A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel

by Sara J. Henry

  “Yep,” I said.

  I called the great-nephew back and got directions. I texted Win to ask her if she could pick up Tiger or if I could drop her off. She answered she’d get Tiger within the hour. I looked up the nearest Motel 6 to where I was going, packed a small bag, left a note on the fridge, and off I went.

  I found the man the next morning, just where Great-nephew Ian had told me he would be, walking the shoreline near the guesthouse. He peered at me suspiciously, but he’d been told to expect me, and I’d brought the current U.S. News & World Report and a bag of crullers his nephew said he would like. He tucked the magazine under his arm and opened the bag.

  “Mmm,” he said. “Ian just wants me to eat healthy stuff, but sometimes a man needs a good cruller, you know.”

  I nodded, not telling him that it was Ian who’d suggested I bring them.

  “You want to talk about the accident, the Winslow boat accident,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “What can you tell me?”

  He took me through it: him out walking on the beach that day, toward the private dock where the Winslows kept their boat, seeing the boat, seeing two people board, and as he neared, seeing a third get on, the one he thought must have been the younger son, one with long and floppy dark hair, and watching the boat leave the dock.

  “Don’t know why they wear their hair like that,” he said. “Seems it would make it hard to see.” We walked on another minute before he spoke again. “Wasn’t a great day for it—looked like it was going to get choppy. But they looked like they knew what they were doing.”

  “You told the police you saw three people on the boat?”

  He nodded, kicking at the sand and dislodging a candy-bar wrapper. He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and put the wrapper inside.

  “Shameful how much trash people throw on the ground,” he said. “Some days I get nearly half a bag full or more, depending how far I go.”

  “The boat … the police?”

  “I heard about the drowning and then saw the report in the paper, the one that said the two boys were out in the boat. I thought maybe it was just a mistake, you know papers get things wrong all the time, but that’s what all the papers said. And then I thought about it some more and I called the police and told them. One young fellow came and talked to me, someone with a Mexican name, but he looked more Indian, American Indian, you know, and I told him what I saw and he thanked me, and that was that.”

  “You didn’t hear from anyone else?”

  “No.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “They don’t know who the third person was, so they said it was just two people, right?”

  I picked up a bottle cap, and he held his bag out for it. “That’s the official version, yes.”

  “And the other boy, the young one, he died too, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he never told anyone who the third person was?” He squinted at me, his wrinkled face showing consternation.

  “I don’t think he did. But I’m going to ask around.”

  “Could be they came back after I left, let off the third person, and went back out again,” he offered.

  “Could be,” I said.

  I walked all the way down the beach with him and back—it must have been two miles, and he did indeed half fill the trash bag, which I ended up carrying to make it easier for him to drop trash in it without breaking stride. Along the way I asked him if I could take some photos and he agreed, and I snapped some of him from the back, from low, angled across the sand and slanting toward the water.

  Back in the car, I called Win. No answer, so I pecked out a text message on my not-smart phone: Can you think of anyone Tobin might have talked to about the accident? A few minutes later she texted back: Not unless it was our grandfather. Or his girlfriend then or his friend Brad.

  Grandfather, dead. Brad—that was the accountant, still mysteriously missing. Former girlfriend—her I could try again, but I hadn’t gotten the impression there were any secrets she was going to be willing to share.

  Then I looked up the nanny’s phone number, and dialed it.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said when she answered. “But I’m working on the next article on Tobin, the one that starts with the boat accident, and I’m trying to find someone Tobin may have talked to afterward. Anyone he may have trusted, or confided in.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment, and I was wondering if I needed to tell her about my talk with Orville, to tell her that someone, a thirdhand someone, had suggested there was more to this than the official version. But then she cleared her throat.

  “Is it important?” she asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” I said. My voice nearly cracked. I was close to crying and had no idea why. There was something here I was close to, something I had very nearly missed, would have missed but for that phone call from the Couchsurfing couple.

  “Talk to David Zimmer,” she said. “He knew both boys.” She spelled the name for me and told me the name of the company she thought he worked at. I didn’t ask more.

  I drove to a Panera’s, which I knew had wi-fi, bought a soup and a half sandwich, and pulled out my laptop and logged on. And I tracked down David Zimmer, at the company the nanny had mentioned, and called him at work. I fumbled through the mail system, and after a few rings his voice mail told me he was out of the office for the day. I spoke slowly, choosing my words carefully, because I didn’t know if this man knew that Tobin was dead. I told his voice mail who I was, that I knew Tobin, that I worked for a small paper in the Adirondacks, that I was writing an article about Tobin and wondered if I could interview him. I left my e-mail address and my phone numbers, and clicked off. Then I ate my soup and my sandwich, and sent a congenial e-mail to Tobin’s college girlfriend, on the off chance he had talked to her about the boat accident that had left his brother dead.

  And then I drove home, my brain churning hard.

  CHAPTER 36

  I got a return e-mail from Tobin’s old girlfriend, who knew nothing. I left Zimmer a second message, and a third, and a fourth, and began to wonder if I wasn’t going to get anywhere and if I should drop it. I reminded myself I wasn’t investigating a drowning from years ago—but I was writing about Tobin’s life, and that did include his brother’s death.

  Win called late that afternoon to tell me she’d ordered the temporary death certificates and started going through her brother’s mail. Among them, she said, were two letters from her, and on this her voice broke.

  “I’m sorry he didn’t get them, Win.”

  She changed the subject. “How is it going? The article.”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t tell her about a mysterious policeman and an old man I’d walked the beach with and someone named David Zimmer I couldn’t get to call me back. I needed to keep journalistic separation where I could, and the fact was I never liked talking about things I was working on.

  I took Tiger out for a brief walk. When I got back, there were no messages, but I checked incoming calls. I had missed one call—from the number I had for David Zimmer

  I called back. “Troy Chance calling for David Zimmer,” I said, when a man answered. A pause. I added, “From Lake Placid. I left a message before.”

  “You left a lot of messages.” His voice was dry: neither angry nor friendly. “Just why is it you’re calling me?”

  “I’m writing an article on Tobin Winslow, and someone suggested I talk to you, and said you knew him and his brother, Trey.”

  Another pause. “And who are you writing for?”

  I told him. “I’m doing a series …” I said, then paused. “Have you … I didn’t know if you knew, but Tobin died here, and his body was recently found.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I knew.”

  “The paper’s doing a series on Tobin, including his life before he moved up here. I’ve talked to their sister a lot.”

  “Jessica Winslow?”

  “Yes, Win. I mean, she goes by W
in now, at least here.”

  “So she gave you my name.”

  “No, actually it was the Winslows’ nanny.”

  “The nanny?” He seemed surprised.

  “Yes, I interviewed her for the article. And when I asked if there was anyone Tobin might have talked to about the accident, she gave me your name.”

  “Why do you need to talk to me, me specifically? Why do you even need to discuss the accident?” he asked.

  He was sounding annoyed. I sensed he was near that moment where he would hang up—that this was when I had to risk telling him more. I took a deep breath. “This next article starts with the accident, the boat wreck, when Trey died. And I’ve been led to believe, from someone who saw them that night, that there was someone else on board.”

  An intake of breath, and a pause, a long one. I could hear him breathing. Maybe it had been a mistake to tell him this.

  “Send me the link to the first article, and I’ll call you back,” he said briefly, decisively. So I did.

  Thirty minutes later my phone rang.

  “That’s a hell of an article, Miss Chance,” David Zimmer said. His voice was different, deeper. Less terse.

  “Troy. My name is Troy.”

  “You’re in Lake Placid? Do you have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a diner at Exit 22 from the Northway in Lake George, about eighty miles from you. Can you meet me there in two hours?”

  I blinked. “Well, yes, but we could just talk on the phone.”

  “No, I’d rather meet.” He told me what he would be driving—a two-year-old gray Saab—and I told him I had a blue Subaru wagon. We exchanged cell phone numbers. I hung up the phone and stared at it. And then went to get ready for a road trip.

  Before I left, I wrote a note: Just in case I’m going off to meet a homicidal maniac, here’s who I’m going to meet—I’ll be home or call before dark. I added name, phone numbers, car make, destination, and taped it to the fridge.

  That would give the roommates a laugh, but I was covering my bases. I e-mailed Jameson. And took Tiger with me. Just in case.

  I was glad the roads were clear—I was jittery, not knowing what I was heading into. But Win’s nanny would have, I thought, warned me if there was any reason to beware of this man. When I arrived he was already there. He stepped out of his car when I pulled up, and followed me into the restaurant. He was slight, with light brown hair, sharply dressed, but didn’t carry himself with that sense of entitlement that many attractive, well-dressed people do.

  “You’re a good writer,” he said. “You work for a very small paper.”

  There seemed to be an implied question in that, so I answered what he hadn’t asked. “I freelance for them, and some magazines.”

  “You knew Tobin?”

  “Yes, but not well. He dated one of my roommates, and I met his sister when she came up recently. She’s staying in Lake Placid a while.”

  We nodded yes to the waitress when she came by with a coffeepot, and waited while she filled our mugs.

  “And you know the Winslows’ nanny?” he asked.

  Just to interview her, I told him, but I’d liked her. Then I looked at him and asked the question I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask on the phone. “Were you on the boat?”

  “On the boat?”

  “Were you on the boat that night? Were you the third person?”

  He set down his coffee cup. He laughed oddly, a laugh that was painful to hear. “Oh, no. I wasn’t on the boat. We wouldn’t be sitting here if I had been the third person on that boat.”

  “But you know about it? You were friends with Tobin and Trey?” He looked at me, full on, and I caught my breath. His face was filled with grief, deep and awful. His eyes held more hurt than I’d ever seen, like falling down an endless dark hole. He coughed, a sharp bark of a cough, the sound you make when you’re choking back pain, and I realized this man was still grieving Trey Winslow, who had died six years ago.

  “I knew Tobin, but it was Tobin’s brother I knew well,” he said simply. He saw it dawning on me, saw in my face that I was starting to understand that the person who had died that night was more than a friend to him.

  He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “This stuff is awful. Look, my friend has a condo here he lets me use, with a machine that will make a much better brew than this. Then we can talk privately, if you’re comfortable with that.”

  Sometimes in life you decide to take chances, and this was one of those times. I got in my car and followed him, and parked where he indicated. As I was getting out he nodded at Tiger in my back seat. “Bring your dog up if you like.” So I did. I don’t know if he was considering Tiger’s comfort or mine.

  The condo was spotless, with a bright kitchen and a long, tiled countertop with padded stools. I sat on one while he started the fancy espresso machine. It made rumbling brewing noises, and then he filled two cups, and added steamed milk from the spigot on the side. He sat down across from me and started talking.

  “I didn’t call him Trey,” he said. “He’d been Trey all his life—what is that, really, bastardized Italian for third? He didn’t want to be a third anything—he wanted to be himself. I called him Martin, his middle name.” He sipped his coffee; I sipped mine. He was right, it was infinitely better than the stuff in the restaurant. It took him a moment to start again.

  “I’d known Martin for four years, and we’d been together for two. He hadn’t told his family. They had his whole life planned out, where he would go to college, when he would come into the family business, who he was going to marry, how many children he would have. And he wanted to make them happy. If he could have done it, he would have. He’d ended things with the girl, but his family acted like it was just a temporary tiff, that they’d get back together. He’d decided he couldn’t go through the rest of it, he couldn’t work in the family business, live in the same town, see his father every day and his mother every Sunday for dinner, living a lie, pretending the whole time. We were going to move to Colorado.”

  He smiled sadly. “He had just told his father he was going to leave.” He sat silent for a moment, and I wondered if this was all he was going to tell me. But he went on. “They were all in the boat, you know.”

  I looked at him, not sure what he meant, or who.

  “All three of them were in the boat: Tobin, Martin, their father.”

  He watched me take this in. Their father had been the third man.

  I hadn’t even begun working this out in my head when he started talking again. Usually it had been just Tobin and Martin on the boat, he said, sometimes a friend or two, but most often just the two brothers. It was something they loved to do together, spending hours out on the water. That day their father insisted on going—he had paid for the boat, he said, and he was going to take the wheel. He’d been drinking, and he drank more while they were out on the water. “He started driving like a madman,” David said, “and they couldn’t get the controls from him. And when he whipped the boat around, Tobin went over. Martin grabbed life jackets and jumped in after him.”

  He stopped, and sipped his coffee. He said nothing for a long, long moment.

  “And then?” I prompted. He had, I thought, imagined this scene so many times that by now it was like a movie he had seen, over and over.

  “And then, nothing. Martin found Tobin; they put the jackets on; they found something in the water, a log or broken mast or something, and hung on to it. And their father never came back.”

  I stared at him.

  “He crashed the boat—they found it the next day—but somehow got himself to shore and home.” David got up and refilled his coffee cup. “Did you know life jackets can go bad?” he said, conversationally. “They can. They can leak, they can get waterlogged. If you don’t store them properly, the material inside can harden, and then they just don’t work anymore. Who checks life jackets regularly? Almost no one.”

  “The life jackets were bad?�
�� I whispered.

  He turned his eyes to me, those dark, sad eyes that made me wish I were an artist so I could capture them in a painting, or that I knew the secret to making that sadness go away. “Only one.”

  “Martin’s.” I whispered the word.

  “No, Tobin’s, actually. It was pulling him down. Martin wrestled him out of it; took his off and made him put it on. He knew what he was doing. He was the older brother; he wanted Tobin to live. He knew they couldn’t hang on to that chunk of wood all night in that cold water; he knew what would happen if no one rescued them. He chose to die so Tobin could live. That was Martin; that’s what Martin would do.”

  We sat there a while.

  “Their father—did he hit his head in the crash, pass out?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Tobin didn’t know. Maybe their father was so drunk he didn’t notice the boys had gone overboard. Maybe he crashed the boat and didn’t remember what happened.”

  “So he just went home—like nothing happened? And never said anything?”

  He took a drink of coffee before speaking. “Apparently not. Everyone assumed it was just the boys on the boat as usual; people thought Tobin asking about his father was delirious rambling. He was pretty hypothermic by the time they found him, and hysterical about Martin. And once he realized his father wasn’t going to admit he was on the boat, Tobin let people assume what they would.”

  “How …”

  “Tobin came to see me as soon as he got out of the hospital and told me all of it, every moment he could remember. He told me he kept his hand twisted around Martin’s shirt to try to help hold him up, that Martin was hanging on to that piece of wood they’d found, but Tobin kept dozing off in the night, and the last time, when he woke, his brother was gone. He told me he thought about taking off the life jacket, throwing it away, letting the water take him. But he knew that wasn’t what his brother would have wanted, that it would have negated what Martin had done to save him. Tobin didn’t cry when he told me, just sat and told me every detail, every single thing Martin said to him and what they said to each other, and then he hugged me. And then, the next day, he left. He got on a bus and never came back.”