It occurred to me then, for the first time, that the Slocums could easily have been the suppliers of the breaker panel parts that burned down that house of mine. I vaguely recalled Sally saying Theo had done some work for the Slocums once. And if the parts had actually come through Doug, there was a connection there, too. Betsy had met Ann at the purse party she’d thrown at our house. And it was likely they’d known each other before that.
“The day Sheila died,” I said, “she was doing a favor for Belinda. She was delivering cash for her to a man named Sommer. The money was to pay for all these goods. But it never got delivered. Sheila had her accident. And this Sommer guy, he’s a menacing son of a bitch. He came to see me the other day, and Arthur Twain says he’s a suspect in a triple homicide in New York.”
“What?” Wedmore had taken her notepad out and was scribbling away, but had looked up when I got to Twain and the triple homicide. “Who the hell is Arthur Twain and what triple homicide?”
I told her about my visit from the detective and what he’d told me.
“And then Sommer came to see you? Did he threaten you?”
“He thought I might have the money. That maybe it didn’t burn up in the accident.”
“Did it burn up in the accident?”
“No. I found it. In the house. Sheila’d never taken it with her.”
“Christ,” she breathed. “How much money are we talking here?” I told her. Her eyes widened. “And you gave it to him?”
“Belinda had already called me, hinting around, asking if there was a package with some cash in it, because I think Sommer had been leaning on her pretty hard to make good on the payment. So when I found the money, I gave it to Belinda to pay the guy off. I didn’t want any part of that money.”
Wedmore put down her pen. “Maybe that’s what the call was about.”
“The one Kelly heard?”
“No, the one Darren admitted to. Just before Ms. Slocum went out, Belinda Morton called her. But she never said that was what it was about.”
“You’ve talked to her?”
Wedmore nodded. “I was out to her house.”
I debated with myself whether to tell her the messy truth about George Morton’s relationship with Ann Slocum, and how she’d been blackmailing him. At the moment, withholding that information was my leverage with Morton to get Belinda to back off her story about Sheila. I weighed being totally open with Wedmore against the financial future of my daughter and myself, and decided, at least for now, to look out for my own. But if and when I found out Morton’s handcuff games had anything to do with Sheila’s situation—I didn’t see how they could, unless Sheila really did know about them and that knowledge had gotten her into trouble—then I’d tell Wedmore everything I knew.
“Were you about to say something?” she prodded.
“No. That’s it for the moment.”
Wedmore made a couple more notes, then looked up.
“Mr. Garber,” she said, adopting the same tone my doctor used when telling me not to worry while I awaited test results, “I think the best thing for you to do is go home. Let me look into this. I’ll make some calls.”
“Find this Sommer guy,” I said. “Bring in Darren Slocum and ask him some tough questions.”
“I’m asking you to be patient and let me do my job,” she said.
“What are you going to do now? When you leave here?”
“I’m going to go home and make some dinner for myself and my husband,” Wedmore said. She glanced over at the McDonald’s counter. “Or maybe just take something with me. And then, tomorrow, I’m going to give your concerns all the attention they deserve.”
“You think I’m nuts,” I said.
“No,” she said, looking me right in the eye. “I do not.” Even though I believed she was taking me seriously, her comment that she’d wait until tomorrow to look into this wasn’t good enough. So I’d have to start doing something tonight.
She said she’d be in touch, got up, and joined the line to place an order. I watched her a moment, and then did something of a double take.
There were two teenage boys ahead of her, jostling each other playfully, both looking down at an iPhone or some other kind of device one of them was holding. One of the boys I recognized. He’d been with Bonnie Wilkinson when I bumped into her at the grocery store. He’d stood there when she told me that I was going to get what was coming to me. And not long after that came news of the lawsuit.
Corey Wilkinson. The boy whose brother and father were dead because Sheila’s car was blocking that off-ramp.
I didn’t want to be sitting here when they walked past with their food. I couldn’t even look at him.
I was sitting in my truck, about to turn the key, when the two of them came out of the McDonald’s, each holding a brown paper bag and a drink. They walked briskly across the lot, then got into a small silver car. Corey got in on the passenger side while the other kid slid in behind the wheel.
The car was a Volkswagen Golf, a model from the late nineties. Stuck onto the top of the stubby antenna, which angled up from the back of the roof, was a decorative yellow ball, slightly smaller than a tennis ball. As the car drove past, I could see a Happy Face painted on it.
FORTY-FIVE
Arthur Twain was propped up on the bed in his room at the Just Inn Time, his laptop resting on the tops of his thighs, his cell phone next to him on the bedspread. He had definitely stayed in better places than this, but everything else in town was booked.
He wasn’t making much progress. Belinda Morton didn’t want to talk to him. Darren Slocum didn’t want to talk to him. The only one who’d talked to him at all was Glen Garber. But he had other names, other women who’d attended purse parties Ann Slocum had given. Sally Diehl. Pamela Forster. Laura Cantrell. Susanne Janigan. Betsy Pinder. He’d give Milford another day or two, see if he could talk to some of them, get a better idea how many different places the purses that were being sold out here were coming from.
One thing Twain was certain of: Slocum and his dead wife were like the hub of a wheel out here. They’d brought all sorts of merchandise into this part of Connecticut. Ann sold the purses, they had a couple of people taking pharmaceuticals off their hands and reselling them, and they even dabbled in some home construction supplies, at least the goods that were easy to move, like electrical components. No toxic drywall.
It wasn’t that Twain didn’t care about all that other stuff, but it was the fashion companies that were paying his tab. If following a drug trail led him to the bogus purses, terrific, but otherwise he wasn’t being paid to worry about all those other things. One time, tracking down some fake Fendis, he’d stumbled upon a DVD counterfeiting lab in the basement of a house in Boston. They were stamping out about five thousand copies of movies, some that were still in theaters, every single day. Twain made a call to the authorities who cared about that sort of thing, and the place was raided within the week.
He was composing an email back to the office about how his investigation was unfolding when there was a rapping at the door.
“Second!” he shouted. He set aside the laptop and swung his stocking feet onto the floor. He was over to the door in six steps and peered through the security peephole. There was nothing but black. Twain had never looked through the peephole before. Maybe it was broken, or someone had stuck gum to it on the outside. It was the kind of place where someone might do that, and where the cleaning staff would never notice.
Or maybe someone was holding a finger over it.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Glen Garber.”
“Mr. Garber?”
He hadn’t remembered telling Garber the name of his hotel. He hadn’t even booked in here yet when he went to visit him. He’d given Garber a card, he was sure of that. So why didn’t the man phone him, instead of tracking him down here?
Unless there was something he wanted to tell Twain that he didn’t feel safe discussing over the phone.
If it was Garber.
“Can you stand a bit back from the door?” Twain asked, putting his eye to the peephole again. “I can’t quite see you.”
“Oh, sure,” the man on the other side said. “How’s that?”
The peephole was still black. Which meant it wasn’t working, or the man was still holding his finger over it.
“Can you give me a minute?” Twain asked. “I just got out of the shower.”
“Yeah, no prob,” the voice said.
Twain’s briefcase was on the desk. He opened it, reached into the pouch on the underside of the lid, took out a short-barreled handgun, felt its reassuring heft in his right hand. He looked at his shoes, on the floor next to the bed, and considered slipping them on, but decided not to take the time. He returned to the door, checked the peephole again.
Still black.
He slid back the chain with his left hand, then gently turned the handle.
It all happened in seconds.
The door slammed into him with tremendous force. If all it had done was hit his body, that would have been bad enough. But the bottom of the door mashed the toes of Twain’s shoeless left foot. He screamed in anguish as he went sprawling across the carpet.
A figure came into the room. Low, and fast. Twain had never seen him in person before, but he knew instantly who he was. And he could see that Sommer’s hands were gloved, and that one of them was holding a gun.
Somehow, despite the pain, Twain had managed to hold on to his. His back pressed to the industrial carpet that looked like crushed caterpillars, his legs splayed awkwardly, Twain arced his arm swiftly, desperate to get a bead on Sommer.
Pfft.
Twain felt something hot under his right arm and dropped the gun. He wanted to reach for it, but this new pain, this was something very different than the pain in his foot. It was sapping him, instantly, of all strength.
Sommer moved toward him, stomped a foot on his wrist to make sure he couldn’t get to his weapon. Twain looked up into the barrel of Sommer’s weapon, noticed the silencer attached to the end.
Pfft.
The second shot went directly into Twain’s forehead. A couple of twitches, and then nothing.
Sommer’s cell phone rang. He tucked his gun away and took out the phone.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?” Darren Slocum asked.
“Taking care of that thing you told me about.”
Slocum hesitated, like he was going to ask, then thought better of it. “You said you were going to Belinda’s to get the money, that Garber said to check with her by the end of the day.”
“Yes. I called her. She said she had the money but there was a problem. Something to do with her husband.”
Sommer looked down and took a step away from the body. The blood was moving, and he didn’t want any to get on his shoes.
“That’d be George. He can be a bit of a tight-ass.”
“It won’t be a problem.”
“I’m coming with you. If she has that money, eight grand of it’s owed to me. I’ve got a funeral to pay for.”
FORTY-SIX
I threw the truck into drive and fell into traffic behind the silver Golf.
The night of the shooting at my house, the cop had told Wedmore that my neighbor—Joan Mueller—had seen a small silver car with something round and yellow on the antenna drive past.
This car being driven by Corey Wilkinson’s friend matched that description very nicely.
I moved over a lane and got in behind them. I made a note, on the pad I kept mounted on the dashboard, of the car’s license plate. I suppose I could have stopped following right then and called the plate number into the cops, but that wasn’t the way I wanted to handle it.
I followed them all the way to the Post Mall, where the kid behind the wheel dropped Corey off at the doors near the Macy’s. Corey took all the McDonald’s trash as he got out, waved as his buddy drove off, and shoved the stuff into a nearby garbage bin. He was starting up the steps to the mall when I pulled over, powered down the window, and called out to him.
“Hey, Corey!”
The kid stopped and turned. He looked at me for a good three seconds before he realized who it was. Then he made a “What the fuck?” face and turned to continue on into the mall.
“Hey!” I shouted. “It’s about my window.”
He stopped again, turned more slowly this time. I tried to coax him over with a wave, but he didn’t move. So I said, “We can either have a chat, or I can just call the cops. I got your friend’s license number. Which do you think he’d like you to do?”
He walked over, stood about a foot away from the door. “Get in,” I said.
“What’s your problem?”
“I said get in. You can get in, Corey, or I can call the cops.”
Corey gave it another three seconds, then opened the door. I hit the gas and headed for Route 1.
“Who’s your buddy?” I asked. “What buddy?” he said, looking straight ahead.
“Corey, I can find out who he is. So why don’t you just stop playing dumb and tell me?”
“Rick.”
“Rick who?”
“Rick Stahl.”
“How’d it work the other night? Did Rick drive? And you took the shot?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, hang on, I gotta do a U-turn up here.”
“Why, what?”
“I’m just going to drive you straight to police headquarters. I’ll introduce you to Detective Wedmore. You’ll like her.”
“Okay, okay! What’s your deal?”
I shot him a look. “My deal? Is that what you said? You want to know what my deal is? You clowns shot at my house. You blew the window out in my daughter’s bedroom.” I jabbed a finger at him. “In my daughter’s fucking bedroom! You got that? And she was in the room! That’s what my fucking deal is.”
“Hey, man—”
“I’m as sorry as I can be about what happened to your dad and your brother, and I understand who you believe is responsible, but I don’t care if you think my wife wiped out your entire fucking family tree, you do not shoot into my daughter’s bedroom.” I reached over, took his arm in a vise grip and shook it. “Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
“Ouch! Yeah,” he mumbled.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Yeah!”
I held on to him. “Who fired the shot?”
“We didn’t know anyone was in the room,” he said. “We didn’t even know whose room it was.” I squeezed harder. “It was me. I did it. Rick drove—I don’t have my license yet—and I was in the back seat with the window down and I took the shot as we drove by and I swear to God I just thought I’d hit the house or your car or something like that. I didn’t think I’d actually hit a window. Or that anyone would be inside.”
I gave his arm a painful twist, then let go. We drove the next few miles in silence. Finally, I asked, “Just tell me.”
“Huh?”
“What was the thinking behind this?”
“Thinking?”
I almost laughed. “Okay, I get that there wasn’t very much thinking going on, but what the hell was going on in your head?”
“I just wanted to do something.” He said it quietly. “I mean, my mom, she’s suing you, but I wanted to be able to do something, too.” He glanced over and I could see the tears welling up in his eyes. “It wasn’t just her that lost people. I did, too. My dad and my brother.”
“You wanted to put a scare into us.”
“I guess.”
“Well, you did that. You scared me. You know who else you scared?”
He waited for me to tell him.
“You scared my daughter. She’s eight. Eight. Years. Old. The bullet came in about six feet away from her, through her window. She was screaming her head off. There was glass all over her bed. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
“I hear.”
&nb
sp; “Do you feel better now? Do you feel better about what happened to your brother and your dad now that you terrified a little girl who’d never done anything to you? Is that the justice you’re looking for?”
Corey didn’t say anything.
“Whose gun was it?”
“It was Rick’s. Like, it was Rick’s dad’s. He’s got all kinds of them.”
“I’m going to give you half an hour,” I said.
“I don’t—”
“If I don’t see you in half an hour, I call the cops and I’ll tell them just what you did. You get on the phone to your friend Rick. You two are going to be at my house, in half an hour, with that gun, and you’re going to hand it over.”
“His dad’s not going to let him—”
“Half an hour,” I repeated. “And there’s one more thing.”
He glanced at me anxiously.
“Bring your mother.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” I pulled the truck over to the side of the road and stopped. “Get out.”
“Here? This is, like, nowhere.”
“That’s right.”
He climbed out of the truck. I saw him in my rearview mirror, talking on his cell phone, as I drove off.
They were at my door in thirty-seven minutes. I was actually prepared to give them forty-five before making the call to Wedmore. The two boys, looking very nervous, were accompanied by Corey’s mother. Bonnie Wilkinson was pale and haggard. She eyed me with a mixture of contempt and apprehension.
Rick had a paper bag in his hand.
I opened the door and motioned for them all to come in. No one said anything. Rick handed me the bag. I unrolled the top and looked inside.
The gun.
I said to Bonnie Wilkinson, “They filled you in?”
She nodded.
“If it were just him,” I said, nodding to Rick, “I’d call the cops. But I can’t turn him in without turning in your boy.” The kid had just lost both his father and his brother. I couldn’t be part of dumping any more grief on the Wilkinson family, regardless of the crippling suit the mother had filed against me.
“But if either of them ever tries anything like this again, if they so much as look at my daughter the wrong way, I will press charges.”