“Same here.”
“Especially now that you’ve, you know, got her pregnant and everything.”
“I agree.”
“I think becoming an uncle will be kind of cool,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to being a dad.”
“I know I’ve been kind of an asshole at times,” Tyler said, “with puking on your deck and stuff, but I’ve been thinking things have been working out okay here.”
“I think so, too. It’s been a big adjustment for all of us. You know my story, what I went through when I was your age. I’ve been there, having to get used to a new place, and a lot of the time not liking it.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “But now, with what’s happened, it could all go to shit.”
“I’m hoping that won’t be the case,” I said.
“So what if, somehow, it really is her? What if the woman who came to that house is Brie? What then?”
“That seems to be the number-one question. I’m gonna try to be honest with you here, Tyler. I don’t know. This is all uncharted territory. I’m in the woods without a compass. But the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt Jayne. So I’m taking this a day at a time. Maybe this is a whole lot of fuss about nothing. Maybe that was just some woman who went to the wrong house and for whatever reason flipped out. The thing is, I don’t see how it can be Brie. It seems very highly improbable.”
My phone rang.
I pulled it out of my pocket and saw a name I was not expecting, and certainly wouldn’t have been hoping to see.
ISABEL
I tapped the screen and put the phone to my ear.
“Hello, Isabel,” I said, although as soon as I’d said her name I wondered whether it might be Norman using her phone. He had, after all, tried to reach me the night before, and I had declined the call.
But it was definitely Isabel who said, “Andrew.”
“What can I do for you?”
“My mother wants to talk to you about something.”
“About what.”
There was a pause, followed by, “Brie came to visit her this morning.”
Twenty-Eight
When Hannah Brown opened her eyes and rolled over, she was expecting to find her partner next to her. But the covers were pulled back, the other half of the king-sized mattress empty.
They often slept in on Sunday mornings, but evidently not today. Hannah swung her legs down to the floor, tucked her feet into a pair of furry Ugg slippers, and walked down the hall to the bathroom.
No one there.
She went downstairs to the kitchen, and it was there that she found Marissa Hardy, perched on a stool, reading something on an iPad that she’d propped up on a stand.
“It’s Sunday,” Hannah said. “What the hell are you doing up so early?”
“Did you know that Agatha Christie once vanished for ten days?” Hardy said, looking up.
“What?”
“The mystery writer. She went missing for ten days, and finally showed up at a health spa, and she would never say where she’d been or what she’d been doing for that period of time.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, ten days is not six years.”
Hannah blinked a couple of times. “No, it certainly isn’t. It’s shorter.”
“And here’s an interesting one. Guy named Lawrence Joseph Bader, from Akron, Ohio. Sold kitchen supplies or something. Goes on a fishing trip to Lake Erie and disappears. A boating accident, right? But then, eight years later — eight fucking years — he’s found in Omaha, Nebraska, working as a local television announcer or personality or something. And he’s got a different name. They never figured out what actually happened, whether he had amnesia or whether he faked his death. What do you make of that?”
“Have you made coffee?”
“And then there was that Ariel Castro guy, in Cleveland? Who kept three women as prisoners in his house for eleven years. Remember that? Back in 2013?”
“What I was thinking,” Hannah said, “was that we should go out for brunch today. I don’t even care where. Even IHOP. What do you think?”
Hardy looked up from the iPad. “Hmm?”
“You know. Pancakes, sausage, that kind of thing.”
“I guess,” Hardy said, eyes going back down. “Might have to work today.”
“Today’s your day off.”
“I know.” She paused. “I really, really hate being wrong.”
“No kidding.”
“What if I am? What if I’m wrong?”
Hannah went over to the coffee maker, pulled out the empty carafe. “Would it have killed you to start a pot?”
“But he looked good for it, you know? I still think he could be good for it.”
“I think I’m going to make tea for a change.” Hannah put water into a kettle and plugged it into an outlet.
“Where could she have been all this time?” Hardy asked. “If he didn’t actually kill her?”
Hannah tore off a banana from a bunch in a bowl and pulled up a stool on the opposite side of the island from the detective.
“Jacksonville, Florida.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, it’s a place. Just trying to help. Let’s talk about bacon. A side order, extra-crispy.” She started to peel the banana.
But Hardy wasn’t thinking about food. “He had time, you know. To drive down from the cabin, kill her, get rid of her body, and get back up there. He can’t prove he was there all night. It’s even possible he gave his buddy something to knock him out. But what’s the motive? He’d broken it off with that other woman. He didn’t have any huge insurance policy on her. If he’d killed her in a fit of rage, that could happen, but making the drive down, intending to kill her, that’s premeditation. And for premeditation, you need a motive. There has to be one. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
Hannah broke off an inch of banana and popped it into her mouth. “I like this part.”
Hardy looked up again. “What?”
“It’s like seeing the inside of a computer or something. Watching you talk it through, thinking out loud. It’s interesting to watch.”
The kettle was starting to boil.
“You want some tea?” Hannah asked.
“Nothing for me.”
“Okay, then.” Hannah slid off the stool and opened a cupboard, where she found a box of tea bags.
“It’s usually the husband.”
“Say again?”
“When something happens to a wife, it’s usually the husband.”
Hannah dropped a tea bag into a cup and poured in some water. “But is that how you usually operate? Based on statistics? I thought you went into each case with eyes open, no presuppositions. No tunnel-vision stuff.”
Hardy studied her for a moment, then said, “You mentioned something about bacon.”
“I did.”
“I’ll need a shower.”
“I’ll join you,” Hannah said.
Twenty-Nine
Andrew
Isabel wanted to meet for a coffee first, before taking me to the hospital to see Elizabeth. She suggested the Starbucks on the Boston Post Road, just west of the turnpike. When I got there, she was sitting at one of the outside tables, both hands wrapped around a paper cup as if using it to keep herself warm, even though it was about seventy-five degrees out. There was a second cup on the other side of the table.
“I took a chance on a latte,” she said. “It’s still warm. I just sat down.”
Isabel buying me a coffee had me wondering whether I’d entered the Twilight Zone. I didn’t know whether this was a peace offering or a trap. Maybe she had a sniper positioned somewhere across the road, ready to take me out.