Linwood Barclay - The Accident

“What?”

“The light on the extension in the kitchen. It came on. Was that you?”

Ann rolled her eyes. “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m asking, were you on the phone?”

“The kid called her dad, remember? He just left?”

That shut him up for a moment. The whole time he’d been talking, Ann had been thinking, I have to get out of here. But she needed a reason. Something believable.

The phone rang.

There was a cordless extension in the living room. Ann was closer. She snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

A voice shrieked, “He came to see me!”

“Jesus, Belinda?”

“He said I was running out of time! I was in the basement, I was getting some prescriptions ready and-”

“Just calm down for a second and stop screaming in my ear. Who came to see you?”

Darren said, “What’s going on?” Ann held up a palm.

“The guy,” Belinda said. “The one you deal with. Honest to God, Ann, I thought, just for a second there… I didn’t know what he was going to do. I have to talk to you. We have to come up with this money. If we can just come up with thirty-seven thousand for him, and whatever you put in, I swear on my mother’s grave, I’ll pay you back.”

Ann closed her eyes, thought about the money they needed. Maybe her earlier caller, the one she was going out to meet, could do more to bail them out. Say something like, This is it, this is the absolute last time, after this, I’ll never ask you for anything again.

Something to think about.

“Okay,” Ann said. “We’ll figure something out.”

“I need to see you. We need to talk about this.”

Perfect. “Okay,” Ann said. “I’ll head out now. I’ll call you on my cell in a minute and we’ll figure out where to meet.”

“Okay,” Belinda said, sniffing. “I never should have got into this. Never. If I’d had any idea that-”

“Belinda,” Ann said sharply. “I’ll see you soon.” She hung up and said to Darren, “He’s leaning on her.”

“That’s just great,” he said.

“I’m going out.”

“Why?”

“Belinda needs to talk about this.”

Darren ran his fingers into his hair and pulled. He looked like he wanted to hit something. “You know we’re totally fucked, right? You never should have brought Belinda into this. She’s an idiot. That was your call. Not mine.”

“I have to go.” Ann brushed past him, grabbed her jacket, car keys, and a purse that was on a bench near the front door, and left.

Darren turned around and saw Emily standing, tentatively, at the far end of the living room.

“Why’s everyone always fighting?” she asked.

“Go to bed,” her father said, his voice like low, rumbling thunder. “Go to bed right this second.”

Emily turned and ran.

Darren pulled back the curtain on the front door window, watched as his wife backed her Beemer out of the drive, took note of which direction she headed.

Ann was grateful to Belinda for calling when she did. It made her exit from the house a lot simpler. But it didn’t mean Ann had to meet up with her right away. She had to get this other meeting out of the way first. Let Belinda sweat it out for a while. After all, she had only herself to blame.

It was dark down by the harbor, and the stars were out. It was cold, in the mid-fifties. Every few seconds there was a wind gust, sending dead leaves fluttering down from the trees.

Ann Slocum parked up close to the edge of the pier and, because of the cold, decided to wait in the car, with the motor running, until she saw headlights approaching. There were still boats moored down here, but the harbor was deserted. Not a bad place to meet if you didn’t want to be seen.

Five minutes later, headlights flared in her rearview mirror. The car came straight up from behind, the lights so bright Ann had to adjust her mirror to keep them out of her eyes.

She opened her door and walked around to the back of her car, her shoes crunching on the gravel underfoot. The driver of the other car opened his door and jumped out hurriedly.

“Hey,” Ann said. “What are you-”

“Who was it?” the man asked, charging toward her.

“Who was who?”

“When you were on the phone, who was it?”

“It’s nothing, it’s nobody, it’s nothing for you to worry-Get your hands off me!”

He’d grabbed her by the shoulders and was shaking her. “I need to know who it was!”

She planted both her palms on his chest and shoved, forcing him back enough that he released her. She turned and started walking back to get into her car.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” he snarled, grabbing her left elbow and spinning her around. She stumbled, braced herself against the back of the car. He closed in on her, grabbing her wrists and pinning them to the trunk lid. He pressed himself up against her, put his mouth to her ear.

“I’m not taking any more of this shit,” he said, softly. “All of this, it’s over.”

She brought up a knee and connected.

“Shit!” he screamed, and again relaxed his grip on her.

Ann twisted under his weight, skittered along the trunk lid, turned up the passenger side of the car. There was little more than a couple of feet between it and the edge of the pier.

“Goddamn it, Ann.” The man reached for her again, grabbing her jacket. But he didn’t have much of a hold on it, and she jerked herself away. She pulled so hard, however, that she stumbled toward the pier’s edge.

Ann attempted to regain her balance, but she’d have needed another couple of feet to do it. She went over, her head striking the edge on the way.

A second later, there was a splash, and then nothing more.

The man peered over the side. The water was black as the night, and it took a moment for him to spot her. She lay facedown in the water, arms extended. Then, with a quiet grace, her arms pulled into her body and she rolled slowly onto her back. She stared up lifelessly for several seconds as an invisible force dragged her legs downward. A moment later, the rest of her followed, her face a pale jellyfish slipping beneath the surface.

Once I’d tucked Kelly into bed and done my best to assure her I was not angry, at least not with her, and that she had nothing to worry about regarding her encounter with Ann Slocum, I went down to the kitchen, poured myself a scotch. I took it with me to my basement office.

I sat there and thought about what to do.

The Slocums’ number was probably already in the speed dial of the upstairs phones, the ones Sheila used, but it wasn’t programmed into my office phone. I didn’t feel like trudging back upstairs now that I had my drink and a place to sit, so I hauled the phone book over and looked up their number. I picked up the phone, prepared to start punching in digits. But my index finger failed to move.

I replaced the receiver.

I had tried, before putting her to bed, to get Kelly to recall as much as she could of what Ann had said on the phone, after first persuading her that I’d do everything I could to make sure Emily remained her friend.

Kelly had sat curled up against a nest of pillows, hugging Hoppy, and using the same technique she employed when spelling words, or reciting memorized verses of poetry. She closed her eyes.

“Okay,” she had said, eyes squeezed shut. “Mrs. Slocum phoned this person to ask if their wrists were okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“She said, ‘I hope your wrists are all better and you should wear long sleeves in case there are marks.’ ”

“She was talking to someone who broke their wrists?”

“I guess so.”

“What did she say to them?”

“I don’t know. Something about seeing them next Wednesday.”