The Accident

by Linwood Barclay

  “Yeah. But she’s gonna rub our noses in it.”

  “If she’ll give you a place to live, suck it up and take it,” I told her.

  “I guess.”

  “Doug,” I said. He didn’t look up. “Doug.” Slowly, he lifted his head. “I’ll give you a hand, putting this stuff in your truck. You can store it at the shed.” That was the building where we kept equipment, out back of the Garber Contracting office off Cherry Street. “Probably going to take a couple of loads.”

  He got up slowly, picked up a single DVD—a Predator movie—and walked it over to his truck like a condemned man. He opened the tailgate and tossed it in.

  Loading up was going to take a long time at this rate.

  I stuffed some clothes that were spilling out of a suitcase and managed to zip it shut. “This’ll probably go to your mom’s, right?” Betsy nodded. “So you might as well put it in your car.”

  Moving equally slowly, she took the case and threw it into the back seat of her Infiniti. Neither of them said a word for the next half hour as the three of us picked up their belongings from the front yard and put them either in the car or truck. The dresser and the end tables wouldn’t fit anywhere, so Doug said he’d come back for those later.

  “You heading over to the office?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got another stop to make.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Finding the right house on Ward was a piece of cake. There are a lot of older, quaint, seaside-type homes down in that part of Milford, places that shared the kinds of architectural details you’d expect to find on houses on Martha’s Vineyard or somewhere up on the Cape. Sheila and I used to talk about shifting over a few blocks into this neighborhood, but whether you moved down the street or across the country, you still had to pack the same amount of stuff.

  But those discussions had been a long time ago.

  It was a two-story, green, wood-shingled house with gingerbread trim, and as I’d guessed, there was a Dumpster in the driveway. Parked in front and to the side of it were three pickups, one advertising a plumber on one door, another the name of a contracting company, and the third with Theo’s Electric on the side. A few feet away from the back of the truck, a worker had set up a couple of sawhorses for a makeshift table and was cutting two-by-fours into shorter lengths with a circular saw.

  “Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  He nodded, then took in my name on the door of my truck. “Can I help you?”

  “Glen Garber,” I said. “You in charge here?”

  “Naw, I’m Pete. You’d be looking for Hank. Hank Simmons. He’s inside.”

  I knew Hank. Over time, you got to know the other people in town who were doing the same kind of work.

  “How about Theo? He around?”

  “His truck’s right there, so he can’t be far.”

  “Thanks.” I took a step toward him, admiring the circular saw. “Nice. A Makita?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I have a look?”

  He got a good grip on the saw and handed it to me. I took it from him, felt the heft of it in my hand, squeezed the trigger for a millisecond to make it whine. “Very nice,” I said. I gave a couple of tugs on the extension cord so I could move around to the back of Theo’s truck with it.

  “What are you doing?”

  I crouched down where the decorative, flesh-colored sack was suspended from the bumper. I got myself into a secure stance. When you performed a delicate operation like this, you didn’t want any accidents.

  “Jesus, what are you doing there?”

  I pulled back the housing that shielded the circular blade, held it there with one hand, then hit the trigger with my index finger. The saw buzzed to life. Carefully, resting my elbow on the top of my knee for support, I sliced through the top of Theo’s bumper decoration. I eased off the trigger as the truck nuts dropped to the driveway.

  I let the shield drop back into place, and when the saw had stopped whining, handed it back to Pete.

  “Nice piece of equipment,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” he yelled. “Are you crazy?”

  Bending from the waist as though I were picking up a golf ball, I picked up the nuts and tossed them a couple of times in my hand. “You say Theo’s inside?”

  Pete, dumbstruck, nodded.

  “Good, I’ll give these to him,” I said, and left Pete standing there, no doubt wondering whether to keep working or follow me inside to see what happened.

  He decided to stay outside, but he didn’t turn the saw back on.

  I walked through the open front door and could hear the sounds of workmen echoing through the house. A hammer tapping, the pneumatic sound of a nail gun, men kibitzing back and forth, the noises echoing because the house was without furniture.

  A man in his sixties standing in the front hallway looked me up and down. “Hey, Glen Garber, you old son of a bitch! How you doin’?”

  “Not bad, Hank,” I said. “Still building houses that fall down if you slam the door too hard?”

  “Pretty much,” he said. He spotted the truck nuts in my hand. “I like to keep mine in my pants but to each his own.”

  “I’m looking for Theo.”

  “Upstairs. Anything I can help you with?”

  “No, but I might be able to help you with something. I’ll catch you on the way out.”

  I went up the stairs, which were lined with clear plastic to protect the carpeting underneath. When I got to the second floor, I called out Theo’s name.

  “In here!” he shouted.

  I found him in an emptied master bedroom, down on his knees, stripping wires for new outlets. I stood in the doorway.

  “Hey, Glen,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  I tossed the detached truck nuts onto the floor in front of him. “I believe those are yours,” I said.

  He looked down at them and his face flushed red with anger. “What the fuck?”

  “It was you, you son of a bitch,” I said.

  “What?” he said, getting up onto his feet. “What was me?”

  “I heard back from the fire department.”

  “Yeah, so?” He glanced down again at the rubber testicles, like they were a dog that had been run over in the road.

  “So, you burned my house down. Those parts you put into the circuit breaker panel were shit.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “I figure this is how it works,” I said. “You cost out a job based on what true-blue, American parts cost, then you buy this knockoff crap from China or wherever it comes from for a fraction of what the real stuff costs, and you make yourself a tidy little profit. Only problem is, the stuff doesn’t meet code, Theo. The stuff can’t handle the load. And the breakers don’t trip. And then you’ve got a house on fucking fire.”

  Hank Simmons was standing in the hall behind me. “What’s going on here?”

  “Have a listen,” I said over my shoulder. “You’re going to want to know about this.”

  “You can’t go around saying stuff like that,” Theo said. Taking one last glance at his castrated bumper adornment, he added, “And you don’t fuck around with a man’s truck.”

  “I just felt a guy who doesn’t have any’s got a lot of nerve hanging a pair from his bumper,” I said.

  I was ready for him.

  When he took a swing at me, I ducked under it and put my right fist hard into his gut. As fights go, it lacked excitement. My punch took the wind out of him and he dropped to the floor.

  “Shit!” he howled, clutching his stomach.

  Hank grabbed my arm but I shook him off. “Jesus, Glen, what the hell are you doing, coming in here and—”

  I pointed to the man on the floor. “Hank, if I were you, I’d take a good long took at anything he’s installed in this house. This guy burned one of my places down.”

  “It’s not … my fault!” Theo gasped.
/>   “That house on Shelter Cove?” Hank asked.

  “He put bogus electrical parts in it,” I said.

  “Goddamn.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. And insurance companies don’t much like to pay off when you build a house with that kind of stuff.”

  “He’s done a couple of my other jobs,” Hank said worriedly. Looking down at Theo, he said, “This true? I swear to God, if you’ve—”

  “He’s lying!” Theo wheezed, getting onto his knees. “I’m gonna have you charged! I’m gonna have you charged with assault!”

  I turned to Hank. “Did you see him take a swing at me first?”

  Hank said, “I believe I did.”

  “See you later, Theo,” I said.

  I turned and started down the stairs. By the time I was out the front door, I could hear Theo coming up behind me. I spun around, figuring he was going to try to jump me, but he wasn’t making any aggressive moves.

  “You got me all wrong, man,” he said. “It’s not my fault.” There was the sound of pleading in his voice.

  “Sure,” I said. I stood my ground. “You’re finished. You’re done. I’m going to tell everyone the kind of work you do. There’s not going to be a contractor in Connecticut who’ll hire you.”

  “Don’t do this, man. I only tried to do my best. You’ve always done right by me.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t actually end up killing anybody,” I said. “You nearly killed me.”

  I got in my truck, feeling exhilarated. It was almost a kind of high, working out my anger and frustrations on Theo. He had it coming.

  But it didn’t take long for the elation to fade away into regret. I’d just punched Theo Stamos, the man Sally Diehl was intending to marry, to spend the rest of her life with. I’d just promised to make it impossible for him to ever work in this state again.

  Sally was going to be pissed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  When I got to the office, Sally’d been crying.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  “I already heard.” She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Sally, come into my office.”

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  “Damn it, get in here.” I took her gently by the arm and led her into my office and put her in a chair. Rather than get behind the desk, I pulled over another chair and sat up close to her.

  “He says you cut off the thing,” she said. “From his truck.”

  “That’s what he’s upset about?” I asked.

  “And he says you hit him. How could you do that? How could you hit him?”

  “Look, Sally, he took a swing at me. I was defending myself.” I didn’t tell her how much I’d provoked him. I pulled a couple of tissues from a box and handed them to her. “Pull yourself together.”

  She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “You already heard from Alfie, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said the circuit breaker panel didn’t meet code. It was garbage. Cheap knockoff parts.”

  “And right away you blame Theo?”

  “Sally, he did the work.”

  She crumpled the tissue in her hands. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s his fault. Like, what if someone gave him the wrong parts and he couldn’t tell the difference?”

  “Look, Sally, I’m really sorry about this. I’m sorry about how this affects you, because you’re special to me. You know that Sheila, when she was still around, and I have always thought the world of you. Kelly loves you. I’d bend over backwards to give Theo the benefit of the doubt, because I know he means a lot to you, but—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know exactly how much he means to me. But he’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

  “Well, look, that’s something you have to work out. And what I have to do, Sally, is I have to protect myself, and this company, and the people like you who work for me, and if someone does work for me that’s unacceptable, that leaves us exposed to possible lawsuits, that could end up getting someone killed, for crying out loud, then I have to do what I have to do.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “But I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.”

  She nodded, dabbed at her eyes again. “I know.”

  “And I know that this has been a tough time for you. Losing your father. No other family here to help you out.”

  “He was just … one minute he was okay and the next he was gone.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s hard. Look at my dad. One second he’s hauling plywood off a truck, the next he’s dead.”

  She nodded. “You were there,” she said.

  “Yeah, I was there when he died.”

  “No, I mean, my dad’s funeral. I couldn’t believe it when you came to the funeral.”

  “Sally, I wasn’t going to not be there for you.”

  “Yeah, but you had a funeral to get ready for, too. I always felt bad.”

  “You always felt bad about what?”

  “That I didn’t come to Sheila’s.”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “No, I feel real bad. I mean, if you could come to my dad’s, why couldn’t I go to your wife’s funeral the day after?”

  “It was hard for you,” I said. “You’re just a kid, really. No offense. You get older, you can handle these things.” I tried to make a joke. “You learn to multi-grieve.”

  “I thought I was the office multitasker.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “ ‘Give it to Sally, she can handle a hundred things at once.’ I guess not always.” After a couple of more dabs at her eyes, she asked, “Is Theo finished? Is he ever going to get work around here again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He said you’re going to ruin him.”

  I let out a long sigh. “He’s ruined himself.”

  That, evidently, rubbed her the wrong way. Abruptly, she pushed back her chair and stood up. “You’re a hard guy to love, Glen. Sometimes, you can be such a hard-ass. Now we’re going to have to move away, and I’m going to have to get a job someplace else.” She stormed out of the room with one last shot. “I hope you’re happy.”

  I wasn’t, particularly.

  Sally went home after that. It was, after all, quitting time. The last thing she’d told me, in short, clipped sentences, was that Doug had left his truck, full of stuff, around the back of the shed, then taken off with Betsy in her Infiniti to go see the bank before it closed about the mess they were in. Sally said Doug had asked, if I had a chance, would I mind unloading his truck.

  I put my head in my hands for a few moments. Then I opened my bottom desk drawer and took out a half-full bottle of Dewar’s and a shot glass, and poured myself a drink. I put the stopper back in the bottle and tucked it into the drawer.

  I downed the drink, then went to the shed. I didn’t know that I could do much for Doug in his current predicament, but letting him and Betsy store their stuff here was at least something. There was a lot of room in the shed, and if their things were stacked efficiently they wouldn’t take up that much space. Unloading Doug’s truck would mean one less thing he had to deal with when—and if—he showed up for work tomorrow morning.

  I felt sick about Doug. It was a strained relationship we had at times, particularly lately. We’d worked side by side for several years while my father was alive, more or less equals on the job. We not only worked together. We played. Everything from golf to video games. Our wives commiserated while their two grown men would kill an afternoon immersed in a Super Mario Bros. time-waster. And to prove we weren’t just children, we would get drunk at the same time. Doug had always been a carefree guy, someone who didn’t see much point in worrying about tomorrow when it was a whole night’s sleep away, and the unfortunate thing was he’d married someone who worried even less. Not, as today’s events proved, an ideal match.

  His lackadaisical approach to life hadn’t been a problem when we w
orked together, but after my father died and I took over the company, and Doug became an employee instead of a coworker, things changed. First of all, we no longer hung out as a foursome. When I became the boss, Betsy didn’t like the way the scales had tipped between her and Sheila. Betsy imagined Sheila somehow lording it over her, like I’d somehow morphed into Donald Trump and Sheila was Ivana, or whomever Trump was married to these days.

  The qualities that had once endeared Doug to me now occasionally drove me to distraction. His work was always good, but there was the odd day he phoned in sick when I knew he was hungover. He wasn’t as attentive as he could be to customers’ concerns. “People watch too many of those home reno shows,” he often said. “They expect things to be perfect, but it’s not like that in the real world. Those shows, they’ve got big budgets.”

  Clients didn’t like to hear those kinds of excuses.

  If we hadn’t at one time been buddies, Doug probably wouldn’t have felt he could hit me up for advances on his salary. If we hadn’t at one time been buddies, I would have said no the first time he asked, and not set a precedent.

  I wanted to help him out, but I couldn’t rescue Doug. He and Betsy were going to have to hit rock bottom before they were able to pull themselves up again. I understood what he said about the banks, about those mortgages that were all too good to be true. He wasn’t the only one that got sucked in.

  A lot of people were learning their lessons. I just hoped Doug and Betsy were able to learn theirs before they killed each other.

  I opened the tailgate of Doug’s truck and the window of the cargo cap above it. Because the Pinders had not had time to organize their things, everything had been tossed in loose. I opened the door to the shed and cleared a spot in one corner for the stuff, and brought out a couple of chairs, a DVD player, some linens. They probably should have taken that to Betsy’s mom’s place, but they could sort that out later.

  I had the truck nearly emptied when I noticed a couple of cardboard boxes, about the size a dozen bottles of wine would come in, tucked up close to the cab. I crouched down and walk-squatted the length of the truck bed. You spend enough time in construction, you can walk in the back of a pickup like that without getting a groin injury or pulling a hamstring.