“Sorry I’m calling so late,” he told her a few minutes later. “Jean invited me to visit Mitch. Before you even ask, I’ll tell you that he’s in terrible shape. I don’t think he’ll live out the week.”
“Oh no.” Eric heard Robbie take a deep breath. “Well, we all knew he didn’t have much time. I’m glad you were able to see him. He thought a lot of you, sir.”
“I’ve known him since I was a little boy. So, how did your canvass of the local motels go today?”
“I went to eight places, ranging from moderately nice to bad. I followed all of your directions plus added a few of my own touches—lots of bright orange lipstick, false eye lashes, hair in a ponytail with a pink ribbon, and I giggled until I’m exhausted.”
“Sounds like you were quite the peacock today.” Suddenly Eric was smiling, enjoying himself. “False eyelashes?”
“And metallic black eyeliner.”
“I’m proud of you, Robbie.”
“Thank you, sir. I spent an extra half hour getting myself turned out this morning. I went to the nice places first. In most of them, people at the registration desks just glanced at the newspaper picture, said they hadn’t seen him, and then wanted to know what he’d done. I smiled at the females, giggled at the males, and said he hadn’t done a thing—we just wanted to ask him something about an old case. We wanted to know about something he’d seen—it wasn’t very important. The registration staff at a couple of motels recognized him. They wanted to know if he’d been found, what he’d done, and if he’d he killed Buddy and Tonya. I tried to look like I didn’t know what they were talking about and I think I did a pretty good job.” She paused. “Maybe that look came a little too easily.”
“I’m sure it didn’t, Robbie. You’d just gotten in character as the day wore on.”
“Well, that’s nice to hear, but I’m not sure you’re right. Not that I ever doubt you, sir.”
“It’s okay to doubt me sometimes, Robbie, just as long as you follow my orders.”
“I will. Always.” She paused and he could feel her revving up for something she considered important. “The last place I went to was a real dump called Fall Inn.”
Eric surprised himself by laughing. “What a classy name. I’m sure people are always getting it mixed up with the Larke Inn.”
“Not once they set eyes on it. Really, we should sic the health department on the place. I can’t imagine how many diseases you could pick up in there overnight, although the manager volunteered the information that they usually rented rooms by the hour.”
“Ah, we have a vice raid in our future,” Eric said.
“At the other places where they recognized Dillon, they said sort of offhand that they hadn’t seen him for years,” Robbie continued. “The manager of Fall Inn—a guy in his mid-thirties, I’d guess—glanced at the picture, then looked away really fast and said he’d never seen that guy in his whole life. Sir, I could have sworn I saw recognition in his eyes and I think he went overboard about never having seen Dillon. He got very nervous even though I was giggling and acting like a loon.
“When I walked back to the patrol car, I glanced at the few cars in the parking lot to see if anything looked like what I imagined Dillon Archer might drive. I didn’t—everything looked pretty pathetic and I was disappointed—but then I thought he’d want to blend into the crowd. He wouldn’t drive anything showy.”
“Very good job, Robbie! And you’re right—Dillon did love flashy cars, but if he’s here, he wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself.” He paused. “I think we’ll watch Fall Inn for at least twenty-four hours.”
“Do you want me to do it?” Robbie asked, dread in her voice.
“No. You’ve done the legwork. We’ll stick one of the guys with surveillance.”
She let out her breath. “Oh, I’m so glad. That place gave me the creeps, which I suppose I shouldn’t have told you.”
“It was okay to tell me.” Eric smiled. “It would probably have given me the creeps, too.”
After hanging up, Eric sighed in relief. This was their first lead in the case. Tenuous? Extremely. But at least something, which he certainly needed after the awful evening he’d had seeing Mitch and then finding out about Gretchen’s illness.
Eric looked at the envelope Marissa had found in his sister’s room, the one he’d been holding all through Robbie’s call. He tossed it aside, refusing to read the information again or see Will Addison looking adoringly at Catherine, and crawled into bed, where he’d tossed and turned most of the night. He would have dragged in the television to see if it could bore him into slumber, but Marissa was right—the screen was so little, hauling the machine into the bedroom wasn’t worth the effort. He’d vowed that he’d invest in a larger-screen TV.
The next day he leaned back in his chair and looked at the clock. Twelve thirty-five. He felt like he’d worked all day. Eric usually brought a sandwich for lunch, eating in his office and drinking some of Robbie Landers’ good coffee. Today he decided to eat out. He’d splurge and go to Wendy’s for a double hamburger, a chocolate Frosty, and top it all off with a cup of Robbie’s coffee. He was just rising from his chair when the phone call stopped him.
“Chief Deputy Montgomery,” he said without enthusiasm, picturing someone else sinking their teeth into a fresh double hamburger. “What can I do for you?”
“I live on Holmby Street.” The woman’s voice sounded middle-aged and furtive, as if she were doing something sly by calling the police. “My friends have all told me to mind my own business or I might get myself into some kind of trouble, but I’m afraid I’ll get in real trouble if I don’t tell you.”
Eric waited for her to continue. His stomach growled and he rolled his eyes, knowing he’d have to urge this woman to talk. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Oh! Well…that’s classified.”
“Classified? Are you with a federal agency?” Eric asked seriously, although he was grinning.
“Not exactly. Well, not at all, really, but I want to keep my name out of it.”
“I see. And what would it be?”
“Lights. At night.” Oh God, Eric thought. She’s going to report UFO activity. “I see lights in the old Archer house. It’s been vacant for years, ever since old Isaac Archer died, and in all those years I never saw lights. But now I do. I live down the street.”
Eric snapped to attention. “Have you ever seen anyone coming or going from the house?”
“I saw somebody go in all sneaky-like just a few minutes ago. That’s why I called right now. But I can’t talk anymore. You’re probably tracing this call. You’d better check that house.” She paused and then said darkly, “God knows what is going on in there!”
Eric usually brushed aside a call coming from a person who sounded like this woman did. Those calls, however, did not involve the Archer house, a place where Dillon might be staying if he really had come back to Aurora Falls. Eric had checked the house the day after Buddy’s murder and found nothing, but maybe Dillon had simply been more careful a few days ago.
Eric strode into the main room at headquarters saying loudly, “I’m going out. Don’t need anyone to go with me. Let me know if there’s any trouble,” and managed to get out the door without anyone asking where he was going. He got in the sheriff’s car, fought downtown Christmas traffic until he’d left the business area, and headed north.
Sebastian Larke, the founder of Aurora Falls, had formed this street first and named it Holmby after his family estate in England. During his lifetime, people called it Holmby Road. Sometime after in the 1830s, citizens had renamed it Holmby Street. As Eric drove past its ramshackle houses with their peeling paint, broken front porch steps, and sagging roofs, he thought Sebastian would be saddened to see what had happened to the place he’d named after his family’s beautiful estate—an estate he was never allowed to visit after his expedition to America. Sebastian probably would have been pleased with neighborhoods like the ones where Eric’s parent
s lived or where the Grays lived. No, Sebastian would have been pleased by the mansions of Oak Lane before time and a flood had taken their toll, Eric mused. He’d seen old pictures. The houses had been large, elegant, graceful, and exquisitely maintained. Now they sat on a nearly vacant street. Now they sat on a street where someone had brutally stabbed to death an annoying but harmless little man named Buddy Pruitt.
Isaac Archer, Andrew and Dillon’s father, founded Archer Auto Repair when he was young and built it into the best car repair business in the city, in spite of its tumbledown appearance. Eric’s father had patronized the place, as had Dr. Gray and Mitch Farrell. Eric knew the business was lucrative, but sour-faced Isaac didn’t indulge his family. When he married pretty Belle Benson, age eighteen at the time of the marriage, he’d stuck her in the old house on Holmby Street with his stern, sharp-tongued mother, who couldn’t stand her daughter-in-law, who was cute, joyful, and not overly bright.
Eric pulled up in front of the small ranch-style house painted gray, with a rusted white wrought-iron railing around the front porch. Several roof shingles lay in the front yard and dead leaves clogged the gutters. Half-dead shrubbery surrounded the house, looking as if a fungus had ravaged it. No cars sat near the house.
Eric looked down the street and saw an extremely thin woman wearing a down coat and knit cap pretending to be checking her garbage cans, all the while throwing surreptitious glances toward Eric. Miss Classified, no doubt, Eric thought, and gave her a salute. She scuttled into her house and slammed the door.
He knocked on the front door of the Archer house and wasn’t surprised when no one answered. The draperies across the big front window showed discolored, rotting lining. They’d probably been hung over forty years ago, when Isaac Senior built the house. Eric couldn’t picture Isaac Junior or Senior spending any money on interior design.
Eric noticed the for sale sign that had stood in the front yard since Andrew and Dillon’s father had died three years ago. Even if the real estate market was good, the house would be a hard sell, Eric thought. The maintenance needed on this beauty would cost as much as the house. He walked around to the back, climbed two steps to a tiny back porch, and knocked on the back door that, to his surprise, clicked and opened simply from the force of the light thud.
Eric stayed on the porch but leaned into a small, dingy kitchen and called, “Anyone home?” He didn’t expect anyone to answer but decided to try one more time: “This is Chief Deputy Montgomery. Is anyone here?”
Andrew Archer walked into the kitchen looking thin, haggard, and dead eyed. “Well, Eric, I guess you found me.”
2
“Are you living here?” Eric asked after Andrew had insisted he sit on a hard, faded plaid couch.
“I don’t know,” Andrew said vaguely. “I spend a lot of time here.”
“Do you sleep here?”
“I did last night. I go back to my house, the house I shared with Tonya, but I can’t make myself stay. We were so happy.” He paused. “At least I thought we were happy.”
Eric was careful not to seize on the statement. “Everyone talks about how well you and Tonya got along. What do you mean you thought you were happy?”
Andrew took a minute, as if sorting his thoughts. “I was happy. I’d had a crush on Tonya ever since we went on those boat rides with Dr. Gray. When I went away to college, I did everything I could to improve myself. When I came back here, I heard she was in love with Will Addison. She wasn’t seeing him, but she loved him.” He stared down at his hands. “When I was certain they weren’t together, I asked her out. Things went so fast. I couldn’t believe it when she told me she loved me. But I’ve always wondered if I was a consolation prize because she couldn’t have who she really wanted.”
“I remember those river outings. Tonya tried to talk to you, but you were so shy you’d hardly say a word.” Eric smiled. “You didn’t give her a chance, Andrew.”
“I tried, but I just couldn’t get out a word.” Andrew’s face tightened. “That sure wasn’t the case with Dillon, though. All the girls loved Dillon.”
“Did they? Back in those days I didn’t notice them falling all over themselves around Dillon. They talked to him more because he talked to them.”
Andrew went on as if he hadn’t heard Eric: “Marissa looked at you all the time when she thought you weren’t looking at her. She’s loved you for years. But Tonya and Dillon—there was something between those two, Eric. I never saw them together. He never talked about her. But there was something.”
“I think you’re wrong, but we can’t know now.”
Finally Andrew seemed to come alive. “Why can’t we know now? Tonya can’t tell us, but Dillon…”
Eric felt the muscles of his whole body grow taut. “But Dillon what? Dillon will tell us?”
“Dillon might, if he feels like it.”
Eric forced himself to let a few moments pass and then ask quietly, “Is Dillon alive and in this city, Andrew?”
Andrew rubbed his big hands together and closed his eyes. “Dad was so mean to him. He wasn’t nice to me, and with Mom he was just…strange. He stared at her all the time. He never said her name. Belle. I never heard that name come out of his mouth. He didn’t beat her, though. But he did Dillon. I don’t know why, but he hated Dillon. I should have done something—I was the big brother—but I was too cowardly to cross Dad. I just watched Dad and cringed.
“So I lost my brother—emotionally, I mean. Dillon didn’t have any love or respect for me and who could blame him? And now I’ve lost my wife because I wasn’t a good husband, because I didn’t try harder to find out what was bothering her so much the last few days of her life. She had to know I’d be thrilled about the baby—she couldn’t have been worried about that. But one day someone mentioned something about Dillon and she went so white, I thought she was going to faint. If I hadn’t caught her, I think she would have dropped to the floor. I asked her what it was about Dillon that scared her, but she said she just had a dizzy spell. It didn’t have anything to do with Dillon.”
Andrew looked up at Eric with pale eyes and swollen eyelids. “But it did. When she got that photograph of us decorating our first Christmas tree and it said: ‘Hope you’re enjoying your new life,’ Tonya was so shook up about it, she brought it to the newspaper office and made me leave with her so she could show it to me. And all I did was brush it off, tell her it was a prank, anything to settle her down.” Andrew paused. “That night, someone murdered her. Someone? No, not just someone. Dillon.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know why he’d do something so horrible.”
Eric nodded and then spoke slowly: “Andrew, you were a wonderful husband, but Tonya was strong willed. If she didn’t want to tell you something, she wasn’t going to tell you. Period. You couldn’t cajole Tonya Ward into doing anything or saying anything she wanted to keep secret.” He waited a moment for those words to sink in. “But Andrew, you never answered my question. Is Dillon here in Aurora Falls?”
Andrew stared emptily at the floor and Eric didn’t think he was going to answer. Finally, he said softly, “If Dillon is in this city, I don’t know it. That photograph was addressed to Tonya, not me. I haven’t heard a word from him since the day he hit Buddy and jumped out of the boat.”
“You haven’t heard a word from him. Has he sent you even a note, some indication that he’s around?”
Andrew shook his head. “No. Absolutely nothing.” Andrew lifted his gaze and said strongly, “But when I came to this house after Tonya’s murder, I found some food and beer in the refrigerator, and a blanket and pillow in Dillon’s bedroom.”
“Why didn’t you let me know immediately?” Eric demanded.
“From time to time, vagrants have holed up in here, especially during the winter. I’ve seen that kind of stuff in here before. I didn’t think it had anything to do with Dillon. But just about an hour before you came, I found something…important. I was going to call as soon as I got my wits about me.”
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br /> “What the hell did you find?”
Andrew swallowed. “In a drawer in his old dresser, I found a…a photograph. Not an old one—something taken in the last week or so, judging by the Christmas decorations and the fake fur coat and high-heeled boots. Eric, it’s a picture of Marissa.”
3
As dusky evening floated into night, Will Addison turned into the cemetery and drove slowly to the north end, closest to the waterfall. Some people had strung tinsel and some had tied metallic balloons to gravestones, as if the bodies lying under the ground were going to rise up and have a party. Will found the practice tacky and the resulting image of partying corpses repulsive. He hoped when he died no one would garnish his gravestone with what he considered trash.
Will pulled to one side of the road and stopped the car. Then he picked up a dozen white silk lilies, their stems wrapped in green paper like fresh flowers, and walked a few feet, weaving around grave markers, feeling the short, cold grass crunching under his shoes, until he came to a small, gray granite stone reading:
JOHN DAVID ROWE
BELOVED SON
The birth and death dates showed that John Rowe had been eight years old when he died. “Eight,” Will said each year when he came to the grave at Christmas. “You never had a chance to make your life good or bad.” Will laid the lilies on the grave, touched the stone, slowly got up, and walked laggardly back to his car, as if he were an old man. He felt old tonight. He felt like he’d lived a whole lifetime in his twenty-seven years.
He lingered in his parked car a few minutes, watching the black of night pushing a rim of purple down behind the hills. With his window open, he could hear the rush of water tumbling over the falls and hitting the river. Soon they’d shine with colored Christmas lights behind them. Will preferred the white lights used the rest of the year—white lights shining pure and luminous on the sparkling veil of water.
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