Joan wondered if it really made a difference calling in the bomb threat, but she also thought it was Addie’s way of making sure Joan was at least somewhat involved with the plot to kill Henry Kimball. It would also potentially connect Joan with what happened to Henry if they could prove she was the one who made the call, and for that reason, Joan was considering not making it. She just wasn’t sure yet. Maybe it would help Addie, and if Addie was able to get rid of Henry, Joan’s life got safer, in return. She decided to make a game-time decision.
When it was ten thirty Joan went to her car and removed the transponder, leaving it in the garage as she drove two towns over to the busy lot of one of the farm stands that sold pumpkins and apple cider doughnuts during the fall season. She had the flip phone with her but had left her own phone at home. She wasn’t sure it was going to make any difference that she wasn’t near her house if she made the call but decided it couldn’t hurt. She sat in her car, the engine turned off, the window cracked. It was a weekday but there were a lot of cars in the lot, city couples hunting through the pumpkin piles for perfectly round specimens, taking pictures of one another for their Instagram accounts. She decided to make the call. She trusted Addie, actually, or at least she trusted that she hadn’t suggested the bomb threat as a way to implicate her in the crime.
At exactly eleven she dialed the number for the Boston Police Department, then holding her mouth open the way she’d practiced at home, she said, “I’m calling to report that there is a bomb in the oncology wing of the Boston Memorial Hospital.” The words sounded garbled in her own ears, but the woman on the other end of the line calmly said, “Can I have your name and where you’re calling from?”
“The bomb will go off in ten minutes. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I want to destroy the building. You’ve been warned.”
She hung up, skin buzzing. She put the phone in her pocket and got out of the car, wandering through the displays of pumpkins to the large market building. Outside were pallets covered with fall produce, apples, squash, brussels sprouts still on the stalk, plus piles of decorative gourds and ornamental corn. She skirted around the building, passing a parking lot that was for employees only, and found a half-filled dumpster. She pulled the SIM card from the phone, snapped it in half, then threw the pieces, along with the disabled phone, into the dumpster.
Instead of going straight home, she wandered through the market, picking up a half gallon of apple cider and a frozen chicken potpie. Driving home she listened to NPR, curious if there’d be anything about an evacuation at Boston Memorial, but there was nothing, of course. And there was nothing on the news that night, after she’d eaten half the chicken pie, while flipping through news channels and drinking wine. Of course, if everything had gone according to plan there would be nothing on the news. All that would have happened was a fake bomb threat, and a patient in critical condition suffering an entirely predictable brain hemorrhage. Neither event would be remotely newsworthy.
She was starting to fall asleep on the sofa in front of a Real Housewives marathon, so she forced herself up the stairs, stripped out of her clothes, and slid under the bedcovers. Her bones were heavy, and she realized she hadn’t really properly slept in two days. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been in bed with the man in the white linen suit. His name suddenly escaped her. Even though she was exhausted she went through the routine she used every night to fall asleep, closing her eyes and imagining herself tipped back on the surface of the sea, sun baking her skin, the cool water keeping her afloat, and the sky impossibly blue.
Chapter 37
Lily
That morning I cleared all my possessions from Henry’s apartment, gave Pye enough food to last two days, and was outside in the cold dawn before most of the world had woken up.
I walked to my car, wondering what I was going to do with my day. There were a few errands, of course, but not enough to fill the long stretch of hours ahead. I drove into Boston, filling up already with commuter traffic, and parked near Copley Square. I spent most of that day in the Boston Public Library, finding and finishing The Green Marriage, then finding a biography of Margaret Cogswell, and reading the sections that talked about my father and their affair. I knew the story, of course. My father was a young, up-and-coming writer, married to Clarissa Pavlow, his first wife, and Margaret was engaged to Robert Rutherford, the painter. The two couples had met on the island of Crete, where my father and Margaret had been invited to a Marxist literary conference. The affair did not begin in Greece but back in London over the winter months, my father and Margaret meeting in secret at a friend’s flat in Maida Vale. Reading the account, it occurred to me that all the players in that particular farce were now dead. Margaret, of course, and Clarissa, my father’s first wife. The painter Robert Rutherford had been dead now for thirty years, and so was the owner of the love nest in north London. It was only my father who was left to remember the true specifics of what had happened that winter.
I left the library in the early afternoon, then bought some supplies and drove one last time out west. It was another pretty fall day but there were puddles on the road and it was clear it had rained at some point during the night. I spotted the muddy parking lot for a state-run conservation area and pulled in. I was the only car there and spun through a deep puddle a couple of times to splash mud onto my car. Then I got out and plastered mud onto my license plate, obscuring enough of it so that it would be impossible to read. I didn’t know if it was necessary, but I knew it wouldn’t hurt.
I left my car at a glorified convenience store in Dartford center, the type of place that sold local trail mix and organic wine along with lottery cards and potato chips. There was a gas station next to the convenience store and in the restroom I changed into the hiking pants and the fleece hoodie I’d bought in Boston. I also took out my nose ring, depositing it down the drain, and scrubbed my face of makeup. At the convenience store I bought bottled water and ham-and-cheese croissants, plus a map that showed the trails that crossed through Dartford. I didn’t think I’d need the map—I’d spent part of the day memorizing the multiple ways to get to Joan’s house—but, again, I figured it wouldn’t hurt.
Most of the public trails in Dartford were essentially dirt sidewalks along the roads, separated from the sparse traffic by a single line of trees. But every once in a while, a trail would divert from the road and cut across old farm fields or through pine forests. Joan’s house was only two miles from the center of town as the crow flew, but it took me over an hour to reach it through the adjacent woods, settling in the shadow of a large boulder where I had a view of the narrow backyard, and the screened-in deck. I watched the house for twenty minutes or so, and when I had detected no movement inside, I snuck around to the front driveway. The silver BMW was gone. Maybe it was possible someone else had the BMW and Joan was in the house, but I doubted it. I checked the front door, which was locked, then worked my way back around to the deck. The screen door was open but the sliding glass doors that led to the interior of the house were locked. I’d brought tools to deal with a locked door but decided to check the windows first, and I found one that slid open. I dropped into the dark room and shut the window behind me.