The twist had to do with the victim’s affair. Throughout the book, it was clear that figuring out the identity of the victim’s romantic partner—the last person to see her alive at a midnight tryst—was the key to the whole mystery. And Vivienne did manage to shock people—in 1987. Because in Death at Maplewood Manor, the twist was that the victim’s lover was a woman!!!!!!! (Shock. Awe. Gasps.) (God, using that many exclamation marks felt unbelievably liberating.) So, in that sense, Mrs. Shufflebottom was right—the novel felt dated. Homosexual relationships didn’t (or shouldn’t) have shock value anymore, and trying to use them that way went against decades of work to normalize them.

  On the other hand, like most of Vivienne’s work, it was a master class in the craft of mystery. One of the reasons the twist worked so well in Death at Maplewood Manor is that Vivienne never does anything so crass as have a character say, “Well, she was a red-blooded American woman, so we’re looking for a man.” Instead, she let the reader’s assumptions do the work for her; most readers, like the other characters in the book, simply assume that the victim’s lover would be a man. It was an excellent example of an old saw among mystery writers: readers will mislead themselves. All you have to do is show them what’s happening, and they’ll make up their own story—and, bonus, it’ll be much more convincing than any red herrings or misdirection you could fabricate on your own.

  All the great mystery authors do it to greater or lesser extents. Elizabeth George does it in her Inspector Lynley novels—while investigating a suspect’s home, Lynley finds a shrine to his wife. The implication—and the reader’s assumption—is that the woman is dead, and the shrine is a display of grief. But it turns out (spoiler alert!) she’s alive!!!!!!! (I’m serious, it feels amazing. You should try it sometime.) Daphne du Maurier does it—that’s basically (spoiler alert) the entire plot of Rebecca!!!!!!! (Okay, that one felt like too much.) Agatha Christie was so good she could do it over and over again, and somehow she always made it work. And, of course, Vivienne had done it here, as well as in many other novels.

  Holding Death at Maplewood Manor in my hands, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the plot, with that final revelation of an illicit lesbian relationship, had been born out of Vivienne’s life. It’s a fallacy, and a dangerous one, to conflate an author with their characters, but it was Vivienne’s first book, and she’d written it so close to the events that had devastated her emotionally—the death of her brother, the loss of her lover, the decision to leave behind everything and stake her future on the belief that she was capable of greatness. Was it really so much of a stretch to think that the immediacy and power of that time in her life must have shaped the story she was telling?

  It would be nice if it did, I thought with wry weariness. It would be lovely if I could flip through the book, spot an easy analogue for Richard’s death, and identify the killer all these years later. As though it were a secret Vivienne had buried in the text for someone else to find. Of course, that was nonsense—if she’d known who had killed Richard, she never would have hired me in the first place. Still, it was a fun idea. I tried to think of a mystery novel that featured a sleuth who solved a crime in the past by unraveling the plot of a novel. The Josephine Tey book came closest. It wouldn’t even be all that difficult to work in that trick about having the reader mislead themselves. I mean, it happened in real life all the time—look at me. I’d assumed Vivienne and Jane had been straight simply because they’d married men—

  The revelation had a physical weight, dropping in my gut. Richard’s distance from his father. Richard’s arguments with everyone in his final months. Neil and Jane. Neil wearing Richard’s bracelet.

  I was an idiot, I decided.

  I laid Mrs. Shufflebottom’s book on the counter, shouted, “Thanks for the tea!” and sprinted for the door.

  Mrs. Shufflebottom’s polite—but stern—“Inside voice, Dashiell,” floated after me into the night.

  Chapter 16

  The drive to Astoria (in Bobby’s SUV) was a blur of darkness, wind-stirred trees, and the oil-paint texture of the ag fields. I tried to keep my attention on the road, but my mind was racing, turning over everything, trying to make the pieces fit. Twice, I caught myself doing 90 on roads that were like black ice, slick with the night mist that gathered along the coast, and I had to force myself to ease off the gas.

  I was still in a state somewhere between excitement and stupefaction when I turned onto that familiar street outside Astoria. In a few of the little white bungalows, light showed in the windows, but Arlen’s house was dark, and so was Neil and Jane’s. I parked, reached for the door, and stopped as a second realization hit me—this one like cold water.

  I had driven out here in a frenzy, determined to confront this family and learn the truth. But in my excitement, I’d overlooked one important detail: someone had tried to kill me. Someone didn’t want the truth about Richard’s death coming to light. Someone was willing to do whatever it took to stop me. And that person was here, I was sure—one of the people I was about to face.

  My hesitation only lasted a moment. I was exhausted—physically and emotionally. I was exhilarated by that feeling of the pieces of a puzzle falling together. And the aftermath of my fight with Bobby was evolving from grief into a low-grade fever and the need to sink my teeth into somebody.

  I dropped out of the SUV and jogged across the street.

  When I knocked on Neil and Jane’s door, only silence answered. I counted to thirty and tried again. I’d lost track of the time, so I checked my phone. At some point, I’d missed a call from Indira, and the group text had blown up. I ignored all of that. It was 9:30. I knocked again.

  This time, on the other side of the door, footsteps came toward me, and then Neil asked, “Who is it?”

  “Dash Dane. I need to talk to you and Jane.”

  The deadbolt thunked back. The door opened. Neil was dressed in blue-striped pajamas, and his hair was sticking up in back; out of uniform, he looked older. Behind him, Jane was cinching the belt on her robe.

  “I need to talk to you right now,” I said. “About Richard. I know what happened.”

  Something changed on Neil’s face. Just a flicker, but I was sure I’d seen it. He didn’t look back at Jane, but I could tell he was fighting the urge. Then, with forced heartiness, he said, “Well, I don’t know about that. But if you’ve got something to say, I guess we’d better hear it.”

  He put his hand in the pocket of his pajamas as he stepped back.

  This was my chance to turn back, I knew. I could run to the Pilot. Call Bobby. Do the sensible thing.

  But what I wanted to do was bite the sensible thing right in the heinie. So, I stepped inside.

  Jane was turning on lamps, and the little click of each switch was the only sound. The lamps left deep shadows, and the house smelled like something floral, and there were fresh vacuum lines in the carpet. Neil motioned me to the sofa, and I sat. Jane took an armchair. Neil stood behind her, one hand still in his pocket.

  “Is it true you and Vivienne were lovers?” I asked.

  It wasn’t surprise that flashed across Jane’s face. It was pain. The realization left me off-balance; after all these years, the fact that it could still hurt her so much.

  All she said was “Yes.”

  I took a deep breath and dried my palms on my jeans. I looked at Neil. “I wondered why the four of you were so close. It’s not uncommon; I know that. A tight group of friends, especially in high school. Even, in a small town, for a group of friends like that to remain tight after they graduate. But the more I learned, the more I started to wonder. You were so close. Even after the divorce, when by all rights, the relationships should have soured. Even after Richard’s death. And there was all that business about Vivienne’s relationship with Neil, how quickly they realized it wasn’t going to work out, that kind of thing. Your comment, Neil, about how Candy was oblivious to the fact that she didn’t have a chance with you. And then I realized what it all meant. You—”

  “I’m gay,” Neil said quietly. “Richard was my boyfriend.” His dark eyes were lost in shadow, and he gave a strange half-laugh. “He would have hated me using that word.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. I was right about to do my thing where I reveal—” I blew out a breath. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, all the fighting, those nasty fights between you and Richard, were because—”

  “I wanted him to come out. With me.”

  “Seriously? Could you just let me have, like, one thing?”

  “I was insistent. In high school, it had been easy enough to—to pretend to be something else. People were happy to see what was on the surface, and we were all still figuring everything out.”

  “It was Vivienne’s plan,” Jane said softly. “She was always the smartest of us. We’d keep doing what we’d been doing. We’d get married. We’d be friends. We’d live our lives without anyone having to know.”

  “She was always smart,” Neil agreed. “But she was a child. We all were. She didn’t understand what it would be like to live a lie forever. She didn’t know what it would feel like to be in love, and to never be able to let anyone know.”

  “Richard—” I began.

  “Didn’t want to come out, of course,” Jane said.

  “You too?” I asked. “Try this: just wait until I finish a sentence.”

  “I think that’s why Vivienne came up with the plan in the first place. She loved Richard. She thought she was helping him.”

  “He was terrified of coming out,” Neil said. “Terrified of his father’s reaction. Terrified of what the town would say. Terrified—” His mouth twisted, and he put his hand on Jane’s shoulder. “Terrified I would ask too much.”

  “Like Vivienne,” I said.

  Jane nodded.

  When Neil spoke again, his voice grew tight with frustration. “He was too afraid to take a chance. He thought everything could stay the same, that we could go on the way we always had.”

  “But things never stay the same,” I said. “Do they?”

  “No, they don’t. I certainly didn’t. Richard didn’t, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise. After Vivienne and I had tried to—tried to make a go of it, I knew we couldn’t keep it up. But the more I tried to push Richard, the worse it got.”

  “You loved him,” Jane said. “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

  Neil shook his head. It was hard to tell, with most of his face lost in shadow, but I thought he was crying. His voice was clear enough, though, when he spoke. “I didn’t understand, then, that there are some people who will choose being safe even if it means being unhappy. They might even manage to believe everything’s okay, so long as they don’t have to face the truth.”

  The floral smell was gone now, and in its place, creeping through the dark of the house, came the stagnant smell of the slough.

  “But you two—” I began.

  “We decided to live together,” Jane said.

  (I couldn’t even be mad about the interruption.)

  “After a few years,” she continued, “when it was obvious neither one of us was going to…to move on, I suppose, it seemed the obvious thing to do.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why?” Jane met my question with a blank expression. When I turned to Neil, I thought I heard him draw in a breath. “You were going to come out. I thought you were done hiding. Why didn’t you—” I almost said find someone else, but I heard how callous it sounded, and I managed to stop myself.

  Neil must have heard the words anyway, though, because he said, as though stating a simple fact, “Richard was gone. There wasn’t anyone else.”

  In the distance, an engine rumbled through the night.

  Jane reached over her shoulder to pat Neil’s hand, but her eyes stayed on me. “There you go, Mr. Dane. Did you ask what you wanted to ask?”

  I nodded, but I said, “Richard wasn’t murdered, was he? Richard—”

  “Say one more word—” a crusty voice said, and then a footfall came from the hall, and Arlen stepped into the room. He leveled the old shotgun at me. “—and I’ll blow your head off.”

  Chapter 17

  I sat there, staring down the barrels of Arlen’s ancient shotgun. Arlen himself looked like something dragged out of the grave: his stringy white hair in a frenzy, his face gaunt and pale, a tic working restlessly in his eye. The smell of the slough was so thick it was almost suffocating, but under it, I caught a hint of body odor and liniment.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Arlen asked. The shotgun trembled in his hands. “Why can’t you leave decent people alone? You had to come snooping around, stirring things up. Why couldn’t you take a hint?”

  “Arlen,” Neil said, “put that down.”

  “Don’t move,” Arlen barked at him. “I know about you. I know about all of you. You think you could keep it a secret, hide it, make a fool out of me. Laughing at me all these years.”

  “No one was laughing at you, Arlen,” Jane said.

  “He was my son! He was gone!” And then Arlen’s voice quavered, and he sounded his age. “Wasn’t that enough?”

  “He wasn’t gone,” I said. My brain was racing, trying to put together the final piece of the puzzle. Someone had wanted to stop me. Someone had wanted the truth of Richard’s death to remain a secret. And now I knew it had been Arlen who had run me off the road. Arlen who had wanted to bury the past. But why? I tried to remember what I knew about this man. He’d been furious about Candy’s relationships with men, including Zane. He’d been head of the Astoria lodge of the Sons of Sweden. He’d fought incessantly with Richard. “Richard wasn’t gone,” I said again. “He—”

  But Arlen braced the shotgun against his shoulder, steadying his aim, and I cut off.

  “He didn’t run away, Arlen,” Jane said.

  Neil breathed out hard and said, “He killed himself.”

  A spasm of pain contorted Arlen’s body. Pure, raw grief—undiluted by the passage of the years. A distant part of me wondered if, twisted by the physical agony of the loss, Arlen might pull the trigger without even realizing it. But another part of me realized that whatever happened, it was beyond my control.

  “No,” Arlen managed to say. “No. Not my son. Not my son. No, he wouldn’t. I saw him—”

  And then I knew.

  Jane and Richard had fought.

  Jane had left.

  Vivienne and Candy had both been gone.

  And Arlen had been home, tending to his sick wife.

  “Richard told you,” I said. My voice sounded scratchy even to me. “After the fight with Jane. He walked next door and told you—”

  “What?” Neil asked.

  Arlen shouted, “No!”

  “He told you?” Neil was shouting too now. He sounded almost hysterical, the words shrill and uneven. “What did you say? What did you do?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything!” The scream was so raw that Arlen’s words were barely intelligible. “He came over to pick a fight, the way he always did. That’s all he ever wanted—to make me angry, to make a fool out of me, to make me a joke in the eyes of every decent man in this town. The things he was saying—” Arlen gulped air, and I thought he was no longer here. He was somewhere else, sometime long ago. “I told him to knock it off. I told him this wasn’t a joke. And he said no, it wasn’t a joke. He said—” Arlen’s voice broke. “He said he was sorry.”

  Our breaths were ragged, unkempt things, rising and falling in the dark.

  When Arlen spoke again, his voice was dull. “I told him he was no son of mine. I told him I never wanted to see him again. I’d kill him if I ever saw him again.” He couldn’t seem to stand up straight anymore, and his labored breathing was like a heartbeat. The muzzle of the shotgun slipped away from me. “That’s why he ran away.”

  Jane was crying softly, her head in her hands.

  “He didn’t run away!” Neil shouted. “He killed himself, you stupid old man. He was right here, the bottle of pills on the floor next to him. We had to take care of him! We did! We loved him, we were his family, and he did that to us! Because of you! He was everything to me, and you took him away from me!”

  Arlen shook his head, his expression empty, not hearing—or not wanting to hear—any of us.

  I looked at Jane.

  The color had drained from her face. She touched her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut, but after a moment, she began to speak. “I came home that night.” She stopped, and in the caesura that followed was the whole tragedy. Then, somehow, she started again. “I didn’t know what to do. Vivienne was God only knew where—gone to help Candy, I found out later. I didn’t want Neil to see Richard like that, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “No,” Neil said. An ugly flush filled his face, and his chest rose and fell with a limping unevenness. “No. He was mine. I needed to be there.” I thought that might have been all, but then he said, “He would have wanted it that way, Jane. He would have wanted to do right by you. Just like he would have wanted Viv to have enough money to move, so we gave it to her. Just like he would have wanted us to take care of each other.”

  Maybe the question was on my face because when Jane opened her eyes, she looked at me and said, “The life insurance. Neil said—”

  “He would have wanted it that way,” Neil said again. “He was sick. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  Jane shook her head, wiping her eyes. “It seems like a dream now. Like someone else did it. I don’t know what we were thinking. I don’t know why it seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “You did this,” Arlen said, and for a disorienting moment, I thought he was talking to me. But he raised his head, and voice muzzy, spoke to Neil. “You did it to him. You made him that way. No son of mine—”