"Well, it's a good thing I had a good time last night," I say, giving him a smile, clearing my plate.
"Why? What do you mean?" he asks.
"Well, I felt this morning that if I didn't have a good time, I'd probably be kicking myself."
"Yeah, Richard is a nice guy. And his friends? I can see us spending some time with them if you want."
"Wow, couple friends," and I raise an eyebrow. "It doesn't help that Lincoln has slept with Richard's girlfriend and his wife doesn't know, but I guess that’s how it is. Things are complicated among the rich and famous."
Dante looks at me, and I think I've crossed the line, but then he begins to laugh a thick, loud, easygoing laugh that begins in the pit of his stomach.
I join him, and all of my worries go away.
8
Jacqueline
The following morning, I take a walk out by the water by myself. The air is cool and the world is slightly overcast the way that mornings by the water usually are.
Thick, gray clouds cover the sky but I know that in just a few hours, they will be burned off by the summer sun. In the meantime, the air feels cool on my cheeks, comfortable, and warm enough to not cause me to sweat.
I walk fast, putting one foot quickly in front of the other.
I don't break out into a full run, not quite yet, because I know that I can maintain the speed, and it seems to somewhat match the tempo of my thoughts.
The weekend has been a whirlwind, to say the least.
I had no plans to meet Dante's family, but I ended up meeting everyone who's important to him; his brother, sister-in-law, and, of course, his mother.
My thoughts on her are still somewhat mixed. Adele was kind to me, approachable, which was surprising. But I've also seen how she has treated Marguerite, and it's the kind of treatment that she clearly doesn’t deserve.
But I have my own relationship to forge and I don't want to burn any bridges; she is Dante's mother after all.
A seagull flies into my field of vision and hops on the ground, looking at me sideways. I smile and wave, and I see what appears to be a little bit of a smile from the bird.
But that can't be true, right? I continue to walk.
The sand is lumpy and wet, heavy from an early tide.
My sneakers get caked with sand all around my feet. I kneel down at one point to feel the water, careful to keep my shoes from getting soaked.
I feel like my life is starting a new chapter.
Turmoil is on the horizon but it's not here yet. There are still so many unknowns.
Will I get the job in Seattle?
And if I go there, what will I find?
And who sent the letter about my brother?
And what is there to know about his death?
A few joggers crowd around on the beach, filling it up with their steady footsteps and their nods in my direction as they run past.
I pick up my pace, but I still limit myself to a brisk walk. I start to run out of breath, but I keep going.
I walk for a long time this morning, going far into the distance. My watch beeps when I get two miles and I force myself to turn around, knowing that I have a two-mile walk back.
All this time alone brings my thoughts back to Michael, my one friend and confidant all of the years when I was growing up.
He was sweet and kind and even though we sometimes fought like cats and dogs, he was always there for me. When someone made fun of me at school or tried to bully me, he stood up for me.
Anyone who's ever been in school knows the politics that riding the bus involves. It's all about where you sit, and the location determines your social status.
I could never sit anywhere closer than five rows from the back as the back of the bus was reserved for the coolest kids at school. It doesn't matter where their stop was, not even if they were the last ones to get on.
If you dared to sit back there, you'd be put in your place pretty quickly. Well, I did.
One day, I just decided to sit second row from the back. I was quickly told to leave and go sit up front where I belonged. Of course, this request was laced with a lot of curse words.
Michael wasn’t there but when he found out about it the next day, he stood up for me. He threatened to beat up Corey Buford, the guy who’d kicked me out. When Corey refused to apologize, Michael put his fist through Corey’s face and got suspended for five days.
Mom was pissed off, angry that she had to take time off work to come in to talk to the principal. I was so thankful to my brother for putting Corey in his place, but I also felt guilty for getting him suspended.
When I get back to the house from the walk on the beach, I change out of my sweaty leggings and hoodie into something a little bit more appropriate.
Dante drives me over to the police station. It's a long drive because we can't go to the one out here in the Hamptons. They don't have jurisdiction.
We first stop by my mom's house to get the letter. She's still not talking to me, not in any real way, but she's glad that I'm taking the initiative and decides to come along with me. The police station's only three blocks away from her home, but it's sticky and hot already so we get into Dante's car.
The drive over is excruciating, filled with a lot of silence. It's Sunday and I won't be able to go to the post office until the next day, but at least we can do this.
Sergeant Mallory meets us in his office. He's the one who worked on my brother's case.
"You know you're lucky you caught me. I'm taking a week off starting tomorrow, so I had to come in to catch up on some work," he says, brushing his hands through his thick ginger hair.
His skin is freckled and his cheeks get red when he laughs, but he has a very casual and easygoing demeanor that has always put me at ease.
When he told me about my brother's death, he was gentle and polite and I appreciated the kindness.
"It's good to see that you're doing better," Sergeant Mallory says, addressing me directly.
I know what he's referring to. I ran into him in a donut shop a few months after the funeral and I hadn't showered for days, if not a week.
My clothes were stained and full of holes, and I was eating a box of donuts all by myself in the parking lot at four o'clock in the morning after not sleeping for seventy-two hours.
"I am doing better. I’m finishing school and Dante and I are actually dating," I say.
“Good, good.” He nods, smiling with approval.
He's about fifteen years older than I am and has four kids of his own, all teenagers. I look at their pictures in the picture frames, them smiling brightly at Disney World and at Six Flags, having the kind of exhausting, overwhelming, sugar-induced fun that only large families tend to have.
"Well, let's see this letter,” he says, and my mom pulls it out of her purse.
9
Jacqueline
I look around Sergeant Mallory's office.
Besides the pictures on the walls, the shelves are pretty empty. There are a few folders here and there but that's pretty much it. The table is broad and wide with just a computer on the side and a keyboard; everything else is pretty clean.
I sit between Mom and Dante, with Dante's chair pushed a little bit behind mine. Mom hands Sergeant Mallory the letter and he opens it carefully wearing gloves.
We had put it into a Ziploc bag under my direction to make sure that no additional prints were added to it.
He looks it over, reads the contents, and then shrugs his shoulders a little bit with a knowing expression on his face but knowing what, I wonder.
"This looks to be a pretty standard letter," he says, sitting back in his chair and it makes a loud creaking sound.
"What are you talking about?" I ask. "What's standard about it?"
"I can't be sure, and of course, we're going to run it through all the proper channels, crime scene investigation, fingerprints, we’re even going to try and figure out who the signature belongs to, but I just want to warn you, sometimes letters
like this appear."
"From whom?" Mom says, clutching her purse.
It's a small rigid leather purse that I got her from TJ Maxx a few Christmases ago and it has both small handles at the top as well as a long strap for the crossbody look.
"Sometimes people receive letters like these. I would love to say that they're not particularly common, but they are. We'll have to wait and see. This may be a letter that's just an introduction and in another week or so, you may get a phone call or a follow-up letter asking for money related to revealing this information. I'm not sure what's going to happen in this case."
I search his face and I get the feeling that he's not being evasive or deceptive. Instead, he's just being honest.
This is the suspicion that I had myself, working as a journalist and reading numerous stories about people who have gone missing.
I tell him about the missing persons letters and he nods along.
“So, you know what I'm talking about," he says.
"Yeah, but I don't understand the angle here. I mean, it's a little bit different, isn't it?" I press.
He hesitates, but then nods again.
"It's not exactly the same thing," I continue, looking at my mom's confused face and knowing that she's not quite following. "Why would someone write something like this? I mean, it's a different situation because this person isn’t asking for anything, he's just stating that it may not have been an accident. I mean, shouldn't he be asking for something in order for it to be a scam?"
"Yes, I would say so," Sergeant Mallory nods, "but it's also possible that he's lying or just setting the scene so to speak."
"How so?" Mom pipes in, clearing her throat and nervously adjusting her grip on her purse.
"Well, he lays out this information. He pulls you in and might offer more information in the future in exchange for money.”
We all sigh practically simultaneously.
"Look, I want to get to the bottom of this. If there was indeed a murder, we have to know, but I just want to warn you of the possibilities," SergeantMallory says, reaching over and taking my hand. "I just want you to be mentally prepared for…anything."
I nod and swallow hard.
We don't stay to talk to him much longer than that. He ushers us out and I'm just happy to leave.
Mom hesitates in the hallway and wonders out loud if maybe she should talk to someone else, but Sergeant Mallory convinces her that they're going to run all of the appropriate tests on the letter and get the results as soon as possible.
"How long will that be? The results, I mean," I ask him as we walk out.
Sergeant Mallory walks us out, holding the door open and is just about to close it. "Unfortunately, we're very backlogged," he says. "It’ll probably be a month to two months."
"A month or two months?" Mom gasps.
"Maybe three."
I swallow hard.
A lump forms in the back of my throat and I swallow again and again but it doesn't go away, instead, I just cough.
"I know that it's a disappointment, but this is not an open investigation right now."
"So open it," Dante says.
"It's not that easy, we need proof."
"The proof is in this letter," I push.
"That may be the case but we have hundreds of other cases that need to be solved right now. Rape victims, attacks, actual murders."
"So you don't think it's murder?" I ask, crossing my arms in a defining manner.
"I did not say that. I'm just trying to not push your expectations, okay? This is a difficult time, but the DNA results are going to take as long as they take. This isn't television. Crimes are not solved in an hour."
"You don't have to tell me that," I say, practically shaking my finger in his face. "You think I'm an idiot? A moron? I think that everything's just solved forty-eight hours later?"
"I did not insinuate that."
"Please run the tests."
I feel my anger getting the best of me, but I can't let him win. Not because I don't want to upset him but because I want the DNA results to be run as quickly as possible.
And I don't want them to get lost anywhere or anything to happen to them by accident. That sometimes occurs in cases where the cops and the victim's families don't agree.
"I will do my best.” He nods and we leave it at that.
When Sergeant Mallory disappears into the building and we walk out to our car across the parking lot, none of us feel confident enough to speak first.
"What just happened in there?" I finally ask, breaking the silence.
"He seemed surprised at first," Mom says, "but then the more he talked, the less convinced I became that he was telling me the truth."
I glance at Dante, and he shrugs. "I don't know."
I shake my head. "He's right in that this could be a scam. Someone could reach out to you and ask for money for details but that doesn't mean that it's not true. Just because someone asks for money doesn't mean that the information that they have isn't accurate."
"Doesn't it sort of mean that?" Dante asks.
I shake my head. "A lot of people need money," I say after a long pause. "They need money for rent, if they lost their jobs they need money to feed their kids, to buy groceries; it's a very real thing. And so, if you have some information about something that you know someone will pay for, I can see a lot of people going ahead and making that threat or making that demand."
"But it's not like you guys have any money,” Dante says.
The words just spring out of him and Mom and I both exchange looks.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like that."
"No, I know what you mean.” I nod. "We don't have a lot of money, but we have a lot more money than some. Mom lives in a nice house and Michael was making a comfortable six figures. That's a lot of money for a lot of people."
Dante nods and I can tell that a part of him is trying to wrap his head around this concept, living on six figures. It's not that he spends a lot of money all the time and is very flashy or anything like that. It's actually the opposite, but still, having a substantial trust fund and a job that pays, God, I don't even know how much, half a million, a quarter of a million, whatever it is, it's enough given his family's other income and all the properties that he has access to.
Money's not a concern for him the way it is for a lot of people. I try to recognize my own privilege in the situation, which is substantial, even though I didn't exactly come from a lot. But I also know that whoever knows this, whoever is reaching out like this must have some knowledge about what Michael had and what he did for a living. And that means that he would probably think that the family's a lot more loaded than we actually are.
Dante drives my mom home and she invites us in for some coffee. I don't exactly know where to go from here. The letter's gone to the police department, but I do have a copy, a number of very clear photographs of both the letter, the envelope and even the back just in case.
I don't know if it's the right thing to turn it over to the police, but I didn't want to take it to a private investigator in case that made it invalid to be used in court.
Mom and I don't talk about our fight besides a brief I'm sorry and a hug. There's nothing to say. We both know that we loved Michael very much and that we each feel the grief in our own way.
She knows that I have a lot of suspicions. I am also more of a realist.
"I guess I'm going to have to prepare myself for another follow-up letter asking for a lot of money, huh?" Mom asks, pouring coffee into three mismatched mugs.
She grabs a tin of Girl Scout cookies from the pantry and I bite into one letting it melt on the tip of my tongue.
"I haven't had breakfast yet," I point out, "but this is delicious."
She smiles.
"Girl Scout cookies aren't the best way to start the day," she says and Dante laughs.
"I think you're wrong about that, Mrs. Archer. I think they're probably right up there with one of the best ways to st
art the day."
It's this moment of relief that puts me at ease and I realize just how tense I have been. As I laugh, my whole body relaxes in places where I didn't even know I was holding tension, the back of my neck, my jaw, my temples, and even the joints of my fingers and toes.
"You know, you don't have to call me Mrs. Archer, though I appreciate the sentiment. Elizabeth is just fine."
"Okay, Elizabeth. I wanted to let you know that I love your daughter very much and I've asked her to be my girlfriend exclusively."
"Oh, wow. Congratulations," Mom says, surprised. "I didn't realize my daughter was capable of being pinned down, but I wish you all the luck in that endeavor."
"I know, but she said yes for now, so I guess we'll take it from there."
The three of us laugh again and I appreciate Dante saying something like that to her.
We're not much into formalities in this family, but it's appreciated, nevertheless.
“So, since we're sharing," Mom says, putting her coffee down and reaching over to take Dante's hand in hers, "I just wanted to thank you personally for saving my life. It was just such an unexpected gesture and I'll never be able to pay you back for it but I wanted you to know that it means the world to me to be here; to continue living my life, to spend more time with my daughter, what a gift!”
"You're welcome," Dante says.
He opens his mouth to add something else like a brief don't worry about it or something casual but then he looks directly into her eyes and says, "I'm just glad that I was able to help. I'm happy that you're still with us and doing so well."
This moment of tenderness brings a tear to my eye that comes very unexpectedly.
I force myself to take another gulp of coffee just to make it go away and I blink my eyes to make the tearing up stop.
"Since we're sharing news," I say, clearing my throat, "I actually have some that is not that great. I mean, you may not think it’s that great."
"Okay," Mom says, furrowing her brow.
Dark Sins Page 5
