Page 77 of Trick of Light
Fiona? Fiona Carmichael? Or were there other Fionas on the island? There probably were, and how would Keith have known Fiona anyway? Unless she too came to Amelia for piano lessons? Were they even the same age?
Fiona was thirty-two or so. After a quick calculation, she came up with an age of about thirty-five for Keith Garner, based on the year mentioned in Amelia’s piano student notes, which would have been his last year of high school. So he’d been slightly older, but from what she knew of Fiona, that wouldn’t have stopped her. She’d probably been a pretty precocious teenager.
But the Carmichael family would probably not have been thrilled with their daughter getting involved with an island boy three years older than her. Was that the real reason the Garners had left Sea Smoke Island? Had the Carmichaels evicted yet another family from the island?
She thought about the hunting lodge and the private plane that had been taking them there. That spoke of money. Maybe the North Slope job had been a ruse, and the Carmichaels had given the Garners a huge sum of money to go as far away as possible.
If Jill Garner had been paid off to keep her silence about the murder of Sophie Brown, what would stop her from demanding another payout once her son got involved with Fiona Carmichael?
Total speculation, Gabby knew. But still, it was worth following up on.
Except that Keith Garner was dead, and therefore had nothing to do with Amelia’s death.
As she climbed down from the upper bunk, something else caught her eye. A flash of silver, something wedged between the mattress and the bare wood of the lower bunk. After carefully retrieving it, she saw it was a torn scrap of a potato chip bag, silver on the inside and bright yellow on the outside. It didn’t look weathered at all, the way something from nearly twenty years ago might.
Had someone been hiding out here recently? Maybe a guest of Amelia? Or perhaps some local kids had been using it as a playhouse?
Her gut instinct said her first explanation was the best one. Amelia had been virtually a hermit by the end, and the island kids were all busy fishing or partying on the dock.
Back in Heather’s mom’s truck, she pulled out her phone and did some searching about the plane crash that had killed the Garner family. Heather had done that research, and as much as she respected Heather, sometimes she liked to double back and see for herself.
She found the article in the Bethel Clarion that Heather had referenced.
“A Cessna 205 crashed on its way to Caribou Lodge on Tuesday night. After two days of searching for potential survivors, the rescue effort has been called off. All onboard have been declared dead. The passengers were a family of four, Jill and David Garner, along with their two adult children, Keith and William. Local officials say that based on the charred and scattered condition of the debris, everyone onboard most likely died in the fiery explosion when the plane hit the side of the mountain. This is the third such incident this year, and all three have been fatal.”
One article, that was it, written ten years ago. She couldn’t find any follow-ups, such as write-throughs on the family, or quotes from the hunting lodge. Maybe plane crashes were so common up there that no one bothered to follow up.
But the way she read the article, they’d located the debris, but no remains, presumably because the debris was too scattered and it was too remote to confirm it. Keith Garner was “declared dead,” but did that mean he actually was dead? What if he’d survived the crash and simply never surfaced in the news again? Maybe he hadn’t wanted to talk about what happened. Maybe he’d wanted to start fresh and not relive the nightmare.
Speculation, Gabby, she told herself. You’re grasping at straws.
She did some more googling, but found no further references to Keith Garner. If he had somehow survived, he’d kept a very low profile since then.
Before she set off for the eastern side of the island to check on Detective Chen, she texted Barnaby the photo she’d taken of the words Keith had carved into the wall.
Hey hot stuff. Look at this. Could that be your sister Fiona?
Her phone rang. She answered with a smile, little thrills already running through her. A warm breeze wafted through the truck window. In Amelia’s overgrown flower border, she watched a bee dart from one dahlia to another, blissed-out on pollen. “Hot stuff?” Barnaby said in his warm rumbling voice.
“Own it, babe. What do you think, did the mysterious Keith Garner have a thing with your sister when she was maybe fourteen or fifteen?”
“Maybe. Fiona was a wild child. She did whatever she wanted.”
“When you say ‘wild child’…”
“Boys. Weed. You know, I do vaguely remember something about a boy Dad didn’t like. They were going off together on one of our speedboats, for one thing, in all kinds of weather. He used to rant about it.”
That sounded promising. “Going where?”
“All over.” A pause, then an exasperated gasp. “Oh shit. I remember now. They were looking for that treasure.”
“The treasure? The mythical pirate treasure?”
“Yes. I figured they just used it as an excuse to go make out. Or fuck, for all I know. Fiona was a wild child, like I said. But yeah, they were looking for the pirate treasure every chance they got. Then they got into trouble out at the lighthouse. Banged up on some rocks, got stranded. The boat was totaled. That was the end of that.”
Now they were getting somewhere. The pirate treasure was back in the conversation. But how it all fit together, Gabby still didn’t know.
“Maybe you should have visited her in jail instead of Carson.”
