“That’s all I need,” she said.
“We always hoped things would change for him, but they never did.”
Peter had listened for half an hour, listened with the patience he’d learned to rely on in his years as a lawyer. People would tell you everything, if you let them. Sometimes they didn’t even realize they were doing it. Gordon Thorley’s sister-a brittle forty-something with fuchsia-painted fingernails and ill-fitting jeans-sat across from him at her kitchen table in the village of Sagamore, her home a cookie-cutter two-story just off Williston Road. A row of fluttering lace-curtained windows let in the late-afternoon sun and the sight of a couple of sea gulls dive-bombing toward the Cape Cod canal, a blue sliver in the distance. Crazy hot for May, but here the breeze kept tempers down and early-bird Cape tourists happy on the beach.
Doreen Thorley Rinker was not a tourist. And right now, she was not happy.
Peter had to tell her about the Treesa Caramona murder, explaining it was in the early stages, her brother innocent till proven guilty, trying to be reassuring. There were rules about dealing with defendants, all carefully spelled out in the canons. Dealing with families was different. Their agendas, their prejudices, and even their birth order, dictated how a lawyer would most effectively present the facts, as well as the possibilities. Doreen was Gordon Thorley’s big sister, maybe ten years older. Now she was still taking care of him, either from devotion or from duty.
“When he left the note, we just didn’t know what to do.” She looked at him, ran her fingers through both sides of her not-completely-gray hair, fluffed it back into place. “He was confessing for the family? Did he mean-Carley Marie Schaffer’s family? Why would he care about them?”
“Did he know her? Carley Marie? Or her family?”
“God knows,” Doreen said. She stared at her coffee mug as if searching for answers in the fading flowers on the china pattern, then looked at him again, frowning. “I’m not trying to be evasive. I really don’t know.”
“Maybe he meant-for your family,” Peter said. “Could that be?”
“My family? The family is me and this house and my kids-they’re out at the beach now since they both work nights-and a cousin or two, who knows where. Our parents bought this house, some years ago, and left it half to me and my husband, half to Gordon, when they passed. Then my husband passed, too. So much for the dream house on the Cape. A lot of the time, Gordon was-well.”
“In prison.” Might as well lay the cards on the table.
She nodded, maybe not wanting to say the word. “Not that he was ever here much. He was what, nineteen? And I was twenty-nine. Nothing in common, you know, at those ages. I was always told he got in with the wrong crowd. But we were willing-happy-to bring him home after all that time. We were so relieved he was paroled. I mean, he’d just been duped into that robbery, had no idea that-anyway, like I said, we were willing to help him start over. He’d actually been a pretty good kid in high school. Played baseball, the whole bit. But he wanted his own place. Insisted he wanted to start over on his own.”
She shrugged one shoulder, a thin strap showing under her sleeveless blouse. “Who were we to say? Who knows what he even does. That’s why this is so upsetting, you know? What if he-”
She took a deep breath. “Maybe it was better he wasn’t living here. You think? Hard to believe he could kill any-”
“I saw his apartment.” Peter saw she was spiraling herself into fear and panic, worrying about imaginary terrors. “He’s a talented photographer.”
“Really?” Doreen seemed surprised. She settled her shoulders. “Anyway. That note he left. I mean-the Lilac Sunday killer? Gordon? The Lilac Sunday killer? And was going to confess? I just saw my whole life, everything I always believed-I don’t know. Crumbling. Like everything I ever thought suddenly wasn’t true anymore.”
She looked at Peter, as if he could provide some explanation.
“My little brother. Maybe I never really knew him? But family is family. We don’t have much, as you can see. And the house payments are-well. We may not be able to keep the place. Who knows? The bank knows, I guess. We’ll survive. Anyway, least I could do was hire my brother a lawyer. Who else would do it? I found you online, under criminal defense. Now you’ve gotten more than you bargained for.”
She examined her coffee cup again. “I have, too. I’m sorry you came all the way out here. We can’t afford you.”
Peter’d heard every sob story in the book, he figured, the down-and-outers, the misfits, the misunderstood. The people who had made wrong decisions, or had wrong decisions made for them. How did people wind up where they were? Could they ever change? He couldn’t help but be fascinated by it, even knowing the slices of life he heard in his cases were, by dint of his profession, going to be the oddities, the outliers, and the mistakes. A criminal defense attorney hardly ever heard a story of joy or success or redemption. Well, sometimes redemption.
“Mrs. Rinker? Let’s talk about the money some other time, okay? I’m involved now, and we’ll see where it goes. So confirming what you told me-you never heard Gordon speak of Carley Marie Schaefer. Or Treesa Caramona.”
Doreen nodded. “Yes. I mean-no. He never said those names. To me.”
“To anyone? Anyone you know?” Sometimes specificity was a good thing. Other times it sounded like evasion.
“No, not to anyone I know.”
“The note was a surprise to you.”
Doreen nodded again. “On the kitchen table.” She pointed with one finger. “Right there.”
“How’d Gordon get in to leave it?”
Doreen smiled, just barely, and seemed to look over his shoulder and out into the past. “There’s been a key in the third pansy pot from the end of the front walk ever since we were kids. At our old house. I did the same thing here. Guess he remembered.”
“I’ll need to see the note, of course. Things are not always what they seem on the surface. It may hold some clue or meaning we didn’t understand initially. Even a fingerprint, you know? Could be someone else’s. Happy to make a copy, certainly, and you’ll get the original back as soon as we find out what’s really going on here.”
Doreen blinked at him, looked at the ceiling.
“I burned it,” she said.
Maybe Jane was trustworthy. Lizzie’s back complained from the ten minutes she’d spent leaning into the intercom speaker, getting her ear as close as she could. She’d told Stephanie to leave the switch open. And, listening, she learned Jane hadn’t divulged that Liz had given her any customer names.
What did it mean? Lizzie leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, considering. Maybe you could trust reporters after all. Jane Ryland, at least. If Ackerman would do the interview she’d heard Jane request, Lizzie’d be off the hook and she could go back to her real life.
A life which was getting more complicated by the second.
She’d be seeing Aaron “lata.” He hadn’t called yet to give her specifics. What might he want to do? What might he be thinking?
She plucked at her navy blazer, imagined she saw a crumb or two of sugar from that chocolate chip pastry. He had completely knocked her out.
That’s what worried her.
She popped her research back to full screen on her computer monitor. That chocolate pastry. She’d been woozy. Had trouble remembering what happened, exactly. Sort of. She’d attributed it to-well, lust. But thinking about it later, in a clinical moment at the bathroom mirror, she admitted it didn’t add up. It didn’t.
She’d searched “date rape drugs.” And checked off the symptoms, yes, yes, yes, one by one. She still had the headache. Could he possibly have drugged her? Why?