Chapter Twenty-Three
I try to shake away the images from the dream as I rub the imprint of the dock’s wooden slats from my cheek.
Out on Burkehaven Cove, a man paddles a blue kayak along the shore until he faces the wreckage. The site of the fire continues to draw onlookers and will continue to do so until Reid erases the scar by building a new house.
“Was this your place?” the man asks.
He could be a reporter. A few have lurked around town, looking for an angle on my mother’s death even as the locals shut them out and the news cycle moves on. Or he could simply be taking a morning paddle. I suspect it’s the latter.
“I live in the next cove,” I say.
“You own your place?”
I do now. Along with half of Reid Construction.
I haven’t begun to dig into the business side of things, or learn how many other Vance Moodeys are out there, waiting to be paid.
Each time I bring it up with Reid, he deflects the conversation, though I did get access to the books. Maybe I’ll find some answers there.
“It’s a family cabin,” I say.
“I’m renting for the week,” the man says. “Got in last night. We come every year—same week, same house, Saturday to Saturday. The first morning, I get out on the lake and see what’s changed, and what’s the same.”
I wish he’d paddle away, but the wreckage seems to draw him closer. “Let’s hope no one got hurt here,” he says, in a way that makes me wonder if he’d rather hear the gruesome details of a painful death.
Eventually, he tells me to have a nice day and zips across the cove. As much as I wanted him to leave, I want to be alone with my thoughts even less. I linger on the hours and days after my mother died, the events that led up to my visit to the station, to my interrogation.
I think about the night I got out of the hospital and went to the Landing rather than staying at Idlewood.
I should have noticed my mother hadn’t returned from wherever she’d gone.
And the next day, when Gilcrest brought me here to Burkehaven, I should have been wary of his offers to help with the podcast. He has the recording of what I told him that morning.
And I can picture him behind the steering wheel of his SUV when he dropped me off outside the Landing, the way his expression changed when he read the text that came through on his phone.
That must have been when the arson investigation transformed into a homicide.
It was the instant my whole life changed, though I wouldn’t know for another few hours.
Later, after Freya burst into the police station, after Gilcrest admitted my mother was dead, I stood in the lobby of the station as the news washed over me. Seton stepped out of her office, and I heard myself saying, “You knew. You knew and didn’t say anything.”
“This isn’t on the chief,” Gilcrest said. “She was doing her job.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Seton said as Freya pulled me toward the door.
Outside, a reporter from the local news station waited with a cameraman. “Keep your head down,” Freya said. “Get in your car and leave. Don’t let them figure out your name.”
Then she transformed into a TV star, flashing a smile and tossing her hair.
With her tailored suit, she’d dressed the part of Gina Shock, and she provided enough of a distraction for me to make an escape.
As I sped away in the Volvo, I caught Freya in the rearview mirror, pausing long enough to let the cameraman capture her in action.
It would be a lengthy enough clip to run on the evening news along with a caption that read Beloved TV star caught up in local tragedy.
The following few days went by in a blur as we planned a memorial service, and I learned more about my mother’s death.
She didn’t die in the fire or from smoke inhalation, which, I suppose, came as a relief.
The medical examiner’s report indicated she died from blunt-force trauma to the head, maybe from the same tree branch used to assault me.
Or maybe with one of the many two-by-fours that lie around a construction site.
Or maybe from a beam that fell from the ceiling.
A pair of teenagers stumbled on her car, backed into a thick copse of trees. My mother, it turns out, hadn’t driven to Finstock.
While I remained in a state of shock, Reid threw himself into planning the memorial service.
He made lists and wrote the obituary and served as the family spokesman by reaching out to old friends.
When we met with the minister, he answered her questions.
And though he asked whether I wanted to speak at the memorial service, he seemed relieved when I declined.
The day before the service, I tried to take my mind off things by sliding under the Volvo to assess the damage to the rusted-out floor and sussing out which holes to patch.
A stone popped from beneath a tire as a car pulled up beside mine, and a pair of familiar-looking leather sneakers stepped onto the rutted ground.
Duncan Gilcrest leaned over and peered beneath the car.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
“Not without my lawyer,” I said.
“These questions aren’t hard,” Gilcrest said, back to playing good cop. “And they may help me solve the case.”
I slid out from beneath the car and ripped off my protective goggles. “I say lawyer; you stop talking.”
“Do you have a lawyer?”
“Talk to Paul Burke.”
“You might get another one,” Gilcrest said. “Everyone’s a suspect until eliminated, Paul included.”
“I still don’t want to talk to you.”
“One question, then I’ll leave. Why did your mother tell you she was going to Finstock when she wasn’t working on a project there? Reid Construction hasn’t had any work in that area of the state in years.”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said, then wanted to kick myself for answering.
“If you had to guess, what would you say?” Gilcrest asked. “Had she gone there before?”
Not that I could remember. “I have a car to repair and a memorial service to plan,” I said.
On TV, that kind of line usually cuts the cops off and provides a transition to the next scene. I turned on the sander, grateful for the noise as Gilcrest paced in his leather sneakers.
“The night before the fire,” he said, “your mother called Paul Burke.”
“They talk all the time,” I say.
“She also called Andrea Haviland.”
I turned off the sander. “I don’t think so,” I said. “My mother and Mrs. Haviland barely speak to each other.”
“They talked for over two minutes. According to Andrea, your mother asked to meet at Burkehaven, which explains why Andrea was out on the boat. But why would your mother call in the first place?”
I turned the sander on again and slid under the car.
Gilcrest got on his hands and knees. “There was a third call,” he said. “But not from your mother’s phone. She used a burner we found hidden in her bedroom to call another burner phone, and here’s where you’re in luck. We pinpointed that phone to somewhere near Finstock. Who would she have called?”
I thought back to the recurring dream, to asking my mother whether she was the one who’d hidden my father all these years. If Mark Kilgore was alive, he was the only person I could think of mysterious enough to warrant a burner phone.
But I’d let the detective figure that out on his own.
The following morning, a week after my mother died, we gathered in the small Unitarian church in downtown Hero, where I sat in the front pew with Hadley, Paul, and Reid.
Reid took to the pulpit. He wore a tailored black suit and talked about my mother through the lens of working with her at the firm.
He focused on her commitment to the business and her dedication to family, and inserted a line about overcoming obstacles, the only reference to my father, however oblique.
Behind us, the church’s pews were packed.
Some of the attendees I recognized—friends from town; Seton and Mrs. Haviland; even Gilcrest, who came with Freya—but the majority of the people I’d never seen, and it made me wonder what vast, complicated life my mother had lived outside of my tiny world.
Who had she spent time with, who had she loved, what mysteries lay deep within her heart?
I searched for my father, too, but if he was there, I didn’t find him.
At the end of the service, the minister invited attendees to Idlewood for a reception, where Blancy and a few others from the Landing served food and drinks from folding tables, while Hadley, Reid, and I greeted the line of mourners, each face melding with the last. Reid fended off the inevitable questions that came when one of these camps changed hands: What do you plan to do with the property?
“No decisions yet,” Reid said, no matter what form the question took.
When Vance Moodey’s turn came, he barely met Reid’s eyes. “I’m so, so sorry, son,” he mumbled to me.
Freya followed, pulling Hadley in for a long hug.
“It’s been too long, friend,” Hadley said.
“Almost forty years, but who’s counting,” Freya said, catching my eye. “Your aunt and I, we used to do everything together.”
“We’ll have to catch up,” Hadley said. “I’ll be around for another week or so.”
The night Freya and I had spent together seemed like another lifetime.
Here, especially with Gilcrest hanging at her shoulder, I wondered why she’d shown up at the police station.
Had she come to rescue me, or in the hope of generating headlines?
Or for some other reason altogether? Whatever the answer, now wasn’t the time to ask.
“Thanks for coming,” I said as she gave me a quick hug.
Gilcrest offered a hand as if neither the interrogation nor our conversation from the day before had ever happened. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.
Beside me, Reid said, “Made any arrests, Detective?”
Despite the exonerating video evidence, Reid remained convinced Mrs. Haviland had started the fire.
“It’s an active investigation,” Gilcrest said. “I’ll make an arrest when I can guarantee a conviction.”
I turned to the next person in line and thanked them for coming. I thanked a lot of people for coming, including Seton and her mom.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Reid said to Mrs. Haviland.
“We’ll be gone soon enough,” Seton said, placing a hand over mine and closing her eyes. “You okay?” she asked softly.
There was so much I wanted to say: that I was wrecked, that I hadn’t slept in a week, that I wanted her to tell me why she’d let Gilcrest browbeat me at the station, and that I’d give anything to get a beer with her at the Landing and sit quietly in the comfort of being together without saying a word—but if I said any of it, I’d start to bawl, and I wasn’t ready for that. “I’m fine,” I said.
She put a hand to the back of my head and mussed my hair. “Find me when you’re ready.”
Julian was the last person through the receiving line. He’d driven up from the city with some friends from the station. He wore a slim black suit and had his hair tied in a man bun.
“Take whatever time you need from work,” he said. “We’ll be there when you’re back, and it might be worth sticking around here. You have some great material already. Now’s the time, while the story’s hot.”
It took a moment to realize he was stuck on the podcast, and it was all I could do not to hurl every bit of pent-up rage from the last week at him. If I had, I suspect Julian would have turned my reaction into material for the podcast, too.
“Thank you for coming,” I said, and left the reception, crossing the footbridge and following the path through the woods to Burkehaven, where the burned-out house loomed over the cove.
Here, I pictured the fire raging around my mother’s body, threatening to consume her. And I mourned.
Since then, I’ve come to this dock almost every day to be alone.
I used the podcast as an excuse to open old wounds, to start difficult conversations, but what I wanted was to uncover the truth.
The one thing I haven’t been able to admit, not even to myself, is that I’m terrified my questions got too close to that truth and forced someone’s hand.
Maybe if I’d left well enough alone, my mother would still be alive.