all clear of snow and that the sidewalks had already been salted. Impressed, she reclined in the stiff backseat as they drove downtown—and then past the county station and kept on going.
“Um,” she said.
They took a left toward the interstate.
“Excuse me…” she said.
“Sit tight, ma’am. We’ll be there in a jiffy.”
“That’s fine and all but, well, where’s there?”
There turned out to be Stewart International Airport some forty-five minutes later. They pulled up to the terminal. The dancer got out and escorted Esme to the curb while the other deputy remained behind the wheel.
Behind a door marked Official Use Only, Sheriff Fallon was waiting for them, a cup of coffee in his hand. His grin left little doubt in Esme’s mind; this, finally, was the cat that ate the canary.
“Good morning!” he said.
In an adjacent room, he went on to say, sat the Weiner family. A member of airport security was keeping them company. Their plane had finally touched down about two hours ago and he knew, just knew, that she’d want to be there when he questioned them.
“Thanks,” she replied, and added Sheriff Fallon to her list of IRS record pulls.
They began with the father, Todd, who could have carried the sheriff’s deputies in the bags hanging under his eyes. His hands couldn’t keep still, either twitching and fumbling with the zipper on his L.L. Bean ski jacket or fixing the part on his thinning brown hair. This was not a calm man—but then again, how often did one’s house get burned to the ground with a body left in the basement? Perhaps he was worried they suspected him. Perhaps he was worried they thought he put the body there.
“I didn’t know her,” he insisted. “We all looked at those photos and none of us had ever seen her before in our lives. I swear.”
The interview lasted about an hour. Most of it consisted of Todd Weiner repeating that he didn’t know her, or anything, or anyone, and asking several times if this would be covered by his homeowners’ insurance. Esme believed more and more that her hunch—about the house being the key—had been way off.
And then Todd said something odd.
“I knew it was too good to be true.”
Sheriff Fallon nodded at Esme, allowing her to take the bait.
“You knew what was too good to be true, Mr. Weiner?”
“This contest. I told Louise I didn’t remember signing up on their website.”
“What contest?”
Todd Weiner looked up at them like they’d just claimed two plus two equaled an apple. “Hammond Travel Agency. That’s how we went on this trip. We won it in a contest from Hammond Travel Agency out in New Paltz.”
6
Finally—finally!—Timothy had found the perfect pet. Like all true heroes of myth (the Norse legends of the Viking civilization being his favorite), he just needed to recognize his own hubris before achieving success. He had been so quick to blame his previous pet, Lynette, for everything that went wrong when, in fact, some of the finger pointing belonged in his own direction. Had it really been wise to capture an adult? Don’t most pet owners start with puppies and kittens rather than dogs and cats? How foolish he had been to think he could improve on centuries of domestication.
In short, Timothy needed to think younger, and he found his ideal in, of all places, his mother’s veterinary clinic. As the first snow fell Friday morning, he walked the familiar two miles from their house to her clinic, which was in the same strip mall as his father’s travel agency. He enjoyed the taste of the snowflakes, and made sure to catch as many as he could with his tongue.
On his way to the clinic he passed the middle school, where the rest of his peers (and that was the right word—as loath as the old Timothy had been to admit it, these were his peers; he was not a young god) were crowded inside. Timothy hadn’t stepped foot in that building in more than a year, ever since that incident in the cafeteria with Mr. Monroe’s earlobe. His parents had filed the appropriate papers for him to be homeschooled and that was that. Still, as Timothy passed by it, his heart filled with a sense of longing. He was, after all, the new Timothy, person of the world, no different from anyone else. Well, hardly different.
The purpose for his snowbound stroll to Mother’s clinic was to get his wrist reexamined. It had been three days since Lynette had bit him,