Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (2 page)

The spinach sauce curdled on his tongue. “What?”

She’d ordered a whisky neat and was sipping from it, never a good sign. “I should be asking you.”

Her blue eyes regarded him coldly across the table. He wondered if her legions of devoted fans ever noticed that they looked like ice chips, shaped and polished to resemble human eyes.

She sipped more single malt. “Because I got an e-mail today. A very puzzling e-mail. From Siobhan Walters. About you.”

Oh, hell. He felt the comfort of the good food slide away. Siobhan—pronounced
Sha-vaun
but spelled the old Irish way—was Carolyn’s New York editor.

He’d felt he could trust Siobhan. He’d believed he could confide in her, without everything he said to her getting back immediately to Carolyn.

He’d thought that Siobhan could just possibly manage to keep her mouth shut.
Wrong
.

He swallowed some wine, felt it go down badly and barely saved himself from a coughing fit.

“And Siobhan says”—another harmless-looking sip of the single malt, the way gasoline was harmless when you trickled it onto a fire—“Siobhan says you’ve got
ambitions.”

She gave the word a knowing twist that told him the jig was up, so under her ice-chip gaze he decided to come clean.

“Look, Carolyn, don’t take it the wrong way. You had to know that being your assistant wouldn’t be a permanent career for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he added. “It’s been great.”

He could practically feel his nose growing. He hadn’t told Carolyn about his foray into online music criticism, either. But that was minor compared to this.

“But I do have a book of my own in mind, and I did talk to Siobhan not long ago, just in an exploratory way—”

Carolyn laughed, a cawing sound of derision that drew looks from people at other tables nearby. She drank off the remaining whisky.

“Hey, it’s not that I blame you for trying to slide in on my coattails,” she said. “And Siobhan doesn’t, either.”

Outside the big window, the junky pickup truck went by again. The kid behind the wheel looked happy, like he didn’t want any more than he already had.

Or if he did, he wasn’t worrying about it; Chip wondered enviously what it felt like not to be always desperately trying to achieve something while at the same time being afraid you couldn’t.

“So I’m not very pissed off,” continued Carolyn. “I mean, I do get it. You want something all for yourself, and it’s perfectly understandable that you would try for a shortcut.”

He looked down at his plate, where a smear of passion fruit sauce stained the edge of a remaining bit of pizza crust. He had not been trying to take a shortcut.

“You called Siobhan?” he asked. But of course she had. At one of the rest areas on their way here, probably, on her cell phone.

Miserably, he imagined how the talk between her and Siobhan must’ve proceeded, their pitying laughter. His own call to the eminent editor now appeared to him for what it was: a pathetic try at raising himself above his station.

He put his napkin on the table. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.” There was wine still in his glass, but he didn’t want it.

“You embarrassed yourself, that’s all. Think of it as a learning experience.”

Right
, he thought bitterly—learning his place, which was that of a paid servant. He hadn’t always been one, he reminded himself. But he’d bought that trip when he’d started working for Carolyn, and now he was on it. So if he was unhappy, he supposed he had no one to blame but himself.

A naturally gifted researcher, he’d discovered fifteen years earlier how easy it was to go online, learn all about nearly any subject, then sell the info nuggets he had mined to his less adept classmates for their essays and term papers.

Later on, he’d found his talent for writing things himself. He’d learned that he was fast and accurate, with an effortless knack for the phrase that summed up a whole subject in a smooth, easy-to-read way. He’d sold a few of them, too.

But stories and articles in publications that paid pennies per word didn’t put food on the table, even if you liked instant mac-and-cheese alternating with ramen noodles. He’d been teaching part-time at a rural community college in Kansas, still trying to get a freelance career going, when he found Carolyn’s card pinned to the student center bulletin board and called the number on it.

She’d been struggling toward writing for a living, just as he was. Six months later, he’d gathered every possible fact about the violent deaths of two pretty young women in Nevada.

After that, together he and Carolyn had come up with the kicker. The killer, a high-school track star and honor student from a wealthy family, had been stalking and murdering other young women for years, unsuspected by his parents and teachers.

Armed with the knowledge, Chip had written part of Carolyn’s first draft and, let’s face it, most of the book’s rewrites. When the
sensational trial ended in “guilty” just as their work on it came out,
Young Blood
had started climbing the bestseller lists, and
Young Savages
was doing even better.

Immersed in these thoughts, he didn’t notice Carolyn getting the check. But now he got up and made his way between the tables to pry the charge-card receipt from her.

It was part of his job to record every penny Carolyn spent, a routine she liked in theory but got irritated about in practice. But never mind, she would thank him in April, when he also handled the visits to the accountant.

Or rather, she wouldn’t. His paycheck, she’d once informed him when she was feeling prickly enough to be honest, was gratitude enough. And anyway, he’d already decided he wouldn’t be working for her anymore by then.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. After they’d met up with the anonymous e-mail informant they’d come here to see—Mr. Mystery, Carolyn had begun calling him—then he would tell her.

Music criticism, fact-checking, even freelance researching again … anything was better than this. He followed her outside, where Eastport’s main street seemed even more empty than before. No cars moving, no people; at just past nine-thirty it might as well have been midnight.

Across the bay a few lights gleamed, sparsely sprinkled over Campobello. To the north, a lighthouse beam stabbed rhythmically at the sky.

A foghorn hooted, though the night was clear and the stars overhead shone frigidly. Shivering, he headed for the car.

“Come on,” he told her over his shoulder. “We’d better go find our rooms before the innkeeper turns out the lights and goes to bed.”

He’d wanted a place here in town, but Carolyn had chosen a rental cabin on the shore of a nearby saltwater inlet instead. It would be more authentic, she’d said, more atmospheric.

Yeah, yeah
, he thought. “Nearby” meant at least ten miles in this
part of the world. Also, the car’s on-screen mapping gadget didn’t work here, so on top of everything else, he would have to find the place himself.

Digging his car keys from his pocket, he hoped the cabin at least had hot running water. Then he realized that she wasn’t behind him. “Carolyn?”

A self-described free spirit, she was capable of wandering off on her own, especially with a few drinks in her. A spurt of mean glee seized him at the idea that she might get lost, but the self-indulgent emotion was fast followed by a pinprick of real fear.

The guy they were meeting tomorrow was no model citizen, at least if what he’d told them about himself so far was true. But then Chip spotted her slim figure hurrying along, already halfway up the street.

“Carolyn, come on, it’s late, and—”

I’m tired
. From the way she ignored him, though, he knew it was pointless. She would do what she liked, as usual. With a sigh, he hoisted the satchel again.

Not that she would use it, but if he didn’t bring it, she would send him back for it. And as he traipsed after her, he saw what had attracted her: a block away, the red neon window sign of a bar.

By the time he got there, she’d already gone in. He followed, resigning himself to an hour of witless barstool conversation, the smell of stale beer, and maybe football on TV way out here in the middle of nowhere. But inside, he got a surprise.

In a room overlooking the long, L-shaped concrete breakwater he’d seen earlier, a dozen or so young hipster types drank Amstel Lights and played darts to the sound of Coldplay’s most recent release, being played on a good if not exactly spectacular sound system. Apparently, driving a truck up and down the main street wasn’t all there was to do in this town.

He looked around, his discontent banished for the moment by the varnished plank floor, the mahogany bar with a polished brass rail,
and the eight-foot mirror on the wall behind it. There was even a jar of pickled eggs by the cash register.

The glass lamp shades weren’t Tiffany, he felt sure, but they weren’t junk, either. Chip decided an Amstel of his own wouldn’t hurt him.

“On the house,” said the bartender to Carolyn, who’d already named her poison. “Welcome to Eastport.” She’d asked for another straight scotch—a double, Chip saw with an unsurprised sinking feeling.

The bartender was a fortyish, sandy-haired guy in jeans and a white polo shirt. His smile didn’t reach his eyes as he slid a glass of amber liquid across the bar at Carolyn.

But then again, why should it? The guy wasn’t here for the laughs. Chip nodded at the draft spigots.

The bartender drew Chip a cold one and returned to the cash register, where he’d been balancing the till, laying fives, tens, and twenties in neat piles. Despite this clear signal that it was nearly closing time, Carolyn knocked her shot back efficiently, then put money on the bar’s gleaming surface.

At this rate, he’d be pouring her into the car, Chip thought. On the other hand, it would cut down on conversation, and after what had happened in the restaurant earlier, maybe that was just as well.

Ignoring her, he took his beer and sat alone at a table while she got her fresh drink and started bragging about who she was, what she’d written, how successful she was getting.

Chip glanced around, embarrassed for her. Luckily, the only other person within earshot was a silent, slump-shouldered guy in a pulled-down Red Sox cap, staring into a beer mug.

Morosely, the guy dug a peanut out of a half-empty packet and ate it, washing it down with the remaining suds in the mug. Chip wondered what a guy like that did the rest of the time, then forgot about him.

Carolyn gabbed on while the twentysomethings in the darts game
laughed and chatted among themselves and the Coldplay tune on the sound system changed to something that Chip hadn’t heard before.

The Tough Alliance, maybe? Tin Can Logic? Whatever, it was good. Someone in here knew their indie music. Behind the darts area was a small stage, too, with the amplifier, mixer, and speakers plus microphone and video screen of an elaborate karaoke system, for patrons who wanted more than just a passive music experience.

“So, what do you know about the Dodd case?” Carolyn asked the bartender. “Those two sisters who were killed? One of them only about six weeks ago? You must hear plenty in here,” she prodded.

The bartender’s smile stiffened. Chip waited for his reply, wondering if maybe his partner and pal, Carolyn, had pushed it a little too hard. But just then somebody in the darts game got a bull’s-eye and fresh laughter erupted from the group.

“Can’t help you there,” the bar man was telling Carolyn when Chip could hear again. Another indie fave, BC Camplight, filled the room with their most recent release: synths, brass, and piano melodies, topped by a self-assured vocal.

Chip’s estimation of whoever chose the music for this place went up another notch. Neither Camplight nor the previous tune was exactly blaring out of the average commercial radio station; even in the city, if you wanted that stuff you had to go looking for it.

The guy down the bar rose without speaking, left money and his empty peanut bag, and limped out, dragging one foot a little.

The bartender ignored the guy as the front door swung open and fell closed again. “I don’t know any more than anyone else around here,” he told Carolyn. “Which is basically nothing.”

He made a last round of drinks for the darts group, then returned. “You’re going to write a book about it, though? Mind if I ask how you’re going to do that when nobody knows what happened or who’s guilty?”

“Oh, well,” Carolyn replied, her voice full of the too-loud confidence of one who could not walk a straight line, much less blow a
Breathalyzer test successfully. “I’m not worried. When I’m finished, everyone’ll know. Just like last time.”

She swiveled on her barstool, reached clumsily for the satchel that Chip had placed near her, and drew out a garishly jacketed copy of
Young Savages
. The cover art featured yellow crime-scene tape, a glistening red blood drop, and cash so real-looking, you could almost try to spend it.

The cash represented the money the teenaged killer’s rich parents had spent trying to get him off. The parents’ prominent friends and well-respected fellow country-club members had all testified to the youth’s stellar character, too, though many had privately already known or suspected otherwise, Chip and Carolyn had discovered.

The result had been a scandal so juicy,
Vanity Fair
ran two long features on it: one an insiderish piece by Dominick Dunne, and the other by Carolyn herself. In place of the usual glowing blurbs from other authors, the book’s dust jacket capitalized on this by featuring outraged quotes from residents of the exclusive enclave whose reputation had been shredded within.

The bartender eyed the book warily. “So that’s what you want to do?” he asked. “Rip our little town up one side and down the other, like you did in that one there? I can’t really say I look forward to that.”

Alert as always to the merest hint of someone getting in her way, or threatening to, Carolyn backpedaled expertly.

“Oh, no,” she reassured him in a voice like warm oil. “Nothing like that. It was another kind of situation entirely. Those people—”