Back to Troy: Troy, #1

By Maki Matsui

She could lose her heart, mind, life—or all three.

 

Murders and disappearances. Spicy rumors and family secrets. A childhood crush turned ladies' man.

This could not end well.

 

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

 

What really brought Emma Dill back to Troy? The need to remember—or to forget? The desire to solve a ruthless murder—or to move on? The hope for a blossoming new romance—or an old flame that just won't die?

 

The murderer is a sociopath: a savage hiding in plain sight.

The victim is her mother: a former stripper, a hot-headed, cold-blooded enigma.

She is a twenty-two-year-old orphan: a spunky poodlehead, a spitfire in the guise of a songbird.

Her partner in crime is her old heartache: an irresistible freewheeler, a shameless tease…and a delicious, impertinent kiss.

 

Charged with fast-paced suspense and slow-burn romance, BACK TO TROY kicks off the series with two hundred pages of heat, adrenaline, and humor.

 

Buy your copy today and settle in for a ride. Welcome to Troy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maki Matsui
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798668103812

Maki Matsui

Born and raised in Japan, Maki Matsui has been a lifelong reader and writer, first in Japanese and then in English. She studied English at Williams College and vocal performance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She makes her home in the hills of Western Massachusetts, where she is better known as a classical singer. She has published two books—Back to Troy (2020) and Daisy Fields (2020)—and is currently working on her third title.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Keep Calm

First, he slit Catrina’s throat. It would have gone just as quickly for Hannah if she hadn’t grabbed the bedside lamp and fought back. He cut her in five different places before finally managing to slit her throat, too.

That the bruise on his collarbone and the long fingernail scratch on his wrist were never adequately explained—that his story about being in the West Side with a client at the time of the murder went virtually unquestioned—that the police never bothered to broaden their investigation past Julian Ortega—these are some of the reasons I still believe the old rumor that the Wasps have friends in the Troy Police Department.

Did she scream? Did she cry? Did she hang her hopes on her drunken knight, who was making a god-awful ruckus downstairs trying to get in?

Her story isn’t one I’d ever be able to tell. If she were to recount it herself, it would involve dry ice, lighting effects, tumbleweed, several cases of red food coloring...maybe Henry Fonda in the villain’s role.

I’ll keep it simple.

Ian Novak killed my mother.

And the day I went back to Troy, I rubbed shoulders with him.

PICTURE A SHELL-SHOCKED twenty-two-year-old, one month after her only relation on earth was murdered in her childhood apartment. Load her up with chocolate chip cookies and strong coffee in a massive scarlet mug proclaiming, KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. Sit her down at Luiza’s Diner a few blocks away from the murder scene, grill her with gossipy questions, and...

Meet Emma.

Luiza’s pretext for inviting me had been to pick up a pile of Hannah’s belongings, which turned out to be nothing but a couple of red uniform polos, a nose ring, and some crusty, cheap makeup. Having failed to engage me in a conversation about Hannah, she’d returned to the kitchen in a funk. For my part, I was annoyed at her for trying to force me to talk—and for using a pile of junk as an excuse to get me to come scratch her itchy mouth.

Were you in touch with her? Did you ever visit her? Did you know she was back with Julian? Was he always such a violent man? Are you scared they haven’t caught him?

Yes-no, yes-no, yes-yes, no-no...what did it matter? Hannah was gone. Too late to ruminate on all the ways she failed me or vice versa. Too late to thank her for attempting to parent me. Too late to mourn the family we should have been. Seeing Troy only reminded me of the worst things about her—vanity, insecurity, arrogance, lack of sympathy or self-control.

My gaze drifted out the window. Cars bopped up and down Newton Street, splashing furiously over the potholes. A bunged-up SUV honked at a sedan that dared to inch into what was left of her lane, and the two drivers swore and flipped each other off.

Those were your typical Trojans. Hannah had been the queen of them all.

I spread my hands over my jeans and tried to massage the goosebumps back into my skin. Of late, I felt perpetually chilled, as if my heart had stopped pumping blood and gone into hibernation. Pulling the ends of my hair from between my lips, I threw on my corduroy jacket and double-wrapped the scarf around my neck. It was time. I dashed off a thank you note on a napkin for Luiza, then headed out of the diner and pointed my feet west toward Linden Street.

The sun was finally out after a week of April sleet, and Newton Street was a river of sludge. I looked around as I walked. So little had changed over my ten-year exile. Small businesses struggling along, unimaginative vandalism on infrastructure and street signs. Having gotten used to Whately, I was taken aback by the dinginess of Troy. This street hadn’t looked half so bad when I was a twelve-year-old on my way home from school, my unkempt curls tugging in the spring breeze, my eyes scouting the streets for a certain red beanie and a crinkly smile.

Stayed out of trouble today, Em?

14B Linden Street—my childhood address—was just off of Newton Street, three blocks from the infamous West Side, which had been the epicenter of gang activity back in the day. A Detroiter or a Chicagoan would have sniffed at our local gangsters—but in the heyday of the Foxes and the Wasps, Troy had a certain notoriety in our state for having seen a series of real live bus holdups and a couple of victimless drive-bys. Just around the time Hannah and I were moving to Pennsylvania, a few prominent OG’s had also skipped town, marking the beginning of the end for their orphaned clans. When Hannah had moved back to Troy four years ago, she’d called it an up-and-coming city.

Newton Street is getting hip, and Linden will be next, she’d told me on the phone. It’s safe, clean...was I smart to have kept our old apartment, or what?

The irony was so bitter I could almost taste it.

A whiff of childhood greeted me at the head of Linden. Slowing down momentarily, I gazed down the street with mild incredulity.

Wow! And we used to fly kites in that ribbon of sky!

My feet steered me toward my old home past a spotted mutt with a pink collar going through an overturned trash can. Approaching the yellow multi-family, I came to a halt. Was this real? I was one flight of stairs away from the place where Hannah was murdered.

A door opened behind me, and a short, dark-skinned woman rushed out of the next-door building, brandishing a broomstick. It took me a second to realize she was after the dog, not me—and then another to recognize Anamaria Oliveira.

The dog scuttled away and disappeared under the porch across the street. Anamaria frowned at me as she picked up the trash bin.

She doesn’t recognize me.

My face relaxed into a half-disappointed, half-relieved smile.

Can I help you? she demanded.

Oh, I’m just—

She jammed the lid back on the trash bin. It was one of her off days, I could tell.

Are you here for your sister’s things? she asked, turning back to me. I thought the place was cleaned out.

Her Brazilian accent was still just as thick as I remembered. I itched to reply in Portuguese—my unofficial minor in college—but caught myself when I read the aggressive indifference in her eyes.

I’m here for one last look, I said. I thought you didn’t recognize me, Mrs. Oliveira.

I didn’t at first. What was your name?

Emma.

Ah. Emma Dill...Dillow...Dylon.

Emma Dill-emma, said Danny’s voice in my head.

Just Emma Dill, I said.

Right, Hannah Dill and Emma Dill.

Emma-Dill-o Armadillo, I heard him say.

I found myself grinning. It’s nice to see you, Mrs. Oliveira. How are Tommy and Danny?

Tommy’s at the art school.

Really?

Wow—I hadn’t felt such genuine joy in months. Warmth spread through me, leaving me almost soft in the knees.

Anamaria sniffed. He’ll never get a job.

What about Danny? I continued eagerly. How is he?

God has forsaken that one, she pronounced, swelling. He’s out West.

That raised my eyebrows, but I let it slide. Anamaria Oliveira’s god—a namby-pamby, hen-pecked fellow who mainly acted as a spokesperson for Herself—had never concerned me.

Wait, Mrs. Oliveira, I said, seeing her turn away. Can I please have their phone numbers?

She walked into her apartment and slammed the door.

I felt the warmth seeping away. I needn’t have embarrassed myself. Nothing would induce her to act cordially or even normally on one of her off days.

I remember why I never missed you, I said under my breath.

I’ll find another way to look up Danny and Tommy tonight, I told myself, though I secretly knew I wouldn’t follow through—not after all these years.

I turned back to the yellow multi-family. Grungy as the walls were, the door was rather handsome—brand new, blue, and smooth. A welcome update from the old white one with its paint chapping around the doorknob. The landlord had left it ajar for me.

It was only as I was stepping into the building that I remembered what the police had told me.

On the afternoon of Hannah’s murder, Julian, in a fit of drunken rage, had broken down the old door.

SOME DAYS, JULIAN WOULD waltz into the apartment with a bouquet of roses he’d bought Hannah with her credit card. On evenings when he was drunk, he’d forget the keys at his place and bang loudly on the door downstairs. Hannah would turn to me with a sheepish face and ask, Let him in, will you, sweetie?

After opening the door for Julian, I’d shut myself in my bedroom and spy on the Oliveiras through my bedroom window. Tommy was often home. A pretty boy—the cutest in my class if you could overlook the greasy hair and the bad posture. He looked delicate next to his older brother Danny, who in his teenage years had suddenly filled out and looked to my child’s eye like a full-grown man.

When I picture that window into their dining room, I see Tommy at about ten years old, wearing his school sweatshirt and hunched over a sketchpad. His bangs are tied over his forehead to keep them out of his eyes. Like a little shallot. Danny I picture at fifteen. Rocking the chair with his feet up on the table, he’s reading something.

Porn, I’d decided—because weren’t all teenage boys horny scumbags according to Hannah?

I saw you reading porn, I said to him once while visiting their house. But I won’t tell if you give me the rest of your jellybeans. And since he didn’t look impressed, I added, I also heard you were seen with a prostitute.

You mean Hannah?

If looks could kill, those would have been his last words.

She’s not a prostitute. She’s a dancer.

A stripper, Tommy put in.

An exotic dancer. I’m gonna tell her you called her a prostitute.

Danny chuckled and went back to his comic book.

I used to think she was your mom, said Tommy.

Uh-huh, I replied. I wouldn’t say that to her if I were you.

How old is she anyway?

She says mid-twenties, but who knows.

That’s a big age difference.

We’re half-sisters. I guess our father had several other women between Hannah’s mom and mine.

Do you ever miss her? I mean your Angel Mother, he asked—rather feelingly for a ten-year-old boy.

I toyed with the idea of saying yes for dramatic effect—but dang those candid eyes of his. I don’t remember her, I confessed. I was two when she died.

My life before Linden Street was a mystery to me. All that was left in my memory was a vaguely smelly, crusty vibe—and that didn’t mesh with Hannah’s accounts of Angel Mother’s home.

I have one picture of her from our house in Pennsylvania, I mused. That’s where me and Hannah are moving to. Whately, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania? Tommy exclaimed. Isn’t that, like, two hours away?

Is it?

More like five, Danny said.

Aw, said Tommy. When are you moving?

I don’t know. I was suddenly uneasy.

Why, though?

Angel Mother said Troy wasn’t a good place to bring me up. Hannah promised her she’d raise me in Whately. Mom’s hometown.

So far, the plan hadn’t panned out—and I suspected that, given Hannah’s line of work, finding employment in a respectable town like Whately may have turned out to be a daunting task.

That’s right, I thought with some relief. When did Hannah’s promises ever amount to anything anyway?

Mom was a pediatrician, I said. Hannah wants me to be one, too, but I’m gonna be a nurse.

Cool.

Tommy’s graphite-covered fingers moved assuredly over the paper. A wart-speckled monster was materializing. Glancing at Danny, I was caught off guard by the expression of mingled pity and curiosity on his face.

What are you looking at? I snapped.

The smile that flitted across his face was oddly caring. I returned a recalcitrant frown.

I was counting your zits. He gestured to the sketchpad. Tommy, your portrait is two pimples short.

My mouth hung open. What’s wrong with him? I said to Tommy, who was snickering. Does he have a crush on me or something? ’Cuz I’m not interested. He probably has gonorrhea.

No, he doesn’t.

How do you know? said Danny. Maybe I do.

Tommy wrinkled his nose. "Ugh. Can you stop, mano?"

Well, I have exactly one pimple, and I’m not afraid of it, I said. It’s better than gonorrhea anyway. Can I have a yellow jellybean?

Danny poured the rest of the jellybeans into his mouth, rolled up the empty bag, and threw it at me. When I threw it back, he dodged it with a cock of his head.

I gave him the fish eye.

He returned a wink.

ANGEL MOTHER.

Where did Hannah come up with such an idea? That charlatan!

With clenched teeth I climbed the stairs to our old apartment. I was so absorbed in my thoughts I started when the landlord greeted me on the landing. He was an egret-like old man I only vaguely recognized. Once upon a time, he must have been six feet tall. His back was bent, bringing his pink eyes down to nearly my level. As a child, I’d never looked at him with much thought—now I found myself scanning him and mentally diagnosing him with spondylitis.

When is the new tenant coming? I asked as he unlocked the door to 14B.

He was supposed to move in last week, he replied. But he hasn’t showed up. An out-a-towner, a Professor Becker from the art school.

Thank you for letting me do this. I won’t be long.

He scratched his nose. What brings you here anyway?

That was the million-dollar question. Something to do with memories, forgiveness, and reconciliation with my dead liar of a mother.

Probably.

I’m not sure, I replied.

Well, there’s nothing much left to see. They found your sister in the bedroom, I guess you must know...and the other girl. He stopped awkwardly. The door opened with a creak. Anyway, everything’s been cleared out. I’m locking the door. Just close it when you leave, all right?

A hint of spices tickled my nose—Hannah’s perfume. A bouquet of jasmine had used to bloom in her wake, finishing with vanilla and cinnamon. No floral fragrance was left in the apartment, but the spices hung in the air like an aftertaste, so faint it could only be recognized by someone who was looking for it. Or was it my imagination?

My mind had been running on overdrive all day to keep the thoughts of Hannah at bay. Now, it suddenly stopped racing and seized on that heart-shaped face—lingering—coaxing each detail into life.

The full lips.

The thick, dark, wavy hair.

Faint freckles on the apples of her cheeks.

The amblyopic brown eyes that gave her a baffling, unfocused gaze. She always seemed to be looking somewhere past you.

She’d sure kept a poker face. Twenty-some years she’d claimed to be my half-sister. Only after her murder had I heard, from the mouth of a bewildered police chief, that Hannah’s original name had been Roberta Dill—the name of my Angel Mother—and that I’d been the victim of a seemingly meaningless and profitless scam.

It’s coo-coo, the chief had kept repeating. Who would do that to their kid?

Hannah would. She’d always lied and made excuses about the weirdest things.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

Hannah had never needed a reason to tell stories.

It’s just stupid and crazy, is all.

The poor chief had been red down to his neck—probably a combination of neighbor shame, righteous humanitarian anger, and mortification at having burst the news upon me in such an unprofessional manner.

The landlord had made himself scarce. I stood in the doorway and stared into the empty kitchen. The rising mist in my eyes smudged the pink cupboards and fragmented the green and white linoleum tiles. Funny—I’d forgotten about Hannah’s psychedelic paint job. As I stood there trying to gather myself, my memory of the apartment came alive in technicolor worthy of the Land of Oz. Pink cupboards, green tiles, lime green living room, lavender bathroom, sky blue hallway, magenta bedroom.

I’d come looking for a mental foothold, a sense of reality and grounding—but standing in the doorway of this kaleidoscope of an apartment, I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

I shut the door behind me.

I would have been glad for the company of a friend—someone to whom I could open up about the numbness that came over me whenever I thought of Hannah. But I didn’t have anyone like that in my life. Nor could I wrap my head around my own grief, or lack thereof. Why did I still refer to Hannah as my sister? Why, instead of going to a shrink or joining a support group, did I come to see this place—the setting of depressing childhood memories and of her murder?

I crossed the kitchen into the living room, my gaze flickering down the sky-blue hallway toward the door of her bedroom. A neighbor had called the police when Julian had broken the door downstairs, and police had arrived to find her lying dead in the corner of her bedroom along with a young woman by the name of Catrina Black.

Catrina, I vaguely recalled, was a dark-haired, round-faced girl who was several years ahead of me in the Troy Public School system. Hannah was always giving counsel to younger women struggling in abusive relationships. I figured Catrina was her most recent protégée.

Imagine becoming collateral damage in the murder of your relationship coach by her ex-boyfriend!

That is...if Julian had in fact killed Hannah.

Julian killed her, I whispered.

Then I mouthed, Julian didn’t kill her.

Big as he was, could he handily knife two women who were fighting for their lives?

Listen, I know you hate me, Julian had said to me on the phone, one week after the murder. Maybe you wanna think it was me. But I didn’t kill her. They were already dead when I got in. Someone was hiding in the apartment. I felt it. That’s why I ran.

It remained a mystery to me why I chose to stay on the phone, why I didn’t report the call to the police. Stranger still was my inclination to believe him—I who’d always known his violent side!

I looked around the lime-green living room, feeling sick to my stomach. The twelve-year-old inside me was itching to spit at the place where his couch used to be.

Who cares if he’s innocent? I muttered, turning away.

I pictured Hannah sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, folding laundry amid the jumble of Hannah-phernalia—the piles of shoes, lingerie, and body products that accumulated wherever she lived. One winter afternoon when I’d been down with strep throat, I’d lain on the couch and watched her pull my threadbare jeans and faded t-shirts out of the laundry pile.

I’m such a bad sister, she’d said with a mixture of sadness and embarrassment. You only have two shitty shirts left, and look at my collection of brand-new panties and stockings! You hate me, right?

It was one of the few tender memories I had of her. I clung to it as long as possible, but it slipped away, leaving me as empty as ever.

I twirled around and headed down the hall. Just one peek out of my old window and I’d say goodbye to 14B. My gaze flickered toward Hannah’s bedroom door as I crossed the threshold into my old room.

It occurred to me for the first time that my room with its plastic accordion door must originally have been a storage. The walls were painted in circus stripes with all the leftover paint from the rest of the house—that could have been Hannah’s welcoming present to me when I arrived in Troy to live with her, having spent the first two years of my life in the care of god-knows-whom. Maybe my great grandfather up in New Hampshire. Gramps—the only relative she ever talked about.

The window was smaller than I remembered. As I approached it, a certain warmth crept back into me. Was it on my twelfth birthday? The Oliveira brothers had surprised me with an ad hoc performance at their window across the narrow alley.

The memory came back fresh and crisp.

Danny juggling clementines, spinning the broomstick, performing sleight-of-hand tricks—Tommy playing the plastic school recorder—finger puppets—my enthusiastic applause—grapes thrown to the performers as a token of appreciation—Danny leaning out to catch one with his mouth—Mrs. Oliveira screaming Portuguese expletives and throwing a sneaker at the back of his head.

IT WAS TOWARD THE END of that year, 2004, that Danny finagled a studio above a seedy bar called McCusker’s, a few blocks from Linden. Tommy called it Danny’s Den, and the name stuck. Danny moved there in November, Tommy at the beginning of December. I joined them around Christmas time. It was a fifteen-by-seventeen room that crammed a kitchenette, a couch, folding table and chairs, sleeping bags, and growing piles of our belongings. Danny slept on the floor, and Tommy and I took turns on the couch.

According to my calculations, it was only about seven months that I lived in the Den—but out of my entire childhood, those months were so disproportionately important to me that it always seemed as though I’d spent a couple of years there.

It started with Danny disappearing for a few days at the end of November. Out of a personal resolution to stop being nosy, I didn’t ask Tommy about it. Then, that Saturday evening, Tommy showed up at my apartment with fresh bruises and cuts on his face.

What the heck happened to you? I blurted.

He looked down at his feet, tears pooling in his eyes.

Close the fucking door, Julian yelled from the living room. You’re wasting heat.

I grabbed my sneakers and hoodie, took Tommy by the elbow, and left the apartment, slamming the door behind me.

Mãe beat me, he said, because I wouldn’t tell her where Danny’s apartment is.

Danny’s apartment?

Yeah. He lowered his voice. Above McCusker’s. They had a bad fight last week. He says he’s not coming home. He tried to get me to go with him, but I felt bad for her. His shoulders sagged an inch toward the ground. I need to see him.

Okay. Let’s go, then.

McCusker’s was a good twenty-minute walk—not a pleasant route to take alone in the dark.

We weren’t dressed for the sleet, but it was better to freeze than go back for our jackets at the risk of getting intercepted by Julian or Anamaria. It was a miserable half-jog through the slushy gray streets to McCusker’s. By the time we arrived, our lips were blue.

We caught Danny leaving through the narrow stairway beside McCusker’s storefront, a gym bag slung over his shoulder. He’d just closed the gridded gate behind him.

The sight of his unmistakable red beanie put bounce back into our steps.

Danny! Tommy called out, trotting toward him.

Danny turned around. His initial look of comical surprise turned into one of shock. He took Tommy’s shoulders and peered into his bruised face.

"Porra..."

Folding Tommy into his arms, he hung his head and muttered a few words. I stood back shivering until he looked up and motioned for me to come closer. He produced a key from his back pocket—then, eyeing the phone booth on the other side of the street, he dug into the gym bag and found a few pennies.

Do you have a quarter? he asked.

Tommy and I shook our heads.

I can go in and ask for one, I said, indicating the pub.

Never mind. I’ll explain to Coach tomorrow. He unlocked the door and stepped aside. Top of the stairs, first door to the right.

Danny treated Tommy’s face with an icicle wrapped in a clean t-shirt. Tommy sat wincing and groaning on the lid of the toilet bowl. The rest of the apartment was dark. I hovered near the open door like a timid moth by the flashlight. In a low voice, Danny was asking a string of questions in a mix of Portuguese and English. I could only decipher a word here, a word there.

At one point, Tommy shook his head. Not Pai.

Mãe, not Pai, Danny said, as though to confirm.

Yeah.

You’d tell me if he came back, right?

Tommy hesitated for a moment before muttering something in Portuguese. But this was Mãe, he added.

Danny was silent.

Eventually, Danny came out of the bathroom and closed the door. I heard the shower running. He took off his beanie and ran his fingers through his thick, tousled hair. Hey—thanks for coming with him, Em.

Are you guys okay? I asked.

Uh...yeah.

Curiosity got the better of me. Is Pai your Dad?

Yeah.

I didn’t know you had a dad.

He snorted. Right. I’m not Jesus.

You know what I mean. I’ve never seen him.

He shows up once in a blue moon, he said. "But the next time will be the last, that filho da puta. Come. I’ll get you some water."

I could see one mug, one plate, and one chipped bowl in the cupboard. After pouring me some water, Danny leaned back against the counter and pulled up his sleeves, exposing a pair of sturdy golden-brown forearms.

Where were you going? I asked.

He scratched his wrists. The Dojo.

Are you learning to fight so you can beat up your dad?

He grinned. I go because it’s fun.

Is it that place on the corner of Abercomb and Lye? With the guy who used to be a wrestler? Mr. Stone or something.

We call him Coach. He was a boxer. I guess he’s a freestyler now.

An ex-con, right?

Mm-hmm. What’s your point?

I shrugged. Nothing. Hannah says he’s a good guy. Says he mentors a lot of ‘troubled kids.’ Like you, I guess.

He laughed heartily. I gazed at him, wondering what was so funny. I was fond of his face—the tousled black hair, the cheeks that kept their summery shade, the tiny mole under his left eye. The crocodile tear, Tommy called it.

I looked up to Danny, secretly and probably against my better judgment. Back in February, shortly before he’d turned sixteen, he’d attained something of a hero status at school by socking the bully Stan Milov, the brother of a locally well-known Wasp who went by Milo. It had happened in the cafeteria. Rumor had it Danny was sticking up for one Julia Something, who, then new to the school and awfully pretty, was receiving unwanted attention from Stan. I confess Tommy and I encouraged the rumor, having had something to gain by association—but Danny snorted at it.

What girl? The jackass stepped on a boiled egg and did a split, so I laughed at him. He got all up in my face.

I was inclined to believe him. Danny Oliveira never disliked a fight.

I lost some sleep over that incident, knowing the probable consequences he’d face for poking the Wasp’s nest. Fortunately—well, from my point of view anyway—Milo stabbed a cop that very night and had to skip town. Much to Stan Milov’s dismay, the only retribution Danny got in the end was a two-day suspension over Valentine’s Day. Tommy and I knew just what to do with the Valentine’s Day treats entrusted to us by some nameless admirers. Only one bag of gummy bears—from Julia herself—slipped past us to its pleasantly surprised recipient.

It wasn’t that we were greedy for candies. We couldn’t stomach the possibility of Danny forfeiting our company to go on dates with some random skank. He was ours.

(He