The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle

by Jennifer McMahon

  “I don’t get it. Emma doesn’t play in here. She would never come in without me.”

  “Well, she found the photos somehow.” Tess is suddenly behind him. He snaps the lid of the toolbox closed. Is he too late? Has she seen the journal that she has no idea he took? Did she notice what he just put in his pocket? He turns to face her, but she’s already headed out of the barn, which surely means she didn’t notice either.

  Now it’s Henry who follows Tess back out of the barn, across the wide expanse of lawn, motion-detecting floodlights picking up their movement and clicking on. Tess sometimes complains it’s like living in a prison yard. Henry says he’s just keeping them safe. That’s his job, right?

  “Safe from what?” Tess sometimes asks him and he never knows just how to answer.

  They head back upstairs to Emma’s bedroom, flip on the light.

  “Emma, honey, have you been playing in your father’s studio?”

  “No.” She doesn’t look up. She pulls the covers up over her head and lays back down as if she’s going to sleep.

  Henry glances around the room. It’s always so damn clean. Not a sock on the floor, or book out of order on the carefully alphabetized shelves. It smells of lemon furniture polish and fresh-off-the-line bedding.

  “Okay,” Tess says. “Can you tell me where you got this?” Tess pulls back the covers, shows Emma the photo.

  Emma looks at it, then starts picking at a loose thread on her comforter. “The woods.”

  “Where?” Tess asks.

  Henry digs his palm into his eye again, trying to press the pain away.

  “The woods behind the garden,” Emma says, looking up from the loose thread to Tess’s face. “There are words on the trees.”

  “Can you show me?” asks Tess, reaching out for Emma’s hand. Emma nods, wraps her own small fingers tightly around her mother’s.

  It’s dark out now, and they grab a flashlight from the hall closet. Henry is following them out the door when the phone starts to ring.

  “Shit,” he mumbles, and he doubles back, picks it up thinking it could be one of his crews working late on a beast of a job that they were way over budget on already—he’d told them they needed to stay until it was done and asked them to call if they ran into trouble.

  “Hello?” There is no response at first from the other end.

  “Anyone there?” Henry asks.

  Great. He’s about to hang up when he hears a man cough.

  “Is this Henry? Henry DeForge?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Bill Lunde. I’ve been hired by the family of Spencer Styles to look into his death.”

  A lump forms in Henry’s throat.

  “Are you still there, Henry?”

  “Of course. How can I help you, Mr. Lunde?”

  “I’ve actually just arrived in Vermont. I was hoping to set up a meeting with you. I’ve got a couple of appointments at Sexton tomorrow afternoon, so how about getting together in the morning? Around ten? I can come to your house or your office, whichever is more convenient.”

  Henry swallows, trying to make the hard knob in his throat disappear. “That would be fine. The house is fine. I’ll be here. We’re out on Route 2 in Langley, about a mile past the center of town, on the right. Look for a white mailbox with pansies painted on it. It’s number 313.”

  “Great, Henry. I look forward to it. If you have a moment, I wanted to ask you a couple of quick questions now?”

  “Uh, sure. Of course.”

  “Spencer’s sister told you about the postcard—do you have any idea who might have sent it?”

  “Not a clue,” Henry says, pleased to be telling the truth.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be in touch with a Valerie Delmarco or Suz Pierce, would you?”

  Henry reaches into his pocket, pulls out the old key chain, gives it a shake. The white 8 is nearly worn off, and the liquid inside it has somehow darkened with time, making the plastic die inside nearly impossible to read.

  “I’m afraid not. After graduation, Val went home to Boston. Suz was headed out to California.”

  He gives the Magic 8 Ball a shake, imagines he sees the words Liar, Liar through the murky water.

  “And Spencer—he went home to Chicago?” Bill asks.

  “Yes,” Henry says. “I think so. I’m not sure, actually.”

  “And he and Valerie were a couple?”

  Henry could barely remember. He hadn’t really known them very well when they were a couple, only in the aftermath. He’d seen them on campus together, noticed that Spencer kept her on a tight leash. They were one of those couples where the guy does all the talking, all the decision making: We’re not going to that party. We think Cubism is totally overrated.

  “For a little while. They broke up senior year.” Around the time Val became Winnie. “She got together with Suz.”

  “I see. All right. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Great,” Henry says, pleased to have gotten off the hook so easily this time. But he knows it won’t last. If this guy is any good at all, he’ll find something to prove Henry a liar. And what then?

  The line goes dead. Henry’s hand trembles as he places the phone back in its cradle. Henry stands for several minutes, transfixed, remembering Spencer’s pointy face, the long black coat he always wore that seemed to have never-ending pockets. He’s still standing by the phone in the front hall when he sees Tess and Emma coming across the yard, up the walkway, flashlight bobbing in front of them.

  “Nine,” whispers Emma as she enters, a strange habit Henry doesn’t understand. Is she speaking German? Saying no each time she enters their home? No. Like something’s not right somehow.

  Tess is pale, shaking. She looks like she’s seen a—

  “Henry,” she gasps, “in the woods. Someone’s painted the trees.”

  —ghost.

  “Painted what?” he asks.

  “Words on the trees.”

  “What words?”

  “‘The Compassionate Dismantlers Were Here.’”

  Henry says nothing, just stands with one hand on the wall, holding himself up. He looks down at his daughter, who is concentrating very hard on the painting of the moose, staring it down.

  “She used my vermilion paint,” Tess says, her voice faint, so faint Henry wonders if he misheard her, if Tess really said she.

  “Who?” he asks.

  “Maybe it’s the lady who painted Francis,” says Emma, her eyes still fixed on the moose. “Maybe she’s come back.”

  And then, just then, out of the corner of his eye, Henry thinks the moose has moved, blinked, given him a little mischievous wink.

  “Did you see…,” he starts to ask, and his daughter just smiles up at him in a way that makes him sure she saw it too.

  Chapter 13

  TESS’S HAND IS TREMBLING so hard she can’t get the key into the lock on her studio door. The red letters she saw in the trees are burning in her mind, their own neon sign: THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE. A confession. A warning.

  “YOU HAVE A KEY to Berussi’s house?” Henry asked.

  Suz shrugged as she fit the key into the lock on the rough wooden door.

  “Tell me you weren’t fucking him,” Val said.

  Suz acted as if she hadn’t heard. A low growl rumbled behind the soon-to-be unlocked door.

  “That’s Magellan,” Suz told them. “A German shepherd. He’s a real sweetie.”

  The hairs on Tess’s arms rose. She didn’t like this. Yes, Berussi would be occupied teaching Sculpture as an Evolutionary Process until at least four o’clock—there was no way they’d be caught. But it felt wrong. And what were they even looking for here? Suz said they were just going in to do a little spying. Enemy infiltration, she called it. Reconnaissance.

  It was the spring of their senior year and Berussi was on the warpath, rallying to get the other professors and administrators behind him. Berussi was not a fan of the Dismantlers, and had done
all he could to see that Suz not be given credit for her sculpture class last fall. Suz, true to form, persuaded the dean that this was ridiculous. As time went on, the battle between the two of them heated up, with Berussi leading a campaign to have Suz expelled. And now, he wasn’t just after her, but the whole group. At a school the size of Sexton, it didn’t take the administration long to figure out who the Compassionate Dismantlers were.

  “It’s a fucking witch hunt,” Suz complained when all four were called into the dean’s office where threats of expulsion were made.

  The dean had rattled off a list of charges: taking apart tools in the sculpture building, breaking the Hobart dishwasher in the cafeteria, removing spark plugs from faculty cars.

  “You have no evidence,” Suz told the dean. “You expel us and we’ll hire a lawyer and sue the whole fucking school.”

  “I’m not sure you’d have much of a case,” the dean said.

  “You might be surprised,” Suz told him.

  So maybe that was what they were doing here in Berussi’s house. Looking for something that they could use as ammunition against Berussi; something that might take the spotlight off the Dismantlers and put it on their number one detractor.

  They’d parked in a dirt pull-off down the road and walked to Berussi’s so that there wasn’t a chance of a friendly neighbor telling him about seeing an orange van in his driveway.

  “And what’s to stop Magellan the sweetie from ripping us to shreds?” Henry asked. In spite of the amazing sculptures he carved of them, animals made him nervous.

  Suz smiled. “Don’t worry. He’s a vegetarian.”

  “Right.” Val laughed.

  “Seriously,” Suz said. “Berussi cooks little meals for him—eggs, carrots, whey protein. It’s crazy. The guy is hard-core. It’s one thing to not eat meat yourself, but to inflict it on your dog? I mean, hello! A dog is a carnivore. Just look at its teeth.”

  Suz unlocked the heavy door and stepped into the little house. Magellan leaped up on her, licking her face.

  “Easy, boy, easy,” she said. Suz reached into her bag and took out the plastic grocery sack inside it, unwrapped a piece of raw steak, and threw it to the dog. “There you go, big guy,” she said, kissing the air in Magellan’s direction. “Who loves you best of all?”

  They watched the dog tear into the steak. “Tell me that’s a dog who wants to be a vegetarian. I’m telling you, Berussi’s got no respect for autonomy,” Suz said. Magellan’s teeth crunched down on bone.

  The house was tiny. The front door opened into the living room, the kitchen was to the left and the bathroom beside it. At the back of the house was a bedroom barely large enough for a twin bed. The floors and walls were unfinished, knotty-pine boards. The place was surprisingly neat, considering the unkempt appearance of its owner. And there just wasn’t much stuff. Shelves of art books, an old stereo system with a turntable, a collection of record albums, a futon couch, some framed prints. No television or computer.

  Tess felt sorry for Berussi. She knew she shouldn’t but she did. Seeing his house, hearing about how he cooked meals for his dog, it made him seem kind of lonely and pathetic. She wanted more than ever to jump in the van, head back to campus, and forget all about this.

  “Look at all this vinyl. The guy loves his jazz,” Henry said, holding up a Count Basie album. He thumbed through the rest. “Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. He’s got some great old blues stuff too.”

  Suz rummaged through drawers in Berussi’s tiny bedroom. “Look,” she called. “His high school ring. Isn’t that sweet?” She held up a chunky gold ring with a burgundy stone. “It’s got his initials and everything.” Suz pocketed the ring.

  “Won’t he notice it’s missing?” Henry asked. He’d left the records and joined Suz in the bedroom. Tess followed. The little room felt stuffy and airless. Tess sat down on the bed, which was covered in an old hand-stitched quilt with red and blue stars.

  Suz shook her head. “Not right away. And besides, the guy’s a total stoner. He’ll probably just figure he misplaced it. Speaking of which,” she said, reaching into the top drawer of his nightstand and pulling out a huge Baggie of pot that she dropped into her knapsack.

  “Now that, he’ll miss,” Henry said.

  Suz nodded. “But what’s he gonna do? Call the cops? Say someone broke into his house, fed his dog a steak, and took his stash?”

  There was a terrible wheezing squawk behind them. Val came dancing into the room with an accordion strapped to her chest. It was red and black with shiny mother-of-pearl-looking buttons and keys. “Look what I found in the professor’s closet!” she said, playing a few drawn-out, wavering, off-key notes. She wrinkled her nose, leaned down, and sniffed. “This thing stinks!” she said.

  Suz came forward and gave the bellows a sniff. “Oh my god,” she chortled. “It totally smells like kielbasa!”

  Henry and Tess had to agree. The thing reeked.

  “I bet Mister Tree-hugging Vegetarian has secret kielbasa feeds here at midnight,” Suz said. “I can see it now: a covert meeting with a sausage maker down in Massachusetts—someplace nobody knows him—then he drives home, locks the doors, and fries it up; has a big old heaping plate of it with sauerkraut and the world is good.”

  Val smiled at her, played a few notes. “Everyone has their secrets,” Val said.

  “Indeed they do, babycakes,” Suz said. “Indeed they do.”

  GOD KNOWS TESS HAS her share. She stands in her studio now, the door locked behind her, as she holds the empty tube of vermilion paint.

  The Compassionate Dismantlers Were Here.

  There’s a quick rapping on the door. Tess feels her heart trying to jump through the wall of her chest.

  “Hello?” she calls, voice shaking as she presses against the already locked door with all her might, holding it closed. It’s quiet for several seconds. The knob rattles as someone on the other side tries to turn it.

  She can almost hear Suz’s voice now: Open up, babycakes.

  “It’s me,” calls Henry from behind the door.

  Henry. Only Henry.

  Tess lets herself breathe and opens the door. Henry squints in at her, one eye more closed than the other—he’s still got his headache.

  “Emma’s asleep. I put on some coffee. I thought we could talk.”

  Tess nods. “I was just thinking about that old accordion we took from Berussi’s. Do you remember?”

  Henry stiffens.

  “Remember how it smelled like kielbasa?” Tess asks, smiling in spite of herself.

  “We shouldn’t have taken it,” Henry says. “Shouldn’t have even been there.”

  “No,” Tess agrees, “but we were just following Suz. And she made everything seem so…so justified. Didn’t she?”

  Henry bites his lip, nods.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you. Earlier, when you and Emma were out in the woods, that private investigator called. He’s in Vermont, Tess. He’s coming out here to see us tomorrow morning.”

  Tess feels it again: the blind panic of something just outside the door, rattling to get in.

  “What’ll we do?” she asks.

  “He’s not the police,” Henry says. “He’s just some midwestern PI who’s only interested in what happened to Spencer. We’ll practice our story, tell it to him, and he’ll be on his way.” He gives Tess a warm, reassuring smile. It’s his best everything-is-going-to-be-okay look.

  “Do you really think so?” she asks.

  He nods.

  Tess forces a smile, touches him gently on the arm. “Well then, let’s go get our lies straight.”

  Chapter 14

  THEY SIT IN THE kitchen drinking the coffee Henry made and going over their story again and again in preparation for Bill Lunde. Henry’s never met a private detective before. He pictures a boxy-jawed guy in a fedora, some Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade wannabe.

  “Suz packed her stuff and left at the end of the summer. She said sh
e was going out west. California.” Tess recites the carefully rehearsed lines as she clutches her coffee mug.

  “Right,” Henry says. “Good.”

  He keeps thinking about the message painted on the trees. How he pointed the beam of the flashlight from tree to tree, not believing what was illuminated there. As if the flashlight had somehow cut through the years, and there they were, peeking back through time at one of their own messages. THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE

  Henry stares down into his mug of coffee, wishes to god it was wine. Later, he promises himself. When he’s done here, he’ll head to the barn and pour himself a nice full cup. Then maybe things will start to make a little more sense. His headache will improve. The clouds will lift.

  “I don’t like that this Lunde guy is going out to Sexton,” Tess says.

  Henry sits up straight on his stool, sets his coffee down on the tiled counter. “There’s not much to find. We got rid of all our records. He might run into some people who remember us, but what’s that going to prove?”

  Tess shakes her head. “I don’t like it. What if he tracks down Berussi?”

  Henry feels himself stiffen. The pain in his head is a many-tentacled monster, reaching, grabbing hold of the back of his eyeball and squeezing.

  Berussi. Christ.

  “DO ME A FAVOR, huh?” Suz whispered to Tess. “Keep Berussi busy in here for a few minutes, okay?”

  They were in the sculpture studio and Berussi was over in the corner, fiddling with some welding gear. Henry was chiseling away at a large wolf sculpture.

  Tess nodded. Called over to him, “Hey, Jon, could you give me a hand with something? I’ve got some tricky cuts to make on a piece of Plexiglas and I’m afraid I’ll screw it up.”

  “Sure, Tess,” he said. “I’d be happy to.” He joined Tess over at the scroll saw.

  Henry put down his mallet and chisel, and followed Suz out into the entryway where she picked up the campus phone and punched in some numbers.