Tar Heart (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 3)

by Mira Gibson

  And when Holly’s miscalculation had finally dawned on her, when she’d experienced the stark blowback of having walked out on Rose that night—Holly the one alone and miserable, regretting every word she had spoken and choice she had made—she’d begun wondering...

  Thinking about it, fantasizing even, exploring the idea that sharing the habit, the addiction with her twin—her urge rising only when the hole in her life where her sister had been felt too dark to bear—might be the only thing that would bring them together.

  It had taken seeing her sister dead beneath the ice to make the leap.

  Sitting on the couch and staring at Rose’s stash, Holly had been confronted with her last chance to truly know her sister. She’d told herself it would work, perhaps it would cloak her sadness in a warm blanket, that it might even be wonderful, that if nothing else it would bring her and Rose together even though her twin was dead.

  Holly pumped the brakes, coming to a rocky stop at an intersection, and waited for the traffic light to turn green. Gazing out the driver’s side window and past a sparse row of naked Birch trees, she saw the lake, its frozen surface, the scattered patches of thawed ice reflecting the glow of lights coming from the Wythe Resort, her destination.

  At this hour the resort looked like a mansion from The Great Gatsby era—twinkling and proud, boasting class and intimidating those not affluent, welcoming the elite few who could afford such accommodations. But Holly had been inside. In the light of day she had touched the walls and tasted the whiskey. It was all smoke and mirrors like the set of a television show, impressive only when seen through the lens of make-believe.

  The traffic light wasn’t turning so she eased her foot on the gas, rolling left through the intersection.

  Not everything Holly had told the detectives was a lie. Benjamin had worked in hospitality and he had been unemployed... until recently. After years of rebelling against his parents, grueling years spent managing any hotel in town that didn’t belong to Warren and Sarah, Benjamin had inadvertently run the Lakes Tavern into the ground and had no choice but to keep his family afloat by accepting a position at his parents resort. Last month, he had been christened Assistant Chief Financial Officer, a title that sounded important, but meant very little. His father, Warren Wythe wasn’t quite ready to pass the crown. As far as Holly could tell from her bird’s eye view of the dynamic, Warren never would be.

  Driving through the resort parking lot was a challenge. Mountainous snow banks lining the narrow perimeter had collapsed onto the asphalt. She cut the wheel left then right, weaving her way through. The west side of the resort was under construction for an extension and because of it the far end of the parking lot was being used to store materials under massive blue tarps as well as two parked bulldozers and other machinery that Holly couldn’t identify in the dim light.

  She pulled up next to one of the bulldozers, which had been collecting snowfall, killed the engine, and flipped off the headlights so she wouldn’t wake the guests sleeping beyond the row of windows that her Saab was facing. Tucker murmured as if lifting from a dream, but settled into heavy breathing. A draft seeped through the vents on the dash, alerting her to what little time she had before the car would be cold.

  Quickly, she leaned over and opened the glove compartment. The drug baggies spilled out, tumbling across the compartment door. A few fell to the floor mat, but she strained, plucking them up. She made fast work of stuffing the plastic bags into her coat pockets. But two bags wouldn’t fit. She stared at them in her palm—one contained roughly an ounce of cocaine wrapped in wrinkled plastic, the other was a plump, square inch Ziploc. She studied it. She was familiar with the bag. Her jewelry studio had millions. Bags this size were meant to hold beads and chains and gems, not drugs.

  She felt eyes on her and glanced up to find Tucker interested. He reached to take a bag, asking, “What’s that?”

  Jesus Christ, her heart was racing. She closed her fist around the bags, stammering to answer and finally settled on, “Adult stuff. Ready to see Daddy?”

  He brightened, straightening up in the seat and looking out at the resort, the parking lot, trying to place his surroundings, where Daddy might be.

  Holly couldn’t bring herself to tuck the last two bags of cocaine into her pocket. She felt the weight of them in her tight fist and cursed herself; her irrational need to feel close to her twin waging war against all reason. She already felt ill. Did she really want to hang on to these?

  She shoved them into the glove compartment and, flipping the door closed, let out a long sigh, her breath a thin white cloud.

  Climbing out of her Saab, her boot hit a sheet of black-ice and she nearly lost her balance, but caught the armrest just in time. After quietly closing the driver’s side door, she rounded the front of the car, opened the passenger’s door, and freed Tucker from his seatbelt. Scooping him into her arms and shifting him onto her hip, it dawned on her that she hadn’t brought any diapers, clothes, toys, all the items Tucker required on a moment to moment basis. But she nudged the door closed with her hip and began trekking through snowdrift that lined the walkway leading to the resort entrance.

  As soon as she stepped inside, Tucker wide-awake on her hip and asking more questions than she could process—Daddy’s here? and Can we make a snowman? and What’s that, what’s that, what’s that?—she felt enveloped in warmth.

  However, no one was manning the front desk. The lobby was quiet, the lounge beyond, vacant by the looks of it. She bypassed the desk, turning the corner down the hallway that led into the east wing. It smelled like hemlock, no doubt the Wythe’s had kept a Christmas tree in the lounge, milking the holidays as far into January as they could get away with.

  She checked the room numbers as she went and paused when she reached 112, the room Benjamin had disclosed to her back when he first moved into the resort—Don’t breathe a word of this to Rose, he had told her. Holly couldn’t have. She hadn’t really been speaking to her sister, only answering the random, midnight phone calls that woke her every four months.

  Tucker boomed out, “Can I have raisins?” and she hushed him in favor of listening through the door. When she had approached the room, she thought she'd detected the flittering voice of a woman, the one she’d heard in the background when speaking with Benjamin earlier that night. But as she leaned in, pressing her ear to the door, the only sounds on the other side were footfall and then the quiet click of a door.

  She knocked and stepped back in case Benjamin needed to spy her through the peephole.

  Giving the door another knock, she said, “Benji? It’s Holly,” and the door popped open, drawing inward and revealing Benjamin, who was wearing a pair of navy boxer-briefs, a white dress shirt off-kilter and unbuttoned down the front as though he’d just thrown it on, and a very annoyed look on his face.

  “Can I come in?” He was just staring at her, his chestnut eyes sharply holding her gaze so she offered him his son, maneuvering the squirrely boy against Benjamin’s chest, but he backed away. “Take your son.”

  Pulling her inside by her arm, Benjamin scanned the hallway and shut the door. That’s when she realized he didn’t look annoyed. He looked paranoid and rattled.

  Tucker began fussing in her arms and trying to wriggle free. The queen-sized bed was a disaster, its comforter bunched at the foot of the bed, the pillows lain haphazardly—one in the center of the bed, another on the floor. Holly set her nephew on the edge of the bed anyway and plowed her fingers through his cowlick-hair, glancing at his father.

  “Cops are at the house,” she stated.

  “Rose’s body is still there?”

  Holly covered Tucker’s ears. He was old enough to know his mother’s name. “At the morgue.”

  Benjamin’s gaze drifted to the floor and he began eating his lower lip, his eyes shifting worrisomely.

  Something clattered on the other side of the bathroom door and when Holly glanced over, she half expected the door to pop open, but heard muf
fled scrambling instead.

  Nearing Benjamin, she unzipped her coat pockets. He was standing near a dresser, the top drawer of which was already open so she began depositing the drugs inside, resting each bag on a stack of folded shirts.

  “Is this why she died? Did it have something to do with this?”

  His response sounded dubious, uneasy. “I have no idea, I haven’t been around.”

  When she looked at Benjamin, she couldn’t fathom what Rose had seen in him. To Holly he was a bottom-feeder, a coward, magnetized only to those who built him up, who overlooked his many flaws—the spoiled sense of entitlement, the stubbornness, the indignation that the world owed him something it hadn’t yet delivered. He was attractive, but it hadn’t gotten him as far as he would’ve liked. He wasn’t that charming or that deep.

  And yet despite the friction that often plagued their interactions, Holly and Benjamin had grown close, gradually connecting through the years thanks to her sister’s unrelenting addiction.

  When Holly had walked out on Rose, she’d walked into Benjamin’s life. They had developed a relationship based solely on surviving Rose’s secrets, the majority of which neither had gotten to the bottom of. Benjamin was the closest living thing to her sister and Holly had welcomed him into her life because of it. She had a love-hate relationship with him, one that had been born out of necessity rather than interest. And ordinarily, she would give him the benefit of the doubt, but the way he was burying his head in the sand—over the phone and in this hotel room—astonished her.

  “I need you to start talking,” she asserted, keeping her tone low and firm.

  “Someone killed her? I don’t know anything.” His shaky voice contradicted his statement.

  “The police are crawling over every inch of your house.”

  Benjamin quirked his mouth into a strange smile and said, “I hope they catch the son of a bitch.”

  “How are they going to do that? I’ve known Rose my whole life and when it came down to it, when they asked me, I realized I know nothing about her at all.” She paused to reel in her emotions. “You know her. You used to have an idea about where she’d disappear to,” she pointed out, referencing a time when Benjamin had cared about his wife’s whereabouts long before these recent stunts of holing up with random women. “We only had a guess as to what she was doing when she was gone and that was last year. So how are the police supposed to figure out what you and I never could?”

  Holly let that hang for a beat, but the affect didn’t register the way she’d hoped. Benjamin met her with a defeatist attitude, his eyelids heavy, his mouth taut with an apathetic frown.

  “What are you going to tell the cops when they come knocking?” she challenged.

  “Did you tell them I was here?”

  “You think they won’t find you? You’re name’s on the sign out front. There aren’t that many Wythes in Center Harbor.” She sliced her hand down as if she could regain control she never had. “If you don’t help the police, they’re going to think you killed her. Why the fu-” she stopped herself. Tucker was building the comforter into a mountain at the foot of the bed. When she returned her gaze to Benjamin, she let out a carefully measured breath. “Why didn’t you come to the house when I called? So what you’re...” Again she had to stop herself from blurting out the F word. “Screwing around. That doesn’t make you guilty of murder. And you didn’t kill her, right, Benji?”

  A moment passed and he said nothing. Her stomach lurched.

  Finally, he breathed the word, “No,” but she didn’t find it reassuring. “But I haven’t been at the house for a reason.”

  Her brow furrowed, her eyes widening, taking in the sight of him. He didn’t seem concerned someone had killed his wife.

  “Did you see this coming?”

  “Let the police do their job,” he concluded. “Stay out of it.”

  “Why? Because you think they won’t find anything and this will all go away?” Finally, after so many hours she broke down. Tears stung her eyes at the thought of the person closest to Rose abandoning her when it mattered most. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger then rubbed her eyes, sobering up from emotions that felt too strong to navigate. “I couldn’t bring any of Tucker’s things. He needs diapers and clothes. Go back to the house or buy them. I’m done with you.”

  Before she reached the door, he said, “Wait.”

  When she faced him, turning slowly and apprehensive to meet his gaze, his expression changed entirely. His dark eyes rounded, pleadingly.

  “I can’t take him. Not tonight.”

  Holly glimpsed the bathroom door and snorted a laugh.

  “You can take a quarter-pound of cocaine, but not your son?”

  “A few days?”

  Decisively, she crossed the room and grabbed Tucker, pulling him onto her hip. When she reached the door, she asked, “What do you know that I don’t?”

  He held his breath, whatever explanation she was angling for was caught in his throat and though his mouth hung open, prodding the words to come out, none did. It wasn’t until she opened the door that he said, “You carry, right? That pistol?”

  “Most days.”

  He seemed to be weighing the fact against whatever threats he thought were out there. “Good.”

  “Don’t treat me like a stranger. Not now.”

  The bathroom door clicked, drawing open and a pair of screaming eyes glared out. The face they belonged to—high cheekbones that could cut glass, a straight mouth and angular jaw, all framed with sandy-blonde hair, shoulder length and greasy at the roots—wasn’t a woman at all.

  Benjamin had a teenage girl in his hotel room and the red dress she wore was as loose as it was senseless this time of year.

  In a melodic tone, light as a feather, the girl asked, “Join me in the shower?”

  Snapping at Benjamin, Holly said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He directed his answer at the girl, but kept his eyes on Holly. “In a minute.”

  The bathroom door closed but for a crack and Holly could feel the girl’s eyes on her. It was enough to drive her from the hotel room.

  She walked briskly down the hallway, Tucker jostling on her hip. He felt suddenly heavy or maybe that was her own exhaustion, a cocaine crash following the high; or perhaps it was the result of dealing with the police, those incessant questions, answering to a man she had used in her youth—basking in the rare luxury of forgetting who she was for one night.

  Lucas York.

  She pushed him from her mind in tandem with opening the entrance door. Icy wind slapped at her sideways as she trekked with Tucker in her arms, following the tracks she had made on the way in, though they were dusted over with fresh snow.

  After getting her nephew situated in the passenger’s seat and climbing in behind the steering wheel, she attempted to visualize where Benjamin’s room was located in terms of the parking lot. Had his window faced the lake or the lot? She hadn’t even noticed the color of the walls much less what was beyond the windows. Still, she had the urge to spy, suss out just what in the hell he was doing with a teenage girl. Where did her parents think she was right now? What child could get away with spending a night away from home with a forty-year old man, and what disease was Benjamin suffering that he craved that kind of company?

  Worst of all she wondered if she was enabling him. Babysitting Tucker for a few days would only give Benjamin the opportunity to revel in whatever reckless abandon he was choosing over dealing with his wife’s murder.

  The feeling that he had known, had seen it coming and did nothing to protect Rose, was unshakable.

  Holly muscled the gear-shifter into reverse and backed her Saab out of the snowy parking spot. When she put her car in gear, easing onto the gas, her eyes were locked on the many rooms of the Wythe Resort, but each was dark.

  It wasn’t until she reached the end of the parking lot and spied a lone window, brightly lit from within, that she se
t the car in neutral, pulled the emergency brake up, and grabbed her revolver from the floor beneath her seat.

  If Benjamin thought he could keep something from her, he was dead wrong.

  Chapter Four

  The jewelry studio looked nothing like an oasis, but to Holly that’s what it was. Her refuge, her sanctuary where life’s cruelties couldn’t touch her.

  However, she couldn’t concentrate on the necklace she was supposed to repair. Her chair felt hard under her ass. The lights seemed too dim. She had slept badly, the long night haunting her.

  When she glanced up, Tucker was watching her from the floor, the blue of his eyes appearing black in the low light, stripped of childlike innocence, suspicion in its place. Or maybe she was just paranoid.

  His mouth puckered then opened into the shape of a heart, as he began examining his hands, which were tarnished gray, having toyed with the spool of chain she had offered to keep him entertained. He was seated next to an industrial space heater that looked powerful enough to launch a 747 into the air, but whirled and clanged noisily. The thing was on its last leg and the constant sound effects were grating on her nerves.

  She was still jumpy from last night, but not because of the lines she had snorted or because she’d seen her sister’s frozen face through the ice, though each continued to disturb her. She was on edge because of Benjamin, what he had said, what she had done.

  She shouldn’t have gone to the resort.

  Edging towards Tucker, she took quick stock of the studio for his benefit. Baby-proofing it had been daunting and ultimately she had given up.

  Storage organizers sat behind him, each metal compartment closed, but there had been no way to lock them. Set against the opposite wall were a row of workbenches topped with a strewn mess of jeweler’s tools—pliers and hammers—which she would’ve hung on the pegboard along the wall, there were enough nails in it, but they protruded at awkward angles and her tools kept falling off. She’d reasoned he wouldn’t climb onto the table without her noticing so she could easily intervene if it came to that.