Before She Knew Him(15)

She went so far as to look up the Cambridge Police Department telephone number, but couldn’t bring herself to call. There wasn’t enough.

Her phone buzzed. Lloyd, texting her that he was on the commuter train, which meant that he’d be home in an hour. She went to the living room couch with her sketchbook, turned to a blank page, closed her eyes for thirty seconds, then drew the fencing trophy exactly as she remembered it, even writing the words she was sure she’d seen. third place epee. junior olympics. Then she stared at her drawing. It looked correct to her: a fencer in mid-lunge on top of a circular pedestal. Hen went and got her laptop, bringing it back to the couch. She searched for “Junior Olympics fencing trophy.” The images from the search were disheartening; first of all, there weren’t many, and second, some of the trophies that were shown were trophy cups. But one picture did catch her eye, a teenage girl beaming at the camera and holding a trophy that looked very much like the one she’d seen on Matthew’s mantelpiece. The photograph came from a local news website, attached to a story from eight years earlier: “Lubbock High School Sophomore Wins First Place at the Junior Olympics of Fencing.” Hen enlarged the photograph, but it was too pixelated for her to see any writing on its base. But it did convince her that the trophy she’d seen at her neighbors’ had come from the same event.

Lloyd arrived home, and Hen was startled. It felt like he’d only just texted her to let her know he was on the way.

He grabbed himself a Lagunitas from the refrigerator, poured it into his favorite beer glass, and settled down on the chair opposite Hen. “How was your day?” he asked.

“Fine. Did some work, took a walk.”

“You go to the studio?”

“I didn’t, but I’ll go tomorrow.” Hen was surprised to realize that she wasn’t going to tell Lloyd that she’d been to the neighbors’ house, that she’d toured the rooms again. It would only make him worry.

“How about your day?” she asked.

“Unremarkable,” he said, then went on to explain the back-and-forth with an annoying client. Lloyd worked in public relations. “For my sins,” he always said whenever anyone asked him what he did; Hen was never really sure what exactly he meant by that, especially since Lloyd loved his job. He’d recently been promoted to the head of social media marketing for his small firm, and he’d landed their biggest client, an up-and-coming microbrewery from just outside of Boston that was about to expand nationally.

“Wanna eat out?” Lloyd said after finishing his beer.

“We have leftovers, too.”

“Remind me again?”

“Chili and cornbread.”

“Oh, right. It’s up to you. I’m happy either way.”

It was a warm night and they ended up walking into what amounted to West Dartford’s center. There was a Congregational church, a convenience store, a café that was open for breakfast and lunch, and a tavern called the Owl’s Head that served food and had occasional live music. There were seats available at the bar of the Owl’s Head, and Hen and Lloyd each got a beer. He ordered a veggie burger and Hen got a bowl of clam chowder. The bartender, a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a handlebar mustache, remembered their names from the last time they’d been there. He even remembered the name of the microbrewery that Lloyd represented and said he’d checked out their website. The food came, and the baseball game began—the Red Sox were playing the Orioles, with whom they were currently tied in the standings, five games left in the season. Hen looked around the small bar, made to look older than it was, she thought, but cozy nonetheless, with brick walls, tap pulls made from polished wood, and even two taxidermied owls, one on either end of the bar. She wondered how many times she’d come here in the future, and the thought filled her with sudden gratitude. Her life was good. She’d come through foul weather and torrential rain to stand in the sun. Something about the feeling made her say to Lloyd, “I have a confession.”

“Uh-oh,” he said, but kept his eye on the game.

“Remember you said I was acting strange at our neighbors’ house, at Matthew and Mira’s?”

“When were you acting strange?”

“At the end when we were looking at Matthew’s study.”

Lloyd turned and looked at Hen. “I remember. You looked faint.”

“It’s because I saw something . . . Remember I asked about the fencing trophy on the mantelpiece?”

“Kind of.”

“Do you remember Dustin Miller?”

Lloyd took a sip of his beer. “Of course.”

“It wasn’t reported immediately, but the police did reveal that one of the things missing from Dustin Miller’s house on the night he was killed was a fencing trophy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And do you remember where Dustin Miller went to high school?”

“Did he go to Sussex Hall?”

“He did.”

“I don’t know, Hen. That’s a stretch.”

“You don’t even know—”

“You think that Matthew, our neighbor, killed Dustin Miller and he took the fencing trophy and put it on his mantelpiece in his study?”

“It was a Junior Olympics fencing trophy—it said that right on it, and that was where Dustin Miller got the trophy from. And one more thing—let me finish. There was an accusation of sexual assault against Dustin Miller while he was at Sussex Hall. What if Matthew somehow knew or suspected Dustin was guilty? That would give him a motive for killing his ex-student.”