The private investigator said, “Again, improbable, Mrs. Thornton. Oh, it could have happened. But I think there’s another, more logical explanation. That in the forty minutes he was at home with you, you got your husband drunk. His sister tells me that he loved drinking orange juice, would have eight or ten glasses of juice a day, since he was convinced it kept him healthy and prevented him from having colds.”
“That’s what she said?”
Gary smiled. “And his primary-care physician back then, Maul. Oh, Bobby Thornton’s records are still private, but I had a general conversation with the doctor about him and his physical health, and he was aware of his orange juice consumption. Plus I was able to get copies of your supermarket purchase receipts for a six-month period prior to the car accident. Astounding how much orange juice you purchased.”
“You think I spiked his drinks?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“Not gin or vodka. There’s not enough alcohol by volume to do the job quickly enough. No, my guess is grain alcohol. The top seller is ninety-five percent alcohol by volume, and it’s tasteless. Put enough in some OJ so it kicked in while he was driving north to Maine, such that he got woozy, or inattentive, hit the deer, and then went off the road and got killed. I mean, I can see you doing that, Mrs. Thornton, in an attempt to get him pulled over for drunk driving. That would give you leverage for an eventual divorce. Having him killed was indeed an accident.”
She stared and stared at him, hoping to break his concentration or his mood, but Talbot matched her.
Jessica said, “Prove it.”
And she quivered inside when he reached into his coat, took out a cell phone, and said, “If you insist.” He looked pleased with himself. “When I went to your first husband’s dealership, there were some there who remembered him well, were even still mourning him. And every one of them told me the same thing: that after his funeral, not once did you go back to the dealership. Not once. Eventually they boxed up his personal belongings and sent them to you.”
Jessica’s voice seemed very far away to her. “I didn’t want to go there. Too many memories.”
The private detective reached out, tapped at his cell phone. “I also learned a lot about Bobby Thornton, how driven he was to make sales. He’d even talk to potential customers while driving back and forth from work. He was so driven that he had actually put an app on his phone that would record his messages.”
Not a single word, Jessica thought. Don’t say a single additional word.
He picked up the phone. “I got hold of his call records from that night. Approximately five minutes before his fatal car accident, Bobby Thornton called home. What did he say to you?”
A memory: the caller ID flashing, her letting the phone ring and ring. “I must have been outside.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“No,” she said.
Delete, she recalled from that night. Delete.
“Interesting,” Talbot said. “I suppose you don’t have his cell phone from that night. Because whatever he told you would be recorded on that device. And we could both find out what he said when he called you.”
“I don’t know where his phone is,” she said, which was true. It was at the bottom of the Warner River, but exactly where, she had no idea. No matter. The evidence was gone. Relax, she thought, relax.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said, tapping his device. “Bobby Thornton had another app, one that automatically forwarded any call he made or received on his phone to a server back at the dealership, where it was recorded. And how fortunate that the folks there, who love him still, were able to dig it up for me.”
The device was put back on the table, and Jessica felt a flash as her palms got moist, hearing that old cliche, a voice from the grave: Hey, Jess, it’s me. Something’s wrong. Christ, I feel like I’m drunk as shit. I’m gonna pull over . . . I don’t wanna get stopped by a cop. I’ll call you again. Please come pick me up . . . Jesus, Jessica . . . Thanks.
Talbot picked up the device, pressed another button. “Well,” he said. “How about that?”
He watched her carefully, seeing the shocked look at hearing the voice of her dead husband, and then it was his turn to be surprised, when she proved to be much more than a housewife and bank teller.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Damn, he thought. That was pretty quick. He kept quiet.
Mrs. Thornton said, “Again, what do you want? You’re an investigator, working for Grace. You’re telling me all this evidence about what may or may not have happened some years ago. You’ve talked to witnesses whose memories might be a bit fuzzy. And you’ve got a recording of my dead husband saying something’s wrong, he feels like he’s drunk.”
Gary said, “But this evidence—”
The insistent woman overran him. “All right, we’ve established that. You have the evidence. But why should I care? The only person who should care is your client, Grace Thornton. Why talk to me? What do you want?”
Gary hadn’t thought that Jessica, a remarried, high-school-educated bank teller, would get to the heart of the matter so quickly, so he decided to reveal all.
“Good job,” he said. “I do want something. And if I get what I need, then Grace doesn’t see a word of what I’ve just told you.”
“Excuse me for being direct,” she said, “but why should I give a shit about what you do or don’t tell Grace?”
Ah, here it goes, he thought. Something this woman could never have guessed.
“Because she’s coming after you,” he said, recalling the internet printouts Grace had gathered about how to proceed, plans she hadn’t told him about. “She wants to remove you as guardian of the trust for your daughter. Take control of the assets. Decide when and how they will be disbursed. From what I’ve learned, you can start withdrawing from the trust once Emma turns twenty-one, and when Emma turns thirty, the entire trust will be under her control. Any way you look at it, it would be a long, drawn-out mess if Grace took you to court.”
“She can’t do that,” Jessica snapped, her eyes looking frightened. Gary so loved that look. How does that feel, sweetheart? he thought. How does it feel?
“If she can convince a judge, she can pretty much do anything she wants,” he said. “And what she wants to do is go to court, saying you’re unfit to be the guardian, with evidence that you had a hand in your former husband’s death. Including your dead husband’s voice saying that something was wrong, that he felt drunk and didn’t know why. But you and I know why, don’t we?”
“That’s not enough proof!” she called out, and then she sat back, eyes flashing, as she realized how loud her voice had gotten.
Gary leaned over the booth’s table. “That’s all she has to do, Mrs. Thornton. Go before the judge with my interviews, my timeline, Bobby Thornton’s voice, and present enough reasonable doubt that the trust and its guardianship will be taken out of your hands. Are you prepared for that, Mrs. Thornton? Are you? Your daughter is just fifteen or so, am I correct? You’ve probably been counting on that money to help pay off school loans after college graduation, or maybe as a nice nest egg once she leaves school. I mean, how much can you, a bank teller, and your husband, a failing real estate agent, save up for your daughter’s college? Especially since your stepson will be college-bound before your daughter. And I know you’ve already spent your first husband’s inheritance on track training for your daughter, along with other expenses.”
Jessica stared at him, her eyes filled with anger and disbelief, and then she said again, “What do you want?”
Gary shrugged.
Payday.
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
Jessica felt the acid taste of coffee nearly crawl up her throat after hearing what Grace had been planning by hiring this sleazy detective sitting across from her.
Twenty thousand dollars. Christ, she couldn’t remember the last time she had two thousand dollars in her checking acco
unt. Twenty thousand!
She nearly felt like laughing at this absurd man. She said, “Twenty thousand dollars? Are you out of your mind? Make it two hundred thousand, two million. What makes you think I can get my hands on that kind of money?”
He said, “Your husband works in real estate. You work at a bank. Figure it out.”
Figure it out. How she hated this man sitting so calmly in front of her. Weeks ago she hadn’t even known him, had gone for months without thinking about Bobby and his death, and now . . . Damn Bobby Thornton and his drunken voice from years ago, now threatening everything.
“Or?”
“Or I tell your sister-in-law—”
“Former sister-in-law,” she snapped at him, without even thinking. “I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since Bobby’s funeral.”
“All right, your former sister-in-law,” he said. “If I’m not paid by you, I’ll tell Grace everything I’ve learned in a very detailed report, including a transcript of that recording. If I get paid, then I tell her there’s nothing there. In fact, if I get paid within the next week, I’ll encourage her to drop the entire matter. Won’t twenty thousand dollars be a good payment to ensure that your daughter’s trust fund remains under your control?”
Trapped, she thought. The whole matter of her daughter and that damn wrestler’s death, the seizure of Ted’s shotgun, and now this. But she hated to admit it, this man had a point. She had to do what was right to protect Emma.
Gary waited, tried to stay calm. Twenty thousand dollars would get him out of his hole, get him caught up on his overdue lease, give him breathing room, even allow him to take a vacation to Aruba this winter for the first time in his long and disappointing life. It all depended on this shaky-looking woman sitting in front of him. He restrained himself, not wanting to push her, not wanting to spook her.
She cleared her throat. “You must be licensed in Maine,” she said. “Suppose I filed a complaint with the state, repeating what you just said to me?”
“You do that, it’ll be a waste of time. You have no proof. And the moment you do that, I’ll go straight to Grace Thornton and reveal everything. I’ll also encourage her to take action. How does that sound?”
The woman looked trapped, a look that pleased him.
“It doesn’t sound great,” she said.
“I know.”
Mrs. Thornton released a heavy sigh. “All right. I think I can do it. Within a week.”
Success, he thought. Success.
But that feeling lasted just two seconds.
“But I can’t possibly afford twenty thousand dollars,” she said. “The best I can do is ten thousand.”
He quickly shook his head. “What, you think this is some kind of bank negotiation, working out what kind of interest rate you can get for a business loan? It’s twenty thousand dollars, Mrs. Thornton. Not ten.”
She said, “It’s going to be ten thousand. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
“How much does Grace know about you?”
“Huh?” He didn’t like this new direction. “Mrs. Thornton, I—”
“Come on, Mr. Talbot. Quick answer. How much does Grace know about you?”
“She knows enough to have hired me.”
The woman suddenly smiled, as if she were the one springing the trap, not the other way around.
“Does she know that when you were a Maine state trooper, you were responsible for crippling the governor’s son during a traffic stop?”
Just like that, the memory of the night came back to him, the realization that the drunk driver he had pulled over had the same last name as the governor, which explained why he had stepped out of the car, yelling, “Do you know who I am?” just before Gary could tell him to get back in the car, just before he could tell him to stop walking toward him, just before there was the blast of an air horn, the shuddering squeal of tractor-trailer brakes, and that deep, bone-crunching thud he could still hear in his dreams at night.
The woman before him no longer looked scared or trapped. The bitch looked happy. Looked smug.
That hadn’t been the plan.
Jessica instantly felt better, seeing the surprised look on the PI’s face.
“Ah . . .”
“You mean you didn’t tell that to Grace? Hard-ass Grace? Judgmental Grace?”
Gary looked like he was trying to gather himself together. “I don’t see how that matters.”
“Oh, but I do,” Jessica said, still enjoying the man’s discomfort. “Even when I knew her back then, she was so faithfully on the straight and narrow that Bobby joked she could be used as a surveyor’s tool on construction projects. She hated dirty jokes, got angry at seeing her mom read those naughty books like Fifty Shades of Grey, and when Bobby and I got married, even seeing the garter ceremony ticked her off. So what do you think she’d do if she found out you were the trooper responsible for putting the Maine governor’s son in a wheelchair?”
“Ah . . .”
“The best I can do, and the best you can do, is ten thousand dollars. That’s it. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it, but do it now. I need to get back home.”
“But—”
“If you take it, I can get you the money within the week. If not, then I’ll call Grace and tell her all about you. Then she’ll dump you. You won’t get whatever fee you’re expecting from her and you won’t get any money from me. Your choice.”
She waited.
Jessica had no idea where she was going to get ten thousand. But she wasn’t going to let this private detective from Maine, this former state trooper, this man, take away what was rightfully hers.
Gary took a breath. “You think calling her will really have an impact?”
Jessica smiled. “Do you really want to gamble on that?”
His face seemed to reveal an internal struggle.
A few heavy moments passed.
“It was an accident,” Gary said.
“I’m sure it was.”
The man started off talking slowly, but then the words came out at a faster pace, as if he couldn’t wait to explain his actions to someone new.
“It was one in the morning. On I-295, north of Falmouth. November night. The kid was driving an Audi. He drifted over to the right into the breakdown lane and then went back. That’s it. No weaving, no sudden jerking left or right. I could have let him go. I could have.”
Jessica didn’t know what to say. She had half expected this PI in front of her to start arguing or fighting with her, but she hadn’t expected this confession.
Gary felt like he was skidding on his ass after trying to cross an icy road. Now he had to get out of here with that ten thousand safely his. All right, most bills would be paid off and the planned Aruba trip would be postponed, but he knew Jessica was right. Grace Thornton was one customer who was tightly wrapped, and she owed him eight hundred bucks that he couldn’t pass up, even with the ten thousand promised down the road.
“Do you see what I mean?” he asked.
The woman kept quiet. He should keep his mouth shut as well, but Gary felt compelled to tell all. Anything to keep her from calling Grace.
“I could have let him go, but I had a rep at Troop B, where I was stationed. A rep as a hardass, someone who didn’t cut corners, who was aggressive as hell. So I made the stop, and the kid . . . the stupid kid wouldn’t follow my commands. A few seconds, that’s all it took, to put him in a wheelchair and kick me out of the state police.”
Jessica gathered up her purse. “And how many seconds did it take for you to come up with this plan to extort me?”
Gary said, “It isn’t extortion. It is—”
“Business? Understanding? Mr. Talbot, I’ll call you in a week.” She got out of the booth. “In the meantime, for what you were planning to do to my little girl, go fuck yourself.”
Outside, even with the smell of gasoline and diesel fuel and the heavy roar of traffic speeding by on Route 128, Jessica felt pretty damn good. The
question of what her former sister-in-law was up to had been answered: Grace wanted revenge by prying Jessica away as the administrator of Emma’s trust. Part of Jessica admired the sheer cold-blooded way Grace had approached her goal, by taking years to line up her case against Jessica.
So.
Ten thousand dollars? Where would she get that money?
Jessica was starting to have an idea of how she could—
Her iPhone rang. She dug it out of her purse, checked the incoming call. Warner Police Department.
What? Was Detective Rafferty calling about something to do with Sam Warner’s murder? Or had something bad happened to Emma?
She dropped her purse on the dirty asphalt, slid a finger across the screen to answer the phone. “Hello?”
A shocked male voice answered her. “Jessica? Is that you? Jessica?”
It was Ted.
“Ted, what’s up?”
And in the next three seconds, seeing the caller ID on her iPhone made terrible and awful sense.
“Jessica, I’m at the Warner police station,” Ted said, his voice tight and strained.
“Ted . . .”
“Jess, I’ve been arrested.”
And the next four words hammered her so hard she flinched.
“For Sam Warner’s murder.”
SAM WARNER’S STORY
Saturday Night
Even though he was in the middle of taking a shower that Saturday night, Sam could hear the music, the loud voices, the happy yells as his house party was getting under way. He ran his hands through his short black hair, wiped at his face, took a loofah and gave his back and other parts a good scrub. A while earlier he had gone mano a mano outside with a guy he went to school with, tossed him around with no difficulty, and it was good to wash the sweat and dirt from his skin. Pissy guy. Still having a grudge years later. Grow up, he thought.
Mum and Pop—my God, could those two have chosen stupider names to be called?—were out west at some numb cultural museum in North Adams and were spending the night with some equally numb friends. Sam, never one to pass up an opportunity, either here or in the wrestling circle, made sure tonight was in the works about five seconds after Mum and Pop told him about their plans.
You Will Never Know Page 15