Crowned and Moldering (8 page)

“Sadly, I never rescued a beautiful woman, but Jake Slater does it all the time,”
he said.

We laughed, and I could tell that Sean was enjoying himself. That was all that mattered
tonight. I wanted him to remember he had friends who cared about him and who didn’t
want him to be alone and sad. After the waitress brought our orders, Wade invited
Sean to stay with his family for a few days.

“Come on, you guys,” Sean said, smiling wryly. “I’ll be fine. I’m not going to flip
out or anything.”

“Promise?” I said.

He chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Besides, you already flipped out a long time ago,” Billy joked.

“Very funny.”

To change the subject, Wade and Johnny pestered Mac to tell them more of his daring
exploits.

As we dined on fish and chips and burgers, Mac spun a story about another group of
Navy SEALs sneaking behind enemy lines somewhere in the Hindu Kush, the mountain range
that formed the border between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. He had us
laughing and shaking our heads at some of the tricks they pulled as they hiked toward
their target. Then the story took a sudden dark turn as the men were set upon by knife-wielding
Pashtun warriors. The SEALs fought back, but they’d been caught by surprise and it
was touch and go for a while.

We were on the edges of our seats as Mac recounted the action.

I kept an eye on Sean as Mac spoke, because his emotions were so clearly reflected
on his face. Laughter at first, then wide-eyed amazement, but as the tale turned more
frightening, Sean appeared to check out. He looked dazed and no longer reacted to
anything Mac was saying. His eyes glazed over and he stared at nothing in particular.

When Mac finished, I elbowed Sean lightly. “You okay, Sean?”

He jerked as if I’d woken him from a deep sleep.

“Oh, wow.” He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry. I zoned out there. Maybe I should
go home.”

“No way,” I said. “You haven’t finished your dinner.”

“Yeah, I’m not ready to call it a night yet,” Wade said.

Sean took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay.”

“Sorry the story got a little violent there,” Mac said.

“Hey, no problem,” Sean said, rubbing his temple. “I was just . . . remembering stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” Mac asked, not willing to let it go. Maybe it would help Sean
to talk things through with Mac and the guys.

“Grim stuff,” Sean muttered. “Really ugly stuff my dad said when I got back from juvie.
You know, after Lily left.” He sucked in another deep breath and his cheeks expanded
as he exhaled slowly. He glanced around the table and then looked directly at me.
“I think my father killed Lily.”

*   *   *

After dinner at the pub, Mac and I convinced Sean to telephone Eric. The chief needed
to know that Sean thought his father had been capable of killing Lily. Even if there
was no evidence to support it, Eric could use every possible piece of the puzzle to
work with as he sought to solve this crime.

It wasn’t as though Sean was betraying his father. That ship had sailed a long time
ago. The man was dead and gone. And maybe it was unfair of me to say so, but good
riddance.

Mac and I followed Sean home and stayed with him for moral support while he talked
to Eric on speakerphone. I was surprised to hear Sean sounding cool, calm, and clear
as he pointed out his reasons for believing the worst about his father. Besides his
father’s violent temper and history of abuse, Sean remembered something specific that
his father had said after Lily disappeared.

“When I told my dad that I wasn’t going to give up until I found Lily, he said, ‘Don’t
bother. Where she’s gone, nobody will find her.’”

“Your father told you that?” Eric said, sounding shocked.

“Yeah. He was pretty drunk when he said it, and I demanded to know what he meant.
But he brushed me off, just said, ‘She’s gone to hell.’”

Eric paused, and I figured he was writing it all down. “Did your father ever talk
about the lighthouse mansion or say anything else about Lily’s disappearance?”

“I always had the feeling he knew something,” Sean said. “But no matter how many times
I tried to bring up the subject, he refused to mention her name ever again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Eric asked.

Sean winced and glanced at me and Mac as he spoke. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t
remember until Mac was telling this story tonight about the Pashtun warriors fighting
with knives.”

“Sounds interesting,” Eric murmured.

“Yeah, it was,” Sean said. “So, my father owned a really old Vietnamese knife with
a sheath made from buffalo horn that he mounted on the wall like it was some kind
of art piece. He said he stole it off a dead Vietcong soldier, but I didn’t know whether
to believe him or not.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Sometimes he would get
drunk and take the knife and just hold it. Every so often he’d sharpen it and then
run his thumb along the blade until he drew blood. He always said his days in Vietnam
were the best of his life, which is pretty screwed up, if you ask me.”

“Some guys miss the camaraderie or the sense of purpose,” Eric explained briefly.

“I guess,” Sean said. “So, anyway, when Mac told the story, I remembered my dad and
that knife. He was holding it, stroking it, when he said those words about Lily. I’d
completely blocked that memory until tonight.”

*   *   *

The next day, Eric telephoned to tell me that the medical examiner had just called
to verify that it was indeed Lily’s body—or, rather, her skeleton—that we’d found
in Mac’s new home, thanks to dental X-rays received from Lily’s childhood dentist.

“That was fast work,” I said.

“That’s how I like things to move,” Eric said. “By the way, I’d appreciate it if you’d
keep this information to yourself. Even though Sean was fairly certain the body was
Lily’s, we haven’t told him or his sister, Amy, the news yet, so I’d like to talk
to them first before the whole town finds out.”

“I won’t say a word.”

I hadn’t slept well the night before and didn’t sleep well that night, either, thanks
to visions of poor Lily being cooped up in the dumbwaiter all these years. And I still
felt so bad for Sean, who had dedicated half his life to finding his sister, only
to discover that she’d never even had the chance to leave town.

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling groggy and out of sorts. But when I remembered
what day it was, I jumped out of bed, knowing I needed to be wide awake and perky,
even if I had to fake it.

It was Career Day at my old high school and I would be talking to students about my
job every hour from nine until three o’clock. I’d done it the past four years in a
row and it was always fun. The kids were attentive and asked lots of great questions,
and it always felt especially good to have some of the girls sign up for a summer
job on my crew.

I just wished I were feeling a little more energetic. I’d spent the past two nights
tossing and turning, continuing to relive that moment when Sean had told us that his
father might have murdered his own daughter. Sean had looked so sad and I couldn’t
blame him. Even though the man had been a cruel monster when he was alive, he had
still been Sean’s father.

I shook off the memory and took a long shower, then poured myself two full cups of
coffee to sip while I dried my hair, put on some makeup, and dressed in my usual attire
of jeans, henley shirt, denim jacket, and work boots. After chowing down on my own
homemade version of a breakfast burrito, I fed my furry kids and made sure their water
was fresh before heading for my truck and driving to my alma mater.

Fifteen minutes later, pulling a small dolly that held my heavy-duty pink tool chest
filled with all my pink tools, along with my laptop computer and briefcase, I walked
into the main corridor of Lighthouse Cove High School. It was bizarre to smell the
same smells, see the same colors and sights, hear the same sounds. But they weren’t
really the same, were they? How could they be after fifteen years? What was definitely
still the same, though, was that feeling I always got, that odd mix of nostalgia for
the good old days and sheer relief that I didn’t have to repeat them.

I’d felt this way the last time I was here for Career Day. The reality was that the
school hadn’t changed a bit. But I had. At first I wondered if things looked smaller
because I was taller. But no, I hadn’t grown an inch since graduation. Maybe I’d just
gotten used to living in a bigger world.

The decibel level was earsplitting, with kids everywhere, talking as they gathered
around open lockers or whispered in corners. They walked in pairs or in groups and
there was a lot of laughter, a few shrieks, some high-pitched whining. Two boys ran
through, dodging in and out and around the clusters in order to make it to a class
before the bell rang.

Some kids were outfitted in colorful stripes and prints; some in severe, unrelieved
black; some in camouflage. Most of them carried backpacks, like my friends and I used
to. Watching them, I had so many mixed emotions. It was so normal and yet so foreign.
It was another world.

I made it to the classroom where I’d be spending my day. I peeked through the door’s
cloudy reinforced-glass window before walking into the room and setting my pink tool
chest on the floor by the front desk. There was nobody else in the room yet, so I
took a minute to glance around at the green blackboards in front and the wall of corkboard
along the side, almost completely covered in flyers and photos and posters of upcoming
events.

They no longer used individual desks in this room, but utilitarian rectangular tables
designed to seat two students. These were arranged in three rows that curved around
the front of the room. The curve gave it all a friendly touch, but the plastic chairs
looked too small and too hard to be comfortable.

The classroom floor was made up of multicolored linoleum squares that I was certain
hadn’t been updated in the more than ten years I’d been gone.

The windows would’ve been more cheerful if they hadn’t been covered in old, industrial-strength
venetian blinds. I would ask to have them opened once the sun was no longer glaring
down on this side of the building.

“Thank you for that scathing review, Ms. Hammer,” I muttered to myself. What was I
expecting? The Ritz-Carlton? Ignoring the room’s decor, I pulled my bullet-point list
of topics out of my purse and studied it for a few minutes, until the door opened
and a woman wearing a dark orange blazer over black pants and a black-and-white-striped
top walked in. She was about forty and wore her brown hair in a chic ponytail. Her
brown eyes were bright and focused, and I would bet she didn’t miss much of anything
in her classroom.

“You’re our Career Day speaker.” She set her briefcase down and reached out to shake
my hand. “I’m Judy Cummings.”

“Shannon Hammer.”

“You’re the contractor,” she said, studying me. “What a fascinating job. And you’re
so lucky, you’re allowed to hit things with hammers all day and get rid of all your
frustrations, right? You must be very well adjusted.”

I laughed. “I can loan you a hammer, if you think it’ll help. For pounding nails,
I mean.”

She laughed along with me. “Oh, believe me, I’m beyond help.”

As I positioned my laptop on Mrs. Cummings’s desk to use for my PowerPoint presentation
a little later, the door flew open and a dozen noisy, laughing teenagers poured into
the room at once. They stared openly at me as they made their way to their seats.
Over the next two minutes, ten more kids walked in.

“Don’t let them see your fear,” Judy whispered.

I chuckled. “I carry a hammer, remember?”

The bell rang and we got started. I began the usual way, with the story of how I got
started working in construction. After my mom died, my dad began bringing my sister
and me to his construction sites because he didn’t want us being raised by babysitters.
The guys on the crew took us under their wings, bought us pink hard hats, pink tools,
and little pink tool belts of our very own with which to play and build fun stuff,
like boxes and a doghouse and a wagon.

When I took over my father’s business five years ago after he suffered a mild heart
attack, Dad bought me a celebratory gift of a rolling pink tool cabinet, along with
a full set of pink Craftsman tools. They were just as well made and effective as regular
tools, but since they were pink, the guys on my crew didn’t walk away with them.

The girls in class enjoyed that detail.

I talked about a few specific jobs and showed a cool PowerPoint slide show of the
evolution of my friend Jane’s new bed-and-breakfast, which slowly changed from a rodent-infested
nightmare to an elegant showcase. I told them that while it was hard work, there were
both immediate and long-lasting rewards.

My talk was impressive, if I did say so myself.

The boys always enjoyed hearing about construction work in general, but I liked to
think I won the girls over with the pink tools and the comment that pounding nails
and hauling lumber was a great way to tone one’s upper arms. That line usually prompted
one of the boys to shout out, “Show us your muscles.”

“Sign up for a summer job with my crew and you’ll see them every day.”

If all that wasn’t enough to sway them to give it a shot, I always added a line at
the end that the money was good, too.

*   *   *

I’d given three hour-long presentations and still had a small group of teenagers surrounding
me, asking more questions, when Judy announced, “We’ve got to close the classroom
and get to the cafeteria, or you won’t have a chance to eat lunch.”

I smiled at the kids. “Okay, that’s it. But if you have any more questions, take one
of my business cards and send me an e-mail.”

Most of them grabbed a card, and they slowly dispersed. Once they were out of sight,
I let my shoulders sag.