I shrugged. “Even if Sharon Gold was involved with Sprague, which I’m sure she wasn’t, Jake isn’t the kind of guy to go shoot him.”
“What kind of guy he is don’t mean shit,” said Horowitz.
“I know,” I said. “Maybe Jake held Sprague responsible for what happened to Brian … .”
“Yeah,” said Horowitz. “That’s good. But why? Why would he blame the chief? He ever say anything like that to you?”
“No. He told me he admired Sprague, considered him a friend. But maybe he got wind of that witness that Sprague didn’t follow up on.”
“There’s your motive for murder, right there.”
I shrugged. “Seems thin to me.”
“Combine it with Sprague humping his wife.”
“Sharon Gold wasn’t humping anybody,” I said, though as I said it, a worm of doubt wiggled into my mind. How well did I really know Sharon?
“I’ve been trying to connect all the dots, Roger,” I said. “But I just don’t see it.”
Horowitz flashed his Jack Nicholson smile. “Of course you don’t. I don’t either. If one if us did, we’d be getting somewhere. That’s why I bought this nice breakfast for you. See if the two of us could put our heads together, connect up some of them dots.” He picked up a corn muffin, broke it in half, slapped on a big glob of margarine, and took a bite. “So, okay. Let’s try again. These two kids drive into the river and die. Might’ve been witnessed. Might’ve even been another car involved. But as far as we know, the chief doesn’t pursue it. Turns out, the boy had a pile of ripped-up money hidden in his trunk. The father finds it, runs off to fucking Route Nine, rents a cruddy motel room for a week, and next thing we know, the chief of police is dead in that room, and the professor’s flown the coop. The fact that we don’t see the connections don’t mean there aren’t any.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve been trying to see them.”
“We found Gold’s car in the parking garage at Logan,” he said.
“That’s progress, I guess. I assume you’re checking with the airlines.”
He shrugged. “You know how tedious that is? Thousands of passengers every day.”
“So you’re not checking?”
“Of course we’re checking. So far, zippo.” He squinted at me. “My guess is he didn’t fly anywhere. Left the car there to throw us off. Hopped in a cab or maybe had somebody pick him up.”
“You saying he had an accomplice?”
“Makes sense, don’t it?”
“But who?”
Horowitz arched his eyebrows.
“No,” I said. “Not Sharon.”
“Why not?”
I shook my head. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Supposing the two of them blame Sprague for what happened to their son.”
I nodded. “Interesting. But why would they blame Sprague?”
“That witness.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “They liked Sprague. Everyone liked him. When I was with Sharon yesterday, it was clear that she was very upset about what happened to him.”
“Like maybe she was having a thing with him.”
“No, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “Like any normal person would feel if a friend of theirs had been found shot to death in a motel room.”
“Maybe she was just scared and guilty,” he said. “Upset that way.
“I didn’t read it like that at all.”
He took a gulp of coffee. “I’m probably gonna have to drag her in, give her a proper interrogation. We went easy on her yesterday.”
“She didn’t exactly find you warm and sympathetic,” I said.
He grinned humorlessly. “She ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“I doubt if you’ll get anywhere playing the tough guy with her,” I said. “Unless you’re interested in upsetting a woman whose son just got killed in a car crash and whose husband has disappeared.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta upset them.”
“You’ll do what you’ve got to do, Roger. It’d be nice if you could be a little sensitive to what she’s trying to live with, though.”
He waved the concept of sensitivity away with the back of his hand. “I’m betting she knows more than she’s letting on,” he said. “For starters, she’s gotta have some idea where the professor would go.”
“I spent the whole afternoon and evening with her,” I said. “I don’t think she knows anything.”
“Sounds like she’s got you bamboozled.”
“I’m not above being bamboozled by pretty young women who are mourning the sudden death of their only son and the disappearance of their husband, all within a couple weeks. I admit it. But,” I said, “if you’re planning to question Sharon Gold as a suspect, I promise you she’ll have her lawyer with her.”
“That’s fine with me,” he said. “Whatever. Some of my best friends are lawyers.” He grinned. “You better grab a muffin before I eat ‘em all. Last thing I put in my stomach except for coffee was a fuckin’ Big Mac last night sometime. I been burping ever since.”
I picked up the last corn muffin and took a bite. “You’re sure Jake killed Sprague, huh?”
“He takes the room under a false name, pays cash, hangs the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and disappears after the deed. Sounds like a plan to me. Not a particularly sophisticated plan. But a plan.” Horowitz shrugged. “It adds up to the professor, don’t you think? Means and opportunity up the wazoo. We’re still a bit speculative in the motive department so far, that’s all.”
“What about the gun?”
“It was a twenty-two. Long-rifle hollow points from about five feet away. Sprague was sitting right there in that chair where we found him when he got it. We figure the professor was sitting on the bed.”
“Any way to trace the gun?”
“Nope. We find it, ballistics can match it up with the slugs they dug out of Sprague’s chest. Otherwise it’s not much help. The wife said Gold didn’t have any guns.”
“That’s what she told me, too,” I said. “She said Jake hated guns.”
“Don’t mean shit, of course.”
“Of course.”
Horowitz stood up and wandered over to the east-facing glass sliders. He stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the harbor. “So whaddya think this homicide has got to do with that accident out there in Reddington?” he said, without turning to look at me.
“Damned if I know,” I said.
“Gotta be a connection,” he said.
I picked up my coffee mug and went over to stand beside him. The low-angled morning sun was streaming in on us, and puffy white clouds hung like balloons in the sky. It reminded me of the e. e. cummings poem—the one where the goat-footed balloonman is whistling far and wee and the world is mudlucious and puddle-wonderful.
“It’s just-spring,” I said.
Horowitz turned and frowned at me. “Huh?”
I smiled. “A poem, that’s all.”
“Fuckin’ Ivy Leaguer,” he muttered.
We watched a tanker plow out toward the Mystic River Bridge and the gulls and terns wheel and swoop over the water.
“Jake called me from that motel,” I said.
“Yeah, you told me that.”
“He set up an appointment. Said he had something important to tell me.”
“And he broke the appointment, right? So what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d like to know what he wanted to talk about.”
“Yeah,” said Horowitz. “Me, too. Tell you his plan, maybe.”
“You really think he had the whole thing planned out?”
“How the fuck do I know?” he muttered. “I’m just trying to make scenarios. You’re supposed to shoot them down.”
“I don’t see Jake Gold as a premeditated murderer,” I said.
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “I’ve known him for almost twenty years. He’s just not that kind of guy.
”
Horowitz snorted. “Compelling.” He turned to me. “If he didn’t premeditate it, what’s he got a gun for? Why’d he call you?”
“We don’t know he had a gun,” I said. “I wish I could tell you why he called me.”
Horowitz and I stood there looking down at the water and rehashing what we’d already talked about for another half hour or so. Neither of us came up with anything else.
My phone rang once, and I let the machine in my bedroom get it. Evie, probably. I’d call her as soon as Horowitz left.
Finally, a little after nine, he yawned and said, “We’re goin’ around in circles. I gotta go grab a nap.”
“Sixteen ounces of coffee,” I said. “You’ll never sleep.”
“Wanna bet?”
After Horowitz left, I went into the bedroom. The light on my answering machine was not blinking. Evie hadn’t bothered leaving a message. She knew I’d call her anyway.
Which I did. And got her machine. She was probably in the shower. This time I left her a message. “Hi, honey,” I said. “It’s, um, nine-fifteen, and I’m here. It’s the weekend. Time to play. Give me a call.”
Then I took a shower, shaved, got dressed, made coffee.
Read the newspaper.
Did some laundry.
Ran the dishwasher.
Tied some flies.
Waited for the phone to ring.
It kept refusing.
At noon I tried Evie again. Got her machine again. Left no message.
Hmm.
I made myself a toasted cheese sandwich and ate it out on my balcony. It was a beautiful just-spring day. Not quite springlike enough to go fishing, but close. Damned if I was going to spend it sitting around my apartment waiting for the phone to ring.
I found Tory Whyte’s business card where I’d stuck it in my wallet. I called her pager and left my number.
My phone rang twenty minutes later. “What’s up?” said Tory.
“Can you talk?”
“No, sir.”
“If I come out there, can we meet?”
“Yes. That would be fine.”
“Where?”
“I go on patrol at two,” she said.
“In front of the bank, two o’clock?”
“Make it two-thirty. Remember how to find it?”
“I’ll be there.”
THIRTEEN
I parked in front of the bank in Reddington at two-twenty. Five minutes later a black-and-white police Explorer pulled up beside me. Tory Whyte got out, opened my passenger door, and slid in beside me. She left the door of the cruiser open and the motor running.
The first thing she did was crank down the window beside her so she could hear her radio. Then she turned to me and smiled quickly. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” she said. “This is a small town. People will talk.”
She wore tailored blue slacks and a short leather jacket with a fur collar over her blue uniform shirt and tie. She squirmed her hip against the car seat to adjust her revolver.
I hadn’t seen her face very well in the darkness the previous night, and I’d forgotten how pretty she was.
“I just have a couple quick questions,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know a local girl named Sandy?”
“Sandy who?”
“I don’t know her last name. Heavy-set girl. Teenager. Black hair. Looks dyed. She was a friend of Brian Gold and Jenny Rolando.”
“Yeah, okay. That’d be Sandy Driscoll. What about her?”
“I want to talk with her.”
“About what?”
I waved her question away with the back of my hand. “Any way I can get ahold of her?”
“I know she works at the camera store. She’s probably there now.” She looked at her watch. “They’re open till five-thirty on Saturdays, I believe. Know where the camera store is?”
“I pass it on the way back to town, right?”
She nodded and pointed. “Just a mile or so up that way. It’s on the left.”
“One more thing,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Where did Sprague live?”
“Big old fix-me-up farmhouse on the north side. Why?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering. Tell me about it.”
“It was one of those handyman specials when he bought it, oh, ten or twelve years ago,” she said. “He did a lot of work on it. Paid the local kids to help him in the summers. He knew about things like carpentry and masonry. Ed knew about a lot of things.” Tory glanced sideways at me. “Nice big old barn, fifteen or twenty acres abutting the pond. He always had an open house around the holidays. Most of the town would show up. Used to have cookouts and swimming parties for the kids in the summer, square dances in his barn in the fall, things like that. This town doesn’t have much for teenagers to do, and Ed tried to make up for it.”
“Quite a guy,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Quite a guy, all right.”
“So how do I find his place?”
“Look,” she said. “I’m not sure—”
“You’re not involved, Tory. But if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m just a snoopy kind of guy.”
She smiled. “Everybody knows where Ed lived.” She gave me the directions. It didn’t sound complicated.
“I’ve been thinking I never should’ve stopped you last night,” she said.
“I’m glad you did.”
“Yeah, well, I think I might’ve opened a can of worms.”
“Who, me? That’s not a very flattering metaphor.”
She smiled. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just, sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut, let things play out.”
“And sometimes keeping your mouth shut is irresponsible,” I said.
“I don’t even know you.”
“I hope you trust me.”
“I hope I can,” she said. “See, the problem with opening a can of worms is, once they crawl out, you can never convince them to crawl back in again.”
I reached over and took her hand. “Look, Tory,” I said. “I’m not one of those hot-shot, fast-talking, big-money lawyers. I don’t perform miracles. In fact, most people would probably say I’m a pretty average attorney. I’m only really good at one thing. Discretion. My clients trust me. I keep my word. Always. I am discreet and fair and honest, and for some reason, a lot of people seem to value that in their lawyer. All I’m saying is, I promised you I’d keep you out of it, and I will.”
“Truly?”
“Truly,” I said.
She reached over, gave my hand a quick squeeze, opened the car door and slid out. Then she bent down and peered in at me. “Happy snooping,” she said. “Be careful, okay?”
I let Tory pull out of the lot before I started up my car. Then I headed back toward town, and a mile or so down the road on the left I spotted the Reddington Camera Shop.
I pulled up in front, got out of my car, and went inside.
Sandy Driscoll was down at the end of the counter, which ran the length of one wall. No one else was in the store. She was bent over with her back to me, and it looked like she was checking some things on the shelves. A cordless telephone rested facedown on the counter.
I stood there for a moment, then cleared my throat.
She whirled around, then rolled her eyes and smiled. “Geez,” she said. “You scared me. Hang on a sec.” She picked up the phone and said, “I’m sorry, it’s not back yet. It should come in on Monday. Check sometime after noon, okay?”
After she clicked off the phone, she put both elbows on the counter, propped her chin in her hands, and frowned at me. “I know you, don’t I?” she said.
“It was a few weeks ago. You were tossing daisies into the river.”
She nodded. “Oh, right. What’s up?”
“We were having a conversation. I don’t think we finished it.”
>
“What were we talking about?”
“Brian and Jenny. You were starting to tell me why they’d packed their clothes, where they were going.”
Sandy glanced around. “Look, mister—”
“Coyne. Brady Coyne. I’m the Golds’ lawyer.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, Mr. Coyne, I don’t know what great story you thought I was gonna tell you, but the answer is, I didn’t have anything to say then, and I still don’t.”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
“I am talking to you.”
“So tell me about Brian and Jenny.”
“They died.” She shrugged. “Everybody’s trying to deal with it.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I said. “And I think you know it. I think if Chief Sprague hadn’t shown up when he did, you would’ve told me what you know. So now that he’s dead—”
“I don’t know anything,” said Sandy quickly.
“You knew that those kids had packed clothes to bring with them. How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “Heard it, that’s all.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. It’s what people were saying, I guess.”
I put my own elbows on the counter so that I was looking straight into Sandy’s eyes. “It’s not what people are saying,” I said. “Those two duffel bags with clothes in them, the police didn’t tell anybody about them. That day when I met you by the river, your chief of police told me they hadn’t even told Brian’s and Jenny’s parents about those clothes. But you knew.”
Sandy straightened up, turned her back on me, and pretended to examine the shelves behind the counter. “So what if I did know?” she said without turning around. “What difference would it make? Brian and Jenny are dead.”
“Then why lie to me about it?”
She turned to face me. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because your chief of police is dead now.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
She shrugged. “Ed was our friend.”
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