Boar Island (36 page)

“The owner is dead,” Anna said. “Chris Zuckerberg bought the farm this afternoon.”

Peter sat back in his chair. Inwardly, Anna flinched. Wrapped up in her own troubles, she’d forgotten that Peter probably knew Ms. Zuckerberg. Not only was Acadia a small world during the winters, and people got to know one another, but any self-respecting superintendent would want to have some kind of relationship with his rich, private-land-owning neighbors.

“Sorry,” Anna murmured as she hid her nose in her teacup. “Did you know Chris had kids?”

“I didn’t,” Peter said.

“Twins, girls, adopted out at birth. Chris was trying to find them when she died. Actually had found one—or thought she had. Paulette Duffy.”

“Mrs. Kurt Duffy?” Peter asked.

“That’s the one,” Anna said. “Odd, isn’t it, how one day you’ve never heard of Paulette Duffy, then she’s popping up everywhere?”

“Not so odd. Every time I learn a word I’ve never heard before, guaranteed I’ll hear it three times before the week is out.”

“There was a legacy, enough to make murdering a husband worthwhile if one didn’t wish to share. Though, from what I hear, most women would have murdered Kurt Duffy for free,” Anna said.

“Iron-clad alibi,” Peter said. “Half a dozen acquaintances and strangers can attest that she was in the Acadian at the time of the murder.”

“But if Paulette is Chris Zuckerberg’s long-lost child, she has an identical twin sister,” Anna said.

Peter digested that for a minute. “Damn,” he said finally. “So mysterious twin sits at the Acadian while Paulette kills her husband?”

“Maybe,” Anna said. “Or maybe the other way around. Or maybe they’re both innocent.”

“Speaking of innocents.”

Lily was standing in the kitchen door, Olivia in her arms. “It’s Livvy’s bedtime.”

Peter leapt up like a terrier offered a treat. “Come on,” he said to Anna. “You can be an aunt.”

Because they clearly thought she would like nothing better than to watch them tucking their baby into its bed for the night, Anna obligingly rose and followed the familial parade up the stairs.

As she would have expected, the nursery was a froth of girly pink, but well done and spotlessly clean. An old-fashioned white antiqued-wood dressing table, with a large looking glass in a matching frame, mirrored the bassinette with its rows of white lace, a mobile of pink and blue and yellow ducklings hanging from the hood.

Peter and Lily cooed and prattled. Anna looked at the guardian angel. It was a lovely thing, not the usual flowing skirts and tiny feet, but a bell-shaped dress with many colors and sturdy handsome wings. On its arm was a basket of flowers.

Anna picked it up.

“Denise gave Livvy that,” Lily said. “Wasn’t that sweet of her?”

Anna turned it over.

“Sweet,” she said, but either it wasn’t a Lenox or it had been broken and repaired. The bottom was patched with plaster of paris.

FORTY

It was late when Denise finally staggered into the foyer of her apartment building. Her mailbox was empty. She’d half expected a note from Paulette reporting on her latest betrayal.

There was nothing. Good, she guessed. Maybe.

Using the handrail as if she were a woman twice her age, Denise dragged herself up the stairs to her apartment, fumbled the key into the lock, and nearly fell into the front room.

This had been one of the longest days of her life, and it had come at the end of one of the longest nights. Exhaustion swelled like a balloon in her chest. Her head throbbed. Her hands jumped with nerves. Exhausted, but not sleepy, not the least little bit. High-pitched, sharp-edged nervous energy sang through her veins, sawed through her bones, and squirted acid into her belly until her throat burned nearly to her back teeth.

The Miata, her pathetic attempt at joie de vivre after Peter had summarily tossed her out, was gone. She wouldn’t miss it. In its place, paid for in cash—it took as long to pay the idiot salesman in cash as it would have to get a loan and buy it on time—was a midsized Volvo XC90. Safe. That was what she wanted in a car now, safe and family-friendly. The car had cost a good chunk of her savings, but there was no choice. A family couldn’t drive around in an accident waiting to happen.

For color, she’d chosen white. There were a zillion white sort-of SUVs with mommies and kiddies in them on every road in America. The Volvo would blend in.

Dropping keys and purse onto the coffee table, Denise let gravity suck her butt down onto the sofa. Her apartment. Sterile and neat and utterly hers. Nothing where it shouldn’t be. Everything where it should. This was gone, too. Or as good as. She’d turned in her two-week notice to the landlord. In winter, she would have been stuck with six weeks’ rent money. In summer, apartments were at a premium, so she’d only had to flush two weeks’ worth of rent down the rat hole.

Rat.

Paulette.

“No, no, no,” Denise muttered, banging her head against the soft back of the couch with each word.

Denise had quit her job, bought the most expensive car she’d probably ever own, given up her apartment, and killed two people, for Paulette. Not to mention the hundreds of dollars she’d dumped at Walmart that afternoon. All the while she was hacking off chunks of her life so that their new life together might have a chance at success, Paulette was betraying her.

It was because of the Walmart shopping spree that Denise knew this. Thinking it would look odd for a retired ranger, who had given two weeks’ notice to her landlord and was supposed to be moving out, to be carting armloads of goods upstairs to her apartment, Denise had taken the risk of driving the lot of it to Paulette’s house in broad daylight. In a new Volvo, she figured if any rangers saw her, they’d never think it was her. Fancy Volvos and GS-9s didn’t exactly go together.

Paulette hadn’t been home. At first, Denise was relieved. This wasn’t the time to be arguing about what she’d bought and why and where it should be kept.

Denise had driven behind the house to unload her purchases into the nursery. Paulette wasn’t in the nursery. Where was Paulette if she wasn’t at work and she wasn’t at home?

Denise trotted through the trees to the house. Forcing the kitchen door didn’t take much brute strength. A firm shove of her shoulder overwhelmed Paulette’s flimsy attempt at security. Since they were family, Denise didn’t consider it breaking and entering, more like she’d forgotten her key. Paulette should have been home. Denise needed to reassure herself that nothing had happened to her sister; that she hadn’t panicked or gotten sick.

Denise needed to know where Paulette was.

The old ads for twins separated at birth, along with the postcard with the cell number on it, were on the kitchen table amid the coffee rings. That was all Denise had to see. She knew what Paulette had done. She’d called the person to ask about the legacy. While Denise was buying and selling and giving notice, Paulette was meeting with their
mother,
or some lawyer or con woman. Undoubtedly Paulette was drinking up whatever bullshit this individual was pouring out. Undoubtedly Paulette was babbling out their secrets with girlish gusto, hoping for a big fat legacy or, worse, the loving arms of the bitch that had whelped them.

Denise groaned. Sitting forward, she held her head between her hands, pushing hard on her temples with her palms. Her disposable cell phone had fallen from her bag and lay on the coffee table. She could call Paulette, let her know this shit wasn’t going to fly.

A hand detached itself from Denise’s head, floating into her field of vision. Not like it was her hand reaching for her phone, more like it was a detached hand, like a balloon-hand in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, floating on wires high above the crowd, then settling down toward the tiny phone on the table.

Denise reached out with her other hand, caught the one floating, and shoved both of them between her knees. “Poison thoughts,” Denise whispered. “If you think poison thoughts you’ll die.”

Instead of taking up the phone, she opened her laptop. A glance at the time told her Olivia would be in her crib. If she was lucky, Peter and Lily would have finished their bullshit cooing and baby-talking, and cleared out of the room. Seeing a baby, a new life, free of the crap that was dripped into every human’s veins over time until the whole person was a toxic waste dump, would settle her, calm her mind. Keep the poison thoughts from killing her. At least for a while.

She tapped on the mouse pad, opening the live feed to the camera in Olivia’s nursery. Peter and lovely little Lily bent over the bassinette making faces they thought were amusing but, in truth, were scary and ugly. Then the world spun, the camera showed the wall, the ceiling, then …

“Shit!” Denise screamed, throwing herself back against the couch cushions, covering her eyes. When she uncovered them, all was as it had been, Peter and Lily cooing, the world right way up, Olivia in her bed.

For an instant Denise could have sworn she had seen a face. The face of a dead woman. Anna Pigeon’s face. The video wasn’t recorded; she couldn’t go back. Had she been able to, there would have been no point. She had seen Anna Pigeon’s body in a black plastic sack sinking beneath the waves of the Atlantic.

The fear and paranoia burning like acid in her gut were from fatigue, not because of anything real. She’d not slept for over forty hours. Too tired and thoughts got crazy. Way too tired and one could even hallucinate.

Anna Pigeon was dead.

Paulette was her soul, her gentle self, her family.

Obstacle removed; identical twin good and right and safe.

There was no Anna.

Paulette might have gone to meet somebody, but she wouldn’t break trust with her sister, her identical twin sister. The legacy was for them, for their family. Denise herself had told Paulette to pursue it. Paulette might even be meeting with a Realtor. Could be Denise was wrong about the meeting with the legacy person.

But Denise wasn’t wrong. She could hear how right she was barking down among the chunks of disappointment and misery in her brain’s junkyard.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said aloud.

The day—and the night before—had been good, she told herself. Better than good. Denise took out the slip of paper she’d been carrying in her front pants pocket so long it was growing soft. From her bag she got a pen, one with red ink.

Kill Kurt (Denise)

“Check,” Denise said, and put a neat red check mark next to it.

Sell Land (Paulette)

“Better be soon,” she muttered as she passed that one over.

Remove Obstacle (D&P)

Denise paused. The dead pigeon’s upside-down face blinked like a strobe light, setting parts of her mind afire. “Check,” she hissed, and scribbled out the words with such force that the pen tore through the paper.

“Stop it,” Denise said aloud. Her hand flicked. The pen flew from her fingers, fell to the white sofa, and rolled, leaving a thin red trail. Denise forced herself to look away from the bloody little snake-track on the perfect white of the fabric. “Calm. Slow and steady wins the race. Nerves. Fatigue. Finish and rest. That’s a girl,” she crooned to herself. When she felt the spate of rage diminish, she went back to the list, carefully avoiding glancing at the ink stain.

Quit NPS (retirement pension) (D)

“Check!” Denise said as she marked it.

Find out about “Legacy” (if it exists) (P)

Denise was sorely tempted to check that off, as a sign that she believed in her sister. That her sister believed in them. If she didn’t know for sure, though, she couldn’t do it. She never broke her own rules. Well, hardly ever.

In a spirit of compromise, she set aside the pen, fished a pencil from her purse, and put a pencil mark next to that item on the list, a faint gray check mark. For now that would have to do.

Car, shopping, etc.

“Check!” and check.

Give landlord notice

“Check!” and check.

Family—Mt. Desert Hospital (D&P)

The injection into the four-ounce, hermetically sealed waxy box, the seventh of those in Lily’s cupboard, would be used by lovely little Lily late in the afternoon tomorrow. Lily used sixteen ounces each day.

That wasn’t enough to check it off the list.

After nearly two days without rest, the pen that had so recently flown from her hand of its own accord became too heavy to lift. The list blurred. Denise leaned back on the couch cushion and rubbed her burning eyes, wishing she hadn’t sacrificed the last of her Valium to the obstacle issue. Tomorrow
Family
would get checked off, then, one by one, the rest of the list. She would do it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow was another day.

Scarlett O’Hara had said that.

But then, Scarlett O’Hara was one crazy bitch.

FORTY-ONE

Denise’s scalp stung, her eyes stung, her nose stung. In law enforcement training at FLETC, the students had been pepper-sprayed—“to know what it feels like.” Sadistic bastards; they just liked tormenting the new kids. Right now, right here in Paulette’s kitchen, she felt the same sensations. Besides that, her neck was going to snap.

“What’s next? Waterboarding? Do you do this once a month?” she asked.

“Every six weeks. You get used to it,” Paulette said as she finished rinsing the bleach from Denise’s hair. “Done. You can get your head out of the sink.”

Lifting her head with the care she’d use lifting a bowling ball with a soda straw, Denise straightened in the chair while Paulette wrapped a towel around her head.

“You’re going to be beautiful as a blonde,” she said, disappearing into the bedroom.

Denise wasn’t sure about that. There were other reasons she’d decided to bleach her hair tonight, reasons she chose not to share with Paulette—at least not yet.

Paulette reappeared brandishing a blow-dryer.

“As beautiful as you?” Denise teased.

“Just exactly as beautiful,” Paulette said with a laugh.

“Identical,” Denise said with an answering smile. She was teasing her twin sister, in fun. If the painful process of stripping the color from her hair had no other use, Denise still would have done it. Playing beautician, Paulette was relaxed, smiled more, even laughed. For a while she seemed to have forgotten the dark web they were weaving, some strands already destroyed forever, some yet to be spun. Denise felt the glow of awe she had experienced that first night as they sat in front of the mirror in the bedroom looking at themselves, at each other, at
theirself.