False Mermaid (26 page)

So far the only connection to Peter was the anonymous note addressed to him. What had he done? What was his connection to Constance and Harris Nash? From the physical evidence, there was never any doubt that Jesse Benoit had committed the murders.

After Tríona’s death, the police had searched for Peter in all the
national databases, looking for criminal history, family connections, known aliases, previous addresses, job history. The information they’d been able to find was limited: Peter’s parents had been killed in a car accident when he was very young; his legal guardian was a widowed grandfather he barely knew. He had grown up mostly in boarding schools, then graduated from Galliard College in Maine and attended the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice. After graduate school, he had spent several years in Europe. Nora had tried to envision him going around the streets and squares of Venice, sitting in cafés, speaking Italian. It was a side of him they had never really known. She couldn’t imagine he’d ever gone long without female companionship—it was something he sought out, something he seemed to need. So why was there no prior history? No former girlfriends, no domestic assault charges. Of course there were many actions, many degrees of shocking behavior that didn’t rise to the level of crime. But Peter paid his taxes, his professional licenses were up to date, he had a good credit history, sat on the boards of several respected charities, and gave generously to the arts and social causes. All part of the elaborate front he’d cultivated and presented to the world, Nora couldn’t help thinking. Cover for the creature inside who got pleasure from hurting people.

Peter’s only visible connection to the Nash murders was the fact that they had happened in Maine, where he went to boarding school and college. He would have been seventeen or eighteen at the time of the murder, about the same age as Jesse Benoit and the murdered couple’s son. Could he have been at boarding school with Tripp Nash? Nora stared at the article on the screen before her now, the last piece about Jesse Benoit’s suicide, the same one Frank had found in Tríona’s stack. Gordon MacLeish, a detective from the Maine State Police, was quoted in some of the newspaper pieces. Maybe he’d be worth a call. But the Nash case was long closed. There was no practical connection to Tríona. She could spend days following crazy tangents, as she’d been doing all morning here, getting distracted from the real thread. And meanwhile, Peter Hallett was preparing to leave the country, maybe never to return. It was time to move on to the next lead, to find Harry Shaughnessy, or the Cambodian fisherman from the river.

Before leaving the nonfiction room, she took a quick detour down into the stacks once more, just to check on the book that had led her to the article about Natalie Russo. She counted down the row of bookcases
again, and turned in at the same spot, but the back-to-front book—Tríona’s book—was not there. There was a gap on the shelf. Maybe it had been checked out. She found an empty computer terminal, and quickly typed the title into a catalog search.

No matches found; nearby TITLES are:
Married to a Stranger
** Married to Magic: Fairy Brides and Bridegrooms
would be here **
Married Woman Blues
The Marrow of a Bone

Impossible. That tattered green cloth cover, the spidery white lettering on the spine—she had seen it, held it in her hand. The blue-green hues of the watercolor plate stood out in her memory. Doubt began to pull at her. But maybe it didn’t matter—after all, Frank had the paper she’d found here, perhaps with Tríona’s fingerprints on it. They had the things from the hiding place. Nobody could doubt those—they were solid forensic evidence, concrete clues.

When his dark-haired subject finally came out the library’s front entrance, Truman Stark, waiting in his truck, watched her unlock her car and get in. She’d been in there for ages—what could she possibly be doing for so long? He’d checked the car last night, out in front of her house. Clean—like it was brand-new, or maybe a rental. That was when the notion had struck him—she could be a private eye, or a reporter, digging up stuff for a story on one of those true-crime things on TV. He had to admit, that last idea had sent a small shiver of excitement through him. He liked those shows, seeing how the people who did the crimes were stupid enough to get caught. They hadn’t spent time figuring out all the angles. Not like he had.

But the grinding feeling in his gut said the brunette was onto something. The way she’d gone straight from the garage to the coffee shop, she knew something was up, he was sure of it. Hadn’t spotted him, though. And she wouldn’t. He had been honing his surveillance technique for years. He’d gotten very good at it.

Remembering back to five years ago, he considered how the redhead always parked down on the lower level of the garage. Like she was hiding
from somebody. That was how he’d first noticed her. He remembered studying the tilt of her head on the TV monitor as she waited for the elevator, the glances over her shoulder, in case someone might be tailing her. But she didn’t know he was watching her. She couldn’t have known.

Frank felt like he’d spent the whole day running back and forth between the crime lab and his office. The fingerprints lifted from the papers Nora had brought in were headed over to the state crime lab for analysis. The substance on the clothes was definitely blood, but now he’d have to wait for DNA results to find out if the blood matched anyone in their small circle of victims and suspects, or whether they’d have to start looking further afield. He had just retrieved the file on Nick Mosher’s accident—probably just coincidence that he’d died the same day as Tríona Hallett, but everything was on the table now. They were quickly running out of time. He’d just returned to his desk with the file when his phone began to vibrate.

“Detective Cordova, it’s Sarah Cates—from the rowing club. When you were here yesterday, you asked about the lockers, so I took a closer look. Some of them seemed abandoned, so I cut the locks. Thought you might want to see what I found.”

It was after five when he arrived at the road above the Twin Cities Rowing Club. For the second time in two days, he parked at the top of the river bluff and skidded down the steep road to the boathouse. This time Sarah Cates met him at the huge sliding door.

“I haven’t touched anything except the lock. I saved that in case you needed it—I wasn’t sure.” She handed him a clear plastic bag with the cut padlock inside. At the door of the women’s locker room, she paused to shout inside: “Everybody decent? I’m bringing somebody in.” A chorus of voices shouted an all-clear, and they advanced into the steamy locker room. “It’s right over here. I put my own lock on until you arrived.” She quickly dialed the combination and removed the temporary padlock, then stepped out of the way.

Cordova pulled on a pair of gloves and swung the locker open to find a series of snapshots stuck inside the door—Natalie Russo with various teammates, all grinning triumphantly at the camera. In one of the photos, there was a large silver cup blurred at the edge of the frame—a victory?

“That was the Winnipeg regatta,” Sarah Cates said, watching his reaction. “Natalie broke all the club and event records that day. That’s when we knew she was Olympic material.”

“I’m going to take this all back to the shop. See what we can shake loose.”

“So I did right to call you?”

“Yeah—you did.”

Just then, an athletic-looking blonde rounded the corner, apparently not anticipating a man in the locker room. She seemed confused, and turned back to check the sign on the door. “This still the women’s locker room?”

Sarah Cates stepped in: “We’ll be out of your hair in just a minute.” The blonde gave a shrug of indifference, and Frank knew it was the same face he’d seen in Natalie Russo’s team photo. He was finally able to place her.

Miranda Staunton.

He’d interviewed her at the time of Tríona’s death. But if his face rang any bells for her, it didn’t show. She ducked past them without another glance. He turned to Sarah Cates.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a spare box or a bag—something I could use to carry all this?”

She nodded. “Be right back.”

While Sarah was gone, Cordova stayed put and took the opportunity to observe Miranda Staunton. She must have known Natalie Russo—they were on the same rowing team. He watched her, one foot up on the bench, tying a strange-looking shoe. Must attach somehow to the boats they used. Unaware that he was watching her, she slipped a wad of gum from her mouth and pressed it to the undersurface of the bench. Frank had always wondered what sort of person did a thing like that. Now he knew. He averted his gaze as Miranda stood up and headed out the locker room door.

When he was finished clearing out the locker, Sarah Cates walked him out to the driveway. He gestured over at Miranda, preparing a solo scull for practice. “Know her?”

“Miranda Staunton? Sure. Joined the club out of college. I heard she was living out in Seattle, but she just moved back and rejoined a couple of weeks ago.”

“Good rower?”

“Great—”

Cordova sensed hesitation. “But?”

Sarah leaned forward slightly. “You know those cranky lightweights I mentioned the other day?”

The phone on his belt began to vibrate, and Sarah Cates signaled a silent good-bye as she backed down the driveway to the boathouse.

He expected to hear Karin Bledsoe’s voice when he answered, but it was his sister Veronica, upset and out of breath. “Oh Frank, he just stopped breathing. I didn’t know what to do—”

There was no reason to ask; he knew Veronica was talking about Chago. Frank and his brother had been born only minutes apart, but they were nothing alike. Twisted in his own umbilical cord, Chago had grown misshapen in the womb. His mind remained that of a child, ever joyful despite a halting gait and withered arm, his lopsided face perpetually split by a broad smile. Veronica, the eldest of his three sisters, had always been like a mother to them, looking after them ever since Frank could remember.

“Luis called the ambulance, and they took him away, to Regions Emergency. They said we should call the priest—” She broke off and began to sob.

“Go now. I’ll meet you there,” he told Veronica. “Get Luis to drive you.”

Frank’s tires sent gravel flying as he peeled out of the parking area above the boathouse.

Eleanor Gavin stood at her bedroom window, watching her husband deadhead flowers in the backyard. He’d been at it since they’d finished their supper this evening in awkward silence. Ever since her conversation with Nora, she’d debated telling him everything. But she wasn’t at all sure he could take the news. He already felt like a failure as a father—not that he’d ever admitted as much, even to her—but she could see it, in his posture as he stooped over the rosebushes, in every word and every gesture for the past five years. She watched him bend and snip, bend and snip, dropping each spent bloom into a canvas sack he wore slung around him like a sower of seeds.

And suddenly she felt a flash of affection so fierce it took her breath away. All the years of their history together cascaded over her, including the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, a hurling game with his pals on the lawn at Belfield. His ease with the hurley was the first thing she noticed, along with his physical beauty, the pleasing proportions of his frame. Good bones. There were no questions at all, really, about the choices you made then. Things happened, and you went along with them. That’s how she’d ended up here, in America, more than three decades gone, staring out the window at the man she loved and respected more than any other in the world, and making plans to deceive him.

She had to remind herself that he didn’t have all the facts, all that she had come to know only last night. If he did have those facts, perhaps he wouldn’t be out there, calmly snipping dead blossoms. He knew about Peter’s impending marriage, of course. The whole world seemed to know about it, and for the first time, Eleanor wondered exactly how that coupling came to be. In some ways, Peter’s choice hadn’t surprised her. Miranda Staunton had been on the periphery of all their lives, for as long as Nora had known Marc—always there, inserting herself next to Peter at every opportunity. He’d always seemed rather indifferent. But Miranda happened to get a job in Seattle only a month after Peter went there, starting fresh with his million-dollar insurance settlement. As if
she hadn’t given a thought to Peter Hallett’s guilt or innocence. Did she have any idea what she was letting herself in for?

Eleanor left the window and sat on the edge of the bed that she and Tom had shared for forty years. She picked up the telephone receiver and dialed, plunging in when she heard the answer at the other end: “Hello, Peter, it’s Eleanor… Yes, we’re fine. How is Miranda? And how are you finding everything at the house?” She heard the strange, false notes in her own voice, as she stared down at Tom working in the garden, watching deadheads as they fell, one by one, into his sack. “And how is Elizabeth? We’re both so anxious and excited to see her. That’s what I’m calling about.”

A few minutes before eight, the lights began to blink off inside the Phnom Penh restaurant on University Avenue. Dinner business must be slow. Nora studied the sign on the brightly painted red and yellow storefront, top half in English, the bottom half in curling Khmer script. The fisherman she’d seen down at the river was the last one out, slipping through the side door just before the man with the keys locked up and closed the extra security gate. The men scattered silently, and the fisherman bent to unlock a bicycle chained to the fence.

The place he headed to was not far, a typical old Frogtown clapboard house, clad in terrible redwood siding, with an exterior staircase to the second floor. The fisherman locked his bike to the metal stair rail and had just placed his foot on the first step when Nora ventured to speak: “Excuse me—”

She was about ten feet away from him. He turned, braced for something, and glanced quickly up and down the street—what was he expecting? Better talk fast. She said: “I wonder if I could talk to you for a second?” His avoidance of Janelle Joyner and her cameraman down at the river gave her an idea. “I’m not a reporter, not with the police.”