Joan thought about it. Her skin was tingly, like she was about to give a presentation in class.
“Okay, I’ll go down and have one beer with them.”
“Good,” Richard said. “What time did he say?”
“He said around ten o’clock.”
“You want me to come to the beach, too?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“Sounds good. And maybe we should meet back here tomorrow night at the same time and talk about what happened.”
“Sure,” Joan said.
Richard left the library first, then Joan, going back to her room. Lizzie was out. Joan began to imagine what it would be like if she was the one who walked out on the jetty with Duane on the night he died. She imagined the attention she’d get, the pity, the worrying looks. She thought about that time when she was eight years old and went missing for a night. It was the week after Lizzie had gotten the all-clear on yet another cancer scan, and as a celebration present had gotten a Discman. She’d spent every minute listening to grunge music on it, singing along tunelessly. One night when Lizzie was out Joan stole the Discman plus a couple of CDs and went into the deep closet that was located in the spare bedroom of their house. She sometimes went there to be alone, burying herself underneath a bunch of old blankets that were stacked in the far corner. That night, she’d lain in the closet listening to Lizzie’s weird music until she must have fallen asleep, not waking up until the following morning. After stumbling out of the closet in the early morning she was surprised to hear adult voices that didn’t belong to her parents coming from downstairs. She followed the sounds, walking into the kitchen where her mother and father, both standing, were talking to a uniformed police officer sitting at the kitchen table taking notes. It was her mother who spotted her first, her eyes widening, mouthing Joan’s name then racing and pulling her into a tight, smothering hug.
Her parents had thought she’d left the house and gone missing. There was lots of laughter and annoying hugs, and even the police officer had stuck around for a while, enjoying the happy outcome. She remembered thinking at the time how easy it had been to make everyone worry about her, and she also remembered thinking, not for the first time, that grown-ups just weren’t as smart as she thought they were. But she’d loved the attention, especially since it meant less attention being directed at Lizzie and her miraculous recovery. Her dad had an expression—he liked to say that when you learned something you should put it in your back pocket for later, and that was what Joan had done, then.
And now, if she and Richard actually did what she thought they were going to do, she was going to be a tragic celebrity for a while, the girl who was with a boy when he drowned. The thought of it was scary and thrilling and even though she wouldn’t be leaving to go to the beach party for another few hours she changed into the clothes she planned on wearing, a pair of jeans and her fleece hoodie, then flipped through the channels looking for a movie to watch while she waited.
Chapter 9
Kimball
I’d parked my car in the lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts at a busy intersection about a mile from where Richard and Joan Whalen lived, and I’d angled it in such a way so I could watch the traffic go by. I was looking for Richard’s silver BMW, assuming he’d have to pass through this intersection whether he was going to the offices in Dartford or in Concord. But it was just past ten o’clock and my coffee cup was empty, and I’d either missed him, or he’d gone another way, or maybe he was already at one of the offices, even though I’d been stationed in my lot since eight that morning.
I decided to give up, and just as I started the engine, I saw a silver car about four back at the lights going in the right direction. I swung out of the lot, pulling into the traffic of the cross street, timing it so that after I watched the BMW pass through the intersection, my light turned green and I was able to get about three or four cars behind him. Two of those cars veered off to head toward Route 2, and I got closer to Richard. I followed him all the way to the Dartford office, where he parked on the street right in front of Blackburn Properties. I went past him and pulled into an open spot about two hundred yards down the road, worrying that Pam might walk by and spot me. In a feeble attempt at anonymity, I put on one of the baseball caps I kept in the glove compartment while keeping an eye on my side mirror. I was glad I’d waited because I watched as Richard, in a navy suit, came back out of the office with a file folder in one hand and got back into his car. He did a U-turn, and I waited thirty seconds and followed him. He was most likely going to an appointment somewhere, or to view a house, but I figured I’d follow for a little while. If he was sleeping with Pam O’Neil, then they were doing it sometime during the daytime hours.
I followed Richard to Sudbury and into a recent development, big houses on big lots, and every house in a slightly different style. A few Tudors, a few classical Romans, but all of them enormous and most likely made from the cheapest materials available. Richard pulled into the driveway of a house with Tuscan columns and mismatched gables, and I drove past, finding myself at a cul-de-sac. Looping back around I saw that an older couple from the house Richard was visiting had come out to greet him. I left the neighborhood.
Not knowing what to do next and feeling as though I was on a well-paid fool’s errand, I drove into Concord center, parking in a free lot next to a cemetery off Main Street. I hadn’t been to Concord for two years, and the last time I was here I had nearly died. I had been following Lily Kintner, a person of interest in two connected homicides, the murder of Ted Severson in the South End of Boston, and the subsequent murder of his wife, Miranda, in southern Maine. Lily had come after me with a knife, managing to successfully slide it between two of my ribs, and I’d been rescued only by the presence of my then-partner Roberta James. That day had changed everything for me. Even though I call Lily Kintner a person of interest in the case I was working on, the real person of interest was Brad Daggett, the contractor working on building their summer home in Maine. He’d been having an affair with Miranda Severson, and he had disappeared after Miranda’s body was found. He was still missing, and as far as I knew he was presumed to be responsible for both deaths.
The murder of Ted Severson was my final official case as a member of the Boston Police Department. Without telling my partner, I had been trailing Lily Kintner, an archival librarian who lived in Winslow, Massachusetts. She was part of the investigation because she’d recently met Ted Severson on a flight from London to Boston, and afterward they’d met for drinks. She had also gone to college with Miranda, Ted’s wife. Most importantly, she’d lied to me when we first met, telling me she hadn’t known Ted Severson. I knew she was involved in some capacity but couldn’t prove anything, and that was why I’d been following her. According to Lily Kintner she’d become frightened of me, so frightened she’d sought to protect herself by attacking me with a knife. The assault case against Lily Kintner was dropped after it was discovered I’d written multiple unsavory limericks about her, and that I was acting on my own behalf. And that was why I was removed from the Boston Police Department.