Barrons, Vermont

November 2014

“Jonas,” Fiona said the next morning as she walked into the cramped offices of Lively Vermont. “Did you know that Idlewild Hall is being restored?”

The main room was empty, but Jonas’s door was ajar, and she knew he was in there. He always was. She wove past the mismatched desks and the cardboard boxes that littered the main room and headed toward Lively Vermont’s only private office, the lair of the magazine’s owner and editor in chief.

“Is that you, Fiona Sheridan?” came a voice from inside. “I haven’t seen you in days.”

She reached the door and looked in at him. He was bent over his desk, staring closely at a photograph print, the computer blank and ignored behind him. Typical Jonas. “I guess it’s a good thing I don’t work for you, then,” she said.

He looked up. “You’re freelance. It counts.”

Fiona felt herself smiling. “Not when it comes to health insurance.”

He gave her a poker face, but she knew he was teasing. Jonas Cooper was fiftyish, his gray-brown hair swept back from his forehead in neat, impressive wings, his eyebrows dark slashes over his intense eyes. He wore a red-and-black-checkered shirt open at the throat over his waffle-weave undershirt. He and his wife had bought Lively Vermont over a decade ago, and since their divorce last year he’d been trying to keep it going. “Do you have a story for me?” he asked.

“No,” Fiona replied. “I gave you one on Friday. You told me that blew the budget.”

“For this issue, yes. But there’s always another one.”

For now, she thought. Lively Vermont was just one of several local magazines she wrote for, and it was struggling just as hard as the rest of them. “What is that?” she asked, gesturing to the photo.

“Local photographer,” he replied. He glanced down at the picture again and shrugged. “She lives in East Charlotte. The work isn’t bad. I might do a feature, if I can find a writer.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Jonas leaned back in his vintage office chair and tossed the photograph onto a pile.

“Because I just did a story on artisanal cheese. That’s my pound of flesh for this month.”

Jonas gave her a look that said, I know you’re lying. She was. Fiona excelled at writing fluff—she had no pretensions to creating great journalism. She didn’t want to do an article about a photographer because photographers always asked her about her father. “Consider it,” he said. “If this pans out, I might dig some money out of the sofa to pay for it. Now, what is it you were shouting about when you came in?”

Fiona felt her heart speed up, as if she were about to ask about something forbidden. “Idlewild Hall,” she said. “I hear it’s about to be restored.”

Jonas looked wary, then nodded. “The new owner.”

“Who is he?”

“She. Margaret Eden. Wife of the late investment whiz Joseph Eden. Does the name ring a bell?”

It did—something to do with the economic meltdown in 2008. She’d seen his face in the news. “So he bought the property?”

“No. He died, and the widow did. She’s come up from New York to oversee the restoration, I think.”

Fiona was stung, somehow, that Jonas knew. “The Christophers owned that land for decades,” she said. “Ever since the school closed in 1979. No one told me it was sold. Or that it was going to be restored.”

A look of sympathy came over Jonas’s expression. “It wasn’t my place,” he said softly. “And the restoration has been nothing but talk until now. I didn’t think anyone would actually go ahead with it.”

“Well, it’s going ahead. I saw the construction signs on the fences when I was there last night.”

Jonas was quiet. He hadn’t been living here in 1994—he’d moved here only when he bought the magazine—but he knew about Deb’s murder, about her body dumped at Idlewild, about Tim Christopher going to prison for the crime. Everyone knew about it. There was no privacy in Barrons, not for the family of the victim of the town’s most famous murder. Even Jonas knew there was something unhealthy about Fiona visiting the Idlewild grounds.

“Don’t say it,” Fiona warned him. “Just don’t.”

He held up his hands. “Hey, it’s your business. I just run a magazine.”

She stared at him for a minute as the familiar jittery energy from last night ran through her blood. “So, do you really want a story from me?” she asked. “A feature?”

“Why do I have the feeling I’ll be sorry if I say yes?”

“Idlewild,” she said. “That’s the story I’ll write. I’ll interview Margaret Eden. I’ll look at the plans for the school. I’ll tour the property, get photographs, everything.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jonas said. “I don’t know, Fiona.”

“It’s local color,” she said, feeling her cheeks heat up. “A new school, a revival, local jobs. No one else is covering it. It beats a feature about a photographer. Isn’t that what you want for Lively Vermont?” She looked straight into his eyes. “I’m fine with it, Jonas,” she said. “I swear, I’m fine.”

To her relief, she saw the wariness leave his eyes and his calculating editor’s side take over. He and his ex-wife, Emily, had bought Lively Vermont for its cachet as an independent Yankee think tank, but under Emily’s direction they’d turned it into a soft-toothed lifestyle magazine, the kind that ran ads for eighty-dollar candles and five-thousand-dollar handmade quilts. Jonas had always been unhappy with that—he’d wanted more, which was why he continued to hire Fiona, hoping she’d show the same journalistic chops as her famous father. “I admit it’s interesting, but I don’t have the budget for a piece that big.”

“I’ll write it on spec,” she said. “I’ll take my own pictures. You don’t even have to buy the piece. Just let me say I’m working for Lively when I call up Margaret Eden. It’ll get my foot in the door faster.”

“I see. And what do I get for letting you use the name of my magazine?”

“I’ll give you first refusal on it.” She waited as he thought it over, suddenly impatient. “Come on, Jonas. You know it’s a good deal.”

He looked like he wanted to be convinced, but he said, “You’re about to ask for something else, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Fiona said, letting out a breath. “I want to start with history. Can you let me into the archives?”

Lively Vermont had first published off a photocopier in 1969, and every issue was kept in a bank of scarred wooden file cabinets that had followed the magazine through every office move. They now sat against the back wall of the office, where someone had left a plate with the stale remains of a doughnut atop them, alongside an ice-cold coffee cup.

“You could go to the library, you know,” Jonas offered skeptically as Fiona pulled open the oldest drawers. “They’d have more about Idlewild than we do.”

“Everyone at the library knows who I am,” Fiona said. The files had a musty smell that made her briefly happy. “If they know what I’m researching, it won’t be a secret anymore.”

It was true. Malcolm Sheridan, the famous journalist, was a local legend in Barrons, and Fiona, his one remaining daughter, had distinctive red hair. The Barrons library staff was dedicated but extremely small, and because of Fiona’s many research visits over the years, they all knew who she was.

“Okay,” Jonas said. “And why is this a secret, exactly? Don’t tell me there’s high competition for this story.”

She turned and gave him a look over her shoulder.

He gave her a look back. “I’ve never met a journalist who’s afraid of librarians.”

“You’ve never met a journalist with my family history,” Fiona replied, trying to make it sound casual, easy. “I hate gossip. I can find other sources, especially online.”

There was a pause of silence behind her as she pulled out the files from 1969 to 1979. “If you’re looking for more sources, your father would have them,” he said. “You know that.”

“I know.” Fiona banged the drawer shut. “I’m due to visit him soon anyway. I’ll ask him about it.”

“Fine. Just bring my files back intact. And, Fiona . . .” Jonas shrugged. “Like I say, it’s your business, but there are going to be references to the Christophers in there. It’s unavoidable.”

He was right. Before their son had gone to prison for murder, the Christophers had been the richest and the most prominent family in Barrons. It was very likely there was something about Tim’s parents in the file she was holding. But she’d cross that bridge when she had to. “Like I said,” she told Jonas, “I’m fine.”

Jonas looked as if he was considering saying something else, but all he said was “Say hello to your father for me.”

“I will.” Malcolm Sheridan was Jonas’s journalistic idol, and it was that admiration that kept her employed at Lively Vermont. “I’ll be in touch,” she said, and she waved the files gratefully at him as she turned for the door.

It was a blustery gray day, the sun fighting to be seen from behind the clouds. The leaves had turned from vibrant colors to faded brown and had mostly left the trees. A handful of maple leaves, blown by the wind, had landed on Fiona’s windshield, and she brushed them off as she got in her car.

She glimpsed her face briefly in the rearview mirror as she started the car—red hair, hazel eyes, pale skin, the beginnings of crow’s-feet testifying to her thirty-seven years—and looked away again. She should probably bother with makeup one of these days. She should probably expand her wardrobe beyond jeans, boots, and a zip-up quilted jacket, too, at least until full winter hit. She tossed the files on the passenger seat and headed for downtown Barrons.

Barrons consisted of some well-preserved historic buildings in the center of town, used to draw the few tourists who came through, surrounded by a hardscrabble population that hoped those same tourists didn’t notice their falling-down porches and the piles of firewood in their driveways. Fiona drove past the clapboard library and, half a mile up, a spray-painted sign advertising fall pumpkins, though Halloween was weeks ago. In the square at the center of town, she passed the old city hall and continued down New Street to the police station.

She parked in the station’s small lot and picked up the files from the passenger seat. There was no one around, no movement in the squat square building, which had been built sometime in the 1970s, when Barrons finally became big enough to warrant a police force. Two picnic tables sat beneath the old oak trees in front of the station, and Fiona sat on one of the tables, swinging her feet onto the seat and pulling out her phone. She texted Jamie: Are you in there?

He made her wait five minutes. She had begun leafing through the first file when he texted back: I’m coming out.

Fiona tucked the phone back in her pocket and went back to the files. He took his time, making his point—he was still mad about last night—but eventually the front door of the station swung open and Jamie emerged, shrugging on a late-fall parka over his uniform.

Fiona glanced up and watched him. It was hard not to, she had to admit. Jamie Creel of the Barrons police, son and grandson of Vermont police chiefs, had dirty blond hair, dark blue eyes, and a scruff of beard on his jaw that grew in honey gold. He was younger than Fiona—twenty-nine to her thirty-seven—and he moved with easy grace as he huddled into his coat against the wind.

“Were you busy?” Fiona asked as he came closer.

He shrugged. “I was typing reports.” He had left off his hat, and the wind tried to tousle his hair. He stopped a few feet from her picnic table, his hands in his pockets and his legs apart, as if braced.

“I came to apologize,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “For what?”

“For freaking you out last night. For leaving.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re not actually sorry,” he observed.

“Still, I’m apologizing,” she said, holding his gaze. “I mean it. Okay?”

He didn’t answer, but gestured to the files in her lap, where she held a hand to them to keep them from blowing away. “What’s that?”

“Files from Lively Vermont. I’m looking for a history of Idlewild Hall.”

Jamie’s posture relaxed and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “This has to do with last night, doesn’t it? Fiona, come on.”

“This is good,” she protested. “I’m going to do a story.”

“About Idlewild?”

“About the restoration, the new school.” She watched his face. “It’s a good idea.”

“Maybe for someone, yes. For you?”

“Don’t worry—I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

“You couldn’t handle it last night,” he said. “You were a basket case.”

It had been sort of a strange episode, but she didn’t regret it. That trip to Old Barrons Road had shaken something loose. Idlewild had always loomed silently in the back of her mind, a dark part of her mental landscape. She’d done her best not to talk about it for twenty years, but talking about it out loud now was like bloodletting, painful and somehow necessary at the same time. “I’m better today,” she said, and she patted the table next to her. “Come sit down.”

He sighed, but he stepped toward the table. Fiona watched with the surreal feeling she still got sometimes when she looked at Jamie, even now. A year ago she’d had a bad night—lonely, wallowing in self-pity and grief for Deb—and found herself at a local bar, drinking alone. Jamie had pulled up the stool next to her—handsome, muscled, glorious in a jaded way, a guy who looked like he’d been a college athlete before something had made him go as quiet and wary as a wild animal. Fiona had put down her drink and looked at him, expecting a line, waiting for it, but Jamie had taken his time. He’d sipped his beer thoughtfully, then put it down on the bar. Hi, he’d said.

There was more, but that was all, really—just hi. Two hours later they’d ended up in his bed, which had surprised her but somehow fit her mood. She’d assumed it was a one-night stand, but he’d asked for her number. When he called her, she’d swallowed her surprise and said yes. And when he’d called her again, she’d said yes again.

It didn’t make sense. Cops and journalists were natural enemies; they should never have mixed. And in many ways, they didn’t. Jamie didn’t introduce Fiona to his colleagues or take her to any of their social functions. She never went inside the station when she wanted to see him during work hours, waiting for him outside instead. He had introduced her to his parents exactly once, a chilly conversation that was over in minutes. On her part, Fiona had brought Jamie to meet Malcolm, but only because Malcolm had insisted. He’d been worried when he heard his daughter was dating a cop, even though he never intruded in her love life. The meeting had been awkward, and she still had no idea what the two men had made of each other.

And yet Jamie’s job was part of the reason she liked him, as was the fact that he’d been born in Barrons and had it in his blood. With every relationship, she’d had the hurdle of explaining her past, explaining Deb, rehashing what had happened and why. Most men tried to be understanding, but Deb was always there, a barricade that Fiona couldn’t quite get past. She had never needed to explain with Jamie: He knew who she was when he approached her in that bar; his father had been police chief when Deb was murdered. She’d never had to tell him anything because he already knew.

So, despite the difficulties, it was easy with Jamie. Easy in a way Fiona was prepared to sacrifice for. He was smart, quietly funny. What he saw in her, she was less sure of, and she didn’t ask; maybe it was the sex—which was particularly good—or companionship. All she knew was that she’d rather amputate her own arm with a rusty handsaw than have the where are we going? conversation.

Now he sat next to her on the picnic table and folded his long legs. “You want something else,” he said matter-of-factly. “Go ahead.”

“The Idlewild property,” she admitted. There was no point in prevaricating. “What do you know about it?”

“I only know what’s common knowledge.”

“Liar. You know everything. Start from the beginning.”

Jamie’s father and grandfather had both been chiefs of police in Barrons. The Creels had been a vital part of this area for decades, and they knew every family in Barrons, from the richest on down. In a way that felt alien to Fiona, Jamie was dedicated to this place, and he had an intelligent brain that never forgot a detail when it came to his town. So she waited for him to call up the information from somewhere in his circuitry, and then he started talking.

“Let’s see. Idlewild was built just after World War One, I think, for girls who were veterans’ orphans. It passed into different hands over the years, but enrollment went lower and lower. The Christopher family bought it when the school closed in 1979.” He didn’t glance at her when he spoke the family name of her sister’s killer, so she knew he was absorbed in the history. “The Christophers were buying land like crazy around that time,” he continued. “They planned to be real estate barons, I guess. Some of the properties they bought were profitable, and others were not. Idlewild was definitely in category two.”

“Why?” Fiona asked. She knew some of this, but she let him talk.

Jamie shrugged. “Everything they tried fell through. Partners backed out; funding disappeared. They couldn’t get anyone on board. The school has always been rumored to be haunted, which sounds silly when you’re talking about a development deal, but I think the Christophers miscalculated. The fact is, Idlewild has always scared the people here. No one really wants to go near the place. The Christophers had other deals that were making them rich—or richer, I should say—so they eventually focused on those and let Idlewild sit as a white elephant.”

Fiona remembered Idlewild from when she was growing up—kids telling stories at sleepovers, teenagers daring one another to go onto the property after dark. She’d never really believed in ghosts, and she didn’t think any of the other kids did, either, but there was no doubt the abandoned remains of Idlewild Hall were unsettling. A crumbling portico, overgrown vines over the windows, that kind of thing. But for all its spookiness, it was just another place until the murder. “And then Deb died,” she prompted Jamie.

“That was the end of the Christophers here,” Jamie said. “Their years as the most prominent family in Barrons were over. After Tim was arrested, his father, Henry, started pulling up stakes almost right away. By the time Tim was convicted at trial, the family had sold off what they could and moved to Colorado. They’re still there, as far as I know.”

Fiona stared down at her hands. Deb had been so excited when she’d started dating Tim Christopher; he was tall, good-looking, from a rich and important family. Deb had never been happy as the child of middle-class intellectuals. “But they didn’t sell Idlewild.”

“They couldn’t. The buildings are so run-down they’re nearly worthless, and the land isn’t worth much, either. The crash in 2008 didn’t help. The family must have been pretty happy when this new buyer came along.”

“Margaret Eden,” Fiona said. “Who is she?”

“That I don’t know.” Jamie gave her an apologetic smile. “She’s not local—she’s from New York. I hear she’s an elderly widow with a lot of money, that’s all.”

“I want to meet her.”

“Dad says she’s a recluse. Her son handles all of her business.”

“Then I want to meet him.”

“Fee.” Jamie turned toward her, twisting his body so he could look at her. His knee brushed hers, and she tried not to jump. “Think about what you’re doing,” he said. “That’s all I ask. Just think about it.”

“I have thought about it,” Fiona said. She held up one of the files. “What I want to know is, why restore Idlewild Hall now? There can’t be any money in it.”

“People still send their kids to boarding school,” Jamie said.

“Around here? You know as well as I do what the average salary is in this part of the state. Who is sending their kid to an expensive boarding school, one that has already required millions to rebuild? Margaret Eden can’t be financing everything by herself. If she has investors, who are they? How do they expect to make money?” Money talks had always been one of her father’s tenets as a journalist. Someone, somewhere, is almost always making money.

“You think there’s something else going on.”

“I think that the place is a money pit. Maybe she’s batty, or she’s being taken advantage of. Don’t you at least find it weird?”

He stepped off the table and stood facing her again. “All right,” he admitted. “It’s weird. And it’s probably a good story. And no one has covered it.” He looked at her triumphant expression and shook his head, but his features had relaxed, and she knew she’d convinced him. “Let me know how it goes when you track down Anthony Eden.”

“Anthony is the son?”

“Yes. They live in one of the town houses on Mitchell Place—the big one on the corner. You could have found all of this stuff out yourself, you know.”

“I know,” Fiona replied, and she felt herself smiling at him. “But it’s more fun to get information from you.”

“I have to go back inside,” he said. He caught her gaze, and there it was, the arc of electricity between them that never seemed to quit. Fiona felt the urge to touch him, but whoever was watching them from the station windows—and there was almost certainly someone—would never let him live it down.

“I’ll call you later,” she managed.

“Maybe,” he replied. He took a step back, then turned and walked toward the station, giving her a wave over his shoulder. As he put his hand on the door, he stopped. “Tell your father,” he said. “Don’t let him find out from someone else.” And then he was gone.