A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel (19 page)

It all added up to the story of a girl named Jessamyn Wallace, the right age from the right area, who had fractured her brother’s skull with a baseball bat—causing him to miss the rest of his high school football season, which, a decade later, his classmates were still convinced had cost them the state championship.

I pushed back from the computer. In a way, I hated myself. If only I had tried a little harder to fall asleep. If only my brain didn’t work this way. If only I weren’t quite so good at researching and figuring out how to put bits together. And if only I were someone else, I could ignore it.

But I wasn’t.

I wanted to convince myself this wasn’t Jessamyn, but I couldn’t. It fit too well. The name, the photo, the dates.

I had to ask her about this, and I had no idea how. I don’t excel at social skills in normal situations, and this was far from normal. I couldn’t explain to Jessamyn that this was just how my mind worked, that this was a part of my personality, how my synapses fired. That when I was on a computer, my brain said,
Oh, let me check out x, y, and z
.

But you always checked out the major characters in anything you were writing. Part of me never quite believed what people told me. Part of me knew that everyone had secrets, especially people who ended up in this remote Adirondack village but weren’t athletes or outdoor-lovers.

And I did have an instinct for when things weren’t quite right. On some level I’d known something wasn’t right with Jessamyn.

I thought of my brother’s warning. Of course the police would
view this as a reason to suspect Jessamyn in Tobin’s death. Maybe my loyalty was blinding me; maybe I was being naïve. But as mercurial as Jessamyn could be—and as damning as it might seem that a young Jessamyn had apparently taken a baseball bat to her brother’s head—I could not imagine her hurting Tobin.

At least instinct did tell me that printing out all this and shoving it under Jessamyn’s door would not be the best approach. I had to talk to her. But not tonight.

It was very hard to get to sleep.

My phone rang early the next morning.

“This is William Johnstone,” said a man, in a deep, slow voice that sounded like someone who had long since passed retirement age. “You were calling about Tobin Winslow. Can you tell me what it is you’re wanting to find out?”

My pulse quickened. The lawyer I’d called, the number in Tobin’s wallet—I’d been so caught up in other stuff I’d almost forgotten about this. I told him Tobin’s body had been found recently, that his sister and I had found this phone number among his things. “We’re basically trying to find out whatever we can, to close off his affairs. And to find a will, if there is one.”

“So there’s a big estate, is there?”

This took me aback. “No, I don’t think there is, but his sister would like to close things off.”

“I assume you know about attorney-client privilege, young lady.”

“Yes, of course. Tobin was a client of yours?”

“I didn’t say that. But if a person had kept an appointment they’d made, then that person would have been a client.”

Bingo
. He was being cagey—he wasn’t going to come out and say anything directly. I chose my words carefully. “So if Tobin
had an appointment with you … would there be a way to find out what this appointment was going to be about?”

“Well, now, that wouldn’t be something I could discuss.”

I tried again. “Could you tell me the date of the appointment?” He did: the day after the last evening Tobin had been at the bars in Saranac Lake.

“But you can’t tell me for what? Or his sister—it might help her to know.”

“Is she older or younger?”

This seemed an odd thing to ask. “His sister? She’s older, by two years.”

“They were close?”

“I think so,” I said, puzzled. “They didn’t see each other often, but they kept in touch, and yes, I think you could say they were close.”

This odd answer to his odd question seemed to be what he wanted. I heard a sound as if he had closed a book. “Well, what I can tell you is that I am the best writer of wills and trusts in this county.”

“The best writer of wills in the county,” I repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “If you were to make an appointment with me, for example, it would most likely be in regards to a trust or a will. It wouldn’t be cheap, but you’d get an impeccable document.”

In regards to a trust or a will
. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll tell his sister.”

“I’m sorry your friend died,” he said.

I almost opened my mouth to say Tobin hadn’t been my friend, when I realized that one, you couldn’t say things like that and two, maybe Tobin sort of was becoming one. In the past tense.

I was due to head out to Win’s, to do that next interview, so I’d tell her about the lawyer when I got there. I checked my inbox: Philippe had read the article and liked it. And my brother had e-mailed.

I almost didn’t want to open it—if Simon knew what I had found out about Jessamyn he’d be all over it. I knew I wasn’t going
to tell him. But his note was short:
Great article, Troy. Sorry I was such a jerk the other day—in the middle of a very bad case
. I wrote back:
Thanks, no worries
. And that was all I said.

Jessamyn wasn’t up yet, so I could put off talking to her for now. But as I whistled Tiger into my car I noticed my left front tire was low, so I detoured up to Stewart’s for air. I maneuvered my car next to the air hose, uncurled it, and hunkered down in the slush to wedge the hose into position. I hoped it hadn’t developed a slow leak when I’d bounced off the road.

Of course it was that moment when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a truck going past, one that looked like Tobin’s.

I dropped the hose and stood and looked after it. But it was gone. I hadn’t caught details of a license plate, details of anything.
You’re seeing things again
, I told myself. There was too much going on, too much out of my range of experience. I was seeing a truck that didn’t exist while trying to figure out what had happened to the truck’s owner, while worrying about Jessamyn and things I wished I hadn’t turned up. I topped off the tire pressure, and drove on to Win’s.

The cabin looked good, the mended cushions back on the sofa, everything seeming brighter than before. Win had started to put Tobin’s clothes into boxes. She’d made coffee and set out bakery muffins. I told her about the phone call and the lawyer in Albany, thinking she’d be pleased. But she frowned.

“What?” I asked.

“The problem is, we don’t know what it means. Did Tobin want to try to break his trust fund, get more money from it somehow? Had he decided to make a will and didn’t get it done?” Her voice almost broke.

“Did you ever …” I started to ask, and stopped myself.

“Did I ever what? Wonder if Tobin killed himself?” A single tear gathered and slid down Win’s cheek. She seemed unaware of it. “Of course I did.”

“I don’t think he did,” I said at last.

“I don’t either, but it’s hard not knowing. And this is frustrating. Everything’s up in the air and I can’t get much of anything done without a will or a death certificate.”

“You can’t get a death certificate until the tox results are back?”

She shook her head. “No, they can issue temporary ones. But without a court order or some kind of official documentation, the state will only release it to a parent, spouse, or child.”

“Your parents won’t request one?”

She shook her head.

“How about his mail?” I said. “There might be something in there. You know Tobin’s PO box number—you could send in a change of address for him, and have the mail forwarded to you.”

“You have to sign those forms,” she pointed out.

I’ve never thought it illegal to sign someone else’s name unless you had intent to defraud. But it was a gray area, leaning, I supposed, toward black. I wasn’t going to ask about searching Tobin’s e-mail account, possibly because I’d gotten myself into so much trouble last summer downloading someone else’s e-mails. Best not to go there.

“I don’t even know if it’s legal to open his mail unless I have legal access to it,” Win said, her voice rising. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. My lawyer’s looking into it, and he may refer me to someone local.”

There wasn’t much I could say. Life would be easier if everyone could leave directions in plain view about what to do when they died. But no one does that, unless they know they’re going to die.

She almost visibly pulled herself together, and went on. “But you came out to interview me. This next article starts with Trey’s death, right?”

I nodded.

She took me through it all, a span of a few days during a mellow summer week: her brothers out that afternoon and evening, her out with her friends, the last time she would have a mindless good time for quite a while. The realization the next morning
that the boys hadn’t come home, calls to their friends and hospitals. The boat found, floating but damaged, not far from shore. The Coast Guard finding Tobin, clinging to a chunk of wood he’d happened across in the water. No sign of Trey; no sign of his body until the next day. And then the funeral, which had been a blur for her.

Afterward, she said, their father started working longer hours, and her mother started drinking more. “All very structured and civilized, of course, but she mostly was in a daze.”

“And then Tobin left.”

“Tobin left right after the funeral,” she said. “He packed a couple of bags and came and told me just before he went—he said he didn’t belong there, and never had. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going, and maybe he didn’t even know. But then he’d call me every few weeks, and later he started sending postcards. Until I finished college and moved away, he never told me just where he was, only where he’d been. I think he was afraid my parents would try to make me tell them where he was—that it would be easier on me if I didn’t know.”

I made myself ask: “On the boat … there were life jackets?”

Win blinked. “I’m sure there were. I remember seeing them. But the boys never wore them. We could all swim like fish. Nanny taught us when we were just toddlers.”

“One guy I interviewed said there was only one life jacket … that Trey didn’t have one.”

She frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe they only had time to grab the one—or maybe Trey’s came off, after.”

“But Tobin never told you?”

“No,” she said. “He never said anything.”

“Did he ever say anything about the accident itself, how it happened, who was piloting the boat?”

“He didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about it. I guess it didn’t matter. They were both experienced and they were both always careful on the boat. They worked well together.”

“Would he have told your parents anything?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no, definitely not.” She sat for a
long moment. When she spoke her voice was firm. “I think Tobin knew our father would have rather Trey survived than him. I think he knew our father blamed him for the accident, blamed him for Trey’s death. Tobin wouldn’t talk about it, would never say what happened.”

We sat in silence for a minute. “What about you—how did you deal with it?” I asked.

“I stayed home the rest of the summer, but I stayed as busy as I could. I got an internship the next summer, and a job right after, and I moved away. I send cards; I meet my mother for lunch sometimes. I don’t go there.”

She straightened, I think without realizing she was doing it. “I had my work. I had my friends, and I had my grandfather. I had Tobin, at a distance. We were getting closer since he moved here—he’d come and visit for a week or two at a time, go with me to see our grandfather in the nursing home.”

“Your grandfather started the insurance company, the one your dad runs, right?”

She nodded. “My father had planned on Trey coming into the business, passing it on to him.”

“Not Tobin?”

She shook her head. “Tobin was never interested in working with our father, nor the other way around. Trey was the golden boy, the one who could do no wrong. Tobin heard a lot of ‘Why can’t you be more like your brother?’ But he wasn’t bad, just mischievous, and he had no interest in making all A’s when he could make B’s and C’s without lifting a finger.”

She got up and refilled our coffee cups. “The last time I saw Tobin was at our grandfather’s funeral,” she said as she sat down. “And when I didn’t hear from him the last few months, I just thought he’d moved on, that he was traveling, and then he’d get in touch when he got wherever he was going.”

And now Tobin is gone for good
. Neither of us said it, but it seemed that we had, that the walls of the room whispered it, that it echoed around the cabin, from wall to wall.

I wasn’t close to my parents or sisters, but I had my brother—
miles away, but he was there. I had Baker and my friend Kate, and Philippe and Paul, even Jameson. And I had Tiger.

“Maybe it’s time to get a dog,” I said. Only after the words came out did I realize how abrupt and trivial it might sound.

But Win knew what I meant. “Maybe it is,” she said.

Back at home, Jessamyn’s jacket was gone from the pegs in the hallway, which meant she was out. I could postpone talking to her a while longer. I climbed my stairs and sat at my computer.

It was clear by now the Oregon policeman wasn’t going to call me back; I had to drop it or try another tack. On his police department’s website I found an e-mail address and sent a note, saying I was writing an article on Tobin Winslow’s death that would mention the accident with his brother, and had a few questions. I included a link to my first article.

I’d never felt this edgy about something I was working on. This felt like being caught up in a tidal wave pushing me in directions I hadn’t anticipated. Now there was the
tick tick tick
of another deadline approaching, of a story that would be harder to write than the first one, me not knowing if I could pull this off. And not knowing if it all hadn’t been a mistake, if I had stirred up things that had better been left unstirred.