Everlasting (12 page)

Quietly, so quietly that at first he thought it was the whine of the wind, the voices began to murmur again. He hurried to the top, reached through the opening, and pulled down the heavy door, slamming it closed. The sound stopped. Taking a deep breath, steadying himself, he backed down the ladder, feeling for each rung, having no light to guide him.

When he reached the bottom, he searched for his flashlight. He thought it was in his backpack, but he couldn’t find it in the darkness. Ivy had left him a wristwatch with a face that glowed. Where was it? As his mind darted from
thought to thought, the sound of the voices came again. They were barely audible, rising between the words of his thoughts. But they grew loud, as loud as his thoughts, then louder still.

Tristan held his hands to his ears, but he couldn’t muffle the voices. Scrabbling over the rough wood floor on hands and knees, searching for his backpack, he found the edge of the trapdoor and pulled it up. He climbed down the ladder to the church.

For a moment he thought he had escaped the voices. All he heard was the wind rattling the leaded-glass windows. The rain had eased and the sky had lightened. It was almost dawn, he realized, then froze. In the gray light a shadow shaped like a dark wing swooped past a window.
A tree branch
, he told himself,
a branch dragging leaves, nothing more.

Then the voices started again. He knew this wasn’t a dream. He was fully awake and he could hear them, though not the words. It was maddening the way they grew increasingly loud but no more clear.

“Leave me alone!” Tristan cried out.

They seemed to draw energy from his anger, but he couldn’t help himself, and cried out again. “Leave me!” A tide of voices rushed toward him. He dropped to his knees. “Help me, God. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. Lacey, Lacey I need you.”

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, WITH THE CAPE WASHED TO A
sparkle from the previous night’s storms and her work done at the inn, Ivy set out for a farm stand on a road that ran between 6A and the highway.

Last night, after being spooked by the unexpected image of Gregory’s face gazing at her from her laptop screen, Ivy had figured out how the “haunting” had occurred. Someone—Beth—had connected Ivy’s screen saver to a file that contained only photographs of Gregory. When Ivy saw that the new file had been created from her family
photos, carefully cropped and enlarged, it felt as personal and creepy as having things in her bureau drawer rooted through.

Doing her best to shake off that feeling, she’d done a search for Alicia Crowley and discovered that Luke’s old friend was spending her summer working at her grandparents’ farm stand on Cape Cod. Alicia’s Facebook page had a link to the business’s website.

Arriving at Crowleys’ Farm Stand at three thirty on Sunday afternoon, Ivy squeezed onto its sandy lot next to cars packed for a return to the mainland. The white building had an overhanging roof that invited you into its coolness. Risers across the building’s front supported buckets of bright flowers, baskets brimming with colorful vegetables and fruit, and bunches of herbs. A chalkboard next to the building’s screen door promised breads, pies, jams, cheeses, and comb honey inside.
Bread
was crossed out, the words
more tomorrow
scrawled next to it; Ivy guessed that it would be worth coming back for.

A white-haired man with sunglasses looped around his neck helped customers outside. Ivy found Alicia inside, working a cashbox. A woman with silver hair was standing with hands on hips, listening to a customer and nodding pleasantly—
Alicia’s grandmother
, Ivy thought. She figured the farm stand was like Aunt Cindy’s inn, the kind of place people came to back year after year.

Picking up a handbasket, waiting for a chance to approach Alicia, Ivy selected a jar of strawberry jam and a wedge of cheese, thinking she could add them to Tristan’s stock. Between customers, Alicia glanced at her, then looked back a second time as if Ivy looked vaguely familiar.

Ivy wandered outside, added a pint of blueberries to her basket, and brushed her fingers against fragrant bundles of rosemary, marjoram, and sage. After ten minutes of going in and out, she gave up trying to catch Alicia alone and got in line to pay.

“Hi, Alicia,” she said, placing her purchases on the wood table.

“Hi.” Alicia’s dark hair was pulled up on her head, tendrils curling away from a clasp decorated with wampum beads. Her hazel eyes held a puzzled look as if she couldn’t quite place Ivy.

“I saw you at Strawberry Days. I was with a friend. A really good friend.”

Alicia suddenly remembered—Ivy saw it in the widening of her eyes. She looked past Ivy toward her grandmother, who was busy with a customer. “Oh! How is . . . he?”

“Okay. I know I said I’d call you,” Ivy went on, taking a chance, hoping Alicia would play along. “But things have been really busy at the inn—hardly getting any time off.”

Alicia nodded slightly.

“It’s awesome finding someone else who’s going to
URI,” Ivy added, glad she had memorized Alicia’s Facebook page. “Maybe we could get together, go on an ice-cream run or something.”

Alicia took Ivy’s money and quickly calculated her change. “I’m due a break. Give me five minutes. Do you like snowballs?”

“Love them.”

“They sell them down the road.”

Ivy put her purchases in her car. A few minutes later, she met Alicia at the edge of the lot.

Alicia pointed the way and said nothing more until they were well out of earshot of the farm stand. “How is Luke? How is he
really
?”

“The last time I saw him, scared.”

“Where is he?”

“Hiding.” Although Bryan had said Alicia would never betray Luke, Ivy didn’t want to give out information that Alicia might unwittingly pass on to the wrong person.

“When did you last see him?” Alicia asked.

“When the police tried to arrest him, the night after you ran into him at the carnival.”

Alicia turned to her. “I didn’t tell them anything!”

Ivy nodded. “I know.”

“I read the news articles,” Alicia said. “I’ve always been afraid he’d end up hurt, lying in the middle of nowhere, with no who cared about him there to help.”

“Alicia, who would have beaten up Luke that way?”

“I have no idea.”

Ivy wondered if Alicia was being as cautious as she was in admitting what she knew.

“But as his close friend, you must’ve known who his enemies were.” Ivy stopped so that Alicia would stop, wanting to look at the girl’s face and read whether she was being truthful.

A small pucker formed above each dark eyebrow. “I didn’t think he had any real enemies.”

Ivy sighed and continued walking. “That’s what Bryan said.”

They had reached the snowball stand and spoke no more about Luke till they sat down at a rough-planked table, away from others who were crunching on the syrupy ice.

“Bryan Sweeny gave you my name,” Alicia guessed. “He was best friends with Luke. I don’t know this for sure, but I think he helped Luke escape.”

Ivy spooned up a mouthful of frozen emerald chips. “He did.”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t . . . ?”

“Help.” Alicia’s voice shook. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought that if I talked to the police, I’d make him look guiltier.” She chopped at her snowball with her plastic spoon, but didn’t eat any.

“What was it like, his relationship to Corinne?” Ivy asked.

“Even before Corinne broke it off, there were big problems between them. I hated the way she treated him. When she finally dumped him, he was devastated. She hurt him badly.” Alicia shook her head. “I found it so hard to believe.”

“That he would love her, or that he would kill her?”

“Both.”

Ivy watched a dribble of pink syrup run over Alicia’s fingers.

“I couldn’t understand why he loved her,” Alicia went on, “but knowing how much he did, I couldn’t believe he’d kill her.”

“What if he didn’t?” Ivy asked.

Alicia stared at her. “
Didn’t kill her?
What did he tell you? Does he remember that night?” Her words were quick with hope.

“He doesn’t remember anything,” Ivy said. “But both you and Bryan, two people who knew him better than anyone, can’t believe he killed her.”

“I was with Luke the night Corinne died.”

“You were?” Ivy hadn’t seen that in any of the accounts. “I thought he was home alone and drinking.”

“He was drinking,” Alicia acknowledged.

“Drunk?”

“He was getting there when I arrived, but he wasn’t when I left him.” Alicia paused, eating several spoonfuls of her melting snowball. “You see, we were always friends. When my family moved away from River Gardens two years ago, my parents forbade me to go back. They’d been trying for years to get enough money to get out of there and put me and my younger sisters in a better school. But I found ways to sneak back, and then, last fall, when I moved into my college dorm, it was easy to slip away and see him. We had always talked. He listened to me, and I listened to him.”

Alicia blinked and turned her face away. Ivy suspected that Bryan was right: Alicia had been in love with Luke. “Luke was lucky to have you.”

Alicia pressed her lips together and nodded, her face still averted from Ivy. Ivy waited quietly, wishing she knew her well enough to hug her.

“Sorry,” Alicia murmured.

“It’s okay,” Ivy assured her and stirred the spearmint slush in her cup. When Alicia faced her again, Ivy asked, “Doing all right?”

“Yeah.” Alicia took a deep breath, then said, “The night Corinne died, Luke called me early in the afternoon. He was really down. I talked to him again at five. I had a paper due, but I knew he needed me. I picked up subs on the way and made strong coffee when I got there.
We talked and talked. I thought we were getting somewhere, that he was starting to accept that he and Corinne weren’t meant to be.

“Then good old Corinne sent him a text. I swear, if she had been within reach,
I
would have strangled her. But she was at Four Winds Farm, Corinne and Luke’s romantic meeting place. It’s an orchard outside of Providence—closed through the winter.

“So Corinne wanted him back?” Ivy asked.

Alicia shrugged. “She just said she wanted to see him. He told me he wasn’t meeting her—he wasn’t even going to reply. He thanked me for helping him. I thought he was going to be all right. We watched TV for an hour, and at eleven o’clock, I went back to the dorm to work on my paper.”

“So the text came in around ten?”

“Just after,” she said. “Just after
Law & Order
began.” Her eyes filled with tears. “There was a lot of alcohol in the apartment—there always was, except when he ran out of money—but I thought he was going to be all right.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

“The next day I heard that Corinne had been strangled at Four Winds, and the police were searching for Luke. It took them two days to catch up with me and ask questions. I told them nothing. Anything I might say—him drinking and getting a text from her—would have made it worse for him.
And they had already made up their minds. ‘No reason to flee if you’re not guilty,’ they kept telling me.”

Ivy leaned forward on her elbows. “Murderers aren’t the only people who have reasons to flee.”

“I want to believe that. In my heart I do. But maybe I’m being naïve.” Alicia shook her head, then glanced at her watch. “I have to get back.”

As they walked to the farm stand, she gave Ivy the names of people who knew Corinne and Luke, as well as tips on approaching them.

“Corinne’s gran thought she could do no wrong, but she also had a huge soft spot for Luke. Corinne’s mother is a real head case—used to compete with Corinne, dressed like she was a teenager. The stepfather’s name is Hank Tynan. He works for a sedan service—picks up executive types and drives them places. If you talk to him, do it when other people are around. He has a temper. Corinne told Luke that her stepfather used to hit her. She could have been making it up, but even before I heard that, I didn’t trust the man. There’s something about the way he looks at you. He and Luke never got along.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Before parting, they exchanged contact information.

“One more thing,” Alicia called, after Ivy had already started across the lot to her car.

Ivy turned around. When Alicia didn’t continue, Ivy walked back to her.

“If you talk to Luke, would you tell him I’d like to see him?” Alicia asked.

Ivy hesitated.

“Just one more time,” Alicia said quietly, her eyes pleading with Ivy. “Just one more time.”

TRISTAN LAY BACK ALONG THE LENGTH OF THE PEW
, hands behind his head, staring upward, his eyes tracing the gothic lines of the church’s ceiling. The voices he’d heard at dawn had stopped after he had called to Lacey and prayed. But he had a bad feeling it wasn’t as easy as that.

He looked at his watch, now fastened securely around his wrist. Four ten p.m. It had been almost twelve hours since he’d called to Lacey, and she still hadn’t come. For a moment he worried that something bad had happened to her. Then he worried that she’d miraculously accomplished
her mission and gone on to the Light without saying good-bye.

“Stop sighing.”

At the sound of her voice, Tristan quickly sat up.

Lacey, in the traditional pose of Buddha, wearing a rosary necklace, earlocks, and kufi, gazed back at him from the front of the church.

“Interdenominational,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Impressive.”

She studied him for a long minute, then unfolded her legs and jumped to her feet. “You’re not grouchy, are you? I came as soon as I could.”

He stood up slowly. “It’s no big deal.”

She walked closer, peering up into his face. “Oh, really.
Lacey, Lacey, I need you!
I was sure that was you sounding totally desperate, but I guess I’d better check on my other clients.” She faded to a purple mist and drifted past him.

“Lacey, wait! I do need you. . . . I’m . . . kind of on edge.”