New England White (54 page)

Trevor Land said, “One hardly knows what to say—”

“Just tell me the truth. Please. I just want to know what you know.”

“People could get hurt,” said Danny.

“If you’re thinking of the Joules, I already know they went along with the cover-up. What I didn’t know until tonight was who the town was covering up for.”

Trevor Land shook his head. “I knew young Malcolm well. He doted on that child. Led the search parties and so forth.”

Julia said, “The line between doting and coveting—”

She got no further. Whisted’s aide was on his feet. “You’re not as smart as you think you are,” he said, moving toward her.

“People know where I am,” she gulped.

“How wonderful for them,” he said, and, passing her, headed angrily for the door. Everybody watched him go.

“And the other thing is—” Julia began.

Then they heard the fortyish man shouting. “Hey, what is this? You can’t—”

But evidently he could. The senatorial aide marched back into the living room, prodded by a rather drunken Anthony Tice, who was holding a gun.

“Looks like the gang’s all here,” the lawyer said.

(IV)

T
RICKY
T
ONY WANTED THEM
to understand him. He was not a bad man, he said, waving the gun in a shaky hand. He just wanted to make sure that the government had to dot every “t” and cross every “i”—he was a little confused—before it took away anybody’s liberty. But his clients, he said, were patient men. Very patient. And their patience was making him desperate. It was not his fault, he assured the frightened group, Julia sitting among them now like a full member. But he needed that diary, and he needed it now, tonight. His clients had let him know that he was out of time.

“Happy to help out,” Trevor Land assured him, soft pink hands held high, as were everyone else’s. “Man in trouble is a brother. Rather one’s credo. Trouble is, not sure what diary you mean, kind of thing.”

“Yes, you are,” said Lurleen. For the first time, it occurred to Julia that maybe all the empty beer bottles were hers.

“We don’t know where the diary is,” said Whisted’s aide. “We want it as much as you do.”

“You’re lying,” the lawyer assured them happily. “If you didn’t have the diary,
she
wouldn’t be here.” The gun waved vaguely toward Julia. “She’s figured out all the clues, haven’t you, Julia? And she doesn’t want to get sued. So she’s—”

A stone shattered the window behind Anthony Tice, who spun around and dropped into a crouch like a man who knows how to use a gun.

He called over the sill, “You think I’m scared of you, Bruce? My clients will eat you for lunch.”

Silence from outside. Tice pulled out his cell phone, hit the push-to-talk button, and waited, but nothing happened. He glanced at the group, peeked over the sill, tried the button again. Nothing. He pressed a speed-dial button without any result.

He lifted the gun and fired three shots, very fast, through the window, the report quite loud in the narrow hallway.

“Bastards,” he muttered, and tried the phone again. The Senator’s aide chose that moment to stand up, but, even drunk, the lawyer was too fast for him, and had the gun centered on his chest in an instant. “Don’t,” he said.

Julia saw something, and leaped to her feet.

The gun immediately trained her way. “Sit,” he began. But by the time he had finished the word “down,” a small, lithe figure had hopped nimbly through the window, Tice was flat on the floor, and Jeremy Flew had Tricky Tony’s gun in his hand.

CHAPTER 61

DEPARTURES

(I)

“T
HAT WAS INTERESTING
,” said Julia. “Having an actual bodyguard. I never had one of those.”

“Probably you never needed one.”

“I’m sorry I maced you.”

Mary Mallard, walking beside her through the grand lobby of the train station, managed a bitter laugh. “Not as sorry as I am.” She hefted her overnight bag. “Are you sure, Julia? That he was only a bodyguard? Nothing else?”

Julia gave her a look. The two women slowed. Impatient passengers brushed past them. Sloshing water from boots and shoes made the floor dangerously slick. “What else did you have in mind?”

“Your boyfriend Bruce Vallely—”

“My
what
?”

“Sorry. Bruce. Your good buddy Bruce. He had this idea that maybe Jeremy Flew was up to no good. And, besides, why would Lemaster move a bodyguard into the house?” She held up a hand. “Wait. I know. You can’t tell me, right?”

“Right.”

“But I’m forbidden to write about him.”

“Right.”

“I think our deal gives you too much power.”

“I think they’re calling your train.”

On the platform, Mary turned to her again. “Julia, listen to me. No, just listen. I think Tice is crazy. Just crazy. All right, he has clients. They’ve been putting pressure on him—that would crack anybody up. But do you really think it’s likely he killed Kellen? Think about it. His clients were buying what Kellen was selling. Why would Tice kill him?”

Julia shrugged.

“All right,” Mary went on. “He could have run a car into Brady, or had somebody do it. He needed Brady’s files to keep his clients happy. I’ll grant that. He could have had the spyware planted on your computer. Maybe he bribed one of your assistants”—Julia had no trouble guessing which—“or maybe he broke in and did it himself. Just for trying to kill Brady, he faces years in prison. But, Julia, even if he did one, that doesn’t mean he did the other, does it?”

Silence. A freezing winter rain peppered their faces.

“The police think they’ve got the killer. Tony isn’t saying a word. But you don’t believe it for a minute, do you? You think the killer’s still out there. Somebody we haven’t met yet.”

But in her eyes were juicier possibilities. Your husband, said the dark, ducklike countenance. Your mysterious Mr. Flew. Maybe even you! Julia, staring back, had uneasy thoughts of her own. She had asked Jeremy why he had not intercepted Mary Mallard that night at the archives. He had pleaded other duties he was not at liberty to disclose. Maybe. But another possibility was that whatever world had spawned him was one through which Mary, with her network of intelligence sources, freely moved. Maybe they had met before, and owed each other favors.

And maybe paranoia was contagious.

Mary said, “I spoke to a colleague of yours. Suzanne de Broglie. Her parents and Gina’s were best friends. Suzanne says her father told her that Merrill Joule made a deal with the devil. I think you know what he meant. But you won’t tell me, will you?”

“You’re going to miss your train.”

“I’m not going to stop searching, Julia. Our deal doesn’t cover facts I dig up for myself. This is too good a story now.” Hugging her anyway. “Whether you help me or not, I’m going to find out who killed him.”

“And write a nice book about it, right?”

“That’s what I do.” The writer hesitated. “I’ve also been talking to Tessa. She’s told me a little bit about you and Kellen. Your history. And, Julia, I’m sorry—I never realized how hard this all must have—”

“I’m fine, Mary. Really.” But she was wondering who else her old roommate had told, and marveling at how time ripens some friendships, yet can sour the best of them. “Tell Tessa I said hello.”

Mary stepped onto the train. Julia stepped back. “Safe journey,” she said.

“Julia, honey?”

“Hmmm?”

“If you do think the killer’s still out there? If you do go searching?” She lifted her hands, waved imaginary pom-poms in the air. “Rah-rah.”

(II)

V
ANESSA WAS WAITING IN THE
E
SCALADE
. The two of them went to lunch at a place in the city they liked, what Lemaster called quiche-and-fern express.

Julia said, “Thank you, honey.”

Eyebrows up, just like her father’s.

“For what?”

“Well, number one, for being the wonderfully special person you are. Number two, for helping me out with Kellen’s word games. I think you’re actually better at it than he was. And, number three, for loaning me Smith’s little device.”

They grinned at each other. Julia had known all along that Tice could not be doing everything himself. Just keeping her in sight from time to time, while worrying about his own coming court case, would be too taxing. He must have had one or more accomplices. When Julia went to Vera’s house to commend her on helping Kellen try to end the injustice done to DeShaun, and Tony burst in on them, thinking the solution to the mystery must be present, Jeremy Flew was there almost at once. Tony used his cell phone to call for help; or, rather, he tried to. To his dismay, he could not get a signal.

Smith had built a silencer, an electronic device that interfered with the ability of the cell phone to synchronize with the signal from the nearest repeater tower. As Vanessa had noted, silencers that worked by jamming were illegal in the United States; but the other types were less effective. Only by using a jammer could she be sure.

She had been certain that Jeremy, acting alone, could beat one man easily—and, in the event, he had beaten poor Tony Tice within an inch of his life, without ever seeming to work up a sweat.

I’m not going to ask where you got him from,
Julia had told her husband.

I’m not going to tell you.

Although Lemaster denied absolutely that Jeremy was a bodyguard. He was just another aide, and if he happened to have some useful talents, so much the better. After Tice’s arrest, Flew had submitted his resignation, effective immediately. Jeannie was devastated, and now insisted, as if in his memory, on being addressed only as “Jeans.”

Now, sitting across the table from her elder daughter, Julia asked about how she liked her new psychiatrist, Sara Jacobstein, affiliated with the medical school and a family friend from their days living in the city, whose husband had been on the law faculty with Lemaster.

“I love her!” Vanessa burst out happily, and Julia believed every word. They went on to talk of school, and of That Casey, who was sniffing around her again, and of what she now thought about college choices—except that Vanessa said it would be better not to get her hopes up, but to wait and see who was going to let her in.

Sara Jacobstein was big on patience, said Vanessa.

And then, inevitably, they fought, the way that mothers and teen daughters do.

“I think it’s time to tell me how Kellen got in the house,” said Julia, softly.

“In the house?” Eyes wide, and far too innocent.

“To plant his little envelope underneath the piano or wherever he taped it. Were you there when he did it? Or did you just loan him your key?”

“No, and no.”

Julia leaned forward. “Come on, honey. You can tell me.”

Vanessa faded back in her chair, drew one knee up to her chest, began rocking slowly. “I am telling you. Why would I let him in the house, or give him my key? He was coming on to me. That’s gross. I didn’t want him near me.” Her shudder of revulsion seemed utterly unfeigned. “I sure wouldn’t want to be in an empty house with him.”

“Then how did he get in?”

“I figured
you’d
know the answer to that,” said Vanessa, and there was coldness between them once more.

(III)

T
WO AFTERNOONS LATER,
she met Bruce Vallely for coffee, quite openly, at the bagel shop in the middle of campus, the same place she used to meet Kellen. She waved unembarrassed to Alice Henner, a Sister Lady who taught in the history department, because somewhere during the past three months she had decided never to be embarrassed any more.

Bruce was the one who seemed uneasy.

Julia, after a few minutes of pleasantries, reminded him of his promise to stop following her. He assured her that his only interest had been keeping her safe from little Flew.

Neither one of them believed a word of it.

For a while, they sat and watched the weather go by, and Julia remembered how she used to teach her eighth-graders the difference between climate and weather by telling them to think of climate as everything available in the whole supermarket, and weather as whatever was in the shopping cart today. Her life right now was suffering from bad weather, she decided—but not necessarily bad climate.

Bruce said, “This has been fun.”

“What has?”

“Getting to know you a little bit.” He laughed. “Even if you are frustrating and bossy.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind of man who’s easily bossed.”

Then, seeing where this line of conversation was headed, they dropped it. Bruce asked a version of Mary Mallard’s question: did Julia think Tice was the guilty party?

She answered with a question of her own: had he arranged for her to ask Rick Chrebet for the information she wanted?

“I’ve arranged it,” he said, tone dubious. “I can’t say whether he’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“He will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

That crooked grin, so full of energy and confidence. “It’s not widely known, Bruce, but I can be very charming when I put my mind to it.”

Outside, Bruce watched Julia pull the Escalade into traffic for the drive back to the Landing. Gwen Turian emerged from a storefront.

“All done,” she said.

CHAPTER 62

THE DUEL

(I)

T
HE FOURTH
S
ATURDAY
of February, Frank Carrington called to say he had a second Federal mirror with nautical motif, to replace the one she had broken, and Julia said she would come over that afternoon, because they had made their peace since the argument at his house. She arrived just before closing, because she had been ferrying Jeans between ballet and a birthday party, and also because she thought at closing they were marginally less likely to be interrupted. Parking, she glanced across the street, but Vera was away on vacation. Nobody could remember when she had last taken one. Lurleen Maddox, who had sold Kellen the cheap hand mirror, was just locking her door.

“Glad you could come,” said Frank with his nervous twitter. “It’ll just be a minute.”

She stood by the counter, waiting, intrigued but not really surprised that Frank had never carried out his threat to leave town. He brought the package from the back room, unwrapped the mirror, and laid it on the glass for her to examine.

“It’s cracked,” she said. “Look at this.”

“It’s an easy repair.”

They negotiated a steep discount anyway.

While Frank rewrapped the mirror, Julia said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I was talking to Rick Chrebet—the detective who worked on Kellen’s murder?”

“Right. I hear they arrested that lawyer.”

“Yes. But, Frank, I was wondering. During the investigation, Rick dropped by my office one day, and told me about some fudge I’d sent to Kellen on his birthday? And how Kellen sent the same fudge to my daughter?”

“Uh-huh.” He turned back and took her credit card.

“Well, here’s the funny part. I didn’t send the fudge from Vera’s shop. I sent it by campus mail. Nobody knew I sent that fudge but me and Kellen. And nobody knew Kellen sent fudge to my daughter but—Kellen. Even Vanessa didn’t know who it was from.”

He pulled out the receipt for her to sign. “Is that a fact?”

“Anyway, I asked Rick Chrebet how he happened to know about the fudge. Know what he told me?”

“Nope.”

“He told me you told him about it.”

Frank’s pinched face came up, eyes squinty and moist. “Me? How would I know something like that? I only met the man that one time, when he came in the store to—”

“To buy the cheval. I know.” Writing her name with a flourish. “All the same, it seems to me that Vera Brightwood couldn’t have been Kellen’s only helper in the Landing. Vera mostly knows rumors. He would have needed somebody who knew the facts, too.”

“Makes sense.”

“Say, an ex-cop who worked on the Gina Joule murder?”

Another nod. “Makes sense,” he repeated, handing her the yellow copy of the receipt.

“That would be quite a formidable team. You and Vera and Boris Gibbs and Kellen, all trying to find that diary. To bring the real killer to justice. Clear DeShaun’s memory.”

“I suppose so.”

“I think it’s commendable.”

A nervous grin. “I like minorities.”

“I know that, Frank. But there’s a couple of problems.”

“Problems?”

Carefully, carefully, measuring the space to the door. He was on the other side of the counter. No way could he catch her if she bolted. “Number one, Four Mile Road isn’t on any map or GPS. So whoever killed Kellen and left him there had to be local. That excludes Tony Tice or some phantom hit man. Number two, I now have most of the diary. I’ve read it, Frank. Arnie Huebner said he couldn’t trust his own people, with all the money floating around. I think Arnie was afraid that one of his deputies might have been in on the cover-up. Maybe even took a bribe. That would give the deputy, if he’s still alive, a pretty strong motive to kill Kellen Zant, even if he pretended to be helping. The deputy could maybe have asked Zant to pick him up on that Friday night, maybe to go out and look at a couple more clues. Kellen was a little worried. Maybe even suspicious. He tried to drop some materials off at the one house he knew in the Landing, but he couldn’t quite work it. I think the deputy killed him, Frank. I think the deputy killed him, and took what evidence he had on him, and then, when he discovered the diary wasn’t there, got a little panicky and maybe let slip to somebody who would care—me, for instance—that the diary was out there, waiting to be found.”

Frank nodded. “You say you’ve got the diary.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then let’s go get it.”

Her plan to run out the front had not counted on a gun.

At that moment the bell over the front door tinkled. They both looked up.

“Am I interrupting?” said Mary Mallard. Then she saw Frank’s hand. “Oops.”

(II)

T
HEY TOOK THE
E
SCALADE,
so that Julia could drive and Frank could keep the gun pointed at her. He was still nervous, but he told little jokes along the way to ease the tension, none of them funny. Julia was kicking herself, and not only because she and Mary might both be dead in five minutes. She was the one who had assured Bruce Vallely that she could take care of herself. And she knew he was not secretly following. Out here on the back roads of the East Woods, traffic was so sparse that his car would have been visible a long way off.

Mary, sitting in the back seat with her wrists tied behind her, had started out on a tirade of don’t-you-know-who-I-am, but had eventually subsided after Frank threatened to gag her. Julia was furious at her friend for showing up again, but Mary, on the scent of a story, was irrepressible.

“Where are we going?” Frank asked.

“You said you want the diary. I’m taking you to the diary.”

Four Mile Road had several forks. No one who didn’t know the area could possibly track them all. Frank knew the area. Bruce did not. Cell phones didn’t work, and GPS systems had never heard of the place. Oh, this was a great plan.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Well hidden.”

“We better be there in five minutes.”

“It won’t take that long.”

Mary said, “Don’t give him the diary,” although she could have no earthly idea whether Julia had it or not.

Frank said, “I told you to hush.” He looked around, realized where they were. “Nobody lives out this way but Mitch Huebner.” A light dawned. “You’re saying Mitch Huebner had the diary all along?” He laughed. “That lying old bastard.”

Julia did not answer. She took one fork, then another, driving deeper into the woods.

“What are you doing, Julia?”

Driving hard, she said nothing.

“Come on, Julia,” said the former deputy. “This isn’t the way to Huebner’s. You missed the turn. Julia! What are you up to? Slow down!”

Instead, she sped up, the sturdy car leaping through drifts and rattling over ditches.

Carrington lifted the gun. “Enough is enough, Julia. I’m impressed. But, truly, there isn’t any point. No more games.”

“You’re going to kill us anyway!”

“If you don’t stop the car,” he answered, calmly, “I think I probably will.”

“Killing is a sin against God’s gift of—”

“Stop the car, Julia.”

“As you wish,” said Julia, and, turning the wheel hard, floored the accelerator and slammed the Escalade into the biggest tree she could find.

(III)

T
HE WORLD WAS RENDERED DOWN
to a crystalline simplicity.

Frank was stunned. Julia was stunned. In the back seat, Mary was moaning. She was not belted, but the side-impact air bag had likely saved her. Nevertheless, the angle of her leg suggested a pretty bad break. At the last minute, Julia had swerved the car into a skid, intentionally striking the tree with the side of the car rather than the front: but striking it hard all the same. The gas tank had ruptured, and the smell was intense. Mary’s groans grew louder. Without speaking, Julia and Frank worked their their doors open and staggered around, trying to get their bearings. The former deputy, remarkably, had not lost the gun. Julia didn’t care. She didn’t want the gun. She wanted Mary Mallard’s purse, and found it, on the floor of the car.

“All right, Julia,” said Frank, breathing hard. “That was fun. Now playtime is over.”

“Who’s playing?”

“You didn’t do that because you were scared. You didn’t do it for fun. You did it because you know something, and you want me not to know it. What do you know?”

Julia said nothing. Stooping beside the car, she was scrounging in poor Mary’s purse as gasoline puddled on the snow. She was remembering high-school science, and something Vanessa had told her after visiting Frank, about bows and arrows and armor.

“Stop faking, Julia. Get up from there. You’re not seriously hurt.” He saw what his captive was doing. “And get away from that purse!”

Julia stood up. She was holding Mary Mallard’s cigarette lighter.

“My friend smokes too much,” Julia said.

“What?”

“I want you to put down the gun, turn your back, walk into the woods in that direction”—pointing away from the trail—“and count to, oh, say, a thousand.”

Frank shook his head, the gun steady. In his other hand was a flashlight he had pulled from some pocket—likely to prove useful now that winter dark was falling. His confidence was appalling.

“Do it,” she said.

“Or else what?”

She flicked the lighter on. The dealer jumped back.

“Have you ever seen a gasoline explosion, Frank? How high the flames reach? How far away they sear? Have you ever seen that?”

“What are you going to do, Julia? Throw the lighter at me?”

“No.” She held it higher, then pointed down at the gas that had run everywhere. “I’m just going to drop it.”

Silence in the woods. At least between the two humans. Animals squiggled through the underbrush. Wind crackled the branches. The fuel continued to drip, drip, drip.

“You won’t do it, Julia.” But he did not sound so sure. “You want to burn up? You want your buddy in the car to burn up?”

“As opposed to what?”

“As opposed to telling me what you figured out just before you crashed the car, and telling me where the other clue is hidden in the woods, after which I vanish from your life.” He smiled. “Or were you telling the truth about Mitch Huebner’s house? Tell you what. Let’s walk over there and see. If the diary’s there, we call 911 for your buddy, and I’m gone. If it isn’t, if you lied to me, well, that’s another matter.”

Julia shook her head. The hand holding the lighter shook wildly. In the distance she heard sirens. “No. You can’t afford to let me live. I know too much.”

“What do you know, Julia?”

“Too much,” she said again. In the car, Mary was weeping from the enormous pain, and Julia knew that if this did not end fast she would break down in empathy.

“We’re wasting time, Julia. Put the lighter away. Let’s get the diary. Then we can get some help for your buddy.”

“No.” Stepping closer. “If you shoot me, it falls. You see that, don’t you?”

He obviously saw that. He edged away.

“You’re still too close.”

“Julia, please. Think about it. You’re not your husband. You don’t see the world as simple, there’s my way and the wrong way. The world is complex. You appreciate nuance. You’re not some sort of comic-book—”

“I’m going to count to five, Frank.”

The former deputy lowered his gun. He smiled. “Look, Julia. Even if you do know the truth—or think you do—if you go around talking about it, who’s going to believe you? The world is too divided, Julia. Nobody cares about ‘real’ truth. They only care about what helps their side, or hurts the other.”

Another shake of the head. Julia refused to accept that the world was so cynical. There were people who believed in truth.

There had to be.

And Frank’s worried eyes said he believed it, too.

“Go,” she said softly. “Just go. Please. Get out of here.”

“Julia—”

“I’m counting to five. Then I’m dropping the lighter.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“One.” Hand rock-steady again. The sirens said officialdom was minutes away. “Two.”

“You won’t do it. You won’t kill your friend. You want to see your children grow up.”

“I don’t think you’re going to let that happen. Three.”

“Suicide is a sin,” he tried, playing to Julia’s other side.

“Four.” Julia lifted the lighter high, astonished at the power throbbing in her arm. “Better get going, Frank.”

“It’s a sin against God’s gift of life, and so is killing somebody else—”

“Five.”

She opened her fingers.

Where Frank Carrington had stood was a patch of bare snow, and brush snapping.

Instinct made Julia grab for the lighter. Her natural clumsiness made her miss.

The lighter tumbled and spun and struck the puddling, running gasoline.