“Whoa, it’s okay,” Seth said. He picked up the chicken feed and said, “You come with us, Brooke.”
They urged her to the car and popped her inside. On the way to the farm, they got the story from Brooke, at least as far as Bill Cartwright went. Brooke gave the tale out in fits and starts, but when Seth began to make the turn into the farm, she begged him to let her out so that she could walk the rest of the way. He tried to tell her that Hayley wouldn’t freak out if she knew that he’d given her a ride home, but Brooke wasn’t convinced, and he finally relented.
She got out, and Seth put the bag of chicken feed into her arms. To him, it looked way too heavy for her to carry up to the chicken barn, but she was relentless. So he let her go, but he watched her progress. She stumbled once and he stopped himself from going to help her. All along, he wondered what the hell he could do.
Prynne got out of the car and they stood there together. Halfway to the barn, Brooke paused, lowered the sack, sat down on it, and doubled over.
“She crying again?” Seth asked his girlfriend.
“I think something’s wrong with her, Seth,” Prynne said. “I think it’s something bad and she doesn’t want her family to know.”
FIFTY
Becca’s decision to tell Derric about his sister had to do with fairness. He had a right to the information.
She thought at first that she’d tell him on the phone. In that way she wouldn’t be able to ease her way into his whispers. But that seemed totally spineless to her. So she waited till they were more or less alone together, but in a situation in which he would be able to see quite clearly that she had no intention of talking him into anything.
There was one special time of day that this could happen: early morning in the weight room at the school. There, Derric not only trained but also worked on strengthening the leg he’d broken so badly the previous year.
As it happened, only one other boy was there when Becca arrived, one of the football players who wore ear buds and an iPod hooked onto his shorts as he grunted through barbell training. Derric was doing bench presses. He didn’t have a spotter, which was dumb, but Becca wasn’t about to argue with him about that.
She went over to him and looked down at his face. She felt what she always felt looking at him for the first time any day of the week: a warmth that spread all over her body. She thought what she always thought as well: How did I get so lucky? Her grandmother would have told her it was all about chemistry. You had it with some people. You didn’t have it with others. From day one, Becca had had it with Derric. She still didn’t know why.
She said, “Looking good, guy. How’s it going? How’s the leg?”
He shot her a smile. “How’d you get here so early?”
“Bike and bus and bike.”
“You should’ve called me. I could’ve picked you up. We even could’ve stopped on the way. You know.” He grinned. “Five minutes or something. Or ten. Or an hour.”
“That wouldn’t exactly be the way to get your leg in shape.”
He replaced the weights on the rack above him, sat up, and swung his legs around. He reached for a towel and wiped himself down. He said, “Maybe not my leg. But my lips would have gotten a workout.”
She laughed and sat down next to him. There was no way to go at things but directly. She said quietly, “Derric, listen. I’ve found Rejoice. She’s on a farm in La Conner. It’s called Broad Valley Growers, and she’s been there for years. Since she was maybe four or five. She was adopted by a family, just like you were, only they’ve got—I don’t know—maybe five kids? Six? But she’s there and it’s Rejoice. I saw her myself.”
He was absolutely still. Becca wasn’t sure what he was feeling or thinking and she was mightily tempted to jerk the AUD box’s ear bud out of her ear so she could discover what was going on with him. But she held true to her purpose and did not do so, allowing him the privacy of his own thoughts.
He said, “How . . .”
She told him. She talked about the phone message that Ralph Darrow had given her, about Ralph Darrow’s not even remembering for whom the message was meant, about setting off with Seth to try to find out if someone was trying to get in touch with her or with Parker or with Seth himself, about wondering if this had anything at all to do with the fires on the island for some reason, about discovering that no one at Broad Valley Growers knew a thing about a message at all. This wasn’t the entire truth of the matter, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him more: about Laurel, about Jeff Corrie and Connor West, about the mess she herself had created back in San Diego. Telling him about Rejoice was enough.
“She came out of the barn with the rest of the kids,” Becca said to him. “Derric, I could tell it was Rejoice. She looks just like a girl version of you.”
Still, he didn’t say a word. She thought that, perhaps, he was struggling to control his fury. Once again she’d intruded, he might have thought. But she hadn’t this time, not really, and she wanted to bring this up. Still, she didn’t do so. Instead she said, “So when I saw her, I went to Reverend Wagner.” She saw his face alter, a hardening of his jaw, and she said, “I didn’t say much to him other than to find out if he was the person who’d called and left the message with Mr. Darrow. He said yes.” She told him the rest of what Reverend Wagner had revealed to her about how he’d traced Rejoice through the other branches of Children’s Hope.
“I didn’t ask too much about it ’cause it seemed to me that the most important part of everything was that Rejoice was adopted a long time ago.” She waited for him to reply and when still he said nothing, she said, “Anyway.” And then when the silence went on, “I just wanted you to know. And Reverend Wagner? He’s not going to say anything about anything. I made him promise. But the thing is . . .” Derric shot her a look from beneath his eyebrows and Becca could read in that look his expectation of what she was about to say. He thought—and who could blame him after all the ways in which she’d blundered around in his life—that she was about to start preaching about all the wonderful things he could now do regarding his sister. But she said to him, “I just wanted you not to have to worry about her anymore, like where she is and if something bad happened to her because nothing bad did.”
He nodded. He swallowed. She could hear it was tough for him to do so. She said, “Hey,” and he looked at her then. She was struck to the quick by the expression on his face and in his eyes, which were all of a sudden liquid with tears. “The thing is this. I love you. I’ve got your back. Now and always.”
She had the phone number of Broad Valley Growers with her. She had the mailing address as well. But she suddenly knew that this wasn’t the moment to press either upon this boy. She understood that he was meant to find his own way and that he would.
• • •
BECCA WAS WORKING on a spaghetti and meatballs dinner when Seth arrived. Ralph was puttering in his shop, repairing a lamp that one of his multitudinous lady friends had brought to him. This particular lady friend was one of the island’s many artists, a swarthy glass blower in serious overalls. She’d earlier tramped across Ralph’s porch yelling, “Darrow! I need you to lookit this lamp. Get your butt out here ’cause I stepped in horseshit up my place and you don’t want me treading inside your house, believe you me.”
Ralph had been sitting at the kitchen table opening the day’s mail. He murmured, “I swear. That Kathy Broadvent has always spoken pure poetry,” and he’d gone outside to engage in a loud and arm waving conversation with the woman.
When Seth arrived, he asked about Parker, saying he wanted to talk to him and asking was he coming to dinner. Becca hadn’t seen him but as his car was up in the parking area, she figured he was in the tree house. He’d be there for dinner, probably, she told Seth. She added the information about Dave Mathieson showing up to talk to him.
As things turned out, Seth knew all about that. He revealed that he
was the person who’d given Dave Mathieson the information that had led him to speak to Parker in the first place. It all had to do with when Parker had arrived on Whidbey, Seth said, which was in advance of the first fire. He concluded with “So, well . . . I guess I told the undersheriff that. Like, about when Parker got here.” Maybe dumb, maybe not, he added mentally.
Becca eyed him. “You ‘guess’ you told the undersheriff?”
“Okay. I did tell him. It seemed like it was the right thing to do once I figured out how long he’d been here. Only, you know, my motives weren’t exactly pure. So then he thought that Hayley told the sheriff.” Do what’s right . . . Prynne would want . . .
Becca ignored this bit. She wanted, in fact, to ignore whispers altogether, so she wrestled with the AUD box. She turned the unit on and put the ear bud in place. “It’s Isis,” she told him.
“What’s Isis?”
“She’s why he thought Hayley told the sheriff.” She sketched out the details: Isis, Parker, the tree house, the lies. “Sex,” she concluded. “Parker and Isis doing the deed.”
“So he did it with Isis and lied to Hayley?”
“Looks that way. Hayley said she was finished with him and he wants another chance and he asked me to talk to her.”
“Heavy,” Seth said. “Damn. Makes me wonder . . .”
“What?”
“What else might he lie about, Beck?”
As if ready to answer that question himself, Parker entered the house. He shed his jacket. He came toward the kitchen and then saw Seth. He seemed to hesitate. He locked eyes with Seth, and Becca saw that Seth was the one to look away once they gave each other that guy greeting of jerking their heads in a nod.
She said, “Hey,” to Parker. She added, “You hungry? We got tons of food tonight,” in a pleasant voice that tried to encourage conversation. “It’s Italian, so you got to promise not to compare it to your family’s restaurant.”
Parker said, “Yeah,” but that was it.
There was a long and uncomfortable silence during which a scratching upon the front door indicated Seth had brought Gus with him. Parker went to open it and the Lab bounded in, oblivious to any tension that existed in the room.
Seth finally broke the silence. “Look, man, I’m sorry if you got hassled by the sheriff. You got to see that the situation’s serious. Someone’s dead and someone else is responsible—”
“Conveniently not you,” Parker cut in acidly.
“I was over town for two of the fires. But that’s not the point ’cause this whole thing stopped being a prank back in August when the fairgrounds fire was set, and you and I both know you were parked in that campgrounds at the fair since when . . . July? So what was I supposed to do? Pretend I never knew that?”
“And since I was there in July, that makes me an arsonist?”
His words were angry and Becca intervened. “They took everyone’s name that night at Maxwelton Beach, Parker. Everybody’s being checked out.”
Parker said, “It doesn’t seem that way to me. But what the hell.” He went to the table and sat. He played with the silverware at his place. Becca could see that he was upset. He said to her, “You talk to Hayley?”
She quirked her mouth regretfully. “I tried.”
He said, “Whatever,” and he blew out a breath. “Well, the sheriff and I more or less reached an ‘understanding.’” He made quotation marks in the air. “I’m outa here. ’Cause despite what Hayley appears to think, the cops think otherwise.”
“You’re clear?” Seth said. “Good.”
Parker’s expression indicated he believed Seth’s declaration pretty much the same way he believed anyone but Jesus could walk on water. He said, “The only thing that saved me turned out to be that I’ve never been to California in my life. This is, apparently, some big deal to the sheriff.”
“California?” Becca said. “What’s that got to do . . . ?” But her words drifted off as she began to see what California might have to do with everything. She turned back to the stove and stirred the sauce.
Parker said, “I was also invited to leave the U.S. of A. as the sheriff had a look at the ol’ passport and saw I’ve more or less overstayed my welcome. So . . .” He regarded them both. “It’s been great knowing you. All of you.”
Seth said, “You can’t blame Hayley.”
“Whatever. She doesn’t want to listen. I tried to call her again but all she wants to talk about now is some damn ring, like I proposed to someone and she wants to know who.”
Becca’s senses went on the alert. “Ring?”
“Did I keep a ring, did I find a ring, did Isis give me a ring, where was the ring, who’s got the ring.” Parker waved his arm to dismiss the subject.
“Sounds like it’s a big deal,” Seth put in.
“Maybe to her but not to me,” Parker announced.
PART VI
Maxwelton Beach 2
FIFTY-ONE
Becca knew it wasn’t rocket science to figure out that a ring was probably important in the fire investigation. She’d already picked up all sorts of variations on “the ring” in Hayley’s whispers and Isis’s whispers.
She wanted to talk to Squat and Jenn about it. She found the chance she needed when her English 10 class broke into groups so that the students could evaluate each other’s essays. They’d had to write on the topic of femininity in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “Like there is any femininity in Macbeth?” Squat scoffed in an aside. “Witches and the She-Wolf of Scotland? Puhleez.” But as was typical for Squat, he’d written a great essay. Becca and Jenn made short work of informing him that it was perfect before Becca told them about the ring.
She lowered her voice and made a pretense of marking Jenn’s essay—“Hey! Go easy on that!” Jenn protested—as they talked.
“A ring keeps coming up,” she said. “Hayley, Isis, Parker . . . Everyone’s into it.”
Squat went right to the fires. “What about a signature on a crime scene? Like a bomber who makes a bomb the same way every time.” He considered this and added, “Is it a signet ring? The kind they used to seal up letters with? They poured wax on the letters and smooshed the ring into the wax and that’s how you knew the letter was from the person it said it was from.”
Jenn looked at him askance. “So the arsonist is leaving his mark? Like a Z for Zorro? Why’d he want to do that?”
“To get caught. They always want to get caught.”
“If it has to do with the fires,” Becca said, “doesn’t it make more sense that it’s a clue that the arsonist doesn’t even know got left there? Like the ring got dropped somehow and the investigators found it.”
“How did it get dropped? It was too big and fell off someone’s finger?” Jenn asked.
“Or,” Becca said, “the person in question wasn’t wearing it at all.”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“I mean it was put there. On purpose. It was taken there, like, in someone’s pocket. To make someone else look guilty when it got found at the crime scene.”
“Great. So how d’we figure who had a ring?”
“I’m not sure. But I think . . . ’cause I think I remember . . .” But what Becca remembered was something she couldn’t speak about: Parker’s memory pictures. A ring could have been what he’d been reaching for on the chain around Isis’s neck. And if Isis had left it behind in the tree house, that put the ring into Parker’s possession. And if that was the case . . .
She hated to think ill of the young Canadian. But even more she hated the idea that someone had died because of a fire. Truth to tell, she didn’t really want to point an accusing finger at anyone. But then she thought of the whispers—the very fact of the whispers in her life—and she thought of the quickening and above all she thought of Diana Kinsale and what Diana might have told her to do.
&nbs
p; She said, “We need to know if there’s really and truly a ring in evidence.”
Jenn said, “Great. How d’we do that?”
“We don’t,” Becca said.
“Then who . . . ?”
“Derric.”
FIFTY-TWO
Hayley had to tell Isis about the ring. That meant she also had to tell Isis about betraying Aidan to the fire chief. She didn’t want to do either, but what choice did she have? There was too much at stake.
She asked Isis to meet her in the band room during lunch. She looked frightened, and Hayley couldn’t blame her. The call for privacy had signaled something was up.
Hayley told her about talking to Karl Levitt. She steeled herself for an Isis reaction: the accusation of betrayal that she figured she deserved. Before it could come, though, she gave her the news about Brady’s ring, about Karl Levitt and the undersheriff talking about it on the phone. She ended with, “It was there, Isis. Brady’s ring was there.”
“Where?” Isis asked.
“At the fishing shack, at the fire. The undersheriff has it and he traced it—”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It says it’s from a university, doesn’t it? Are there initials inside? If there are, some ring company would have done the engraving. How hard could it be to trace back from the university to the engraver to the initials to who ordered that ring with those initials? Are there initials?”
“BAD3,” she said.
“Bad three? Huh?”
“Bradley Anthony Davenport the third,” Isis whispered. “Brady—my Brady—he’s actually Bradley. Bradley Anthony Davenport the fourth. But it has to be . . .” Her voice faded off.
“What?”
“Hayley, I can’t remember a thing about that ring. The only thing I can think of is that I must have left it in the tree house that night. Parker found it after I left and he knew it was mine and he figured he could . . . He didn’t want to be with me. But I kept coming on to him and he didn’t know how else to get rid of me.”