Chapter Thirty-Three
Between Freya’s rifle and Ginger’s teeth, I don’t dare move or ask Reid what he’s doing here, sprawled in the brook by the trailhead, or if he had anything to do with the message smeared on Freya’s truck.
I certainly don’t ask if that message is somehow connected to the photos of Freya he had taped on his bedroom walls as a teenager.
Instead, I focus on sounds: water flowing over rocks and birds chirping in the trees. It could almost be peaceful here.
Except then Reid shifts, and Ginger lunges, and Freya shouts, “Heel,” and the dog backs off, her body quivering, every part of her ready to attack.
“If he bites me,” Reid says, “I’ll have him put down.”
“If she bites you,” Freya says, “you’ll have earned it.”
I manage to find my voice. “This is Reid, my brother.”
Reid probably wants to lay into me about the podcast, like Seton. That could be why he came to the trailhead in the first place.
“Reid and I have met plenty of times,” Freya says. “Paul used to bring him to the set when he was at NYU, and he’s been trying to talk me into buying the house at Burkehaven for months. What the hell are you doing here?”
For a moment, Reid seems as though he might not answer, but he relents. “I came looking for Charlie. Paul told me you were up at the summit, but the two of you were having a moment, and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever was about to happen. Then Teeth here came charging.”
“Put the gun down,” I say to Freya. “What will he do, anyway? He’s wearing capri pants.”
Freya lowers the barrel and hands me the rifle.
“I thought I lost my gun privileges,” I say.
“You got a reprieve.”
“This water is freezing,” Reid says.
“Release,” Freya says.
Ginger relaxes. I pull a treat from my pocket, and the dog comes to me.
Reid has the good sense to stand slowly.
His sodden clothing clings to his body, outlining the wallet and phone beneath the fabric, but no bottle of nail polish, which Freya seems to realize, too, as she says, “The police will need to set up a perimeter and find out what he did with it.”
“With what?” Reid asks.
Freya catches my eye and barely shakes her head.
“Someone used blue nail polish to write on Freya’s windshield,” I say. “She has a stalker, and now he’s in New Hampshire.”
“Thanks for the discretion,” Freya says.
Reid steps out of the river, the soles of his espadrilles slipping on the slick stone. My brother came dressed for a garden party, not to terrorize.
“Walk in front where I can see you,” Freya says. “And Charlie, tell Seton what’s happening.”
It’s only then I hear Seton’s voice shouting from the other end of the call I never disconnected.
“What the hell is going on there?” she says. “I’m two minutes out.”
“How much did you hear?” I ask.
“Enough to call for backup. Maggie’s on her way, too.”
“Meet by the trailhead,” I say.
A moment later, Seton speeds up the road in her cruiser, lights flashing. She gets out of the car deliberately and approaches with her hand poised over her holster. “Lock those firearms away,” she says to Freya.
Freya checks the chambers on both rifles and stores them in the gun rack at the back of her truck.
“And the dog,” Seton says. “Let’s put her in my cruiser.”
“Is she under arrest?” Freya asks.
“She should be,” Reid says.
“Zip it,” Seton says. “Both of you.”
Ginger follows Freya to the cruiser and leaps into the back seat. As soon as the car door closes, Reid says, “That thing tried to kill me.”
“You have all your fingers and toes,” Seton says. “Don’t make something out of nothing. Can everyone get along, or do I have to wait for my deputy?”
Reid kicks a stone into the trees. “We’re fine.”
Seton glances at Freya, who nods.
“These two seem to have something between them,” Seton says to me. “Charlie, why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“Freya came at me with a rifle and an attack dog—” Reid begins, but Seton interrupts him.
“Walk it off,” she says.
Reid charges up the road. Seton watches him for a moment. “Is he hurt?”
“Only his pride,” I say. “He got taken down by two women . . . or two females. Freya and Ginger. Now you’re here to berate him, too.”
Freya suppresses a smile, one that feels good to see after these past twenty minutes.
“Keep talking,” Seton says to me, “and don’t believe for a second you’re off the hook for what you did with the podcast. How could you have posted that file without telling me?”
I don’t bother with excuses. “My producer’s taking it down,” I say.
“It’s too late,” Seton says. “The story’s out there and spreading like lice. Ollie from the Kingston Gazette’s been hounding us at the station for the last hour. There’ll be others soon. But we can deal with your mess later. Let’s focus on what happened here.”
I cover the events of the last half hour, beginning with emerging from the trail, and ending with pursuing Reid through the forest. “What did I miss?” I ask Freya.
“Only the part where you went commando with the rifle,” she says.
“I wasn’t the only one,” I say.
Seton ignores the bickering as she examines the windshield. “And you didn’t see anyone else in the area besides Reid?”
“Gilcrest was at Burkehaven Farm earlier,” I say.
Seton’s eyes narrow. She’s in full cop mode now. “Meaning?” she says.
I wave a hand toward Freya’s truck. “Shouldn’t the boyfriend be a suspect?”
“That would make you a suspect, too,” Seton says. “So quit playing detective.” She turns her attention to Reid as he joins us again. “Have you cooled off?”
“For now,” he says.
A second cruiser speeds up the rutted road, and Maggie, the deputy, gets out. So does Paul, who storms toward us, his face red. He glares at Reid and then me, before pulling Freya in for a protective hug. She crumples against him.
“This road goes right past your place,” Seton says to Paul. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Paul says. “Charlie was there earlier helping me fix a wall. Duncan Gilcrest came by, too. Then Reid stopped in and asked if I knew where Charlie had gone. I sent him to the trailhead.”
Seton barely touches my forearm, a warning to keep my mouth shut. “When did Gilcrest leave the farm?” she asks.
“About an hour ago,” Paul says. “Jesus, Freya. I told you not to play those shows at the Landing. We were trying to lie low here.”
“I can’t hide,” Freya says. “I should have learned that by now.”
“Thank God nothing worse happened,” Paul says.
Seton punches a text into her phone and confers with the deputy, who begins to cordon off the area with yellow crime-scene tape.
“Normally I’d have to do backbends to get the state cops to focus on an incident like this one,” Seton says, “but Gilcrest is sending a couple of techs this way. And before anyone asks, Gilcrest was driving his daughter to a softball game. Now he’s on his way here. ”
From the trees, the deputy shouts. Seton joins her and takes more photos, before emerging from the woods with a wad of paper towels smeared with blue. She drops the wad into a plastic bag. “Let me see your hands,” she says to Reid.
Paul gives Reid a quick nod, and Seton snaps a photo of both sides of Reid’s outstretched hands. “You, too,” she says to Paul.
Before she can ask, I hold out my hands, too.
“I need to talk to Freya,” Seton says. “The rest of you head to the farm and wait. I’ll have questions for you, too.”
“I’ll stay,” I say.
“You won’t, though,” Seton says.
“I can handle myself, Harold,” Freya says. “I’ll be at the house soon.”
Paul, Reid, and I make our way down the unpaved road toward Burkehaven Farm, the two of them walking together and talking softly, while I trail behind and replay the afternoon’s events: the conversations with Seton, Mrs. Haviland, and Paul; the grid we scratched in the dirt; the theories Freya and I put forth; Julian’s stupid move with the podcast. And that’s not even taking into account the mysteries that keep converging: the fire, my father’s reappearance, my mother’s murder, now Freya’s stalker.
Four separate, unrelated incidents. Or maybe not so unrelated.
What if . . . what if . . . what if . . .
Start with the simplest explanation.
Gilcrest was at Burkehaven Farm earlier. And he worked for the security firm in New York when Freya was on Eternal Flame. And he lured her here to New Hampshire, far away from her life in Manhattan. He’s touched every part of that plotline.
We arrive at the farm and enter Paul’s converted barn, an enormous kitchen built from reclaimed materials, with ceilings that soar to the rafters, and a wine cellar in the old hayloft.
“Gilcrest and his team should be laser focused on Andrea Haviland,” Paul says.
“We don’t need him distracted with protecting his girlfriend. ”
Reid raises an eyebrow. “Or maybe Gilcrest will learn something about his girlfriend he doesn’t want to know. It’s pretty convenient having a stalker return in the middle of a murder investigation, especially when the woman being stalked has been trying to revive her flagging career for decades.”
I’ve had similar thoughts, but they don’t jibe with what I observed in the moment. “Freya was terrified,” I say.
“Freya’s an actress,” Reid says. “She’ll play any role she needs to, including damsel in distress. What do you bet she’s on the phone with her agent right now trying to book a gig?”
“Freya’s been avoiding the reporters,” I say.
Or she mostly has.
“That makes them want to talk to her more,” Reid says. “We’ll see what the cops dig up. They might find connections they never imagined.”
“Watch it, Reid,” Paul says, resting his hands on the marble counter.
“We need to stick together and keep the story tight and to the point. That’s the way you get through these things.
I know both of you are upset about . . .
about everything. I am, too.” He catches Reid’s eye.
“Let’s not go creating links where none exist. The FBI hasn’t managed to find Freya’s stalker.
Why would it be different for the New Hampshire state police? ”
“There are a lot fewer suspects than there were in Manhattan,” Reid says. “Plus, we have Seton Haviland on the case, and Charlie here, too. He gets off on digging into things that should be left alone. Any new sightings of Dad?”
I ignore the jab. I also haven’t forgotten Reid’s teenage bedroom, the walls covered with images of Freya he’d torn from magazines, images my mother thought made him feel safe. “What were you doing at the trailhead?” I ask.
“I was looking for you,” Reid says. “What were you thinking, releasing that podcast? You’ve done enough damage. And stay away from Vance Moodey, or anyone else I work with. Your questions are making trouble I don’t need. People are talking and calling in debts.”
Off in the distance, a police siren sounds as a thought suddenly takes shape: The simplest explanation for what happened to Freya’s truck has nothing to do with Duncan Gilcrest or a long-ago connection to a soap opera set.
Instead, it’s standing right here trying to convince me Freya did this to herself.
Reid owns the building where Freya lives and showed more than a passing interest in her years ago; he has access to her condo and its security system, which means he could have easily slipped into the apartment and taken that bottle of nail polish; and we found him hiding in the woods by the truck.
But the question is why. Could the answer lie in the money he owes? Reid and I do need to talk. But not here, not in front of Freya’s lawyer, and not with the police on the way. “We’ll finish this later,” I say to him.
When we’re alone.