A talent for murder, p.1
A Talent for Murder, page 1
Dedication
To the Steinback family,
So much talent, none for murder
Epigraph
Someone is dead.
Even the trees know it.
—Anne Sexton, “Lament”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Josie
Part 1: Half Winter, Half Spring Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part 2: Listen to Its Throat Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part 3: Even the Trees Know It Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Alan
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Peter Swanson
Copyright
About the Publisher
Josie
Even though Josie Nixon had graduated from college and gotten married and knew how to hang curtains and had opened a retirement account, going to this conference still felt like the most grown-up thing she had ever done. Something about being sent somewhere for your work, about being paid to travel, about attending a professional event that had an acronym, just seemed so fucking adult.
After checking in at the long table in the student union building of Shepaug University, accidentally standing in the A–M line instead of the N–Z, Josie was given a cool tote bag with the AEC logo on it. It was white canvas, designed to look as though it were paint-splattered. She took the bag with her to one of the vinyl couches along the side wall and sat down. Inside the bag was her name badge, plus a lanyard to hang it on, and the program for the three-day-event. There was also a bottle of water, a bag of locally made potato chips, and a chocolate bar, also from a local company. She loved free stuff, and all her loot made her inexplicably happy. After snapping a picture on her phone of the other teachers checking in, she sent a text to Travis, even though he’d already told her that he didn’t need a play-by-play of her weekend. He wanted her to feel independent, do whatever she wanted, but she did want him to know she’d arrived safe. She’d have felt that way if the roles were reversed. He texted her back right away, one red heart and one black.
She studied the program even though she’d already read it online, pre-picking the workshops and panels she hoped to attend. What was cool about the Art Educator Conference was that even though it had a pedagogical bent, many of the workshops were simply art instruction. She was most excited for collage, and for the puppet-making workshop. Two teachers wandered over and asked if they could share the couch. She slid along and they plopped down next to her, a man and woman, the man with a gray ponytail and the woman tall and fairly ravishing. Together they looked at the program. They were clearly colleagues, they’d been to this conference before, and they were making lots of jokes about the content. When the man read the name of the puppet workshop out loud, the woman said, “Hard pass.”
When Brian, her supervisor, had told her that she’d been approved to attend this conference, she’d let him know it was going to be her first work trip. “Be prepared,” he’d said, “teachers are the worst at conferences, like poorly behaved children. They do things they’d never let their own students do.”
Suddenly feeling awkward, Josie stood up from the couch and wandered through the student union. It seemed like the vast majority of attendees had come in pairs or small groups. And they were more conservatively dressed than she thought they’d be, for art teachers. Lots of tucked-in shirts on the men and denim skirts on the women. She was wearing her oldest jean jacket over a lace-up burgundy dress. She had on her oxblood lipstick and her black pendant necklace, and she suddenly felt a little bit out of place, like the new kid in school who wore the worst possible outfit on day one. Telling herself it didn’t matter, she made her way across the campus, its lawns yellow from the dry summer, to the dormitory where all the attendees were going to be staying. It was an ugly concrete building that looked more like a chain hotel next to an Outback restaurant than a dormitory at a New England college. In the downstairs lobby there was another check-in desk. She gave her name and they handed her a piece of paper that listed her room number and the combination that would open the door. Her room was on the sixth floor. She took the elevator, crushed in by another group of teachers, who were talking about a restaurant in town that was supposed to be great, then found her room. It was about what she’d expected: a single bed; concrete walls that had been painted white; bathroom down the hall. What she hadn’t expected was the sliding glass doors that led to a shallow balcony. She hated heights—just the existence of an open balcony made her head feel dizzy and her heart thud. At least the room seemed to have air-conditioning, a noisy vent pushing in stale cool air. She told herself it was going to be an amazing weekend, even if she didn’t make friends, then unpacked her rolling suitcase, laying out possible outfits for the next three days.
The following day she reminded herself that things were still great, even though she continued to feel alienated from her fellow teachers. Not surprisingly, the puppet workshop was absolutely amazing. She’d created a witchy-looking puppet in about fifteen minutes, using swatches of fleece fabric and string, and she couldn’t wait to try it out with her middle schoolers during the next year. She hadn’t been a huge fan of the teaching-methods panel but loved the found-object printmaking class, where they’d all been ushered outside to look for things to make prints with. She’d found an old plastic spork, plus some gingko leaves, and made a print that was now pinned to her dormitory-room wall.
On the Saturday night of the conference Josie drank way too much wine at the cocktail hour and found herself explaining polyamory to a group of art teachers from Sudbury in Massachusetts.
“So, are there rules, or simply no rules at all?” one of the female teachers, a young woman in paint-splattered jeans and an oxford shirt, asked Josie.
“There might be with real-deal polyamories, like the ones who get together for meetings and stuff. For Travis and me it’s more like, we know that we’re in love and that we’re going to be together forever, so why not have the occasional hookup? Why lose that exciting part of life, you know?”
“And you tell one another?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “That actually is a rule. No hidden flings. It has to be all out in the open.”
“And what would happen in one of you fell in love with someone else?” This was an older man with a white goatee who leaned in very close when he spoke to someone.
“But isn’t falling in love with someone else a risk for everyone in a marriage?”
“Sure. But I’d say that you’re increasing the risk by taking your clothes off with other people.”
Josie took a sip of her wine, spilling some down her front because her glass was fuller than she had remembered. Had someone just bought her a new drink? “Sure, absolutely,” she said. “It’s a risk, but the way I see it is that I’m so in love with my husband that I’m just not worried about it. And if it did become an issue, then I guess we would deal with it. Together.”
“How often do you guys have flings?” This was from the woman in the oxford, and now she was leaning forward as well.
“So that’s the thing. This is all more of a theory right now than an actuality. We live in upstate New York—not exactly swinger central.”
“I thought you lived in Woodstock.”
“We do. It’s more Birkenstocks and crystal deodorants than young polys.”
“So you’re only interested in other young people, which means I’m out of the running,” the older guy said, then laughed like he’d made an outrageous joke.
“I don’t know who I might be interested in. I guess I’ll know it when I meet them.”
“So, is this trip . . . ?”
“Travis gave me the go-ahead, and I’d be up for it, but like I said, it’s not just with anyone. I mean, I want to be into it.”
Afterward, when Josie was alone again, sitting on another stiff vinyl couch, looking at the program for the hundredth time, she went over the conversation with the three Massachusetts teachers and felt a weird sense of shame. It had been okay at the time, but now she felt dirty, remembering the way they looked at her, and imagining that they would trot out the conversation as a funny story from the convention. That weird-looking girl who was trying to fuck someone. She stared at the program without seeing the words and told herself that it didn’t matter. It had been her truth and they could make fun of it if they wanted. And she was having a good time at this convention, even though it was now clear that she wasn’t going to find someone to play with in quite the way she hoped. And now it was early in the evening and she was only thinking about the print she’d made that day and how excited she was about getting back to her dorm room and looking at it again. She hadn’t felt that way about a piece of her own art for a lon g time.
“Do you mind if I sit next to you?” It was an older man, slender and tall, holding a bottle of beer.
“Oh sure,” Josie said. “Sit down.”
He sighed as he sat, as though his body hurt. Or maybe he was just happy to be away from the throng, like Josie was. For a moment she didn’t think he was going to speak to her, but he turned and said, “Sorry if this sounds creepy, but I was happy to see you sitting alone. I spotted you yesterday and was hoping we’d meet.”
“Just a little creepy,” Josie said, but then she smiled to let him know she was only kidding.
Later, when they were naked in her dorm room, awkwardly entwined in the single bed, she had what felt like an out-of-body experience, the room shimmering with dark energy, her soul, or something that felt like her soul, floating a little above her body. The encounter with the man had started off kind of hot, him throwing her down on the bed, almost panting with sexual excitement. But then something had gone wrong. She’d climbed on top of him and felt him go instantly soft. Things had worked out in the end, her on her side, him behind her using his hands to make her come. Still floating a little above herself, she imagined her conversation with Travis, her telling him all about the encounter, about how she’d enjoyed herself, but maybe not quite as much as she’d been enjoying using the waffle maker at the breakfast buffet.
“Which was better?” he asked her in her mind.
“Waffle maker.”
She laughed in her thoughts and she must have laughed out loud as well, because the man said, “What’s funny?” and then she was back down inside her body.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Sorry if I was . . .”
“No, it was great.”
And then they were talking, and that part was actually interesting. She told him she thought he was afraid of sexually free women, and he laughed and said he probably was. And then he’d asked her what she was afraid of, and she told him how scared she was of heights.
“These rooms have balconies, you know,” he said.
“Like that wasn’t the absolutely first thing I fucking noticed when I walked in here.”
She was still drunk, plus she’d eaten an edible an hour earlier, and somehow he talked her into stepping outside on the balcony in order to face her fears. They were both naked out there, the sky swarming with stars, their bodies drying in the cool night air. It was actually good—exciting, really—maybe only because it was dark and she couldn’t actually see how high up they were, or maybe it was because she was now having the kind of experience that she thought she might have on this trip. Something new, and a little dangerous. She felt alive, but she also felt excited that the next day she would be returning home. It was time. And now she had new ideas for her classroom, plus she couldn’t wait to see Travis, tell him all about her weekend. They hadn’t spoken that day at all. Suddenly she realized just how much she missed him.
And that was when she was thrown off the balcony.
Part 1
Half Winter, Half Spring
Chapter 1
They’d met the way couples met nowadays, online, paired up because they were both self-proclaimed book nerds, both seeking a stable monogamous relationship without kids. He’d been married before, just after college, for three years. It had been an amicable divorce (according to Alan) and there hadn’t been any children. He said he had no idea what his ex-wife was even doing with her life now—they’d lost touch completely.
Alan and Martha, after a few introductory texts, had met for dinner, Alan driving to Portsmouth from his home outside of Scarborough in Maine. The best part about dinner that night—besides the truffle fries—was that there were no awkward silences. Alan was chatty, and funny, and unselfconscious. Martha didn’t exactly feel romantic stirrings, but she did have fun. And later that night she told herself that having fun while eating in a restaurant with a strange man was no small thing. She hadn’t dated anyone in more than ten years. And she hadn’t had sex for five years, not since a brief and awkward coupling at her fifteen-year college reunion. So she told herself to say yes to Alan Peralta, yes to further dinner dates, yes to sex if that was something he was interested in, yes to being in a relationship with him.
And that was what she did. She kept saying yes. It wasn’t hard to do. Alan was very sweet, easy to be with. Yeah, he made a lot of dumb jokes, but he knew they were dumb. And when they eventually got around to having sex, that part was nice, too. She wasn’t exactly attracted to Alan, who was raw and bony with deep-set eyes, but he had a grace about him, and at least he didn’t want to do anything strange in bed, except for some occasional dirty talk whispered into her ear.
Martha would have been happy to simply stay in a committed relationship, but Alan’s mother was a strict Catholic, and the most important person in Alan’s life, so during a weekend away to Kennewick on the southern shore of Maine, Alan lowered himself to a knee while they were on a cliffside walk and asked Martha to marry him. It was a moment that Martha had long believed would never happen to her, any kind of proposal, let alone such an old-fashioned one, and she had been filled with a surge of gratitude and love that propelled her to tell him yes right away. Toward the end of the trip, however, Alan said that he’d noticed she’d been quieter since the proposal, and she’d had to admit that he was right.
“Maybe it feels too sudden,” she said. “Give me one week.”
As it happened, Alan was traveling for the next week and Martha spent that time thinking about her decision. She did love him, she believed, although she wondered if she was truly in love with him. He had never really raised her pulse. And she had never yearned for him when he was away. But she realized that those two negatives, even the phrasing of them, were clichés about romantic love, and not necessarily based in reality. She loved his company. They could talk to one another. He smelled nice. And one thing she kept coming back to was a moment when they had first been casually dating, an evening in Portsmouth, when they were taking a stroll after dinner out. They’d been walking side by side along a dark sidewalk. It wasn’t raining, but it had rained all day and there were still puddles on the streets, and the occasional drip of water from gutters and trees. At one point during the walk they approached a section of the sidewalk where water was still falling in a steady flow from a large hotel awning. Without slowing down Alan had slid his hand around Martha’s waist and guided her smoothly away from the dripping water. Gallantry, but with the grace of a dance move, and Martha still remembered the tiny shiver that had coursed through her body when he’d touched her.
And maybe that was more important than yearning, just having someone looking out for you in small ways. Yearning never lasted anyway. Kindness did.
Martha said yes to Alan when he returned from his trip. She told herself she wouldn’t be completely giving up her independent life. Alan traveled so much for work that she’d have plenty of time alone.
They honeymooned in London, Alan making a list of pubs he wanted to visit (he had a passion for beer), and Martha was happy to go along. Toward the end of that trip they’d visited an elegant Victorian pub during a rainy afternoon, Martha studying her Fodor’s travel guide while Alan leaned against the elaborate bar chatting with the bartender. She watched him, his loud American voice at odds with the quiet man behind the bar, noting the way that Alan won over the reluctant Brit, who was now smiling and giving Alan tastes of the different beers they had on cask. It was at this moment that Martha had two competing thoughts. One, that she’d married a nice man. And, two, that he was a complete and utter stranger to her. She realized she didn’t really know him any better now than she had after that first date, when she’d returned home to her two-bedroom house in Portsmouth and decided that if Alan wanted to see her again, she’d agree.
A year later, and there were some days Martha never thought of her husband. And some days he was all she seemed to think about.
It was natural, she supposed. Even though she was thirty-nine she was still a newlywed, married less than a year. She actually hated the word “newlywed,” or hated other people saying it, like Donna from the library, who called her “the newlywed” in a wink-wink kind of way for about six months after she and Alan were married. Martha preferred the phrase “newly married,” but however you said it, that was what she was, a newly wedded person, with all that that implied.
