Henry hadn’t slept. Not that he’d really planned on sleeping, trapped in an airport with other passengers unlucky enough to get ridiculous layovers, but he really hadn’t slept. Once Henry had his initial email crafted, which took a while to get worded properly, he started sending them out, working his way down his normal list … and above it. This wasn’t some simple little human-interest piece. This was gold.
As the replies came in, he sorted them. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t seem interested at all, but the You’re going to need a good lawyer responses got segregated to one folder that he figured he’d never have to look at again. The ones with invitations to meet with various staff members, including a legal team, got precedence.
Henry accepted a number of appointments for later today, picking and choosing as carefully as his sleep deprived, caffeine-riddled brain would let him, and more for tomorrow. He’d really have to sleep on the plane. And at some point, he’d also have to start writing the thing he’d teased them all with: an account of his time at Loon Lake.
He sat by his gate, which was at last finally displaying his flight number, finishing his McDonald’s breakfast and refreshing the window with his email. The news was on the airport screens, as usual, but there weren’t any updates to the whole Ferguson-Sype-Jennings triangle. Henry would know, because it kept cycling through, promising more information as they received it, even though there hadn’t been anything in the past eight hours.
That was fine. That made the information in Henry’s head all the more appealing, because it was new information, and nobody else would be sharing it. Alyssa and Truman were too loyal to the Meyers, Jane had a stick so far up her ass she’d fume if it was even suggested, and Edgar …
Maybe Henry could tell the story without Edgar. Or, at the very least, without identifying Edgar, even in a roundabout way. Edgar, Jane, and even Agatha could simply be labeled with their July names and fade into the background as he focused on the people who mattered: Percy, Mary, and Emily. Not that he had anything to say about Mary. But.
Henry sipped his coffee and debated another offer when he heard the little fanfare that made him look back up at the news. The morning anchor gazed into the camera, all young and eager but trying to appear earnest, because the image that appeared over his shoulder read Bank Robbery Update. “Breaking news in the Wells Fargo robbery case,” he announced, boring into viewers’ souls with his dark blue eyes. “It seems that there’s a deeper, personal connection between suspect Tammy Sype and suspected kidnap victim Kimberlee Jennings. Mary O’Connell has the story. Mary?”
The camera switched to a woman standing in the dark outside some sort of brick building, buffeted by wind. “Thank you, Connor. We’ve just received information that Tammy Sype was also a student of Professor Everett Youngren, here at Western Michigan University, and may also have been involved with him romantically. As we already know, Kimberlee Jennings is reported to be the latest in his long line of affairs, and bank records show Youngren paid for her month at Loon Lake after his wife and children moved out of the house. Jenny Youngren has filed for divorce from her husband, and those proceedings are ongoing. Other former students have come forward to report that Tammy Sype took classes with Youngren and petitioned to switch to him as her advisor, despite not being a history major.”
The shot switched to a woman probably in her twenties, also wind-blown, looking off-camera, presumably at Mary O’Connell. “Tammy was obsessed,” she said earnestly, or maybe even dismissively. With her hair going across her face and blocking much of her expression, it was hard to tell. “She never told us if she was really sleeping with him, but she certainly hinted at it. She told me once that he was going to leave Jenny for her, so when she didn’t …”
It cut back to Mary O’Connell before the woman could clarify what, exactly, Tammy Sype had done when Youngren’s divorce didn’t materialize for her. “Tammy Sype is, of course, one of the suspected Wells Fargo robbers who made away with upwards of three million dollars on June 27 of this year. She and purported partner Kyle Ferguson paid for a cabin in the tech-free Loon Lake Retreat, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, for the month of July using stolen identities. Loon Lake is known for both its isolation and its discretion. Owners Jonathan and Lydia Meyer have not been reached for comment. Back to you in the studio, Connor.”
“Thank you, Mary,” Connor replied, completing the call and response, and Henry tuned him out as he promised more updates as events warranted.
Exactly how much coincidence was too much? Emily was in the bank when Percy and Mary robbed it, okay, but then Emily was also at Loon Lake when Percy and Mary hid out there, and now Emily secured the divorce from the married professor whom Mary had also dated? Although maybe the bank and the professor weren’t too much of a coincidence, because it meant Mary had remained close to the college town and Emily was still there after graduation. But still. It was absolute luck that meant Youngren had booked Emily a cabin.
Henry blinked and clicked to a new window, because maybe Youngren had floated the idea of Loon Lake to Mary when they’d been hot and heavy. Maybe Youngren himself had once stayed at Loon Lake, although records being what they were, it would take a good amount of luck, or money, to find it. But wouldn’t that be ironic? Mary’s mask slipped, fine, but it didn’t really matter until they ended up at Loon Lake with one of the witnesses. And she was also at Loon Lake because of Youngren.
Seriously, this just got better and better. And he’d gone to Loon Lake thinking he’d only find Annabeth Deschain, who—
Henry stopped, deleted his search terms, and typed in her name instead. She hadn’t surfaced at Loon Lake.
He frowned. Annabeth Deschain’s Body Found; Murder Suspected. That couldn’t be right. Fine, Emily wasn’t Annabeth Deschain, but this was … nothing. An anticlimax. One so dismissed that it hadn’t made the news the entire time he’d been here in Chicago, even though it was the murder of a young woman, and usually the murder of a young woman got played for all the airtime they could eke out of it.
The murder of a young woman who most likely murdered a toddler got bumped from the headlines even before this weird robbery and sex triangle, or quadrangle, or whatever the heck was playing out with Percy and Mary and Emily at its center. And nobody in the comments seemed upset about it: Serves her right. I feel bad for her family, but come on. Who was ever going to trust her again? Karma’s a bitch, especially when you’re one first. Sheesh. No love for Annabeth Deschain, and—he tried a few more searches—no public announcements of funeral services. Her parents probably didn’t want a whole line of people waiting to spit on her coffin.
Henry took a diversion anyway, since there was still time to kill before his flight was called and hey, this was the story he’d wanted to chase: no one knew the last time Annabeth Deschain had been seen alive, because she’d been keeping to herself, but they suspected sometime between four and six weeks ago she’d gone into the abandoned house where she was only found dead about one week ago. It didn’t look like she’d been living there, at any rate, but she’d been strangled and left there. Either she hadn’t fought back, or her killer took precautions to make sure she didn’t scratch him and get his DNA under her fingernails.
Really, it looked like the perfect crime, made even more so because nobody wanted to waste time prosecuting it. Her death simply wrapped up the Dani Jay murder story without opening another one, and everyone seemed fine with letting it go. Harsh, but what else could Annabeth Deschain have expected? To live the rest of her life as the woman who murdered a toddler? Even if she changed her name, someone would track it down and expose her. That happened to Karla Homolka. She got out and changed her name—more than once, even, Henry thought—but every time she moved somewhere, a concerned citizen in the neighborhood outed her. That was the life facing Annabeth Deschain, so if that life happened to be cut short … well. In death, she barely even made the news. The gate attendant came over the PA system announcing that Henry’s flight would start boarding soon. He wasn’t in any of the first groups, but Henry closed out the search, downed the rest of his coffee, and did one last scan of his emails before packing his laptop away to prepare for boarding.
Cold Comfort: Sunday, July 14, 2024 – Agatha (1), coming August 29
Rebecca Frost 
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