Page 77 of The Summer Guests

“You mean free diving?” Susan nodded. “She took lessons last year, when we were in Florida.”

“How deep could she dive?”

“I think she made it to thirty feet.”

“This was in salt water?”

“Yes. Why are you asking?”

“The skeleton that the warden service recovered wasn’t far offshore from Moonview, at a depth of twenty-one feet. If Zoe was diving there, she might have seen something at the bottom of the pond. Something that’s been down there for a long time.”

The revelation made Susan sit up straighter. “You think this is all about that skeleton?”

“It’s just a theory. We still don’t know who the woman was. All we know is, she was young, probably in her twenties. We have to wait for the crime lab to finish the facial reconstruction and analyze her dentalwork. That could help us narrow down the decade of her death, but it still won’t tell us her name. Or who put her down there.”

“‘Put her down there’?” Susan rocked forward. “Are you saying ...”

“It’s a homicide. The state police are now investigating.”

Susan took another moment to absorb this revelation as well. “How long ago? How long has she been down there?”

“It could have been decades. I’ve reviewed all our missing persons files, looking for any case that matches, but so far, we haven’t found one. Which makes me think the victim was from out of town, someone whose absence wouldn’t be noticed by our local community. Someone who could be easily disposed of, and never missed.”

“And then my daughter went swimming,” Susan murmured.

Jo nodded. “If not for Zoe, we never would have searched the pond. And the skeleton would still be down there.”

Susan fell silent, and no wonder; it must have been difficult for her to take in all of this at once, and the woman was exhausted, wrung out by the seesawing between hope and despair during these last few days. Now Jo had jolted her with yet another shock.

“A woman from out of town,” Susan said softly. She looked at Jo. “Hannah Greene was only eight years old when the woman vanished, but she still remembers it. Which means Elizabeth would remember it too. And so would Arthur Fox.”

“Remember what?”

Susan reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. “You need to talk to my mother-in-law.”

Chapter 36

Susan

“Dragging me into amurderinvestigation?” said Elizabeth. “Really, Susan, I wish you’d thought this through before talking to that policewoman. Making her think I know something about those bones.”

“You can’t blame this on Susan,” said Ethan. “She only shared what I told her. If you’re going to blame anyone, you should blame me, Mom. I’m the one writing the novel. I’m the one who asked Hannah for the details.”

Elizabeth turned to her son with a look that could sear flesh, but Ethan didn’t flinch. He faced her with a resoluteness that Susan had not seen before. Certainly not in the face of his mother’s fury. Everyone else in the room seemed cowed by Elizabeth, no one daring to challenge the family matriarch. Brooke and Kit sat side by side on the sofa, mother and son shrinking against each other, as though to disappear from view. Colin stood off in a corner, his attention fixed on his cell phone. Even the usually jovial Arthur Fox was silent, his expression unreadable as he stood backlit against the window. Outside, the afternoon sky had turned gray and threatening, matching the mood inside the house.

“What, exactly, is this novel about?” Elizabeth asked.

“It’s just fiction, Mother.”

“You were writing about Vivian Stillwater? That’s not fiction.”

“No, my story’s onlyinspiredby her disappearance. I didn’t even know the woman existed until Susan brought home that old newspaper article. Then Hannah told me she remembered Vivian, because the woman worked for Dr. Greene, and the police interviewed him after the woman went missing. I thought it would make a good story. A vanished woman. A group of summer people.”

“And you put our family in this novel,” said Elizabeth.

“No. I mean, there are similarities, but—”

“What similarities?”

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