Page 75 of Snow Creek

I encourage her to continue. “What did you make of that?”

“First,” Chantelle says, “I thought that I didn’t even know this girl anymore. I knew that they homeschooled Ellie and that they went to a fundamentalist church somewhere on the eastside. Second, I felt sorry for her. I wanted to say something, ask her how she really felt. I just couldn’t go there. I knew that my asking her anything would only make things worse.”

“Do you know anything about the Whitcombs?”

“Do I know Troy and Tyra are liars? Yes.”

“What do you mean, liars?”

“I saw Susan Whitcomb two weeks ago.”

I’m confused. And I look it.

“She didn’t die in any accident. Her husband and daughter made that up after she’d been discovered having an affair. I don’t know why they made up the story. Sympathy for the two of them, I guess. Joy in getting rid of her. She went along with it. Susan’s like that. Weak. I’d have taken him for everything he had.”

“I’m actually stunned,” I admit. “Now I know why there hasn’t been anything filed about her death. Nothing in the papers either.”

“Right. To hear those two talk about it they couldn’t be happier if she actually were dead.”

We talk some more. I look at my phone. I ask her if we can speak again and she gives me her number.

“Detective,” she says as I turn to leave, “I wish I could tell you more, but really…” She looks over at the fence that separates her house from the Burbank place. “After Hudson became the leader, or whatever, of the family, we no longer needed a fence. He’d fashioned an invisible forcefield between all of us.”

Thirty-Five

Troy Whitcomb answers the gleaming mahogany front door before I knock. That quick. He’s older than he sounded on the phone, around sixty, I think. His hair is nearly gone, just a gray halo of duck-down-like hairs on his crown. He’s crumpled, worn out. The bags under his eyes could hold the contents of a family’s trip to the beach.

“Did you have a hard time finding your way here?” he asks, letting me inside. “I thought you’d be here at eight.”

It’s only a quarter past eight, but I offer an apology anyway.

“You know the ferries,” I say.

He looks at me warily.

“Right,” he says. “Extremely unreliable.”

His tone is suddenly accusatory. I wonder if he’s just another of the control freaks that live on that Seattle block.

He yells up the stairs.

“Tyra! The detective is here!”

For such a beaten-down figure, his voice is surprisingly robust.

“I told her why you’re here.”

“Thank you. Is Mrs. Whitcomb home?”

“Susan is dead,” he says. “An accident.”

“Oh I’m sorry to hear that. Car accident?” I scan his face and he cast his eyes away in the direction of footsteps coming toward the stairs.

“No. Boating accident,” he replies. “Please don’t bring it up. Tyra was on the boat with her mom when it happened.”

I nod, but inside all I can think about is the similarity between these two best friends.

One is a liar.

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