Page 26 of Trick of Light
“You were disrespecting her. You can’t talk to my mother like that.”
“I…what?” Heather had stopped on the sidewalk, framed by a storefront filled with beige mannequins, which somehow felt appropriate, like a Greek chorus of whiteness behind her.
“Do you know how hard it is to work your way up from a cleaning lady to state senator? How hard it is for a Black woman like her to have a career in the public eye? What she’s had to face? Do you know how much her legacy matters to her? How easily it could all go away?”
Aghast, Heather had gone white except for her freckles. “Of course not, but you’re my friend and I couldn’t let her rip you apart like that.”
“That’s not what was happening. She loves me and she worries about me and she has every right to. It’s not your place to tell her anything. Why would it be? It’s family business. If I need to defend myself, I will.”
She’d watched understanding dawn, chasing away the automatic defensiveness.
“Oh shit. You’re right. I was way, way out of line. What can I do?”
It had taken a year and multiple apologies for her mom to warm up to Heather again. Nowadays she appreciated Heather’s loyalty and forthrightness, but there had definitely been some cultural differences that needed working out.
At the same time, Gabby did appreciate Heather wanting to defend her. Over the years, there had been many instances of Heather having her back, and vice versa.
The only time Heather had let Gabby down was when she’d found herself doing all the work on the podcast because Heather’s old show, Boiling Point, was eating up all her time. But they’d worked through that, thanks to a couple of kidnappings and a lobster boat shootout.
“This name,” Heather said, pausing on one of the photos Gabby had printed out. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“Keith Garner?”
“Yes, the Garners lived…actually, I think Amelia Burnhauser bought the house from them.”
“Seriously? That seems like an important connection.”
“The family had fallen on tough times and had to sell. I think the father had an accident or something. It all happened when I was a kid, so the details might be fuzzy. Keith was a teenager then.”
“So he stayed around and took piano lessons from the woman who bought their house?”
“Maybe. I think maybe she let them stay in the guesthouse for a while, so Keith could finish high school? Something like that.”
“Hm.” To Gabby, it sounded like an odd arrangement, but what did she know about life on a remote island two decades ago? “So there’s nothing in that book that’s helpful.”
“Not that I can see, so far. It’s just names of her students.” Heather flipped through the photos, then went back to the one for Keith Garner. “I wonder what she said about Keith. This feels like eavesdropping, you know?”
Gabby shrugged. “It’s not like she was a therapist keeping confidential notes. What did she say about Keith? He was bad at scales?”
Heather scanned the page. “The first entry says, ‘excellent memorization skills and decent ear.’’’ She read on. “‘Little progress after six months. Resists instruction.’ And then the final note says, ‘Reported what I saw to Jill. He’ll be lucky to avoid police. Lessons over.’ Nothing after that.”
“Whoa…I wonder what she saw? He sounds like a problem. Did she say anything like that about anyone else?”
They scanned through the rest of the notes about Amelia’s long-gone piano students. “She sounds edgy, in general, kind of a no-bullshit sort of teacher. But Keith was the only one who got reported to his mother,” Heather finally said.
Gabby closed the folder on her computer and sat back, jiggling her leg the way she did when she was brainstorming. “So our working theory is that this Keith Garner came back to the island for revenge because of some piano lessons from twenty years ago?”
They both laughed at how absurd that sounded. “Bigger question, should we bring this bulletproof evidence and theory to the police?” Heather asked.
“You mean your boyfriend?”
“Or maybe Detective Chen? She helped us in May. I trust her.”
Gabby shook her head, needing no time to think about it. “The police would laugh us out of the office. A name from twenty years ago, from a notebook Amelia might or might not have been looking at? We’ll sound like idiots.”
“Right.” Heather extracted herself from her cushy armchair—upholstered in a divine shade of pistachio green—and stretched her arms overhead. “But we could try to find out where Keith Garner is today. I can ask around.”
Gabby snorted. “You mean, ask your mom.”
