Harry Dolan (35 page)

He tried to study her face in the dimness. “I don’t have Sean Wrentmore’s flashdrive here. It’s hidden somewhere safe. I couldn’t give it to you now even if I wanted to.”

“Meaning you don’t want to,” she said mildly. “But that’s all right. I trust you to hold on to it.”

“What do you think it’s got on it?”

“It must be Sean’s manuscript.”

“Sure,” said Loogan. “What else could it be? But it’s Sean’s drive, so it would be Sean’s version. Not the edited one.”

“I don’t want any copies of that manuscript floating around,” she said. “Not in any version.”

“You still think you can publish it?”

“In a few years. When things cool down.”

“But you gave a statement to the police about Sean’s death. Did you tell them the truth?”

“Of course.”

“And they weren’t curious about the manuscript? It’s the reason Sean died. They didn’t want a copy?”

“They haven’t asked for one. Not yet.”

Loogan said nothing for a moment. Then: “If they ask, what are you going to give them?”

“I’ll figure something out,” Laura said. “People have sent a lot of manuscripts to
Gray Streets
over the years. We only publish short stories, but they send us novels anyway. The discs pile up, and we don’t always get around to sending them back.”

He let her have a long, appreciative stare, and she laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m telling you this because I trust you, David. And to show you I’m serious. Sean’s novel—the edited version, Tom’s version—is going to be published in a few years. I’m going to make sure of it. For Tom’s sake.”

A van cruised through the parking lot. Loogan watched it in the rearview mirror. He watched a family approach the entrance of the restaurant with the half-moon sign. He heard a snatch of distant music as the restaurant door opened.

“I believe you,” he said, turning back to Laura. “Mostly. I’d believe you all the way, except for one thing. The police found my fingerprints in Adrian Tully’s car.”

“What are you talking about?”

He reached over to brush his fingertips against her golden hair. “Tully was at your house, the night Sean Wrentmore died. But he left before I got there to help Tom with the body. So far so good. But Tully didn’t leave in his own car. It stayed behind. A blue Civic hatchback. Tom put it out of sight in your garage, and it would have stayed there if I hadn’t asked so many questions. Tom didn’t want to tell me that the body in his study was Wrentmore; he said it was a thief who had broken into the house.
How did the thief get there?
I wanted to know.
Did he have a car?
He did have a car, naturally, but Tully had driven away in it. Tully took Wrentmore’s car to dispose of it. Isn’t that right?”

“I guess it must be. I don’t really know all these details, David.”

“Of course not,” he said. “You weren’t there. Well, Tom didn’t want to explain everything to me, but he had to account for how this thief had gotten to his house. So he improvised. Tully’s blue Civic became the thief’s car, and Tom and I would have to get rid of it, along with the body. I drove the Civic, and we left it in front of a run-down apartment building, assuming it would be stolen. I wiped my fingerprints off the steering wheel, but I left a plastic shopping bag in the backseat. Just carelessness. That’s how the police found my prints.”

He drew his hand back from her hair. “Here’s the funny part. The other day I looked up Adrian Tully’s address and drove by there—it’s a run-down apartment building. It’s where Tom and I left the blue Civic. Tom chose the spot; he drove ahead of me in his own car.” He waited a beat. “We delivered Tully’s Civic right to his doorstep.”

“Tom had a sense of humor,” Laura said. “But I’m not sure what your point is.”

“Maybe I’m the only one who’s interested in all these little details. But I’ve been mulling them over. Think about Sean Wrentmore’s car, for instance. It hasn’t been found. Where did Tully leave it?”

She looked away. “I don’t know. I guess he would have picked a run-down neighborhood, just like you did.”

“You can do better than that. Dumping a car is a two-person job. You helped him do it.”

A few seconds ticked by while she sat unmoving. Nothing to read in her profile. Then she turned to him and gave him a sorrowful look up from under her brow.

“I’m not going to deny it, David. I came home from the university that night and found the three of them in the study: Sean dead on the floor. Adrian in a corner, hugging his knees, and Tom pouring himself a drink. I did what needed to be done.”

“No,” said Loogan crisply. “You were never at the university that night. You were in the study, with Adrian and Sean. I don’t know where Tom was. But you were there, because you were the one who edited Sean’s manuscript. You were the one trying to convince him to accept the changes.”

She almost wavered then, he thought. But she said, “No. Tom was the editor.”

“Anyone can be an editor,” Loogan said. “You don’t have to go to school for it. It’s something that happens to you, like falling down a well. Tom told me that. I have a good memory for these things. You and I talked about editing once. You said you like it when a manuscript needs work. When you can see right away what’s wrong and how to fix it. You make the changes and they’re so obviously right that the author can’t argue, not if he has any sense. But Sean Wrentmore didn’t have any sense. He argued. Are you the one who hit him with the bottle?”

Laura shrank away from him, sat facing forward with her coat tight around her.

“I suppose I deserve that,” she said in a hollow voice. “You have grounds to think the worst of me. But I’m not that bad. Adrian’s the one who hit him. It happened fast. I couldn’t stop it.”

She faced him again and he thought he could see tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, David. I was wrong to lie to you—to say I wanted Sean’s novel published for Tom’s sake. I want it for myself. I know I handled things badly, but I never meant for anything to happen to Sean. And the work I did on his manuscript—I don’t regret that. You can’t tell me that was wrong. I know what I accomplished. I won’t apologize for wanting to see it published.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said. “Go home, Laura. Keep your two thousand dollars. Publish your novel, if you think you can. I won’t try to stop you.”

The envelope still rested on the dash. Neither of them looked at it.

But she said, “Take the money, David. You need it.”

“I don’t want it,” he said. “There’s only one thing I want from you, but I don’t hold out any hope of getting it. So let it go.”

She leaned close to him. “What? What do you want?”

“A straight answer to a straight question. Do you know who killed Tom?”

In the gray shadow-light of the car, her eyes narrowed and a pulse beat at her temple. Her lips parted but no words came from her. Loogan watched her open the car door, and the dome light blazed white on the cool, smooth porcelain of her skin. Before she got out, she turned to him again and drew back her right hand very deliberately and slapped him hard across the face.

Chapter 36

A HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SEAN WRENTMORE’S condo, Elizabeth approached a car parked off by itself beneath a crab-apple tree. The man in the car saw her and pushed a button to unlock the passenger door.

Roy Denham grinned as he cleared his thermos and his newspaper from the seat.

“Detective Waishkey,” he said, brushing crumbs onto the floor.

“Detective Denham,” she said. “Any sign of our friend?”

“None at all. But I’ve only been here an hour or so.”

Elizabeth settled in and pulled the door shut. The car’s interior smelled of smoke, and stubs of cigarettes filled the ashtray. Denham lowered his window to clear the air.

“I just came from Loogan’s house,” Elizabeth said. “I half expected to see you over there. What brought you here?”

Denham pointed to a paperback lying on the dashboard.
Kendel’s Key,
by Casimir Hifflyn.

“I picked it up in a secondhand store to pass the time,” he said. “The detective, Kendel, travels across country to investigate a woman’s murder. She lived alone, and her apartment is sitting empty, so he decides to sleep there instead of staying at a hotel.”

He touched his temple with an aged hand. “So then a light went off and I figured there must be at least a couple empty places here in town. Sean Wrentmore lived alone, and so did Adrian Tully. I thought I’d try here first.”

He nodded toward Wrentmore’s condo, a single-story unit at the end of a long brick building. The blinds were closed behind the two front windows. No glow from the porch lamp above the door.

“Nothing stirring,” he said, and turned back to Elizabeth. “What about you? You’re working late on a Saturday night. Anything new?”

“Our friend’s been on the move,” she said. Briefly, she sketched Loogan’s strange visit to the Kristoll house, and the stakeout currently under way at the
Gray Streets
building.

“I’ll take my turn there later,” she said. “But I got to thinking about where else Loogan might be. He came here last weekend and talked to Wrentmore’s neighbor. She saw him coming out of Wrentmore’s place. He had a key. I should have thought of it before.”

“It’s a long shot anyway,” said Denham. “He might not turn up here.”

“Wrentmore’s involved in this though. He may be at the heart of it.” Elizabeth picked up the Hifflyn book from the dash.

“I talked to him today,” she said. “Cass Hifflyn. He’s a man with a secret.” She dropped the book on the seat between them. “He didn’t write this.”

Denham looked puzzled.

“Sean Wrentmore wrote it,” Elizabeth explained. “He and Hifflyn had an arrangement.” With Denham listening intently, she described her encounter with Hifflyn at the cemetery. She went over her theory of Tom Kristoll’s murder: how Kristoll had covered up Wrentmore’s death; how he and Hifflyn had been blackmailed; how Kristoll had decided to go to the police; how Hifflyn had murdered him to keep him silent.

“Hifflyn denies it,” she said. “He insists his arrangement with Wrentmore was no big deal. Not something he would kill to keep secret. Either I’m right and he’s lying, or he’s telling the truth and I’m way off base.”

Denham stared off thoughtfully into the night. “But those aren’t the only alternatives,” he said. “There’s a third way, isn’t there?”

The words caught Elizabeth by surprise. A third way. She looked at Denham keenly. “What do you mean?”

“Say you’re right about why Kristoll was killed, but you’re wrong about the killer. Hifflyn’s telling the truth. Someone else killed Kristoll.” Denham raised his bristly eyebrows. “Who else was Wrentmore writing books for?”

 

 

 

David Loogan crept up the slope behind Wrentmore’s condo. He had a canister of pepper spray in his pocket and Wrentmore’s shotgun at his side, pointed at the ground. He slipped through the sliding glass door and closed it behind him.

Quiet in Wrentmore’s bedroom. Loogan made his way through in the dark. Reconnoitered the empty house and then doubled back to the bathroom. He had been sitting in his car a long time.

Two minutes later he stood in Wrentmore’s living room before one of the two front windows. He had closed the blinds earlier but now he turned the rod to open them so he could scan the parking lot. He knew Hifflyn’s car, and Hideaway’s, and Shellcross’s. He saw none of them. Off out of the way, beneath the bare gnarled branches of a tree, he saw a nondescript sedan with someone sitting behind the wheel. After a while he made out a second form in the passenger seat. He couldn’t make out faces.

 

 

 

“Nathan Hideaway,” Elizabeth said.

Her mind worked, putting together the details. She spoke them aloud to Roy Denham.

“Hideaway lost his wife six years ago. Cancer. He couldn’t work after that. He told me so. Then Tom Kristoll brought him to Ann Arbor, got him a fellowship at the university. And his writer’s block was cured. Tom was the one who introduced Hifflyn to Sean Wrentmore. He could have done the same for Hideaway.”

Denham nodded, listening. He got out a pack of cigarettes, started to shake one loose, and then thought better of it.

“The timing is right,” Elizabeth said. “It was about five years ago when Wrentmore’s fortunes started looking up. He wrote three books for Hifflyn. He could’ve written one or two more for Hideaway. I should have thought of that before.”

“You’re awfully hard on yourself,” said Denham. “You can’t think of everything.”

Elizabeth frowned. “He’s a charming old rogue. Hideaway. White-haired. Grandfatherly. That’s what threw me off, I think.”

“The old ones are the ones you have to watch out for,” Denham said with a wink. “But if he’s guilty you still need proof. How will you get it?”

She had been asking herself the same question. “Tattoos, for starters,” she said. “Wrentmore had the words ‘Kendel’s Fortune’ tattooed on his arm. That’s one of the novels he wrote for Hifflyn. He may have had other tattoos. We need to recover his body. And Loogan’s the one who can lead us to it.”

Denham leaned forward suddenly, staring at the front of Wrentmore’s condo. “I think he’s in there. That window on the left—the blinds are open. They were closed before. I’ve been waiting for him to go in through the door. Maybe he’s been in there all the time.”

“He might have just gone in,” Elizabeth said. “There’s an entrance in the back, a sliding patio door.”

Denham’s hands fidgeted on the steering wheel. “I could watch the back if you want. You and I could pick him up right now.”

“Easy, Roy,” she said. “Let me call in for backup. Do this by the book. You’ll have to sit it out, I’m afraid.”

Denham flashed her a self-deprecating grin. “I guess you’re right.” He sighed and his right hand went to an inner pocket of his rumpled jacket. “Do you want to use my phone?”