Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  Elizabeth was beginning to form an image of Sean Wrentmore. This was his view, the circumscribed world he lived in. Sitting at the desk in his bedroom, he would have looked out at that artificial half-moon, the same every night.

  He had been thirty-two years old, quiet, disciplined, slightly eccentric. Elizabeth had interviewed his neighbor, Delia Ross, and these were the words the woman had used to describe him. The photograph on his old college ID showed a plain, lean face, blond hair, eyes that seemed determined to stare down the camera.

  According to Laura Kristoll’s statement, Wrentmore had owned a laptop computer. Tom Kristoll had taken it and disposed of it after Wrentmore’s death. A laptop would have allowed Wrentmore the freedom to write anywhere, out in public or in any room of the house, but Elizabeth imagined him sitting at his desk, facing off against a white screen night after night.

  And when he rose from his desk, he would wander to the other rooms. He would look around his walls and see strangers in black-and-white photographs, people from Third World countries, their expressions intense, their eyes, like Wrentmore’s, staring down the camera. He would see their faces, not the faces of family members or friends. There were no snapshots that Elizabeth could find, no photographs of old girlfriends tucked away. No evidence that any woman had ever entered Wrentmore’s home.

  But Wrentmore had not been completely solitary. He had turned outward and had found Delia Ross. He had given her his manuscript to read, and he had shared with her an odd secret. He had given her a key to a padlock.

  The next morning Elizabeth drove out to Sean Wrentmore’s storage unit: number 401 at Self-Storage USA. Carter Shan accompanied her and when the metal door rolled up they looked together on Wrentmore’s sad belongings. Boxes of books and girlie magazines, scraps of furniture not worth keeping.

  Under a cloud-gray sky they crunched across the gravel lane to a tiny rental office. The attendant on duty was a muscular young man in his twenties, tattoos covering his arms and curling around his neck from under his collar. He leaned his thick forearms on a Formica counter and studied Wrentmore’s photograph.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him before,” he said. “Are you really cops?”

  His face was animated, his voice enthusiastic.

  “We’re really cops,” Shan told him.

  “So if I tell you what I know about this guy—Sean Wrentmore of unit 401—that makes me a solid citizen, right?”

  Shan nodded. “Sure.”

  “It earns me credit,” the attendant said with a sly grin. “Like if I ran a red light, you’d cut me some slack.”

  “We’d let you off with a warning,” Elizabeth said.

  “Awesome,” the attendant said. “Get ready to be dazzled then, because I’m going to tell you everything I know about Sean Wrentmore. Starting at the beginning.” He turned to the computer on the counter beside him and tapped at the keyboard. “Sean Wrentmore has had unit 401 for five years now. Since before my time.”

  “How long have you worked here?” asked Shan.

  “About two years. But like I said, I’ve seen him around. I talked to him once. We have the same tattoo.” The attendant raised his left arm to show them a series of linked rings, drawn in black ink, that circled his wrist. “He showed me his, asked me where I got mine. That, I’m afraid, was the extent of my conversation with Sean Wrentmore.”

  Elizabeth exchanged a weary look with Shan. “We’re not dazzled,” she said.

  The attendant’s grin returned. “I’m not finished. I haven’t told you about the girl.”

  “What girl?” Shan asked.

  “The girl from unit 401. She came here two or three weeks ago. Drove up in a Chevrolet—gray, or light green. Parked in front of 401. Rolled the door up. She was in there for a while. I wandered over. It was a slow day. Besides, she was a hot girl. I thought I might help her out, like if she needed to load something in her car.”

  “And did you—help her out?”

  “I lifted a box for her, put it in her trunk. That’s all she ended up taking. It was heavy, one of those fireproof file boxes.”

  “Did you see what was in it?”

  “I didn’t see inside,” the attendant said. “But I think she had it open before I came around. There was a key in the lock.” He braced himself against the counter and lowered his voice a notch. “Now I’d like to be able to tell you I got her name and number, and Lord knows I tried. But the number she gave me, when I called it, turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. The name is probably a dud too. Mary-Louise.”

  The name caught Elizabeth’s attention. She thought of the letter Loogan had described—the letter signed M. L. Black.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Hot, like I said. Tall, but not too tall. Maybe twenty-four years old. Her nose wasn’t quite straight, but who cares? Great skin. Long hair—not quite red and not quite brown.”

  “Auburn,” Elizabeth said softly.

  Shan turned to her. “It’s Valerie Calnero. What does Valerie Calnero have to do with Sean Wrentmore?”

  Elizabeth closed the cover of her notebook. “Let’s go ask her.”

  “So that’s good, right?” the attendant said eagerly. “That earns me some credit.”

  “It does,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve been a big help. We appreciate it.” She turned away from the counter. Shan was already at the door.

  “Cool,” said the attendant. “But where are you going? I haven’t covered everything.”

  She stopped and turned back. “What do you mean?”

  “I still have to tell you about the guy I talked to yesterday. You’re not the only ones interested in unit 401.”

  Chapter 25

  FROM WHERE HE HAD PARKED ON THE STREET, DAVID LOOGAN HAD A clear view of a modest apartment building: three stories, glass doors at the entryway, bricks the color of sand. He watched Valerie Calnero walk down the steps with a small suitcase in one hand and a garment bag over her shoulder. She took these to a light green Chevrolet parked in the horseshoe drive in front of the building, where they joined the items she had already stowed away—more suitcases, cardboard boxes, a wicker laundry basket full of books.

  It was Wednesday morning. He would have gone to her sooner, but he’d had some trouble finding her. Her address was not in the phone book. It was on the Gray Streets list, but he had left the list behind at his house.

  He had it now, folded and tucked away in his glove compartment. He had retrieved it earlier in the morning—a calculated risk, based on the assumption that the police, with all they had to do, wouldn’t keep someone stationed at his house.

  Still, he had been cautious. He had parked around the block, walked through an alley, climbed the low chain-link fence that enclosed the backyard. Entered through the back door that opened into the utility room behind the kitchen. The Gray Streets list was in the office, among the papers in the deep drawer of the desk.

  With the list in hand he risked a detour upstairs. There was a guitar in a solid black case in the spare bedroom. He remembered seeing it when he first moved into the house. The guitar itself was glossy and unworn, as if it had never been played. Loogan left it in the bedroom. He took the case.

  Valerie Calnero slammed the trunk of her car and headed back into the building. Loogan watched her through his windshield, a slim figure in a lightweight, tapered jacket and blue jeans. He got out of his car, grabbed the guitar case from the backseat, and jogged to the horseshoe drive, up the steps. The entrance door was wedged open with a folded newspaper.

  The hallway on the second floor was deserted. Valerie lived in number 203. Loogan had a moment of doubt as he reached for the doorknob. If you were loading a car, going in and out repeatedly, you might leave the lock disengaged. Then again, you might not.

  The knob turned. Loogan opened the door an inch, held it with his foot. Laying the guitar case against the hallway wall, he worked the snaps, opened the lid. Sean Wrentmore’s shotgun was inside.

  Loogan still had the
key to Wrentmore’s condo. He had picked up the gun there the day before.

  Passing through the foyer of Valerie’s apartment, Loogan kept the shotgun aimed at the floor. The door closed behind him. The rooms looked abandoned. The furniture remained, but there were open cupboards, empty cardboard boxes. On the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room stood a plastic pet carrier. A gray and white cat peered out at Loogan from behind the carrier’s wire door. It whined at him softly.

  There was a purse on the counter too, and, on the floor below, a briefcase and several small travel bags piled together—and a fireproof file box, the size of an ottoman, with a key resting in its lock.

  Down a short hallway Loogan heard water running, a door opening. Valerie stepped into the hall, froze when she saw him. He knelt by the file box, turned the key, opened it. There was nothing inside.

  Valerie stepped closer. “Mr. Loogan,” she said.

  He drew himself up. “Miss Calnero.”

  “You can take the box if you want,” she said. “You’ll save me the trouble of getting rid of it.”

  She regarded him coolly. Eyes remote behind glasses with black plastic frames, auburn hair drawn tight in a ponytail.

  Loogan thought, just then, of something Michael Beccanti had said to him. Some people, you break into their house, they get hysterical. Valerie Calnero wasn’t one of them.

  He matched her bland tone. “Will you sit with me for a minute?”

  “I’m pressed for time,” she said.

  The barrel of the shotgun swayed like a pendulum at Loogan’s side. With his free hand he waved her into the living room. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  He stepped back so she could pass, and she waded through empty cardboard boxes and bubble wrap and settled onto the sofa. Loogan took a chair.

  “I know what you want,” she said. “I can’t help you.”

  A single line of worry appeared in her smooth brow. Loogan studied it.

  “I think you can,” he said. “You can tell me about the box. I know it came from Sean Wrentmore’s storage unit. You can tell me what was in it. And what it has to do with Tom’s death.”

  She looked at him sidelong. “Does it have something to do with Tom’s death?”

  “You were blackmailing Tom about Sean. The two things can’t be entirely unrelated.”

  “Do you think I wrestled Tom out his office window, Mr. Loogan?”

  “I think you know who did. Or you have suspicions.”

  “And if I did—have suspicions—why would I share them with you?”

  He made a point of not looking at the shotgun that lay across the arms of his chair. “Because you want to leave,” he said, “and I can’t let you leave until you tell me what you know.”

  “Suppose I told you Sean was a friend of mine,” she said. “He let me keep some things in his storage unit. Keepsakes. Chapters from my dissertation. When I was a child, my grandmother’s house burned down. I’m paranoid about losing things in a fire.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “But it’s not a bad story, and the part about my grandmother’s house is true.”

  “I don’t think the police would be convinced.”

  “They may never get a chance to ask. I intend to be out of their jurisdiction soon.”

  Loogan crossed one leg over the other, resting his ankle on his knee. The barrel of the shotgun fell across the instep of his shoe.

  He said, “Do you think that’s smart, leaving town right now, after all that’s happened? It makes you look guilty.”

  “I don’t see why,” Valerie said. “If anyone looks into why I left, they’ll find that I’ve requested a leave of absence from the university. If they talk to Laura Kristoll, they’ll learn that I’ve been unhappy for the past few months about how my dissertation’s going. You try keeping up your enthusiasm for the Scottish Chaucerian poets of the fifteenth century. Then with Tom’s death, and Adrian’s suicide, it was just too much to bear. Sometimes you have to take a break, step back, regain your perspective.”

  “And what about the blackmail?” he said. “Suppose someone investigates that? Suppose they talk to the clerk who rented you a mailbox in Chicago?”

  The faintest of smiles played at the corners of her mouth. “I wish them luck. Sometimes those clerks are careless. I dealt with one once—he didn’t go by the book at all. They’re supposed to check your driver’s license and take down the number, but I had forgotten mine that day. So he did me a favor. He thought I looked like a nice person. Some men are sweet that way. But if he ever had to pick me out of a lineup—well, maybe if he was allowed to look down my blouse. I don’t think he’d remember my face.”

  Her body leaned forward and her fingers rose reflexively to the open collar of her shirt. Loogan watched them touch the hollow at the base of her throat.

  “Look, I think it’s admirable,” she said softly. “You want to find out who killed Tom. I wish he were alive. I wish Adrian were alive. I wish none of this had happened. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I can’t help you.”

  He uncrossed his legs. The muzzle of the shotgun grazed the carpet. “That’s not good enough. If you won’t tell me what was in that file box, I’ll have to go looking for it on my own.”

  “You won’t find it,” she said. “Whatever was in that box is long gone.”

  “We’ll see. We can start here, with those.” He pointed to the bags on the floor below the counter. “Then we’ll go down and look in the car. I’m willing to spend all day.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I need to leave.”

  She started to rise from the sofa, but he sprang to his feet, grabbed her shoulder, pushed her back down.

  Her glasses had slipped down her nose, and he saw her eyes clearly for the first time as she looked up at him. They were hard and dark and steady.

  “That’s better,” she said. “You were much too genteel before, but now I can see you’re just a brute.”

  “Stay there.” He retrieved the briefcase from among the other bags and set it on a cardboard box between them.

  “Start with this,” he said. “It needs a key. Where is it?”

  “In my pocket,” she said.

  “Let me have it.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a gun.”

  “You’re not even pointing it at me.”

  Holding the shotgun one-handed, he leveled the barrel at her knees.

  “That’s more like it,” she said, “but you wouldn’t really shoot me, would you?”

  “I’m a dangerous lunatic,” he said. “Two nights ago, I stabbed a man.”

  She reached into her jacket pocket, drew out a ring of keys.

  “Toss them here,” he said.

  Her fist closed around a small black cylinder attached to the key chain. Her thumb found the end of it.

  “Pepper spray,” she said. “Now we have a standoff.”

  He made a grim mask of his face and leveled the shotgun at her chest, holding it with two hands now. “Give me the keys,” he said.

  Valerie Calnero stood up slowly from the sofa, her dark eyes fixed on him. The muzzle hovered inches away from her chest. Off to the side, the cat whined plaintively from its carrier.

  With no particular urgency, Valerie said, “Do you think no one ever aimed a gun at me before? I had a stepfather once. At least that’s what my mother wanted me to call him. They weren’t married. He had a pistol, a souvenir from his days in the army. He used to bring it out, when my mother wasn’t home, when he’d had a few beers. He’d aim it at my head and make me take off my clothes. I was eleven. He never touched me. He thought men who did that were sick. He had scruples. I was safe with him, he said. Then in a couple years, when I started to fill out, he lost hold of his scruples and I wasn’t safe anymore.”

  Without taking her eyes from Loogan’s, she reached for the briefcase with her left hand. Her right hand gripped the pepper spray. “You’ll have to shoot me or let me go,”
she said. “I’m willing to use mine.”

  He stepped back from her, lowering the shotgun. He watched her gather the straps and handles of the remaining bags on the floor. The black cylinder remained in her right hand. The pet carrier was still on the counter when she headed for the door.

  “Are you coming back for the cat?” Loogan asked her.

  She looked at him over her shoulder from the doorway. “I think the cat’s on her own. This is the one and only exit I plan to make.”

  The cat mewed quietly in the hallway as Loogan restored Wrentmore’s shotgun to the guitar case. The animal was purring softly when he placed the pet carrier on the front passenger seat of Valerie Calnero’s car.

  The sun came out from behind a cloud as Valerie piled her bags in the backseat. She turned to Loogan and the sunlight illuminated her face.

  “I’m off,” she said. “It’s a good day for driving.”

  She held the pepper spray discreetly at her side.

  “Where to?” Loogan asked her.

  Her laugh came involuntarily. It tossed her head back. “You’re a ridiculous man,” she said.

  He squared his shoulders against the weight of the guitar case. “Was it true what you said, about your stepfather?”

  Taking off her glasses, she looked at him keenly. “Ridiculous,” she said again. “And you make a terrible gunman. But I can see why Laura likes you.”

  She raised her chin and stood on tiptoe and with her eyes open she gave him a kiss that lingered on his lower lip.

  He got his phone out as she drove away. Turned it on and punched a number as he crossed the street. Three rings and then he heard Elizabeth Waishkey’s voice.

  “Mr. Loogan. Where are you?” She sounded slightly amused.

  “You need to talk to Valerie Calnero,” he said.

  “We’re on our way to do that. We’ve been delayed, listening to the story of your visit to Self-Storage USA.”

  “She’s skipping town,” he said evenly. “If you want to catch her, now’s the time. She just left her apartment.”