“I still think Jasper skipped town,” he said. “But there’s something strange going on here. Is it me, or does it seem like Camilla and Abella are the only ones sad to see that Jasper’s gone? Maybe not everybody goes berserk when a loved one disappears, I’ll give you that—but what does it say about these people that they don’t look remotely upset?” His eyebrows got straighter. “I don’t like it. Watch yourself, okay?”
My gaze traveled back to the seven people in the parlor. This island was their territory, and I felt like an intruder. I didn’t know what awaited me upstairs, or around the corner, or even in the parlor itself.
“Yeah,” I said as I twisted my body to face the stairs. “You too.”
FIVE
I didn’t like him. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t met him yet. The eldest Sinclair sibling hadn’t bothered to come downstairs to hear what we had to say about his brother’s disappearance, and that transported me back to the police boat. It made me feel queasy and ill at ease.
This time when I knocked on the locked door, I got a reply. “Come in,” Flynn said at once. I was about to argue—it’s locked, don’t you know it’s locked?—but when I tried the knob it turned easily in my moist hand.
He sat on the edge of a four-poster bed all the way across the room. When had Flynn unlocked the door? For a moment I wondered if I’d been wrong. Maybe it was just jammed, or sticky with age. Maybe it was never locked at all. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d imagined a locked door. Usually, though, it was me on the other side.
Flynn Sinclair looked nothing like his name, which had a Peter Pan quality, elfish and light on its feet. He was a large man with simian features, a seventies-style mustache, and dense dark hair. From the shape of his shoulders and upper arms, contained by a gray cashmere sweater like you’d wear to Sunday brunch, I could see there was muscle under his mass. My guess was he played football in college and was killing himself fighting the middle-age spread. Flynn didn’t get up to greet me. But he did ask about Jasper.
“We haven’t found him yet. We’re working on it,” I said. There was a needlepoint pillow in Flynn’s lap that he held against his stomach like a compress. It made the big man look more vulnerable. I’m sure that was his intent. “We need you downstairs. But let’s talk a minute first.”
“You saw it? The blood?” He clutched the pillow tighter. “Philip wouldn’t let me in there. What happened to my brother?”
I had trouble imagining stubby Norton taking on Flynn. If Flynn wanted to see that room, he’d have done it. “We’re still trying to figure that out,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll know more when the forens—”
Flynn flinched. It was that word; too much crime TV makes the public associate forensic science with death. “When the rest of our team gets here,” I said, backpedaling, “we may have more information about the nature of the injury and crime.”
“You’ve got to have a theory. People don’t just disappear.”
You’re wrong, I wanted to tell him. People disappear all the time. Instead, I said, “Not every day, no.”
“Did you talk to her? She’s the one you should be talking to, not me.”
“You’re referring to his girlfriend.” I took out my notebook. “That would be Abella Beaudry?”
“Obviously. Christ.”
“I do plan to speak with her. But right now, I’m with you. Do you mind if I sit down?”
A muscle rolled across Flynn’s jaw. I couldn’t tell if he was suppressing anger or pain. He jerked his chin in the direction of a chair and I took some time getting there, seizing my chance to study the room.
The curtains on the windows were open. Rain beat against the glass. This side of the house was closer to the trees, and they blocked most of the dull daylight in a way that made the room feel cold. Some coins and a set of house keys were scattered across the surface of the dresser. Flynn had emptied his pockets of the things one didn’t need on a private island. Must be nice, I thought, to have the luxury of sloughing off the burdens of the outside world. Beside the items, he’d placed his billfold-style wallet. But no, that was wrong. There wasn’t one wallet, but two.
“Mind if I take some notes?” I adjusted myself on the stiff ladder-back chair. Like the parlor, Flynn’s bedroom was sparsely decorated with antique furniture and Adirondack flare. I was pleased to find sitting across from someone with notepad and pen in hand still came easily, as if each step of the interview process was ingrained. It emboldened me; I took it as a good sign. Flynn hadn’t answered my question, but it didn’t matter. I was taking notes regardless.
“Okay, so. First question. Are you and Jasper close?”
“Of course we’re close. He’s my brother.”
“There’s a pretty big age difference between you.” I thought of Jasper’s photo as I looked at Flynn, whose skin was rough and had succumbed to decades of gravity. His heavy jowls made me think of melting wax. “Ten years?”
“Twelve.”
“You were almost a teenager when he was born.”
A shadow passed across his face. “What’s your point?”
“Not making a point, I just wonder how well you know him—now, I mean. A lot of siblings grow apart as they get older.”
“That didn’t happen to us.”
“Fair enough. So, Flynn. Why don’t you tell me what happened last night?”
That muscle again. It slid beneath the surface of his skin like an eel in shallow water. It wasn’t just that I didn’t like the guy for hiding up here while the rest of his family was downstairs. Something about Flynn’s body language made me edgy. “If I knew,” he said coolly, “you wouldn’t be here.”
“Why don’t you walk me through yesterday and we’ll see what we can turn up?”
“My brother’s been gone for hours. There’s a goddamn hurricane outside. It’s fucking freezing, and Jasper’s jacket and shoes are sitting in the mudroom downstairs. You’re wasting time. She’s right downstairs.” To make his point Flynn slammed the sole of his shoe against the floor. It was an oil-tanned leather moccasin dyed navy, fine, and out of season. No wonder he’d opted to join the search party that stayed indoors.
I’d been with Flynn ten minutes and already the ridges of my ears were tingling. He hadn’t relinquished the pillow, but the vulnerability I witnessed when I entered the room had been replaced with an aggression so intense it radiated from his body in waves. In my academy days, when we were learning to use our firearms, we’d compete to see who was the quickest draw. We would stand back-to-back, western-movie style, while an instructor manned the stopwatch, tapping his foot in wait. He was deadly serious about our reaction time on those drills—in the city, the fastest draw is the one who survives—but we had other motives for winning. Fastest draw was bragging rights, and bragging rights were currency in the academy. Plenty of times it was me who was flush.