Harry Dolan (18 page)

“Who knows?” Loogan paced between the table and the kitchen counter. “Maybe it was just a copy of Wrentmore’s novel, and he wanted Delia Ross to try to get it published if something happened to him.”

“You said she read it. Doesn’t that mean she already had a copy?”

“He gave it to her on disc. But he couldn’t be sure she’d hold on to it. If he wanted her to get it published, he’d want to make sure she had a printed copy.”

Beccanti shook his head as if to clear it. “But whatever it was in the box, we’re assuming that after Wrentmore was killed, someone went to that storage unit and took it away. Right?”

“Right.”

“So who was it? Who knew about the storage unit?”

“Wrentmore himself, and his neighbor. And we don’t know who else.”

“You’re avoiding the obvious, David. You don’t want to think ill of the dead. Tom could have gone there. He searched Wrentmore’s condo, and then had me search it again for good measure. Maybe something he found in the condo led him to the storage unit. Whatever was in the mystery box, he might have taken it. Just like he took Wrentmore’s computer from the condo—and whatever else he took.”

Loogan leaned against the counter. “I can think of one other thing Tom must have taken—Wrentmore’s manuscript. If you’ve written a novel, you’re going to print at least one copy, and probably more than one. Maybe there was a copy in the storage unit and maybe not. But I’d wager anything that Wrentmore kept a copy at home.”

Beccanti slid the beer bottle over the surface of the table. “Do you suppose the manuscript is the MacGuffin?”

“What?”

“The MacGuffin,” Beccanti said. “It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s term. It’s the thing that spurs the plot and forces Cary Grant to go on the run—but no one really cares about it, once the story’s moving. At first I thought the flashdrive I found was the MacGuffin, but they’re probably the same thing. Wrentmore’s novel is probably what’s on the flashdrive. Have you had any luck guessing the password?”

Loogan had been carrying the drive with him. He put his hand in his pocket to reassure himself it was still there. “I haven’t even tried,” he said.

A scowl passed over Beccanti’s face. “I don’t like the idea that Tom might’ve been killed because of an oversized novel that no one would even want to publish. What’s our next move?”

Loogan shook his head. “I don’t know if we have one.”

“I’m not going to quit.”

“We should think about the risk. You almost got caught tonight. Strike that: You did get caught. Even if there were no consequences this time. And then there’s what happened to Adrian Tully.”

Beccanti obviously hadn’t heard. “Who?” he said.

Loogan summarized what he’d learned from Laura and the local news. As an afterthought he added, “The news report didn’t draw a connection between Tully and Tom, but Tully was once an intern at the magazine.”

“You don’t think he shot himself,” Beccanti said.

“I could buy it, but I’d need convincing.”

“I’d need convincing too. I’d like to have a look at his car.”

“The police have his car.”

“And his house. Did he live in a house? No, he was a student. He probably had an apartment.”

“You’re not going to break into his apartment.”

Beccanti got up from the table. “I didn’t say I was going to, I said I’d like to. Imagine finding a copy of Wrentmore’s manuscript in the trunk of Tully’s car, or under his bed. It would make things interesting.”

He finished off the beer and brought the bottle and his plate to the sink. “I’m not going to break into Tully’s apartment,” he said. “I think I’d have better luck with the Kristoll house. We need to know what Tom was up to. If he took the mystery box from Wrentmore’s storage unit, maybe it’s there in the house. It’s time I had a look around in there.”

Loogan frowned. “That’s a bad idea. It’s not like the office. If you get caught breaking into Tom’s house, I won’t be able to cover for you.”

“You worry too much, David. I won’t get caught. You’re going to help me.”

“I can’t get you into Tom’s house. I don’t have a key.”

“I don’t need you to get me in,” Beccanti said. “I need you to make sure Laura Kristoll is out.”

Chapter 19

NATHAN HIDEAWAY’S HOME WAS MORE MODEST THAN ELIZABETH HAD expected: a single-story cottage with a garden and a duck pond and a detached garage. Hideaway’s crown of white hair was damp when he met Elizabeth at the door on Sunday afternoon. He had just come from his health club, he said. He went every day to swim laps, and today he had worked in a game of tennis with the club’s pro.

He deposited Elizabeth in a living room lined with tall bookshelves, disappeared for a minute, and returned with two glasses of lemonade.

He handed one to Elizabeth. “I shouldn’t say this,” he told her, “but I’m glad to see you.”

“Is that right?” she said.

“I heard you’ve been making the rounds. Talking to writers. If you had waited much longer, I might have had my feelings hurt.”

He waved Elizabeth to a seat on a curved sofa and dropped into an armchair across from her. “Bridget Shellcross,” he said. “And then Cass Hifflyn. And now you’ve got around to interviewing old Hideaway. I guess it’s only right. If you go strictly by the calendar, I’ve got twenty years on them, but they’ve both been in the business longer than I have. I never wrote a word of fiction until I was forty-eight years old.”

“Really?” Elizabeth said. “What did you do before?”

He drank some lemonade, lowered the glass to the floor. “I was an insurance adjuster,” he said. “If the wind knocked a tree over and it crashed through your roof, I’d come out and tell you what it was worth. On my forty-eighth birthday, my wife gave me a book—a novel about a crew of shady characters who worked together to defraud insurance companies. It was a half-assed thriller. Unrealistic. I thought I could do better. I wrote some opening chapters, just goofing around, then my wife found the manuscript and wouldn’t stop pestering me until I finished it. Well, I saw it through to the end, but when I got there what I had was about forty thousand words—too long for a story, too short for a novel. I sent it to some magazines and they sent it right back, and then Tom Kristoll published it in
Gray Streets.

“A literary agent read it, a bright young thing just out of college. She called me one day and asked what I was working on. I described an idea I had for a novel, and she said she’d like to see it when it was ready. A month later I sent her sixty pages and an outline of the rest. I didn’t dare wait any longer. I was afraid she’d forget about me. Somehow she got me a contract based on those sixty pages. That was my first novel,
The Longest Night in June.

“I’ve still got the same agent. We didn’t meet in person until I delivered the final manuscript of that first book. I think she was surprised. She thought she was dealing with someone close to her own age—not with someone’s grandfather, which I was by then. My wife and I had raised two girls, in a split-level house in Huntington, Long Island. The oldest had a three-year-old and another on the way. I had a grandfather’s name then too: Nate Henderson.”

Elizabeth traced a finger through the condensation on her glass. She said, “Hideaway is a pseudonym then.”

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it? I’m surprised Cass Hifflyn didn’t tell you. He was already established when I was just getting started, and he swears I picked ‘Hideaway’ so my novels would be shelved next to his in the bookstores.” Hideaway grinned. “It’s not a bad story, but the truth is more mundane. I opened the dictionary to a page in the H’s and scanned down until I came to ‘hideaway.’ I liked the sound of it.”

“How did you end up in Ann Arbor?” Elizabeth asked him.

The grin left him and his mouth went slack. Suddenly he looked very old. “My wife passed on six years ago,” he said. “Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Bad business,” he said heavily. “After that, I was alone in our house. My daughters had both moved to the West Coast. It was just as well. I didn’t want to see anybody. Couldn’t work. Tom Kristoll got wind of it, and he and Laura arranged a fellowship for me at the university here. Six months to write, an office in the English department, surrounded by students. I almost refused, but it turned out to be just what I needed. When the six months were up, I decided to stay.”

“You weren’t tempted to move out west,” Elizabeth said, “to be closer to your daughters?”

“I was, but I resisted the temptation. Do you have children?”

“I have a daughter.”

“She must be young.”

“Fifteen.”

Hideaway nodded. “Just the age when a girl needs her mother. When they get older, they want some distance. I can fly out to see my girls whenever I like, and I’m always welcome. My grandchildren are always thrilled to see me. It wouldn’t be the same if they saw me every day. Here I can be alone when I need to, and I have company when I want it.”

“The students must like having you around,” Elizabeth said. “A published novelist is a curiosity—that’s what Cass Hifflyn told me. They must like spending time with you.”

“Some of them do.”

“What about Adrian Tully?”

Hideaway leaned forward in his chair. “Now you’ve managed to steer me around to the point,” he said. “Adrian was friendly. A little intense, I would say.”

“Cass Hifflyn thought he was meek.”

“I don’t know about that. Adrian was intelligent, thoughtful.” His eyes locked on Elizabeth’s. “You believe he was attracted to Laura Kristoll.”

“Someone’s been gossiping.”

“There’s never any shortage of that. I think it’s true. I think he was in love with Laura.”

Elizabeth put her glass aside. “Did he tell you that?”

“Not directly,” Hideaway said. “But he spoke about her sometimes—usually about some insight she’d had that had helped him with his work. She was his adviser, of course. There was always a reverence in his voice when he spoke about her. And he would watch her at gatherings, social events. He was careful not to stare, but you got the sense that he always kept track of where she was.”

“Sounds like he wasn’t careful enough.”

“Others might not have noticed,” Hideaway said. “I like to observe people. In Adrian’s case, you could almost predict he would fall in love with his adviser. He was just that kind of man. He would fall for any beautiful woman he came in close contact with. He fell for that redhead, the one with the Botti celli face.”

“Valerie Calnero?”

“Valerie, yes. Some men are like that. And I’m not talking about a superficial attraction. I believe Adrian felt things deeply.”

“So if he was in love with Laura Kristoll and he found out she was having an affair with someone else, he would have been jealous.”

“Certainly.”

“Do you think he might have gone to Tom Kristoll, to tell him about the affair?” Elizabeth asked. “And if Tom didn’t believe him, would that have made him angry?”

“I’d be speculating, but I’d say that’s possible.”

“Do you think Adrian killed Tom?”

“I wouldn’t want to go that far. Speculation has its limits.”

“But you think it’s plausible, as a hypothesis.”

Hideaway shrugged. “As a hypothesis.”

“And Adrian felt things deeply. So if he killed Tom, it would weigh on him. He would feel guilty.”

“Of course.”

“Would he feel guilty enough to shoot himself?”

“We’ve come up against the limits again,” said Hideaway. “I understand you have doubts about whether Adrian shot himself.”

“There are some things that don’t fit.”

He made a steeple of his fingers. “I’m curious about the gun. I wouldn’t have thought Adrian owned a gun.”

“Is that right?”

“We never discussed the subject. But if you had asked me if he was the sort of man to keep a gun, I would have said no.”

“The gun was registered to a man in Dearborn,” Elizabeth said. “We haven’t located him yet. He moved out of state two years ago. His ex-wife says he used to go to gun shows. I have a feeling it’ll turn out he sold the gun to somebody in a parking lot somewhere. Sold it for cash, and didn’t take down any names. The ex-wife never heard of Adrian Tully.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Tully’s parents said he never expressed much interest in guns, though he knew how to use a rifle. His father is a hunter.”

“So much for my instincts,” Hideaway said. “I wouldn’t have imagined Adrian handling a rifle either. Perhaps the simplest explanation is the right one after all—Adrian killed Tom and then killed himself. If not, then someone has gone to an awful lot of trouble.”

Hideaway rose from his chair and walked over to a bookcase. “That should make your job easier,” he said. “The easiest murder to solve is supposed to be the one somebody tried to get very cute with. The hardest is the one somebody thought of two minutes before he did it. That’s something Raymond Chandler said—another old-timer who got a late start as a writer.”

“Tom’s murder doesn’t fit into any easy category,” Elizabeth said. She got up and joined Hideaway by the bookcase. “Whoever killed Tom may have decided to do it on the spur of the moment. But once he did it, he tried to get very cute with it. He started by knocking Tom out. A hard blow to the back of the head. We think he used a book. At that point, if he just wanted to finish Tom off, there were simple ways to do it: Smother him or strangle him. Hit him again with the book. But our killer hauls him over to the window, tries to make it look like he jumped. Then it gets even cuter. If it’s a suicide, there should be a note. Did you know we found a note?”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” said Hideaway.

“We’ve kept it from the public. I don’t think even Laura Kristoll knows. Suppose you were in Tom’s office and you needed to fake a suicide note. Fast. How would you do it?”

He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “You’d probably type it,” he said. “You could open a file on Tom’s computer and peck something out. Use the end of a pencil on the keys, not your fingers. Keep it short, keep it general. You wouldn’t need to print it, just leave it on the screen.”