“Why don’t we step outside and talk for a minute. Mrs. Townsend, thank you for everything.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.
Duckworth led Rooney outside, ambled over toward the driveway, near the rusted van. A nearby streetlight and a light on Emily Townsend’s front porch were more than enough for the two men to see each other.
“A bit chilly tonight,” Duckworth said. “But it’ll be summer soon enough.”
“I don’t mind if it’s cool. Once I start running, I warm up.”
“You do marathons?”
“God, no. I’m just getting back into it. A mile, maybe.” He rolled his head around on his shoulders, stretching his neck muscles. “I’m trying to improve myself.”
“Good for you.”
“People seem to think I need to do that.”
Duckworth let that one go. “I’m still looking into Olivia’s murder,” he told Rooney. “I was talking to her father earlier today.”
“That guy,” Rooney said, blinking slowly.
“Yeah. That guy.”
“Why were you talking to him? You got some news? You and your buddies finally get off your collective asses and arrest someone?”
“No,” Duckworth said. “We haven’t. Mr. Fisher told me that what happened still weighs pretty heavily on you.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “No one has to worry about me.”
“I was wondering if, even after all this time, maybe something new has occurred to you. Something that might help us make an arrest. Someone who might have had a fight with Olivia. Were there any men who were interested in her, maybe an ex-boyfriend who was upset she was going to marry you?”
“No other boyfriend,” he said.
“So she wasn’t involved in any other relationship?”
Victor hesitated, then said, “No.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t think it’s anything.”
“That’s often what people say later. They say they didn’t think it was anything. But it turned out to be something.”
“She was kind of—it’s hard to describe—but sort of distant for a while,” he said.
“When was this?”
“Like, a month before it happened? Maybe three weeks. Just . . . she acted like she had something on her mind. I thought maybe it was the idea of getting engaged to me, but she swore up and down it wasn’t that. She said one time she wondered if she was a good person. Like she’d done something she felt bad about.”
“What did you think it was?”
Victor shrugged. “I thought maybe she’d spent the night with another guy. A one-night-stand thing. I might have pressed harder, but I guess I just didn’t want to know. But what happened to Olivia? In the park? That was some fucking maniac—that’s what that was. So I don’t even know what the point of your questions is. They’ve got nothing to do with what happened to her.”
“You might be right.”
“This, what you’re doing? You just want me to think you’re getting somewhere, but you’re never going to catch the guy. Why don’t you go after the others? The people who did fuck all? The ones who listened while she screamed.”
“It must be hard to get over,” Duckworth said, his eyes scanning the house and the property, the detached garage in the backyard. “How long was it before you started seeing anyone else?”
“Are you for real? You honestly came by to ask me when I started dating again?” Rooney turned away, spit onto the driveway.
The front door of the house opened. It was Mrs. Townsend.
“Oh, Victor?”
He turned around, said, “Yeah?”
“Sorry to interrupt. Before you go on your run, could you get me a garbage bag? I thought I had some in the kitchen, but they’re all gone, but I think there’s a package of them in the garage.”
“Sure,” he said, and the woman withdrew. He looked at Duckworth and said, “I help Mrs. Townsend around the place.”
“She was telling me. You do all the chores.”
“Most of them. Are we done here?”
“I guess,” Duckworth said.
“Okay, well, fine. See ya.” He started walking toward the garage, then stopped when he realized Duckworth hadn’t moved, that he was watching him.
“Is there a problem?”
“No problem,” Duckworth said.
Victor Rooney said, “Screw it. I’ll do my run first.”
He jogged past Duckworth and disappeared up the street.
THIRTY-SIX
Cal
I had the radio back on and this time I found out more about Mr. Twenty-three. That was the instant nickname the media had given some nut who had killed forest creatures, fired up abandoned amusement park rides, and very likely blown up the drive-in. A reporter had stopped people on the street to get their reaction.
“I’m pretty freaked-out, to tell you the truth.”
“They better get this guy fast before he does something even bigger.”
“I knew it was terrorism. Isn’t that a verse or something in the Koran? Thou must kill everybody?”
I wondered sometimes why I even turned on the radio. I switched it off, choosing instead to occupy myself with my own thoughts.
I couldn’t, in good conscience, drag this case out much longer. Lucy Brighton had hired me for a day’s work, and I was prepared to run out the clock on this, but come tomorrow, we’d have to talk about how much more she wanted to spend. What I’d told her, that whoever took these discs probably wanted to bury them, was what I believed. This might be one of those problems that just went away.
I turned a corner and was about a block away from the Chalmers house when I noticed a car parked at the curb, taillights on, exhaust coming out of the tailpipe. A small black BMW coupe. I drove past slowly, and noticed there was enough light from the dash to make out Felicia Chalmers behind the wheel.
She was alone.
I stopped the car just ahead of her, put the car in reverse, and backed up until I was directly beside her. She glanced over, probably couldn’t make me out at first.
I powered down the passenger window, raised my hand, and did a downward motion with my index finger. She got the idea and did the same.
“Ms. Chalmers,” I said.
“Yes?”
I hit the interior light in my car for three seconds, long enough for her to get a look at me. “Cal Weaver. I came by your place.”
Her mouth made an O. “Right, yes, of course,” she said. And nothing else.
I didn’t take my eyes off her and allowed the silence to go on.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“But then again, I could ask what you’re doing here,” Felicia said. “Looks like you’re going to the house.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m still working for Adam Chalmers’s daughter.”
“Of course.”
“Your turn,” I said.
“I’m sorry?” she said. “I can’t hear you that well over the engine.”
“I said, your turn.”
“Oh. I was just . . . I guess I was sitting here thinking about Adam.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding understandingly.
“It’s still a shock.”
“I can imagine.”
“And . . . I was sort of driving around the neighborhood, looking at the houses. I’m . . . I probably shouldn’t tell you this.”
I waited.
“I’ve been talking to a lawyer. He says I might have . . . that as Adam’s only surviving former spouse, I might have some claim . . . you know what I’m saying. On the estate. Whatever there is of it.”
“I understand,” I said, tempted to add that everyone
handles grief in their own way, but holding my tongue.
“So I was taking another look at the house, considering where it stands in the market. Nothing in this town’s worth as much as it was five or ten years ago.”
“I can imagine,” I said, the car still in drive, my foot on the brake.
“Anyway, nice to see you,” she said, and powered her window back up.
I took my foot off the brake and continued on up the street. In my rearview, I saw Felicia do a three-point turn and take her Beemer around the corner.
I parked out front of the Chalmers house. The light over the front door was on. Probably on a timer. But the rest of the house was dark. If Adam and Miriam had been leaving for a holiday, they might have left some lights to go on and off in the house, but that’s not the sort of thing you bother doing when you’re just going to the movies.
When I got to the front door, I reached into my pocket for the key Lucy had given me, and found two.
Right. Felicia had given me her old key to the house where she once lived. She said she was pretty sure Adam had changed the locks since their divorce.
Instead of using Lucy’s, I inserted the key I’d taken from Felicia, expecting some resistance. But it slid right in. I turned it, and opened the door. Immediately, the alarm system began to beep, warning me that if I didn’t enter the code in the next few seconds, it would start whooping loud enough to wake the neighborhood and connect to the monitoring service. I entered the four digits Lucy had told me, and the beeping stopped.
Flicked on some lights.
I was betting that if Chalmers never bothered to change the locks, he’d never gotten around to changing that code, either. Which meant Felicia could have gotten into this house anytime she wanted. Or sent someone here on an errand, with that key.
I didn’t think she’d looked very pleased that I’d caught her parked down the street from here.
There’s always a strange feeling, walking into a place where the owners are no longer alive. You half expect one of them to pop out of a closet and ask what the hell you’re doing in their house.
I wandered first through the living room and into the kitchen, noticed that the red light was flashing on the phone that rested on the countertop. A message. There hadn’t been one when I was here before with Lucy. Someone had called who, evidently, did not know the homeowners were no longer available.
It could easily be a nuisance call. It was one of the pleasures, for me, of no longer having a landline that I wasn’t pestered all night by duct cleaners, driveway resealers, window installers, and people wanting me to go on a cruise.
I looked through the recent callers, those that had come in since Lucy and I had been here. There was only one, but it was an unidentified number.
I wanted to hear the message. But a four-digit code had to be entered to retrieve it. Given that most people don’t want to have to remember half a dozen passwords, I figured there was a good chance it was the same code I’d used for the security panel.
I tried it.
“You have one new message,” the voice said. “To hear your message, press one-one.” I did so.
There was a pause, then, “Adam, it’s me.”
A woman. Speaking very softly.
“I tried your cell. Where are you? We . . . I’ve been thinking . . . I don’t think I can carry on this way. . . . I just don’t . . . never mind. I have to go.”
End of message.
I wondered whether it could be Felicia. I just couldn’t tell. I checked the time of the call, saw that it had come in between the time Lucy and I had left the house this morning and my arrival at Felicia’s apartment. I looked at the list of incoming calls, and made note of the number of the caller when that message had been left. I didn’t recognize it.
She’d admitted the two of them kept in touch. I was betting that when they did talk, Adam usually used his cell, as the phone bill had suggested. Even if Miriam knew he kept in touch with his ex, she probably didn’t like it.
Odd, though, that she would leave a message like that one. Felicia would have to know there was a good chance Miriam would end up hearing it.
The same would be true of any other woman calling here for Adam.
Maybe, when you were in the “lifestyle,” you didn’t worry about that sort of thing.
A thought that led me to pay another visit to the downstairs playroom. I could search through Adam’s e-mails later.
Hitting light switches along the way, I descended the stairs to the bookcase. Lucy had slid it shut, concealing the room, before we left the house earlier in the day. No sense leaving it exposed in case someone else decided to break in.
It really was a marvel of engineering. Despite being loaded with books, the shelves practically floated on hidden casters. You had to put your back into it at first, pushing the case to the left, but once it was moving, it moved quite freely. The three-foot-wide doorway was revealed. I reached around inside, found the switch, and exposed the room to the light.
At a glance, nothing appeared to have changed since my first visit, suggesting that whoever had paid a visit here after the death of Adam and Miriam Chalmers hadn’t returned.
It really was some room. Erotic photos on the wall, sex toys in the cabinet, expensive camera equipment under the bed. There were two small tables on either side of the bed, each with a drawer. I found the same thing in each of them. Condoms. A wide assortment. Different textures, different colors, lubricated and nonlubricated.
If there was something to be found here, I wasn’t seeing it.
Then I thought: Bathroom.
Visits to bathrooms followed sex the way heartburn followed pizza. I figured there had to be a downstairs bathroom where folks could clean up, take a shower.
I came out of the playroom, crossed the large rec room area full of games, entered a short hallway leading to a storage room, a furnace room, and a bathroom. Not some rinky-dink basement powder room, either. There was a large marble-tiled shower big enough for two to soap up comfortably. And beyond that, a handsome wood door to a small cedar-lined sauna.
Everything was sparklingly clean and tidy. There was a stack of perfectly folded towels on chrome racks bolted to the wall over the toilet. The contents of the medicine cabinet indicated this was strictly a bathroom for visitors. New toothbrushes still in the packaging. Unopened tubes of toothpaste. Scented soaps wrapped in tissue paper. Mouthwash and small throwaway paper cups.
There was nothing in the garbage can.
Nothing particularly helpful at all in—
“Hello? Adam?”
A woman’s voice coming from upstairs. At the front door. I hadn’t heard anyone knock or ring the bell.
I exited the downstairs bathroom, made my way to the stairs at a steady pace. I could hear footsteps, what sounded like high heels, coming into the house.
“Adam?” she shouted again, sounding uncertain, but also slightly annoyed.
I reached the top of the stairs. I didn’t see the woman, but I did see a leather overnight bag on the floor in the front hall. I was guessing the visitor had gone into the kitchen.
“Ma’am?” I said. “Hello?”
The heels turned, started marching furiously in my direction. When she materialized, she looked at me with a mix of fury and fear.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “Is that your car out front?”
She was late twenties, early thirties, and, not to put too fine a point on it, a stunner. Five-six, long brown hair, wearing a knee-length black dress that clung to her like a second skin. She looked familiar. I was pretty sure I’d seen her picture around the house.
I was reaching for my ID. “My name is Cal Weaver. I’m a private investigator and I’m here with the permission of Lucy Brighton, who’s the daughter of Adam Chalmers, and—”
“I know who the hell my stepdau
ghter is,” the woman said.
I said, “Excuse me?”
“I said I know who my stepdaughter is.”
I said, “Miriam Chalmers?”
“Who the hell else would I be? This is my house. And you better get the fuck out of it, but not before you tell me where my husband is.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
AFTER interviewing Victor Rooney, Detective Duckworth picked up three coffees at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through on the way to the Promise Falls courthouse. He parked around back. The courts were not in session this time of night, but the wing where the jail cells were located was a 24-7 operation. Duckworth had called ahead to let them know he wanted to talk to Bill Gaynor, and that his lawyer, Clark Andover, would be in attendance.
Andover had tried, without success, to get Gaynor out on bail while he awaited trial. He’d argued that Gaynor had never been in trouble with the law before and was an upstanding member of the community. The judge didn’t buy it.
Gaynor was due to be transferred to another facility, given that the local jail was not intended to keep those awaiting trial for extended periods.
“What’s this about?” Andover, dressed casually in jeans and a button-down collared white shirt, asked Duckworth.
“Like I said, a few questions,” the detective told him.
Bill Gaynor, a good five or more pounds thinner since Duckworth had last seen him, was brought to an interrogation room. He was wearing lightweight hunter green pants and a T-shirt. He and Andover sat side by side across the table from Duckworth.
“What’s this about?” Gaynor asked. “What’s going on?”
“Mr. Gaynor,” Duckworth said, setting down a cardboard tray with three coffees. “There’s some creams and sugars here if you need them.”
Gaynor looked at his lawyer, then back at Duckworth.
“How are you this evening?” the detective asked, setting a coffee in front of him.
“How am I? Seriously? They wouldn’t even let me attend my own wife’s funeral. That’s how I am.”
Duckworth nodded sympathetically. “That’s a terrible shame. You’d have thought they could have found a way to accommodate you.” He pried off the plastic lid of his coffee, blew on it. “Mr. Gaynor, how long have you lived in Promise Falls?”
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