by Pam Stucky
“That’s Sylvie,” Megan said, releasing a huge sigh of relief. She walked softly down the stairs to where Sylvie was holding the book in her hands. Sylvie heard Megan approach, and looked up.
“Hi,” whispered Megan. “Everything okay?”
Sylvie nodded and showed Megan the book she was holding. “Murder by the Full Moon. One of Romy’s first. Tonight’s moon made me think of it. I wanted to re-read it.”
Megan then noticed Sylvie already had set the gas fireplace crackling, and had prepared the cozy reader’s nook for a late night of reading. “It’s a good one,” Megan said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“No,” said Sylvie, “come talk to me for a bit. It’s a little creepy down here alone.” She laughed gently at herself.
Megan nodded. The enormous house took a bit of getting used to. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll show you a secret.” She led Sylvie to the nook, where she opened up the top of an oversized ottoman in the center, to reveal a stash of fluffy throw blankets in forest greens and river blues. “I stashed these away for when I come here to read,” she said, handing Sylvie a lush green throw and taking a blue one for herself. They sat in overstuffed chairs on either side of the gas fireplace and stared at it a while. Megan decided it would be best to let Sylvie lead the conversation.
“It’s not real,” Sylvie said, finally.
“I can’t even imagine what you’re going through,” said Megan. “I’m so sorry.”
Sylvie held up Murder by the Full Moon. “The sister of the murder victim in this one was based on me.” She shook her head. “I was so mad at the time. The sister is not painted in the most flattering light. But probably closer to accurate than I cared to admit at the time. Romy was so astute,” she said. “A keen observer. She paid attention to everything, to everyone. She wasn’t really interested in sharing anything about herself. ‘I already know myself,’ she used to say. ‘I want to understand everyone else.’ No one could listen like she could. She made people feel comfortable, I guess.”
“Safe,” said Megan. “She made me feel safe.” She saw the question in Sylvie’s eyes. “When she stayed here, we talked a couple of times. You’re right. I would have told her anything, probably.” She reflected back on the evening she’d spent opening her soul to the author and wondered what it had been, exactly, that had made her so willing to talk. Purely and simply the fact that someone was truly interested, she decided. That had been enough. “I didn’t give her the same courtesy, I’m ashamed to admit,” she said.
Sylvie waved a dismissive hand in the air. “That wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry. That was her way. Like I said, she collected other people’s stories. She didn’t share hers.”
Megan wished for a cup of tea or cocoa, but didn’t want to ruin the mood by going to get one, even though the staff kitchen was not far away. “What was Romy’s story?” she asked.
Sylvie subconsciously was running her fingers along the pages of the book, fanning their soft, well-worn edges and creating the tiniest of breezes that occasionally lifted the ends of her hair. She gazed out the tall windows at the full moon, shaping her thoughts in her mind. “Lonely,” she said finally. “She was lonely.” She laughed wryly. “I once told Wade that I thought Romy was lonely. He didn’t believe me. He said, ‘She’s famous. What is she, lonely in a crowd?’ I said yes. Lonely in a crowd. Surrounded by well-wishers and fans and agents and publishers, all of whom wanted something from her but none of whom really cared about her. They saw her as they needed her to be. So many of the people closest to her only wanted to be near her for what they could get from her. That feeling of being important by association.” She put the book down and tucked the blanket up to her chin. “Romy didn’t have a lot of friends. Too many people betrayed her early on. She stopped trusting most people after a while.” The dancing light of the fire flickered in Sylvie’s sad eyes, and Megan could see Sylvie had more thoughts churning, so she let the silence rest in the space between them for a while. She looked out again at the moon, bathing the river and the library in its cool glow. If she had a chance to go to the moon, would she? She’d wondered before. The problem, of course, would be the isolation. All that time alone.
“I think,” Sylvie said, “I think that ultimately, everyone is lonely. Don’t you?”
For a minute Megan wondered if she’d been talking out loud again, about the isolation of the moon. Then she remembered, Sylvie had been talking about Romy. “I don’t know,” Megan said. “I suppose maybe. Are you? Even with Wade?”
Sylvie pursed her lips and said nothing.
“My fiancé died a while back,” Megan offered. “I guess there are different kinds of lonely. I have great friends, but I missed him anyway. I still do.” She decided this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have right at the moment, so she turned her words back to Romy. “I’ve been talking to Max—Deputy Coleman. He’s working so hard to figure out what happened. I’m assuming he’s already talked with you?”
Sylvie nodded. “I’m not much help, unfortunately.”
“Do you have any ideas at all? Who might have wanted to hurt your sister?” She looked upward, through the ceiling toward the rooms where Emlyn and Baz were staying. “What do you know about Emlyn?”
As if she’d smelled something sour, Sylvie wrinkled her nose. “She’s a snob,” she said, then shook her head. “But probably harmless. It’s the husband who makes my hair stand on end. He never says anything but he’s always there. Like a rash.” She shuddered.
Megan decided that as distasteful as it might seem, she should talk with Emlyn and Baz in the morning, to see if she could get anything helpful out of them. She couldn’t blame Edison for their being in the library, though; that was Lily. Lily owed her. “What about Edison?” she said. “What was up between Romy and Edison?”
Again Sylvie was dismissive. “Oh, they were … just old friends.”
“Old friends?” said Megan. “I thought they only met recently?”
Sylvie looked at Megan, as though only then realizing she hadn’t been sitting there talking to herself the whole time. “No, that’s right. They didn’t talk about it. They met at a support group years and years ago.”
The hairs on the back of Megan's neck stood up inexplicably. “They did? What kind of support group?”
“Just a general support group. Group therapy. Romy suffered from depression. Edison …” she stopped.
“Edison?” Megan said, encouraging Sylvie to go on. What about Edison?
Sylvie picked up the book and started flipping through the pages again. “Edison’s ex-wife was abusive. Not just physically, but also emotionally. Manipulative. Cruel. Relentless. He didn’t want people to know. He probably still doesn’t want people to know.”
This information shed a new light on things, Megan thought, but she didn’t know what that light meant. Daphne Wright was capable of violence, for one thing. And Edison? What would he do to keep his past secret?
“It’s just me, now,” said Sylvie, opening the book. “Our parents are gone, neither of us had any kids. I’m the only one left.” She switched on a lamp next to her chair and started reading.
Sensing that this was her cue to leave, Megan replaced her blanket in its secret hiding spot and headed back upstairs. She suspected sleep would not be soon in coming.
NINE
As she’d expected, Megan had trouble falling asleep. Instead she lay awake puzzling over the mystery before her. “Motive and opportunity,” she said to the moon as it sailed away out of view. “That’s what it’s about. Motive and opportunity.” She went through the list of possible suspects in her head, but none seemed likely. Unlikeable, some of them, but likely to commit murder? She had a hard time believing it. Certainly she didn’t want to believe anyone currently living under her roof had anything to do with it. She’d taken extra care to lock the dead bolt on her front door, but had stopped short of moving furniture in front of it—not that she hadn’t been tempted.
“Emlyn
and Baz,” she said to the ceiling. Regardless of motive, did they have opportunity? Lily remembered them coming back to the B&B on the night of the party, and they’d been there in the morning. But Lily slept hard, and her husband, Steve, wore a CPAP machine at night, which blocked out most other sounds. Emlyn or Baz, or both of them, could have slipped out without anyone noticing a thing. “But why?” said Megan.
She checked the clock and sighed. She had plans for the morning and really wanted to get some sleep, but her mind wouldn’t stop whirling. “All right, then: Daphne Wright. Or Edison,” she said. Did Max know about Daphne’s abusive nature? Megan hated to reveal Edison’s secrets without permission, but surely that was critical information. She vowed to call the Deputy in the morning and let him know.
“None of it adds up,” she said to the stars, and then she fell asleep.
* * *
The skies were dark gray and the wind was blowing the next morning as Megan set off on the mission she’d set for herself. Everyone seemed to think the prime suspect in this case was Romy’s ex-husband, Gus. If Gus swam every morning at eight, well, it was a free country; what was there to keep Megan from just happening to show up at the pool and having a chat? She’d gone online and found a not-too-old picture of Gus, which she’d printed out and brought with her in the car. “I hope he looks the same now,” she thought, as she pulled her car into the parking lot of the public pool in Concrete, a town near Emerson Falls.
Having no idea how long the average person might swim, she’d aimed for eight-thirty. The lot was only half full, but as she looked around she realized she had not thought this mission out particularly well. What was she going to do? Confront him? Go in and pretend she was going for a swim, in her street clothes? As she chewed on her dilemma, she sat in her car and watched the front door carefully. Two women came out, chatting and laughing with an aura of rigorous health, one with her hair wrapped in a towel and the other with her short hair still slightly damp. The door shut behind them and remained closed for a few minutes. Next, a man came out, eyes on his phone as he scrolled through calls or social media posts he’d missed. “Not Gus,” Megan said, double-checking the photo she’d printed out. The man on the phone was at least twenty years younger, and his skin was too dark for it to be Gus. Another woman came out, looking at her watch and walking at a steady clip toward Megan, looking at Megan sitting in her car and making Megan's heart beat fast. Did Megan know this woman? Not intending to stare, she tried to figure out where she might have met the lady before. At the library? But the woman was staring back at her, hard, with deep concentration. She walked up to Megan's side of the car … and then continued past, to the car parked behind Megan's, got in, and drove away.
“Silly,” Megan scolded herself. She then realized that while she’d been watching the woman, a man who looked a good bit like Gus had exited the pool building. She checked the photo again: bald, graying mustache, glasses, wiry body, average height. Definitely the same guy, and he was getting into his car and was about to drive away.
Megan panicked. She couldn’t run over to his car now; he’d be gone before she got there. She’d just have to follow him for a bit. Most likely he’d head to a coffee shop, wouldn’t he? That’s what she would do after a swim, anyway. Maybe? As he pulled his car out of the parking lot she decided just to follow him and see where he went.
At first, he drove down the main roads of the town. Megan felt like a real detective, keeping her distance while holding him in sight. But shortly after, he turned up a side road with much less traffic, heading toward the hills. Megan fell back a bit, hoping not to be noticed. A few blocks later, Gus turned off onto a road that quite clearly was heading away from town.
Megan hesitated just slightly. “What would Nancy Drew do?” she said, letting Gus get a little farther away from her before turning her own car down the road. “Nancy would definitely follow him,” she said. A self-satisfied smile turned up her lips as she felt quite smug. Until, that is, she realized the road was very narrow, with few places to turn around. The road curved up and up around a hill; on the right was the hill, and on the left, a steep drop-off.
She was trapped.
At which point she remembered that Nancy Drew had been kidnapped on many occasions, and suddenly Megan's plan, or lack thereof, seemed extraordinarily dense. Megan had visions of Nancy being gagged and thrown into the trunk of a car, or worse, and she wondered if her own fate might be the same. She slowed to a crawl, watching for the tiniest opportunity to turn around. But she was too late. Gus, who had apparently spotted the lone car following him down the lonely road, stopped, put his car in reverse, and backed up his vehicle until he was inches away from Megan's hood.
He got out of his car, not even bothering to shut the door, his eyes raging in anger, veins popping on his neck. He stopped at Megan's closed window, his eyes piercing through the glass at Megan's soul.
“ARE YOU THE PRESS?” he screamed. “ARE YOU THE PRESS? WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME? ARE YOU THE PRESS? WHY CAN’T YOU PEOPLE LEAVE ME ALONE?”
Megan had instinctively thrown her hands up in front of her face to protect herself from the man’s fury. She let them down now and rolled down her window, just slightly, the car’s engine still running.
“No,” she said, trying to sound calm. “I’m not the press. I’m—I’m a librarian.”
The words had a flabbergasting effect on Gus, who breathed hard and stared at Megan for several long seconds. “A librarian?” He flung his arms wide and looked around, shaking his head. “What, do I have an overdue book?”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Megan and Gus were seated inside a coffee shop back in Concrete. She had explained to him who she was, though she’d fudged a bit on her motive, telling him she was hoping to figure out Romy’s state of mind, whether she might have wanted to hurt herself. After a bit of coaxing, Gus had agreed to talk. Much to Megan's relief, he hadn’t asked her to continue along the road to his home. She was not about to get herself kidnapped and stuffed into a trunk.
Up close, Gus looked weary. Outside of the photos she’d found of him online, Megan had little way of knowing how he looked normally. But he seemed tired, like he hadn’t slept for days. His shoulders slumped. He seemed capable of breathing in just enough air to keep him alive. His eyes had the look of a person who had fallen asleep crying: still somewhat puffy, but no longer red. He seemed not to have shaved all week.
It hadn’t taken too much convincing to get him to come out and talk, Megan noticed. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he needed a friend.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, once the two were settled in a corner booth with their coffees and, for him, an egg sandwich.
He shook his head and shrugged unconvincingly.
Megan had rehearsed in the car what she thought she would say to Gus when she met him, but now, seeing this broken man before her, all her righteous indignation melted away. Broken was a place she knew too well.
“Today was my first day back at the pool,” Gus said. Megan didn’t have to ask, “first day since what?”
“That’s good,” said Megan. “Routine is good. Routine helps.”
Gus looked up, squinting, his eyes making an accusation: How would you know?
“My fiancé died in a plane crash,” Megan said.
The recrimination in Gus’s eyes vanished. He nodded, and took another bite of his sandwich.
“Had you been in touch with Romy recently?” Megan asked. “I’m trying to sort out whether she would have hurt herself. Or who might have wanted to hurt her.”
Again he shrugged, as though the effort of speaking was itself beyond him. He heaved a burdened sigh. “We didn’t talk much,” he said. Having wolfed down his sandwich, he now started folding a straw into a zigzag, unfolding it, and then folding it the other way, over and over and over. “But I guess I kept up on what she was doing.”
Megan pondered this a minute. Did he mean he’d been stalking her? Romy had mentioned h
ow angry he’d been with her. Megan looked around the room. Definitely she was safe here, in this public place, but one never knew who could become explosive. Zeus had always been fascinated by tales of crime on TV news magazine shows. He would go on at length about how seemingly ordinary people could just one moment be encumbered by that final straw, the last moment of sanity before they snapped into the unthinkable. Murder, he’d always said, wasn’t about murder. It was about the ways people failed to cope; the ways they gave up; the ways they broke. The ways people couldn’t accept the failures in their own lives, and thus tried to shift the horrible pain and the responsibility onto someone else in one irreversible, unforgivable action.
But was it unforgivable? She’d had that discussion with him many times—and it had been a discussion, not an argument, as both of them had enjoyed the philosophical discourse. In some senses, they’d agreed, it was unforgivable. In other senses, though, he had posited, in order to understand the monster outside of ourselves, we had to understand the monster within ourselves. In order to go forward with our own lives, he would say, each of us would need to let go of the bonds that anger, or the desire for revenge, could put on us.
“Any of us is capable,” he would say.
“Not me,” Megan would say.
“Even you,” Zeus would promise, with a smile. And then he’d pull her into his lap and kiss her and tell her “I’m going to murder you with my undying affection,” and make her wonder how anyone could ever kill, when there was so, so much love in the world.
