“Are you doing okay?” Bent said.
How formal they were now with each other, almost as if they were strangers. Back when she’d been in college in Chicago, she’d used to watch through the window, waiting for him to show up at her apartment. She nodded. “I should be asking you. Are you? Do you want to talk about it?”
His body sagged, as if he’d deflated. “What is there to say?”
“You knew her so well,” Grace said. A new alertness flickered in his eyes for a moment. He didn’t know how much she knew, she realized.
“You mean . . . ? Well, yeah. Most of us knew her better than you did. You never did like her much.”
Grace flinched at the bluntness of that. It sounded wrong now that Angie was dead. And it wasn’t really true, in the end. But Bent didn’t know that.
Bent was watching her. “Thanks for bringing Duncan,” he said. With a strained half smile, he added, “We didn’t want him to quit before he starts.”
Grace nodded. “He seems more comfortable now. You were right about the informal setting.”
“Cinasat’s big on informal settings,” Bent said. “Hammond’s dinner is all about that. I would normally go, except I have things to attend to.”
“Right . . . but after all this, I don’t think we’ll be going either,” Grace said.
Bent frowned. “You have to. Hammond’s expecting you. Duncan’s starting on Monday.”
That’s why he should relax, Grace thought, not waste the evening talking to a bunch of strangers at a company party. Duncan had only met Hammond Gleeson, Cinasat’s chief executive officer, a few times.
Bent eyed her pursed lips, still frowning. “Really, Grace. Don’t skip it, yeah?”
The microwave beeped. “I have to take this to Marla,” Grace said. She pulled the plate out and left the room without looking back.
The police inquiries took hours. Mortensen seemed to speak to everyone. Whenever Grace looked around from where she was sitting, he was hovering near one of the picnic tables scattered around the pavilion, his head bent deferentially toward another of the Kandyans. She never saw him extracting individual people from the tight clusters here and there. He seemed to have a knack for making himself unnoticeable, even with his extraordinary height.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Mrs. McCloud,” Mortensen said. “Where were you when Ms. Osborne was found?” Earlier, when Mortensen had been talking to Duncan, Grace had slipped away, murmuring about the need to tend to Marla. Now there was no avoiding him. He had led Grace to the northeastern edge of the clearing in which the pavilion stood. The piney scent of the woods drifted toward them, driven by a recurring breeze. Night had fallen, and the darkness under the trees beyond was thick. Only a few fireflies pierced it, flickering on and off as if they were trying in vain to defeat the night.
“Here. I was babysitting a kid. Janie, a nine-year-old,” Grace said. “She’s Bentley Hyland’s daughter. He asked me to stay with her while he was out searching.”
“Just you and her here?” He bent toward her, and she smelled his minty breath.
“No, Sofie Tittleworth was here with her four kids.” What if he saw that she was hiding something, she kept thinking. What if everything came out?
“How long were you here?”
Grace shrugged, trying to look at ease. “Since before lunch.”
“You heard shots?”
Grace nodded. “We couldn’t have missed them. They were loud.” She rubbed futilely at the stain on her sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was hunter green, with a yellow KIS logo across the front. Each of the alumni had received one of the sweatshirts the evening before. When the first shot sounded, she had been at the buffet table, serving herself a spoonful of chicken curry. She had jumped, jerking the serving spoon. Now the top of the K had a red curry stain on it. “There were three shots. Later on, we heard a scream. It was loud, really shrill. It got cut off very suddenly.” She shivered, remembering. There had been something creepy about the high-pitched quaver of it, the way it had come to an abrupt stop. “That’s when people went searching.”
“For Ms. Osborne?”
“Not for her specifically, although everyone had been wondering where she’d gone to. People just went to look, because of the scream. It was really foggy earlier. You could barely see anything out here.”
She watched him scribble in his book. “Angie fell, right? That’s how she died?” she said. Her voice sounded too strained, she thought.
“I understand you being upset, Mrs. McCloud. You and all your friends.” He paused, chewing his gum thoughtfully.
“I didn’t know Angie very well in school,” Grace said. “I ran into her once about twelve years ago, but other than that, I hadn’t seen her since I left Sri Lanka.” She hesitated, not sure how much he knew. “That’s where we all went to school. In Sri Lanka. At an international school there. Kandy International School. This is our—”
“Twenty-third reunion. Yes, I gathered,” Mortensen said. “Did you see her this morning?” He moved his jaw again. The gum chewing seemed incongruous, given his deferential manner. Somehow it made her feel more on edge.
“No.” Grace tried to keep her voice steady. “I didn’t even know she was going to be here. She travels a lot, I think, on assignment. Traveled, I mean. She was a journalist for the Washington Post. She wasn’t on the list of people who had signed up to come. I heard she showed up really late last night, unexpectedly. She stayed in Marla’s cabin. Marla Muller—she’s over there. Some of the others met up with Angie in Marla’s cabin. Not me. My husband and I had already gone to sleep when she got here. I don’t think anyone saw her this morning. Marla said Angie had already gone when she woke up. Hiking, Marla thought.”
Had she explained too much? Crickets were calling all around them, rasping in the darkness. They seemed loud, and Mortensen’s silence seemed unduly long. His eyes on her face were unblinking. Was he wondering why she seemed anxious if she hadn’t been close to Angie? It occurred to her suddenly that the police must have found Angie’s phone. Why had that not occurred to her before? That was why Mortensen was watching her. He wanted to see if she would bring up the phone calls. “I guess I should tell you,” she said, trying to make her tone casual. “Angie called me and left a voicemail message. She said she wanted to see me, meet my husband. I thought it was a bit odd because I hadn’t seen her for twelve years. I didn’t know her very well, as I said, and we didn’t keep in touch.”
“When did she call?”
“Around eight this morning,” Grace said, checking her watch involuntarily. “At 8:19, actually. I saw the time stamp.”
“Do you have the voicemail?”
“No, I erased it,” Grace said. She could feel the corner of her eye twitching. She pushed at the skin with her fingers, grateful for the distraction.
Mortensen cocked his head. “Why did you do that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“That’s what I usually do.” She struggled to keep her tone even, still rubbing the corner of her eye. Would he ask to see her phone? Could he do that? Then she remembered it was probably dead by now. There had been only a little charge left in it at lunchtime.
“Did you call her back?”
“Several times,” Grace said. “To find out why she wanted to meet. But I couldn’t reach her or leave a voicemail.”
“You have no idea why she would want to see you?”
Grace shook her head. But speaking of that, listen, I really want to talk to you. Why had Angie wanted to talk about what had happened in Palmer Square? “No. As I said, I’d completely lost touch with her.” Mortensen was watching her closely. She managed to look him briefly in the eye.
“The others don’t know that she called me,” Grace said, and then wished she had not blurted that out.
Mortensen’s gaze sharpened, his jaw stopping in midchew. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell them?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant,” Grace said. “She didn’t say much. T
he message kept cutting out. I couldn’t make out most of it.”
“The one you erased,” Mortensen said, his voice grave.
“Yes.” For a moment, there seemed to be absolute silence. Then the crickets started their raucous rasping again.
Mortensen made a note in his pad. His eyes skimmed over her face. “And you haven’t mentioned it even since you heard about her death?”
“Not yet. It just didn’t seem relevant.” Sure Duncan knows, Angie had said. But how could he?
Mortensen was still watching her. “It’s such a terrible thing to happen,” Grace said, “when we’ve come here to celebrate.” She added, “Those shots had nothing to do with her? I heard she fell? Is that what happened?”
Mortensen closed the cover of his notebook with the utmost care. “That I couldn’t tell you, Mrs. McCloud.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “That’s for the medical examiner to determine, you see. Our usual examiner is out of town. We’re waiting for another one to show up.”
Grace watched him amble away, dread jumbling her thoughts. Surely she’d had no choice but to tell him that Angie had called. But what if he mentioned it to the other Kandyans? Should she say something to them? But would they wonder why she had not said anything before? And what if Mortensen could find out what Angie had said in the voicemail message? Was that what the police did in cases like this?
She took a deep breath. She was making too much of it. Even if Mortensen did manage to listen to Angie’s message, it wouldn’t mean anything to him, and she could just say she had forgotten exactly what Angie had said.
3
DUNCAN
Saturday
Watching Grace approach, Duncan was struck, as he often was, by how deceptively fragile she looked, with her bird bones. Like the rest of her family. At their wedding, her relatives had stood out from his own large-boned family, quite apart from skin color. The bird people among the behemoths. No one would guess how tough minded Grace was, how pigheaded she could be, by looking at her. She was too thin, thinner than she’d been when he’d met her. The bulkiness of that eternal silver watch of hers made her wrist look as delicate as a twig. The fixation on her work was what kept her that way. No time for a proper lunch most days. No sense of priorities. He shrugged off his irritation, seeing how pinched she looked now. For once, she didn’t look like she was thinking about her work, her lab flies. She seemed so tense, almost frightened.
“Did the cop tell you when we can leave?” he asked, moving closer to Mo to make room for Grace at the table. A faint odor of sweat hung around Mo; the cologne scent that had enveloped him at lunchtime had dissipated. He was clutching a bottle of beer. The keg had run out, and pizza and beer had been ordered from Ridgeville, the nearest town. Someone had put out the lunch leftovers on a table in the lighted pavilion, and a few people had put scraps of cold curried vegetables or chicken on their plates along with pizza.
“I didn’t ask him. But sounds like everything’s up in the air. He won’t even say if she fell,” Grace said. Duncan heard her stomach growl. She had probably not eaten since lunch. The pizza had come while she’d been talking to Mortensen, in festive red delivery boxes that seemed terribly out of place, given the situation. It was cold now, but Duncan put a slice on a plate and handed it to her.
Grace picked it up listlessly.
“Suki says she had to have fallen,” Marla said. She’d washed the streaks of dirt off her face, but she looked too tired to be sitting up. Duncan wondered if she knew what stress could do to a pregnancy. Or was she like Grace, refusing to admit that she might be under stress?
“You fall on the backa your head, right here.” Mo slapped the back of his neck with his hand. “You don’t stand a chance. Your brain right there . . . that controls your breathing.” His words were slurred.
Bent reached past Mo for another beer. “No blood, though.” He knocked the cap off the bottle with one sharp tap against the table edge and drank deeply. Duncan thought he’d had as much as Mo had drunk, but on Bent the beer seemed to have had no effect. Bent had calmed down a lot over the course of the evening. That said something about his capacity to deal with unforeseen circumstances, Duncan thought. He rubbed the thin silver ring on his finger, looking Bent over surreptitiously. This guy was going to be his superior, although they were the same age. He had the kind of blue-blooded good looks Duncan associated with young politicians: a thick head of light-brown hair, small, almost pouty lips, an unusually long jaw, regular features marred only slightly by faint pouches under his eyes. But according to Grace, he was no blue blood. His family’s wealth had been made through the furniture company his grandfather had built from scratch.
“They’ll be able to tell. A bruise even if there’s no blood,” Suki said, using his Hawaiian print shirt to wipe the moisture off his beer bottle. He was the plumpest of Grace’s old classmates. He looked like an overgrown adolescent, except for his beard, which partially camouflaged his double chin.
“Apparently the medical examiner decides that,” Grace said, her voice tight. “I don’t know if that means later or now.”
The bench wobbled as Bent swung his legs around and rose to his feet. “I’m going to ask the guy how long this is going to take.” Duncan watched him stride off, the beer bottle swinging from his hand. Clearly a man who could take charge. No wonder he’d risen to the top at Cinasat.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it,” Marla said. “Angie, of all people.”
“She could have . . . lived forever,” Mo said, gesticulating. Beer sprayed out of his bottle, splashing onto the table and soaking Grace’s sleeve.
“Never mind,” Grace said. She tugged her sweatshirt off and tossed it under the bench.
Mo glugged more beer. A trickle ran down the side of his chin, and he rubbed roughly at it. His shirt was crumpled. The light from the pavilion revealed how stained it had got. This was a far cry from the pressed, primped Mo of that morning. How many beers had the guy had, Duncan wondered. Poor sod. He could still see Mo in his mind’s eye, the way he had wailed when he had seen Angie lying there, how he’d shaken her, not seeing the futility of trying to wake her up. This was such a different side of Mo. None of the usual sarcastic polish. He had seemed down in the dumps when he had been talking about his financial troubles the night before, but this was something else. He was crumbling.
“Remember the junior field trip?” Mo said, leaning across the table. “When the bus went off the road at that . . . hairben . . . hairpin bend? How Angie crawled out the window . . . like that withougetting hurt?”
“Yeah, that bus driver was shouting,” Suki said, a grin starting on his face. “Remember? ‘Aney, aney, baba, wait, wait!’ He was more shocked at seeing her knickers when she was climbing out than anything else.”
Duncan watched them giggling. They needed the release. He relaxed himself, letting their reminiscences fade into the background of his consciousness. He directed his attention toward the woods, beyond the wall of darkness that surrounded them. He closed his eyes, listening to the crickets. He loved the sound of them, their collective enormity, their uninhibited clamor. In the woods, everything seemed possible.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when he opened his eyes again.
“Thawoman . . . wasn’t afraida anyone,” Mo was saying. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Marla and Suki had teared up again too. Turning to Grace, Duncan saw something that wasn’t just sadness. Was it survivor guilt? That was the problem with Grace. Even growing up more or less Catholic himself, he had never known anyone with such a propensity for guilt. What childhood does to you, Duncan thought.
He squeezed her hand. “You need to sleep,” he whispered. “Everything will seem easier in the morning.”
“Did Bent find out if we could leave?” Grace said.
Mo raised his head. “That . . . that fucker is the root . . . doesn’t care about anyone,” he said.
Marla put her arm around him. “What
are you talking about, Mo? You’re too drunk.” She tried to pry the bottle from his grip, but he pushed her hand away.
Duncan peered around, searching for Bent, but he wasn’t in sight. Mortensen was alone in a corner of the pavilion, his head bent, talking into a phone. As Duncan watched, he slid the phone into his pocket and ambled out of the pavilion toward two uniformed police officers standing by a portable floodlight, which they’d set up to illuminate the path to the trailhead. A lengthy conversation took place. Some controversy, from the arm waving and head shaking, Duncan thought. Eventually, the uniformed officers fiddled with the floodlight, turned it off, and carried it away. Mortensen emerged from the darkness and wandered toward where they were sitting, his shoes crunching the gravel.
“You are all free to go,” he said, his large hands adjusting the lapels of his jacket.
“For tonight you mean?” Duncan said. “Or we can take off?”
“The investigation has been completed,” Mortensen said. He sounded as if he were reading aloud from an instruction manual, Duncan thought. There was no expression in his voice.
“So you know what happened?” Grace asked. “Angie fell?”
“Then what about the shots?” Suki said.
Mortensen raised his hand in a gesture that was almost priestly in its gentleness.
“We have been informed . . . about the cause of death. Ms. Osborne died of a heart attack.” In the light from the pavilion, his face looked rigidly composed. A muscle twitched in his cheek.
Grace said, “What?” just as the others broke out simultaneously.
“Heart attack?”
“Wait . . .”
“She didn’t fall?”
“Are you sure?” Duncan said.
“She had a medical history,” Mortensen intoned.
“Of what?” Suki said.
“A hystec . . . ectomy, not heart attack!” Mo’s slurred voice was shrill.
“Her medical records were obtained,” Mortensen said stiffly. “The medical examiner . . . he said the cause was clear. And the risk of heart disease was plain.”
The Mask Collectors Page 2