twenty-four.
Nina was in the kitchen, dressed as she always dressed, carefully and for company.
Sometimes Marsden forgot that the boardinghouse owner and Shine were the same age, each seeming older than the other for different reasons. They’d gone to school together, had been semi-friends as teens. Then her mother had gotten pregnant and left school, while Nina graduated and went to college; having once been friends must have seemed like another lifetime. It wasn’t until her mother became a widow with nothing to her name but a piece of land no one wanted to buy, and Nina took over as manager of her family’s boardinghouse that sat next door to that land, that they reconnected in the strangest of ways.
She was at the table with a cup of coffee at her elbow and a half dozen mini blueberry pies on a plate in front of her—more of what Marsden had baked that night when she’d been too full of dread to sleep.
The coffee in the cup would be, she knew, as black and unforgiving as tar, unsullied by even a single grain of sugar. The sweet, fragrant pies, which Nina would have pulled from the freezer, would be merely lusted after and breathed upon.
As slim as a willow, her mother’s boss had begun to worry lately about losing her figure.
Marsden could have assumed Nina was sitting at the table waiting for her, knowing that she wanted to talk to her again about becoming one of her girls. So far, Marsden had managed to avoid running into her alone.
But she wasn’t the company Nina was looking for that morning, because seated across from her at the table was Hadley.
Marsden had missed seeing the cop’s car parked outside the boardinghouse. She’d been distracted and thinking of cameras and drownings and Jude.
“There you are.” Nina pressed a rose-tipped hand to her front, the nails like gems against the paler pink of her blouse. Her brown bob swung as she shook her head, concern all over her face. “Please tell me you weren’t in the covert this morning—I know you like to take walks there, even now.”
Even now.
Marsden tried not to roll her eyes.
Nina’s show of distress over Marsden having found Rigby’s body—someone so close to her age, with people in common—was for appearance’s sake. Her mother’s boss knew she was more effective as a cutthroat businessperson by being selective about when she showed her claws; bodies in the covert bothered her only because it was bad for the boardinghouse, and a nuisance to deal with.
More than the bodies that bothered her, though, were Marsden’s reactions to them. Marsden knew it unsettled Nina, the way she was able to report a body and then go about her day. But Nina didn’t know she needed those bodies more than she could ever be scared of them.
“No, I was walking along the river,” she said, trying not to fidget, feeling stained by the covert. How much did she smell of ginger when what she needed was the scent of the mud from the Indigo? “Why?”
“Did you see a car parked along the highway out there?” Hadley asked. He took a sip of coffee, slurping just the slightest. His coffee would be thick with cream and sugar and lazy indulgence. “A brown Buick?”
“Yes, it’s still out there now.” She couldn’t lie about that. There was no way she could have missed seeing that car if she’d been where she said she was.
“It appears to have been abandoned. The owner . . . Well, unfortunately, we think he went into the covert. You understand what that means.”
She nodded. “Suicide.”
“Most likely.” The note of sadness in Hadley’s voice almost sounded authentic. “People don’t go there for much else, as you know. It’s a terrible state of affairs—not just for your family, but for Glory as a whole. We’re not sensationalized in the news much anymore, but people still know, and they still talk. Unfortunately, we can’t just block off the entire west end of town from the world.”
“If you want to do something, patrol the area more. Get Glory to pay for a proper fence. Cement over the covert so people have no dirt to touch.” It was a mistake to goad the cop, but the shame she lived with—actually needing the covert the way it was for her own purposes—was suddenly suffocating. She wanted Hadley with his too-sweet coffee to feel some of that shame, too. Nina paid the cops well to do as little as they did, at both their conveniences.
The money stuffed into her pocket seemed to grow heavier.
The head cop stared at her with flinty eyes. “Yeah, well, too bad we can’t change town history.”
Marsden fought to keep her expression neutral at the dig at her great-great-uncle. It stung being blamed, but it wasn’t wrong. And she’d half expected it, knowing Hadley would recognize her own dig.
“I called the police as soon as I saw that car out there.” Nina’s bob shimmied again. “And I’m glad Shine’s in town, as she’d be distressed to see this. She always is, each time this happens, considering it’s her property—as you’re affected, too, Marsden. I was so very worried of what you might see.”
“Where is she?” Marsden asked. “Do you know when she’ll be back?” She wondered if Brom was with her. If Hadley weren’t there, she might have asked Nina, but she didn’t want the corrupt cop to know any more than he had to.
“She’s at the mall,” Nina answered, “with plans to be back after lunch.”
The revelation at Seconds—the possibility that Brom had been there with her father that night—had stuck deep, like something caught in her teeth, so she’d decided she would take more notice of her mother’s lover. Until now, she’d never had reason to watch him, to even want to acknowledge his presence. But things had changed. She wanted to know all about his days (she already knew too much about his nights). Shine had said his time at the boardinghouse was when he had weeks off from his job. So where did he go during the days? What was he doing to fill his hours when he wasn’t busy “courting” her mother, trying to be who her father had been? Or was he simply with her all the time?
Hadley lumbered to his feet, tugged his hat back on. “I’ll tell Shine myself if I find anything.”
Marsden eased away, her skin crawling as Nina saw the cop out. Of course he would tell Shine himself. He took three of the mini blueberry pies on his way, his hands soft and white and absurdly delicate as he slid them off the plate. She could imagine his fingers on the body in the covert, not being careful at all as he skimmed from it before walking back to his car.
In the bedroom she shared with Wynn, Marsden dug out the pair of old boots from the closet and slipped in the money—she would change the bills for smaller ones from the till later. She used to store her cash in between the pages of books, but then Wynn started wanting to read what she read. She considered putting all of into the bank, but the owner liked to gossip on top of being friends with too many people in Glory. So she’d bought the used boots from a garage sale a couple of years ago, realizing they were just ugly enough that no one else in the boardinghouse would even think about touching them. Beneath the pair of socks she kept pushed down into them, the boots held all the money she’d saved over the years. They held her and Wynn’s escape from Glory.
She left her room and went upstairs. It was still morning, but late enough that Peaches would be alone in her bedroom, her john gone. Marsden needed to ask to borrow her camera.
She silently named the girls as she passed their rooms: Kim, early thirties, whose boyfriend lived overseas; Wendy, late twenties, who used to teach Spanish part-time; Bridget, mid-thirties, who talked about one day going to fashion school. Shine. Marsden remembered how once, when she was too young to know that her mother was no longer employed as just the housekeeper, she’d heard a man’s voice come from behind her door. She’d thought absolutely nothing of it until later that night when she fell asleep wondering if her mother had actually met someone else and was going to get remarried. If he would ever be willing to drink pretend tea with her.
As she neared Peaches’s room, she heard laughter from behind its closed door. Wynn’s.
Marsden’s heart sank as she knocked.
She really wasn’t much different from her sister, wanting something from Nina’s girls. But Wynn wanted to learn their secrets, while Marsden had too many to hide—she needed Peaches and Lucy and all the others to stay away.