Chapter 32
IN THE MORNING, THE SUN IS TRYING TO PEEK OUT FROM A HEAVY CLOUD bank as I run past the cottage and round the bend to the backside of the lake road. I’m moving faster than usual and I’m gulping air, but I need this. I need to push myself to try to chase away all that’s happened, to clear my mind.
I see Dale up ahead at his mailbox. He notices me and waves me down. I don’t want to stop my run, but I don’t want to be rude either.
“Hey, Emma.” He holds a stack of mail in his hand, a huge clump of colorful ads and assorted envelopes, like he hasn’t checked the box in days.
Lines that I hadn’t noticed before trail his mouth.
Dark bags hang below his eyes. He’s dressed in old jeans and a faded hoodie as if it’s a Saturday and he plans to lounge around the house.
“How are you?” I ask, pulling up and slowing my breathing.
“I’ve been better. You?”
“Okay.”
“You got a minute? Want to come in for a cup of coffee?” He tilts his head at his enormous house.
I don’t really want to go inside with him.
There’s something off about Dale. Something in his somber countenance and weary appearance that wasn’t there when I first met him.
It’s as if he’s slowly falling apart, unwinding.
I can’t blame him with Aubrey’s disappearance.
But what if he actually had something to do with it?
Or with what happened to Simon? Maybe that accounts for the changes in him.
And what if Jeffrey told him I’d been in his backyard?
“Please?” he says. “I’m going out of my mind with worry about Aubrey, and the cops haven’t done a damn thing to help me find her.”
“I’m sorry.” I clutch my phone in the pocket of my sweatpants, follow him up the steps and through the massive front door.
Inside, the house is white, the floors, the walls, the kitchen counters, everything.
I feel like I’m in a science lab, but it’s just the prevailing modern décor, so different from Spencer House.
Dale’s voice seems to echo in the two-story kitchen/living room. “Cream? Sugar?”
He pours coffee into two white mugs.
“Yes, please.” He places one mug in front of me, carries over the cream and sugar. I sit on a stool at the breakfast bar and glance at the front door. It’s only a few strides away if I need to make a hasty exit.
Dale leans back against the counter across from me. “Anything new over at Alex’s?”
“No, not really. We haven’t heard from the police in a couple of days.”
“Are they going to search Spencer House?”
“I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“Or Ruth’s? Have they talked to Larry?”
“I don’t know, Dale.”
He sips his coffee, swirls it around in his mug, and takes another sip as if he’s deep in thought. “You’re friendly with Noah, right?”
“We’re friends.” Anxiety crawls up my back.
“Yeah, well, he and Aubrey were friends, too.” Dale’s brows draw together, and I wonder, again, if there was more to Noah and Aubrey’s friendship than Noah wants to say. Dale drains his mug, wipes his mouth with his hand, and I almost think he’s going to cry.
He sets the mug on the counter and starts pacing. “There’s too much going on here in this little enclave, Emma. And no one seems to give a shit that my wife is missing.” He turns to me. “You haven’t heard anything from her?”
“No. I haven’t had a chance to get to know her all that well. I doubt that she’d contact me.”
“You’d let me know if you heard anything, though, right?” His voice is rough with emotion.
“Yes, of course.”
Dale walks close to me, stands in my personal space. The whites of his eyes are red, and I smell the coffee on his breath.
“Be careful, Emma.” He stands back, wipes his hand over his mouth again. “There’s no telling what people are up to around here.”
“I’m careful.” I’m thinking maybe not so much being here with Dale. “Have the cops talked to you lately?”
“Bellman’s called a few times. Not about Aubrey, though.
” He snorts. “They don’t seem to give a damn about her.
He wants to search the house and grounds.
Still looking for the weapon used on Simon.
But they won’t find it here, so I told him to pound sand, you know?
They won’t look for my wife. I’m not going to help them out. ”
He leans back against the cabinets and taps his fingers against the countertop. “What am I going to do? Who knows if my wife is alive or dead? Maybe she’s buried here in someone’s backyard, or they’ll find her in the lake.” His face is flush and sweat beads cling to his hairline.
“I’m sorry, Dale,” I say. “I know this has to be really hard. They’ve finished searching the lake, though. They would’ve found her if she was there.”
“Right. Yeah.” He ruffles his hair as if that will help clear his mind.
His blond locks are thin and lank. He looks so different from the dapper businessman I met when I first arrived.
“It’s torture. What if there’s a killer here, still, at Cheshire Lake?
I mean, someone who’s looking to knock us all off?
And Simon and Aubrey are just the beginning? ”
My pulse is pounding in my ears. What if Dale’s right? Or what if he’s somehow involved and trying to convince me that he’s innocent?
“I need to get back,” I say. I slide off the barstool and walk toward the front door. Dale follows me.
“Please, Emma. Keep your ear to the ground. Let me know what everyone’s saying. They’ve all shut me out, of course. I’m an outsider.” He puts his hand against the front door, preventing me from opening it. “And so are you.” He smirks.
“I’ll do what I can,” I say. I just want to get out of here.
He sighs and steps back from the door. I turn the knob and step out into the cold air.
I start my run again, but my muscles are tight, and I can’t seem to get into a rhythm, so I slow to a walk as I circle the swamp. When I round the curve, I see a white van in front of Spencer House. Wonder what that’s about.
As I get closer, I see that it’s a news van.
Great. And there’s a woman and a cameraman on the porch with Alex.
Sunny is going to be pissed if this wasn’t cleared with her and she isn’t here to supervise.
That almost makes me smile. I don’t think it was planned because Alex didn’t mention anything to me about an interview.
I don’t want them to see me, so I slip into the woods by Noah’s house and make my way through the trees until I emerge in Alex’s backyard. I haven’t been to the cemetery in a while, so I take the path. I’ll ride out the interview there, hopefully.
I stop at Mary’s headstone, place my hand on top for a moment, and whisper a quiet thanks for her help when I was here so long ago.
Like I told Alex, I don’t remember her specifically, but she must have given me the doll, and she definitely took the picture of my mom.
I wander back into the deeper recesses of the cemetery, something I haven’t done before.
There are only a few other graves marked, their gray stones poking up through the brush that is encroaching from the woods as if nature would take back this little plot of land, hiding the bodies buried there for all time.
The graves go back to the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds.
All Spencers, all connected in some way.
My family. The DNA hidden in their bones connected to mine.
I’m here because they were here. I see a headstone with the name Lucy Harwood Spencer, so there is Harwood blood in the Spencer line.
I see what Noah meant by the intertwined neighbors.
And there’s a small headstone with a carved little lamb on top.
A child’s grave. But it’s so old, I can’t read the inscription.
A sad testament to the mortality rate of children long ago.
I start back toward the gate and pause to see if I can hear anything from out front, but I’m too far away.
I take a last glance at Mary’s grave. She died in 1995. So that’s when my mom and I were here. Alex was telling the truth about that, that I was about three years old. Then it occurs to me that Detective Bellman said that Carol Lawson hasn’t been seen since 1995. A coincidence?
I go into the house, quietly, through the back door. I hear Alex’s voice, talking to the reporter on the porch, winding down it seems.
“How was your run?” he asks, as I meet him in the foyer. He smiles, searching my face as if to silently ask, “Are we okay now?”
“Fine.”
There are dark circles under his eyes and stubble on his chin. He tips his head toward the front door. “Reporter.”
“You talked to her?”
He sighs. “Yeah. She’s been calling me off and on for two days. I don’t know how she got my number. I wanted to get rid of her, so I figured if I gave her something, she’d leave me alone.”
“What did she want to know?”
“What do I think about what happened to Simon? Do I have any ideas on who might’ve done it?
I have no idea, of course, and told her so.
” He smirks. “They think because I write murder mysteries, I have some crime-solving superpower, I guess.” Alex pats my shoulder and starts past me.
“I better get to work. I’m in the home stretch on the first draft of my Lizzie Borden manuscript. ”
“Did she ask you about Carol Lawson?”
He turns to face me. “She tried, but I shut that down pretty fast. I don’t know anything about what happened to Carol, so I think Miss Reporter was left with a whole lot of nothing.”
Alex nearly slinks away, it seems to me. He heads into his office and shuts the door.
Ruth is in her backyard, hedge clippers in her hands, which are covered with floral printed gardening gloves, her silver hair tucked under a sun hat, although the sun hasn’t fully come out in days.
She turns when she hears my shoes crunching through the leaves.
“Good morning, Emma.” She smiles. “At least I think it’s still morning.”
“Just.”