The Accident (32 page)

I felt sick about Doug. It was a strained relationship we had at times, particularly lately. We’d worked side by side for several years while my father was alive, more or less equals on the job. We not only worked together.
We played. Everything from golf to video games. Our wives commiserated while their two grown men would kill an afternoon immersed in a Super Mario Bros. time-waster. And to prove we weren’t just children, we would get drunk at the same time. Doug had always been a carefree guy, someone who didn’t see much point in worrying about tomorrow when it was a whole night’s sleep away, and the unfortunate thing was he’d married someone who worried even less. Not, as today’s events proved, an ideal match.

His lackadaisical approach to life hadn’t been a problem when we worked together, but after my father died and I took over the company, and Doug became an employee instead of a coworker, things changed. First of all, we no longer hung out as a foursome. When I became the boss, Betsy didn’t like the way the scales had tipped between her and Sheila. Betsy imagined Sheila somehow lording it over her, like I’d somehow morphed into Donald Trump and Sheila was Ivana, or whomever Trump was married to these days.

The qualities that had once endeared Doug to me now occasionally drove me to distraction. His work was always good, but there was the odd day he phoned in sick when I knew he was hungover. He wasn’t as attentive as he could be to customers’ concerns. “People watch too many of those home reno shows,” he often said. “They expect things to be perfect, but it’s not like that in the real world. Those shows, they’ve got big budgets.”

Clients didn’t like to hear those kinds of excuses.

If we hadn’t at one time been buddies, Doug probably wouldn’t have felt he could hit me up for advances on his salary. If we hadn’t at one time been buddies, I would have said no the first time he asked, and not set a precedent.

I wanted to help him out, but I couldn’t rescue Doug. He and Betsy were going to have to hit rock bottom before they were able to pull themselves up again. I understood what he said about the banks, about those mortgages that were all too good to be true. He wasn’t the only one that got sucked in.

A lot of people were learning their lessons. I just hoped Doug and Betsy were able to learn theirs before they killed each other.

I opened the tailgate of Doug’s truck and the window of the cargo cap above it. Because the Pinders had not had time to organize their things,
everything had been tossed in loose. I opened the door to the shed and cleared a spot in one corner for the stuff, and brought out a couple of chairs, a DVD player, some linens. They probably should have taken that to Betsy’s mom’s place, but they could sort that out later.

I had the truck nearly emptied when I noticed a couple of cardboard boxes, about the size a dozen bottles of wine would come in, tucked up close to the cab. I crouched down and walk-squatted the length of the truck bed. You spend enough time in construction, you can walk in the back of a pickup like that without getting a groin injury or pulling a hamstring.

Once I reached the boxes, I got down on my knees. I wasn’t sure whether this was stuff from Doug’s house or something he’d already had in the truck that belonged to the business. So I folded back the cardboard flaps and had a peek inside. There was a lot of crumpled newspaper, which had been used as packing material. I took out bits of paper to see what it was protecting. The box was filled with electrical parts. Coils of wire, outlets, junction boxes, light switches, parts for circuit breaker panels.

It might have been interesting to read some of the stories on the newspaper scraps, but they were all written in Chinese.

THIRTY-EIGHT

It wasn’t immediately obvious these parts were all junk. As knockoff electrical bits went, they looked pretty authentic. But sitting in the back of Doug’s truck, studying them, I was able to spot things that didn’t pass muster. The circuit breaker parts, for one, had no certification marks on them. Anything legit would have had them. The color of the plastic used for the light switches was off, not consistent throughout. You handle parts like these long enough, you just know.

I had a terrible, sinking feeling. There was something Sally had said.
“What if someone gave him the wrong parts and he couldn’t tell the difference?”
Maybe Theo hadn’t been in the business long enough to spot this kind of thing, to have an instinctive feel for it.

Shit.

What the hell was junk like this doing in the back of Doug’s truck? Was he the one who’d substituted parts like this on the Wilson job? Had he done it on any others?

I slid the two boxes along the truck bed until they were positioned on the tailgate, then carried them, stacked one atop the other, to my own vehicle. I tossed them into the back, put up the tailgate, then locked the shed, the office, and the gate that led into the property.

I called Doug on his cell phone, hoping his service hadn’t been cut off for nonpayment. Surely the bill had been one of those tucked, unopened, in his kitchen drawer.

I got lucky.

“Yeah, Glen?” He sounded weary.

“Hey,” I said. “You get settled in with Betsy’s mom?”

“Yeah, but man, this is no way to live. She’s got five fucking cats.”

“Have any luck at the bank?”

“They were closing when we got there, so we’re going to go first thing in the morning, try to talk some sense into them. This is totally unfair, man, really.”

“Yeah. Listen, I need to see you.”

“What’s up?”

“We need to talk, in person. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment, but it’s important.”

“Yeah, well, I guess.”

“I can drive up to Derby, but I don’t know where your mother-in-law’s place is.” Doug gave me an address. I was pretty sure I knew the street. “Okay, I’m heading up there now.”

“Can you stay for a beer?” he asked. “Because, listen. That thing I said the other day, kinda threatening you, that was out of line, you know? I feel bad about that. Elsie—that’s Betsy’s mom—she’s got some beer in the fridge and she says I can take three a day out of there. I’ll save you one.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “See you in a bit.”

It wasn’t that far to Derby, but it felt like a long drive. I’d really wanted to lay all this on Theo. I’d never liked the guy, and I’d never been that crazy about his work. If the fire had to be blamed on him, well, that suited me fine. Even considering that Sally was supposedly going to marry the guy.

I would never have wanted Doug to be the bad guy. I wondered what my father’s reaction would have been to finding out that one of his supposedly most loyal employees had done something that could destroy the company.

He’d have fired his ass, that’s what he would have done.

I found the street, turned down it, and about halfway up, in a driveway on the left, I spotted Betsy’s Infiniti. I wondered how much longer she’d have that. I could see a ten-year-old Neon in her future.

I parked in front of her mother’s house, a brick two-story. A Siamese
cat was watching the street through the front window. I went up the drive and was about to knock when the door opened.

“You made good time,” Doug said, a cigarette dangling between his lips. “Usually you run into some rush-hour traffic this time of the day.”

“The roads were pretty clear.”

“Which way did you come? When I come, I usually take—”

“Doug, cut it.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. But you want that beer?”

“No.”

He took a long drag on the cigarette, then threw it to the ground. Smoke continued to waft up from it.

“Listen, I really appreciate your help this afternoon, and for kind of, you know, defusing a tense situation. If you hadn’t been there, I swear, I don’t know what I might have done to Betsy.”

“Emotions were kind of running high,” I said.

“Now, here at her mom’s, I got two of them going at me. Elsie takes Betsy’s side in everything. She doesn’t know how to see the big picture. And the place smells like cat piss.”

“Walk with me,” I said, leading him down the driveway to the truck.

“What’s on your mind, Glenny?”

“Just wait a minute. There’s something I need to show you.”

“Sure. I don’t suppose it’s a bag full of cash?” Doug forced a laugh. I didn’t respond.

I unlocked the tailgate and opened the window.

“I unloaded your truck for you,” I said.

“Oh, that’s good of you, man. ’Preciate it. Hope it doesn’t take up too much room in the shed.”

“I found these two boxes up by the cab.” I paused, waiting for a reaction. Getting none, I said, “You recognize these?”

He shrugged. “They’re boxes.”

“You know what’s inside them?”

“Beats me.”

“No idea?”

“Can we open ’em up?”

I pulled back the cardboard flaps on the first one, tossed aside some Chinese newspaper clumps, and lifted out a circuit breaker switch. Doug,
uncrumpling a balled-up piece of newsprint, said, “How does anyone read this shit? Have you ever wondered how the Chinese do typewriters when there’s, like, a million letters? Their computers must have keypads the size of driveways. How do they do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“This stuff was in my truck?” Doug said, tossing the paper aside.

“Yeah. The other box is full of the same. Switches, outlets, all that kind of thing.”

“Huh,” he said.

“You saying you don’t recognize this?”

“They’re switches and shit. Sure, I recognize that kind of thing. But I don’t know what it’s doing in my truck. Just supplies, I guess. You know everything that’s in the back of your truck?”

“This stuff, none of it’s up to code,” I said. “It’s made overseas, made to look like legitimate parts made here.”

“You think?”

“I know. This is what caused the fire at the Wilson house, Doug.”

“This stuff here? It doesn’t looked burnt or nothing.”

“Stuff just
like
it. I got the news from Alfie today, over at the fire department.”

He took the part from my hand. “Looks okay.”

“It’s got no certification stamp. Although some, I gather, do, but the stamps are fake.”

He turned it around in his hand. “Damned if it don’t look like the real McCoy.”

I took the part from him and tossed it into the box. “I just accused Theo Stamos of installing this in the Wilson place. It got a bit ugly. He swore up and down it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t believe him. Thing is, I still don’t. I think he installed it. But what I’m wondering now is, did he knowingly do it?”

“Knowingly?”

“I wonder if the parts got switched on him.”

“Why would someone do that?” Was Doug really this thick, or was it an act?

“You substitute knockoff parts for the real thing, you can return the real stuff to the store and make a tidy little profit.”

“Yeah, I suppose—
You?
You mean me?”

“That’s what I want to know, Doug. I want to know if that’s what you did.”

“Jesus, are you kidding me? You think I’d do something like that?”

“I never would have, but now, I don’t know anymore. You went behind my back with Sally, tried to get an advance on your salary. That was wrong. You threatened to call the IRS on me. You’re in the middle of a financial meltdown, and your wife spends money like she’s printing it off the computer.”

“Come on, man. That’s a serious accusation.”

“I know. And I want you to explain to me why this stuff is in your truck.”

Doug swallowed, glanced up and down the street. “I swear to you, I don’t know anything about this, Glen.”

“No idea,” I said.

“Nope.” A lightbulb seemed to go off. “You know what I think?”

“Tell me.”

“I think I’m being set up or something.”

“You’re being framed?”

“Yup.”

“Who’s framing you, Doug?”

“If I knew that, don’t you think I’d tell you? Maybe it’s KF.”

“Ken Wang,” I said.

“He’s Chinese,” he said. “Maybe those are his newspapers in the box there.”

“He’s grown up in America,” I said. “I don’t even know if he knows Chinese.”

“I’ve heard him speak it. Remember that time we went into that Chinese place for lunch, Ken was talking to the owner?”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“Well, I do. He was all ‘egg foo this and moo shu that.’ You should talk to him, that’s what you should be doing.”

“The stuff is in
your
truck, Doug.”

Betsy popped her head out the front door and shouted, “What’s going on?”

“Go inside!” Doug shouted at her, and she did.

“You know what I think?” I asked him.

“What?”

“I think you’ve let me down. Big-time.”

“No way, man. We go way back.”

“That’s why this hurts so much. I know you’re in deep shit, Doug. I know the wolves are at your door. But you ask for help. You don’t betray a friend. You don’t put everything he has at risk.”

“Seriously, I don’t know nothin’ about those boxes.”

“Don’t come in tomorrow, Doug. Except to pick up your truck.”

“What about the day after that? What are you saying?” Something occurred to him. “Can I still leave our stuff in the shed?”

I slammed the tailgate shut and walked around to the driver’s door, Doug trailing me.

“Come on, man! This is the worst day of my life, and now you’re, what—firing me? Is that what you’re doing? What the fuck?”

I got in the truck, slammed the door and locked it. Through the closed window I could still hear Doug shouting at me.

“You’re supposed to be my friend, you son of a bitch! Why are you doing this to me? Huh? Your old man would never treat me like this!” A pause to catch his breath, then, “I should have let you burn!”

I hit the gas and was on New Haven Avenue when I had to pull off into a service station parking lot. I threw the truck into park, rested my elbows on the steering wheel, and pressed the heels of my hands into my forehead, taking deep breaths all the while.

“Damn it, Doug,” I said under my breath. I’d never felt more let down, more betrayed.

You think you know people.