The Dead Season

by Tessa Wegert

  Abandoned. Was that how Bram felt?

  “I wanted to do right by you,” my aunt said. “I tried to set him straight. I told him he needed help. Therapy, maybe even medication. He called me a hypocrite. He called me all sorts of things. Everyone thinks he ran away, but we fought and fought that day, and in the end, I told him to go. I made him. But I never meant to drive him away for good, never imagined he wouldn’t come back. He was only sixteen.”

  A chill shot through me. Only sixteen, and tossed out of the house. It was entirely possible Bram believed his mother had abandoned him, too. Despite what she said about their fight Felicia must have been relieved, in a way, to have him gone. After what he did to me, I didn’t know how else she would be able to look her sister in the eye again.

  I opened my mouth to question her some more, and found I had no idea what to say. This was what I’d been hoping for, straight-from-the-source insight into Bram’s twisted mind, but Felicia wasn’t the only one feeling repentant.

  Back in the East Village, when I was face-to-face with Bram and trying to identify the man who claimed to be from my hometown, I’d asked him why he left Swanton. “I had to,” he said. “My mother wouldn’t let me stay.” But if I hadn’t been so quick to move on from Swanton, he wouldn’t have attacked me. If he hadn’t attacked me, Felicia wouldn’t have kicked him out. And if she hadn’t kicked him out, would he still have become Blake Bram?

  Felicia collected our empty mugs and brought them to the kitchen, where the digital clock on the oven caught her eye.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hon, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ve got a yoga class downtown in twenty minutes.”

  “No problem.” I was happy to get going. The house and our history were suffocating. I was almost at the door before I remembered about Cheryl. “Felicia,” I said. “I talked to Brett’s friend Russell Loming, and he mentioned something about Brett having a girlfriend around the time he disappeared. A woman named Cheryl?”

  I watched my aunt’s face for a reaction. She hadn’t alluded to a girlfriend, but now her mouth bent into a new shape. The haughty expression was reminiscent of Crissy’s, but different. Darker. “The only Cheryl I know is Cheryl Copely.”

  “Cheryl Copely,” I repeated miserably. “As in Robbie Copely’s mother?”

  She nodded. “Brett and I met her when Robbie and Crissy started dating.”

  Please God, don’t let Brett’s killer be Suze’s mother-in-law. “But you aren’t aware of a relationship there?” I said, hopeful.

  After a few seconds of silence, she pulled her cardigan across her chest as if she’d caught a chill. “No. Brett and I split in late ’97. I didn’t care to know what he did after that.”

  I didn’t believe her; that no was bullshit through and through. On paper, Felicia and Brett were still married. She’d wanted him to be more involved with the kids. Surely she’d kept tabs on what was happening in his life.

  “Brett didn’t just leave you,” I said. “He left his kids, his job, his friends, and a girlfriend, and it all happened very suddenly. Why would he do that, Felicia?”

  That smile. She had the same thin lips as my mom, and now they were stretched straight across her small teeth. It wasn’t really a smile at all, but a grimace.

  “If I knew that,” she said, “you wouldn’t be here.”

  EIGHTEEN

  My plan was to question Crissy about Cheryl Copely. Between Loming’s insinuation that Cheryl was involved in Brett’s murder, and Felicia’s oblique reaction to the mention of a girlfriend, I needed another opinion. I had a feeling Loming was using Cheryl to deflect attention, but if she and Brett really had been an item, Cheryl merited an interview, and I wanted to get Crissy’s take on her father’s possible romance first.

  The route to the office building where I knew Crissy worked required that I pass right by her house. What I saw there stopped me dead in my tracks.

  It was nearly 11:00 a.m., but Crissy’s car was still in her driveway—and it had a friend. I trundled to a stop across the street and saw the front door swing open and a small woman emerge. Her dark head was lowered, her features bunched together in distress. I felt my jaw fall open as I turned off the engine and got out of my SUV. “Suze?” I called into the icy air. “What are you doing here?”

  “Shana! Hi!” My friend’s eyes were huge with surprise, but she gave me a hug when I got close, her unzipped jacket flapping in the wind. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m still not used to you being back. You startled me.”

  “Um, likewise. You’re visiting Crissy?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yeah. We do that sometimes. She’s my go-to source for school questions.”

  “I didn’t know you guys still talked.” Still wasn’t the right word, because as far as I knew, Crissy and Suze had never talked. We gave my cousin a wide berth when we were kids, though Suze had always been intrigued by Crissy’s scandalous behavior. As the designated voice of reason, it was up to me to remind her how quickly sex and drugs could devolve from weekend fun to addiction, expulsion, prison time.

  I couldn’t imagine Suze and Crissy growing up to become friends, especially since Crissy used to date Robbie, who was now Suze’s husband—but what did I know about their lives? In a town of sixty-five hundred people, there are only so many candidates for friendship to go around. As I pondered this, I suddenly understood how Suze found out I was in town. I’d visited Crissy on Monday morning. And Crissy had turned around and called Suze.

  “How long have you been friends?” I asked.

  “We reconnected a few years ago—thank God! Some of the other moms I know are straight-up bitches.” The way Suze tossed a glance down the street, I half expected to see legions of catty women in yoga pants, chubby toddlers propped against their hips. “I ran into Crissy at the nail salon a few months before I got married, and we just hit it off.”

  “But school questions already? Erynn’s practically still a baby.”

  “She’ll be three next month.” Suze shifted her weight. “You have no idea how complicated it is to navigate this stuff.”

  Was there a hint of acrimony in her tone? “I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “Crissy’s not working today?”

  “She only works afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s a small agency; they don’t get that busy. Anyway, what are you doing here?”

  “Same as you. Minus the grade school primer.”

  Suze shrugged. “Well, I better get going. I’ve got some errands to run before I pick up Erynn.”

  “Daycare?”

  “She’s with my mother-in-law.”

  “You mean Cheryl?” The words, my tone, it all felt disingenuous. Suze and I were trying to revive a friendship that had been on life support for years. And that was going to make what I had to do next very difficult.

  Suze narrowed her eyes. “You know Cheryl?”

  I took a breath. “Not really. But listen, do you know anything about Cheryl dating Brett way back when?”

  Again with the surprised expression. “Seriously? Is that true?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s what I’m hearing, though.”

  Suze sank her chin into the folds of her fleece scarf. “I feel like Crissy would have told me that? But I guess we don’t talk much about Robbie.”

  “Well, I’d like to talk to Cheryl about it. Just in case she can help with the case.”

  If this news alarmed Suze, she didn’t show it. “Cheryl’s a great lady, an amazing grandma to Erynn, and really supportive of me. I’m sure she’d be happy to answer your questions.”

  She took out her phone and AirDropped Cheryl’s number and address. Then she said, “I’ve really got to go,” and after one more fleeting hug, she was off.

  As soon as Suze drove away, I knocked on Crissy’s door.

  No PJs for my cousin today. Her attire was
business casual and fairly demure, apart from the hot pink button-down shirt popping open at her chest. Crissy oozed sarcasm when she said, “Perfect timing as always, cuz,” but I wasn’t taking no for an answer, and after I darkened her doorway for a moment, she let me in.

  Today the miasma of perfume was even stronger, and I thought I detected an underlying stench of stale cigarettes.

  “Cheryl Copely,” I said as we sat down on the couch. “What do you know about her relationship with Brett?”

  “Cheryl?” Crissy’s tone was harsh. “You can’t just waltz back into town and start messing with people’s lives, Shana.”

  The time I spent with Felicia had thrown Crissy’s long-simmering anger into sharp relief. Her mother might have accepted the true nature of my scar, but not Crissy. Those moments in the shed, when I stumbled, were unseen; it was my word against Abe’s. In his version of events, I’d fallen on a box of old gardening tools. I shrieked and grasped at my blood-slippery face while Abe, loving cousin that he was, went for help. Crissy and I never talked about it, but if this was the story she gave credence to, if she blamed me for Abe running away, it was no wonder she was pissed.

  “I’m trying to identify your father’s killer,” I said, tamping down my frustration. “Brett’s girlfriend is the logical place to start.”

  “Do you even hear yourself? Why would his girlfriend want to hurt him?”

  And just like that, I had confirmation Russell Loming was telling the truth. Brett and Cheryl had been an item. But the fact that Crissy knew this was troubling.

  “What’s going on here?” I said. “I just came from your mom’s place, and she claims she had no idea Brett and Cheryl were dating. If you knew, why keep it a secret from Felicia?”

  She laughed derisively. “If she found out about the two of them, she would have murdered Brett.”

  Her choice of words made me wince. Did Crissy ever call him Dad anymore? I wondered if this was her way of staying emotionally disconnected from the horror surrounding his death. If so, it didn’t seem to be working.

  “If Felicia didn’t know about Cheryl,” I said, “then how did you?” I had no recollection of Abe mentioning his father had a girlfriend, and he confided in me about everything. Crissy let my question hang in the air a long time before answering.

  “They didn’t exactly advertise it. I found out from Robbie.”

  I’d been steadily sinking into my cousin’s too-soft couch since sitting down, and when I straightened my back in surprise, my knees almost touched my nose. It wasn’t a professional pose, but I liked my proximity to Crissy, hoped she’d be easier to read up close. “Hold on,” I said. In my mind, I sorted through the tangle of wending threads that linked Brett to Cheryl, Cheryl to Suze, Suze to Crissy, Crissy to Robbie. “That means your dad was dating your ex-boyfriend’s mom? That’s—”

  “Gross,” she supplied. “Believe me, I know. Thank God Robbie and I had broken up by then. We only dated freshman year, and they didn’t get together until I was a sophomore.”

  “Was it serious?” I asked. If so, Cheryl couldn’t have been too happy to learn Brett was leaving.

  Crissy folded her arms. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “The only way to figure out what happened to him is by learning as much as possible about his life back then. You and your mom deserve to know the truth.”

  Crissy’s face went crimson. “My mom scared the living shit out of us as kids. She could have gotten help, but she didn’t, and Abe and I were the ones who had to suffer. When I finally made it out of that house, all I asked was for her to leave me alone, and she went and bought a place on the same damn block. And now? Now I have to see her every day, standing on her lawn mooning over my boys like a stalker. My mother doesn’t deserve a thing.”

  I cast about for something to say. I knew Crissy and Felicia weren’t close, but I was shocked by the intensity of my cousin’s loathing. After years of being imprisoned by her mother’s senseless rules, Crissy hadn’t just broken out: she’d set the jailhouse on fire.

  A surge of resentment welled up inside me. If I had any hope of finding Trey, I had to figure this out. Yes, I’d made the choice to track down Brett’s killer, but couldn’t a girl get a break? The two women closest to him didn’t seem the least bit interested in putting his case to bed. All I had to work with was my shared past with Bram and my family’s accounts, all incomplete and unreliable. In a way, being back in Swanton under these conditions felt like being held captive all over again. But I’d be damned if I was going to let Bram trap me this time.

  “Why can’t you just be open with me?” I said, incensed. “Why does everything you say feel like evasion?”

  “Why can’t you understand it’s killing me to think of him this way!” Crissy set her jaw and looked away. Her breaths were coming fast, but her body had grown still. “How would you feel if it was Wally out there? Right there.” With a trembling arm, she pointed in the direction of the window, the bay, the refuge beyond. Reflexively, I shook my head. Dad, out there? It was unimaginable.

  Her voice was hushed when she said, “He would have loved my boys. I used to tell them about him, how they might get to meet him someday. Yesterday they came home from school and asked if it was true grandpa was dead. Don’t you get it?” Crissy said, her voice breaking. “I don’t care about being open. I don’t want to help you find whoever did this. All I want is for it to be over.”

  But it’s so far from over, I thought, trying not to let my pity for my cousin show. Crissy had a hard childhood. She’d cast her mother aside, and her father had suffered a horrible fate.

  Bram would make it all so much worse.

  NINETEEN

  I’d never seen Crissy cry. She would sooner hammer a sap spigot into her hand than show weakness, and I won’t lie: the sight of her wet, red face rattled me. I left shortly after that. My cousin and I may not have been close, but I knew her well enough to let her be.

  Where did that leave me? All I’d succeeded in confirming was that Cheryl and Brett had dated. That made Cheryl’s house the next logical destination.

  She lived a few blocks from my parents over on Jones Court, a tidy street that in the summer months was jungle-lush with old trees. Those trees were bare and colorless as skeletons now, and the way they lined the street gave the impression of ghostly sentinels stripped of their armor.

  I hadn’t called ahead; over the years I’d had some success with getting the truth out of witnesses by catching them unawares. I walked up the path to the narrow porch and peered into the sidelights as I rang the bell. Inside, the house was quiet. Didn’t Suze say Cheryl was home taking care of Erynn? It hadn’t been that long since Suze left to run those errands, but I supposed it was possible she’d already come and left. Maybe Cheryl was napping, or had gone out herself.

  Or maybe she was lying low. Whether or not Fraser Harmison had already tracked her down, Cheryl might not be too keen on talking about her dead ex-boyfriend to a stranger. I rang a second time and knocked intermittently for several minutes before resorting to my phone. When Cheryl’s number went to voicemail, I gave up and reached into my wallet for Harmison’s card.

  I owed the police chief an update, and managed to catch him at his desk. He was interested to hear about Cheryl and the letter from Brett, but it was immediately clear the top spot on his watch list was occupied by Russell Loming. Apparently Loming had a record that included domestic abuse. He’d beaten up his first wife on more than one occasion, and that history of violence, coupled with his allusion to an unpaid debt, made him a viable suspect.

  Loming. He was little more than a blip on my radar. Had I been too focused on Bram and Felicia? Was I letting him off easy? By all accounts Loming and Brett had been friends, but I’d seen plenty of happy relationships turn toxic, especially when money was involved. Loming was one of the few people who knew Brett was leaving, and when.
If Brett owed him some cash, Loming might not appreciate the man’s hasty retreat.

  Russell Loming had also made a point of trying to sidetrack me by bringing up Cheryl. Redirecting my attention would seem like a smart strategy to a guy who was guilty of murder.

  I’d told Harmison my connection to Brett would be useful. I’m coming at things from a different angle, I’d said. But what if that angle was skewed, like so many moments from my past? Like that night Abe, Suze, and I went drinking. It was Abe who planted the idea in my head that he’d saved us all from a ride in the paddy wagon. If my obsession with the idea that the buck stopped at the Skiltons’ front door was making me shortsighted, I might overlook critical evidence. What if that meant I couldn’t find Brett’s killer? What if it meant we would never find Trey?

  Back at my parents’ house, I parked next to Doug’s car and turned off the ignition. I hadn’t talked to Tim all morning, and while his silence didn’t bode well for positive progress on Trey’s case, I had to know what was going on. This time, he answered his cell on the first ring. That didn’t bode well, either.

  “Anything new?” I asked, sinking into the residual heat of the seat warmer. Through the big living room window I could see the back of my mother’s head. She was sitting on the sofa.

  “Let me put you on speaker,” said Tim. “McIntyre’s here, too.” I heard a click, and the ambient sound of the station.

  “Mac?” I said eagerly.

  “I’m here. We just got the composite sketch from that forensic artist.”

  “Check your e-mail,” said Tim.

  In recent weeks I’d gotten used to the barren column of white that greeted me when I opened my mail app. Tim’s message was a welcome sight. I clicked on the attached image and found myself looking at the man in the hat who had left the poster of Trey and Brett at Smuggler’s Cargo.

  To successfully evade New York investigators, Blake Bram had to excel at disguising his looks. I’d spent hours studying his face in that basement, committing every pore to memory while visualizing him behind bars. Since then I’d been living under the assumption I would recognize him if he passed me on the street. Sat down next to me at Nelly’s. Walked into my karate studio. But the face on the screen bore only the faintest resemblance to the Bram I’d seen in New York. The nose was too broad, the eyebrows too arched. Bram had grown a goatee and cut his hair, and he’d gained weight, at least forty pounds. It smoothed the lines on his forehead and plumped the creases under his eyes.