The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(76)

I arrived at Endicott Park at three thirty and parked near the farm. A group of children had been brought to see the goats and the pigs. There were blue skies overhead and the air was cool and dry. I watched one of the little boys wander away from the pens of farm animals, crouch in front of a stump on the ground. It took me a moment to see that he was staring at a busy red squirrel a few feet away. “Justin, buddy, over here,” one of the daycare workers said, and he turned and made his way back to the group.

Wandering past the farm I found a large wooden sign that had a map of multiple trails and figured out how to walk to the parking lot where I was supposed to meet Joan. I walked slowly, past a meadow bordered on three sides by crumbling stone walls, then through a brief thicket of dense woods. I got to the small parking lot a little before four. It was empty except for a Subaru Outback. The parking lot by the farm was much larger, and filled with cars.

I found a large boulder, moss blanketing one side, and leaned against it to wait. At five minutes past four a silver BMW pulled into the lot and I knew at once it had to be Joan. I felt a familiar calm come over me, my senses sharpening, then reminded myself that I was Addie Logan, and I was a nervous person.

Joan got out of the car and came around the front side, spotting me as I stepped onto the gravel parking lot. She was short but took long strides and was wearing black leggings and a dark green fleece top. Her shiny hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and when she spotted me I saw something soften in her, as though she’d instantly decided I didn’t pose a threat.

“Addie,” she said, and I nodded, taking another step forward but not reaching out my hand. Joan took a breath in through her nose, and said, “Should we take a walk? How are those shoes?”

I was wearing a used pair of Converse sneakers, and said that they were fine. Joan began down the path that led through the woods, and I caught up to her. “Thank you so much for meeting me here,” I said. “I wouldn’t have asked, but . . . you know, it’s important.”

“What did you want to talk with me about?” Joan said.

“It’s about Richard Seddon. I was a close friend of his.”

Joan turned her head to look at me. She had round eyes, very blue. Her skin was pale except for two splotches of red on either cheek. “You’re the second person I’ve talked with recently who wanted to know if I knew Richard Seddon. Trust me, I didn’t.”

“Well, he told me he knew you,” I said.

Joan stopped. “This is the Richard Seddon who just blew himself up in Cambridge, right? I’m sorry, but he was a freak who I went to school with when I was a kid. I didn’t know him then, and I don’t know him now. I have no idea why he went to see Henry Kimball with a bomb. Maybe it had something to do with high school and James Pursall but if it does, I don’t know anything about it.”

I was watching her carefully. She seemed angry, the way most people do when they’ve been caught in some kind of lie. I decided to say what it was that I had come here to say. “Joan, he told me he knew you, and he told me that you two killed people together.”





Chapter 34





Joan


The strange-looking woman stared at her with those flat green eyes, waiting for her to say something. “He told you that?” Joan said.

“He didn’t tell me details, but he told me that you two had a special bond. I want to talk with you because I know that side of Richard, too.”

Joan shook her head. “I’m sorry, you’re wasting your time. I think Richard Seddon must have had some kind of sick fantasy about me. I have no idea why, and I have no idea why you’re here, honestly. If you think Richard Seddon was some kind of murderer, you should go to the police.”

“I’m not interested in going to the police. I mean, Richard’s dead, right? But he was my friend, and I know that you were his friend, so I wanted to meet you.”

Joan gave this freak her most condescending look, and said, “He actually wasn’t my friend. That’s what I’m telling you.”

They were stopped now, in the dark woods, leaves falling around them. The woman, Addie Logan, was just looking at Joan, studying her. Joan’s mind was racing, trying to quickly figure out the best approach to this woman that Richard Seddon had clearly confided in. Right now, her gut instinct was to deny everything, to deny she’d ever even known Richard, at all.

“Okay,” Addie finally said, jutting her lower lip out a little, as though she were a disappointed child. “All I want you to know is that I’m on your side, just like I was on Richard’s side. And that I wanted to meet you, that’s all, and I also wanted to tell you the reason that Richard brought that bomb to that investigator’s office was because he knew everything. He knew about what the two of you did to your husband and that slut he was seeing, but he also knew about other things. Richard told me that Henry Kimball knew all about Kennewick, what you two did at the Windward Resort.”

The woman paused, and Joan tried to keep the surprise and fear off her face. She hadn’t expected to hear anything about Maine. She took a deep breath that she hoped looked like exasperation, and said, “I’m sorry, Addie, but it’s clear that Richard told you a lot of made-up stories. I’m not angry at you for believing them, but just know that I’m telling you the truth. And now I’m going to walk back to my car and go home.”