Chapter Three
Hero is too small of a town to arrive without being noticed, especially by a cop like Seton, who wears aviators and has dark hair cropped short.
Her boxy uniform hangs off her as though she picked it up at a costume shop for a Halloween party and forgot to order the sexy version.
She taps on the glass and waits for me to crank down the window before resting her tattooed—and jacked—forearms on the yellow door.
“Charlie Kilgore,” she says. “Don’t lose this beater. Otherwise, I won’t know when you get to town. Glad you survived the winter.”
“Good to see you, Seton,” I say.
“You were speeding. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and everyone’s coming back to the lake for the summer. You have to watch out for kids.”
We’re in the middle of nowhere, on a road lined with thick forest and outcroppings of granite, but I’ve known Seton since we learned to swim together on the lake as kids.
We still go swimming, and one of these days, maybe I’ll work up the courage to confess I find her plenty sexy beneath that boxy uniform, in a tattooed, pierced, tough-as-nails kind of way.
I suspect, though, that Seton wants to keep me safely friend-zoned.
“Does this car look like it can speed?” I ask. “I should report you for police harassment.”
Seton shifts the aviators to look at me over the frames. “Report away. I’m the chief of police now—or acting chief, at least till they fill the vacancy. My mom’s on the hiring committee. Think I’ll get the job?”
Seton will get the job, and it won’t be because her mother pulled strings. Seton’s nothing if not competent.
She leans her back against the car and shimmies down until her legs form a right angle. “Missed my wall sits this morning,” she says. “Gotta work the glutes. Did I tell you about the helicopter? The town bought one, and I’m getting my license. If you’re nice, I’ll take you for a ride.”
The last thing in the world I want is to get in a helicopter with a novice pilot. “We’ll see,” I say.
“Sure, we will,” Seton says. “How’s the journalism career?”
“Good as can be,” I say. “I like the radio station.”
“You could move here and take over the Kingston Gazette. Ollie’s ready to retire.
We could work cases together, me the cop, you the reporter.
Haviland and Kilgore. It’d be like one of those cheesy old TV shows, except nothing happens here besides the usual drug dens and hunting violations. And speeding.”
“I wasn’t speeding,” I say.
“Speed limit’s forty. You were going forty-two, but I’ll let you off.
” She stands and shakes out her legs. “Here are some stories you could cover: The Randalls’ rooster has been waking the whole neighborhood at the crack of dawn.
And someone’s stealing firewood from the Millers’ house, but they refuse to put in a security camera.
Autumn and Juna over on Sheridan Road are constantly getting out—they’re dogs, by the way. ”
Before she can delve into minute details from the latest town meeting, I cut her off. “Do you ever run into Lisa Lawson?”
“That lady who used to be in local theater? Not really, but she lives in Enstone, not Hero. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I say.
“Well, here’s another thing going on around town,” Seton says. “My mom has it in for Paul Burke. He tore down his old cabin at Burkehaven. Now he’s putting in a whole development.”
Seton’s mother, in addition to being on the hiring committee for the new chief of police, is the unofficial mayor of Hero, a position she manages from the café she owns downtown.
She’s also the chair of the Hero Conservation Commission and opposes most new development, which usually involves attending public hearings and then getting drunk and rage-posting on the town listserv, the Hero Board.
Unfortunately for her, the Burkehaven project was approved unanimously.
“I know all about Burkehaven,” I say. “Reid’s designing the development.”
My family’s construction firm won the bid, and Seton’s mother’s opposition probably has more to do with our involvement than anything else.
Seton’s mother, Andrea Haviland, is the widow of Isaac Haviland, the man my father killed, a topic Seton and I manage to avoid discussing however we can. It’s the only way we’ve stayed friends.
“This is a part of the story you probably don’t know,” Seton says.
“Someone took out the security cameras at the construction site yesterday morning with a spare sledgehammer. I’ll give you one guess who the prime suspect is.
My mom. I had to question her. She tried to blame it on teenagers who hang out there and drink. ”
“She could be right,” I say. “We drank plenty of Bud Light at Burkehaven when we were that age.”
“Well, now she’s not speaking to me,” Seton says. “But I finally moved out of her house. I got an apartment in town. It’s over the café, so technically my mom’s my landlord. And right now, I’m banned from the café.”
With the sound of an approaching car, Seton stands straight, smile gone, her thumbs resting in her belt loops. The car slows as it passes, and the driver shouts Seton’s name.
“Gotta look like I’m earning my keep,” she says, dropping the act as soon as the car turns the next corner.
“Try arresting the Randalls’ rooster,” I say.
“Thanks, hack,” Seton says. “That’s a good line: Thanks, hack. I’ll say it when we work together on Haviland and Kilgore. It’ll be my signal to the audience that I know how annoying you are.”
“There is no Kilgore and Haviland,” I say.
“It’s Haviland and Kilgore. Get it right. Alphabetical. I’m the main character. You’re the sidekick . . .” Seton pauses, glancing past me. I follow her gaze to where the digital recorder sits on my dashboard, the red record light illuminated. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“Sorry, I forgot that was on.”
She reaches over my shoulder and hits pause. “You can’t record someone without consent. It’s a felony. And erase what I said about my mom.”
Another car turns the corner. Seton nods at the driver and touches the brim of her hat. When the car passes out of sight, she crouches. “Spill. What’s the recording for?”
“A podcast.”
“About what?”
“You can’t tell anyone,” I say.
Seton swears under her breath. “That’s why you were asking about Lisa Lawson. She used to live with the lead detective on my dad’s murder case. Is this some true-crime crap about our fathers?”
So much for the détente on that topic.
“Why would you dig all that up?” Seton asks. “We all know what happened, Charlie.”
Damn. We all know what happened, Charlie—that would have been a good line to record.
“I’m trying to find out what really happened,” I say.
Another good line.
“We all know what really happened, too,” Seton says. “Your dad killed mine, and by some miracle, we’re friends, though right now I’m not sure for how much longer.”
“Will you say We all know what happened, Charlie, again for the recording?”
“No! I’m not saying anything for the recording. That story’s been following me for my entire life. Keep me out of it.”
“Okay, okay,” I say. “I get it. You don’t want to be interviewed. The podcast is mostly conceptual anyway, and it probably won’t go anywhere.”
“How about guaranteeing it doesn’t go anywhere by not doing it?”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not great on follow-through.”
“It’s one of the things I like best about you.” Seton kicks at the Volvo’s front tire. “Are you coming to the café tonight?”
“I thought you were banned from the café.”
“I don’t listen to my mom.”
“And that’s one of the things I like best about you,” I say. “But I won’t be able to get there till tomorrow. We’re opening the camp today. And there’s the Lantern Festival.”
Tonight, as on every Memorial Day weekend, paper lanterns will float over the lake—like they did twenty-five years ago.
“You lake people and your traditions,” Seton says.
“The Lantern Festival is a fire hazard. I should sic my mom on you and get it banned. Payback for your stupid podcast.” A voice crackles over her radio, something about an incident at Burkehaven.
“Speaking of my mom.” Seton takes a deep, centering breath, one that she exhales for a full five-count.
“I have to take care of another mess she’s in the middle of.
You stay out of it. Understand? And drop the podcast. It’s a terrible idea.
Like, the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life. ”
She jogs to the cruiser and speeds past me toward town. When the sound of the siren fades, I start the recording again. As Julian told me earlier, if people don’t get angry, there’s no story to tell. And I have no intention of dropping the podcast, for Seton or anyone else.
“We all know what happened, Charlie,” I say. “That’s what Seton Haviland said to me. She doesn’t want me to dig into the past. Her father died. My father killed him. We’ve carried the weight of that burden through our whole lives, of what happened, of what was taken, and what could have been.”
I pause as another car passes, waiting until the sound of the engine has faded in the distance.
“Here’s more of what I know,” I say. “Seton’s father, Isaac Haviland, hired Reid Construction to rehab an old train depot in town.
My mother, Jane Reid, and Mr. Haviland began working closely together, which led to an affair.
When Mr. Haviland showed up at Idlewood, he intended to convince my mother to leave with him. ”
I pause. The rest of the story is hard to say out loud.
“My father stabbed Isaac first, then my mom, then turned on my brother Reid and me, but Reid escaped with me in a rickety old rowboat. He pulled on the oars until we were a hundred yards from shore, drifting on the inky water, while paper lanterns floated overhead. It was early in the season. The docks hadn’t yet gone in, and the other boats were in storage.
That didn’t keep my father from wading into the water and begging Reid to return to shore.
Reid rowed farther into the lake to keep us safe, and my father eventually fled the scene.
“Hours later, a local cop found the two of us huddled on that boat. A massive manhunt began, with Wendy Burrows leading the investigation, and the next day, this yellow Volvo, the one I’m driving right now, was found at a trailhead in the White Mountains as a freak spring snowstorm hit the region and stranded hikers all over the range.
Resources were diverted to search and rescue, and by the time the hunt for my father resumed, the trail had grown cold.
The police claim my father died on that mountain, though his body was never found. ”
I tap my finger on the steering wheel.
“Isaac Haviland’s murdered. My father disappears. The lead investigator drowns.”
We all know what happened, Charlie.
We do know. Or we should know. My father died in those mountains. He must have. He was an accountant who wore glasses and sang in regional theater, not a mountain man, so if he didn’t die, he should have been caught by now.
“But without a body,” I say, “you can never truly know if someone’s gone.”