Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
“I swear to God, Ronan,” Heather says, craning her neck to peer up into the oak. “If this is another one of your tricks, I’m going to get the Directors Guild to come down on your ass so hard you’ll be feeling it for the rest of your life.”
It’s ten minutes after I spotted the clothes in the tree.
Nine minutes after I ran to Susie’s cottage so fast I kicked up gravel.
Eight minutes after I burst inside without knocking, finding it completely empty.
Seven minutes after I sprinted back across the green, glancing up at the tree just long enough to make sure the clothes were still there and that, like with Molly hours earlier, I wasn’t simply seeing things.
They were.
I wasn’t.
So I kept moving, to Heather’s cottage, flushed and breathless by the time she came to the door. “Have you seen Susie?” I said.
Heather shook her head. “Have you tried her cottage?”
“She’s not there. But that is.”
I grabbed Heather by the wrist, yanking her around the tree until she, too, saw the clothes.
“Shit,” she said.
The two of us fanned out, peeking into every cottage—including Susie’s again, just in case I somehow missed her the first time—and notifying the others. Now we’re all gathered at the gnarled oak, unsure if we should be worried about Susie—and suspicious of Ronan.
“It wasn’t me,” he says. “I swear. And this is no trick.”
I join Heather in staring up at the clothes hanging limply in the oak.
They’re clearly Susie’s. No one else wore that same style or color combination.
Also, all of us are dressed in our mandated outfits.
Even Ronan, who continuously tugs on his neckerchief like he’s praying on a string of rosary beads.
With the issue of ownership out of the way, only one question remains: How did the skirt and blouse get up there?
Caught on the end of an upper branch, surrounded by leaves, their presence seems accidental, as if they simply landed there like a deflated balloon.
It’s too high for someone at ground level to have reached up and hung them there.
A ladder would have been needed. A tall one.
“Who would do something like this?” Julianne says. “Why would they do it?”
Ronan’s script doesn’t give an explanation for why the dresses are put in the tree, mostly because Daisy’s diary doesn’t provide one, either.
The closest she gets is when she quotes Ruth Hume Semple talking about people leaving offerings for the witches they believed lived here long ago, including clothes left on the shore to appease them.
Despite that lack of reason, their meaning remains clear.
If clothes are found in the tree, the person who wore them is gone.
“There has to be a logical reason for all of this,” Violet says. “Did Susie have another costume just like that one?”
“No,” Ronan says. “Only one. Like the rest of you.”
Violet looks my way. “Marin, you were in her cottage. Did anything look out of place?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’d never been inside before.”
“Well, let’s all go look,” Violet says, taking charge with an unfussy efficiency that makes me realize she’d be amazing in a mystery series. A reboot of Murder, She Wrote, perhaps. Or maybe playing a faded movie star who now solves murders on various film sets.
Inside Susie’s cottage, nothing looks amiss.
Sure, it’s messy, with non-period clothes strewn everywhere, but not crime scene messy.
The only thing slightly suspicious is a Fendi satchel on the bed, sitting wide open next to her discarded nightgown, as if someone had been rooting through it.
Thinking robbery, I pick it up and dump its contents onto the bed.
Susie’s wallet is still there. As are a flashlight and a lithium battery for a device that notably isn’t present.
“Does anyone know what this could be for?” I say, pointing to the battery sitting among a compact, a tube of lipstick, and Susie’s vape.
“No idea,” Heather says. “But Susie wouldn’t leave without her wallet or vape.”
“No one said she left,” Julianne says.
Heather gives her a look. “No, but we’re all thinking it.”
“Did anyone see Susie this morning?” Violet says as she edges back outside, pausing on the cottage’s porch.
I certainly didn’t, and according to the others, they hadn’t, either.
“What about last night? Who was the last person to see her?”
I look to Ronan, wondering if he’ll admit that he’d gone to Susie’s cottage, how casually she’d opened the door, how he hesitated just a moment before slipping inside. When he doesn’t, I’m left with no choice but to do it for him.
“Ronan was,” I say, unable to meet his gaze. Although I’m not accusing him of anything, I know those words make it sound like I am, the unspoken allegation hidden in the space between them.
“Is that true?” Violet says, turning to Ronan.
“I don’t know if I was the last person to see her,” he says. “But, yes, I was here at her cottage last night.”
“What time was this?” Heather asks.
“I don’t know. A little after eleven, I think.”
“Why?” I say, the question itself an insinuation. There are very few reasons for a director to visit an actress at that hour. No good ones, at least.
Ronan looks at me, hurt. Like I’ve betrayed him somehow. I could say the same thing about him. “She slipped a note under my door asking me to come see her,” he says.
“Which you did,” Julianne says, making it clear just how imbalanced the conversation has become. Four against one. “What happened?”
“We talked a little bit,” Ronan says, hedging. “Then I left.”
“What did you talk about?” Violet again, resuming her role as leader.
“The movie.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Because it got uncomfortable.” Ronan again reaches for his neckerchief. “I got uncomfortable. It turned sexual. At least it felt that way to me. So I left.”
Heather gives him a look, hands on her hips. “Just so we’re clear. You’re saying this was Susie’s doing? That she initiated a conversation that made you uncomfortable?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Sorry if I don’t buy that,” Heather says.
I’m not sure I do, either. Yes, my immediate assumption upon seeing Ronan step into Susie’s cottage was that she was trying to seduce him.
But was he as unwilling as he claims? I stopped watching the cottage after that.
I have no idea how long he was there. It might have been five minutes.
It might have been all night. Even if he’s lying, it doesn’t mean he did something to Susie.
“Maybe Azra took her,” Julianne says, back in the grass and staring up at the tree. “Just like in the screenplay.”
Next to me, Heather scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Julianne says. “First Brad gets sick and has to be evacuated from the island. Loretta is nowhere to be found. Now Susie is gone, too.”
“She’s not gone,” Violet says, aiming for reassurance but coming off sounding uncertain herself. “She’s just not…here.”
“Was Susie angry when you left last night?” I ask Ronan, making the assumption that he’s telling the truth and nothing happened between them.
“I don’t know,” he says. “She seemed pouty.”
“Enough to want to fuck with your head?” Heather asks, refreshingly blunt. “Marin’s onto something. Maybe Susie did this herself, trying to get your attention.”
Ronan works his jaw, thinking. “To make me pay for rejecting her?”
“Maybe,” Heather says. “She hung her clothes in the tree and then left the island.”
I look to the wrought iron arch over the path.
Beyond it is the way to New Avalon’s only dock.
If Susie did get off the island, that’s where she would go.
But in what boat? In order for her to leave, someone would have to arrive.
And the most likely person—Loretta—makes no sense.
If she made it back to the island, even briefly, surely she’d announce her return, if not to everyone, then at least to her sister.
Violet must be thinking the same thing because she says, “That’s highly unlikely. The rest of us would know if another boat was here. My guess is Susie is still around. Maybe she’s hiding somewhere. Or was trying to hide and got lost.”
“On an island this small?” Heather says. “That’s impossible. You reach the water, turn around, head back to the center.”
I’m hit with a sudden, horrible thought. “What if she can’t? What if she’s hurt?”
“Hiding or hurt, we need to find her,” Heather says, snapping into action like one of the supercompetent women she plays on TV. “We should spread out and search the island. In groups of two. No need for someone else to go missing.”
We all agree that’s a good idea and pair off.
Heather and Julianne head south toward the dock, while Violet and I go north, toward the cliff.
The plan is to work our way clockwise, heading inland as we circle the island.
Because he’s the odd man out—and because none of us fully trust him—Ronan stays behind in case Susie or Loretta returns.
That two women are now MIA makes me realize my initial impression about this endeavor was correct.
Coming to New Avalon was indeed a very bad idea.
A reasonable part of me assumes we’ll find Susie, she’ll cop to messing with us, and this will all be over by lunch.
Yet another part of me—the one that heard a malevolent whisper during the séance and thought my dead sister was outside my window—fears something else is happening here. Something sinister.
The feeling only gets worse as Violet and I approach the woods behind Julianne’s cottage.
All the trees that border the forest here also bear daisy wheels—a chilling reminder of Mrs. Semple’s mad father.
I picture him knife in hand, blade chipping away at the bark, desperately trying to fend off the mangled ghosts of men killed by his cannons.
Did he see them in these woods? Were they the dark force that took Daisy and the others? Have they now done the same with Susie?
“Something is wrong,” Violet says as we move past the daisy wheels and into the forest. “With Susie, of course. But also Loretta. It makes no sense that she’s not back yet. The only thing I can think of is—”
She stops herself from uttering the worst-case scenario, as if speaking it aloud will somehow make it real. I understand because it’s the same reason I’ve avoided even thinking about it. Now, though, it’s impossible not to assume the worst—that Brad is dead.
A tragedy like that would surely keep Loretta away for more than a day as she deals with the authorities, contacts Brad’s next of kin, informs the studio, which surely has protocols to follow and insurance issues to contend with.
Now there’s also this situation with Susie, which makes everything even more fraught.
“Do you think Ronan’s telling the truth?”
Violet sighs and reaches for a nearby pine branch, her fingers trailing through its needles. “I don’t know. You?”
“I hope he is,” I say, which is different from yes.
“For Susie’s sake? Or Ronan’s?” Violet gives me a sidelong glance. “I know you’re fond of him. Which is completely understandable. It’s easy to develop a crush on a director.”
“It’s not a crush,” I protest, even though that’s exactly what it is. Well, was. After last night, I’m not as enamored with Ronan as I used to be.
“Well, try to keep it that way. Trust me, I know how quickly an intense bond with a director can form—and how it can fall apart even faster.”
After that, we continue searching in silence. I scan the trees, seeing nothing amiss. The only thing that catches my eye is a group of trees fifty feet away that seem to form a wall around something. A fortress of wood. I peer past them to a circular clearing that’s eerily familiar to me.
“It’s real,” I say, moving to the edge of the clearing.
“Just like in the screenplay,” Violet says.
Yes, that, too, but I had meant Daisy’s diary.
The clearing is exactly how she described it.
The trees ringing it form a circle so perfect that it had to have been intentional.
Someone created this place, likely a long time ago.
Why it hasn’t grown over in the intervening decades is a mystery.
Only moss covers the clearing—now a dull brown, not the blazing red Daisy described—surrounding the massive rock in its center.
I step into the clearing, awed and anxious. The circle seems to hum with an energy missing from the rest of the forest. I suspect it’s the moss. All that moist earth beneath it makes it feel like it’s just rained.
Or maybe it’s because of the rock, which is so large it emits a sort of gravitational pull.
I move toward it, Violet right behind me.
I’ve been hiking before. I’ve seen boulders in the wild.
Huge, shapeless monoliths. This isn’t like that.
Waist-high and flat, its shape seems purposeful.
Like it’s some kind of ancient ruin. Part of the earth but also seemingly placed here.
But the way it looks is not the strangest thing about the rock.
That would be the digital camcorder that sits atop it.
Although it’s unclear how long it’s been there, I assume it hasn’t been long. Save for a couple of scratches on its side, there’s nothing to suggest wind or rain damage. When I press the power button, it starts up immediately.
I turn the camcorder over and open the back. Inside is a battery exactly like the one I saw in Susie’s cottage, along with an SD card.
“Something might be saved on it,” I say.
“We shouldn’t watch,” Violet says, not elaborating if it’s because she doesn’t want to invade the camcorder owner’s privacy or is simply scared of what we might see.
“We have to. I think it belongs to Susie.”
Despite her protests, Violet joins me at the rock. We lean against it, huddled together, as I flip open the camcorder’s LCD screen.
Then, with a deep breath, I press play.