“When was the last time you had a long talk with Emma?” asked Cordelia, playing a game of solitaire on her phone as the trees and cornfields whizzed past.
“Oh, gosh,” said Jane, slowing her truck so the man in the muscle car behind them could pass. Not that she needed to slow down. The guy had been going at least ninety when he’d roared up mere inches from the Ridgeline’s bumper.
“Jeez,” said Cordelia, sitting up straight. “That jerk’s an accident waiting to happen. But back to my question.”
“I suppose it was when we drove up for the funerals. Must be three years.” Both of Emma’s parents had died in a small-plane crash. Leo had been a licensed pilot since his mid-forties. He owned his own Cessna and flew it often, mostly back and forth to the cities. “Like you, we keep in touch mostly through emails.”
“And now Emma’s back home for another sad reason. But this time, it will be Cordelia and Jane to the rescue.”
“How do you figure that?”
“We’ll cheer her up. And then we’ll provide her with lots of sage advice.”
Jane wasn’t so sure Emma wanted advice.
Jane Lawless and Cordelia Thorn were best friends—had been ever since high school. While Jane had gone on to become a restaurateur, developing The Lyme House on Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, Cordelia had been working as a creative director, first at the Blackburn Playhouse in Shoreview, and later at the AGRT in St. Paul. She and her generally missing-in-action sister, Octavia, had opened the new Thorn Lester Playhouse in downtown Minneapolis in 2012.
Jane had first met the Granholms when they’d rented the house next to her family home in St. Paul. After a lengthy stint in the military, Leo was finally finishing his law degree at William Mitchell and at the time, his wife, Audrey, was a stay-at-home mom. Jane’s dad and Leo became fast friends, bonding over the law and their love of fishing. After the Granholms moved back to Castle Lake, where Leo and Audrey had grown up, they’d invite Jane’s family, often including Cordelia, up for a long weekend every summer. It all seemed like such ancient history now.
“Hattie and I drove up two summers ago, when Emma and her daughter had flown back from California for the dedication of that bronze plaque in honor of her mom and dad.” Cordelia searched her purse, probably looking for something to eat. “Remember? If it hadn’t been for Audrey and Leo, there wouldn’t be an art center.”
“Did Hattie have a good time?”
Hattie Thorn Lester was Cordelia’s thirteen-year-old niece. She’d lived with Cordelia since she was a little girl, mainly because her mother, Cordelia’s sister, was usually on the hunt somewhere in the known universe for her next husband.
“She loved it. So many new bugs to examine and categorize. She’s moved on since then. Did I tell you she’s into Carlo Rovelli now?”
“Who’s he?”
“A theoretical physicist. She has one of his books with her at all times. In fact—” Cordelia looked over both shoulders and then lowered her voice. “I squirreled one of them out of the house before I left.”
“Why?”
“I need to figure out why she finds his ideas so compelling.”
“I’m sure she’d tell you if you asked.”
“Oh, she reads me passages all the time. Things about gravity. Electromagnetism. The space-time continuum—things I already know everything about. No, there has to be more. Did I mention what she wants next?”
“Let me guess. A mass spectrometer?”
“A private math tutor. Get this: She said the entire cosmos can be understood in terms of math. Math! Nothing about theater or music or literature. It boggles the mind.”
“She’s every bit as intense as you are, Cordelia, she just has a different approach.”
“Yes, but this science thing gets kind of old. I mean, offer her a book on art deco and one on metallurgy and which do you think she’d pick?”
“I see your point.”
“To have a titan of the arts for an auntie seems like such a waste.”
“But you adore her.”
“Well, there’s that.”
They were driving up on Saturday so they could both relax for a few days before the annual Castle Lake Arts Festival began. Emma had convinced Jane to offer a gourmet dinner, prepared by her, as a way to make money for the silent auction benefiting the center. Cordelia had agreed to do several meetings and speeches and a visit to the local high school.
Emma lived in California these days, but because her marriage was in trouble, she’d come home to Castle Lake for the summer to get away and try to figure out what to do next. She’d confided to Jane that she was glad now she’d been unable to sell her parents’ house. It was a place where she felt comfortable and safe, a retreat from her chaotic life in Mountain View. She wanted Jane and Cordelia to stay with her while they were in town.
“Does it make you feel old that you used to babysit Emma?” asked Cordelia.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Emma was forty, Jane thirteen years older.
“Take Ewing Road to the lake,” said Cordelia. “It’s faster.”
“I know how to get to the house,” said Jane.
“Consider me a GPS with opinions.”
It was just after three when they pulled into the driveway next to the Granholm house. The stone-and-timber structure was the largest and grandest property on Ice Lake, having been built in the early nineteen hundreds by the son of L. R. Granholm, the patriarch of the family. According to what Jane had learned from Leo, L.R. was a dairy and wheat farmer who was responsible for the development of the Farmer’s Grange Association in Castle Lake, Clarksville, and Fergus Falls. His son, Edward, worked as a land developer. He was the one who had amassed the family fortune, such as it was. He was also one of Castle Lake’s longest-serving mayors.
As soon as Jane eased the truck to a stop on the cobblestone drive, Cordelia was out the door. Jane spent a few minutes removing luggage from the backseat of the cab, waiting for Cordelia to return with Emma. When she did come back, she was alone.
“Nobody’s home.”
“Really?” said Jane. “I texted her when we’d be arriving.”
“Well, she’s not here.”
As they dithered about what to do, a white convertible came sailing around a curve in the Granholm’s private access road, one that connected the house to the highway.
“Ah, our landlord,” said Cordelia.
Emma pulled up next to them and cut the engine. Her long brown hair was tangled by the wind, held away from her face by a pair of sunglasses. She pulled the glasses down over her eyes before she spoke. “Sorry to be late.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Cordelia. “Have you been crying?”
“I just got some bad news. It’s about my old boyfriend, Sam Romilly.”
Emma had talked about him many times over the years, telling Jane that he’d gone missing at the beginning of their senior year. Nobody had ever seen or heard from him again.
“What about him?” asked Jane.
“I just talked to Dave Tamborsky, this idiot football jock I went to high school with. He’s a cop now. Still a jerk. Seems Holy Trinity was excavating a grave this morning, and a workman found Sam’s backpack underneath the coffin.”
“His backpack?” repeated Jane.
Emma looked from face to face. “There were bones, too. This is so unbelievable. I can’t get my head around it. After all these years, to find him like that. I mean, why on earth would someone bury him under Ida Beddemeyer?”
Cordelia did a double take. “Who’s Ida Beddemeyer?”
“She was the wife of our old high school principal.”
“Heavens,” said Cordelia, waving air into her face.
“Are they sure the remains belong to Sam?” asked Jane.
“Dave said they’d need to send everything to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul for testing, but yeah, he was pretty sure.”
“Let’s go inside, out of this heat,” said Cordelia, slipping her arm around Emma. “I’ll get you something cold to drink. Then we can all sit down together and talk.”
Emma nodded, allowing herself to be guided toward the front door.
Jane was left to schlep the luggage inside by herself.