by Tessa Wegert
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Norton said, “but I was wondering if you noticed the time.”
Putting away my phone, I said, “Got someplace you need to be?”
He flushed, all the way from his neck to the tips of his ears. “’Course not, I just meant it’s almost cocktail hour. After that there’ll be dinner and dessert—”
“I’m familiar with how meals work.” I was tetchy. Carson’s messages had gotten to me.
“I have to get cooking, yeah?” Norton said. “We’re a lot of people. It’s gonna take time.”
Once again this man was asking if he could disappear into the kitchen. Out of sight. At that point I’d questioned nearly everyone, and all had their share of problems. Abella was unemployed, weeks away from being deported. Flynn’s lover was cheating on him. Bebe and Ned were engaged in an affair that, when exposed, would wreak havoc on their lives. Jade was losing Jasper to a fiancée. What about Philip Norton? He’d been working for these people for twenty years. It seemed unlikely their profound dysfunction hadn’t worn off on him.
“Hang back a minute,” I said.
“Is there something you need?” His gaze fell to the spilled coffee on the library rug and he set his jaw. “I should clean that up before—”
“Sure, sure. I’ve just got a couple more questions first.”
“Oh?”
I motioned for him to sit down. “You said you only work here during the summer?”
“During the season,” he corrected. “April through October. I’ll be shuttering the house for the winter next week.”
“And you come whether Mrs. Sinclair visits or not?”
“There’s a lot to be done on an island.”
“Where do you spend the rest of the year?”
“A-Bay.” He smiled. “Same as you.”
“Getting some well-earned rest, I imagine. You went to a lot of trouble this weekend. Must be exhausting,” I said.
“It’s a special occasion. Jasper never brought a lady out here to meet Cam—Mrs. Sinclair—before.”
It was the second time I’d caught him calling Camilla by her first name. I remembered Abella watching them in the parlor. I needed to talk to her again, not just to hear what she wanted to tell me but to ask what she knew about Norton and Camilla’s friendship. “I guess that means it’s serious,” I said. “Can’t see him bringing a girl all the way out here otherwise.”
“Mrs. Sinclair hopes so. She’d like to see him married soon.”
“Because she’s ill.”
Norton’s eyes widened. “Who told you?”
“Bebe. Cancer, huh?”
He dropped his gaze and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “She talks about you like you’re family. Got any family of your own around here?”
“Not locally.”
“Never been married?”
“Nope.”
“No kids?”
Norton shifted his weight around in his seat. “I didn’t say that.”
“I saw a picture in your bedroom. You and a little boy.”
He nodded. “That’s my son. His mama and I were real young when he was born. He doesn’t live around here. Never did.”
“Ah.” It was a tale of woe I’d heard a million times before, and it instantly changed the way I felt about Philip Norton. I pictured him in his teens, telling his baby mama he couldn’t raise a kid because he was still a kid himself. “This place must feel like home to you, then.”
“Two decades is a long time.” The whites of his eyes were alarmingly bright surrounded by all that pink skin. “I’ve seen some things over these years, you know?”
“Have you?”
“You wouldn’t believe it. One spring? I got out here and found a deer and her fawn.” He said it fondly. The memory made Norton smile.
“On the island?” I remembered the long ride from the mainland. “But how?”
“They swam! I had to chase ’em off, of course. Can’t have a deer invasion. But it was something, watching those deer swim back to shore.”
I waited for Camilla to factor into the story, but she didn’t. “Will you stay on, do you think? When Mrs. Sinclair passes?”
Norton seemed unsure how to answer. “With the grandchildren, who knows what’ll happen. It’s not the place it used to be, never will be again. And I guess I’ll need to retire one of these days.”
“Got enough money saved up for that?”
“She’s always paid me well. I should be all right.” Again Norton rapped the wooden doorframe with his knuckles for luck. “What about that trapper? You get anywhere with him?”
“Sounds like he’s got an alibi.”
Norton grunted. “Guess I should get started on that dinner.”
“Right,” I said, watching him go, feeling my gaze pull magnet-like back to Ned, and the girlfriend Jasper left behind.
EIGHTEEN
Back in the parlor, I took a minute to read the room. The fug that hung over the guests earlier was gone, replaced with a kinetic buzz. They spoke in pairs with low voices, flicking furtive glances my way.
Tim wasn’t getting the same treatment. Sitting quietly on an ottoman in the corner, he’d managed to make them comfortable with his presence. Soon our witnesses might even forget he was there. As I watched him smiling passively at the room, I thought about what Carson said. Not a good person. Huh. Tim had a knack for blending in, and he wasn’t big on socializing. I really didn’t know much about him at all.
Ned pulled a chair next to Abella, who had given in to her despair and was weeping softly into her hands. Miles and Jade were still on the couch, while Bebe and Flynn stood by the fire, their backs to the room. With every hour that passed, our witnesses were growing more restless. Lines were being drawn, alliances established—or maybe that was all an illusion. Maybe on this forsaken island it was every man for himself.
I took a step toward Ned. He was whispering to Abella again, and I heard him say, “We’ll find him, baby. Hush, now. I’m here.” At the sound of his voice, Bebe swiveled her head and watched from the corner of one smoky eye as Ned stroked the girl’s matted hair. Ned was the only person I hadn’t interviewed, the only one left. It was a matter of convenience and timing, but now that I took stock of the way his gaze darted from face to face, his mechanical movements, I feared I’d made a mistake. Ned was a wild card. He’d caught a ride into the family with Jasper, found a permanent place with Flynn, and traded him for Bebe. The Sinclair siblings were flavors of ice cream and Ned was working his way through the freezer. No matter how Jasper felt about his older brother and sister, I didn’t think he’d approve. If Ned thought Jasper knew he’d swapped lovers, he might have been scared yesterday. And fear’s right up there with anger and jealousy as the emotions that cause people to kill.
“Mr. Yeboah,” I said casually, like I was looking for a friendly chat. Fear also turns men into liars, and I didn’t want to alarm Ned, not yet.
There was wariness in his eyes all the same. It turned the honeyed irises black. As he rose from his seat Abella did the same, the two of them twin puppets on a string. She looked up at his face, imploring him to stay. Abella was being truthful when she said she and Ned were close. Both were outsiders trying to navigate a family that doubled as an active minefield.
I have a method, as all investigators do, for interrogating witnesses. Rarely do I get straight to the point. I’ve learned it’s better to ease in and look for ways to make connections that coerce an interviewee into sharing everything. Back at the academy, someone once showed me the transcript from a police interview with Robert Pickton, the pig farmer turned serial killer who murdered dozens of women in western Canada. The detective spent hours chatting with Pickton in an effort to eke out the truth. The endurance that investigator displayed was a thing of beauty.
Right off the bat
I could see that’s what it would take to get Ned to talk. He knew he was the last person to visit the library, and that put him on edge. I had to gain his confidence, but this posed a problem. The more I hacked away at the family’s tangled lives, the more rot I turned up. Everyone on the island was guilty of something, to the point where I didn’t know which trail to follow. And then there was Carson. I’d always thought of him as a touchstone for my sanity, but what he’d said about Tim and the way he said it threw me off. If I could sense Ned’s anxiety, he could surely feel mine.
The coffee stain was still conspicuously present on the library rug. It must have killed Norton that I sent him back to the parlor without allowing him to assess the damage. When the doors were closed behind me, I turned to Ned.
I started by asking about his family, steering as far from Jasper as I could. Ned was born in Ghana but grew up in the South Bronx, in a working-class family of six that still lived in the same two-bedroom Prospect Avenue apartment they’d rented upon their arrival. All the money Ned made stocking shelves at the bodega downstairs went toward paying a monthly rent that could have gotten the Yeboahs a four-bedroom new construction in Accra. When he wasn’t staying at Flynn’s place, Ned lived with his family even now. On the weekends, Ned told me, he still made time to volunteer at an animal rescue in Brooklyn. I couldn’t picture this buffed and polished man de-fleaing mutts and hosing down cages, but the skin around his eyes relaxed when he told me about the dogs he cared for, and I took him at his word.
Ned hadn’t been an especially good student, but he knew how to entertain and he got involved with a friend’s YouTube channel at a young age. Soon Ned had a channel of his own and was amassing a fan base by sharing fashion tutorials and lifestyle tips.
It was a shock when Ned realized he could make more from the ads associated with his videos than he could earn at the bodega, and even more of a surprise when a talent agency came knocking. The next thing he knew, his agent had received a message from Jasper Sinclair. An exclusive contract with the company would establish Ned as a major influencer. He didn’t hesitate to take it, and before long, he and Jasper were friends.
“We’re a lot alike,” Ned said of Jasper. “I’m sure you don’t believe that, but it’s true.”
“No, I get it. He may not have to worry about paying the rent, but he suffered in his own way. It isn’t easy losing your parents at a young age. At least he has a brother and sister to lean on.”
“Whatever,” Ned said with a shrug.
“Are they not close?” I said, feigning confusion.
“I’m not the person to answer that.”
Though the library was chilly, Ned’s forehead shone with sweat. He’d dressed as any respectable fashion vlogger would for a weekend getaway to a luxurious rustic home: woolen plaid shirt, thick tan pants, suede slip-ons in a fetching shade of loden green. Several of his shirt buttons were undone and I could see sweat on his breastbone, too. I’d arranged the overstuffed chairs across from each other so we were knee to knee. It’s how I used to sit with Carson in his office when we talked about Bram. Carson said it was conducive to sharing and created a balance of power that helped people relax. With Ned, the arrangement made me apprehensive. We were a mirror image of each other, our feet firmly planted on the soiled rug, and in that moment Ned and I were equals. So why did I feel so unstable? Nothing I knew about him indicated he was violent, yet I didn’t like being alone with Ned. As I watched him joggle one knee and then the other I realized it wasn’t the man I feared, but the possibility he’d bolt.
Holding him in my gaze, I leaned forward and pushed a piece of hair from my brow. I was so close I could see Ned’s pulse in his neck. His eyes moved to the scar on my cheek, widened at the faint stitch marks that gave it a centipede look, and cut away. “You and Jasper are pals,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“For his sake, help me figure this out. Something happened here yesterday. We both know it involves his family.”
I was throwing it all out there, hoping to gain purchase. Now Ned’s hands were twitching, too. As he rubbed his palms up and down his muscled thighs I saw his nails were polished to a high shine.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He wouldn’t look at me.
“You and Flynn haven’t been getting along.”
“Flynn’s a salty bastard. We argue. So what?”
“My fiancé and I argue, too. Sometimes those arguments escalate, make us say and do crazy things. Has that ever happened with you and Flynn?”
“Have we ever argued and ended up killing someone? Nah,” he said, “we usually stick to armed robbery.”
“If Flynn’s such an asshole, why did you get together with him at all?” I couldn’t conceive of a more unlikely match, or understand what anyone could see in Flynn that had the potency to spark romantic attraction, let alone sexual desire.
“Domineering brutes are my type.”
“Are they?” I said. “Just men, or women, too?”
“What business is it of yours?” Ned dragged a hand across his forehead with a sound like sandpaper on wood. “Look, Flynn wasn’t always this way. He treated me like royalty. I cared about him, okay?”
“You realize I’ve spoken with everyone but you. There are some disadvantages to being last. The others already had their chance to shape the story. Do you get what I’m saying, Ned? Whatever you aren’t telling me, the secret you think you’re hiding? I already know.”
“Jesus Christ, it doesn’t fucking matter. We should be looking for Jasper! What if he’s still on the island, hurt or . . .” His voice trailed off. “What if he needs help?”
My visions of Jasper out there in the storm . . . Ned saw them, too. They stretched his mouth into the shape of a scream. He wasn’t wrong with those what-ifs. I’d searched bits and pieces of the three-acre island alone. I could easily have missed something. Jasper might still be shivering in the mud while his blood turned the yellow leaves black. Knowing Ned was thinking the same thing softened me, but only a little. As he spoke Ned folded his arms across his chest, a demonstration of his refusal to tip his hand.
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” I said with frustration. “Everything matters—every act, every look, every word. We’re not going to find Jasper until we know who hurt him. He could be dying out there.” He could be dead.
Ned ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “There was a fight,” he said in a tight voice. “Last night.”
“Right. Upstairs.” Loud voices after midnight.
His forehead puckered. “No. That was Miles and Bebe.”
It was the first time he’d spoken her name. I watched carefully but his expression didn’t change. “Miles and Bebe?”
“Arguing in their room.”
“Are you saying there was another fight? Somewhere else?”
“Outside.” Ned cocked his head. “You didn’t know?”
I felt my cheeks get hot. I’d told him I knew everything worth knowing.
“I thought,” Ned said, “maybe Flynn . . .”
“Lucky you. You get to be the one to fill me in. Who was involved in this fight?” I said. “You and Flynn?”
“No. Flynn and Jasper.”
Remembering Flynn’s knuckles, battered and bruised, made my chest seize up. Got in a fight with his brother and took off. Hadn’t that been Tim’s theory from the start? “What happened?”
Ned’s face went from pained to resolute. Somewhere in the span of a few seconds he’d made the decision to betray someone. In the gloomy half-light of the room there was a cruel curl to his lip. “Abby wasn’t the only one who had too much to drink last night. Flynn got lit and laid into Jas. He hit him.”
“Flynn physically assaulted his brother last night.” I blinked at Ned. “I’ve talked to every person in this house and not one of them mentioned this.”
Ned lowered his voice another notch. “That’s because they don’t know. It was after dinner, late. Everyone was in bed. The only person we saw afterward was Norton. He was in the kitchen when we came inside. I told him Jas tripped in the yard.”
“Why?” I asked. “Did Jasper ask you to cover it up? Or were you trying to protect Flynn?”
“Neither,” he said, and looked away. Earlier, when I’d interviewed Bebe and Miles, I’d caught them exchanging a conspiratorial glance. Old habits die hard, and I suspected that maxim applied to Ned’s loyalty to Flynn as well.
“Okay,” I said, wondering if Ned could hear the light-speed rhythm of my heart. “Back up. Walk me through this.”
He exhaled and wiped his brow. “Dinner was over. We went out back to smoke a joint and Flynn followed us. Started in on Jasper.”
It would have been pouring by then. That explained the dried mud on Flynn’s, Ned’s, and Jasper’s shoes. Before long, I had enough details to envision the scene. Jasper and his older brother breathing hard, locked in a struggle in the storm. Ned forcing his way between them, but not before Flynn split open Jasper’s lower lip. When Ned got to that part of the narrative, my mind jumped back to our crime scene. There was no way a split lip could have caused the stain on the mattress, but it did clarify the source of the blood on Jasper’s pillowcase.
Abella went to sleep early, drunk and alone. She didn’t wake when Jasper came to bed, so she didn’t know about his bloody lip or the fight. The only other person who did was Flynn, and he’d deliberately hidden his knuckles from me. Flynn wasn’t stupid. If he’d told me from the start that he gave his brother a thrashing mere hours before Jasper went missing, the day would have gone a lot differently for him.
I asked Ned where Flynn went after the fight, but he didn’t know. “I slept down here last night.” He nodded at the library’s leather couch. “I didn’t want to see him.”
“You haven’t told me what they were fighting about.”