“No, just shapes. How do you see a beach?”
She pointed out the large circle she said looked like a sun, and the blue rectangle she thought was the sea.
When Richard heard the first shot, a muffled pop that could have been almost anything, most of the kids in the classroom continued to work on their prints. But Ms. Bryant, after two more gunshots sounded, had perked up, her face angled toward the ceiling as though it helped her hear better. Richard thought she looked like a meerkat, sensing danger on the horizon.
Then the speaker system kicked in, the principal’s voice telling all teachers to shelter in place, and all the students stopped what they were doing, one girl dropping to the floor and starting to moan. Richard waited to hear more gunshots, but none came, and he knew they had done it again. Joan and Richard. Why had he ever doubted her?
Chapter 24
Kimball
I could find nothing online about Richard Seddon, nothing beyond that one mention in the Southern Forecaster that he’d been staying with Duane Wozniak and his family when Duane had gone swimming off the Kennewick jetty and drowned. There were multiple Richard Seddons in the world, of course, but none of them seemed like a match for the one I was looking for. The only promising lead I dug up was an address for a Donald and Julie Seddon who had lived in Middleham, Massachusetts. And I found an obituary for a Julie Seddon from a few years earlier, although no surviving family members were listed. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
The following day I drove out on Route 2 toward Middleham, the route familiar from my stint as a teacher all those years ago. To get to the address I’d found online, I had to pass the high school in Dartford, a single-story brick structure up a sloping hill from the road. A three-story structure was being built next to the old school and I remembered reading somewhere that a new high school was being built, and that it was going to cost somewhere around $200 million. When I crossed the town line from Dartford to Middleham the road condition changed, becoming bumpier, peppered with unfixed potholes. There was more open land, as well, remnants from when Middleham had been primarily a farming community. I found Adams Street after passing through Middleham’s small, quaint center. It was a winding, tree-lined street of mostly modest houses. I pulled into the short driveway of number twenty-nine, a ranch house, its exterior painted a light blue. I pulled in next to a parked PT Cruiser and got out of my car. A woman with a rake in her hand came around from the back of the house and peered at me through cat’s-eye glasses. I walked toward her, trying to look unthreatening, and when we were talking-distance apart, I told her I was looking for Donald Seddon.
She frowned, and said, “He hasn’t lived here for ten years. We bought the house from him and his wife.”
“Oh, yeah?” I’d removed my wallet and was holding one of my cards that identified me as a fully licensed private investigator. The woman propped her rake against the side of a cherry tree and stepped forward to take my card. “I’m looking for their son, for Richard Seddon.”
Again, the woman frowned. She wore lime-green capri pants and a vintage-y sweater with a shiny collar. I’d thought, from a distance, that she was unintentionally retro, but up close I could tell that her outfit, even for raking, had been carefully curated. While she looked at my card, I spotted a teapot tattoo on her left ankle. “I don’t think I can help you,” she said. “I’m not sure I ever met the Seddons.”
“Do you remember where they went after leaving this house?”
I expected her to tell me she had no idea, but she thought about it for a moment, then raised a finger, and said, “You know, maybe I do. I remember we kept getting mail for them and the real estate agent gave me an address to forward it. I think I wrote it down in my address book.”
“That would be incredibly helpful,” I said.
“Why do you need to find the son?” she said. The sun was low in the sky and she held her hand over her eyes.
“Believe it or not,” I said, “he’s owed some money from a distant relative. Crazy, right? And they can’t locate him.”
“Lucky him,” the woman said, and went inside the house to look for the address book. I stood and waited, getting into a staring contest with a brown poodle through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the house. When the woman came out, she was holding an old spiral-bound address book, folded over to a specific page.
“Don and Julie Seddon,” she said. “I knew there was a reason I never threw this book out.”
She showed me the entry, and I took a photograph of the address—42 Wagoner Road in Fairview, Massachusetts—then thanked the woman.
“Is it a lot of money?” she said as I was getting back into my car.
“They don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m just the messenger.”
Fairview was about four towns away, west and a little north of Middleham. I’d never actually been there but had seen its name on exit signs. I crossed over into Fairview on a minor road that ran along a river past a defunct paper mill. The houses I’d seen so far seemed just a step up from shacks, and I’d spotted several larger buildings that looked like they’d once been boardinghouses for the mill workers. I passed through an old town center, a cluster of commercial buildings in the shadow of a large congregational church with a white steeple. There was a beautiful, red-brick structure that turned out to be the local library, and there was a gas station that advertised itself as “full service.”
I picked up Wagoner Road about half a mile from the town center. One side was a pine forest and the other comprised old farmland, parceled off by stone walls. I drove past forty-two and had to double back, parking across the street from what looked like an abandoned farmhouse, its windows shuttered, and half the roof caved in. What was strange was that there was a new car parked in the overgrown driveway, a white sedan that looked like a Chevrolet. I sat in my car for a moment, feeling conspicuous, trying to figure out what to do. Maybe Donald Seddon still lived there, or maybe it was even Richard Seddon. I hadn’t actually decided how to approach Richard yet if I managed to find him.
As I was sitting there thinking, idly keeping an eye on the old house, a figure emerged from around the back, a tall, dark-haired man wearing jeans and an untucked flannel shirt. I popped the hood, then got out of the car, stepping around to the front, opening the hood all the way, and staring into the engine. The man from the farmhouse got into his white car and pulled down the short driveway. I fully expected him to swing over and see if he could help, but he turned out of his driveway and sped away in the direction I’d come from, toward the center of Fairview. I watched the car retreat and memorized the license plate number.
I thought of following him but decided against it. If that was Richard—and the age had seemed correct—then I’d done what I had set out to do. I’d found him. I shut the hood of my car, then, on a whim, walked briskly down the driveway and around the house. It looked as though there had once been a backyard that separated the property from the encroaching woods, but it was completely choked now with a thick tangle of bushes, all covered with bittersweet vine. On the back side of the house there was a rusty metal bulkhead, plus a backdoor reachable by three wooden steps. I went up them and peered through one of the panes of glass, but a piece of fabric had been hung on the inside of the window, and all I saw was my own reflection. The door was locked.