Slice (14 page)

T
WENTY-FIVE

W
hat surprised Wolfie most was how cooperative, even pleasant, John Manning had been to them. When Wolfie had shown him the search warrant, the author had given him a gracious smile, stepped aside so that the policemen could enter, and said, “Please, come in. Search whatever and wherever you need. Be my guest.”

What surprised him less was that they found nothing.

No blood, no burned clothes, nothing.

The forensics team had descended as soon as Wolfie had called them, and they'd swept through the house, opening drawers and closets, looking in safes and locked compartments, sifting through the ashes in the fireplace, dusting for fingerprints, using X-ray technology and a bloodhound to search for even minuscule droplets of blood.

Nothing.

They found the girl's fingerprints, but that didn't mean anything. Everyone acknowledged that she had been there. But nothing was found to shed any light on how or why she had been killed.

As they searched, Manning kept up his smiling pretense, having Caleb make coffee for some of the detectives, though Wolfie declined a cup. Manning led them out into the back courtyard and let them poke through his writing casita as well. Wolfie noticed how extra charming Manning was to one of the female investigators, smiling at her, often directing his comments to her. The guy was really a womanizer, Wolfie thought.

The police detective stood off to the side, watching the forensics team work. He guessed he shouldn't have been that surprised that they'd found nothing. It had been more than a week since the murder, after all. The goddamn judge had waited far too long in giving them the warrant; that had given Manning plenty of time to clean the place of any last scrap of evidence. Wolfie wondered if Manning's millions had spoken; had he pulled strings somehow in the courts to delay the release of the warrant? Wolfie wouldn't put it past him.

He didn't trust John Manning. He believed he'd killed his wife. And now he believed he killed the German girl as well.

Wolfie watched how the esteemed author was doing his best to dazzle the policewoman. Diane Ballard was a hard-edged, tough-as-nails detective. Her head wasn't easily turned. And yet, Wolfie noticed the small smile she gave Manning when he made some little witticism. He had to give it to Manning: he did have a way with women.

A way of
killing
women.

“Wolfie?”

The police detective was pulled out of his thoughts by Harry Knotts, coming up behind him. “What is it, Knotts?” Wolfie asked.

“I think you ought to come out to the casita,” Knotts whispered.

“You find something?”

Knotts held his gaze. “Just come take a look.”

The two men walked outside. They didn't hurry. Wolfie was careful not to draw attention to their movements. He didn't want Manning following them. At the moment, Manning was busy trying to make Detective Ballard smile again, but she was proving a hard sell.
Keep him occupied, Diane
, Wolfie sent out in a telepathic request.

There were several investigators going through drawers in the casita. Another was seated in front of Manning's computer, his fingers on the keyboard, going through the author's files. Manning had joked they could read anything they wanted, as long as they didn't reveal the ending to his latest novel-in-progress.

“What do you have for me?” Wolfie asked as he entered the casita.

“Not sure, sir,” said Davidson, a young detective. “But Detective Knotts says this might be relevant in some way.”

Davidson was flipping through a spiral-bound notebook. There were about twenty leaves in the notebook, cellophane holders with newspaper articles, printed out from a computer, slipped inside each one. Wolfie bent down to read them, but realized he needed his glasses. He fumbled them from his front pocket and slipped them onto his face.

“Seems Manning is interested in another case we investigated out here six years ago,” Knotts said, coming up beside Wolfie.

Wolfie looked down at the notebook. The headline on the first sheet read:

MAN FOUND WITH THROAT SLIT IN PARKING LOT
.

Wolfie flipped to the second page.

LOCAL WOMAN QUESTIONED ABOUT SLAYING
.

The third page had two photographs: Screech Solek and Emil Deetz.

“Well, bust my buttons,” Wolfie murmured. “This is about Jessie Clarkson's ex-boyfriend. Who, coincidentally enough, also sliced open someone's throat.”

“Hardly seems a coincidence to me that Manning would have a notebook all about that case, when he hadn't even been living in Sayer's Brook at that time,” Knotts said.

Wolfie looked over at his partner. Knotts was a good detective but sometimes a little slow on the uptake when it came to irony or sarcasm. “I was speaking facetiously, Knotts,” Wolfie told him.

“Oh, right.”

In fact, it
couldn't
be a coincidence. John Manning downloads all these newspaper articles about his next-door neighbor—and then, in his own backyard, a girl gets murdered in the exact way described in the articles? A razor swung nearly from ear to ear across the throat. But what connection could there be?

The rest of the notebook contained all the rest of the newspaper coverage. There were the reports about Jessie's eyewitness testimony about the murder, and the revelation of Deetz's drug and porn ring, and the search of the Clarkson property, and then the manhunt for Deetz that moved out from Sayer's Brook and extended all across the country. Finally, the last pages of the notebook included the report that Deetz had been found in Mexico after his fatal shoot-out with police.

“When did he compile this?” Wolfie wanted to know. “If he did it
after
the killing of the German girl, it could just be morbid curiosity.”

“Nope,” Davidson said. “There are dates on the printouts. They're from more than two years ago.”

“Ah, yes, I see.” He kept flipping through the notebook. At the very end was a short article that quoted Wolfie himself, saying that, with Deetz's death in Mexico, he now considered the Solek case “closed.”

Maybe he'd been too hasty.

“Find anything interesting?”

The detectives turned around. Manning had walked into the casita.

Wolfie discreetly closed the notebook before turning around to face Manning.

“Just reading your novel on the computer, Mr. Manning,” Wolfie said, a smile playing on his face. “Have to admit it takes a lot of twists and turns.”

Manning smiled back at him. Neither smile was genuine, but that was the game they'd been playing all day.

“Well, you do know if you breathe a word of it,” the author said, “you'll have to face the wrath of John Manning fans all around the world.”

“Believe me,” Wolfie said, “we wouldn't want that.”

Manning held his eyes for several seconds He didn't trust Wolfie, and Wolfie knew it. Manning wasn't worried about police spoiling the ending of his novel. He was worried about something else, and Wolfie knew that, too.

The author gave a final little smile and left the casita.

“Why didn't you ask him anything about the notebook?” Davidson wanted to know.

“Instinct,” Knotts answered for Wolfie. “We'll ask him about it when we know more of why we're asking.”

Wolfie smiled. “Indeed you are correct, Knotts. We need to first find out if Manning had any kind of relationship with Deetz. And we need to look into what kind of relationship, if any, he has with Jessie Clarkson.”

“Yes, sir,” Davidson said. “Shall I confiscate the notebook?”

“Just take photos of it, high resolution, every page, and dust it for fingerprints. I don't want him to know yet that we're interested in it.” Wolfie had moved to stand in the doorway of the casita. From there, he could see the upper deck where Millie Manning took that one last flying leap to her death.

But Wolfie was certain she had been pushed.

T
WENTY-SIX

A
few days after the detectives had been to Manning's house, igniting a frenzy of talk and wild speculation among the neighbors, Todd Bennett placed a ladder against the side of his sister-in-law's house and lugged a can of paint with him up to the top step. He was helping Jessie spruce up the house, giving the weathered old shingles a fresh coat of yellow paint.

Like most everyone else, Todd had some very deep suspicions about their famous neighbor. He'd always though Manning had had something to do with his wife's death. Now he felt the bestselling author definitely knew more about Inga's murder than he was saying. Todd had thought Manning had looked awfully shifty that night. He wasn't sure if Manning was the murderer, or if the actual culprit was that obnoxious Caleb, and Manning was just covering up for him. But he hoped that detective had found something in his search of Manning's house to implicate one of those two creeps in Inga's death.

From up here, Todd had a good view of the backyard. As he gently layered fresh paint onto the shingles, his eyes kept wandering over to watch Jessie as she cleared away a thicket of brush that had grown over her mother's garden. Next spring, Jessie said, she planned to plant tomatoes and beans and squash and peas and peppers. Todd watched as Jessie ripped out tall bunches of crabgrass and yanked up the tangled orange roots of bittersweet vine. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail.

She looked beautiful.

Todd sighed and returned his eyes to his painting.

He wasn't sure when he'd fallen out of love with Monica. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure he ever
had been
in love with Monica. He would never have dumped Jessie for her if Monica hadn't been pregnant. He knew that for sure now. Todd had been a scared kid, terrified of what his deeply religious parents would say if they knew their son had gotten a girl “with child,” as they called it. He knew they'd have ordered him to “do the right thing” and marry her.

But then Monica had lost the baby. By then, she'd convinced Todd that he
was
in love with her. She'd been so fragile after the miscarriage, too, crying all the time, that Todd couldn't have left her, even if he had wanted to.

He
had
wanted to.

At the time, Todd hadn't allowed himself to believe so. But now, looking back, Todd knew that he
had
wanted to leave Monica and go back to Jessie. He had wanted to do so very much. But he had simply been unable to do so.

When he'd married Monica, Todd had believed he loved her. But as the years passed, things changed. They bickered. They fought. And Monica could never get pregnant. Todd remembered the doctor saying it was unusual for a woman to get pregnant so easily the first time, and then never again. It had left a little nagging question in the back of Todd's mind, one that he had never allowed himself to articulate out loud.

Had Monica really been pregnant?

Or had she used the claim as a ruse to get him away from Jessie?

That was crazy. Monica wouldn't have done that to her own sister.

But Todd saw how jealous Monica always was when it came to Jessie. Todd admitted that he hadn't wanted Jessie to come back to Sayer's Brook. After all the problems Jessie had caused with her dalliance with Emil Deetz, Todd had been very glad when she'd moved away to New York. There had just been too much unpleasantness. Even after she'd moved away, Jessie had still been so distraught, at least in the beginning, always calling Monica about nightmares and hallucinations she was having. That eventually stopped, after Emil was shot to death in Mexico. But still Todd had worried that if Jessie ever came back, the drama would return, and Todd was a man who could not abide drama.

Taking a step down the ladder so he could paint the next row of shingles, Todd supposed that the drama
had
returned. Everything had been quiet and uneventful here on Hickory Dell before Jessie's homecoming. Todd and Monica had had their routine. They bickered now and then, but no real arguments tore up their marriage anymore. They had settled into a kind of numbness. They hardly made love anymore. Todd just didn't have it in him; she didn't excite him the way she used to. His work kept him preoccupied, especially as the banks struggled to stay afloat during this economic downturn. It wasn't an exciting life, but at least there was no drama.

Then Jessie came back and within a week there was a murder practically in Todd's backyard.

But Todd found himself wanting to protect Jessie from the stress of it, not blame her. He'd told Monica that they couldn't blame Jessie for this. If they should cast blame, it was at John Manning, in Todd's opinion. Jessie had had absolutely nothing to do with this, Todd believed. She was as devastated as any of them—actually far more devastated. Inga had been her friend. Abby had been devoted to her. Todd told Monica that Jessie and Abby needed their help and support during this time, not their resentment.

Monica didn't quite see it that way. But Todd made sure that Jessie knew he was there for her if she needed him.

The Jessie Clarkson who had come back to Sayer's Brook wasn't the Jessie who had left it. This new woman was strong and determined, and funny and warm and human. She was rather like the girl Todd had fallen in love with in high school. The girl he might have married had Monica not gotten in the way. He couldn't deny that he'd rather be over here helping his sister-in-law than sitting home with his wife.

“Looking good, Todd!”

He glanced down. Jessie stood at the foot of the ladder, looking up.

“The house really needed a new paint job,” he said. “Especially before winter sets in.”

“I really appreciate your help, Todd,” Jessie called up to him.

He smiled. “No problem, Jessie, Glad to do it.”

“You're very sweet.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Can I ask why you're not at work today?”

“I'm a big shot, haven't you heard?” he called down, laughing. “I can set my own hours.”

“Well, you are Mr. Successful, aren't you?” Jessie teased.

Todd smiled again.

No,
he thought.
I'm not successful. I have a great job and I make a lot of money. I live in a gorgeous home I designed myself. I drive a fancy car and am financially set for the rest of my life.

It would have been different, Todd thought, as he started painting the next row of shingles, if only he hadn't gotten Monica pregnant that one drunken night in high school, a night that had set his life on a course he'd never have chosen otherwise.

A night he couldn't remember and would forever have his doubts about.

“Todd,” Jessie called up again. “I'm driving over to the school to pick up Abby. Will you still be here when I get back?”

“I will indeed,” he told her.

“Good,” Jessie said. “I'll make us all some lunch.”

Todd smiled.