The Accident (33 page)

“I don’t know anybody anymore,” I said to myself.

When I got home, it was dusk.

I didn’t like coming back to an empty place. I knew sending Kelly away was the best thing to do, but right now, I wished she was here. I needed someone. And while I wouldn’t have poured my heart out to Kelly the way I would have to Sheila—I was hardly going to burden her with my disappointment in Doug—I would have hugged her, and felt her arms around me in return, and maybe that would have been enough.

With all the spring in my step of a dead man walking, I went to the front door, and as I was about to slip the key into it, I noticed it was slightly ajar.

I knew that when I’d left I’d closed and locked this door.

I pushed, ever so gently, against it, just far enough to slip inside. I thought I heard some kind of jostling in the kitchen.

It looked as though I was going to get my wish after all. There was someone in the house.

THIRTY-NINE

Slocum was coming out of the Connecticut Post Mall, where he’d gone to buy a few things for Emily to try to cheer her up—some markers, a pad, a stuffed dog, and a couple of books by someone named Beverly Cleary that he had no idea whether Emily would like but the lady in the store said they were good for an eight-year-old—when the man called out to him, saying, “Officer Slocum? Do you have a minute?”

He stopped just as he was about to head out into the parking lot and whirled around.

“My name’s Arthur Twain,” he said. “I wonder if you have a moment.”

“No, I don’t.”

“First of all, I’m very sorry to hear about your wife, Mr. Slocum. I need to ask you some questions about her business, the parties she held, where she sold handbags. The company I work for has been engaged to investigate trademark infringement. I suspect you know what I’m talking about.”

Slocum shook his head. “I got nothing to say to you.” He scanned the lot, looking for his pickup. He spotted it and started walking.

Twain followed. “What I’d like to know, Officer, is where you were getting the merchandise. I believe you know a man who goes by the name Sommer?”

Slocum kept on walking.

“Did you know, sir, that Sommer is a suspect in a triple homicide in Manhattan? Are you aware that you and your wife have been doing business with a man with significant criminal connections?”

Slocum hit the button on his remote and opened his door.

“I think it might be in your interest to help me,” Twain said, speaking more quickly now. “You let yourself get in too deep, there’ll be no coming back. If you’d like to talk to me, I’m staying at the Just Inn Time for the next—”

Slocum settled in behind the wheel, closed the door, and keyed the ignition. Twain stood there and watched as he drove away.

Detective Rona Wedmore waited until it was dark before she returned to the harbor for the third time. The temperature had dropped sharply since the sun had gone down. Had to be in the high forties, she figured. Should have worn a scarf and some gloves. As she got out of her unmarked car she pulled her jacket together in front, zipped it up to her neck, stuffed her hands into the pockets.

Not as many boats in the harbor now as there were even a week ago. Many owners had taken them out of the water and put them into storage. It seemed so dead down here this time of year. The place was so full of activity in the summer; now these boats seemed mournful in their abandonment.

The car Ann Slocum had been driving was no longer here, of course. It remained, on Wedmore’s orders, in a police garage.

Those scratches on the trunk lid bothered her a lot. And she’d just learned something else. The flat tire was caused by someone sticking a knife blade into the sidewall, right at the rim’s edge. Ann hadn’t driven over a nail, and it didn’t appear that the tire had been driven on flat. The air had gone out of it after the car had been stopped.

This so-called accident was looking less like one with each new development.

She’d caught Slocum in a lie. He’d denied knowing that Ann had been on the phone prior to the call from Belinda Morton. Wedmore knew, after her talk with Glen Garber, that Slocum was covering up something.

His story about how his wife liked to take a drive in the evening to clear her head was pure fiction. Wedmore wanted to know why a cop, who should be smart enough to spot inconsistencies at a crime scene, was willing to accept his wife died in an accident when so many clues pointed to suspicious circumstances.

Of course, Darren Slocum’s attitude made perfect sense if he was the one who’d killed her.

Wedmore knew the stories about Officer Darren Slocum. The allegations that he’d helped himself to some drug money. Stories of extreme force during arrests. The guy was a loose cannon. Everyone knew his wife ran an off-the-books business, and that he helped her with it.

He could have done it. He had no solid alibi. He could have slipped out of the house while his daughter slept. But suspecting it and proving it were two entirely different things. There were the life insurance policies the two had taken out on each other. That provided a decent motive, especially when they were having financial problems, but it wasn’t enough to nail the guy.

As for Slocum’s first wife, Wedmore had confirmed that she really had died of cancer. Rona kicked herself for that one. She should have known the facts before raising the issue. Felt like a bit of a shit, too.

She stood there in the cold night air, looking out over the Sound, as though the answers to her questions might magically wash ashore. She sighed and was walking back toward her car when she noticed the light.

It was coming from a moored cabin cruiser. She could see shadows moving back and forth behind the windows.

Wedmore strode out onto the dock, the heels of her boots echoing off the wood planks. As she came up alongside the boat she could hear muffled talking inside. She leaned out over the water, rapped on the hull, and called out, “Hello? Hello?”

The talking stopped, and then the door to the cabin opened. A thin man in his late sixties or early seventies, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and reading glasses, emerged.

“Yeah?”

“Hi!” Wedmore called out. She identified herself as a detective with the Milford department. She thought,
What’s the phrase?
“Permission to come aboard?”

He waved her on, extended a hand to help her but she managed on her own. He invited her into the cabin, where a white-haired woman was seated at a table, sipping on a cup of hot chocolate. The smell of cocoa filled the cabin.

“This is a police detective,” the man said, and the woman brightened,
as though this was the most interesting thing that had happened in quite some time.

They introduced themselves as Elliot and Gwyn Teale. When they retired, they sold their house in Stratford and decided to live on their boat full-time.

“Even in the winter?” Wedmore asked.

“Sure,” Elliot said. “We’ve got a heater, we’ve got water, it’s not so hard.”

“I love it,” Gwyn said. “I hated the upkeep with a house. This is so much easier.”

“When we need groceries or to do the laundry, we get a taxi and run our errands,” Elliot said. “It’s close quarters, I’ll give you that, but we have everything we need. And it means when our kids want to come visit, they have to take a hotel. There’s a lot to be said for that.”

Wedmore was impressed. She had no idea anyone could live here year-round, and doubted any officers who’d been down here investigating Ann Slocum’s death would have thought to look for anyone.

“I wanted to ask you about the woman who died here the other night.”

“What woman was that?” Elliot asked.

“Just over there? Friday night? A woman fell off the pier. Struck her head, drowned. Her body was found there later that night when an officer noticed her car sitting there, the door open, the motor running.”

“That’s a new one on us,” Gwyn said. “But we don’t have a TV, or listen to the radio much, and we don’t get a paper. And we sure don’t have a computer here, so we’re not on the Internet. Christ Himself could rent a boat here and we wouldn’t know about it.”

“That’s the truth,” Elliot agreed.

“So you didn’t see the police early Saturday?”

“I did notice a couple of police cars,” Elliot said. “But it didn’t seem to be any of our business, so we stayed on the boat.”

Wedmore sighed. If they hadn’t been curious enough to check out a swarm of police cars, it wasn’t likely they’d noticed much of anything going on around here.

“I don’t suppose you saw anything out of the ordinary late Friday night, early Saturday morning, then?”

The two looked at each other. “Just those cars that drove down, wouldn’t you say, hon?” Gwyn asked Elliot.

“Just that,” he said.

“Cars?” Wedmore asked. “When was this?”

“You see, when anyone drives down that ramp there toward the pier,” Gwyn explained, “their lights flash right into our bedroom.” She smiled, then pointed to the forward hatch, where Wedmore could make out a bed that tapered toward the bow. “It’s not much of a bedroom, but there are some very small windows in there. And I guess it was around ten or eleven, something like that.”

“Did you notice anything else?”

“I got up on my knees and took a peek outside,” Elliot said. “But it must not have been the same thing you’re talking about.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, there were two cars. Not just one car came down. Some woman was getting out of her car just as another one was pulling in right behind her.”

“The first car, it was a BMW?”

Elliot frowned. “Could have been. I don’t pay much attention to makes of cars.”

“And the car that pulled in behind it, can you remember what it looked like?”

“Not really.”

“Would you at least be able to remember whether it was a pickup truck? A red one?”

He shook his head. “Nope, wasn’t a pickup truck. I think I would have noticed that. It would have sat up more, been shaped different. I think it was just a regular kind of car, but that’s about all I could tell ya.”

“Did you see who was in it?”

Another shake. “Couldn’t tell ya. That’s when I dropped back down and went to sleep. I have to tell you, I’ve never slept better than since I started hearing the sound of waves lapping up against the hull at night.” He smiled. “It’s like a lullaby.”

FORTY

Standing just inside the door, hearing an intruder moving around in my kitchen, my heart pounded as I tried to figure out how to handle this.

I could charge in there and surprise whomever it was. But there were problems with that. First, they might not be surprised. They might be waiting for me. And if the person waiting for me was Sommer, I knew he carried a weapon. I did not. So, not such a great plan.

I could try something really radical, like calling out, “Who is it?” But that had all the drawbacks of the previous strategy. Someone waiting for me could come out of the kitchen and shoot me just as easily as waiting for me to walk in there.

A third option made the most sense. Back quietly out of the house and call the police. I reached noiselessly into my jacket for my phone. Worried that the beeping would alert whoever was in the house to my presence, I opted to wait until I was outside before punching in 911.

I was turning to slip back out when the woman shrieked.

“Oh God! You gave me a
heart attack
!”

She was standing in the kitchen doorway, a beer bottle in one hand, a plate of crackers and cheese in the other.

My own heart did a flip, too, but I managed not to scream. “Jesus, Joan, what are you doing here?”

All the color had drained from her face. “Were you walking on your tiptoes or something? I didn’t hear you come in at all.”

“Joan—”

“Okay, okay, first of all, why don’t you take this beer?” She smiled and took a couple of steps toward me. She was wearing tight jeans, and that top again that showed a hint of bra. “You look like you could use it. I’d planned to nurse this one till you got here, but you take it and I’ll crack open another one. I figured it was okay to put some snacks out now.”

“How did you get in here?”

“What, Sheila never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“That I had a key? We had keys to each other’s place, in case there ever was a problem. You know, like if Kelly came to my place after school, but there was something she needed at home, or who knows? Kelly
is
away, right? I mean, I saw you putting her little suitcase in the truck, so I just figured maybe she was going to stay with Fiona for a day or two after the house getting shot up and all. Is that what you decided to do? It makes sense, it surely does.”

I stood there, stunned. “Go home, Joan.”

Her face fell. “I’m sorry. I know what you’ve been going through and I just thought, When’s the last time anyone’s done anything nice for you? It’s been a while, am I right? Sheila told me her mother’s never cottoned to you, so I know the last thing she’s been to you these last few weeks is a comfort.”

“Carl Bain doesn’t have a wife,” I said. “At least not one that he lives with. She ran off when Carlson was only a baby.”

Joan stood there, frozen. The plate of crackers and cheese suddenly looked very heavy.

“Why did you tell me that story?” I asked. “Because it was all a story, right? The boy, he never said anything about his father hurting his mother. And you never told Sheila you were wondering what to do. Because it was all bullshit, right? You made those lies up.”

Joan’s eyes started to mist.

“Just tell me why,” I said, although I thought I’d already figured it out.

I saw panic in her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t talk to him.”

“It doesn’t matter how I know. I just do. You can’t do something like that.” I shook my head. “You can’t.” I took the beer and the plate from her hands and walked them into the kitchen. When I turned around, she was standing there, looking very small.

“I keep thinking maybe he’ll just walk in the door one day,” she said.
“That the rig went down, but somehow Ely clung onto some part of it, and maybe he got picked up by some ship somewhere, without any ID, and maybe he lost his memory, like in that Matt Damon movie, you know the one? But then Ely gets his memory back, and he comes home.” She dug a tissue from her jeans pocket, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “But I know it’s not going to happen. I know that. But I miss him.”