by Steve Richer
“Tom’s just stepped out. He’s exhausted. I’m their friend. Their tenant, too. I live in the basement apartment.”
“I know.” For a moment she wondered just how much he knew, then he smiled, and went on, “I’ve just come from their place. We’re looking into the death of a Mr. Walter Jones there earlier.”
“He’s dead? Your officer wouldn’t say. How awful.”
“Afraid so, ma’am. We just need to do things properly. Ask a few questions.”
“What happened? I know you can’t say, but, well, I live there. If there’s some lunatic out there…”
“It’s okay. I don’t think we have a serial killer on the loose, ma’am. If there was any real suggestion of anything worse than a tragic accident they’d have sent out someone far more senior than me.”
He was trying to make a joke, trying to reassure her. The guy really had no idea just how much more reassured she felt now! He had pretty much just told her they wanted to close this.
“We just need to establish a timeline, make sure we’re not missing anything. We just have to make sure all the dots join up and there’s nothing suspicious. You mind I ask a few questions now? Would that be okay?”
So they hadn’t completely dismissed the possibility of foul play, after all. Libbie reminded herself she needed to tread carefully.
“Fine, Detective,” she said. “But I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”
“Do you have any idea why the deceased would be at your address earlier today?”
Time for a little misdirection, perhaps.
“Who was it?” she asked. “You said it was Walter Jones? How sad. He worked with Alice. They were close friends, I know. I haven’t seen him at the house before. But, well, I had the feeling he might have a thing for Alice, from the way she talked about him. Is that silly?”
“A thing? How do you mean, a thing?”
“Oh, all from his side, I can assure you of that. Alice and Tom are so sweet together. But, well, she kind of attracts it. There’s Walter, and there’s Rusty…”
The officer’s demeanor changed immediately. A new alertness, a narrowing of the eyes.
“Rusty?”
“The neighborhood kid. Used to do odd jobs at the house until Tom told him to stay away.”
“Now why would Mr. Granger do something like that?”
“Well, Rusty had a thing for Alice. You know what boys are like. He was kind of intense, though. I don’t know quite what happened between Rusty and Tom, but the boy stopped coming around after that. I could see how Rusty might not like Walter calling around, though…”
She looked away, then looked back up to meet Malwitz’s eyes. “Oh, Detective. You don’t think…? Please don’t do anything on what I’ve said. I’d hate to think I’d gotten the boy into trouble. He’s a sweet kid. Always means well.”
“Rusty. Do you have a surname for the kid? An address?”
She did, but she wasn’t going to give it up straight away. She was going to keep Detective Malwitz talking just a bit more before she gave up the information he wanted. She was enjoying this too much to make it that easy for him.
Chapter 32
This time when Alice woke, it was the real thing. As if her body had decided now was the time to do it properly, rather than drifting in and out of consciousness and all states between.
Tom was there, in one of the room’s two chairs. He was slumped sideways in what must be a horribly uncomfortable position.
They were in a hospital room, that much was clear. She heard machine sounds from beyond the room, the low hum of a generator, perhaps, and random electronic beeps and whines. Occasional voices. The air smelled of antiseptics that were supposed to be aromatic, but only reminded her of chemicals.
At first, she’d thought it must be the middle of the night. The room was about as dark as a hospital room ever gets, after all. The main lights turned off, and the room only lit by the glow from monitors and the light coming in through the doorway.
She realized it must be earlier though. The voices. The sounds of activity.
How long had she been here?
She had no idea.
Much of the time since she’d left the house for Whitetail Lane was a blur, or completely absent.
She remembered arguing with Franco Vialli.
She remembered all the signs of the impending hypoglycemic shock. The ones you dismiss, thinking No, it’s not going to happen this time. As if willpower alone was a substitute for medicine.
That must be what had happened. Why she was here.
She remembered…
Tom was watching her, his expression unreadable.
And at last she knew why.
“Walter?” she managed to say.
The slight shake of her husband’s head answered more fully than any words could have done.
Walter.
She hadn’t noticed him move, but now Tom leaned over her, delicately balancing himself on the bed so as not to disturb her. His cheek was cold against hers and the stubble scratched.
“Oh, Tom.”
“Sweetie.”
They pressed cheeks together and she felt the reassuring presence of his body over her, only a few points of delicate contact, as if she were a flower that might be crushed.
“You had a hypo,” he told her, straightening, moving to pull his chair closer and sit. He took her hand in both of his. “For some reason your shot of glucagon didn’t work fast enough to keep you afloat.”
She didn’t care. She should, she knew, but…
“Walter?”
“The police think it was an accident. A fall. He hit his head.”
“I found him.”
“I know. You called 911. And… well, it was obvious you’d tried to save him.”
The blood. She knew he must’ve been referring to Walter’s blood on her hands and clothes.
There were so many unanswered questions, not the least of which was what Walter might have been doing at the house. She closed her eyes again. It was all too much.
She opened them again. “Tom?” She waited until he was looking. “I think Libbie tried to kill me. Here. Earlier.”
She saw his whole body tense. His mouth opened, then closed again. No words.
“I woke earlier. Kind of. I wasn’t properly conscious, but I could see. I understood enough to know I was in a hospital room. And she was there.”
“She was here. She came visiting.”
“She had a pillow. She was standing right over me. And just for a second I knew she was going to press it down over my face. I so desperately wanted to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. I tried to call for help, but I couldn’t make my voice work. It was like the worst kind of nightmare.”
“But she didn’t…”
“Someone came.”
The silence stretched out.
“You don’t think maybe it was a dream, sweetie? It sounds like the classic dream of powerlessness: something awful about to happen and you can’t move, can’t speak, can’t do any of the things that might make a difference.”
Tom’s suggestion was convincing, even if he didn’t sound convinced himself.
“She did come to visit,” he said again. “It was the weirdest thing. Right up until that point I was convinced she was the devil incarnate. I had five minutes with Jason Grande this morning, and we went over the eviction process. As soon as I said she seemed to be using a fake identity he was onto it, said that would invalidate any lease. Talking to Jason seemed to make everything real: she’s a fake, she stirs things up, she might be guilty of just about anything, or so I believed.”
He shrugged. “But then when she came by the hospital, well, as soon as you’re in her presence none of that seems credible somehow. She has that eager puppy-dog charm thing going on. She’d do anything to help you. She just… disarms you.”
Tom was floundering. Struggling to explain what it was that Libbie Burchett did to people.
“It’s impossible to dislike her, isn’t
it?” Alice said.
He smiled. She’d found the words he’d been struggling to put together himself. “That’s exactly it. When she came here earlier and she was so upset to see you like this, I felt like such a bad person.”
“And yet…”
He smiled, but it was a bitter smile. “When she’s not here to charm and distract you, it’s far easier to remember exactly why we want her out of our lives, uh?”
“It is.”
Her throat hurt and, as if he’d read her mind, Tom moved closer with a glass of water and a straw.
“Thank you.”
He kissed her forehead tenderly before sitting again.
“Poor Walter. I tried so hard to save him. But I was so close to blacking out. I nearly didn’t make it back into the house.”
“There was nothing you could do.”
“He fell?”
“That’s what they think.”
He’d said that before. Think.
“But?”
“The lawn rake was there,” he told her. “But I know I left that by the tool shed. I remember. I was so angry… angry with the goddamn leaves, would you believe? That time I tried to rake them up but the wind kept blowing them around. So how did the rake get there, on the path, so anyone could trip on it?”
She didn’t know what he was getting at. That someone had moved the rake to booby-trap the path? That was beyond belief. Unless someone had put it there afterward…
“Are the police confident it was an accident?”
Tom shrugged. “They’re asking a lot of questions. That might just be procedure.”
“Or?”
“I keep asking myself why Walter was at the house? We both know he’s not the unannounced house call kind of guy, right?” He paused as if to correct himself, but didn’t. Was not is…
Alice was studying her husband closely. Surprised that, even in the thick of all that was going on, she should feel a hint of relief that Tom hadn’t leaped to a paranoid, jealous explanation for Walter’s presence.
Had he turned a corner? Finally moved on from that damaging behavior pattern?
She squeezed his hand where it lay on top of hers. Gave him a weak smile.
“Sorry,” he said. “Is this too much? You must be exhausted. You should be resting, having some of that delicious sugar-free Jell-O.”
She squeezed again, ignoring his attempt at humor. “No, we need to talk. About all this. I need to understand.”
“Well when you do, if you could just share it with me?” A smile, a wink. The old Tom, even in the middle of all this. It was good to see.
“I’m glad you saw Jason.” She had known he was going to call, but to actually have a discussion so quickly was good. He was a busy man. “Is he putting things in motion?”
“I have a follow-up arranged with him next week. We’ll go through all we know about the situation and draw up some options.”
“That’s good. We need her out of our lives. I don’t care if that puppy-dog charm is entirely the real thing and there’s nothing at all wrong with her. She gives me the creeps. She has to go.”
“Totally. She creeps me out, too. I’m working on it.”
He moved in with the water again and Alice took several long sips. She knew she had to hydrate before they’d take the drip out of her wrist. The hospital routine was familiar.
She couldn’t believe she’d let herself get so ill again. She really had gotten either complacent or forgetful about keeping her supplies of meds and candies replenished. It could so easily have been much worse.
“Is my phone there? I think they’ll have put my purse in the cabinet.” They always put belongings in the cabinet. Hospital routine.
Tom was giving her a look.
“What?”
“You’re not checking your work emails, sweetie. Mapleview can wait for once.”
She didn’t remind him that she’d been taken off Mapleview. And at least part of the reason for that was that he was right. Michael Tuckett might have taken her off it, but she still hoped to prove him wrong, and she couldn’t do that if she took her eye off the ball.
He always got like this when she fell ill. The protective thing.
He knew she wasn’t up to much right now. Hell, she could barely even see straight.
“I just… would you check for me? I’ll let you be the judge of whether I should know.”
She couldn’t put her finger on it. Most of the time she was the epitome of the rational modern professional. Methodical, logical. But sometimes… sometimes there was something indefinable. An instinct thing. A hunch.
And when she felt that, it was nearly always for good reason.
Tom looked as if he was going to keep arguing, but maybe he sensed it as well. Or maybe he sensed what a hard time she’d give him before he finally gave in to the inevitable.
He reached for the cabinet, found Alice’s purse, and moments later was thumbing the passcode into her cellphone.
Impatient now, Alice waited as Tom scrolled through messages. What was he taking so long to check? Email? Text messages? Messenger? Freaking baseball scores?
Finally, she cracked. “Well? Anything I should know about?”
“Oh, sorry. Mostly junk and office noise. I’d forgotten how much junk circulates at Pierson Newport. Lots of messages from folks wishing you well. CeeCee Jonson, Jilly Tuckett, Emma Cheng. A few from neighbors. You want me to read them out?”
“No, thanks, it’s fine. Anything from Walter?” She’d finally put her finger on the source of her unease. Something Tom had said. That Walter wasn’t the kind of guy to call around unannounced. He’d have messaged her first to say he was on his way, at least.
“No, nothing.”
That was strange.
“Email or text,” she said. That was how he preferred to contact people. Messages he could think about as he composed them. Messages he could edit before sending.
Tom was shaking his head. Then: “Ah… there’s a voicemail. Sorry, your phone layout’s different to mine. I didn’t spot the icons.”
“Not different. Organized.”
Tom pressed something on the screen, and suddenly Walter’s voice emerged from the speaker, mid-sentence.
Alice felt sick hearing his voice like that. A voice she’d never hear again.
And after she’d heard the message she felt sick for an altogether different reason.
“—found some interesting things about her. Like her real name isn’t Burchett, it’s Cottrill. Elizabeth Cottrill. And once you have the right name, well, let’s just say she’s a woman with history. Violent history. Like…”
His voice stopped then and Alice thought the connection might have been cut. But then, after a long pause, Walter resumed.
“Now’s not the time. Not on voicemail. Listen, Alice, I’m heading over. We need to talk. Urgently. You really need to know what I’ve found out.”
Then the line did cut and Alice was left staring at Tom.
“What did he mean? Violent history?”
“I don’t know, but…” Did Libbie know Walter was onto her? Had she somehow found out? And if so…
Had she been responsible for his accident? Had she killed him to silence him? From the look on Tom’s ashen face he was clearly thinking along the same lines.
Had they been sharing their house with a murderer?
Chapter 33
Alice looked so frail and weak. It broke Tom’s heart to see her this way.
Sitting there as she clawed her way back to consciousness, he was reminded of his earlier resolve. Get a job. Put himself out there in the world. Get a goddamn grip.
He had to tackle this. Had to put things right so that Alice could focus on her recovery. He’d wavered again when Libbie had come to the hospital, but no more.
She had to go.
He’d already decided that much even before listening to Walter’s message. Walter had sounded desperate. A man on a mission. He wished the guy had told them more in his m
essage. Hadn’t felt the need to do it in person.
So Libbie’s real name was Cottrill. Tom struggled to see the implications, other than it being something they could use to build the case of fake identity Jason Grande had told him would invalidate the lease.
But he’d hinted at so much more.
Let’s just say she’s a woman with history. Violent history.
What had he meant by that?
At first, Tom had dismissed Alice’s claim that Libbie had tried to smother her with a pillow. She’d admitted she was delirious at the time, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Even now, with the accumulating evidence that Libbie was up to something, he found it hard to believe that of her.
But Walter’s message changed all that.
A woman with a violent history.
“I’m going to take care of this,” he’d told Alice. “I’m going to get to the bottom of it all.”
“Tom?”
“It’s fine, sweetie. You’re safe here.”
He wished he believed it. As he left, he spoke to one of the nurses. “She’s suffering anxiety,” he told the young man. “She often does after an episode like this. Would you keep a close eye on her? I know you would anyway, of course, but just…?”
The nurse had smiled, nodded and reassured him, and Tom had gone on his way.
Now, he paused at the wide glass double doors of the Pierson Newport main office. He took the keycard he’d taken from Alice’s purse and swiped it through the reader. The doors gave that familiar muffled click and opened when he pushed.
It was early evening now and he hoped no one would still be here.
Inside, he followed a once-familiar route across the lobby and through to the open-plan area. He’d had his first desk space here, years ago, before he’d graduated to a separate office. Lights were on in the big corner office.
He stopped, considering his options, but it was too late. Michael Tuckett had seen him.
Now, the big man emerged from his office and stood, filling the doorway.
“Tom,” he said.
“Michael.”
“How’s Alice?”
Tom found himself unable to answer. All he could see was that weak form in the big hospital bed.
