The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(71)

Walking back down Mass Avenue in my new clothes, teetering in my high-heel boots, I felt like myself again. Not because I liked the clothes, or even felt comfortable in them, but because I felt invisible, camouflaged. I suspected that if my mother walked past me on the sidewalk she wouldn’t give me a second look. I still didn’t have an exact plan for what I was going to do next, but it felt important that I was essentially in a disguise. I hoped to find a way to meet Joan Whalen, and if she had done her research on Henry Kimball—and I imagined she had—then she’d know about me, maybe even seen a picture of me attached to one of the news stories. But unless she really paid attention to what my face looked like, then I thought my new look would probably fool her.

I passed a library and went inside, finding a free computer and opening up an internet browser. I hadn’t found out too much from my search through Henry’s apartment the night before, but I’d found a little more than the limerick. There had been a stack of books on Henry’s desk, including the 2003 yearbook from Dartford-Middleham High School. I’d found pictures of both Joan Whalen, then called Joan Grieve, and Richard Seddon. Two other books on his desk interested me; they were both volumes of poetry by Elizabeth Grieve, who I guessed was Joan Grieve’s sister. In the slimmer of the two volumes, a book called Sea Oat Soup, Henry had left a pencil marking a poem called “Tides.” Its subtitle was “Kennewick, 1999,” and Henry had faintly underlined the word Kennewick with the pencil. At first, I wondered if he’d done that because of our connection to Kennewick. It was the town where Ted and Miranda Severson (rest in peace to both of them) had been building their dream house. But Henry had also underlined the word sister and the word drowned in the poem, and I’d made a mental note to investigate it later when I could get on an anonymous computer.

It took a while but I eventually found what I was looking for. There had been a drowning off the jetty in Kennewick in the year 2000. A teenager named Duane Wozniak who had been accompanied by an unnamed girl also staying at the Windward Resort. There was very little information but in one of the articles I found it mentioned that a Richard Seddon, Duane’s cousin, had also been staying with the Wozniaks at the resort. It all fell into place. I’d learned what Henry had learned, maybe not all he learned but enough. Richard and Joan had been involved in at least three incidents that had resulted in death. The first was the drowning of Duane Wozniak in Kennewick in 2000. The second was the school shooting three years later in Dartford, and the third was the death of Joan’s husband and Joan’s husband’s girlfriend. Actually, there were four incidents, because now Richard Seddon was dead in an explosion at the offices of the private investigator who’d been hired by Joan.

Before logging off, I did a quick check to see if there had been any updates on the story of the explosion. There was nothing new, not since yesterday, which made me think that at least Henry hadn’t died. That would surely make the news.

After leaving the library I walked to a busy Irish pub in Davis Square and got a table to myself. I ordered a Guinness plus the veggie burger and scrolled through my phone so I would look like everyone else who was alone in the place. A young guy wearing a flannel shirt and black jeans sitting at the bar caught my eye and I gave him my flattest, coldest look, hoping he’d stay away. For the last two years, since I’d been living at Monk’s House, I’d forgotten what it was like to be out in the world. Now that I was back in it, all I saw around me were flawed animals who didn’t really know they were animals. Sad, horny men. Drunk, flirty women. That sounds judgmental, but I don’t mean it to be. It’s who I am too, an animal just trying to survive, trying to understand my impulses. And maybe being here, away from the simplicity of my real life, was a huge mistake.

I could go back to Henry’s apartment, sleep until dawn, then drive back to Connecticut. My parents would be surprised by my new appearance but that wouldn’t last long. I could go back to sorting through my father’s materials, to taking long walks in the surrounding woods, to rereading my Agatha Christie collection at night.

The burger came and was better than it should have been. When I’d finished it, and paid my bill, I stood up to go. The burly guy at the bar stared at me a little more as I left through the swinging doors.

I’d decided to not go home just yet. I wanted to meet Joan Grieve first.





Chapter 32





Joan


“It’s good that you’re here,” Detective James said. “I was planning on reaching out to you anyway.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joan said. They were sitting on either side of a hard couch in the waiting area of the hospital. Even with Joan sitting up as straight as she could, the detective was looking down at her, the expression on her face unreadable.

“First of all, I’m sorry for your loss, and for the circumstances around it. That must have been quite a shock.”

“It was.”

“How are you doing now?”

“I mean, I’m still in shock, I think. I’m grieving, but I’m also trying to come to grips with what Richard, with what my husband, did. It’s like I didn’t even know him.”

“I can imagine,” the detective said, and crossed one leg over the other, like they were settling in for a long chat.

“I was so shocked when I heard about what happened to Henry Kimball,” Joan said. “He’d been . . . he was always kind to me, and I already felt bad about what he had to see . . . to discover . . . when he was investigating my husband. I know it doesn’t make sense for me to come here to check on him, but I can’t stand being alone in my house, and then I was so worried, so here I am.” Joan held both palms of her hands up in a gesture that immediately felt unnatural to her. Why had she just said all those things to this woman? She made a decision to stop babbling and just answer questions.