The Accident

by Linwood Barclay

  “How do you know this?”

  “You think I just sit here all day and work on my stamp collection?”

  “So he’s a bad cop.”

  Edwin paused a moment before answering, as if there might be others in the room and he didn’t want to get sued for slander.

  “Let’s say he’s got a cloud over him.”

  “Sheila was a friend of his wife’s.”

  “I don’t know that much about his wife. Other than that she wasn’t his first.”

  “I never knew he was married before,” I said.

  “Yeah. When someone was telling me about his troubles, it came up that he was married years ago.”

  “Divorced?”

  “She died.”

  “Of?”

  “No idea.”

  I thought about that, then, “Maybe this all starts to fit. Him being a sketchy cop, his wife selling knockoff designer purses out of their house. I think they were bringing in good money with the purses.” I didn’t mention that it was probably all off the books. People in glass houses and all that.

  Edwin’s lips puckered. “The force might take a dim view of a cop and his wife selling knockoff merchandise. It’s illegal. Not owning a knockoff bag, but making them and selling them.”

  “When Slocum came to see me, Saturday morning, he was pretty rattled. There seemed to be, in his mind, some connection between the phone call his wife took and the accident that killed her.”

  “Explain.”

  “I guess if she hadn’t been going out to meet whoever called her, she might have had that flat tire some other time, in a safer place, and never would have fallen into the water and died.”

  Edwin’s lips did some more puckering.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Do you know whether the police are treating Ann Slocum’s death as suspicious?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Edwin moved his tongue across the front of his teeth. I’d seen him do this before when he was deep in thought.

  “Glen,” he said tentatively.

  “I’m right here.”

  “Do you believe in coincidences?”

  “Not so much,” I said. I had a pretty good idea where he was going.

  “Your wife loses her life in an accident that is, I think we would concur, difficult to reconcile. About two weeks later, her friend is killed in another accident, the circumstances of which are curious, if not equally so. I’m sure this has not escaped your attention.”

  “No,” I said, and felt myself roiling inside. “It hasn’t. But, Edwin, beyond that observation, I don’t know what to make of it. Look, you know that trying to make sense of what Sheila did, how she died—it’s all I’ve been thinking about. What did I miss? How could I not have known she had some kind of problem? Christ, Edwin, she didn’t even like vodka, so far as I knew, and yet there was an empty bottle of it in her car.”

  Edwin strummed the fingers of his left hand on his desk. He cast an eye toward his bookshelf. “You know I’ve always been an Arthur Conan Doyle admirer. A fan, I suppose.”

  I followed his eye. I stood, took a step closer to the shelves, and tilted my head slightly to read the words on the spines. A Study in Scarlet. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Sign of the Four.

  “They look really old,” I said. “May I?”

  Edwin nodded and I pulled out one of the books, opened it delicately. “Are these all first editions?”

  “No. Although I do have some, sealed and safely put away. One that’s actually signed by the author. Are you familiar with the works?”

  “I can’t say that I—maybe the one about the hound. The Baskervilles, isn’t it? When I was a kid. And Sheila and I saw that movie, the one with the guy who also played Iron Man.”

  Edwin closed his eyes briefly. “An abomination,” he said. “Not Iron Man. I liked that.” He looked disappointed, possibly at the gaps in my literary education. There were many.

  “Glen, let me ask you this, a straightforward question. Do you believe it is at all possible—even remotely so—that Sheila would willfully consume a bottle of vodka and bring about the accident that took her life and the lives of two others? Knowing what you do about her?”

  I swallowed. “No. It’s impossible. But yet—”

  “In The Sign of the Four, Holmes says, and I think I have this right, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ You know the phrase?”

  “I think I’ve heard it. So you’re saying, if it’s impossible that Sheila would do such a thing, then there must be some other explanation for what happened, even if it seems … really out there.”

  Edwin nodded. “In a nutshell.”

  “What other explanations could there be?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But in light of these recent developments, I really think you need to be considering them.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I was driving away from Edwin’s office when my cell rang. It was one of the private schools I’d called. The woman answered my questions about tuition fees (higher than I expected), whether Kelly would be allowed to switch in the middle of the school year (she would), and whether her academic record qualified her for admission (maybe).

  “And of course you know we are a residential school,” she told me. “Our students live here.”

  “But we already live in Milford,” I explained. “Kelly would be able to live at home with me.”

  “That’s not the way we do it,” the woman stated. “We believe in a more immersive educational experience.”

  “Thanks anyway,” I said. That was just dumb. If Kelly was going to be right in town with me, she was going to live with me. Maybe some parents were happy to farm their kids off to a school 24/7, but I wasn’t one of them.

  I phoned Sally to remind her that I was going to the visitation for Ann Slocum and likely wouldn’t be at the office or at any of our job sites the rest of the day. When I got to Kelly’s school I parked and went into the office to tell them I was taking her out of school for the afternoon. The woman in the office said a couple of other kids, as well as Kelly and Emily’s teacher, planned to attend.

  When Kelly came into the office to meet me, she had a small envelope in her hand. She didn’t look me in the eye when she held it out to me. I tore it open and read the note as we headed out to the truck.

  “What’s this?” I asked. “This is from your teacher?”

  Kelly mumbled something that sounded remotely like a yes.

  “You stomped on another kid’s foot? You did it again?”

  She whipped her head around to look at me. Her eyes were red. “He called me Boozer. So I let him have it. Did you find me a new school yet?”

  I put my hand on her back and guided her across the parking lot. “Let’s go home. You need to get changed for the visitation.”

  I was in the bedroom, taking a third run at doing up my tie so the broad end wasn’t shorter than the thin, when Kelly appeared. She was wearing a simple navy blue dress—something her mother had bought for her at the Gap—and matching tights.

  “Does this look okay?” she asked.

  She looked beautiful. “Perfect,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Okay.” She scampered off, and just in time. I didn’t want her to see my face. It was the first time that she had ever asked her father for an opinion on an outfit.

  The funeral home was just off the downtown green. The parking lot was full. A number of the cars were police cruisers. I took Kelly by the hand as we walked across the lot. Once we were inside, a man in a perfect black suit directed us to the reception room for the Slocum family.

  “Remember, stick close,” I whispered down to her.

  “I know.”

  We’d barely stepped into the room, where about thirty people were milling about chatting in subdued tones, awkwardly holding coffee cups and saucers, when Emily came
charging in our direction. She wore a black dress with a white collar. She threw her arms around Kelly and the two girls clung to each other as though they’d not seen each other in years.

  They both burst into tears.

  Slowly, the small talk descended into a murmur as everyone focused on the two small girls, propping each other up, bonding in a way that few of us could imagine for ones so young. They were joined by grief, and a sympathy and understanding for each other.

  I, like most everyone, felt overwhelmed. But I couldn’t bear to see the two of them dealing with this alone, and so publicly, so I knelt down, touched a hand lightly to each of their backs, and said, “Hey.”

  Another woman knelt on the other side of them. She looked, at a glance, like Ann Slocum. She flashed me an awkward smile. “I’m Janice,” she said. “Ann’s sister.”

  “Glen,” I said, taking a hand off Kelly’s back and offering it.

  “Why don’t I get the girls some refreshments?” she said. “Somewhere a little more private.”

  I hadn’t wanted to let Kelly out of my sight, but at that moment, letting the girls be together seemed to make a lot of sense. “Sure,” I said. Janice led Kelly and Emily, walking with their arms around each other, out of the room. In one respect, however, I was relieved. Across the room, the casket containing the body of Ann Slocum, unlike my wife’s, was open. I didn’t want Kelly to see Emily’s mother in repose. I didn’t want to have to explain why Ann’s face could be made suitable for viewing and her mother’s could not.

  “That just broke my heart,” a woman said behind me. I turned. It was Belinda Morton. Standing beside her was her husband. “Never in my life have I seen anything so sad.”

  George Morton, in a black suit, white shirt with French cuffs, and a red tie, extended a hand. I took it, somewhat reluctantly, since he was reputedly the one who’d pushed his wife to open up to the Wilkinson lawyers.

  “This is all just, so, I just don’t know where to begin,” Belinda said. “First Sheila, and now Ann. Two of my best friends.”

  I didn’t have it in me to offer any words of comfort. I was too angry with Belinda. But this wasn’t the time to get into that.

  “We have to believe there’s a purpose in the way life unfolds,” George said, affecting his usual wise manner. I could see the purpose in punching him in the nose. He had a way about him, that he was smarter than the rest of us, talking down to us. Quite a trick, since he was an inch shorter. I had a good view of his comb-over. What surprised me, looking at his eyes beyond the lenses of his heavy, black-framed glasses, was how troubled he appeared. His eyes weren’t red the way his wife’s were, but they looked sorrowful and tired.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “Such a shock. Just horrible.”

  “Where’s Darren?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen him around,” Belinda said. “Did you want me to find him for you?”

  “No, that’s okay.” I didn’t want to talk to him, I just wanted to keep track of him. “Will you be home later?” I asked.

  “I would imagine,” she said.

  “I’ll give you a call.”

  She started to speak, then stopped herself. George was looking off to one side, at the other people paying their respects, and she took advantage of the moment to lean in and ask, “Did you find it?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The envelope? You found it? Is that why you want to call?”

  I hadn’t thought about that in a while. “No. It’s something else.”

  She looked even more upset than when she’d watched the girls consoling each other.

  “What?” George said, returning his gaze to us.

  “Nothing,” Belinda told him. “I’m just … Glen, it was nice to see you.” There was nothing in her voice that suggested she meant it.

  She steered George off in another direction to mingle. I had a sense Belinda knew exactly what I wanted to talk to her about. I wanted to deliver a few choice words about her decision to help Bonnie Wilkinson wipe me out financially.

  I was left standing there with no one I immediately recognized to talk to. There were several tall, broad-shouldered men with short haircuts clustered together. Fellow cops—it didn’t take a genius to figure it out—but Darren wasn’t among them. I went over to where the coffee was set up and bumped shoulders with a short black woman doing the same thing.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Glen Garber.” I put down my cup and saucer so we could shake hands.

  “Rona Wedmore,” she said.

  “Were you a friend of Ann’s?”

  She shook her head. “I’d never met her. I’m with the Milford PD.” She tipped her head in the direction of the men I’d just noticed. “I don’t work directly with Darren, but we’re always running into each other. I’m a detective.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, then added, “It always seems dumb to say ‘pleased’ or ‘nice’ to meet you at things like this.”

  Rona Wedmore nodded understandingly. “Sure.” She looked at me curiously. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Garber. Glen Garber.”

  “Your daughter, she was staying over with the Slocums that night.”

  I wondered how she knew this, and whether she was somehow involved in the investigation of the accident.

  “Well, Kelly was going to stay over, but she came home early.” When Rona Wedmore narrowed her eyes, I added lamely, “She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “She’s okay now?”

  “Yes, well, she’s upset, too. Emily’s her friend.”

  “Was that your daughter, was that Kelly that was just …”

  “Yes.”

  “Your girl, she seemed to be taking her friend’s mother’s death pretty hard,” the detective said.

  “She lost her own mother—my wife, Sheila—a few weeks ago.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss. Your wife, she …” Wedmore seemed to be processing information, trying to retrieve data buried in her head.

  “An accident.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know the one.”

  “It wasn’t in Milford.”

  She nodded. “But I’m aware of it.”

  “First Sheila, then Ann,” I said. “I think it’s hardest on the girls. Speaking of which, I’m going to find mine now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Wedmore smiled as I moved away. Carrying my coffee, I worked my way through the crowd and over to the door. I thought maybe I’d find the two girls out in the hall, but they weren’t there. The funeral home had several other reception rooms, and as far as I could tell the only one in use was the one for the Slocums.

  I moved down the hall, poking my head into one room, then the next. I heard someone scurrying behind me, and saw Emily. She was alone.

  “Emily!” I called softly.

  She whirled around. “Hi, Mr. Garber.”

  “Where’s Kelly? Isn’t she with you?”

  The girl shook her head and pointed to a closed door. “She’s in there.” And then she darted off.

  The door was marked KITCHEN and instead of a knob had a brass plate. I pushed and the door gave way on its swing hinges. It was bigger than a standard kitchen, no doubt used to prepare foods for events that demanded more than just coffee.

  “Kelly?” I called.

  I stepped into the room and saw Kelly sitting on one of the counters, her legs dangling over the side. Standing before her was Darren Slocum. He would have had to pick Kelly up for her to be sitting there, almost eye to eye with him.

  “Glen,” he said.

  “Daddy,” Kelly said, her eyes wide.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, closing the distance between Slocum and me.

  “We were just talking,” he said. “I was just asking Kelly here a couple of questions about—”

  My fist caught him squarely on the chin. Kelly screamed as Slocum stumbled back i
nto a shelving unit loaded with oversized pots. Two of them went crashing to the floor. Orchestra cymbals would have made less noise.

  It wasn’t long before the screams and the pots brought us an audience. One of the funeral home directors, a woman I didn’t know, and a couple of big guys I suspected were cops burst through the door. They saw Slocum rubbing his chin, feeling the trickle of blood that was coming down from the corner of his mouth. And then they saw me, my hand still shaped into a fist.

  The cops started to move on me.

  “No, no!” Slocum said, holding up his hand. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  I pointed a finger at him and said, “Don’t you ever, ever talk to my daughter again. Go near her again and I’ll take a fucking two-by-four to your goddamn head.”

  I scooped Kelly up in my arms and headed for the parking lot.

  I could just imagine what Sheila would have said. “Punching out a guy at his own wife’s visitation. Smooth.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “What was he asking you?” I asked Kelly as we drove home.

  “Why did you hit Emily’s dad?” she whimpered. “Why did you do that?”

  “I asked you a question. What was he talking to you about?”

  “He wanted to know about the phone call.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I wasn’t supposed to talk about it anymore.”

  “And then what did he say?”

  “He said he wanted me to think really hard about everything I’d heard and then you came in and then you hit him and now everyone’s going to hate me. I can’t believe you did that!”

  I was gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles were white. “You know you were supposed to stay with me.”

  Tears running down her face, Kelly said, “You let me go with Emily’s aunt.”

  “I know, I know, but I told you I didn’t want you to talk to Mr. Slocum. Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “But he came into the kitchen and he told Emily to go and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do!”

  I realized, at that moment, how astonishingly unreasonable I was being. She was eight years old, for God’s sake. What did I expect her to do? Tell Darren Slocum to piss off and walk out? I had no business being furious with her. I could be furious with him, and I could certainly be furious with myself for letting her out of my sight. But I had no reason to take it out on Kelly.