Harry Dolan (16 page)

“Was that the first time you met him,” she asked, “when he edited your story?”

“Yes, we got together over coffee and went over what he’d done.”

“Is that common—for an author and an editor to meet in person?”

“Probably not,” Hifflyn said. “But I’m something of a curiosity, especially for students. A published novelist. Sometimes they want to see for themselves if such a thing really exists.”

“And you oblige them?”

“When I can. For Tom’s sake, more than anything else,” he said. “Tom and I went to the university together. We founded the magazine together—with Laura and a few others. My part in that was modest, though, and my motives entirely self-interested. I saw
Gray Streets
as a way of getting some of my own stories published. But I’m straying into personal history now, and you want to hear about Adrian Tully.”

“How often did you see him, after that first meeting?”

“Not often. Our paths crossed a handful of times, usually at the Kristoll house. The last time I saw him was after Tom died. Those first few days, there were always students hovering around Laura. Adrian was one of them. I remember speaking to him, but only in passing.”

“You can’t shed any light on his mood then.”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Were you aware that he was under suspicion in Tom’s murder?”

Hifflyn pushed at a stick of firewood with the heel of his shoe. “That’s something I heard, though I never heard why.”

“We believe that he followed Laura on the day Tom died and that he discovered she was having an affair with David Loogan. We were working on the theory that he went to Tom’s office to tell him about the affair and the two of them had an argument that got out of hand.” Elizabeth observed Hifflyn’s face in the glow of the firelight. “Did you ever get the impression that Tully was attracted to Laura Kristoll?”

He shook his head slowly. “I can’t offer you any insight on that.”

“Let’s put Tully aside then,” she said. “Let me ask you about Tom. You went to school together.”

“Yes.”

“Then you started getting books published, and he had the magazine. Did that ever put a strain on your friendship?”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“I understand he wanted to be a writer when he was younger.”

“We were all writers back then.”

“But you’ve made a success of it. He never did.”

“He took another path. He made a success of
Gray Streets.
”

“It’s not the same though, is it?”

“If Tom ever envied me, he kept it to himself.”

“How close were you?” she said. “Did you see him often? Did you talk to him on the phone?”

“Sometimes he’d call to ask me how a manuscript was coming along, or if he discovered a new writer. And we would go out to dinner—Tom and Laura, my wife and I.”

“There’s a Mrs. Hifflyn then?”

“She’s traveling in Europe. I could give you a number if you want to talk to her. She’s in Venice now. She has family there.”

Elizabeth tipped her head to the side. “And here you are in Michigan.”

“I’d rather be with her,” Hifflyn said, “but I’m trying to finish a book.”

“Who do you suppose killed Tom?”

He had been watching the fire, but now he turned to her sharply with a puzzled look. “I don’t know.”

“That was an abrupt question,” she said. “I apologize. I should have eased into the subject. When you found out he’d been killed, what did you make of it?”

“I didn’t know what to make of it. It seemed entirely senseless.”

“But there must have been a reason. If I went digging around in Tom’s past, what would I discover?”

Hifflyn’s fingers touched his earlobe. His face made a pained expression. “I don’t know if I feel comfortable talking about Tom in this way. It doesn’t seem proper.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect. But I could use your help. Tell me what he was like in school.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

“Indulge me.”

Hifflyn sighed. “He was driven. Dedicated.”

“To the magazine?”

“And to fiction writing.”

“You were in the creative writing program?”

“The three of us were,” he said. “Me and Tom and Laura.”

“And Bridget Shellcross, where does she fit in?”

“Bridget was a year ahead of us. But she was studying art history.”

“All right,” Elizabeth said. “Now, remember, I’m digging. What do I find?”

“I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“Sure you do. Imagine I was talking to someone less scrupulous, someone willing to pass on tales. What would he tell me?”

Hifflyn folded his hands in his lap. “If I were willing to pass on tales,” he said, “I might tell you that Bridget and Tom were once involved.”

“You mean romantically.”

“Yes. Bridget was . . . open-minded then.”

“Was this before or after Tom and Laura got together?”

“It was after they were together, but before they were married. Eventually, Laura found out about Bridget, but she and Tom worked it out.”

“And that was the end of it—between Tom and Bridget?”

“I believe it was.”

“But in the years since, you don’t know what may have happened,” Elizabeth said. “They could have started up again.”

“I’ve no reason to think so.”

“If they had started up again, would Tom have told you?”

“I don’t see why. I wasn’t his confessor.”

“All right. I’m still digging. What else do I find?”

After a quiet moment Hifflyn got out of his chair and stood staring at the night sky. “Do you like looking at the stars, Detective?”

“Not while I’m digging.”

“In the city, it’s hard to see anything at all. Artificial light drowns out the real thing. But it’s better here, for stargazing.” He pointed toward the northern sky. “Those three stars—I believe that’s Orion’s belt.”

Elizabeth joined him. “I think you’re right. Look a little to the east and you can see Sirius.”

“The bright one there?”

“The brightest. Also known as the Dog Star, part of the constellation Canis Major. Why don’t you tell me what I’m digging for?”

Watching his profile, she saw a crow’s-foot form at the corner of his eye.

“Laura and me,” he said.

“You were involved with Laura?”

“Freshman year. Before she and Tom met. I introduced them. In fact, I believe you would say he stole her away from me.”

“I see. And how did that play out?”

“Tom was charming. And I told you he was driven. ‘Obsessed’ might be a better description. Especially after he got the magazine started. Laura was attracted to that.”

“You must have been hurt.”

“There were some rough days,” he said. “There were even days when I hated Tom. Days when I might have been tempted to push him in front of a bus. Or out an open window.”

Hifflyn stood looking down at the ground. With the toe of his shoe he traced the outline of a flagstone.

“I had my reasons then,” he said. “If Tom had been killed twenty years ago, I might have been a prime suspect. I don’t know what that makes me today.”

Chapter 17

IN THE KITCHEN OF SEAN WRENTMORE’S CONDOMINIUM, THE CUPBOARDS were efficiently organized, the surface of the stove was clean. The countertops were free of crumbs.

There was a glass in the sink, a few plates in the dishwasher. Then, in the refrigerator, indications of Wrentmore’s absence: an expired carton of milk, leftovers beginning to grow mold.

David Loogan closed the refrigerator door and moved on to the living room. He noted a fairly expensive stereo system, a flat-screen television. The furniture seemed to have been purchased as an ensemble: the sofa matched the reclining chair; the coffee table matched the end tables. There were a few photographs hung in metal frames. Most of them were portraits of people in Third World settings: women at a well, young men leaning against a graffitied wall. Their expressions were invariably serious; sometimes angry, sometimes resigned.

The photographs had not been taken by Wrentmore. They were matted and signed by the photographer, a woman Loogan had never heard of. There were no personal photographs, no snapshots, no photo albums that Loogan could discover.

He went down a hall and came to the bedroom. It was large and doubled as an office. Desk by the window. Shelves of books. A walk-in closet held dress shirts and turtlenecks, khaki pants and blue jeans—they seemed about the right size for the man Loogan remembered from the floor of Tom Kristoll’s study. In a corner of the closet stood a shotgun, barrel pointed toward the ceiling. A box of shells on a shelf above. A smaller box of twenty-two-caliber ammunition. Loogan thought of the nickel-plated pistol in the dead man’s ankle holster.

Loogan left the closet and sat at the desk, which was cluttered with empty notepads and scattered pens and pencils. There was no computer, just as Michael Beccanti had said, and Loogan guessed that the clutter was there to disguise the computer’s absence.

He made a casual search of the drawers of the desk and came across a few phone bills and utility bills, but no bank statements, no checkbook. There were no journals, no notebooks, nothing to indicate that the owner of the desk was a writer. There were index cards, but they were all blank. Loogan fanned through them idly. He would have liked to find a cryptic word or series of numbers—a password that might unlock the flashdrive that Beccanti had discovered hidden behind the faceplate of an electrical outlet. He found nothing of the kind. But in one of the drawers he turned up a student ID with Sean Wrentmore’s name on it. It was ten years out of date, from a community college in Ohio, but the photo was recognizable. Lean face and long, dirty-blond hair. It was a younger version of the man he and Tom had buried in Marshall Park.

The books in Wrentmore’s collection were more or less what Loogan would have expected. Most were mystery novels. Raymond Chandler was there, as were Dashiell Hammett and Rex Stout. As for contemporary writers, Wrentmore seemed to favor Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, and Elmore Leonard, but Nathan Hideaway, Bridget Shellcross, and Casimir Hifflyn were also represented.

The non-mystery books were eclectic: science fiction by Robert Hein lein, an anthology of Mark Twain, the plays of Edmond Rostand.

Loogan opened one of Nathan Hideaway’s novels and got a hint of Wrentmore’s personality. There were passages underlined, notes in the margins. Wrentmore would bracket off sections of dialogue and mark them
stilted.
He would circle a paragraph and write
ugh!
or
god-awful.

On the last page of one of Bridget Shellcross’s books—
Roll Over,
featuring art dealer Linda Lorenger and her golden retriever—Wrentmore had provided a two-sentence review:
Shoot the dog. Run off with Linda.

One of Casimir Hifflyn’s Kendel novels carried a series of blurbs on the opening pages. A
Boston Globe
reviewer had written:
Grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go.
Wrentmore had lined through this and replaced it with:
Punches you in the face and throws you off a moving train.

There were similar comments in other books. Loogan sampled more of them, but stopped when he realized he was procrastinating. He had gotten what he came for—a sense of Sean Wrentmore. He wasn’t likely to learn much more by snooping through the man’s books.

He took a last look around and then went out through the front door, the way he had come, into the cool gray of an October afternoon. He turned the key to secure the dead bolt, stripped off the plastic gloves he had been wearing so as not to leave his prints behind. He spotted movement on the sidewalk, a woman coming toward him—young, African-American, wearing what looked like nursing scrubs. She had a purse slung over her shoulder; she might have just come home from work.

Loogan slipped the gloves in the pocket of his jacket, hoped she wouldn’t notice. He smiled sheepishly and waved.

She halted a few feet from him, looking uncertain. “Are you a friend of Sean’s?”

“I’m his cousin,” said Loogan. “Ted Carmady.”

“Delia Ross.” She nodded a greeting and closed the distance between them. “I live next door.”

“I came up from Dayton on business,” Loogan said, “and stopped for a visit. But Sean’s not home.” Wrentmore’s bio note in
Gray Streets
said he had grown up in Dayton.

“I haven’t seen him for a while,” said Delia Ross. “I kind of wonder where he’s gone to.”

“We haven’t heard from him in the last month or so,” Loogan said. “Not so long, really, but his mother worries. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone in.” She had seen him come out, Loogan thought. No sense denying it.

“Lucky you had a key,” she said.

He held it up for her. “Sean keeps a spare outside, hidden under a rock.” With a wink, he added, “I probably shouldn’t tell.”

That elicited a tentative smile. “His secret’s safe,” she said.

“Do you know Sean well?” he asked her.

“I wonder if anybody does,” she said.

“He was always a loner, growing up. Still lives alone, from the look of things in there,” Loogan added, nodding toward the door. “Keeps the place neat, though. I wonder if he has a cleaning service come in.”

“I’ve never seen anyone,” she said. “I think he’s kind of a neatnik.”

Loogan put some mischief into his voice. “Any girlfriends? I wouldn’t ask, but it’s the first thing his mother’ll want to know when I see her.”

“I couldn’t say for sure. But none that I’ve seen.”

“He’s still writing, I suppose.”

“Yes. That I can vouch for.”

“I’ve read some of his stories,” Loogan said. “They’re pretty wild. Violent. But I guess that’s what people want to read.”

“Do you know about his novel?”

A short pause. “I know he talked about writing one. Is it finished?”