The Accident

by Linwood Barclay

  “This is a police detective,” the man said, and the woman brightened, as though this was the most interesting thing that had happened in quite some time.

  They introduced themselves as Elliot and Gwyn Teale. When they retired, they sold their house in Stratford and decided to live on their boat full-time.

  “Even in the winter?” Wedmore asked.

  “Sure,” Elliot said. “We’ve got a heater, we’ve got water, it’s not so hard.”

  “I love it,” Gwyn said. “I hated the upkeep with a house. This is so much easier.”

  “When we need groceries or to do the laundry, we get a taxi and run our errands,” Elliot said. “It’s close quarters, I’ll give you that, but we have everything we need. And it means when our kids want to come visit, they have to take a hotel. There’s a lot to be said for that.”

  Wedmore was impressed. She had no idea anyone could live here year-round, and doubted any officers who’d been down here investigating Ann Slocum’s death would have thought to look for anyone.

  “I wanted to ask you about the woman who died here the other night.”

  “What woman was that?” Elliot asked.

  “Just over there? Friday night? A woman fell off the pier. Struck her head, drowned. Her body was found there later that night when an officer noticed her car sitting there, the door open, the motor running.”

  “That’s a new one on us,” Gwyn said. “But we don’t have a TV, or listen to the radio much, and we don’t get a paper. And we sure don’t have a computer here, so we’re not on the Internet. Christ Himself could rent a boat here and we wouldn’t know about it.”

  “That’s the truth,” Elliot agreed.

  “So you didn’t see the police early Saturday?”

  “I did notice a couple of police cars,” Elliot said. “But it didn’t seem to be any of our business, so we stayed on the boat.”

  Wedmore sighed. If they hadn’t been curious enough to check out a swarm of police cars, it wasn’t likely they’d noticed much of anything going on around here.

  “I don’t suppose you saw anything out of the ordinary late Friday night, early Saturday morning, then?”

  The two looked at each other. “Just those cars that drove down, wouldn’t you say, hon?” Gwyn asked Elliot.

  “Just that,” he said.

  “Cars?” Wedmore asked. “When was this?”

  “You see, when anyone drives down that ramp there toward the pier,” Gwyn explained, “their lights flash right into our bedroom.” She smiled, then pointed to the forward hatch, where Wedmore could make out a bed that tapered toward the bow. “It’s not much of a bedroom, but there are some very small windows in there. And I guess it was around ten or eleven, something like that.”

  “Did you notice anything else?”

  “I got up on my knees and took a peek outside,” Elliot said. “But it must not have been the same thing you’re talking about.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, there were two cars. Not just one car came down. Some woman was getting out of her car just as another one was pulling in right behind her.”

  “The first car, it was a BMW?”

  Elliot frowned. “Could have been. I don’t pay much attention to makes of cars.”

  “And the car that pulled in behind it, can you remember what it looked like?”

  “Not really.”

  “Would you at least be able to remember whether it was a pickup truck? A red one?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, wasn’t a pickup truck. I think I would have noticed that. It would have sat up more, been shaped different. I think it was just a regular kind of car, but that’s about all I could tell ya.”

  “Did you see who was in it?”

  Another shake. “Couldn’t tell ya. That’s when I dropped back down and went to sleep. I have to tell you, I’ve never slept better than since I started hearing the sound of waves lapping up against the hull at night.” He smiled. “It’s like a lullaby.”

  FORTY

  Standing just inside the door, hearing an intruder moving around in my kitchen, my heart pounded as I tried to figure out how to handle this.

  I could charge in there and surprise whomever it was. But there were problems with that. First, they might not be surprised. They might be waiting for me. And if the person waiting for me was Sommer, I knew he carried a weapon. I did not. So, not such a great plan.

  I could try something really radical, like calling out, “Who is it?” But that had all the drawbacks of the previous strategy. Someone waiting for me could come out of the kitchen and shoot me just as easily as waiting for me to walk in there.

  A third option made the most sense. Back quietly out of the house and call the police. I reached noiselessly into my jacket for my phone. Worried that the beeping would alert whoever was in the house to my presence, I opted to wait until I was outside before punching in 911.

  I was turning to slip back out when the woman shrieked.

  “Oh God! You gave me a heart attack!”

  She was standing in the kitchen doorway, a beer bottle in one hand, a plate of crackers and cheese in the other.

  My own heart did a flip, too, but I managed not to scream. “Jesus, Joan, what are you doing here?”

  All the color had drained from her face. “Were you walking on your tiptoes or something? I didn’t hear you come in at all.”

  “Joan—”

  “Okay, okay, first of all, why don’t you take this beer?” She smiled and took a couple of steps toward me. She was wearing tight jeans, and that top again that showed a hint of bra. “You look like you could use it. I’d planned to nurse this one till you got here, but you take it and I’ll crack open another one. I figured it was okay to put some snacks out now.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “What, Sheila never told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “That I had a key? We had keys to each other’s place, in case there ever was a problem. You know, like if Kelly came to my place after school, but there was something she needed at home, or who knows? Kelly is away, right? I mean, I saw you putting her little suitcase in the truck, so I just figured maybe she was going to stay with Fiona for a day or two after the house getting shot up and all. Is that what you decided to do? It makes sense, it surely does.”

  I stood there, stunned. “Go home, Joan.”

  Her face fell. “I’m sorry. I know what you’ve been going through and I just thought, When’s the last time anyone’s done anything nice for you? It’s been a while, am I right? Sheila told me her mother’s never cottoned to you, so I know the last thing she’s been to you these last few weeks is a comfort.”

  “Carl Bain doesn’t have a wife,” I said. “At least not one that he lives with. She ran off when Carlson was only a baby.”

  Joan stood there, frozen. The plate of crackers and cheese suddenly looked very heavy.

  “Why did you tell me that story?” I asked. “Because it was all a story, right? The boy, he never said anything about his father hurting his mother. And you never told Sheila you were wondering what to do. Because it was all bullshit, right? You made those lies up.”

  Joan’s eyes started to mist.

  “Just tell me why,” I said, although I thought I’d already figured it out.

  I saw panic in her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t talk to him.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know. I just do. You can’t do something like that.” I shook my head. “You can’t.” I took the beer and the plate from her hands and walked them into the kitchen. When I turned around, she was standing there, looking very small.

  “I keep thinking maybe he’ll just walk in the door one day,” she said. “That the rig went down, but somehow Ely clung onto some part of it, and maybe he got picked up by some ship somewhere, without any ID, and maybe he lost his memory, like in that Matt Damon movie, you know the one? But then Ely gets his memory back, and he comes home.” She dug a tissue fr
om her jeans pocket, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. “But I know it’s not going to happen. I know that. But I miss him.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ely, he was always there for me. He protected me. He watched out for me. No one does that for me now. I just, I just wanted to be protected from something, to have someone doing the protecting …”

  “So you made up that story, so I …”

  Joan tried to look at me but she couldn’t. “It felt so nice, you know?” Her face crumpled and more tears trickled. “Knowing you were there? That I could call on you?”

  “You can call on me,” I said. “For something real.”

  “And the other thing is, I wanted to look after someone. Ely, he looked out for me, but I looked out for him, too. And now, after what you’ve gone through, you need that. You need someone to look after you. I thought … I thought I could do that for you. And the other thing I said, about the money that’s coming, that’s true, I swear to God. I’ve got a big settlement coming.”

  I was about to take a couple of steps closer to her, but held my distance. This had the feeling of something that could go very wrong very quickly if I allowed it to.

  “Joan,” I said gently, “you’re a good person. A kind person.”

  “I noticed you didn’t say ‘woman.’ ”

  “You’re that, no question,” I said. “But … I don’t want this. It’s not just with you, but with anyone. I’m not ready. I’m a long, long way from ready. I don’t have any idea when that will be. The only thing I care about now, the only thing I’m looking after now, is my girl.”

  “Sure,” Joan said. “I get that.”

  We both stood there another moment. Finally, Joan said, “I’m going to go, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  She started for the door.

  “Joan,” I said.

  She stopped, and there was this ever-so-slightly hopeful look on her face, that maybe I’d reconsidered, that I wanted to deal with my loneliness and loss and grief the same way she did, that I would hold her in my arms, take her upstairs, and in the morning, she would make me breakfast just the way she did for Ely.

  “The key,” I said.

  She blinked. “Oh yeah, okay.” She fished it out of her pocket, placed it on the kitchen table, and left.

  How many other times, I wondered, had Joan let herself into the house when I wasn’t here, and what might she have been up to?

  I also wondered, for a moment, if she’d be interested in a business teacher I knew.

  FORTY-ONE

  As I ate the cheese and crackers and drank the beer, I tried to get my head around the other events of this day.

  Sommer’s visit. The sixty-two thousand dollars Belinda had wanted Sheila to deliver to him. The crappy electrical parts that had caused the fire in the house I’d been building. The showdown with Theo Stamos. Finding the knockoff parts in the back of Doug Pinder’s truck.

  My head was spinning. There was so much information—and at the same time, so little—that I didn’t know how to process it. My fatigue level didn’t help. There had been too many sleepless nights.

  I finished my beer and picked up the phone. Before I crashed, I needed to be sure Kelly was okay.

  I speed-dialed her cell number. It rang twice before she answered.

  “Hi, Daddy. I was just about to go to bed and was hoping it was you.”

  “How’s it going, sweetheart?”

  “Okay. Kind of boring. Grandma’s wondering if we should drive to Boston for something to do. At first I wanted to go but I really just want to come home. I thought maybe if I came here I wouldn’t be so sad but Grandma is sad so it’s kind of hard not to be. But she says there’s a big aquarium there. It’s like the Googleheim. You know, the museum where you start up at the top floor and you keep going around and around until you get to the first floor? The aquarium is like that. It’s this big tank and you start at the top and keep going until you get to the bottom.”

  “Sounds like fun. Is she there? Your grandmother?”

  “Hang on.”

  Some fumbling. “Yes, Glen.”

  “Hi. Everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine. Is there something you wanted?”

  “I just wanted to be sure Kelly was okay.”

  “She is. I guess she told you we’re talking about whether to take a trip.”

  “Boston.”

  “But I don’t know if I’m up to it.”

  “Just let me know what you decide,” I said. Fiona passed the phone back to Kelly so I could say good night.

  A second later, the phone rang. I picked up without glancing at the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Glen?” A man.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Glen, it’s George Morton. I wonder if you might be able to meet me for a drink.”

  He was waiting for me in a booth at a place over in Devon. It was a bit down-market for George, but maybe he wanted a place he thought would suit me.

  A couple of tables away from the booth were four young guys. If they’d been carded, I had to guess their IDs were borrowed from older friends. But this seemed to be the kind of place where they didn’t worry much about that kind of thing.

  George made no move to stand as I arrived. He let me slip in opposite him. My jeans got caught on sticky spots as I shifted in. George was dressed casually this time, a button-down shirt and a denim jacket. There was a bottle of Heineken in front of him.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “You didn’t want to say what this was about when you called,” I said.

  “It’s not the sort of thing to discuss over the phone, Glen. Can I get you a beer first?”

  “Sure.”

  George caught the waitress’s eye and I asked for a Sam Adams. George sat with his hands on the table, folded together, his arms forming a defensive V around his beer.

  “This is your meeting, George,” I reminded him.

  “Tell me about that envelope full of cash you delivered to my house.”

  “If you know about it, but you don’t know what it’s for, that tells me Belinda hasn’t told you. But she told you it was from me?”

  “I saw you put it through the mail slot,” he said.

  I glanced over at the table with the boys. They were starting to whoop it up. They had three pitchers of beer on the table and their glasses had been filled.

  “Well, there you go. Anything else you want to know, ask Belinda.”

  “She’s not very forthcoming. All she’ll say is the money is a down payment on a property. Are you buying another property, Glen? Tearing down a house and putting up a new one on the site? Reason I ask is, I had the sense things were a bit tight for you right now.”

  The waitress delivered my beer and I took a sip. “Look, George, I don’t know where you get the idea I owe you a favor or an explanation for anything. I understand you’re the one who persuaded Belinda to open up to the Wilkinson lawyers, to tell them Sheila had the odd drink and once smoked pot with your wife and—”

  “If you read the transcript of my wife’s statement closely, you’ll see that it says Sheila smoked marijuana in my wife’s presence, but it does not state that Belinda was also smoking it.”

  “Oh, I see. So you don’t mind tearing my wife down, but you’re careful to protect yours at the same time. Did the Wilkinson woman promise you a cut if she gets everything I own? Is that how it went down?”

  “I was doing what I thought was right.” He unclasped his hands, extended an arm and tapped the table dramatically with his index finger. “Here’s a woman who’s lost her husband and a child, and you want my wife to lie and deny them justice?”

  “If my wife had a history as a pothead and a record for driving around stoned, you might be on to something, George. But she had no history, and she didn’t drive around stoned. So blow your self-righteous crap out your ass.”

  He blinked furiously. “I believe in doing things right. I
believe people need to live up to a certain standard. And envelopes stuffed with cash, without any explanation, that’s just not the way one does business.”

  Three of the boys were chanting “Chug! Chug! Chug!” as the fourth downed a glass of draft in a matter of seconds. They refilled his glass and started chanting again.

  I looked back at George, down at his tapping finger, then suddenly dropped a hand down on his extended arm, pinning it to the table. George’s eyes opened wide. He tried to pull his hand away but he couldn’t do it.

  “Let’s talk about standards,” I told him. “What sort of standards would a man have to have to let a woman other than his wife slap some handcuffs on him?”

  When he’d stuck out his arm, I’d gotten a good look at his wrist. It was red and angry, all the way around. In a couple of spots, the skin was just beginning to heal, as though it had been scraped recently.

  It was, I knew, a stab in the dark. But George Morton was within Ann Slocum’s circle. And Ann, in that snippet of video I’d seen, wasn’t exactly talking to a total stranger.

  “Stop it!” he whispered, still trying to wriggle free. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Tell me how you got those marks. You’ve got two seconds.”

  “I—I—”

  “Too long.”

  “You just, you caught me off guard. I did that—I did that working in the garden.”

  “Both wrists, same marks? What kind of gardening injury was this?”

  George was stammering, none of the words making any sense.

  I let go of his hand and wrapped mine back around my beer. “Ann Slocum did that to you, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered.

  “Since you’re all about being honest and forthright, why don’t I ask Belinda to join us, save you having to tell this story twice.” I started reaching for my phone.

  He reached out and held my arm, giving me an even better look at the marks. “Please.”