Two Sides to Every Murder, page 4
Karly took another sip of coffee to hide her grimace. She had also been a track-and-field star and at the top of her class, but when you were a girl, you had to work a little harder to impress people. At least, she always did.
“Hey there, Matty,” she said, swallowing.
Matthew’s smile faltered. “You know Mom’s the only one I let call me Matty.”
Karly knew. But she thought it was good for Matthew that at least one person in town hadn’t completely succumbed to his charms. “I used to change your poopy diapers, Matty, I’ll call you whatever I like.”
An annoyed expression crossed Matthew’s face, looking all wrong with his tousled blond hair and little-boy dimples. But then Johnny snickered, and Matthew shook the look away.
“Fair enough,” he said easily. Turning to Johnny, he added, “Hey, Mr. D’Angeli. Can I get a coffee and a banana muffin to go?”
Johnny went to pull a muffin out, but Matthew stopped him. “No, the one on the bottom,” he said. Turning to Karly, he explained, “Andie says the muffins on the bottom are the freshest.”
“Andie told you that?” Miranda asked, popping back up. Her normally cheery face looked concerned.
Karly couldn’t help smirking. It was well-known around town that Miranda didn’t want her daughter dating her ex-boyfriend’s son. In fact, the only time Karly could ever remember seeing a crack in her perfectly cheerful demeanor was when she overheard Miranda telling Andie that the Knight boys were no good.
If Matthew was surprised to see Miranda appear, he didn’t show it. “Hey, Mrs. D’Angeli. Whoa, that baby’s getting pretty big.”
“It is,” Miranda said with a thin smile.
“Andie and I were working on a history project together last semester,” Matthew explained smoothly. “Tell her I say hi the next time you talk to her, will you?”
Miranda still looked skeptical, but she said, “Yeah, I will.”
While Johnny went to pack up his order, Matthew pulled out his wallet and dug around for a few crumpled bills. Distracted, humming along with the My Chemical Romance song playing over the speakers, he didn’t seem to notice when a card slipped between his fingers and fell to the floor.
“I’ll get that,” Karly muttered, but she didn’t think Matthew heard her. He was thanking Johnny now, reaching over the counter to grab his muffin and coffee.
“Keep the change,” Matthew said, turning for the door. “See you, Mr. and Mrs. D’Angeli!”
Karly held up the card. “Wait, Matty, you—”
But Matthew had already ducked out the door into the cold. Karly glanced down at the card he dropped, wondering if it was important.
The card was thick and creamy white, a sketchy outline of mountains and a lake printed on the front.
Karly recognized it immediately: it was a Camp Lost Lake key card. And written in blocky, capital letters across the back, right above a barcode and an electronic stripe, was the name M. Edwards.
3
Olivia
“Pickle…stop it.” I scrunch my nose, snorting with laughter as Pickle Rick’s tiny pink tongue sweeps over my chin. “You’re tickling me.”
“That dog loves you,” Andie says, glancing at us from the driver’s seat. We’re in her fancy electric car, on our way to the old Camp Lost Lake grounds. Everything around us is leather and chrome and spotless, like even the dust is too intimidated by Andie to settle. I don’t blame it. My sister can be intimidating.
As Pickle’s tongue slides over my nose, I close my eyes, taking a second to imagine a future like this for myself, a future of organized drawers and living spaces so clean they don’t hold fingerprints. Capable and collected, I’ll move through the world with effortless grace, my hair flat-ironed into a silky curtain, my clothes graceful and unwrinkled—just like Andie.
I glance sideways at her while giving Pickle Rick another ear scratch, trying to work up the courage to ask the question I’ve been rolling around in my head since we left. I almost immediately lose my nerve. I love my sister, I do. But it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by her.
We’ve never had a normal sister relationship. She’s so much older than me, for one thing. And she’s lived somewhere else my entire life, first in New York City for an internship that was so prestigious she somehow convinced our mom to let her leave before her senior year even ended, then undergrad at UC Berkeley, Stanford for business school and, from there, start-up land in Silicon Valley. And now she’s back. For the first time in sixteen years, Andie’s living in Lost Lake, opening her own company, putting down roots. It feels more like hanging out with a local celebrity than my actual sister.
It’s not like she doesn’t try. She’s always been really nice to me, sending lavish gifts for my birthday and Christmas, texting that she was impressed when I made straight As or was elected class treasurer. But there’s always been this distance between us. Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know her at all.
She glances at me, and she must realize I have a question because she says, “What’s up?”
Okay, Olivia, spit it out, I think. This is Andie. My big sister. Not Rihanna.
“Um, Mom used to date Jacob Knight, right?”
Andie’s phone buzzes, distracting her. “What? Um, yeah, I think so.”
Her casual answer encourages me to keep going. Clearly she doesn’t think this is a weird thing for me to talk about. “But that was way back in high school, right? Way before she met either of our dads?”
Andie’s phone’s buzzing again. She doesn’t pick it up, but she’s spending more time squinting down at the screen than watching the road. “What?”
I hesitate, wondering if I should just tell her what I know about Dad. Andie knows how it feels to have questions about her parents. Mom got pregnant with her right after she graduated from high school. She was even married to Andie’s dad for a while, before he decided he didn’t want to be a dad and took off. Andie went through this phase of seeking him out and trying to have a relationship with him. Once, when she was visiting from school on break, I went through her things. While I was snooping, I found this postcard tucked between the pages of some advanced calculus textbook. There were only two lines of slanted handwriting:
I’m sorry. Don’t try to fix this and don’t try to find me. It’s not safe. I’m starting over.
We’re happy.
It didn’t have a signature or a return address, and the only clue to where it came from was the mountain range on the front, the words Lake Winnipesaukee written in big block letters in the lower left corner. I’d assumed it was from Andie’s dad, off with his new family, telling her to stop looking from him, so I put the postcard back and never asked about it. We were all relieved when she gave up and let Dad officially adopt her, so the four of us could be one big, happy family.
I could tell Andie the truth. She’d probably understand. I even open my mouth, trying to figure out how to word it. But something stops me. The thing is, Andie’s never confided in me about how she felt about her bio dad. She didn’t tell me about the postcard, and she never told me how much it hurt when he cut her out of his life.
“I’m just…curious about what Mom was like when she was young,” I mutter, losing my nerve. It feels weird trusting her with this when I know there’s so much she’s never told me.
“Mom wasn’t really any—” Andie’s phone beeps and, like Pavlov’s dog, she jerks her head toward the sound without seeming to process what she’s doing. Unfortunately, she completely forgets to hit the brake when she does this, and the car keeps rolling—
Right through a stop sign.
I spot flashing red and blue lights in the rearview mirror.
“Seriously?” Andie mutters, wrinkling her nose. Even I have to admit this is bad luck. As far as I know, Andie’s never gotten a ticket before. She’s probably never even broken a traffic rule. What are the chances that one of the two cops in our small town was waiting at the corner the second she did?
“It’ll be okay, it’s just Karly,” I tell her, glancing at the rearview mirror. Officer Karly Knight is a regular at Dad’s diner. We’ve known her since we were kids.
A few minutes later, Officer Knight is smiling as she leans down to peer through Andie’s car window, the crinkly skin around her eyes showing her age. She actually looks remorseful as she says, “I’m afraid I’m going to need to see your license and registration, Andie.”
“Of course, Officer Knight,” Andie says. She pops open her glove box and removes a sleek black folder of organized paperwork. “I’ve been wanting to call you, I was so sorry to hear about your mother.”
Officer Knight’s smile wobbles. Everyone in town knows her mother, Barbara Knight, recently died after a decades-long battle with dementia. “Thank you, Andie, that…that means a lot.” Officer Knight blinks, taking a second to wipe something from her eyes. “We just had the reading of her will and…to be honest, I’m still a bit of a wreck.” She hands Andie back her paperwork and says, “I’ll let you go with a warning this time. But stay off that phone. And be careful up at the campgrounds today. We’ve had reports of someone lurking around up there. It’s probably just kids messing around, but you never know.” She glances over at me and the smile slips from her face. “Olivia. I-I didn’t see you there.”
Something about her expression makes me feel awkward all of a sudden. Officer Knight and I have always gotten along, but now she’s looking at me like she’s seen a ghost.
“Is something wrong?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just stares, eyes narrowed, before turning to look back down the road behind her.
“Sorry,” she says after a moment, shaking her head. “Déjà vu.”
* * *
• • •
Camp Lost Lake’s main office is built into the side of a hill. While the front of the building is level with the ground, the back sticks out into thin air where the ground gives out to a sharp incline, creating the illusion that it’s precariously balanced—one false move, and the whole thing could fall. It’s only when you get closer that you notice the thick, wooden stilts drilled into the ground below, holding it up. A narrow balcony wraps around the sides and back of the building, creating a shaded patio. That’s where everyone’s hanging out now, half-full boxes stacked around them.
“Can you walk the rest of the way?” Andie wants to know. “I forgot to pick up plates for the barbecue.”
“Sure,” I say, nudging Pickle Rick aside so I can climb out.
“And see if you can find out whether the phone and internet guys came by this morning to set up the landline!” Andie calls out the window. “I got confirmation that they were able to get the electric working, but no one seems to know whether the internet and phone guys were here.”
I flash a thumbs-up at her rear window as she peels away and trudge up the path to join the others. Andie has a construction crew scheduled in a few weeks, but she wanted to get a cleaning committee in before then to see if anything’s worth salvaging. For a long time after the murders, no one came back here. Dad said it was because the cops restricted access to the lake and surrounding areas while they searched for Matthew’s body. But the lake opened back up the next summer, and people still stayed away. Andie says what happened was too sad, that no one wanted to be reminded.
Whatever the reason, leaving the campgrounds vacant for all those years just led to rumors and stories. Don’t come back to Camp Lost Lake, or the witch will return.
The place is like a time capsule. Detectives and police officers searched the lake, but the cabins, the lodge, even my mom’s old office, have been left exactly as they were that night. Mom once told me she was reading Water for Elephants, but she left her copy behind on her desk, and she could never bring herself to come get it. To this day, she doesn’t know how the book ends.
But that was sixteen years ago. Most people don’t believe the old urban legend about the Witch of Lost Lake returning, and it wasn’t hard for Andie to convince people to join her cleaning committee. There are only, like, two other options for work in Lost Lake: either you can wait tables at Dad’s diner, or you can bag groceries at the general store, and there are always around thirty kids applying for each opening, so getting one is like winning the lottery. Andie’s paying us all twenty bucks an hour to spend the summer cleaning out old fridges and dumpsters, which is unheard of in a town that thinks the minimum wage is a suggestion. Half my school volunteered.
It takes me a minute to make my way across the patio. First, I spend a few minutes chatting with the French Club kids, who’ve taken it upon themselves to handle the rancid dumpsters—or, en français, poubelles rances—and then I stop and say hello to Amir and Kayley, who I know from Mathletes. When I walk up, Kayley is in the middle of a joke about how the witch is coming out of hiding to attack us because we’re all so bad.
“You’ve got the story wrong,” Amir corrects her. “It’s not the Witch of Lost Lake who’s going to attack, it’s Matthew Knight.” He lowers his voice when he says Matthew’s name, trying to make it sound spooky.
Kayley rolls her eyes. “Matthew drowned. The witch is the one who got away.”
“Yeah, but they never found Matthew’s body. People think he, like, lost his memory, and now he’s some wild mountain man living off the grid, killing anyone who comes out in the woods…”
By the time I make my way over to Hazel, I’ve already been here for nearly twenty minutes.
“Finally.” Hazel groans when she sees me. She’s standing in the corner nearest the wall, loading things into a cardboard box. “You’re too popular for your own good. I was starting to think you wouldn’t be able to fit me into your busy schedule.”
She’s teasing me. The popular kids at our school are all athletes and cheerleaders, just like they are everywhere else. I just volunteer for a lot of different clubs and teams, so I happen to know a lot of people. And, to be honest, it seems like they only want to talk to me when they need something from me. I have a little problem saying no to things I’m not that interested in doing, so I tend to get asked for favors. A lot.
Hazel leans over the box she’d been packing up, her thick, springy natural curls swinging forward to cover her brown skin and deeply freckled face. “Pretending you’re capable of doing everything all the time without any visible effort just reinforces the narrative that girls should be perfect. It’s like those influencers who post ‘I woke up like this’ pics but fail to mention all the makeup and filters and the two grand they spent on veneers so they could have the perfect smile.”
“Wow, Hazel,” I say, shocked. She never goes off on me like this. “I am not an influencer.”
“Sorry,” Hazel says, blinking like she’s just coming out of a trance. “That’s not what I meant.”
“These are my real teeth.”
“I know. I’ve just been feeling some weird vibes all morning. I pulled the Lovers card before coming here.”
Hazel pulls a tarot card every morning. It’s kind of a meditation, her way of preparing herself for the day. “Does this mean you’re finally going to ask Brianna out?” I ask, happy to move the topic away from me.
“What?” Hazel frowns. “Didn’t I tell you? Brianna told me last week that she hates bread. She hates all bread, Olivia. You know I can’t be with a girl like that.”
I smirk. Hazel’s parents run Pecky, an artisanal Jewish grocery store and bakery in town. Her dad’s the one who originally opened Pecky, but her mother’s family all come from the Caribbean, so when they got married they started selling cornmeal pudding and Jamaican toto alongside the hamantaschen and babka. For people who love cooking as much as Hazel’s family does, saying you hate bread is like saying you hate puppies or rainbows. Like, why don’t you like joy?
“Okay, then, who are these Lovers?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but they were reversed, which isn’t good. We’re talking strained relationships, miscommunication, lies.”
My eye twitches. Lies. Without meaning to, I think of my mom, my dad, the lie they’ve been telling my whole life.
But I’m not even close to ready to share this drama with Hazel, so I clear my throat and say, trying to sound like I couldn’t care less, “Okay…so what? Some couple is lying to each other. We couldn’t be more single, so it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
But Hazel’s shaking her head. “Have I taught you nothing about tarot? The Lovers don’t have to be two people in love. They can represent any kind of relationship. Some people think the Lovers are associated with the star sign Gemini, so it’s possible that they’re not even lovers, but twins—”
“Oh no,” I say, throwing my hands over my chest in mock horror. “I’m a Gemini!”
Hazel rolls her eyes at me. “If you see any deceitful twins, maybe run the other way, okay? Now, what am I supposed to do with this?” She holds up a sleeping bag. “I found it over by the trees. It was unrolled and everything, like someone’s been using it.”
“Creepy,” I mutter, shivering. I don’t know anything about sleeping bags, but the one Hazel’s holding is kind of the same shape as this thousand-dollar one Dad uses when we go camping. “Here, let me take it. Andie wanted me to keep an eye out for any equipment we can resell. Apparently, some of the old camp stuff was pretty high quality.”
