“They’ve been coming for a while.”
Patrick Middleton took a sip of his wine and gazed into the fire crackling beside him, the whites of his eyes glowing like orbs from the flames. He appeared tired and stressed, but composed.
There was a chill in the night air, and Patrick had given Harley his jacket, which she had since draped across her shoulders. The surrounding outdoor kitchen was fully lit, the bistro lights strung across a giant arbor covering the outdoor dining and living areas. Inside, the historical society members helped themselves to bowls of stew and biscuits in the kitchen. Low rumbles of conversation and intermittent bursts of laughter seeped through the cracks of the back door.
“The notes,” Harley said, “like the one tonight?”
He nodded. “They always say the same thing.”
“Maybe it’s just the protesters sending them—about the new history museum.”
“I only wish it were that.” He diverted his gaze to the night sky and his voice dropped to a near whisper. “I only wish.”
He did not sound convinced, and Harley had the uncertain feeling he was holding something back. Patrick seemed haunted by something. Guilty. Then there was the argument he had with Beau Arson that afternoon and his mysterious connection to the man they had found in Briarwood Park.
Harley turned to him. “I’m sure after the building’s constructed and the museum’s open, they’ll forget it over time. It’ll be yesterday’s news. The grudges will pass with time.”
“Do you believe that? Do you believe all grudges pass with time? Or do they just fester, magnify, feed resentment?”
Harley considered. “I guess it depends on the person who’s angry and what caused their anger to begin with. Some people tend to hold grudges, others don’t.”
Patrick stared at her in earnest. “Emotions are powerful things, Harley. Don’t underestimate them. And over time those emotions are shaped by our memories of the perceived insult. They can mutate with each replay of the event until the memory carries no resemblance to the actual event. ‘The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history on.’”
“Thomas Still?”
He nodded. “Thomas Still.”
Harley shifted her weight in the patio chair, trying to figure out the best way to approach the question she needed to ask. “Patrick, I need to ask you something, and I hope you won’t think I’m being too nosy.”
“You, Harley? Never. What is it?”
“Well, we found a man this morning in Briarwood Park. Tina and I did. He was in the ditch beside the creek—disoriented—and he was talking gibberish. We tried to help him, but he ran off in the woods.”
Patrick sprung forward in his seat. “What’d he look like?”
“Middle-aged. Dark hair, tattered clothes, lots of scars on his face. He had a pair of dog tags around his neck.”
“And you say he was speaking gibberish?” Patrick’s voice grew desperate as his hands grasped the arms of his chair. “What’d he say? Could you understand any of it?”
“Something about a boy. He said he needed to know what happened to ‘that boy.’ That the boy was ‘innocent.’”
A perplexed expression crossed Patrick’s face. He shook his head and gazed down at the fire in thought. “Innocent? But whatever could he mean?”
“I was hoping maybe you could tell me. He’d been looking for you, apparently—at Bud’s Pool Hall last night.”
“Last night? But he must’ve gotten it wrong then. We were supposed to meet at Bud’s tonight, not last night.”
He rose from his seat and threw the fleece blanket in his chair. “I’m sorry, Harley, but I have to go. I need to …”
“But who is he?” Harley called after him.
Patrick rushed inside the house, bypassing the others and heading straight for his office, where soon after, the lights came on.
Harley sat back in her seat, pondering what had just occurred, trying to wrap her mind around the puzzle. A stranger arrived in town, a stranger no one seemed to have ever seen or known. The man had supper at the homeless shelter, then said he had a meeting with Patrick Middleton at Bud’s Pool Hall, a meeting Patrick hadn’t attended. So the man got directions to Patrick’s house instead and presumably went there. But he never made it, or at least Patrick never encountered him. Then she and Tina found the man in the ditch the next morning, delirious, speaking of a boy, a boy who was innocent. But the man’s mentioning of the boy, in and of itself, hadn’t seemed to surprise Patrick. It was the man’s assertion that the boy had been ‘innocent’ that surprised Patrick. Before Harley could ponder further, Tina appeared on the back porch, wiping her hands on her apron.
“You about ready to head out? I’ve got another event in the mornin’.”
Harley nodded, then glanced at her watch. It was getting late. She rose from the chair and folded the blanket before placing it neatly on the arm. Inside, the historical society members were gathered around the table, and Tina was in the process of packing up.
“I’m just about ready,” she said.
Harley and Tina said farewell to everyone and traveled down the long entryway. As Harley moved to open the front door, she caught sight of someone in the front yard, the figure coming forth from the shadows with the porch light.
A young man, about thirty, and tall and slender, with neatly styled blond hair stood beneath the oak trees, his boyish face reddened with anger. He wore a burgundy cashmere sweater and dark jeans, with a plaid scarf wrapped loosely about his neck, a Rolex watch glittering in the streetlights. Harley recognized him, but not from ever having met him. Over the years she had read about him in the society pages, from his fabled boyhood to his adolescence, and now his early adulthood. Orphaned as a child and then raised on a trust fund by Arthur and Pearl Johnson, his legal guardians, who had subsequently sent him away to the world’s most elite boarding schools.
Michael Sutcliffe. Heir to the Sutcliffe timber and real estate fortune. When he had come into his inheritance five years prior, he had visited Notchey Creek on occasion, checking in at Briarcliffe, the Sutcliffe’s ancestral mansion. But he only started living there recently, since he became engaged to Savannah Swanson.
Harley watched as Michael’s gaze traveled from one lit window in Patrick’s house to the next, his teeth biting into his lower lip. When he caught sight of her, he disappeared into the shadows once more.
“Tina, did you see that?”
“See what?” Tina said, peering over a stack of Tupperware containers.
Footsteps sounded behind them, and Harley turned to see Arthur and Pearl Johnson walking in their direction, their coats draped over their forearms.
“What is it Harley?” Pearl asked, looking at her with concern. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Somebody was out there just now. Standing underneath the trees.”
Arthur hurried past them and pushed open the door. He stood on the porch, his eyes darting about the front yard. “Well, there’s no one out here now.”
“It looked like …”
“Who?” Pearl asked.
“Oh, nobody,” she said, deciding not to mention Michael Sutcliffe’s name. “I probably just imagined it.”
“Well,” Pearl said, “why don’t you let us walk you to your truck?”
“Please do,” Tina said with a sigh of relief. “That’d be great.”