“The same way you did.”
“He watched the house?”
“He asked everyone he talked with about the words by the door, the inscription that’s carved there. Everyone told him they’d not seen the carving until we were gone, and he believed that it had been left as an epitaph. He was right, of course.”
She lifted her hand and waved at the eastern sky, now beginning to glow red with the rising sun. “Let’s walk up top, okay? I loved to sit up there and watch the sunrise. It’s just gorgeous.”
She moved without waiting for my response, walked around to the side of the hill and started up, following a flagstone path that was now almost completely submerged in weeds. I followed.
When we got to the top of the hill, she moved over to the old well house and leaned against its side, facing the sun. Again I marveled at how completely hidden the house was, nothing but grass and soil evident beneath our feet, only the lip of a stone wall indicating the drop-off on the other side where the windows looked out on the pond. I walked to within a few feet of her and stood silently, arms folded, waiting. She seemed at ease, and for a while she just looked off at the sunrise and did not speak. When she finally broke the silence, she didn’t bother to turn around.
“How many days have you been watching?”
“Quite a few.”
She nodded. “This was going to be my last visit, you know. It will have to be. The house will have new owners soon. I can’t very well come by then.”
“If you know everything that’s happened, why didn’t you announce yourself, prove that you’re still alive and keep the home? Why would you let it be sold?”
She didn’t answer.
“Did you kill him?” I said.
Now she turned, wounded. “Of course I didn’t kill him. Joshua? I loved him so much. So very dearly.”
“Then what are you hiding from?”
She stepped away from the well house and dropped down to sit in the grass, cross-legged. It was tall grass, rising well above her waist, but she settled into it comfortably and pushed her sleeves up on her forearms. She was wearing dark jeans and a gray fleece jacket, and there were simple silver bracelets on both wrists. She had to be near fifty now, but she looked like a college student settling down outside of a dormitory. If she weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds I would’ve been stunned, and her skin was weathered but still smooth, every thin wrinkle looking as if it belonged and added something that you’d miss otherwise.
“Are you going to continue standing?” she said, looking up at me. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
So I sat in the grass with her, felt the moisture of day-old rain leave the ground and soak through my jeans, and watched the sun rise behind her as she told me the story.
Alexandra’s life was shaped very much by her father’s, by the world of crime and violence that had surrounded her childhood. The money he’d left was something she’d viewed as an embarrassment at first and then decided to reinvest into the reentry program. Her vision for Whisper Ridge as a sort of work farm had not received the funding or support it needed. She decided to operate at a smaller level and use success to grow the operation in the future. It was at this point that she began to feel her husband’s resistance.
“Joshua was not a direct man in times of conflict,” she said. “He wouldn’t come out and tell me flatly that he didn’t want to open our home to this, but I knew it was the case, and I pushed ahead anyhow. I thought he believed in the ideals, and that time would take care of the rest. It was a selfish thing to do, maybe. I’ve wondered about that a lot, and I think that it probably was, but at the time I could not imagine . . . I’m sure you know I could not imagine what would come.”
What came was an increasingly troubled marriage. Alexandra’s version of events meshed well with John Dunbar’s. She described Joshua as growing withdrawn and distrustful. Then Parker Harrison was hired, a move that exacerbated the problem at Whisper Ridge.
“My relationship with Parker was very close,” she told me. “I’d say that of all of them, of course, but not to the same level. Parker and I, we were similar spirits. I found his story truly tragic.”
“I believe the family of his victim would agree,” I said.
She stopped speaking and looked at me with a frown that was more sad than disapproving.
“To say one is not to dismiss the other,” she said. “Can you understand that?”
“Can I hear the rest of the story?”
“As I said, my relationship with Parker was special. We were so close. I think that fueled the resentment that was already in Joshua.”
“You say your relationship with Harrison was special. Was it also sexual?”
“No, no, no. Absolutely not. Although during the first six months Parker was with us, Joshua’s personality changed. I now understand this was when he was in contact with the FBI and being pressured to inform on my brother, but I didn’t back then.”
“It wasn’t the FBI,” I said. “It was one retired agent with some bad ideas.”
“Nevertheless, my husband was withdrawing, and I finally began to understand just how much damage had been done. Then we began to discuss who would replace Parker, and Joshua told me that he wanted to do the interviews and make the offer, which was something I’d always handled in the past. I was confused by that but agreed, because I was so happy to see his enthusiasm returning. Then he decided on Salvatore Bertoli, who was very far from the profile we’d agreed upon at the start.”
“You didn’t know Bertoli was associated with your brother?”
“No. Salvatore didn’t know who I was, either, because my name was Cantrell, and my brother and I were not close. We saw each other, but only rarely, and we did not discuss his . . . associates. All of that is in the past, though. My brother’s crimes. He served two years, and when he got out his life changed. He kept no ties. Many who would’ve posed the greatest problems to him were in prison themselves, and the others accepted his desire to step away. My brother has not been involved with a crime in fifteen years.”
“There are police who would dispute that,” I said. “I’ve met some of them.”
Her arms unfolded and she leaned forward. “What proof did they show? What evidence? What did they tell you that was current, not historic?”
“Nothing,” I said, and then, as the satisfaction crossed her face, “but some of those
The satisfaction disappeared, and she dropped her eyes again. “I’m sure that’s true. All I can tell you is that he’s not been involved in anything criminal in years, that he’s led a life that benefits others. He’s a businessman now, a generous one. You should see the charities—”
“All due respect,” I said, “I’m not here to evaluate your brother’s tithing history. I’m glad you don’t think he’s killed anyone lately. I’d agree that’s progress, but it’s not what I’m interested in.”
I expected that would get a rise, some defensiveness, but instead she just considered me calmly. It was a gaze that made me uncomfortable, as if I fit neatly into a mold she’d been studying her whole life and understood well. When she began to speak again it was without rancor, leaving the subject of her brother behind.
“I was losing trust in my husband and had none in Salvatore. I felt bad things coming into my home, and so I asked Parker to stay. I trusted him. That’s the decision that put Joshua over the edge. I didn’t see it at the time, of course, but apparently he’d had misgivings and was being bullied along by that FBI agent, Dunbar. When I said I wanted Parker to stay, though, it incensed him, and he decided to go ahead with it. The house became a very ugly place for a while, a distrustful, silent place.”
“I’ve talked to Dunbar,” I said, “and he said he conceived the whole thing because he is certain that Bertoli witnessed your brother killing a man named Johnny DiPietro.”
“That’s not true.”
“According to your brother.”
“No. According to Salvatore.”
“What?”
“He told Parker,” she said, “that he understood what Joshua was trying to do and that whoever had put him up to it was absolutely wrong, didn’t understand who they should be after, but that it was someone who wouldn’t
