The Accident (17 page)

Finally, she could speak, although only just barely. “You just wait,” she said.

I stopped. “Excuse me?”

“You’re going to get yours,” she said. “You’re going to get it good.” Her son’s dead eyes bored into me.

I left my half-full cart and walked out of the store.

I picked up what I needed at the Super Stop & Shop. And instead of buying Rice Krispies, I bought all the ingredients I thought I’d need to make
lasagna. I knew I couldn’t make it as well as Sheila did, but I was going to give it a try.

I took the long way home so I could visit Doug Pinder.

My father had hired him to work at Garber Contracting about the same time I graduated from Bates. At twenty-three, Doug had been a year older. We worked side by side for years, but it was always understood I’d eventually be the guy in charge, even though no one expected it to happen quite so soon.

Dad, overseeing the construction of a ranch house in Bridgeport, had just unloaded two dozen four-by-eight sheets of plywood from a truck when he clutched his chest and dropped to the ground. The paramedics said he was dead before his head landed in the soft grass. I rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital, picking the blades out of his thinning gray hair.

Dad had been sixty-four. I was thirty. I made Doug Pinder my assistant manager.

Doug was a good right-hand man. His area of expertise was carpentry, but he knew enough about all the other aspects of construction to supervise the rest of the trades, and pitch in when needed. And where I was reserved, Doug was outgoing and jovial. When things got tense on a job, Doug knew just what to say and do to keep everyone’s spirits up, better than I could. For years, I don’t know what I would have done without him.

But things hadn’t been right with Doug the last few months. He wasn’t the life of the party anymore, or at least when he tried, it seemed forced. I knew he was under pressure at home, and it didn’t take long to figure out it was financial. When Doug and his wife, Betsy, moved in to a new house four years ago, they’d gotten one of those too-good-to-be-true, subprime mortgages with almost nothing down, and when it had come up for renewal last year their monthly payments had more than doubled.

Betsy had been working in the accounting department of a local GM dealer that had closed its doors. She’d found a part-time job at a furniture store in Bridgeport, but had to be bringing in half of what she used to, if that.

The salary I paid Doug had remained constant through all this, but at
best, he had to be treading water. More likely, he was drowning. While the construction and renovation business had slowed, I had, up to now, resisted cutting the pay of anyone who worked for me. At least those on staff, like Doug, Sally, Ken Wang, and our kid from north of the border, Stewart.

The Pinders had a wood-sided two-story off Roses Mill Road, near Indian Lake. Both their cars—Doug’s decade-old Toyota pickup with a cargo cover and Betsy’s leased Infiniti—were in the drive when I pulled up out front.

I could hear loud voices inside as I raised my hand to rap on the front door. I held it there a moment and listened, and while I could determine the mood inside that house—“ugly” was the word that came to mind—I couldn’t make out any actual conversation.

I rapped hard, knowing I might not be heard over the commotion.

The shouting stopped almost immediately, like a switch had been flipped. A moment later, Doug opened the door. His face was red and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He smiled and pushed open the aluminum screen.

“Hey! Whoa! Will you look who’s here! Hey, Bets, it’s Glenny!”

From upstairs somewhere, “Hi, Glen!” Cheerful, like they hadn’t been tearing into each other five seconds earlier.

“Hi, Betsy,” I called out.

“Can I get you a beer?” Doug asked, leading me into the kitchen.

“No, that’s—”

“Come on, have a beer.”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not.”

As I came into the kitchen my eye caught a pile of unopened envelopes sitting by the phone. They all looked like bills. There were bank and credit card logos in the upper left corners of several of them.

“What’ll it be?” Doug asked, reaching into the fridge.

“Whatever you’ve got is fine.”

He took out two cans of Coors, handed me one, and popped his. He extended it toward me so we could clink cans. “To the weekend,” he said. “Whoever invented the weekend, there’s a guy whose hand I’d like to shake.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Good of you to drop by. This is terrific. You want to watch a game or
something? There must be something on. I haven’t even looked. Gotta be some golf, at least. Some people, they don’t like watching golf, think it’s too slow, but I like it, you know? So long as you got enough people playing, camera can go hole to hole, so you don’t waste a whole lot of time watching people walk up the fairway.”

“I can’t stay long,” I said. “I’ve got groceries in the car. Some stuff that has to go into the fridge.”

“You could put it in ours for the time being,” Doug offered enthusiastically. “Want me to go out and get them? It’s no problem.”

“No. Look, Doug, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Shit, there a problem at one of the sites?”

“No, nothing like that.”

Doug’s face went dark. “Goddamn, Glen, you’re not laying me off, are you?”

“Hell, no,” I said.

A nervous smile crossed his lips. “Well, that’s a relief. Christ, you gave me a start there.”

Betsy popped into the kitchen, came over and kissed my cheek.

“How’s my big strong man?” she said, but in her heels, she was nearly as tall as I was.

“Bets,” I said.

Betsy was a tiny thing, barely an inch over five feet, but often wore killer heels to compensate. With them, she wore a super-short black skirt, tight white blouse, and jacket. She had a handbag hooked over her elbow, the word
PRADA
emblazoned on the side. I figured she got it the night Ann Slocum used our house to hawk her fake designer bags. If I were Doug, I wouldn’t feel good, my wife heading out of the house looking like, if not quite a hooker, at least like someone who was on the prowl.

“How long you gonna be?” Doug asked her.

“I’ll be back when I’m back,” she said.

“Just don’t …” Doug’s voice trailed off. Then, “Just take it easy.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything crazy,” she said. She flashed me a smile. “Doug thinks I’m a shopaholic.” She shook her head. “An alcoholic,
maybe.
” She laughed and then, just as quickly, adopted a look of horror. “Oh my God, Glen, I’m so sorry I said that!”

“It’s okay.”

“I just didn’t think.” She reached out and touched my arm.

“That’s your whole problem,” Doug said.

“Fuck you,” she said to him, her tone no different than as if she’d blessed him after a sneeze. Her hand still on my arm, she asked, “How you holding up, anyway? How’s poor Kelly?”

“We’re managing.”

She gave my arm a squeeze. “If we had a dollar for every time I put my foot in my mouth, we’d be living at the Hilton. Give that little girl of yours a hug from me. I gotta go.”

“Glenny and me are gonna chill out a bit,” Doug said, even though I thought I’d made it clear I didn’t have a lot of time. I was relieved Betsy was leaving. I didn’t want to say the things I had to say to Doug in front of his wife.

I didn’t expect Betsy to give her husband a kiss goodbye, and I was right. She just turned on her killer heels and left. When the front door closed, Doug grinned nervously and said, “Storm front’s moving out.”

“Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah, sure! Everything’s peachy.”

“Betsy’s looking good,” I said.

“Oh, she’s not one to let herself go, you can take that to the bank.” He didn’t say it proudly. “If there was anything
in
the bank.” Now it was his turn to force a laugh. “I swear, sometimes, the way that woman shops, you’d think she had a printing press in the basement. She must have a secret stash someplace.”

His eyes landed on the stack of unopened bills by the phone. He stood in front of them, opened a drawer and swept them into it. There were more envelopes already in there.

“Need to keep the place tidy,” he said.

“Let’s go sit outside,” I said.

We took our beers out onto the deck. Beyond the trees, I could hear traffic rushing by on 95. Doug brought a pack of smokes with him, tapped one out, and stuck it between his lips. He was a heavy smoker when he joined the company, but quit a few years later. He’d picked up the habit again in the last six months. He lit up, drew in smoke, blew it out through his nostrils. “Gorgeous day,” he said.

“Beautiful.”

“Cool, but they’re still out there golfing.”

“Sally dropped by today,” I said.

He shot me a look. “Yeah?”

“With Theo.”

“Jesus, Theo. You think she’s really going to marry him? It’s not that I don’t like the guy, but I think she could do better, you know what I mean?”

“Theo wanted to know why I haven’t been using him.”

“Whadja tell him?”

“The truth. That his work isn’t up to par, and that electrical panel he wired in’s probably why the Wilson house burned down.”

“Ouch.” A drink of beer, another puff. “So, that was it?”

“Sally ratted you out, Doug.”

“Huh?”

“She’s sorry she had to do it, but you didn’t leave her any choice.”

“I’m not sure I get where you’re going, Glenny.”

“Don’t play dumb. We’ve known each other too long.”

His eyes met mine, then he looked down. “I’m sorry.”

“If you need an advance, you ask
me.
”

“I did, and you said no. This last time.”

“Then that should have been it. If I can do it, I will. If I can’t, I won’t. And we’re going through some tough times now. The jobs are drying up, and if the Wilson place isn’t covered by insurance we’re really gonna be behind the eight ball. So don’t ever,
ever
, do an end run around me and ask Sally to do it for you.”

“I was in kind of a bind,” he said.

“I don’t like to tell people what to do, Doug. I figure how other people live their lives is none of my business. But in your case I’m going to make an exception. I see what’s going on. The requests for pay advances. The unopened bills. Betsy off to the mall when you’re up to your eyeballs in debt.”

He wouldn’t look at me. Suddenly his shoes were of tremendous interest.

“You need to get a handle on things, and you need to do it now. You’ll probably have to lose the house, get rid of a car, sell off some things. You may have to start over. But you’re going to have to do it. The one thing you can count on is your job with me. Just so long as you don’t pull any fast ones.”

He put down his beer, tossed the cigarette, and put his hands over his eyes. He didn’t want me to see him crying.

“I’m so fucked,” he said. “I am so totally, totally fucked. They sold us this bill of goods, you know.”

“They?”

“Everyone. Said we could have it all. The house, the cars, the Blu-ray players, big flat-screen TVs, anything we wanted. Even while we were sinking, we’d get more credit cards in the mail. Betsy, she grabs them like they’re lifesavers, but they’re just more anchors dragging us down to the bottom.”

He sniffed, rubbed his eyes, finally looked at me. “She won’t listen. I keep telling her we have to change things, and she says not to worry, we’ll be okay. She doesn’t get it.”

“Neither do you,” I said. “Because you’re letting it go on.”

“You know what we’re doing? We’ve got, like, twenty credit cards now. We use one to pay off the balance on another. I can’t even keep track of it anymore. I can’t bring myself to open the bills. I don’t want to know.”

“There are people,” I said. “People who can help you get through these things.”

“Sometimes I think it’d be easier to just blow my brains out.”

“Doug, don’t think that way. But you need to get hold of the problem. It’s going to take you a long time to dig yourself out of this hole, but if you start now, you’ll be coming out sooner. You can’t count on me for money every time you’re short, but you can talk to me. I’ll help you where I can.” I stood up. “Thanks for the beer.”

He couldn’t stand. He was back to looking at the ground.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, but his tone lacked sincerity. “I guess with some people, gratitude only lasts so long.”

I weighed whether to respond or walk out. After a few seconds, I said, “I know I owe my life to you, Doug. I might never have found my way out of that smoke-filled basement. But you can’t play that card every time. That’s separate from this.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, looking out over his yard. “And I guess, I guess you wouldn’t want me making any calls.”

That stopped me. “Calls about what?”

“I’ve known you a long time, Glenny. Long enough to know that not every job’s on the books. Long enough to know you’ve got a secret or two yourself.”

I stared at him.

“Tell me you don’t have something tucked away for a rainy day.” His voice was gaining confidence.

“Don’t do this, Doug. It’s beneath you.”

“One anonymous phone call and you’d have the IRS so far up your ass they could count your cavities. But no—you can’t help out a guy when he’s having a few problems. Think about that, why don’t ya, Glenny.”

SEVENTEEN

Darren Slocum, standing out back of his house with cell phone in hand, made another call.

“Yes,” said the man who answered.

“It’s me. It’s Slocum.”

“I know who it is.”

“Have you heard?”

“Have I heard what?”

“About my wife.”

“Suppose you tell me.”

“She’s dead. She died last night. She went off the pier.” Slocum waited for the man to say something. When he didn’t, Slocum said, “You don’t have anything to say? You’re not curious about this? You don’t have a single fucking question?”

“Where should I send flowers?”

“I know you saw Belinda last night. Put the fear of God into her. Did you call Ann? Did you ask her to meet you? Was it you? Did you fucking kill my wife, you fucking son of a bitch?”