Page 7 of Not a Word

She went back down to the living room and retrieved the photo of Catherine Chartwell sitting on the dock in her swimsuit. She took it back to the bedroom and held the picture not far from the dead woman’s face.

Where was the mole?

There wasn’t one to be found on the cheek of the woman in this bed. Which meant she’d either had it removed, or this woman was not who everyone had, up to now, assumed her to be. And if she really was Catherine Chartwell, how was she sending texts to her husband after she was already dead?

She didn’t want to bring Reece back up here to ascertain whether this woman was, in fact, his mother. Not with the father’s body still here, his brains splattered across that painting. With her phone, she took a close-up photo of the dead woman’s face she could show to the son.

McCabe went back downstairs, past Williams, and out the front door.

Reece Chartwell was not sitting on the wrought-iron bench. McCabe scanned the yard but didn’t see the man anywhere.

The BMW was gone.

“Where’s the guy?” she asked Williams, nodding at the bench.

The uniformed cop said, “He left.”

“When?”

Williams shrugged. “Five, ten minutes ago? He wasn’t supposed to stick around, was he?”

Three

Reece

“Mom?” I said, my voice no more than a whisper.

“Yes. Can you do it? Can you check on him? You’re closer than I am, unless you’re not at home.”

Her voice was breezy, chipper even.

“Mom, where are you?”

“It’s Friday,” she said. “You know what I do on Fridays.”

I had no fucking clue what she did on Fridays, and even if I did, it wasn’t likely I would remember it in my current state of mind. When I said nothing, she reminded me.

“It’s my arts lunch. I’ve told you about that. It’s—”

“It doesn’t matter. Where—”

“All of us on the Yorkton Hill Arts Council? We meet for lunch every other Friday?”

“Is that where you are now?”

“I just stepped away from the table, yes. I wanted to ask your father to check my datebook.”

“Your datebook.” Mom was old-school. She wrote appointments and important dates down, on paper, with a pen. She didn’t keep anything like that in her phone.

“It’s in the drawer in the kitchen. He knows where. I wanted him to look ahead to early August. A group of us were talking about going to that inn on Fogo Island. In Newfoundland? But I can’t remember if that’s when Sheila’s daughter is getting married. I thought he could check, but he must have muted his phone. I tell him over and over again not to do that. He mutes it overnight and then forgets to unmute it when he gets up in the morning. I don’t know how many times I’ve reminded him about this but he doesn’t listen.”

I wondered why she didn’t just try the house. My parents had resisted giving up their landline, thinking it would be essential should some apocalyptic event occur.

But then she said, “I tried the house phone too. You’d think he’d have heard that.”

“Which restaurant?” I said.

“What?”