Death in the Family

by Tessa Wegert

  “This is why. Because of what you’re thinking right now. Because of that look on your face. I don’t know how to trust anyone anymore. Not them, and not you.”

  I broke eye contact, but he caught my chin and lifted my face level with his. “You may not trust me, but I trust you,” Tim said. “I didn’t know any of this, and yeah, it’s alarming. But we’ve been working together for months. You’re a good person, and a good investigator. But you have to trust yourself. Why do you think those psych screenings exist? There are thousands of officers who’ve been through traumatic situations. They get the help they need, and they move on. You can, too.”

  “My situation is different.”

  His expression was indecipherable. “Who told you that?”

  “It just is. I was taken. Locked in a room for a week and—”

  “The therapy you got after it happened,” Tim said, interrupting me. He was still looking at me, but his gaze was unfocused. “It was from Carson, wasn’t it?”

  “He was doing his job. I stopped seeing him professionally before we started dating.” I couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of my voice. I wore what Carson told me after we met like a brand on my skin, how Bram went from enemy to ally in my mind because without his help my basic needs wouldn’t be met. Carson said that’s why I couldn’t see him for the criminal he was. There was more to it than that, but I couldn’t deny he was right. “Carson helped me figure things out. It was his idea to move up here. Get away from the bad memories.”

  “Was it his idea for you to go back to work?”

  I hesitated. “He knew I would eventually.”

  “Did he? Does he support what you’re doing, Shana? Or is he still telling you you’re unbalanced so you’ll be the dutiful wife he always wanted? That’s why you didn’t tell me,” Tim said. “Carson has you so convinced you’re crazy you couldn’t even tell your closest colleague about the most significant event of your life.”

  Closest colleague. Tim wasn’t wrong about that, but even though his words were sparse and sounded bureaucratic I found them strangely touching. I could see the struggle in his deep-set eyes. He took my injured hand in his and moved his callused thumb along the edges of my burn. “I can’t understand what you’ve been through, and because I respect you, I won’t pretend I do. But whatever happened, whatever’s happening now, we’ll figure it out together.”

  It was so completely different from how I’d imagined the conversation would go that when it was done, shock glued my feet to the floor. Tim’s hand was warm and dry and covered mine completely in a way that left me feeling protected. Safe.

  I won’t deny my devotion to Carson was tied to the fact that he’d freed me. I came out of that basement feeling shame more profound than I’d ever thought possible, and Carson rationalized my depraved behavior. If it hadn’t been for him in those early days after my release, God only knows where I’d be.

  Something unexpected happened during my time with him, though. Despite his insistence that I was still broken, I began to heal. I was a long way from being whole, but I wasn’t adrift anymore—at least not all the time, the way I used to be. There were consequences to Carson’s warnings I don’t think he anticipated. He hadn’t known the me who lived before the day I disappeared. To him I was a victim to the core. But I didn’t want to be a victim anymore. It took until that moment with Tim for me to understand why I’d been delaying the wedding and biting Carson’s head off every time he reminded me I was too fragile, too shaky, too weak.

  Tim was proof that McIntyre’s faith in me wasn’t a fluke. Here he was, offering the same kind of support that made the sheriff and me grow so close so fast. I was sure I’d squandered my chances of ever having mutual trust with another officer again, but Tim made me feel separation from my trauma was possible. That maybe even the most terrifying of my evocations could be overcome.

  I hadn’t forgotten about Jasper and Abella, but for a second I felt a lightness in my chest I hadn’t experienced in a long time. McIntyre was right. I needed to come clean—and clean was what I felt. It was a temporary fix, but it felt so good I allowed myself to enjoy it, if only for a little while.

  Neither of us spoke for a long time. Eventually Tim let go of my hand.

  “I’ll call McIntyre,” I said quickly. “I know you’re right about the storm, but things are different now. This is an active murder investigation. There has to be a way.” I checked my watch. “At six on a Saturday night she’s usually walking her dog or eating fried perch at the Thousand Islands Inn.” I’d joined her for both of those activities on multiple occasions, and on one especially nice night in early fall we’d combined them, taking her Maltipoo to the Clayton restaurant with us for takeout and eating while watching tankers glide through the channel. “With this rain, though,” I added, “who knows.”

  “Perch.” Tim stuck out his tongue. “Don’t know if I could do it after being in that boathouse.”

  I inclined my head, thinking about what he’d said. As Tim walked away I mumbled, “We’ll never think of fish the same way again.”

  I didn’t want to call McIntyre from the hall. The last time I stormed out of the house, a woman wound up dead, and even with Tim watching over the others now, that course of action didn’t feel safe. Camilla was asleep in the library. As far as main-floor rooms out of earshot of the parlor went, there was the sun-room, Norton’s bedroom, and the kitchen. The kitchen was closest, and it smelled of roasting chicken. I pulled out my phone and dialed McIntyre’s office as I followed the mouthwatering scent. With the weather such as it was, I guessed she was still managing storm-incited mayhem.

  “Sorry I haven’t been in touch,” I said when she answered. “We’ve got a situation out here.”

  Explaining Abella was dead, Flynn was injured, and we were trapped on the island took surprisingly little time. I suppose that’s because I heeded Tim’s advice and gave the details of the shooting a wide berth.

  “Christ on a bike, in all my years,” said Mac. “Think you can keep them under control?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I said. Then I asked her to check into one more lead. I could tell she found my request puzzling, but she agreed all the same.

  “I’m not going to give up on that boat,” she told me. “In the meantime, I’ve got something new that might prove useful.”

  Like Tim, McIntyre was a local with deep Thousand Islands roots. She’d asked around and discovered someone else had been doing the same. Two months ago, the real estate office in Alexandria Bay received several calls from a man inquiring about selling an island. He wanted to know what a three-acre private estate and immaculate vintage six-bedroom house would fetch. The property the man described matched Tern to a T.

  If the caller was one of our men—Flynn, Miles, Norton, Ned, or Jasper—it would go a long way toward validating my theory about the killer being after Camilla’s money. “Anything else to go on?” I asked.

  “No notable accent,” she said.

  “That rules out Ned. He was born in Ghana. His accent’s faint, but it’s there.”

  With fondness in her voice that warmed me like broth in my belly, McIntyre said, “Getting closer, kid. One more thing, nearly forgot. Carson called.”

  I never used to be an anxious person. If my parents were an hour late coming home from date night, I didn’t assume they’d been in a terrible accident, I just squeezed out a few extra minutes of TV. When McIntyre said Carson’s name, though, my stomach dropped. They’d met before, but Carson and Mac weren’t in the habit of gabbing on the phone. Given the way he felt about me going back to work, I’d partitioned off my fiancé from the force. If he called her, something was up.

  “Apparently,” she said, “he’s concerned about your health.”

  “My health?”

  “Your mental health. He thinks I should pull you from the case and send you straight home to Daddy.”<
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  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Look, you’ve been nothing but honest with me,” Mac said. “But you know I was a tad uncertain when you came to me about this job.”

  Again my gut twisted. “I was, too. That’s why I volunteered to be screened. I’m not going to lie, Maureen, I’ve had a few iffy moments out here.” What would she say when she found out about Flynn’s gunshot wound? I tried not to think about it. “But I talked to Tim.”

  “Ah. That’s good.” She paused. “Isn’t it?”

  “It is. You were right, as usual. He was amazing. Is amazing.” I said it with a smile. “I think I can do this, I really do. Carson doesn’t have a clue what’s happening right now. He doesn’t want me here, and whatever he said to you is just his way of trying to pull me back.”

  On the other end of the line I heard a door click shut. “I haven’t told you this,” McIntyre said, “but I dated someone like Carson once. Controlling. Paranoid. I’d be at work and get these phone calls accusing me of cheating. In the same breath he’d tell me I wasn’t good enough for him.”

  McIntyre didn’t gush about her personal life. She’d never once mentioned an ex. Controlling and paranoid. These were the words my friend selected to describe my fiancé. I’d never thought of Carson like that, but the endless questions about Tim, the accusations against him, the ceaseless efforts to convince me I was defenseless . . . it added up.

  “What did you do about it?” I didn’t feel totally comfortable asking, but McIntyre had brought it up for a reason.

  “I left,” she said. “It wasn’t as simple as it sounds. I broke the rules. Me leaving him was the ultimate act of disobedience, and he wasn’t about to sit back and wish me well. But that’s a longer story, and you’ve got work to do.”

  “Right, yeah,” I droned absently, mulling over what she’d said.

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I will say this. You might want to step back and analyze the situation before the wedding day rolls around.”

  I hung up and stood in the kitchen, stunned into a state of inertia as I thought about what Maureen McIntyre had said. Broke the rules. It was a good way to describe what I’d done, too.

  And I wasn’t done yet.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  People are simpler than we give them credit for. We imagine our species is composed of complex beings with extensive wants and needs, but we really only yearn for two things: to feel safe and to feel loved. It sounds elementary—but there’s a problem. If we’re deprived of these things long enough, it gets to the point where we can’t take it. We’re desperate, and desperation activates our survival instinct. Makes us do inconceivable things.

  When I remembered Carson on that first day, wearing his kitten socks and smelling of fresh sage, I had to fight with myself to stay angry. I’d found safety and love with him at a time when I thought I’d never have either again. In return, he tried to turn me against Tim; hell, he’d called my boss mid-case to convince her I was hanging on by a thread. By no means was I back to my old self, but I needed to believe I could get there. Until McIntyre took me in, my career was DOA, and I’d always blamed Bram. But Carson was equally guilty of killing it.

  I understood why he did it, didn’t doubt his motivation for a second. It was just like McIntyre said. He was always distant and dismissive when I brought up work. Even the texts we’d exchanged hours earlier were rife with admonitions. My fiancé had embarked on a full-fledged crusade to remove me from the force, and there was a whole lot more to it than fearing for my mental health.

  I was back out in the world now. No more sitting at home waiting for him to psychoanalyze me. I’d dared to stray outside the neat parameters of his life. Carson needed to dominate me, and whether because I didn’t trust my own judgment enough to question his behavior, or because I needed to relinquish control of the life I’d let spin off its axis, I’d let him. Tapping my deepest fears and summoning my demons was his pet pursuit.

  I’d been a fascinating hobby for him at first. He quickly recognized that damaged, docile Shana would make an obedient wife. He’d doled out his diagnosis then, used my condition to keep me right where he wanted me. I felt like an idiot for not spotting Carson’s trickery sooner. Caught up in my own thoughts and actions, I didn’t think to monitor his.

  What really got me, though, was how Carson looked straight at my face and lied. Dozens of times I’d heard him say it’s a bad idea for people who have suffered psychological trauma to put themselves in high-stress situations. He made his professional feelings about that known whenever he read about a cop who’d done something insane, like gun down a kid in the street or sexually assault a witness. Carson always chalked it up to the officer’s mental state. In the same breath, he’d tell me I was different. The second he saw how determined I was to go back to my job despite the horrors of a homicide detective’s daily life, he swore to me I could, and would, prevail. He’d figured out what I needed to hear and was clever enough to oblige. I clung to his insistence that one day I’d be a good detective again. Banked on his pledge to help. But from denigrating my condition to proposing Thai food for dinner, it was all just a strategy designed to strip down my self-reliance and make me question whether I’d survive.

  When I thought back to Tim’s account of his childhood with Carson, I felt an overwhelming urge to toss my engagement ring in the river and bring up my lunch on the shore. Carson’s behavior as a kid proved McIntyre’s point. Power was my fiancé’s favorite high. My dynamic with him wasn’t so different from Tim’s: doctor and patient, enabler and pawn. And that filled me with a boiling, bottomless rage.

  Down the hall I heard the others talking, and through the kitchen door I spied Tim pacing nervously just outside the parlor. Time was running out, and we both knew it. Without the boats, the perp was trapped, and when people feel trapped, they panic. Fear had already killed Abella. I worried it was about to strike again.

  An empty wine bottle in hand, Norton stepped up to Tim and pointed in my direction. A few seconds later he was walking toward me under Tim’s watchful gaze.

  “Jade’s hungry,” Norton said. “I thought I’d put out some appetizers. Detective Wellington said I could make a plate if you stay with me.”

  My watch read half past six. Tim and I had been on the island for almost nine hours. Maybe what my brain needed was a hard reset. A quick, invigorating swim in the frigid river should do it. It’d be worth the risk to my life if it helped me see things clearly.

  I blinked my dry, bloodshot eyes and told Norton to be my guest.

  He crisscrossed the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and pulling ingredients from the fridge. Despite his prep work earlier, the counters were spotless. The few dishes he’d used were already washed and left to dry by the sink. I leaned back against the counter and revisited everything I knew about “Moonshine Phil.” He’d been short on money twenty years ago, fired from his dead-end job at the liquor store. Then Camilla brought him to Tern Island and his life changed for the better. He’d put his previous boss at risk of being charged with selling alcohol to minors, but to Camilla he was a loyal employee, a compassionate caregiver, a friend.

  Camilla wasn’t the only person in the house Norton seemed to like more than the others. I’d noticed it throughout the day, and it nettled me even now.

  “Spend much time with kids?” I asked.

  He was arranging cold roasted vegetables on a platter at the kitchen island and folding slices of cured meat and cheese. My question made him fumble a sliver of salami. “Sorry?”

  “I was just thinking about Jade. You’re very attentive to her needs. You made her favorite soup today.”

  “Everyone enjoys that soup. I make it because it’s not hard on Mrs. Sinclair’s stomach. But I am fond of that girl. She hasn’t had it easy. Until Bebe, Jade didn’t have a mother around—and between you and me, Bebe isn’t exactly the mothering type.” />
  “At least Jade’s got Miles.”

  Norton smiled. “That she does.”

  “There are going to be a lot of changes around here now. After Miles leaves Bebe, he and Jade won’t be visiting anymore. I wonder if anyone will. With Abella’s death and Jasper disappearing the way he did, how can the Sinclairs keep the property? Some horrible things have happened here.”

  Norton opened a drawer and took out a paring knife. It glinted under the bright pendant lights above him. “Maybe they won’t,” he said. “But to be honest, that’s no concern of mine. It’s almost time for me to move on. When Camilla leaves this place, so do I.” He shook his head sadly. “I hate to say it, but sometimes I think this family is cursed. Baldwin’s and Rachel’s deaths, their business troubles, Camilla’s illness, Jasper . . .”

  “That’s quite a string of bad luck.”

  Norton opened a bag of radishes and started carving them into elaborate edible flowers. My eyes followed the blade’s every movement. His knife skills were precise and lightning quick. “Flynn and Bebe . . . they’re very negative people, and negative people attract negative energy. Trust me, I know. I made my share of mistakes as a younger man, some I’ll regret for the rest of my life. But I turned things around. Coming here changed everything. We’ve all got to make our own destiny.”

  His speech reminded me of what Camilla said upstairs, about the importance of forging your own path. “I’d love to know how to do that,” I said, and meant it.

  He looked up from his knife. “What I do, see, is I picture myself where I want to be. In the future I want to have. That’s what helps me get there.”

  I felt my cell phone buzz twice in quick succession, two messages coming in at once. Excusing myself, I glanced at the display. McIntyre had made an interesting discovery related to my request. I filed it away in the back of my mind. The next message was from Tim. Miles and Jade want to talk to you.