Page 48 of The Summer Guests

“About Reuben Tarkin,” said Maggie. “I assume Susan showed you these articles from thePurity Weekly?” She handed Jo a stack of photocopied pages. “The Tarkin family has a troubled history.”

Jo glanced at the headline:Massacre on Main Street. “1972?”

“I hadn’t heard about this incident before. But you must know about it.”

“Yeah, sure. My dad remembers it pretty well. But this was over fifty years ago. It’s ancient news.”

“Fifty years is ancient?” said Ingrid, and she looked at her husband. “What does that make us?”

“When his father killed those people, Reuben was only twelve years old,” said Maggie. “What kind of family did he have? Was he ever in trouble?”

“Reuben got into some minor scrapes,” said Jo. “Trespassing, vandalism.”

“Directed at the Conovers?”

“And a few of their neighbors.”

“Which neighbors?”

“Arthur Fox. And the Greenes, when they were still alive.”

“You should take a closer look at this man.”

Jo sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”

“And here’s another person you should look into. A woman named Vivian Stillwater. In 1972, she was twenty-seven years old and living on Maiden Pond.”

“Why is she of interest?”

“Because a few weeks after Sam Tarkin went berserk on Main Street, Vivian vanished. There’s an article about her, also in thePurity Weekly.” Maggie pointed to the photocopies in Jo’s hand.

“What?” Jo flipped through the pages to the story about Vivian Stillwater.

“You didn’t know about her?” Ben asked.

“No.”

“The skeleton from the pond still hasn’t been identified. Didn’t Vivian’s name come up as a possibility?”

“I combed through all our open missing persons files. There’s no unsolved case with her name.” Jo looked up. “Which means she must have been found.”

“Are you absolutely certain of that, Jo?” Maggie asked quietly.

The tenor of the question seemed to make Jo hesitate. By now, she should know that Maggie and her friends would demand confirmation, and there was always the possibility she’d overlooked something. She looked around at the five people watching her.Dissectingher. They couldn’t help it; they’d spent their careers scrutinizing people, and old habits died hard.

Jo’s cell phone rang. She looked almost relieved for the excuse to break away from the conversation and answer the call.

“Hey, Mike,” she said. Her head suddenly jerked up. Her neck muscles snapped taut. “Stay right there. Don’t do a thing!” she ordered. “I’m on my way.”

“What is it?” asked Maggie. “What’s happened?”

Jo hung up and turned to her. “Zoe Conover’s cell phone was just turned on.”

Chapter 23

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” said Lloyd as they careened around a corner in pursuit of Jo’s patrol car. All five of them had piled into the Slocums’ Mercedes SUV, the vehicle that had been positioned to make the quickest getaway. This was the first time Maggie had ridden in a car with Lloyd at the wheel, and as she scrambled to buckle her seat belt, she wondered if they would survive the experience. Lloyd had never trained on the slalom course at the Farm, yet he expertly maneuvered his SUV as if the entire Russian army were in hot pursuit. He might be a maestro in the kitchen, a talented putterer in the garden, but this? This was utterly reckless, the way he squealed around corners and briefly swerved into the opposite lane to pass another car.

“You’re going to get a ticket, dear,” Ingrid said, maddeningly calm.