Find anything?
She waited.
*
“They’re related,” Corinne said, breathless, the next afternoon. “Ansel Packer and the Harrisons.”
They’d escaped to their favorite diner, Saffy’s coffee cooling in a stained yellow mug. The station had felt too oppressive, everyone looking to Saffy for direction.
“Ansel doesn’t have any family,” Saffy said, too quickly.
Corinne raised her eyebrows. The many times they’d sat in this very booth, escaping into cold cases when they needed an outlet, spinning theories and reworking motives, Saffy had painted Ansel as a suspect. Nothing more. But Corinne’s bullshit detector was unflappable—the primary reason Saffy had hired her. Corinne’s eagle eye extended beyond detective work and into a person’s very essence. She’s like a human polygraph, Corinne’s wife, Melissa, had joked, at the late-summer bonfire they’d hosted on Melissa’s family’s property. Saffy hadn’t told Corinne about Miss Gemma’s house or the weekends she’d spent camped out in Vermont, spattering the last decade of her life, but she would not be surprised if, somehow, Corinne knew.
“Rachel Harrison was married to Ellis Harrison. They bought the restaurant and had the girl, Blue, when they were really young. He died in 2003. Cancer. I found his school files, a private academy in the city—a guidance counselor noted that Ellis was adopted, so I called the county, checked the records. And guess who had an older brother, from the same case report?”
“The baby,” Saffy murmured.
“Ellis and Ansel were abandoned on a farm just outside of town. Here’s the address, if you want it.”
Corinne slipped a corner of notebook paper across the table, which Saffy shoved quickly into her pocket.
“So why is Ansel there? At the Blue House?”
“That’s what I can’t figure,” Corinne said. “Blue is about to start her junior year at Tupper Lake High School. Rachel runs the restaurant. They only have two employees, a cook and a dishwasher. But the finances look bad, really bad. They owe back on a huge loan, and it looks like the bank will come calling soon.”
“So maybe she wants help. Money?”
“Maybe.” Corinne shrugged. “Doesn’t look like Ansel has much money, though.”
Saffy pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, let the pressure alleviate the rising swell. “Blue wouldn’t necessarily know that. Maybe she invited him there, to ask for help. But how did she find him? And why now?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Corinne was watching her with a hapless sort of pity. Saffy gazed out the window, where the empty parking lot blistered in the sun.
“Why this case, Captain? With the Lawson trial coming up, why are we here?”
“I have a feeling.” Somewhere in the back of Saffy’s mind, Moretti rolled her eyes. The most important lesson Moretti had imparted: feelings meant nothing, until they became facts.
“Feelings won’t—”
“I know,” Saffy interrupted. “I need this, Corinne. Stay with me on this one.”
Corinne took a sip of her coffee, then shrugged. “It does seem a long way for Packer to drive. You might be right. There might be something there.”
The waitress arrived with the check. She was young, maybe twenty, freckles tossed carelessly along the ridge of her chest. Saffy wondered if this diner remembered Angela Meyer—if they talked about her still, or if she’d disappeared from the collective memory of this place. Saffy recognized, with an electric zap of surprise, that for the first time in many years, she felt wary, cautious. She felt afraid.
*
When Saffy pictured Angela, she saw her on a beach. California, or maybe Miami. Wide blue sky above a jutting balcony. Angela would have become a real estate agent or a pharmaceutical rep, the owner of a one-bedroom condo on the coast. She would have spent her Sundays making homemade face masks, she would have learned to cook risotto—she would have become bored, like Saffy, with most of the men she dated. Saffy pictured her often, standing on that balcony in her favorite silk pajamas, savoring her solitude, the sun dipping down over gentle rushing waves.
*
Seven days before the Lawson trial, Saffy returned to the Blue House.
A weekday morning. Only Corinne knew where she’d gone—when Saffy promised she’d be quick, Corinne had served a worried, sideways glance. This was an avoidance tactic, sure, but Saffy was burning out on the Lawson case. She needed to find something, anything. When Rachel delivered the plate of eggs, over easy with a side of pancakes, Saffy noted the blisters along her knuckles, where her skin had nicked the rim of an oven.