Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

So it could have been one of them she was referring to.

But it couldn’t have been any of them who killed her. Only Blackmore was alive the night of her murder, and he was in custody.

Which would mean that her comment about having a crush on a married man was a lead that was going to go nowhere.

Still.

“You there?” Joyce asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “When you’re talking to people about Lorraine, ask them about who she might have been seeing. Married, unmarried, student, professor. Whatever.”

“What am I now?” Joyce Pilgrim asked. “A detective?”

“Just ask, okay?”

“You want me to be a coroner, too? ’Cause there’s still been no one here to look at the body. I’m waiting out front of the building for someone to show up. I can’t exactly check that security video while I’m killing time here.”

“I’ll make another call,” I said, thanked her, and put the phone down on the plastic tray, next to the two donuts.

I hadn’t taken a bite out of either of them yet. They seemed to be taunting me, daring me to eat them.

To show I was weak.

My phone, which had been out of my hand for only about thirty seconds, started to ring.

It was Garvey Ottman, at the water treatment plant.

“Hello?” I said.

“Duckworth?”

“Yeah.”

“We found Tate.”

RANDALLFinley was talking all the way back to the water plant about what David should do next, but the former reporter was not listening.

He was thinking about Samantha Worthington.

He really hadn’t stopped thinking about Sam since he’d broken into her house and found out that she had left. Where had she gone? Why had she packed up and taken off? Why hadn’t she called to let him know what she was doing?

Was he wrong in thinking that there was something there? Had he misjudged things? Had he been an idiot to think that Sam had feelings for him? David knew his feelings for her were genuine. He was, he believed, in love with this woman. Pretty funny, considering that the first time he had met her, she had a shotgun pointed at his head.

It was one of those things they’d worked through.

It had gotten worse before it got better. For a period of time, Sam had believed David had betrayed her, that he was helping her former in-laws, Garnet and Yolanda Worthington, in their bid to take Carl away from her and raise him themselves. Seemed pretty paranoid, David had thought at first, but he soon realized how obsessed the parents of her ex-husband, Brandon-who was serving time in prison for bank robbery-were about getting Carl. They’d even sent a nutcase by the name of Ed Noble to kidnap him at school.

David had foiled that. Ed Noble had been arrested, and so had Garnet and Yolanda-all three charged with kidnapping. Ed Noble was up for attempted murder. They weren’t going to be a problem for a very long time. And Sam’s ex-husband, Brandon, remained in prison.

Sam’s life was starting to approach normalcy, and she seemed ready to do what normal people did.

See one another. Go out. Have fun.

Sleep together.

It was early in the relationship, but David was sure there was a real connection here.

Not that he hadn’t been wrong before.

Years earlier, there was another woman David set out to rescue. Her name-at least the name she gave him at the time-was Jan. But Jan turned out not to be who she claimed to be, and things ended, as they say, badly.

It was a long time before David could trust anyone. Not just a woman he might be interested in, but anyone at all . The number of dates he’d had in the last five years could be counted on the fingers of one hand. There had been a couple of women in Boston, one a coworker at the Globe . But there hadn’t been anyone since he’d returned to Promise Falls.

Not until he’d found himself looking down the barrel of that shotgun.

What was wrong with him? he kept asking himself. Why was he drawn to women who had more problems than the entire cast of Orange Is the New Black ? What was it his dad said, quoting one of his favorite crime writers? “Never sleep with a woman who has more troubles than you.”

His father really nailed it once in a while. And yet, David had not been very good at following his advice.

He had to know what had happened to Sam.

He’d failed to find any trace of where she’d gone at her house, but he hadn’t had a chance to check her place of work. Sam managed a Laundromat in downtown Promise Falls. Was there even a chance she might be there today? Was it possible she’d moved out of her house for some reason but hadn’t quit her job?

It occurred to him there was someone who might know.

Once he was back in his own car, he phoned home. His father answered.

“David?”

“Hi, Dad.”

“People are dying all over the place,” he said. “I feel like I should be doing something, but I don’t know what.”

“You’re looking after Ethan, right?”

“Yup.”

“That’s doing something. Have you heard anything from Mom?”

“She called from the hospital a little while ago. She’s still there with Marla and the kid.”

“Matthew,” David said.

“Yeah, right. Matthew. Sounds like it’s still touch and go for Gill, but at least he’s still among the living.”

“Dad, can you put Ethan on?”

“Huh? Sure, hang on.”

Seconds later, Ethan said, “Dad?”

“Hey. You okay?”

“Poppa is letting me drink all the Coke I want,” he said. “Nana” and “Poppa” were his names for Arlene and Don.

“Isn’t that great,” David said. “Was Carl at school yesterday?”

“Nope,” Ethan said.

“You didn’t see him around at all?”

“Nope.”

“How about the day before?” That would have been Thursday. David had spoken with Sam on the phone around lunch. He had told her he would call her on Saturday about doing something that evening.

“Uh,” said Ethan. “I think so. Yeah, he was at school on Thursday.”

“Did you talk to him?”

He hesitated. “Maybe.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“This is important, Ethan. What did you guys talk about?”

“Well, we talked about how it was kind of weird that you and his mom were boyfriend and girlfriend. He said…”

“What did he say?”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I won’t be mad,” David said.

“He said that when he had a sleepover at my house, you were doing it to his mom at her place.”

David closed his eyes wearily. “Did Carl say anything about going away?”

“No.”

“Nothing about his mom and him moving or going on a trip or anything like that?”

“No.” A pause. “Are you mad about the other thing?”

“No, Ethan. You take care of yourself. I’ll check in later.”

“Do you want to talk to Poppa?”

“No, thanks.”

He tossed the phone onto the seat next to him and headed for the Laundromat.

David got a space right out front, and was encouraged when he saw the OPEN sign in the Laundromat window. Below that, however, was a hastily scribbled sign that read: “USE AT OWN RISK WATER WARNING.” He jumped out of the car and ran inside.

Despite the warning, there were three customers in the shop. One man was standing at a folding table, taking clothes out of a nearby dryer. A woman was loading washing into a machine, and a second woman was killing time, reading a copy of the New York Times . A couple of the machines had signs taped to them saying that they were out of order.

One of the machines had bullet holes in it. David knew all about that. That detective, Cal Weaver, had been here when Ed Noble showed up to kill Samantha. Shots had been fired, but Sam had not been hurt.