After the service, the funeral home director took me and Cynthia and Grace in his Cadillac down to Milford Harbor, where he kept a small cabin cruiser. Rolly Carruthers and his wife, Millicent, followed, having offered to give Pamela a ride with them in their car, and the three of them joined our family on the boat.
Once we had left the sheltered harbor, we put out into the Sound, only about a mile, out front of the beach houses along East Broadway. I’d always thought it would be great to have one of those places, certainly as a kid, but when Hurricane Gloria swept through in 1985, I started to have second thoughts. It was hard to keep all the hurricanes straight if you lived in Florida, but the ones that hit Connecticut you tended to remember.
Fortunately, given the nature of our task out there on the water that day, the winds were light. The funeral director, a man whose charm seemed genuine rather than forced, had brought along the urn containing Tess’s ashes, which were to be scattered onto Long Island Sound, as Tess had requested when making the arrangements for her own funeral.
There wasn’t a lot of conversation on the boat, although Millicent made an attempt. She put her arm around Cynthia and said, “Tess couldn’t have had a more beautiful day to see her final request carried out.”
Maybe, if Tess had actually died from an illness, there might have been some comfort in this, but when someone dies by violence, it’s hard to find consolation anywhere.
But Cynthia attempted to take the comment in the spirit it was offered. Millicent and Rolly had been friends to her long before I’d even met her. They were an unofficial aunt and uncle, and had always looked in on her over the years. Going way back, Millicent had grown up on the same street as Cynthia’s mother, Patricia, and even though Patricia had been a few years older, they had become friends. When Millicent met and married Rolly, and Patricia met and married Clayton, the couples saw each other socially, and that was how Millicent and Rolly had the opportunity to watch Cynthia grow up, and take an interest in her life after her family had disappeared. Although it was Rolly, more than Millicent, who was most there for Cynthia.
“It is a beautiful day,” Rolly said, echoing his wife. He approached Cynthia, his eyes looking down at the deck, perhaps figuring this would help him keep his footing as the boat went over the choppy water. “But I know that doesn’t make any of this any easier to bear.”
Pam approached Cynthia, teetered a bit, probably thinking that heels weren’t that great a thing to wear on a boat, and gave her a hug. “Who would do this?” Cynthia asked her. “Tess never meant any harm to anyone.” She sniffed. “The last person from that part of my family. Gone.”
Pam pulled her closer. “I know, love. She was so good to you, so good to everyone. It had to be some sort of a crazy person.”
Rolly shook his head in disgust, a kind of “what’s the world coming to” gesture, and walked down to the stern to watch the boat’s wake. I came up alongside him. “Thanks for coming today,” I said. “It means a lot to Cynthia.”
He looked surprised. “You kidding? You know we’ve always been there for both of you.” He shook his head again. “You think that’s what it was? Some sort of crazy person?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t. At least not in the sense of it being a total stranger. I think Tess was killed by someone for a specific reason.”
“What?” he asked. “What do the police think?”
“They haven’t got a clue, far as I can tell,” I said. “I start telling them all this stuff that happened years ago, you see their eyes start to cloud over, like it’s too much for them to take in.”
“Yeah, well, what do you expect?” Rolly asked. “They got their hands full trying to maintain peace in the here and now.”
The boat slowed to a stop, and the funeral director approached. “Mr. Archer? I think we’re ready.”
We gathered tightly together on the deck as the urn was placed formally in Cynthia’s hands. I helped her open it, both of us acting as though we were handling dynamite, afraid that we might drop Tess at the wrong moment. Grabbing it firmly between both hands, Cynthia moved to the side of the boat and upended the urn while Grace and I and Rolly and Millicent and Pam watched.
The ashes fell out and settled on the water, dissolved and dispersed. In a few seconds, what physically remained of Tess was gone. Cynthia handed the urn back to me, and for a moment appeared light-headed. Rolly went to support her, but then she held out her hand to indicate she was okay.
Grace had brought a rose-her own idea-which she cast upon the water.
“Goodbye, Aunt Tess,” she said. “Thank you for the book.”
Cynthia had said that morning that she wanted to say a few words, but when the time came, she didn’t have the strength. And I could find no words that I thought were any more meaningful, or heartfelt, than Grace’s simple farewell.
Coming back into the harbor, I saw a short black woman in a pair of jeans and tan leather jacket standing at the end of the dock as we came back into the harbor. She was nearly as round as she was short, but she showed grace and agility as she grabbed on to the boat as it drew close, and assisted in securing it. She said to me, “Terrence Archer?” There was a hint of Boston in her voice.
I said yes.
She flashed me a badge that identified herself as Rona Wedmore, a police detective. And not from Boston, but from Milford. She held out a hand to assist Cynthia onto the dock while I lifted Grace onto the weathered planking.
“I’d like to speak with you a moment,” she said, not asking.
Cynthia, who had Pam at her side, said she would watch Grace. Rolly stayed back with Millicent. Wedmore and I walked slowly along the dock toward a black unmarked cruiser.
“Is this about Tess?” I asked. “Has there been an arrest?”
“No, sir, there has not,” she said. “I’m sure every effort is being made to do just that, but that’s another detective’s case and I’m aware, one way or another, what progress is being made in that regard.” She spoke rapid-fire, the words coming at me like bullets. “I’m here to ask you about Denton Abagnall.”
I underwent a bit of mental whiplash. “Yes?”
“He’s missing. Two days now,” she said.
“I spoke to his wife the morning after he’d been to our home. I told her to call the police.”
“You haven’t seen him since then?”
“No.”
“Heard from him?” Ping, ping, ping.
“No,” I said. “I can’t help but think it might have something to do with the murder of my wife’s aunt. He’d been to see her not long before her death. He’d left her a business card, which she told me was pinned to the bulletin board by the phone. But it wasn’t there after she died.”
Wedmore wrote something down in her notebook. “He was working for you.”
“Yes.”
“At the time of his disappearance.” It wasn’t a question, so I simply nodded. “What do you think?”
“About?”
“What happened to him?” A glimpse of impatience. Like, What else do you think I mean? I paused and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “I hate to let my mind go there,” I said. “But I think he’s dead. I think he may even have gotten a phone call from his killer while he was in our home, reviewing our case with us.”
“What time was that?”
“It was around five in the afternoon, something like that.”
“So was it before five, or after five, or five?”
“I’d say five.”
“Because we got in touch with his cell phone provider, had them check all his incoming and outgoing calls. There was a call at five, made from a pay phone in Milford. There was another one later, from another Milford pay phone, that went through, then later in the day, some calls from his wife that went unanswered.”
I had no idea what to make of that.
Cynthia and Grace were getting into the back of the funeral director’s Caddy.
Wedmore leaned toward me aggressively, and even though she was probably five inches shorter, she had presence. “Who’d want to kill your aunt, and Abagnall?” she asked.
“Someone who’s trying to make sure that the past stays in the past,” I said.
Millicent wanted to take us all out for lunch, but Cynthia said she’d prefer to go straight home, and that was where I took her. Grace had clearly been moved by the service, and the entire morning had been an eye-opener for her-her first funeral-but I was actually glad to see she still had an appetite. The moment we came through the door, she said she was starving and that if she didn’t get something to eat immediately, she would die.
Then, “Oh, sorry.”
Cynthia smiled at our girl. “How about a tuna sandwich?”
“With celery?”
“If we have any,” Cynthia said.
Grace went into the fridge, opened up the crisper. “There’s some celery, but it’s kind of soft.”
“Bring it out,” Cynthia said. “We’ll have a look.”
I hung my suit jacket on the back of a kitchen chair, loosened my tie. I didn’t have to dress this well to teach high school, and the formal attire made me feel constricted and awkward. I sat down, put everything that had happened so far that day on the back burner for a moment, and watched my two girls. Cynthia hunted up a tin of tuna and a can opener while Grace put the celery on the counter.
Cynthia drained the oil from the tuna can, dumped it into a bowl, and asked Grace to get the Miracle Whip. She went back to the fridge, brought out the jar, got the lid off, and put it on the counter. She broke off a celery stalk, waved it in the air. It was a piece of rubber.
Playfully, she hit her mother on the arm with it.
Cynthia turned and looked at her, reached over very deliberately and broke off a rubbery stalk of her own, and hit Grace back. Then they used the stalks as swords. “Take that!” said Cynthia. Then they both started to laugh, and slipped their arms around each other.
And I thought, I’ve always wondered what sort of mother Patricia was like, and the answer’s always been here right in front of me.
Later, after Grace had eaten and gone upstairs to get back into some regular clothes, Cynthia said to me, “You looked nice today.”
“You too,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t blame you. For Tess. I was wrong to say what I said.”
“It’s okay. I should have told you everything. Earlier.”
She looked at the floor.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, and she nodded. “Why do you think your father would have saved a clipping about a hit-and-run accident?”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“He saved a clipping about a hit-and-run accident.”
The shoeboxes were still on the kitchen table, the clipping about fly-fishing, which included the one about the woman from Sharon who was killed by a passing motorist, her body dragged and dumped into the ditch, sitting on top.
“Let me see,” Cynthia said, rinsing off her hands and drying them off. I handed her the clipping and she accepted it delicately, like parchment. She read it. “I can’t believe I’ve never noticed it before.”
“You thought your dad saved the clipping because of the fly-fishing piece.”
“Maybe he did save it because of the fly-fishing piece.”
“I think, in part, he did,” I said. “But what I’m wondering is which came first. Did he see the story about the accident and go to clip it out, but then given his interests, he clipped the fly-fishing story with it? Or did he see the fly-fishing story, then spotted the other one, and, for some reason, clipped it, too? Or,” and I paused for a moment, “did he want to clip the hit-and-run story, but worried that clipping it alone would lead to questions should someone, like your mother, find it, but clipping it with the other story, well, that was like camouflaging it?”
Cynthia had handed the clipping back to me and said, “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“God, I don’t know,” I said.
“Every time I look through those boxes,” Cynthia said, “I keep hoping I’ll find something I’ve never noticed before. It’s frustrating, I know. You want to find an answer but it’s not there. And yet,” she said, “I keep thinking I’ll find it. Some tiny clue. Like that one piece in a jigsaw puzzle, the one that helps you place all the others.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
“This accident, this woman who got killed-what was her name again?”
“Connie Gormley,” I said. “She was twenty-seven.”
“I’ve never heard that name in my life. It doesn’t mean a thing. And what if that’s it? What if that’s the piece?”
“Do you think it is?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly. “No.”
Neither did I.
But it didn’t stop me from going upstairs with the clipping and sitting in front of the computer and looking for any information about a twenty-six-year-old hit-and-run accident that left Connie Gormley dead.
I came up with nothing.
So then I started looking up Gormleys in that part of Connecticut, using the online phone listings, wrote down names and numbers onto a scratch pad, stopped when I had half a dozen, and was about to start calling them when Cynthia poked her head into the room. “What are you doing?” she asked.
I told her.
I don’t know whether I was expecting her to protest, or offer encouragement, to grasp onto any thread no matter how slender. Instead, she said, “I’m going to go lie down for a while.”
When someone actually answered, I identified myself as Terrence Archer from Milford, said that I probably had the wrong number, but I was trying to track down anyone who might have information about the death of Connie Gormley.
“Sorry, never heard of her,” said the person at the first number.
“Who?” said an elderly woman at the second. “I never knew no Connie Gormley, but I have a niece goes by Constance Gormley, and she’s a real estate agent in Stratford. She’s terrific and if you’re looking for a house, she could find you a good one. I’ve got her number right here if you’ll hold on a second.” I didn’t want to be rude, but after I’d held for five minutes, I hung up.
The third person I reached said, “Oh God, Connie? It was so long ago.”
It turned out that I had managed to reach Howard Gormley, her sixty-five-year-old brother.
“Why would anyone want to know about that, after all these years?” he asked, his voice hoarse and tired.
“Honestly, Mr. Gormley, I don’t quite know what to tell you,” I said. “My wife’s family had some trouble a few months after your sister’s accident, stuff that we’ve still been trying to sort out, and an article about Connie was found among some mementos.”
“That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” Howard Gormley said.
“Yes, it is. If you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions, it might clear things up, at least allow me to eliminate any connection between your family’s tragedy and ours.”
“I suppose.”
“First of all, did they ever find out who ran your sister down? I don’t have any other information. Was someone finally charged?”
“Nope, never. Cops never found out a thing, never put anyone in jail for it. After a while, they just gave up, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, it just about killed our parents. Grief ate away at them. Our mother died a couple years after that, and our dad went a year later. Cancer, both of them, but you ask me, it was the sorrow that overtook them.”
“Did the police ever have any leads? Did they ever find out who was driving?”
“Just how up-to-date was that article you found?”
I had it next to the computer, and read it to him.
“That was pretty early on,” he said. “That was before they found out the whole thing had kind of been staged.”
“Staged?”
“Well, at first, they figured it was a hit-and-run, plain and simple. Maybe a drunk, or just a bad driver. But when they did the autopsy, they noticed something kind of funny.”
“What do you mean, funny?”
“I’m no expert, you know? I’ve been a roofer all my life. Don’t really know much about that forensic stuff. But what they told us was, a lot of what happened to Connie, the damage done to her from the car? That happened after she was already dead.”
“Wait a sec,” I said. “Your sister was already dead when the car hit her.”
“That’s what I just said. And…”
“Mr. Gormley?”
“It’s just, this is hard to talk about, even after all this time. I don’t like to say things that reflect badly on Connie, even after all these years, if you understand.”
“I do.”
“But they said, well, that she might have been with someone shortly before she got left in that ditch.”
“You mean…”
“They’re not saying she was raped, exactly, although that might have happened, I suppose. But my sister, she kind of got around, if you understand, and they say she met up with someone that evening, most likely. And I’ve always wondered if that’s who it was, who set it up to look like she got hit by a car, dumped her into that ditch.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Connie and me was close. I didn’t approve of the way she lived her life, but then, I was never no angel myself and was never in any position to point a finger. After all these years, I’m still angry, and wish they’d find the bastard who did it, but the thing is, it was so long ago, there’s a pretty good chance that son of a bitch may be dead himself by now.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s very possible.”
When I was done talking to Howard Gormley, I just sat there at my desk for a while, staring off into space, trying to figure out whether it meant anything.
Then, reflexively as I often do, I hit the Mail button on the computer keyboard to see whether we had any messages. As usual, there were a bunch, most of them offering deals on Viagra or stock tips or places to get a Rolex cheap or solicitations from widows of wealthy Nigerian gold mine owners looking for assistance transferring their millions to a North American account. Our anti-spam filter caught only a fraction of these annoyances.
But there was one e-mail, from a Hotmail address that was nothing but numbers-05121983-with the words “It won’t be much longer” in the subject line.
I clicked on it.
The message was short. It read: “Dear Cynthia: As per our earlier conversation, your family really does forgive you. But they can’t ever stop asking themselves: Why?”
I must have read it five times, then went back up to the subject line. It wouldn’t be much longer till what?