Layover

by David Bell

  “Yes.”

  “Like I said, head on home, and we’ll be in touch.”

  And that’s exactly what I did, flying back to Chicago and my regular life the next afternoon.

  PART THREE

  60

  Kimberly hung up the phone, ending her call with the medical examiner’s office in Louisville. She’d been back in Laurel Falls for two days, following every path possible to find Morgan Reynolds, officially a “person of interest” in the death of Giles Caldwell. So far, they’d found nothing worthwhile. A few false alarms trickling in, people claiming to have seen her at various points around the country. But none of it panned out. She’d pulled a complete Houdini act after she smacked Joshua Fields over the head with an empty beer bottle at Fantasy Farm.

  When she ended her call Brandon came across the room and plopped down in the empty chair next to her desk. He wore a polo shirt and dark pants. His cheeks looked rosy, his eyes fresh.

  “Sleeping better?” she asked.

  “A miracle has occurred,” he said. “The baby has slept through the night twice in a row.”

  “Party time.”

  “I know. I almost didn’t want to tell you because I’m afraid I’ll jinx it. But then again, I’m so well-rested and happy, I want to tell the world.”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” she said.

  Kimberly was happy too. She’d found time to take Maria out to dinner the night before, just the two of them. And it had been exactly the distraction Kimberly needed. Maria talked about soccer and school and friends, and even let slip the name of a boy she had a crush on. Kimberly played it cool, absorbing the information without comment, and then went on to discuss horror movies they might watch later in October. The night felt chilly, the wind blowing, and Kimberly sensed the seasons turning, the world moving on. Would they have Morgan Reynolds in custody before Halloween? Thanksgiving? Christmas? Or would they ever find her?

  “Was that Louisville with our autopsy results?” Brandon asked.

  “It was.” Kimberly looked down at her notes, even though she didn’t need them. “Our first impressions were correct. Official cause of death on Mr. Giles Caldwell—manual strangulation.”

  Brandon whistled. “Wow.”

  “No other significant injuries. Some marks on the backs of his legs and torso, likely from being dragged out of the house and thrown in a car. Then being dumped on the ground at Fantasy Farm.”

  “Good thing the petting zoo is closed. I’d hate for the kids to find a corpse among the chickens and goats.”

  “Right. He wasn’t intoxicated at the time of his death either. Apparently, though, Giles’s heart was in shit shape. Mostly clogged arteries and some fluid in the lungs. He was cruising for a heart attack. In fact, that might have made it easier to strangle him. He didn’t have the cardiovascular capacity to hold out very long.”

  “Could make it easier for a woman to do the deed.”

  “Exactly. Not much else to report. The time of death matches what we know from Morgan Reynolds’s whereabouts. He likely died last Thursday night, had been in the well-fertilized ground at Fantasy Farm since shortly after his death. They took hair and fiber samples, so we can match them to samples from Morgan Reynolds’s home and car. . . . And to her, if she ever resurfaces.”

  “And I guess there’s no other real news?”

  “Nope.” Kimberly flipped her notebook shut and pushed it aside. “I’m going to have to tell Simon Caldwell his brother’s official cause of death. He’s supposed to be home today. Apparently, Morgan Reynolds hit him much harder than she hit Joshua Fields. Simon’s concussion was pretty severe, and he’s had some short-term memory loss. He may need therapy, but he’s being discharged.”

  “He’s probably in a great mood.”

  “I’m sure.” She paused, thinking over the last couple of days. “It’s possible he just feels like crap, but it’s weird that he hasn’t been bugging us at all. Maybe the bottle knocked some sense into him. Or maybe he’s just happy no one’s pressing assault charges against him.”

  “Not even the kid at the hotel?”

  “He doesn’t want to bother. So Simon’s in the clear right now. There’s a case to be made for intimidation, I guess, but given what everyone’s been through . . .”

  Brandon nodded. He placed his thumbnail between his two front teeth. He appeared to be thinking of something.

  “What?” Kimberly asked.

  “What are we thinking about him as a suspect in Giles’s death?”

  “Who? Simon?”

  Brandon nodded, and Kimberly took her time answering. After talking to Steven Hatfield and getting an earful about Simon, she seriously considered him a suspect in his brother’s death. He had the temper and the track record. Even if the will cut him out, he could contest it. At the same time, so much of what had transpired over the past few days and so much of what they’d learned pointed toward Morgan Reynolds.

  Kimberly wasn’t willing to entirely let go of anything yet. Not until the case was signed, sealed, delivered.

  “I’m keeping my options open,” she said.

  “Lots of unlikable people aren’t killers.”

  “Yeah. And lots of unlikable people get killed.”

  “You mean people like Giles Caldwell?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Dudes who threaten women. I’m going to ask Simon about his brother’s employees, especially Megan Bright, the one you found. Giles actually laid hands on her, grabbed her by the arm hard enough to leave a bruise when they argued at work. I don’t like any of that. Hatfield’s clammed up, started referring us to the company lawyer. I guess he’s worried about the word getting out or someone getting sued.”

  “It’s bad PR to be associated with a guy who roughs up women. Is that why the mayor has backed off?”

  “What a strange coincidence, right? So I’ll go see what Simon knows. If anything.”

  “Do you really think Simon is going to tell you something useful? Or anything at all?”

  Kimberly laughed. “Will anyone ever tell us anything useful? I try to keep my expectations low. That way I’m pleasantly surprised when good things happen.”

  61

  Simon Caldwell opened the door of his town house and blinked against the midday sun. The air remained cool, the wind crisp. Simon’s neighbors already had two pumpkins and a bale of hay decorating their stoop, while his own displayed two discolored newspapers and an old phone book.

  Simon stepped back, out of the light. Either his concussion was making him more sensitive to brightness, or he was just sick and tired of talking to cops.

  “Can I come in?” Kimberly asked, stepping forward.

  “A personal visit? You never returned my calls before.”

  “I returned as many as I could. Can I come in and talk to you?”

  Simon just grunted, and she took that as assent.

  Inside, the blinds were drawn, the surfaces cluttered by empty glasses and dirty dishes and stacks of mail. He wasn’t a tidy man. No way all of it had accumulated in the time since his brother disappeared. They went into the living room and sat on opposite ends of an overstuffed sofa. Simon wore sweatpants, white socks, and a loose, oversize sweatshirt advertising his support for the Kentucky Wildcats.

  Simon kept his head down. Kimberly saw no bandages or other signs of injury until she glanced at his knuckles. They were scabbed, healing from his battle at Fantasy Farm, just like Joshua Fields’s knuckles in the emergency room. Boys being boys. How many of the crimes she investigated came down to that? Boys being boys.

  But then it was also possible Morgan Reynolds was the person who’d committed murder.

  Kimberly told Simon about his brother’s cause of death, as well as the information about his bad heart. Simon listened without looking at her, and she wondered if he was hearing her at all, or if the effects of th
e concussion were causing him to completely zone out and miss what she was saying. She paused, giving him a chance to speak.

  Finally, he said, “He ate a lousy diet. I knew that.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “But that doesn’t mitigate the cause of death. She killed him. It’s murder.”

  “I’m not ruling that out,” Kimberly said.

  Simon looked up at her then, their eyes meeting for a moment, and he seemed to be seeing her for the first time not as an adversary but as an ally. Kimberly knew the feeling might not last, but it was there. She tried to take advantage of it.

  “I was hoping you were up for a couple of questions,” she said. “Specifically, I wanted to know if your brother ever mentioned an employee of his named Megan Bright.”

  Simon stared at her, his cheeks dotted with gray stubble. The skin around his jowls hung slack and loose, and he seemed to have aged a decade since she’d last seen him.

  He shook his head from side to side.

  “You don’t know her at all?”

  “No, I don’t. Why? Is she missing too?”

  “No, it’s not that. She worked for Giles a couple of years ago. Apparently they had a disagreement over some additional work she had done. She says he’d promised to pay her but refused once the work was complete.”

  Simon grunted.

  Kimberly tried to determine if the grunt was because his head hurt or because he was tired of answering questions about his brother’s treatment of his employees.

  “You don’t know anything about this?” Kimberly asked.

  “My brother kept me at arm’s length from his business affairs. A long arm’s length.”

  “So you don’t know about this woman’s claims?”

  “I don’t.”

  Kimberly waited. The man across from her looked too miserable to be hiding anything. And what Steven Hatfield told her lined up with what Simon was saying—his brother kept him away from the business.

  “She says Giles grew aggressive,” Kimberly said. “Physically aggressive. He grabbed her by the arm, and she had to pull away. And flee. This happened after hours one night in the office, when everyone else had gone home. She resigned from the company the next day and never went back.”

  “But she never filed a lawsuit or anything?” Simon asked. “A harassment claim?”

  “She didn’t. She says she was scared. Had he ever been violent with women?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Do you think he was capable of something like that?”

  Simon reached up and rubbed his temple. Then he gently probed around on the back of his head, grimacing slightly as he did so. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I suppose you’re trying to make a case that this Morgan Reynolds killed my brother in self-defense.”

  “I’m not making any case at this point,” she said. “I’m exploring all avenues.”

  “Well, you’ll have to explore that avenue without me.” He rubbed his temple again.

  Kimberly felt a measure of sympathy for the man. He’d lost his brother. He’d been attacked in the amusement park. But she also couldn’t dismiss his single-minded pursuit of Morgan Reynolds, a pursuit that led to an innocent college student getting beaten up.

  “Okay, Mr. Caldwell,” Kimberly said, “I’ll let you rest. We may need to talk again as the investigation proceeds. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “You haven’t found that woman yet?” he asked. “I was hoping she’d be brought in quickly and all of this would be over.”

  “Sometimes it’s slow. Especially when someone doesn’t want to be found.”

  Kimberly stood up, ready to go. Simon stayed on the sofa.

  “I figured you were here to read me my rights or something,” he said. “I was about to call my lawyer.”

  “I told you the guy in the hotel isn’t pressing charges. And neither is Mr. Fields. Given the circumstances of your brother’s death . . . and everything you’ve been through . . .” He continued to rub his temple. She thought he looked paler than when she’d first come in the door. Kimberly feared he was about to pass out. She leaned down and asked, “Do you need help, Mr. Caldwell? Can I call somebody for you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I have pills. Pain pills. I’ll take a few of those and go back to sleep.”

  “Then don’t bother getting up,” she said. “I’ll let myself out.”

  “And . . . thanks. I know . . . I know I didn’t make your life any easier over in Wyckoff. Thanks for working out the charges or whatever.”

  “Just feel better, Mr. Caldwell.”

  “I suppose the Nashville Police will want to talk to me about the other thing,” he said before Kimberly left the room.

  “What other thing?” she asked, turning.

  Simon stopped rubbing. “The Nashville thing? The thing with Morgan Reynolds’s mother?”

  Kimberly came back and sat down on the sofa again. “What about her mother?”

  “Remember? She says I went down there and threatened her? The mother?”

  “Yes, I remember. But her mother is dead. Has been for three years. How could we charge you with threatening a dead woman?” Kimberly had never asked such a question before. “Is there something I don’t understand? I figured Morgan Reynolds was lying, trying to make Joshua Fields feel sorry for her. What are you saying?”

  He picked at a loose thread on his shirt. “Well, maybe I’ll regret being honest about this. . . . Look, I didn’t threaten the woman. I went by Giles’s office that Monday after he disappeared. Somebody told me he and Morgan Reynolds were having a dispute over money.” He pointed at Kimberly. “I called you. Five times. But you didn’t answer or call back. Five times. I could sue you all for neglect. Or dereliction. You just brushed me off.”

  “Somehow you ended up talking to this woman you say is her mother.”

  “It was a Monday afternoon. Look, I didn’t know the woman was so sick. If I’d understood that . . . Well, I have my limits too. But I did talk to her. I asked her the questions I wanted to have answered. But I never threatened anyone. Certainly not a woman who was so frail.”

  “Did you hear me clearly, Mr. Caldwell?” She wondered if the blow to his head had scrambled his brains. “Morgan’s mother is dead. You must have talked to someone else in Nashville.”

  “Her . . . mother . . .” He reached up to his head again, but this time he appeared to be confused instead of in pain. “No, not her mother.” He stared into space for a moment.

  Kimberly remained quiet, letting him think, even though she wanted to shake the answer out of him.

  “Her foster mother,” he said. “That’s who it was. Her foster mother. The woman didn’t really understand what I was talking about. Not very much of it.”

  Her foster mother?

  Kimberly went back to the conversation with Ashley Clarke. The comments about a rough patch in Morgan’s childhood. And then Elaine Adams had reported the same thing. Foster care. During high school.

  And how much she liked one of the families she stayed with.

  Had she reconnected with that woman?

  “How did you find this woman?” Kimberly asked. “How did you know about her?”

  Simon shook his head. Slowly. Carefully.

  “I didn’t find her,” he said. “She found me. She called me up on Monday afternoon and said she wanted to talk to me about her daughter. When I got there, I didn’t learn a damn thing.”

  62

  Kimberly recalibrated. Instead of merely showing up to inform Simon Caldwell about his brother’s cause of death, she was suddenly learning new information.

  “Her foster mother called you?” she asked. “Why?”

  Simon leaned back, easing his body against the large sofa cushions. For a moment, his imperious demeanor retur
ned. Except for his ragged, sickly appearance, he looked like an emperor preparing to make a pronouncement.

  “You’d like me to tell you these things,” he said. “You’d like me to admit to all kinds of stuff, wouldn’t you? Are you rethinking? Trying to get me for intimidation or obstruction or something?”

  Kimberly hid her frustration. So often questioning witnesses felt like the days of Maria’s Terrible Twos, when even the simplest task—putting on clothes, pouring juice—turned into an epic battle of wills with an utterly illogical individual. She’d grown to temper her expectations for adults, knowing they could be as recalcitrant and stubborn as children. And just like with Maria, no matter how much she wanted to reach out and slap the smugness off Simon Caldwell’s face, she knew she couldn’t.

  “Mr. Caldwell, anything you tell us about Morgan Reynolds or any circumstances concerning Morgan Reynolds will only help us solve the case sooner. Don’t you want that? A suspect in your brother’s death brought in and questioned fully?”

  “I had other things in mind,” he said.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Kimberly said. “Your ham-handed approach to people connected to this case isn’t my highest priority right now. So why don’t you do us all a favor and tell me about this call from Morgan’s foster mother?”

  Simon remained reclined, his lips drawn wide in a smirk. But then something passed across his face, a weariness or resignation similar to what Kimberly had seen when she first came in.

  “Okay,” he said, flipping his hand in the air as though shaking water off of it. “If it helps you nail that bitch.” He took in a deep breath and went on. “Fine. Her mother or whoever she is called me because I’d been down to Nashville on that first Monday when you didn’t call me back, trying to find Morgan. Asking her friends and anyone else I could find where she was. And, yes, I was . . . How did you put it? Ham-handed? I can’t help it. That’s the way I approach the world. I guess I do think of myself as a hammer, and every problem as a nail.”

  “And word got back to the mother that you were looking for her?”