Chapter Twenty-Five
She drives quickly, and soon the thick forest alongside the road transitions into a two-lane highway lined with strip malls and restaurants. “Has Vance Moodey come up in Gilcrest’s investigation?” I ask.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Harold: Duncan doesn’t confer with me on his open homicide investigations, and that’s too bad for him, because I’d make an excellent consultant.
Even if he did, I wouldn’t tell you what he said.
It would be a breach of trust. Let’s stick to finding Vance Moodey for now. What do you know about the guy?”
“I met him at Burkehaven the day I arrived for Memorial Day weekend,” I say. “He confronted my mother. And two days later, he came by Idlewood and got into it with my brother. Vance attended my mother’s memorial service. Now he showed up at Burkehaven again.”
“If he owns the lumberyard,” Freya says, “he’s probably worked with your mother for years. There can’t be that many suppliers in the region.”
“Reid owes Vance money,” I say. “Vance said as much when they were arguing.”
“And the Burkehaven project is stalled,” Freya says. “Cash flow may be a problem at the construction firm. Vance could be taking photos for a lawsuit.”
Something from the earlier conversation between Vance and my mother returns to me now.
After Vance left that day, I’d asked my mother what she owed him, and she’d replied that everything wasn’t about money.
If Vance hadn’t come to talk to her about the Burkehaven project, what could he have come for?
We drive in silence for a moment, until Freya says, “That night we met at the Landing, you weren’t straight with me, and you should have been.
But I wasn’t up front with you, either. Duncan and I were supposed to go out on his boat the night of the Lantern Festival, but he canceled and spent the evening at his cabin with his wife and kids.
I wanted to get back at him. And I used you.
So we’re more even than I want to admit. ”
“Is that an apology?” I ask.
“I don’t know if it’s an apology, but it’s my explanation for what happened, and it’s part of the reason why I came to find you this morning.”
“You were Gilcrest’s date to my mother’s memorial service.”
“I don’t know if date is the right word. Chaperone, maybe. I had to be sure he didn’t act like an asshole. Besides, he’s working an open homicide, and plenty of suspects were there.”
Including me.
“Did he learn anything?” I ask.
“I told him he could observe, but no questioning,” Freya says. “And I told you I wouldn’t talk about what I learned from Duncan. So stop asking.”
“I can’t make any promises,” I say, swiveling around to face her as she drives. “And I didn’t mind being used.”
Freya’s eyes glint in the sun. “Lascivious,” she says.
“I thought we were being honest,” I say.
Freya pulls up beside a lumberyard. A chain closes off the entrance. “Well, I didn’t mind using you, either,” she says, cutting the engine and turning to face me. “You made me feel young.”
Sunlight streams across her face. She’s beautiful, and in another life, we might have given things a go.
We came together when we both needed each other for different reasons, but that night won’t be something I forget anytime soon.
“What’s the game plan here?” I ask. “We could ask Vance why he came to Burkehaven this morning.”
Freya’s eyes search my face, as though she might have something else to add about our night together.
If she does, she lets it go and returns to the business at hand.
“We need more of a strategy, especially if the guy’s keeping secrets.
We’ll start by asking about your brother.
I’ll take the lead. I have plenty of experience talking to persons of interest.”
“You don’t, though,” I say.
“I have more experience than you.”
We get out of the truck and step over the chain and into the empty yard, where the air smells of split pine and mulch. “It’s Sunday,” Freya says. “They must be closed.”
We take a few steps across an empty parking lot toward a beat-up trailer. The truck that came to Burkehaven is parked beside it. “I wish Ginger were here,” I whisper.
“If it comes down to it, I’m packing,” Freya says.
“You brought a gun?”
She opens her bag, and I flinch. “Pepper spray,” she says, showing me the canister. “Don’t leave home without it. But I have a gun too. It’s locked in the truck.”
The door to the trailer slams open and Vance Moodey emerges, a bottle of Wild Turkey in hand, his eyes red and swollen. He wears a blue flannel coat and a backward baseball cap over his close-cropped hair. “We’re closed,” he says, squinting into the sun.
“We wanted to ask you some questions,” Freya says. “About your relationship with Reid Kilgore.”
“He’s a shithead,” Vance says. “And a liar. What about it?”
I feel myself rising to my brother’s defense and take a step forward, but Freya puts a hand of warning to my arm. “You and Reid,” she says to Vance. “You got into an argument a few weeks back.”
Under my breath, I whisper, “Start with some softballs.”
Vance reaches into the trailer, leaving the bottle of Wild Turkey on the step and retrieving a two-by-four. “I told you I was closed. Come tomorrow when the staff is here, and we can help you then. And I’m not answering any nosy questions.”
Freya stands her ground, hand in her bag, while I step back, ready to run.
A shadow passes over Vance’s face as the sun disappears behind a cloud.
He slips on a pair of glasses from where they hang from his collar, then focuses in on Freya.
“I know you,” he says, his shoulders softening.
“You’re the lady from that TV show. Sorry.
I had a robbery a few years back on a Sunday. I’ve been jittery ever since.”
“We saw you over at Burkehaven,” Freya says. “You were taking photos.”
“What about it?” Vance says.
“You came to my mother’s funeral,” I say.
Vance turns, as though seeing me for the first time. He smacks the two-by-four against his palm. “Damn,” he says.
He comes at me as Freya fumbles with the pepper spray in her bag.
I raise my hands, but the two-by-four clatters to the asphalt, and Vance has his arms out, and he pulls me into a bear hug, and I struggle to free myself until I realize he’s sobbing.
“Son,” he says as he swipes at his eyes with a meaty fist, “I didn’t want to intrude.
It didn’t seem like the time or the place. ”
I stop fighting, as I try to make sense of his words.
“I can’t believe it happened,” Vance says. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Suddenly, the pieces fall into place as I hear my mother’s voice in my ear: Everything isn’t always about money.
“You and my mother,” I say.
“I miss her,” Vance says. “All the time.”
I’ve been fighting feeling anything since the moment Gilcrest told me my mother died.
When Seton came to the reception at Idlewood, I was too withdrawn to lean on her, and even when Freya found me at the dock earlier this afternoon, I wanted to talk about anything but being sad.
Now, here, with Vance Moodey, this man I’ve barely ever met, I sob, huge ugly tears that won’t stop no matter how much I try.
Vance swipes at his eyes too. “Your mother and I, we used to meet at Burkehaven to watch the sun set. Things are changing there so quickly, with all the building. I wanted to capture what the cove looked like in my memory before those houses go up. That’s why I went over there to take photos.”
“How long were you together?” I ask.
“A few months, though we’ve known each other for years.
We’ve worked on dozens of projects, saw each other socially, but my wife, Evelyn, got sick last winter.
Jane was kind to her. She’d come to the hospital almost every week to play cribbage, bring cookies, try to get Evelyn to eat.
Evelyn kept telling me, right up until the day she died, that there’d be someone for me after she was gone.
It was the last thing in the world I ever could have contemplated, but then later .
. .” Vance blows his nose. “I shouldn’t have come to Burkehaven that day, when you and I met the first time.
I tried to force your mother’s hand. I wanted her to tell you about us and to make it official, but Jane wasn’t sure if you were ready. ”
I think back on the night I spoke to my mother in her room.
She said there was something she wanted to tell me, and I’d assumed it was a secret about my father.
Maybe all she wanted was to share that she was ready to move on with her life.
I wish she’d had the chance so I could have been happy with her.
“You look stunned,” Vance says. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“This isn’t what I expected,” I say.
He offers a hand. “I’m glad to know you, though I wish it was better circumstances.”
I take his hand in mine, and in a way it feels as though I’m reaching through time and touching a part of my mother’s life I never knew existed.
We talk for a few more moments and promise to get together sometime soon, a promise I’m not sure we’ll keep.
Though now that I own half of Reid Construction, we’ll probably work together in some way or another.
“We owe you money,” I say. “We’ll get that settled sooner rather than later. ”
“It’s a few thousand dollars,” Vance says. “Leave it to Reid, okay? Your mother wouldn’t want you involved, and neither do I.”
In the truck, Freya hands me a box of tissues. “I feel like an idiot,” I say.
“For crying about your mother?” Freya asks. “That’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“For not seeing what was right in front of me.”
“Sometimes things don’t make sense until they do,” Freya says. “One mystery’s solved, and now other pieces will fall into place. Clear the clutter to see what’s really happening—or that’s how it worked on most of my cases.”
“You didn’t work any cases,” I say.
“So you keep telling me,” Freya says. “But I’m working one now. With you.”