Page 46

FORTY-FIVE

They’ve driven for almost four hours with only a single quick stop. Now Alex is jittery, hopped up on gas station coffee and the giant Snickers bar she consumed to keep herself awake as they creep along the expressway in deep summer traffic, Lucy’s dilapidated Hyundai dwarfed by giant SUV Mercedes, Volvos, and BMWs. But now they are nearly to the end of the famous peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic and the traffic has finally thinned.

“Look, this is the turn,” Alex says, pointing at the exit for East Morehead. Lucy grips the steering wheel as they veer off toward the coastal town where Francis Keen spent her summers, and her last day alive.

Alex glances at her phone. It’s nearly 5 p.m. If Howard leaves the Herald once the paper goes to press, that will give them at least four hours to hunt down the missing knife.

“So, this is where the rich spend their summers?” Lucy cranes her head as they pass a row of businesses in whitewashed buildings, a few cafés, a Pilates studio, a few shops with caftans and handmade pottery in the windows. People linger at outside tables with gem-colored drinks. They look so worry-free that Alex wants to park the car and join them, to be absorbed into their lives and forget what she is actually doing here.

“Look at this,” Lucy scoffs, waving her hand out the window at a bakery for dogs. Alex looks up, surprised at the bitterness in her voice. “These people have so much money they have to invent ways to spend it.”

“It doesn’t mean they’re happy though,” Alex says quietly, reminding herself of what she knows deep down is true, that no amount of privilege can buy you contentment.

“No, I’m sure you’re right,” Lucy agrees begrudgingly. “But they’re idiots not to be. What does anyone with a beach house have to worry about?” She waves her hand dismissively.

Getting murdered, for one, Alex thinks.

“I think Francis’s place is up here just a little way,” she says instead, looking down at the map on her phone. They pass a public beach. A few holdouts are still in the water, their towels empty on the sand. The waves rock them gently on their golden crests as the sun starts its descent. How long has it been since Alex has had a real vacation? For a moment she pictures Tom in the driver’s seat. She imagines them coming here for a romantic weekend, checking into a hotel by the beach, lingering over lobster and bottles of white wine at one of the beachside restaurants. No, no, that’s no good . She shakes her head, dissolving the image of Tom, of beach walks and sun-kissed skin and evening cocktails, from her mind.

Lucy doesn’t seem tired at all. If anything, she is more energetic now than at the start of the drive. Her eyes are bright and focused as Alex directs her down one of the side streets, fringed in tall trees, their silhouettes bending in the late summer light. The houses back here look like they are straight from a fairy tale, sprawling cottages shingled with cedar and landscaped with sea grasses and massive hydrangeas. It’s the kind of low-key wealth that you only find in New England. Alex glances at the map and sees that past their manicured lawns there is a crescent of beach invisible from the road. She looks at the houses, which are set back from the street and spaced far enough apart to not have to interact with each other. You wouldn’t have to worry about your neighbors bothering you in a place like this, Alex thinks. You wouldn’t be able to hear anyone scream either.

They round a curve and drive along a stacked-stone fence. “This is it,” Alex says, glancing back to make sure they aren’t being followed. They turn onto a long drive bumpy with cobblestones. The house comes into view at the end of the drive. It is three floors with graying wood shingling and white trim. A cheerful blue door opens onto a wide front porch. The driveway is still blocked off by a crisscross of police tape, sagging and faded.

“We probably don’t want anyone knowing we’re here, right?” Alex says, pointing to a hedge down the road.

“Oh, right, smart,” Lucy says, rolling the Hyundai very slowly behind a stand of trees. As they step out of the car, the smell of freshly cut grass and the tang of ocean hit Alex’s nose. It makes her think of being a child, back in the before times. The nostalgia feels almost painful. They walk silently toward the house, slowing to step over the fence in a spot where the stones have toppled.

A bank of clouds has blown in and the sky has turned a milky green. They look toward the house. The windows are dark and opaque.

Alex glances at Lucy, feeling another stab of guilt for bringing her here. This whole thing could get her into so much trouble. She has tried not to think of the possibility of getting caught, but it is there.

“You don’t have to come with,” Alex says suddenly. “You should wait in the car and I’ll just do this on my own.”

But Lucy ignores Alex, her eyes fixed on the house. “Where did you say the key was?”

“Howard said it was under a garden gnome.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lucy mumbles.

“You want to tackle this side and I’ll look around back?” Alex asks. Lucy nods, and they split. Alex moves past the house with its perfectly weathered shutters and stone accents and out into the backyard. She stops to take in the view, which looks like it’s out of a postcard, a lush green lawn cradled on two sides by pretty wild foliage and flowering plants framing a view of the Atlantic, which seems to appear there as if by magic, shimmering right above the edge of the yard.

The grass has been mowed, though not recently. The blades tickle her ankles as she walks through it. As she approaches the water, she sees the slender curve of beach, dipping down from a line of sea grasses wavering ever so slightly in the breeze. The honey-colored sand looks warm and inviting. If Alex had a house like this, she would spend all of her time down here just listening and watching. She thinks of Francis following this same path. Would she have stood in this spot and gazed at the ocean on the day she died? She forces herself to turn away and keep searching for the key.

She walks to the far edge of the property and comes up to a row of raised garden beds. Left to their own devices, they have still managed to seed. Clumps of green tomatoes cling to their stalks, while some farther down have ripened and burst open uneaten. Snap peas with nothing to climb droop over the sides of the bed, their pods eaten away by animals. Another gift Francis left behind without even meaning to, Alex thinks.

She spots the gnome finally, tucked away behind the last bed. Lucy comes around the side of the house, and Alex calls her to it. The gnome is bigger than she expected, made of solid concrete worn down by the weather, moss growing up its side. She can still make out its cherubic face, its plump hands on its waist framing a round belly. Lucy tilts it back, grunting with effort, and Alex drops onto her knees in the grass; she sees a glimmer of a silver key pressed into the dark soil and pulls it up from under a layer of dirt, wiping it on her shirt.

“Okay, let’s go,” Lucy says. They dash back across the lawn, ducking back against the side of the house. Alex’s hands shake as she fits the key into the back door’s lock and twists the handle.

Alex’s skin prickles as the door swings open into Francis’s back foyer. The flashlight from her phone bounces around the mudroom. She doesn’t know what she expected to find, but she hadn’t thought it would feel so lived-in. Francis’s shoes are still stacked on a tray next to the door. A set of light jackets, a market tote, and sun hats hang from a row of wooden pegs, just waiting for her return from the city. Beyond the entrance is a wide hallway that opens into a large open living room with a giant fireplace. It is stylish and cozy, a bright quilt thrown over the arm of a plush cream sofa. No one knows why Francis came up here that weekend, but looking around, Alex has the suspicion that this was a place she could come to sort herself out.

“What are we looking for exactly?” Lucy says.

“A knife.” She lifts the top off a box shaped like a wooden dove and looks inside at a set of fireplace matches. She replaces the lid. “That’s what Howard implied, anyway, that the murder weapon is here somewhere in the house. He just didn’t seem to know where.”

They come to a spacious kitchen. Everything is still where Francis must have placed it. It’s on the small side for such a big house. Wide white cupboards ring a center island topped with a rough wood chopping block. Alex runs her fingertips across the surface; from the amount of nicks in it, she can tell that Francis must have liked to cook.

Alex stops and looks out the kitchen window. It is getting dark outside, the edges of the yard blurring into shadows. It would be strange to be here all alone, she thinks.

“How would we know which knife?” Lucy asks, pulling a large chef’s knife from a butcher block and extending it in front of her.

Alex shakes her head. “I don’t think it is a kitchen knife. I think it might be decorative,” she says, thinking of the elaborate embossing on the case. “Look for some sort of design on the hilt.”

Lucy returns the knife to its slot. “I’m confused. Wouldn’t the police have found it already if it was here?”

“Apparently the detective in charge of Francis’s case was pretty incompetent. He might not have even tried that hard to find it,” Alex says. “Even Howard thinks that it is still here, so I think it must be true.”

“He didn’t say where?”

“No. I wish.” Alex wonders if Howard had been drinking when he drove up that night. She can imagine him parking out on the street and stumbling up the cobblestone drive, a flask tucked up his sleeve.

“How much time do you think we have?” Lucy asks nervously.

“If he left right after work? I don’t know, with traffic maybe three hours now?” Alex guesses. “But he could have ducked out earlier.”

Lucy looks anxiously at her phone. Alex can see the bubbles of text on the screen. She types something quickly on it and then presses the side, making the screen go dark. Alex has another pang of sympathy for her assistant. Here she is in the middle of nowhere with her boss instead of out somewhere with her friends. It’s hardly the thing a twentysomething wants to be doing on a summer evening.

“Thank you for driving, Lucy. I really appreciate you helping me with everything. I don’t think I could have gotten here without you.”

“It’s nothing, I wanted to. For Francis,” she says quickly, slipping the phone into her pocket. “Should we divide up again to cover more ground?”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Want to look and see if you find anything else in here and in the living room? I’m going to go look for her office.”

“Perfect.” Lucy seems more excited now about their mission. “We should keep the lights off or the neighbors might see us and call the cops.”

It’s true, Alex realizes. With the fading daylight they will have to be cautious and rely on their phones for light. As she steps back into the hall, she has another thought. “Oh, and Lucy, if you find the knife, definitely don’t touch it. You don’t want to get fingerprints on it.” Alex has only a vague idea of what happens when you turn something in to the police, but she has Raymond’s stern voice in her mind as she walks to the back of the house: Don’t mess with the evidence, Alexis .

Alex holds up her phone. The thin beam shines out onto a worn woven runner leading into the back of the house. She wonders where Francis was standing when she realized she was in danger. Was it here in the hall? Did she run? Or was someone waiting to surprise her? Perhaps she never saw it coming at all. An involuntary shudder jerks her shoulders. She swallows and forces herself farther into the house. It will be hard to find anything in an old house like this. Now that the light is almost gone it could be nearly impossible. Maybe this was a bad idea.

The hall opens into a modest-sized office room. It contains a wall of bookshelves and a desk that faces out toward a bank of windows overlooking the dark lawn. Under the deep blue of the sky, the ocean churns darkly. She sits down at Francis’s desk. It’s less grand than the one in her New York office, but what a view. It’s a small wooden desk with a row of drawers to one side. The wood is nicked and stained with rings from coffee mugs left to sit as she wrote.

Alex opens the drawers one by one. She finds the usual desk things inside, a jumble of pens and paper clips, some old bills. She finds a stack of letters with a rubber band around them. She flips through them, looking for her own, but none are familiar. The computer surprises her by humming to life when she bumps the mouse. There are no blinds or curtains covering the windows and Alex has a terrible feeling that someone is watching as she sits in front of it, the screen sending a haze of bright white light into the room. Surely the police have already looked through her computer.

The log-in to Francis’s email. Alex types in the log-in to her own email, an homage to her former self: LostGirl93. The screen refreshes. And she sees that it has been reset to her own and she watches with disappointment as her own inbox fills the screen. She logs back out and explores the desktop. It is a mess. But Francis has also saved things on this computer.

She drags the mouse over to the deleted files. The email at the very top is dated the seventh of October from Howard Demetri. That was easy.

“Oh my God. We’ve got him,” Alex mutters, clicking open the email. She leans in to read.

My Dearest Francis,

I know you didn’t want to talk to me today, but I need you to read this. Forgive me, but I know you have to, it is your sworn pledge, isn’t it? So, I can cross my fingers now and hope that you will continue to honor it. All I want is for you to hear me out for the length of this letter. I have always been better at writing than talking. You know that more than anyone. What I started to tell you at the bar before you ran away from me is this: I am going to leave Regina. This is not some grand gesture I’m making for you alone. It is the last sane choice in an untenable situation. I have made mistakes. I know that what happened, what I have caused, willed to happen, was unfair to her, to you, to myself. But you know that my marriage was nearly arranged. It was one of complete convenience. I have never let myself love anyone until you came into my office. The moment you sat down in front of me for the interview all those years ago, it was the strangest feeling. Familiar, as though I was looking into a mirror. But I wasn’t seeing myself, I was seeing the potential of what life could be. It flashed before my eyes, and even then, I knew that I’d made a mistake. What you said about it being unfair to her is right. I live with the regret of what I’ve done to Regina, but I can’t live my life for her any longer.

It has been the honor of my life to spend twenty years with the woman I love just down the hall. I told myself it could be enough. But it isn’t. I ache for the moments we could have together. I used to think that this job alone could sustain me, could give me meaning that would make up for all the lies I told myself. But you’ve taught me better. I know that this can be us; I am done living a lie for a career. What does it mean in the end? What does any of it matter beyond being with your beloved one? I no longer care about anything else. I’ve already told her, Francis. It is done. I will meet you at the beach house. Please stay and wait for me there.

I love you.

Howard

Alex reads and rereads the words, staring and trying to make sense of them until the screen blurs in front of her. Howard was not trying to threaten Francis; he was professing his love to her. Why would he kill the woman he loves?

Alex’s image of Francis also crumbles. Despite what Jonathan told her, she has only ever believed that her idol could be perfect. Alex thinks of the indentation on Howard’s ring finger and of the anger radiating off Regina while they waited in his office.

All this time Alex has only imagined Francis in a supporting role in all the drama, an impartial bystander dragged into things against her will. But Francis wasn’t some unsuspecting innocent who stumbled upon an affair—she was the one having the affair herself. Francis wasn’t perfect. Not even close. The thought makes Alex sit back, a startled sort of relief in her limbs. She should have known that life is more complex, reality more bendable, than you can ever come to expect. If Francis wasn’t some saintly figure, maybe Alex doesn’t have to be either, she thinks, realizing that she doesn’t know Francis the way she thought she did. She doesn’t know her at all.