Now it was Grace’s turn to hate Lara.
Grace sat at the wheel of her pickup truck for a few minutes, staring off into space. Her stomach felt raw and hollowed out. The orange-juice chaser couldn’t erase the stale taste in her mouth and no amount of denial could ease the sadness she was feeling. She rummaged in the truck’s glove compartment, finding some rock-hard gum that had been there since her uncle was still alive. She tossed it aside and backed out of the space. Grace had to prove she didn’t have anything to do with the fire. It was time to find the man she’d spoken to on Halloween night.
She cut across town on a secondary road that ran parallel to Main Street. She was careful to signal at every turn and check the mirrors before stopping at each intersection. Anything to avoid drawing further attention. She was halfway home when an oncoming driver flashed their headlights. It turned out she’d been driving blind. She switched on the headlights and decreased her speed further.
On Cedar Street, she stopped briefly in front of the house where she’d fallen asleep on the lawn. The Halloween decorations had been replaced with Christmas lights. An elderly man stood near the bay window holding an infant in his arms. The child was grabbing at his glasses and the man was laughing.
Grace drove along the road until she found an elm tree whose branches hung low over the pavement. Her memories from the night had been disjointed up until the moment Jordan’s Bronco had rounded the nearby street corner. Fear had had a sobering effect. She was in no doubt that this was the tree she’d hidden behind as Jordan drove by. Grace stepped out of her truck and used a flashlight to take a closer look at an indentation in the hedge. Branches had snapped clean off where she’d hurled herself through it. She drove to the next block, took a right, and slowly cruised along another quiet street, heading in the direction of Pilot Hill. She stopped in front of the sixth house. It was more ramshackle than the others. The sofa on the front porch was a dead giveaway that university students lived there. The side yard looked like the one she’d passed through on the night of the fire. Madison Road was four blocks farther to the east.
Grace wasn’t sure what to do next. The man she’d spoken to on Halloween night had said he was a visitor to the house. She didn’t know his name and all she knew of the woman who lived there was a voice. Grace flipped down the mirror on the sun visor and stared up at her pale face.
She was in trouble already.
There really was nothing left to lose.
She went to the door and rang the bell. Now that she was closer she could hear music playing inside. The door swung open and a woman looked down on her from a great height. Already tall, she was wearing six-inch platform shoes, a floral maxi dress, and a long kimono, all of which were vintage. Everything about her was tattooed or pierced.
“Come in,” she said. “It’s fucking cold outside.”
Grace was surprised that the woman didn’t ask who Grace was and why she was there. She walked toward the back of the house and Grace followed. A group of about ten people were gathered in the kitchen and dining room. Someone handed Grace an exotic-looking cocktail as she stepped inside. The tattooed woman was at the stove with her back turned to Grace. Grace took a sip of her drink. It tasted strongly of alcohol and berries.
The man who’d handed Grace the drink leaned in. He wore a blazer and a bow tie and carried a pitcher. His beard and mustache were so perfect they looked as if they were molded from plastic.
“I make my own gin. What do you think?” he asked.
“I couldn’t judge. I don’t have much experience with gin.”
“That’s about to change. Can I take your coat?” he asked.
Grace gave him a blank look. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s been a misunderstanding.” She tilted her head toward the front door. “I rang the bell to ask a question. I don’t know anyone here.”
“In that case, give me back that drink.”
Grace blushed as she tried to hand it over.
He waved her off and laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. What should I call you?”
“Grace Adams,” she said. She watched his reaction. If he’d made the connection he didn’t show it.
He held out a hand. “It’s just plain ole Charlie, I’m afraid. What brings you here?”
“It’s an odd story.”
He held up a hand. “I only want to hear it if it’s interesting. Can you promise me that it’s interesting?”
Grace had another sip of her drink. She was feeling brave.
“I can definitely promise that it’s not something that you’ve ever heard before.”
“I hate being bored.”
“You won’t be bored.” Grace glanced over at the woman at the stove. “Who lives here?”
“A couple of artists, a poet, a documentary filmmaker, some kittens … it’s a collective of sorts.”
“I don’t feel like I’m in Montana anymore.”
They clinked their glasses together.
“In that case, Dorothy, welcome to Oz.”
“I really need to speak to someone who lives here. It’s important.”
He held a finger to his lips. “It doesn’t work like that in our little collective. First you have to tell us your interesting story.”
Grace tried to back away. “Us, as in all of you?”
He steered her into the center of the room and relieved her of her coat.
“We’re a collective. We share everything. Think Vladimir Lenin and Kim Kardashian.” He poured a bit more booze into her glass and winked. “We even share our homemade gin.”
An elderly couple sat on a sofa holding hands. Their eyes darted around the room. The man whispered something in the woman’s ear and she put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. A litter of sleeping kittens rested in a wicker basket at their feet. The window behind the sofa looked out onto the garden. An ashtray was balanced on the sill. A door leading out into the back garden was less than ten feet away. This was definitely the right house.
Charlie tapped the side of the pitcher of cocktails with his pipe.
“Grace Adams has just confessed to crashing our little party. Apparently, she has an interesting story to tell us.” He stepped away and bowed. “Grace, the floor is yours.”
Grace stood in front of the odd assortment of strangers. The floorboards creaked beneath her red galoshes. She wondered if it was too late to click her heels together three times and say there’s no place like home. Someone switched off the music.
The tattooed woman stepped away from the stove and wiped her hands on a dish towel. She gazed at Grace with open curiosity.
“You’re the Grace Adams? From Collier?”
Grace watched her for a few seconds. She was definitely the woman she’d heard on the night of the fire. Grace was keenly aware that everyone was listening now. The color was rising in her cheeks. Her mouth was dry. She took another swallow of gin. It burned in a nice way.
“Yes,” said Grace. “That’s me.”
“What brings—”
Charlie held up a hand. “I’ve told Grace she has to tell us her story before we tell her what she needs to know. We made a deal.”
Grace knocked back the rest of her drink. All that stood between her and proving her innocence was a story. It didn’t seem too much to ask.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to start at the beginning,” said Grace.
16
Friday
Macy needed to calm down before she went into an interview room with Lara Newcomb. Grace had tried to make excuses for Lara’s behavior, but Macy couldn’t see any reasonable justification for hiding the Polaroids from the police and her closest friends. Witnesses and video footage put Lara at the K-Bar when the fire started, but that didn’t stop Macy from thinking that she may have had something to do with it. It was becoming clear to Macy and everyone else involved in the investigation that Lara Newcomb had a complicated relationship with Peter Granger.
The door to the interview room was a
jar. Macy could overhear the conversation Lara was having with the officer who was setting up the recording equipment. She wanted to know how everything worked and seemed especially fascinated with the one-way mirror. Macy walked into the room, slammed her folders on the desk, and said nothing for the first few minutes she was seated. She instead went through her notes and checked her messages again. Aiden had arrived and was looking forward to seeing her later. He’d sent her a photo of the pizza he’d just ordered. The table was full of beer glasses so she assumed he was out with a crowd of people. Macy already had enough reasons to be angry with Lara Newcomb, so she put all thoughts of Aiden, beer, and pizza aside. Macy looked up only because Lara spoke. The first thing she asked Macy was if she was free to go.
Lara had been wearing a coat when Macy met her at the hospital but now she wore a loose-fitting sweater. Her shoulder bones poked out from her rounded back and she smelled strongly of tobacco. Macy was once again taken aback by the huskiness of the young woman’s voice.
“You’re helping with inquiries. We’re hoping you’ll cooperate willingly,” said Macy.
“So, I’m here voluntarily,” said Lara.
“For now, but that might change. You’ve been informed that you have a right to an attorney, which I understand you declined.”
“Where’s Grace?”
“I assume she’s gone home,” said Macy.
“Is she a suspect?”
“Lara, this isn’t a friendly chat. I’m conducting a formal interview. You’ve given a preliminary statement to the police.” Macy slid the document across the table. “Can you confirm that everything you’ve written here is correct?”
Lara barely looked at the forms. She sat back in her chair and studied Macy.
“It’s all there.”
“Tell me about the Polaroids. I want to know why you went searching for them in the first place. Something must have made you suspicious.”
“Actually, I was more petulant than suspicious. The woman who was supposed to housesit for Peter and Hannah cancelled at the last minute. Peter implied that I was obligated to do it because of everything he’d done for me. I didn’t say anything at the time but his attitude really upset me.”
“Why did you housesit for them then? You could have refused.”
“Peter was my mentor. He’d helped me get an agent. He was going to help me get a publisher. I was in no position to say no to him.”
“But that’s not how it’s worked out. Thirty-six rejections and counting. You must have been feeling pretty desperate.”
“At that point I was just feeling grateful. Like I said, he’d done a great deal for me.”
“But you did a great deal for him too. Your friend Clare says that you basically handed him Grace Adams on a plate.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You’re the one who invited him to the poetry evening at the café where Grace worked. You were the one who convinced Grace to read a poem. You’re the one who whispered her real name in his ear. You say in your preliminary statement that Grace Adams is your best friend. Why would you do something like that to her?”
“It wasn’t meant to go any further than that evening. I was as surprised as anyone when he invited her to join the writing workshop.”
“But he did even more than that. During May and June they had two private sessions a week in his office. She told him everything about what happened back in Collier. She became a fixture in the Granger’s household, staying the night, sharing meals, drinking their wine. I can only imagine how much that pissed you off.”
Lara didn’t answer. Macy placed photocopies of the four Polaroids they’d found in Hannah’s office on the table. For now she’d be leaving in the folder the rest of the Polaroids Lara had given to her colleagues who conducted the preliminary interview. Macy could almost see Lara’s justification for keeping them from the police, but Taylor, Clare, and Pippa were her friends.
“Tell me why you were snooping around in Peter Granger’s office in the first place.”
“I wanted to see if there was anything in Peter’s office that related to my manuscript. I was worried he wasn’t as confident in my work as he professed to be.”
“How did you get in?”
A shrug. “They left all their keys behind. The photos were in a box hidden in the back of a cupboard. There were hundreds of them.”
Macy raised her voice. “Of different woman?”
“No, there were half a dozen photos of each woman. I went through them all.”
“When did you realize you were looking at photos of yourself and your friends?”
“They were the first ones I found.”
“So, let me get this straight. You find these Polaroids and your first thought isn’t to go to the police or tell your friends, but to take them to Hannah Granger. Why?”
“I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I guess if I actually remembered it happening I’d be more traumatized. In a way I feel very separate from the girl in the photo. She isn’t me.”
“But she is you.” Macy pointed to the other photos. “And this is Clare and this Pippa and this one is of Taylor. Did you ever stop to think that they might see these images in a completely different way? Clare was here earlier. She was devastated when she saw the photos. She trusted you as a friend. She feels that you’ve betrayed her as well. Your friends had a right to know what happened to them and you tried to take that right away.”
“I knew they couldn’t handle it.”
“But that’s my point. They were already suffering. Pippa had a nervous breakdown, Taylor was self-harming, and Clare has pulled out almost all of her hair. They knew something horrible had happened. They just didn’t understand what it was. You weren’t helping them by hiding the truth.”
“When I brought the photos to Hannah I thought she would do something. She has a lot of influence over Peter.”
“I have another theory. Would you like to hear it?”
“I’m telling the truth,” said Lara.
Macy leaned in. “I think you only gave them to Hannah because the alternative meant going to the police and that wouldn’t have suited your needs. Were you trying to get the photos back when you broke into Hannah Granger’s office on Tuesday evening?”
Lara looked down at her hands.
“The police found copies of the Granger’s house and office keys when your room was searched this evening,” said Macy.
“You searched my room?”
“Under the circumstances it was pretty easy to obtain a warrant. Did you break into Hannah Granger’s office?”
“I wanted to get the photos back. I didn’t want my friends to ever see them. I know you don’t believe me, but I did it because they couldn’t have coped.”
“But you could?”
“I suppose so.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re handling things from this side of the table. When is the last time you ate?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Do you want to tell me why there were searches on your Web browser about arson?”
“That was nearly a year ago. I was doing research for a short story I was writing. It was published in an anthology if you want to read it.”
“Don’t worry. I will. Did you steal Peter’s laptop and download files from a remote server?”
“No, never.” Lara paused. “Wasn’t it destroyed in the fire?”
“Apparently, it wasn’t. You had keys to his office and home. That puts you pretty high on my list of people who might have it.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Where were you Wednesday afternoon between two and three?” asked Macy.
“I was in a lecture.”
“Can you prove it?”
“They take attendance.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I was sitting next to Clare Stokes. She may be angry with me but she wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
“Le
t’s hope not, for your sake.” Macy made some notes. “Clare and Grace told me that you’d always had a difficult relationship with Taylor Moore and that you’d recently fallen out. They said you were jealous because Peter was giving her all the attention, attention you’d once had.”
“They’re making a big deal out of nothing and so are you. I didn’t have a problem with Taylor, because I knew Peter would move on. She was just his latest project.”
“Whereas you were old news.”
“He was going to come back.”
“Why would he do that? Were you threatening him with blackmail? Is that why you kept the photos instead of going to the police?”
Lara chose to remain silent.
“It troubles me that you had keys to the Granger’s home and a difficult relationship with both the victims.…”
“I can prove where I was all evening. I’ll show you my phone. I have hundreds of photos.” Lara placed her cell phone on the table in front of Macy. “I not only took pictures of every single Elvis in the K-Bar, I spoke to them as well. I was nowhere near the Granger’s home.”
Lara pulled the sleeves of her sweater. Her wrists were birdlike, nothing but veins and sinew. She looked up at the ceiling when she spoke. Her eyes were dry.
“Check my phone. It’s all there. I document my entire waking life. I didn’t set that fire.”
Macy scrolled through the images. It was one Elvis impersonator after another. The images at the end of the night were more chaotic. Macy stopped when she found a video clip.
Silent Rain Page 21
