"It was the epitaph," I said. "That's what convinced him you'd come back—"
She nodded.
"Who did the carving—"
"Parker. At my request, and after I was gone. I wanted to leave some sense of a memorial, and I wanted the words to speak to my brother. I wanted him to know that I knew he'd killed my husband. Ken Merriman suspected something close, and he thought that if I viewed the house as a memorial, I might return to it. Probably around the last date, April twelfth. So he waited, and he watched. Every day for three weeks."
Three weeks. I wouldn't have lasted that long. I remembered now what Casey Hopper had told me when I called to ask him about Ken—You know I was a sniper in Vietnam. So when I say somebody is patient…
"You didn't come back on the twelfth—"
She shook her head. "I wanted to, but then I was afraid that might be expected. So I came later."
"He was still waiting."
"Yes. He said everyone told him how important this place was to me, how much hope and excitement I'd held for it, and between that and the epitaph he became convinced I'd come back."
"The house was almost new," I said, "and worth a fortune. You intended to just leave it empty forever—"
"There was nothing left for me here. There was no way I could continue to live here—but sell the house— I could never have done that. Never."
"It's gone now," I said. "I doubt you can reclaim it. It might be too late."
She nodded. "I won't try to stop it. Let them have their money. I owe them that much, surely."
"They did great damage to Ken's career."
"I know, and when he left a message telling me that you'd be inquiring about the house, I said I wanted to hire him to find out who you were working for. I was afraid it was them again, and that Parker would be at risk. I didn't imagine he was the client."
"When you found out, you asked Ken to hang around and keep an eye on things—"
"No. That was on his own. He'd evidently grown doubtful of my brother's guilt."
"You have no contact with your brother—"
"None. As I said, for so many years I believed he killed Joshua. Then Ken left that final message and said he thought I was wrong."
"And that the police needed to pay attention to a car," I said.
She nodded again.
"It needs to be finished," I said. "You have to realize that."
"Will the police be able to finish it—" she said. "After all this time—"
"I'll be able to," I said. "Hell, according to Ken, I already did. Now I just have to figure out how I did."
We stayed for another hour, sat there as the sun rose higher and our muscles stiffened, and she told me more of her story but nothing that compared to what I'd already heard. Eventually I asked her where she had been for the past twelve years. She gave more of an answer than I expected.
"I live in a small town not in this country but not so far away, either." She laughed. "How difficult of a riddle is that— Fine, so I live in a small Canadian town. I live under a different name, and I've worn a wig for so long that it feels like part of me. I make a modest living in modest ways and it's all that I need. In my new life, it's more than I need. I've never remarried, and I doubt that I ever will. I have friends whom I treasure, people who mean more to me than I can express, and none of them, not a soul, understands my past. I haven't lied to them, I've just asked for no questions, and they have respected that. Those closest to me have, at least."
I had so many questions myself, but it became clear that she had fewer answers, and after a time the conversation became stagnant and then disappeared altogether. I didn't want to let her go. I also knew we couldn't stay
"I could hold you here," I said, "and call the police. There are many of them who would like to talk to you."
She didn't answer. Just held my eyes in silence.
"I'm not sure I want to do that," I said. "Maybe I will, soon, but not yet. I'm equally certain it would be a mistake to let you leave."
"Give me your phone number," she said. "I'll call you in a day. I promise I will do that. Whatever you want from me, I'll offer it."
"Including coming forward—"
Again, the silence.
"Ah," I said. "Whatever I want, except that."
"Maybe that. I'm not sure. I've been gone for many years, and I have a new life that would be sacrificed. Surely you know that's not a snap decision."
"No decision that takes twelve years to make is—but I'm not sure it's your decision to make, Alexandra."
We sat and looked at each other for a while, and then I got to my feet. My legs felt foreign. We'd been sitting for a long time.
"I can accept all of this as the truth, and a week from now realize it was a lie and feel a fool for believing you," I said.
"It isn't a lie."
"It may be," I said. "If it is, you can know this—I'll chase you. For as long as it takes me, and as far as it takes me, I'll chase you."
She stood as well, brushed off her jeans, and then stepped forward and offered her hand. I clasped it and held it and looked into her eyes as she said, "I'll say this one more time—it isn't a lie."
She walked away from me then, walked to that short ridge of stone that marked the rear wall of the house and looked down at the pond. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her jeans and her shoulders hunched, looking down. I gave her a few minutes before I followed.
"I wish you could have seen it," she said when I was beside her.
"I can imagine what it looked like."
"No." She shook her head. "You can't. When Parker was tending the grounds, when everything was at its best, it was beyond what you can imagine. In the spring, when it was all in bloom… no, you can't imagine what that looked like."
She took her hands from her pockets and turned away. "It was everything I'd dreamed of. We could have done so much here. We could have done so much."
* * *
Chapter Thirty-eight
I walked up the drive with her, and neither of us spoke. When she reached her rental car, she turned and faced me.
"I'll call tomorrow," she said, "and we'll figure out how to move forward. You may not believe me, but it is the truth. If I don't call, keep your word. Start the chase."
"That might seem like a joke to you," I said, "but it is not to me. I don't care where you are, Alexandra, I'll find you eventually. Anyone can be found."
"Ken Merriman already taught me that." She took my hand again, squeezed it once, and then turned and opened the driver's door and climbed inside. I waited until she'd started the engine before I left and walked back up the road to my truck. I got inside, started it up, and drove to the highway. I stared at every vehicle that passed and thought, He said all they needed to do was pay attention to a car.
There was only one possibility coming to my mind, and Mike London had checked it out. The day Ken and I had lunch with him, he told us about a vehicle he'd seen near Bertoli's murder scene that had belonged to a chop shop affiliated with Dominic Sanabria. What had the owner's name been—
Neloms. Darius Neloms. His alibi checked out solid, though, and the lead dried up. So what could Ken have possibly seen that Mike did not—
Unless it was a different car entirely. If that was the case, then I was as utterly clueless as I had been before talking to Alexandra.
I was halfway back to the city when my cell phone rang, and I saw the call was coming from the office. Joe.
"You're out there again, aren't you," he said when I answered, and then, before I could respond, "LP, you've got to let it go. You've got to stop."
"She came to the house this morning."
For a moment I didn't hear a thing.
"Tell me it is the truth," he said, "and that I don't need to begin searching for the proper institution for you."
I told him what had happened. By the time I was done, I was a mile from the office, and he hadn't spoken for a long time.
"I let
her go," I said, "and I know you'll tell me what a terrible mistake that was, but I don't care. I'll find her again if I have to."
"If you believe what she told you, that's not the issue of the day," he said, and something inside me sagged with relief. He agreed with me. Alexandra was no longer the focus.
"I believe it," I said, "because I saw her lie today, and, Joseph, she is not good at it."
"And the car—" he said. "Do you have any idea what that means—"
"Maybe. If I'm wrong, then I've got nothing. We'll have to wait and see."
I hung up with him, and five minutes later I was behind my desk. I told Joe what I remembered from Mike London's investigation, then leaned back with my hands spread.
"That's the best I've got. Darius Neloms was an associate of Sanabria, but he was far from the inner circle. The guy painted stolen cars and sent them back out the door. It's not like he was Sanabria's right-hand man. Even if he was, Ken apparently was questioning whether Sanabria had anything to do with the murder."
"He said the car was important. So maybe he found out who else had access to it."
"Maybe. If it doesn't go back to that chop shop, though, then I have no idea what he was talking about. We talked to Mike the day before Ken was killed, so it would have been fresh in his mind, and if he was giving me credit for getting him to the solution, well, that's the only thing I got him to. Only London mentioned a car."
"Well," Joe said, "I'd say now's the time to call him."
So I called him. Put him on speaker while Joe sat with his chin resting on steepled fingertips and listened. I had not spoken to Mike London since Ken was killed. He'd called after he heard the news, more curious then distressed, and I had never called back.
I'd already decided I didn't want anyone but Joe to know that the new information had come from Alexandra, so I skirted that, told Mike only that Ken had evidently mentioned his belief that a car was the key to the case shortly before he was killed.
"The only car I ever heard mentioned," I said, "was the one you told us about. It belonged to a guy named Darius Neloms, right—"
"Right."
"Who had an alibi that was—"
"Airtight. Yes."
"There's no way you could have been wrong on that."
Silence. Then, "Brother, you want to check up on me, by all means go ahead. Hell, we probably still have the security tapes buried in some evidence locker. But I'm giving you my word that Darius Neloms was nowhere near Bertoli's death scene. A car belonging to him was. I did not find out who was driving the car. I tried, and I did not find out."
His voice was terse and biting, and Joe raised his eyebrows and gave me a little smile. I was stepping into dangerous turf now, with even a suggestion that Mike might have missed something.
"That's good enough for me," I said, trying to soothe, thinking that while I was still going to need to verify, there was no reason to call him out on it now. "I just don't know what the hell to do with this, Mike. If Ken was excited about a car, I think it had to be the one you told us about, but where that took him…"
"Like I told you back in the spring, Darius was connected to Sanabria."
"Evidently Ken wasn't sure the murder had anything to do with Sanabria."
"Then I quite simply don't know what to tell you, Lincoln."
I rubbed my forehead and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think of the right question—hell, of any question. What could Ken have seen in that car that neither Mike nor I could—
"You traced the plate, and it ran back to Neloms directly," I said. "Right—"
"Right. Wait, no. It was registered to his shop, which doesn't really make a damn bit of difference. Ultimately still his vehicle. He claimed no idea of who could have driven it, said the keys were inside the shop and maybe somebody took them, then told us the car must have been stolen."
"But it had been returned."
"Uh-huh. I checked out every employee—most of whom were family or friends of his, cousins or nephews or whatever—and didn't get anything, but I don't think whoever was behind the wheel really had much to do with Neloms."
"You think they worked for Sananbria."
"Right. They had a history together."
All of this was recycled, the same damn conversation we'd had six months ago, and all of it pointed back to Sanabria, when Ken's final words pointed in another direction entirely.
"Look, Lincoln, I don't know what else to tell you…"
"It's fine, Mike. Don't worry about it. If I think of something else, I'll call."
I thanked him and hung up.
"Mike thinks one of Sanabria's guys drove the car," Joe said.
"Yeah."
We sat in silence and thought.
"This is going to sound crazy," I said, "but what if Bertoli drove himself there—"
He frowned. "His ghost got up off the pavement and drove it back— The car was gone after he died, right— That's why Mike was looking at it as a suspect vehicle."
"Right," I said, "but he had to get there somehow, and whoever killed him would have known that. The guy had just gotten out of prison; it's unlikely he had his own car. So maybe he borrowed one from this Neloms guy.
He drove that car to meet somebody, he got killed, and then someone else—maybe the guy who killed him, maybe not—drove the car back. Having the car gone from the scene is one less thing for the cops to look at, which is what they'd want, and they couldn't have known…"
My voice trailed off, and Joe said, "Keep going," but I didn't answer. The notion of Bertoli as the driver had tripped something in my brain, and I got up and went to the file cabinet and pulled out the sheaf of papers Ken had given me on the case. Copies of everything he'd had, or so he'd told me.
It took me a while, but I located the paperwork he'd brought into the office on the morning after our first encounter, the morning after my wild drunken dream about Parker Harrison watching me on the roof. Profiles of all the convicts who'd stayed at Whisper Ridge. I flipped through until I found Bertoli. Read the report once again, the details of his arrest for beating the truck stop manager and stealing his heroin. The police had arrested him within hours. Due to his car.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-nine
Bertoli used a stolen plate, but it was his own vehicle, an Impala with a custom paint job and chrome rims featuring cutouts in the shape of diamonds.
"Son of a bitch," I said, and then, without bothering to say a word to Joe's questioning glance, I pounded the redial button on the phone and got Mike London back on the line. He sounded weary when he realized it was me.
"One last question," I said. "The car you saw that night, it was an Olds Cutlass, not an Impala, right—"
"Right."
"You said it had custom features on it, though"
"Yeah, all that shit like in a rap video."
"This is a long shot, but do you remember the rims—"
"The rims—"
"Yeah."
"Well, they were spinners. You know, the kind that rotate when the engine's on—"
"Right. You remember whether there were diamond etchings in them— Cutouts in the shape of diamonds—"
Silence while he thought, then, "Yeah, maybe. Maybe there were. I'm not sure, but I think that sounds right."
"All right, Mike. Thanks. Thanks a lot."
I hung up with him again, and then I stood and brought the Bertoli report over to Joe's desk and dropped it down, waited while he read it.
"You're thinking that he got his car worked on down there—"
"Yes."
"Makes sense. Of course, we already know Sanabria's guys and Neloms had an association."
"Uh-huh, but read that arrest report again—who was in the vehicle with Bertoli the night he stole the heroin—"
"Unidentified juvenile."
"Right. Name redacted from Ken's report, because what Ken could access was public record, and the passenger was a minor. There's an original police report with that kid's
name. I want it."
"I'll call."
Unlike me, he wouldn't use the speakerphone. I heard him say what he wanted and was sure he'd be told to wait for a call back. That's what it would have taken had I called—and if I didn't pick the right person to lean on for the favor, the wait might have extended into the next day Instead, Joe was on hold for what seemed like all of thirty seconds. He murmured a soft thank-you into the phone, scribbled a name onto his notepad, and then hung up and held the pad a few inches from my face.
Alvin Neloms, black juvenile, sixteen years old.
"A son, probably," I said. "Darius has a son."
"Check on it."
I went back to my computer and ran a database search on Alvin Neloms and pulled up a family history. His father was listed as unknown. His mother had kept her own name, it seemed. According to the family chart the database offered, Darius Neloms was the boy's uncle, not his father. He was from East Cleveland, was now twenty-nine years old, and had been arrested just one time as an adult, for drug possession, charge dismissed. These were all things Ken could have found in a few minutes of research after he made the connection between the cars.
"You know anybody with East Cleveland PD—" I asked.
"Tony Mitchell did some task force stuff with them."
"Ask about this kid, would you— I want to know more before we talk to him."
"We're going to talk to him—"
"Bet your ass, Joseph. We're getting there. Getting somewhere."
So Joe got back on the phone and asked for Tony, and they exchanged cursory greetings while I waited impatiently.
"Use the damn speaker, Joe."
He ignored me, then told Tony he was calling to ask if the name Alvin Neloms meant anything to him. He listened for a while with no change of expression, then said, "Could you repeat that, please—" This time he finally hit the speakerphone button.
"I said Cash is the worst they've got," Tony said. "One of them, at least. And down there— When I say he's one of the worst, you know what I'm talking about."
"Cash—" Joe said.
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