The Accident (27 page)

He held out his hands, as if bewildered by my tone. “Mr. Garber, you’ve totally misinterpreted my intentions. Have I threatened you? Have I threatened your daughter? I’m just a businessman, eager to complete a transaction. And here you are, threatening harm to me.”

I took a moment to think about how I wanted to handle this. “This money, this package, you say Belinda gave it to my wife to deliver to you.”

Sommer’s head went up and down a fraction of an inch.

“Why don’t you check in with her later today,” I suggested. “Maybe she’ll have some news for you.”

Sommer considered that. “All right then.” He pointed to the two-by-four. “But if she doesn’t, I’ll be seeing you again.”

He turned and got back into his car. He sped off so quickly I didn’t have a chance to take note of the plate number. Seconds later, the Chrysler turned the corner at the end of the street and was gone.

“I didn’t call 911,” Kelly reported cheerfully when I came in. “It looked like you guys were just having a nice chat.”

THIRTY-ONE

Emily Slocum located her father in the bathroom, shaving.

“Dad, there’s someone at the door,” she said, her voice flat and emotionless.

“What? It’s not even eight o’clock yet. Who is it?”

“Some lady,” Emily said.

“What lady?”

“She’s got a badge.”

Emily went into her parents’ bedroom to watch television while Darren Slocum grabbed a towel and wiped the shaving cream off his face. As he was buttoning up his shirt, he looked at her. This was pretty much all Emily had done these last few days. Sat and stared at the TV, not really seeing anything, her eyes glazed over, like she was in some kind of trance.

He did up the last couple of buttons as he walked to the front door. Rona Wedmore was standing on the tiles just inside the door.

“Jeez, Rona, did you tell Emily it was you?” He took her hand and shook it.

Detective Wedmore said, “I did. I guess she forgot.”

“I just put some coffee on. You want some?”

Wedmore said yes and followed him into the kitchen. “How are you doing?”

“Not so great,” he said, getting down a couple of mugs. “I’m really worried about Emily. She’s not crying all the time or anything like that,
but it’d almost be better if she did. It’s like she’s keeping it all bottled up. She just kind of stares.”

“You should take her to the doctor. He might suggest she see someone.”

“Yeah, maybe. I’m going to let her stay home from school all this week. Ann’s sister’s been coming over a lot, spelling me off. We’ve had the visitation—thanks for coming, by the way—and today we’re going to have a small, family-only service.”

Wedmore said, “I need to ask you a few more questions about Ann’s accident, Darren.”

“Okay,” he said. “Cream, sugar?”

“Black,” she said, taking the mug from him. “Have you thought any more about why Ann was down by the harbor so late at night, alone?”

Slocum shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes, if she can’t sleep—if she
couldn’t
sleep—she’d take a walk at night, or go for a drive. She might have thought looking out over the Sound, down by the harbor there, would be relaxing.”

“But you said she was going out to meet her friend, Belinda Morton.”

“That’s right. They never hooked up.”

“So why did she go down to the harbor first?”

“Like I said, maybe she just needed to clear her head.”

Slocum poured cream into his coffee, watching the liquid go from black to light brown.

“You think it’s possible,” Wedmore asked, “that she was going to meet someone else before she was going to meet Belinda?”

“Like who?”

“I’m asking you.”

“What’s going on here, Rona? Is there something weird about Ann’s accident I should know?”

“Okay, let’s start there,” she said. “I’ve been down there, to the harbor, a couple of times. And I’ve read the investigating officers’ reports.”

Slocum looked at her curiously. “Yeah?”

“And, I have to tell you, Darren, it’s not coming together for me.”

He took a sip of coffee. He’d put too much cream in it. He grimaced. “What do you mean?”

“The way it looked, initially, is that Ann noticed she had a flat, she gets
out to check, leaving the door open, the motor running, goes around the back, on the passenger side, and takes a look, somehow loses her balance, maybe hits her head on the edge of the pier, and goes into the water.” She looked into his face carefully. “Are you okay talking about this?”

“Of course.”

“So I’ve gone down there, and parked in the same spot, and I can’t figure how, exactly, she did it. She hadn’t been drinking before she left.”

“That’s right.”

“When I was down there, I kind of pretended to stumble, you know?” She did a brief demonstration, like she was tripping over her own feet. “There’s plenty of opportunity to catch yourself before you go in.”

“But it
was
dark,” he reminded her evenly.

“I know. I was down there last night. There’s plenty of streetlights.” She shook her head. “There’s another thing, a big thing.”

Slocum waited.

“You know we took Ann’s car in, just to give it a going-over. The tech guys didn’t notice it at first, but there are these two scratches on the trunk lid.”

“Scratches?”

“It’s an odd place for them. You get them on the bumper, you get them on the doors, but on the trunk lid? Tech guys said they were very recent.”

“I don’t know what they would be.”

“Ann had rings on both hands,” Wedmore said.

“Uh, yes, she did. A wedding ring on her left and another one on her right. Why?”

“If you can picture someone being pushed up against the back of a car, with their hands on the trunk, that’s where the scratches are.” Wedmore demonstrated, holding her arms out and slightly to the back. “They think the scratch marks could have been made by her rings.”

“If she had a flat tire, and went for the spare, she’d have had her hands on the lid.” Slocum turned and dumped his coffee in the sink.

“Except there’s nothing to suggest she ever attempted to change the tire. She hadn’t even turned off the car.”

“Why don’t you just tell me, Rona, what you think happened.”

“I wish I knew. All I know, Darren, is that it doesn’t play out the way it looks. It’s not playing out the way we’re supposed to
think
it looks.”

He shook his head. “What are you saying? That it was staged?”

“I’m saying it doesn’t feel right. But if that’s all there was to it, maybe I’d have to write it off as one of those things. Like you said, maybe she did somehow stumble, then lost her balance and went in. As unlikely as it seems.”

Slocum’s eyes narrowed. “But you say that’s not all there is to it?”

“No. There’s this business about why she decided to go out for a drive.”

Slocum adopted a puzzled look. “I just told you. Belinda called her. She decided to stop by the harbor first.”

“That was the only call she got?”

“Right. Just before she went out.”

“She wasn’t on the phone earlier that evening?”

“How many times we going to go in circles, Rona?”

“Darren, are you going to keep on playing dumb or you gonna be straight with me here?”

“And why don’t
you
just level with
me
? If there’s something you want to put out there, just fucking say it.”

“What about the call she took in the bedroom? The one the Garber girl heard?”

That stopped him. “Rona, I don’t know what people have been telling you, but—”

“Why’d Garber take a punch at you yesterday? What was that all about?”

“Nothing. Just a little misunderstanding.”

“The bullet that went through his daughter’s bedroom window last night, was that just a little misunderstanding, too?”

“Jesus! You think I had anything to do with that?”

“Whoever shot at that house, they may not have been aiming at the kid, but they were sure sending a message. Did you want to send Glen Garber one after he clocked you?”

“Damn it, Rona, you have got to believe, I did not have
anything
to do with that.”

“Convince me. Tell me why he slugged you at the funeral home.”

“I’m guessing you already think you know the answer.”

She smiled humorlessly. “You were talking to Kelly Garber, without her father’s permission. Even though he’d warned you not to. How does
that sound?” When he was silent, she continued. “You’d already tried to talk to her before, and her father wouldn’t let you, or she wasn’t there at the time. How’m I doing?”

“Oh, you’re doing just great. I’m fascinated.”

“And the reason you’ve been so desperate to talk to her is, she was hiding in your bedroom closet when Ann was on the phone. She was having a conversation she chose not to tell you about. This is the phone call that prompted her to head out, not the one from Belinda. Kelly Garber was in that closet when your wife was having this conversation, and you really want to know what she overheard.” She put out her hands, as though she’d just finished a performance. “How’s that?”

Slocum placed his palms on the countertop and pressed down, like he was trying to keep his kitchen from floating away. “I didn’t hear that call, and I didn’t hear Ann talking to that person. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

“But you know there was a call. You know Ann was on the phone earlier, and you know the Garber kid was there.” Slocum said nothing, so she carried on again. “Here’s what I don’t get, Darren. First of all, you’re a cop, so you’re trained to look for things that don’t add up. But you don’t seem very curious about the circumstances surrounding your own wife’s death.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, stabbing an accusing finger at her. “If you know Ann’s death wasn’t an accident, I want to know what you know.”

“The thing is, I’m getting this sense you don’t
want
to know,” she said. “If it was me, and someone I knew died this way, I’d have a hundred questions. But you don’t have any.”

“Bullshit,” he said.

“And I can only think of two, maybe three reasons why that would be. You had something to do with it, or you know who did and you want to settle the score on your own. Or—and I haven’t quite sorted this one out yet—you don’t want us nosing around in this because it’s going to open up a can of worms you’d rather stayed closed.”

“You’re really something else,” he said. “Going after members of your own department. That give you a little thrill? You know the officers talk, right? About you? About how’d you make detective, anyway? Was it one of those equal opportunity things, trying to make up for the lack of black women detectives in the department?”

Wedmore didn’t even blink. “You got anyone who can vouch for where you were all night?”

“What? Are you serious? I was here with Emily.”

“So if I asked her now, she could tell me you never left the house? She never went to sleep?”

“I’m not having you bother my daughter at a time like this—”

“So you’re saying she wouldn’t be able to confirm you were here.”

Slocum’s face was starting to flush with anger. “We’re done.”

Wedmore didn’t respond.

“You look down on us guys still in uniform. You think, once you make detective, you’re hot shit and the rest of us are just a bunch of grunts.”

“Another thing,” Wedmore said. “I made some calls. You’re coming into some money.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your wife’s life insurance policy. She took it out only a few weeks ago. What’s the payout? A couple of hundred grand?”

“Lady, you’ve got one hell of a nerve—”

“Am I right, Darren?”

“Yeah, okay, so Ann and I both got life insurance. We figured we had enough in the monthly budget to cover the premiums. We wanted to make sure Emily would be okay if something happened to us.”

Wedmore’s look said she wasn’t buying it. “You were married before, weren’t you?”

Slocum balled his fists and now his face turned red. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I was.”

“Did you have a policy on your first wife, too?”

“No,” he said. He actually smiled. “Once they’d diagnosed the cancer, it wasn’t possible for her to get insurance.”

Wedmore blinked. She didn’t say anything for a moment, then pushed the mug across the counter in his direction. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll find my way out.”

THIRTY-TWO

“I have to make a couple of calls before we leave,” I said to Kelly. She rolled her eyes, like we were never going to get out of here, as I went down to my office. My first impulse was to contact the police about Sommer’s visit, but as I picked up the receiver I wondered what, exactly, I’d tell them. The guy oozed menace, but he really hadn’t threatened me. I was the one who said I’d beat him to death, if he came near Kelly.

So I made the other call. To Belinda’s real estate office.

“She’s not in right now,” the receptionist told me. “If you’d like to leave a message, I’ll—”

“What’s her cell number?”

She gave it to me. I hung up and dialed the new number. After two rings, an answer. “Glen?” she said.

“Yeah, Belinda.”

“Could I call you back? I’m just heading off to show a house.”

“No. We need to talk now.”

“Glen, if you called to chew me out about the lawyer thing, I told you, I’m sorry about that, I really am. I never—”

“Tell me what was in the envelope,” I said, removing the lid from the shoebox under the desk and taking it out.

“Excuse me?”

“The one you gave to Sheila. You answer all my questions about it, and it’s yours.”

Silence at the other end of the line.

“Belinda?”

“You found it? So it really wasn’t in Sheila’s car?”

“That depends. You tell me what was in it, and I’ll tell you if I’ve found it.”

She started making funny breathing sounds. I wondered whether she was hyperventilating or something.

“Belinda, are you there?”

Her voice small, whispering. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it.”

“Just tell me.”

“Okay, okay, okay, it was an envelope. A brown business envelope. And there was … there
was
some money inside.”