He ran searches for the Erickson handshake induction she had referenced. He watched half a dozen videos of people supposedly put into immediate hypnosis with a few slight hand movements, and he said “Bullshit” under his breath. You’ll see some obvious frauds, and some things that once would have made you laugh, she had told him. But now? Now you won’t laugh.
She was right about that much. He wasn’t laughing.
“Make yourself at home,” a voice from behind him said, and he turned to see Danielle standing in the kitchen.
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine.” She waved him off and turned her attention to the coffeemaker. She was dressed in jeans and a formfitting long-sleeved shirt, and she stood barefoot on the hardwood floors. Her auburn hair was loose around her shoulders, and the sight of her, so natural and comfortable in her own home, drove thoughts of Lauren at him like a spear. There had been other women since Lauren, but not many, and he’d never lingered long enough to see one of them at home in the morning. Watching Danielle MacAlister go about making coffee was, in its own way, a more intimate moment than any he’d shared with a woman since Lauren died.
“Last night you wanted maps,” she said. “Do you still?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we can go downstairs and pick one out.”
He closed her laptop and came into the kitchen. “Why are you cooperating?”
She set the coffee to brew without answering, then watched it for a few seconds. When the pot began to fill, she turned back to him.
“You’ve been told that I wouldn’t, I take it?”
“That seems to be the family reputation.”
“It better be. The property is my family’s and there’s no small amount of liability risk with a cave. Your situation is the perfect example. If you’d died in there, someone might have sued us, even though you’d trespassed.”
“That explains your defensiveness. But I asked about your cooperation.”
She took a breath, pushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, and said, “Ridley Barnes talked to you.”
“Correct.”
“Ridley Barnes hasn’t talked to anyone in ten years.”
“You want to know what he says to me.”
“And why. Yes. If you bring Ridley a map and he sits down and looks at it and talks to you about the cave? About anything? My God, would I love to know what he has to say and why he’s decided to say it. It’s fascinating. He hasn’t spoken to anyone about Sarah, at least not as far as I know.”
“He speaks to Evan Borders.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“They exchanged calls the day I ended up in your cave. I found that interesting, to say the least.”
“Ridley talks to Evan.” She said it as if she were trying to believe it.
“At least that day. Did you know Evan?”
“Oh, yes. He’s very different now than he was back then.”
“How was he back then?”
“Funny. He was an entertainer. He liked to get you laughing, and he was good at it. That’s hard to remember now.”
“He wasn’t telling many knee-slappers when I met him, that’s for sure.”
“Evan is another casualty, in my opinion. He wasn’t killed, but whatever happened that night took what he was, what he could have been, and snatched that away. Then he became what the town probably expected him to be all along — like his father. One of those people who just seem destined for bad luck and trouble, you know? But when he was a kid...” She shook her head. “There’s a reason a girl like Sarah Martin ended up in that cave with him. You see him today, you wonder how it would be possible, because he seems...”
“Threatening,” Mark offered, and she nodded with what seemed to be real sorrow.
“He’s angry white trash now, right? That’s what people who don’t know him would say. Isn’t that what you’d say?”
Mark thought of the bins overflowing with Busch cans, of the rental house that was waiting on a teardown. “He’s trying to play the role, at least.”
“That’s my point. He was given a role, and it was given to him that night in the cave.”
Mark understood something about being given a role and about the way you could play a different one if you cared to try, but he didn’t want to argue with her. He was about to ask another question when he was interrupted by an electronic chime. Danielle leaned over and punched a button on an old-fashioned intercom screen that was mounted on the wall above the kitchen counter.
“Good morning, Cecil.”
“Miss MacAlister, I think that asshole from Florida came back.”
Danielle smiled at Mark, then pushed the talk button again. “I’m aware of this. He’s actually standing here with me now.”
There was a pause, but Cecil’s voice didn’t betray any less hostility when he spoke again. “I didn’t know he was on the property. From the snow, looks like he has been all night.”
“It’s under control, Cecil. Thanks.”
The intercom light blinked off. Mark nodded at it and said, “That’s connected to the garage?”
“Yes. And he has a radio.” She shook her head and poured coffee into two mugs and passed one to Mark. “He’s quite the watchdog, our Cecil. Always vigilant. Only took him twelve hours to notice your car.”
“Yet your father has paid to keep him here for ten years. Even Cecil seems confused by that.”
She drank some of the coffee without looking at him and said, “Let’s go downstairs and get your map.”
They were back in the unfinished basement room with the map-covered walls when Mark said, “Why do you still have this place? Why let it sit for a decade?”
“That wasn’t my choice. It will be soon enough, I’m afraid. My father isn’t well.”
“Will you sell it?”
“Absolutely.”
“So why hasn’t he?”
“He promised Diane Martin he would keep the cave closed,” she said. “That was when they were still speaking. Whatever they had, it fell apart fast after Sarah died. Selling Trapdoor would have made him feel like he was profiteering when he should be suffering, I think. So he put that gate up, put the locks on, and left it to sit like some sort of monument to the dead. Any thought of selling it ended completely when Diane overdosed. He never came back to Garrison when he heard that. Not once. I’m the only person in the family to have stepped onto this property in the past four years, and I wasn’t any more eager to do that than he was. For my family, Trapdoor became a very bad place, very fast. There’s nothing but a lot of regret here.”
She sat down on the old recliner, and dust rose from the cushions. She pulled the wooden handle on the side of the chair and the footrest rolled out with a protesting creak.
“You know this was the first place I ever made out with a boy? Not kissed, I’d been kissed before, but I mean really... you follow.”
“I follow the mechanics, sure. I don’t follow why you’re talking about them.”
“It felt terrible. Not the make-out session, that’s not what I mean. At that age, you don’t know what feels good yet.”
“Then why’d it feel terrible?”
“You’re a detective,” she said.
“That’s right. But apparently not a very good one, because I don’t know why we’re talking about this.”
“Do some detecting, then,” she said. “Why does a girl feel terrible for kissing a boy?”
Beside them the furnace kicked on and the exposed ductwork above began to hum. Mark looked at her and said, “Evan Borders?”