The Accident

by Linwood Barclay

  About five minutes later I was parked out front of a different house. I walked up to the door and rang the bell.

  Sally Diehl opened the door a few seconds later. She was wearing rubber kitchen gloves, and was carrying a caulking gun.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  SIXTY-TWO

  “You have to come back,” I said. “I need you.”

  “I told you, I quit,” Sally said.

  “When I was in a jam, when I needed help the other day when I was going for Kelly, you were the one I called. You’re the one who always knows how to get things done. You’ve always been the go-to girl, Sally. I don’t want to lose you. Garber Contracting is falling apart and I need you to keep it together.”

  She stood there, brushed back some hair that had fallen across her eyes.

  I said, “What’s with the caulking gun?”

  “I’m trying to finish up around the tub. Theo did this new bathroom but he never quite finished it.”

  “Let me come in.”

  Sally looked at me for another second, then opened the door wide. “Where’s Kelly?”

  “She’s at Emily’s. They’re having some pizza.”

  “That’s the kid whose dad got shot?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Sally asked what had actually happened at Fiona’s house and I filled her in, even though it wasn’t something I liked to talk about.

  “Jesus,” she said. She’d gotten rid of the caulking gun, peeled off the gloves, and taken a seat at the kitchen table. I was leaning up against the counter.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I said. I rubbed my temples with my fingers. “God, I’m getting such a headache.”

  “So Marcus killed Ann?” Sally asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And Sheila, too?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, when he recovers enough that he can talk again, he’ll be willing to tell us everything, although I’m not counting on it. I’m starting to come around to the fact that, you know, maybe Sheila did it.”

  Something seemed to soften in Sally’s face.

  “I tried to tell you,” she said. “But you haven’t been in the right place.”

  “I know.” I shook my head. It was still throbbing. “What about Theo?”

  “Funeral was yesterday. It was horrible, Glen, honestly. Everybody crying. I thought his brother was going to throw himself on top of the casket when they lowered it into the ground.”

  “I should have been there.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I regret the things I said, Sally. Maybe Theo meant exactly what he was saying when he was writing that note to me, that he was sorry. I turned it into something else.” I rubbed my head. “You got any Tylenols or anything? My head feels like it’s about ready to explode.”

  “In the drawer right behind your butt,” she said.

  I swiveled around, pulled out the drawer, and found a veritable pharmacy in there. Different pain remedies, bandages, syringes. “You got an entire Rite Aid in here,” I said.

  “It’s a lot of stuff for my dad. I haven’t gotten around to clearing it out yet,” Sally said. “I’m going to have to do that.”

  I found the Tylenols, closed the drawer, and got the cap off.

  “Tell me you’ll at least think about coming back to work,” I said. “KF’s about to have a nervous breakdown.”

  I shook two pills out onto the counter. When I’d get headaches on the road with Sheila, and didn’t have water to wash down the pills I kept in the glove box, she’d insist we stop somewhere so I could get a drink.

  “You can’t take them dry,” Sheila’d say. “They’ll get stuck in your throat.”

  So I said, “Glass?”

  “In the drying rack,” Sally said.

  I looked at the rack next to the sink. There were a couple of glasses there, a single plate, some cutlery. As I reached for the glass, I saw something I wasn’t expecting to see.

  A baking dish.

  The lasagna pan I hadn’t seen in over three weeks. Browny-orange in color.

  What Sheila always called “persimmon.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  I carefully lifted the pan out of the rack and set it on the counter.

  Sally laughed. “You gonna drink out of that?”

  “What’s this doing here?” I asked slowly.

  “What?”

  “This lasagna pan. I recognize this. It’s Sheila’s. What’s it doing here?”

  “Are you sure?” she said. “I’m pretty sure that’s mine.”

  Sheila and I had a routine over the years. She cooked dinner, I cleaned up. You spend year after year cleaning the same dishes and bowls and glasses and baking dishes, you get to know them like the back of your hand. If this dish had come from our house, it would have a smudge on the bottom near one corner, where the residue from a price tag had never worn away.

  I turned the dish over. The smudge was there, right where I expected it.

  “No,” I said. “It’s ours. This is the dish Sheila always made lasagna in.”

  Sally had gotten out of the chair and walked over to have a look. “Hand it over.” She examined it. She looked inside it, flipped it over, and checked the bottom. “I don’t know, Glen. If you say so, then I guess it is.”

  “How’d it get here?” I asked.

  “Jeez, I don’t know. I know it didn’t fly in through a window. I guess Sheila must have brought lasagna over sometime and I forgot to return it. So shoot me.”

  “Sheila made up a lasagna the day of her accident. She left two plates of it for Kelly and me. But there wasn’t any more of it. I decided to try making lasagna the other day and I couldn’t find the pan.” I held it up. “Because it was here.”

  “Glen, please. Is there a point to this?”

  “Your father died the same day Sheila did. I remember telling Sheila on the phone, just before she was going out, that your dad had passed away. She said we’d have to think of something to do for you. But the minute she hung up, she must have decided to take you the rest of the lasagna. That’s what she did. When people died, she’d always take food to the family. Even people she didn’t know all that well. Like her business teacher.”

  “Honestly, Glen, you’re starting to scare me here.”

  “She came here, didn’t she?” I said. “She came here to see you, to comfort you, and that’s why she didn’t go into the city. That’s why she didn’t have the money with her, why she hid it in the house.”

  “What money? What are you talking about?”

  “She didn’t want to be carrying it around. She came here to bring you a lasagna, to help you deal with losing your father. That afternoon. She thought it was more important to look after a grieving friend than run an errand for Belinda. If she came by here that day, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Glen, Jesus,” Sally said, and with the pan still in one hand, pointed with the other to the Tylenols on the counter. “Take those. I think there’s something wrong with your head.”

  It was pounding more than ever as I tried to figure out why the baking dish was here. I looked away from Sally, just for a second, at the pills, then thought of something else I wanted to say to her.

  I turned back and said, “I was going crazy, trying—”

  All I saw was the baking dish, coming at me. And then everything went black.

  I was at the doctor’s, getting my flu shot.

  “This isn’t going to hurt a bit,” he said as he put the needle into my arm. But the moment it pricked my skin and he found the vein, I shouted out in pain.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” he said. He injected the serum and withdrew the needle.

  “Now,” he said, producing another syringe, “this isn’t going to hurt a bit.”

  “You already gave me my shot,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t be such a baby,” he said. He injected the serum and withdrew the needle.

  “No
w,” he said, producing another syringe, “this isn’t going to hurt a bit.”

  “Wait, no! Stop! What are you doing? Stop it! Get that motherfucking needle away from me you son of a—”

  My eyes opened.

  “Oh good, you really are alive,” Sally said, close enough to me that I could smell her perfume. I had to blink a couple of times to bring her, and the rest of the world, into focus.

  That world was sideways, and above me. I was lying on Sally Diehl’s kitchen floor. A few feet away from me, scattered across the linoleum, was Sheila’s lasagna pan, or what used to be Sheila’s lasagna pan. It had shattered into countless pieces.

  “You got one hard head,” Sally remarked as she knelt over me. “I was afraid I hit you too hard, killed you. But now, I can make this work.”

  She moved back from me and I could see that she was holding a syringe in her hand. “I think that’ll be the last one,” she said. “You’re full up now. You put it straight into the bloodstream, I don’t think you need as much as if you were drinking it.”

  I attempted to roll over so I could look behind me, but there was an obstacle at my back. I realized after another second that it was my hands. They were bound behind me. I could feel something stuck to the hairs on my wrist. Duct tape. Lots of it.

  Sally had crossed the room, grabbed a chair, and dragged it back across the floor toward me. She sat on it backwards, her legs straddling it. She rested her arms on the chair back. In one hand she held a gun.

  “I’m sorry about this, Glen. Between you and Sheila, fuck, you guys. She was too nice, and you, you’re a dog with a goddamn bone.”

  My head was pounding and I could taste blood in my mouth. I sensed I had a pretty good wound in my forehead and the blood had run down my face.

  In addition to the headache, there was something else. A different kind of feeling. Woozy. The room seemed to be circling around me. At first, I figured that was the head injury. But now I wasn’t so sure.

  I was feeling … I was feeling a little drunk.

  “It’s hitting ya, right?” Sally asked. “Starting to feel a little three sheets to the wind and that kind of thing? Got pretty used to giving my dad his insulin. But that’s not what I shot you up with. You’re full of vodka.”

  “Sheila,” I said. “This is what you did to Sheila.”

  Sally didn’t say anything. She just kept looking at me, then at her watch.

  “Why, Sally? Why did you do it?”

  “Please, Glen, just let it kick in. You’ll be feeling pretty good very soon. Nothing’ll seem very important then.”

  She was right. I was already feeling woozy in a way that had nothing to do with getting hit in the head with the lasagna pan.

  “Just tell me,” I pleaded. “I have to know.”

  Sally’s lips pressed tightly together. She looked away, then back at me.

  “He wasn’t dead yet,” she said.

  The words didn’t make any sense.

  “I don’t … What?”

  “My dad,” she said. “It hadn’t worked yet.”

  “I … I don’t get you.”

  “When I talked to you that morning, told you he was dead, he almost was. I’d given him a double dose of heparin, was waiting for it to make him bleed to death internally. But then, the son of a bitch, he rallied a bit. And that was when Sheila came over with the fucking lasagna. She comes right in, doesn’t even knock, she’s all ‘Oh, Sally, I’m so sorry for you, here’s something you can put in your fridge for later.’ And then she sees my dad, still barely breathing, and she’s like, what the hell? ‘He’s alive?’ she says. And then she starts going on about how we had to call an ambulance.”

  I blinked. Sally was going in and out of focus. “You killed your father?”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore, Glen. I gave up my own place—I couldn’t afford the rent spending all my money on his medicines—and I moved in here, but the cost of the drugs, Jesus, and pretty soon I was going to have to put him into care someplace, and do you have any idea what that costs? I’d have to put this place up on the market, too, and with the economy the way it is, what do you think I could even get for this dump? I figured, the day after I ended up on the street, he’d just die anyway. I needed to move things along.”

  She sighed. “I couldn’t have Sheila telling the cops I killed my dad. I hit her in the head, shot her up with booze.”

  “Sally, you’re making this up …”

  “How you feeling, Glen? It must be working, right? Feeling no pain and all that?”

  “The … accident.” I was trying not to slur my words.

  “Just let it go,” she said. “It’ll be better that way.”

  “How … did you do that?”

  Another sigh. “Theo helped. Came over, couldn’t believe what I’d done, but I knew he’d bought those bogus parts from the Slocums, put them in the Wilson house, so he couldn’t say no to me. I drove her car up the ramp, got her behind the wheel, and Theo gave me a lift back. But I’m gonna have to do this one on my own tonight.”

  “Sally, Sally,” I said, trying to keep my head clear despite what was coursing through my veins, “you … you were like family …”

  She nodded. “I know. I feel bad, I do. But I gotta say, Glen, lately? You’ve been a bit holier-than-thou, you know, acting like I wasn’t making the best choices. I’ve made my choices, Glen. I’ve chosen to look out for myself. No one else will.”

  “Theo’s note,” I said. “Saying he was sorry …”

  “I know he was an asshole to you, but the guy had a conscience. It was eating him up. The fire. Sheila. He wanted to confess.”

  “Doug,” I whispered. “You set him up … right? Put those boxes in his truck, take the heat off Theo.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, Glen. It’s all very painful.”

  “How … wait a … fuck no … you killed Theo. That was you.”

  For the first time, I thought she actually looked sorrowful. She rubbed her eyes. “I only did what I had to, okay? Like right now. I’m doing what I have to do.”

  “Your … fiancé …”

  “He phoned me from his trailer, saying he couldn’t stay quiet any longer. Said he had to tell Doug it wasn’t his fault. I said, Theo, don’t do anything till I get there, and when I did, I said okay, call Doug, invite him over, tell him in person, that was the honorable way to do it. And as soon as Theo got off the phone, I walked him into the woods. I’d brought one of my dad’s guns.”

  A tear ran down her cheek.

  “I hid my car, then parked Theo’s truck down by the road so Doug would have to walk in. When he was looking around the trailer, I slipped the gun into his car. Betsy’s car.”

  I was just able to understand it, but my brain was getting cloudy.

  “The thing is, Glen, I’d rather be single, and on the outside, than married and sitting in a jail cell the rest of my life. You have to get up.”

  “What?”

  She got off the chair and knelt down beside me. She held on to the gun with one hand and grabbed my elbow with the other. Yanking on me, she said, “Let’s go. Up. Up!”

  “Sally,” I said, on my knees now and weaving, “you puttin’ me on an off-ramp, too?”

  “No. It has to be different.”

  “What … how?”

  “Come on, please, Glen. You can’t change how this is going to go. Don’t make it hard for both of us.”

  She pulled hard and got me off my knees. She’d always been in good shape, and had the edge on me in size. Plus she had the added advantage of being sober. I tried to get my wrists apart but Sally had done a good job taping them. With enough time, I might have been able to free them. “Where are we going?”

  “To the bathroom,” Sally said.

  “What? I don’t have to go to the bathroom.” I thought a moment. “Maybe.”

  I swayed. I was definitely drunk.

  “This way, Glen. Just take it a step at a time.” She walked me patie
ntly out of the kitchen, through the dining room, where I bumped into a chair, and into the hall that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom.

  I didn’t know what, exactly, Sally had planned, but I had to do something. Try to make a break for it.

  Suddenly, I threw my weight into her, ramming her into the wall with my shoulder. She knocked a commemorative Wedgwood plate, adorned with a profile of Richard Nixon, off its hook and to the floor, where it shattered.

  I turned to run, but my feet caught on the carpet runner and I went down. Without hands to break my fall, I landed on my cheekbone. Pain rocketed through my jaw.

  “Damn it, Glen, stop being such an asshole!” Sally shouted. I turned enough to see her standing over me, the gun pointed at my head. “Get the fuck up, and this time I’m not helping you.”

  Very, very slowly, I got to my feet. With the gun, she pointed to the door to the bathroom. “In there,” she said.

  I stood in the doorway of Sally’s refinished bathroom. Theo’s handiwork was everywhere. The toilet, sink, and tub were gleaming white porcelain. Uneven black-and-white checkerboard tiling covered the floor. Some of the grouting was chipped, and there was a glimmer of the heating cable beneath the tile. It hadn’t been properly covered.

  The new tub had fresh caulking about halfway around. The tub, I was guessing, had never been used.

  But it was full of water.

  “Down on your knees,” Sally said.

  Even in my drunken stupor, it was starting to become clear. Like Sheila, I was going to be found dead in my truck, with a very high blood-alcohol count. But they weren’t going to find me on an off-ramp.

  They were going to find me in the water.

  If I was doing this to someone, I’d run them off the road at Gulf Pond. Put my victim behind the wheel, roll the truck into the water, and let it sink. Hoof it home from there. When they hauled out the body, the lungs would be full of water.

  “It … it won’t work, Sally,” I said. “They’ll put it together eventually.”

  “On your knees,” she said again, sounding only a little impatient. “Face the tub.”

  “I’m not doing it. I’m—”

  She kicked me, hard, in the back of my right knee, and I dropped like a stone.