Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

“Just about to.”

“Beer?”

“Why would I say no to that?”

She handed him one, then brought down a plate from the cupboard. “Get some pizza. But the veggie is mine.” She gave him a look of mock fury.

“Like I’m gonna steal your veggie,” he said. “Dwayne seems pretty upbeat.”

“I know,” she said, whispering. “I’m trying not to make a big deal about it. It’s just nice to see him happy for once.”

“Sure. He brought home a feast.”

Keeping her voice low, Celeste said, “He got a deposit on a job. Or a retainer, or something. I think he said Walmart. They pay him a certain amount a month, and if they have any paving needs in their lot, they call him and he fixes it. So, some months he might do no work for them, but he still gets paid, and other months he might have a lot of potholes to fill or whatever, but it all balances out.”

“Sounds like a good deal,” Cal said. “I’m gonna get something to eat.”

“Remember, hands off the veggie.”

“You couldn’t pay me to eat that,” he said. He took his plate and his beer and went into the living room. He grabbed a slice of Hawaiian and a slice of pepperoni, plus half a dozen wings, and sat down on a La-Z-Boy chair.

“Don’t get too comfy there,” Dwayne said, grinning. “Soon as I’m done here, I’m dropping into that chair and not moving till bedtime.”

“I’ll consider myself warned,” Cal said. “Listen, this is a lot of food. Let me pay you back for this.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“At least let me contribute.”

A firm shake of the head. “No fucking way.” He glanced around suddenly. “Where’s the kid? Celeste already told me not to swear in front of the kid.”

“She’s in the kitchen.”

“Good.”

“Celeste told me about your good news. About the Walmart retainer.”

Dwayne fixed his eyes on the TV. “Yeah, well, it’s a good thing, no doubt about that.”

“Nice to have something to celebrate on a day like this,” Cal said.

Dwayne glanced his way, puzzled, as though he’d forgotten about all the people who had died in Promise Falls that day. “Oh, right, for sure. You know, they were handing out free water by the park today, but hey”-he raised his beer-“who needs that stuff?”

Cal returned the salute with his own bottle.

“Remember what W. C. Fields said about water?” Cal asked.

“W. C. who?”

“Fields. A comic from years ago. Anyway, he said he didn’t drink water because”-Cal lowered his voice-“fish fuck in it.”

Dwayne laughed, slapped a palm on one knee. “That’s a good one.”

Cal set his plate and beer on a small table next to his chair, dabbed his mouth with a napkin, and said, “Think I’ll hit the can before I have anything else.”

“There’s a plan,” Dwayne said.

Cal slipped out of the living room, but instead of heading upstairs, he quietly went out the back door, down the steps, and meandered in the direction of Dwayne’s pickup. He’d backed it to within a foot of the garage door.

The pickup had what was called a tonneau cover over the bed, made of black vinyl. It kept items in the truck from falling out, and could be locked to foil would-be thieves. It could be tipped up at the back to allow an item to be dropped in, without opening the tailgate.

Cal went around to the far side of the truck and attempted to lift the cover an inch, testing to see whether it was locked. It was not.

He got out his phone, opened the flashlight app. There was still plenty of sunlight, but he wasn’t planning to open the cover that far. He raised it about a foot, which cast light near the tailgate. Cal stuck the flashlight in, and there was just enough light to see that not only was there nothing near the end of the bed, but nothing was in there at all.

He dropped the cover back into place and put away his phone.

There was a regular door on the property line side of the garage, which, Cal was pleased to note, was out of sight from the house. He tried the door.

Locked.

Shit.

He wanted to know what it was Dwayne might have been picking up at the back end of that printing shop. He was willing to bet it was not several thousand invoices for his paving company.

There was a small window, divided into four smaller panes, in the side door. At first Cal thought the glass was simply too dirty to see through, then realized that something had been taped over it. A piece of black paper, or a garbage bag.

He had a set of picks hidden under the spare tire in his trunk. The state of New York frowned on the possession of burglar’s tools, but sometimes they came in handy in his line of work. So he kept them out of sight.

He tucked the small satchel into his pocket and trotted back up the driveway. As he went past the house, he glanced at it to make sure Dwayne didn’t happen to be looking out the back window.

Once he was hidden beyond the corner of the garage, he went down on one knee so he could be at eye level with the lock. He set the satchel on the ground and drew out two picks. The lock didn’t look very challenging, and he thought he could defeat it in two to three minutes.

After three minutes, he concluded it wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d first thought. But some locks were like that. Maybe this one would take him six.

Cal was so focused on what he was doing, and so confident he was out of sight, that he had failed to notice Dwayne standing down by the front end of his pickup truck.

“I thought you were going for a crap,” Dwayne said.

Cal’s head turned abruptly.

“But then I happened to look out the living room window and saw you going to your car, and I wondered what the hell you were doing.”

Cal withdrew the picks, put them back in the satchel, and stood. He offered no apology as he looked his brother-in-law in the eye.

“What’s in the garage, Dwayne?” he asked.

Dwayne walked slowly up the side of the truck, past the corner of the garage, and stopped when he was no more than a foot away.

“What’s it to you?” Dwayne asked.

“I know where you got the pizza money, and it wasn’t from Walmart.”

“What?”

“The guy at the printing shop. You met him earlier, got paid, and then made a pickup at the shop.”

The muscles in Dwayne’s neck tightened. “You’ve been following me?”

“I saw you in the alley, taking the money,” he said. “Then I followed the other guy.”

“You fucking son of a bitch. Who are you working for? Or did Celeste put you up to this?”

Cal shook his head, ignored the questions. “Just open the garage.”

“It was Celeste, wasn’t it?”

“No. But she is worried about you. She says you’ve been gone a lot. Sometimes at odd hours. She senses something’s going on, but she doesn’t know what.”

“Whatever’s going on is between her and me.”

“No,” Cal said. “She’s my sister. If you’re into something bad, Dwayne, it could blow back on her. Open the garage.”

“I’m not opening the garage. You need to get in your car and get the fuck out of here and take that freaky little kid with you.”

“Does Celeste know what’s in here?”

“You’re not hearing me, Cal. Get off my property.”

“I suppose you could call the cops and have me arrested for trespassing.” Cal reached into his pocket for his phone. “You want to make the call or you want me to do it?”

Dwayne’s eyes blinked. “You’re sticking your nose in where it don’t belong,” Dwayne warned. “Something bad could happen to you.”

Cal smiled and closed the gap between them by a few inches. “You seem to be under the impression that I give a fuck. Everything bad that can happen to me has already happened. Open the garage.”