A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel (8 page)

If you need me, call me
. For Jameson, this qualified as almost intimate.

Again I went looking for Jessamyn, and this time I found her sitting in her room, on the bed, neatly made. My eyes went to her
duffel bag on the floor. It was plump, full. Packed. “You’re thinking about taking off,” I said, and I realized there was nothing stopping her. She could hop a bus or stick out her thumb and leave Lake Placid and her tiny room and her few possessions behind. Just as she’d left somewhere else to come to the Adirondacks. Her eyes darted around the room. Finally she looked at me.

“I don’t want to talk to the police, Troy.” Her voice was thin, tight.

“But you did once, and it wasn’t so bad.”

“Yes, but this is the state police—that’s a bigger deal. That means they think someone did something to Tobin, that he didn’t just drown.”

I’d hoped she hadn’t thought of this. I sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s possible,” I said carefully. “Or the Saranac Lake police could be uncomfortable handling it because of things stirred up by the newspaper article, or the missing truck. Or pressure from Tobin’s parents.”

“Or it could mean Tobin’s death
wasn’t an accident
.”

The words hung in the air. I looked at her full on. “It could. What do you think?”

Her eyes shifted. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

I spoke rapidly. “Jessamyn, if someone did something to Tobin, it needs to be found out. If you think anyone could have hurt him, you have to face this, you have to tell the police. You don’t want to run from this.”

She looked miserable, but she nodded.

“Do you want to talk to an attorney before you go?”

She shook her head, and on this she was adamant. In the North Country, she said, showing up with a lawyer would make everyone assume she was guilty of something. She was right about that.

I thought of more I could say, but in the end I just left her there.

That evening we had an even better dinner, lasagna with homemade noodles, an exquisite salad, fresh-baked bread. Jessamyn
was more animated than I’d ever seen her, as if wringing every bit she could from one last happy evening with this family. We played a rousing game of Pictionary, roping Elise in, me coaching Paul, until it was time for Paul to go to bed. I got to tuck him in, freshly bathed in his flannel pajamas, and I read him
Where the Wild Things Are
. Paul loved this book, and the little boy Max.

“Max was
très vilain
—very naughty,” he told me solemnly. “But I shouldn’t like to be sent to bed without dinner.”

“He was a little naughty,” I agreed. “But I don’t think you ever have to worry about going to bed without dinner.” I thought of the months Paul had been held captive, with the closest thing to a real dinner an occasional McDonald’s meal put in his room. Maybe he thought of that too. He gave me a hug so warm and tight I didn’t want to let go. I felt that swell of love, so intense it nearly hurt, like I’d felt not long after I’d rescued him last summer. I’d known then I would lay my life down for this kid. That hadn’t changed. I didn’t think it ever would.

Afterward Philippe and Jessamyn and I sat in the library, fire blazing, and talked about anything but Lake Placid until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. We went off to our rooms, and I saw Jessamyn close her door. I hoped she’d be there in the morning.

And she was. A little wan, but she was there. We left right after breakfast, taking along an enormous box of food from Elise, who thought we didn’t eat well enough. She was probably right.

We didn’t talk much on the drive. I repeated what Jameson had said, to just tell them facts, and to stop answering questions if it got uncomfortable. “And if you don’t know something, just say so—don’t make something up,” I added.

“I
won’t
,” Jessamyn snapped. “I’m not stupid, Troy.”

I guessed I did sound patronizing. I should have been surprised Jessamyn hadn’t been sharp-tongued before now. In a way it was good to see her like this, more like her old self.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that it’s no fun being questioned by the police, and these guys are going to be pros, not like that
yahoo from Saranac Lake. They can trick you or hammer at you until you want to say anything to shut them up.”

She looked at me curiously. I hadn’t told her the police here had considered me a suspect in Paul’s kidnapping last year, and I didn’t go into it now.

We drove for an hour before she spoke again. “Do you think Tobin’s parents are in town?”

I thought about the parents from Connecticut, the rich parents, the parents who had just lost a second son. “I imagine they are,” I said. They would, I thought, have come up to ID the body if nothing else. I didn’t know if Jessamyn hoped to meet them, or hoped not to.

We got to the state police headquarters before noon and waited in not particularly comfortable chairs. It seemed there might be security cameras recording what we said and did, so we said and did nothing. Finally Jessamyn was called, and I opened the paperback I’d brought. After I’d pretended to read three chapters, she was back. She gave a shrug that seemed to say
No big deal
. The investigator turned to me.

“Miss Chance?”

I nodded.

“I need to talk to you as well.”

This I hadn’t seen coming. I’d been so concerned about Jessamyn, I hadn’t given any thought to the notion I might be questioned. I gave Jessamyn a fake smile and followed the man. The room we entered was a regular office, not an interrogation room, but still reminiscent of when I’d been questioned in the Ottawa police station last summer. The investigator was typical of most New York state troopers I’d seen: tall, tightly muscled, white, male, with a brush cut.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said briskly. Which made me want to ask who “we” were, if someone was in the closet or under the desk. But I didn’t.

He asked when I’d met Tobin, when I’d last seen him, the names of his friends. And about Tobin’s relationship with Jessamyn.
I wasn’t going to out-and-out lie, but neither was I going to throw Jessamyn under the bus.

“It seemed fine,” I said brightly.

“They got along? They didn’t fight?”

I shook my head. “I never saw them fight,” I said, which was true. Jessamyn could have gotten that fat lip from running into a door. I’ve done it: walked slam into the edge of a door standing open—it hurts like heck, and you feel really stupid. Or someone other than Tobin could have done it.

“How often did you see them?”

“When Tobin was in town, he was at the house at least every other day, sometimes more.”

“And what was your relationship with him?”

“Relationship? He dated my roommate. I never knew him before that.”

“You never went to his place?”

I gave a short bark of laughter before I could stop myself. “No, of course not.”

“So you were never in his house?”

“Of course not,” I repeated.

“Do you know where it was?”

“Vaguely. It’s on one of the roads off Highway 73 toward Keene. I gave him a ride home once.” It had been snowing and Tobin was hitchhiking; he said he’d had too much to drink to want to drive. It had surprised me, because it wasn’t rare in these towns for guys to get behind the wheel with sky-high blood alcohol.

The investigator seemed to smirk. “But you just said you’d never been at his house.”

“No, I said I hadn’t been
in
his house. And it wasn’t a house, it was a cabin, a small cabin.”

“And you never went inside?”

I sighed inwardly. This game I knew. Keep repeating the question to see if I changed my answer.

“No,” I said. “I never went in. Not once. Not ever. I stopped
my car; he got out and walked to his front door. I drove home. Period, end of story. I don’t even know if I could find it again.”

“And what is your relationship with Jessamyn Field?”

I felt like throwing up my hands. “She’s one of my roommates. She’s lived there since late summer.”

“But you went out of town together.”

Suddenly meeting the investigator before lunch didn’t seem like such a great idea. I was hungry and getting crosser by the minute.

“Yes,” I said, and couldn’t keep the edge from my voice. “I’ve been known to go out of town with many different people, some roommates, some not.” I pulled two business cards out of my wallet that I’d put there yesterday, possibly because a little voice in the back of my head had hinted I might need them. I set Philippe’s card on the desk. “Here’s the friend I was visiting in Ottawa.” Then I placed Jameson’s card on top. “Here’s another friend I saw while I was there, a detective with the Ottawa Police Service. You can call either of them and ask them whatever you want.” I stood up and started for the door. He let me go.

So much for advising Jessamyn to stay cool and calm. She was smart enough not to ask anything, and just followed me to the car. I reached into the box of food in the trunk and pulled out a turnover. I offered her one, but she shook her head. I finished it as I pulled out of the lot.

“Didn’t go well, huh?” Jessamyn asked after a while.

“Nope,” I said.

She started to say something else, but we were nearing the house and could see someone on the front porch, perched on the edge of the big swing.

I sighed. “We could park in the back and go in the kitchen door. I think we can get it open.”

“No,” she said. “I’m tired of this. Let’s just go in.”

We parked in my usual spot in front of the house, and the woman stood as we came up the steps. She was, I guessed, in her mid- to late twenties, trim, attractive, with brown hair to her shoulders,
and stylish earmuffs instead of the thick knit hats Jessamyn and I wore. Her jeans and boots and coat were far nicer than I’d ever had or thought about having. She looked tired and cold.

She took a step toward us. I was thinking she didn’t look like a reporter when she spoke. And just before the words came out of her mouth, I guessed who she was.

“I’m Tobin’s sister,” she said, looking from one of us to the other. “I’m Jessica Winslow.”

If Jessamyn and I hadn’t just had the week we’d had, this woman showing up on our doorstep might have thrown us for a loop. But in a way it seemed the inevitable next step in an inexorable chain of events:
body found, media blitz, escape to Canada, police interview, arrival of bereaved sister
. We didn’t know if she was here to blame or commiserate, and didn’t ask. We just told her who we were and invited her in. I unlocked the door and led the way inside, and turned on the water for tea. We sat at the kitchen table. I opened the bag of Elise’s pastries. No one took any.

The woman had Tobin’s coloring, and you could see the resemblance around her mouth and jaw. I put a mug of tea in front of her, and set out milk and sugar. She poured in some of both, stirred, and took a sip, wrapping her hands tightly around the mug. It had been cold on our porch, and I guessed she’d been out there a while. We waited for her to speak.

“Call me Win,” she said. Maybe she realized an already awkward conversation would be even more awkward with one person named Jessamyn and another named Jessica. “That’s what my sorority sisters called me.” It was a measure of how much I instinctively liked her that I didn’t hold the sorority-sister thing against her.

She started talking, in that flat tone you have when all the energy has drained out of you. The police had notified her parents when Tobin had been found, she said, but she’d been out of the country and couldn’t get here until now. Someone had mentioned the online article with Jessamyn’s name, but she hadn’t seen it. She’d asked around and had found her way to the restaurant, and had been directed here. She wasn’t quite sure why she was here, in our house, she said, but she’d needed to come here. It made sense, I supposed. If my brother had died, I might be doing the same thing, visiting his friends, retracing his last steps.

“You were his girlfriend?” she asked Jessamyn.

Jessamyn nodded, her face blank.

Win turned to me. “And you knew him too, right? You wrote the newspaper article, about Tobin.”

I nodded. I think her next question took us both by surprise.

“Was he happy here?”

Jessamyn’s face clenched. She opened her mouth, and closed it again.

“I think he was,” I said, when I saw Jessamyn wasn’t going to be able to answer. “He had Jessamyn. He had friends. He did some construction work. He was healthy.”

It wasn’t much of an epitaph, but it seemed to be what Tobin’s sister needed, at least for now. She nodded. She set down her tea and looked around.

“Are you two hungry?” she asked. “Would you like to get something to eat?”

So we bundled up and walked up to town, like three friends out on a cold Adirondack afternoon. We went to Pete’s, across from the movie theater, and took a table in the far back.

It should have seemed odd, sitting there with this woman who was Tobin’s sister, but it didn’t. After we ordered, Win started talking again, like a toy wound too tightly. She told us about being the only girl between two brothers, about growing up with them, Tobin dropping out of college after their brother died. “Tobin took it hard,” she said. “Up until then he’d tried to please our parents,
tried to do everything Trey did, and after the accident he just stopped trying, and pretty much left the family.” At first I heard
Tray
, and it took a moment to remember this was what rich families called sons whose names were Thirds
—trey
, for three.

“This was the first place he’d seemed to settle down.” She blinked hard, the way you do when you’re trying to convince yourself not to cry. “What about you two? Are you from here?”

We shook our heads. Our food arrived, and I told her about growing up in Nashville and taking the job here after university out West, how I’d loved working as a small-town sports editor but because of the nonstop schedule had quit to freelance. Jessamyn volunteered that she was from the Midwest and had lived here a year and a half, and had never been to college. She said it with a touch of defiance, but Tobin’s sister wasn’t in a judging mood. And maybe she wasn’t a judging sort of person.