“Who the hell are you?” Tynan asked, looking from Ivy to Tristan.
“Friends of Corinne,” Ivy answered.
“Are you now.” He turned his back on them and opened the refrigerator door, standing in front of it for a while as if he wanted to cool himself down. “I don’t ever remember seeing you before.”
“I went to art school with Corinne.”
“You’re a liar,” her stepfather said, then reached in and pulled out a soda. “Corinne wouldn’t tell anyone where she came from.”
“Yes, you’re right about that,” Ivy said. “But she talked a lot about Gran. She also left behind a lot of photos. And photos have clues, you know.”
Tristan guessed that Ivy was testing for a reaction, and she got it. Tynan stared at her for a full minute in a way that made Tristan want to step between them. Then he yanked the top off his can, threw it at the table where they were sitting, and kicked closed the refrigerator door.
“And you have these photos with your little clues?”
“A lot of people have them. She was always sending them out to friends and posting them online.”
“But you had enough to trace her back here,” Tynan noted.
“I was a big fan of her work.”
Tristan could see that Ivy was making Tynan uncomfortable.
“Corinne and her photos—she was a snoop.” Tynan took a swig from his can. Beads of moisture coated his upper lip. “She could never get enough dirt on people. She thought herself high and mighty, but she was a bottom dweller—she loved mud.”
“She was a wonderful photographer,” Ivy said.
“She was a tattler with a camera. And in the end she was a fool, because she didn’t know when to stop.”
“Stop what?” Ivy asked.
Tynan smirked. “Tattling, what else?” His smile faded as he studied Tristan. “And you, you some kind of a silly artist?”
Tristan simply looked at him.
“Got a voice?” the man asked.
Tristan removed his sunglasses. “Yes, I do, Hank.”
Tynan’s small eyes grew larger. “Well, well, well. He returns.” Tynan’s voice was smooth and sarcastic, but his eyes darted from one to the other as if he suspected some plot against him.
Tristan decided that the less he said the better. Let the man imagine Luke, who might know all kinds of things about him, had returned and was keeping a smug silence.
“I could turn you in,” Tynan threatened.
Tristan nodded. “You could.”
“But I owe you.”
Tristan forced himself to gaze blandly at the man, as if he could care less what Tynan had to say.
“Life’s a lot more pleasant in this house now, know what I mean?”
A hiss escaped Gran’s lips.
“And it’s going to stay that way.” It sounded like a threat. “Did you kill the other girl too?”
“Neither,” Tristan replied.
“Alicia hasn’t been in River Gardens for two years,” Gran said, “and it happened on the Cape.”
Tynan spun around. “Where do you think he was?”
Gran snorted. “I know murderous rage when I see it,” she said, never taking her eyes from Tynan.
The man glanced at the kitchen clock, cursed, and grabbed a large bag of chips from the counter. Pulling a set of car keys from his pocket, he paused in the kitchen doorway. “Here’s a bit of advice, Luke. Don’t let Corinne’s mother catch you here.” He laughed and made a gesture with his keys, handling them like a knife. “She’s liable to cut your throat.”
AFTER TYNAN LEFT, IVY SIPPED HER TEA AND watched Gran over the rim of her cup.
“Yeah, he’s the same,” Tristan said.
“Don’t get me started,” the old woman replied. “Between him and my daughter—” She made a dismissive gesture.
“Where is Corinne’s mom?” Ivy asked.
“At work. Waiting tables at the diner. Somehow she’s managed to keep the job,” Gran said. “Luke, I was sorry to hear about Alicia. She was a good friend to you. She was better to you than Corinne was.”
Tristan nodded and stared down at his coffee. Ivy wished she could reach across and rest her hand on top of his. When she glanced up, Gran was watching her closely. The old woman didn’t miss much.
Ivy set down her cup. “Who killed Corinne? Do you have any idea?”
“I have a lot of ideas,” Gran replied, “but no answers.”
Because there were so many people who wanted her granddaughter gone?
“Is her room still—what did her mother do with her bedroom?” Tristan asked.
“Mia moved things back from Corinne’s apartment—took the new stuff, the nice stuff for herself, of course—and piled the rest in Corinne’s old room. Sometimes I sit on Corinne’s bed, the way I used to, but it’s not the same. I know she’s not coming back.” Gran studied him. “Maybe you’d like some time in there.”
“If that’s okay with you.”
She led the way, and Ivy followed Tristan.
The room was crammed with boxes and bags that were piled on the floor, bureau, desk, and a pair of old kitchen chairs. Despite the chaos, Corinne’s bed was neatly made, her coverlet lovingly turned down as if prepared for someone to climb in bed. Ivy had the feeling Gran had done that, even though she’d acknowledged Corinne wasn’t coming back.
On the table next to Corinne’s bed sat a broken piece of pottery that had once been a glazed jar with a lid. Ivy picked up one of the fragments. “She made this, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Her apartment was broken into, some of her decorative boxes and jars broken.”
“When?” Tristan asked.
“Several days after her death, you remember.” Gran frowned. “No, you must have been gone by then.”
“Was anything taken?” Ivy asked.
“Her computer and iPad. I didn’t care about those. But I hated the way they destroyed things that Corinne made with her own hands. Hoodlums!”
Or someone looking for something in a hurry, Ivy thought, exchanging glances with Tristan. What if Corinne was more than a cyberbully? What if she was a blackmailer? Tony’s sister had called her “a world-class snitch,” and Hank Tynan, “a tattler with a camera.”
“What a shame,” Ivy said aloud. “Luke, you probably want some time alone here. I’ll wait back in the kitchen,” she added, hoping Gran would follow her, allowing him to search the place. After a few minutes, the old woman did.
“I told him we’d be in my room,” she said to Ivy. “He and Corinne both liked to sit there and talk while I did my sewing. Bring your tea.”
Gran’s room was pleasant, with floral slipcovers and framed photographs of family members, pictures that went back all the way to sepia-toned portraits. The old woman pointed to a chair, then took the one opposite, which had bright light coming in over her shoulder and an array of sewing tools around it—a basket of yarn, a box filled with a rainbow of shining thread, and a large jar of buttons. “Corinne used to thread my needles for me. I need a white one—the heavy cotton—and a black polyester. I’d better match this one myself,” she said, holding a peach colored blouse next to the box of spools.
Ivy threaded the needles, adjusting the lengths of thread according to Gran’s directions.
Gran poured a small heap of buttons onto the table between them and sorted through with quick fingers, finding the ones she wanted.
“So are you an item?” Gran asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You and Luke.”
“Uh, no. I met him when he came to see Corinne at school. We’re just friends.”
Gran’s dark eyes were piercing. “So far.”
“So far,” Ivy said, acquiescing to Gran’s perceptiveness.
“Don’t hurt him. That boy’s been through hell and back.”
Ivy nodded.
“Did Corinne have a rich boyfriend at school?” Gran asked.
The question caught Ivy off guard. Of course, Ivy re
alized, Gran saw her as a source of information, just as she saw Gran.
“It was hard to tell if Corinne had someone steadier than the rest. She didn’t have any trouble finding guys interested in her,” Ivy ventured.
“Never had trouble,” Gran confirmed.
“And she was kind of private about some things.”
“Secretive,” Gran said. “We may’s well tell it like it is. She was secretive and sometimes sneaky.”
“She never asked anyone from school over to her apartment,” Ivy went on, realizing there was a limit to what she could fake; even if Gran had never been there, she would have seen the objects they brought back.
“She had some very nice things,” Gran said, “and I had hoped she had a rich lover. Corinne always liked expensive things, and sometimes she bent the rules.”
Bent the rules—as in stealing? Ivy nodded as if she understood.
“If rich people didn’t show off their nice things, other people wouldn’t steal them now, would they?”
It was a strange way of seeing the world, but perhaps it worked for an older woman defending a grandchild she loved.
“The last time I saw Corinne, she was very nervous,” Gran remarked.
“She was? I’m surprised,” Ivy said. “Of course, people at college have different personas than they do at home.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t like Corinne,” Gran replied, and sewed fiercely for several minutes, fastening a button to a man’s shirt so tightly Ivy imagined that the collar would rip off before the button could be lost again.
“Something was wrong. Corinne came home and asked me to mend a sleeve for her, and sat where you are sitting, just like she did when she was a little girl and in some kind of trouble. She didn’t always tell me what trouble she was in—told me less and less as she got older, but still she would come in and sit. This was her safe place, and when she came that evening, I knew something was very wrong.”
“Did she give any hint of what it was?”
“No. I thought maybe you knew.”
“Sorry, no.”
“Nothing going on at school?” Gran persisted. “Not that anything to do with school ever rattled her.”
Ivy shook her head. “I’m surprised the police didn’t follow up on that.”
“I told the police nothing,” Gran said. “The trouble was for me to know, not them.”
So Gran must have suspected that Corinne wasn’t involved in a completely innocent thing. . . .
“Finding out is for my peace of mind, no one else’s.”
Except, Ivy thought, others’ safety could depend on it.
Gran put aside the shirt she’d mended and picked up the jar of buttons. She shook it, held it up, squinting at it, then poured what was left in the jar on the table between them. Picking out a gold button, she studied it for a moment then held it out to Ivy.
“This is the only clue she left.”
Twenty-two
IVY OPENED HER PALM, LETTING THE PIECE OF GOLD drop in. “A cufflink.”
“Ever seen one like it?” Gran asked.
“No. My stepfather is the only person I’ve known to wear them to work. What is this design?” Ivy turned it around. “An arrow?”
“Looks it to me,” Gran said. “Nobody you know at school makes jewelry?”
Ivy hesitated. “No one I’m friends with. But Corinne and I didn’t share friends. It’s not like high school when you have a clique you belong to. I assume Corinne gave this to you.”
“Left it here that night. Hid it in the button jar.”
Ivy turned the cufflink this way and that, looking for a fine engraving of initials or a jeweler’s signature. “I don’t see anything but the arrow on it. Are you sure Corinne was the one who dropped this in the button jar? You’re sure she put it there the night she was killed?”
Gran nodded. “When she was a little girl, she used to play with the buttons while I sewed, made pictures around them, used them for faces and flowers and things. The night she was murdered, she emptied the jar and was moving the buttons around like she did when she was little, then she put them all back. I didn’t think about it till after her funeral. I was sitting here, missing her, and poured out the buttons. There it was.”
Ivy wished she could take the cufflink and wondered who else Gran had shown it to. “And no one else who you showed it to had any idea where she got it?”
“I haven’t told nobody. Her mother’d sell it for its weight in gold. The police would put it in a plastic baggy and I’d never see it again. It’s the last thing I have from Corinne. It stays with me.”
Ivy handed it back to her.
“I’ll show it to Luke. Maybe he knows something,” Gran said.
“Let me get him,” Ivy offered, rising quickly, not wanting Gran to walk in on Tristan searching the room. “Luke,” Ivy called out before reaching the bedroom door, “Gran has something curious to show you.”
Tristan followed her back to the room and studied the round cufflink. “Sorry,” he said, handing it back. “Never seen it.”
They stayed an hour longer, looking at old photos of Corinne, several of which had a young Luke in them, and listening to Gran’s stories. It occurred to Ivy that Corinne’s grandmother had not been able to share her grief with anyone else, including Corinne’s mother.
She held Ivy tightly when saying good-bye. “Just your age,” she kept repeating. Ivy walked ahead, letting Gran say a private good-bye to “Luke.” Then Tristan and Ivy drove off silently, not speaking till they were beyond the boundaries of River Gardens.
“That was hard.”
“Yeah,” Tristan agreed softly,
“When Gregory died, his dad cried like a baby. Andrew was horrified at what Gregory had done, but he still grieved for him.”
Tristan nodded. Ivy was wondering when he would ask about his own parents; whenever he was ready, she told herself.
“Art school next?” Tristan asked. “Think anyone will be there for summer session?”
“It’s worth a try. There should be dark rooms and computers where photography students hang out. And it’s not far from the mall where Corinne worked. Grab the maps in the back seat.”
They set their course, then Ivy recounted her conversation with Gran.
“So what do you think was going on?” Tristan asked.
“Gran wasn’t supporting Corinne, not if she was wondering if Corinne had a rich boyfriend to pay for her stuff. And I’ve worked at a mall shop. Even if school tuition was completely covered by scholarship, there’s no way Corinne was paying for her own apartment and buying nice things with a part-time salary from a store.”
“Then you’re thinking the same thing I am,” Tristan said. “The elementary school snitch—”
“And middle school cyberbully—” Ivy interjected.
“Figured out how profitable real blackmail could be.”
“Sure looks that way,” Ivy agreed. “All her electronics are gone—anything which might have photo files that could be used for blackmailing.”
“I wish I’d had more time to search,” Tristan said.
“Was anything damaged other than the handmade boxes and jars?”
“No. I think they were broken because someone was looking for a small object, like a flash drive.”
“Or a cufflink!” they said at the same time. Ivy added, “Corinne anticipated that someone would come looking, so she put it where her victim wouldn’t think to search, in an old woman’s button jar.”
“So why is this cufflink so important?”
Ivy didn’t respond until she had merged off the exit ramp. “Well, if you lose a piece of jewelry somewhere, it proves you were there. And if you weren’t supposed to be there—”
“But you could always deny it,” Tristan pointed out. “You could claim you were set up, that someone else put it there. Although I suppose enough damage could be done just by others believing you left it there.”
“Not that many people wear cufflink
s,” Ivy said.
“Yeah, only classy guys like me, working as a waiter at your mom’s wedding.”
Ivy laughed at the memory. “I guess it was the weight of those cufflinks that made you spill the trays. You also wore them for the prom.”
“So it’s possible Tony’s worn them,” Tristan said.
“And Hank, driving the execs around.”
“Or a professor type from her school. Or someone she caught doing something at the mall where she worked. The list is getting long,” Tristan noted.
“Or maybe she did have a rich boyfriend,” Ivy suggested, “one that was married, and she blackmailed him.” Ivy sighed. “We need to find out as much about her life away from home as her life in River Gardens.”
For the next three hours they tried and had little success. The two students they found working on photos in the school lab shrugged off their questions, saying Corinne hung around a little with everyone but not much with anyone; no one was close to her. The people in Corinne’s apartment building shut their doors in Ivy and Tristan’s faces, all except one neighbor who, after an extended interview, was discovered to have moved in after Corinne left. Ivy guessed the man was lonely for company. At the mall they received strong opinions from her coworkers. The two twenty-somethings clearly didn’t like her. She was “always watching us” they said, and she “sucked up” to the owner; Ivy figured that Corinne the snitch had made their lives miserable.
At last, tired from a long day of faking and questioning, Ivy and Tristan collapsed at a local Panera. They didn’t say a word till they were both digging into sandwiches, enjoying the comfort of a cushioned booth. They sat side by side, Tristan putting his long legs up on the bench opposite, Ivy leaning happily against him. She wondered if Tristan had any idea how precious these ordinary moments were to her.
During the meal Ivy told Tristan that Beth was continuing to act strange, but she stopped short of mentioning the attempt on her life. There was no need to worry him more, Ivy decided; it wasn’t going to happen again.
“Will’s keeping a close eye on her,” Ivy said, then checked her phone for messages. “No news, and no news is good news.”