Chapter 31
Once we’re outside, Morgan and I follow the short concrete sidewalk to the edge of the parking lot, which runs adjacent to the diner. She stops to dig a key fob from her jeans pocket and then continues ahead, the wind tousling her short black hair.
“I’ll say goodbye here,” I call out from behind her. “A taxi’s picking me up in a few minutes.”
That’s not exactly true, though. I’m going to have to shiver by myself in the parking lot for a while, along with my anguished thoughts.
“Oh,” she says, turning back to me. “Uh, why don’t you wait in my car?”
I’m touched by the offer, but I need to let her go. She’s had enough of me to last a lifetime.
“That’s very thoughtful, Morgan, but I’ll be fine.”
Behind us, the diner lights switch off, one section at a time, and then, all at once, those in the parking lot do, too, except for a single security light.
I take a second to glance around. The stores on either side of the diner—as well as those across the road—seem to be locked up tight for the night, and there’s very little traffic right now.
It’s not going to be any fun waiting here alone.
“Sure?” Morgan asks. “I don’t mind hanging around a bit longer.”
“Well, if you really don’t mind, I think I’ll take you up on your offer. But just so you know, the taxi actually isn’t due for fifteen minutes.”
“Not a problem.”
I follow her halfway down the darkened lot to a shiny black SUV.
A plastic bag skitters across the tarmac, chased by the wind, and then stops dead.
There was a fleeing bag like that in the state police parking lot when Logan and I went to meet Riley.
Was that only on Wednesday? Because it seems like decades ago.
We reach the car and Morgan unlocks the doors.
From the back of the diner comes the sound of a metal door slamming shut, followed by the murmur of voices, the click of car doors opening and shutting, and the sudden purr of an engine.
Seconds later, just as I’m opening the door, a sedan with two people appears from behind the restaurant and exits the lot.
The last two staffers obviously sharing a ride.
The SUV is spotless inside, and it still has a slight new-car smell. To my surprise, Morgan suddenly fires up the engine.
“Wait,” I exclaim. “What—”
“Just turning the car around so we can see the cab when it gets here.”
She does just that, backing up the SUV and then pointing it nose forward. She keeps the motor running, I guess so we have light from the dashboard.
“This is very thoughtful of you, Morgan,” I say. “You must have work to do tonight, papers to grade.”
“Fortunately, I’m done with that for the day. I always save the later part of the evening for my own creative work.”
“Writing poems?” At our first meeting, she mentioned she’d studied poetry as part of her MFA program.
“Not anymore, no,” she says, glancing over. “I write book reviews for some online sites. And I dabble a little in painting—just watercolors, really.”
“What a nice hobby.”
“As some wise man once said, it’s silent poetry. So maybe I haven’t completely abandoned my former passion.”
Before I’m even conscious of a thought, I feel my face wrinkle in confusion.
“I heard someone else say that recently,” I tell her. “It’s part of a longer quote, right?”
My mind flickers for a couple of moments until the person who made the comment materializes in her black velveteen dress: Alison. We’d been discussing how she used to sit in on some of her husband’s backyard classes and share her thoughts on the similarities between art and poetry.
Did Morgan hear Alison quote Plutarch when she was helping Handler? She mainly worked remotely, she’d said, but perhaps the two women met in passing. Or even became friendly with each other.
“Who?” she asks flatly.
“Um, an editor friend who I’ve known for years.”
I’m not sure why I don’t want to admit it was Alison. But my heart has begun to skitter like the plastic bag, which I see from the window is now on the move again.
“You were in publishing?”
“Yes—though, since Melanie’s death, I’ve only worked freelance.”
Another remark of Alison’s swims to the surface in my mind. She said she’d been sloppy with the rules more than once during that period years ago, meaning Mel might not have been the only lover who didn’t fit within the boundaries the Handlers established for their open marriage.
Could Morgan be someone she once got sloppy with? Surely professional colleagues of her husband would have been off-limits.
And there was another rule Alison admitted violating, one about overlap. Meaning she’d allowed herself two lovers during the same time frame.
There’s now a weird rumbling in my head, as if I’ve picked up the early sounds of a stampede of horses and if I don’t get out of the way, I’ll be knocked to the ground and dragged in their wake.
“Is everything okay?” Morgan asks, staring across the front seat at me.
Maybe she can tell, even in the dimness of the car, that the blood has drained from my face. All I know is that I don’t want to be sitting here anymore.
“I’m fine,” I say. “But—but I should let you go. I hate holding you up this way.”
“I said it’s not a problem.”
As I fumble for the door handle, Morgan reaches across me and grasps my right arm. I can feel the pressure through the sleeve of my coat.
“Don’t be crazy,” she says. “It’s deserted out there.”
She tightens her grip, and it takes all my strength to wrench my arm away.
“I don’t care,” I exclaim. My fingers finally find the handle, and then I’m nearly hurling myself from the vehicle.
Within seconds, I’m at a full jog, moving across the blacktop toward the front of the lot and starting to gasp for air. There’s no taxi in sight.
God, where is he? I see a truck barrel down the road in front of me but nothing else.
I brace myself for the sound of Morgan’s car heading toward me. But what comes next is the double click from the car door opening. My breath freezes in my chest. Seconds later, I hear the scuff of boots on the blacktop. She’s following me on foot.
“Bree, what’s going on?” she calls out through the darkness. “Are you all right?”
I’m almost at the road, but there’s not a single car passing by. I fish desperately in my purse for my phone, finally grabbing it.
Then, almost out of nowhere, a white taxi rumbles into view and pulls up in front of the restaurant.
I wave frantically at the driver, who nods when he sees me.
I rush toward the car and yank the rear door open.
Before diving in, I turn quickly back. Morgan is retreating to her car and is soon enveloped in darkness.
“Everything okay?” the driver asks, eyeing me in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah, I just need to get back to the inn as soon as possible.”
Was I being totally irrational just now? Maybe I’m so distraught about Riley that I’m not thinking straight. But no, something feels very wrong, and I’m not sure exactly why. I have to make sense of what just happened and let Halligan know.
I quickly text Logan, my palms almost too sweaty to type.
Have you heard from Halligan?
not yet. where ARE you?
On my way back. I’ll be there in thirty-five minutes.
k. come get me in my room.
I lean back against the seat, drained. Will Halligan even care that I’ve got a weird feeling based on a Plutarch quote?
There’s one person, I realize, who can fill in some blanks.
Alison Handler. Though I can’t stand the thought of hearing her voice again, I call her anyway.
After half a ring, the call goes to voicemail, meaning she’s probably declined it.
I can hardly blame her. I suggested her husband might be a murderer.
“Alison, I know it’s late,” I say, “but I need to speak with you tonight. It’s urgent.”
To my shock, I hear back from her several minutes later.
“I didn’t want to be rude and not take the call, but we can’t communicate after this,” she says. “It’s not fair to Jeffrey.”
So now she’s a fan of fairness.
“I won’t call again if you answer one question.”
“One question—and really, that’s all.” She’s speaking at a normal volume, so Jeffrey is either out for the evening or she’s sneaked over to the studio to guarantee herself privacy.
“Did you once have an affair with Morgan Kroll?”
I hear the intake of breath, and I can almost feel her weighing whether to answer or not.
“Please, Alison. It’s critical that I know.”
Silence follows. I wait, praying she has the decency to tell me.
“Yes,” she says finally. “But Jeffrey can’t know about it. I confessed to him about Melanie, and I told him there was someone else around that time, someone I’d been seeing since the summer, but he never knew that person was Morgan.”
My pulse, finally slowed from the parking lot, starts to race again.
“It started when she worked for your husband?” I ask.
Another pause.
“The attraction began before then, if you must know. We’d met on campus—when we were both in grad school at SUNY Albany—and I suggested her for a freelance job with Jeffrey. And eventually one thing led to another.”
“It sounds like the relationship overlapped with Melanie.”
“Why is that relevant?”
“Just tell me.”
“Yes, for a while. But as I made clear before, I’d lost my way as an artist. I finally broke it off with Morgan once things intensified between Melanie and me.”
I swallow, trying to calm myself.
“And how did Morgan take it?” I say.
A few seconds pass before she responds.
“First, I need you to know, I’m not an unprincipled person.
I’d always been clear with Morgan that our relationship was a casual thing, but she’d convinced herself otherwise.
When it ended, she was furious—furious at me, furious at the idea there might be someone else. She even stalked me for a while.”
I don’t even say goodbye. I just end the call and let the phone drop in my lap.
Morgan Kroll had been replaced as Alison’s paramour, sending her into a rage. Maybe while stalking Alison, she saw her with Mel, and started stalking her, too.
And then, around that time, Riley stumbled into Morgan’s life. Riley with her crushing story about being raped and almost killed by a sexual predator.
What if the “one person” who Riley said knew the real date of the attack was simply Morgan? Perhaps the morning Riley showed up in the English department really was the next day, meaning that Tuesday morning, not almost a week later. No wonder her bruises looked fresh and she seemed “in shock.”
This would mean that Morgan learned everything she needed in order to get rid of her rival without anyone guessing who the killer was.