by Tony Healey
“Not right now,” Harper says. “Hugo, we’re investigating a very serious crime.”
The kid swallows. “Okay.”
“When was the last time you spoke to Gertie Wilson?” Harper asks him.
Realization dawns on his face. He sits forward, eyes wide. “Gertie? Has something happened to Gertie?”
Harper waves him back. “Slow it down a notch. When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“About three days ago, I guess.”
“Where’s your phone?”
He digs into his sweatpants pocket for his cell phone, swipes the screen, and hands it to her. Harper walks across the room and gives it to Albie.
She stands in front of Esmerelda and Hugo. “I’ve been led to believe you and Gertie were going out?”
“Yes.”
Esmerelda looks at him. “Really? I thought you were just friends.”
Hugo shakes his head. “No, Mom. I didn’t want to say anything because, well, you know. Her being black and all.”
“Oh, Hugo! You know I am not a racist!”
He puts her hands in his. “Mom, I didn’t know how you’d react. You and Pop are pretty old-fashioned with a lot of things.”
Esmerelda’s face flushes red. “I’m very angry. Really, I am,” she says, looking up at Harper. “We came here from Mexico thirty years ago, as immigrants. We have sought acceptance from black, white, Asian . . . We are all Americans. I never gave my son any indication I would frown upon such a pairing.”
Before Harper can reply, Hugo is on point. “I know, Mom, but Maria Torres down the street introduced her black boyfriend to her parents. Half an hour later her Dad’s getting hauled downtown by the police for threatening behavior.”
“Well, I can assure you that will never happen here,” Esmerelda says.
A big coffee table sits atop a white rug in the middle of the room. Harper perches on the edge of it so she can look them both in the eye.
“We found Gertie’s body left in a crop field just outside of town. It’s taken all this time to get into her phone and retrieve her call logs and her messages,” she says, looking squarely at Hugo.
“She . . . you found her . . . what?” Hugo mumbles, shaking his head. “It can’t be true.”
“I’m afraid it is, son,” Harper assures him. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask this. I need to know where you were three days ago, Hugo. Her last message to you was at four thirty in the afternoon. I need to know where you were from four thirty, till the following morning.”
Without hesitation, Esmerelda says, “He was here with us. We ate out at Lorenzo’s in town, had pizza, then we went and watched a movie as a family.”
“Uh-huh.” Harper glances at Albie. “How’re you doing with that?”
He shrugs. “It’s all here,” he says, handing it to Hugo, then sitting back down.
“Okay,” Harper says. “I’m going to need to see some kind of receipt. And maybe ticket stubs for the movie theater if you have them.”
Esmerelda is instantly on her feet. “I keep all that stuff. I’ll go get them.”
Hugo is very quiet. He’s watching the floor, lost in his own thoughts.
“Hey,” Harper says in a soft voice, sitting next to him. “Are you okay?”
“Gertie’s . . . gone?”
“I’m afraid so.”
A single tear rolls down the boy’s cheek and falls into his lap. “I can’t believe it.”
Harper feels her heart sink. There’s no way this boy—this kid—killed Gertie. He loved her. She can see it.
“I’m so sorry, Hugo.”
Esmerelda returns with the receipts and stubs, just as Harper asked. It clearly says three medium pizzas, four Cokes, and four sundaes on the receipt for Lorenzo’s . . . unless Esmerelda’s husband and daughter are exceptionally large and have voracious appetites, then Hugo was with them.
Harper looks at the stubs. There are indeed four of them, with the ticket price, the time, and screen in the top corner. She gets up to let Esmerelda return to her son’s side and watches as she throws her arm around him.
“Oh, Hugo . . . ,” she whispers, kissing the top of his head as if he is a child again.
Harper turns to Albie. “Hey, uh, go tell those two they can head off now. Why don’t you go wait by the car. I won’t be a minute.”
“Sure.”
“Listen, Hugo . . . there may be further questions at some point. But for now, your alibi checks out. Look, I can tell you cared for Gertie. And I want you to know I’m doing everything I can to get to the bottom of this.”
Hugo looks up, eyes red. “Will that bring her back?”
Harper is stuck for what to say. His face, his words, the pain—they hit her right in the chest.
“No it won’t. But it might let her rest,” she says, excusing herself and stepping outside. It’s a bright, hot day. Once more she finds herself missing the Bay Area, the cool mist, the smell of the salt water. She can still smell the ocean in Hope’s Peak, but it doesn’t compare with what she could smell in San Francisco. Harper slips her shades on and walks to the car.
She drops Albie back at his complex so that he can collect his car and warns him not to tell anyone other than Morelli.
“Of course. I’m on your side, remember, boss?”
Harper watches him go, then hits the road. For a moment, she considers calling Stu, but decides against it. She wants to be alone right now. To drive her car in solitude, except for maybe her thoughts.
And they are not quiet.
It’s ten in the morning and music pours from Ida’s house. Harper knocks on the door frame, but gets no answer.
“Ida?” she calls, easing the screen door open. There’s a Jimi Hendrix LP on the turntable, its sleeve propped next to it. “Ida?”
Ida appears in the kitchen doorway, apron on, flour on her hands. “Harper? You gave me a scare.”
“Sorry. I got no answer at the door.”
“It’s okay. I like it loud. Here, come in the kitchen,” Ida tells her. “Do you want tea? I was about to have some.”
“Yes, please,” Harper says.
The kitchen is old, but clean. Lived in, some would say. Harper takes a seat at a little table with two chairs. There’s a ficus tree in the middle—perhaps the biggest she’s ever seen.
Ida nods in her direction. “Was my grandmammy’s. She had it from a little girl.”
“Really? It’s very big.”
“She lost it once. Grew it for ages, and lost it. All she had left was a single leaf,” Ida tells her, filling the kettle and putting it on the stove to heat. “But you know, if you plant that one leaf in soil, it’ll grow. Like the old saying. From small things, big things someday come.”
Ida sets a ceramic teapot on the counter, puts three teabags inside, then rinses out a pair of cups.
“So this whole plant is from that leaf,” Harper says. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Milk and sugar?”
“Just as it is, please,” Harper says. “And from now on, how about just Jane?”
“Okay, Jane.” Ida hands her a cup. “Is that alright?”
“Perfect.” Harper listens to the music. “Have you always been into music?”
Ida sits opposite her. “Since getting out of the hospital. My mother would always play her records when she finished work. It’s one of the clearest memories I have of her. Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone, you know, all those old names. When she passed, and I ended up in the hospital, I missed hearing those songs.”
“You were in there for what, four years?”
“Yes. It was after finding my grandfather the way I did. I came out just in time for my grandmammy to leave as well.”
“That must’ve been awful.”
Ida looks at her tea. “It was. Still is. But I moved on. She wanted to die at home, but they wouldn’t let her, so they put her in the hospice.”
“Sorry to ask, but what did she die from?”
“They said
it was cancer of the stomach,” Ida tells her. “But by the end, it was everywhere.”
Harper lifts her tea, takes a sip. “I’ll bet that was hard to deal with.”
“No, actually,” Ida says, smiling lightly. “It was beautiful.”
“I don’t follow,” Harper says, frowning.
Ida takes a deep breath. “She fell into a coma near the end, and I’d sit up at that hospice holding her hand. The whole time, all I got from her was good things. Memories, moments. Sunny days. All the light of her life, do you know what I mean, Jane?”
“I think so.”
“Then, toward the end, that’s all there was—light.” She looks up, eyes glistening. “That’s what awaits most of us, Jane. Warm sunlight from that other place. It just gets brighter and brighter until there’s nothing else.”
“You’ve seen this?” Harper asks, her voice barely a whisper.
Ida nods slowly. “I’ve never forgotten it. The kiss of that sun is like nothing I’ve ever felt.”
“What about bad people, Ida? What’s in store for them?”
Ida’s lips press to a thin line, her jaw taut as she sets her cup down on the table. “What they deserve, Jane.”
A timer goes off in the kitchen, and Ida moves to a metal mixing bowl on the windowsill, peels back a dish towel to reveal dough risen almost to the surface. Harper watches as Ida slaps the dough with the back of her hand, and it sinks immediately.
“Making bread?”
“Uh-huh,” Ida says, easing the dough from the bowl onto the work surface. “I make a loaf every couple of days. Never buy one. Sometimes I make them for others, if there’s a demand.”
“I’ve never seen it made before,” Harper admits.
Ida looks at her, eyebrows up in peaks. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” Harper laughs. “Is that strange?”
“Round these parts, maybe,” Ida says. She starts to work the dough.
“So, I’m curious as to what prompted this visit, Jane. Have there been more developments?” She folds the dough over, presses down hard with the ball of her hand, stretches it out, folds it over again. “Please tell me there isn’t another young woman’s been found.”
“No, nothing like that. I just came to see you. I felt like I should, after what happened up at Wisher’s Pond. I felt bad.”
“For what?”
“For putting you through that, when there wasn’t any real need. I just thought—”
“I’m glad you did take me there,” Ida tells her, working the dough, her voice tight with effort. “It showed me you believed in me, that you don’t think I’m nuts. Like they did back when they locked me up.”
Harper stands and leans against the counter, watching Ida work. “I hoped you might pick up on something. A trace of something. It was a long shot, but at this point, I’ll take any break I can get.”
“Let me ask you something. How come you’ve worked your way to me after all these years? And what about the other families? He must have killed in the past thirty years. He must’ve.”
Oh God, she is sharp.
“I’m going to be completely honest here, Ida. I need you to listen to what I have to tell you.”
“Go on.”
Harper starts at the beginning, and tells her the whole story. Ida listens while she works the dough, lets it rise a second time, and shapes it to go in the loaf pan.
“You haven’t said a lot,” Harper says. It’s immeasurably hot, the air still and smothering.
They’re out on the porch, listening to another of Ida’s records, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting from within. “I don’t know what to say. I guess I’m sad. No, angry, that those families have been lied to, that this man has been allowed to get away with killing young women all these years, with no one to stop him.”
“I know how you feel, and I completely sympathize. They justified it as protecting the town.”
Ida shakes her head in disgust. “Apple’s rotten, no matter how much you polish it on your sleeve.”
“Well, the truth is out now. And when we catch this guy, the whole world will know it, I promise,” Harper says. “But that’s why we can’t contact the other families. They don’t know their daughters died in such a way.”
“So all you have is me, huh?”
“Pretty much,” Harper sighs.
Ida looks out at the horizon, where it gets hazy, her eyes narrowed. “Four years they locked me up at the mental hospital, thinkin’ I was nuts. Four years. I wasn’t allowed music, despite asking for some over and over again. I was a prisoner. They didn’t let me out of my room at night, not after I tried to kill myself. All I’ve ever wanted is to heal. That’s why I live out here, Jane. I need space to fix myself, sort my head out. But more than that, I guess I’ve wanted to feel understood.”
“Ida—” Harper starts to speak, but her phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out, looks down at the screen.
Dead end on Ruby’s work friends. No record of who was employed there. How’s it going? Where are you?—SR
She types back quickly:
Still at Ida’s. I’ve told her everything. Will explain later.
His response is immediate.
Ok. Take care of yourself. Talk to you later.—SR
Harper is about to put it away when it vibrates again.
BTW, last night was amazing. We need to discuss at some point. I think I’ve fallen for you, Jane. I hope you feel the same. Sorry to put this on you, but I need to say it.—SR
“Trouble?” Ida asks quietly, watching her put the phone away.
“No,” Harper says.
Did Stu just say he loves me? Is that what that text was?
“You don’t know what it means to me that you believe what I’m sayin’,” Ida tells Harper. “I’ve waited so long.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Ida gets up. “You want to stay for dinner? I’m doing a chicken. And I’ve got beers in the fridge, nice and cold.”
Harper smiles up at her. “You had me at beers. And I am kind of suspended, after all.”
Ida heads back inside. “Be right back.”
Harper thinks for a moment, takes her phone back out, and types a reply to Stu’s last text:
I can’t think about us until this case is over. That’s not me saying no to us. That’s me saying let’s wait. I hope you understand. X
“Here you go.” Ida hands her a cold beer.
“Cheers.” Harper clinks her bottle against Ida’s and takes a long, hearty swallow. “Ah, that’s good.”
“So, how goes the investigation in general? Are you any closer to catching him?” Ida asks her.
Harper shakes her head. “No. We have DNA, but nothing to match it to. We have a description of his car, but that’s a dead end. Everything we’ve tried has come to nothing.”
“Because the truth has been buried so long,” Ida offers.
“That, and the cases weren’t investigated properly back in the day. Any details that might have helped us aren’t there any longer.”
Ida swallows some beer. “I remember there was a very nice detective working the case in the beginning. He came to my mother’s funeral.”
“I know him. We spoke to him. He directed me to you,” Harper tells her. “I actually intended on calling him. He might be able to tell me something else.”
She finds the number for the retirement home on her phone. She calls it, holding the phone to her ear. “Hello . . . Yes, I know it’s a long shot . . . I’m a detective with the Hope’s Peak PD . . . Yes, that’s the one . . . uh-huh . . . The patient is Lloyd Claymore . . . Yes, I can wait . . .” She looks at Ida, feels her heart sink as she listens to the person on the other end. “Oh. No, no, no, I understand . . . Yes I will . . . Thank you for your help.”
“Jane?”
Harper puts her phone away. “He’s gone. Passed away two nights ago.”
Ida clamps a hand to her mouth. “My God. Natural causes?”
�
�Yes.”
“That’s so sad. He was a lovely man,” Ida says. “Tried his best to get to the bottom of my mother’s murder.”
All that Harper can think is, He’ll never answer for the crimes he covered up. And I’ll never truly know if he regrets it.
Ida hoists the beer in front of her. “To Detective Lloyd Claymore.”
And unsolved cases, Harper thinks.
11
The chicken was roasted with lemon and sprigs of thyme from Ida’s herb garden. She sautéed potatoes and served them with steamed greens. Of course, Ida let a giant knob of butter melt over the greens, and of course, the pair of them had one too many beers to wash it all down.
Now Jane Harper is asleep on Ida’s sofa, snoring steadily. There came a point when Ida knew Jane would end up staying the night—there was no way she could’ve driven home safely. Ida fetches a thick blanket, knowing how cold the house gets at night sometimes, even when the days are so hot. She covers Harper over and turns off the TV, but puts a small lamp on in its place—that way the detective will remember where she is, instead of waking in the dark in a strange house. As she begins to leave, Ida rests her palm on Harper’s head.
“There you are, sugar. You rest easy now.”
The lamp flickers and the room warms slightly.
The white mist rises, the connection is made, and Ida sees something take shape in her mind’s eye, a memory, a dream, something from Harper’s subconscious: removing her wedding ring and setting it down on a dresser. Looking around a house as if she’ll never see it again. Licking the edge of an envelope before sealing the letter inside. Setting the envelope next to the abandoned wedding ring.
And then: Harper driving away from the house, belongings in boxes in her car. Looking back in the mirror and not feeling deflated, or sad, but liberated. Leaving, walking away from hard situations comes easily. It’s a comfort to her, not being rooted in any one spot.
Ida removes her hand, breaking the tenuous connection.
“But rooted is what you want, ain’t it, sugar?”