Chương 7
“There was.”
“I believe you.”
She looked at him.
He rubbed his thumb along the seam of his coat. “The case contained financial documents. Drafts of trust amendments. Property maps. Emails between Dad and someone named Owen Mercer.”
“The man in the photograph?”
“Maybe.”
“What do the emails say?”
“I don’t know. Detective Singh wouldn’t show me.”
“Does your mother know?”
“Malcolm told her the papers were evidence of Dad’s paranoia.”
“That’s convenient.”
Julian leaned forward. “The police found your mother’s medication.”
“In my bathroom.”
He winced. “I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds like someone searching my dead mother’s things.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nora picked at a loose thread on the motel blanket.
“Your father said the center tree mattered. The false crest had two pines. The real signet was planted in my closet. Whoever did that knew I had noticed the crest before I opened the casket.”
“Only everyone in the chapel knew.”
“They would need access to the signet and my apartment.”
“Malcolm.”
“Your mother.”
Julian’s face hardened.
Nora regretted nothing this time.
He stood and walked to the window. Cars moved through the gas station across the road, their headlights passing over his reflection.
“My mother has spent forty years protecting him,” he said.
“From what?”
“Everything. Bad investments. Lawsuits. His temper. His pride. Himself.”
“Maybe she got tired.”
“That doesn’t make her a murderer.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Saying the cruel part without technically saying it.”
Nora stood. “You came to my room.”
“Because I need your help.”
“Then stop defending people before we know what they did.”
He turned toward her. “She’s my mother.”
“And he’s your father.”
The words struck harder than Nora intended.
Julian looked down at the coat over his arm.
After a long silence, he said, “Owen Mercer lives in Deer Isle. Or he did last year. Dad’s emails mention a boatyard called North Channel Repair.”
Nora waited.
“I’m driving there tomorrow,” he said.
“The police told me not to leave the state.”
“Deer Isle is in Maine.”
“That is exactly the sort of clever answer people give before getting arrested.”
“Are you coming?”
She looked around the motel room, at the boxes stacked beneath the television and the maintenance tool she had bought that afternoon because the police still had hers.
She had no job. No home after the week ended. No reason to trust Julian, and no safer place to stand.
“What time?” she asked.
They left before dawn.
Julian drove a dark rental car because reporters had photographed his own vehicle at the hospital. He complained that the rental smelled like artificial cherries. Nora told him that was preferable to expensive leather and panic.
For the first hour, they barely spoke.
The road followed frozen coves and low woods silvered with old snow. Lobster boats sat on blocks in yards beside swing sets and rusting grills. At a gas station near Belfast, Julian bought coffee and two breakfast sandwiches. Nora removed the eggs from hers and placed them on his wrapper.
“You don’t eat eggs?” he asked.
“Not when they bounce.”
He looked at the pale rubbery disk.
“That’s fair.”
It was the first time she saw him smile without bitterness.
North Channel Repair occupied a strip of shoreline behind a chain-link fence. The office was a converted shipping container painted dark green. A handwritten sign on the door said CLOSED FOR FAMILY BUSINESS.
Julian knocked anyway.
No one answered.
They walked around the side. Beyond the sheds, a narrow pier extended into gray water. A man in orange coveralls was welding beneath the hull of a fishing boat.
Julian called out.
The man shut off the torch and lifted his visor.
“We’re looking for Owen Mercer.”
“You and other people.”
“What other people?”
The man climbed from beneath the boat. He was young, perhaps twenty-five, with a red beard and a guarded expression.
“Lawyer came yesterday. Police this morning.”
“Did they find him?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
The man looked at Nora. “Who are you?”
“Former household assistant.”
“That supposed to mean something?”
“No.”
Julian showed him a photograph of Arthur on his phone. The image had been captured from a news report and made Arthur look already dead.
“That’s my father.”
The welder’s expression changed. “Jesus.”
“You know him?”
“He came here last week.”
“With Owen?”
“Yeah.”
“What did they do?”
“Argued.”
“About what?”
“I wasn’t listening.”
The answer came too fast.
Nora looked toward the water. A gull stood on the pier rail worrying a piece of rope with its beak.
“What did Mr. Mercer repair?” she asked.
The welder frowned. “What?”
“The business is a repair yard. Was he a mechanic?”
“Bookkeeper. Part owner.”
“What did Arthur bring him?”
Julian glanced at her.
The welder lowered the visor onto his chest. “A set of old company ledgers. Paper ones. Owen used to work for Vale Marine before your dad shut half the yards down.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. “He didn’t shut them down.”
“Sure.”
“Where is Owen?”
“I told you.”
“No, you said he isn’t here.”
The man looked past them toward the road.
Nora saw the movement before she heard the approaching engine.
A black SUV slowed outside the fence.
“Did that lawyer drive one of those?” she asked.
The welder stepped backward.
Julian turned.
The SUV continued past without stopping.
The young man swore softly. “Owen has a camp on Little Deer. Off Eggemoggin Road. Blue roof, red door. I didn’t tell you.”
“Why is he hiding?” Julian asked.
“Because your family has money.”
The man pulled his welding visor down and returned beneath the boat.
Owen Mercer’s camp had no blue roof.
It had no roof at all on one side, where winter storms had peeled away shingles and tar paper. The red door hung open.
Julian parked in the muddy track.
“Stay here,” he said.
Nora unfastened her seat belt.
May you like
“That command probably works better in your office.”
“I don’t want you walking into something dangerous.”
