The Dead Season

by Tessa Wegert

  Loming said nothing.

  “You had two kids at home and a shift job at the factory, yet you’re telling me you didn’t care about recouping two hundred dollars. That just doesn’t sound plausible to me. Everyone has their vices, Mr. Loming,” I said. “For Brett, it was gambling. I’d like to know yours. If you’re holding something back that’s pertinent to this homicide investigation, I should warn you that I’ll have to charge you with obstruction of justice.”

  “Brett didn’t gamble.”

  “What?”

  Loming’s shoulders sank again, and this time the belly I now realized he’d been trying to play down strained against the belt of his robe. “We didn’t go to Montreal to gamble. Well, we did at first,” he said, “but that didn’t pan out too well. Brett was in the hole to a bunch of fellas he worked with here in town. He couldn’t even pay his mortgage for a while. Then we met some people up there.”

  “What kind of people?”

  “Two guys—guys just like us, with wives and kids. They started telling us they made thousands in extra cash a month. So they invite us to this booze can,” he said. “Brett talks to them for a couple of hours, and next thing I know our trips across the border don’t have anything to do with playing cards anymore.”

  Cards. The word set off alarm bells, but I was too preoccupied with Loming’s admission to pay it any mind. He and Brett had frequented illegal after-hours clubs in Montreal, smuggled their drugs across the border, and sold them to Swanton teens. “You ran an international drug operation?”

  Loming blanched. “No! No, it was nothing like that. We sold a little pot and hash to college kids in Burlington, and we were lucky if we split a grand a month between us. I don’t know how anyone around here got wind of it, but one day a local kid from the high school came up to Brett wearing this big grin, and next thing we’re setting up shop at the drive-in. We were nervous—it’s a small town, and we both had kids at the school—but some people were dumb enough to pay double what the stuff was worth.” He gave a helpless shrug as if to suggest anyone would have done the same thing.

  “But Brett was broke.” Always. It was one of the things that drove Brett and Felicia apart.

  “Bullshit,” said Loming. “That’s just what he told his wife. After we got the business going, he started saving the money he used to blow at the casino, and his take from those sales, too. How else could he afford to leave Swanton for Philly?”

  My mind was racing. I had so many questions, but we both heard the soft crunch of tires on snow signaling the return of Mrs. Loming. My witness’s eyes went wide.

  “Shit. Don’t tell my wife. Please.”

  “Don’t tell her what? That you were dealing to minors the same age as your own sons? Jesus. Is that how Crissy got into drugs? Did Brett send her to school with hash brownies in her lunch?”

  “Hell, no! He wasn’t even living with the kids anymore. He didn’t want them anywhere near that shit.”

  “Then where did Crissy get her supply? Her mother says she started taking drugs when she was fifteen. That means it happened the same year you and Brett started your operation.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know, she sure didn’t get ’em from me.”

  The slam of a car door. Loming’s muscles seized. As soon as his wife was in the house, he would shut down, and I might never get this close to cracking him again. I had a minute, maybe less. “So what you told me about Brett owing you money was a lie?”

  “No! That’s all true. About a month before he bolted he started talking about wanting out of the business. But we’d pooled our money to buy the stash from Montreal. He took it from Felicia, out of the bank account they used to share.” He was talking fast now. Getting desperate. “When we went to split the stash, I realized our supply was crazy low. Brett said he had nothing to do with that, tried to convince me it must have been stolen. I thought he was trying to screw me.”

  “What happened to the rest of the stash? Did Brett give it to you?”

  “No. He took it all with him.”

  No wonder he’d called Brett an ex-friend. “Why did Brett want out of the business?”

  “Because of Crissy. He found out she’d been using and he freaked.”

  “Hang on,” I said, “Brett found out Crissy was using after a chunk of his stash disappeared?”

  “That’s what I remember.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that she could have taken it?”

  “No. I don’t know!”

  “So you were selling drugs with Brett at the drive-in that night.”

  “Yes, okay? Yes!”

  “You say Brett didn’t give any to Crissy, and you claim you didn’t either. You sure about that? Last chance, Mr. Loming.”

  The front door opened with a creak, and Loming’s wife singsonged his name from the front hall.

  “Not her,” he said. “I never sold to Crissy, just that kid she was with. He came around a lot.”

  I could picture it: Darkness, punctuated by flashes of blinding light. Hundreds of cars carefully maneuvered into place, and on the outskirts of it all, two men. Russell Loming and Brett Skilton, lurking in the shadows of the trees where abandoned picnic tables sticky with dried ketchup attracted flies, and the goods they concealed attracted kids in search of a rush.

  Kids like Crissy.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I paused on the threshold and took stock of the street before leaving Russell Loming’s. I was feeling significantly more optimistic than when I went in. After our initial conversation I hadn’t expected to find much meat on the bones of his account, yet here I stood with the knowledge that the small-town drug dealers my parents always warned me about included none other than Uncle Brett.

  Loming’s statement, assuming it was unvarnished, had flipped my investigation on its head. Despite his insistence that Brett never furnished his daughter with drugs, the tally on Brett’s supply had mysteriously come up short. It was possible—likely, even—Crissy had her hand in Daddy’s cookie jar. The missing drugs, the money owed, all added up to motive. Not only was Brett indebted to Loming, but my uncle had become a liability; his decision to quit dealing put Loming at risk of exposure and threatened the future of his side hustle. Could Crissy’s abduction have been Loming’s idea of a shot across the bow? I recalled Tim’s report about the drug case he’d been working in A-Bay, the husband-and-wife operation that fell apart when the relationship soured. I could easily imagine Loming and Brett coming to the same end.

  There were other possibilities, too. I was happy to consider the prospect of an entirely new suspect, a Canadian drug lord come to clean up loose ends, but that didn’t quite fit. After everything I’d learned, I refused to believe there was no connection between Crissy’s disappearance and her father’s death, and if a kingpin from Montreal heard Brett planned on going straight and Crissy somehow got caught in the cross fire, Brett’s killer would never have let her live. I still had a strong suspicion the person I was hunting was a close acquaintance of them both. Loming fit the bill. I couldn’t be sure if I was right, however, without first eliminating another potential suspect from the mix.

  For the second time, I drove to Cheryl Copely’s. I took my time walking to her front door, noting the absence of snowy tire marks leading out of her garage, and wondered if she’d left the house at all since the news broke about Brett.

  The first time I rang the bell, I got no answer. I rang again. Still nothing. “Mrs. Copely,” I called, pounding my uninjured fist on the door. “I’m a senior investigator with the police. I need to speak with you about Brett Skilton.”

  After another few whacks loud enough to alert the neighbors, the door swung open to reveal a petite blond in her midfifties. She wore a plum-colored cardigan and matching lipstick, and her penciled eyebrows hovered in a way that made it clear she was pissed. But her eyes. They were the blue of a lake in summer
when the sun breaks through the water. Robbie had inherited his best feature from his mom.

  “Can I help you?” she said tartly, as those blue eyes darted around the street.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you. I left several messages.” I smiled at her. “I’m an old friend of Suze’s. May I come in?”

  Taking a final glance at the neighborhood—was she expecting to see a news van? A couple of suits in an undercover vehicle?—she reluctantly stepped aside.

  Cheryl’s living room was furnished with two enormous beige couches. I let my gaze drift around the space. There were pictures of her son and granddaughter all over the place, at all stages of life. Little Erynn had Suze’s coloring and a long mane of dark hair, but the eyes were pure Copely, jewel-toned and bright. “She’s gorgeous,” I said.

  “I know who you are.” Cheryl’s expression was smug. “People talk, you know. Brett was your uncle. You interviewed Crissy and Russell Loming. But you’re not the investigator on his case.”

  The local grapevine covered even more ground than I’d realized. “Not officially,” I admitted, though that was putting it mildly. “I have a personal interest in knowing what happened to Brett. I’m sure you do as well.”

  “What are you implying?”

  Cheryl lowered herself onto the sofa, and I did the same. There was a basket of toys on the floor, and a half dozen minuscule figurines lined up along the edge of the coffee table. “Just that I’d appreciate your help,” I said. “I know you two used to date.” I slipped out my notebook. “How long were you in a relationship with Brett Skilton, Mrs. Copely?”

  “About eight months,” she said.

  Eight months. Based on what I knew about Brett and Felicia’s marriage, that meant the affair started before they split. “Would you say it was serious?”

  “I was a single mother working my you-know-what off to support my son. I wouldn’t have bothered unless I believed Brett and I could have a future.” That last word caught in her throat. “He’d already left Felicia. He was going to ask for a divorce. I just don’t understand it: one day we were talking about renting a place in St. Albans to get a fresh start, and the next he was gone.”

  “How did you feel when he told you he was moving?”

  Cheryl wrung her hands in her lap. “He didn’t tell me. He just disappeared.”

  “He didn’t tell you in advance?”

  “No.”

  “Huh,” I said, scribbling furiously. “Did you have an argument?”

  A crease appeared between her eyebrows. “No. Everything was fine.”

  “Did he seem unhappy? Unstable in any way?”

  “He was perfectly normal.” Those hands. They couldn’t be stilled. Plucking one of the tiny figurines off the table, she rolled the colorful knob of plastic between her palms.

  “Can you think of any other reasons why he’d want—or need—to leave? I know he had a gambling problem—”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “He quit gambling as soon as we started seeing each other. I insisted. Brett promised he was done with that.”

  Only because he was onto bigger and better things. “It seems like he was under pressure to leave quickly, though. Could he have been mixed up in something?” I looked up from my notes. “It’s been suggested that he was trafficking drugs.”

  “Drugs?” Cheryl’s mouth dropped open, but there was a canny look to her eyes. “No. That’s impossible.”

  “I’ve been told Brett fell in with some dealers in Montreal. He and Russell Loming were smuggling small quantities of drugs across the border and selling them in Burlington. Right here in Swanton, too.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you get your information,” Cheryl snapped, “but you’re absolutely wrong about that.”

  “Did Brett ever talk to you about Crissy? How things were for her and Abe at home?”

  “All the time,” she said, relaxing slightly. “He worried about them constantly. I knew about Felicia and her . . . condition. Brett said it was getting worse. I floated the notion of having Crissy and Abe come live with us.”

  “Did you really?” That wouldn’t have gone over well with Aunt Fee. I’d have thought that if anyone was going to broach the idea of relocating the kids, it would be my mother, but Felicia had made it clear she had no intention of parting with them. Still, it had always struck me as strange that Brett didn’t work harder to get custody, considering Felicia’s mental state and the disaster that was their home life.

  Then again, he wasn’t exactly a model citizen, either.

  “His plan was to file a petition for custody,” Cheryl said. “That was another reason why he quit gambling. He wanted to clean himself up, so when the time came he was clearly the more dependable parent.”

  “Uh-huh.” The skepticism I felt was like a tickle in the middle of my back, insistent but too far out of reach to scratch. Clean himself up? Brett was dealing drugs to minors. He’d decided to quit, yes, but he planned to move immediately afterward, and he wasn’t taking Cheryl with him.

  Something else about her claim bothered me. “Two more kids in the house in addition to Robbie. Wouldn’t that have put a damper on your romance?”

  Cheryl said, “I’m not saying it would have been easy. Crissy was a wild one. But I thought it would be nice for Robbie to have some company.”

  I almost laughed. Two hot-blooded teen kids who’d already hooked up, living under the same roof as pseudobrother and sister? It was like something out of a dirty movie. “I’ll be honest, Mrs. Copely, I’m surprised to hear you say that. Crissy and Robbie were an item once, weren’t they? Wouldn’t making them live together be asking for—”

  “Robbie wasn’t interested in Crissy.” Cheryl said it through tightly drawn lips. “Whatever happened between them was in the past, nothing but a silly freshman fling. If he still had feelings for her, I never would have started seeing Brett.”

  “Mind if I ask how you and Brett got together?”

  “Robbie introduced us, when he started dating Crissy. He was quite taken with Brett—that’s not unusual for boys who grow up without fathers. We didn’t get together until long after they’d broken up. Robbie was very supportive. Crissy was not.”

  I always knew Crissy’s reputation in town wasn’t stellar, but I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which parents wanted to keep her away from their own offspring. “I get the sense you weren’t Crissy’s biggest fan.”

  The skin around Cheryl’s mouth tightened. “I wasn’t disappointed when they split up. She wasn’t a good influence on him.”

  It was always the same old story. Crissy was brazen, licentious, out of control.

  “She was wild, like I said,” Cheryl told me. “Alcohol, drugs—and all at such a young age. Getting her out of that house would have been the best thing for her.”

  “It would have cemented your relationship with Brett, too.”

  “I wasn’t trying to trap him, if that’s what you mean,” Cheryl huffed, and the sagging skin under her tiny chin wobbled. “Everyone says being a single mother is hard, but they don’t know the half of it. The one income, the need to parent constantly with no relief or support, all of that’s easy compared with trying to make up for what your child is missing. My husband died when Robbie was six years old. We did okay, just the two of us, but I was soft on him. I felt sorry for him, I guess, growing up without a father, so I didn’t always discipline him the way I should have. Maybe I spoiled him a little too much. When he got older he took advantage of that, even talked me into buying him his own car at sixteen. As cliché as it may sound, he needed some discipline in his life. A father figure. I thought Brett could be that for him.”

  “Once he cleaned up his act, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Mrs. Copely,” I said, “Brett was seen at the St. Albans drive-in on Saturday, June 20th. That was the da
y before he planned to move out of Swanton. Were you at the movies that night?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? It was a long time ago.”

  “I never went to the drive-in. I didn’t want to encroach on Robbie’s time with his friends. You know how easily embarrassed boys are at that age.”

  I also knew that if Cheryl avoided the movies, Brett could be sure she wouldn’t be around. That made the drive-in the perfect place to deal drugs and meet up with a pretty schoolgirl. The girl from Brett’s car that I still hadn’t identified.

  “The reason I ask,” I said, “is that I’ve got a witness who saw Brett there with a woman. A girl, actually, possibly in her teens. The witness saw them talking in Brett’s car during the movie. She thinks they were kissing.”

  Cheryl brought a hand to her mouth. Did Brett, and the promise of what could have been, still upset her so much that she was hurt by the idea of him canoodling with an underage girl almost two decades ago? Her shock over this news could have been an act. In a town the size of Swanton, it was feasible Cheryl might have been well aware of Brett’s indiscretion. I didn’t think so, though. In that moment, in that living room, Cheryl’s pain seemed real.

  “There are a few things I haven’t managed to figure out,” I said. “One of them is why Brett left. You’re telling me you two were happy, and that he wanted to improve his life and bring the kids to live with him. But none of that happened. Could this explain why Brett left you? If he was seeing someone else?”

  She was talking again before I got the sentence out. “Brett was a very social person, very loving. That’s what made him so attractive—to me, and to everyone else. Brett was loyal.” Cheryl gave a brisk nod. “I know that in my heart. Whatever your witness saw, they got it wrong.”