Everlasting (19 page)

“You’d expect a path to be worn around the edge of the yard,” Ivy said. “Dogs don’t just run up and down a sidewalk.”

“Maybe the dog is her stepfather,” Tristan joked.

“Right. It’d be better for you not to run into him. I’ll see who’s home.”

“No,” Tristan said quickly, his pride getting the better of him. “It’s both or neither of us.”

“Stubborn angel!”

Together they walked up the front path and rang the doorbell.

After the second ring, a lace curtain was pulled aside, then let go. A short, squarely built woman with expressive eyes and thick white hair opened the door. Tristan removed his sunglasses. Her eyes widened as she peered up into the shade of his baseball cap. Before he could react, she reached and pulled the hat off his head. “Luke! It
is
you.” Tears filled her eyes.

It was hard for Tristan, the way the old woman gazed at him. He felt so . . . unworthy around people like her and Alicia, who looked at him with a love that he had done nothing to deserve, people who were desperately glad to see him, a mere pretender.

“I missed you, Luke. It broke my heart, losing Corinne. And then I lost you, too.” One worn hand cupped his cheek. “Come in, come in.” She turned to Ivy, then cocked her head at Tristan. “A friend?”

“This is Gemma. She wanted to meet you, Gran.” Although Alicia said everyone called the old woman that, it was hard for Tristan to, because he suspected, coming from “Luke,” it would mean something to her. The look she gave him, her eyes glistening, told him he was right. He wanted to look away, but he knew that he couldn’t. “Gemma went to art school with Corinne.”

Gran reached and took Ivy’s hands in her own, then turned and led them through a living room of assorted dark wood furniture. Her kitchen was scrubbed clean and made bright by chipped, colorful dishes.

“Still like your coffee strong?” Gran asked, and, without waiting for an answer, poured Tristan a cup. “How about you?”

“Thank you, but no for me,” Ivy said

Tristan sipped the coffee. It made Starbuck’s espresso taste like flavored water.

“Tea?”

“That would be perfect,” Ivy agreed.

Gran turned on the kettle. “How have you been, Luke? Where have you been? There were so many rumors.”

“Different places,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you write me? I wouldn’t have told no one. I knew you could never hurt my Corinne.”

“And I knew you wouldn’t tell anyone, but other people might have seen the letter and the postmark before it got to you.”

“Excuses!”

Tristan smiled—she sounded less like a scolding grandmother and more like a flirtatious girl who was letting him know she hadn’t gotten the attention she wanted. She smiled back, then placed a mug and two boxes of tea in front of Ivy. “You
look
like art school,” she remarked.

“Thank you. . . . I think.”

“How have you been, Gran?” Tristan asked.

“You know, you know, nothing different ’cept I don’t have my Corinne.
He
’s the same.”

Tristan figured that
he
was Corinne’s stepfather. “How’s her mom?”

“Acting like a fool.”

Tristan wondered what that meant, but nodded like he knew what she was talking about.

“Corinne had some issues with her mom,” Ivy said.

“Don’t we all,” Gran remarked.

“But she always talked about you and—”

The front door banged back against the wall. Ivy jumped, but Gran appeared used to it; her only response was to turn off the kettle, which was about to whistle.

“Whose car is that?” a deep male voice demanded from the living room.

Gran put her finger to her lips.

“Gran?” he yelled. “Gran? I smell your stinkin’ coffee.”

Tristan slipped on his sunglasses and hat.

A large man with a shaved head entered the kitchen. He was neatly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and black pants, his clothes seeming more refined than his manners. His high bald dome made his facial features look low on his face, pushed down toward his chin with a kind of meanness.
Hank Tynan
, Tristan thought.

“Who the hell are you?” Tynan asked, looking from Ivy to Tristan.

“Friends of Corinne,” Ivy answered.

“Are you now.” He turned his back on them and opened the refrigerator door, standing in front of it for a while as if he wanted to cool himself down. “I don’t ever remember seeing you before.”

“I went to art school with Corinne.”

“You’re a liar,” her stepfather said, then reached in and pulled out a soda. “Corinne wouldn’t tell anyone where she came from.”

“Yes, you’re right about that,” Ivy said. “But she talked a lot about Gran. She also left behind a lot of photos. And photos have clues, you know.”

Tristan guessed that Ivy was testing for a reaction, and she got it. Tynan stared at her for a full minute in a way that made Tristan want to step between them. Then he yanked the top off his can, threw it at the table where they were sitting, and kicked closed the refrigerator door.

“And you have these photos with your little clues?”

“A lot of people have them. She was always sending them out to friends and posting them online.”

“But you had enough to trace her back here,” Tynan noted.

“I was a big fan of her work.”

Tristan could see that Ivy was making Tynan uncomfortable.

“Corinne and her photos—she was a snoop.” Tynan took a swig from his can. Beads of moisture coated his upper lip. “She could never get enough dirt on people. She thought herself high and mighty, but she was a bottom dweller—she loved mud.”

“She was a wonderful photographer,” Ivy said.

“She was a tattler with a camera. And in the end she was a fool, because she didn’t know when to stop.”

“Stop what?” Ivy asked.

Tynan smirked. “Tattling, what else?” His smile faded as he studied Tristan. “And you, you some kind of a silly artist?”

Tristan simply looked at him.

“Got a voice?” the man asked.

Tristan removed his sunglasses. “Yes, I do, Hank.”

Tynan’s small eyes grew larger. “Well, well, well.
He returns
.” Tynan’s voice was smooth and sarcastic, but his eyes darted from one to the other as if he suspected some plot against him.

Tristan decided that the less he said the better. Let the man imagine Luke, who might know all kinds of things about him, had returned and was keeping a smug silence.

“I could turn you in,” Tynan threatened.

Tristan nodded. “You could.”

“But I owe you.”

Tristan forced himself to gaze blandly at the man, as if he could care less what Tynan had to say.

“Life’s a lot more pleasant in this house now, know what I mean?”

A hiss escaped Gran’s lips.

“And it’s going to stay that way.” It sounded like a threat. “Did you kill the other girl too?”

“Neither,” Tristan replied.

“Alicia hasn’t been in River Gardens for two years,” Gran said, “and it happened on the Cape.”

Tynan spun around. “Where do you think
he
was?”

Gran snorted. “I know murderous rage when I see it,” she said, never taking her eyes from Tynan.

The man glanced at the kitchen clock, cursed, and grabbed a large bag of chips from the counter. Pulling a set of car keys from his pocket, he paused in the kitchen doorway. “Here’s a bit of advice, Luke. Don’t let Corinne’s mother catch you here.” He laughed and made a gesture with his keys, handling them like a knife. “She’s liable to cut your throat.”

AFTER TYNAN LEFT, IVY SIPPED HER TEA AND
watched Gran over the rim of her cup.

“Yeah,
he’s
the same,” Tristan said.

“Don’t get me started,” the old woman replied. “Between him and my daughter—” She made a dismissive gesture.

“Where is Corinne’s mom?” Ivy asked.

“At work. Waiting tables at the diner. Somehow she’s managed to keep the job,” Gran said. “Luke, I was sorry to hear about Alicia. She was a good friend to you. She was better to you than Corinne was.”

Tristan nodded and stared down at his coffee. Ivy wished she could reach across and rest her hand on top of his. When she glanced up, Gran was watching her closely. The old woman didn’t miss much.

Ivy set down her cup. “Who killed Corinne? Do you have any idea?”

“I have a lot of ideas,” Gran replied, “but no answers.”

Because there were so many people who wanted her granddaughter gone?

“Is her room still—what did her mother do with her bedroom?” Tristan asked.

“Mia moved things back from Corinne’s apartment—took the new stuff, the nice stuff for herself, of course—and piled the rest in Corinne’s old room. Sometimes I sit on Corinne’s bed, the way I used to, but it’s not the same. I know she’s not coming back.” Gran studied him. “Maybe you’d like some time in there.”

“If that’s okay with you.”

She led the way, and Ivy followed Tristan.

The room was crammed with boxes and bags that were piled on the floor, bureau, desk, and a pair of old kitchen chairs. Despite the chaos, Corinne’s bed was neatly made,
her coverlet lovingly turned down as if prepared for someone to climb in bed. Ivy had the feeling Gran had done that, even though she’d acknowledged Corinne wasn’t coming back.

On the table next to Corinne’s bed sat a broken piece of pottery that had once been a glazed jar with a lid. Ivy picked up one of the fragments. “She made this, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Her apartment was broken into, some of her decorative boxes and jars broken.”

“When?” Tristan asked.

“Several days after her death, you remember.” Gran frowned. “No, you must have been gone by then.”

“Was anything taken?” Ivy asked.

“Her computer and iPad. I didn’t care about those. But I hated the way they destroyed things that Corinne made with her own hands. Hoodlums!”

Or someone looking for something in a hurry
, Ivy thought, exchanging glances with Tristan. What if Corinne was more than a cyberbully? What if she was a blackmailer? Tony’s sister had called her “a world-class snitch,” and Hank Tynan, “a tattler with a camera.”

“What a shame,” Ivy said aloud. “Luke, you probably want some time alone here. I’ll wait back in the kitchen,” she added, hoping Gran would follow her, allowing him to search the place. After a few minutes, the old woman did.

“I told him we’d be in my room,” she said to Ivy. “He
and Corinne both liked to sit there and talk while I did my sewing. Bring your tea.”

Gran’s room was pleasant, with floral slipcovers and framed photographs of family members, pictures that went back all the way to sepia-toned portraits. The old woman pointed to a chair, then took the one opposite, which had bright light coming in over her shoulder and an array of sewing tools around it—a basket of yarn, a box filled with a rainbow of shining thread, and a large jar of buttons. “Corinne used to thread my needles for me. I need a white one—the heavy cotton—and a black polyester. I’d better match this one myself,” she said, holding a peach colored blouse next to the box of spools.

Ivy threaded the needles, adjusting the lengths of thread according to Gran’s directions.

Gran poured a small heap of buttons onto the table between them and sorted through with quick fingers, finding the ones she wanted.

“So are you an item?” Gran asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You and Luke.”

“Uh, no. I met him when he came to see Corinne at school. We’re just friends.”

Gran’s dark eyes were piercing. “So far.”

“So far,” Ivy said, acquiescing to Gran’s perceptiveness.

“Don’t hurt him. That boy’s been through hell and back.”

Ivy nodded.

“Did Corinne have a rich boyfriend at school?” Gran asked.

The question caught Ivy off guard. Of course, Ivy realized, Gran saw her as a source of information, just as she saw Gran.

“It was hard to tell if Corinne had someone steadier than the rest. She didn’t have any trouble finding guys interested in her,” Ivy ventured.

“
Never
had trouble,” Gran confirmed.

“And she was kind of private about some things.”

“Secretive,” Gran said. “We may’s well tell it like it is. She was secretive and sometimes sneaky.”

“She never asked anyone from school over to her apartment,” Ivy went on, realizing there was a limit to what she could fake; even if Gran had never been there, she would have seen the objects they brought back.

“She had some very nice things,” Gran said, “and I had hoped she had a rich lover. Corinne always liked expensive things, and sometimes she bent the rules.”

Bent the rules—as in stealing?
Ivy nodded as if she understood.

“If rich people didn’t show off their nice things, other people wouldn’t steal them now, would they?”

It was a strange way of seeing the world, but perhaps it worked for an older woman defending a grandchild she loved.

“The last time I saw Corinne, she was very nervous,” Gran remarked.

“She was? I’m surprised,” Ivy said. “Of course, people at college have different personas than they do at home.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t like Corinne,” Gran replied, and sewed fiercely for several minutes, fastening a button to a man’s shirt so tightly Ivy imagined that the collar would rip off before the button could be lost again.

“Something was wrong. Corinne came home and asked me to mend a sleeve for her, and sat where you are sitting, just like she did when she was a little girl and in some kind of trouble. She didn’t always tell me what trouble she was in—told me less and less as she got older, but still she would come in and sit. This was her safe place, and when she came that evening, I knew something was very wrong.”

“Did she give any hint of what it was?”

“No. I thought maybe you knew.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Nothing going on at school?” Gran persisted. “Not that anything to do with school ever rattled her.”

Ivy shook her head. “I’m surprised the police didn’t follow up on that.”

“I told the police nothing,” Gran said. “The trouble was for me to know, not them.”

So Gran must have suspected that Corinne wasn’t involved in a completely innocent thing. . . .