Bad Move zw-1

by Linwood Barclay

  “Yeah,” I said. The splotches of blood on Stefanie Knight’s off-white suit looked black as night.

  “So are you coming home or what? Or should I go ahead and eat without you?”

  “I think you should probably go ahead and eat without me.”

  I could hear Sarah breathe in, startled. “What’s wrong? Oh God, have you had an accident or something?”

  “No, I’m okay. I just kind of got into a thing, and I’m going to be a little bit delayed, that’s all.”

  “What sort of a thing?” Sarah was over being sarcastic. Now she was worried.

  “Uh, it’s Kenny,” I said.

  “What about Kenny?”

  “His wife. She’s been sick, and we got talking, and I couldn’t just walk out on the guy, you know. He needed someone to talk to.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Sarah said. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “It’s, uh, you know, a thing. One of those female things.”

  “Is she in the hospital?”

  “Yeah, she’s in the hospital. He was going to go see her as soon as he closed up the shop.”

  “Is she having an operation? A hysterectomy? Is it cancer?”

  For a writer, I was having a hard time making this up as I went along. The black puddle on the concrete garage floor was getting larger, ever so slowly.

  “I think it’s some sort of an injury,” I said. “She might have fallen.”

  Sarah was thinking. “So it’s a female thing, but it might be an injury. What did she do, Zack? Fall on her uterus?”

  “I could have some of the details wrong. Kenny doesn’t seem to know. Or at least he didn’t tell me.”

  I could picture Sarah shaking her head on the other end of the line. Even though she’d never met Kenny’s wife (I had never met Kenny’s wife; I wasn’t even sure that Kenny had a wife), that didn’t make her any less sympathetic.

  “You’re a good friend of his,” Sarah said. “I mean, God knows, you’re in his store all the time. You tell him that if there’s anything we can do, just ask.”

  “I’ll do that. He’ll appreciate that.”

  “Just take whatever time you need. We’ll do up the steaks when you get home.”

  “No, you go ahead and eat. I’m not, honestly, I’m not even that hungry anymore.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you when I see you.”

  I pressed the “end” button on the phone, but I didn’t slip it back into my jacket. I held it in my hand for a moment, thinking that it was time to press 911. This was no crank call. I wasn’t pretending to be dead at the bottom of the stairs. There was no car hidden around the corner. What we had, ladies and gentlemen, was a legitimate emergency on our hands here.

  I pressed the “ 9” on my phone. Then I pressed the “ 1.” I was about to press the “ 1” a second time, but my index finger hung over it, half an inch away.

  Just hold it a minute there, pardner. Think about this. Think about this really hard.

  What would Detective Flint’s first question be? How was it, exactly, that I came to be at this address, and to have found Stefanie Knight’s body?

  Was I a friend of Stefanie Knight’s? No.

  But I knew Stefanie Knight? Not really.

  Then how was it I happened to be in her garage and found her body?

  Well, that was an easy one. I was here to return the purse I’d stolen from her.

  And slowly I pulled my finger away before I punched in the last digit of 911. I slipped the phone back into my jacket.

  This was, I told myself, a very bad situation. A very bad situation that could get a whole lot worse by calling the police and hanging around to answer their questions.

  And yet, didn’t this go against everything I believed in, everything I’d ever told my children? How many cliches had I uttered over the years? Here’s a sampling: Don’t be afraid to get involved. Treat others as you would have them treat you. Don’t walk away from trouble. Own up to your mistakes.

  And of course, my personal favorite: The policeman is your friend.

  I was not sure, in this particular instance, that that was the case. I suspected that the policeman would not be my friend, and that by calling one, I might end up with a new roommate named Moose, who’d sleep on the lower bunk and want me to be his dance partner.

  It’s probably worth pointing out at this juncture that I do not have what you’d call a long history with the law. I am not the kind of person, as you’ve probably gathered by now, who’s “known to police.” I’ve always played by the rules, paid my taxes on time, pled guilty to parking offenses and mailed in my check within a day of finding a ticket under my windshield.

  So it’s safe to say that if the police were to find a woman dead in her garage, I would not be on the list of usual suspects. However, I could probably jump to the front of that list in no time by placing a call to the authorities to report the murder of a woman whose purse I had stolen only a couple of hours earlier.

  As bad a day as I seemed to be having, I had to concede that it was a picnic next to the one Stefanie Knight had put in.

  First, her purse is stolen, and when she finally finds a way home, some nutbar smashes her head in. What were the odds that two things that bad (the second one being considerably worse than the first) could happen to one person on the same day?

  Unless, of course, the two events were related.

  I was feeling pretty sick, and scared, already, but at that point a new chill swept through me.

  Surely, there was no connection. It simply wasn’t possible that my taking this woman’s purse could have had, in any way whatsoever, anything to do with her death. The police might think so, but that would be an opinion formed through only a cursory inspection of the facts. I knew better. Just because two things appeared to be connected didn’t mean they were.

  Then again, they might be.

  I pictured the leather purse back in my car, and thought about what might be inside it. As much as I had regretted invading Stefanie Knight’s privacy by taking something that belonged to her, that ship, as they say, had sailed. The time had come to be a bit more intrusive.

  But not here. I had to get out of here. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that the person who had killed Stefanie Knight might still be in the house, or returning to it shortly. It was time to get the hell out.

  I unlocked the regular door that led from the garage to the outside, the one I’d peeked through earlier, and quietly walked down the driveway to my car parked at the curb. I unlocked it, got behind the wheel, and slipped my keys into the ignition. And stopped.

  Fingerprints.

  What had I touched?

  A deadbolt, for starters.

  And the front doorknob.

  And the door to the laundry room, and the door from the laundry room to the garage, and the light switch, and the door from the garage to the outside…

  I thought that was it.

  I reached around into the back seat, where we keep a box of tissues on the floor, and grabbed a huge wad of them. There was no one on the street, so I got out of the car, walked back up the drive. I’d never relocked the front door, so as I turned the knob I wiped it down, then the inside doorknob, and the deadbolt. From there I went to the laundry room door, wiped down both knobs, then the door to the garage. It had a safety hinge, so the door would swing closed on its own to keep residents safe from a car spewing exhaust, and I didn’t think I had touched the inside knob, but wiped it down just the same. Then the light switch, and the knobs on the door leading out of the garage.

  My head was pounding. I was sure I’d touched nothing else, left no other clues behind. I didn’t feel that I was keeping the police from finding the real killer. I hadn’t wiped down the shovel handle, for example. Surely that would be the first thing the cops would dust for prints.

  I’d been careful not to step in any of the blood, but looked at the soles of my shoes anyway. I rubbed my shoes on the grass once I’d stepped back outside
, then got back into the car. Slipped the key back into the ignition, turned over the engine, put the car into gear, foot off the brake and onto the accelerator and-

  Mailbox.

  I hit the brake, glanced back up at the house, and backed up far enough that I could see the front door and the mailbox. There, peeking out from under the flap, was my signed note for Stefanie Knight.

  Once I had it in my pocket and was driving home, I kept wondering if there was anything I’d missed. I swung into a fast-food joint, headed straight for the men’s room, and flushed all the tissues, including the one I’d used to wipe the blood from my finger, down the toilet. I tore the note written on the back of my checkbook into a dozen pieces and flushed it as well. Then, as an afterthought, I ripped up the scrap of paper from Stefanie’s mother and flushed a third time. As I exited the stall, a man washing his hands glanced at me, no doubt wondering just how severe my bowel disorder was.

  I got back in the car and felt I’d thought of everything. I’d covered my tracks well.

  Oh fuck.

  My name and e-mail address were on a piece of paper in that woman’s house. When the police came to tell her about her daughter’s murder, she’d tell them about the man who’d been by earlier that evening, looking for her, supposedly to return a driver’s license.

  Think. Think.

  My fingerprints weren’t anywhere at Stefanie’s house. As far as anyone could tell, I had not been inside. I could stick with the story that I’d found her driver’s license. Ditch the purse behind Mindy’s, if I had to. Police could think some kid stole the purse, driver’s license fell out, I found it, attempted to return it. Went to the address on the license, met her mother, got a further address, went there, found no one at home, window smashed in, thought that looked funny, called 911.

  That way, I’d look less suspicious. Being the guy to make the call.

  I’d crack in an instant. Five minutes under the hot lights and I’d spill my guts.

  No, no, I wouldn’t. I could pull this off.

  But first, I wanted to get home and look inside Stefanie Knight’s purse. What I wanted to find in there was nothing. Nothing that would lead someone to want her dead if she’d lost it, been unable to produce it, to give it back.

  When I got home I went straight to my study and was taking the purse out of the bag when I heard Sarah call to me from upstairs. “Zack? That you?”

  I tossed the purse behind a box of old papers I kept under the desk and went upstairs, finding her in our bedroom, emptying a basket of clean laundry and slipping it into drawers.

  “How’s Kenny?” she asked.

  Kenny? I thought. Was there something wrong with Kenny?

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Kenny’s wife. How’s she doing?”

  It came back to me. “Aww, she’s okay. She’ll be fine. Should be out in a day or two.”

  “That’s good,” Sarah said. “He didn’t say what’s wrong with her?”

  “No, not in detail, and I didn’t want to ask unless he offered, you know.”

  “How long’s Kenny been married?”

  “I don’t know exactly. He’s about my age. Probably as long as we have, I’d guess.”

  “Have you ever met his wife?” Sarah asked. She seemed to have a lot of questions.

  “No, she’s never come into the shop when I was there, or if she did, I didn’t know it was her.”

  “Do you know her name? In case you wanted to send a card?”

  “What did he say? Mary? Marian? Something like that?”

  “Could it have been Gary?”

  I looked at Sarah, who had stopped putting away clothes and was staring right at me.

  “Gary?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What is that short for? Gariella or something?”

  “No, just Gary.”

  “Why on earth would you think Kenny’s wife would be named Gary?”

  Sarah paused a moment, like she was working up to something. “Kenny phoned here tonight, while you were out.”

  Houston, we have a problem.

  “He did.”

  “Yes. He called to tell you that that thing you wanted had come in, and he’d hang on to it whenever you had a chance to drop by.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then I told him how sorry I was that his wife was not well. And you know what he did then?”

  “No. What did he do then?”

  “He started laughing. So hard that he started choking. He thought that was a very funny thing for me to say.”

  “So his wife’s not sick after all?”

  “Kenny doesn’t have a wife,” Sarah said. “But he does have a companion.”

  “A who?”

  “Kenny said he couldn’t believe you didn’t know that he wasn’t exactly the marrying kind. He said he lives with a man named Gary, and that Gary is very well, thank you very much.”

  This was enough to make me forget all the events that had transpired in the last couple of hours. “Kenny’s gay?”

  “Evidently.”

  “No shit. Kenny’s gay?”

  “I don’t really think that’s the issue here,” Sarah said.

  “How long I been going to that store? Eight, ten years, maybe? Way before we moved out here. You’d think maybe in all that time I’d have learned to read the signals.”

  “You’ve missed plenty of others before.”

  “I’d never have guessed. But now that you mention it, he never has talked about a wife or kids or-”

  I knew instantly I’d made a blunder. “So,” Sarah said, “he’s never mentioned a wife. Yet if I’m to believe anything you say, not only does he have one, but she’s under the weather.”

  “Sarah, listen, I know I may have seemed a bit odd tonight.”

  “Gee, I hadn’t noticed.”

  “It’s kind of hard for me to explain right now. I just have a few things I have to attend to, but, listen, it’s not like I’m having an affair or anything.”

  In some households, mentioning the word “affair” might be enough to raise suspicions, start an argument, make someone burst into tears. Sarah reacted differently to the suggestion that I might be seeing someone else.

  She began to laugh.

  “Why is that so funny?” I asked.

  She smiled. “You having an affair. Of all the people I’d suspect of having an affair, you’d be the last. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d have too guilty a conscience. When you’ve done something wrong, you can’t hide it. It shows in your face. You get kind of flushed, you perspire. I can spot these things.”

  I shot a sideways glance into our dresser mirror. I looked warm. Sweaty, even.

  “No,” Sarah said, regaining her composure. “I think I’ve got it figured out. I know what’s going on.”

  “You do.”

  “Yep.”

  “What is it you think is going on?”

  She approached me and smiled. “I think maybe, just this once, for the first time since we’ve been married, you’ve actually remembered my birthday and decided to do something special about it.”

  I tried to smile as Sarah slipped her arms around my waist. “That is what’s going on, isn’t it?”

  I locked my arms around her and she pressed herself into me. “It’s never very easy to pull one over on you,” I said.

  “You’ve been running all over the place. When I was at the market, after we got home. What are you up to?” She turned her head up toward mine and breathed on my neck. Her hands were moving from behind my waist and settling on my butt.

  “I really can’t tell you now,” I said, my mouth on her ear. “I want it to be a surprise.”

  She grinned, and moved her mouth onto mine. She darted her tongue in a couple of times, then pulled away. “Go close the door,” she said.

  “Aren’t there kids in the house?” I said. I needed an excuse not to go through with this. I was a bit concerned, wh
at with all the things currently occupying my thoughts, that I might not quite be up to what Sarah had in mind.

  “They still haven’t come back from McDonald’s,” she said. “We’ll hear them come in.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we should wait till later.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, unbuttoning the top of her jeans and slipping onto the bed next to a pile of rolled socks and clean towels. “Close the door.”

  I went around the bed and pushed the door closed. Then Sarah reached up for me, pulled me down onto the bed, undid my belt buckle and the top of my jeans.

  “Really, hon, I think they might come home any moment.”

  “What do you think of Trixie?” Sarah asked.

  “Trixie? What about Trixie?”

  “There’s something about her. She’s very sexy, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I never really noticed, I suppose. We’ve just had coffee a couple of times.” I had nothing to feel guilty about where Trixie was concerned, but under pressure I might confess to anything right about now.

  Sarah pulled back and looked at me. “What’s with you? This isn’t an interrogation. All I’m saying is, there’s something about her, more than meets the eye. Did you catch that thing she said, about Catwoman? How she liked her outfit?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I remember.”

  Sarah smiled at me, slipped her hand down into my jeans. “How would you like it if I got a Catwoman outfit?”

  “Well,” I said, aware that I was not responding to Sarah’s touch the way I normally did, “it would probably be very hot. There’d be chafing. A lot of chafing.”

  Now Sarah had noticed that her touch was not producing the desired effect. “Is somebody sleepy?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I think he’s got a lot on his mind.”

  Sarah pulled out her hand, rested it on my shoulder. “Is everything okay?”