Broken Promise: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “What are you saying?” Marla asked.

  “It’s all right, dear. I’m just talking to David.”

  “I’ll keep what you have to say in mind,” I told my aunt. “But I don’t think my role in this entitles me to clam up when the police start asking questions.”

  Agnes shook her head. “You really are Arlene’s boy, aren’t you? Stubborn to the end.” She scanned the various police vehicles. “I’m going to find out who’s in charge here.”

  She went off in search of authority.

  My cousin looked at me and said, “You have to help me.”

  “Your mom’s doing that,” I said. “That was probably Natalie Bondurant she was talking to on the phone. She’s a good lawyer.”

  “Don’t you get it?” Marla asked. “Didn’t you hear what she said? She said ‘I’ have a situation.”

  “Marla, she just meant—”

  “I know what she meant. She’s worried about her own reputation first.”

  “Even if that were true, anything she does to protect herself will end up protecting you.”

  Marla’s eyes darted about, as if looking for some safe place to run to, and finding none. “I think . . . maybe I am in trouble.”

  I leaned in close to her, rested my hands on her shoulders. I’d already asked her the big question, but felt it was time to try again. “Marla, look at me. Tell me. Did you do anything to that woman? To Matthew’s mother? Maybe, just for a moment, something snapped? You did something you didn’t mean to do?”

  Even as I asked this, I wondered whether I wanted to know the answer. If Marla confessed to me that she’d killed Rosemary Gaynor and then run off with her baby, would that be something I could withhold from the police?

  I knew how Agnes would answer that question.

  “David, I could never do a thing like that,” she said, a voice barely above a whisper. “Never.”

  “Okay, okay, that’s good,” I said.

  “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “Sure, of course. But really, I know you don’t always trust your mother’s motives, but once she gets Natalie on board, then—”

  “No, no,” Marla said, her eyes pleading. “You. You have to help me. It’s what you do, right? You ask questions and find out things.”

  “Not anymore,” I told her.

  “But you know how. Find the woman who gave me Matthew. Find her. She’ll tell you what I’m saying is the truth.”

  “Marla, just—”

  “Promise,” she said. “Promise you’ll help me.”

  I was hunting for the right words. I held her tightly, looked her in the eye, and said, “You know I’m in your corner.”

  Her face shattered like a dropped teacup as she slipped her arms around me. “Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest, clearly not appreciating how totally noncommittal my response had been.

  ELEVEN

  “I wonder what’s going on,” said Arlene Harwood, standing at the top of the stairs to the basement. “I want to phone David, but I figure, if he has something to tell us, he’ll call. What a terrible situation. Just terrible.”

  Don Harwood, seated at his workbench, had just tightened the vise on a lawn-mower blade that he wanted to sharpen. His basement workshop—as opposed to the other one he had in the garage—was more crowded that it once was, ever since he’d set up a Lionel train layout on a four-by-eight sheet of plywood for Ethan to play with before he and his father had moved away to Boston. Ethan had lost interest in it in, but Don had not, and could not bring himself to tear it down. He’d put a lot of work into it. The O scale station, the miniature people waiting on the platform, the crossing signal that flashed when the train raced by, even a replica of the town’s water tower, with the words “Promise Falls” printed on the side.

  “I don’t know,” he said, not looking in Arlene’s direction, but staring at the blade, wondering where he’d put his grinder. That’d be just the ticket to make this blade sharp enough to shave with. “She’s trouble, that girl. Always has been, always will be. Your sister should have committed her to a mental ward for a while after she tried to run off with that baby in the hospital.”

  Arlene descended halfway down the stairs, far enough that Don would be able to see her from the waist down, if he chose to take his eyes off the blade. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “Is it? Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t be having more trouble with her today. Damn it, where’s my grinder?”

  Don suddenly raised his head, sniffed the air. “Arlene, you got somethin’ on the burner?”

  “What?”

  “Something sure smells like it’s burning.”

  “Oh, Lord!” she said, turned and started running up the stairs. But two from the top, she stumbled, pitched forward, and yelped.

  “Shit,” Don said, then hopped off his stool and bolted up the stairs to help her.

  “I’m so stupid!” she said, trying to get upright.

  Don knelt next to her. “What hurts? What did you hit?”

  “Just my leg. Below my knee. Damn it. Go turn off the stove!”

  Don edged around her and entered the kitchen. Smoke was billowing up from a frying pan. There were half a dozen breakfast sausages burning to a crisp. Don grabbed the handle, slid the pan over to another burner, then opened a lower cupboard door to look for the biggest lid he could find. He grabbed one and slammed it on top of the pan, smothering the smoke and the flame that was just beginning to erupt.

  He could feel his heart pounding, stood leaning against the counter to catch his breath. He hadn’t run up a flight of stairs in a long time, certainly not since his cardiac incident.

  He heard some shuffling, looked to see Arlene framed in the doorway to the basement. She’d managed to climb the rest of the stairs, but there was blood on her beige slacks, below her right knee.

  “Oh, honey, you’ve really hurt yourself,” he said.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay. I was cooking up some sausages so I could slice them and put them in toast for our lunch. I can’t believe I did that.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll make us something else. Some soup. I’ll open a can of soup.”

  Arlene limped over to the kitchen table, dropped herself into a chair. “Look what I’ve done to these pants. I just bought these. I don’t know if I can get that out. They’ll never be the same.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Don said. “Let me have a look.”

  He pushed himself away from the counter and went carefully down to one knee, rolled up the pant leg to just over Arlene’s knee, and examined the wound. “Those things always hurt like hell, right on the bone there. You’ve scraped the skin, and it’s gonna swell up good. Does it feel like it’s broken?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Stay here.” With effort, he stood, using the table for leverage, feeling his bones creak as he did so, and rummaged around in the drawer where they kept a first-aid kit. He cleaned the wound, put a bandage on it, then got a pliable ice pack from the freezer.

  “Hold this on it,” Don said. “Here, let’s prop your leg up on another chair. Then the pack won’t slide off.”

  He rolled her pant leg back down so the ice pack wouldn’t be right on her skin, then set it into position.

  “Damn, that’s cold,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, you’ll get used to it. Gotta leave it on there for a bit.”

  Arlene reached out and touched his arm. “I’m losing my marbles.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m forgetting things,” she said. “More and more.”

  “We all do,” he said. “I forget stuff all the time. Remember the other night I was trying to remember the name of that actor, the one from that movie?”

  “Which movie?”

  “You
know, the one where they were fighting that thing, and that actress was in it? The one you like? You know.”

  She smiled sadly. “You are as bad as me.”

  “I’m just saying, we’re forgetting things that aren’t that important, like movie stars’ names, but we still remember the stuff that matters.”

  “Remembering I have something on the stove matters,” she said. “I can’t find my keys half the time; the other day I thought I’d lost my Visa card and I found it in the drawer. Why would I put my Visa card in a drawer and not in my wallet?”

  Don pulled up a third chair so that he could set himself down right next to her. He put an arm around her shoulder. “You’re fine. We get older; we forget things. But you’re fine. Don’t worry about the sausages. If you’re okay walking, we’ll go out for lunch today.”

  “You can’t,” Arlene said suddenly.

  “And why not?”

  “Because you’re meeting Walden. I shouldn’t even have been making the sausages. You’re not going to be here at lunch.”

  “What? What are you talking about? Walden Fisher?”

  “Do you know any other Waldens?”

  “He’s coming over to see me?”

  “At eleven. I think he said coffee, not lunch, but when you go out at eleven, there’s a good chance it’ll turn into lunch.”

  “This is all news to me,” Don said, an edge in his voice.

  “Oh, no,” Arlene said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What?’

  “He called here yesterday. I’m pretty sure it was yesterday. He said he was going to drop by. Didn’t I tell you? Are you sure I didn’t tell you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I wrote it down. I’m sure I wrote it down. Look on the calendar.”

  By the phone was a promotional calendar from a local florist that came in the mail every December. They kept a record of their appointments—mostly medical these days—in the tiny squares.

  “Here it is,” he said. “‘Walden, eleven.’”

  “I knew I wrote it down. I was sure I told you.” The ice pack slid off her leg and hit the floor. “Oh, Christ almighty.”

  Don bent over, carefully retrieved it, and put it back on his wife’s leg. “Feeling any better?”

  “What hurts most is my pride.”

  “Why the hell does Walden want to see me? I haven’t talked to him in years.”

  Arlene shook her head. “Well, he’s going to be here in a few minutes. You get ready. I’m fine, really.”

  “Did he say what it was about?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Don, a man can’t get together for coffee? He’s a friend of yours.”

  “That’s kind of debatable,” Don said.

  Walden Fisher, a good fifteen years younger than Don, was still employed by Promise Falls. Before Don retired from his position as a building inspector, he and Walden occasionally crossed paths, even though Walden worked in the town’s engineering department as a draftsman. It was there, however, where Don had gotten his start when he went to work for the town back in the sixties.

  Don had worked with Walden’s father—long since passed away—and when Walden graduated college with an engineering degree, Don put in a good word for him with personnel. Walden’s dad had figured a recommendation would be better coming from someone who was not a relative. Walden always credited Don with getting him into a decent job with decent benefits, where the risk of getting laid off was minimal.

  “It wouldn’t kill you to have a social life,” Arlene said.

  “I suppose,” Don said. “But I haven’t talked to him since I retired.”

  “You heard, I guess,” Arlene said.

  “About his daughter?” he snapped, almost defensively. “Of course. Who the hell hasn’t heard about that? It was only three years ago. Who could forget that?”

  “You don’t have to bite my head off. And I’m not talking about her. Walden’s wife. She passed away a couple of months back.”

  “How do you know that?” Don asked, his voice softening.

  “I read the paper. Or I did, when there still was one. It was in the death notices.”

  “Oh,” Don said. “Didn’t know.”

  “Maybe he’s just looking to get out there, get out of the house, now that his wife is gone.”

  “You know what happened to her?” Don asked.

  “Cancer, I think,” she said. “Go on, he’s likely to be here any—”

  The doorbell rang.

  Don was frozen. He didn’t want to leave Arlene. “It’s okay,” she said. He told her one more time to keep the ice on her leg, and left the kitchen.

  He swung open the front door, and there was Walden Fisher. Looking older and grayer than the last time he’d seen him, that was for sure, although there was less hair to turn gray than there used to be. A bit more padding around the middle, but he wasn’t a heavy man. Had to be about fifty-five now, Don figured.

  “I’ll be damned,” Don said. “Look who it is.”

  Walden smiled awkwardly. “Hello, there, Don. Long time.”

  Back in the kitchen, he could hear the phone start to ring.

  “You retired?”

  “No, I got nearly five more years to go. But I’ve built up so much overtime, I’m taking a day here and there. Taking the better part of this month off. I get you at a bad time? You knew I was coming, right?”

  The phone rang a second time.

  “Of course, yeah. What’s on your mind?”

  “I wanted to pick your brain some. It’ll take five years, but all the town’s planning and engineering is going to computer. Most of the infrastructure was built before computers, so it’s all on paper. Blueprints, schematics, everything. Details of every water main, bridge support, sewer grate are on huge sheets rolled up with rubber bands, and God knows where they’ve all gone to. If you can believe it, some guys retired and took their work home with them when they did.”

  “I never did that,” Don said.

  “Not saying you did,” Walden said. “But I’ve been getting together with some of the older guys, no offense intended, to see if they know where some of that stuff ended up. Once we find it, we can get it all transferred onto computer.”

  “Thought you said you were taking some time off.”

  Walden shrugged. “When I’m actually in the office, I don’t have time to do what I’m doing now.”

  Don let out a breath he’d been holding. “Like I said, I never took anything home, but I might be able to fill in some of the gaps if there’s stuff you don’t know. I worked on the water tower, for one thing.” It was why he wanted to have a model of it on the model railroad.

  The phone started to ring a third time, then stopped abruptly.

  Don said, “Listen, let me grab my jacket and we’ll go over to Kelly’s. I could go for a BLT, maybe a piece of pie.”

  Don left Walden standing on the front step, but before going to the hall closet for his coat, he returned to the kitchen. He was worried Arlene probably got up to answer the phone, and that was exactly what she had done.

  The ice pack was on the floor. Arlene was leaned up against the counter, one foot off the floor, receiver in hand.

  She looked at Don and said, “I thought it would be David calling with news about Marla. But it’s the school, and it’s David they’re looking for. They had a cell number for him but it was his Boston number, and he changed his phone since then and must not have told them and why wouldn’t he think to do that?”

  “What is it?” Don asked.

  “Ethan. Something’s happened with Ethan.”

  TWELVE

  BARRY Duckworth steered Bill Gaynor into the dining room, making sure the connecting door to the kitchen was closed. He pulled out two chairs that were tucked under the dining room table and turned the
m to face each other.

  “Mr. Gaynor, have a seat.”

  “Tell me again, where’s Matthew?”

  “Matthew is fine; don’t worry. Please sit.”

  Gaynor settled into a chair, and when Duckworth sat, their knees were a foot apart.

  “They won’t give him back to that crazy woman,” Gaynor said.

  “Don’t worry about that. Do you know that woman, Mr. Gaynor?”

  “No, I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

  “I’m told her name is Marla Pickens. Mean anything to you?”

  The man shook his head tiredly. “No.”

  Duckworth noticed a photo on the serving table against the wall. He pointed to it. “That’s you and your wife?”

  Gaynor looked older than the man in the picture. “That was taken when we were married.”

  Duckworth took a longer look at the picture. Rosemary Gaynor’s straight black hair hung to her shoulders. She’d still been wearing it in the same style. Her eyes were dark brown, her skin pale, no rouge or lipstick to give herself some color.

  Gaynor asked, “What’s going to happen to my Rosemary?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My wife.” He tipped his head in the direction of the door to the kitchen. “What’s going to happen with her? What are they going to do with her?”

  “She’ll be taken to the forensic examiner’s office,” Duckworth said. “An autopsy has to be conducted. Once that’s done, she can be released to you so that you can make arrangements.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why does there have to be an autopsy? For Christ’s sake, all you have to do is look at her to know . . .” He put his face into his hands and cried. “Hasn’t she been through enough?”

  “I know,” Duckworth said gently. “But an examination of your wife may yield a lot of helpful information that will help us find out who did this. Unless you already have some idea.”

  Without looking up, he shook his head. “No, I have no idea. Everyone loved Rose. This is the work of some crazy person. That woman. She’s crazy. She had Matthew, for God’s sake.” He raised his head, looked at Duckworth with red eyes. “It had to be her. She kidnapped Matthew and when Rose tried to stop her, she . . . she did that.”