Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
VON
The next morning, I come downstairs to find Noah has made me both a coffee and some sort of green juice.
“What’s this?” I ask.
He points to a Vitamix I’d forgotten I had, now sitting on the counter by the espresso machine.
“I figured you weren’t one for big breakfasts,” he says.
I take a sip and damn, it’s delicious. Who is this Noah, rearranging kitchens and cooking dinners and blending green juice?
If he thinks he’s the only one that can be considerate, he’s got another think coming. I can be considerate. I can be nice . I can be so nice he won’t know what hit him.
Okay, maybe being nice doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to him, but I’ll figure something out. I can’t exist in this state of him one-upping me in my own home.
“I’d tell you not to leave the apartment, but I know you won’t listen to me,” I say. “So here.” I hand him a spare key to the elevator .
Noah’s eyes brighten. He’s wearing track pants and a hoodie, and stubble shadows his cheeks and jaw. It’s actually not a bad look for him.
“There’s a gym on the second floor, if you want to use it,” I tell him. “You can ask your new best friends downstairs for the code.”
“Hey, thanks,” he says.
“Just do me a favor—stay in the neighborhood, okay? I don’t need you getting lost on the subway.”
“I think I can figure out the subway, Von,” he says.
“Yeah, well, I’d rather be around to chaperone.”
His eyebrow quirks up. “You take the subway?”
He’s got me there.
“I’ll stay close to home,” he promises, sliding onto one of the stools at the island.
“Hey, do you mind doing me a favor? Pop is going to stay at Mr. Sanderson’s cabin for a few days. I texted Charlotte but she hasn’t responded—she can probably help him pack and drive him up there since school hasn’t started yet. Do you mind checking with her?”
I still need to talk to this Charlotte person anyway. I note this is the second time Noah’s mentioned her. I wonder if there’s something going on between them. “She’s in school?” I ask.
Noah laughs. “She teaches kindergarten.”
The faceless image I’d had of her shifts to a plain-faced woman in mom jeans with a handknit crochet vest. Kindergarten teacher does seem like Noah’s type.
“Here,” he says, “I’ll send you her number. Isla’s too.”
“How do you know I don’t already have Isla’s number?” I shoot back.
He cocks an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“No,” I admit.
“Will you keep me posted?” he asks as my phone pings with the new contacts. “Let me know how it goes with Patrick?”
“Of course,” I say .
He sips his coffee, then glances at me. “I can make dinner again.”
I feel a tiny leap of excitement. “Oh,” I say, playing it cool. “Sure. If you want to.”
Based on the smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, I’m not fooling him.
“Do you remember where the light switches are?” I ask dryly.
“You mean the Panel of Doom?” he says. “Yeah, I’m not touching that.”
“It’s easy,” I say. “Just tap the screen and the buttons are self-explanatory. Oh, and if you want to connect your phone to the speakers, you can do that through the screen too.”
If he likes to listen to music while he cooks, he should at least have decent sound quality.
Noah looks surprised only for a half second. “Thanks,” he says.
I leave quickly because this is getting altogether too strange. I take my green juice with me, though.
I say hello to Sam behind the front desk and thank Benito by name as he holds open the door for me. They both look a little surprised but also smile at me, and not in that way they usually do, where it feels like a job requirement. My car is waiting to take me to the helicopter at the Seaport and Alex picks me up at the helipad in Magnolia Bay. When I give him the address of Dale’s Tavern, he raises one eyebrow in the mirror.
“It is a little early to be drinking, no?” he says.
I smirk. “I wish this was that sort of bar visit.”
He pulls out onto the road.
“How are things with the press?” I ask as vineyards roll past me out the window.
“The same as yesterday. Mr. Alistair is going to spread the word that you have left town. Your father is thinking that will be helpful.”
“That’s good,” I say. With nothing left to report on until the pretrial hearings, maybe things will get back to normal for the estate—at least until the end of the summer season. We do solid business through the Christmas holidays, but summer is Everton’s peak.
The bar is exactly where Noah said it would be, a run-down establishment about twenty minutes outside Magnolia Bay. The windows are made of thick bricks of wavy glass, making it impossible to see inside. There’s a dilapidated sign on the green roof that just says TAVERN. Maybe the Dale’s part got lost to time.
“Would you like me to be coming inside with you, Miss Von?” Alex asks, looking at the chipped wooden front door warily.
“No,” I say. There are only three cars in the lot. I’m sure I can handle a couple of early morning drinkers. A glance at my watch tells me it’s just after ten-thirty. Alex opens the door for me, and I step onto the cracked pavement, balancing precariously in my Louboutins. I smooth down the crepe material of my beige pencil skirt and stride toward the door.
The first thing that hits me is the smell—like decades of cigarette smoke has been permanently ingrained into the fake leather booths that line one wall. The bar is long and weathered, stools scattered haphazardly along it. One grizzled man nurses a beer at the end closest to me while a woman with an aggressive perm sips a vodka tonic in one of the booths. A bartender wipes the dirty bar with a dirtier rag.
All three of them look up in surprise at my presence. I ignore the patrons and stride across the worn wooden floor toward the bartender. He’s in his sixties, with sagging jowls and age spots at his temples.
“Good morning,” I say. “I’m Siobhan Everton.”
The bartender tosses the rag over his shoulder. “I know who you are.”
This tracks—most of the locals on the North Fork know my family. We were in the press a lot even before Mom died.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions,” I say. “Is there someplace we could speak in private? ”
The man considers me for a moment, then comes around the bar and leads me back outside. He lights a cigarette.
“What?” he asks.
“May I have your name?”
“Dale Lewiston.”
The infamous Dale.
“How long have you worked here, Mr. Lewiston?”
He takes a long drag. “Just Dale. I own this place. Going on twenty years now.”
“Were you working five years ago the night of June twenty-first?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Honey, I’ve worked here every night since I opened. It all blends together. So if you want me to remember something from five years ago—or even five days ago—you’re shit out of luck. What’s this all about, huh?”
“My mother was murdered on the morning of June twenty-second five years ago,” I say tartly.
At that, Dale’s eyes widen a fraction. “Oh right,” he says. “That.” Then he adds, “Sorry, uh, for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I say tartly. “Are you familiar with a man named Patrick Forrester?”
“Pat? Sure, sure. Used to come in all the time. Part of the Lock In Crew.”
“The what?”
“The drunks that I had to lock in overnight.”
This is all tracking with what Noah told me. “Do you remember locking him in the night of the twenty-first?”
Dale shrugs. “Was it a Saturday?”
“It was.”
“Then yeah. Every Saturday like clockwork. Until the day he got sober.” He scratches the back of his head and flicks his cigarette away. “You know, that might actually have been about five years ago, now that I think of it.” His eyes widen. “Wait. You’re representing that cop, right? The one they arrested for?— ”
I cut him off. “I am representing Noah Patterson, yes.”
“I remember him too,” Dale says, getting excited now. “He used to hang out here on Sunday mornings. Early. Watching the place. Sitting in his car on the street, never the parking lot, so I couldn’t call the cops on him. Not that I would have. I don’t get into nobody else’s business.”
I highly doubt that, but don’t press him. “Do you remember Noah being here on the morning of the twenty-second?”
“I can’t say the exact day,” Dale says. “All I know is that one Saturday night that summer was the last time Pat came in here. I let him out of the bar with the others on Sunday morning, and never saw him again. And that cop was here watching the Lock In Crew leave every Sunday morning.”
“Do you have an address for Mr. Forrester?” I ask.
“Think he’s still in the same place,” he says. “Big old colonial in Riverview.”
He gives me the address and I jot it down in my phone.
“Thank you,” I say, then turn and hurry back to the car.
“Hey,” Dale calls and I stop and turn to him. He’s eyeing me with interest. “You really think that cop is innocent?”
“Yes, I do,” I say, with more vehemence than I was anticipating. But what was once a gut instinct is fast becoming a cold certainty.
“Everything all right, Miss Von?” Alex says.
“We’ve got another stop to make,” I tell him.
We arrive at the address Dale gave me—it is, in fact, an old colonial in Riverview—and I time how long the drive takes. Just under ten minutes. Putting Noah here at around 6:10. Mom was shot at 6:24. I’ll have to see if it’s possible for Noah to get to the estate in time. But first, I need to talk to Patrick .
Unfortunately, I quickly discover that Patrick Forrester no longer lives there.
The woman who answers the door says she has no forwarding address for him. I get back into the car and call Noah.
“What did Patrick say?” he asks in a rush.
“Nothing because I haven’t found him yet.” I relay the conversation I had with Dale. “We really need Patrick to confirm your alibi. Dale isn’t going to cut it. But we can’t get him to confirm it if we can’t find him. He could be anywhere. He could have left Long Island.”
There’s a brief pause.
“Patrick got sober?” Noah says quietly. That doesn’t seem pertinent at the moment, but the next second, I hear the clack of a keyboard in the background. “Hold on,” he says.
I frown. “You aren’t doing anything illegal, are you? You know you don’t work for the MBSD anymore.”
“I don’t?” Noah says sarcastically. “Gosh, I hadn’t noticed.”
“Ha ha.”
“I’m checking his social media,” Noah says.
“Seriously?”
“I was the tech guy at the department. Which really meant I was the only one who knew how to navigate Instagram. But you can learn a lot about someone based on what they post—more than they realize.”
“Is that why you have no social media presence?”
His chuckle tickles my ear through the phone. “One of many reasons. Okay. Here are some pictures of him and his family…wife, two little girls…let’s see…it’s tagged in a town called Maplewood. Looks to be on a nice street. Quiet. Big stone house with a massive front porch. Probably will have some toys on the lawn.”
“I need a bit more than that,” I say.
“There’s a church nearby,” Noah says. “I can just make out the steeple over the tops of the trees in one of the pics. Hold on…” Th ere’s more clacking. “It looks like it’s St. Michael’s Episcopal Church. Start near there. I’ll send you the photo of the house.”
A few seconds later, my phone pings.
“Wow,” I say, unable to help myself.
“Impressed?” I can hear his confident grin and roll my eyes.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I say and hang up.
Alex finds the church and we drive through the nearby streets until we find the house in the picture. There are, in fact, kids’ toys on the front lawn. I walk past a tricycle and a miniature trampoline, up the front steps, and ring the bell.
A woman opens the door with a toddler on her hip. “Can I help you?” she asks.
“I’m looking for Patrick Forrester,” I say.
She sizes me up, then calls back into the house. “Pat! Someone here to see you!”
The man who comes down the hall is in his mid-fifties, wearing khakis, a red T-shirt with some logo on it, and loafers. A little girl who looks to be about seven is close behind him.
“Hi,” he says genially. “How can I help you?”
“My name is Siobhan Everton,” I begin.
“You’re pretty!” the little girl pipes up.
“Um, thank you,” I say. “Mr. Forrester, I’m a lawyer representing Noah Patterson.”
His wife’s eyes widen. I see a flicker of pain, or maybe shame, in Mr. Forrester’s eyes.
“Gina, take your sister and go play on the iPad,” his wife says, handing the toddler off to the little girl.
“But Momma?—”
“Now,” the woman says firmly, and the two kids toddle off. She whirls on me. “You’ve got some nerve coming here.”
“Alice, please,” Patrick says. He looks at me wearily. “I saw he was arrested in the paper.”
“He is innocent, Mr. Forrester,” I say. “And I believe you hold the key to proving that. ”
“Please, call me Patrick.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice demands. “Pat, what’s she talking about?”
Patrick turns and lowers himself into a wicker chair by the door, rubbing his temples. “This is about him following me, right?”
My heart flips in my chest. “That’s right.”
“No,” Alice says, shaking her head. “We don’t want to talk about this.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he says, reaching for her hand. He turns his gaze back to me. “He followed me a lot back then. Every damn weekend for probably a year. I’m an alcoholic,” he says. “Been sober for five years, two months, and ten days.”
I’m not sure what to say to that—congratulations? “That’s very specific.”
He chuckles. “Not something you forget. My last drink was around two o’clock in the morning on the twenty-second of June, five years ago. That was the morning I came home and Alice had had enough. She threatened to leave me if I didn’t get help.”
Alice’s face tightens, confirming this story.
My pulse kicks into a sprint. “How can you be so certain of the date?”
“That was the day of my first AA meeting.”
“Do you remember seeing Noah following you that morning?”
“He followed me every Sunday,” Patrick says. “Every single one. The twenty-second was no exception. But it was the last time.” He sighs heavily. “I will carry the burden of what I did to that poor man’s parents for the rest of my life. I remember he offered to drive me home once. He tried to help me. After everything I took from him, he tried to help me.” He shakes his head. “And I tried to hit him.”
“You’ve changed,” Alice says, rubbing his shoulder. “You’re not the same person.”
My fingers tingle. We’re almost there. This could prove Noah is innocent. “Patrick, would you be willing to testify to this in court?”
Alice’s head snaps up and she takes a threatening step toward me. “Absolutely not,” she says. “You think he’s going to embarrass our family? Bring up those terrible years after we’ve worked so hard to put it all behind us? No way.”
“Alice, please,” Patrick says, getting to his feet. “This is a man’s life we’re talking about. And not just any man. This is my chance to fulfill Step 8. To make amends. It’s the least I can do.” He turns to me. “Of course I’ll testify.”
A great whoosh of relief runs through me.
“But—” Alice begins but Patrick silences her with a faint smile.
“I’m not ashamed of my past,” he says. “I accept it, as I accept all parts of myself. I have to do this, darling.”
She gazes at him with such fierce love. Her lips press into a thin line. Then she nods.
“Thank you, Patrick,” I say, shaking his hand. “Thank you so much.”
“Could you do me a favor?” he asks. “Could you please tell Noah I—I’d like to speak to him sometime. Apologize in person. If he’s willing.”
“I’ll pass along the message,” I say. I can’t guarantee anything—would Noah be willing to talk to Patrick? I don’t think I would want to hear an apology from the man who killed my mother. But then, I’m not Noah.
I tell Patrick I’ll be in touch again soon, then get back in the car, buzzing with excitement. There’s still one more thing to do before I can call Noah with the good news. I tell Alex to go back to the house in Riverview. Then we drive to Noah’s house and I time it. I instruct Alex to stop when we’re a block away—I can see the reporters gathered still, waiting for a glimpse of Noah. I check my clock. Eight minutes. So that’s a total of about twenty minutes from the tavern to the colonial to Noah’s house .
“Alex,” I say. “Take me to the estate.”
“You’re not going inside, miss?” he asks.
“No. I need to check something.”
Alex drives to the estate, where more reporters are camped out along the road. Dad must be furious. Alex again stops far enough away so that we’re unnoticed. Seven minutes. So twenty-six minutes of driving, plus the couple minutes he waited at Patrick’s and however long he was standing out on his dock, plus the time it would have taken him to supposedly get to the entrance to the garden, through the garden, to Mom’s pottery shed.
There’s no way Noah could have had time to murder Mom at six twenty-four in the morning if he left Dale’s Tavern at just before six. The timing doesn’t add up.
I can’t wait to give Noah the news. My fingers tremble as I call his number.
“Patrick Forrester remembers me?” he says after I relay everything that happened. “Von, this is amazing! Let’s tell the judge. Are you going to call Wilbur? They’ve got to dismiss the charges if I’ve got an alibi.”
“They do not have to dismiss the charges,” I tell him. “And I can guarantee you Judge Warner won’t—it’s going to take Patrick testifying at trial, in person, to exonerate you. The prosecution has a right to cross examine him. But he’s a solid witness, Noah. We want to keep this card as close to the vest for as long as possible. But…”
“But…”
A slow smile spreads across my face.
“There’s no way any jury in the world will convict you,” I say. “Not with this alibi.” We just went from fucked to victorious in the span of two days. “We could go to trial tomorrow and win.”
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I’m feeling triumphant. Exhilarated .
“Yes!” Noah cries. “Von, you’re incredible. I’ll make Lobster Thermidor tonight.”
I laugh. “Please don’t. I don’t want any lobsters murdered in my newly intuitive kitchen.”
I can hear the smile in his voice. “Good, because I don’t know how to make it anyway. Spaghetti and meatballs?”
My first thought is that’s too many carbs . But then I think of how delicious my apartment will smell. “Deal,” I tell him.
My phone beeps with another call. It’s Isla.
“Noah, I gotta run, see you later,” I say. I change over to her call.
“This is Von Everton,” I say, then wince. Probably didn’t need to use my business greeting.
“Hi Von!” Isla says. “Noah told Charlotte you were in town. She’s going to take Pop up to Mr. Sanderson’s cabin later this afternoon, but we were wondering if you wanted to come join us for coffee at Perks.”
I hear a woman’s voice in the background and Isla shushes her.
“We’d really love to see you,” she adds.
My scalp prickles. I’d like to meet Charlotte and not just because I need to talk to her about the case—I’m intrigued to see this kindergarten teacher Noah may or may not be dating.
“I’ll be there in five,” I tell her.