Calling her again was pointless. I’d have bet all my money, a paltry sum unless I gave her Jack’s stash, she’d spin another tale. Trouble was, I wouldn’t be there to see it. Maybe she’d cooperate with Heron and Stevens, but the only proof I had linking her to Jack was a library book he’d taken by mistake, and a picture that no longer existed. The memory of the latter faded a little more with every passing day, to the point where I couldn’t be sure it had actually been him.
Maya wasn’t my only problem. Once I’d loaded Jack’s things into my car and got home, I realized I couldn’t keep them there. My space was limited, and unless I wanted to stumble over his stuff stacked on my living room floor every night, which I didn’t think my heart would withstand, I had to find another solution. I’d dug through the boxes and removed two of Jack’s favorite shirts and the framed photo of us, and driven across town to the cheapest storage facility I could find, where I rented the smallest space available on a rolling monthly basis.
Things only got worse the next day. I salted my dinner with sugar and forgot to pick up toilet paper, and as I was about to step out to the store, the doorbell rang.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Heron said after I’d let her and Stevens in, and they’d sat down on the sofa. She threw a glance at Stevens and gave him a slight nod as if to say, “Your turn.”
“We need to talk about a few things.” With the gruff delivery of his words there was an acute shift in the atmosphere. Jack had been missing for over a week now, but Stevens’s sympathy had turned into something else. He was so stoic and guarded, I couldn’t tell what it was. He spoke again. “How often have you used a motorboat?”
The question threw me, and I stumbled to reply. “What? Uh...never.”
“What about the night Jack disappeared?” Stevens said, raising his voice, and as I shook my head, Heron put a hand on his arm, which I interpreted as code for the rookie to take it easy.
“Did you rent or borrow a boat the night Jack went missing?” Heron said softly, sympathetically, as if she were talking to a friend. I knew that ruse. I’d seen it before.
“No, I was here, I told you. What’s this about?”
Stevens tapped his notepad with the tip of his pen. “Someone saw a boat out on the water the evening Jack went missing, down by the beach where we found his truck.” Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. The noise became louder and louder as the implication of his words landed on top of my shoulders.
“You think it was me?”
Heron shook her head. “That’s not what we said.”
“But now that you’ve brought it up, was it you?” Stevens said.
“No.” A tingly shiver ran down my spine and all the way back up again. “Of course not.”
Heron studied me, her expression still neutral. She slid a finger across her phone and turned it toward me, revealing a mug shot of a thirtysomething man with watery-blue eyes, blond spiky hair, and an L-shaped scar above his left eyebrow. “Do you know him?”
I leaned closer, examined the shape of his jaw, the way his lips curled into a half smirk... I put a hand to my throat. “It looks like the man who was at Jack’s place. I’m not a hundred percent certain...”
“This is Jason Whitmarsh,” Heron said. “His car matches the description you gave us.” She waited a few beats. “Lily, did you and Jack like playing cards?”
“Sure,” I said. “The two of us played together a lot. Jack always wins, though. He’s really good.”
“Do you play for money?” she continued.
“Hardly.” I let out a small laugh. “Jack always says my ‘tells’ are so obvious I might as well scrawl them over my face. I’m so bad, I’d never even win at Go Fish. Besides, we don’t have cash to lose and it would be weird betting against one another.”
“What about with others?” Stevens said impatiently. “Did Jack gamble with anyone?”
“No,” I said as I remembered the money hidden in the cookie tin. Could Jack have won it playing poker? Had he been gambling when he’d told me he was working late? How much more didn’t I know about him?
“No,” I said again, slowly shaking my head. “Not that I’m aware of. Why? Who’s Jason Whitmarsh?”
Heron leaned in and smiled but said nothing as she continued to observe me. When I thought I couldn’t take the silence any longer, she said, “Can you tell us about Dominic Martel?”
The air left my lungs as my body seemed to fold into itself, and I knew there was zero sense insisting I didn’t know who they were talking about. As much as I’d tried to run from my past, hide from it, forget about it, here it was, my dirtiest secret ready to be exposed.
“It was a long time ago,” I said. “And I really can’t see how it’s relevant.”
“Humor us.” Stevens sat back, arms crossed, digging in for the long run. Heron nodded at me, sending a polite but firm message they weren’t going anywhere until I explained what they probably already knew. If I said nothing, they’d continue focusing on me, which meant they weren’t doing anything to find Jack. If I refused to cooperate, their wasted time was my fault.
“I was eighteen,” I said, “and I was broke because I’d moved out from home.”
Moved out was the polite way of saying unceremoniously kicked out. It happened three months after I’d declared I still had no intention of following in my parents’ medical or banking footsteps but wanted to pursue an art degree instead. After spending a number of weeks trying to convince me otherwise, my parents sat me
