Arrowood (7 page)

While I had a composite image of those holiday parties, the only one I remembered with any clarity was the one when I was seven. The house smelled of spiced cider and fragrant pine boughs my mother had draped on the windowsills, banisters, and mantels. I wore a red and green Fair Isle sweaterdress with itchy red tights, and black patent leather shoes that I had outgrown. I grew tired of trying to get my mother's attention to ask her if I could remove the uncomfortable shoes and tights, and eventually I snuck into the laundry room, peeled them off, and stuffed them into one of the closets. I put on a pair of gym socks I found in the dryer and hoped that my mother wouldn't notice.

When I came out of the laundry room I saw my father down the hall, standing under one of the sprigs of mistletoe my mother had hung for the party. He held a mug of cider in his hand, and he was kissing my mother, or so I thought. I hesitated, waiting for them to finish. Bing Crosby's
White Christmas
was playing on the stereo, and I knew every song by heart. My father had been playing that album for the entire month of December. When he pulled away from the kiss, I saw that the woman was not my mother. It was Julia Ferris, Ben's mom, her manicured fingernails gripping the lapel of my father's jacket.

I still haven't forgiven you,
she said.
You have to make it up to me.
She gave his jacket a little tug, then let go and clicked down the hall in her high heels, back toward the party. Just then my dad turned and looked right at me, a pensive expression freezing on his face. He set his mug on top of Nana's curio cabinet, next to the framed portrait of him and his brothers in matching blue sport coats and ties.

“Hi, sweetie,” he said, walking toward me. “Did you see the mistletoe?”

I nodded, staying right where I was. When he got close enough, Dad reached down and picked me up. He was warm and flushed from drinking, or because my mother had insisted on lighting fires in every fireplace on the first floor. His jacket smelled faintly of cigar smoke and Aqua Velva.

“Mistletoe means you have to kiss. Isn't that silly?” He grinned to show me how silly it was. He carried me over to the mistletoe and I looked up at the little bundle of leaves. My mother had tied it to a long red ribbon so that it hung just above our heads. My father kissed my cheek. His skin was smooth; Mom had made him shave before dinner. He picked up his drink and took a sip. There was a snowman on the mug, its neck wrapped in a jaunty scarf.

“Want to try it?” Dad asked. He held the mug to my lips. It was warm, the liquid inside still steaming. I took a sip, but it didn't taste like the cider my mother had given me earlier. It was bitter, and I swallowed hard to keep from spitting it out.

He looked me in the eye a moment too long and then set me down. I slid along the wood floor in my socks, back toward the laundry and up the rear stairs, my throat burning from Dad's drink. I crept into the twins' room. They were wearing matching footie pajamas, sleeping in identical positions in their separate cribs—on their tummies, with their knees tucked under and their bottoms in the air. I curled up on the floor, listening to them breathe. I couldn't hear the party beneath us at all. Thick layers of plaster and wood silenced Bing Crosby and the clinking of glasses and my mother's shrill laughter. The sturdy bones of the house absorbed it all before it could reach me.

I arrived early for my Friday meeting with Josh Kyle. The roadside park had a swing set and picnic tables that looked out over the river, and I sat at one of the tables to wait, picking at the peeling paint and reading the graffiti that had been carved into the wood with fingernails and pocketknives. Bees swirled around the lone garbage can, McDonald's wrappers and Dairy Queen cups spilling out onto the ground and stinking in the heat. Though it was nearly October, it was eighty degrees, and sweat dripped down my neck into my bra.

Across the road from the park, Riverside Cemetery nestled at the edge of a cornfield. Grammy and Grampy and most of my mother's other relatives were buried there, though the oldest graves had been washed down the Mississippi long ago in a hundred-year flood. Grammy and I used to take a picnic lunch along when we went to pay our respects. I had always secretly hoped to be buried at Riverside instead of at the Catholic cemetery in town, because I didn't want to lie next to the three other Arden Arrowoods. Why my parents chose to give me such an ill-fated name I couldn't say, though I assumed they hadn't thought it through in the way that I did, as a little girl reading my own name on the stones and guessing at my odds.

In the Catholic cemetery, the Arrowood family plot sat on a west-facing slope in the good part of the old section, where the markers were all upright and the grass still got mowed. My ancestors had favored decorative tombstones with lambs and weeping angels, torches and doves, large stone arches and pillars topped with draped urns. Three empty spots waited for my sisters and me, prudently reserved for us by Granddad in case we died young or failed to marry. There were two small marble angels for Violet and Tabitha, but no slabs engraved with their names, because no one wanted to set in stone something that might not be true.

I'd been waiting at the picnic table for about ten minutes when a white van with tinted windows pulled into the gravel lot. It was the sort of van I always avoided parking next to, because it looked like a vehicle you might use if you wanted to kidnap someone. Though of course I knew you didn't need a van for that.

Josh Kyle emerged wearing the same hat and jacket that he wore in his website photo, both embroidered with the logo for Midwest Mysteries. It was too hot out for the jacket, and I figured maybe it was part of his investigative uniform, that he felt like he needed to wear it to look professional. He wasn't wearing the sunglasses from the picture, though. Instead he had regular glasses with thick black frames. I hadn't expected him to be so clean-cut and normal-looking, someone I might find attractive if I walked past him in a bar. He didn't appear to be much older than me, though the hair sticking out below his cap was salt-and-pepper gray.

I stood up, and he reached out to shake my hand, his grip firm and businesslike.

“It really is you,” he said. His voice, too, was a surprise, low and soothing like a radio announcer's. “You look just like your pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“They were posted by your school, something to do with the history department,” he said. “I have a Google alert that sends me anything that comes up with your name.”

“Really?”

“I promise that sounds creepier than it really is. It pulls anything with the word ‘Arrowood.' Just part of the research.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's none of my business, but—how old are you?” I didn't feel too bad asking, considering how much he already knew about me.

One corner of his mouth turned up in a lopsided grin. “Twenty-six. I graduated high school the same year as you.” He took off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. “Everybody asks. Completely gray before I turned twenty. Runs in the family.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, it's great to finally meet you,” he said, putting his cap back on. “I'm glad you agreed to do it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm curious to know why you think I'm wrong.”

He gestured toward the picnic table, and we sat down across from each other. He leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “Well, you know I interviewed Harold Singer. And I'm guessing you're familiar with that whole part of the case? With his story?”

“I know the police searched his house and found those pictures. Places he was casing to rob, supposedly. But they didn't find anything connecting him to my sisters. I think that's only because it took them so long to search his car.”

“So you probably also know that he said he wasn't parked in front of your house at four. He claimed he was parked there earlier in the day, around one o'clock.”

Out on the river, a barge sounded its air horn, and gulls swooped low over the water.

“That's what he said, but he had no witnesses. No alibi. Two people saw him there at four, including me.”

Josh stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “I think I found proof that he wasn't lying about the time. But I need your help to be sure. I was hoping you'd take a look at something for me.”

“I don't mean to sound skeptical right from the start, but what kind of evidence could you have possibly found after all this time? That was missed by everybody else?”

“I got it from Singer,” he said. “Some pictures. From that day.”

“I've already seen the pictures,” I said. “They're not even sure when he took them. There's no way to know.”

“Not those. Not the pictures of the houses. Those were from the film police found at his place, under the floorboards. There were other rolls of film, other pictures. When he saw they were looking for a gold car, he got nervous. He bundled anything he thought might be incriminating into a garbage bag, and he buried it out in the woods. It would have been smarter to just burn everything, but he wanted to keep the photos. That's how it is with guys like him—they get a thrill out of something and they don't want to give it up, even if it might get them in trouble.”

I was fairly certain I knew where the conversation was leading, but I had to ask. “What's in the pictures, then?”

“Kids.”

Ice spread through my chest. “My sisters?”

“In one picture, yes.”

“If he has a picture of my sisters, why didn't you go to the police as soon as you saw it?”

“Because I won't know whether the pictures mean anything until you look at them.” His glasses had slid down and he pushed them back up. “Like I said, I think these images could prove his innocence. Or at least put his guilt in doubt, for you, anyway. They're not…pornographic, or explicit in any way. Just close-ups of kids, playing. Riding their bikes, stuff like that. Your sisters are in one of them. Some are of you.”

My stomach twisted.
Some are of you.
I had always wondered why I had been left behind. Maybe he had planned to take me, too. Maybe he would have, if I hadn't run to the backyard to get the dandelions.

“And how does that prove him innocent?” I asked. “Because if anything, it makes him sound worse than before.”

“If these were taken the day your sisters disappeared, I think there's a way to determine what time of day he took them. I brought them with me—they're in the van.”

I studied his face. The sun glared against his glasses, so that I couldn't see his eyes. “Why did he show them to you?”

“Because I told him I wasn't convinced he was guilty, that I was trying to find out what really happened. There was no physical evidence tying him to the disappearance, and I wanted to hear his side of things. I think I was the first person who was willing to listen to him.”

I glanced over at Riverside. I hadn't gone to see Grammy and Grampy and Aunt Alice since I'd moved back, hadn't checked on their graves.

“Have you told him you think these pictures can prove his innocence?”

“No. Not yet. I wanted you to see them first.”

I followed him over to the van, a nervous prickling sensation crawling across my skin. When he handed me the first picture, my hands began to shake. It was me, wearing a pair of purple shorts and a Hello Kitty T-shirt. The same outfit I'd worn the day the twins disappeared, and never wore again.

“This is you, right?”

I stared at the picture. Eight-year-old me had an animated face, like I was telling a story. My sweaty bangs were stuck to my forehead. I was looking outside the frame, at the twins. I thought of Singer, taking this photo, and acid crept up my throat.

“It's me,” I said. “But I can't be sure it's the same day. I wore that outfit a lot that summer. It was my favorite shirt.”

He handed me the next photo. Me again, smiling wide enough so you could see that one of my front teeth was missing. The other would soon follow, and the tooth fairy would leave a worn Buffalo nickel under my pillow at the Sister House. I had been the last person in my class to lose those top teeth, and I had prayed to Saint Apollonia for them to fall out.

“I lost that tooth a few days before.”

Josh nodded, visibly relieved. “So that makes it pretty likely this was the day. Here's what I was talking about.” He pointed at the picture. “See how the shadows are, here? They'd be much longer at four. The sun would have been high when this was taken. It couldn't have been late afternoon.”

I looked closely at the photo, trying to take in what he was saying. I couldn't have said how long shadows would be at any given time of day, except that they would be minimal near noon, as these were. He had a point, though it didn't seem like conclusive evidence.

“Just because he took pictures when he says he did doesn't mean he couldn't have come back again later,” I said. “It doesn't really prove anything.”

“It might. He was telling the truth about this much, at least. It introduces doubt to all the assumptions that were made.”

“What was it like, when you talked to him? Did he seem…credible?”

Josh shrugged. “His story hasn't changed in all this time. He's adamant about his innocence.”

“Do you think he would talk to me?” I had always wondered what it would be like to confront Singer face-to-face, to ask him what he'd done to my sisters. I thought I'd know, when he told me, whether or not he was lying.

“Why would you want to?”

“Maybe it would help,” I said, “to talk to him in person. Maybe it would be easier to believe what you're telling me.”

“I don't think that's a good idea. Talking to him isn't going to make you feel any better. He's…”

“The kind of guy who takes pictures of little girls. I know.”

“It's not that,” Josh said. “He's angry. At you, your family. He's not the most upstanding guy, and he's served some time for petty stuff, but he's maintained from day one that he was wrongly accused in the kidnapping. Whether it's true or not, he thinks you ruined his life. He's really made an effort to rehabilitate himself in the past few years, but no matter what he does, regardless of the fact that no charges were filed, people still think he's the guy who took the Arrowood twins. He's not going to be pleased to see you.”

“I'm not expecting some sort of happy reunion.”

“Arden, I really appreciate you looking at the pictures. Why don't we wait and discuss talking to Singer another time.”

“Please.”

We stared at each other. I couldn't tell whose side he was on, if he thought he was protecting me from Singer or Singer from me.

“I can call him up and ask him, but I doubt he's going to agree to it.”

“Okay.”

Josh sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he took out his phone and walked around to the other side of the van to make the call.

He returned a minute later. “He'll do it,” he said. “I can drive you, if you want. He's up near Mount Pleasant. Or you can follow me, if you'd rather do that—if you're not comfortable riding together.”

“You can drive,” I said. I had emailed my mother to let her know I was meeting the man from Midwest Mysteries to talk about the twins, so in the unlikely event that Josh Kyle decided to kill me and chuck my body into a ditch, she could give the police his name. She had emailed back, warning me that I shouldn't get involved, that nothing good could possibly come out of rehashing the case.

He opened the passenger door, removing a storage tub full of computer parts from the seat. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Work stuff.” He stowed the box in the back of the van and then got in and started the engine.

“What kind of work do you do?” I asked. “Aside from the website.”

“Freelance programming, mostly. I do some computer repair on the side.”

“So Midwest Mysteries is just a hobby?”

“For now,” he said. “I'd like to have it the other way around—spend all my time on the website and writing my books, and only program when I want to. Hasn't happened yet.”

He headed north on the highway. I could hear things rattling around in the back of the van as we swung around a curve.

“How about you?” Josh asked.

“What?”

“You're done with school? Are you working? Or looking?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm looking. I'd like to do something at least vaguely related to history, if possible.”

“There are lots of museums around here.”

There were. I didn't bother to tell him that most of them ran on donations and volunteers, or that an extensive knowledge of history was not necessarily profitable in the way that an understanding of computer hardware and software might be. No one would pay me fifty dollars an hour to explain the past. History, unlike technology, was irreparable and often ignored.

I caught Josh glancing at me a few times as we drove, and each time I thought he would say something, but he didn't. We were headed away from the river, deeper into farmland, thousands of acres of corn swaying like a restless sea. Every so often, a long driveway cut through the fields, straight as a hem stitched with a sewing machine, a white farmhouse hazy in the distance.