A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel

by Sara J. Henry

  That night after dinner, after apple pie for dessert, and after Paul was tucked into bed, the three of us retired to the library and a crackling fire. We relaxed and sipped a superb pinot noir and sampled different cheeses. Philippe chatted about Paul’s school and his marketing business. I talked about my brother, Simon, my friend Baker, my roommate Zach who was in Boulder visiting a girlfriend—all people Philippe had met. Jessamyn told funny stories about tourists visiting the restaurant.

  And then Philippe asked her, “Where are you from originally?”

  It was a simple question, and up until that moment I hadn’t really considered that in Lake Placid you don’t usually ask people where they’re from. Sometimes they tell you, and sometimes you figure it out from where they disappear to on holidays, if they do. But you don’t ask.

  There’s a line in the movie Insomnia, something like There’s two types of people in Alaska, the ones who were born here and the ones who came here to get away from something. You could say much the same about the Adirondacks.

  But Jessamyn replied easily, though vaguely. “The Midwest, but I don’t keep up with anyone.”

  And Philippe, bless him, just poured more wine and smiled with the right mix of sympathy and understanding, and launched into a story about one of his clients who owned a small winery. This was one of the things he excelled at, putting people at ease. And after a while he excused himself, saying he had some paperwork to do. After he was out of earshot Jessamyn leaned toward me and whispered, “What’s the deal with Philippe?” I nodded toward my room—this wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have in the open. She followed me, and we sat cross-legged on the bed as if we were in junior high.

  “So what’s the deal with Philippe?” she repeated.

  I didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. I told her about finding Paul last summer and staying in Ottawa to help him adjust to his new life here, without a mother, with the father he hadn’t seen for months; that Philippe and I had gotten close, partly because of Paul, but had backed off for many reasons. The timing wasn’t right; I was deeply attached to his son, and he was recovering from the loss of his wife. Not the best time to start something.

  Jessamyn drained her wineglass. “I dunno, maybe you should just go for it, Troy. He seems to be a great guy. You like the kid, and this place is amazing.”

  Yeah, I know. I wasn’t going to open my veins here and tell her how much I’d struggled with my attraction to Philippe and to Paul and the whole setup, and explain why I couldn’t have stayed here. “I know. Maybe if there wasn’t a child involved. But I didn’t want to try something that was too soon or not right, and then not be a part of Paul’s life. He’d already lost his mother; I didn’t want him to lose me, too.” It was late enough and this was enough of the truth that my voice caught.

  Jessamyn thought for a moment. Her next question took me off guard. “Are your mother and father together?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think it ever occurred to them not to be. They seem okay. Neither of them have much use for me, but that’s just how it is.”

  “Mmm, kind of the same here. But no father. He took off when I was about three. I saw him again once, I think, and that was it. I don’t even remember what he looked like.” She shrugged. “Paul’s lucky. He’s lucky to have his father, and Elise, and you, and all this.” She waved a hand to encompass all this. The puppy, the delectable meals, the fine furnishings, the house filled with love.

  My throat tightened. “Yes, he is.”

  “I think we need more wine,” she said.

  “I think you’re right.”

  We tiptoed off to the kitchen and polished off the bottle and the last of the apple pie while we were at it. We rinsed our dishes and went off to bed, comfortably full, and feeling, I think, more like friends than we had before.

  CHAPTER 14

  At breakfast Philippe excused himself to go to work early, but we’d be meeting him downtown later. Jessamyn said she was tired, and found a book and went off to her room to read. I fired up my laptop and sent an e-mail to my brother, telling him what had happened, because at some point in all this I might need Simon’s cool logical brain.

  And then I started some Googling to see if I could track down the person who had sent that article around. I had the e-mail address from George, and it didn’t take long to trace it to a little-used Facebook page with a cartooned Marilyn Monroe for an avatar. Lives in: Lake Placid, New York. Worked at: Price Chopper. User name: Marilyn Munro. It was likely a fake name but if not, how unfortunate. I asked Jessamyn if she knew anyone named Marilyn, and she said she didn’t.

  Then we drove downtown to meet Philippe for a bundled-up walk and an early lunch at a bistro. Because, as he told Jessamyn, you shouldn’t come to Ottawa and not at least see the Parliament buildings and Rideau Canal. It was iced over so thoroughly that some people commuted on skates to work, and little huts were set up to sell hot chocolate and beaver tails, a particularly large and sticky pastry.

  When we got back I went through the voice mail messages that had downloaded into my inbox as mp3 files. Most were reporters, but not the last two, and they left me feeling queasy.

  I found Jessamyn in the kitchen.

  “The state police called me at home,” I told her. “They were trying to get in touch with you—they want to interview you.”

  All the animation drained from her face. I hadn’t realized until then just how much Jessamyn had relaxed here, how different she looked.

  “The state police?” she asked. “Not the local police?”

  I nodded. “I guess they’re following up on Tobin’s death.”

  “Do we have to go now?” Her voice was plaintive, like a small child’s.

  I looked up at the wall clock, and at Elise, carefully busy with something she’d taken from the fridge. “Even if we left now we’d have trouble making it by five. We can wait until morning.”

  The state police investigator, when I called, was none too happy, and I felt more than a trifle guilty. I hoped I hadn’t made things worse for Jessamyn by whisking her out of town. I told him we were visiting in Ottawa, I’d just gotten the messages, and we’d come straight to the state police headquarters in Ray Brook in the morning. I gave him my cell phone number, and put Jessamyn on the phone to confirm what I’d said. He didn’t push it—it wasn’t as if they were going to extradite Jessamyn to interview her half a day earlier.

  I called Jameson, who agreed that someone could be exerting pressure to bump this up a notch. “Or it’s possible that all non-conventional deaths there are referred to your state police,” he said. “I’d remind Jessamyn not to say anything that’s not a fact, and if she gets uncomfortable, to ask to leave. Or consider getting an attorney before she goes in. And if you need me, call me.”

  If you need me, call me. For Jameson, this qualified as almost intimate.

  Again I went looking for Jessamyn, and this time I found her sitting in her room, on the bed, neatly made. My eyes went to her duffel bag on the floor. It was plump, full. Packed. “You’re thinking about taking off,” I said, and I realized there was nothing stopping her. She could hop a bus or stick out her thumb and leave Lake Placid and her tiny room and her few possessions behind. Just as she’d left somewhere else to come to the Adirondacks. Her eyes darted around the room. Finally she looked at me.

  “I don’t want to talk to the police, Troy.” Her voice was thin, tight.

  “But you did once, and it wasn’t so bad.”

  “Yes, but this is the state police—that’s a bigger deal. That means they think someone did something to Tobin, that he didn’t just drown.”

  I’d hoped she hadn’t thought of this. I sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s possible,” I said carefully. “Or the Saranac Lake police could be uncomfortable handling it because of things stirred up by the newspaper article, or the missing truck. Or pressure from Tobin’s parents.”

  “Or it could mean Tobin’s death wasn’t an accident.”
/>   The words hung in the air. I looked at her full on. “It could. What do you think?”

  Her eyes shifted. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  I spoke rapidly. “Jessamyn, if someone did something to Tobin, it needs to be found out. If you think anyone could have hurt him, you have to face this, you have to tell the police. You don’t want to run from this.”

  She looked miserable, but she nodded.

  “Do you want to talk to an attorney before you go?”

  She shook her head, and on this she was adamant. In the North Country, she said, showing up with a lawyer would make everyone assume she was guilty of something. She was right about that.

  I thought of more I could say, but in the end I just left her there.

  That evening we had an even better dinner, lasagna with homemade noodles, an exquisite salad, fresh-baked bread. Jessamyn was more animated than I’d ever seen her, as if wringing every bit she could from one last happy evening with this family. We played a rousing game of Pictionary, roping Elise in, me coaching Paul, until it was time for Paul to go to bed. I got to tuck him in, freshly bathed in his flannel pajamas, and I read him Where the Wild Things Are. Paul loved this book, and the little boy Max.

  “Max was très vilain—very naughty,” he told me solemnly. “But I shouldn’t like to be sent to bed without dinner.”

  “He was a little naughty,” I agreed. “But I don’t think you ever have to worry about going to bed without dinner.” I thought of the months Paul had been held captive, with the closest thing to a real dinner an occasional McDonald’s meal put in his room. Maybe he thought of that too. He gave me a hug so warm and tight I didn’t want to let go. I felt that swell of love, so intense it nearly hurt, like I’d felt not long after I’d rescued him last summer. I’d known then I would lay my life down for this kid. That hadn’t changed. I didn’t think it ever would.

  Afterward Philippe and Jessamyn and I sat in the library, fire blazing, and talked about anything but Lake Placid until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. We went off to our rooms, and I saw Jessamyn close her door. I hoped she’d be there in the morning.

  And she was. A little wan, but she was there. We left right after breakfast, taking along an enormous box of food from Elise, who thought we didn’t eat well enough. She was probably right.

  We didn’t talk much on the drive. I repeated what Jameson had said, to just tell them facts, and to stop answering questions if it got uncomfortable. “And if you don’t know something, just say so—don’t make something up,” I added.

  “I won’t,” Jessamyn snapped. “I’m not stupid, Troy.”

  I guessed I did sound patronizing. I should have been surprised Jessamyn hadn’t been sharp-tongued before now. In a way it was good to see her like this, more like her old self.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that it’s no fun being questioned by the police, and these guys are going to be pros, not like that yahoo from Saranac Lake. They can trick you or hammer at you until you want to say anything to shut them up.”

  She looked at me curiously. I hadn’t told her the police here had considered me a suspect in Paul’s kidnapping last year, and I didn’t go into it now.

  We drove for an hour before she spoke again. “Do you think Tobin’s parents are in town?”

  I thought about the parents from Connecticut, the rich parents, the parents who had just lost a second son. “I imagine they are,” I said. They would, I thought, have come up to ID the body if nothing else. I didn’t know if Jessamyn hoped to meet them, or hoped not to.

  We got to the state police headquarters before noon and waited in not particularly comfortable chairs. It seemed there might be security cameras recording what we said and did, so we said and did nothing. Finally Jessamyn was called, and I opened the paperback I’d brought. After I’d pretended to read three chapters, she was back. She gave a shrug that seemed to say No big deal. The investigator turned to me.

  “Miss Chance?”

  I nodded.

  “I need to talk to you as well.”

  This I hadn’t seen coming. I’d been so concerned about Jessamyn, I hadn’t given any thought to the notion I might be questioned. I gave Jessamyn a fake smile and followed the man. The room we entered was a regular office, not an interrogation room, but still reminiscent of when I’d been questioned in the Ottawa police station last summer. The investigator was typical of most New York state troopers I’d seen: tall, tightly muscled, white, male, with a brush cut.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said briskly. Which made me want to ask who “we” were, if someone was in the closet or under the desk. But I didn’t.

  He asked when I’d met Tobin, when I’d last seen him, the names of his friends. And about Tobin’s relationship with Jessamyn. I wasn’t going to out-and-out lie, but neither was I going to throw Jessamyn under the bus.

  “It seemed fine,” I said brightly.

  “They got along? They didn’t fight?”

  I shook my head. “I never saw them fight,” I said, which was true. Jessamyn could have gotten that fat lip from running into a door. I’ve done it: walked slam into the edge of a door standing open—it hurts like heck, and you feel really stupid. Or someone other than Tobin could have done it.

  “How often did you see them?”

  “When Tobin was in town, he was at the house at least every other day, sometimes more.”

  “And what was your relationship with him?”

  “Relationship? He dated my roommate. I never knew him before that.”

  “You never went to his place?”

  I gave a short bark of laughter before I could stop myself. “No, of course not.”

  “So you were never in his house?”

  “Of course not,” I repeated.

  “Do you know where it was?”

  “Vaguely. It’s on one of the roads off Highway 73 toward Keene. I gave him a ride home once.” It had been snowing and Tobin was hitchhiking; he said he’d had too much to drink to want to drive. It had surprised me, because it wasn’t rare in these towns for guys to get behind the wheel with sky-high blood alcohol.

  The investigator seemed to smirk. “But you just said you’d never been at his house.”

  “No, I said I hadn’t been in his house. And it wasn’t a house, it was a cabin, a small cabin.”

  “And you never went inside?”

  I sighed inwardly. This game I knew. Keep repeating the question to see if I changed my answer.

  “No,” I said. “I never went in. Not once. Not ever. I stopped my car; he got out and walked to his front door. I drove home. Period, end of story. I don’t even know if I could find it again.”

  “And what is your relationship with Jessamyn Field?”

  I felt like throwing up my hands. “She’s one of my roommates. She’s lived there since late summer.”

  “But you went out of town together.”

  Suddenly meeting the investigator before lunch didn’t seem like such a great idea. I was hungry and getting crosser by the minute.

  “Yes,” I said, and couldn’t keep the edge from my voice. “I’ve been known to go out of town with many different people, some roommates, some not.” I pulled two business cards out of my wallet that I’d put there yesterday, possibly because a little voice in the back of my head had hinted I might need them. I set Philippe’s card on the desk. “Here’s the friend I was visiting in Ottawa.” Then I placed Jameson’s card on top. “Here’s another friend I saw while I was there, a detective with the Ottawa Police Service. You can call either of them and ask them whatever you want.” I stood up and started for the door. He let me go.

  So much for advising Jessamyn to stay cool and calm. She was smart enough not to ask anything, and just followed me to the car. I reached into the box of food in the trunk and pulled out a turnover. I offered her one, but she shook her head. I finished it as I pulled out of the lot.

  “Didn’t go well, huh?” Jessamyn asked
after a while.

  “Nope,” I said.

  She started to say something else, but we were nearing the house and could see someone on the front porch, perched on the edge of the big swing.

  I sighed. “We could park in the back and go in the kitchen door. I think we can get it open.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m tired of this. Let’s just go in.”

  We parked in my usual spot in front of the house, and the woman stood as we came up the steps. She was, I guessed, in her mid- to late twenties, trim, attractive, with brown hair to her shoulders, and stylish earmuffs instead of the thick knit hats Jessamyn and I wore. Her jeans and boots and coat were far nicer than I’d ever had or thought about having. She looked tired and cold.

  She took a step toward us. I was thinking she didn’t look like a reporter when she spoke. And just before the words came out of her mouth, I guessed who she was.

  “I’m Tobin’s sister,” she said, looking from one of us to the other. “I’m Jessica Winslow.”

  CHAPTER 15

  If Jessamyn and I hadn’t just had the week we’d had, this woman showing up on our doorstep might have thrown us for a loop. But in a way it seemed the inevitable next step in an inexorable chain of events: body found, media blitz, escape to Canada, police interview, arrival of bereaved sister. We didn’t know if she was here to blame or commiserate, and didn’t ask. We just told her who we were and invited her in. I unlocked the door and led the way inside, and turned on the water for tea. We sat at the kitchen table. I opened the bag of Elise’s pastries. No one took any.

  The woman had Tobin’s coloring, and you could see the resemblance around her mouth and jaw. I put a mug of tea in front of her, and set out milk and sugar. She poured in some of both, stirred, and took a sip, wrapping her hands tightly around the mug. It had been cold on our porch, and I guessed she’d been out there a while. We waited for her to speak.