The Accident

  “Well, I had a couple, maybe even three.” Allan’s face was flushed. “But Sheila, actually, I think she was having one. Just a glass.”

  “You did this often with Sheila? Have a beer after class?”

  “No, just the once,” he said. “She always wanted to get home in time to give her daughter a kiss good night.”

  The way the police figured it, Sheila had skipped her class that night to drink away her evening somewhere. They never found out where she’d gone to do it. A check of area bars didn’t turn up any sightings of her, and no area liquor stores remembered selling her any booze that night. All of which meant, of course, nothing.

  She could have sat in the car for hours drinking stuff she’d bought at another time, in another town.

  I asked the police several times if there was any chance there’d been a mistake, and each time they told me toxicology reports didn’t lie. They provided copies. Sheila had a blood-alcohol level of 0.22. For a woman of Sheila’s size—about 140 pounds—that worked out to about eight drinks.

  “I don’t just blame you for not picking up the signals,” Fiona fumed, at the funeral when Kelly was out of earshot. “I blame you for making her turn to drink. You swept her off her feet, no doubt about it, with your common touch, but over the years she was never able to stop thinking about the life she could have had. A better life, a richer life, the kind you’d never be able to give her. And it wore her down.”

  “She told you this?” I said.

  “She didn’t have to,” she snapped. “I just knew.”

  “Fiona, honestly,” Marcus said, in a rare moment that made me quite like the guy. “Dial it down.”

  “He needs to hear this, Marcus. And I may not have it in me to tell him later.”

  “I doubt that,” I said.

  “If you’d given her the kind of life she deserved, she’d never have had to drown her sorrows,” she said.

  “I’m taking Kelly home,” I said. “Goodbye, Fiona.”

  But like I said, she loved her granddaughter.

  And Kelly loved her in return. And Marcus, too, to a degree. They doted on her. For Kelly’s sake, I tried to put aside my animosity toward Fiona. I was still reeling from the news that—evidently—Ann Slocum was dead, when I heard a car pull in to the driveway. I eased back the curtain and saw Marcus behind the wheel of his Cadillac. Fiona sat next to him.

  “Shit,” I said. Before Sheila died, Kelly would stay at their town house one weekend out of six. If I’d been informed that this was one of those weekends, I’d certainly forgotten. I was confused. Neither Kelly nor I had seen Fiona or Marcus since the funeral. I had spoken to Fiona a few times on the phone, but only until Kelly had picked up the extension. Each time, Fiona made it clear she could barely be civil to me. Her contempt for me was like a buzz over the phone line.

  I bounded up the stairs and poked my head into Kelly’s room. She was still asleep.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I said.

  She rolled over in bed and opened one eye, then the other. “What is it?”

  “Grandmother alert. Fiona and Marcus are here.”

  She sat bolt upright in bed. “They are?”

  “Did you know they were coming today?”

  “Uhhh …”

  “Because I sure didn’t know. You better get moving, kiddo.”

  “I kind of forgot all about it.”

  “Did you know?”

  “I might, sort of.”

  I gave her a look.

  “I might have been talking to Grandma on Skype,” she confessed. “And I might have said it would be okay to come out and see me, but I didn’t say an actual day. I don’t think.”

  “Like I said, you better get moving.”

  Kelly slithered out from under the covers just as the doorbell rang. I left her to get herself dressed and went down to answer the door.

  Fiona was up front, ramrod stiff and stone-faced. Marcus hovered just behind her, looking uncomfortable.

  “Glen,” she said. Her voice could cut ice.

  “Hey, Glen,” Marcus attempted. “How’s it going?”

  “This is a surprise,” I said.

  “We came to see Kelly,” Fiona said. “To see how she’s doing.” Her tone implied she doubted my daughter was doing well.

  “Was this one of those weekends?”

  “Do I need it to be one of ‘those weekends’ to see my granddaughter?”

  “We might not have been home. And I’d hate for you to come for nothing.” This sounded reasonable to me, but Fiona flushed.

  Marcus cleared his throat. “We thought we’d chance it.”

  I stepped back to give them room to come inside. “You’ve been talking to Kelly over the Internet?” I asked Fiona.

  “We’ve had some chats,” Fiona said. “I’m very worried about her. I can just imagine what she’s going through. When Sheila lost her father, she was older than Kelly, but she still took it so very hard.”

  “The thruway was a son of a bitch,” Marcus said, still trying to cut through the tension. “Seems like they’re ripping up the roads all over the place.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They do that.”

  “Look,” he said, “I told Fiona, you know, maybe this isn’t such a great idea, just showing up without calling or—”

  “Marcus, do not apologize for me. There’s something I want to discuss with you, Glen,” Fiona said, in a tone MacArthur might have used when he got the Japanese to surrender.

  “What’s that?”

  “Kelly was telling me, during our Skype chat, that things aren’t going very well for her at school.”

  “Kelly’s doing fine. Her grades are even a little better than last year.”

  “I’m not talking about her grades. I’m talking about her social situation.”

  “What about it?”

  “I understand the other children are being horrible to her.”

  “It hasn’t been an easy time for her.”

  “Yes, well, I wouldn’t think so, considering that the boy who died in that accident was a student at Kelly’s school. She’s being tormented. That’s not a good environment for the child.”

  “She told you about the kids calling her Boozer.”

  “She did. So you do know.”

  “Of course I know.”

  “I guess I thought, if you knew, you would have done something about it.”

  I felt that familiar prickling at the back of my neck. I didn’t want to get into this with her, but couldn’t let her get away with it. “I’m doing something about it, Fiona. Rest easy.”

  “Are you moving her to another school?”

  “Fiona, she only told me about this last night. I don’t know what it was like where you went to school, but in Milford the schools aren’t open on weekends. But I’ll be getting in touch with the principal first thing Monday morning.”

  Fiona glared at me a moment, then looked away. When she met my eyes again, she seemed to have made an effort to soften her look. “I had an idea that might preclude you from having to do that, Glen.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Marcus and I talked about the possibility of Kelly going to school in Darien.”

  He gave me another uncomfortable look. It seemed clear this idea had not originated with him.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  She nodded, as though she anticipated my reaction. “I can understand your reluctance. But let’s look at the situation objectively. All the stress Kelly is being subjected to now can’t be good for her academic performance. If she were in another school, where the other students don’t know her situation, or that other boy, it would be a fresh start for her.”

  “It’ll pass,” I said.

  “And,” she continued, ignoring me, “there are several schools within a few miles of our place that come very highly recommended. Their test scores are far superior to the results being achieved in the public schools. Even if Kelly had not suffered such a tragedy, were
not being subjected to this harassment at her school, it would be an alternative worth considering. These are good, solid institutions with impeccable credentials. Many of Fairfield County’s more prominent families have enrolled their children in these schools.”

  “I’m sure they can afford them,” I said.

  Fiona shook her head. “Money’s not a problem, Glen. I’ll look after any tuition-related expenses.”

  I thought I glimpsed something in Marcus’s face at that moment. I told Fiona, “I think it would be a bit much for Kelly to commute from here to Darien every day for school.”

  She smiled slyly at me. “Kelly would be with us through the week, of course, and back here with you on weekends. We’ve already been talking to a designer, someone Marcus knows, about making over the room Kelly stays in when she sleeps over now. She’d have a place for her computer, a desk where she could do her homework, and—”

  “You’re not taking her away from me,” I said bluntly.

  “Not at all,” Fiona said, feigning offense. “I can’t believe you’d think such a thing. I’m trying to help you, Glen. You and Kelly. Believe me, I know how hard it is to raise a child on your own. I’ve been there. I understand what it must be like for you, trying to juggle work and being a father. You’re probably only just getting back into the swing of things, but you wait and see. You’re on a job site, outside of town, you’re waiting for a delivery or an inspection or a client—I don’t know, I don’t pretend to understand what you do—and suddenly realize you have to be at the school to pick Kelly up.”

  “I’ll have to roll with it,” I said.

  Fiona reached out and touched one of my folded arms, quite a gesture for her. “Glen—I know you and I, we haven’t always seen eye to eye. But what I’m proposing here, it’s in Kelly’s best interest. Surely even you can see that. I’m trying to give her every possible opportunity.”

  The thing was, it wasn’t an entirely terrible idea, if I could swallow my pride about who’d be paying for it—there was no way I could afford to send Kelly to a private school here or anywhere else. And if I believed Fiona’s motives were genuine, I might have been willing to entertain the proposal. But I couldn’t help but feel this was an attempt on her part to drive a wedge between my own daughter and me. With Sheila gone, Fiona wanted control over her granddaughter.

  “I told you,” Marcus said to his wife. “I told you this would come across as too pushy.”

  “This really doesn’t involve you, Marcus,” she said. “Kelly is my granddaughter, not yours. There’s no blood connection.”

  He looked my way, as if to say, I know what you’re going through, pal.

  “I am involved,” Marcus insisted. “Kelly would be coming to live with us.” He glanced at me again and clarified. “Through the week. And I’m okay with that, but don’t say it doesn’t involve me, goddamn it. Don’t say that for one second.”

  “Kelly’s staying with me,” I said.

  “Well,” Fiona said, not accepting defeat, “clearly you need some time to think about it. And of course, we’ll want to see what Kelly has to say. She might like the idea very much.”

  “It’s my call,” I reminded her.

  “Of course it is.” She patted my arm again. “Where is the little princess, anyway? I was thinking we could at least take her on a little excursion for the afternoon—maybe to the Stamford mall. Get her a new winter coat or something.”

  “I think Kelly should stay at home today,” I said. “The thing is, something’s happened, something I haven’t even had a chance to tell Kelly about yet, and I don’t know how she’s going to react, but I think she’s going to be very upset.”

  “What?” Marcus was frowning. Probably anticipating his wife lighting into me again, whatever the problem.

  “You know Sheila’s friend Ann? She has a daughter named Emily who’s friends with Kelly?”

  Fiona nodded. To Marcus, she said, “You remember her. She had the purse party here.”

  Marcus looked blank.

  “I can’t believe you don’t remember. She was a real dish,” Fiona said with more than a hint of disapproval. To me, “What about her?”

  “We saw her only last night. Kelly had gone over for a sleepover. But Kelly called me to pick her up early, she wasn’t having a good time, and sometime after that—”

  “Daddy!”

  The three of us turned our heads toward the stairs as Kelly screamed.

  “Daddy, come here! Quick!”

  I took the stairs two at a time and was in her bedroom a good ten seconds before either Fiona or Marcus could get there. Kelly was at her desk, still in her yellow pajamas, perched on the edge of her chair, one hand on the mouse, the other pointing at the screen. She was on one of the sites where she chats with her friends.

  “Emily’s mom,” she said. “It’s about Emily’s mom—”

  “I was going to tell you,” I said, getting my arm around her and giving Marcus and Fiona a look that said Get out of here. They retreated. “I just found out myself, honey—”

  “What happened?” There were tears in Kelly’s eyes. “Did she just die?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I guess she did. When I called their house this morning—”

  Kelly squirmed in my arms. “I told you not to call!”

  “It’s okay, honey. It doesn’t matter. I thought it was Emily’s mom who answered, but it was her aunt, her mother’s sister. She told me that Mrs. Slocum had died.”

  “But I saw her. Last night. She wasn’t dead then!”

  “I know, sweetheart. It’s a shock.”

  Kelly thought a moment. “What should I do? Should I call Emily?”

  “Maybe later, okay? Emily and her dad, they need some time alone.”

  “I feel all weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  We sat there for what seemed a very long time. I held on to her, cradling her in my arms as she cried.

  “My mom, and now Emily’s mom,” she said softly. “Maybe I’m, like, a bad luck charm or something.”

  “Don’t say that, sweetheart. Never say that. It isn’t true.”

  When she stopped sobbing, I knew I needed to broach the subject of our visitors. “Your grandmother and Marcus want to take you out for the afternoon.”

  Kelly sniffed. “Oh.”

  “And I think your grandmother wants you to go to school in Darien. Any idea why she might want that?”

  She nodded. She didn’t look very surprised. “I guess I might have told her I hate my school.”

  “Online,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, now your grandmother wants you to live with her through the week and go to school in Darien, come back here to me on weekends.”

  She slipped her arms tight around me. “I don’t think I want to do that.” A pause. “But at least, if I did, the kids there wouldn’t know anything about me, they wouldn’t know what Mom had done.”

  We held each other for another minute.

  “If Emily’s mom had a disease or something, like Evian flu, will I catch it? Because I was in her bedroom?”

  “I don’t think someone could come down with the flu and die from it in just a few hours,” I said. “A heart attack, maybe. Something like that. But not something you could catch. And it’s avian flu, by the way.”

  “You can’t catch a heart attack?”

  “No.” I looked her in the eye.

  “She doesn’t look even a little bit sick in the video.”

  That stopped me. “What?”

  “On my phone. She looks fine.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When I was in the closet, I had my phone ready to take video of Emily when she opened the door. I told you that, Daddy.”

  “You didn’t tell me you shot video of her mother. I thought when Mrs. Slocum came in you put your phone away.”

  “Like, pretty soon after.”

  “You still have it?” I asked.

  Ke
lly nodded.

  “Show me.”

  TWELVE

  “Darren, I need to ask you some questions.”

  He was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car parked in his driveway. Behind the wheel was Rona Wedmore. She was a short, stocky black woman in her mid-forties. She had on a tan leather jacket and jeans, and there was a gun holstered to her belt. Her short hair was sensibly styled, although lately she had been streaking just a few strands, so there was this pencil-thin line of silver-gray that swept across the top of her head. The sort of thing that said she was her own person, without shouting it from the rooftops.

  They were sitting in an unmarked police car. Darren Slocum had his hand on his forehead, shielding his eyes. “I just can’t believe it,” he groaned. “I just can’t. I can’t believe Ann’s gone.”

  “I know this is a tough time. But I need to go over a few things with you again.”

  Rona Wedmore knew Darren. Not well, but they did have the same employer, after all. He was a Milford street cop and she was a police detective. They’d worked several crime scenes together, knew each other well enough to say hello, but they were not friends. Wedmore was aware of Slocum’s reputation. At least two complaints of excessive force. Rumors, never proven, that he’d helped himself to some cash at a drug bust. And everyone knew about Ann’s purse parties. Darren had once asked Wedmore if she’d consider hosting one, and she had declined.

  “Go ahead,” he said now.

  “What time did Ann go out last night?”

  “It would have been nine-thirty, quarter to ten, around then.”

  “And did she say why she was going out?”

  “She got a phone call.”

  “Who called her?” Wedmore asked.

  “Belinda Morton. They’re friends.”

  Darren Slocum knew that wasn’t the only call. He knew there had been one before that. Ann had spoken to someone else. He’d seen the light on the extension come on. And he knew, from talking to Emily later, that the Garber kid had her own cell phone. That she hadn’t, as Ann had suggested, used their landline to call her father to pick her up.

  “Why were they getting together, Belinda and Ann?”

  Darren shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re friends. They talk to each other all the time, cry on each other’s shoulders. I figured they were going to grab a drink somewhere.”