Page 12 of You'll Be Sorry

“Are we crazy, or just stupid?” she murmured, more to herself than him.

There was an awkward pause. Then Theo, sounding unusually serious: “Something had to give.”

Her turn to attempt to lighten the mood. “At least we’ll never run out of projects.”

Then they turned toward the main bedroom, which had once been beautiful, but now bore thirty years of grievous injury.

“Who you gonna call?” Theo sang out softly, in his bestGhostbustersimpression.

“Drywall contractor!” she sang back.

“We got this,” he said firmly.

And they both knew he wasn’t talking about the remodel.

4

I don’t know, there’s something about them.” Mandy carried the steaming Yankee pot roast to the dining room table. She’d already done the honors of piling thick slices of beef atop a bed of roasted potatoes and carrots. The enormous platter currently weighed as much as a tank and held enough food to feed an army. But that was Betty for you.

Mandy and the retired postmistress had dinner together every other week, generally switching off cooking duties. Truthfully, Betty got the short end of the deal; Mandy’s culinary skills topped out at picking up a rotisserie chicken from the local deli.

Now, Betty followed her into the dining room with a vat of gravy. At seventy-six, the woman was as spry as they came. She proudly walked her three miles a day with the help of two ski poles and continued to do the daily crossword puzzle in ink. Most afternoons, she made the rounds at the village’s local establishments, chatting it up with storekeepers, customers, and the hired staff. As a result, she was the biggest know-it-all in the town and proud of it.

She was also Mandy’s last link to her parents, who’d counted Betty and her husband, Paul, as close personal friends. Mandy grew up watching the foursome battle it out over dominoes most Sundays, or more rarely, get gussied up for a big night out at Howie’s Pub.

First Mandy’s father had passed. Then her mom. Then six monthsafter that, Betty’s beloved Paul. And now there were Betty and Mandy. In the beginning, Mandy had started bringing Betty dinners out of respect, but soon enough, they’d forged their own relationship, born out of shared memories and mutual grief. Mandy appreciated having a surrogate mom, while Betty counted Mandy as her third child, given her first two now lived on the other side of the country.

Mandy gingerly set down the heavy ceramic platter. Betty insisted on using the dining room, which held a gorgeous Queen Anne table meant for six. Mandy couldn’t decide if it was sad to see the relic of so many family dinners now set for two, or inspiring that Betty still cared that much.

Mandy ate most meals sitting in front of the TV. And yes, cereal did count as an acceptable dinner option.

Betty pulled out her chair at the head of the table. Mandy took the one kitty-corner. Head bowed as Betty murmured a brief blessing. Then, they got down to business.

“The Collinses did buy the property,” Betty commented now. “Doesn’t seem so strange they’d be interested in its past.”

“But some of their questions were so specific—what was the timeline between the start of the storm and Dad’s arrival? Had the blood been collected, tested? What about DNA? Better yet, what about new DNA analysis given the advances in the past thirty years? These aren’t idle questions. They’re…”

“More like the ones your father and now you have been asking all these years?” Betty scooped up a red potato. “Could be they’re amateur sleuths. Lord knows enough have tried to solve the mystery over the years.”

“None of those armchair detectives bought the actual house and moved in.”

“He comes from money,” Betty provided sagely. “Third-generationfamily wealth. Though I hear his investment firm is successful in its own right. Same with her design business.”

“Which makes it even stranger they’d abandon two great Boston careers to move to Nowhere, New Hampshire.”

“Maybe they wanted a change of pace.”

“And maybe there’s something else going on.” Mandy could be as bullheaded as her father. Probably why they had locked horns so many times.

“It might be good to have them pushing,” Betty continued with maddening calm. “Generate new interest in the case. It’s been…gads…maybe a decade since the last go-round.”

“Which resulted in absolutely no new leads!” It had enraged her father, the two state cold case detectives basically implying the lack of closure was all his fault, a small-town cop unprepared for such a major crime. Mandy had been in New York for the twenty-year-anniversary investigation, but she’d heard plenty from her mother on the phone. After the detectives left, Ian Grady had locked himself in his study for a month, poring over his murder board, obsessively searching for that one detail he’d missed.

Mandy often wondered if the stress had led to her father’s heart attack. Though, realistically speaking, his abiding love for red meat was probably a factor as well.

“I advised them to contact the cold case unit,” Mandy conceded. “Mostly to get me out of the hot seat. I can see why Theo and Raquel Collins were both so good at their jobs. They’re nothing if not tenacious.”

Mandy gave up on her pot roast. She hadn’t been able to settle since leaving the Dixon…Collins…place. She was twitchy and resentful in equal measures. How dare some outsiders come along and stir the pot? And yet, why not? She was a cop; she should be grateful for new perspectives. Mandy sighed. Perhaps this was the heartof her conflict. “I haven’t followed up since I became chief. Maybe I should’ve pushed again. The Collinses’ question about reanalyzing the blood using the latest and greatest DNA technology makes sense. I mean, assuming the state cares, has the budget, and some lab somewhere doesn’t have a hundred-year backlog.”