Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

“When did Conrad’s book come out?” I asked. “When was it published?”

Ellen tried to think. “Was it nine, ten years ago? Hang on.” She got up, walked out of the room, went downstairs. I followed her down to the living room, where she was scanning the wall that’s lined with bookshelves. They’re pretty much overflowing, books tucked in sideways on top of other books, so it took Ellen a moment, cocking her head so that she could read the spines, before she could put her hands on our copy of A Missing Part .

She flipped it open to the copyright page. “It was in 2000,” she said. “The hardcover. Trade paperback a year later.”

“Brett Stockwell killed himself ten years ago,” I pointed out. “Two years before the book came out.”

“There must be a simple explanation,” Ellen said.

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe so. It’s just funny, is all. And there’s the fact that the computer’s gone missing.”

“Someone stole it?”

I shrugged. “It was in the Langley house as recently as Thursday, Derek says, and now it’s gone.”

“Did Barry say it was stolen when the Langleys were killed?”

“No. Derek noticed that it was missing when Barry took us through the house.”

She looked away from me and shook her head. “This is crazy. What did Barry say when Derek noticed that it was gone?”

“He didn’t tell Barry. He told me afterwards. He wanted to talk to me about it first, because he was too embarrassed to talk to you about a book with that kind of content. He didn’t know it was a published novel. I mean, he was what, nine when it came out? I think maybe he was reading the Hardy Boys then, and Frank and Joe weren’t exactly waking up in the morning with their dicks missing. Derek just thought it was some student’s attempt at porn, although as porn goes, Derek said it kind of missed the mark.”

Ellen almost smiled, but then it faded away. “What are you going to do about this?”

“I guess I should tell Barry, don’t you think?” I said. “It may not actually mean anything. And the fact that the computer’s missing doesn’t mean it has to have anything to do with what happened at the Langleys’. It might have disappeared between the last time Derek was in Adam’s room, which was Thursday, when he saw the computer there, and the murders, which were Friday night. Maybe it’s someplace else in the house where Barry didn’t take us.”

Ellen paced about the room, then said, “You should let Conrad know.”

“What?”

“Before going to Barry. Conrad deserves to know, because there really may be a simple explanation. If there is, we’ll be glad we went to him directly instead of involving the police.”

“We?”

Ellen looked at me. “Don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being anything. I’m just saying, you may be interested in sparing Conrad from trouble and embarrassment, but that’s not really a priority for me.” Even as I said it I knew I wasn’t being totally honest. The guy did sign my wife’s paychecks.

“This isn’t about that,” Ellen said. “This is about fairness. Particularly when this is probably a big fuss about nothing.” She shook her head in frustration. “Maybe it would be better if I talked to him. If you do it, he may think you’ve got some other agenda.” She met my look. “You know that’s true.”

I nodded very slowly. “I have another idea,” I said. “Why don’t I talk to Agnes. Without telling her everything, maybe I can get an idea why her son might have had that book on his computer.” There was something else I’d be wanting to ask Agnes, too. “And if there’s a simple explanation, I can just tell Barry that Derek noticed the computer was missing, and leave it at that.”

Ellen nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Do that. Talk to Agnes.”

Neither of us said anything for a moment. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Something that I’d been thinking about, out in the shed, just before Derek returned with the pages from his printer, was still nagging at me.

Ellen had turned away and was looking out the window toward the Langley house. “I hadn’t even talked to any of them in days. Hardly even saw them.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“I guess the last time I saw Donna was that day she came to the door,” Ellen said.

“When was that?” I asked. I had no memory of this.

“That publisher in New York, they sent me some advance copies of books by writers I was going to ask about coming to the festival.”

“What was Donna doing bringing them over?”

“The courier delivered the package to their place instead.”

She stood for another moment, looking out the window, then turned, and it seemed as though a bit of the color had drained from her face.

“Donna said he got the house wrong-he saw the mailbox, with our name on it, and he just assumed their house was ours.”

Derek and I hadn’t quite finished up at Agnes Stockwell’s house the day before. That was when Ellen had phoned my cell to tell me that something was up at the Langley house.

So I had an excuse to go back. I didn’t need to hook up the trailer to the pickup. Her yard was cut and there was no need for the lawn tractor. I put the weed trimmer in the bed of the truck. All I had to do was a bit of tidying.

“Where are you going?” asked Derek, who’d remained outside when I went into the house to talk to Ellen, and had been passing the time trying to jump from one side of the driveway to the other without touching gravel.

“Look after your mom,” I said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

I drove slowly up the lane, nodded to the cop still babysitting the Langley house, turned onto the highway, and pointed the truck in the direction of Promise Falls. I parked at the curb out front of Agnes Stockwell’s house, stepped up onto the wide, old-fashioned porch, and rapped lightly on the door. It was still Sunday morning, although it was nearly noon.

When she pushed on the screen door, she smiled. “What are you doing here today?” she asked, her cat slinking around her leg to see who’d come to call. It was, without a doubt, one of the ugliest cats I’d ever seen, looking as though it’d be more at home in a pigpen, wallowing in the mud, than curled up on a couch.

Agnes had no doubt been an attractive woman at one time, but a lingering sadness had worn away at her over the years. She’d lost a husband-to a heart attack, if I remembered correctly-and then a year later her son, for no apparent reason, had taken his own life. I didn’t know how someone ever recovered from something like that. Perhaps you never did. She’d continued to live on in this house, making it, as far as I knew, her only project. Working on her garden when the weather allowed, keeping pretty much to herself.

“We had to take off early yesterday,” I told her. “I didn’t finish up the trimming.”

“Oh, I hadn’t even noticed,” she said, although she probably had been too polite to mention it. “Isn’t your boy with you today?”

“No,” I said. “There’s just a bit to do, so I thought I’d look after it myself. Give him the day off.” I was about to say, You know how teenagers are, how they like to sleep in, but caught myself before doing it.

“When you’re done, I’ll have some lemonade for you,” she said.

That was what I’d hoped she’d say.

It took barely fifteen minutes to do what had to be done. I put on safety goggles, got out the weed whacker, and ran the filament line along the edges of the sidewalk and driveway and by her flower beds, making sure there was no stray piece of long grass sticking up anyplace. I liked this kind of work. I got a sense of satisfaction from it that I got from little else, except perhaps when I used to paint.