“You think it’s possible,” Wedmore asked, “that she was going to meet someone else before she was going to meet Belinda?”
“Like who?”
“I’m asking you.”
“What’s going on here, Rona? Is there something weird about Ann’s accident I should know?”
“Okay, let’s start there,” she said. “I’ve been down there, to the harbor, a couple of times. And I’ve read the investigating officers’ reports.”
Slocum looked at her curiously. “Yeah?”
“And, I have to tell you, Darren, it’s not coming together for me.”
He took a sip of coffee. He’d put too much cream in it. He grimaced. “What do you mean?”
“The way it looked, initially, is that Ann noticed she had a flat, she gets out to check, leaving the door open, the motor running, goes around the back, on the passenger side, and takes a look, somehow loses her balance, maybe hits her head on the edge of the pier, and goes into the water.” She looked into his face carefully. “Are you okay talking about this?”
“Of course.”
“So I’ve gone down there, and parked in the same spot, and I can’t figure how, exactly, she did it. She hadn’t been drinking before she left.”
“That’s right.”
“When I was down there, I kind of pretended to stumble, you know?” She did a brief demonstration, like she was tripping over her own feet. “There’s plenty of opportunity to catch yourself before you go in.”
“But it was dark,” he reminded her evenly.
“I know. I was down there last night. There’s plenty of streetlights.” She shook her head. “There’s another thing, a big thing.”
Slocum waited.
“You know we took Ann’s car in, just to give it a going-over. The tech guys didn’t notice it at first, but there are these two scratches on the trunk lid.”
“Scratches?”
“It’s an odd place for them. You get them on the bumper, you get them on the doors, but on the trunk lid? Tech guys said they were very recent.”
“I don’t know what they would be.”
“Ann had rings on both hands,” Wedmore said.
“Uh, yes, she did. A wedding ring on her left and another one on her right. Why?”
“If you can picture someone being pushed up against the back of a car, with their hands on the trunk, that’s where the scratches are.” Wedmore demonstrated, holding her arms out and slightly to the back. “They think the scratch marks could have been made by her rings.”
“If she had a flat tire, and went for the spare, she’d have had her hands on the lid.” Slocum turned and dumped his coffee in the sink.
“Except there’s nothing to suggest she ever attempted to change the tire. She hadn’t even turned off the car.”
“Why don’t you just tell me, Rona, what you think happened.”
“I wish I knew. All I know, Darren, is that it doesn’t play out the way it looks. It’s not playing out the way we’re supposed to think it looks.”
He shook his head. “What are you saying? That it was staged?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t feel right. But if that’s all there was to it, maybe I’d have to write it off as one of those things. Like you said, maybe she did somehow stumble, then lost her balance and went in. As unlikely as it seems.”
Slocum’s eyes narrowed. “But you say that’s not all there is to it?”
“No. There’s this business about why she decided to go out for a drive.”
Slocum adopted a puzzled look. “I just told you. Belinda called her. She decided to stop by the harbor first.”
“That was the only call she got?”
“Right. Just before she went out.”
“She wasn’t on the phone earlier that evening?”
“How many times we going to go in circles, Rona?”
“Darren, are you going to keep on playing dumb or you gonna be straight with me here?”
“And why don’t you just level with me? If there’s something you want to put out there, just fucking say it.”
“What about the call she took in the bedroom? The one the Garber girl heard?”
That stopped him. “Rona, I don’t know what people have been telling you, but—”
“Why’d Garber take a punch at you yesterday? What was that all about?”
“Nothing. Just a little misunderstanding.”
“The bullet that went through his daughter’s bedroom window last night, was that just a little misunderstanding, too?”
“Jesus! You think I had anything to do with that?”
“Whoever shot at that house, they may not have been aiming at the kid, but they were sure sending a message. Did you want to send Glen Garber one after he clocked you?”
“Damn it, Rona, you have got to believe, I did not have anything to do with that.”
“Convince me. Tell me why he slugged you at the funeral home.”
“I’m guessing you already think you know the answer.”
She smiled humorlessly. “You were talking to Kelly Garber, without her father’s permission. Even though he’d warned you not to. How does that sound?” When he was silent, she continued. “You’d already tried to talk to her before, and her father wouldn’t let you, or she wasn’t there at the time. How’m I doing?”
“Oh, you’re doing just great. I’m fascinated.”
“And the reason you’ve been so desperate to talk to her is, she was hiding in your bedroom closet when Ann was on the phone. She was having a conversation she chose not to tell you about. This is the phone call that prompted her to head out, not the one from Belinda. Kelly Garber was in that closet when your wife was having this conversation, and you really want to know what she overheard.” She put out her hands, as though she’d just finished a performance. “How’s that?”
Slocum placed his palms on the countertop and pressed down, like he was trying to keep his kitchen from floating away. “I didn’t hear that call, and I didn’t hear Ann talking to that person. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“But you know there was a call. You know Ann was on the phone earlier, and you know the Garber kid was there.” Slocum said nothing, so she carried on again. “Here’s what I don’t get, Darren. First of all, you’re a cop, so you’re trained to look for things that don’t add up. But you don’t seem very curious about the circumstances surrounding your own wife’s death.”
“That’s a lie,” he said, stabbing an accusing finger at her. “If you know Ann’s death wasn’t an accident, I want to know what you know.”
“The thing is, I’m getting this sense you don’t want to know,” she said. “If it was me, and someone I knew died this way, I’d have a hundred questions. But you don’t have any.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
“And I can only think of two, maybe three reasons why that would be. You had something to do with it, or you know who did and you want to settle the score on your own. Or—and I haven’t quite sorted this one out yet—you don’t want us nosing around in this because it’s going to open up a can of worms you’d rather stayed closed.”
“You’re really something else,” he said. “Going after members of your own department. That give you a little thrill? You know the officers talk, right? About you? About how’d you make detective, anyway? Was it one of those equal opportunity things, trying to make up for the lack of black women detectives in the department?”
Wedmore didn’t even blink. “You got anyone who can vouch for where you were all night?”
“What? Are you serious? I was here with Emily.”
“So if I asked her now, she could tell me you never left the house? She never went to sleep?”
“I’m not having you bother my daughter at a time like this—”
“So you’re saying she wouldn’t be able to confirm you were here.”
Slocum’s face was starting to flush with anger. “We’re done.”
Wedmore didn’
t respond.
“You look down on us guys still in uniform. You think, once you make detective, you’re hot shit and the rest of us are just a bunch of grunts.”
“Another thing,” Wedmore said. “I made some calls. You’re coming into some money.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your wife’s life insurance policy. She took it out only a few weeks ago. What’s the payout? A couple of hundred grand?”
“Lady, you’ve got one hell of a nerve—”
“Am I right, Darren?”
“Yeah, okay, so Ann and I both got life insurance. We figured we had enough in the monthly budget to cover the premiums. We wanted to make sure Emily would be okay if something happened to us.”
Wedmore’s look said she wasn’t buying it. “You were married before, weren’t you?”
Slocum balled his fists and now his face turned red. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I was.”
“Did you have a policy on your first wife, too?”
“No,” he said. He actually smiled. “Once they’d diagnosed the cancer, it wasn’t possible for her to get insurance.”
Wedmore blinked. She didn’t say anything for a moment, then pushed the mug across the counter in his direction. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll find my way out.”
THIRTY-TWO
“I have to make a couple of calls before we leave,” I said to Kelly. She rolled her eyes, like we were never going to get out of here, as I went down to my office. My first impulse was to contact the police about Sommer’s visit, but as I picked up the receiver I wondered what, exactly, I’d tell them. The guy oozed menace, but he really hadn’t threatened me. I was the one who said I’d beat him to death, if he came near Kelly.
So I made the other call. To Belinda’s real estate office.
“She’s not in right now,” the receptionist told me. “If you’d like to leave a message, I’ll—”
“What’s her cell number?”
She gave it to me. I hung up and dialed the new number. After two rings, an answer. “Glen?” she said.
“Yeah, Belinda.”
“Could I call you back? I’m just heading off to show a house.”
“No. We need to talk now.”
“Glen, if you called to chew me out about the lawyer thing, I told you, I’m sorry about that, I really am. I never—”
“Tell me what was in the envelope,” I said, removing the lid from the shoebox under the desk and taking it out.
“Excuse me?”
“The one you gave to Sheila. You answer all my questions about it, and it’s yours.”
Silence at the other end of the line.
“Belinda?”
“You found it? So it really wasn’t in Sheila’s car?”
“That depends. You tell me what was in it, and I’ll tell you if I’ve found it.”
She started making funny breathing sounds. I wondered whether she was hyperventilating or something.
“Belinda, are you there?”
Her voice small, whispering. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it.”
“Just tell me.”
“Okay, okay, okay, it was an envelope. A brown business envelope. And there was … there was some money inside.”
“So far, so good. How much money?”
“There should be … there should be sixty-two thousand in it.” She sniffed. She was crying.
I had counted it late last night, and she had it right. “Okay. Next question. What was it for?”
“It was to pay for some merchandise. Some purses. A lot of purses.”
“What else?”
“Just …”
“Belinda, I’m going to start a little fire in the trash can here. And every time you don’t answer my question, I’m going to drop a thousand bucks in.”
“Glen, no! Don’t do that!”
“What else other than purses?”
“Okay, okay, purses, and also some vitamins and—”
“I’m just getting out my lighter.”
“Okay! Not vitamins, exactly. More like pharmaceuticals. Prescription drugs. Discount prescription drugs. Not, like, you know, crack or heroin or anything like that. The kind of drugs that help people. At better prices.”
“What else?”
“That’s mostly it. A few other things, but mostly purses and prescriptions.”
“And where does all this stuff come from?” The receiver felt hot in my hand.
“You know, from purse makers and drug companies.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Instead of setting fire to the money, I’ll just hang on to all of it myself.”
“Damn it, Glen, what do you want me to tell you?”
“Everything!” I shouted. “I want to know where you get this stuff, what you’re doing with it, how Sheila was involved, and why the fuck there’s more than sixty fucking grand in an envelope in my house! I want to know why Sheila had this money, why you gave it to her, what she was supposed to do with it. I want to know what the hell happened that last day! I want to know what Sheila did, where she went, who she saw, right up to the moment she drove her car up that ramp. That’s what I want you to tell me, Belinda. That’s what I want to know.”
Once I was done with my tirade, I could hear her weeping. “I don’t have all those answers, Glen.”
“Tell me the ones you’ve got. I’ve got money to burn here.”
She sniffed. “The Slocums were the ones who first got into it. Darren, he pulled over some guy driving a van up to Boston one night, for speeding or something. And when he checks out the truck, he finds it full of purses. Knockoffs, you know?”
“I know.”
“So instead of giving the guy a ticket, Darren gets asking him about his business, what it’s all about. He’s thinking this would be a good way for Ann to make some money, because she was losing her job about this time, and the police, they were cutting back on overtime. So the guy, he puts Darren onto his suppliers, people out of New York.”
“Okay.” I put my free hand to my forehead. I could feel a massive headache coming on.
“Ann said there was a lot of money to be made, and not just in purses. She said there was watches and jewelry and DVDs and building supplies—she had a couple of customers for some of that stuff. But she was finding that running the purse parties kept her busy enough. She didn’t want me selling the bags, then we’d be competing with each other, but if I wanted to take on some of the other stuff—and, well, real estate’s kind of been slow lately, so I said okay, I’d try the prescriptions.”
“Drugs,” I said.
“I told you, it’s not like that. It’s not like I’m running a crystal meth lab. These are legitimate prescription drugs, made overseas. A lot of it comes through Chinatown—you ever been down around Canal Street?”
“How’d Sheila get involved? How’d she end up with all this money? Why was she doing this delivery?”
“She knew how bad things were going for you, Glen. She was taking the course to help you, but then there was the fire, and hardly any jobs on the horizon, and she wanted to do her part. She’d only just gotten into the prescription thing, she’d only made a couple of sales, enough to buy Kelly some new clothes.”
Oh, Sheila, I thought. You didn’t have to do this.
“The money, Belinda.”
“Ann and Darren, they had a payment to be made. That was the sixty-two thousand. Sometimes, I’d get it to them. They liked their money delivered in person.”
“They?”
“The suppliers. I don’t think Ann or Darren had ever really met them, but there was a contact person. I don’t know his name for sure, but—”
“Sommer? Tall guy, black hair? Nice shoes? Fake Rolex?”
“That could be him. But the thing was, I’d go into the city, and usually I’d just drop the money off in a mail slot or something, although sometimes, when Ann went in, she’d hand deliver it to the guy. But the day before I was to do the delivery, I had two or three calls from people, wanting to se
e properties the next day that I had listed, so I asked Sheila, since she was getting interested, and it was already the day she was going to be out for her class, whether she could do the delivery for me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “And she said yes.” Sheila always said yes when a friend asked for help.
“She did. So I gave her the envelope, with a phone number to call if there was a problem.”
“Sommer,” I said. “Sheila called the number once. To say something had come up. The money never left the house. Why didn’t she do the delivery?”
“I don’t know, I swear. Glen, they’re telling me, if I don’t come up with the money soon, they’re going to do something! We’ve managed to pay some of it back. I’ve maxed out my line of credit and gave seventeen thousand to Darren and Ann, and they put in another eight, for a total of twenty-five. But that still leaves thirty-seven thousand, and if we don’t pay soon, there’s going to be crazy interest on it. Ann told me, before she died of course, that she’d gotten a life insurance policy, but that could take months to pay out, and these people, they don’t want to wait.”
“Maybe you should call the police,” I said coldly.
“No! No, listen, if I can get the money to them, it’ll all be over. I don’t want the police involved. George, he doesn’t even know I’ve been doing this. He’d go crazy if he knew I’d gotten involved in all this.”
“So what the hell happened?” I said, as much to myself as Belinda. “She didn’t make the trip into Manhattan, or if she did, she went without the money. And she didn’t make it to her class or—”
“That class,” Belinda said. “She was liking it so much at first, but that instructor—she was getting kind of fed up with him.”
“You talking about Allan Butterfield? Was he calling her a lot?”
“Yeah. I don’t think it was about homework. Sheila would look at her phone, see it was him, and ignore it.”
All those missed calls on Sheila’s cell. The ones she either didn’t hear or chose not to pick up. “Maybe that’s why she didn’t go to the class,” I said. “But where did she go instead?”
“I guess … I guess she went somewhere to drink,” Belinda said, gently. “I mean, that is kind of what happened. Maybe everything that was going on, she was so stressed out, she just needed to take the edge off, you know? God, I feel like I’m there.”
The Accident Page 22