Look Closely
Look Closely
Laura Caldwell
There is no statute of limitations on murder.Look Closely. That's all the anonymous letter said, but attorney Hailey Sutter understands the meaning behind the well-chosen words. Someone wants her to investigate what happened to her mother, who died when Hailey was only seven. The death was ruled accidental, but Hailey begins having flashbacks that tell a different story: a pounding at the door…her mother struggling to stand…a man with a gold ring that flashed in the night as he held her mother's lifeless body.Obsessed with uncovering the truth, Hailey can't trust anyone, especially her father, whose secrecy both unnerves and protects her. Desperate to remember that fatal night, she seeks out the brother and sister who left home after their mother's death. But they have disappeared. It's soon clear to Hailey that the answer is right in front of her–all she has to do is find the courage to look closely….
Praise for the novels of
Laura Caldwell
“Riveting. Laura Caldwell has weaved a haunting story of suspense and family secrets. If you pick up Look Closely, you won’t want to put it down.”
—Mary Jane Clark, New York Times bestselling author of Nobody Knows and Hide Yourself Away
“A sensational suspense debut for Laura Caldwell! Look Closely is an action-packed thriller of surprising emotional depth. Caldwell mixes the ingredients—an unexplained death, family secrets and foggy memories—into a compelling story you won’t want to end.”
—David Ellis, Edgar Award-winning author of Line of Vision and Jury of One
“Caldwell’s snazzy, gripping third novel gives readers an exciting taste of life in the fast lane, exposing the truth behind the fairy tale.”
—Booklist on The Year of Living Famously
“A Clean Slate is Laura Caldwell’s page-turner about a woman with a chance to reinvent herself, something most of us have imagined from time to time.”
—Chicago Tribune
“This debut novel from Laura Caldwell won us over with its exotic locales, strong portrayal of the bonds between girlfriends, cast of sexy foreign guys, and, most of all, its touching story of a young woman at a crossroads in her life.”
—Barnes & Noble.com on Burning the Map, selected as one of “The Best of 2002”
Watch for a brand-new novel from
LAURA CALDWELL
Laura Caldwell
Look Closely
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to the following people: Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Maureen Walters, everyone at MIRA Books (especially Dianne Moggy, Donna Hayes, Laura Morris, Craig Swinwood, Sarah Rundle, Margie Miller and Tara Kelly), Mark Bragg, Pam Carroll, Jim Lupo, Ginger Heyman, Trisha Woodson, Ted McNabola and Joan Posch.
Thanks mostly to Jason Billups, purveyor of dreams.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Prologue
Seated at a table near the back, Caroline Ramsey lifted her champagne flute an inch off the table. “Cheers,” she murmured halfheartedly, toasting the bride and groom for what seemed the fiftieth time. Almost immediately, she set the glass back down.
Her husband, Matt, leaned toward her. “Anything wrong?” he said. Through his glasses, his brown eyes looked only mildly concerned.
The groom was a distant relative of Matt’s, and in order to compensate for knowing so few people, he’d gone into his social mode, dancing to every silly wedding song and striking up conversations around the room. He always became vivacious and outgoing in these situations, something Caroline loved about him, since she was more reserved. Yet now she almost wished that he were more of a watcher, like her, someone who hung on the fringes. If that were true, maybe he would wonder now, maybe he would look deeper.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she lied, because she didn’t want him to wonder. She might not be strong enough. She might tell him what she’d planned. And if she told him, he would talk her out of it. This was something she had to do, though, just one more time. Hopefully, she would get the chance one day to explain.
Matt ruffled her hair, a gesture that usually annoyed her. Tonight, it somehow brought relief.
The wedding was being held in an eight-point tent on the lawn of a Charleston mansion, and the beleaguered jazz band struck up another number as the latest toastmaster finally gave up the microphone. Caroline and Matt both turned to watch the newlyweds take the dance floor, a surge of guests following and engulfing them. Caroline remembered her own wedding, just four years ago, at an inn on Mount Hood. It had been much smaller, with cheap ivory votive candles and wilted wildflowers instead of silver candelabras and elaborate white lily arrangements, but she’d been filled with promise just like the bride tonight. She’d stupidly assumed that her troubles were behind her, that her new life with Matt would obliterate the old.
“Should we join them?” Matt cocked his head at the dance floor.
She looked at those warm brown eyes, his soft curly hair, which was always a little too long, and the dimple he got in one cheek when he smiled, and she kissed him. He kissed her back, cupping her face. It reminded her of their wedding, except that it was beaming bright that day, the sun relentlessly striking their faces as they stood on the cliff. Matt’s parents had been there, along with his brother and a few friends, but of course her family had been absent. Or maybe “absent” wasn’t the right word, since she hadn’t exactly invited anyone from her past.
“You want to go back to the hotel?” Matt murmured.
She shook her head, finding it hard to talk. “I have to use the restroom,” she said at last.
“I’ll be here.” He stroked her cheek one more time.
She stood and turned away before she could change her mind, making her way across the flagstone path to the Trembly Mansion where the restrooms were located. According to the history printed on the back of the wedding program, the mansion had been built in 1856 by Arthur Trembly and his second wife, Meredith, who was only seventeen at the time of their marriage. Caroline glanced up at the mansion with its brick front, soaring white columns, wide veranda and leaded-glass windows, and she could almost imagine young Meredith stepping out onto that veranda, resplendent in a tightly bodiced gown of crimson taffeta, greeting the guests of their latest gala.
It was how Caroline had coped all those years—making up stories and images in her head, filling her mind with fascinating people and intriguing families to compensate for her own lack of friends and family. But she couldn’t let herself go too far down the paths of those tales any longer. Instead of shielding her from reality as they used to, they now reminded her of the memories she’d worked so hard to bury. She quickened her pace and trotted up the side stairway, past a sign with an arrow reading Powder Room. The information about the Trembly Mansion also said that this side of the house had been temporarily converted into a catering kitchen and guest-bathroom facilities, while the remainder of the home was being renovated by a local historical society.
Caroline stepped into a well-lit kitchen. The shiny silver espresso makers sitting atop tan Formica counters gave nothing away about what the rest of the mansion might look like. She picked her way through a pack of tuxedoed servers, most of whom held trays of cut cake. One waiter nodded with his head to direct her toward the restroom.
When she came out of the bathroom, the kitchen was empty. There was no one to stop her from changing her direction and ducking under the blue velvet curtain that hung across the arched wood doorway, the one that led into the main part of the mansion. The renovations were supposedly in high gear, with too much dust and equipment to allow guests to view it, but Caroline didn’t care much for rules. Why should she? Except for Matt, no one in her life had followed them.
As the curtain flapped closed behind her, she blinked to let her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The only light in the room came from the lanterns hanging in the trees outside, and there was a musty scent in the air. She could hear the tinkle of music from the band and the clatter of dishware from the waiters, who must have returned to the kitchen.
As the dark room became clearer, Caroline made out a massive, mahogany stairway that curled upward in scrolls from the center of the room. Nothing seemed to support the staircase, yet it gave the impression of solemn strength. Caroline felt a trembling inside her belly, a shakiness in her hand. The stairway reminded her of another staircase. One she hadn’t seen in so very long, but one that had, in a way, started it all.
She had to do this. One more time, he’d said. Just one more time.
Caroline tried to draw her gaze away from the stairs but couldn’t. And it didn’t matter, because in her mind, she was seeing that other staircase so long ago.
The trembling deepened, the shaking in her hands grew stronger.
Finally wrenching her eyes away from the staircase, Caroline turned, found the front door and ran outside into the night.
The lights were blinking, weren’t they? Blinking and flickering and then fading. Or maybe it was him.
Dan Singer stopped trudging and opened his eyes wide to stare at the lights. No. Not blinking. It was a Budweiser sign. Just a yellow and green neon beer sign hanging in a bar window. Jesus, he’d drunk too damn much, and after so many years of sobriety, it had hit him hard. He’d needed courage, and he’d convinced himself that this time the vodka might bring him some. Really, he was drinking to kill time. He was delaying the inevitable.
He’d been in and out of nearly every bar on this street. What was the name of it again? He turned and gazed at the street sign. “Division Street,” it said. That was right. He knew that. Division Street in Chicago. He’d been at a convention here for the last few days, and he’d spent the time with other salespeople in the pharmaceutical industry, acting as if he still cared about the new cholesterol drug and his company’s revenues. Yet, as uninterested as he was in the technicalities, he’d reveled in the normalcy of it all, knowing he might not have that for some time.
He turned to the nearest bar and pulled open the big oak door, a rush of laughter and music swelling out to greet him, along with the smell of stale beer. Strangely, the scent was comforting, a reminder of college—blurry days filled with classes and parties and bars and girls. He’d been able to escape for a while during those days.
He pushed his way to the bar, drawing a few irritated looks in the process. There were no available stools so he lodged himself between two patrons and waved at the bartender.
“Vodka with a splash of soda,” he said when the bartender reached him.
He watched as she poured his drink. He liked the way she made a dipping motion with the bottle, her T-shirt lifting up and exposing a slice of tanned skin above her jeans. A week ago, he would have tried to flirt with her. He was finally getting back into the dating scene. But that wasn’t an option now.
She slid the glass in front of him. “It’s on me. You look like you could use it.”
He tried to give a lighthearted smile, but her kindness put a lump in his throat, so he just nodded.
He tipped her and sipped the drink, trying not to think of Annie or how she must have felt when he hadn’t picked her up today. His ex hadn’t helped matters, he was sure. She’d probably told Annie, in a smug voice, that her dad didn’t care enough. She wouldn’t think about how hearing that would make Annie feel. She’d only know that it made her feel superior. His failure to show would confirm what she thought anyway—that he was irresponsible and not to be trusted. He’d never cheated on her when they were married, but he understood why she suspected it. It was his secretive manner that made her wonder, and when he wouldn’t fill in any of the blanks, when they couldn’t communicate the way she’d been taught on Oprah, she’d assumed the worst. He didn’t try very hard to convince her otherwise. Annie was the loser in their divorce, caught between two people who wanted to move on with their lives. For that he was sorry. It was why he’d never missed any of his weekends or Wednesdays with her, until now.
He was jostled from behind by a group of women who were hugging and shrieking as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. Soon, two of the women pushed in beside him, waving dollar bills at the bartender, who took their orders.
“You look amazing!” one woman said to the other, grabbing her friend by the forearm and looking her up and down. “You’re so thin.”
“Oh, stop,” said the other, but she beamed.
They launched into a discussion about who they’d been in touch with, how much they’d missed everyone, how it had been way too long, and yet neither of them sounded particularly surprised to find themselves together again. It made Dan think about how empty his own life was, how devoid of any relationships like that. But it was too late to change. Way too late. And he had to make himself accept, again, that it had all been worth it. If he didn’t get his mind around that, he would snap. He’d given up too much—his family, his hometown, his history, for Christ’s sake. It had been worth it, he told himself, but his own voice sounded like that of a politician, trying to sugarcoat an international incident.
The ease of the women’s reunion was depressing him, and the vodka seemed to have lost its power. He’d hit that point where he couldn’t get any more loaded, no matter how hard he tried, his veins already coursing at their alcoholic capacity. He shot a halfhearted goodbye smile toward the bartender, then turned and elbowed through the girlfriends.
After he’d walked a few blocks, he saw cars up ahead, flashing by. In the spaces between the cars were intermittent glints of silvery light. He took a few more steps before it hit him. Lake Shore Drive, or LSD as he used to call it in high school, liking how saying that made him sound as if he might know a thing or two about illicit drugs. He had nearly reached Lake Shore Drive, which meant he was almost to Lake Michigan.
“Hey, buddy.” The voice startled him so much he flinched. Spinning around, he saw a man crumpled on the sidewalk, against the side of a brownstone. Dan’s first instinct was that the man was hurt and needed help, but in the next instant he saw the stuffed garbage bag at the man’s side and his multiple layers of clothing, and realized he was homeless.
“Spare a couple bucks?” the man said, his voice a rough croak. “Gotta get some food.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dan extracted a ten-dollar bill from the few he had left and crumpled the rest in his pocket. He tossed the bill toward the man, but it caught a breeze, twisting and lilting in the air like a snowflake until the man snatched it.
“Thanks, bud.” The man gave Dan a nod. “Appreciate it.”
Dan stood a moment longer, looking at the man. He used to wonder how anyone could be homeless, how someone could shift from a house and a profession to a life on the street. But now he understood better. In fact, it was a possibility that occasionally loomed in his own future, because sometimes he just didn’t care anymore. At those times, he could imagine letting it all go—his sales job, his apartment, his child-support payments—until he was fired, evicted and strapped with a restraining order. What scared him was that oftentimes that possibility appealed to him, because he saw it as a way to let go of the constraints in his life, and maybe that would allow him to let go of the secret, too. A secret that had somehow grown larger and larger over the years, when, in fact, some days he wondered whether it really needed to be hidden at all.
He turned away from the man and kept moving toward the lake. He’d avoided lakes his whole adult life, especially this one. It reminded him too much of the old days. But he felt its pull now, the water’s tug. He kept walking. When he reached the poorly lit tunnel that would take him under LSD and to the lake, he hesitated, waiting for the alcohol to clear his head.
But the fear he expected didn’t come. He took that as a good sign, and descended into the tunnel.
1
The short letter, a note really, arrived at my apartment on a Thursday. It was one of those random, end-of-April days in Manhattan when the temperature shot to eighty degrees, sending everyone to Central Park or the cafés that had rushed to set up their outdoor tables. A boisterous, electric feeling was in the air. I called Maddy from my cell phone as I walked home from the subway, and we decided to go for wine and dinner at Bryant Park Grill, a rooftop restaurant where Maddy knew the maître d’.
In the terminally slow elevator on the way to my apartment, I glanced at my mail. There was nothing interesting at first, just a bill and a few obvious pieces of junk, but I stopped when I came to the flat, business-size envelope with no return address. The envelope looked as if it had been printed on a personal computer, and there was a postage stamp with an antique car on it.
Inside my place, I dropped my purse, my briefcase and the rest of the mail on the front-hall table, then slit open the envelope. I pulled out a piece of folded white paper, and strangely, all my senses went on alert. The apartment was suddenly warm and stuffy. It smelled dusty and stale, and my skin itched from the uncharacteristic heat. Holding the envelope and the still-folded paper, I walked to the windows and cranked them open for the first time that year. Balmy, fresh air seeped into the room.
I sat on the couch and unfolded the paper. Only two typewritten lines appeared there.
There is no statute of limitations on murder. Look closely.
“What?” I said the word out loud, but as I read the note again, some odd glimmer of comprehension began to ruffle my mind. It wasn’t that I recognized the words or the type. I was sure I’d never heard those exact sentences before, and I had no idea who’d written them, yet there was a flicker of understanding.
The breeze from my windows felt too cool then, yet I didn’t move to close them. In fact, I hoped the air would help me breathe. All at once, my chest and throat felt constricted, my lungs making shallow movements. I told myself to stay calm and put the note down. But I couldn’t let go of the paper. I read the words over and over until I felt light-headed, and the words swam in front of me. Murder, statute, closely…
The ring of the phone rattled me away from the letter. I blinked rapidly, finally getting that deep breath, and grabbed the receiver off the end table.
“Hailey, it’s me,” Maddy said. “I’m early, and I’m two blocks from you, so I’m coming over.”
I dropped the letter in my lap. “I need a few minutes.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s…It’s nothing.”
“Whoa,” she said. “I know that voice. I’ll be right there.”
Five minutes later, she buzzed from the lobby.
“What’s up with you?” she said when I opened the door, the letter still in my hand. “What’s wrong?”
I handed her the note. “I’m not sure.” I felt both sick and elated, as if on the verge of some discovery.
Maddy read it. “What in the hell is this?”
I shook my head and took the note from her. I read it again, letting that flicker of comprehension grow brighter.
“Hailey, what’s going on?” Maddy said, her voice cautious, slightly alarmed. She flicked her dark, ringletted hair over her shoulder.
“I just got it in the mail,” I said inanely.
“Who sent it?”
I shrugged.
Maddy groaned. “Why are you being so difficult? Give me the envelope.”
I turned toward the couch and pointed to where it had fallen off my lap. It was now almost hidden between the cushions. Maddy’s heels tapped on the wood floor as she crossed the room. For some reason, I noticed that she was wearing an expensive-looking tan suit, one I hadn’t seen before.
“The letter was sent from here in the city,” she said, lifting the envelope and pointing to the postmark. “Do you have any idea who sent it to you?”
“No.” I looked down at the page, although I knew the words by heart already.
“Well, who was murdered? I mean, do you know who it’s referring to?”
I felt that nauseous elation again, a sick swoop and dive of my insides. “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “My mom.”
My lungs ached, but I ignored the feeling. I ran faster, heading south down Broadway, then rounding the corner at Union Square West, just barely avoiding a full-frontal collision with a falafel vendor. I kept running, my shoes making dull slaps on the concrete, until I hit University, where I turned toward my apartment. Almost there, almost there. My breath sounded ragged to my own ears, but I pushed past it. Just a few more blocks. I pumped my arms faster, increasing my speed, feeling my bangs stick to my forehead with sweat.
I reached Eleventh Street and dropped to a walk, letting my breath catch up with me. It was heaven to jog without all my winter layers, to let the breeze hit my bare legs, to let the run shake off the thoughts of that letter, those two sentences that I carried constantly in my brain. I’d spent the last few weeks obsessing about who had sent it to me. I wouldn’t show it to my dad, and I had no guesses myself. On a long shot, I interrogated my mailman, but he could only tell me the bit of information I already knew—that the envelope had originally been sent from here in Manhattan. Which left me with millions of residents to consider, not to mention the millions of tourists.
I slowed even more when I reached the display of flowers on the sidewalk that signaled my favorite Korean grocery store. A few weeks ago there’d been prom carnations and roses that looked hair-sprayed—winter flowers—but now there were tulips, bright-colored and fresh. Inside the crowded shop, I picked up a bottle of grapefruit juice and a mammoth Sunday New York Times. Buying that paper every weekend made me feel like a native, one of those people who acted as if it was no big deal to live here, in one of the largest, craziest cities in the world. Maddy was like that. So were many of the associates at my firm. Manhattan lingo rolled off their tongues with ease. They’d say, “I’m going to the Korean,” instead of “the Korean deli,” or “I’m heading to Seventy-sixth and Lex” not “Seventy-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue.”
I, on the other hand, had never been truly comfortable in Manhattan, despite my three years there during law school and the last five years of private practice. I’d thought the accumulation of years, together with the fact that my father still lived in Manhasset on Long Island, would bring me a sense of contentment. But no matter how often I put myself in the thick of things, no matter how much I tried to convince myself, I always felt a little off, a little like an impostor. It was why I jogged the chaotic streets, picking my way past too many obstacles, like pedestrians and baby strollers and bicyclists, instead of heading for the river or Battery Park. I had this notion that if I constantly placed myself in the middle of the urban crunch it would soak in, and I’d finally feel as if I belonged.
I finished the juice while waiting in line to pay, picking the pulpy bits off my lips. I showed the bottle to the cashier when I reached him.
“How are you today, Hailey?” the cashier said. He was a short Korean man with a wide bald head.
“Good, Shin. How are you?” We had a few seconds of light chatter while he rang me up. Shin was the reason I went to that store; someone, other than my co-workers, who knew my name.
I threw the bottle in a trash can outside the store, feeling a cool trickle of sweat slide down my spine, then walked in the direction of Ninth Street. I balanced the paper on one arm, while I flipped to the business section.
“Shit!” I said. “Shit, shit, shit.” The headline read, Online McKnight Store In Trouble?
McKnight Corporation was one of my clients—one of my newest, biggest clients—and I was scheduled to leave for Chicago that night to represent them at a federal arbitration. Until then, I hadn’t been as nervous as I usually would be in an arbitration. I’d been more focused on that letter and the fact that Chicago was right across the lake from Woodland Dunes, the town where I’d lived until I was seven. The town where my mother, Leah Sutter, had died.
The night I had received the letter, Maddy and I split a bottle of wine, then another, talking for hours. Why, Maddy had demanded, did I think the stupid little note was about my mother? It was probably just a cruel prank, she said. By that time I was sure that the letter was about Leah Sutter, but I had a hard time explaining my conviction, my absolute certainty. I couldn’t remember much about that time, and I’d gotten used to ignoring it, yet now it had come back, a force to be reckoned with. The more I thought about it, a family shouldn’t scatter the way mine did after someone died. One day I had a mother, a father, a sister and a brother. After my mom passed away, it was only my dad and me.
I’ve read stories of estranged families coming closer after someone dies. I don’t know why that didn’t happen to my family. We didn’t stay long in Woodland Dunes, but during the few weeks that I’d returned to school, I saw the pointed stares of my classmates, a curious fear behind their eyes. So, I’d been glad when my dad said we were leaving. Caroline and Dan went their own ways—Caroline to boarding school, Dan to college and then both of them off into the world. I grew up without siblings, without knowing what I was missing. It wasn’t until college, when I was away from my father for the first time, that I realized how strange that was.
Staring at the McKnight headline now, thinking of the publicity it would generate, my heart rate picked up again. I hurried to my apartment, and instead of waiting for the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time to my place on the sixth floor. During law school, I’d lived on the ground floor of the same building, in a small studio with a single window that had a lovely view of the Dumpster. Once I had a steady paycheck, I moved to the top floor and into a large one-bedroom. Instead of the Dumpster, my windows now overlooked an old church on the corner, which would have been quaint if it weren’t for the couple of homeless guys who set up camp there every night and screamed obscenities at passersby.
Inside the apartment, I skimmed the article. The beginning gave information I already knew: McKnight Corporation owned department stores nationwide and had recently gotten into online retail, but they’d been sued by a competitor who claimed that McKnight copied its Web design and certain slogans. Their stock had gone down because of the suit, and if they lost the arbitration or a later trial, the article speculated, it could sound the death knell for the company. I knew the arbitration was important to McKnight’s business, of course. What I hadn’t known was that the company could go under if I didn’t win.
“Christ,” I said, slamming a hand on the table.
I stood up straight, embarrassed by my own temper, despite the fact that I was alone. It wasn’t just the professional pressure that was getting to me, I knew. It was the thought that this development might steal away the time I’d planned to spend during my visit to Woodland Dunes.
The second half of the article gave a history of the company, something I was only vaguely familiar with. I skimmed most of it until I saw a teaser headline in the middle that read, Corporate Foul Play? The juice I’d drank felt like acid in my stomach.
According to the piece, Sean McKnight, the current CEO, had engineered a deal twenty years ago that allowed McKnight Corporation to buy another department-store company called Fieldings. Initially, the deal had all the makings of a hostile takeover, but suddenly Fieldings’s board, made up of mostly Fieldings family members, had decided to sell. There was a rumor that McKnight had used personal information to blackmail his way into the sale. Charges were never brought, though, and McKnight Corporation had flourished until now.
I read the section again. I’d been told by McKnight’s in-house counsel that there was no dirty laundry. I might be able to bar the plaintiff’s attorney from questioning McKnight about this Fieldings takeover, but the rules of evidence were looser at arbitrations than at trials, so I would have to be prepared. The media surrounding the story would only make my job harder. Hopefully, Illinois didn’t allow filming at arbitrations.
I picked up the phone and dialed Maddy’s number. When I got her machine, I hung up and dialed her cell phone instead.
I had met Maddy on the first day of law school, and I liked her right away. I liked her loud, cheerful personality and her crazy, curly hair. Maddy, unlike me, was someone who told you her life story within the first twenty minutes of meeting her. When I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do that, she seemed to understand. As we spent more and more time together—studying in the library, griping about exams, drinking too much merlot on the weekends—Maddy found subtle ways to draw me out.
One of her favorites was using magazines as props. We would study in the coffee-shop area of a large bookstore, and every few hours we’d take a break. Maddy would buy a stack of magazines, and we’d sit across from each other, steaming mugs of coffee in front of us, the magazines fanned out over the table. As we flipped the pages, Maddy would ask questions. They started mundane, or at least as mundane as Maddy could be. “Don’t you think I’d look amazing in this dress?” she’d say, or “Can you believe how much these frickin’ sneakers cost? They look like orthopedic shoes.” But as we continued to talk, Maddy would sneak in slightly more substantial questions. “Did you have one of these hideous dolls when you were growing up?” or “Would you wear a wedding dress like this?”
I knew what Maddy was doing, but the questions didn’t feel threatening, so eventually I began to talk, my eyes still looking at the magazines, my fingers still turning the glossy pages. The questions grew more pointed, and by the end of our first year in law school, Maddy knew everything about me. She knew about my mother. She knew what I knew anyway, which wasn’t much. It was an odd freedom to release all those thoughts from the cage in my brain.
“I was just going to call you,” she said as she answered her phone now. In the background, I heard the ticking of cash registers and women’s voices. “I’m at Saks, and they’re having an incredible shoe sale. Those strappy sandals you wanted are forty percent off. Get your ass over here.”
“No, thanks. I think I’ll get enough of department stores this week. Plus, I have to leave for the airport in a few hours.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your McKnight arb. You ready?”
“Check out the business section of the Times, and you’ll know the answer to that one. Listen, I have a question about Illinois law. You had a few cases there, right?”
“Well, sure, but mostly I just carried the trial bags and ran for coffee.” Maddy was also at a big law firm in Manhattan, and like many other young associates, she hadn’t gotten much trial experience. I, on the other hand, had been lucky. Right out of law school, during the dot-com boom, I’d started a cyber-law division at my firm. I was young and determined. I had time to learn this new area of law, and I liked not being under the thumb of the other attorneys. To everyone’s surprise, the division was a huge success, and the clients didn’t stop coming even after many of the start-up companies failed. There was still so much business and very few firms who specialized in cyber law. Since my department was now pulling in lots of revenue, they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. In fact, I was hoping to make partner soon.
“Do you remember if they allow TV cameras at arbitrations?” I asked.
“I know they’re kept out of the courtroom. I don’t know about an arb, though. Sorry I’m not more help.”
“That’s all right.” I moved into the bedroom and took off my jogging shoes.
“How long will you be in Chicago?” Maddy said.
“A week or so.”
“You’ll be there next weekend, huh?”
“What are you getting at, Mad?” I pulled off my socks and slumped back on the bed. The satiny-smooth cotton felt cool under my legs.
“You know what I’m getting at. That bizarre letter. You’re going to Woodland Dunes, aren’t you?”
Like my father, Maddy knew me too well. Normally I loved her for it. “I’m just going to ask a few questions,” I told her, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
“Not smart, girl. Someone who writes a letter like that is not someone you want to mess with.”
“Right. Well.” It had occurred to me that maybe the author meant to be helpful in some way, but I wasn’t about to try to convince Maddy.
“Did you tell your dad?” she asked.
“Of course not.” My dad was my other best friend. We even worked together at Gardner, State & Lord, but he worried about me too much as it was.
Maddy sighed. “You can be such a pain in the ass. Just leave it alone, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“At least promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will, I will.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy those sandals for you, and I’ll hold them hostage. You only get them if you’re a good girl, and come home safely.”
I laughed. “Deal.”
I stripped off the rest of my clothes and took a quick shower. After I was dressed again, I loaded my laptop and the McKnight file into my large leather trial bag, the one that made me feel like a traveling salesman. Next, I packed a week’s worth of suits, some running clothes and a couple pairs of jeans into a suitcase. I had everything I needed for the arbitration, everything I needed for a week away from home, but there was one thing left to pack.
I moved around my bed to the corner of the room where I’d set up a desk and computer. I opened the top drawer and took out the envelope. I lifted the flap to make sure the letter was still there, then I read it once more. There is no statute of limitations on murder. Look closely.
2
The opulent Chicago headquarters of McKnight Corporation were housed on the top floors of their State Street department store. Marble-decked with gold fixtures, I assumed that it was supposed to bring to mind old world elegance. Personally, I found the place overdone. It reminded me of some of the homes in my dad’s neighborhood in Manhasset—all show and no warmth.
The receptionist escorted me to the top floor and into a conference room where paintings of the flagship store hung in gold-leafed frames. I was there to meet with Beth Halverson, McKnight Corporation’s in-house counsel, and Sean McKnight whom I hadn’t yet met. Then I would review my notes and get ready for opening arguments that afternoon.
I had the buzz, that taut, high-strung feeling I always got when I was on trial or in an arbitration. But now I was even more on edge since I’d been sideswiped with the new information about possible shady dealings in McKnight’s takeover of Fieldings Company.
“Hi, Hailey, welcome to Chicago.”
I stood to greet Beth Halverson, an impeccably dressed woman in her late thirties with stylish, short blond hair. I’d always found Beth competent and agreeable, and I was thrilled that she’d decided to give us McKnight’s business, but I had a bone to pick with her this time.
She seemed to read my mind. “I want you to know that I found out about the Fieldings allegations the same way you did. By reading the paper yesterday.”
“I mean no disrespect, but I find that hard to believe.” On a side table, coffee, juices and pastries had been set out. I poured myself a cup of coffee and added a few drops of skim milk, exactly the way my mom used to.
“Look,” Beth said. “I only came on as general counsel a year and a half ago.”
I turned around to see her shutting the conference-room door.
“What I found,” Beth said in a lowered voice, glancing at the closed door, “was that this place is run exactly the way Sean wants it.”
I took my seat again. “And what does that mean?”
Beth walked around the table, coming closer to me, and leaned on it with both arms. “It means that Sean doesn’t want anyone to talk about the Fieldings takeover, so no one does. I wasn’t apprised of the rumors. I never heard of any of the allegations until that article. Honestly, I wouldn’t keep that from you.”
I had only worked with Beth for a year or so, but she seemed like a straight shooter, and I believed her. “It’s just that I don’t know anything about that takeover,” I said. “I don’t know how to refute the allegations. I feel like I’ve been completely ambushed.”
Beth slumped into a chair. “God, I feel the same way. I even thought about quitting, but this is a great job when I don’t have to deal with the boss. I don’t know what to tell you except what I’ve learned about the Fieldings deal since yesterday.”
“I think I’d better hear it from McKnight himself. Where is he, by the way?”
Beth gave a shake of her blond head. “He should be here any minute. You’ve heard what he’s like?”
“I’ve heard he’s an asshole,” I said, deciding that now wasn’t the time to mince words.
I saw Beth’s face go slack, then heard a rough laugh behind me. I swung around to see a man standing in the now open conference doorway. He must have been in his late fifties, but the trim body and the immaculate blue suit made him look younger. His salt-and-pepper hair was brushed away from his sharply angled face.
“I assume you’re Ms. Sutter,” the man said. He walked into the room and extended his hand. “I’m the asshole.”
I stood, feeling heat rush to my face, but I was still angry about being kept in the dark, so I decided not to go overboard in my apology. I shook McKnight’s hand, feeling his strong, dry grip. His green eyes ran quickly over me, before they settled on my own eyes with a look of complete concentration.
“I’m sorry you heard that,” I said. “I’m sure it’s not true.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is.” He didn’t let go of my hand. Instead, he stood there holding it, intently studying my face, until I pulled away.
I made a show of looking at my watch. “We need to get to work. Why don’t you start by telling me about the Fieldings deal.”
McKnight took a seat at the head of the conference table. “You’re all business, aren’t you?”
“Isn’t that why you hired me?”
He gave me a tight smile. “Of course. What do you want to know?”
I flipped through my legal pad to the list of questions I’d prepared last night in my hotel room. The questions were those that the plaintiff’s attorney might ask McKnight on cross-examination.
Once I got him talking, I found myself relaxing somewhat. Technically, the man would make an excellent witness with his obvious intelligence, his even more obvious good looks, and the way he never hemmed or hawed, never seemed edgy or defensive. He had brought with him a stack of documents, meticulously organized and tabbed, which he referred to every so often. He’d prepared well for the arbitration, and that impressed me. So many clients thought that I could—and should—do all the work for them.
His explanation of the Fieldings allegations sounded plausible, too, yet something still gnawed at me. The way he told the story, the Fieldings family members had been undecided over whether to sell to McKnight Corporation. Sean had had a talk with Walter Fieldings, the founder and eldest family member, and convinced him that it would be in the family’s best financial interests to sell. Walter Fieldings had, in turn, convinced the rest of the family, and the deal went through. Yes, McKnight said, there were some grumblings that he had pulled some kind of trick. The authorities had even questioned him, but everyone realized the blackmail allegations weren’t true, and nothing came of it. He’d never been charged with anything, and he made the Fieldings family very rich.
“And that’s it?” I said, the incredulity slipping into my tone despite myself. “There’s nothing more to the story? You just had a talk with Papa Fieldings, and the deal fell into place?”
“Essentially, yes.” McKnight leaned forward on his elbows. His eyes held mine, and I wondered for a second if he was one of those older guys who hit on every woman under forty. For some reason, that thought didn’t strike me exactly right. There were a handful of those types in my office, and they were much more overt—staring at your breasts, letting their hands run over your back as you passed them.
“Are you doubting me?” McKnight asked.
“I’m trained to doubt everyone.”
“How interesting.” He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, as if waiting for me to make the next move.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not trying to antagonize you, but if you want to avoid a trial, we need to win this week, and if we’re going to win, we need to make sure you sound credible.”
“Are you saying I don’t seem credible?” McKnight’s tone was low and, to be honest, scary.
“I’m simply saying that in case they’re allowed in, you have to be ready for some intense questions on this issue. Your story needs to be perfect.”
McKnight’s gaze never left my face. “Well, Miss Sutter, what part of my ‘story,’ as you put it, don’t you believe?”
I reviewed the notes I’d taken. It was a good question, because I couldn’t exactly find fault with his rendition of the events. He was the problem, I realized. I didn’t trust him, and that made me very anxious. Any lawyer’s worst nightmare is a client you can’t trust, who might hold things back or take matters into his own hands. McKnight struck me as that type, but I couldn’t very well tell him that. In one month, the Gardner, State & Lord executive committee would vote on new partners. If I lost the McKnight account right before the vote, I might lose the partnership. I’d worked too hard to let this guy ruin it for me.
“It’s nothing precise,” I said, raising my head to meet his eyes again. “As I mentioned, I just want you to be ready.”
“If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s this. I am always, always ready.” He closed the file folder in front of him as if the subject were also closed.
“All right then. Let’s review what’s going to happen this week.”
I took them through what I expected of the arbitration step by step, and when we were finished, McKnight stood from the table and began moving toward the door. It was twelve o’clock, one hour before the arbitration started.
“Please call if you want lunch sent up,” he said to me. “You do eat, right? You do require regular human sustenance?”
I blinked a few times, confused at his hostility. “I’ve been known to eat once in a while,” I said wryly.
“Good to hear it. I’ll see you at the arbitration.”
“I think we should walk over together so that we can talk some more about your testimony,” I said.
He stopped and turned around. “I think you’ve taken up enough of my time.” With that, he sailed out the door.
I looked at Beth. “What the hell?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t take it personally. Supposedly, he wasn’t always like this. I’ve heard that he used to be a decent guy until he got a divorce years ago. He was never the same after that.”
“A divorce made him such a jerk? Are you kidding me?”
She shrugged. “You never know what can push a person over the edge.”
A few days later, I sat at a scratched wooden table, alone in the arbitration room, getting ready to present McKnight’s Web designer as my next witness. Since everyone else was at lunch, the room was cool and quiet. The proceeding was being held in a stately old government building near the federal courthouse, the place where McKnight Corporation would find itself in approximately six months for a trial if the arbitration didn’t go well. The arbitrators had barred members of the press from the room, but journalists were always stationed outside, like vultures waiting to swoop, so most of the time I stayed put until I had to leave for the day.
It was hard when the room was so still. I wasn’t as focused as I should have been. My thoughts kept straying from the notes and deposition transcripts piled in front of me to the letter tucked at the bottom of my trial bag. I kept counting the days until I could leave Chicago and drive to Woodland Dunes. Only two more now.
So far, the arbitration had been an odd mix, some parts better than I expected, others decidedly worse. I’d been pleased with my opening argument. I went into that zone where I wove my words easily, where I could read the arbitrators’ faces and change my course when their interest waned. The only thing that threw me was the constant feel of Sean McKnight’s eyes on me. It didn’t seem like the lustful watch of a man interested in a May/December romance. That would have been simple, because I knew how to handle come-ons. No, his stare felt more like an ever-present evaluation. Every time I saw him observing me from the corner of my eye, I had to force myself to concentrate so that I could keep on the path of my statement.
Luckily, after the opening arguments, McKnight did as he said he would and disappeared until it was time for his testimony. Once he was on the stand, he became the charming person customers associated with McKnight department stores. I was surprised when the plaintiff’s attorney, Evan Lamey, didn’t hit McKnight hard with questions about the Fieldings takeover. I would’ve liked to think that Lamey was entranced by McKnight’s good looks and smooth talking, but I knew better. Lamey was trying to cast a shadow of doubt over McKnight with his cross-examination, all the while saving his real zingers in case a trial was needed. As a result, McKnight finished his testimony at the end of the day with a smug look on his face.
“You see,” he said, leaning toward me so the others wouldn’t hear, “I didn’t need the practice.”
I clicked my trial bag shut. “Don’t kid yourself. He went easy on you.”
A flicker of doubt crossed McKnight’s face, then disappeared. He didn’t ask what I meant. Instead, he simply said, “When do I have to be back here?”
“Closing arguments. Friday at one o’clock. Unless of course you want to show support for your employee, who will be testifying tomorrow.”
“And what do you do with your evenings here in Chicago?”
“I…” I faltered for a second, startled at the shift in topic. I wondered if I’d been wrong before, if he might be hitting on me. But his eyes were cold, and he had taken a step away, as if he found it difficult to be in my proximity.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said.
“I think it is. I’m paying you to be here.”
“You’re not paying me for my time after hours.”
“Yes, right.” He studied my face with that way of his. Then he swiveled on the heels of his Italian-leather shoes and walked out of the room. I decided that he was, by far, the rudest and oddest client I’d ever had.
People started trickling into the arbitration room now, and I was finally able to get my mind on track. Unfortunately, the McKnight Web designer, a Jesus look-alike named Gary Sather, didn’t fare as well as his boss that afternoon. My direct exam went smooth enough, although I had to constantly remind Gary to speak up and to respond to questions out loud instead of answering with a nod or a shake of his head. On cross-examination, he crumbled. Lamey didn’t hold back this time. He went after Gary hard, his cross designed to show that the McKnight Web site stole ideas from its competitor, Lamey’s client.
“Is it possible,” Lamey said, prowling in front of Gary like a lion stalking its prey, the tails of his gray suit coat flapping behind him with the movement, “that the Easy Click and Shop system you said you designed for McKnight was actually a copy of technology you saw somewhere else?”
Gary blinked again. He looked at me for help, even though I’d told him not to. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Lamey stopped in front of him. “You’re not sure, then?”
I tried to will the answer to Gary by mental telepathy. Say you’re sure, say you’re absolutely positive that you created it on your own, just like we practiced.
Gary missed my telepathy and lamely shrugged his shoulders.
“Let me ask it another way,” Lamey said, taking a step toward the witness. “Is it possible that you’d seen something very similar to the Easy Click and Shop system on another Web site before you designed the McKnight site?”
Gary blinked again. “I guess it’s possible.”
“So, it’s possible that you borrowed that technology and used it on the McKnight site.” Lamey flipped through some papers as he said this, a trick designed to make Gary think that he had something in writing that could verify his statement.
Gary watched him and licked his lips. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It’s possible.”
I resisted the urge to drop my head in my hands.
I opened the window and let the azure sky push a damp spring breeze through the rental car. I’d finally escaped the clog of cars that surrounded the Loop and was heading east on the Dan Ryan Expressway toward the Skyway. On the passenger seat, I had a bottle of water, a bag of pretzels and a map of the Midwest. Strangely, I didn’t actually need the map. I knew the way, as if I could sense the streets and highways that would lead me to the past, to Woodland Dunes, and maybe to the truth about my mother.
Yesterday’s closing argument had gone as well as possible, but afterward, when the arbitration room cleared, I’d broken the news to McKnight that Gary’s testimony would almost certainly make the arbitrators find for the plaintiff.
McKnight listened, his unreadable eyes watching me, and then he said, “Fine. He’ll be gone by this afternoon.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You can’t fire him!”
“I can, and I will.”
“Don’t you realize that terminating him is exactly what the plaintiffs want? At trial, they can make a huge issue of how you knew Gary had messed up, and that’s why you sacked him. If you keep him on, though, you show confidence in your Web site and your belief that your employee did nothing wrong.”
McKnight spread his lips in an insincere smile. “Point taken. He stays until the case is over. Although I suppose we could have avoided this conversation if you’d prepared him correctly.”
I felt my jaw clench. The silence of the large room seemed to envelope us, although I could hear the murmurs outside the door; no doubt Lamey was spinning his tale of impending victory for the reporters.
“I worked with him for two days before his deposition, one day last week on the phone, and two nights this week,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. “Gary is a very nice person, but he’ll never be a good witness. No amount of prep can change that.” I hefted my trial bag off the counsel’s table, wishing I could launch the thing at McKnight’s head. “The arbitrators will call me next week when they’ve reached a decision. I’ll let you know immediately, and we’ll come here together to hear it.”
He nodded, his face slightly less haughty. “You did a good job. Other than that.”
I didn’t know whether to take that swing with the trial bag or thank him, so I only nodded an acknowledgment.
“I mean that,” he said. “You’re obviously an excellent lawyer.” He looked slightly embarrassed, and, for the first time since I met him, he seemed human. It was probably more than he could bear, because he turned and left without a word of goodbye.
Don’t think about it, I told myself now, and I turned up the car radio so that it blared an Allman Brothers song. I dug my hand in the bag of pretzels and popped a few in my mouth, washing them down with a swig of water. I found that it wasn’t hard to shift my thoughts as I made my way down the Skyway, a multilane raised road that hugged the lake and formed a bridge from Chicago into northern Indiana. Through the line of smokestacks and steel mills, I began to catch glimpses of the lake, a flat, watery carpet of deep blue, the lake that was my playground until my mom died.
Once across the Indiana border and into southern Michigan, I exited and got on a small highway that would take me even closer to the lake. The highway here was more scenic, lined with a couple of rural towns and then long patches of oak trees with nothing to interrupt them. It was odd how familiar it all seemed, how recent the memory. Finally, I reached a stop sign, so faded by the sun it was almost pink. Below it was another sign, black and rectangular with white lettering that read, Welcome To Woodland Dunes.
I didn’t hesitate. I stepped on the gas and crossed the threshold. I was back.
3
I passed Franklin Park, a wide plot of green land filled with benches and swing sets and a white gazebo. On the other side of the park lay the softly lapping waves of Lake Michigan. After the park, there were small cottages on either side of the street. Soon, the houses became larger and grander, the old section of Woodland Dunes. I pulled over and checked the slip of paper where I’d written Della’s address. I’d never been to her house before.
The street that Della lived on turned east, away from the lake, and coursed through the woods. This was where people built homes when they couldn’t afford to live near the water, and as a result, the homes became smaller and closer together again.
Della’s house was a trim ranch with brown aluminum siding and a small, unfinished wood porch with a lone rocker. An old blue station wagon was parked in the driveway. I pulled in behind it.
I climbed out of the car, not even pausing to check my face in the mirror or grab my purse. I hadn’t seen Della, the woman who’d been housekeeper and nanny to my family, in more than twenty years, but suddenly I couldn’t wait.
There was no bell, so I rapped on the screen door, which rattled back and forth in its casing.
An older Hispanic man dressed in jeans and a golf shirt opened it.
“Is Della home?” I said.
He gave me a kind smile. “Are you Hailey?”
I nodded.
“Well, hello. I’m Martin, Della’s husband. I met you years and years ago, but you probably don’t remember.”
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t be silly, you were a little girl. Della will be so happy to see you. She went out to the store. Wasn’t sure when you’d be here. Would you like to come in?”
I tried not to show my disappointment. Now that I was there, I was impatient to talk to Della, to find out everything she knew and remembered, but I couldn’t bear the thought of making small talk in the interim.
“Actually,” I said, “I haven’t been to Woodland Dunes in a long time. Maybe I’ll just drive around, go by our old house. Do you know who lives there now?”
Martin looked a little surprised. “Oh, no one lives there. Not for a while. They call it the Marker Mansion, after the family that originally built the house at the turn of the century. It’s been converted into a cultural center for the town.”
“So I could go inside?”
“Sure. They’ll even give you a tour.”
I thanked him, promised to return in an hour, and headed for my car.
After a five-minute drive, I turned the corner and came face-to-face with the house, the image of my early childhood—its gables, its sloping black roofs, its wide dormered windows on the second floor and the tall oaks and pines that surround the house like a cape. I parked in a large concrete lot that used to be part of the front lawn.
Turning off the ignition, I stared at the house, taking in the Victorian shape and the broad porch with its white wood railing. The house was dove-gray instead of the creamy yellow that my parents always painted it, and there were tall bushes where my mother used to plant flowers. Otherwise, the outside looked much the same. It had resided in my memory for so long, a memory I didn’t often visit, that it was strange to see it in person.
I got out of the car, and as I approached the front steps, I saw a small iron sign that read:
Woodland Dunes Cultural Center.
Formerly The Marker Mansion. Built 1905.
Tours Daily 10:00, 11:30, 1:00.
I glanced at my watch. I was just in time for the second tour.
When I stepped onto the porch, I had a sudden vision of a swing that used to hang in the corner. I could almost see my sister, Caroline, sitting there, her feet on the swing, her arms wrapped around her knees, her sandy, straight hair falling around her shoulders. She was always so quiet, so still, and in the summers, she spent much of her time on that swing. She never read or even hummed to herself. She just sat. I remembered myself, years younger than my newly teenage sister, coming out of the house to peek at her, wondering what tragedies she was mulling over. Although no one had given me that impression, I always imagined Caroline as a complicated and tragic figure.
“May I help you?” A voice startled me away from the memory. I turned to see a young woman in the doorway with dark hair twisted up in a loose knot.
“Hi. I’m here for the tour.”
“Great. C’mon in.” The woman stepped inside and held open the door. “We don’t get too many visitors until the summer really starts, so I’m glad to have you.”
My first thought when I stepped into the front hall, a wide foyer with molded plaster ceilings, was that the house was much darker now. Maybe I was mistaken or simply remembering poorly, but I always thought the house had been sun-filled and airy, even in the winter. Now the house had a shuttered, impersonal feel, a museum feel, which I supposed wasn’t surprising, since it was a museum of sorts now.
“I’m Jan,” the guide said, extending her hand. She was probably no older than twenty-one. She wore little makeup and a simple outfit of khaki pants and a blue T-shirt.
“Hailey.” I shook her hand.
“Are you from around here?”
“No. New York.” I didn’t mention that I used to be from around here, that I used to live in this house. For now, I wanted to keep my memories to myself. It had been so long since I let them in.
“Let’s start the tour over here.” Jan led the way to the right, past open pocket doors and into the library.
The inlaid mahogany bookshelves were still in place, as were the Tiffany lamps, permanently installed at the top of each shelf. At the end of the room was a huge pink marble fireplace that my dad used to call the “bordello fireplace.” It was so tall that I used to be able to walk directly into it without ducking. As I walked toward it now, I realized that I was a long way from that little girl. At five foot six, I could easily reach the mantel.
I took in the whole room, vaguely aware of Jan’s talk about how the house had been completed for the Marker family in 1905, how craftsmen had needed the previous six years to complete it. Like the entryway, the library appeared much darker than I remembered, probably because it was now adorned with period furnishings from the early 1900s to make it look as it did back then—heavy red velvet drapes, brass candelabras, uncomfortable-looking high-back chairs. But I saw it as my mother had decorated it—with soft, stuffed chairs and ottomans, vases of fresh flowers, and the corner that was saved just for me, complete with a small child’s chair, the replica of the larger ones, and my own miniature bookcases.
“How do you like it?” I heard Jan ask.
“Oh, it’s lovely. I was just imagining what it would have been like to live here.”
“Well, when the Markers were here, they had a full staff of servants to carry out their every whim, and they entertained often. The Markers were famous for their balls and their travels.”
And what about the Sutter family? I wanted to ask. What were they famous for? Does anyone remember them?
Next, Jan led me to a large drawing room on the other side of the hallway. I listened to her speech about the oil paintings and the marble sculptures, because the room held few memories for me. I couldn’t recall my family spending much time there.
But no, that wasn’t quite right. A recollection came to me of my brother, Dan, seventeen years old when I was only seven, hunched over a scarred octagonal table, his straight blond hair falling over his forehead, writing furiously in his notebook, filling it with his stories. He’d used the room as an escape from the rest of the family, his teenage years making him crave privacy.
“Let’s go upstairs now,” Jan said.
I followed her back through the lobby and up the wide, dark wood stairway that was covered with a wine-colored carpet runner.
“You’ll notice the tapestry on the landing here,” Jan said, pausing, one hand resting on a carved wood globe that formed the top of the banister. Her other hand pointed to a silk wall-hanging in colors of gray and salmon. She described how the tapestry had been hand-woven in Italy, how the artist had visited the Markers. But I had quit listening.
I had returned to a moment that had lain buried until now. I saw my mother standing at the bottom of those stairs, dressed in a powder-blue suit, her feet in high heels I’d never seen before. She moved to the front door and opened it. She spoke to someone, their voices hushed, one voice much deeper than the other. A hand was on her blue shoulder. A large man’s hand. A ring on his finger. The soft sounds of crying. Then my mother swayed, nearly fell.
I had watched this scene, I realized, from the landing where I now stood. I’d been dressed in my favorite pair of jeans and the shirt with the sunflower on the front, my face peering around the post at the top of the landing.
“Are you all right?”
I focused on Jan’s face, her eyes wary. “Sure, sure. I’m fine.” I looked back down the staircase again, but the vision was gone.
“Well, come on up this way. I’ll show you the bedrooms.”
I followed Jan again, surprised at the sudden, vivid flash of my mother. It had been ages since I’d really remembered her in any detail. There were the vague recollections, like how she ran every night, even if it was raining, sometimes coming in the house with her long hair dripping in sheets, her chest heaving as if she’d been chased and not out for a leisurely jog, and later the feel of that hair sweeping my cheek as she leaned over me, kissing me good-night, the smell of lavender on her skin.
“This bedroom belonged to Catherine, the Markers’ only daughter,” Jan said, leading me to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.
I remembered it well. It used to be mine.
The walls were still painted peach, the fireplace still white, and a canopy bed still stood in the corner. The bed, though, which was made of dark wood, its canopy designed with heavy velvet, was different from the one I loved so much. Mine was white with an eyelet covering. Seeing the bed and the room brought back another flood of memories: myself in the bed, quilt up to my neck, reading until my mother insisted that the lights be turned off; my friend, Patsy, and I playing in front of the fireplace that was never lit; Caroline helping me with my homework at the desk against the wall.
How odd, I thought, that so few of those memories included my dad. But maybe it wasn’t so strange, since he’d spent most of his weekdays working in Chicago and most of the weeknights at his apartment there. And yet, my memories after Woodland Dunes are exclusively of my father and me. No one else.
Jan showed me through three other bedrooms, two of which had been occupied twenty years ago by my siblings. She stopped in the hallway before the master bedroom and pointed out an intercom system that had been installed by the Markers in order to talk to their servants.
“The intercom hasn’t worked in a long time,” Jan said. “At least not since the cultural center moved in here.”
“And when was that?”
“The early eighties.”
“Really?” The early eighties were when my family moved away from Woodland Dunes. “Why did the town want this specific house?”
“Well, I don’t know that they actually wanted this particular home, but from what I heard, they got it at a great price. The people who’d lived here before couldn’t sell it.”
“Why was that?”
Jan made a show of looking around, even though there was no one else near us. “We’re not supposed to talk about this,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “but a lady died here.”
I was quiet. I felt as if I was holding my breath and didn’t know how to let it out. I’d never known where my mom was when she died or exactly how it had happened. I was only seven at the time, and I didn’t remember anything—nothing at all—which had always troubled me. And yet my father and I rarely talked about the subject. When we did, or I should say when I did, it was too painful for him. She became ill, he would say, tapping his head as if to indicate some injury or disease in the brain. His eyes would cloud over, making me fearful he might cry. I knew I looked like her in some ways—my slim build, my wide shoulders, my long sandy hair. I always assumed that resemblance, combined with the horrible memories, made it too painful for him to talk about her death. And so I never stayed on the topic for long. What difference did it make, really? Eventually, I managed to ignore the issue altogether. But that letter had let loose the wonderings again.
“There was some talk, I guess,” Jan said. “The rumor was that someone had done something to her. I got this all secondhand, of course. I was just a baby when it happened.” She checked her watch. “Anyway, let’s finish up.”
She started to take a step away, but I grabbed her arm. She looked at my hand, then at me in surprise.
“I’m sorry.” I took my hand away. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but can you tell me what you mean by the rumors. I mean, what were the rumors, exactly?”
Jan gave me another wary look and rubbed at the spot on her arm. “I don’t know really. Like I said, we’re not supposed to talk about this on the tour, and I wasn’t around to hear about it at the time.”
“I understand.” I tried to make my voice easy, conversational. “But what have you heard? I’m just curious.”
Jan paused a moment, then shrugged. “Well, to be honest, I heard someone killed her, but no one was ever charged, so I’m sure it’s one of those old wives’ tales. Now let me show you the master.”
I trailed behind, her words reverberating in my mind. Someone killed her.
We entered the master bedroom, a large space with a huge bay window of curved glass at the opposite end. A secretary’s desk was tucked into the bay, but I remembered how my mother had installed a long bench under that window and covered it with pillows. I would often find her there, writing in her journal or just looking through the glass onto the front lawn.
I studied the rest of the room, and the cold feeling returned. I remembered so many things all of a sudden—my parent’s king-size bed against the right wall, a bureau of cherrywood with a mirror over it, more flowers, my mother’s yellow sweater hanging over a chair, an armoire to match the dresser, paperbacks and tissue on one nightstand, a lone alarm clock on the other. Recollections poured into my brain with such speed that they startled me. And yet, there was something else about the room that I couldn’t recall.
“Thank you,” I said, interrupting Jan’s remarks. “I have to be going.”
I turned and left the room.
“Is something wrong?” Her voice followed me.
I hurried down the stairs, distantly hearing Jan’s feet pounding behind me, until I made myself stop on the landing. Be calm, I told myself. Be calm. It wouldn’t be good to act crazy when I’d come here seeking answers.
I opened my mouth to say something, but as I gazed down the stairs, I saw my mother again in the powder-blue suit. She was struggling to stand, holding a hand to the back of her head. The doorbell rang once, then again, then pounding came from the door. My mother moved slowly, inching toward the doorway, the white of her hand never leaving her head, holding it gingerly, as if she was keeping her hairstyle in place.
“Is something wrong?” I heard Jan say again.
“No. Nothing at all.” And I turned away, because if I said anything else, I might have told her what I suddenly knew—that my mother, Leah Sutter, died in this house.
4
After leaving the Marker Mansion, formerly the Sutter home—my home—I drove slowly, not sure where I was going, letting the sights of Woodland Dunes fill my head and refresh my memories of the place. I passed the town’s riding stables, matching white barns with green roofs resting on a large field, a white fence surrounding the property. Patsy and I used to ride there on Saturdays, eating brown-bag lunches in the long grass behind the barns when we were done. The town’s championship golf course with its rolling greens and intermittent circles of sand appeared the same as it did years ago, just like the lighthouse at Murphy’s Point.
I turned left on the outskirts of town, then left again toward the lake. And suddenly, there it was. A square plot of land on a hillside dotted with trees and sprinkled with gray and white headstones. The Woodland Dunes Cemetery. I hadn’t realized I was so close. In fact, I didn’t know if I could have found it if I tried.
I pulled into the lot, the tires of the rental car crunching over the gravel. As I got out, I remembered where to go. My dad had brought me here a few times before we moved. I walked toward the far left corner, the heels of my loafers sinking into the damp, spongy ground. I passed an older man in jogging clothes squatting over a small, simple headstone. He pulled stray weeds with a quick hand as if accustomed to the movement.
I stopped when I came to the tall white column made of stone, an angel on either side looking down, protecting the grave. A grayish-green film had made its home in some of the crevices of my mother’s memorial, around the angel’s wings and in the edges of the lettering that read: Leah Rose Sutter, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1942–1982. The rest of the grave site was remarkably clean. No weeds or sand on it like some of the others nearby.
Then I noticed it. A single yellow tulip lying at the base of the monument. I stood completely still, staring at it, my mind latching onto our old house again, wandering the rooms inside, seeing it the way my mother had always kept it. Flowers below the porch, blooms in the vases in the library, and more flowers in her bedroom. In the spring, when the air was new and clean as it was now, those flowers were usually tulips, mostly yellow.
I wrapped my arms around myself. The fact that my mother loved yellow tulips, and the fact that this one had been placed by her headstone had to be a coincidence. I wasn’t aware of anyone who visited her grave. My mother’s own parents had died a few years after her, and she had no siblings. Once we moved away, my father and I never returned. As far as Dan and Caroline were concerned, I didn’t know where they were. They had both been so much older than me. After my mom died, Caroline had gone off to boarding school and Dan to college. We never really saw them after that. My dad and I moved all over for his work at the firm—San Francisco, London, Paris, Long Island—and when I asked about Caroline and Dan, he said that they had their own lives and families. He gave the impression that they didn’t want to be a part of ours any longer.
Maybe the flower had come loose from a nearby bouquet. I glanced at the other grave sites. Some were untended and nearly overgrown. A few had small flower arrangements but no tulips.
When I looked back at my mother’s grave, I had the odd feeling that someone was watching me. A few more glances around told me that I imagined it. The man in the jogging clothes had turned away, walking back to the parking lot.
I bent down and lifted the bud. It looked fairly new, only two of the petals showing signs of droop, probably no more than a day or two old. I laid it gently on the cool stone again, wondering who could have left it here. No matter. I was grateful to the person for honoring my mother, for remembering her.
This time, there were two cars parked in Della’s driveway. As I pulled in behind them, the front door flew open, and a short woman dressed in gray slacks and a sleeveless white blouse rushed down the sidewalk. I got out of the car and opened my arms to hug Della, the woman who’d helped raise me until we moved away from Woodland Dunes, and someone I recalled well, as if there was nothing to fear from my memories of her.
“Oh, Hailey.” Della held a warm hand to my cheek. “You’re so grown-up. You look so much like your mom.”
“Thank you.” Other than my father, I didn’t come across many people who knew my mom, and I liked hearing about the resemblance.
Della took me by the hand and led me around the back of the house where she had a pitcher of iced tea and a tray of cookies waiting on a metal patio table. The branches from a tall oak tree formed a canopy of shade, the breeze making its leaves ruffle and whisper.
Della fussed over me, telling me to sit in one of the chairs. While she spooned ice into our glasses and placed a few cookies on a paper plate, I noticed how little she had changed. Her olive skin was still smooth, her cheeks still full with a pink glow. Her hair, though obviously dyed to keep its black color, still lay in crinkled waves to her chin. She’d put on a few pounds, but they only made her seem more like the comforting figure of my memories.
“Tell me,” Della said, settling into the chair next to me. “Tell me everything about you.”
I talked about law school, my job, my apartment in Manhattan. When I finally slowed down, I took a bite of an oatmeal-raisin cookie, the soft, sweet taste raising a recollection of Della in our old house, lifting a baking sheet out of the oven, placing a hand on my head, telling me to wait until they were cool.
“And you’re not married?” Della said. She bit into her own cookie, but her eyes watched me, waiting for an answer.
“No. I’m a long way from married.”
“No one special then?”
I shook my head. “A few years ago, I was dating someone seriously.” I thought of Michael, sitting bare-chested in his bed, eyes playful, holding firm to my hand, trying to pull me back under the covers.
“And what happened to that?”
I shrugged. The therapist I’d seen after Michael and I broke up had nodded her head at the end of our first and only session and said in a grave tone, “Abandonment issues,” as if she was making a horrible diagnosis like, “Permanent facial disfigurement.” It was natural, she said, for a child who lost a parent so young to have such feelings, but I couldn’t carry them over into my adult relationships and push people away. I knew she had a point, but I had never learned how to avoid keeping most people at arm’s length. I got busy with the bar exam, and I didn’t keep up with the prescribed weekly appointments. Michael met someone at his firm our first year out of law school, and he slid away from me the way the others had. I didn’t think I was ever really in love with Michael, or with any of them for that matter.
I felt that I’d know true love when a kiss could make everything, the rest of the world, disappear. I kept waiting for that moment with Michael. I didn’t expect it to happen right away, but I hoped each time. I’d close my eyes, feel his lips settle over mine, and while I enjoyed it, I was always still right there. Nothing ever disappeared, not the Miles Davis music Michael always played or his high-rise apartment where we often stayed. I began to wonder if maybe I was incapable of feeling that kind of love, or maybe I was laboring beneath an unattainable fantasy.
Della asked me about college at UCLA, about high school on Long Island, about the tutors in Europe and grade school before that in San Francisco. And then we were back to Woodland Dunes, to the year my father and I left.
“I missed you all so much when you were gone,” Della said. She raised a paper napkin to her eyes, and I wondered for a second if she was going to cry. “It was like a part of my family had left.” Her voice creaked, betraying her age. “Of course, I had my own family to take care of. Max was twelve and Delphine ten. My husband said I had to get over it. I had to get over Leah’s death and get a new job.”
“And did you?”
“Oh, I got other jobs, although never as a housekeeper or a nanny again. I cleaned office buildings for a janitorial service, and I cooked meals for the sick.” Della tsked, as if none of that had mattered much. “I never got over Leah.”
“You two were close,” I said. An image drifted back of my mom and Della in the kitchen, sun slanting through the high window over the sink, the two of them laughing as they washed dishes. It seemed to me now that my mother probably kept Della around as much for her company as her housekeeping skills. I couldn’t remember my mom having any other close friends.
“She was a wonderful woman.” Della’s voice was softer now. “A good friend. And I miss her every day.”
I stayed silent, and tilted my head up for a moment, watching a squirrel above me racing from branch to branch. I had missed my mom every day, too, but not in the same way. I longed for the vague concept of my mother, of a mother in my life. I missed her especially when I was learning about boys, shopping for prom dresses, graduating from college, from law school. I had my dad for all those things, and he tried to be everything—father, mother, friend—but sometimes I craved female guidance and companionship. My friendship with Maddy had filled some of that void, yet no one could totally replace a mother.
“How did she die?” It was the question I came to ask, the one that had been haunting me since I read that letter, but I hadn’t meant to say it so abruptly.
Della sat straighter in her chair, then raised a hand to her lips. She lifted her shoulders, then let them fall again. “It’s hard to say. What do you remember?”
I pushed my mind back to that time when I was seven years old. I remember not needing to ask the question of how she had died, as if I had known the answer and didn’t want to be reminded. But somewhere along the way, I lost the knowledge.
“I don’t really remember anything specific,” I said. “That’s the problem. And I need to know.”
Della pushed her plate away and leaned on the table. “Do you remember talking to the police?”
I felt a strange pulse beating in my neck. “The police? I talked to the police?”
“We all did.”
I tried to conjure up some sense of my seven-year-old self, in a police station, sitting across from a detective, swinging my legs underneath the table. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, they never made any decisions. They never drew any conclusions. Just looked into her death and closed the file. It got people to talking, though.”
“I remember the whispering and the looks,” I said, slightly agitated now that I was getting close to the topic, yet not learning anything. “But why did the police look into it?”
A gust of wind blew through the backyard, pushing Della’s hair into her face. She brushed it away; she sighed loud enough that I heard it over the breeze. “Oh, sweetie, your mother died from a blow to the head. They wanted to find out if someone had done that to her on purpose.”
5
I checked into the Long Beach Inn, an aptly named bed-and-breakfast perched above a lengthy stretch of tawny sand that hemmed Lake Michigan. Because the summer season hadn’t yet started, I was able to get an upstairs room. It was the largest one, I’d been told by the housekeeper, who was filling in for the owner. The room took up half the third floor, a sunny space painted white, like a summer cottage. A large canopy bed covered in pillows sat in the center. The French doors on the other side led to a balcony and, beyond that, the beach. I had always dreamed of a balcony off my bedroom overlooking the water, but I was too preoccupied now to enjoy it.
I unpacked the way I always did in hotels. I traveled so often that I liked to try to create a semblance of home for myself, even if it was a fictional and transient one. Once my clothes were in the closet and my makeup in the bathroom cabinet, I called Maddy to tell her what I’d learned. For once I got no answer at either her home or cell phone. There was no one else I could tell about what I was doing, what I’d discovered.
I closed my eyes and let myself hear Della’s words again.
Your mother died from a blow to the head. They wanted to find out if someone had done that to her on purpose.
It only confirmed what I’d thought—that something strange surrounded my mother’s death. What did it mean that my mom had died of a head injury? Did that necessarily mean that someone had purposefully hurt her? I had asked Della those questions before I bolted, but she had shrugged. “There were lots of stories about what happened, but mostly people said it was an accident,” she’d said. “No one really knows.”
But someone knew. The person who’d sent the letter knew. Or at least they thought they did.
The sound of a vacuum downstairs made me realize I was standing in the middle of the room, motionless. I’d had so much momentum all day. What to do now? Though the room was cozy, a huge step up from the impersonal hotel where I’d stayed in Chicago, I wished for my own apartment right then, for my comfy sweatpants and the taupe chenille blanket my father had given me. Under different circumstances, I would have loved to curl up on the canopy bed here with a book, but I couldn’t just sit around. Not now. I couldn’t stand the thought of being in Woodland Dunes and not be moving, remembering, doing. I wasn’t here for a weekend getaway. I was here for my mother.
The thought drew me to the French doors, but for a moment, I didn’t open them. I stared out at the wide beach, the gray-blue water licking the sand. As I watched the rush and recede of the water, I remembered the feel of my small hand in my father’s as he led me down the unfinished wood pathway to the lake. I must have been about six or seven years old. He had come home to Woodland Dunes that day, a treat for the middle of the week.
“Where’s Mom?” he’d said when he was inside the front door. He crouched down and held open his arms. “Is she taking her walk on the beach?”
I nodded and charged into him, wrapping myself around his neck, breathing in the slightly stale scent of the city he always brought with him.
“Let’s find her,” he said.
We walked the two blocks to the lakefront and then down the wood sidewalk to the sand. We pulled off our shoes, my dad rolling up the bottoms of his suit pants.
“Which way?” he said, his voice playful. “You pick.”
I bounced on my toes with excitement. I looked both ways down the beach. The sun was growing gold and heavy, but it wasn’t dark yet. To my right, the houses were grand, some of them as big as hotels. To the left, they grew smaller and friendlier, and there were usually more kids that way, so I raised my left arm and pointed.
“You got it, Hailey-girl,” my dad said.
We walked along the water where it was packed wet and hard, looking for beach glass, the colored shards of glass, rounded and smoothed by years spent in the water.
“Here’s a great one,” my dad said, bending down to lift a green piece the size of a quarter.
I held out my hand, but just then I saw a flash of pink farther down the beach. I looked closer, and I could see my mother’s pink T-shirt, the length of her sandy blond hair.
“Mom!” I called.
My father stood in one quick motion, the glass falling from his hand. I knelt to pick it up. When I stood again, I saw my mother hadn’t heard me. She was standing a few hundred yards away, her back to us, and she was talking to someone.
“Let’s go see Mom,” I said, tugging my father’s hand, but he refused to move. He was frozen, it seemed, with his pants rolled up, his suit coat over his arm, staring at his wife.
I looked at my mom again, too. I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but I could tell it was a man, someone a little taller than her, and for a second, I saw the man reach out and put a hand on my mom’s shoulder.
“Let’s go.” My dad pulled my hand so hard I almost cried out. He marched me back the way we came, pulling me down the beach. In my other hand, I gripped tight to the beach glass, trying not to drop it. When I looked up, my father’s jaw was hard, his eyes narrow. A few times, I almost stumbled as he propelled us over the sand.
When we reached the wood walk that would take us back to the street, he slowed so we could sit and pull on our shoes.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I’d said a terrible thing, then he pulled me to him, hugging me so close it was difficult to breathe.
“Everything’s all right.” He released me, but I thought for a moment he might cry because of the way his eyes were pulled down, the way his mouth seemed ready to tremble. “Let’s go home.”
We walked back quickly, not strolling as we had on the way to the beach. When we reached the house, he said he loved me very much but he’d forgotten something at the office. He needed to go back that night.
I sat on the window bench in my room, watching him pull out of the driveway. The bench reminded me of the larger one in my parents’ room where my mother often rested and wrote in her journals. Usually, when I sat on my own bench, it made me feel a little like my mom, and that made me happy. That night, though, staring out at the now dark lawn, I didn’t want to be my mother. She’d made my dad leave, and I only wanted him to come back.
When my mother came in the room, I was still there. “You made him go away,” I said.
“What?” My mother raised a hand and smoothed the pink cotton front of her T-shirt.
“Dad was here. We saw you on the beach, and he left.”
My forehead was touching the glass of the French doors. Still, I peered at the beach, thinking over this new memory the way I studied a witness’s testimony after a deposition.
I’d always assumed my parents were happy together, from the devastation my father experienced after she passed away. But was my mother involved with someone else? I knew my father had been upset with her that day, but I’d been too young to draw any conclusions. Now it seemed possible my mother was having an affair.
I opened the French doors and went onto the balcony. The spring air was balmy and light. I leaned on the painted white railing and gazed at the beach, trying to bring back more of the memory, the parts that had happened before and later, but nothing else came.
Just a few blocks to my left was where my father and I had taken our walk, where my mother had stood with the man. Just because he was a man, though, didn’t mean my mother was involved with him. Why was I so quick to jump to the conclusion that my mother had been unfaithful? The hand on my mother’s shoulder, the way she’d smoothed down her pink shirt when she’d come to my room, that was why.
I sank down on the Adirondack chair, painted white to match the railing. The hand had reminded me of the vision I’d had on the stairs today, of the hand that I had seen steady my mother at the door. The lawyer in me confronted myself. How can you assume it was the same person? And even if it were true, who was he? Did it matter? He might not have anything to do with her death.
I ran a hand through my hair. I was going in circles. This happened to me sometimes during a big case. My mind wound around too many details, unable to see the important things.
I threw on a pair of khaki shorts, a long-sleeved shirt and sandals. Once down on the beach, I walked to the left, the way my mother had headed that day, the way I’d followed with my father. A soft breeze blew, playing with my hair, pushing it in my eyes. There were only a few people on the beach—a jogger and an older couple who were camped out with chairs and a cooler. The couple gave me a happy wave.
As I walked, I gazed across the lake toward Chicago. If I narrowed my eyes, I could see the blocky outlines of the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building through the hazy sun. Somewhere over there, probably on Monday morning the arbitrators would come to their decision on the McKnight case, or maybe it was done already. Either way, it seemed a lose/lose situation. If I lost the arb, I’d have to work with Sean McKnight during a trial, and if I won, he might hire me again. The thought of dealing with his arrogant attitude on another case was not pleasant. I made myself find the bright side. If I won, it might be what I needed to ensure I would make partner. Some associates thought I was a shoo-in, knowing my father was on the executive committee, but the reality was that the higher-ups were so afraid of nepotism accusations that I had to prove myself more than the average attorney. Winning the McKnight case could help seal the deal.
I stopped walking when I saw a glint in the sand. Reaching down, I wrapped my fingers around a piece of clear beach glass, rounded to a perfect oval. I rubbed it between my fingers, caressing its smooth, dusty surface. It had the same feel as the green beach glass I’d found with my dad that day.
When I got back to the inn, I looked at the clock over the front desk, surprised it was almost three in the afternoon. I hadn’t eaten anything for lunch except those few cookies at Della’s.
“Can I help you?” A man in his late twenties or early thirties came out of the back room. He grabbed a handful of the rusty hair that had fallen over his eyes and pushed it away, but it fell right back again.
“Oh no,” I said. “I’m already checked in.” I pointed uselessly with my finger toward my room upstairs as if that might provide some explanation.
“I’m Ty.” He held his hand over the desk. “Ty Manning.”
He wasn’t much taller than me, but he had a presence about him. When he smiled, his blue eyes crinkled a little around the corners.
“Hailey.” I shook his hand. “That’s an interesting name—Ty.”
“It’s short for Tyler, which is too preppy–East Coast–boarding school, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I said, unable to imagine this guy who wore old jeans and an olive T-shirt going to a boarding school on the East Coast or being called Tyler. I knew a million of those types from Manhattan, and unlike my first impression of Ty, they were much more arrogant, much more reserved. “So, do you work here?”
“I own the place.”
I could feel my eyebrows rise. “You own the inn?”
“Yeah. My parents bought it years ago. Their plan was to rehab it and run it as a B and B for an early retirement. My dad can’t seem to retire though, so I bought it from them.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You are?” He gave me a disarming smile, and again, his eyes crinkled with his grin. “Thanks. Which room do you have?”
“Third floor on the right. It’s beautiful.”
“I call it the nap room because I feel like lying down every time I’m in there.”
I laughed. “I can understand that.”
Ty turned around and reached into a multileveled box where they kept the keys. “You said your name was Hailey, so your last name must be—” he lifted out a piece of paper with my check-in information, “—Sutter.”
“Right.”
He glanced up at me. “That sounds familiar.”
“I used to be from around here.”
“Ah.”
“Do you know someplace I can get lunch?” I said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in Woodland Dunes.”
“Sure. I can make a few recommendations.” He looked at the check-in slip a moment longer before he put it back in the box, then turned back to me, his lazy hair falling farther over one eye. “Mind if I join you?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected him to ask that, although it wasn’t a totally unappealing thought. “Don’t you have to stay here?”
“Nah, everyone’s checked in, and Elaine, my housekeeper, she’s like my right hand. She can deal with anything.” He paused a second. “But if you’d rather be alone, I can tell you where to go.” He pulled a map out from under the desk and placed in on the counter.
Alone. I thought about it a minute. It might be the best thing since I needed to keep looking, to keep pushing in corners until I found out what happened to my mother. Yet I wasn’t sure what my next step was, and it would be helpful to have someone who knew the area.
Truth was, I was feeling a little rattled. I didn’t want to be alone right now.
I smiled at Ty. “Let’s go.”
Ty took me to a diner called Bingham’s, where we could sit in the sun. The restaurant was in the downtown section of town. It still boasted quaint shingled buildings and bricked sidewalks, just as it used to when my family had lived there, but the stores that used to sell hardware, flowers and crafts had been replaced with a designer boutique, a coffee shop and an upscale delicatessen.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the change. Decades had passed since we’d left. During that time, Woodland Dunes and the surrounding towns had morphed into sort of a Midwest version of the Hamptons—a summer enclave for those looking to escape the city. When my parents had originally bought here, they too used the place as a summer retreat, but my mom had fallen in love with it. They had two children then, Dan and Caroline, both of whom adored the space and the freedom they couldn’t get in the city, so my parents made the house near the lake their permanent home. My dad bought an apartment in Chicago for the nights he couldn’t get home during the week.
My dad had told me this much. He’d always been willing to talk about the early days, about the afternoon he met my mom at University of Chicago, their wedding at the Palmer House, and how they’d moved to Woodland Dunes. But I learned not to ask questions about anything after that. Seeing the pain in my father’s eyes was too difficult. He was the only family I had, and I wasn’t willing to risk losing him, as well. So I learned to push away the wonderings. The letter had brought all those questions back, though, and I didn’t have the power to bury them again.
We placed our orders, Ty joking with the owner, who gave him two complimentary lemonades.
Sitting under the red-and-white-striped awning, I bit into my turkey sandwich, suddenly starving. “Good?” I asked Ty, watching him dig into his food.
“Excellent,” he said between mouthfuls of a broccoli and cheddar omelet. “I love breakfast foods after breakfast. I eat weird stuff first thing in the morning, too, like sushi and pasta.”
“Cold pizza. That’s a good breakfast.”
Ty’s fork stopped in midair, and he smiled wide. “Exactly.”
We talked, and I told him about my job and my life in Manhattan. Ty explained the work he’d done on Long Beach Inn before it opened.
“How did you know how to do all that stuff?” I asked. I finished the last bit of my sandwich and sank back into my chair.
“After I got out of college, I came home and worked construction. I was pretty lost during that time. No idea what I wanted to do, but the construction paid off. I learned a hell of a lot. Because of that, I was able to either do the work at the inn myself or find someone fast who knew how.”
“How do you like living in Woodland Dunes?” I said. “I vaguely remember living here as a kid, but now that I’m in New York, it’s hard for me to imagine.”
“You know what? I love it here. When I first came home after school, I thought I’d just get my act together and head out again. I didn’t think I’d stay for good, but once I took a breather and looked around, I loved a lot about this town.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, geez,” Ty said, as if there were too many things. “I love the beach, the people, the way everybody knows me and the way anyone would help me if I needed it. I love the crazy summers when the bars are packed and people are crawling all over my place, and I love it when the fall ends too, and it gets quiet. It’s like having the best of both worlds—parties and crowds for five months, R & R the rest of the year.”
I nodded. I liked the picture he painted. There was never a respite from the teeming people or the noise in Manhattan.
Ty waved to a woman walking her dog on the other side of the street, then shifted in his chair so he faced me directly. The sun picked up the freckles that dotted his cheekbones. “So you were how old when you lived here?” he said.
“We left when I was seven. I remember school the most. The playground and Mrs. Howard, my first-grade teacher. I went to Dunes Primary.” It occurred to me that maybe I’d been at the same school as Ty. “Maybe we were there together?”
“No, I went to St. Bonaventure, or St. Bonnie’s as we called it. Twelve years of Catholic repression for this kid.” Ty glanced down for a second. “I think I remember you, though, or at least hearing about you.”
“You do?” Despite the sun on my skin, I felt goose bumps prickle the back of my arms.
Ty watched me. “Your mom died, didn’t she? When you lived here?”
“That’s right.”
“I remember that. I saw a picture of your family that was taken at the funeral.”
“Where did you see it?” Maybe it had been in the paper, something I could dig up.
Ty scratched his jaw, looking a little uncomfortable for the first time since I met him. “I saw it in my dad’s office.”
“Your dad? Who’s your dad?”
“He’s the chief of police.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, after a moment spent digesting Ty’s words. My stomach felt slightly ill, but there was a tickle of excitement. “This picture you saw was in the police station?”
Ty nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know all the details. I was just a kid too, but…” He trailed off.
“Look, I don’t know much about my mom’s death,” I said. “It’s why I’m here. So please, just tell me what you know.”
A look of surprise came over Ty’s face, and I realized I might have spoken a little harshly.
“I’m sorry.” I leaned toward him. “I had a case in Chicago last week. I’m an attorney. But the point is, I came here to see what I could find out about my mother’s death. Anything you could tell me would be a help.”
“Wow.” Ty shook his head. “That’s tough. But as I said, I don’t know much. What I recall is waiting for my dad in his office at the station. It was a big day for me because he was going to take me to get my uniform and equipment so I could start football. My dad wasn’t the chief then. He was assistant chief. Anyway, I was playing around his desk, and when he came in, I was holding that picture. There was a coffin being moved into the ground, and your family stood around it. You had on a long yellow coat.”
I nodded. My Easter coat, the one my mom had picked out for me.
“When my dad saw me with the picture,” Ty continued, “he stopped, pointed to the coffin and said, ‘Do you know what that is?’ I told him there was somebody who was dead in there. He said, ‘That’s right. A dead lady, and I’m going to find out who killed her.’”
I took a breath. “But they never charged anyone, did they?”
He shook his head again. “My dad told me sometime later that he’d been wrong, that no one had killed her or meant for her to die.”
I felt a little gust of relief. If the police had ruled out murder, then maybe whoever had sent me the letter was simply mistaken. “Would your dad talk about this?”
“I think so. I mean, I don’t see why not. He’s fishing this weekend. He won’t be back until tomorrow night. Will you still be around?”
I didn’t answer right away. I’d been planning on going back to Chicago Sunday night so I could wait for the arbitration decision that should come sometime Monday or Tuesday. But talking to the police might be just what I needed to set my mind straight, and I could follow up on some other questions in the meantime. And then there was Ty with his freckles.
“Can I keep my room at the hotel?” I asked.
He made a face like he was thinking hard about it. “For you, I’ll make it happen.”
“Yeah?” I said, surprised to hear the coy tone of my voice.
“Definitely.”
“I’ll be around,” I told him.
6
For the third time that day, I pulled into Della’s driveway, still thinking about my lunch with Ty. Over lemonade, I had told him what I knew about my mom’s death, about the letter, and about my visit with Della this morning. I hadn’t meant to spill the whole tale—it was so unlike me—but I was unusually comfortable with him, and once I started talking, it was cathartic to get the story out.
Ty had asked me if I’d spoken to my brother or sister. They would be obvious places to start, he said. Obvious, yes, but I had no idea where either of them were, a fact that had always gnawed at me, confused me. When I got up the nerve to ask my dad about either of my siblings, he became visibly upset, telling me that they had their own lives now. During college, I went through a period when I longed for companionship, for family, and I made a halfhearted attempt at finding them. I called Information in different cities where I thought they might be. The Internet wasn’t widely used then, but I had a friend who was adept at computers do some digging. Neither of us could find a Caroline or Dan Sutter. And so I eventually gave up.
Ty thought I should call my father right then and ask him, point-blank, what had happened and where my brother and sister were, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Old habits weren’t easy to kill, and I still abhorred the idea of distressing my father, of picking at old wounds.
The last time I raised the issue was shortly after I met Maddy in law school. It was so weird, she had said over and over, that I didn’t know how my mom had died, that I didn’t know what had happened to my brother and sister.
“I know,” I’d said, irritated that I’d told her to begin with.
But Maddy’s questions stayed with me, and so I brought up the topic a few weeks later on a Sunday afternoon. I was with my dad on his patio, sipping a glass of cabernet while he grilled steaks for us.
“Do you ever think about Mom?” I said, apropos of nothing.
He dropped the grill tongs he was holding. They clattered on the stone patio tiles. He bent over to pick them up, and when he stood, he looked like a confused old man instead of a confident trial lawyer. His face was slack.
“Of course,” he said quietly, his gaze asking me how I could ask such a question.
But still I pushed. “Really?” I said. “Do you really?”
“Yes, Hailey. I think about your mother all the time.” He blinked.
“Well, you never talk about her. You never talk about when she died.”
A strange, garbled sound erupted from inside my father’s throat, making me stop my words. I could have sworn he was about to cry, something I had never seen, and I bailed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I stood and took the tongs from him. “Let me do that.”
And, like an old man, he feebly handed them to me, wiping the grease from his hands on his immaculate khaki pants before he went into the house.
I had never brought up the issue again. If I could find my own answers, without confronting the parent who raised me on his own, I wanted to do that.
Which brought me back to Della’s.
“Sweetie!” Della said when she opened the front door now, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder. “Come in, come in.”
“Thanks.” I accepted a quick hug. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
“Not at all.” Della led me into the kitchen, a large, green-painted room smelling of garlic and crowded with plants, knickknacks and crocheted pot holders. It was the type of warm, homey kitchen I’d always hoped my father and I would have, one that was lived in, that was used to cook for a large family. My dad wasn’t much of a chef, though, and so although our homes were lovely and expensive, the kitchens always had cold tiles and stainless-steel appliances, and I never spent much time there.
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Laura Caldwell
There is no statute of limitations on murder.Look Closely. That's all the anonymous letter said, but attorney Hailey Sutter understands the meaning behind the well-chosen words. Someone wants her to investigate what happened to her mother, who died when Hailey was only seven. The death was ruled accidental, but Hailey begins having flashbacks that tell a different story: a pounding at the door…her mother struggling to stand…a man with a gold ring that flashed in the night as he held her mother's lifeless body.Obsessed with uncovering the truth, Hailey can't trust anyone, especially her father, whose secrecy both unnerves and protects her. Desperate to remember that fatal night, she seeks out the brother and sister who left home after their mother's death. But they have disappeared. It's soon clear to Hailey that the answer is right in front of her–all she has to do is find the courage to look closely….
Praise for the novels of
Laura Caldwell
“Riveting. Laura Caldwell has weaved a haunting story of suspense and family secrets. If you pick up Look Closely, you won’t want to put it down.”
—Mary Jane Clark, New York Times bestselling author of Nobody Knows and Hide Yourself Away
“A sensational suspense debut for Laura Caldwell! Look Closely is an action-packed thriller of surprising emotional depth. Caldwell mixes the ingredients—an unexplained death, family secrets and foggy memories—into a compelling story you won’t want to end.”
—David Ellis, Edgar Award-winning author of Line of Vision and Jury of One
“Caldwell’s snazzy, gripping third novel gives readers an exciting taste of life in the fast lane, exposing the truth behind the fairy tale.”
—Booklist on The Year of Living Famously
“A Clean Slate is Laura Caldwell’s page-turner about a woman with a chance to reinvent herself, something most of us have imagined from time to time.”
—Chicago Tribune
“This debut novel from Laura Caldwell won us over with its exotic locales, strong portrayal of the bonds between girlfriends, cast of sexy foreign guys, and, most of all, its touching story of a young woman at a crossroads in her life.”
—Barnes & Noble.com on Burning the Map, selected as one of “The Best of 2002”
Watch for a brand-new novel from
LAURA CALDWELL
Laura Caldwell
Look Closely
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to the following people: Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Maureen Walters, everyone at MIRA Books (especially Dianne Moggy, Donna Hayes, Laura Morris, Craig Swinwood, Sarah Rundle, Margie Miller and Tara Kelly), Mark Bragg, Pam Carroll, Jim Lupo, Ginger Heyman, Trisha Woodson, Ted McNabola and Joan Posch.
Thanks mostly to Jason Billups, purveyor of dreams.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Prologue
Seated at a table near the back, Caroline Ramsey lifted her champagne flute an inch off the table. “Cheers,” she murmured halfheartedly, toasting the bride and groom for what seemed the fiftieth time. Almost immediately, she set the glass back down.
Her husband, Matt, leaned toward her. “Anything wrong?” he said. Through his glasses, his brown eyes looked only mildly concerned.
The groom was a distant relative of Matt’s, and in order to compensate for knowing so few people, he’d gone into his social mode, dancing to every silly wedding song and striking up conversations around the room. He always became vivacious and outgoing in these situations, something Caroline loved about him, since she was more reserved. Yet now she almost wished that he were more of a watcher, like her, someone who hung on the fringes. If that were true, maybe he would wonder now, maybe he would look deeper.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she lied, because she didn’t want him to wonder. She might not be strong enough. She might tell him what she’d planned. And if she told him, he would talk her out of it. This was something she had to do, though, just one more time. Hopefully, she would get the chance one day to explain.
Matt ruffled her hair, a gesture that usually annoyed her. Tonight, it somehow brought relief.
The wedding was being held in an eight-point tent on the lawn of a Charleston mansion, and the beleaguered jazz band struck up another number as the latest toastmaster finally gave up the microphone. Caroline and Matt both turned to watch the newlyweds take the dance floor, a surge of guests following and engulfing them. Caroline remembered her own wedding, just four years ago, at an inn on Mount Hood. It had been much smaller, with cheap ivory votive candles and wilted wildflowers instead of silver candelabras and elaborate white lily arrangements, but she’d been filled with promise just like the bride tonight. She’d stupidly assumed that her troubles were behind her, that her new life with Matt would obliterate the old.
“Should we join them?” Matt cocked his head at the dance floor.
She looked at those warm brown eyes, his soft curly hair, which was always a little too long, and the dimple he got in one cheek when he smiled, and she kissed him. He kissed her back, cupping her face. It reminded her of their wedding, except that it was beaming bright that day, the sun relentlessly striking their faces as they stood on the cliff. Matt’s parents had been there, along with his brother and a few friends, but of course her family had been absent. Or maybe “absent” wasn’t the right word, since she hadn’t exactly invited anyone from her past.
“You want to go back to the hotel?” Matt murmured.
She shook her head, finding it hard to talk. “I have to use the restroom,” she said at last.
“I’ll be here.” He stroked her cheek one more time.
She stood and turned away before she could change her mind, making her way across the flagstone path to the Trembly Mansion where the restrooms were located. According to the history printed on the back of the wedding program, the mansion had been built in 1856 by Arthur Trembly and his second wife, Meredith, who was only seventeen at the time of their marriage. Caroline glanced up at the mansion with its brick front, soaring white columns, wide veranda and leaded-glass windows, and she could almost imagine young Meredith stepping out onto that veranda, resplendent in a tightly bodiced gown of crimson taffeta, greeting the guests of their latest gala.
It was how Caroline had coped all those years—making up stories and images in her head, filling her mind with fascinating people and intriguing families to compensate for her own lack of friends and family. But she couldn’t let herself go too far down the paths of those tales any longer. Instead of shielding her from reality as they used to, they now reminded her of the memories she’d worked so hard to bury. She quickened her pace and trotted up the side stairway, past a sign with an arrow reading Powder Room. The information about the Trembly Mansion also said that this side of the house had been temporarily converted into a catering kitchen and guest-bathroom facilities, while the remainder of the home was being renovated by a local historical society.
Caroline stepped into a well-lit kitchen. The shiny silver espresso makers sitting atop tan Formica counters gave nothing away about what the rest of the mansion might look like. She picked her way through a pack of tuxedoed servers, most of whom held trays of cut cake. One waiter nodded with his head to direct her toward the restroom.
When she came out of the bathroom, the kitchen was empty. There was no one to stop her from changing her direction and ducking under the blue velvet curtain that hung across the arched wood doorway, the one that led into the main part of the mansion. The renovations were supposedly in high gear, with too much dust and equipment to allow guests to view it, but Caroline didn’t care much for rules. Why should she? Except for Matt, no one in her life had followed them.
As the curtain flapped closed behind her, she blinked to let her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The only light in the room came from the lanterns hanging in the trees outside, and there was a musty scent in the air. She could hear the tinkle of music from the band and the clatter of dishware from the waiters, who must have returned to the kitchen.
As the dark room became clearer, Caroline made out a massive, mahogany stairway that curled upward in scrolls from the center of the room. Nothing seemed to support the staircase, yet it gave the impression of solemn strength. Caroline felt a trembling inside her belly, a shakiness in her hand. The stairway reminded her of another staircase. One she hadn’t seen in so very long, but one that had, in a way, started it all.
She had to do this. One more time, he’d said. Just one more time.
Caroline tried to draw her gaze away from the stairs but couldn’t. And it didn’t matter, because in her mind, she was seeing that other staircase so long ago.
The trembling deepened, the shaking in her hands grew stronger.
Finally wrenching her eyes away from the staircase, Caroline turned, found the front door and ran outside into the night.
The lights were blinking, weren’t they? Blinking and flickering and then fading. Or maybe it was him.
Dan Singer stopped trudging and opened his eyes wide to stare at the lights. No. Not blinking. It was a Budweiser sign. Just a yellow and green neon beer sign hanging in a bar window. Jesus, he’d drunk too damn much, and after so many years of sobriety, it had hit him hard. He’d needed courage, and he’d convinced himself that this time the vodka might bring him some. Really, he was drinking to kill time. He was delaying the inevitable.
He’d been in and out of nearly every bar on this street. What was the name of it again? He turned and gazed at the street sign. “Division Street,” it said. That was right. He knew that. Division Street in Chicago. He’d been at a convention here for the last few days, and he’d spent the time with other salespeople in the pharmaceutical industry, acting as if he still cared about the new cholesterol drug and his company’s revenues. Yet, as uninterested as he was in the technicalities, he’d reveled in the normalcy of it all, knowing he might not have that for some time.
He turned to the nearest bar and pulled open the big oak door, a rush of laughter and music swelling out to greet him, along with the smell of stale beer. Strangely, the scent was comforting, a reminder of college—blurry days filled with classes and parties and bars and girls. He’d been able to escape for a while during those days.
He pushed his way to the bar, drawing a few irritated looks in the process. There were no available stools so he lodged himself between two patrons and waved at the bartender.
“Vodka with a splash of soda,” he said when the bartender reached him.
He watched as she poured his drink. He liked the way she made a dipping motion with the bottle, her T-shirt lifting up and exposing a slice of tanned skin above her jeans. A week ago, he would have tried to flirt with her. He was finally getting back into the dating scene. But that wasn’t an option now.
She slid the glass in front of him. “It’s on me. You look like you could use it.”
He tried to give a lighthearted smile, but her kindness put a lump in his throat, so he just nodded.
He tipped her and sipped the drink, trying not to think of Annie or how she must have felt when he hadn’t picked her up today. His ex hadn’t helped matters, he was sure. She’d probably told Annie, in a smug voice, that her dad didn’t care enough. She wouldn’t think about how hearing that would make Annie feel. She’d only know that it made her feel superior. His failure to show would confirm what she thought anyway—that he was irresponsible and not to be trusted. He’d never cheated on her when they were married, but he understood why she suspected it. It was his secretive manner that made her wonder, and when he wouldn’t fill in any of the blanks, when they couldn’t communicate the way she’d been taught on Oprah, she’d assumed the worst. He didn’t try very hard to convince her otherwise. Annie was the loser in their divorce, caught between two people who wanted to move on with their lives. For that he was sorry. It was why he’d never missed any of his weekends or Wednesdays with her, until now.
He was jostled from behind by a group of women who were hugging and shrieking as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. Soon, two of the women pushed in beside him, waving dollar bills at the bartender, who took their orders.
“You look amazing!” one woman said to the other, grabbing her friend by the forearm and looking her up and down. “You’re so thin.”
“Oh, stop,” said the other, but she beamed.
They launched into a discussion about who they’d been in touch with, how much they’d missed everyone, how it had been way too long, and yet neither of them sounded particularly surprised to find themselves together again. It made Dan think about how empty his own life was, how devoid of any relationships like that. But it was too late to change. Way too late. And he had to make himself accept, again, that it had all been worth it. If he didn’t get his mind around that, he would snap. He’d given up too much—his family, his hometown, his history, for Christ’s sake. It had been worth it, he told himself, but his own voice sounded like that of a politician, trying to sugarcoat an international incident.
The ease of the women’s reunion was depressing him, and the vodka seemed to have lost its power. He’d hit that point where he couldn’t get any more loaded, no matter how hard he tried, his veins already coursing at their alcoholic capacity. He shot a halfhearted goodbye smile toward the bartender, then turned and elbowed through the girlfriends.
After he’d walked a few blocks, he saw cars up ahead, flashing by. In the spaces between the cars were intermittent glints of silvery light. He took a few more steps before it hit him. Lake Shore Drive, or LSD as he used to call it in high school, liking how saying that made him sound as if he might know a thing or two about illicit drugs. He had nearly reached Lake Shore Drive, which meant he was almost to Lake Michigan.
“Hey, buddy.” The voice startled him so much he flinched. Spinning around, he saw a man crumpled on the sidewalk, against the side of a brownstone. Dan’s first instinct was that the man was hurt and needed help, but in the next instant he saw the stuffed garbage bag at the man’s side and his multiple layers of clothing, and realized he was homeless.
“Spare a couple bucks?” the man said, his voice a rough croak. “Gotta get some food.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dan extracted a ten-dollar bill from the few he had left and crumpled the rest in his pocket. He tossed the bill toward the man, but it caught a breeze, twisting and lilting in the air like a snowflake until the man snatched it.
“Thanks, bud.” The man gave Dan a nod. “Appreciate it.”
Dan stood a moment longer, looking at the man. He used to wonder how anyone could be homeless, how someone could shift from a house and a profession to a life on the street. But now he understood better. In fact, it was a possibility that occasionally loomed in his own future, because sometimes he just didn’t care anymore. At those times, he could imagine letting it all go—his sales job, his apartment, his child-support payments—until he was fired, evicted and strapped with a restraining order. What scared him was that oftentimes that possibility appealed to him, because he saw it as a way to let go of the constraints in his life, and maybe that would allow him to let go of the secret, too. A secret that had somehow grown larger and larger over the years, when, in fact, some days he wondered whether it really needed to be hidden at all.
He turned away from the man and kept moving toward the lake. He’d avoided lakes his whole adult life, especially this one. It reminded him too much of the old days. But he felt its pull now, the water’s tug. He kept walking. When he reached the poorly lit tunnel that would take him under LSD and to the lake, he hesitated, waiting for the alcohol to clear his head.
But the fear he expected didn’t come. He took that as a good sign, and descended into the tunnel.
1
The short letter, a note really, arrived at my apartment on a Thursday. It was one of those random, end-of-April days in Manhattan when the temperature shot to eighty degrees, sending everyone to Central Park or the cafés that had rushed to set up their outdoor tables. A boisterous, electric feeling was in the air. I called Maddy from my cell phone as I walked home from the subway, and we decided to go for wine and dinner at Bryant Park Grill, a rooftop restaurant where Maddy knew the maître d’.
In the terminally slow elevator on the way to my apartment, I glanced at my mail. There was nothing interesting at first, just a bill and a few obvious pieces of junk, but I stopped when I came to the flat, business-size envelope with no return address. The envelope looked as if it had been printed on a personal computer, and there was a postage stamp with an antique car on it.
Inside my place, I dropped my purse, my briefcase and the rest of the mail on the front-hall table, then slit open the envelope. I pulled out a piece of folded white paper, and strangely, all my senses went on alert. The apartment was suddenly warm and stuffy. It smelled dusty and stale, and my skin itched from the uncharacteristic heat. Holding the envelope and the still-folded paper, I walked to the windows and cranked them open for the first time that year. Balmy, fresh air seeped into the room.
I sat on the couch and unfolded the paper. Only two typewritten lines appeared there.
There is no statute of limitations on murder. Look closely.
“What?” I said the word out loud, but as I read the note again, some odd glimmer of comprehension began to ruffle my mind. It wasn’t that I recognized the words or the type. I was sure I’d never heard those exact sentences before, and I had no idea who’d written them, yet there was a flicker of understanding.
The breeze from my windows felt too cool then, yet I didn’t move to close them. In fact, I hoped the air would help me breathe. All at once, my chest and throat felt constricted, my lungs making shallow movements. I told myself to stay calm and put the note down. But I couldn’t let go of the paper. I read the words over and over until I felt light-headed, and the words swam in front of me. Murder, statute, closely…
The ring of the phone rattled me away from the letter. I blinked rapidly, finally getting that deep breath, and grabbed the receiver off the end table.
“Hailey, it’s me,” Maddy said. “I’m early, and I’m two blocks from you, so I’m coming over.”
I dropped the letter in my lap. “I need a few minutes.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s…It’s nothing.”
“Whoa,” she said. “I know that voice. I’ll be right there.”
Five minutes later, she buzzed from the lobby.
“What’s up with you?” she said when I opened the door, the letter still in my hand. “What’s wrong?”
I handed her the note. “I’m not sure.” I felt both sick and elated, as if on the verge of some discovery.
Maddy read it. “What in the hell is this?”
I shook my head and took the note from her. I read it again, letting that flicker of comprehension grow brighter.
“Hailey, what’s going on?” Maddy said, her voice cautious, slightly alarmed. She flicked her dark, ringletted hair over her shoulder.
“I just got it in the mail,” I said inanely.
“Who sent it?”
I shrugged.
Maddy groaned. “Why are you being so difficult? Give me the envelope.”
I turned toward the couch and pointed to where it had fallen off my lap. It was now almost hidden between the cushions. Maddy’s heels tapped on the wood floor as she crossed the room. For some reason, I noticed that she was wearing an expensive-looking tan suit, one I hadn’t seen before.
“The letter was sent from here in the city,” she said, lifting the envelope and pointing to the postmark. “Do you have any idea who sent it to you?”
“No.” I looked down at the page, although I knew the words by heart already.
“Well, who was murdered? I mean, do you know who it’s referring to?”
I felt that nauseous elation again, a sick swoop and dive of my insides. “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “My mom.”
My lungs ached, but I ignored the feeling. I ran faster, heading south down Broadway, then rounding the corner at Union Square West, just barely avoiding a full-frontal collision with a falafel vendor. I kept running, my shoes making dull slaps on the concrete, until I hit University, where I turned toward my apartment. Almost there, almost there. My breath sounded ragged to my own ears, but I pushed past it. Just a few more blocks. I pumped my arms faster, increasing my speed, feeling my bangs stick to my forehead with sweat.
I reached Eleventh Street and dropped to a walk, letting my breath catch up with me. It was heaven to jog without all my winter layers, to let the breeze hit my bare legs, to let the run shake off the thoughts of that letter, those two sentences that I carried constantly in my brain. I’d spent the last few weeks obsessing about who had sent it to me. I wouldn’t show it to my dad, and I had no guesses myself. On a long shot, I interrogated my mailman, but he could only tell me the bit of information I already knew—that the envelope had originally been sent from here in Manhattan. Which left me with millions of residents to consider, not to mention the millions of tourists.
I slowed even more when I reached the display of flowers on the sidewalk that signaled my favorite Korean grocery store. A few weeks ago there’d been prom carnations and roses that looked hair-sprayed—winter flowers—but now there were tulips, bright-colored and fresh. Inside the crowded shop, I picked up a bottle of grapefruit juice and a mammoth Sunday New York Times. Buying that paper every weekend made me feel like a native, one of those people who acted as if it was no big deal to live here, in one of the largest, craziest cities in the world. Maddy was like that. So were many of the associates at my firm. Manhattan lingo rolled off their tongues with ease. They’d say, “I’m going to the Korean,” instead of “the Korean deli,” or “I’m heading to Seventy-sixth and Lex” not “Seventy-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue.”
I, on the other hand, had never been truly comfortable in Manhattan, despite my three years there during law school and the last five years of private practice. I’d thought the accumulation of years, together with the fact that my father still lived in Manhasset on Long Island, would bring me a sense of contentment. But no matter how often I put myself in the thick of things, no matter how much I tried to convince myself, I always felt a little off, a little like an impostor. It was why I jogged the chaotic streets, picking my way past too many obstacles, like pedestrians and baby strollers and bicyclists, instead of heading for the river or Battery Park. I had this notion that if I constantly placed myself in the middle of the urban crunch it would soak in, and I’d finally feel as if I belonged.
I finished the juice while waiting in line to pay, picking the pulpy bits off my lips. I showed the bottle to the cashier when I reached him.
“How are you today, Hailey?” the cashier said. He was a short Korean man with a wide bald head.
“Good, Shin. How are you?” We had a few seconds of light chatter while he rang me up. Shin was the reason I went to that store; someone, other than my co-workers, who knew my name.
I threw the bottle in a trash can outside the store, feeling a cool trickle of sweat slide down my spine, then walked in the direction of Ninth Street. I balanced the paper on one arm, while I flipped to the business section.
“Shit!” I said. “Shit, shit, shit.” The headline read, Online McKnight Store In Trouble?
McKnight Corporation was one of my clients—one of my newest, biggest clients—and I was scheduled to leave for Chicago that night to represent them at a federal arbitration. Until then, I hadn’t been as nervous as I usually would be in an arbitration. I’d been more focused on that letter and the fact that Chicago was right across the lake from Woodland Dunes, the town where I’d lived until I was seven. The town where my mother, Leah Sutter, had died.
The night I had received the letter, Maddy and I split a bottle of wine, then another, talking for hours. Why, Maddy had demanded, did I think the stupid little note was about my mother? It was probably just a cruel prank, she said. By that time I was sure that the letter was about Leah Sutter, but I had a hard time explaining my conviction, my absolute certainty. I couldn’t remember much about that time, and I’d gotten used to ignoring it, yet now it had come back, a force to be reckoned with. The more I thought about it, a family shouldn’t scatter the way mine did after someone died. One day I had a mother, a father, a sister and a brother. After my mom passed away, it was only my dad and me.
I’ve read stories of estranged families coming closer after someone dies. I don’t know why that didn’t happen to my family. We didn’t stay long in Woodland Dunes, but during the few weeks that I’d returned to school, I saw the pointed stares of my classmates, a curious fear behind their eyes. So, I’d been glad when my dad said we were leaving. Caroline and Dan went their own ways—Caroline to boarding school, Dan to college and then both of them off into the world. I grew up without siblings, without knowing what I was missing. It wasn’t until college, when I was away from my father for the first time, that I realized how strange that was.
Staring at the McKnight headline now, thinking of the publicity it would generate, my heart rate picked up again. I hurried to my apartment, and instead of waiting for the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time to my place on the sixth floor. During law school, I’d lived on the ground floor of the same building, in a small studio with a single window that had a lovely view of the Dumpster. Once I had a steady paycheck, I moved to the top floor and into a large one-bedroom. Instead of the Dumpster, my windows now overlooked an old church on the corner, which would have been quaint if it weren’t for the couple of homeless guys who set up camp there every night and screamed obscenities at passersby.
Inside the apartment, I skimmed the article. The beginning gave information I already knew: McKnight Corporation owned department stores nationwide and had recently gotten into online retail, but they’d been sued by a competitor who claimed that McKnight copied its Web design and certain slogans. Their stock had gone down because of the suit, and if they lost the arbitration or a later trial, the article speculated, it could sound the death knell for the company. I knew the arbitration was important to McKnight’s business, of course. What I hadn’t known was that the company could go under if I didn’t win.
“Christ,” I said, slamming a hand on the table.
I stood up straight, embarrassed by my own temper, despite the fact that I was alone. It wasn’t just the professional pressure that was getting to me, I knew. It was the thought that this development might steal away the time I’d planned to spend during my visit to Woodland Dunes.
The second half of the article gave a history of the company, something I was only vaguely familiar with. I skimmed most of it until I saw a teaser headline in the middle that read, Corporate Foul Play? The juice I’d drank felt like acid in my stomach.
According to the piece, Sean McKnight, the current CEO, had engineered a deal twenty years ago that allowed McKnight Corporation to buy another department-store company called Fieldings. Initially, the deal had all the makings of a hostile takeover, but suddenly Fieldings’s board, made up of mostly Fieldings family members, had decided to sell. There was a rumor that McKnight had used personal information to blackmail his way into the sale. Charges were never brought, though, and McKnight Corporation had flourished until now.
I read the section again. I’d been told by McKnight’s in-house counsel that there was no dirty laundry. I might be able to bar the plaintiff’s attorney from questioning McKnight about this Fieldings takeover, but the rules of evidence were looser at arbitrations than at trials, so I would have to be prepared. The media surrounding the story would only make my job harder. Hopefully, Illinois didn’t allow filming at arbitrations.
I picked up the phone and dialed Maddy’s number. When I got her machine, I hung up and dialed her cell phone instead.
I had met Maddy on the first day of law school, and I liked her right away. I liked her loud, cheerful personality and her crazy, curly hair. Maddy, unlike me, was someone who told you her life story within the first twenty minutes of meeting her. When I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do that, she seemed to understand. As we spent more and more time together—studying in the library, griping about exams, drinking too much merlot on the weekends—Maddy found subtle ways to draw me out.
One of her favorites was using magazines as props. We would study in the coffee-shop area of a large bookstore, and every few hours we’d take a break. Maddy would buy a stack of magazines, and we’d sit across from each other, steaming mugs of coffee in front of us, the magazines fanned out over the table. As we flipped the pages, Maddy would ask questions. They started mundane, or at least as mundane as Maddy could be. “Don’t you think I’d look amazing in this dress?” she’d say, or “Can you believe how much these frickin’ sneakers cost? They look like orthopedic shoes.” But as we continued to talk, Maddy would sneak in slightly more substantial questions. “Did you have one of these hideous dolls when you were growing up?” or “Would you wear a wedding dress like this?”
I knew what Maddy was doing, but the questions didn’t feel threatening, so eventually I began to talk, my eyes still looking at the magazines, my fingers still turning the glossy pages. The questions grew more pointed, and by the end of our first year in law school, Maddy knew everything about me. She knew about my mother. She knew what I knew anyway, which wasn’t much. It was an odd freedom to release all those thoughts from the cage in my brain.
“I was just going to call you,” she said as she answered her phone now. In the background, I heard the ticking of cash registers and women’s voices. “I’m at Saks, and they’re having an incredible shoe sale. Those strappy sandals you wanted are forty percent off. Get your ass over here.”
“No, thanks. I think I’ll get enough of department stores this week. Plus, I have to leave for the airport in a few hours.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your McKnight arb. You ready?”
“Check out the business section of the Times, and you’ll know the answer to that one. Listen, I have a question about Illinois law. You had a few cases there, right?”
“Well, sure, but mostly I just carried the trial bags and ran for coffee.” Maddy was also at a big law firm in Manhattan, and like many other young associates, she hadn’t gotten much trial experience. I, on the other hand, had been lucky. Right out of law school, during the dot-com boom, I’d started a cyber-law division at my firm. I was young and determined. I had time to learn this new area of law, and I liked not being under the thumb of the other attorneys. To everyone’s surprise, the division was a huge success, and the clients didn’t stop coming even after many of the start-up companies failed. There was still so much business and very few firms who specialized in cyber law. Since my department was now pulling in lots of revenue, they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. In fact, I was hoping to make partner soon.
“Do you remember if they allow TV cameras at arbitrations?” I asked.
“I know they’re kept out of the courtroom. I don’t know about an arb, though. Sorry I’m not more help.”
“That’s all right.” I moved into the bedroom and took off my jogging shoes.
“How long will you be in Chicago?” Maddy said.
“A week or so.”
“You’ll be there next weekend, huh?”
“What are you getting at, Mad?” I pulled off my socks and slumped back on the bed. The satiny-smooth cotton felt cool under my legs.
“You know what I’m getting at. That bizarre letter. You’re going to Woodland Dunes, aren’t you?”
Like my father, Maddy knew me too well. Normally I loved her for it. “I’m just going to ask a few questions,” I told her, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
“Not smart, girl. Someone who writes a letter like that is not someone you want to mess with.”
“Right. Well.” It had occurred to me that maybe the author meant to be helpful in some way, but I wasn’t about to try to convince Maddy.
“Did you tell your dad?” she asked.
“Of course not.” My dad was my other best friend. We even worked together at Gardner, State & Lord, but he worried about me too much as it was.
Maddy sighed. “You can be such a pain in the ass. Just leave it alone, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“At least promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will, I will.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy those sandals for you, and I’ll hold them hostage. You only get them if you’re a good girl, and come home safely.”
I laughed. “Deal.”
I stripped off the rest of my clothes and took a quick shower. After I was dressed again, I loaded my laptop and the McKnight file into my large leather trial bag, the one that made me feel like a traveling salesman. Next, I packed a week’s worth of suits, some running clothes and a couple pairs of jeans into a suitcase. I had everything I needed for the arbitration, everything I needed for a week away from home, but there was one thing left to pack.
I moved around my bed to the corner of the room where I’d set up a desk and computer. I opened the top drawer and took out the envelope. I lifted the flap to make sure the letter was still there, then I read it once more. There is no statute of limitations on murder. Look closely.
2
The opulent Chicago headquarters of McKnight Corporation were housed on the top floors of their State Street department store. Marble-decked with gold fixtures, I assumed that it was supposed to bring to mind old world elegance. Personally, I found the place overdone. It reminded me of some of the homes in my dad’s neighborhood in Manhasset—all show and no warmth.
The receptionist escorted me to the top floor and into a conference room where paintings of the flagship store hung in gold-leafed frames. I was there to meet with Beth Halverson, McKnight Corporation’s in-house counsel, and Sean McKnight whom I hadn’t yet met. Then I would review my notes and get ready for opening arguments that afternoon.
I had the buzz, that taut, high-strung feeling I always got when I was on trial or in an arbitration. But now I was even more on edge since I’d been sideswiped with the new information about possible shady dealings in McKnight’s takeover of Fieldings Company.
“Hi, Hailey, welcome to Chicago.”
I stood to greet Beth Halverson, an impeccably dressed woman in her late thirties with stylish, short blond hair. I’d always found Beth competent and agreeable, and I was thrilled that she’d decided to give us McKnight’s business, but I had a bone to pick with her this time.
She seemed to read my mind. “I want you to know that I found out about the Fieldings allegations the same way you did. By reading the paper yesterday.”
“I mean no disrespect, but I find that hard to believe.” On a side table, coffee, juices and pastries had been set out. I poured myself a cup of coffee and added a few drops of skim milk, exactly the way my mom used to.
“Look,” Beth said. “I only came on as general counsel a year and a half ago.”
I turned around to see her shutting the conference-room door.
“What I found,” Beth said in a lowered voice, glancing at the closed door, “was that this place is run exactly the way Sean wants it.”
I took my seat again. “And what does that mean?”
Beth walked around the table, coming closer to me, and leaned on it with both arms. “It means that Sean doesn’t want anyone to talk about the Fieldings takeover, so no one does. I wasn’t apprised of the rumors. I never heard of any of the allegations until that article. Honestly, I wouldn’t keep that from you.”
I had only worked with Beth for a year or so, but she seemed like a straight shooter, and I believed her. “It’s just that I don’t know anything about that takeover,” I said. “I don’t know how to refute the allegations. I feel like I’ve been completely ambushed.”
Beth slumped into a chair. “God, I feel the same way. I even thought about quitting, but this is a great job when I don’t have to deal with the boss. I don’t know what to tell you except what I’ve learned about the Fieldings deal since yesterday.”
“I think I’d better hear it from McKnight himself. Where is he, by the way?”
Beth gave a shake of her blond head. “He should be here any minute. You’ve heard what he’s like?”
“I’ve heard he’s an asshole,” I said, deciding that now wasn’t the time to mince words.
I saw Beth’s face go slack, then heard a rough laugh behind me. I swung around to see a man standing in the now open conference doorway. He must have been in his late fifties, but the trim body and the immaculate blue suit made him look younger. His salt-and-pepper hair was brushed away from his sharply angled face.
“I assume you’re Ms. Sutter,” the man said. He walked into the room and extended his hand. “I’m the asshole.”
I stood, feeling heat rush to my face, but I was still angry about being kept in the dark, so I decided not to go overboard in my apology. I shook McKnight’s hand, feeling his strong, dry grip. His green eyes ran quickly over me, before they settled on my own eyes with a look of complete concentration.
“I’m sorry you heard that,” I said. “I’m sure it’s not true.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is.” He didn’t let go of my hand. Instead, he stood there holding it, intently studying my face, until I pulled away.
I made a show of looking at my watch. “We need to get to work. Why don’t you start by telling me about the Fieldings deal.”
McKnight took a seat at the head of the conference table. “You’re all business, aren’t you?”
“Isn’t that why you hired me?”
He gave me a tight smile. “Of course. What do you want to know?”
I flipped through my legal pad to the list of questions I’d prepared last night in my hotel room. The questions were those that the plaintiff’s attorney might ask McKnight on cross-examination.
Once I got him talking, I found myself relaxing somewhat. Technically, the man would make an excellent witness with his obvious intelligence, his even more obvious good looks, and the way he never hemmed or hawed, never seemed edgy or defensive. He had brought with him a stack of documents, meticulously organized and tabbed, which he referred to every so often. He’d prepared well for the arbitration, and that impressed me. So many clients thought that I could—and should—do all the work for them.
His explanation of the Fieldings allegations sounded plausible, too, yet something still gnawed at me. The way he told the story, the Fieldings family members had been undecided over whether to sell to McKnight Corporation. Sean had had a talk with Walter Fieldings, the founder and eldest family member, and convinced him that it would be in the family’s best financial interests to sell. Walter Fieldings had, in turn, convinced the rest of the family, and the deal went through. Yes, McKnight said, there were some grumblings that he had pulled some kind of trick. The authorities had even questioned him, but everyone realized the blackmail allegations weren’t true, and nothing came of it. He’d never been charged with anything, and he made the Fieldings family very rich.
“And that’s it?” I said, the incredulity slipping into my tone despite myself. “There’s nothing more to the story? You just had a talk with Papa Fieldings, and the deal fell into place?”
“Essentially, yes.” McKnight leaned forward on his elbows. His eyes held mine, and I wondered for a second if he was one of those older guys who hit on every woman under forty. For some reason, that thought didn’t strike me exactly right. There were a handful of those types in my office, and they were much more overt—staring at your breasts, letting their hands run over your back as you passed them.
“Are you doubting me?” McKnight asked.
“I’m trained to doubt everyone.”
“How interesting.” He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, as if waiting for me to make the next move.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not trying to antagonize you, but if you want to avoid a trial, we need to win this week, and if we’re going to win, we need to make sure you sound credible.”
“Are you saying I don’t seem credible?” McKnight’s tone was low and, to be honest, scary.
“I’m simply saying that in case they’re allowed in, you have to be ready for some intense questions on this issue. Your story needs to be perfect.”
McKnight’s gaze never left my face. “Well, Miss Sutter, what part of my ‘story,’ as you put it, don’t you believe?”
I reviewed the notes I’d taken. It was a good question, because I couldn’t exactly find fault with his rendition of the events. He was the problem, I realized. I didn’t trust him, and that made me very anxious. Any lawyer’s worst nightmare is a client you can’t trust, who might hold things back or take matters into his own hands. McKnight struck me as that type, but I couldn’t very well tell him that. In one month, the Gardner, State & Lord executive committee would vote on new partners. If I lost the McKnight account right before the vote, I might lose the partnership. I’d worked too hard to let this guy ruin it for me.
“It’s nothing precise,” I said, raising my head to meet his eyes again. “As I mentioned, I just want you to be ready.”
“If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s this. I am always, always ready.” He closed the file folder in front of him as if the subject were also closed.
“All right then. Let’s review what’s going to happen this week.”
I took them through what I expected of the arbitration step by step, and when we were finished, McKnight stood from the table and began moving toward the door. It was twelve o’clock, one hour before the arbitration started.
“Please call if you want lunch sent up,” he said to me. “You do eat, right? You do require regular human sustenance?”
I blinked a few times, confused at his hostility. “I’ve been known to eat once in a while,” I said wryly.
“Good to hear it. I’ll see you at the arbitration.”
“I think we should walk over together so that we can talk some more about your testimony,” I said.
He stopped and turned around. “I think you’ve taken up enough of my time.” With that, he sailed out the door.
I looked at Beth. “What the hell?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t take it personally. Supposedly, he wasn’t always like this. I’ve heard that he used to be a decent guy until he got a divorce years ago. He was never the same after that.”
“A divorce made him such a jerk? Are you kidding me?”
She shrugged. “You never know what can push a person over the edge.”
A few days later, I sat at a scratched wooden table, alone in the arbitration room, getting ready to present McKnight’s Web designer as my next witness. Since everyone else was at lunch, the room was cool and quiet. The proceeding was being held in a stately old government building near the federal courthouse, the place where McKnight Corporation would find itself in approximately six months for a trial if the arbitration didn’t go well. The arbitrators had barred members of the press from the room, but journalists were always stationed outside, like vultures waiting to swoop, so most of the time I stayed put until I had to leave for the day.
It was hard when the room was so still. I wasn’t as focused as I should have been. My thoughts kept straying from the notes and deposition transcripts piled in front of me to the letter tucked at the bottom of my trial bag. I kept counting the days until I could leave Chicago and drive to Woodland Dunes. Only two more now.
So far, the arbitration had been an odd mix, some parts better than I expected, others decidedly worse. I’d been pleased with my opening argument. I went into that zone where I wove my words easily, where I could read the arbitrators’ faces and change my course when their interest waned. The only thing that threw me was the constant feel of Sean McKnight’s eyes on me. It didn’t seem like the lustful watch of a man interested in a May/December romance. That would have been simple, because I knew how to handle come-ons. No, his stare felt more like an ever-present evaluation. Every time I saw him observing me from the corner of my eye, I had to force myself to concentrate so that I could keep on the path of my statement.
Luckily, after the opening arguments, McKnight did as he said he would and disappeared until it was time for his testimony. Once he was on the stand, he became the charming person customers associated with McKnight department stores. I was surprised when the plaintiff’s attorney, Evan Lamey, didn’t hit McKnight hard with questions about the Fieldings takeover. I would’ve liked to think that Lamey was entranced by McKnight’s good looks and smooth talking, but I knew better. Lamey was trying to cast a shadow of doubt over McKnight with his cross-examination, all the while saving his real zingers in case a trial was needed. As a result, McKnight finished his testimony at the end of the day with a smug look on his face.
“You see,” he said, leaning toward me so the others wouldn’t hear, “I didn’t need the practice.”
I clicked my trial bag shut. “Don’t kid yourself. He went easy on you.”
A flicker of doubt crossed McKnight’s face, then disappeared. He didn’t ask what I meant. Instead, he simply said, “When do I have to be back here?”
“Closing arguments. Friday at one o’clock. Unless of course you want to show support for your employee, who will be testifying tomorrow.”
“And what do you do with your evenings here in Chicago?”
“I…” I faltered for a second, startled at the shift in topic. I wondered if I’d been wrong before, if he might be hitting on me. But his eyes were cold, and he had taken a step away, as if he found it difficult to be in my proximity.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said.
“I think it is. I’m paying you to be here.”
“You’re not paying me for my time after hours.”
“Yes, right.” He studied my face with that way of his. Then he swiveled on the heels of his Italian-leather shoes and walked out of the room. I decided that he was, by far, the rudest and oddest client I’d ever had.
People started trickling into the arbitration room now, and I was finally able to get my mind on track. Unfortunately, the McKnight Web designer, a Jesus look-alike named Gary Sather, didn’t fare as well as his boss that afternoon. My direct exam went smooth enough, although I had to constantly remind Gary to speak up and to respond to questions out loud instead of answering with a nod or a shake of his head. On cross-examination, he crumbled. Lamey didn’t hold back this time. He went after Gary hard, his cross designed to show that the McKnight Web site stole ideas from its competitor, Lamey’s client.
“Is it possible,” Lamey said, prowling in front of Gary like a lion stalking its prey, the tails of his gray suit coat flapping behind him with the movement, “that the Easy Click and Shop system you said you designed for McKnight was actually a copy of technology you saw somewhere else?”
Gary blinked again. He looked at me for help, even though I’d told him not to. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Lamey stopped in front of him. “You’re not sure, then?”
I tried to will the answer to Gary by mental telepathy. Say you’re sure, say you’re absolutely positive that you created it on your own, just like we practiced.
Gary missed my telepathy and lamely shrugged his shoulders.
“Let me ask it another way,” Lamey said, taking a step toward the witness. “Is it possible that you’d seen something very similar to the Easy Click and Shop system on another Web site before you designed the McKnight site?”
Gary blinked again. “I guess it’s possible.”
“So, it’s possible that you borrowed that technology and used it on the McKnight site.” Lamey flipped through some papers as he said this, a trick designed to make Gary think that he had something in writing that could verify his statement.
Gary watched him and licked his lips. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It’s possible.”
I resisted the urge to drop my head in my hands.
I opened the window and let the azure sky push a damp spring breeze through the rental car. I’d finally escaped the clog of cars that surrounded the Loop and was heading east on the Dan Ryan Expressway toward the Skyway. On the passenger seat, I had a bottle of water, a bag of pretzels and a map of the Midwest. Strangely, I didn’t actually need the map. I knew the way, as if I could sense the streets and highways that would lead me to the past, to Woodland Dunes, and maybe to the truth about my mother.
Yesterday’s closing argument had gone as well as possible, but afterward, when the arbitration room cleared, I’d broken the news to McKnight that Gary’s testimony would almost certainly make the arbitrators find for the plaintiff.
McKnight listened, his unreadable eyes watching me, and then he said, “Fine. He’ll be gone by this afternoon.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You can’t fire him!”
“I can, and I will.”
“Don’t you realize that terminating him is exactly what the plaintiffs want? At trial, they can make a huge issue of how you knew Gary had messed up, and that’s why you sacked him. If you keep him on, though, you show confidence in your Web site and your belief that your employee did nothing wrong.”
McKnight spread his lips in an insincere smile. “Point taken. He stays until the case is over. Although I suppose we could have avoided this conversation if you’d prepared him correctly.”
I felt my jaw clench. The silence of the large room seemed to envelope us, although I could hear the murmurs outside the door; no doubt Lamey was spinning his tale of impending victory for the reporters.
“I worked with him for two days before his deposition, one day last week on the phone, and two nights this week,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. “Gary is a very nice person, but he’ll never be a good witness. No amount of prep can change that.” I hefted my trial bag off the counsel’s table, wishing I could launch the thing at McKnight’s head. “The arbitrators will call me next week when they’ve reached a decision. I’ll let you know immediately, and we’ll come here together to hear it.”
He nodded, his face slightly less haughty. “You did a good job. Other than that.”
I didn’t know whether to take that swing with the trial bag or thank him, so I only nodded an acknowledgment.
“I mean that,” he said. “You’re obviously an excellent lawyer.” He looked slightly embarrassed, and, for the first time since I met him, he seemed human. It was probably more than he could bear, because he turned and left without a word of goodbye.
Don’t think about it, I told myself now, and I turned up the car radio so that it blared an Allman Brothers song. I dug my hand in the bag of pretzels and popped a few in my mouth, washing them down with a swig of water. I found that it wasn’t hard to shift my thoughts as I made my way down the Skyway, a multilane raised road that hugged the lake and formed a bridge from Chicago into northern Indiana. Through the line of smokestacks and steel mills, I began to catch glimpses of the lake, a flat, watery carpet of deep blue, the lake that was my playground until my mom died.
Once across the Indiana border and into southern Michigan, I exited and got on a small highway that would take me even closer to the lake. The highway here was more scenic, lined with a couple of rural towns and then long patches of oak trees with nothing to interrupt them. It was odd how familiar it all seemed, how recent the memory. Finally, I reached a stop sign, so faded by the sun it was almost pink. Below it was another sign, black and rectangular with white lettering that read, Welcome To Woodland Dunes.
I didn’t hesitate. I stepped on the gas and crossed the threshold. I was back.
3
I passed Franklin Park, a wide plot of green land filled with benches and swing sets and a white gazebo. On the other side of the park lay the softly lapping waves of Lake Michigan. After the park, there were small cottages on either side of the street. Soon, the houses became larger and grander, the old section of Woodland Dunes. I pulled over and checked the slip of paper where I’d written Della’s address. I’d never been to her house before.
The street that Della lived on turned east, away from the lake, and coursed through the woods. This was where people built homes when they couldn’t afford to live near the water, and as a result, the homes became smaller and closer together again.
Della’s house was a trim ranch with brown aluminum siding and a small, unfinished wood porch with a lone rocker. An old blue station wagon was parked in the driveway. I pulled in behind it.
I climbed out of the car, not even pausing to check my face in the mirror or grab my purse. I hadn’t seen Della, the woman who’d been housekeeper and nanny to my family, in more than twenty years, but suddenly I couldn’t wait.
There was no bell, so I rapped on the screen door, which rattled back and forth in its casing.
An older Hispanic man dressed in jeans and a golf shirt opened it.
“Is Della home?” I said.
He gave me a kind smile. “Are you Hailey?”
I nodded.
“Well, hello. I’m Martin, Della’s husband. I met you years and years ago, but you probably don’t remember.”
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t be silly, you were a little girl. Della will be so happy to see you. She went out to the store. Wasn’t sure when you’d be here. Would you like to come in?”
I tried not to show my disappointment. Now that I was there, I was impatient to talk to Della, to find out everything she knew and remembered, but I couldn’t bear the thought of making small talk in the interim.
“Actually,” I said, “I haven’t been to Woodland Dunes in a long time. Maybe I’ll just drive around, go by our old house. Do you know who lives there now?”
Martin looked a little surprised. “Oh, no one lives there. Not for a while. They call it the Marker Mansion, after the family that originally built the house at the turn of the century. It’s been converted into a cultural center for the town.”
“So I could go inside?”
“Sure. They’ll even give you a tour.”
I thanked him, promised to return in an hour, and headed for my car.
After a five-minute drive, I turned the corner and came face-to-face with the house, the image of my early childhood—its gables, its sloping black roofs, its wide dormered windows on the second floor and the tall oaks and pines that surround the house like a cape. I parked in a large concrete lot that used to be part of the front lawn.
Turning off the ignition, I stared at the house, taking in the Victorian shape and the broad porch with its white wood railing. The house was dove-gray instead of the creamy yellow that my parents always painted it, and there were tall bushes where my mother used to plant flowers. Otherwise, the outside looked much the same. It had resided in my memory for so long, a memory I didn’t often visit, that it was strange to see it in person.
I got out of the car, and as I approached the front steps, I saw a small iron sign that read:
Woodland Dunes Cultural Center.
Formerly The Marker Mansion. Built 1905.
Tours Daily 10:00, 11:30, 1:00.
I glanced at my watch. I was just in time for the second tour.
When I stepped onto the porch, I had a sudden vision of a swing that used to hang in the corner. I could almost see my sister, Caroline, sitting there, her feet on the swing, her arms wrapped around her knees, her sandy, straight hair falling around her shoulders. She was always so quiet, so still, and in the summers, she spent much of her time on that swing. She never read or even hummed to herself. She just sat. I remembered myself, years younger than my newly teenage sister, coming out of the house to peek at her, wondering what tragedies she was mulling over. Although no one had given me that impression, I always imagined Caroline as a complicated and tragic figure.
“May I help you?” A voice startled me away from the memory. I turned to see a young woman in the doorway with dark hair twisted up in a loose knot.
“Hi. I’m here for the tour.”
“Great. C’mon in.” The woman stepped inside and held open the door. “We don’t get too many visitors until the summer really starts, so I’m glad to have you.”
My first thought when I stepped into the front hall, a wide foyer with molded plaster ceilings, was that the house was much darker now. Maybe I was mistaken or simply remembering poorly, but I always thought the house had been sun-filled and airy, even in the winter. Now the house had a shuttered, impersonal feel, a museum feel, which I supposed wasn’t surprising, since it was a museum of sorts now.
“I’m Jan,” the guide said, extending her hand. She was probably no older than twenty-one. She wore little makeup and a simple outfit of khaki pants and a blue T-shirt.
“Hailey.” I shook her hand.
“Are you from around here?”
“No. New York.” I didn’t mention that I used to be from around here, that I used to live in this house. For now, I wanted to keep my memories to myself. It had been so long since I let them in.
“Let’s start the tour over here.” Jan led the way to the right, past open pocket doors and into the library.
The inlaid mahogany bookshelves were still in place, as were the Tiffany lamps, permanently installed at the top of each shelf. At the end of the room was a huge pink marble fireplace that my dad used to call the “bordello fireplace.” It was so tall that I used to be able to walk directly into it without ducking. As I walked toward it now, I realized that I was a long way from that little girl. At five foot six, I could easily reach the mantel.
I took in the whole room, vaguely aware of Jan’s talk about how the house had been completed for the Marker family in 1905, how craftsmen had needed the previous six years to complete it. Like the entryway, the library appeared much darker than I remembered, probably because it was now adorned with period furnishings from the early 1900s to make it look as it did back then—heavy red velvet drapes, brass candelabras, uncomfortable-looking high-back chairs. But I saw it as my mother had decorated it—with soft, stuffed chairs and ottomans, vases of fresh flowers, and the corner that was saved just for me, complete with a small child’s chair, the replica of the larger ones, and my own miniature bookcases.
“How do you like it?” I heard Jan ask.
“Oh, it’s lovely. I was just imagining what it would have been like to live here.”
“Well, when the Markers were here, they had a full staff of servants to carry out their every whim, and they entertained often. The Markers were famous for their balls and their travels.”
And what about the Sutter family? I wanted to ask. What were they famous for? Does anyone remember them?
Next, Jan led me to a large drawing room on the other side of the hallway. I listened to her speech about the oil paintings and the marble sculptures, because the room held few memories for me. I couldn’t recall my family spending much time there.
But no, that wasn’t quite right. A recollection came to me of my brother, Dan, seventeen years old when I was only seven, hunched over a scarred octagonal table, his straight blond hair falling over his forehead, writing furiously in his notebook, filling it with his stories. He’d used the room as an escape from the rest of the family, his teenage years making him crave privacy.
“Let’s go upstairs now,” Jan said.
I followed her back through the lobby and up the wide, dark wood stairway that was covered with a wine-colored carpet runner.
“You’ll notice the tapestry on the landing here,” Jan said, pausing, one hand resting on a carved wood globe that formed the top of the banister. Her other hand pointed to a silk wall-hanging in colors of gray and salmon. She described how the tapestry had been hand-woven in Italy, how the artist had visited the Markers. But I had quit listening.
I had returned to a moment that had lain buried until now. I saw my mother standing at the bottom of those stairs, dressed in a powder-blue suit, her feet in high heels I’d never seen before. She moved to the front door and opened it. She spoke to someone, their voices hushed, one voice much deeper than the other. A hand was on her blue shoulder. A large man’s hand. A ring on his finger. The soft sounds of crying. Then my mother swayed, nearly fell.
I had watched this scene, I realized, from the landing where I now stood. I’d been dressed in my favorite pair of jeans and the shirt with the sunflower on the front, my face peering around the post at the top of the landing.
“Are you all right?”
I focused on Jan’s face, her eyes wary. “Sure, sure. I’m fine.” I looked back down the staircase again, but the vision was gone.
“Well, come on up this way. I’ll show you the bedrooms.”
I followed Jan again, surprised at the sudden, vivid flash of my mother. It had been ages since I’d really remembered her in any detail. There were the vague recollections, like how she ran every night, even if it was raining, sometimes coming in the house with her long hair dripping in sheets, her chest heaving as if she’d been chased and not out for a leisurely jog, and later the feel of that hair sweeping my cheek as she leaned over me, kissing me good-night, the smell of lavender on her skin.
“This bedroom belonged to Catherine, the Markers’ only daughter,” Jan said, leading me to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.
I remembered it well. It used to be mine.
The walls were still painted peach, the fireplace still white, and a canopy bed still stood in the corner. The bed, though, which was made of dark wood, its canopy designed with heavy velvet, was different from the one I loved so much. Mine was white with an eyelet covering. Seeing the bed and the room brought back another flood of memories: myself in the bed, quilt up to my neck, reading until my mother insisted that the lights be turned off; my friend, Patsy, and I playing in front of the fireplace that was never lit; Caroline helping me with my homework at the desk against the wall.
How odd, I thought, that so few of those memories included my dad. But maybe it wasn’t so strange, since he’d spent most of his weekdays working in Chicago and most of the weeknights at his apartment there. And yet, my memories after Woodland Dunes are exclusively of my father and me. No one else.
Jan showed me through three other bedrooms, two of which had been occupied twenty years ago by my siblings. She stopped in the hallway before the master bedroom and pointed out an intercom system that had been installed by the Markers in order to talk to their servants.
“The intercom hasn’t worked in a long time,” Jan said. “At least not since the cultural center moved in here.”
“And when was that?”
“The early eighties.”
“Really?” The early eighties were when my family moved away from Woodland Dunes. “Why did the town want this specific house?”
“Well, I don’t know that they actually wanted this particular home, but from what I heard, they got it at a great price. The people who’d lived here before couldn’t sell it.”
“Why was that?”
Jan made a show of looking around, even though there was no one else near us. “We’re not supposed to talk about this,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “but a lady died here.”
I was quiet. I felt as if I was holding my breath and didn’t know how to let it out. I’d never known where my mom was when she died or exactly how it had happened. I was only seven at the time, and I didn’t remember anything—nothing at all—which had always troubled me. And yet my father and I rarely talked about the subject. When we did, or I should say when I did, it was too painful for him. She became ill, he would say, tapping his head as if to indicate some injury or disease in the brain. His eyes would cloud over, making me fearful he might cry. I knew I looked like her in some ways—my slim build, my wide shoulders, my long sandy hair. I always assumed that resemblance, combined with the horrible memories, made it too painful for him to talk about her death. And so I never stayed on the topic for long. What difference did it make, really? Eventually, I managed to ignore the issue altogether. But that letter had let loose the wonderings again.
“There was some talk, I guess,” Jan said. “The rumor was that someone had done something to her. I got this all secondhand, of course. I was just a baby when it happened.” She checked her watch. “Anyway, let’s finish up.”
She started to take a step away, but I grabbed her arm. She looked at my hand, then at me in surprise.
“I’m sorry.” I took my hand away. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but can you tell me what you mean by the rumors. I mean, what were the rumors, exactly?”
Jan gave me another wary look and rubbed at the spot on her arm. “I don’t know really. Like I said, we’re not supposed to talk about this on the tour, and I wasn’t around to hear about it at the time.”
“I understand.” I tried to make my voice easy, conversational. “But what have you heard? I’m just curious.”
Jan paused a moment, then shrugged. “Well, to be honest, I heard someone killed her, but no one was ever charged, so I’m sure it’s one of those old wives’ tales. Now let me show you the master.”
I trailed behind, her words reverberating in my mind. Someone killed her.
We entered the master bedroom, a large space with a huge bay window of curved glass at the opposite end. A secretary’s desk was tucked into the bay, but I remembered how my mother had installed a long bench under that window and covered it with pillows. I would often find her there, writing in her journal or just looking through the glass onto the front lawn.
I studied the rest of the room, and the cold feeling returned. I remembered so many things all of a sudden—my parent’s king-size bed against the right wall, a bureau of cherrywood with a mirror over it, more flowers, my mother’s yellow sweater hanging over a chair, an armoire to match the dresser, paperbacks and tissue on one nightstand, a lone alarm clock on the other. Recollections poured into my brain with such speed that they startled me. And yet, there was something else about the room that I couldn’t recall.
“Thank you,” I said, interrupting Jan’s remarks. “I have to be going.”
I turned and left the room.
“Is something wrong?” Her voice followed me.
I hurried down the stairs, distantly hearing Jan’s feet pounding behind me, until I made myself stop on the landing. Be calm, I told myself. Be calm. It wouldn’t be good to act crazy when I’d come here seeking answers.
I opened my mouth to say something, but as I gazed down the stairs, I saw my mother again in the powder-blue suit. She was struggling to stand, holding a hand to the back of her head. The doorbell rang once, then again, then pounding came from the door. My mother moved slowly, inching toward the doorway, the white of her hand never leaving her head, holding it gingerly, as if she was keeping her hairstyle in place.
“Is something wrong?” I heard Jan say again.
“No. Nothing at all.” And I turned away, because if I said anything else, I might have told her what I suddenly knew—that my mother, Leah Sutter, died in this house.
4
After leaving the Marker Mansion, formerly the Sutter home—my home—I drove slowly, not sure where I was going, letting the sights of Woodland Dunes fill my head and refresh my memories of the place. I passed the town’s riding stables, matching white barns with green roofs resting on a large field, a white fence surrounding the property. Patsy and I used to ride there on Saturdays, eating brown-bag lunches in the long grass behind the barns when we were done. The town’s championship golf course with its rolling greens and intermittent circles of sand appeared the same as it did years ago, just like the lighthouse at Murphy’s Point.
I turned left on the outskirts of town, then left again toward the lake. And suddenly, there it was. A square plot of land on a hillside dotted with trees and sprinkled with gray and white headstones. The Woodland Dunes Cemetery. I hadn’t realized I was so close. In fact, I didn’t know if I could have found it if I tried.
I pulled into the lot, the tires of the rental car crunching over the gravel. As I got out, I remembered where to go. My dad had brought me here a few times before we moved. I walked toward the far left corner, the heels of my loafers sinking into the damp, spongy ground. I passed an older man in jogging clothes squatting over a small, simple headstone. He pulled stray weeds with a quick hand as if accustomed to the movement.
I stopped when I came to the tall white column made of stone, an angel on either side looking down, protecting the grave. A grayish-green film had made its home in some of the crevices of my mother’s memorial, around the angel’s wings and in the edges of the lettering that read: Leah Rose Sutter, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1942–1982. The rest of the grave site was remarkably clean. No weeds or sand on it like some of the others nearby.
Then I noticed it. A single yellow tulip lying at the base of the monument. I stood completely still, staring at it, my mind latching onto our old house again, wandering the rooms inside, seeing it the way my mother had always kept it. Flowers below the porch, blooms in the vases in the library, and more flowers in her bedroom. In the spring, when the air was new and clean as it was now, those flowers were usually tulips, mostly yellow.
I wrapped my arms around myself. The fact that my mother loved yellow tulips, and the fact that this one had been placed by her headstone had to be a coincidence. I wasn’t aware of anyone who visited her grave. My mother’s own parents had died a few years after her, and she had no siblings. Once we moved away, my father and I never returned. As far as Dan and Caroline were concerned, I didn’t know where they were. They had both been so much older than me. After my mom died, Caroline had gone off to boarding school and Dan to college. We never really saw them after that. My dad and I moved all over for his work at the firm—San Francisco, London, Paris, Long Island—and when I asked about Caroline and Dan, he said that they had their own lives and families. He gave the impression that they didn’t want to be a part of ours any longer.
Maybe the flower had come loose from a nearby bouquet. I glanced at the other grave sites. Some were untended and nearly overgrown. A few had small flower arrangements but no tulips.
When I looked back at my mother’s grave, I had the odd feeling that someone was watching me. A few more glances around told me that I imagined it. The man in the jogging clothes had turned away, walking back to the parking lot.
I bent down and lifted the bud. It looked fairly new, only two of the petals showing signs of droop, probably no more than a day or two old. I laid it gently on the cool stone again, wondering who could have left it here. No matter. I was grateful to the person for honoring my mother, for remembering her.
This time, there were two cars parked in Della’s driveway. As I pulled in behind them, the front door flew open, and a short woman dressed in gray slacks and a sleeveless white blouse rushed down the sidewalk. I got out of the car and opened my arms to hug Della, the woman who’d helped raise me until we moved away from Woodland Dunes, and someone I recalled well, as if there was nothing to fear from my memories of her.
“Oh, Hailey.” Della held a warm hand to my cheek. “You’re so grown-up. You look so much like your mom.”
“Thank you.” Other than my father, I didn’t come across many people who knew my mom, and I liked hearing about the resemblance.
Della took me by the hand and led me around the back of the house where she had a pitcher of iced tea and a tray of cookies waiting on a metal patio table. The branches from a tall oak tree formed a canopy of shade, the breeze making its leaves ruffle and whisper.
Della fussed over me, telling me to sit in one of the chairs. While she spooned ice into our glasses and placed a few cookies on a paper plate, I noticed how little she had changed. Her olive skin was still smooth, her cheeks still full with a pink glow. Her hair, though obviously dyed to keep its black color, still lay in crinkled waves to her chin. She’d put on a few pounds, but they only made her seem more like the comforting figure of my memories.
“Tell me,” Della said, settling into the chair next to me. “Tell me everything about you.”
I talked about law school, my job, my apartment in Manhattan. When I finally slowed down, I took a bite of an oatmeal-raisin cookie, the soft, sweet taste raising a recollection of Della in our old house, lifting a baking sheet out of the oven, placing a hand on my head, telling me to wait until they were cool.
“And you’re not married?” Della said. She bit into her own cookie, but her eyes watched me, waiting for an answer.
“No. I’m a long way from married.”
“No one special then?”
I shook my head. “A few years ago, I was dating someone seriously.” I thought of Michael, sitting bare-chested in his bed, eyes playful, holding firm to my hand, trying to pull me back under the covers.
“And what happened to that?”
I shrugged. The therapist I’d seen after Michael and I broke up had nodded her head at the end of our first and only session and said in a grave tone, “Abandonment issues,” as if she was making a horrible diagnosis like, “Permanent facial disfigurement.” It was natural, she said, for a child who lost a parent so young to have such feelings, but I couldn’t carry them over into my adult relationships and push people away. I knew she had a point, but I had never learned how to avoid keeping most people at arm’s length. I got busy with the bar exam, and I didn’t keep up with the prescribed weekly appointments. Michael met someone at his firm our first year out of law school, and he slid away from me the way the others had. I didn’t think I was ever really in love with Michael, or with any of them for that matter.
I felt that I’d know true love when a kiss could make everything, the rest of the world, disappear. I kept waiting for that moment with Michael. I didn’t expect it to happen right away, but I hoped each time. I’d close my eyes, feel his lips settle over mine, and while I enjoyed it, I was always still right there. Nothing ever disappeared, not the Miles Davis music Michael always played or his high-rise apartment where we often stayed. I began to wonder if maybe I was incapable of feeling that kind of love, or maybe I was laboring beneath an unattainable fantasy.
Della asked me about college at UCLA, about high school on Long Island, about the tutors in Europe and grade school before that in San Francisco. And then we were back to Woodland Dunes, to the year my father and I left.
“I missed you all so much when you were gone,” Della said. She raised a paper napkin to her eyes, and I wondered for a second if she was going to cry. “It was like a part of my family had left.” Her voice creaked, betraying her age. “Of course, I had my own family to take care of. Max was twelve and Delphine ten. My husband said I had to get over it. I had to get over Leah’s death and get a new job.”
“And did you?”
“Oh, I got other jobs, although never as a housekeeper or a nanny again. I cleaned office buildings for a janitorial service, and I cooked meals for the sick.” Della tsked, as if none of that had mattered much. “I never got over Leah.”
“You two were close,” I said. An image drifted back of my mom and Della in the kitchen, sun slanting through the high window over the sink, the two of them laughing as they washed dishes. It seemed to me now that my mother probably kept Della around as much for her company as her housekeeping skills. I couldn’t remember my mom having any other close friends.
“She was a wonderful woman.” Della’s voice was softer now. “A good friend. And I miss her every day.”
I stayed silent, and tilted my head up for a moment, watching a squirrel above me racing from branch to branch. I had missed my mom every day, too, but not in the same way. I longed for the vague concept of my mother, of a mother in my life. I missed her especially when I was learning about boys, shopping for prom dresses, graduating from college, from law school. I had my dad for all those things, and he tried to be everything—father, mother, friend—but sometimes I craved female guidance and companionship. My friendship with Maddy had filled some of that void, yet no one could totally replace a mother.
“How did she die?” It was the question I came to ask, the one that had been haunting me since I read that letter, but I hadn’t meant to say it so abruptly.
Della sat straighter in her chair, then raised a hand to her lips. She lifted her shoulders, then let them fall again. “It’s hard to say. What do you remember?”
I pushed my mind back to that time when I was seven years old. I remember not needing to ask the question of how she had died, as if I had known the answer and didn’t want to be reminded. But somewhere along the way, I lost the knowledge.
“I don’t really remember anything specific,” I said. “That’s the problem. And I need to know.”
Della pushed her plate away and leaned on the table. “Do you remember talking to the police?”
I felt a strange pulse beating in my neck. “The police? I talked to the police?”
“We all did.”
I tried to conjure up some sense of my seven-year-old self, in a police station, sitting across from a detective, swinging my legs underneath the table. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, they never made any decisions. They never drew any conclusions. Just looked into her death and closed the file. It got people to talking, though.”
“I remember the whispering and the looks,” I said, slightly agitated now that I was getting close to the topic, yet not learning anything. “But why did the police look into it?”
A gust of wind blew through the backyard, pushing Della’s hair into her face. She brushed it away; she sighed loud enough that I heard it over the breeze. “Oh, sweetie, your mother died from a blow to the head. They wanted to find out if someone had done that to her on purpose.”
5
I checked into the Long Beach Inn, an aptly named bed-and-breakfast perched above a lengthy stretch of tawny sand that hemmed Lake Michigan. Because the summer season hadn’t yet started, I was able to get an upstairs room. It was the largest one, I’d been told by the housekeeper, who was filling in for the owner. The room took up half the third floor, a sunny space painted white, like a summer cottage. A large canopy bed covered in pillows sat in the center. The French doors on the other side led to a balcony and, beyond that, the beach. I had always dreamed of a balcony off my bedroom overlooking the water, but I was too preoccupied now to enjoy it.
I unpacked the way I always did in hotels. I traveled so often that I liked to try to create a semblance of home for myself, even if it was a fictional and transient one. Once my clothes were in the closet and my makeup in the bathroom cabinet, I called Maddy to tell her what I’d learned. For once I got no answer at either her home or cell phone. There was no one else I could tell about what I was doing, what I’d discovered.
I closed my eyes and let myself hear Della’s words again.
Your mother died from a blow to the head. They wanted to find out if someone had done that to her on purpose.
It only confirmed what I’d thought—that something strange surrounded my mother’s death. What did it mean that my mom had died of a head injury? Did that necessarily mean that someone had purposefully hurt her? I had asked Della those questions before I bolted, but she had shrugged. “There were lots of stories about what happened, but mostly people said it was an accident,” she’d said. “No one really knows.”
But someone knew. The person who’d sent the letter knew. Or at least they thought they did.
The sound of a vacuum downstairs made me realize I was standing in the middle of the room, motionless. I’d had so much momentum all day. What to do now? Though the room was cozy, a huge step up from the impersonal hotel where I’d stayed in Chicago, I wished for my own apartment right then, for my comfy sweatpants and the taupe chenille blanket my father had given me. Under different circumstances, I would have loved to curl up on the canopy bed here with a book, but I couldn’t just sit around. Not now. I couldn’t stand the thought of being in Woodland Dunes and not be moving, remembering, doing. I wasn’t here for a weekend getaway. I was here for my mother.
The thought drew me to the French doors, but for a moment, I didn’t open them. I stared out at the wide beach, the gray-blue water licking the sand. As I watched the rush and recede of the water, I remembered the feel of my small hand in my father’s as he led me down the unfinished wood pathway to the lake. I must have been about six or seven years old. He had come home to Woodland Dunes that day, a treat for the middle of the week.
“Where’s Mom?” he’d said when he was inside the front door. He crouched down and held open his arms. “Is she taking her walk on the beach?”
I nodded and charged into him, wrapping myself around his neck, breathing in the slightly stale scent of the city he always brought with him.
“Let’s find her,” he said.
We walked the two blocks to the lakefront and then down the wood sidewalk to the sand. We pulled off our shoes, my dad rolling up the bottoms of his suit pants.
“Which way?” he said, his voice playful. “You pick.”
I bounced on my toes with excitement. I looked both ways down the beach. The sun was growing gold and heavy, but it wasn’t dark yet. To my right, the houses were grand, some of them as big as hotels. To the left, they grew smaller and friendlier, and there were usually more kids that way, so I raised my left arm and pointed.
“You got it, Hailey-girl,” my dad said.
We walked along the water where it was packed wet and hard, looking for beach glass, the colored shards of glass, rounded and smoothed by years spent in the water.
“Here’s a great one,” my dad said, bending down to lift a green piece the size of a quarter.
I held out my hand, but just then I saw a flash of pink farther down the beach. I looked closer, and I could see my mother’s pink T-shirt, the length of her sandy blond hair.
“Mom!” I called.
My father stood in one quick motion, the glass falling from his hand. I knelt to pick it up. When I stood again, I saw my mother hadn’t heard me. She was standing a few hundred yards away, her back to us, and she was talking to someone.
“Let’s go see Mom,” I said, tugging my father’s hand, but he refused to move. He was frozen, it seemed, with his pants rolled up, his suit coat over his arm, staring at his wife.
I looked at my mom again, too. I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but I could tell it was a man, someone a little taller than her, and for a second, I saw the man reach out and put a hand on my mom’s shoulder.
“Let’s go.” My dad pulled my hand so hard I almost cried out. He marched me back the way we came, pulling me down the beach. In my other hand, I gripped tight to the beach glass, trying not to drop it. When I looked up, my father’s jaw was hard, his eyes narrow. A few times, I almost stumbled as he propelled us over the sand.
When we reached the wood walk that would take us back to the street, he slowed so we could sit and pull on our shoes.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I’d said a terrible thing, then he pulled me to him, hugging me so close it was difficult to breathe.
“Everything’s all right.” He released me, but I thought for a moment he might cry because of the way his eyes were pulled down, the way his mouth seemed ready to tremble. “Let’s go home.”
We walked back quickly, not strolling as we had on the way to the beach. When we reached the house, he said he loved me very much but he’d forgotten something at the office. He needed to go back that night.
I sat on the window bench in my room, watching him pull out of the driveway. The bench reminded me of the larger one in my parents’ room where my mother often rested and wrote in her journals. Usually, when I sat on my own bench, it made me feel a little like my mom, and that made me happy. That night, though, staring out at the now dark lawn, I didn’t want to be my mother. She’d made my dad leave, and I only wanted him to come back.
When my mother came in the room, I was still there. “You made him go away,” I said.
“What?” My mother raised a hand and smoothed the pink cotton front of her T-shirt.
“Dad was here. We saw you on the beach, and he left.”
My forehead was touching the glass of the French doors. Still, I peered at the beach, thinking over this new memory the way I studied a witness’s testimony after a deposition.
I’d always assumed my parents were happy together, from the devastation my father experienced after she passed away. But was my mother involved with someone else? I knew my father had been upset with her that day, but I’d been too young to draw any conclusions. Now it seemed possible my mother was having an affair.
I opened the French doors and went onto the balcony. The spring air was balmy and light. I leaned on the painted white railing and gazed at the beach, trying to bring back more of the memory, the parts that had happened before and later, but nothing else came.
Just a few blocks to my left was where my father and I had taken our walk, where my mother had stood with the man. Just because he was a man, though, didn’t mean my mother was involved with him. Why was I so quick to jump to the conclusion that my mother had been unfaithful? The hand on my mother’s shoulder, the way she’d smoothed down her pink shirt when she’d come to my room, that was why.
I sank down on the Adirondack chair, painted white to match the railing. The hand had reminded me of the vision I’d had on the stairs today, of the hand that I had seen steady my mother at the door. The lawyer in me confronted myself. How can you assume it was the same person? And even if it were true, who was he? Did it matter? He might not have anything to do with her death.
I ran a hand through my hair. I was going in circles. This happened to me sometimes during a big case. My mind wound around too many details, unable to see the important things.
I threw on a pair of khaki shorts, a long-sleeved shirt and sandals. Once down on the beach, I walked to the left, the way my mother had headed that day, the way I’d followed with my father. A soft breeze blew, playing with my hair, pushing it in my eyes. There were only a few people on the beach—a jogger and an older couple who were camped out with chairs and a cooler. The couple gave me a happy wave.
As I walked, I gazed across the lake toward Chicago. If I narrowed my eyes, I could see the blocky outlines of the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building through the hazy sun. Somewhere over there, probably on Monday morning the arbitrators would come to their decision on the McKnight case, or maybe it was done already. Either way, it seemed a lose/lose situation. If I lost the arb, I’d have to work with Sean McKnight during a trial, and if I won, he might hire me again. The thought of dealing with his arrogant attitude on another case was not pleasant. I made myself find the bright side. If I won, it might be what I needed to ensure I would make partner. Some associates thought I was a shoo-in, knowing my father was on the executive committee, but the reality was that the higher-ups were so afraid of nepotism accusations that I had to prove myself more than the average attorney. Winning the McKnight case could help seal the deal.
I stopped walking when I saw a glint in the sand. Reaching down, I wrapped my fingers around a piece of clear beach glass, rounded to a perfect oval. I rubbed it between my fingers, caressing its smooth, dusty surface. It had the same feel as the green beach glass I’d found with my dad that day.
When I got back to the inn, I looked at the clock over the front desk, surprised it was almost three in the afternoon. I hadn’t eaten anything for lunch except those few cookies at Della’s.
“Can I help you?” A man in his late twenties or early thirties came out of the back room. He grabbed a handful of the rusty hair that had fallen over his eyes and pushed it away, but it fell right back again.
“Oh no,” I said. “I’m already checked in.” I pointed uselessly with my finger toward my room upstairs as if that might provide some explanation.
“I’m Ty.” He held his hand over the desk. “Ty Manning.”
He wasn’t much taller than me, but he had a presence about him. When he smiled, his blue eyes crinkled a little around the corners.
“Hailey.” I shook his hand. “That’s an interesting name—Ty.”
“It’s short for Tyler, which is too preppy–East Coast–boarding school, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I said, unable to imagine this guy who wore old jeans and an olive T-shirt going to a boarding school on the East Coast or being called Tyler. I knew a million of those types from Manhattan, and unlike my first impression of Ty, they were much more arrogant, much more reserved. “So, do you work here?”
“I own the place.”
I could feel my eyebrows rise. “You own the inn?”
“Yeah. My parents bought it years ago. Their plan was to rehab it and run it as a B and B for an early retirement. My dad can’t seem to retire though, so I bought it from them.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You are?” He gave me a disarming smile, and again, his eyes crinkled with his grin. “Thanks. Which room do you have?”
“Third floor on the right. It’s beautiful.”
“I call it the nap room because I feel like lying down every time I’m in there.”
I laughed. “I can understand that.”
Ty turned around and reached into a multileveled box where they kept the keys. “You said your name was Hailey, so your last name must be—” he lifted out a piece of paper with my check-in information, “—Sutter.”
“Right.”
He glanced up at me. “That sounds familiar.”
“I used to be from around here.”
“Ah.”
“Do you know someplace I can get lunch?” I said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in Woodland Dunes.”
“Sure. I can make a few recommendations.” He looked at the check-in slip a moment longer before he put it back in the box, then turned back to me, his lazy hair falling farther over one eye. “Mind if I join you?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected him to ask that, although it wasn’t a totally unappealing thought. “Don’t you have to stay here?”
“Nah, everyone’s checked in, and Elaine, my housekeeper, she’s like my right hand. She can deal with anything.” He paused a second. “But if you’d rather be alone, I can tell you where to go.” He pulled a map out from under the desk and placed in on the counter.
Alone. I thought about it a minute. It might be the best thing since I needed to keep looking, to keep pushing in corners until I found out what happened to my mother. Yet I wasn’t sure what my next step was, and it would be helpful to have someone who knew the area.
Truth was, I was feeling a little rattled. I didn’t want to be alone right now.
I smiled at Ty. “Let’s go.”
Ty took me to a diner called Bingham’s, where we could sit in the sun. The restaurant was in the downtown section of town. It still boasted quaint shingled buildings and bricked sidewalks, just as it used to when my family had lived there, but the stores that used to sell hardware, flowers and crafts had been replaced with a designer boutique, a coffee shop and an upscale delicatessen.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the change. Decades had passed since we’d left. During that time, Woodland Dunes and the surrounding towns had morphed into sort of a Midwest version of the Hamptons—a summer enclave for those looking to escape the city. When my parents had originally bought here, they too used the place as a summer retreat, but my mom had fallen in love with it. They had two children then, Dan and Caroline, both of whom adored the space and the freedom they couldn’t get in the city, so my parents made the house near the lake their permanent home. My dad bought an apartment in Chicago for the nights he couldn’t get home during the week.
My dad had told me this much. He’d always been willing to talk about the early days, about the afternoon he met my mom at University of Chicago, their wedding at the Palmer House, and how they’d moved to Woodland Dunes. But I learned not to ask questions about anything after that. Seeing the pain in my father’s eyes was too difficult. He was the only family I had, and I wasn’t willing to risk losing him, as well. So I learned to push away the wonderings. The letter had brought all those questions back, though, and I didn’t have the power to bury them again.
We placed our orders, Ty joking with the owner, who gave him two complimentary lemonades.
Sitting under the red-and-white-striped awning, I bit into my turkey sandwich, suddenly starving. “Good?” I asked Ty, watching him dig into his food.
“Excellent,” he said between mouthfuls of a broccoli and cheddar omelet. “I love breakfast foods after breakfast. I eat weird stuff first thing in the morning, too, like sushi and pasta.”
“Cold pizza. That’s a good breakfast.”
Ty’s fork stopped in midair, and he smiled wide. “Exactly.”
We talked, and I told him about my job and my life in Manhattan. Ty explained the work he’d done on Long Beach Inn before it opened.
“How did you know how to do all that stuff?” I asked. I finished the last bit of my sandwich and sank back into my chair.
“After I got out of college, I came home and worked construction. I was pretty lost during that time. No idea what I wanted to do, but the construction paid off. I learned a hell of a lot. Because of that, I was able to either do the work at the inn myself or find someone fast who knew how.”
“How do you like living in Woodland Dunes?” I said. “I vaguely remember living here as a kid, but now that I’m in New York, it’s hard for me to imagine.”
“You know what? I love it here. When I first came home after school, I thought I’d just get my act together and head out again. I didn’t think I’d stay for good, but once I took a breather and looked around, I loved a lot about this town.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, geez,” Ty said, as if there were too many things. “I love the beach, the people, the way everybody knows me and the way anyone would help me if I needed it. I love the crazy summers when the bars are packed and people are crawling all over my place, and I love it when the fall ends too, and it gets quiet. It’s like having the best of both worlds—parties and crowds for five months, R & R the rest of the year.”
I nodded. I liked the picture he painted. There was never a respite from the teeming people or the noise in Manhattan.
Ty waved to a woman walking her dog on the other side of the street, then shifted in his chair so he faced me directly. The sun picked up the freckles that dotted his cheekbones. “So you were how old when you lived here?” he said.
“We left when I was seven. I remember school the most. The playground and Mrs. Howard, my first-grade teacher. I went to Dunes Primary.” It occurred to me that maybe I’d been at the same school as Ty. “Maybe we were there together?”
“No, I went to St. Bonaventure, or St. Bonnie’s as we called it. Twelve years of Catholic repression for this kid.” Ty glanced down for a second. “I think I remember you, though, or at least hearing about you.”
“You do?” Despite the sun on my skin, I felt goose bumps prickle the back of my arms.
Ty watched me. “Your mom died, didn’t she? When you lived here?”
“That’s right.”
“I remember that. I saw a picture of your family that was taken at the funeral.”
“Where did you see it?” Maybe it had been in the paper, something I could dig up.
Ty scratched his jaw, looking a little uncomfortable for the first time since I met him. “I saw it in my dad’s office.”
“Your dad? Who’s your dad?”
“He’s the chief of police.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, after a moment spent digesting Ty’s words. My stomach felt slightly ill, but there was a tickle of excitement. “This picture you saw was in the police station?”
Ty nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know all the details. I was just a kid too, but…” He trailed off.
“Look, I don’t know much about my mom’s death,” I said. “It’s why I’m here. So please, just tell me what you know.”
A look of surprise came over Ty’s face, and I realized I might have spoken a little harshly.
“I’m sorry.” I leaned toward him. “I had a case in Chicago last week. I’m an attorney. But the point is, I came here to see what I could find out about my mother’s death. Anything you could tell me would be a help.”
“Wow.” Ty shook his head. “That’s tough. But as I said, I don’t know much. What I recall is waiting for my dad in his office at the station. It was a big day for me because he was going to take me to get my uniform and equipment so I could start football. My dad wasn’t the chief then. He was assistant chief. Anyway, I was playing around his desk, and when he came in, I was holding that picture. There was a coffin being moved into the ground, and your family stood around it. You had on a long yellow coat.”
I nodded. My Easter coat, the one my mom had picked out for me.
“When my dad saw me with the picture,” Ty continued, “he stopped, pointed to the coffin and said, ‘Do you know what that is?’ I told him there was somebody who was dead in there. He said, ‘That’s right. A dead lady, and I’m going to find out who killed her.’”
I took a breath. “But they never charged anyone, did they?”
He shook his head again. “My dad told me sometime later that he’d been wrong, that no one had killed her or meant for her to die.”
I felt a little gust of relief. If the police had ruled out murder, then maybe whoever had sent me the letter was simply mistaken. “Would your dad talk about this?”
“I think so. I mean, I don’t see why not. He’s fishing this weekend. He won’t be back until tomorrow night. Will you still be around?”
I didn’t answer right away. I’d been planning on going back to Chicago Sunday night so I could wait for the arbitration decision that should come sometime Monday or Tuesday. But talking to the police might be just what I needed to set my mind straight, and I could follow up on some other questions in the meantime. And then there was Ty with his freckles.
“Can I keep my room at the hotel?” I asked.
He made a face like he was thinking hard about it. “For you, I’ll make it happen.”
“Yeah?” I said, surprised to hear the coy tone of my voice.
“Definitely.”
“I’ll be around,” I told him.
6
For the third time that day, I pulled into Della’s driveway, still thinking about my lunch with Ty. Over lemonade, I had told him what I knew about my mom’s death, about the letter, and about my visit with Della this morning. I hadn’t meant to spill the whole tale—it was so unlike me—but I was unusually comfortable with him, and once I started talking, it was cathartic to get the story out.
Ty had asked me if I’d spoken to my brother or sister. They would be obvious places to start, he said. Obvious, yes, but I had no idea where either of them were, a fact that had always gnawed at me, confused me. When I got up the nerve to ask my dad about either of my siblings, he became visibly upset, telling me that they had their own lives now. During college, I went through a period when I longed for companionship, for family, and I made a halfhearted attempt at finding them. I called Information in different cities where I thought they might be. The Internet wasn’t widely used then, but I had a friend who was adept at computers do some digging. Neither of us could find a Caroline or Dan Sutter. And so I eventually gave up.
Ty thought I should call my father right then and ask him, point-blank, what had happened and where my brother and sister were, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. Old habits weren’t easy to kill, and I still abhorred the idea of distressing my father, of picking at old wounds.
The last time I raised the issue was shortly after I met Maddy in law school. It was so weird, she had said over and over, that I didn’t know how my mom had died, that I didn’t know what had happened to my brother and sister.
“I know,” I’d said, irritated that I’d told her to begin with.
But Maddy’s questions stayed with me, and so I brought up the topic a few weeks later on a Sunday afternoon. I was with my dad on his patio, sipping a glass of cabernet while he grilled steaks for us.
“Do you ever think about Mom?” I said, apropos of nothing.
He dropped the grill tongs he was holding. They clattered on the stone patio tiles. He bent over to pick them up, and when he stood, he looked like a confused old man instead of a confident trial lawyer. His face was slack.
“Of course,” he said quietly, his gaze asking me how I could ask such a question.
But still I pushed. “Really?” I said. “Do you really?”
“Yes, Hailey. I think about your mother all the time.” He blinked.
“Well, you never talk about her. You never talk about when she died.”
A strange, garbled sound erupted from inside my father’s throat, making me stop my words. I could have sworn he was about to cry, something I had never seen, and I bailed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I stood and took the tongs from him. “Let me do that.”
And, like an old man, he feebly handed them to me, wiping the grease from his hands on his immaculate khaki pants before he went into the house.
I had never brought up the issue again. If I could find my own answers, without confronting the parent who raised me on his own, I wanted to do that.
Which brought me back to Della’s.
“Sweetie!” Della said when she opened the front door now, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder. “Come in, come in.”
“Thanks.” I accepted a quick hug. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
“Not at all.” Della led me into the kitchen, a large, green-painted room smelling of garlic and crowded with plants, knickknacks and crocheted pot holders. It was the type of warm, homey kitchen I’d always hoped my father and I would have, one that was lived in, that was used to cook for a large family. My dad wasn’t much of a chef, though, and so although our homes were lovely and expensive, the kitchens always had cold tiles and stainless-steel appliances, and I never spent much time there.
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Laura Caldwell
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: There is no statute of limitations on murder.Look Closely. That′s all the anonymous letter said, but attorney Hailey Sutter understands the meaning behind the well-chosen words. Someone wants her to investigate what happened to her mother, who died when Hailey was only seven. The death was ruled accidental, but Hailey begins having flashbacks that tell a different story: a pounding at the door…her mother struggling to stand…a man with a gold ring that flashed in the night as he held her mother′s lifeless body.Obsessed with uncovering the truth, Hailey can′t trust anyone, especially her father, whose secrecy both unnerves and protects her. Desperate to remember that fatal night, she seeks out the brother and sister who left home after their mother′s death. But they have disappeared. It′s soon clear to Hailey that the answer is right in front of her–all she has to do is find the courage to look closely….