I slid out from beneath the car and ripped off my protective goggles. “I saylawyer; you stop talking.”
“Do you have a lawyer?”
“Talk to Paul Burke.”
“You might get another one,” Gilcrest said. “Everyone’s a suspect until eliminated, Paul included.”
“I still don’t want to talk to you.”
“One question, then I’ll leave. Why did your mother tell you she was going to Finstock when she wasn’t working on a project there? Reid Construction hasn’t had any work in that area of the state in years.”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said, then wanted to kick myself for answering.
“If you had to guess, what would you say?” Gilcrest asked. “Had she gone there before?”
Not that I could remember. “I have a car to repair and a memorial service to plan,” I said.
On TV, that kind of line usually cuts the cops off and provides a transition to the next scene. I turned on the sander, grateful for the noise as Gilcrest paced in his leather sneakers.
“The night before the fire,” he said, “your mother called Paul Burke.”
“They talk all the time,” I say.
“She also called Andrea Haviland.”
I turned off the sander. “I don’t think so,” I said. “My mother and Mrs. Haviland barely speak to each other.”
“They talked for over two minutes. According to Andrea, your mother asked to meet at Burkehaven, which explains why Andrea was out on the boat. But why would your mother call in the first place?”
I turned the sander on again and slid under the car.
Gilcrest got on his hands and knees. “There was a third call,” he said. “But not from your mother’s phone. She used a burner we found hidden in her bedroom to call another burner phone, and here’s where you’re in luck. We pinpointed that phone to somewhere near Finstock. Who would she have called?”
I thought back to the recurring dream, to asking my mother whether she was the one who’d hidden my father all these years. If Mark Kilgore was alive, he was the only person I could think of mysterious enough to warrant a burner phone.
But I’d let the detective figure that out on his own.
The following morning, a week after my mother died, we gathered in the small Unitarian church in downtown Hero, where I sat in the front pew with Hadley, Paul, and Reid. Reid took to the pulpit. He wore a tailored black suit and talked about my mother through the lens of working with her at the firm. He focused on her commitment to the business and her dedication to family, and inserted a line about overcoming obstacles, the only reference to my father, however oblique.
Behind us, the church’s pews were packed. Some of the attendees I recognized—friends from town; Seton and Mrs. Haviland; even Gilcrest, who came with Freya—but the majority of the people I’d never seen, and it made me wonder what vast, complicated life my mother had lived outside of my tiny world. Who had she spent time with, who had she loved, what mysteries lay deep within her heart?
I searched for my father, too, but if he was there, I didn’t find him.
At the end of the service, the minister invited attendees to Idlewood for a reception, where Blancy and a few others from the Landing served food and drinks from folding tables, while Hadley, Reid, and I greeted the line of mourners, each face melding with the last. Reid fended off the inevitable questions that came when one of these camps changed hands: What do you plan to do with the property?
“No decisions yet,” Reid said, no matter what form the question took.
When Vance Moodey’s turn came, he barely met Reid’s eyes. “I’m so, so sorry, son,” he mumbled to me.
Freya followed, pulling Hadley in for a long hug.
“It’s been too long, friend,” Hadley said.
“Almost forty years, but who’s counting,” Freya said, catching my eye. “Your aunt and I, we used to do everything together.”
“We’ll have to catch up,” Hadley said. “I’ll be around for another week or so.”
The night Freya and I had spent together seemed like another lifetime. Here, especially with Gilcrest hanging at her shoulder, I wondered why she’d shown up at the police station. Had she come to rescue me, or in the hope of generating headlines? Or for some other reason altogether? Whatever the answer, now wasn’t the time to ask. “Thanks for coming,” I said as she gave me a quick hug.
