“He was naked, in a hotel room, apparently. It’s all so sordid. I mean, I just remember him as my little brother, gawky and sweet. Dermot was a good person. He helped people, especially children who were having problems at home. That’s why he went into social work to begin with.”
“It sounds like you knew him fairly well,” Joyce observed.
“I knew the basic facts of his life. You can get those off Facebook or Instagram. I mean, we were connected through those. We weren’t cut off from each other or anything.” Susan twisted a strand of hair around her finger, and then seemed to think twice and folded her hands into her lap again. “But we didn’t talk, you know? I didn’t know him, as a person.”
“I understand.”
“And there’s also this piece that I can’t fit into everything else. I’m not sure if I should tell the police or keep it to myself.” Susan’s eyes roamed around the room, looking for somewhere to safely focus. She settled on the rose in the center of their table.
Joyce sat perfectly still, as though she might startle a fragile creature. She felt as though Susan was about to unfurl something that could never be put back inside once it was let out.
She listened.
“Dermot wrote a letter to me, just a few weeks before he died.”
“Yes, you mentioned that at the salon. He reached out to you.” Joyce said it as a statement, hoping that it would help Susan find some comfort in the belief that she and her brother weren’t so disconnected.
And that it would encourage Susan to keep talking.
“At first, as I was reading it, I thought it was a letter about his life. He told me about his work, and his friends. He talked about falling in love with a woman, and how happy he was with her. That was really wonderful to read, although he said that there were some obstacles to the two of them being together.”
She paused. Joyce waited.
“He asked about my children, his niece and nephew. And then,” Susan closed her eyes and a tear slipped out and down her cheek. “Well, he confessed to something.”
“Oh, I see,” was all that Joyce could think to say. “What had he done?”
Susan swallowed, and then looked around at their fellow café customers, who all seemed to be engrossed in their own conversations. “He confessed to killing someone.”
Something cracked inside Joyce, and she felt tears welling up inside her. Whatever Joyce may have been expecting, it was not this. She hadn’t cried since she lost the baby, almost twenty years ago.
“Well, we all make mistakes,” Joyce offered, and then reached out to hold Susan’s hand.
She didn’t ask Susan if she thought the two were connected—Dermot’s death and this other loss he apparently felt responsible for. She didn’t ask Susan about the love affair Dermot mentioned in his letter. There would be time for that later, she was certain of it.
For now, she just waited while Susan composed herself, and then she asked, “Did the police ask you about a woman named Catriona Dell yet?”
Susan sniffed and wiped her eyes and nose with the café’s cloth napkin she’d draped over her lap.
“No. I haven’t been interviewed by them yet. I’m supposed to go to the station later this afternoon. Why?”
Joyce took in a deep breath. Was she really going to do this?
“Because Trina Dell was the last person to see your brother alive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE TRINA
Addy drove to Dermot’s apartment. Her green VW bug was pristine on the inside, to the point that Trina felt self-conscious climbing inside with the slush and salt sticking to her boots. They didn’t talk during the drive, and Addy left the radio off. Trina stared out the window, watching the neighborhoods pass by as Addy navigated to the high-rise apartment complex seated towards the edge of town.
When they arrived, Addy pulled a ring of keys out of her purse and Trina followed her up the staircase to Apartment C20. A wreath hung on the outside of the door, made of sprigs and berries in bright blues and purples. A quick stab of pain shot through Trina’s chest. It was such a homey touch for a young guy living on his own to have. She felt certain it was a gift from someone who cared about him.
Trina looked over at Addy. Her face was tense as she slipped the key into the lock and opened the door further into Dermot’s life.
“The police haven’t closed this off to people?” Trina asked, a little late on the realization.
Addy ignored the question and stepped inside the apartment, Trina following behind her. Apparently not, Trina thought. There were no barriers, or signs that anyone had been in the apartment, looking for clues as to what happened to Dermot in that hotel room.
The apartment was a one-bedroom, with a living area and galley kitchen and a bathroom leading off from the side of the hallway to the bedroom. Trina could see the light-blue sink through the cracked door. The bedroom door, or what she assumed was the bedroom door, was closed. Everything in the apartment was neat and organized. The kitchen counters were immaculate, with a toaster and red dish towel the only items taking up space. A beige couch with black-and-white cushions sat in front of a television hung from the wall. There were a few plants—Trina didn’t know what kind—scattered in bright clay pots around the apartment.
There were no pictures hung on the walls or decorating the shelves.
Looking around, Trina’s first thought was that the wreath on the front door was the most personal piece of the apartment. Otherwise, it looked like a rental someone staged for a real estate viewing. Stylish but without any personality.
Which was kind of how Dermot struck Trina when they met at the wedding. She tried to dismiss the unkind thought, but it stuck to the side of her mind like an unwelcome visitor.
Addy fidgeted with the keys in her hand. “I’m not sure what we’re looking for.”
“Neither am I.” Trina thought about how she could really use a drink right about then, to steady her nerves and blunt the hard-edged feelings that kept rising when she was unprepared to handle them, which was essentially any time.
Trina took her boots off on the small patch of tile by the apartment door and laid her coat over the back of the couch. She had no clue what she was looking for or where to start, so she headed to the bedroom at the back of the hall. The walls of the apartment were thin, and she could hear someone talking in the apartment next door. Footsteps creaked above them as Dermot’s upstairs neighbor moved around.
At first Addy stayed on the tile patch by the front door, her coat on and her wish to leave as soon as possible clear. But then she took off her own shoes and placed her coat next to Trina’s, joining Trina at the threshold to the bedroom. The door opened easily. Trina noticed the carpet was worn but clean below their feet.
The bedroom had a twin bed, a small end table with what looked like a second-hand lamp poised beside it, and a bookcase partially full of old paperbacks. Trina was immediately drawn to the books and had to get close to read the spines in the dusky light of the bedroom. They were each well-loved, with cracked spines disguising some of the text, but Trina noted the majority of the books were crime and mystery novels. New and classic: Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie.
“Was Dermot a big reader?” The question came out before Trina could filter herself.
“Does it matter?” Addy replied, moving towards the bed and smoothing her hand over the bedspread, which was a plain-blue cotton.
Trina opened the closet to find a typical array of shirts and pants, mostly grey and black. To the right side were several fleeces and a few neon-orange sweatshirts, the kind Trina recognized were popular with hunters or hikers.
She pictured that young woman’s face—practically a girl—smiling back from the photo on Dermot’s Facebook page, the forest alive in color behind her. The one she saw looking at her and Dermot as they slipped into his hotel room the night he died.
“Are you almost done here?” Addy’s voice had taken on an edge. Trina looked up and saw her standing by the bedroom door, inching out into the hallway.
“You were the one who offered to bring me here,” Trina reminded her. “Why do you have a key to his apartment, anyway?”
“I watered his plants for him a while back, when he needed to go out of town. He gave me a key, I came and watered a few of his plants, and then I sort of forgot about it until all of this happened, and I saw you in the stairwell.” Addy crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorframe as she spoke.
“What was he going out of town for?” Trina opened the drawers on the bedside table.
Some pens, a few pads of paper that were blank, and a random mix of headphones coiled into each other in a tangled mess. The white kind, that came with certain laptops.
“I don’t know. He said for a work thing. Look, I’m not really comfortable with this anymore. Can we just go?” Addy glanced over her shoulder, as though she was worried someone might come in. Trina realized Addy might be right.
“Just another minute, I promise. I really appreciate you helping me with this, even if we don’t find anything that might clue me in to what’s going on.” Trina moved over to the bed and bent down to look underneath it. “What was the work thing?”
“I don’t know. And, honestly, I’m not sure if it really was for work.”
