Downstairs, the phone rang. Lynne ignored it. God knew, if she picked up every phone call that came in to the house, she would never get any work done. Because of all that had happened this summer, she was running behind. The answering machine picked up. The Castles had to be the last family in America that even still had an answering machine. Everyone else used automated voicemail. Lynne tried not to listen to the voice on the machine-if she was so keen to know who was calling, she told herself, then she should have just picked up the phone in the first place. But she listened anyway, just long enough to discern that the voice belonged to Zoe.
Zoe. It was Zoe, finally calling her back. Lynne sprang from her desk and rushed down the stairs to get the phone, but by the time she picked it up, she was talking to a dial tone. She was just about to call Zoe back when the phone rang in her office, and Lynne thought, Of course, Zoe would call my office phone next since she couldn’t reach me on the home phone. Lynne hurried up the stairs, calling out pointlessly, “I’m coming, hold on, here I come!” When she picked up the phone, she was out of breath. She was too old for this. But it was Zoe. At last! She couldn’t wait to talk to her.
“Hello?” she said.
“Lynne,” Al said. “I need you to sit down.”
Twenty minutes later Lynne and Al were meeting in the hot, unvented offices of Frog and Toad Landscaping with Kerry Trevor and a hysterical Demeter. It was difficult for the adults to talk about what had happened with Demeter making so much noise.
“Honey,” Lynne said. “You have to calm down.”
But Demeter was a volcano intent on erupting. She hadn’t emoted nearly this much after the accident or after Penny’s funeral, which was probably why she was such a mess now. All of that difficult stuff was surfacing.
“Actually, maybe Demeter should wait outside,” Kerry said.
Was that a good idea? Lynne wondered. At this point, she knew, Demeter was a flight risk. If she was left unsupervised, she might just get into her car and drive away. She might do something stupid.
“Jeanne will keep an eye on her,” Kerry said.
“Okay,” Lynne said. Jeanne, Kerry’s right-hand woman, had grown up in Brockton, where, she liked to tell people, she had earned her doctorate in badass.
As soon as Jeanne took Demeter by the arm and led her from the room, it was much quieter.
Lynne said, “Maybe you should start again at the beginning.”
“Demeter was caught trying to steal two bottles of vodka from a client’s house,” Kerry said. “She had a bottle in each hand; she was hurrying for the side door. The clients weren’t home, but a member of their staff caught her.”
“A member of the staff?” Lynne said.
“I have to tell you this in extreme confidence,” Kerry said. “The clients were the Allencasts.”
Lynne thought she might vomit in her lap.
“And the person who caught Demeter was their personal chef, Zoe Alistair.”
“We know Zoe,” Al said. “We’re close friends.”
“I realize that,” Kerry said. “And Zoe handled the situation sensitively. She called me right away. She said she had taken the bottles from Demeter and decided that she wasn’t going to tell the Allencasts. She said she would let the three of us handle it.”
Lynne thought about the phone call from Zoe. She had been calling to warn Lynne of what was coming. To let her know that her daughter-the girl who had survived-was a thief.
“Anybody else would probably have alerted the owners,” Kerry said. “And called the police.”
“Of course,” Al said.
“Now,” Kerry said, “I have more bad news.”
“Oh God,” Lynne said. The room was quiet for a second, and they could all hear Demeter sobbing on the other side of the door.
“I’ve had three separate complaints about missing bottles of alcohol from clients, which I dismissed because my crews never go inside the houses. However, when I spoke with Demeter’s crew members, they indicated that she enters clients’ homes all the time-most frequently to ‘use the facilities.’ My employee Nell, who worked closely with Demeter, told me that Demeter used the bathroom only when the clients weren’t home. I cross-checked the names of the clients who complained against the assignments of Demeter’s crew, and they all matched up.”
“So now you’re accusing my daughter of… what?” Lynne said.
“Honey,” Al said.
“I don’t think this stealing today was a onetime thing,” Kerry said. “I think it’s possible she’s been doing it all summer.”
“Stealing alcohol?” Lynne said. “But what for? I just don’t get it. What for? We don’t drink at home. Not a drop.”
“I think you’ll have to ask Demeter that,” Kerry said. “And I’m going to let you do that privately, because I know you’re good people and good parents. Demeter is finished working here, however, and I won’t be able to give her a reference.”
Kerry stood up and cleared his throat. He was wearing the standard-issue green Frog and Toad Landscaping T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. He was sunburned, and his hair was bleached-out blond. Lynne had always liked Kerry. She and Al sometimes saw him surfing at the South Shore after work. But what Lynne felt for Kerry now was anger and hatred, which was backward, she knew: she should be grateful that he wasn’t calling Ed Kapenash. Demeter had been stealing. She had been entering people’s homes as an employee of Frog and Toad and burgling them.
“I know Demeter has been through a lot,” Kerry said. “And you two as well.”
There was something that Lynne could agree with. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
When they got home, all of them, at two o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, Lynne listened to the message from Zoe.
“Hi, Lynne, it’s Zoe. Listen, something happened at work just now, and I have to speak with you about it as soon as possible. Call me, please. On my cell.”
Lynne listened to the message again, then a third time. The first thing that struck her was that it was Zoe’s voice, and that she’d missed her. The second thing she noticed was that while the voice held urgency, it didn’t sound either angry or vindictive. This episode was not something Zoe had dreamed up to prove that Demeter was a bad person. To prove that the wrong girl had died.
Demeter was headed straight for her room, but Al stopped her. “Oh no, young lady,” he said. “You are going to sit right here”-he pointed to her usual seat at the dining room table-“and tell us what the hell this is all about.”
Lynne was glad for this. She needed Al’s help, even though she thought his tone sounded too harsh.
Demeter sat in the chair and dropped her face into her hands and bawled. Lynne fixed her a glass of ice water and, as a little treat, added a wheel of lime.
Lynne set the glass down on the table next to Demeter, and Al glowered at her. Demeter lifted her head and sucked the water down to the bottom, and Lynne realized that because of the lime, the drink looked like a cocktail. The roiling, nauseated feeling returned to Lynne’s stomach. She went over and turned up the air-conditioning a little, then sat down next to Demeter.
“Let’s start with the accident,” Al said. “Did you have a bottle of Jim Beam with you that night?”
“No,” Demeter said.
“Honey,” Lynne said. “We know the police found a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam in your purse.”
“It was in my bag,” Demeter said, “but it wasn’t mine.”
“Whose was it?” Lynne asked.
“I don’t know,” Demeter said. “Some kid at the party gave it to me. I had a sip of it, and so did Jake and Hobby, but it wasn’t mine. I just ended up with it somehow. It was in my bag because I had a bag to put it in.”
“So you’re saying some kid at the party gave it to you,” Al said. “Some kid you didn’t know?”