The Accident

by Linwood Barclay

  “I told you not to do this, Theo,” Sally said.

  “What did the fire department say?” Theo’s voice was starting to rise. “Did they say I wired it wrong?”

  “I’m waiting on their final report, but they say the fire started in the area of the electrical panel.”

  “The area,” he said. “So, somebody could have left some oily rags in that area, and that’s what caused the place to go up in smoke.”

  “I do what my gut tells me,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, your gut sucks.”

  He was wasting my time. I’d made up my mind not to use him again and that was it. My eyes wandered down to the truck nuts hanging from his back bumper.

  Theo saw me eyeing them. “Need a pair?” he asked.

  “Another thing,” I said. “Anybody shows up at one of my jobs with those hanging off the back of the truck gets sent home. I won’t have my daughter walking past garbage like that.”

  “It’s none of your business how I or anybody else dresses up his truck.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “But I decide whose trucks come to my job sites and whose don’t.”

  Theo’s hands fisted at his sides.

  “Theo, knock it off,” Sally said, stepping forward. “I told you not to do this but you wouldn’t listen.” To me she said, “Glen, I’m so sorry. I swear, I told him.”

  “Get in the truck,” Theo told her. His face had gone beet red with fury. He got in and slammed the door but Sally didn’t join him.

  I felt a pang of guilt. “I don’t mean to disrespect your boyfriend in front of you, Sally. But he asked, and I told him.”

  “He’s not what he seems, Glen. He’s got a lot of good points. He’s got a good heart. The other day, at Walgreens, the lady gave him too much change and he gave it back.”

  What can you say to that?

  Sally’s head drooped when I didn’t answer. Then she sighed and shook her head. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” she said.

  I waited.

  “I feel funny telling you about this. I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

  “Theo?”

  “No. Doug.” She sighed again. “He asked me to double his paycheck for a week, then not write him one the next week. I said if he wanted an advance, he had to clear it through you. He said it could be our little secret.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh. “Thanks for telling me, Sally.”

  “I think he’s having big-time money problems, him and Betsy.”

  “He called me about this last night.”

  “I know you’ll have to tell him I told you, but when you do, please tell him I felt bad about it.”

  “Leave it with me.” I reached out and touched her arm. “How you doin’?” I didn’t have to ask her how long it had been now since her father had died. She’d lost him the same day I’d lost Sheila. “At the office, it’s hard to get a moment.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I miss him. I miss him so much. It’s just so weird,” she continued. “Me losing my dad, and a few hours later …”

  “Yeah,” I said, and forced a smile. Then, even though Theo was glaring at both of us through the windshield and would probably disapprove, I gave her a quick hug. The last time I’d done that had been at her father’s funeral, which had been held a day before Sheila’s. Given my own circumstances at the time, I might have been inclined to give the service a pass. But Sally had no family, no siblings, and was carrying a heavy load alone. My own sorrow was so raw I’d known how much it would mean to Sally if I spent two hours helping her deal with hers.

  In the couple of weeks since, they’d figured out what had happened. Sally’s dad was on meds that slowed down blood clot formations and thereby reduced his risk of another heart attack. Sally gave him his dose in the morning, but shortly after she’d left for work, he’d apparently become confused and given himself another shot. The overdose caused him to bleed to death internally.

  “We pick ourselves up and keep on going,” I told her as Theo glared at us. “There’s not really much else we can do.”

  “I guess,” she said. “How’s Kelly doing? Is she home?” Sally remained Kelly’s favorite babysitter, even though Sally hadn’t sat her since she was four.

  “She’s with her grandmother. She’ll be sorry she missed you.” I hesitated. I wasn’t big on self-revelation, but found myself saying, “Nobody told me it would be so hard. Some father-daughter discussions are easier than others.”

  “Oh yeah,” Sally said, and grinned. “I can just hear you giving her the talk about her monthly visitor.”

  “Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that.” Maybe I could recruit Fiona when the time came. Or better yet, Sally.

  “If you need me to talk to her about—”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind. Listen, you should go. Theo looks like he’s going to blow a fuse.”

  She tipped her head toward the pickup’s rear bumper. “Sorry about the truck nuts.”

  “I wouldn’t let Kelly ride in a truck that had those on them,” I said.

  She flushed. My words had shamed her.

  “See you Monday,” she said, turning away, and got back into the truck. Theo squealed the tires as he pulled away from the curb.

  I went back inside and poured another cup of coffee I knew I wouldn’t drink. Sally and I had always had a kind of little sister–big brother thing going on, so my criticism must have felt like a harsh judgment. I was still brooding about that when the phone rang. “Hello?”

  “You’re home,” said a male voice I thought I recognized.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Darren Slocum. You and I need to talk right now.”

  FOURTEEN

  I went out on the porch and waited for Darren Slocum to show.

  My curiosity was piqued. Why would Slocum want to talk to me? I would have thought that other matters, like picking a casket, would be more of a priority.

  I was only out there about five minutes when Slocum’s red pickup came cruising down the street and came to a stop in front of the house. “Darren,” I said, descending the porch steps and extending a hand as he came up the walk. “I’m so sorry about Ann.”

  We shook, Slocum accepting my condolences with a nod. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a bit of a shocker.”

  “Tell me about Emily.”

  “She’s a disaster. Kid loses her mom, all of a sudden. I guess you know what that’s about.”

  “What happened, Darren?”

  He thrust out his jaw and looked up, as though trying to draw some strength first. “There was an accident.”

  The word sent an unexpected chill down my spine. “A car accident?” I asked.

  “Sort of, but not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’d gone down High Street, by the harbor, and it looks like she got a flat tire on the passenger’s side, pulled over and got out to have a look—the door was open and the engine was still running—and anyway, she was parked up close to the edge there and it looks like she lost her footing, and went into the water. A guy I know, another Milford cop, spotted her just under the water there.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I’m very sorry. I really am.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks.”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “I thought you should know, what with our girls being friends and all.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Does your girl—Kelly—does she know?”

  I nodded. “After I spoke to—I guess it was your sister-in-law—on the phone, I was going to tell her, but she found out on her own chatting online with her friends. Maybe even Emily.”

  “Okay,” he said softly. “Must be a shock for her, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What I was wondering,” Slocum said, “was whether it would help if I had a couple of words with Kelly, let her know what happened.”

  “You want to talk to K
elly?”

  “Yeah. Is she here?”

  “No, she’s not. But I’ve talked to her. It’s okay.” I couldn’t think of a single good reason for Darren Slocum to tell Kelly how his wife died. I’d be the one to tell her, and comfort her.

  He moved his jaw from side to side. “When’s she going to be back? She off playing with another friend or something?”

  A small muscle by his right eye was twitching. He was so tightly wound, he looked like he might snap. I wasn’t eager for that to happen, so I kept my voice low and calm.

  “Darren, even if she were here, I don’t think you talking to her would help. She’s just lost her mother, and now her best friend has lost hers. I think the best one to get her through this is me.”

  A look of frustration crossed his face. “Okay, Glen, let me just cut to it here.”

  Mentally, I went into a defensive stance.

  “What the hell happened last night?” he asked.

  I pushed the inside of my cheek with my tongue. “What are you talking about, Darren?”

  “Your kid. Why’d she ask you to come get her?”

  “She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “No, no, don’t give me that. Something happened.”

  “Whatever happened, it happened at your house. I might ask you the same thing.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever happened, I don’t know what it was. But I think something happened between my wife and your kid.”

  “Darren, where are you going with this?”

  “I need to know. I’ve got my reasons.”

  “Does this have something to do with your wife’s accident?”

  His jaw moved around some more but he didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said gruffly, “I think my wife got a phone call. I think that phone call might have been the reason she went out to the harbor. I need to know who made that call.”

  I’d had enough. “Darren, go back home and be with your family. I’m sure they need you.”

  Darren kept pushing. “The girls were playing hide-and-seek. I think Kelly was hiding in our bedroom, and maybe she was there when Ann was on the phone. She might be able to tell me who Ann was talking to.”

  “I can’t help you,” I said.

  “When you showed up, and I went looking for your girl, I found her standing right there in the middle of our bedroom. She said Ann had told her to wait there, like she was being punished.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “If Kelly’d busted something, or gotten into something she wasn’t supposed to, Ann would have mentioned it to me. But the fact that she didn’t, that’s curious. She kinda glossed over the incident before she went out. And she lied to me about being on the phone. She said Kelly must have used it to call you, but Emily told me she has her own cell phone. That right?”

  “I got her a phone after her mother died,” I said. “Look, Darren, I don’t know what to tell you. How could Kelly know who Ann was talking to? And really, why does it matter? I mean, you just said what happened to Ann was an accident. It’s not like, you know, someone lured her to the harbor. I mean, if that’s what you thought, you’d be talking about it with the police, right?”

  I continued, “And if, somehow, that is what you think, then maybe I should be talking to whoever’s investigating your wife’s accident, because I’m guessing it’s not you. That wouldn’t be the way they’d do things, right?”

  “I’ve got every right to know the circumstances surrounding my wife’s death,” he said.

  That struck a chord.

  Wasn’t that exactly how I felt about Sheila? Her death was an accident, but the circumstances made no sense to me. Hadn’t I been doing the same thing Darren Slocum was doing now? When I sought out the other students and teacher from her night class, wasn’t I searching for the truth? When I tore the house apart, trying to determine whether my wife had been hiding booze in places where I wouldn’t find it, wasn’t I looking for answers?

  If there were things Ann didn’t want him to know when she was alive, wasn’t it conceivable that he was entitled to know them now that she was dead?

  And yet, I didn’t want to get dragged into this mess. I certainly knew I didn’t want Kelly getting dragged into it.

  “Look …,” I started to say. But before I could decide what, exactly, I was going to tell him, he cut me off.

  “Why’d you call my house this morning?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. You called and got my sister-in-law. You said you wanted to talk to Ann. Why?”

  “Just …” I wasn’t ready to be straight with him yet. “I was going to ask her if she’d seen Kelly’s stuffed bunny. Hoppy. But then she found it.”

  “Bullshit. You think you can be a cop as long as I have and not tell when people are lying to you? Why were you calling? Did Kelly tell you what happened? And you wanted to talk it over with Ann?”

  I shook my head. “For Christ’s sake, Darren, if that damn phone call is so important to you, why don’t you just check your phone’s history?”

  He smiled sourly. “I thought of that. And guess what? Ann cleared the incoming and outgoing call list. What d’ya make of that? That’s why I want to talk to Kelly.”

  “Look.” I tried to adopt a conciliatory tone. “I don’t know what kind of problems you and Ann were having, and I’m sorry, whatever they might have been, but I’m not getting dragged into them. My daughter’s been through enough these last few weeks. She’s lost her mother. The other kids—not your daughter, and thank you for that—have been hateful to her, because Sheila, what she did, it left one of the kids from that school dead. Now, Kelly’s friend’s mother dies. She’s going to need a lot of time to get through this. I won’t have you interrogating her. Not you, not anybody.”

  Slocum’s body sagged. A moment ago, he looked ready to slug me. Now, not so much.

  “Help me out here, man,” he said.

  A few seconds of silence passed between us. I knew what he was feeling, how desperate he was for answers. “Okay,” I said. “Kelly and I talked, after I picked her up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Here’s the deal. I’ll tell you what she told me, and we’re done. You don’t talk to her.” I paused, then added, “Ever.”

  Slocum only had to think a second. “Okay.”

  “Kelly was hiding in the closet, waiting to surprise Emily, when Ann came into the bedroom to use the phone.”

  He nodded. “I thought it was something like that.”

  “Kelly said the first person your wife talked to was—”

  “Wait a minute. First person? There was more than one call?”

  “Kelly had the idea there were two. The first person your wife talked to must have been a friend or something. Someone who’d hurt their wrist. Ann was calling to see if this person was okay. Then the line beeped and Ann took another call.”

  “So the first call, she placed that one herself,” Slocum said, more to himself than me. Then, “So this first call, she was asking somebody how they were? They got hurt?”

  “Something like that. But then the other call came in. Kelly said at first she thought it was a telemarketer or something, because Ann said there was some talk about a deal. And then she got a little angry.”

  “Angry how?”

  “Ann said something like, don’t be stupid or you’ll end up shot in the head. Something like that.”

  Slocum tried to process it. “Shot in the head?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s really it.”

  “What about a name? Ann must have said someone’s name?”

  “No, there were no names.”

  He looked like he’d come to a fork in the road and didn’t know which way to turn. This new information only seemed to frustrate him more. It was my turn for a question.

  “What the hell’s going on, Darren?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You’re in some kind of m
ess, and you’re in over your head.”

  He shot me a sly grin. “I might not be the only one.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The way I figure it, you may have come into a little windfall lately. Like, within the last few weeks.”

  “I’m not following you, Darren.”

  His grin shifted into something menacing. “I’m just giving you a heads-up. That windfall, it’s not yours. And hanging on to it, that’s a real risky thing to do. You take a day or two to think it over and do the right thing, because after that, you’ll be running out of options.”

  “I don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re getting at, and now it’s my turn to tell you something: threatening me, that’s a risky thing, too. I don’t care what you do for a living.”

  “Couple of days,” he repeated, as if I hadn’t spoken. “After that, I won’t be able to help you.”

  “Go home, Darren. Your family needs you.”

  He started walking back to his truck, then stopped. “I gotta say, it’s a hell of a thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your wife, my wife, both friends, both with little girls that play together—both dying in accidents within a couple of weeks. What are the odds of that?”

  FIFTEEN

  Kelly made the point, once she was in the car with Fiona and Marcus, that she hadn’t had any breakfast, and since it was almost lunchtime, maybe they should get something lunchlike to eat. It was Fiona’s plan to take Kelly, first, to the Stamford Town Center and buy her a new winter coat because she’d outgrown the one she’d worn last year and Fiona was not confident Glen would notice. Then, after that, they’d backtrack to Darien, where it was Fiona’s plan to take a tour of two of the local private schools, give Kelly an idea where she could go once Fiona had managed to sell Glen on the idea.

  “We’ll eat at the Stamford Town Center,” Fiona decided. Kelly said they had a pretty good food court, so she could wait. Fiona would have preferred a sit-down restaurant where someone took your order and brought it to you, but she was inclined to indulge the child, because there were some things she wanted to ask her about what had happened with her friend’s mother, and she wanted the girl to be forthcoming.