The Dead Season

by Tessa Wegert

  “Why do you think I’m interested in interviewing you, Mr. Loming?”

  Loming was balding, and had shaved his head down to quarter-inch gray bristles. He massaged the stubble as he spoke. “Brett and I used to be buddies. That was a long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. What do you make of all this? Any ideas about what happened to your friend?”

  “Ex-friend. Like I told you guys before, Brett must have rubbed someone the wrong way.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like he owed someone money and didn’t pay up.”

  Money. It was at the core of most crimes, the chewy black center you knew was there but had to crunch through layer after layer of lies to reach. Money—wanted, owed, distributed in a way deemed unjust—brought out the worst in people, from greed to desperation, jealousy to pride. Coming off a case where following the money had helped Tim and I catch a killer, I knew this for a fact. If Loming was right and Brett had owed someone money, this case might be more of the same.

  “Any idea who he was in debt to?”

  Without taking his eyes from mine, Loming said, “You seem awfully young to be a detective.” Wetly, he snapped his tongue against his teeth. “Must be pretty dangerous work.”

  I can’t explain it, but whenever my scar catches someone’s attention, I feel their stare like a needle being dragged down the skin of my cheek. “Answer the question, Mr. Loming.”

  “Brett’s stack of IOUs was taller than me.”

  “Did he owe you money?”

  “He might have. Nothing major, though.”

  “Did you know Brett was planning on leaving town?”

  “He told me, yeah. I didn’t blame him. His wife was a psycho bitch, pardon my French. They’d already split, but she wouldn’t stop harping on him. I figured leaving Swanton was the only way he could cut ties with that woman for good.”

  “Did you keep in touch with him after he left?”

  “Oh sure, we were pen pals. I was partial to scented paper and purple ink.”

  “Mr. Loming—”

  “No,” he said grudgingly, “we didn’t keep in touch.”

  “Not even a phone call? Didn’t you wonder where he ended up?”

  “Brett’s the one who convinced me to hand over my paychecks to that goddamn casino up in Montreal. He was a bad influence.”

  I studied him. “You don’t seem like the type to be easily influenced,” I said, thinking, You don’t look that virtuous, either.

  Loming’s shrug was loose. “Okay, so maybe it went both ways.”

  Something about Russell Loming’s attitude reminded me of Crissy. This wasn’t your average death, to be sure. Brett was gone long before we knew he was gone for good, and that made it difficult to gauge the nature of his relationship with others. How close had these men been, really? Loming knew about Brett’s problems with Felicia, but that could have been due to idle talk. Half the town had heard about their squabbles. Were these men gambling buddies, plain and simple? I just couldn’t be sure. “Do you remember what you were doing in June of 1998?”

  “Do you?”

  “Was there anyone else Brett was close to before he moved out of town?” I asked, plowing on.

  “I was a married man by then, with two boys at home. I had better things to do than keep track of Brett’s love life.”

  Wait, what? “I didn’t say anything about his love life. Was Brett dating someone, Mr. Loming? You’re under no obligation to answer my questions, but if you don’t and I find out you know something, I’ll wipe that grin right off your face.”

  “Ohh,” Loming said, feigning an epiphany. “You’re asking about Cheryl.”

  “Cheryl?”

  “Brett’s girlfriend.”

  My mind went into overdrive. As far as I knew, Brett hadn’t left Felicia for another woman. It was possible, however, that he was in a new relationship before his death. “Got a last name for me?” I asked.

  “Aw, hell, I can’t remember that.”

  “When exactly were they dating?”

  Lazily, he lifted his gaze to the room’s low, dingy ceiling. “Don’t know when it started. But I can tell you when it ended.”

  So can I, I thought, picturing Brett’s lifeless body among the trees.

  Loming’s stare was distant. His mind was in overdrive, too. “Now that I think about it,” he said, “if you really want to find out who did this, you should talk to Cheryl. They were hot and heavy for a while. I don’t believe she was too thrilled when he took off.”

  “Thanks for your time, Mr. Loming,” I said, tearing a piece of paper from my notebook. “I’ll be needing your number and address, if you don’t mind.”

  “Call me Russ.” He scribbled down his number and forced his sweaty hand against mine. “And call me. Anytime.”

  SEVENTEEN

  In the parking lot of the plant, I messaged Tim. He’d responded to my previous text with a thumbs-up emoji and no questions asked, but now he had bad news. Got a land survey of the houses in town with standalone structures like garden sheds. Sol and Bogle searched the few we found. Nothing there, or in the basements. I felt my shoulders slump. I never imagined thinking about my scar could give me comfort, but I’d been hopeful that Bram might incorporate parts of our shared past into his game. That maybe the reference to swans was only the beginning. At least then I’d stand a chance.

  After my disappointing check-in with Tim, my attention returned to Brett. I spent ten minutes cleaning up my notes on Russell Loming and transcribing what I’d learned from Police Chief Harmison. If Loming wasn’t lying, and assuming I could locate her, Cheryl might have some valuable insights to share. It was Harmison’s report vis-à-vis Brett’s autopsy that had me feeling cautiously optimistic. Blunt force trauma. The killer left him where he fell. Those factors deepened the pool of suspects. Anyone could attack somebody from behind. A man.

  A woman.

  A kid.

  It felt good to puzzle over a case again. It was also a convenient avoidance tactic. The dread I’d felt about sinking helplessly into my past was back, but I could only delay it for so long. Today was about reconnecting with long-lost family, and that meant it was time to pay a visit to Aunt Fee.

  The house stood less than a block from Crissy’s, and I cruised up the road at a snail’s pace, shocked all over again that this embittered mother and daughter shared the very same street. My memories of the Skilton family converged on a split-level from the sixties that wore its age like a curse—rotten siding on the outside, smelly carpets within, and a porch railing forever caked in dank green algae. Felicia’s new place was nothing like that. Its white trim hadn’t been left to yellow like Crissy’s, and the driveway I turned into looked newly repaved.

  After parking, I paused at the door, puffing out white plumes of breath and staring at the water. Felicia had the same spectacular bay view and easy access to the wildlife refuge as Crissy, and there was a motorboat tied to her dock. From what I could remember, neither my aunt nor my cousin had a history of boating. Despite living so close to Lake Champlain, my family was always more comfortable with our feet on the ground.

  “Shana, my God,” Felicia said when she opened the door, her gaze alighting on my scar and flitting away just as quickly. “It’s been too long.”

  As she ushered me inside, I got a timid hug and a chance to feel her ribs move under her loose skin. She was layered in scarves, a tunic, and a celery-green cardigan that made her pale blue eyes look yellow in a way that was unnerving. This was something else that distinguished mother from daughter: Felicia had shed a few pounds. Her fine, flowing hair was completely gray, and so long the ends tickled her elbows. I found her new look perplexing. Was she a mystic now? Had my aunt given herself heart and soul to Crock-Pot yogurt and transcendental meditation retreats? She was thin, but she looked healthy. More cheerful
than I remembered, too.

  Too cheerful to be grieving.

  It was the strangest thing, seeing Felicia now that I knew the atrocities her son had committed, crimes to which she remained oblivious. So much of my job involves tracing bad people to their kin, not just because I’m following a lead, but because I need to know the life they came from, walk their path backward from criminal to harmless kid. I’d seen the volatility that surrounded Bram firsthand, and while I was determined to keep an open mind, facing Felicia now made me realize I took it as a given that my aunt shouldered some of the blame.

  Felicia invited me to sit down in a living room that matched her outfit and offered me a hot peppermint tea. She talked while she fixed it, her monologue distinctly devoid of substance. She told me the weather was unseasonably cold, as if I hadn’t lived three-quarters of my life right around the corner, and explained about the Christmas light contest, to be judged by the Swanton Chamber of Commerce. Felicia had never entered before, but she’d always wanted to. This was going to be her year. By the time the tea had steeped and we were settled on the couch, she’d covered every topic imaginable, aside from her husband’s death.

  I sipped from a black-and-yellow-striped mug that read Don’t worry, bee happy and said, “I’d like to talk to you about Brett.”

  Felicia warmed her hands on a mug of her own and sighed. “The man’s never been so popular.”

  I gave her my condolences. Added, “This can’t be easy.”

  “I still thought about him sometimes. Wondered where he ended up.” Her laugh, a sharp ha, gave me a start.

  The pastel room, the sinus-clearing tea, my smiling aunt—all of it made me feel ill, but I soldiered on. “As you know, the police are conducting a criminal investigation to determine exactly what happened. I’m not a part of that, but—”

  “But you want to help.” That last word—help—was delivered with a slightly disparaging look. I got the sense she didn’t believe my presence in her house was totally selfless.

  “Your mother called,” she explained. “She told me you were in town. I worked the rest out myself.”

  So Crissy wasn’t alone in thinking of me as a sicko obsessed with crime. Felicia’s mint tea wasn’t doing much to calm my nerves. “I know the police have already stopped by, so I’m sorry if these questions feel redundant. We’re all just trying to track Brett’s movements around the time of his departure, so we can figure out how and when he ended up back in Swanton.”

  “The departure part’s easy,” she said. “He quit his job on June 19th of 1998.”

  The same day we went to Brett’s factory. That was when Abe and I stumbled upon his plan to clear out. The receptionist at the manufacturing plant took pity on Abe and divulged more than she should have. Aw, honey, didn’t your daddy tell you? He’s moving to Philly. This was his last day. Abe was shattered. From the moment Brett left Felicia, packing up his Levi’s and his bottle cap collection—he used to let Abe organize them by color, challenge him to see how many he could stack—Abe imagined he’d eventually come home to his kids. He didn’t.

  If the day Brett quit was June 19th, then June 19th had been a Friday. I was sure about that because we had pizza for dinner that night. Friday was always pizza night at my house, my favorite. Abe’s too. But Abe didn’t join us for that particular meal. He was home, feeling betrayed and humiliated by both of his parents.

  Was that true? Or was I remembering what Bram told me last year, in that godforsaken basement?

  “You have a good memory,” I told Felicia, unimpressed by the irony of that. I knew it was unreasonable, but it irked me that I wasn’t the first investigator to speak with her. The date of her husband’s departure was on the tip of her tongue, and I needed to know whether she’d clung to it all these years or dug it up for Harmison’s sake.

  I got my answer. “He left a week to the day before Crissy’s sixteenth birthday,” she said.

  “And did you have any contact with Brett after that weekend?”

  Felicia pursed her lips. “What was there to say? He made it clear he wasn’t going to help us financially. He owed money to half the town by the time he left, and I didn’t want to risk getting mixed up in that. I always hoped he’d get it together and come home—not to stay, but to be more involved with the kids, at least. Be a father to them. Abe was barely twelve when his dad took off, and Brett missed Crissy’s Sweet Sixteen and didn’t even call.”

  She hadn’t answered my question, and her fencing act felt deliberate. “So no contact at all after the weekend? Not ever again?”

  “Just the letter, and that was ages ago.”

  I frowned. “What letter?”

  “The letter about Abe. It came a few years after Brett left, right after Abe . . .”

  Cut you.

  Ran away.

  Felicia could have said any number of things. I felt my blood pressure nudge upward as she studied me, but she stayed silent.

  I asked about the letter.

  “It said Abe had arrived in Philadelphia. There was no phone number, and no return address. No way at all for me to reach them. It felt like a slap in the face, Brett’s way of calling dibs on our son. I didn’t even know they’d been in touch all those years, but they must have been or Abe wouldn’t have known where to find him.”

  I jogged my knee as I recalled what Mom said about the age of the bones not adding up. The letter seemed to prove Brett had left Swanton as planned. I knew for a fact his son ran off in 2002. If Abe met up with Brett in Philly, Brett couldn’t have died in Swanton years earlier. Did the forensic analyst get it wrong? It didn’t make any sense.

  “When was the last time you actually saw Brett?” I asked. “You, Crissy, and Abe?”

  Felicia tucked a wisp of long silver hair behind her ear, and her pinky snagged on her hoop earring. “Lord, how am I supposed to remember that? He didn’t visit regularly, as you know.”

  I nodded. I did know. “I don’t suppose you still have that letter?”

  I didn’t expect her to say yes. Felicia had moved on from her last home and the bad memories there, but within moments she was walking to a linen closet down the hall. She returned with a shoebox in hand, and when she lifted the lid, I saw it was crammed with family photos. A single letter, folded in thirds, lay right on top.

  She handed it to me, and I examined the writing in the natural light from the living room window. The letter was dated September 4, 2002. Over all these years, the only communication my aunt had with her husband was a scant paragraph in length.

  I’m sorry I left so suddenly. I hope you and Crissy are well. I want you to know Abe’s safe in Philadelphia, and he’ll be living with me from now on. I think you know that’s for the best.

  “Did you show this to the police?”

  “No,” Felicia said, startled. “Should I have?”

  The letter was crucial to establishing a timeline. Felicia had to know that. It didn’t seem like she was going out of her way to help the local cops. On the contrary, if Felicia hadn’t mentioned the letter to Harmison, that could qualify as obstruction.

  I asked if I could hold on to the letter, and Felicia agreed that would be fine. When we sat back down, she lowered her eyes. “I wasn’t a good mother to your cousins, Shana.”

  Oh, God. What to say? “I’m sure you did the best you could.”

  “All I ever wanted was to keep them safe, but I didn’t know how, not without hurting them. I was so afraid.”

  “Of what?” I needed to understand. “What were you afraid of, Aunt Fee?”

  She angled her head and said, “Losing them.”

  I never would have thought my aunt could be prophetic, yet here she was describing a fear that ultimately came to pass. She’d lost them both, and much more.

  Felicia said, “You must have heard some terrible stories about me.”

  My who
le face burned. I’d heard stories, yes, but the worst thing I knew Felicia to have done I’d witnessed with my own eyes. Abe didn’t want to tell her what we learned the day we walked to Brett’s work. He knew how upset his mother would be. Felicia was still furious with Brett for leaving her the first time, but Abe was committed to changing his father’s mind. That made it all the more heartbreaking when he failed.

  By the time we got back to the house that Friday, Felicia was frantic with worry and demanded to know where we’d been. Abe made me wait out on the lawn while they talked, but I saw him through the kitchen window, its curtains flapping in the summer breeze off the bay.

  When he got to the part about Brett moving out of state, Felicia grabbed a jug of milk from the counter and swung it straight at her son’s head. The whole side of his face was purple for days. Afterward, Felicia cried harder than Abe did. But the damage was done.

  “I needed help back then,” Felicia went on, “but I was too overstrung to ask for it, and Brett’s drinking and gambling made me even more paranoid. I used to be so worried any trouble he stirred up would find its way back to the kids. But the trouble, it came from me. When I think of what Abe did to you, I can hardly bear it. Can I tell you something, Shana?” she said. “I knew. I didn’t want to believe it, could never bring myself to tell Della, but I always knew it wasn’t an accident.”

  Felicia’s fingers unfolded themselves toward my face. I couldn’t help it; I recoiled as if I’d been slapped. She snatched her hand back and stared hard at her lap. “It was the idea of you planning to go off to college that pushed Abe over the edge. He couldn’t bear it, especially not after Brett abandoned him.”