by H. P. Bayne
Sully slipped into the socks, sweats and hoodie he’d brought in with him and accepted the quilt Dez thrust his way as they passed at the bathroom door.
“Coffee’s ready,” Dez said. “Don’t drink it all.”
Grabbing a mug, Sully poured some out and set it on the rickety coffee table in the living area long enough to bundle himself up in the quilt. By the time Dez reemerged from the bathroom and sat with his own coffee and comforter, Sully was feeling a little more human.
“Any better?” Dez asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“Getting there. I was thinking while I was in the shower. Did you ever hear back from Evan about Roanna? One of them was supposed to get ahold of you, right?”
“I didn’t, now you mention it,” Sully said. “I guess I forgot in the middle of everything else today. I’ll check in with Evan first thing. Did you call Lachlan or Justice Montague back?”
“Both. Nothing like getting yelled at twice after the night we had.”
“It’s not like it’s your fault.”
Dez uttered a chuckle free of amusement. “Yeah, well, you know Lachlan. I wasn’t watching my step and all that, blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening after that.”
“You still have a job, right?”
“Yeah, I still have a job. Thing is, if I had to put money on it, I’d say the guy was actually a little worried about me. I’m growing on him.”
“Like a fungus.”
“You’re lucky you’re holding a cup of coffee.”
Sully laughed, then returned to the issue at hand. “You still have the key, right?”
“Yep. It’s on the table. I mentioned it to Lachlan. He was intrigued. Typical, really: I annoy him, you intrigue him.”
“The ghosts intrigue him,” Sully corrected. “Any plan for how we find out what it fits?”
“I was thinking, can’t you ask Carter? I mean, ghosts give you those visions sometimes, right? He’s showed you stuff. Couldn’t he show you whatever this fits?”
As much as Sully hated the idea—having ghosts’ memories blasted into his brain was never pleasant—it made sense. “I’ll ask when I see him. He might show me. But just in case he goes AWOL again, what should I do?”
“First thing is we ask the parents,” Dez said. “Since you’ve apparently gotten all buddy-buddy with them, you can do that, can’t you? I should see about having a meet with the judge, find out what he knows about this Lars Ahlgren jerk. Maybe between the two of us, we can sort this mess out. In the meantime, I don’t know about you, but I’m beat.”
“Yeah, me too. Today sucked.”
“Understatement. If I can make one suggestion, when you come due for another ghost, make it a native Hawaiian or something like that. I could use a vacation.”
20
Dez’s plan to talk to Justice Montague the next morning was put on hold when he learned Tessa was still home.
“She called in sick,” the judge’s text read. “Will notify you when she leaves. She got home late last night. Said was at a friend’s.”
Dez hadn’t yet broken the news to the judge about where Tessa actually was, or with whom. It seemed the sort of thing best done in person.
Meanwhile, Sully had been trying Evan, with no luck.
“I think he’s ignoring me,” Sully said.
“It’s a bit much to take in, probably,” Dez said. “You’ve left him voicemail and text messages. Give him until a bit later today. If you don’t hear back, we’ll drop in on him again.”
Circumstances had freed both of them up to visit the Devereaux house to ask about the key. With any luck, Carter would show up with an answer eliminating the need for further inquiries.
As it stood, the only person home was the teen’s mother, Hal having left for work already.
“It’s not a door key,” Lana said, peering at the object Sully presented. “Carter led you to it, you said?”
“Not without a whole lot of difficulty,” Dez said. “We had to hammer at a chunk of rock to get it out. And the whole thing was underwater.”
“We received his backpack after the search team found it. Carter’s keys were inside.”
“Were they on a keyring?” Dez asked.
“Yes, they were.”
“And it wasn’t broken? Everything was accounted for, as far as you know?”
“It looked intact to me. Why?”
The answer seemed obvious to Dez, but it was one he didn’t want to voice. “I’m thinking this isn’t his key then.”
He looked over at Sully, his brother’s face largely concealed by the hood and the downward angle of his head. “I think that puts us back at square one.”
“He wanted us to get it for a reason,” Sully said. “That tells me it means something to him. If he can show me, hopefully that gets us somewhere.”
Naturally, that meant Carter was nowhere to be found. Dez stood in the doorway while his brother sat on the teen’s bed, talking to the air and asking for the ghost’s return. If Carter heard, he gave no indication. Dez had learned to spot some of the more obvious signs of ghostly presence: temperature changes, cold spots, hair on his arms and neck standing to attention. When none of that happened after half an hour, Dez decided to call it.
“I don’t think he’s up for a chat.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Sully said. “Maybe he’s still restoring his energy after last night. He would have used up a lot guiding us through the caves. We wouldn’t have gotten out except for him.”
“I won’t comment on why we ended up down there in the first place.”
Dez’s phone pinged with a message. The name on the screen drew a groan from his throat.
“It’s the judge,” he said. “Tessa’s left to go shopping or something. So much for being off sick. Judge wants to meet me.”
“Tessa?” came a voice from down the hall.
Dez turned. Lana stood at the opening to the kitchen.
“Yeah, Tessa Montague, why?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was thinking of someone else.”
“Who?”
“Theresa Hanson. She goes by Tessa. She was a teacher at Pintlake Comp. Still is, I think.”
Dez realized he’d never asked. “Is that the school where Carter went?”
“No, he went to St. Matthews, a Catholic school. Pintlake is in the public school division. Carter was taking a commercial art class over there they weren’t offering at St. Matthews, and Tessa was his teacher.”
“Huh,” Dez said. “Did you ever meet her?”
“No, but Carter used to talk about her a lot. He really liked her.” Lana quirked up a corner of her mouth. “I’d go so far as to say he had a crush on her.”
Dez thought back through his current investigation before he realized he had no photos of Tessa Montague on hand to show Lana. It seemed a stretch, but one worth checking into anyway. “This Tessa Hanson. Do you happen to know if she’s a blonde, by chance?”
“No, brunette. Carter had a photo of her on his phone. That’s how I know he had a crush on her. When he saw me noticing it, he turned the phone so I wouldn’t see any more.”
“How much did you notice?” Sully asked. “Did you see the way her hair was cut?”
“It struck me she was very pretty, but I’m not sure about much else. I think her hair was on the short side, but I couldn’t swear to it. It might have been in a ponytail. Why? Do you think it’s important?”
Dez wanted to know the answer to that one too.
Unfortunately, Sully didn’t have a good answer. “I don’t know. Did you ever happen to go through Carter’s trunk? The one he showed me the key to?”
“Hal and I started last night, but we had to stop. It got too hard.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but Dez has to head off to something else, and I’m wondering if I could take a look through the trunk.”
“I certainly don’t mind, but I’d like to call Hal first and ask him.”
Dez prepared for disa
ppointment, so was surprised when Lana’s phone call—made from the hallway—ended with an affirmative.
“He says it’s fine,” she said, stepping into her son’s room. A small smile broke upon her face. “It’s strange. Since you found the key to that trunk, it’s like my husband’s become a different person. He’s so much lighter than he was. It might seem funny to you, but even though we had Carter in a Catholic school, Hal and I aren’t very religious. In fact, Hal gave up all forms of faith after Carter left us. Hal could never sense our son like I could. He never said it out loud, but I think he believed I was going crazy. He’d become convinced there was nothing after this life. For Hal, Carter dying was final, just a big, black void. He got lost inside it, just as he felt Carter had. You haven’t just convinced him Carter isn’t truly gone, Oliver. You’ve given him back his faith. Thank you for that. Please, stay as long as you like.”
Sully had sat stock still through the woman’s speech, and Dez wasn’t surprised to hear the shaky exhale from beneath the hood the moment Lana headed back to the kitchen.
Dez dropped a hand onto Sully’s shoulder. “Y’okay?”
The hood nodded, but no verbal answer accompanied the movement. The tension Dez felt rippling through Sully suggested emotion was the cause, so he took a moment to sit on the side of the bed next to his brother. “You sure?”
Another nod, but this one was followed by a response thickened with choked-back tears. “I’d forgotten how it feels to help people. I feel like I’ve been living in the dark forever.”
“And now? Does this help?”
Another nod. “Yeah. It does.”
Dez lifted his hand, brought it down in a solid pat and a gentle shake. “Then I’m happy to be able to help. But, listen, I’ve got to get my ass in gear, here. You have money to get a cab back to my place after? I think Emily’s got to be getting sick of dog-sitting, and Pax could probably use a good walk after all this time being cooped up.”
“Yeah, I know. I won’t stay long. I just want to see if there’s anything in the trunk that might give me an idea what the teacher looked like.”
“Tessa Hanson? Why?”
“You remember that vision I told you about? The one Carter shut down really quick?”
“The one of the woman in the underwear and New Year’s glasses?”
“Yeah. She had brown hair, but it definitely wasn’t Roanna.”
“And you’re wondering now if it was Tessa Hanson.”
“If he was involved in a sexual relationship with his teacher, it would explain why he was so quick to boot me out of that memory. And it might be a lot more than that. He was old enough it wouldn’t have counted as statutory rape, but teacher-student relationships are fireable offences at the high school level. She’d have reason to want it kept quiet.”
“You’re suggesting she might have had motive to commit murder.” Dez drew in a breath and let it out through pursed lips. “Damn it. Listen to me, if anything turns up in that trunk, you let me know right away. Don’t make any major moves unless I’m with you, got that?”
“I’ll let you know what I find.”
It wasn’t until Dez was in his SUV and headed back to the judge’s, leaving his brother behind in the murdered teen’s home, that he realized Sully hadn’t promised him he’d avoid doing anything dumb.
Words were probably meaningless, anyway. Sully had abilities most others on the planet did not.
Staying out of trouble was not one of them.
If there was any debate as to whether Theresa Hanson and Tessa Montague were the same person, the judge put a quick end to it.
“Tessa didn’t teach at Pintlake, or anywhere else,” he said. “She’s a consultant working with a PR firm. That’s how we met. The court communications officer wanted to put together a video for use on our website. It was to help educate the public on the role and the workings of the courts. Tessa was brought on board to help with the project. At any rate, this is all beside the point. I would like to know more about the investigation. What have you found out so far?”
Dez realized he was chewing his bottom lip, and quit. There was no way around it and, now that he was here, he wasn’t sure how to say it.
He did it anyway, stumbling through the events of last night, including Tessa’s attendance with Lars at the caves.
“It does seem as though the two of them are spending time together, and she’s trying to help him cover up what might turn out to be a homicide,” Dez concluded. “Lars made it very clear he was eager to find out whether someone had made a discovery that could sink him. And Tessa was there to help him. Even though I’ve never caught the two of them in…” He paused trying to think up a polite term. “…a sexually compromising situation, I can’t think why Tessa would involve herself if there’s not something going on. She made it very clear she wasn’t happy to be there. The only reason I can think she went along was out of loyalty to Lars.”
By the time Dez finished, Montague’s features had twisted into a scowl, his chin dropped so his eyebrows appeared to sink even farther over piercing blue eyes.
When no verbal response followed, Dez took his chances at asking. “What would you like me to do?”
The judge’s lips moved, an indication of teeth sawing back and forth against each other. He was thinking, and it would have been clear to a small child the thoughts were not pleasant ones.
“While, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve answered my question pertaining to my wife’s infidelity, this isn’t enough to stand up in court should I press for divorce. The terms of the prenuptial are clear. I need clear evidence she has been unfaithful. At the moment, all I have is the word of a private investigator that my wife was exploring a cave with another man.”
“A man who might turn out to be involved in the death of a teenager,” Dez added.
“Nevertheless. I need something more from you, Mr. Braddock. Find those missing rings at this man’s apartment on his bedside table, and I might have something I can use to at least draw a confession from her. Anyway, I’d like them back. As I said, they’re worth a lot of money, and I’ll not have her keeping them if it turns out she’s been unfaithful.”
All thoughts of ending this job here and now crashed and burned. “I’ll do my best.”
“See that you do.”
This time, Dez was the one left grinding his teeth.
The trunk was a treasure trove of memories: elementary school scrapbooks, winning ribbons from childhood track events and a photography contest, T-shirts from various concerts, a sizeable collection of sports cards, old video games belonging to a long-defunct system, two worn pairs of Nikes, several sets of comic books, a drawing pad full of a child’s sketches.
Sully could see why Carter’s parents would have stopped digging through here shortly after they’d started. A distinctive smell had wafted up from the box’s depths upon its opening, a scent Sully suspected had been distinctive to the youth. This box clearly contained all of the things that had meant the most to the boy, his most cherished memories, the possessions he couldn’t bear to part with. It would be a minefield for grieving parents.
For Sully, it was its own kind of difficult. Stuffed with items, it would be next to impossible to figure out precisely what—if anything—held a hidden meaning about the teen’s death.
Sully had been hoping for some photographs, and he suspected Dez had too. It occurred to him partway through the process that would be an unlikely find; few teenagers actually bothered printing photos, content to post them to their social media accounts or storing them on Internet backup sites. Sully realized he’d have better luck trying to hack Carter’s Dropbox account than searching for physical photos.
What he did come up with, after a long search, was a small, white keycard marked on one side by the name of a security firm. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that belonged in here, not with all of the other items, which clearly held fond memories for a kid standing on that border between youth and adulthood. Y
et, for it to be there, within this locked box of important things, the keycard clearly meant something.
With nothing else inside the box leaping out at him, and no sign of Carter to provide any extra clues, Sully closed the trunk and carried the key with him to find Lana.
She was in the kitchen, boiling water for tea when he entered the room. His face cast downward inside the shadows of his hood, Sully knew she’d seen what he was holding when her question came. “Is that a keycard?”
“It seems to be. Do you know if he might have gone someplace regularly that required a keycard?”
“I can’t think of anyplace. He had keys to our house and his car, obviously, but nothing else that I know of. Certainly nowhere that took a keycard. Maybe it’s from a hotel? It’s possible he stayed in one during a school trip and forgot to leave the card at checkout time. You know how kids’ brains work sometimes.”
It seemed a plausible explanation, one that might negate the possibility of this keycard’s role in anything nefarious. And yet, something told Sully not to let go of the item just yet.
“Is it all right if I hold onto this for the time being?” he asked. “I’d like to see if I can figure out what it’s for.”
“Certainly, if you think it will help. I can call Hal, too, and find out if he knows anything about it.”
“That would be great, thanks. And I’m also wondering if either of you know where Carter might have kept any photos he took.”
“He wasn’t in the habit of printing them, if that’s what you’re wondering. If there were any, they would have been in that trunk, as I’ve never found anything else in his room.”
“I figured that out about halfway through the search. I was thinking more along the lines of a Dropbox or Cloud account or something.”
“I’m not sure, but I can ask Hal about that too.”
Sully waited while she phoned her husband. The conversation wasn’t long, and by the end—having listened to this side of it—Sully was braced for disappointment.