THAT NIGHT, PEARL jerked awake in the bluish darkness of her living room. The digital clock read 12:18 a.m. Her phone was ringing. She put it to her ear, staring unseeingly at the TV, which she’d fallen asleep in front of two hours ago. “Hello?”
“Pearlie?” Dad sounded distant, muffled.
She swung her legs to the floor. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, but . . .” Voices in the background, a bellow of laughter. He was borrowing the Tavern phone. “Don’t think I can make it home.”
“It’s okay.” Her words were quick. “It’s fine. Hold on. I’ll be there.”
No good-bye, just a soft fuzz of distant music and bar noise, then the disconnect.
Sleep addled, she crept around, looking for her flip-flops and car keys. She stepped out into the night.
The Mermaid Tavern was the bar’s original name, and you could still read the letters on the sign, if you squinted right. What had first opened as a whimsical watering hole for tourists had, over the years, been claimed by local hard-core drinkers. It was as if their hopelessness had drained the place, weathering the periwinkle-and-lavender-trimmed paint job to gray, starving the window boxes to dirt.
Pearl hesitated outside the door, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag as she stared at the figurehead of a bare-breasted mermaid mounted by the door. The siren, collecting lost souls. Like the rest of the building, she was chipped and peeling, her right hand carved to grip the pole of the “open” flag like a pike. Pearl steeled herself, pushing through the door into the smell of booze and fried bar food.
Inside, there was recessed lighting over the bar, and green-shaded lamps above the pool table, where dark shapes hunched and leaned and drew from glass steins. They knew Pearl here; she was allowed as far as the stools, where Dad always sat.
She put her hand on his shoulder; his head hung down, nearly resting on the bar. “I’m here. Let’s go.”
“You need any help getting him into the car, dear?” The rusty voice of Yancey Sanford spoke into her left ear, and every nerve in her body revolted. The big man spilled over the stool beside her, grizzled gray curls covering the tops of his ears, eyes shiny with drink and mocking good humor. “I tried to cut him off, but you know how it is. He goes on a tear sometimes.”
Saying nothing, Pearl drew her shoulder up automatically, making a barrier between them. “Dad, time to go, okay?”
He finally turned to her. For a moment, she expected a different face, somehow unfamiliar. Maybe monstrous. Too many horror movies with Reese; he was the same old Dad, only bleary-eyed, and somehow gone from her. Belonging more to these people, the same ones you stood in line with at Godfrey’s Market and the Citgo station, their faces seamed with cold weather and monotony and drink. “Yup. Okay.”
“Sure you gonna make it, bub?” Yancey’s voice rose for the benefit of the other drinkers, who chuckled, craning their necks as Dad navigated the stool, holding on to Pearl’s arm. “Now, don’t give that girl of yours any grief. She’s awful good to cart you around.” More laughter.
Bullshit. They were the ones: buying Dad shots after he tried to cut himself off, encouraging him to give in, to drown it all so they could have a night’s entertainment and some gossip to spread around town tomorrow. Pearl tugged too hard, making Dad stumble, then slid her arm around his middle, propping him up.
“Yep, my boy would do that for me. Wouldn’t you, Ev?” Yancey’s twentysomething son Evan sat to his left, peeling the label on his Sam Adams, not bothering to look up. “’Course, I always manage to get myself home, one way or another. . . .” Yancey’s words caught her ear on her way out the door. Never mind that nobody ever offered Dad a ride home when he was like this, never thought to call a cab.
When Dad was in the passenger seat, he pinched the top of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut. “Christ. I’m sorry.” He sounded hoarse.
“Don’t apologize. Those guys are assholes.” She pulled the seat belt across him, buckled him in.
“I’m sorry.” Wheezing now, his eyes still closed, as if he wasn’t talking to her at all. “Sorry.”
They drove down the night streets in silence, Pearl so focused on getting home that she started a little when he said, “I walked all around that goddamn yard. Snow was ass-deep. Didn’t see anybody, didn’t hear anything. Swear to God.” He turned his face to the window.
Cold filtered in slowly, from the crown of her head to her fingertips. This was the only time he talked about it, when he was drunk and numb. “He was in the woods, they said.” Her voice was soft. A stranger, hiding, biding his time, watching the sleeping Garrison household through the trees and the storm. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Nobody came over that fence. Would’ve been footprints.”
“It was snowing too hard.” All the prints, even Dad’s, had been lost under the ashy, frozen mess left by the fire hoses, destroying the only proof that Dad had made his rounds at the one-hour intervals marked on the clipboard with his initials. The proof that he’d seen nothing, could’ve done nothing to stop the stranger who’d later walked the quiet hallways of the second floor, pushed David and Sloane’s bedroom door open to watch them breathe. Put a bullet in the base of David’s spine, another in his head. The discharge from the silencer might not have even woken Sloane before he did the same to her.
“I don’t care what they say. Had to be somebody who knew the house. Knew the schedule.” Dad scrubbed his face and sat back, closing his eyes. “I just looked back . . . and the place was on fire. Alarm was screaming. How’d he get in without setting off the goddamn alarm?”
They didn’t speak again until they were home, Pearl watching him tug ponderously at his laces until she finally knelt and pulled the boots off his feet. She guided him to his bed, laid the chenille blanket over him. Dad curled onto his side, his breathing slow, labored. He licked his dry lips before he spoke. “I didn’t have the flask with me. Swear.”
“I know.” She was positive it was Yancey who’d started that rumor after the news broke about the Garrisons. That Win Haskins had a flask he carried around with him everywhere, that he was probably drunk as a lord while murder was being done in the big house.
The flask was real enough. It sat on the bureau, engraved with Dad’s initials. He used to bring it with him on fishing trips, weekend outings, never on the job. “You shouldn’t go to the Tavern anymore.” She felt empty, hollowed out by the smallness of her own voice in the room. “Please don’t go there anymore.”
Dad promised nothing. He was snoring, mouth open, one fist clenched beside his head. She stuffed the extra pillow against his back so he’d sleep on his side—that had been a persistent fear these past months, that he’d vomit and choke, she’d read about that happening—switched off the lamp, and continued to sit on the edge of the bed in darkness, her own fists balled.
She didn’t know who this helpless anger was for, if she could pick just one target, but it left her knotted with tension that could be eased only by going over the facts, digging up the bodies again and again and hoping for something new to emerge.
In her room, her tablet glowed with cold comfort, glinting off the sea glass and shells in their neat rows. There were more true-crime nuts out there than she’d ever imagined, entire sites dedicated to unsolved cases. The Garrisons were hot right now, that familiar navy-and-white family portrait reused again and again, the same links reposted to Cassidy’s website, which showcased her musical career and a video journal she’d kept while touring. The videos were usually shot in some greenroom right before Cassidy went onstage, featuring the girl in full makeup and formal gown, saying how very excited she was to perform. Despite the difference in their coloring, there were similarities between her and Tristan: the shape of their jaws, the arch of their brows. Cassidy was animated, high energy, with none of the aloof detachment Pearl associated with her older brother.
Pearl read all the message boards she could find. Tristan’s name leaped out repeatedly. As much as everyone liked him for the crime—the only survivor, the sole heir to all that money—it was impossible. He couldn’t have committed the murders.
A security camera in the Sugarloaf condo complex had caught Tristan driving in around nine thirty p.m., nearly three and a half hours after he’d left Tenney’s Harbor, exactly the time it would take to drive straight there with one pit stop for gas. Five witnesses—two of them Tristan’s vacationing Yale friends and three “guests” (girls, Pearl assumed)—corroborated that he’d arrived at that time, free of blood or wounds. One of the girls must’ve been intended for Tristan, put on reserve until the crown prince made his appearance.
A notification popped up on one of Pearl’s social media accounts; this late, there was no worry of Mom being online. A friend request from Bridges Spencer. Pearl accepted.
A few seconds later, an instant message box appeared with a thumbnail selfie of Bridges: U always up this late?
The cursor blinked. A muscle moved in Pearl’s jaw. Her fingers flew over the pad. When I’m bored. I thought you were an early riser.
And a night owl.
Bridges, you amaze me. As she awaited his response, she accessed his page, scrolled through photos, read old posts, hunting for signs of Tristan. Searching, endlessly searching, for what was written between the lines.