Chapter 20
DARK DESCENDS RAPIDLY IN THE EVENINGS AS WE HEAD DEEPER INTO autumn. Time seems to be passing quickly since I arrived here at Cheshire Lake.
The grandfather clock chimes the hour. Eight o’clock. Headlights cut across the front room windows as a car pulls into the driveway.
Alex is back.
“Hi, girls,” he says affably. Sunny hugs him at the door like she hasn’t seen him in a week. Sunny and I have avoided each other all day, moving around the house like the other doesn’t exist.
“I decided to head back up here. Nothing to do at the apartment.”
“What did the doctor say?” Sunny asks.
Alex shrugs out of his coat, hangs it in the hall closet. “Everything’s fine. He thinks we’re on target for the original due date next month.”
Sunny taps her foot. “Release day is only a few days away, Dad. The baby won’t make a surprise appearance in the middle of all our plans, right?”
Alex tugs her ponytail. “Don’t worry, Sun. Everything will work out. It always does.” He walks past her and into the dining room. “How was your day, Emma? Can I get you girls a drink?”
“Fine. Yes,” I reply, knowing that Sunny probably wants our father all to herself.
Having learned that Sunny elected to stay with Alex after her parents divorced perhaps explains her possessiveness of him.
But that’s not my fault. He is my father too, and I’m not about to give him up just because she feels threatened by me.
Alex launches into his time in Boston like he was away on a vacation.
He doesn’t seem to sense the mood that exists between me and Sunny, the shift from cautious coexistence to outright war.
I wonder if he knew anything about what Sunny was up to, invading my personal life, bringing my ex here.
I doubt it. Alex seems oblivious to any undertow of trouble.
We sit down with our drinks in the front room, which is dim in the lamplight, the corners of the room dark. Sunny scrolls through her phone, running through Alex’s agenda for next month. He sips his brandy and nods along, but his mind seems elsewhere.
“How’s the writing coming, Emma?” he asks.
“I’m making progress.”
“You want to send me the first fifty pages or so? I’d love to read it and maybe I can give you some pointers.”
That thought sends waves of panic through me.
No one has seen my novel since college, where my creative writing professor made some lukewarm remarks and gave me a B minus.
And now here’s a bestselling author wanting to read it.
But what can I say? “Sure.” I swallow. “I’d love that. I’ll, uh, send it to you.”
“Great.” Alex drains his drink.
Someone bangs on the door and rings the bell at the same time.
Sunny jumps up. “What the fuck?”
She ushers a bedraggled Dale into the house. He’s not wearing an overcoat as if oblivious to the weather. His shirt collar is open, his tie off and wadded up in the pocket of his suit jacket, his blond hair dark with rain.
“Have you guys heard from Aubrey?”
Alex stands. “No. What happened?”
Dale turns toward the door, runs his hand across his forehead. “I don’t fucking know. No one’s seen her or heard from her since this morning.” Wind rattles the glass in the windows.
Alex’s brow furrows. “She go to Boston? Maybe she had a meeting there, her phone died.”
Dale shakes his head. “The last location I have for her phone is right here.” He points at the floor.
“Cheshire Lake. She was supposed to meet a client in Portsmouth this afternoon, but she never showed. And the cops won’t do a goddamn thing because ‘she’s an adult and doesn’t have to tell anyone where she is or where she’s going. ’”
The room falls silent except for the rain striking the windows. Dale’s gaze fastens on me. “Emma, you might’ve been the last one to see her.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I left for work this morning I saw you in a boat headed toward our dock. I looked in my rearview mirror just as I was rounding the bend in the road where the trees start. I saw you talking to Aubrey.”
I stand, place my glass on the end table. “I did talk to her for a few minutes. Then she went back in the house.”
“Well, no one’s seen her since then.” He puffs out his cheeks and everyone looks at me as if I can clear up what happened to Aubrey. But I have no clue.
Alex walks Dale to the door and I hear murmurs of concern between them. When Alex comes back into the front room, his forehead is furrowed. He picks up a poker from the stand next to the fireplace. “Freezing in here all of a sudden. I’ll build a fire.”
We finish our drinks as the flames flicker, illuminating the creepy inscription.
The next morning, Alex is busy in his office and Sunny is nowhere in sight. I need to return the pie pan to Ruth. I’d meant to do it sooner, but then with Simon’s death, it had slipped my mind.
Ruth greets me at the door and invites me into the kitchen, where a little radio plays on the counter and the smell of baked goods fills the air, a homey, comfortable scene.
A bag of flour, sugar, and measuring cups are scattered on the counter.
A mixing bowl sits in the sink, remnants of beige dough clinging to the sides.
Larry sits at the table drinking coffee and eating a cinnamon roll. “Dale heard from Aubrey yet?”
“I don’t know. Did he stop over here last night?”
“Yes,” Ruth says. “He’d just come from Alex’s. I guess he was making the rounds.”
Larry and Ruth exchange glances.
“She’s a flighty one, if you ask me,” Larry says. “And I don’t trust that Dale as far as I can throw him.”
Ruth wipes her hands on a dish towel. “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe she needed to get away for a while. They’re from Boston, don’t forget. We’re way out here in the country. The isolation doesn’t sit well with some people.”
I feel like an idiot standing in the middle of the room with the pie plate. Ruth seems to notice, and I hand it to her. “I meant to bring this back … before.”
“No problem, Emma. I have plenty. Sit. I’ll get you a cup of coffee. I just made a fresh batch of peanut butter cookies. They’re Alex’s favorite. I’ve been making them for him since he was a little boy. I’ll put them in a Tupperware container so you can take them home. But we’ll sample them first.”
Larry pats his stomach. “I’m always ten pounds up when I go home.”
“Nonsense,” Ruth says. “If you’d do a little more walking, you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”
Larry sips his coffee and grimaces. “I’m busy enough.”
I wonder what he does. He was supposed to be visiting for the weekend, but then after Simon’s death he seems to have settled in as if taking his place here at Cheshire Lake.
Maybe he has. Maybe now that Simon is gone, he’s decided to stay here with his aunt.
I wonder if he has a job back in New York.
While middle-aged, he still seems a little young to be retired.
Ruth sits opposite me with her coffee. “Jeffrey said that you were out on the lake yesterday morning, Emma.”
“I wanted to get some air.”
“Do you swim?”
“Yes.”
“Just be careful. The lake isn’t very big, and it looks fairly calm, but it has an undertow.”
“I don’t plan on swimming, Ruth. Not in this weather.”
“Just to be safe, make sure you wear a life jacket next time. Jeffrey said you weren’t wearing one.”
The doorbell rings.
“Who could it be this early?” Ruth asks, rising from her seat.
“Hope it’s not Dale again,” Larry calls after her.
Ruth returns with Detective Bellman. “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Tom?” she asks.
“Appreciate it, Ruth. Cold this morning.”
The detective stands in the doorway, his jacket zipped up to his chin. He removes his gloves and rubs his hands together.
Ruth hands him a mug. “What are you doing all the way out here so early?”
“We’re going back over to where Simon was found to do another search of the roadway and shoreline.”
“Still looking for a weapon?” Larry asks.
“That’s on our list.”
The room has grown close with the four of us. Detective Bellman seeming to have dragged in a gloomy air despite the pleasantries and the coffee drinking.
“We’re also looking at bringing in a dive team if we don’t find anything there,” he says.
Ruth leans against the counter. “What for?”
“Well, so far, we haven’t found anything that the assailant might’ve used to hit Simon, so the next logical step is the lake.”
“That’ll cost a pretty penny, won’t it?”
“It’ll stretch the budget, but it looks like it’ll have to be done.”
Ruth wipes at her cheeks. “Are you sure that autopsy got it right, Tom? Who in their right mind would hurt poor Simon?”
The detective sips his coffee, sets the mug on the table. “Maybe it was someone who wasn’t in his right mind, Ruth. I’ve known Simon my whole life, and I’m not going to rest until I find whoever did this.” His jowls shake with his words.
“Of course.” Ruth folds her hands together.
“You heard that Aubrey Thompson is missing?” Larry asks.
“We know. Her husband filed a missing persons report this morning.”
“That seems a bit suspicious to me.” Larry wipes sticky fingers on a napkin.
“Maybe. Well, I better get going, Ruth.” Detective Bellman pulls his gloves on. “Thanks for the coffee.”