CHAPTER 10
It was strange being back in Ray Landry’s house, in large part because it no longer looked like his. Ray had been tidy, and he’d always liked practicality and the sparse look when it came to his furnishings. The Dearborns were nearly the opposite. Their living room held three large parakeet cages, a dozen bonsai trees, orchids and ivy plants, books galore, and plump, floral-patterned couches and chairs. Sierra had welcomed me at their door, and I was now sitting on one of those plump chairs, surveying the shocking transformation with a phony expression of admiration planted on my face.
“Red or white?” Gavin asked me.
“Red, please.”
“Good choice. We’ve got an open bottle.” While Gavin attended to the wine, Sierra sat down across from me, arranging pillows behind her back. She was dressed in blue jeans and a red cowl-neck sweater, and her dark, shoulder-length hair was tousled, as if she’d hadn’t combed it since our birdwatching tour.
“So, Kate,” she began, settling in, “you knew Ray Landry?”
Silly question. She knew I did. “Yes, we were friends for a long time. I met him when I first moved to Birch Street about twenty years ago.”
“Our realtor said he died in our house. Not to open old wounds.”
“Yes, he did. In the kitchen.”
“Here you go, Kate,” Gavin said, handing me a wine glass. He sat next to Sierra, cautioning her with his eyes.
“I think she had to tell us, since he was murdered,” Sierra went on. “And it’s fine, Gavin. Kate’s not bothered—are you, Kate? Anyway, in spite of what happened here, the house won us over. We fell in love with it.”
“Poor Mr. Landry,” Gavin said. He took a gulp of his own wine, downing half his glass in one go.
“And poor Nadine Sullivan,” Sierra said. “I don’t think she was much older than I am, and she’s gone. Here one minute, looking for birds, and gone the next. It’s eerie.”
There was an eager, almost hungry, tone to her voice that was inappropriate, given the subject matter.
“She was murdered too,” I ventured.
“Yeah? They think so?” Gavin said. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“I happened to run into one of the cops on the case,” I said.
He scowled. “How did she die?”
“She touched a potent drug that someone put in her backpack.”
Sierra threw her hand up. “Wait. Someone on the bus did it? It really was someone on the bus?”
“That’s the theory.”
Sierra seemed genuine in her surprise. On the other hand, Gavin, I surmised from his reaction, had believed all along that Nadine’s killer had been among us, even though he’d argued with Bouchard about her death, insisting she’d probably had a stroke.
“So Nadine wasn’t paranoid,” Sierra said. “I thought she was.”
Gavin raked a hand through his thick hair and flopped back in his seat. “That’s, um, not good.”
“That we were on a tour bus with a killer?” I asked.
“Yeah, that. And then, um, one of them—that Comeau guy—was in our house after the tour. We let him in, but that was before I knew someone killed Nadine.”
I set down my glass. “This afternoon?”
“Yeah. He might be a murderer. He could’ve been the one, couldn’t he?”
“I don’t like him,” I answered simply. “Can I ask why he stopped by?”
“He said he’d just been to your house,” Gavin said. “We talked for almost an hour. He’s kind of a—”
“Loopy French Canadian guy?” Sierra suggested.
So much for my assumption that Comeau had caused Rancourt’s accident after leaving my place. Instead, he’d been with the Dearborns. And he hadn’t hit Rancourt before coming to my house. Not in that shiny, unblemished BMW of his.
“What did he talk to you about?” I asked Gavin.
Gavin emptied his glass and quickly refilled it with wine. The guy was quite the drinker. “First he apologized for what he said on the bus—about Sierra moving her backpack to the rack above Nadine while she wasn’t looking. Next he started asking us about Ray Landry and this house.”
“Don’t forget our back garden,” Sierra said.
“Yeah, he wanted to see our garden.” Gavin spread his hands, almost spilling his wine. “Covered in snow and ice, he wants to see it? Crazy. There’s nothing to see. But he went out there anyway. I guess I didn’t mind.”
“What’s to mind?” Sierra said.
“It’s crackers, though, babe.”
Immediately, the parakeets in both cages began to chirp wildly.
Gavin let go with a laugh. “I said ‘crackers,’ Kate. Their favorite treat.”
Sierra rose, took a handful of tiny crackers from a bowl between the cages, and fed the birds. Contented now, they ceased their chirping and munched away on their treats.
“Comeau never said what fascinated him about our back yard,” Gavin said. “He stared at it without saying a word.”
Sierra retook her seat, and laughing, she said, “We have an idea what he found so interesting. Nuts as it is.”
Gavin sloshed his wine as he scooted excitedly to the edge of his seat. He remedied the situation by taking a big gulp. “Okay, this is why I mentioned Ray Landry to you on the bus.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” I said. I had planned to get Tom talking about alpine plants, hoping it would grease the wheels and he’d open up to me about other things, but I needn’t have worried. His alcohol-loosened tongue was working just fine.
Gavin leaned toward me, blue eyes beaming. “We found something of his. A journal.”
So that was it. “Where? I was here last October, when the realtor was cleaning out the house.”
“Taped to the back of the water heater down cellar,” Gavin replied. “Can I ask you something about Landry? Was he a little, um, touched in the head?”
Be careful, I thought. Ray had been as sharp as any man I’d ever known, and I didn’t want to say otherwise, but I also didn’t want Gavin and Sierra to believe what he’d written in his journal because I had a nasty feeling he’d written about Minette. “He was eighty-one,” I said.
Sierra turned triumphantly to Gavin. “See?”
“That doesn’t mean he was delusional,” Gavin said.
“What did he write?”
With one hand on his wine glass, Gavin opened a drawer in the end table next to the couch and brought out a navy blue notebook. “He had a rich fantasy life. If it was all a fantasy.”
“Oh, Gavin,” Sierra moaned. “My husband likes all things small, Kate, from bonsai and alpine plants to little people no bigger than a minute.”
I struggled to maintain a placid expression. “What do you mean?”
Gavin put his glass on the table, held the journal up—it was stamped with a golden wreath on the cover—and turned to a page. He cleared his throat, readying himself to speak as though he were about to give a recital of some kind. “Three pages in, it says this. ‘I finally found it—or her, I should write. She was afraid at first, and she hid well. But she finally revealed herself to me, saying she had been watching me and that I was kind to the birds, feeding them in winter when berries were in short supply in the forest.’” Gavin looked up. “I’m thinking that’s true. We started using Landry’s bird feeders in the back yard. He had six of them.”
I nodded stiffly. “He liked birds.”
“Then he writes, ‘I wish my grandmother were here to see this. All her stories about the woods in Smithwell were true. When I was a child, I hated when she talked about fairies. It embarrassed me. I want to share news of the little being with someone, but now isn’t the time. Minette is afraid to be found out, and I agree we must be cautious.’ Gavin stopped reading. His eyes fixed on me. “Ray’s writing about fairies,” he said solemnly.
Six months earlier, I might have laughed at him.
Sierra did laugh. “Gavin, for goodness’ sake, you’re scaring Kate. Ray L
andry was an old man. And besides, he lived alone.”
So do I, I wanted to say. Did she think everyone who lived alone was ipso facto batty? But for Minette’s sake, I pretended that Ray’s journal perplexed me. “Could he have been writing a book? It sounds like he’s working out a plot, and I know he loved to write. Maybe that’s his writing journal.”
“Taped to the back of his water heater?” Sierra said.
She had a point.
“Have you found anything else he’s written?”
“Just this,” Gavin said.
“I ask because Ray has a son in California who would treasure that journal or anything else you find belonging to Ray.” I emphasized the word belonging just enough to make my point without being rude.
“Oh, naturally,” Sierra said. “I mean, we’re not going to keep that, are we, Gavin? We only found it day before yesterday.”
“Yeah, of course. I was seeing how the water heater was holding up in our cold snap, and there it was. I finished reading it last night, so it was fresh in my mind when I saw you on the bus.”
“But on the bus you said Ray told you I live at 2000 Birch Street.”
Gavin smiled, his chubby cheeks growing chubbier, and he brandished the journal. “Yeah, he wrote about you, how he enjoyed your conversations.”
“He did?” I pictured Ray scribbling in his journal at night, a melancholy image that made me miss him all the more.
“He wrote that you hated living at 2000 on Birch because the number was so ordinary.”
“Oh.”
“He thought it was funny, but in a good way.” Gavin placed the journal in my hands. “Read it for yourself. I considered giving that to Comeau.”
“Shouldn’t we hold onto it?” Sierra said, sounding alarmed.
Still sitting on the edge of his seat, Gavin’s eyes stayed focused on mine. “Kate will bring it back in two days, okay? Then we can mail it to his son. Ray wrote that he debated telling you about fairies, and that the fairies had watched you too. Did he ever say anything?”
“About fairies? No, sadly.” I could answer that question honestly and without hesitation because Ray had never trusted me with his discovery. I’d learned that disheartening piece of news from Minette last fall. “He knew I would’ve worried about him if he had.”
“The thing is, he wrote like a man with all his faculties intact.”
Gavin continued to study me as we talked, looking, I supposed, for any sign that I was lying. I tried my best not to give him one. “You never know when it comes to someone’s private life. Or their imagination.”
“If he’d been delusional, you would’ve known,” Gavin said, “no matter what he talked to you about. He couldn’t have been rational in every area of his life but crazed about fairies in his house and the woods across the street.”
“You sound convinced.”
“Gavin, you’re obsessed with a mythical creature,” Sierra said, giving a lighthearted laugh. “I’m telling you, Kate, he likes anything miniature.”
It seemed the conversation disturbed her, or perhaps embarrassed her, and she wanted an end to it. I decided to help her by forcing a swift change in topic. “Did you hear about Detective Rancourt’s accident? Someone ran him off the road and he’s in the hospital.”
“Was he hurt badly?” Sierra asked.
“Enough to wind up in the hospital, but I was told his injuries aren’t life threatening. I wonder if Comeau had anything to do with it.”
“Speaking of Comeau,” Gavin said, “he thinks there are fairies in Smithwell, too, and he seems to know his stuff.”
Sierra was incredulous. “What stuff is that? The man was a flake. You said so yourself.”
“You didn’t hear most of what he said,” Gavin said. “Two rational people say there are fairies—yeah, mythical creatures—in Smithwell and I can’t dismiss that. There’s a reason there are myths, Sierra. They point to the truth across geography and generations.” His blue eyes darted my way. “Don’t you think so, Kate?”
“I think Ray was my friend, and so I don’t want to say more about his beliefs.”
Sierra nodded sympathetically. “I understand, and I’d feel the same.”
Gavin’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I can see I’m fighting a losing battle with you two.”
“Well, it’s been a very long day, so I’m going to make an early night of it,” I said as I got to my feet. “Thank you both for inviting me over.” Afraid that Gavin might snatch the journal from me, seeing as I hadn’t supported his position, I told him I’d remember to return it in two days, grabbed my coat by the door, and hurried outside to my car. Early night of it, my foot. I couldn’t wait to get home and crack open Ray’s journal.
CHAPTER 11
Back home, I changed into my pajamas, made myself a cup of chamomile tea, and got into bed. Since Minette wanted to know what Ray had written in his secret journal and it was her last night in the house for a time, I invited her to sit with me while I read. Rather than fly to the pillow I’d arranged for her at my left elbow, she dropped to the end of my bed and then made her way over the hills and valleys of my quilted comforter until she reached a point just below my knees. It was her peculiar way, and I’d come to believe she enjoyed her trek across what must have been for her mountainous layers of bedding.
“When I met you, on that first night,” I said, “I almost locked my bedroom door. Remember? I was afraid you’d sneak in while I was sleeping.”
“I would not,” Minette said. “It’s your private sleeping place.”
“Yes, and your private sleeping place is in that teacup, and I forgot to put new cotton balls in it.”
“It’s all right.” She looked away quickly. “I can sleep on your bed tonight. Then you don’t have to get the cotton.”
“Yes, you can.” I opened Ray’s journal on my lap. At the sound of it, she looked back, and I smiled at her and tried to reassure her with a little banter. “But don’t sleep too close or I’ll roll over on you. You don’t know it, but I’m very fidgety when I sleep. I’ll leave this pillow between us and you can stay on the other side of it.”
“Yes, Kate, I will.”
“What would the Dearborns think to hear me talk now?” I wondered aloud. “What if they have this house bugged? I wouldn’t put it past Gavin. You have to be careful of Gavin Dearborn, too, Minette. He thinks fairies exist.”
“But they do.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not totally convinced, but all that means is he’s out for proof. Let’s see what Ray told him without meaning to.”
“I think I saw that book before, when Ray of the Forest wrote in it.”
“Maybe you did. Come here.” I held up my hand, palm out. She flicked her wings once to rise and a second time to float onto my hand. “If you get on my shoulder, you can see his handwriting as I read it to you.”
Minette squeaked with joy and flew to my left shoulder. Her innocence was such that the simplest things delighted her. Moss, maple syrup, listening to me read while she sat on my shoulder. In one sense she was demanding—without knowing it—because I constantly feared for her safety and tried to keep her existence secret from everyone but Emily, but in reality, she was pure joy to be around. She took pleasure in countless things and did so without guile. Even in the midst of her, well, peppier moments, when she would buzz about my face and insist we do something or talk about something, I enjoyed being around her. She had saved me from my loneliness after Michael’s death.
And now I had to force her out of my house and back to her tree in the woods.
Exhaustion quickly setting in, I leaned back against my headboard and held Ray’s journal closer. “I need to sleep soon, so I can only read a little tonight.”
Minette leaned sideways, reclining on my hair and pulling it about her waist like a blanket. “Then I won’t hear it anymore.”
“Yes, you will. You have to believe me when I say you’ll be back here when I find a way to make Comeau disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“Not literally. I mean, when he’s not a problem anymore. I’ll copy this journal—I’ll take photos of every page—and when it’s safe, I’ll read the rest of it to you.”
“So I can remember Ray of the Forest.”
“We’ll both remember him. All right, here we go.” I flipped ahead, picked a random page, and began to read. “‘Today Minette and I went to the woods.’”
Minette giggled.
“‘She was well hidden in my pocket,’” I continued reading, “‘but I worry about being seen with her, even by a neighbor. Though I don’t think they would hurt her, I can’t be too careful. As soon as we were deep in the woods (she calls it the forest), she flew into the air like a tiny chickadee and started an aerial search for any remaining blueberries, one of her favorite foods. She spotted some bushes a hundred feet off from fifty-plus feet in the air. Her eyesight is something else.’”
“That’s true,” Minette said. “My eyesight is extraordinary.”
“I wish Gavin hadn’t read this,” I said. “It’s too matter-of-fact and detailed to sound crazy. At least he didn’t share it with Comeau.”
“Keep going, Kate.”
“‘While I picked what blueberries I could find, Minette talked to me about her old home in a maple tree and the other fairies in the woods. I’d always wondered why she had left her home and why she had sought me out.’”
“This was the time of leaves turning colors,” Minette said. “A little time before I met you.”
“Around last September, I guess,” I said to her. “We met in late October, when most of the leaves had already fallen.”
“Read more. I like to hear your voice with his words.”
“‘Minette told me something I never would have believed. She said she once had a family, but they were all gone. I asked her where they were, but all she would say was they were gone. I think she meant they were dead, but I couldn’t think what tragedy would wipe out an—”
“No more!” Minette hurtled from my shoulder to the end of my bed. “Close the book, close the book,” she said. “I have to sleep now. We have to sleep.”
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