Pete Darnell, Doro’s friend. These must have been his parents.
Doro said the Darnells were regulars at Ambletern; maybe they’d show up in later registries. I ran back over to the box and pulled out a stack of three more books. Sure enough, the Darnells appeared regularly in each one, every summer for the next eight years. They seemed to always come in May and stay for two weeks exactly. After 1983, there was no sign of Pete or his family.
I thought back to what Doro had told me about Pete, how she’d lured him to the marsh without his clothes to teach him a lesson, one that had humiliated but not actually done any damage, and that seemed to be the end of it.
I searched through the rest of the eighties and into the nineties. Pete Darnell’s name didn’t appear once. And there was something else. The ledger from 1990 was missing. The same year William Kitchens filed his hush-hush lawsuit against Frances that nobody—nobody—seemed to remember. Now that was just way too much of a fucking coincidence, if you asked me. A little too convenient.
I dialed Asa’s number. It immediately rolled to voice mail.
“Asa, hi.” I scanned the pile of leather guest ledgers. “So . . . I hope Frances hasn’t torn you to shreds. Doro’s being a little cagey.” I hesitated. “Okay, a lot cagey. She lies some. Hides things.” I looked at the stack of ledgers. “But I think it’s just out of self-protection, and I can understand that. She’s been through a lot. I’ve got some other sources I think I can mine for info . . .”
I trailed off. He didn’t know about Susan Doucette or her notes. Or, at least, he’d never mentioned her. Maybe he had known. It had been Rankin Lewis, his employer, who had shut Susan down, after all; maybe Asa had known all about her from the start. But then why wouldn’t he have said something?
There were too many unanswered questions. Too many blank spaces, and I wasn’t feeling like I should show Asa all my cards. Not yet. Something told me he hadn’t shown me his.
I realized the line had gone unusually quiet. I looked at the screen on my phone.
“Dammit.” While I was off in la-la land, the call had dropped. It had probably cut off half my message too. I shoved the phone in the waistband of my yoga pants and hauled the registry books back over to the boxes. There was something to be learned here, something to be understood, but I couldn’t get past the feeling I was looking in the wrong place.
I got back to my room and powered up my laptop. As I jotted a few notes on what I’d found in the attic, I noticed the printer icon in the dock. Weird. It didn’t usually pop up unless it had just finished a job. I clicked on it and pulled up the recent print jobs. The only one it showed was the second half of my manuscript. Someone had just printed it.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 14
At sundown, the sheriff’s patrol skiff drew up to the Ambletern dock. Fay told Kitten to stay in the house, and she met the deputy on the front steps. He was holding his hat in his hands, and his hair was plastered with sweat. She’d gotten so used to the heat and humidity, she barely noticed it anymore.
“Did you find the ashtray?” Fay asked him in a low whisper.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t under the tree.”
“The one lying on its side, on the bank by the dock? That looks like a skeleton?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I looked. There wasn’t any ashtray there.”
Fay’s stomach churned. She cast a furtive glance back at the house. The windows, covered in their plywood panels, seemed like eyes squeezed shut. A house that kept its secrets locked inside.
“We weren’t able to locate the Murphys either.” He nodded toward the forest. “Herb and Delia have been living here on Bonny a long time. They know this island well. They’re hiding out there, somewhere. Or else they’ve cut and run to the mainland.”
“Because they murdered Cappie?”
“I’m afraid it’s starting to look that way.” He scratched his head. “It’s been suggested . . . well, some folks are saying that the Murphy girl should be brought back to town. It’s been suggested she would be safer there.”
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Thirty
Frances stayed in her room all the next day—which didn’t surprise me. She had undoubtedly snuck into my room when I wasn’t around and printed my book, that snake. No wonder she couldn’t face me.
Down in the kitchen, Laila told me she’d climbed the stairs multiple times with food, but the trays had all been left outside the door, barely touched.
“She doesn’t eat when she’s working. Blocks the flow,” I said. We’d brought supper out on the porch and were eating cold fried chicken and raw, slender green beans from the garden on the edge of the lawn. I pulled a strip of golden fry off the chicken breast and popped it in my mouth. Considered my own flow.
I’d written everything I could for the second half of the book—how Frances had turned Ambletern into a carnival sideshow, how Doro had been forced to play along with it, ruining her chances at love and basically sending her father to an early grave. But it was lacking something, an element that connected the disparate parts.
Maybe that missing piece would be a new clue about the elusive murder weapon. Or a story I hadn’t heard from a source I hadn’t met yet. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I just wanted something.
If I could find that, I thought, I would finally blow away all the lies.
Not that snooping around for whatever killed Kimmy was actually the same as getting words on paper. But if I did happen to stumble upon something, it couldn’t hurt. And it would definitely make it sexier, that was for sure. Maybe then Asa would leave the Graeme stuff alone.
He still hadn’t called me back. When I could manage to snag a decent signal, I’d left him a couple of messages. I’d sent him the latest pages, such as they were, but since I hadn’t heard from him, I hoped it meant he was too busy setting up his new agency, or slamming back drinks with the Pelham Sound folks.
I was counting on him.
And Susan Doucette. She felt like my only chance to make any sense of the loose threads.
Tomorrow was our meeting in St. Marys. Captain Mike’s ferry always appeared at the dock Friday mornings at nine o’clock to drop off the mail and any extra groceries Laila had ordered. I planned to be there waiting. My cover story? I was going inland to drop off my latest blood samples to Dr. Lodi in town. With Frances at Ambletern now, I doubted anyone would be surprised if I stayed gone the remainder of the day.
On my way out of Dr. Lodi’s office, the doctor caught me at the door.
“How are the treatments going?”
I smiled. “Very well, thanks.”