“It’s only been a few days. Can’t we wait?” I stand. I can just see some Fox 25 reporter in her ice-cream-colored suit and plastic makeup, delivering the line: “A local mystery writer is now the star of his own mystery.”
Lindy looks up at me, her eyes sharpening. I now see the veins in them, the swelling in the soft pink corners I’ve been ignoring all this time. “This isn’t the kind of decision we should be putting off. You’re not a little girl, Imogene. You have a crucial role in this family, and I want you to be part of these decisions. I need you with me, and I need you to understand.”
“I know you’re worried.”
“You must be worried too, Immy, even if you won’t admit it.”
On the one hand, I can practically hear my shoulders creak under the weight of everything I know, and everything she doesn’t. She looks so sad, with her swimming eyes. But on the other hand, knowing what Dad is up to when no one else does almost feels like a superpower. And isn’t it? Sherlock Holmes is a morphine and coke addict and depressed as hell. Dirk Gently from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a fat gambler who was once arrested for psychically plagiarizing exam papers. Nero Wolfe from Over My Dead Body drinks like a fish during Prohibition, keeps track of his boozing by stashing the bottle caps in his desk. And Miles Faye: in ten books, he never once had an actual relationship, and every friend of his we hear about is a dead friend. All the great detectives are screwed up somehow, and those are just the men. But they have the truth. They have the big answer. Isn’t that the best power there is?
But I couldn’t tell Lindy the truth if I wanted; I don’t have it yet. So I duck the question. “Even Officer Griffin said he was, like, in control of his faculties. That he knows what he’s doing.”
“You heard that?” She sighs and digs purposefully into her stir-fry.
I stand. Let her think it’s too hard for me to talk about, if it will end this horrible conversation. “I just . . . I just want to go shopping with Jessa tomorrow. Is it okay if I go to bed early?”
“Of course, Immy. Of course. I’ll leave you some cash tonight for an outfit, to start.”
“Thanks.” I give my plate a lazy rinse in the sink, jam it in the dishwasher, and retreat to my room.
Like the rest of the house, my bedroom contains the same stuff it always has. Same twin bed, same sun-washed blinds, same pictures on the hand-me-down desk. Every book I’ve ever read, even the bad ones. I wouldn’t throw away a book any more than I’d toss a pet out on the street, if I’d had any pets since my ill-fated goldfish. Rebecca is currently being used as a coaster.
I flop onto the unmade bed and reach into my book bag, extracting my copy of A Time to Chill, the stone heart, and the stack of photos. All of these I tuck into my nightstand drawer, except for one picture: Mom on the lawn of her childhood home, in front of the forked paper birch, the chain-link fence, the queasy storm sky. On the drive home from the ski slopes, Jessa tried dialing Lil’s number to get an address a couple times, but she never picked up, and she never returned our messages. So no help’s coming from her.
I squint at the small white house behind my mother. An American flag dangles from the lamppost along the front walk, limp and greasy-looking. If there’s a number on the door, I can’t see it.
In the next picture of Mom and Lil, they stand on the lawn of the church, a steeple towering over them with a pale green roof. I pull my own laptop from the desk. Speaking of problems that never crop up in detective stories these days, where’s a genius computer hacker when I need one? The main mystery-solver always has a friend they can go to and say, “Hey, Sullivan, the perp seems to have disappeared by the old town hall.” Then Sullivan sits at the computer, cracks his neck, and with a little pitter-patter on the keyboard, he says “Okay, I’ve accessed the security footage for the past twenty-four hours from the bank across the street, and here he is going into the storm drain behind the Pretzel Shack!” A friend like that could, I don’t know, break into the Fitchburg real estate records and find the Fayes’ and the Wards’ old addresses in a heartbeat.
My Watson is busy eating dinner with her own family up the road. So I’ve got work to do before I get her back tomorrow morning.
THIRTEEN
“Since when are you busy?”
Jessa sighs over the phone. “I know, I know. Sucks, right? I totally forgot. I promised Mom we’d have a girls’ day before this big pediatric conference she’s going to, and this is her only day off all week. She booked us a treatment for two at In Your Facial, that spa in Newton? And she paid ahead of time.”
“Okay, I understand.”