by Lisa Bork
“Did she say if Cory was at the hearing, by chance?”
“That’s why she called me. She needs us to throw a net over him. Brennan does not want him around, and he kept trying to speak to Brennan during the hearing. We have to keep an eye on Cory. He’s not taking the hint.”
And that task apparently fell to me. Wonderful. “Does Catherine know why Brennan feels that way?”
“If she does, she didn’t tell me. She’s not repeating anything Brennan said except to keep Cory out of this.”
A nasty thought wiggled its way into my head. Brennan liked to keep a low profile as to his sexual orientation. In fact, he once asked Catherine on a date, misleading her as to his intentions by omission. For years, I’d had no idea he preferred men, although I hadn’t known him well then. I’d thought he’d become more open of late, especially since he and Cory could be seen together frequently. Of course, I’d never seen them hold hands or exchange any sort of public affection. Maybe Brennan didn’t want to admit his relationship with Cory. If so, their relationship would be over quickly. Cory didn’t like being kept in the closet. He’d burst through that door a long time ago.
“Darlin’, I got a call. Can you get the net out and use it on Cory?”
Ray hung up before I could tell him that Cory wasn’t returning my calls. So I hit the speed dial button for Cory’s cell again—and went right to voicemail. Now he’d apparently turned his phone off altogether. I left an urgent message for him to call me immediately.
When Ray and I went to bed that night, Cory still hadn’t called me back.
_____
Tuesday I left for work right after Danny got on the bus at 7:45 a.m. I visited the donut shop on the way, bought a newspaper from the machine in front of the store next door to it, and parked my Lexus around 8:10 a.m. behind Asdale Auto Imports, a cedar-shingled, white-trimmed building that stuck out like a sore thumb in among the historic, more picturesque and stately buildings that made up downtown Wachobe, causing the town mucketymucks no end of angst. Of course, now they could sweat the bad publicity of being the hometown of an accused murderer. Wouldn’t that do wonders for tourism? My building would be the least of their worries.
I unlocked the doors, turned off the alarm, flipped the light switches, checked the messages and my emails, then dusted and straightened my desk. Afterward I wandered into the showroom to inspect the Austin Healey, Mercedes, and Mazda under the pin lights, checking for any fingerprints that might be marring their shine. I didn’t find a one. Nor could I find any scuff marks or dirt on the black and white checkered tiles covering my showroom floor.
Seated at my desk with not much more work to do, I couldn’t find any mention of Brennan’s case in our local paper either. From the looks of the world news in the paper, reporters had plenty of other violent things to report.
Cory arrived for work on time at nine a.m., properly groomed with his stainless steel travel mug of coffee in hand. I sat waiting for him in my office. He called out “Good morning, Jo” from the showroom and disappeared into the garage.
Never once in the last four years had he failed to come in my office to sit and chat for a while, nor in all the years prior when he’d worked for my dad. Most days he even had a few jokes to tell. No way was he going to get away from me today.
My heels rapped the floor as I marched through the showroom and entered the orderly three-bay garage. Cory had a Volvo on the lift and a Mercedes on jacks. I didn’t know what he was doing to either of them. The garage was his domain, and he was a certified mechanic for at least a dozen common foreign manufacturers.
“I got donuts.”
“Awesome.” With his back to me, Cory stepped into a pair of overalls and pulled surgical gloves over his hands. He’d learned a long time ago that grease under the fingernails didn’t work for a man who liked to be on stage, not to mention he was a bit of a clean freak. No oily floors or smelly rags in his garage.
“Want to come in the office and have one?”
“Maybe later. The Volvo’s due at eleven.”
I leaned against his workbench, determined not to be driven away. “I called you twice yesterday.”
He grabbed a wrench and stepped under the Volvo to work one of its bolts. “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I had a busy day.”
“I heard you attended Brennan’s hearing. How’d that go?”
“As expected.”
“Really? I was surprised Brennan doesn’t have the cash to post bail. He must be worth millions.”
Cory’s shoulders slumped. “Most of his money is in real estate, and he has expenses.”
“Like what?”
Cory sprang from underneath the Volvo and tossed the wrench on his workbench, where it clattered to a halt inches from the far edge of the bench. “I’m not sure, Jo. I’m not sure about anything, okay? Brennan won’t talk to me. He doesn’t want me around. And you won’t help me. Everything I find out just makes me more worried.”
I studied his face. Dark circles and a pinkish tinge to the whites of his eyes suggested Cory hadn’t slept much since I saw him last. “Why? What have you found out?”
“Nothing.” His face was the picture of innocence.
Of course, Cory was an accomplished actor, but he’d given the answer Danny always gave Ray and me when we caught him doing something he shouldn’t. Nothing, my sweet fanny.
I decided to try a new route. “Where were you the rest of yesterday?”
“Nowhere.”
Another of Danny’s favorite answers. I burst out laughing. “Cory, you’re lying to me, and you’re not even doing a very good job of it.”
He had the good graces to blush. “Then stop asking me questions and I won’t have to lie anymore.”
“Cory!”
He stripped his gloves off and tossed them in the nearby plastic garbage can. “Okay, okay, let’s go in your office and sit down.”
We settled in the black leather office chairs, Cory in front of the laminated desk and me behind it. I handed him a donut. He ate it in two bites and washed it down with his coffee. I slid another one in front of him. It disappeared. I wondered when he’d eaten last.
He waved off the third, mine. “What do you think Brennan had for breakfast this morning?”
The bite of donut I had taken wedged in my throat. All I could do was shrug.
Cory didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy looking toward the floor. “I did something I probably shouldn’t have. You’re not going to be proud of me.”
I’d managed to dislodge the donut and swallow it. “What did you do, Cory?”
His gaze met mine. “You can’t tell Ray.”
This presented a problem. It wasn’t that I told Ray everything. Heavens, no. Although Ray was the first person I wanted to tell anything and truly my best friend, some things he didn’t want or need to know. Often in the past, the most significant of these things had related to Erica. But if Cory had done something illegal or found out something pertinent to the case, my obligation would be to tell Ray, even though another county altogether had charge of this investigation and he wasn’t really involved. I wasn’t going to pretend any different.
“No promises until I hear what you did.”
Cory signed. “First I drove to Albany and went through the newspaper archives at the library.”
No harm there. “What did you find out?”
Cory’s eyes lit up. “Brennan was a track star in high school, a long distance runner. He won a lot of medals.”
Not the answer I expected, nor the one Cory really wanted to tell me, I suspected. “That’s cool.” I waited for him to continue.
“He was in Torque Club, too, just like me.”
I smiled. The club for gear heads. For some boys, it was all about the toys, and cars were one of the best toys of all, lucky for my business.
Cory’s shoulders sagged. “And I found articles about the crash. The car left the road and hit a tree around eleven o’clock at night. A pas
sing motorist found them an hour later. Monica Gleason died on impact. The other girl sustained serious injuries and spent months in the hospital. At her family’s request, she wasn’t named in any of the articles. Brennan sustained head injuries and was in a coma for a couple days after the accident. When he woke up, the last thing he remembered was leaving his home to go to the reunion picnic in the park around noon. He claimed he didn’t have any memory of anything after that.”
Interesting. “Anything else?”
“James Gleason attacked him the day he was released from the hospital. He jumped him in front of his house. Brennan didn’t press any charges.”
A vision of Gleason’s waving arms on Friday night flashed through my mind. I could picture him attacking Brennan, frustrated and enraged at the legal system’s failure to punish the man he believed responsible for his sister’s death.
“Did you learn anything else from the papers?”
Cory swigged his coffee. “Not really.”
I still hadn’t heard anything I couldn’t tell Ray. “There must be more.”
He sipped of his coffee and licked his lips. “Lots more.”
Oh boy. “Go on.”
“I went over to Brennan’s house. I just wanted to be … to feel …
close to him. I started thinking about the weird phone call from that guy and how Brennan doesn’t want me around now … about how sometimes I think I don’t know him as well as I should. I remembered all the jokes about the skeletons in Brennan’s closet.” Cory sucked in a deep breath. “Anyway, I went through all his stuff.”
“Huh!” I couldn’t help it—the gasp just burst from my lips. It sounded judgmental, even to me.
Cory hung his head in shame.
I didn’t know what to say. It was a huge breach of trust, certainly not the foundation upon which to build a solid, lifelong relationship. In fact, it sounded too much like Isabelle’s crazy notion to hire a private detective. I didn’t approve. But I had to admit I was curious as to what Cory found. Did that make me guilty by association?
“You didn’t break in, did you?” Ray would want to know about that; Brennan’s residence was in his territory.
“Of course not! Brennan gave me a set of house keys months ago, and the alarm codes.”
Well, that made it all better, didn’t it?
I still wasn’t grasping the problem. If Ray knew about all this, he might lose respect for Cory, but nothing more.
“You found something you don’t want me to tell Ray about?”
“Sort of, but not exactly.”
“Then what is it?”
Cory laid his hands flat on my desk and leaned forward to whisper his confidence.
“I don’t want you to tell him about the evidence I took out of there.”
EIGHT
THE PULL OF UNANSWERED questions was like quick sand—deadly and impossible to escape.
I leaned forward and breathed my reply, “What evidence?”
Cory pointed at me. “Wait here!”
He leapt from his chair and raced across the showroom floor, narrowly missing a collision with the spoiler on the Mazda when his dress shoes slid out from under him on the ceramic floor. The bells jingled as Cory slammed through the front door and disappeared toward the parking lot. Clearly he’d taken my question as the green light to share all. I hoped I wouldn’t find myself in an awkward position with Ray or any other lawman once he’d finished.
A minute later he reappeared, out of breath, briefcase in hand, the contents of which he dumped on my desk after furtively closing and locking my office door.
I assessed the check registers and high school yearbook, wondering if they technically constituted stolen property and what the legal ramifications might be of having possession of them, seeing as they were laid out on my desk.
“Cory—”
He cut me off. “Look at these registers, Jo. Starting six months after the crash and lasting for eleven and half years, Brennan wrote a check on the first of every month to “Cash” for five thousand dollars. He stopped a year ago. I think someone was blackmailing him.”
“That’s a huge leap. Maybe it was to pay monthly bills.”
Cory dismissed my notion with a wave of his hand. “His monthly bills were paid by check, too, and he made cash withdrawals throughout the months that look like spending money. His business records don’t reflect this money, either.”
I grabbed my calculator and did the math. $690,000. Wow! “I don’t know, Cory. Who would be blackmailing him?”
“Maybe the other passenger in the car. She would know if he was drunk.”
“I’m sure the police must have spoken to her after the crash, before they decided not to charge Brennan.”
“Maybe she lied for him.”
Cory had veered into wanton speculation now. Or had he? Impossible to know without further investigation. “I’m not sure this all adds up to blackmail.”
“I think it does. I asked Brennan once why everyone jokes about skeletons in his closet. He got all embarrassed, then he said, ‘I guess I didn’t pay off enough people.’ I thought he was kidding, but now that I think back, he seemed serious.”
That would make me think blackmail, too. “What else did you find?”
He dropped the check register and reached for the yearbook. Three pictures fell from it as he lifted it in the air: two of young women and one, a young man. “This is Brennan’s senior yearbook. I read all the notes his friends wrote in it. It looks like he and Monica were going steady. Her best friend was Elizabeth Potter, and his was Wayne Engle, who was also on the track team and in Torque Club. The four of them planned to go to the senior ball together. They wrote about it.” Cory whipped the book open, flipped through the pages and pointed the entries out. “See?”
I did. “So who’s who?”
Cory pointed to the two by three photo of a stunning blond girl with startlingly blue eyes and dimples that had fallen on my desk. “That’s Monica. The other is Elizabeth. And this is Wayne.”
Elizabeth had dark hair teased into an incredible pouf, heavy eye shadow that made her eyes disappear, and a crooked but friendly smile. Wayne was another blond Adonis, dark eyes sparkling and a loopy, happy grin. No wonder he and Brennan were friends. He looked a little familiar, too. I wondered if we’d ever sold him a car.
“Did Wayne and Elizabeth date?”
Cory shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
I leaned back in my executive chair, which squeaked in protest. I’d have to find the oil can later. “What do you make of Brennan going steady with Monica?”
Cory’s smile was rueful. “I went steady with a girl in high school, too. The heterosexual pressure is pretty tough to ignore, you know.”
I could imagine. “Not to get too personal, but were you intimate?”
Cory burst out laughing. “I never even kissed her. All we did was hold hands. We still send each other Christmas cards every year. She has three kids now with her husband. I wished she’d been the one. She was a really nice girl.”
I glanced over the spoils on the desk. “So you took this stuff because you’re afraid Brennan was paying Elizabeth to keep her mouth shut?”
“Yes.”
“I think the statute of limitations would have run out by now, don’t you?”
“The court of popular opinion is in session every day. Brennan’s reputation and his business could be ruined by this if it’s true.”
“Why did the payments stop a year ago?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
Something else bothered me. I decided not to keep it to myself. “You don’t seem to have much faith in Brennan, Cory. Have you known him to be impulsive or violent?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
“Then why are you so convinced he’s guilty of something?”
Cory rubbed his hands together and cracked his knuckles. “You know my track record. Mr. Right has been Mr. Wrong every time. I don’t
have that much confidence in my judgment anymore.”
“What about Brennan? What do you really think of him?”
A wistful expression crossed Cory’s face. “I’m afraid he’s too good to be true.”
_____
I contemplated Cory’s statements the rest of the day and into the evening, so much so that I failed to pay attention to my pot of chili on the stove, heating it to the point where the smoke alarms went off in the house. Danny proved quite adept at removing the batteries to kill the noise. We must have aired the house out enough before Ray got home because he didn’t comment on any lingering burnt smell. I skimmed the top of the pot to serve with cornbread. No one complained.
But keeping Cory’s confidence proved challenging. Ray asked me if I’d talked with Cory and gotten him under control. I said, “yes” but really thought “no.” Cory had asked me to help him look into the thirteen-year-old accident, believing it would offer insights into Gleason’s death. It seemed possible. And I wanted to help. I wanted to know the truth about the accident and the huge checks Brennan wrote, but more importantly, I wanted to know if Cory and I had been wrong about Brennan. We both had thought he was a prize until now. On the other hand, Ray was not likely to be pleased to have me aiding and abetting Cory’s investigation. Ray and Catherine might want to lock up both of us.
I tossed and turned all night, to the point where Ray threw his arm over me and pinned me between his chest and the mattress so he could get some rest. I got up with my head feeling clouded, still uncertain of the right course of action.
Ray and I dressed side by side in the walk-in closet, Ray donning his gray sheriff’s deputy uniform and me, tan slacks and a summer-weight blouse. “Darlin’, what was on your mind last night? You were like a jumping bean.”
“Cory asked me to help him find out more about Monica Gleason’s accident. It’s eating at him that Brennan might have been responsible for her death. He wants to see if we can find the other passenger in the car and talk to her.” I hoped Ray wouldn’t ask how we planned to do that.