The Little Woods (17 page)

“Come on,” she groaned. “Don’t be a pussy. Do you hate art or something?”

“Chelsea, you’re serious?”

She nodded and tossed me the dress, a gossamer white thing.

“Here, take your hair down. There, I want it to be kind of wild. Good. Right, now, get your ass out there. Waist deep.”

I pulled off my jeans and T-shirt and slipped the dress over my head. It made me feel strange, like a doomed fairy princess. I walked to the pond and paused at the edge of the water. My breath caught, and I found myself inexplicably excited and frightened. It was just a pond, so why did it feel like something else? I had the distinct impression that once I stepped in, in a way, there would be no turning back.

I set a toe in. Crisp, cold, nipping at the base of my spine.

“For fuck’s sake, get in there, Inspector Wood. I don’t have all day.”

I stepped in and began wading—the water rising, my skin tingling—and something inside me changed. A shot of electricity bolted up my spine to the base of my skull and suddenly my vision seemed more lucid. I started to laugh.

“No laughter,” she called. “This is serious business.”

I turned to see that she had the camera trained on me and was already taking pictures.

“So you really just didn’t go back to school this semester?”

“No. I’m right here. I can’t be in two places at once, now can I?”

“I don’t know,” I said, sinking my hips in, the water licking at my waist. “Quantum mechanics might say different.”

“Oh, shut up, wondergeek. Now turn around.”

“So why didn’t you go back?”

“I told you. Psychological problems. I’m taking some personal time.”

“And your parents don’t care?”

“I don’t have parents; I have guardians.”

“Guardians?”

“Yeah. My grandparents. Lift your hair up above your head and then drop it. There you go. Good.”

“My dad died too,” I said, then bit down on my lip.

“Christ, Wood, my parents aren’t dead. They’re just not here. Turn around. Dip your head over and spread out your arms. Sorry about your dad, though. That blows.”

“Yeah. Sorry about your craziness. I hope you get better.”

“Yeah, thanks. Turn around and start walking away from me.”

I did, the trees rising before me, the water drifting through my fingers. High in nests, birds rustled and peeped.

“Hey, Wood. What would you say if I told you I was fucking Richard Slater?”

My heart jolted and I spun to face her, unable to keep the disgust and horror from my face.

“There we go. That’s the shot I wanted. You can come out now.”

I waded toward the shore, watching Chelsea pack up her
gear. Had that been just a stunt? Something to shock me? When I got to the shore, she grinned at me.

“That was brilliant.”

“You were joking, right?” I said, changing out of the wet dress.

“God, Wood, you’re unbelievable.”

“You
were
, right?”

She sighed. “Yes, Wood. I was joking.” But then she laughed, and something in my gut told me she was lying.

She let the camera fall from her neck and gathered her things. We were weaving our way through a shining sea of yellow sour grass flowers when she brought up Iris.

“Pretty creepy,” she said, eyeing me to watch for my reaction.

“It’s horrible,” I sighed. “Did you know her at all?”

She shook her head. “Not really, no. I knew
of
her.”

“Yeah, I guess she and Helen weren’t exactly friends.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Or so Helen would have us believe.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to seem nonchalant.

“Oh, you know,” she drawled, sweeping her arm down to pick a flower without breaking stride. She bit into the stem. “Mmm. So good. When I was little, I thought the stems were sour because dogs peed on them. I ate them anyway, though. Want one?” Again, she raised an eyebrow at me.

I shook my head.

“You should just know that Helen doesn’t always tell the truth.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

She stopped and rolled her eyes at me. “For fuck’s sake, I’m not saying
that
. It’s not like I think Helen killed her or anything. Christ, Detective Wood, get a hold of yourself. I’m just saying that there was something going on between them.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I saw Iris here more than once.”

“Yeah, I heard they used to be friends a long time ago.”

“No,” she said. “I saw Iris up here last spring, which seemed sort of strange, since Helen was always saying, ‘Iris is such a liar, she’s such a stalker, requesting me for a roommate,’ that kind of thing, but I think she’s covering her tracks or something.”

“Last spring?”

She nodded, pleased with herself. “Mmmhmm. How you like them apples?”

We were at the path to the Slaters’ place now, and it was clear she was dropping me off.

“Thanks,” she said, patting me on the head. “And shhh. Don’t tell Helen you heard it from me, ’kay?”

I nodded.

“See you around, Columbo.” She laughed. And then she turned and headed back out into the woods, the verdant morning light seeming to close in around her and swallow her up.

Inside, the house was empty. I had no idea when the twins would be back from wherever they’d gone, so I grabbed my notebook and climbed into a lake-view window seat. From my perch, the water looked still as glass. If only I could stay in that
seat, staring at that lake forever. But I would need to go back eventually, and when I did, I would need a plan. I opened my notebook and got to work. I decided to devise a two-pronged attack. First I would talk to John, the art instructor. I hadn’t tried to grill a teacher yet, and I thought it best to be prepared. I even went so far as to write out a list of questions to ask him. It made me feel a bit like Lois Lane.

Next—and I felt this was a particularly ingenious plan—I would go to the library and make a list of anyone who had checked out books pertaining to woodworking, in case our killer happened to be an autodidact. I would then narrow down that list and continue my investigation. I closed my notebook and stared out across the lake, satisfied I’d done all I could for the time being. Now, I decided, I would enjoy my vacation.

The break turned out to be phenomenally pleasant. Mornings were spent lounging at the lake, afternoons reading in the woods, evenings eating, talking, watching movies or listening to music. Noel had a tremendous jazz collection on vinyl, and she did her best to fill in what she deemed the formidable holes in my music vocabulary. Helen was more relaxed than she ever was at school, and that in turn chilled me out. Chelsea would show up every once in a while to cadge a meal, standing over Noel while she cooked, picking bits and pieces out of the saucepan, or to coerce the twins into ordering pizza. She liked it with pineapple, she would remind them. And sometimes we’d see her down at the lake, stretched out on a rock in an uncharacteristically modest navy one-piece. I wondered if she was being completely honest with me about Iris and Helen. I
didn’t see why she would lie, but then, she was Chelsea Vetiver, and I never really knew what to make of her. The last night of break, she showed up in a faux-fur coat, demanding that Helen go into town with her to see a movie.

“It’s about scorpions, Helen.
Scorpions
. You know how I feel about scorpions.”

I couldn’t disguise my disappointment when Helen went with her.

“Don’t worry, Droopy Dog,” Noel said. “We don’t need my stupid sister to have fun.”

It was still early, so we grabbed a bottle of red wine and went out to the gazebo. It was a beautiful night—clear and light, warm enough that we didn’t have to wear sweaters, but with a slight crispness to the air that paired nicely with the cherrywood warmth of the wine. We drank out of her mother’s crystal goblets, though I noticed that Noel barely touched the cup to her lips. Since I didn’t really drink either, the whole thing seemed like a bizarre but necessary custom.

We talked for a while about school, about boys, about whether we were going to fail the eleventh grade because we’d basically made up a sport, and then Noel looked sick and exhausted, and I felt I finally needed to say something.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “But are you okay? I mean, about the eating thing.”

She smiled and looked at my hairline. “I’m fine, silly. Don’t worry. I just lose weight when I’m stressed, and things lately have been a little stressful.”

“Are you sure? I just want you to be okay.”

She took an actual sip of her wine and closed her eyes. She smiled, and for the first time since we’d found the body, Noel looked at peace.

“Do you know who Kuan Yin is?” she asked.

“No. Does she go to St. Bede’s?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “No, not at all. She’s a goddess. She protects women and children. You can call on her and ask for her protection, and when you die, she comes and holds you, and she takes away all your karmic debt. She just holds you, and you’re free. I’m not sure it would be too bad, being held like that.”

“I guess not,” I said, trying to keep the skepticism from my voice.

“Cally, do you ever think about it?”

“About what?”

“About suicide.”

“Whoa,” I said, nearly spilling my wine. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice soft and quiet. “I don’t think I’d ever do it, but in a way it does seem kind of noble, or beautiful, or something.”

“Noel, listen to yourself. Suicide is terrible. It’s not beautiful. It’s horrible. And not every culture thinks it’s noble or whatever. Catholics think suicides go to hell.”

“Lucky I’m not Catholic, then.”

“Well, whatever, it seems pretty stupid to me.”

“So if you do something horrible, you don’t think you should make amends for it?”

“Noel, what could you possibly have to make amends for?”

“Nothing, I guess.” She shrugged.

“You talk about this goddess coming to hold you, but what if there aren’t any goddesses to hold you? What if there’s just a cold black nothing?”

She opened her eyes and gave me a brilliant smile. “But there are goddesses. I know for a fact.”

“How do you know that?” I laughed.

“I’m serious,” she said. “I know someone who saw one.”

“Seriously?” I said, and took a sip of wine, the bitter warmth running through my veins. “Someone told you they saw a goddess?”

“Yes,” she said, laughing. “I swear.”

“Who?”

“I can’t say.”

“Oh my God, you have to tell me. I promise I won’t tell.”

She leveled her gaze at me. “Asta.”

“No. She must have been kidding.”

“She was serious. I was at her place borrowing a book and we got to talking and she was drinking, like, a lot of wine, and she told me that I was her favorite student and that she wanted to tell me a secret. See, I tell her lots of secrets.”

“You do?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve told her stuff I’ll never tell another living soul. I’ve told her terrible things. She’s like my father confessor. Anyway, I guess since I tell her all my secrets, she decided to tell me one. She said she’d never told anyone else.”

“Okay, so what was it?”

“Well, she said that the night that her daughter disappeared, she went out to the pond in the woods. It was midnight, and
there was a storm coming and the sky was strange and filled with magic, and she had to go and be out in it. Asta’s like that. She’s a nature person. So she lay there looking at the stars, and then a goddess came to her and whispered in her ear that there was an afterlife, and that she and her daughter would meet there when the time came to pass. It didn’t make any sense to her at the time, but when she went back to her house and the girls were missing, it was like, oh my God. She said whenever she gets upset about her daughter, she remembers what the goddess told her, and she feels better.”

I couldn’t speak. I felt like I’d been kicked in the teeth, my gums numb with shock. I needed to say something. I needed to get the knot out of my chest. I shook my head.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does. Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not what I mean. The night Asta’s daughter disappeared, she couldn’t have gone out to the pond.”

“Why not?”

“Because the whole forest was on fire.”

“Oh,” Noel said. “This was earlier, then, before the fire started.”

“It couldn’t have been. The fire started when it was still light out.”

“How do you know so much about the fire?” Noel asked, looking confused.

I froze for a moment, certain I’d revealed too much, but then I saw a way out. “I got curious. I read about it in some old papers in the library.”

If Helen had been there, she would have grilled me, but Noel accepted my explanation without question.

She took a large swig of her wine. “Oh,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. I guess I misunderstood. Sometimes Asta says some weird stuff. She gets things wrong when she’s drinking.”

“It’s kind of weird that she drinks around you. Isn’t that, like, not kosher?”

“I don’t know. Don’t judge her just because you don’t drink. She’s had a really tough life, you know,” she said, nodding to herself. “Even before her daughter died. She told me once that she was supposed to get a PhD. She was halfway through her dissertation when she got pregnant. The guy left her for her best friend, and she had to drop out of school to raise the baby. She never finished. Her whole life got derailed.”

“Wow,” I said, distracted. “That sucks.”

Noel nodded and started saying something about Freddy, but I couldn’t concentrate. Why would Asta make a mistake like that? Hadn’t that night been etched into her memory? Had she really gone out to the pond, like she’d said? If so, which night had it been, and while she was out there, had she left my sister and Laurel alone in the house?

I knew these were questions I couldn’t ask Asta, but if Asta had left them alone in the cottage, it really did change things. Maybe there was another reason the girls weren’t in their room the night they disappeared. Maybe they hadn’t left the house that night. Maybe they’d been taken.