for the Lore book called for eight illustrations plus the cover, and now it’s up to twelve illustrations.”
“Have you done them all?”
“Almost.”
“Are they paying you more?”
“They are. It’s more to do with the time commitment. I’m supposed to have started on book two already, and I haven’t even read it. How was your day?”
“Pretty good,” he said, his standard response.
She got herself a glass of wine and pulled out chicken breasts, plus a head of broccoli, for dinner.
“Have you thought any more about Columbus Day weekend?” Lloyd asked, and for a moment Hen panicked, trying to recall their previous conversation. Then she remembered.
“Rob’s party,” she said.
“Right.”
“Um, probably not, Lloyd, if that’s okay?” she said.
Rob was Lloyd’s best friend from college. He lived just over the Massachusetts–New York state line, about two and a half hours away, and he had a bonfire party every Columbus Day weekend. Hen had been many times in the past. She’d even had fun a few of those times, but Rob was a professional pothead and Hen had quit smoking ten years earlier. She occasionally missed the way her brain exploded with new ideas when she smoked, but she certainly didn’t miss the crushing paranoia. Or the stupid conversations.
“That’s okay,” Lloyd said.
“You’ll spend the night, right?” Hen asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’ll go next year.”
“You don’t have to. I know he’s not your favorite person.”
“I don’t have anything against Rob. I just don’t really have anything to say to him. And I miss Joanna.”
Joanna had been Rob’s longtime girlfriend, a funnier, smarter, more sarcastic version of Rob. Hen hadn’t been surprised when she’d moved out of their drafty farmhouse and gotten her own place in the Pioneer Valley, but, still, she missed her presence. Without her there, Lloyd and Rob quickly morphed back to their college personalities, and Hen felt like she was standing just outside of their pocket of pot smoke and dumb jokes, looking in.
“We all miss Joanna,” Lloyd said. “Do you need me to do anything?”
Hen slid the slightly rubbery broccoli his way and asked him to cut it up.
After dinner, while Lloyd watched the Red Sox game, Hen went to her laptop and looked up the website for the C-Beams again. She was now somewhat convinced that the lead singer for that band—they’d been playing at the Owl’s Head on the night she followed Matthew—was the bearded man whom Matthew had been following. It would make perfect sense. He’d clearly been part of the band—she’d witnessed him helping the drummer load up his van—or, at the very least, associated with them. Hen was now assuming that Matthew had gone to the Owl’s Head to watch the C-Beams play, and then he went home, got his car, and came back to follow the lead singer, one of the last to leave the bar. The question, of course, was why?
His name was Scott Doyle, and Hen tried to find out more about him. She wondered, for example, if he had some connection to Sussex Hall. Was he a previous student? Maybe Matthew saw himself as a vigilante, killing off his most immoral students long after they’d left school. But all she could find out about Scott was information pertaining to his band. He had a Twitter account, but all he ever posted there was either links to his songs or plugs for upcoming performances. The C-Beams’ next show, coincidentally, was the Saturday night of Columbus Day weekend, the same night as Rob’s bonfire party. It wasn’t at the Owl’s Head, but at a bar called the Rusty Scupper on the North Shore. Maybe she’d drive there that night, just peek in. It would give her something to do for the night she was alone. And if she got a chance to speak with Scott Doyle, then she could ask him if he’d gone to Sussex Hall or if he had any connection with Matthew Dolamore. Because if he did, she genuinely believed he was in trouble.
And what if Matthew was there himself? What if he saw her? Well, then, so what? It would be a coincidence. And maybe it would stop her neighbor from committing another murder.
“Get out of there!” Lloyd was yelling at the television. His groan immediately afterward told her that he’d just witnessed a long fly out instead of a home run.
Chapter 16
“I’ve had too much already, Matthew,” Mira said.
“It’s not like we have too far to go to our room,” he said. “We could also get dessert, if you’d prefer?”
“Ugh, I couldn’t eat