Page 25 of Death in the Family
We stared at each other across the table. Sometimes, when I got tired of revisiting the worst experience of my life and projected my frustration onto him, I told myself his eyes were too close together. The color made up for that. They were the clear, cool pool I always found relief in when I needed to loosen my muscles and mind.
Carson slid back his chair far enough for me to see his socks. He’d picked Bob Ross today, the painter’s face and iconic puffy hair encircled by the wordsHappy Clouds. The socks made me smile. “You’re gonna be late,” Carson said. “We’ll talk about it over dinner. Let’s just do takeout. I’ll pick up some Thai food.”
“Not Thai,” I said. “Anything but that.”
“Fish, then,” he said as he kissed the crown of my head and strode off to the bathroom down the hall. The place where his lips met my scalp felt as bright and hot as a flame.
—
Lunch on Tern Island was more refined than my breakfast with Carson by a mile, but there was just as much tension in the air, and just as much unrest. Aside from Camilla, who was still trying her best to be a perfect hostess, everyone stared unsmiling at their plates.
Tim and I planned to eat in shifts—one of us would supervise the Sinclairs while the other wolfed down only the most filling components of Norton’s meal. Camilla had other ideas. She insisted we all sit together in the dining room while the rain streamed down the windowpanes. Naturally, she took the head of the table. Flynn sat at the opposite end. Tim and I were elbow to elbow with our fellow interlopers, Abella and Ned, but Tim did most of the talking, beaming at the others while praising the food. One thing about Tim is he doesn’t like awkward silence. If there’s a chance to talk, he’s going to take it.
As for me, I tried to be invisible. It was my first opportunity to study our witnesses’ faces without looking like a creep, and I intended to make the most of it. Maybe it was because I had Carson on the brain, but I found my eyes lingering on Miles. Looks-wise he reminded me of my fiancé—cool glasses, dark hair with a smattering of gray. If I saw Miles Byrd on the streets of New York, I’d definitely turn my head his way. As I ate, he looked up from his soup and met my gaze with a shy smile.
What was this guy’s relationship with his brother-in-law? Men as good-looking as Miles and Jasper often stuck together. From my place on the periphery I’ve observed that beautiful people travel in packs. Then again, Jasper was an eligible bachelor while Miles was married, a man in his forties with a daughter to think of. Hedidn’t appear to be devastated by the day’s events. He didn’t look afraid that a dangerous criminal might be lurking on the island either.
Next to Miles, Flynn reminded me of a circus bear. He ate noisily and didn’t bother to wipe the soup from his mustache, but his facial hair and clothing were lavish enough that I suspected he, like Ned, enjoyed standing out. When Flynn and I made eye contact, he radiated anger. I noticed he wasn’t trying to hide the bruises on his hand anymore. Nobody else at the table gave his swollen knuckles a second glance.
I set down my spoon to wipe my own mouth, and was surprised to see it quiver in the bowl. Glancing to my left, I saw Abella’s eyebrows knotted in concentration as she tried to lift a spoonful of broth to her lips. On the other side of her, Ned whispered something in her ear and took her hand under the table.
If Abella had lied to me, she was a convincing actress. While her boyfriend’s family slurped chicken, fennel, and farro soup all around her, the girl’s knees shook so violently I thought she might fall off her chair.
TWELVE
There was no question as to what Tim and I would do when Norton cleared the table. Tim immediately escorted the family back to the parlor, where he would tackle the dual challenge of distracting an increasingly impatient lot and counting the stylized flowers on the Persian rug. Buoyed by a full belly—the Sinclairs’ caretaker was an excellent cook—I retraced Abella’s footsteps to the kitchen, out the mudroom door, and across the yard.
The October air was raw and cold and the rain pummeled me from all sides. If I didn’t have a slicker of my own, I’d have been soaked through in seconds. High above me the treetops thrashed like barbed whips and I heard the telltale crack of a splitting branch. I picked up the pace, careful on the dicey rocks, and hoped a falling tree wasn’t about to cleave me in half.
As I trudged through the muck with boots squelching and mudsplattering the backs of my knees, I thought about Jasper. I imagined him beyond the island’s stone wall, bleeding and battered by ice-cold waves. I saw him lying pale and still among tall trees as rain pooled in his unseeing eyes. In my mind, Jasper was no longer breathing. Thinking of him like that kept me going. No way would I get lazy or careless if I invited that image to haunt me today.
My destination was the shed, but as soon as I got far enough from the house to see all three stories, I pivoted and planted my feet. Counting windows, I figured out which ones were Jasper’s. I hadn’t been wrong about his little Juliet balcony. Not only was there no staircase, ladder, or tree nearby, but the first-floor roof wasn’t close enough to give someone a leg up either. Whatever his condition when he left his bedroom, Jasper did it through a door.
I walked on, around the perimeter of the house over squishy moss and blue rocks that stuck up like fangs. There were no other access points to the second floor, no signs of forced entry to the cellar door, which was almost invisible, flush with the ground.
Back where I started, I returned my attention to the shed. Earlier, when I’d gone looking for Jasper, I’d taken a peek inside. The building looked just the same now. Strapped to its exterior wall on the west side was a thirty-two-foot aluminum ladder, but it looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. I pushed up the latch, and the door to the small building swung open without a sound.
The inside of the shed was as Abella described it, sawhorse and all. Rakes and hoes and coils of rope hung from hooks on the walls. She’d been right about the woodpile, too. Firewood was stacked floor to ceiling in the corner and there was a general odor of sawdust and wet bark. Crouching, I examined the floor andfound a cluster of footprints in the dust. They could have belonged to Norton, Bebe, Ned, Jasper, or anyone.
I shrugged deeper into my coat and dialed McIntyre’s number. It wasn’t much warmer in the shed than outside, but it was dry, and private. Given the conversation I was about to get roped into, I needed that.
When I accepted this job, it was partly because of Maureen McIntyre. A twenty-eight-year veteran of the state police, a former senior investigator with the BCI in Alexandria Bay, the first-ever elected female sheriff in the history of New York State... the woman was a legend. I’d met her once before, years earlier. Shortly after she was first elected, she visited NYPD headquarters and the chief of the Community Affairs Bureau gave her a tour. I made sure to be there that day. A lot of female officers did. It wasn’t long ago McIntyre was one of just ten women in her State Police Academy class. We ladies like to support our own.
McIntyre’s law enforcement career was impressive on every level, but what she was doing now to clean up Jefferson County was more remarkable still. Watertown, where she was stationed, was embroiled in controversy—four former town officials had just been indicted on charges of misconduct and corruption. Half the town was convinced the accusations against the longtime officials were false, while the others felt so betrayed they wanted them convicted on the spot. McIntyre had her hands full. Couple that with weeks of flooding that led to multiple drownings, damage to public facilities and roads, and countless other hazards, and I wasn’t surprised it took her a few rings to answer my call.
“Tough morning?” I asked, checking my watch. With a start I realized it was coming up on 3:00 p.m.
“Neither snow nor rain nor a goddamn nor’easter,” McIntyre said. “How’s by you? Your first big case on the river and it sounds like a doozy. Everything going okay?”
I’d hoped against all hope there would be no trepidation in her tone, and to my relief she sounded as collected as ever. “Still no sign of our missing person,” I said. “The interviews are taking some time. Seems like some of our witnesses have reason to want Jasper Sinclair gone.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. We’ll figure it out, though.”
“I don’t doubt you will. Gotta say, this is an unusual situation for us.”
“So I’ve heard.”
