One of the deputies cleared his throat and woke Scott up. He looked amused as Scott apologized.
“I want you to verify the list of what we’re taking,” the deputy said.
Together they went through the items the deputies had gathered in several cardboard file boxes. They had a large stack of Theo’s paper files, his day planner, and the hard drive from his PC. Among the personal effects were a zip-lock plastic bag half-full of pot, several prescription bottles of pills, a few vials of white powder, and an old-looking gold coin.
After one of the deputies gave him the house key and left, Scott called Sarah from inside the house on Theo’s landline. He told her Willy was missing, and about Drew calling Hannah to tell her Theo was dead. Sarah thanked him and abruptly ended the call, leaving Scott feeling dismissed and left out. This was the county’s case now, but it was his town, and he wanted to do something.
Scott admired the interior of the house. The spacious entryway was paved in flagstone, and separated two large rooms on either side, framed by tall, timbered archways. This central corridor was open to the exposed timber framed ceiling, peaking about 40 feet above the ground floor, and ended in a wide, carved oak stairway that led to the rooms on the second floor.
Just to the side of the main stairway was a narrow hallway that led back to the kitchen, and Scott went back there to look around. The kitchen had been updated with newer commercial-grade appliances since his last visit, as a teenager. The large, heavy wooden work island in the center was the same as he remembered, scarred by countless knives and heavy ceramic bowls. Scott could remember seeing an entire roasted pig being cut up on this work surface by several staff members during a summer barbecue. Theo had chased girls with the pig’s tail all afternoon.
The kitchen was centered between a dining room on one side and a study on the other. Scott walked through the large wood paneled dining room, and noted that although the table was set for two, only one of the place settings had been used. He went through to the spacious front sitting room that featured a high ceiling, a polished wood floor, ornately patterned rugs, heavy dark furniture in the mission style, and a large fieldstone fireplace.
He then crossed through the entryway to the library, which had the air of a room rarely used. Scott studied a collection of silver-framed family photos displayed on a polished grand piano. He remembered Theo’s father as a larger than life, red-faced man with a potbelly, a purple, bulbous nose, and a bad temper. He was pictured here holding a large shotgun broken down over the crook of his arm, kneeling next to the carcass of an elk with an impressive display of antlers. Scott wondered if it was the same elk head as the one prominently displayed over the fireplace in the sitting room.
Theo’s photograph, snapped at his college graduation, proved he had inherited the majority of the paternal DNA. Theo attended a succession of boarding schools, but came back to Pine Mountain Lodge every summer with his British accent refreshed and new methods of torture devised for anyone weaker than himself.
Twenty years ago Theo had broken Scott’s nose for trying to interfere with him torturing Sean Fitzpatrick, one of Maggie’s brothers. It had required several lodge staff members to pull Maggie’s brother Patrick off of Theo afterwards. Those old animosities never dissipated over the years, but just simmered beneath the surface.
Theo’s mother, a fragile blonde with a gracious, poised demeanor, looked young and delicate in her black and white bridal photo. She had been a lovely, kind woman who seemed overwhelmed by her domineering husband and belligerent eldest son.
There was a photo of Theo’s sister Gwyneth as a teenager, her long blonde hair haloed in sunlight, seated in an Adirondack chair on the dock down by the lake, reading a book. Like Theo, she was a boarding school student, and affected the same pretentious accent and snobbish disdain for “the locals.” From what Scott remembered, Gwyneth spent her summers sighing dramatically, perceiving slights, complaining about being too hot or too cold, and looking down her nose at everyone.
It was through younger siblings Brad and Caroline that Scott and his friends were invited to Pine Mountain Lodge. Brad was a good natured, good-looking kid who was popular and athletic. He and his sister Caroline, several years younger than Theo and Gwyneth, had been allowed to stay in Rose Hill to attend school.
There was a photo here of Brad as a teenager, embracing his mother with one arm as they stood on the front porch of the lodge. He had sun-streaked blonde hair and bright blue eyes, looked mischievous and good humored. While he faced the camera, his mother was looking up at him in delighted adoration. He was fifteen the summer he drowned.
Caroline was the youngest, a sweet, outgoing girl who loved horses, so it was no surprise to see her portrayed in full riding gear seated in an English saddle on the back of a glistening Tennessee Walker. She, like Brad, had many friends, and there was always a pack of kids running about the place all summer. After Brad died, Caroline was sent away to boarding school as well, and there were no more fun summers at the lodge.
Scott left the library and entered the billiard room. He lifted a tablecloth draped over a small-scale model set up on the pool table. It was a development model for a large tract of land, with subdivisions of homes, condos, hotels, and a golf course around a lake. Scott shook his head at the absurd logo for “Eldridge Point.” It was a very muscular looking eagle in flight with a comically fierce look on its face, its talons gripping a bouquet made up of a golf club, a fishing pole, an oar, and a ski pole. Scott covered it back up with the tablecloth and entered the study.
Although he could tell the sheriff’s deputies had thoroughly searched the premises, Scott looked through the desk in the study, but didn’t find anything interesting. He felt underneath all the drawers and the desktop, but nothing was taped under there. He looked behind all the books on the bookshelves, pressed on the wood molding around them, and looked behind the pictures on the wall. Maybe he’d watched too many crime shows, he thought to himself, but if ever there was someone likely to be hiding something it was Theo Eldridge.
The study closet was full of boxes, and Scott pulled them all out and went through them. They were full of clothing and other promotional merchandise with the ridiculous Eldridge Point logo on them. Before he put them back in the closet he checked the walls of the closet in case there were any dummy panels with a hiding space behind them, but they were solid cedar. The floor was made of thick pine planks, and the ceiling looked to be made of the same cedar as the walls. Scott put all the boxes back in the closet and shut the door.
Scott found the housekeeper’s name and number by the phone in the lodge kitchen; Gail Godwin was a woman he knew from town. He wondered if she would know who it was Theo expected for dinner, and why this person didn’t show up. He called her house and left a message telling her not to bother coming to Theo’s until he notified her, and to drop off her keys at the police station. Being a church-going woman, he assumed she probably already knew more than he did, or would immediately dial one of her friends to get the details.
Scott was a church-going person himself, and although he saw many of his fellow congregants perform selfless good deeds, he also broke up their domestic disputes, heard their bitter complaints about the neighbors they were supposed to love, and bore their constant criticism.
Scott stretched the yellow crime scene tape back across the front door after he locked up. Hannah’s truck was gone, and the dog kennel was quiet. The day was getting on and he could feel a headache developing from lack of sleep and food. He shook out the last migraine pill from a small bottle he kept in the center console of his SUV and took it, hoping he caught it in time. He didn’t need a setback right now.
Back in town, he checked in at the station, where Frank told him the physician at the emergency care clinic had examined and released Ed. Frank said he brought him back to the station to sign his official statement, and then took him home. Skip also said a lot of people were just happening to drop by the station to ask questions about t
he yellow tape around the vet’s office.
Scott left Frank in charge and drove up the hill to his house on Sunflower Street. Sitting at his kitchen table, he wrote out his notes before he gave in to exhaustion and went to bed. As he fell asleep, he happened to think of Tommy, the newspaper delivery boy, and got back up to call Skip.
“He was waiting outside the newspaper office,” Skip said. “Said he’d overslept, and seemed really sorry about it. We sat on the tailgate of my truck and rolled papers, and then I drove and he threw. He didn’t say more than ten words to me, but the kid has a great arm.”
Scott thanked him and hung up. Relieved to know the boy was safe, Scott let himself sink into the sweet oblivion of sleep.
As Maggie left Sacred Heart Catholic Church, flanked by her mother, Bonnie, and Aunt Alice, she saw Hannah’s animal control truck parked a little way down the block. As they approached, Hannah waved out the window, and then leaned over to open the passenger side door for Maggie.
Watching her mother and Hannah’s mother in the side mirror as they pulled away from curb, Maggie said, “I’ll get an earful about this later.”
“I don’t let my mother bother me anymore,” Hannah said. “Why worry about pleasing the unpleaseable?”
“My mother just assumes if you and I are together we must be doing something wrong.”
“That’s because we so often are,” said Hannah.
She drove Maggie home so she could change, and then drove them both out to Hannah’s and Sam’s farm.
Maggie and Hannah were first cousins whose fathers were brothers, and they, along with their cousin Claire, had been friends all their lives. They were “as tight as ticks” or “as thick as thieves,” according to their mothers, and had an unbreakable bond of loyalty and love between them that so far, no man or woman had been able to sever.
Even when they weren’t speaking over some disagreement, Hannah could always call up Maggie and say, “I know we aren’t talking right now, but did you know the English professor with the bad comb-over has run off with the bursar’s wife?”
“I guess you heard all the gossip at church,” Hannah said. “Who do all the good Christian people think killed him?”
“Someone he screwed over,” Maggie said. “Someone he lied to or cheated.”
“That includes most of the county, doesn’t it?”
“Pretty much. Why do you think he was at the vet’s?”
“To get that stray. Unless there’s something more going on we don’t know about.”
“We need to talk to Drew.”
“I was thinking of having him over for dinner this week. Want to come too?”
“Yes,” Maggie said. “I’m dying to know why the guy really moved here.”
“Good. We can grill him for dinner.”
Hannah and Sam Campbell owned a couple hundred acres outside of town, accessed by a long, curvy dirt road which branched off of Hollyhock Ridge. Their farm sat in a small valley surrounded by mountain ridges, with a pond and a large meadow. They had converted the barn into a kennel to house the strays Hannah brought home on her job, and although it wasn’t nearly as fancy as Theo’s was, it was clean, warm, and dry–conditions her canine inmates rarely experienced in their often short, difficult lives.
As they crested the last hill of the long driveway, all the kenneled dogs started barking, yelping, and howling, and the two house dogs, Jax, a husky mix, and Wally, a Border collie, came running to meet them.
“If Sam wasn’t awake before he will be now,” Hannah said.
Sam was a network security consultant who worked from an office in their home. Years ago, while escorting a convoy outside Kuwait during the Gulf War, his unit was attacked. Because of the injuries he received, both legs had to be amputated just below his knees. After a long recovery period, Sam married Hannah, and they renovated the farm to accommodate Sam’s wheelchair, adding wide doorways and a series of wooden ramps and walkways to the various outbuildings.
A quick check inside proved her husband was working, so Hannah and Maggie took some beer and chips and retired to the “parlor,” their word for the tiny messy office in the barn. It consisted of two old horsehair-filled armchairs, a battered desk and chair, a filing cabinet, and an electric milk house heater. Hannah turned up the heater and they slumped back in their chairs to smoke and gossip. Hannah never smoked in front of Sam, who hated it with a passion, and although Maggie had given up nagging her about it, she still refused to breathe it second hand.
Hannah found an empty soda can to use as an ashtray and lit up. Squinting to keep from getting smoke in her eyes, she cranked open the window so the draft would suck the smoke out, and then waved her hands to try to clear the air.
“You ought to put Scott out of his misery,” she said as she sat back down.
“Not gonna happen,” Maggie responded. “He’s too nice.”
“A man is like a kit. You have to put him together to suit you. Look at Sam. I made him what he is today.”
“A technology genius slash virtual recluse?”
Hannah flicked ash in Maggie’s direction and Maggie had to jump up to avoid the glowing embers that came with it.
“No, smart ass, he’s a well-behaved husband. We get along great.”
Maggie thought but didn’t say that Hannah’s description of her husband was true when Sam was feeling well. When Sam was feeling down he could be very difficult to live with, but Hannah pretended it rarely happened, and when it did, it didn’t count.
“I would only disappoint Scott,” Maggie said. “He has this ideal image of me in his head that I can never live up to. He doesn’t think I’m being myself when I’m always being myself, just not the person he wants me to be. He drives me crazy, saying, ‘don’t say that,’ ‘don’t think that,’ and ‘you don’t mean that’ until I can hardly stand to be around him.”
“You can tell yourself that, but you can’t fool me. You turn bright red every time he shows up.”
Maggie thought of Scott. He had hazel eyes with long, dark, curled up lashes, a crooked nose, and a beautiful smile. His chestnut hairline might be receding, but he was a powerfully built, good-looking man with a great ass, and even the smell of the laundry soap he used on his clothes could make her weak at the knees.
“I am attracted to him, and I’m fond of him too. He’s a good man,” she admitted. “But he makes me crazy, and we would fight all the time. And that mother...”
“She hates any woman who might steal her little precious,” Hannah said, and lit another cigarette off the one she’d just finished.
“She’s vicious,” Maggie said. “Except it’s all so passive aggressive, and you know how that kind of hatefulness always goes over a man’s head.”
“Why is that?” Hannah demanded. “It’s like only we can see the barbed wire wrapped around the backhanded compliment.”
“If I married Scott she would constantly interfere and tell me what to do. I don’t think I could bear it, and eventually it would split us up.”
“Sharon found out the hard way,” Hannah said and Maggie nodded.
Scott met his ex-wife Sharon at community college, where he was studying criminal justice and she was taking paralegal courses. A petite blonde with big, innocent-looking blue eyes, she had a mind like a steel trap, which she took care to keep hidden behind a studied naiveté and a breathless little girl voice. She set her sights on Scott and applied herself to winning over his mother as if it were an Olympic event. His mother Marcia enjoyed being flattered and catered to until her guard lowered. Before she realized what was happening, Sharon had snagged her son, married him, and installed him in a house of her own, right under Marcia’s nose. Not, however, out of her reach.
Marcia and Sharon had Scott stretched tight between them for a while, as Sharon desperately tried to get pregnant and Marcia became ill with a succession of nonspecific complaints involving fainting spells and continual weeping, which required her son’s constant attention. After a humiliating
round of doctor appointments confirmed Scott was unlikely to father children, Sharon assessed her quality of life married to him and his mother, and decided to cut her losses in order to pursue bigger game in the city.
“Sharon had the right idea,” Maggie said. “Abandon ship.”
“Not me, baby,” Hannah said. “I made Sam’s mom walk the plank.”
Maggie smiled, thinking about the fight Hannah and her mother-in-law had at the reception after her and Sam’s wedding, when Hannah told Mama Campbell she needed to pull the self-pity bug out of her ass and accept the fact her son could have a good life married to Hannah and living in a wheelchair.
“You have to admit Mama Campbell’s hostility wasn’t veiled with anything,” Maggie said, “and her aggression was anything but passive.”
“That’s true.”
Maggie picked at the horsehair sticking out of a hole in the upholstery, and pictured herself walking down the church aisle toward Scott. Each time she did so, his mother barred the way.
“I just don’t see it happening,” Maggie said.
“Is it also maybe because you think Gabe might come back?” Hannah asked.
Just then, both women heard the unmistakable sound of Sam’s wheelchair rolling down the wood plank boardwalk toward the barn, and Hannah hurriedly hid all signs of tobacco usage.
“Hey,” he called out, as he got closer. “You two juvenile delinquents aren’t smoking in my barn, are you?”
Hannah cranked open the window as far as it would go so she and Maggie could stick their heads out.
“Your barn? I think you mean my barn,” Hannah said. “We’re having a prayer meeting in here. It’s the Lord’s day, you know.”
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