Everafter (Kissed by an Angel) (13 page)

“I don’t know how you can keep your eyelids up,” Tristan remarked as they walked to the car, his arm around her. He could feel her giggling.

Since they didn’t want to leave an electronic trail via her GPS, Ivy had printed out a map and marked on it Mrs. Abbot’s address. They reached the Providence neighborhood of River Gardens close to nine o’clock and parked across the street from the tall frame home. In a neighborhood of rusty chain-link fences, Mrs. Abbot’s yard seemed more welcoming than the others with its assortment of plastic toys. Flowers grew at the corners of her chipped concrete steps. Next to the door were two buttons and two mailboxes. Ivy pushed the bell marked
ABBOT
.

The door cracked opened and the face of a little boy appeared in the three inches between the frame and the door. “Mom said the apartment’s rented.”

“We’re not here for an apartment,” Ivy began to explain.

The door closed, then just as quickly opened wide and the child flew out. Footsteps sounded in the hallway and a blur of a little girl raced past Ivy and Tristan.

“Zeke, I’m gonna hammer you!” she cried. Chasing the boy, she left the door gaping.

“Hello?” Tristan called as he and Ivy stepped inside.

At the end of the hall, tucked beneath the stairway, another door was open and a baby crawled toward them. A pair of strong arms appeared, scooping up the child.

“Sorry,” the woman said, moving into the hallway, the struggling baby in her arms. “The apartment is leased now.”

Tristan removed his baseball cap and sunglasses.

“Luke! So it’s true. You
have
been coming back to the Gardens.”

He simply nodded, not knowing what Luke had called his landlady.

“Hello, Mrs. Abbot,” Ivy said.

“Crystal,” she replied with a nod. The full-bodied woman had mahogany-colored skin and close-cropped hair. Her pleasant face was set off by a huge pair of hoop earrings.

“Crystal, this is my friend Gemma.”

“A friend through Corinne,” Ivy added. “Corinne and I went to art school together.”

The woman smiled a little, eyeing Ivy’s outfit. “Should’ve guessed,” she said. “Come in. Watch the scooter. And the skates.”

The Abbots’ living room was sunny, its furniture worn, and its scatter rugs truly scattered, creating the feeling of kids rushing through it even in the silence. Crystal balanced the baby on her hip and picked pillows off the floor with her free hand as she led them through the room to the kitchen.

“Al’s asleep. My husband works the night shift,” she added, directing that explanation at “Gemma.”

They followed the landlady onto a porch with two rockers. Tristan sat on the steps. The backyard was a small jungle of weed trees growing under one large tree. But, judging by the ropes and tires tied to the big tree and the open bins of leftover construction materials, it was a kid’s paradise. The boy and girl were busy stringing up a tent.

“Just like old times,” Crystal said, and Tristan smiled, feeling that same awkwardness and humility he had felt before when people who cared for Luke looked fondly at him.

“Better put on your sunglasses and hat. I’m not telling the kids it’s you. Don’t want them saying something to the wrong person.”

He nodded and did as she said.

“Whoever the wrong person is,” Crystal added, frowning. “Do you know who killed Corinne?”

“No.”

Crystal rocked a moment, then turned to Ivy. “Do you think the murderer was someone from Corinne’s new life? Did she make enemies at art school?”

“She didn’t make many friends.”

The baby started fussing, and to Tristan’s amazement, Crystal handed the child to him. “Micah always liked you.”

Tristan looked at Ivy, feeling helpless. He tried to remember how he’d seen people hold babies. The little bare feet kept beating against Tristan’s legs, so he held the kid
by his armpits, standing him up so he could flex his pudgy knees. “You’re getting big, buddy.”

The baby grabbed the brim of Tristan’s hat and started chewing on it. “Whoa! You don’t know where that’s been,” Tristan said, holding the child with one hand and turning his hat backward. Micah grabbed Tristan’s sunglasses and started swinging them around, batting him on the side of the head, then dropped the glasses and collapsed against Tristan’s chest. His small body was damp and warm and smelled like powder. Patting the baby’s back, hoping he wasn’t going to spit up, Tristan glanced over his shoulder and saw Ivy laughing.

“You should have gone west, Luke,” Crystal said. “Or south. The Cape’s not far enough.”

“Yeah, I know that now.”

“What happened to Alicia? That girl wasn’t suicidal.”

“I agree,” he said.

“I heard talk, blaming it on you,” she continued. “I know that’s not true.”

“I think the person who killed Corinne also killed her. She was here with me the night Corinne asked me to meet her at Four Winds. Alicia didn’t realize it when it happened, but she was my alibi.”

“So they killed your alibi.” Crystal closed her eyes for a moment. “God have mercy.”

“Did you see Alicia that night?” Ivy asked Crystal. “I
know if you had seen what time she left, you would’ve told that to the police. But maybe, at least, you saw her arrive.” Ivy’s voice pleaded. “Anything that you could tell them now might help.”

Crystal glanced at “Luke.”

“You always could win over the girls’ hearts.” Then she pointed to a set of exterior steps. “That’s the stairway to the third floor,” she told Ivy. “Evenings are noisy here—Al gets the kids wound up. I hole up in the bedroom and study. I didn’t see or hear anything. I told that to the police when they came banging on our door at two a.m. I wasn’t awake enough to think about giving anyone an alibi. The best I could do was keep them from searching Luke’s place until they had a warrant.”

So, another dead end, thought Tristan.

“How about Bryan Sweeney?” Ivy asked, and let the question hang, as if testing the landlady’s gut response to the mention of him.

Crystal watched her kids wheeling a cinderblock to the tent in a rusty wheelbarrow. “Bryan was a help. He got Luke out of here. But he and I, we don’t get along. You know that, Luke.”

“Why not?” Ivy asked.

“You know him?” the woman asked back. “He’s a lot like Corinne. Ambitious. Self-centered. He disguises it better than Corinne did, but he was always looking out for
himself.” Crystal studied Ivy, then rose to her feet as if she had made some decision. “I’ve kept something for you, Luke. I guess I can give it to you in front of your friend here.”

She disappeared into the kitchen, and Ivy and Tristan exchanged hopeful glances. The baby straightened his chubby legs, straining to see where his mother had gone, then rested back against Tristan’s shoulder.

Crystal returned carrying a cereal box. Slipping her finger under the cardboard flap, she pulled out a small padded envelope and handed it to Tristan in exchange for the baby. The envelope, addressed to Luke, had a handwritten return address for Corinne Santori.

“It arrived two days after Corinne was murdered, one day after the police searched your rooms.”

Tristan looked up questioningly at Crystal.

“Al and I decided not to tell them. If they had caught you, I would have found a way to get it to you. As far as we were concerned, it was for your eyes only.”

It took all of Tristan’s self-discipline not to rip the package open. He tried to loosen the packing tape, then asked for a pair of scissors. With a few snips, he eased open one end of the envelope. Something small and solid fell out.

“Her flash drive!” Ivy exclaimed softly.

Tristan set the drive on the porch floor next to him, then pulled out a note.

“Luke, keep this safe for me,”
he read aloud.

“What’s the postmark on the envelope?” Ivy asked.

Tristan squinted. “The day before she died.”

“Somebody was breathing down her neck,” Crystal said.

Tristan picked up the flash drive. Somewhere in these 16 gigs were pictures of Bryan’s damaged car. Those photos, Corinne’s note, and the photo of Bryan wearing the cufflinks matching the one left next to his first victim would be enough evidence to convince the police.

“I wouldn’t advertise you’ve got that,” Crystal advised. “Corinne was always poking her camera into other people’s business. There’ll be plenty of folks desperate enough to pry it out of your hands.”

Tristan smiled up at her, then pocketed the drive. Of course! There would be others who had done lesser things than murder, who could verify that Corinne was a blackmailer. They wouldn’t have come forward willingly, but if evidence was presented now, they’d have to talk to police. “Do you have something we can put this envelope in?”

Crystal brought him a zip-lock bag.

“I—I don’t know how to thank you for this,” Tristan said.

“You could pay your last two months of rent,” Crystal replied.

“I owed you two months?” Tristan saw Ivy bite back her laughter.

“You paid off the third month by painting the bathrooms, remember?”

“Write down the amount,” Ivy said. “You’ll get it.”

Crystal did, then walked them to the front door with Micah on her hip.

Tristan debated how to say good-bye. A handshake seemed too formal for a woman Luke used to sit on the back porch with. But each hug he gave while playing the role of Luke made him feel more dishonest. He laid his hand gently on the baby’s head. “Soon,” he said, “you’ll be chasing your big brother and sister. You’ll be showing them just how fast those little feet can go.”

Crystal’s dark eyes shimmered. “We miss you, Luke.”

As they drove away, Ivy smiled. “A natural,” she teased. “Who’d have thought it? I was waiting to see you feed and change him.”

“Yeah, and tape his diaper to his undershirt. Did you see how little his undershirt was? Did you see his miniature fingernails?”

Ivy laughed at Tristan.

They had taken Ivy’s laptop from the trunk, and Tristan booted it up as she drove, then slipped in the flash drive. “I’m making a backup.”

“I’ve been trying to think of a good place for us to plug in and start searching the files. I checked online last night. With Alicia’s death, you’ve resurfaced as a news story in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, complete with photos.”

“Yes, but according to Chase, they’re not very flattering,” Tristan joked. His heart felt so much lighter now. “How about Connecticut? Hartford. It’s easier to be overlooked in a city.”

“Good idea! I know exactly where we’d blend in.”

Two hours and one rest stop later, during which Ivy shed everything of Gemma’s except the darkened eyelashes, she pulled into a parking lot belonging to Trinity University. Tristan placed the laptop in the protective pocket of her knapsack and slung it over his shoulder. Hand in hand, they walked the path to the library. They could have been any two college kids on the half-empty summer campus.

For the next several hours they looked at photos. At first glance, they had thought their task might be easy. Though the drive held a huge number of photos and there were folders within folders, the files were named in a systematic way that a compulsive artist—or competent blackmailer—might label them.

But promising names of folders yielded useless files. In a folder labeled
RIVER GARDENS
there was just one car, which appeared in a photo of Corinne’s stepfather and the car he drove for hire. They found her photo essay,
Carscape
, among her schoolwork, but those photos were so artistically rendered there was no shot of an easily identifiable car with front-end damage.

“I don’t know enough about how a photographer would use a computer,” Tristan said, sitting back in his chair. “Is there a way of accessing the photos according to date?”

“The date they were taken?” Ivy sighed. “I don’t know.”

“If she sent this to Luke for safekeeping, it’s
got
to have something incriminating.”

“I agree.” Ivy rubbed her eyes and sat back in her chair. “Perhaps Corinne used a large drive and put this many photos on it to keep anyone who got ahold of it from being able to easily find the incriminating photos. Tristan, what about letting Will have a crack at this? He does a lot of artwork on his Mac, including photography. He’d know the kinds of tech things Corinne knew. And being visual, he might see a pattern in the photos that we don’t.”

Tristan nodded. “Let’s take a break, then look a little more. If we don’t find anything, we’ll turn it over to him.”

They found lunch at a campus café called the Cave and carried their sandwiches out to the main quad for a picnic beneath a tree. A scattering of girls sunbathed on the grass. A guy and his dog played with a Frisbee. Summer students strolled along a flagstone walk that ran past a block of connected brownstone buildings. The buildings’ steep roofs were punctuated by gables, towers, and dormers, so perfect in its college-Gothic detail, it looked like a movie set.

After finishing his sandwich, Tristan lay back in the grass, gazing up at the canopy of maple leaves and the small petals of blue sky peeking through here and there. Ivy lay close to him, resting her head on his shoulder. He twined her hair lightly around his finger and listened to a fragment of conversation as two people passed by, a younger guy talking excitedly about something he’d read, and an older man, whose contribution was simply a chuckle.

“This is where you’ll be going to college,” Tristan said suddenly. Earlier he had noticed that Ivy had seemed to know her way to the library. In a short month, she would come here to study, live in a dorm, and make friends with people who occupied a world far different from the one he could inhabit as Luke.

Ivy raised her head and gazed down at him. “What is it? What are you thinking about?”

As Luke, he didn’t have a high school diploma, a home, or a job; and he didn’t have the money or track record to get those things. “Andrew and Maggie, and your new college friends—they’re not going to be raising a glass of champagne to you and me. Ivy, nobody who loves you will want us to be together.”

“Philip will. And Beth and Will—they’re glad for us,” she argued.