As a boy he’d understood only that Kelly had left for her own unexplained reasons. The possibility of her being dead never once entered his mind. As a result he unquestioningly carried this version of events forward over the years, continuing to see her disappearance through the optimistic gaze of youth, determined to protect at least that piece of childhood from the harsher scrutiny of his adult eye.
Even now a particle of hope, a relic from his days with her – the part of life before his father died when it seemed easy to keep dark terrors at bay – insisted she couldn’t have been murdered. But his clinical self, trained to stare at the worst possible truths and not flinch, knew differently.
Only in his memory did Kelly still gleefully win at Monopoly, stride through wildlife parks, and send sizzlers across strike zones.
Flashbacks of her crowded in… she arrived to baby-sit him wearing overalls… they made some fudge… he put chocolate freckles all over her face, and they tied her blond hair in two ponytails with red ribbon, like Daisy Mae’s from his comic books…
He started to sprint.
“Feels like I’m stepping on dog shit,” the man who walked between him and Dan complained. His leather soles kept slipping on the wet mush of fallen leaves that coated the sidewalk. “Is it always so soggy up here?” His breath hung white in the mist, and his frizzy gray hair glistened from the moisture it picked up from the air.
“Pretty much, this time of year,” Dan said. “We’ve already had a few dumps of snow, but the rain washed it away. Still, good shoes are a must.”
Mark’s own hiking boots had no such traction problems.
Their visitor, Detective William Everett, a cold-case specialist from the NYPD, shivered and dug his hands deeper into the pockets of a light tan raincoat. Short in stature, his craggy face had the pasty gray complexion of a smoker, and he chewed gum about sixty times a second.
Reformed, Mark figured, recognizing a chiclet that the man had popped in his mouth as a common nicotine substitute. But he’d quit too late. A mewing wheeze accompanied every word he said, and his chest heaved from walking up the gentle incline.
“Must be nice when you can see everything, though,” the detective added, peering into a fog so thick it made the houses along the road appear to be little more than looming gray cubes. “Or is this as good as it gets around here? Christ, you need a fuckin’ foghorn just to take a hike.”
A hike? Not with him along, or they’d end up carrying him. “You caught us on a bad day,” Mark said, slowing his step so as not to set too fast a pace for their visitor. The man looked fifty going on seventy, and the loose semicircles sagging from under his eyes suggested a lifetime of being tired.
“Still, even like this the air’s a whole lot cleaner than in New York,” Everett continued. As if to prove the point, he inhaled deeply, only his effort ended in a paroxysm of coughing that doubled him over. He spit on the pavement, then, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, added, “So tell me about your town. This is the playground for the horsey set, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” Mark replied. “We’re above the money belt.”
“The what?”
“The wealth. It’s more down around Saratoga.”
“So the woman was dumped far away from where she lived?”
“Not too far. The Braden estate is only nine miles south.”
“But you said the money-”
“Every town along the railroad took a flyer on being great someday,” Dan cut in. “Saratoga Springs made it. Hampton Junction ended up a leftover water stop from the heyday of steam locomotives. Our roots are blue-collar, not blue-blood, but we’re proud of it.” He had a way of sounding defensive when dealing with outside officials, whatever their stripe. His speech would unwittingly elongate into a bit of a drawl, and, with his portly frame stuffed into a fleece-lined bomber jacket that strained at the zipper, he’d come off like a cross between Rod Steiger and a Rotary Club booster.
Mark figured the awkwardness stemmed from Dan being an outsider himself. As far as the locals saw such matters, a person could move to Hampton Junction, live and work in the place for twenty years, yet still not be “from here.” Since Dan had arrived from Syracuse a mere decade ago, the townspeople considered him a newcomer, and, as he confided to anyone who would listen, it bugged the hell out of him.
“We tend to be more a lunch bucket crowd, our inhabitants mostly descended from train people,” he continued, proprietary as any native son. “The crystal-and-silver bunch generally drew the line at building their big estates twenty miles south of this area. If it weren’t for the fog, you’d see clapboard houses are the preferred style. As for all our vacationers and weekenders, they can’t afford luxury addresses close to the horse race set either. You’ll find them squirreled away in cottages and cabins all through the woods. Of course, there are exceptions, places where people have gone all out-”
“The Bradens were among those,” Mark said, wanting to rein in the conversation closer to the business at hand.
“Really?” The New York detective briefly pondered the fact. “Now why would a family that powerful want to be away from their own kind and off by themselves?”
Mark shrugged.
“I don’t know their reasons for sure,” Dan said, “I suppose it’s because they’re what I’d call quiet money. They like to enjoy it with their friends, not show it off.” Dan’s voice had become normal again, the drawl gone and his manner casual, as if nothing had happened. But authority had been established and boundaries marked – Dan’s way of trying to make himself appear an insider, at least to the eyes of a visitor.
“What about here?” Everett said, nodding to a massive shape that emerged from the gloom at the end of the street. “Is this more quiet money?”
“The quietest there is,” said Dan. “Welcome to Blair’s Funeral Home.”
Even in the mist the structure appeared substantially bigger than anything they’d passed. Stepping through an elaborate wrought-iron gate guarding the entrance, they followed a well-raked path that meandered up a sloping lawn. What little foliage remained on the surrounding trees glowed a muted orange, like a bed of coals smothered in ash. As they drew closer the three-story mansion took on a warm yellow hue, and white railings of a long wraparound porch became easily visible. Capping the structure, a cupola with a black-shingled roof pointed upward like a witch’s hat.
Mark grimaced at the thought of what awaited them inside.
Everett gave a soft whistle, “Christ, it’s bigger than Gracie Mansion, where our mayor lives. Same paint job, though, except this one isn’t peeling… his is. Death must pay good here.”
Dan chuckled. “Not from us locals. We live forever. But the part-timers, the outsiders, after ruining their health with big-city stress and pollution, they all want plots where they spent their summers, sort of the ultimate vacation. Mr. Blair can hardly keep up.”
They passed a gleaming Cadillac hearse parked at the head of a curved driveway. A haphazard cluster of lesser vehicles reached all the way out to the street. Mark had suggested they walk the block from Dan’s office so as not to add a police car to the mix. He shipped most of the local dead here, and in exchange for the business got to keep his coroner cases in the refrigerator locker alongside the corpses slated to be embalmed. But, as old man Blair always reminded him, he had to keep his comings and goings out of sight and not disturb the viewings upstairs.
Mark led the way around to the back door, to which he had the key. They went down a wooden staircase and passed through a dimly lit hallway stacked with empty caskets. Some had sticker prices on them. There was a cloying sweetness in the air, offset by a hint of something sour.