Nowhere Girl (24 page)

Gabby winked at him. “I love you, but it's girl time.” She got his jacket from the chair in the living room. It was a Paddington Bear coat with the same wooden buttons. “I'll see you at the library,” she told him, patting him on the butt as he went out into the night.

Gabby closed the door. “I much prefer fucking him in the library,” she said, grabbing the rest of the bottle of wine Brady had brought. “Screw the dishes,” she said. “Let's talk.”

“What do you think that was about?” she asked after I told her about the kiss, even though I'd told Brady I wouldn't tell anyone.

“I don't know.” I slumped against the couch while Gabby drank wine from the bottle and smoked her cigarette. “Maybe he's not the same person he was in high school. Maybe I'm not.”

“You've been in love with him since we were toddlers.”

“No,” I said. “I've been in love with him since second semester freshman year.”

“Yeah.” She blew smoke out her nose. “Since we were infants. I think you're stressed. The guy is fucking gorgeous.”

I reached for the wine and drank it. “Chandler hates him,” I said.

Gabby leaned back next to me and put her feet up. “I know.” There was no surprise in her tone.

“I wish I hated him,” I told her.

“That would be no fun,” she said, taking the wine back and pulling a long swig from it. “No fun at all.” She smiled at me in the candlelight. Her little nose ring glinted, and her mouth was the color of blackberries and looked exotic from the wine.

“Why do you like him so much?” I asked her.

“I don't know.” She let out a stream of smoke. “I think it's nice to have a guy look at you the way he does. Like he's curious about you.”

“Greg doesn't do that,” I admitted. “I'm not sure he ever did.”

She dropped the cigarette in a glass of wine someone had left behind. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Do me a favor.”

“What?” I asked, getting up.

She got up with me holding the wine and gave me a little hug, careful not to bonk me in the head with the bottle. “Try again with him.”

When I got in my car and headed home, I realized I wasn't sure whom Gabby meant. Brady or Greg.

 

CHAPTER

27

Terhune Orchards at nine on a Saturday morning in the beginning of May was deserted. The two hundred acres were shaded by apple and peach trees. “We could walk and talk,” Patrick had said, “and no one would overhear us.” I got there seventeen minutes early so I could think about what I was going to say and get comfortable with the surroundings. Ever since Savannah, I needed extra time to get familiar with new places.

The air smelled of cinnamon, and I felt instantly at ease. The family who ran the orchard had set up a farm stand north of the parking lot, and I thought I'd have enough time to pick up some cheese and cardamom before Patrick got there. But as soon as I started toward it, I heard him call my name.

I wouldn't have known it was Patrick if I wasn't expecting him. He'd tied a black bandanna around his head, tucked a pack of cigarettes into the back pocket of his torn jeans, and was wearing a dirty wifebeater.

“Day off?” I called, using my hand like a visor against the sun.

He laughed, his white teeth incongruous with his attire. When he got close enough to touch me, he said, “Undercover. I'm supposed to be a dirtbag. Do I pass?”

“With flying colors.” He smelled like strawberries. “Almost,” I told him.

“Almost?”

“Um, you smell a little fruity. Have you been wearing your wife's perfume?”

He laughed. “I'm not married.” There was something in his voice that sounded apologetic. “My son loves to give the dogs baths with his strawberry-scented shampoo.”

“Do you still have greyhounds?”

“Good memory.” He smiled. “Want to walk in the shade?”

We headed toward the orchard. “I didn't know you had a son,” I told him.

They'd set up a table at the edge with baskets. A sign told us to pick our own, but in early May, there was really nothing to pick. Patrick grabbed a basket anyway and hooked the handles on his elbow.

“Yeah,” he said. “Darlene got pregnant before we split up. She didn't really want a baby, but luckily for me, mistakes happen.”

I felt bad for this big teddy bear of a guy. “What's his name?”

“Aiden Patrick.”

“That's a nice strong name,” I told him. And Patrick grinned. The orchard smelled of fresh mud and bark, and I wanted to lie in the grass and take a nap in the sun.

Apple trees were planted in neat rows lining the path, and I told Patrick about my dreams and the hypnotist. “I don't want to believe it's someone I know,” I told him. “It's like ever since I met you and Jon at the station, I've been trying not to think everyone I know is a possible killer.”

We'd reached the top of the hill. Terhune's had put a little bench beneath one of the apple trees, and a split-rail fence separated us from the acres of blueberry bushes stretching out below.

Patrick went over to it. “It's like one of your books,” he said.

I sat down beside him. “Yeah, but in the books, I get to decide who did it.”

He didn't answer. It was unusually warm, and I could feel sweat trickling between my breasts, and my breath was coming quickly. Patrick was sturdy, standing there like one of those big trees out on the land in back of our house that I wanted to hug because they were so solid.

It took a while for him to speak again, and then finally he said, “People get obsessed with girls, Cady. And let's face it, girls get obsessed with people—a teacher or someone at your parents' restaurant. I don't know. We interviewed everyone we thought Savannah knew and came up empty. But we've got to try again.”

I watched him in that wifebeater, the way he had of moving one foot forward when he stood, as if stepping into life. I got up from the bench and stood at the fence by the blueberry bushes, haphazard and happy. In a couple of months, they'd be bursting with fruit, and Chandler and I would come pick them and then make pies. Beyond the orchard, I could see our town laid out like a little stage setting, the square and the churches and, even though I couldn't see them, all the people, moving about with a possible murderer in their midst. And what had felt sure and right a few moments ago, that steady solidity in Patrick's voice about trying again, rose up like an overwhelming wave, and I felt suddenly like I was drowning. “Do you think he's still here?”

“That's a good question. I want to find out if anyone who knew Savannah left town within a few months of her murder. If we're right and the perpetrator cared about her, the guilt may have driven him away.” He got quiet and toed a rock with his boot. “Believe me, I know what it's like to have guilt wrap itself so tightly around you that all you want to do is run.”

“Shouldn't the police have investigated things like that sixteen years ago?”

“Yes, of course, but the original theory was that a stranger had done this, not someone who knew her. We thought she had been lured away and accosted, so we concentrated on that vein.”

“This is so fucked up.” I turned my back to the fence. “One minute it's a stranger, the next it's someone who knew her and was obsessed with her, maybe a teacher or someone from the restaurant.” I felt like I might cry. “Maybe the killer left. Unless he couldn't leave. It could be somebody one town over or a mailman or maybe someone from the high school.” I could feel something rise in me, something I had been trying to stamp down every minute of every day. “Or you know what? Maybe my parents are right. Maybe we might as well keep the case closed.” And because tears were blurring my vision, I left the fence and started walking down the hill, not sure really where I was going. My car sat in the parking lot, waiting for me.

Patrick ran to catch up with me. “Stop, Cady.” He pulled at my elbow. “Please stop.”

So I did. I expected him to tell me all the reasons we had to keep going, but he did something I'll never forget: he put the basket on the ground and pulled me into a hug.

“I know,” he said. “I know how frustrating this is. It's fucking horrible.”

And then I cried. Standing there leaning against his big chest, I sobbed. I felt sick I cried so hard. I cried and cried in the heat with that empty basket next to us.

*   *   *

Afterward, we ate lunch in Terhune's café. No one was in there. And they had a nice full salad bar as a result, but they also had a whole table of desserts. Patrick and I decided to eat peach pie with ice cream and skip all the rest. I actually felt happy after my cry. I couldn't explain it. I felt hopeful and relaxed.

“Pie is so good when you're hungover,” I said while we ate.

“Yeah. It's the best. Why are you hungover?” He had a spot of vanilla ice cream on his chin, but I didn't say anything.

“David and I closed The Ivy Inn last night playing One in a Hundred
.
”

“What's that?” He scratched at the scruff on his chin, but the ice cream still didn't come off.

“You watch everyone who walks by and have to decide if you'd sleep with them.” The game seemed so stupid when I said it out loud, but it'd been keeping us entertained in restaurants and airports for years. “Last night, my brother, the horndog, made it to twenty-five.”

“And you?”

“Oh God, I can't tell you that. It's way too embarrassing.”

“C'mon, how many hotties?” It sounded strange to hear this giant of a man use a word like that.

“Um.” I let a peach slip around my mouth before swallowing it. “In a bar full of guys, I couldn't find one I wanted to sleep with.”

“No one?” He smiled. “No hotties at all?”

This was not how I'd thought my meeting with Detective Tunney would go. “That's not really how it works for me. I have to feel like I'd want to wake up with them without chewing off my arm. Or better yet, without them thinking that sneaking out the window naked would be a better option than facing me in the morning.”

“Stop it,” he said. “You're adorable.”

I scooped up the last of my ice cream. “That's nice-person speak for
chunky
.”

I waited to endure a clumsy silence, but Patrick set his fork down on his plate with some peach pie still on it. “Actually,” he said, his green eyes sparkling, “
adorable
means
adorable
.”

I felt my face burning. “Does Aiden look like you?” I asked to change the subject.

“Ah, Aiden.” Patrick pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through it. “You tell me.” He turned it toward me, and I saw the cutest little red-haired boy smiling over a piece of half-eaten watermelon.

He was a carbon copy of Patrick but chubbier and smaller. “Now
that's
adorable,” I said. And right when I was about to take the cell to enlarge the picture, it rang. Patrick stood and went to talk over by the window. I could tell from the relaxed tone of his voice that the caller was a girl, and I imagined him waking up with a beautiful, skinny girlfriend with silky hair.

“That was my researcher,” he said when he put the phone back in his pocket. “She has a list of who left town in the months after Savannah was killed.”

“What can I do?”

“Go through the funeral guest list and the yearbooks again.” He put up his hand when I started to say I'd already done that about nine hundred times. “It's been a while,” he said. “Do it one more time, please.”

“Whatever you say, boss. So,” I said, not really wanting the answer to my next question, “who were the main suspects way back when?”

“We had to investigate everyone.”

“Everyone? Even my family?”

“Come on. You know this from your books. It's Detectivology 101. First thing you do is rule out loved ones.”

“Detectivology?” I thought about all the words I made up for my books. “Is that a real word?”

“It is now,” he said, laughing.

“Does that mean at one point I was a suspect?”

“You were only sixteen.”

“So what? Children do horrible things to each other all the time.”

He was chewing on his lip. “Everyone was on the list … including you.”

“So what made you take me off … the
list
?”

“Cady.” He held out his hand, and when I put mine in it, I felt instantly comforted. “No one in your family was responsible for Savannah's death. Plenty of witnesses saw your parents at the restaurant, getting ready for dinner.”

“Squeezing melons and not their daughter's neck?” I'd meant it to be funny, but I had a quick, gruesome image of my parents choking the life out of my sister.

Patrick ignored me and kept talking. “I can't remember the name of the kid whose house your brother was at, but his mom was home and gave us a sworn affidavit that he was there playing video games. And you were on the phone with 911, calling it in.”

“Yeah, but isn't there some rule in detective land like
whoever smelt it dealt it
?”

“You watch too many cop shows.” He tapped the Irish band on his right ring finger on the table. “But yes, because you called it in, we had to look at you.”

“What did you see?”

“A terrified girl who somehow knew something awful had happened to her sister.” He held his breath for several seconds. “Plus, we subpoenaed your cell phone records.”

“And? My parents gave me that phone for emergencies. I made exactly one call on it.”

“I know. But it was the time that you made the call. The medical examiner determined there was no way you would have had enough time to get from the Wolfe Mansion back to Kingswood.”

“So you really did check me out.”