Liar

by Jan Burke

  “A knife?”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “Maybe it’s his weapon of choice.”

  I began to feel a little better about breaking DeMont’s window—and a little shaky again.

  “Are you there?” he asked.

  “Yes—sorry. So what happened then?”

  “According to the paper, Horace and the widow struggled with Robert, both trying to get control of him, but he still managed to cut her once. Horace wrested the knife away from him, and then helped the widow bind up her wound.”

  I had been in Robert DeMont’s kitchen. What if he had been in the mood to stab somebody then?

  “Apparently it wasn’t very deep,” Frank was saying, “but naturally, she was upset. A neighbor happened by and the DeMonts got scared and ran off. The neighbor called the police, who managed to catch the DeMonts before they got very far.”

  “They were both arrested?”

  “No, just Robert. But Horace wouldn’t leave town without him. There was a second article, a little later on, saying that the charges were dropped, and there’s a quote from the widow that made it sound as if the whole thing was a misunderstanding.”

  “Right,” I said. “A misunderstanding that got straightened out once Papa DeMont’s checks cleared the bank.”

  “Probably.”

  “I wonder how often his money covered some situation like this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but steer clear of these people, all right?”

  “I can promise you, I won’t go near Horace or Robert DeMont.” I didn’t tell him I had already learned that lesson the hard way.

  “What happened?” he said sharply.

  Oh, damn. “Who said anything happened?” I tried, but even to me it sounded feeble.

  “ ‘I can promise you’? You think I just met you yesterday?”

  So I ended up explaining.

  After a long silence, I heard him let out a deep sigh. “You’re sure you’re okay? I mean, I know you weren’t hurt, but—”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “You’re still willing to make that promise? I don’t have to have Reed show you a pile of photos of stabbing-wound victims?”

  “Not necessary—I promise. I believe absolutely that Robert DeMont is capable of stabbing someone in a fit of rage. I don’t want to be next.”

  “You might also think about the fact that one of the easiest places in the world to buy a wetsuit is Huntington Beach.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was picturing self-involved Robert DeMont— walking past a surf shop, looking in the windows, suddenly inspired; later, pleased with his plan to use the wetsuit, reveling in his invention of a special torture device, eager to try it out.

  Frank’s voice brought me back from horrific visions. He had changed the subject—apparently he didn’t want to end on that note of fear and argument. I didn’t either. We talked for a while longer. I thanked him again for the research help, and we agreed to talk again later that night. In the end, I was glad not to be hiding anything from him, and knew that talking about it with him had helped me shake off the worst of my gloominess.

  Mary, seeing I wasn’t going to take a nap, made a strong cup of coffee for me. I asked to borrow a magnifying glass, and after locating one for me, she went out to work in her garden. One of the things I like about Mary is that she puts a limit on her hovering.

  I sat at the kitchen table and took another look through the envelope I had taken from Robert DeMont. This time, I pulled out the note. It read:

  Robert-Rushed these per your request, no time to sort them. I have my own copies, these are yours to keep.

  Have already spoken to you re: photos I took of subject’s mother prior to locating him. Of interest is Irene Kelly, subject’s cousin, who appears with subject and unknown woman in some shots. Believe Kelly may have possession of item we seek.

  It was signed by Harold Richmond.

  The anger kicked in again. I was feeling better and better about breaking that window. If I hadn’t made that promise to Frank, I would have considered going back and breaking a few more. But what, I wondered, was this “item” they were looking for? The murder weapon? But why would they look for that if Robert DeMont had killed her?

  I thought about this. If Robert DeMont had killed Gwendolyn in a fit of anger, then left the knife at the scene, who found it? Arthur or the housekeeper, Mrs. Coughlin. If Richmond believed I had it, he must also believe that Arthur took it from the scene.

  But Richmond thought Arthur, not Robert DeMont, was guilty. He’d never work for DeMont if he thought Robert had killed Gwendolyn. Maybe that suited DeMont just fine; let Richmond pursue it for his own reasons and—and what? It made no sense. DeMont would not want Richmond to find the knife—not if the knife could somehow link him to the crime.

  Perhaps the “item” had nothing to do with the crime scene. I quickly dropped that idea—Richmond’s obsession, his connection to the DeMonts and Arthur and my cousin, was one event: Gwendolyn’s murder.

  I set that problem aside and went back to the photos, started looking through them more slowly.

  At the top of the pile were the ones of Briana in San Pedro. I pulled out my notebook, flipped to my conversation with Mr. Reyes. According to the store owner, Briana had been wearing a blue sweater on the day she was killed. I sorted through the photos, found the ones taken of Briana when she was walking near the market. A red sweater. Little chance of mistaking one for the other. The photo had not been taken on the day she was killed.

  Still, she had been stalked.

  I went on to the ones taken at my house—of Rachel, Travis and me getting out of the camper; of the house, street and camper from other angles. The photos were taken during the day; the only daylight hours during which the camper had been at the curb in front of my house were that same afternoon. By later that evening, it had been destroyed.

  If Richmond had been taking photographs before he—or Robert De-Mont—had rigged a bomb, perhaps one of the people on the street had seen him near the camper, witnessed him fooling around with it.

  It was while I was looking at a group of people walking on the sidewalk, slightly down the street from the camper, that I inadvertently made a discovery. The group included a young woman with two small boys. I didn’t recognize them, and although they appeared to be giving their mother a hard time, I doubted the kids were young urban terrorists, out to rig bombs in campers. As I idly moved the glass to focus on one boy’s impish expression, I saw something odd in the car nearest the group—gradually, I realized that it was a shoulder.

  The car was a gray El Camino with dark upholstery. The shoulder, in a white T-shirt, stood out against the dark seat. It belonged to someone who was sitting in the car, ducking out of view from the camera.

  In three or four other shots, varying portions of the car and the shoulder appeared, but there was no closer shot of it. It became apparent that Harold Richmond, master detective, had no idea that someone was trying to hide in a car not half a block away from where he was spying on us. A large man with muscular shoulders.

  One shot accidentally caught a portion of the man’s head, taken as he was either starting to peek up or duck down again. Dark hair, silver on the sides.

  Robert DeMont’s hair was white. Harold Richmond’s hair color was very similar to that of the man in the photo, but Richmond was the camera man. Gerald Spanning’s was also dark, going to silver on the sides.

  I told myself that from the little that was visible of the man in these photos, there was no way to tell if it was Gerald Spanning in the El Camino. I couldn’t convince myself that it wasn’t.

  That raised other questions. If it was Gerald, how did he learn where I lived? How did he manage to be there on the same day I found Travis, at the same time as Richmond? Had he followed Richmond? How would he even know what Richmond was up to, who he was watching?

  There was also the problem of the car. At Gerald’s mobile home, he had pulled up
in a pickup truck. Parking was limited near his trailer; I hadn’t seen an El Camino.

  I kept looking at photos. At the end of the stack, I came to one that made my blood run cold.

  Mary Kelly’s house.

  Richmond—and Robert DeMont—knew where to find us.

  29

  “Mary!” I called, running into the backyard.

  “For heaven’s sake—”

  “Do you have friends you could stay with, someone else you could spend a few nights with?”

  She looked puzzled, but said, “Yes, why?”

  “It isn’t safe here for you, or for us.” I found myself looking toward Travis’s room, worrying that I would be too late to take him out of harm’s way. Hastily, I tried to explain, all the while distracted by my fears, wondering if even now the killer was watching this house, setting new plans in motion.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked calmly, after I had told my disjointed tale.

  She wasn’t going to challenge me, question me at length. Some of the panic lifted. “Help me wake Travis. Pack whatever you’ll need. Most of my own things are ready. You have Travis’s cell phone number?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take it with you. If you need to reach us, use that number.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “In the van. I’ll stay on the move. Safer for us, safer for our friends.”

  I knocked on Travis’s door; he didn’t answer. I knocked louder, still no answer. “The pain pills,” Mary said, and opened the door.

  He slept peacefully on his back, on top of the covers; except for stockinged feet, he was fully clothed. His hands lay palm up at his sides, his mouth slightly open, his face relaxed—but it was not the face of the puckish storyteller in the park. The young man before me had been marked by too much sudden grief, its signs apparent even as he slept.

  Reluctantly, I tried to wake him; he opened his eyes, murmured something, fell asleep.

  “Let him sleep until we’re ready to leave, then,” I whispered to Mary. I put his few items of new clothing in his trunk, packed up my own belongings and the cell phone, then took all of it out to the van. I made up the bed in the back.

  When I came back in, Mary was ready to go. She gave me a slip of paper on which she had written information about where she would be staying. “Met her in my t’ai chi ch’uan class,” she said.

  We managed to rouse Travis enough to get him into the van; he promptly fell asleep on the bed.

  I hugged Mary, and she pulled me back into a second embrace, giving me a kiss on the cheek and telling me, “Be careful. I will never forgive you if you don’t outlive me.”

  “I feel exactly the same way about you,” I said, making her laugh. I watched her walk over to the Mustang and called out, “Will you be able to park that thing in your friend’s garage?”

  “That,” she called back, “was the first consideration in deciding where to stay!”

  I watched to make sure no one followed her, then drove off, sparing one last, worried look at my Karmann Ghia. I supposed if Mary could leave her home behind, I could leave my car.

  For a while I drove aimlessly, checking the rearview mirror often. I stopped at a gas station, filled up the tank. Travis slept through it all.

  I picked up the cell phone and called Rachel. I asked her to meet me in the parking lot of a grocery store on the east side of town.

  I got there first. I opened some windows and the roof vent, so that Travis wouldn’t suffocate in the afternoon heat, and stepped outside. I stayed next to the van, even after Rachel parked several spaces away.

  She walked over and I explained what was happening. I told her she could look through the photos while I picked up a few things in the store.

  I wasn’t gone long; I had no idea how many days we’d spend on the road, but being an optimist, I guessed on the low side. Besides, there wasn’t much room in the van’s little refrigerator.

  We stepped outside to talk.

  “What are your plans for these photos?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I’m going to have a talk with your friend McCain.”

  She didn’t comment on that, or shrug or gesture. That made me uneasy. “You’ve seen him lately?” I asked.

  “Had lunch with him today.” After a moment she added, “Talked over old times.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Listen, you have something on your mind, say it.”

  “And get my ass kicked? No thank you.”

  “I won’t touch you, and you know it. So speak up.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “All right, then,” she said.

  After a long silence, during which neither one of us would look at the other, she said, “You need anything?”

  “Just check on Mary once in a while.” I gave her the address and phone number. “And one other thing—a big favor.” I handed her my car keys. “Move the Karmann Ghia? Maybe Jack would help you out.”

  “I’d rather stay with you, protect the two of you.”

  I shook my head. “If anything happens to us, I’m depending on you and Mary to make sure Frank starts dating again.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Oh, I’m supposed to tell you that our boys spent Saturday night at a public library in Boise, Idaho, looking up that story on DeMont.”

  She smiled. “The sad thing is, I believe it.”

  She walked back to her car, then drove it over to where I still stood outside the van. She rolled down her window, said, “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but I would never do anything to hurt him.”

  She drove off, while I stood there, alone with my shame.

  I called McCain.

  I drove the van to a large park near the eastern side of town. Part of the park can be accessed for free; I went to the larger section, the side that charges a low admission fee. It was that time of day when picnickers were starting to leave, so when I paid the two bucks to go in, most of the other cars were going out.

  I drove to the far end of the road, to a relatively treeless section that is mostly a large stretch of uneven ground. Not enough shade or tables for a picnic, nor level enough for games. We had it to ourselves. I would easily be able to see anyone approaching by car or on foot.

  Travis still slept, but his sleep was more restless now. Once, I thought he had awakened, but he was only talking in his sleep, murmuring half-words that I couldn’t understand.

  I opened up the side of the van, and set up its attached awning. This kept the van cool and made a shady spot to sit while waiting for McCain. I set up two chairs under the nearest tree, so that we could talk without waking Travis.

  I heard the car even before I saw it, and noticed that McCain was approaching cautiously, as if driving into a possible trap. Suspicious son of a bitch. Not that I blamed him.

  He parked some distance away, but that might have been because I had told him Travis was sleeping. I motioned him over to the chairs. He was in a suit, and he hung the jacket on the back of his chair. I offered him a can of iced tea, and he accepted. He seemed to be studying my every move. As I handed him the iced tea, it dawned on me that he hadn’t seen me at all the day before, so the bruises and swelling were new to him. He saw that I had caught him staring at me and said, “I didn’t realize that guy had roughed you up so much.”

  I shrugged, and said, “There are worse things that can happen to a person.”

  “Reed Collins tells me you know about some of those, too.”

  I took a deep breath. “Not why I asked you over here.”

  “Well, yes, but this is my awkward attempt at working up to an apology. Sorry I got so hot under the collar yesterday.”

  “I was a little testy myself.”

  Nobody had slammed me against a wall.“

  “Okay, you win, you were the bigger asshole.”

  He laughed. “Much better. What can I do for you?”

  “I visited Robert DeMont today. You know who he is?”r />
  “Cousin of Arthur Spanning’s first wife. We talked to him. Says what everybody says in this case—he hasn’t seen Briana Maguire in years.”

  “Did you visit him at his house?”

  “No, just talked to him on the phone.”

  I held up the envelope. “If I tell you who has the negatives, will you leave these here with me?”

  “If they have to do with an ongoing—”

  “Oh, take the starch out of your drawers!” I snapped, holding the envelope out of reach.