Chapter 31
Wendy Ward lived on the quiet side of Cambria, in a small cottage tucked between two larger homes that looked like they’d been renovated one too many times.
Hers hadn’t been. The paint was a soft teal that had started to fade, the kind of color chosen by someone who liked it because it made them happy, not because it was on trend.
I parked at the curb and sat for a moment, rereading the address Rosemary had messaged me after I left her house.
Wendy answered the door as soon as I knocked, and I assumed Rosemary had given her a heads-up that I was coming.
She was tall and thin, with silver-blond hair that fell to her shoulders. Oversized black glasses sat low on her nose, and she wore a cardigan several sizes too big over a black dress with symbols of the sun and the moon all over it.
“Wendy Ward?” I asked.
She nodded. “That’s me.”
“I’m Georgiana Germaine. I’m investigating Audrey Ashford’s murder.”
“Yes,” she said. “I was told you’d be stopping by.”
“If it’s a good time, I have a few questions.”
She stepped aside, and I walked in, noticing a plethora of plants crowding every counter and every windowsill, some healthy, others clinging to life.
“I’ve been meaning to catch up with Rosemary about the investigation for a few days now,” she said. “We’ve been playing phone tag, haven’t seemed to find a time that works for us both. Maybe you can fill me in on what’s going on.”
“I’ll do my best.”
We moved into the living room, and she gestured toward the couch, then sat in an armchair opposite me, curling one leg beneath the other.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Audrey since she died,” she said. “She came to see me, not too long before she … she …”
Wendy turned, staring out the window as she wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“What did the two of you talk about?” I asked.
“She had a lot of questions. At the time, I thought we were having a casual, innocent conversation. Now, I’m not sure what to think.”
“What were her questions?”
“Audrey wanted to know about my last year of high school and the group of friends I hung out with back then. She said it was for a history assignment.”
“She went through Rosemary’s and Dustin’s yearbooks, and she told them the same thing. But I don’t believe there ever was a history assignment. I think she was trying to find out what happened to Anne Fontaine. Did she ask you about her?”
“I mean, you don’t think she was digging into the past and someone put a stop to it, do you?”
“That is exactly what I think.”
Wendy shook her head, mumbling, “I had no idea, or I wouldn’t have said anything.
The last time I saw Audrey, she asked me if I’d ever met Anne.
I said yes, I’d met her once. I didn’t think admitting it now, after all these years, was a big deal.
The case is cold. No one is looking into it anymore. ”
“They weren’t before, but they are now. What else did the two of you talk about?”
Wendy leaned back, thinking. “She asked me to tell her what I knew about Anne, which was minimal.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her I was with my girlfriends one night, and we’d stopped at a store to get some snacks before we met the boys at the beach to have a bonfire. They’d gone to the liquor store to try and talk someone into buying them some beer.”
“How did Anne fit into the equation?”
“She was in the store, standing by the freezer, looking lost. She asked the clerk a question about directions, then she turned and she saw us.”
“What did she say?”
“She was in town visiting her aunt, and she admitted she didn’t know anyone around her age. I thought it would be a good idea to invite her to the bonfire, so I asked, and she accepted.”
“How did Anne seem that night?”
“Excited to hang out with us, and grateful that we’d invited her along. She was nice and funny. I liked her. A couple of days later, rumors started going around town that Anne was missing. I guess she never made it back to her aunt’s house after the bonfire.”
“Which means you all were the last ones to see her.”
Wendy nodded. “When the paper ran an article about her disappearance, my stomach dropped. I wanted to believe she was fine, that what we were hearing were rumors or that she’d been found. But she hadn’t been.”
“And you didn’t go to the police.”
“No,” she said. “None of us did.”
“Why not?”
“We were young and stupid, and we knew we were the last ones to see her. We weren’t just worried about that.
We were all drunk that night. I think we all were, at least. When we got together to talk about Anne, we were talking about what we remembered and about how the night ended, but no one had a specific recollection.
We each had either no recollection or vague ones.
Since none of us had anything to do with what happened to her, so we decided it was better not to talk to the police. ”
“You’re assuming no one in your friend group had anything to do with what happened to Anne. In truth, one of them could be lying, keeping a secret for all these years.”
“Maybe you’re right, but we figured once the police started asking questions, they wouldn’t stop. There was a lot going on in our friend group at the time, things we didn’t want to be dragged into the open.”
“Secrets like the relationship between Tilly and Aiden.”
“How do you know about it?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
She let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “We convinced ourselves that maybe Anne didn’t have a happy home life, and when she got to Cambria to visit her aunt, she’d taken the opportunity to run away.”
“From what I can tell, she had a good home life, and what you all did was create a lie to ease your guilt. You had to know staying silent instead of going to the police was wrong.”
“I know. I’ve had years to think about it, believe me.”
“Did you tell Audrey about the affair between Tilly and Aiden?”
“I didn’t. It’s not my story to tell.”
It seemed she was being straight with me, but the longer we spoke, the more I wondered if there were other secrets she was hiding.
“You may not have gone into details about that night, but having grown up here, in such a small town, Audrey was connected to just about everyone in your former friend group,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess when I talked to her, I didn’t think it through. I didn’t know that Anne was in any way connected to Audrey’s murder. If I had, I would have said something sooner. I swear.”
“You seem to be telling the truth,” I said.
Her shoulders slumped in relief, but the guilt was still written all over her face.
“Now I’m thinking,” she said, “if I had kept my mouth shut, maybe Audrey would still be alive.”
“Or maybe she would have found out another way to get to the truth,” I said. “Curiosity has a way of pushing through cracks.”
We sat in silence for a time, and then I said, “At the bonfire, did Anne talk to any one person more than the others? One of the boys, perhaps?”
“To be honest, once the truth about Tilly and Aiden came out, my focus was on Tilly. Everyone was yelling at each other, and there she was, mourning the loss of a child. No one seemed to be focusing on that or caring about what she was going through, except for me.”
I leaned forward, looking Wendy in the eye. “My opinion is that someone in your group is responsible for Anne’s disappearance, what I believe was her murder, and Audrey’s as well. I just haven’t been able to prove it yet.”
I stood, the puzzle pieces shifting in my mind as I realized I was homing in on the killer. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
Wendy nodded. “Are you close to figuring out the person responsible for Audrey’s death?”
“I’m a lot closer today than I was yesterday,” I said.
She wiped away a few more tears, reaching for a tissue as she said, “That’s something, I guess.”
I walked out the door, and as it closed behind me, I stared out at the quiet street, thinking about a night at the beach, a girl who’d trusted the wrong people, and a former circle of friends who were still bonded in silence … until now.