Far From True

by Linwood Barclay

  “What?”

  “You didn’t grow up here—isn’t that right?”

  “I grew up in Albany,” he said, ignoring the coffee in front of him. Andover, however, had reached for the third one and was tearing off the ends of two sugar packets. “When Rosemary and I were looking for our first house, we came here. Houses were more affordable here, and it was an okay commute to my work in Albany.”

  “When was that?”

  “That was around—it was in 2002.”

  “And you’ve been in that house ever since?”

  “No. We were there eight years. Then we moved to Breckonwood.”

  “Your current residence.”

  “This,” he said, looking around, “is my current residence.”

  “Not for long,” Andover said, his eyes on Duckworth.

  “And you were still commuting to Albany all that time? Every day?”

  “Not every day. I usually worked from home one or two days a week. I have—had a lot of local clients.”

  “That’s going to get cold.”

  “I don’t want it,” Gaynor said.

  “So, three, four years ago, you’d have been working from home, as you say, a couple of days a week.”

  “That’s right. Usually Thursday and Friday.”

  “Did you have a lot of people you did insurance work for right here in Promise Falls?”

  Gaynor shrugged. “Maybe two, three dozen.”

  “Those clients included the Fisher family. Isn’t that right?”

  “Fisher?”

  “Walden and Elizabeth Fisher.”

  “Uh, yes, I think, maybe—”

  Andover stepped in. “What’s going on, Barry?”

  “I just wanted to know if Mr. Gaynor was the insurance agent for Walden and Elizabeth—she passed away recently, by the way—Fisher. Were you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “There was a hundred-thousand-dollar policy on Beth—on Elizabeth—that was paid a while ago.”

  “So you know the Fishers.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “So then you would also have known their daughter, Olivia.”

  Bill Gaynor’s head slowly went up and down, once. “I did. But she didn’t have life insurance. Of course, she was on the family’s automotive policy. Their car insurance.”

  “Right,” Duckworth said, taking a sip. “But even though Olivia didn’t have a life insurance policy, as someone who worked with the family on their insurance needs, I’m sure you must have reached out to them at the time of her death. To offer your sympathies, see how they were managing.”

  Gaynor looked at his lawyer, as though seeking guidance. He said to Duckworth, “Well, sure, of course. I felt terrible for them.”

  “And you kept in touch with the Fishers after.”

  “Like I said, we still handled the life insurance policies for Beth and Walden. After Beth passed away, Walden canceled his policy. He said there wasn’t much need for it. He didn’t have anyone left to provide for.”

  “Did you know Olivia well?” Duckworth asked.

  Andover raised a palm. “Just what kind of fishing expedition is this, Barry?”

  “Olivia’s murder remains unsolved. We haven’t given up on it. Mr. Gaynor, I thought it would be worth talking to you to see if you might remember anything that might help us in the investigation. Maybe Olivia confided in you. Told you something that didn’t seem important then, but does now.”

  “I barely remember her,” he said.

  “Maybe this will help.” Duckworth took from his jacket a reproduction of a three-by-five high school yearbook photo of the dead woman, placed it flat on the table. “This was from her senior year, before she went to Thackeray.”

  He glanced at it. “Sure. I mean, I remember what she looked like, but I don’t even know if I ever had a single conversation with her. Does this have—you’re not thinking that what happened to Rose was in any way connected to her, are you?”

  Duckworth tossed it back to him. “Do you think there might be a connection?”

  “You think whoever killed Rose also killed the Fisher girl?”

  Duckworth tapped the picture with his finger. “You notice anything interesting about her?” he asked Gaynor.

  “Interesting?”

  “Maybe it’s just me,” the detective said, “but you look at her hair, the shape of her face, she reminds me a bit of your wife.”

  Gaynor studied the picture, then looked Duckworth in the eye. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  “We’re done,” Andover said.

  “Did Jack kill both of them?” Gaynor asked. “Is that what’s going on?”

  “No,” Duckworth said. “I’ve pretty much ruled him out.”

  “Then—” He stopped himself. “Jesus, you think I killed Rosemary? You think I killed my wife? And this girl? What the hell is wrong with you? I barely knew Olivia, and you know I was in Boston when Rose died. You know that!”

  “Bill, enough,” Andover said, putting his hand on the man’s arm. “Enough!” He looked at Duckworth and said, “For God’s sake, leave the poor man alone. You got someone out there killing animals and blowing up drive-ins, but you’re in here harassing a man who lost his wife. You must be proud.”

  Duckworth retrieved the picture, put it in his jacket, pushed back his chair, and stood. “I want to thank you both for meeting on such short notice. You mind tossing those coffees in the trash on your way out?”

  • • •

  By the time he reached his desk, the phone was ringing.

  “Duckworth.”

  It was the front desk. “There’s a guy here wants to see you. Martin Kilmer. Says he’s Miriam Chalmers’s brother.”

  One of the four people killed at the drive-in. Her body had yet to be positively identified. Duckworth said he would be right out.

  Martin Kilmer was about forty, trim, six feet tall, and decked out in an expensive suit, a white shirt, a silk tie, gleaming black dress shoes.

  “Mr. Kilmer, I’m Detective Duckworth.”

  “I got a call from Lucy Brighton, my sister’s stepdaughter,” he said abruptly. “She told me about the accident. She identified her father, but didn’t identify Miriam. So I’m here. How the hell did something like this happen? A goddamn screen falling over?”

  “We’re still trying to find that out.”

  “I want to see her,” he said.

  Duckworth said, “I’ll take you.” He put in a call to the morgue so that they knew they were on their way.

  On the drive over, Duckworth felt the need to warn Miriam Chalmers’s brother that identification might prove difficult.

  “Why?”

  “Your sister sustained . . . the screen came down right on top of the car. A Jaguar convertible, with the top down. She wasn’t afforded much in the way of protection.”

  “You telling me her face is all smashed in?” Kilmer asked bluntly.

  “Yes.” Sometimes, trying to be sensitive was a wasted effort.

  “Then how the hell do I identify her?” the man asked.

  “Maybe other distinguishing features. A birthmark? A scar?”

  “Christ, it’s not like I saw my sister naked a lot. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t married that son of a bitch.”

  “You didn’t like Adam Chalmers?”

  “No. He was too old for her, first of all. And there was his past.”

  “His biker days.”

  “I know they were long ago, but they go to character.”

  “What do you do, Mr. Kilmer?”

  “Stocks,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Duckworth’s cell rang. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Yeah, hey, Barry, it’s Garth.”

  Garth worke
d in the police garage. Actually, a wing attached to the police garage, where vehicles damaged in accidents were towed and inspected.

  “Hey, Garth.”

  “You know that old Jag from the drive-in?”

  Duckworth glanced at his passenger, who had used this opportunity to take out his own phone. He was looking down at the screen, sweeping his finger in an upward direction. It didn’t look like e-mails. More likely an app for stocks.

  The detective pressed the phone more tightly to his ear. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so, it was crushed pretty bad. They managed to get the bodies out, but we’ve been going through the car, and it took some doing, but we finally got the trunk open, which wasn’t easy since the whole back end of the car kind of got all smooshed together. We were kind of anxious to get in there so we could stop the ringing.”

  “Ringing?”

  “Like a cell phone. We could hear it in the trunk. Figured one of the two deceased—well, most likely the woman—must have left her purse back there since the interior of one of those cars is so damn tiny. There was another phone, up by the driver, but it was all smashed to pieces.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So why I was calling is, we pried open the trunk, and it was a purse, and we figured you’d want to return it to the family or something like that.”

  Duckworth said, “Okay, I’ll get back to you.”

  He ended the call, put the phone into his pocket, and said to Kilmer, “Sorry.”

  “Hmm?” Kilmer said, glancing over.

  “I’m done.”

  Kilmer put his own phone away. “How far away is this place?”

  “We’re here,” Duckworth said.

  • • •

  Duckworth’s favorite coroner, Wanda Therrieult, wasn’t on duty. They were met by a young, pasty-looking woman Duckworth thought was a student picking up some part-time hours. She wasn’t qualified to perform an autopsy, but she could run the office alone until one needed to be done, at which point Wanda would be called.

  She consulted her computer, then said, “Okay, um, Miriam Chalmers . . . okay, I know where she is. Hang on. If the two of you could wait here.”

  The body, Duckworth explained to Kilmer, had to be moved to a viewing area. While they waited, Kilmer went back to studying his phone.

  “Were you and your sister close?” Duckworth asked.

  “Not particularly,” he said, not looking up.

  “Were you in touch?”

  Kilmer glanced up. “Christmas, sometimes. Weddings. Things like that.”

  “Did you come for her wedding to Adam?”

  “No. I wasn’t invited. No one was. They got married in Hawaii.”

  “Oh,” Duckworth said.

  A door opened. “We’re ready,” the young woman said. “She’s just in here.”

  The two men moved toward the door, Duckworth in the lead. He caught a glimpse of a pair of naked feet on the table when his phone rang yet again.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “I’m really sorry about this.” He took out his phone, wanting to check the caller’s name, figuring that whatever it was, it could wait.

  It was Garth again.

  “Hang on,” Duckworth said to Kilmer, turning and blocking him from going into the viewing room. Into the phone, he said, “What is it, Garth?”

  “Okay, don’t be pissed. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I did it, so sue me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The phone started ringing again, so I figured, shit, maybe I should just answer it, so I opened up the purse, found the phone, and answered it. I said hi, and it was some guy, and he said, ‘Who’s this?’ And I said, ‘Garth Duhl.’ Which, I guess if he’d never heard of me, would seem kind of odd.”

  “What did he say, Garth?”

  “He says, ‘Where’s Georgina?’ And I say, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘Where’s Georgina? Where’s my wife?’ And I say, ‘Who is this?’ And he says, ‘This is Peter Blackmore. Why are you answering my wife’s phone?’ So I tell him that somebody would get back to him, and I hang up, and I look through the purse, and I find a driver’s license, and you’re not going to believe this.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Duckworth said, ending the call. He looked at Kilmer and said, “We’re not going to do this now.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Cal

  MIRIAM Chalmers looked at me fiercely and said, “I’m calling the police.” She was reaching into her purse, presumably, for a cell phone.

  “Okay,” I said evenly.

  I was happy for her to call the Promise Falls cops, or Lucy Brighton. Then I could be spared the task of giving her the news about her husband.

  Assuming, of course, that the police had that right. Lucy had identified his body, after all. I realized now everyone had just assumed the body next to him had been his wife’s.

  It was possible, I supposed, that Miriam already knew her husband was dead, that coming into the house and shouting his name was an act. But it didn’t strike me that way. If she really did not know about what had happened at the drive-in, I had to marvel at the fact that Adam Chalmers had found two women—Miriam and Felicia—with an apparent disinterest in current events. In Felicia’s defense, I’d found her much earlier in the day. But it was well into the evening now, nearly twenty-four hours since the drive-in bombing.

  My lack of concern about Miriam calling the police seemed to have lessened the urgency on her part to do it. She still had the phone in her hand, poised to make the call, but she had stopped.

  “Is Adam here?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Where is he? I called here earlier today and left a message, and he hasn’t answered his cell.”

  The voice mail I’d heard. It had been from her. “I don’t think I can carry on this way.” I was betting that number I’d made note of was her cell.

  “You should talk to the police,” I said. “Make the call. But not 911. Call one of their nonemergency lines. Or better yet, I could drive you down to the station.”

  She let the phone fall into her bag, then dropped the purse onto the nearest chair. She reached a tentative hand out to the wall. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Who did you say you are?”

  “Cal Weaver.” I took out one of my business cards and handed it to her. She barely glanced at it before dropping it onto the chair. “When did you go away?”

  “What?”

  I nodded in the direction of the overnight bag on the floor. “Have you been out of town?”

  “Two days,” Miriam said.

  “Where?”

  “Lenox.” A small town, just into Massachusetts, where they held the annual Tanglewood music festival. “There’s an inn there I go to when I need some time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “I don’t know who you are, or why you’re here, but I’m not answering another question until you tell me where Adam is. Is he okay? Has he had a heart attack?”

  You did what you had to do.

  “Have a seat,” I told her.

  “No.”

  “Please. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  She knew it was going to be bad. I could see it in her face. I pulled out a chair at the table for her, sat down close to her on the corner. My eyes were glancing around, wondering where the alcohol was kept.

  “There was an accident last night,” I said. “At the Constellation Drive-in. You know it?”

  Miriam nodded.

  “The screen toppled. It looks like it was a bomb. The screen fell on some cars, crushed them, including a Jag registered to your husband. He was in the car. The police got in touch with Lucy, told him that her father was dead.”

  “No,” she whispered. “There must be a mistake. Why wasn’t I called? Why’s no one been in touch with me?”


  “That might be because everyone thought you had died with your husband.”

  She let that sink in for a moment.

  “There was someone else in the car,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “Of course. Who goes to the drive-in alone?” She fixed her eyes on me. “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone knows at this point. I don’t know if anyone realizes the mistake that’s been made. Because you’ve been out of town, because you haven’t been here.”

  “All Lucy had to do was look in the garage and see my car wasn’t here and . . . the stupid twat. Where is Adam? Where is he . . . where are they keeping him?”

  “You should talk to Lucy. Or the coroner’s office. He may have been moved to a funeral home. Paisley and Wraith, for example. They’re the biggest in town.”

  Miriam sniffed.

  “There are probably people you should call,” I said. “Your brother, for one. Lucy was in touch with him. I think he’s coming here, with the intention of identifying your remains.”

  “Good God.”

  “Why were you in Lenox?” I asked.

  “I needed some time to think. Adam and I have been . . . having a rough patch. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. Even if someone had tried to reach me, I had my phone off most of the time. I didn’t watch the news, didn’t know anything about any of this. Today, I was ready to talk, but I couldn’t get hold of him.”

  “You left a message. That you didn’t think you could keep on going this way.”

  The tears were coming now. She tried to wipe them away from her cheeks with her fingers. “Purse,” she whispered.

  I retrieved it from the front hall, set it on the table, and sat back down. She reached in for some tissue, dabbed her eyes, then went back in and brought out a pack of Winstons and a lighter. She got a cigarette between her fingers, but her hand was shaking too much to light it. I gently took the lighter from her, held it to the end of the cigarette.

  She pulled hard on it, held the smoke in her lungs, let it come out her nostrils.

  “I think I know who it was,” she said quietly.