I wondered if Doug might have found a way to slip in anyway, and once the cop was done with me I unlocked the place and walked through the office and shed, checking to see whether Doug might be sitting in his truck around back. It was still there, but there was no sign of him.
Once I had the place locked up again, I set off for the house Doug and Betsy had lost the day before. Even though they no longer lived there, I wondered whether Doug might try to break in, grab a few extra things he and Betsy hadn’t been able to drag out onto the lawn with the little time they’d been given yesterday.
As I came around the corner, I saw the Infiniti sitting in the driveway. Doug sat slumped on the front step, his arms resting on his knees, a bottle of beer in his right hand, a cigarette in the other.
“Hey, pardner,” he said, a smile crossing his face. “Can I get you a cold one?” It sounded as though he’d had a few.
I walked toward him. “No, I’m good.”
The lock on the door appeared intact. If Doug had gotten into the house, he’d found some other way to do it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“This is my house,” he said. “Why the hell shouldn’t I be here?”
“It’s the bank’s now, Doug,” I said.
“Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me,” he said glumly, taking a swig from the bottle. “But I always liked sitting out here havin’ a beer. I can still do that.” He patted the concrete slab next to him. “Pull up a chair.”
I sat down on the concrete step.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“Oh, here and there,” he said, drawing on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. “You sure you don’t wanna wet your whistle?” He pointed to the six-pack at his feet. It had one bottle left in it.
“I’m sure. You go out to see Theo last night?”
“Huh?” he said. “How you know about that?”
“He called you.”
“Damn right. Cell going off didn’t wake anybody up but me, though, because I’m sleeping down in the basement on my own.” He blew out more smoke, took another drink.
“What?”
“Yeah, get this. Betsy’s old lady won’t allow me and her sleeping together under her roof. Says it makes her uncomfortable, the idea of people having relations in her house, so I’m in the basement and Betsy’s upstairs. She treats us like we’re a couple of unmarried teenagers or something. Can you believe that? Just between us, I don’t think Betsy’s mom thinks much of me, but I’ll tell you this, she doesn’t have to worry about me and her daughter getting it on. Hasn’t been much of that in a long time. Betsy goes along with these rules, I think, because it means her and her mom can talk about me into the night without me being there.”
“What did Theo want?”
“Said he needed to talk to me, is all. I said, what the fuck is so important you need to talk to me in the middle of the night? And he said, ‘Get your ass up to my place and I’ll tell ya.’ Or something like that.”
“So you went.”
“Is there some sort of problem here, Glenny?” he said.
“Just tell me what you did.”
“I took a drive up. He gave me some directions and I went up there. You know what I think?”
“Tell me.”
“I think he was playing some sort of joke on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I went all the way up there and the Greek son of a bitch wasn’t even there.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“You looked around?”
“His truck was there, but I couldn’t find him around anyplace. I looked in his trailer—he lives in a trailer, did you know that?”
“Yeah.”
“I went inside, looked around, stupid bastard wasn’t no place to be found.”
“What did you do then?”
“Drove around.” He finished off the beer and tossed the bottle onto the grass. “You sure you don’t want that last one?”
“Positive. Maybe it would be better if—”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, grabbed the beer and twisted off the cap. “This one’s a bit warm. But what the hell.”
“So you just drove around.”
“Well, I was already up, and I didn’t much want to go back to Betsy and her mom. No fun up there. And the Infiniti, it’s nice to drive, and God knows how much longer we’ll have it before it’s repoed. Parked down by the beach for a while, must have had a little nap, because before I knew it, it was after ten.”
“Then what?”
“Picked myself up some beer and decided to sit here for a while and contemplate my future.” He grinned. “It’s a tad grim.”
“You never saw Theo at all?”
“Not to the best of my recollection,” he said, and chuckled. He finished his cigarette and tossed it in the direction of the bottle.
“What do you think he wanted to talk to you about?”
“I don’t know, but I sure knew what I wanted to talk to him about.”
“What was that?”
“Why’d he put those boxes of shit parts in my truck?”
“Did he tell you he did it?”
“Fuck, no.”
“But you think it was him? Last time we talked, you were talking like it was KF.”
He offered up an elaborate shrug. “I think I might have been guilty of what they call racist profiling, Glenny. Shame on me.” He theatrically slapped the back of his hand that was holding the beer. “But fuck, Theo? The heat’s already been on him for this. I mean, if he’s the one put that stuff into that house, makes sense he was the one put it into my truck. If I can figure that out, I don’t know why you can’t. I was interested to ask him why he’s trying to screw me over. And I still will, next time I see the bastard.”
“Theo’s dead,” I told him, looking for a reaction.
He blinked tiredly. “Come again?”
“He’s dead, Doug.”
“Well, shit, that’s going to make it difficult to talk to him, isn’t it?” He took a long swig from his last beer. “He electrocute himself? Be fitting.”
“No. He was shot.”
“Shot? You say shot?”
“That’s right. Doug, tell me you didn’t shoot Theo.”
“Jesus, you’re really something else, you know that? First you accuse me of burning our own houses down, now you think I’m going around shooting people?”
“So the answer is no,” I said.
“You gonna believe me if I say so? Because lately, you’re not exactly what I would call a great guy to have in my corner.”
“I’m sorry, Doug. Maybe I, I don’t know, maybe there’s some explanation—”
“Hello, what’s this?” he said, looking down the street.
It was a police car. No siren, no flashing light, just coming up the street. The car stopped at the end of the drive and a female officer got out.
“Douglas Pinder?” she said.
He waved. “That’d be me, sweetheart.”
She said something into the radio clipped to her shoulder, then started walking our way.
“Mr. Pinder, I’ve been asked to bring you in for questioning.”
“You got something to ask, ask.”
“No, sir, you’ll need to come in.”
“Okay if I finish my beer?”
I said, “Doug, do what she says.” To her, I said, “He’s had a little to drink, but he’s harmless.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“I’m Glen Garber. Doug works for me.”
He swung his head around. “I got my job back? That’s good news. We’ve lost a lot of the day but there’s still probably some work we can get done. Just don’t expect me to hammer a nail in straight. And I probably shouldn’t operate heavy machinery.”
Two more police cars were coming up the street.
“What’s this, a convention?” Doug said. “Glenny, do a donut
run.”
“I need you to come with me, sir,” the cop said. “Peacefully.”
“Well, fine then,” he said, and put down his beer. “But first I have to get my wife’s car back to her.” He grinned at me. “Bet the bitch wants to go to the mall.”
“Sir, the Infiniti there, that’s yours?”
The other cop cars had stopped and an officer was coming out of each one.
“It’s Betsy’s,” he said. “You know, to be honest, I probably shouldn’t drive it back right now, anyway. Last thing I need at the moment is a DUI, know what I’m saying?”
The woman gave a nod to the closest approaching officer, and he opened the door on the Infiniti. He leaned in for a look.
“If you want to take it for a spin,” Doug said, “I got the keys in my pocket here somewhere.”
“Sir,” the officer said, more sternly this time than before.
Doug stood, wobbled, and said, “Okay, so what’s the deal-ee-o? What you want to talk to me for?” He looked at me. “This about Theo?”
“Don’t say anything,” I warned.
“Why’s that?” He asked the officer, “Is this about Theo Stamos? My boss here says somebody shot him. That’s pretty weird because I went out to see the son of a bitch last night.”
“Doug,” I said. “For Christ’s sake.”
“Come this way, please,” the officer said, leading him toward her car. He went without objection.
The officer looking into the Infiniti came back out, reached into his pocket, and drew out a latex glove. He pulled it over his hand, snapped it, and leaned back into the car again.
“It’s not that dirty in there,” Doug said as he walked past the Infiniti.
This time, when the officer came out of the car, he had something dangling from his baby finger on the trigger guard. A gun.
“Whoa,” Doug said, just before he was put into the back seat of the police car. “Hey, Glen, check it out! Betsy’s keeping a goddamn gun in the car! I’m definitely gonna have to start being a little nicer to her.”
FORTY-FOUR
I watched them take Doug Pinder away in one car while the other cop staked himself out by the Infiniti, seemingly guarding it. I had a feeling Betsy wasn’t going to get her car back anytime soon. It was headed for the lab, along with the gun that had been found inside.
What a mess.
I wondered whether to give Betsy a heads-up, but figured she’d be up to speed in very short order. That cop posted at her mother’s house was about to get word that Pinder had been found, Betsy’s car impounded. Which would upset her more? I wondered. That her husband was being questioned in a murder investigation, or that she’d lost her expensive wheels?
Their entire world had fallen apart in the last twenty-four hours, on every goddamn level. I felt sick about it for a host of reasons, not least of which because I didn’t believe Doug had it in him to kill someone. I’d allowed myself to believe he’d try to make a buck by using shitty electrical parts, but it was another thing altogether to believe he was a murderer.
But the problem there was, Doug had been up to see Theo. He had reason to be angry with him. And there was a gun in the car. Maybe he had done it, and gotten so drunk after that he didn’t remember. Or was even drunk when he pulled the trigger.
Three times.
You had to be pretty sober to nail someone in the dark—in the woods—three times.
I didn’t know what to think. So I got in my truck and drove back to Garber Contracting. I opened the gate that led onto the property, then unlocked the office. It felt like a weekend. No one around, the place quiet.
The light on the phone was flashing. I picked up and logged into the voicemail. Seventeen messages. I grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and started taking them down, one by one.
“We’re here with the drywall, Glen. Where the hell are you guys? Nobody working today? Was there a holiday no one told me about?”
“I called last week? You put a Florida room on the back of our house last summer? And we’re getting bees in the room, we think they’re getting in someplace and wonder if you could come out and have a look?”
“My name’s Ryan and I wondered if I could drop off a résumé? My mom says if I don’t get a job she’s going to kick me out.”
They went on from there. I noticed, just as Sally had the other day, that none of them were prospects for future jobs. Everything really was turning to shit.
Once I’d made a note of all seventeen, I started calling people back. I was there until nearly five, dealing with subcontractors, suppliers, past customers. It didn’t make me forget my litany of problems, but it at least distracted me from them for a period of time and let me focus on something I was good at.
When I’d dealt with as many calls as I could, I sat back in the chair and let out a long, exhausted sigh.
I looked at the picture of Sheila on my desk and said, “What the hell am I doing?”
My mind went back to the day I was supposed to clean out my father’s garage after he’d passed away. I suddenly found a number of projects that had to be done around my own house. I’d nailed down some loose shingles, fixed a broken screen, replaced a porch step that was starting to rot.
Sheila’d stood there, watching me cut the board to size. When the saw stopped its buzzing, she said, “If you run out of projects here to keep you from dealing with your dad’s stuff, you could try the neighbors. The Jacksons’ chimney’s kind of crumbling.”
She always knew when I was avoiding something. And that’s what I was doing now. I was doing more than avoiding an unpleasant task.
I was avoiding the truth.
The time I’d spent here, catching up on work, writing down phone messages—there was a much bigger problem I wasn’t addressing. I was sweeping leaves off the driveway when the funnel cloud was only a block away.
I’d had no trouble harping at anyone who’d listen that Sheila wasn’t the type to drink and drive. But once I’d gotten the notion that Sheila’d been forced to do what she did, all these horrific images starting coming into my head. Images as bad as those in my nightmare. Flashing before my eyes during every waking moment.
I believed someone had done something horrible to Sheila.
Someone was behind her death. Set it up somehow.
“Someone murdered her,” I said.
Out loud.
“Someone killed Sheila.”
I had nothing concrete. I had no evidence. What I had was a gut feeling born out of the swirling vortex that involved Ann Slocum, her husband, this thug Sommer, Belinda and that sixty-two thousand dollars she wanted Sheila to deliver for her.
It all added up to something.
I believed it added up to murder. Someone put my wife into that car, drunk, and let her die.
And killed two other people at the same time.
I was as sure of it as I’d ever been of anything.
I picked up the phone, called the Milford police, and asked for Detective Rona Wedmore.
“Your wife’s accident didn’t happen in my jurisdiction,” Wedmore reminded me over coffee. She’d agreed to meet me at the McDonald’s out on Bridgeport Avenue an hour after I put the call in to her. She thought I’d called wanting to know whether the police had learned who’d shot at my house. I’d said if she knew, I’d like to know, but if she didn’t, I wanted to talk about something else.
“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who’d use that as an excuse not to look into something,” I said.
“It’s not an excuse,” she said. “It’s a reality. I start sniffing around in another department’s case, they don’t take kindly to that.”
“What if it’s related to a case that’s local?”
“Like?”
“Ann Slocum.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t think my wife’s death was an accident. Which has got me wondering if maybe Ann’s death isn’t exactly what it seems. They were friends, our daughters played together, th
ey were both involved in the same sideline, although to varying degrees. There are just a hell of a lot of coincidences here. And you know Darren’s been on edge about that call Kelly heard. I’m no cop, okay, but it’s kind of like houses. You walk into a place, it might look okay to most people, but I go in, I see things other people don’t see. Maybe the plaster’s wavy in one place, like it’s been patched over in a hurry to cover up where water’s getting in, or you feel the way the boards move beneath your work boots, and you know there’s no subflooring. You just know something’s not right. That’s how I feel about my wife’s accident. And Ann’s, too.”
“Do you have any evidence, Mr. Garber, that Ann Slocum’s death was not an accident?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Something you’ve seen, or heard? Anything definitive that supports what you have to say?”
“Definitive?” I repeated. “I’m telling you what I believe. I’m telling you what I believe to be the truth.”
“I need more than that,” Wedmore insisted.
“You don’t ever go on hunches?” I asked her.
“When they’re mine,” she said, and half smiled.
“Come on, are you telling me you don’t believe it, too? Ann Slocum goes out in the middle of the night after that crazy phone call and ends up falling into the harbor? And her husband accepts the whole thing without question?”
“He’s a Milford police officer,” Wedmore said. Was she really standing up for him, or playing devil’s advocate?
“Please,” I said. “I’ve heard about the allegations against him. And you must know he and his wife, they were running this knockoff purse business on the side. You don’t buy that stuff wholesale from Walmart, and you don’t get your start-up money from Citibank. You have to deal with some very shady people. The Slocums had other people involved in selling knockoff stuff, and not just purses. Prescription drugs, for one thing. And stuff for construction.”