Death in the Family

by Tessa Wegert

  “Where’d you go?” Jasper asked with a note of concern. He surveyed the jacket, her crimson cheeks, the wide stripe of mud on the thigh of her jeans. She’d panicked and come straight back inside without even taking off her muddy shoes. A look of disapproval rolled across Camilla’s face as her gaze followed the muddy footprints down the hall.

  “Just . . .” Sweltering, Abella shrugged off the hood. “Outside,” she said. “To get some air.”

  If he picked up on her fear, Jasper didn’t show it. “My jacket looks good on you.” He said it with a wolfish grin. Abella wearing nothing but his too-big T-shirt on a lazy Saturday morning. Abella tucked into one of his threadbare college sweatshirts as they sat on Jasper’s couch drinking good wine. The images he was trying to convey with those words and that playful expression were meant to be prophecies, but they were as painful to her as torn skin. They were what Abella thought she wanted, and what she’d now never have. “No luck with Ned?” asked Jasper.

  Abella took off Jasper’s jacket and draped it over her arm. She stared at it for a long time before meeting his gaze again. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

  TEN

  Bebe and Ned,” Tim repeated slowly. “She’s absolutely sure.”

  I’d seen the shed Abella was talking about. It was visible from the library window where I’d listened, unmoving, to her story. Where Tim and I stood now, alone. “She’s sure,” I said.

  “Flynn’s boyfriend and his sister. Man, it’s like . . .” Tim paused. “Like a bad soap opera or something.”

  Together, we glanced over at the parlor. I’d questioned the wisdom of sending Abella back in there with Jasper’s family, but isolating her could tip off the others to what she revealed in her interview, and I needed to hear their side of things without that kind of interference. Tim had implemented a mandatory bathroom break, which meant he was on break, too. While the Sinclairs took turns stalking down the hall muttering about the absurdity of the routine, Tim and I took the opportunity to regroup.

  “If it’s true,” I said, “they’d want to keep their affair secret. That, right there, is motive. Picture it—they’re in the shed while Flynn’s working here in the library—”

  “That’s a hell of a risk to take,” Tim interrupted.

  “But for whatever reason, they take it. They’re hyperaware of their surroundings. They had to know there was a chance that they’d get caught—and then, suddenly, they hear a sound and see someone running back to the house. The yard’s wide open, nothing to obstruct their view, and the someone they see is wearing Jasper’s raincoat. They assume it’s him and realize he saw them smack in the middle of . . . you know.” I tried not to blush. I hadn’t worked any sex crimes with Tim yet, so talk of lewd misconduct and inappropriate hookups was brand-new, but the fact that I felt like a teenager in an awkward conversation with my dad was downright embarrassing.

  “Bebe is Jasper’s sister,” Tim said. “She couldn’t tell the difference between him and a girl she just met?”

  “They were distracted. The shed windows are covered with cobwebs. I can see how Bebe could make that mistake.”

  Just to be sure, I’d grilled Abella about the scene and what came afterward. It took until she looked down at Jasper’s raincoat in her arms for the horrible realization to sink in. They were close in height, and both she and Jasper wore jeans that day. Tim had a point, but I found myself wanting to side with Abella. There was a good chance Ned and Bebe believed the Peeping Tom was Jas.

  “What kind of person cheats on her husband at her grandmother’s house with the whole family around?” Tim looked at me like he thought I might know the answer, what with all my years living in New York with a mixed bag of human garbage.

  “The kind that kills her brother when she thinks he’s caught on?”

  Tim’s eyes widened. “You think?”

  “Could be. Ned has reason to freak, too, but Abella’s pinning the blame for the affair squarely on Bebe. She says Ned’s a close friend. They hang out together in the city—her, Jasper, and Ned. If you ask me she’s giving Ned a lot of credit, considering she caught him banging his friend’s sister, but she insists he’s innocent.”

  “They hang out in the city,” Tim repeated thoughtfully. “Does the happy group include Flynn?”

  “I got a hard no on that. It’s Ned, Jasper, and Abby who fraternize, no asshole brothers allowed. Flynn made it sound like he and Jasper are pals, but Abella says they hate each other. According to her, Flynn’s got a history of aggression. You should have heard the story she told me about Flynn torturing Jasper when they were kids. Way worse than your typical sibling stuff.”

  “So does Flynn know about the affair, too?”

  “Abella doesn’t think so. If he did, and he’s as violent as she’s suggesting, it’d be Ned or Bebe missing, not Jasper.” I paused. “You’ve had a look at Ned. He take a fist to the chin?”

  “The fresh bruises on Flynn’s knuckles,” Tim said. After talking to Flynn, I’d texted Tim a truncated report of what I knew so far. It wasn’t as good as sharing my findings in person, but I wanted to keep him in the loop without having to constantly pull him off guard duty. It was kind of like backing up critical data. Tim made a useful hard drive. “No sign any of them took a punch.”

  “Maybe there’s a wall somewhere missing some plaster?”

  “Or maybe it was Jasper who got hit,” Tim said. I started to speak, but he cut me off. “You know, I bet that’s it. Jasper got in a fight with his brother and took off. Out here, so close to the border, he could easily make a dash for Canada. There are lots of places where he could have crossed, where the border’s just an invisible line in the river. You’re supposed to check in with your passport on the other side, but it’s an honor system. Agents don’t patrol the border area much this time of year. Even if he went over without letting them know, it’s not so easy to slip into another country unnoticed if you plan to stay awhile. If that’s what happened, we’ll find him.”

  “This doesn’t feel like a runaway situation,” I said. “Jasper’s phone is still charging upstairs. What twentysomething guy leaves the house without his phone? I think Jasper’s in trouble.” It was such a huge understatement; saying it out loud sounded stupid to my ear.

  “We’ll find him,” Tim said again. “I know we will.”

  “These people.” I shook my head. “This isn’t a soap opera, it’s a shit show.”

  “They’re not from around here. So.”

  I hadn’t meant the comment as an attack on the Thousand Islands and their residents. Tim was fiercely loyal to his community. It was my community now, too.

  “Right, of course,” I said. “Wonder what the parents were like? Abella never met them, but she told me a little about their deaths. Car accident while on vacation.”

  “Shit, I think I remember that,” Tim said. “Didn’t put two and two together—but yeah, the deaths would have been in the paper up here on account of their island connection. Google?” He reached for his phone.

  “Already done,” I said with a smile. We were clicking in a way I’d hoped we would months down the line. Tim had worked at the state police Alexandria Bay station a long time, so while I was technically his superior, I’d come to rely on him to indoctrinate me in the ways of the North Country. The ease with which we could bounce ideas off each other, his ability to read me and gauge where I was going next—those aren’t guarantees in a colleague, and finding it so soon with Tim was a nice surprise. “The accident was big news farther south. New York Textile Tycoon and Wife Killed While Vacationing in the Caribbean. Two years ago, Baldwin and Rachel Sinclair went on one of many quick getaways to Antigua and never came back.”

  Tim sighed and dropped into an armchair. There was a second chair nearby, so wide and plush I wanted to curl up in it and reset my brain, but I knew neither of us should get too comfortab
le. I could see Abella nervously watching us from across the hall, and I was itching to talk to Bebe and Ned.

  “Both parents in one shot. Can’t have been easy on the kids,” Tim said. Then, “Where’s the money?”

  “Excellent question. It went to the three of them, most likely—Jasper, Bebe, and Flynn. We need to confirm that. I’ll ask Camilla.”

  “This girl, Abella,” Tim said. “You believe her?”

  I’d asked myself the same question multiple times since sitting down with her. My gut told me she was innocent. But could I trust it? “Right now, at this moment? Yeah, I do.”

  “Because the girlfriend has every reason to lie. She was in a bed stained with blood. There’s blood on her clothes. She could be making the whole thing up: the affair, Flynn’s bullying, all of it.”

  “She could be,” I agreed, “but I still can’t imagine her rolling over to stab her boyfriend and going back to sleep.” Someone else had done that, and I was increasingly sure that someone was still in the house.

  “Know what I think? I think Abella knows exactly what happened.” Tim interlaced his fingers and clasped the back of his neck in a stretch. “The fight Flynn overheard last night was probably them breaking up, and Jasper didn’t feel like sticking around to deal with the fallout in the morning. I know lots of guys who don’t have the balls to face an ex. Abella’s pissed and embarrassed by the fact that he left, and as for the blood, couldn’t it be . . . you know . . . female trouble?”

  I gaped at him. “What?”

  “Bleeding all over the sheets at an ex-boyfriend’s house is even worse than the boyfriend taking off in the middle of the night. The family called it murder, and she didn’t want to fess up, so she let it snowball. From where I’m standing—sitting,” he amended with a grin, “this seems like a simple misunderstanding that got way out of hand.”

  I contemplated Tim’s straight eyebrows and the evenhanded character I’d come to know. Between the two of us, I was the only one who seemed certain Jasper Sinclair was dead. Tim was considerably more optimistic about the man’s fate, even when faced with evidence to the contrary. As he rolled his neck and relaxed his shoulders, it was clear he thought he had it figured out.

  It occurred to me I might be the victim of self-sabotage. Could it be that my subconscious was trying to trick me? I have too much history with gruesome homicides to assume everything’s flowers and rainbows when I find blood all over the walls, but what I was feeling wasn’t just healthy skepticism: it was a bone-deep belief this missing person was dead. There were parallels to the horrors I’d left back in New York. Memories circled me like hungry dogs. The sooner I solved this case, the sooner I could get off the island. I wanted to be there, but I didn’t. Thought I could do what needed doing, and doubted myself at every turn. It was a push and pull between my head and my heart. Either way, I lost.

  I was willing to consider Tim’s theory. Of course I was. But when he winked at me and said, “It’s not as complicated as you think, Shane,” all I heard was “Listen, sweetie, get a grip. This isn’t Law & Order.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  His eyes got marginally larger. “Just . . . I know you’re used to crazy cases in the city. Around here, the explanation’s usually pretty simple.”

  “A missing person and a ton of blood. You think that’s simple?”

  “Not simple,” he said, flushing. “Simple’s not the right word. But this is a missing persons case.”

  “That was called in as a murder. Everything I’ve seen so far leads me to believe that’s what we’ve got. So I’m thinking we should take them back to the station.” I said it quick, knowing my resolve wouldn’t last. I didn’t know if I could trust it, but if my intuition about these people was right, I didn’t want to be alone with them on the island for one more minute. “We’ve got the two boats. You drive one, Norton will take the other.”

  “Take them all in? In this weather? Shane, come on. It’s rough on the water, getting worse all the time. We have to question them here. On the off chance we need to make an arrest, then we can—”

  “A man is missing without a trace! We’ve got critical evidence up there that’s deteriorating with every passing second!”

  “We’ve got no body,” Tim said. “He could still show up—what then? Do you want to be the one to explain why we’re clogging up headquarters with eight witnesses to a nonexistent crime?”

  “You know as well as I do that murder and a corpse aren’t mutually exclusive. We don’t need a body. We don’t even need the murder weapon, not if we’ve got a confession or enough circumstantial evidence. It’ll take hours to question everyone, and it’s already nearly noon. We’ll be here all day. If we stay, we could get stuck.”

  “Yeah, but not, like, forever.” Tim showed me the side of his face and looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You’re acting weird. What’s this all about?”

  Shit. Pull yourself together, Shay. “It seems like a bad idea, us against them.”

  To my absolute horror, Tim laughed. “There are two of us, and we’re both armed. I think we can handle them for a few hours, don’t you?”

  He looked tickled, like this wasn’t a homicide investigation but some sort of weekend team-building retreat. I wondered why he didn’t share his theory with me sooner. Was he humoring me all morning? Did my efforts to probe our witnesses amuse him? So much for the two of us being on the same wavelength. “You’re a BCI investigator,” I said, suddenly furious. “You were trained to solve murders. Why does it feel like you aren’t doing your fucking job?”

  The smile melted from Tim’s face. After a beat he said, “No, that’s fair. I should have prepped you better. That’s on me. Look, I’ve been working for the New York State Police in this region for seven years. You want to know how many homicides I’ve seen during that time?”

  I already knew the answer. When I applied for the job, McIntyre dangled the data in front of me like a fishing lure, and I’d bitten greedily. I didn’t see the point in playing his game. “I’d rather know how many times you’ve found a bed soaked with blood and it turned out a woman ran out of pads. Don’t you get it?” I said. “We don’t have the team we need to do this right. We have to be on the same page, and that page has murder written all over it. This is entirely about protocol,” I told him. “I’m not okay with straying from procedure, and you shouldn’t be either. It’s sloppy, Tim, and sloppy is dangerous. You understand that, right? Please tell me you get that.”

  Over the few weeks that I’d known him, I’d challenged myself to learn Tim’s tells. I was getting pretty good at extracting information from the most neutral of expressions. If Tim doubted what he was hearing, whether from a witness or suspect, his mouth shifted a hairsbreadth to the right. When he was nervous, he swallowed twice in quick succession. If I was ever in doubt, I could always rely on his eyebrows. But as he sat there in that comfy chair, staring up at me, his face was as indecipherable as a book written in a foreign language I was trying to read upside down.

  “Sure, Shana. I get that,” he said.

  I thought about explaining myself. I didn’t think about it for long. It was an asshole move, attacking him like that, but I figured Tim and I had years of thoughtless remarks and regrets and makeup sessions ahead of us. He’d stumbled across a trip wire. In time he would learn to sidestep those, just like I would circumvent his.

  Silence. His eyebrows were a steady line. “So what now?” he said when he tired of waiting for an apology that wasn’t coming.

  The question was rote. What came next couldn’t be answered with a word or a three-point plan. I was still in the middle of preliminary interviews, and there would be follow-up questions, hours more of exploration as I searched for a crack that would give me a sure foothold on the case. What Tim actually meant was you’re acting crazy, and I don’t know you well enough to understand why, s
o can we please move on?

  “I’d like to check in with McIntyre,” I said. She’d have heard about the case by now, and I should have called her sooner, had been putting it off. I knew what McIntyre would say when she found out where I was, and after talking to Carson, I didn’t feel like listening to another lecture.

  “Yeah, okay,” Tim said, faking cheerful. “But first, let’s see if Norton’s done buttering his toast points and spooning the caviar. I’m starving.”

  ELEVEN

  Tim and I broke bread with the Sinclairs while a grandson, brother, boyfriend was missing, possibly out in a historic storm, dead already or fighting for his life. I couldn’t help but think about how, just that morning, I’d sat at the breakfast table with Carson and reached for his pumpkin-spice creamer believing it was the most excitement I’d see all day.

  The in-box on my iPhone had been crammed with messages from brands—reminders to update the wedding website Carson built for us, e-mails from Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma warning me their sales were going, going, gone. I scrolled through them while sipping my too-sweet coffee. After I got my scar, getting married wasn’t something I thought I’d do. God knows planning a wedding wasn’t something I expected to enjoy; the fashion and extravagant frivolity were lost on me, a woman who used dollar-store shampoo and owned exactly three pairs of pants. But Carson kept signing me up for newsletters, hoping I’d come around. He said it would be cathartic, and it was true I’d found some comfort in ticking off a to-do list. My ability to be methodical about unresolved issues means organization comes naturally. Plus, planning the wedding kept my mind off the marriage itself.

  It wasn’t that I was reluctant to wed this handsome and successful catch, just that everything was moving fast. I’d already pushed back the date once because of the move, so Carson was more eager than ever to “tie the knot and get on with our lives.” For him, the big day couldn’t come soon enough. As I deleted a message promising to reveal my bridezilla ranking on a scale of one to ten, he brushed my cheek with his hand and asked if I’d thought about inviting Tim to the wedding.