“It’s a rash,” he said. “Don’t touch it or you’ll catch it. It’s very contagious.”
“What, is it poison ivy?”
“Something like that. I was just trying to protect—”
The doorbell rang. That stopped both of them.
“Well, there’s someone here,” George said. “You want to go see?”
Belinda glowered at George as he hit the button to restore Judge Judy’s lecturing. She headed for the front door, swung it open without even thinking, because she wasn’t expecting Sommer. She’d told him to call and they’d arrange a meeting tomorrow, by which time she was counting on finding a way to persuade George to unlock the safe.
It looked as though there had been a change in plan.
“Oh God,” she said. “I thought we said tomorrow. I need another—”
“No more time,” Sommer said, stepping in and closing the door behind him.
“Who is it?” George called out.
“My husband’s home,” Belinda whispered.
Sommer gave her a “So what?” look. “You do have the money.”
She tipped her head in the direction of her husband’s voice. “He found the cash, thought there was something fishy about it, and he won’t take it out of his safe until I tell him what it’s for.”
“So tell him.”
“I told him it was a down payment for a property. But he doesn’t believe me. George is a stickler for proper paperwork and receipts and documentation.”
Sommer sighed, looked off toward the family room. “I’ll show him some documentation,” he said.
And Belinda thought, What the hell, I’ve tried everything else.
Slocum got out his cell phone, hit a button, put the phone to his ear.
“Hi, Daddy,” Emily Slocum said.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
“Did you want to talk to Aunt Janice?”
“No, I just wanted to talk to you.”
Darren Slocum kept his eyes on the house up the street, hoping Sommer would return shortly. These situations made him very uncomfortable. He had no illusions about what kind of person Sommer was. He knew full well what he was capable of. Ann had told him what had happened on Canal Street, what she’d seen him do. Sitting out here in the car, wondering just how far Sommer might take things, it worried him.
But if Sommer got his money, if this went without incident, this could be the end. You’re all paid up, he’d tell him. Go find someone else to sell your stuff out here. With Ann dead, Slocum wanted out. No more purse parties, no more bringing in prescription drugs for Belinda to sell. No more home construction stuff for Theo Stamos.
Slocum wanted out. Out of this business. And out of Milford.
He figured his days as a cop were numbered. His bosses were still looking into that stolen drug money, the cash he’d used as start-up money for their business. Even if his bosses couldn’t nail him for it, the stench around him was only going to get worse. Maybe he’d hand in his badge. If he walked away, odds were they’d deep-six the investigation. Getting him off the force would satisfy them. He’d move. Maybe upstate New York. Pittsburgh. Get a job in security or something.
In those moments when Slocum felt shame about the path he’d decided to take, the choices he’d made, the people with whom he’d aligned himself, he phoned his daughter. A man who loves his daughter, he told himself, can’t be all bad.
I am a good man. My little girl means more than anything to me.
So, waiting for Sommer to show, he placed the call.
“Where are you, Daddy?” Emily asked.
“I’m sitting in a car waiting for someone,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You must be doing something,” he said.
“Aunt Janice and I were on the computer. I was showing her how many friends I’ve got and what their favorite things are. I wish you’d come home.” Her voice was so sad.
“I will, soon. Once I wrap up a few things.”
“I miss Mom.”
“I know. I do, too.”
“Aunt Janice said we should go on a vacation. Me and you.”
“That’s a good idea. Where would you like to go?”
“Boston?”
“Why Boston?”
“That’s where Kelly says she might go.”
“Kelly Garber’s in Boston?”
“Not right now. She’s at her grandma’s.”
“Well, I think it’d be good for me and you to go someplace, and if you want it to be Boston, that’s okay with me.”
“They have an aquarium.”
“That’d be fun,” Slocum said, watching a set of headlights coming up the street. “See all kinds of fish and sharks and dolphins.”
“When do I have to go back to school?”
“Next week, I guess,” Slocum said.
The car was stopping across from the Morton house, pulling over. The headlights went off.
“Sweetheart,” Slocum said, “Daddy has to go. I’ll call you again later.”
Belinda led Sommer into the family room. George shifted in his leather recliner when he sensed her approach. He grabbed the remote, hit the mute button again.
“Hey,” he said, seeing only Belinda first.
“Someone here to see you,” she said.
George peered up and saw Sommer standing there. “Well, hello. I don’t believe we’ve—”
Sommer grabbed hold of George by the back of the neck, hauled him out of the chair, and propelled his head directly into Judge Judy. The plasma TV shattered.
No one got out of the car right away after the headlights went out. But Slocum thought he could make out the driver looking at the Morton house. Thinking about what to do, maybe.
Slocum thought, Who the hell is this?
The flat-screen TV shattered. George screamed. Belinda screamed.
Sommer dragged George away from the TV. The top of his head was bloodied and he was flailing his arms about wildly, trying to strike out at Sommer, getting in the occasional slap that might have worked with a mosquito but wasn’t going to have much effect here.
“Where is it?” Sommer asked.
“What?” George whimpered. “What do you want?”
“The money.”
“My study,” he said. “It’s in my study.”
“Lead the way,” Sommer said, but held on to George by twisting a fistful of shirt at the back of the neck.
“You didn’t have to do that!” Belinda shouted at Sommer. “He’s bleeding!”
With his free hand, putting his palm directly on her right breast, Sommer shoved her out of the way. Belinda stumbled back against the doorjamb.
“It’s in a safe, is that right?” Sommer asked.
“Yes, yes, it’s in the safe,” George said, steering them into his study and around his desk. “It’s in the wall, behind that picture over there.”
“Open it,” Sommer said, shoving George across the room until his face was forced into the portrait of his father.
Sommer let up on the pressure slightly so George could swing the picture out of the way to reveal the safe with the combination lock.
“So this is the kind of people you’re doing business with,” George spluttered at Belinda.
“You stupid bastard!” she screamed at him. “You brought this on yourself!”
George put his fingers on the dial, but they were shaking. “I … I don’t know if I can do it.”
Sommer sighed. He switched his grip on George from his right to his left hand, then pulled him out of the way so he could twist the dial himself. His hand was rock steady.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Okay, okay, okay, spin it a couple of times around to the right, then left to twenty-four, right to eleven—”
I’ll be damned, Belinda thought. He used my birthday.
Just as George was about to call out the third number, which Belinda was now able to predict, there was a ringing in the room.
A cell phone.
Belinda kept hers on when she was home, but it wasn’t her ring tone. George always turned his off when he wasn’t out somewhere. So it had to be Sommer’s. But with one hand on George and the other still spinning the dial, he didn’t have much choice but to ignore it.
The driver’s door opened. Slocum squinted, trying to get a look at who it was.
The person started crossing the street.
“Get under the light, get under the light,” Slocum whispered through gritted teeth.
It was as though Slocum’s pleadings could be heard. The person stood, just for a moment, under the streetlamp. Still looking at the house. Slocum could now make out who it was.
“Shit, no,” he said, and reached into his pocket for his cell phone. He flipped it open, called up Sommer’s number, hit the button.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.”
Sommer spun the dial to the last number, heard the tumbler fall into place, and swung open the safe door. By the time he’d done that, his cell had stopped ringing. He let go of George’s shirt and reached in for the cash-stuffed envelope.
“At last,” he said.
George, sensing an opportunity, started to bolt. But he wasn’t fast enough for Sommer, who dropped the envelope, turned, grabbed George by the arm and threw him into the leather office chair. It pitched over as George fell into it.
Sommer reached into his jacket and pulled out his gun. He aimed it straight at George and said, “Don’t be an idiot.”
But Belinda screamed when she saw the weapon, so George barely heard Sommer’s warning.
And none of them heard the doorbell.
FORTY-NINE
Once Betsy and her mother had driven off, I went upstairs to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I looked in the mirror, at the bags under my eyes. If I’d ever been this run-down before, I couldn’t remember when.
I came out of the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed I’d shared with Sheila. I ran my hand across the spread, over to where she used to sleep. This was where we’d come to rest every night, where we’d shared our hopes and dreams, where we’d laughed and cried, where we’d made love, where Kelly had begun.
I put my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands and stayed that way for a few moments. I could feel tears welling up, but I refused to let them out. This wasn’t the time.
I took a few deep breaths, tamped down the hurt and the pain and the sorrow.
“Pull it together, dipshit,” I said. “You got places to go, people to see.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what all those places, or who those people, might be. I couldn’t sit still. I wasn’t going to sit around while Rona Wedmore ate her Big Mac and fries and then went to bed and waited until tomorrow to follow up on the things I’d told her. I wanted to find things out now. I had to keep moving, keep asking questions.
I had to know what had happened to Sheila.
I knew what she would say to me right now if she could: “Make one of your lists.”
I kept a notepad and a pen on the bedside table for the times I woke in the middle of the night, thinking something like This is the day the countertops are going into the Bernsteins’ place, I gotta make sure the cabinet guys are ready. I’d make a note so I wouldn’t forget.
When I put pen to paper, I found I wasn’t so much making a list of things to do, but a list of questions that remained unanswered.
What had Sheila done in her final hours? How did she get so drunk? Was she, as I was strongly inclined to believe now, murdered? And if Sheila’s death was murder, did it follow that Ann’s was, too?
Could Ann have been murdered by her husband Darren? Or George Morton, whom Ann was blackmailing? Or even Belinda, who might have found out what was going on? And what about Sommer, who was already a murder suspect, according to Arthur Twain? The Slocums were tight with him.
It could have been any of them. Did it make sense that, whomever it turned out to be, that same person also killed Sheila?
My gut said yes. But my gut didn’t have a lot to go on.
And what about Belinda? By her own admission, she was the one who gave Sheila the money to deliver to Sommer. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Belinda knew more than she’d told me so far. I wanted to talk to her again, preferably without George hovering over us.
Finally, there was Theo. How did his murder figure into all of this? Was it related at all? Or was it as simple as it looked? He and Doug had gotten into a fight and Doug had shot him?
I just didn’t know, but I kept scribbling.
The very last question I underlined four times: Why did Theo write me a letter saying he was sorry about Sheila?
I looked at everything I’d written down and wondered if, and how, all these puzzles might be connected. If I could get the answer to just one of these questions, would I have the answer to them all?
I knew who I wanted to see first.
On the way out the door, I grabbed the paper bag with the gun in it. It was going to end up in Long Island Sound, or maybe Milford Harbor, or Gulf Pond. Some body of water deep enough to swallow up this gun forever.
I locked up the house and got into my truck, tucking the bag under my seat. I hit the headlights as I backed out of the drive. I didn’t have all that far to go. Just from one Milford neighborhood to another.
When I got to the house, I rolled the truck to a stop. I was parked across the street from it, looked at the house for a moment, thought about what I wanted to say. Some of these questions were going to be tough to ask. One of them I would leave right to the end.
Finally, I opened the truck door, slammed it shut behind me, and crossed the road, the streetlamps illuminating my way. There was no one out on the road, just one car parked at the curb a few houses down.
I went up to the door and leaned on the bell. Waited. I rang it again. I was about to ring it a third time when I could hear someone approaching.
The door opened.
“Hey,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“Sure,” Sally said, looking a little surprised to see me. “Come on in.”
FIFTY
Sally gave me a hug as I stepped into the front hall. She took me into the living room.
“How are you doing?”
“Not so great,” she said.
“I know. You’re probably still in shock.”
“I think, maybe, yeah. It doesn’t seem possible that he’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Theo’s brother from Providence called me. He’s coming down to make all the arrangements once they, you know, once the body’s been released by the police. The father’s coming over from Greece tomorrow or the next day. They’re going to ship the body home.”
“To Greece?”
“I think so.” She offered up a short, sad laugh. “We were going to go there one day.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I just feel so mixed up. I mean, I loved the guy, but I know he was no prize. I’m not even sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But sometimes, a girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do if she doesn’t want to be alone forever.”
“Sally.”
“It’s okay, I’m not fishing for compliments or anything. Not that I’d object if you wanted to throw any my way.” Another laugh, accompanied by a tear. “And he’d almost finished my bathroom. Can you believe it? Floor heats up nice, but he still had to fix a few of the tiles, caulk the tub. I was thinking the two of us would have had a bubble bath in it by next weekend.”
I must have looked away.
“Am I embarrassing you?” Sally asked.
“No, not at all. I just … feel bad.”
“You and me, we’re quite a pair, yeah?” Sally said. “I lose my dad three weeks ago, you lose Sheila, now this.”
That actually brought a smile to my lips. “Yeah, we’re a couple of good luck charms, we are.”
Something that had never occurred to me until this moment prompted
me to ask, “Sally, when your dad was still alive, and you were having to buy all those drugs for him, you never bought any from Sheila, did you? Or Belinda? Or get them from any place but a drugstore?”
I had this horrible thought that maybe Sally had been sold ineffective, knockoff prescriptions that could have contributed to her father’s death.
Sally was perplexed. “What? Why would I buy drugs from Sheila or anyone else?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Before she died, she was thinking about starting up a little business, selling common prescriptions for way less than what they cost at regular drugstores.”
Sally’s eyebrows went up. “Wow. I could have used those.”
“No, you wouldn’t have wanted them. They could have been totally useless.” We sat down opposite each other.
Sally said, “What’s the latest on Doug?”
“All I really know is they’ve charged him.”
“I can’t believe it,” Sally said.
“Me neither.”
“I mean, we’ve worked with him for years. I never would have thought.”
Sally’s definition of “I can’t believe it” was evidently different from mine. She was shocked, but accepting. I really, truly did not believe it.
“I think I know what happened,” Sally said. “I mean, it’s only a theory. But I think once Theo realized Doug had substituted those bad parts, they got into a fight, and maybe Doug was afraid Theo would tell you what he’d done.”
“Maybe,” I said, with little enthusiasm. “But it’s not like him. I don’t see Doug shooting someone in the back.”
“A lot of people have done things lately we didn’t think made much sense,” she said, and I knew she was talking about Sheila.
“Let me get to what I came to ask you about,” I said. Sally looked at me expectantly. “I got a call from Detective Stryker. She said Theo was writing some kind of a note, maybe not long before he got killed.”
“What kind of note? Where did she find it?”
“On the kitchen table in the trailer, I think, under some other papers. Stryker said it looked like he was writing something to me. Making notes, trying to figure out what he was going to say.”