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- Author: Delancey Stewart
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They both nodded. “Can you describe your first meeting with him?”
“Sure. He came up here. He was interested in buying the house.” I pointed at the skeleton framed next to us. Jensen’s attention seemed to stay focused on the monstrous ridiculousness of it while Rawley nodded again and turned back to me.
“Is he going to buy it?”
“No.”
“Is it still for sale?”
“Are you in the market?” I smiled.
“No. Just curious.”
“I’d consider selling,” I told him.
“You’re not going to finish building it?”
“I thought you were going to ask about Connor Charles.”
He nodded again. Rawley’s thing seemed to be the knowing nod. It was already getting old. “So you didn’t sell him the house. But you met him again at some point?”
“I, uh … I went to his house. To talk about potentially selling.”
“When was this?”
“Last week,” I said.
“And again he did not want to buy?”
“Right.”
“Were you inside the house?” Jensen was watching me again. He had a hooked nose and wire glasses. He appeared to be the insightful observer of the pair.
“For a little while.”
“And what was Mr. Charles like during this time?”
“He was polite.”
“Was he receptive to your request for him to pose for photos?”
My eyes snapped to his. “What?”
“When he posed for you. Did he know you were taking his picture?”
I nodded. “I always carry my camera. I’m a photographer.”
“Anything published anywhere we would have seen?” Jensen was squinting at me now.
“Doubtful,” I said, my mind still stuck on the fact that they knew about the photo. “Weddings and portraits mostly. And not for a while.”
“So Mr. Charles was calm and polite, and he posed willingly for photos.”
“Right. Um, can I ask how you knew I took a photo?”
Jensen smiled and spoke for the first time since sitting down. “You can ask.”
“But you won’t tell me.”
He smiled again. I decided I liked it better when Jensen didn’t smile.
“Did Mr. Charles do anything to frighten you? Did he threaten you? Touch you?”
I shook my head.
“You work at the diner, correct?”
I nodded, stealing a move from Jensen’s book.
“Do you know Amanda Terry?”
“No, I don’t know her. I’ve seen her in the diner. But I’ve never talked to her.”
“Ever see the two of them together?”
“Never.”
The officers looked at each other, passing some kind of knowledge. “Very good. Just a couple more questions, then.” Jensen stared at his notebook for a minute and then fixed me with a critical gaze. “What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Charles?”
That was the million-dollar question right there. “I guess we’re acquaintances.”
“A few folks around the village have mentioned seeing you together.”
“Mr. Peters. The Trenches.” I was doing a mental inventory of people who might know I’d been seeing a bit of Connor, and the names popped out of my mouth.
“Right. And your ex-husband, too.”
My head snapped up. “What? Sorry?”
“Mr. Douglas noted that you’d moved on from your marriage, that you’re dating Mr. Charles.”
“Not that it’s any of his business at all, but that is false,” I told them. “We have never had anything that could be construed as a date.” Would Jack’s evil influence never end?
“Okay, that’s fine.” Jensen wrote something down while Rawley nodded some more. “Well, I hope we’ll be welcome to return should we have further questions for you, Mrs. Douglas.”
“Turner.”
“Right. And here’s my number if you think of anything else we might need to know.” He handed me a small white card.
I raised an eyebrow as I took it. I doubted I’d be thinking of anything else.
They both nodded this time, and rose to leave.
As I watched the dark car pull back down the hill I felt strangely violated. Their questions had been benign enough, but I sensed some deeper agenda. Did they know I was going to have dinner with Connor? Would it matter in any way? How would that affect his case, I wondered.
More concerning, how did they know that I’d taken photos of him? Unless … my mind went back to Jack, seeing the picture over my shoulder. No doubt he was salivating, hoping I’d change my mind and decide to hang Connor out to dry by selling that photo to whatever dirt-digging friend he had in LA. I shook my head, annoyed that Jack had never known me well enough to understand that I couldn’t do that. Consciously deciding to hurt someone in order to further my own interests wasn’t in my nature. Or if it was, I’d have to be really damned desperate to do it. And I might have been desperate, but I wasn’t that desperate.
I returned to the trailer, laced up my boots and grabbed my camera bag to head out for a hike.
Maddie was going to have dinner with me. I had to repeat it to myself a few times until I actually believed it.
Just the knowledge of her acceptance had broken something loose inside me, and some of the darkness that had hung over everything in my life for so long seemed to dissipate. I felt myself changing, too. The solitude I’d craved and preserved at the expense of everything else wasn’t attractive to me now. I wanted something else—some kind of connection I’d never sought before. I wanted to be known, and to know someone else. It was an uncomfortable realization, but it was welcome, in a way. For years I’d wondered if there was something broken in me, something that made me different in some fundamental way from everyone else. Why didn’t I want the same things they did? Why did I find happiness in silence and solitude? Why did I prefer fictional company to that of actual people?
Maybe I just hadn’t met the right people.
But if Maddie was coming for dinner, I needed to take care of a couple things. For one thing, I’d need to actually be prepared to make a meal, which meant venturing to the grocery store in town. I was not the town’s most celebrated citizen at this point, and I wasn’t eager for the exposure, so I set out as soon as the store had opened for the day. The place was quiet, if not empty, and I didn’t run into anyone I knew.
I checked out, feeling happier than I had in a long time, and loaded the groceries into my car, pleased to have been left alone. There were a few police cruisers in the parking lot, and the distant drone of a helicopter told me they were still searching the back hills for Amanda. I shook my head as I got into the car, wondering if my plan to be as cooperative as possible and otherwise stay uninvolved was the right one. My agent had suggested I needed to be seen visibly helping with the search, but the police had asked me to stay away from the girl’s family. I’d given the detectives every bit of information I had, had gotten in touch immediately when anything new popped up that they might have interest in, and I had decided to put my faith in the law.
But that did little to lessen the belief of everyone in Kings Grove that I was a dangerous man. And I knew that what they’d seen of my sister only added fuel to the fire, but that was no one’s business but my own. And it was business I planned to finish today.
With the assurance that Maddie was coming to dinner, and the belief that maybe life was finally turning a corner for me, I finally felt capable of doing what I needed to do for Cathy.
I put the groceries away and packed up my hiking supplies, taking the black bag that held her urn and tucking it into my pack. It was big and awkward, but I didn’t mind. This was the last time I’d have a chance to carry my little sister, morbid as that thought was, and the hard firm pressure of her urn against my back reminded me we were together this last time.
The Ridge Line trail was one of her favorite spots in the park, so I hiked it as the sun burned toward midday. I did my best to take in the sweeping views of the Great Western Divide and the endless march of pine and granite down into Kings Canyon with the appreciation I knew my sister had always felt for these things, and by the time I’d reached the stacked rocks at the side of the trail, the place
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