you ask him about the empties in the stable? Did he say anything privately?” Her voice is so eager. Martina gets it. Caden may have a solid alibi now, but it doesn’t change the fact that he knows something. And now that he’s been cleared in the investigation, it’s unlikely the police will talk to him again.
Martina scrubs her hand across her eyes. She is slowly beginning to fit the pieces together, understand how this all led to the charges against Anna. When Zoe’s body was found in August, Caden was brought back in to speak with the Herron Mills PD. They reinterviewed everyone they’d previously talked to regarding Zoe’s case. He felt guilty or scared; something compelled him to tell the police about the bottles he’d found. She can visualize how the conversation went down. Tell us every detail about the afternoon of January first, even if it didn’t seem important at the time. That’s what police always say.
So Caden told them about the empties, how he figured some local kids had broken onto the property while he and his mom were away, how he tossed them. How he’d never tied them to Zoe because she didn’t drink.
When the police interviewed Anna, she said she was drinking with Zoe at Windermere that night. She probably mentioned Caden’s Glenlivet, and they got her to say they were also drinking beer. The police made sure Anna’s story fit Caden’s. Match point.
“I did ask,” Martina says. “He told me the same thing he told police, as far as I can tell.”
Anna groans, the sound reverberating through the phone line. “I don’t believe him,” she says. “Caden knows who was drinking in the stable that night—he has to. How many people knew he kept whiskey hidden there? They made me think it was me … but it wasn’t. I’m sure of that now.”
Martina wishes she could be that certain. She wants to believe Anna unequivocally. But Zoe’s killer wasn’t Tiana. It wasn’t Caden. The suspect pool is getting smaller and smaller, and no one’s coming forward to provide an alibi witness for Anna Cicconi.
25 THEN
July
Herron Mills, NY
THE WEEKEND ROLLS into the new week with nonstop rain, a new baking project with Paisley (peppermint brownies this time), a Disney movie marathon, and finally sunshine and back to the beach on Tuesday. Martina still hasn’t heard from Tiana Percy, and at this point, we’re both starting to give up hope. Maybe she figured out who Martina was. Maybe I should have been the one to email her. Maybe she doesn’t check her university account over the summer.
With the Zoe-Caden-Tiana triangle still a mystery, and all my little memory fragments of Herron Mills and Zoe still refusing to coalesce into a real, tangible piece of my very recent past that I can grasp onto, July in Herron Mills barrels on. On Wednesday, Emilia gives me permission to take Paisley into the city on a day trip, something Paisley has been asking for nearly since I arrived. Second to the Zoe-factor, clearly the New York City appeal was my other big draw.
We take the train back Wednesday evening, exhausted and stuffed with pierogi from Veselka and way too much fro-yo from 16 Handles (Green Tea Vanilla for me and something called Cake Cake Cake Batter with about ten toppings for Paisley). The instant we clamber into Emilia’s car at Bridgehampton, she says she wants “a moment of my time” when we get home, which can’t be good. I spend the ten-minute ride sweating, racking my brain for ways I might have messed up with Paisley, then wondering if, after all this time, the Bellamys checked my references and didn’t like what they found.
Fortunately, Paisley fills the air in the car with a detailed rendition of the day’s events: late morning picnic in Central Park with bagels and lox from Zabar’s, followed by the Let’s Dance! and Art, Artists, and You exhibits at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, then downtown for a Meet the Residents tour at the LES Tenement Museum, which I’d worried might appeal more to me than Paisley, but was the runaway hit of the day, second only to dessert.
When we step through the front door at Clovelly Cottage, the first thing I see is flowers. Lots and lots of flowers—four huge bouquets on the white marble table in the entry hall, bursting with purple irises, red poppies, bright yellow sunflowers, and a whole host of blooms I don’t recognize by name. It looks like