The Bay at Midnight

of Ethan’s creations.

“How are you doing this morning?” he asked, putting two slices of bread in the toaster.

“I think I’m okay,” I said slowly, like someone who had just sustained an injury and was trying out the muscle to be sure it wasn’t sprained.

“Do you want me to drive you?” he asked.

“Just give me directions and I’ll be fine,” I said with false bravado. I liked the idea of him coming with me, but I was sure he had work to do.

He jotted a phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “This is my cell number,” he said. “I’m stopping over at a job this morning, but let me know when you’re done and I’ll meet you back here.”

I nodded. The toast was ready and I carried it and the bacon onto the sunporch while he followed with two cups of coffee. The jalousies were wide-open, and the reedy scent of the canal, the swift current, and the boats cutting through the water all combined to take hold of my heart and squeeze. I nibbled at the toast, my appetite gone as I tried to carry on a conversation about the job Ethan had to check on that morning. I had made it through half a slice of toast and an inch of bacon by the time I needed to leave, and as I headed out the door, I wished that I’d accepted his offer to go with me.

The room I was taken to at the Point Pleasant Police Department was small and bare, and there was nothing to look at other than the faces of my two questioners. I sat on a hard, straightbacked chair across a table from Lieutenant Michael Jaffe from the Prosecutor’s Office and a very young, blond detective, Grace Engelmann, from the Police Department. They each had a notepad in front of them, and a tape recorder rested on the table between us, a thick file of papers next to it.

There was a little small talk at first, designed, I thought, to put me at ease.

“It’s changed a lot since you were a kid here, huh?” Lieutenant Jaffe asked after he’d introduced himself and the detective. He was a handsome man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a youthful face.

“Yes,” I said. “I haven’t been back since my sister’s death.”

“Really,” he said, as if that surprised him. “I didn’t come here until ninety-two myself, so I’ve only known it the way it is now. What sort of changes have you noticed?”

He had to know how the area had changed, whether he’d lived here or not, but I figured I would play along with the putting-me-at-ease game.

“Well,” I said, “there were a lot of summer people back then. And far fewer houses. The bulkhead is different. That new bridge wasn’t there.”

He frowned. “The new bridge?”

“Over the canal,” I said, and he and Detective Engelmann both laughed.

“We call that the old bridge now,” he said. “It really has been a long time for you, hasn’t it?”

I smiled. I could hear the tape running in the small machine resting on the table.

“You know,” he said, “my wife and I love your books.”

“Thank you.” I was tempted, as I always was, to ask which book he liked best, but decided against it, in case he was simply making conversation and had not read them at all. The last thing I wanted to do was make him uncomfortable. Detective Engelmann wrote something down on her pad. What I had said to prompt her to do that, I couldn’t imagine.

“How did you happen to go into mystery writing?” Lieutenant Jaffe asked.

I always got that question. I had a long answer designed for speaking engagements and a short answer designed for times like this.

“I loved Nancy Drew as a kid,” I said. “And I loved writing. So it seemed a natural fit.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, as the detective continued writing on her pad. “You know, I remember reading an article about you in some…I don’t know, probably some magazine or newspaper, where you said that when you were a child, you entertained your friends by making up mysterious events and pretending they’d occurred in your neighborhood.”

Were we still in the small-talk mode, or did I detect a subtle shift in the tone of his questioning? “That’s true,” I said.

“And then there was the real mystery…the ultimate mystery in your own family,” he said.

I was confused for a moment and must have looked it.

“The murder of your sister,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yes.” I shifted in the hard, armless chair. I wanted to cut to the chase. I wanted to tell him and the so-far-silent Detective Engelmann that I’d always suspected Ned was guilty and that, in my opinion, that was what he’d been alluding to in his letter. But this was not my show, and I waited for the next question.

“What can you tell us about George Lewis?” he asked.

The thought of George brought an rueful smile to my lips.

“He was a teaser,” I said. “I spent quite a bit of time with him and his sister, Wanda. I don’t think he knew who his father was, and I’m not sure what happened to his mother. He and Wanda had been raised by a cousin, Salena. I think his family was very poor, but they were close to each other and there was a lot of affection between them.” I remembered the look of daggers George had sent my father the day Daddy came over to drag me home. “He had a tough facade and was probably pretty streetwise.”I added, “Although I’m only guessing. I never actually saw that side of him. It makes me so angry…so upset…to know that he went to prison for something he didn’t do.”

The lieutenant nodded. “I imagine the person who’s responsible for your sister’s murder carries a lot of guilt around for letting the wrong person go to prison.”