Chapter 23

23

Bea's silver suitcase is sleek and expensive-looking, compact enough to be carried on board, pushed into an overhead locker.

Neatly placed under the long wooden table in the meeting room, it's the only clutter in the space. The meeting room, despite the official connotations, has the same laid-back vibe as the rest of the lodge. It's hard to place Bea here after what Elin's seen of her; imagine her wheeling this case in, anticipating surprising her family, full of life.

Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, Elin hauls the case onto the table. As she sifts through the contents, she finds typical holiday attire. Several cover-ups—silky, flimsy bits of material low in the neckline, slit up the sides. Elin recognizes the chevron pattern immediately from magazines—Missoni. Expensive. The rest of the clothing clearly is too—a bohemian mix of fine knit tops, textured cotton skirts and shorts.

It gives her another insight into who Bea was as a person. Someone not only successful, but ordered. In control.

Yet something's bothering her. Elin rummages through the case again. This time, it strikes her: no swimwear. Why come to a retreat like this and not bring something to swim in? It might be an oversight, but it also might imply that Bea had packed in a hurry, was in some way distracted.

She thinks about the fact that Bea let Tom know she was coming only yesterday, and about the phone call he'd overheard. She picks it over, once again gripped by the sense that another narrative is running alongside what she already knows.

No way to tell at this point if it's important to the case, but it's niggling at her.

Piece by piece, she puts the clothing back in place.

She's nearly done when there's a ping from her phone: a message from Rachel.

All done here. Can you come down when you're ready?

Elin taps out a reply. She's about to zip the suitcase back up when she notices a daily planner in the woven netting in the top half of the case. It's clear from the battered cover that it's well used. Bea, like her, still prefers paper over digital when it comes to making notes.

Flicking through, her eyes immediately alight on the calendar section. It's meticulously filled out in neat, precise handwriting up until the last few days, which are blank. Moving on, she finds notes from various meetings. It's only when she hits the end page that she finds something that piques her interest: a couple of website addresses.

It's not the sites themselves that draw her attention, but how they've been written. The messy script is nothing like the ordered handwriting style in the rest of the organizer, and the addresses are scrawled diagonally across the page, underlined several times.

Definitely Bea's handwriting, she thinks, comparing the shapes of the letters.

www.fcf1.com, www.localhistory.org

Taking a photograph with her phone, Elin places the organizer back into the case.

The addresses, like the packing oversight, might be nothing, but still, she can feel something stirring to life—that sense of momentum that comes with questions starting to pile up, loose threads pulling free.