“Natalie Cleary’s a friend of mine,” I said. “Is she okay?”
He pursed his lips. “She’s not hurt, if that’s what you mean.”
“What happened?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything, Riley,” he said. “You’ve seen enough cop shows to know that.”
I nodded. “Can you at least tell me where Nat is? Or how to get ahold of her?” To our left, the tight knot of Trip, Sarah, and Tannis were all staring numbly at the house.
Officer Willets followed my gaze. “They took her down to the station,” he said finally. “She’s going to be there for a while, I’d guess. And frankly, she’s not really in a state to chat, even with her friends. I’d go home and get some sleep.” He gave me a once-over. “You look like you could use it.”
He started to walk away, but I called after him. “Where was she? When it happened?”
He paused, and I saw his jaw tighten. He shook his head, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he did. A single word. “Inside.” He sighed heavily. “Go home, Riley. Hug your mom. Say some prayers for that poor girl.”
***
The four of us stood out in the cold for more than an hour. The sun rose gradually, light bouncing off the white trailer, but there wasn’t much else to see or learn. Nat was gone. The police came in and out. Mr. Peters waved to us, his face tight and unsmiling, but aside from what Bob had told me, no one was talking.
I told the others what he’d said. That was why we stayed, hoping to get even the smallest clue what it meant. “If she was inside, she must know who did it,” Tannis said. “Right?”
“You’d think so,” Trip answered simply. We stood, watched, waited.
Eventually we gave up, piling back into Trip’s car. It wasn’t until we were driving slowly down the hill that Tannis brought it up. “You don’t think . . .” She paused. I knew what she was getting at but wasn’t about to be the one to say it.
“What?” Trip glanced at her in the rearview.
Tannis shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you know how the other day when she had the bruise . . . and, I mean, this is what she saw, right? In those binoculars.”
“Oh! Shit,” Trip said. It hadn’t occurred to him before.
“What are you saying, Tannis?” Sarah asked. Her voice was low and controlled. I could tell she’d already considered it, just like I had.
“I don’t know,” Tannis backpedaled. “Just that . . . you know, what Riley said at lunch that day—about, like, our hidden desires . . .”
“You think she did it?” Trip’s eyes in the rearview were wide in disbelief.
“Nat would never, in a million years—” Sarah started, but Trip didn’t even let her finish.
“No way, Tannis,” he interrupted. “Nat’s been putting up with his shit for years, and she was fine when we dropped her off last night—”
“But who knows what happened after?” Tannis argued. “You saw the way he was acting at the mountain, Trip. How was he later? When you guys got him home?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Wasted? Unstable? Fine one minute and pissed off the next.”
“And if he was in the same mood when Natalie got home from the party . . . ,” Sarah said slowly.
“Or was whacked-out on some drug . . . ,” I added.
None of us said anything else, letting it hang there. The idea that Natalie might have shot her own dad was suddenly fairly easy to imagine. Trip turned down Main Street. The town was just starting to wake up. A few tourists walked quickly from the coffee shop, steaming cups in hand. We let the radio play, watched sun light the metal ski lifts strung across the mountain face. We’d run there yesterday. The start of the season, almost anything seeming possible. Except this.
I turned to Tannis, thinking about the after-party. “What happened to you last night?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Matty?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“God,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead. “Don’t remind me.”
It was just after eight when Trip dropped me at work. I’d texted George that I’d be late, explaining why. He’d already heard, of course, and I knew by the end of the day, it’d be all over town.
CHAPTER 8
THE FIRST REPORTER WAS ALREADY at the restaurant when I arrived. A skinny guy in jeans and a button-down. He’d come from Burlington the day before to cover the Dash—I guess it was a slow news week—but suddenly found himself with the scoop on a much juicier story.
Not that any of us were answering his questions.
“You’re not gonna tell him anything, right?” Moose asked, his eyes darting to the restaurant floor, the entrance, then me.
“What would I tell that half the town doesn’t already know?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah, exactly,” he said, bobbing his head. “Just . . . you know . . . nothing about that one time we went up there with Wynn, right? I mean, I didn’t even know Mr. Cleary. I was just doing a favor. It—”
“Moose. Calm down,” I interrupted, taking a step back. “You’re freaking out. Talk like that, and they’ll think you did it.” I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t, did you?”
I was joking, but Moose didn’t think it was funny. “Jesus Christ,” he exploded, “that’s exactly what I don’t need!”
He stalked away, and I stared after him. I’d never heard him yell before. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Nat had found her dad dead, and there’d been a murder in our little town. People were going to be freaking—it wasn’t something to joke about. I kept my head down the rest of the morning, busing and cleaning and trying to ignore pretty much everyone and everything.
“You must go to school with Natalie Cleary.”
The guy behind me at table ten was sipping a Coke and wearing a flannel shirt that looked fresh from a package, still creased down the front. There was a pen and notebook open on the table, the page clean and white. Reporter number two. I wondered how many others would follow.
“No comment,” I told him, loading the last of table nine’s plates into the bus pan and heading for the back.
Bob Willets and Lincoln Andrews walked in just after one p.m. “Too busy to make it this mornin’, I reckon,” Patti said. They looked less rumpled but more exhausted than when I’d seen them behind the yellow crime scene tape six hours earlier. “There’s some outta towners at yer table.” She gestured to a pair of city people. “But I can seatcha by the fountain.”