Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

In my rearview mirror, I saw him shrug. “I guess I really didn’t give a shit,” he said. “To be honest with you, Cutter, other people’s lives, they don’t really interest me that much.”

There was a campaign slogan in there somewhere, I thought. My cell rang.

“It’s Barry,” the police detective said. “You want to grab a coffee?”

“I’ve got a bit of a window this afternoon. Mayor doesn’t have to go out till about three to plant a tree.” I’d been thinking about Kelly’s, where Linda said she’d last seen Sherry Underwood. It was close to city hall. I mentioned it to Barry.

“Half an hour,” he said.

By the time I’d dropped Randy off and parked the car in the underground garage, it was time to meet with Barry. He was already in a booth, and there were coffees and slices of cherry pie on both sides of the table. He hadn’t touched his pie yet.

I sat down.

“What’s this?” I said, looking at the pie.

“Peace offering,” Barry said.

“There’s no whipped cream,” I said.

Barry raised his hand, snapped his fingers. The waitress came over and Barry said, “Could you bury this in Cool Whip or something, please?”

She took the plate away and was back in under thirty seconds, the pie now largely obscured by white fluffiness.

“How’s that?” Barry said.

“Better.”

“I’m sorry about your son. It made sense at the time. He was in the house, he lied about being there, and I don’t know what, but there was something funny going on between your boy and Mrs. Langley.”

I said nothing.

“But that earring,” he said. “They never managed to get a DNA trace off it. That, and those guys coming to your place, the gun. The case fell apart. I was doing my job, Jim. But I called it wrong.”

He was looking me square in the eye.

“If it had been me you tossed in jail by mistake,” I said, “I’d forgive you immediately. But it was my son. It’s going to take longer.”

Barry nodded. “I accept that.” He paused. “So you’re back working for Randy. I didn’t see that coming. What, does he want his nose broken again?”

“I never actually broke it,” I said.

“Ha! So, you admit it.”

I rolled my eyes. “I have legal bills to pay, Barry. That’s why I’m working for him.”

Barry had the decency to blush. “Okay.”

“I’ve promised him a month or so. That’s it.”

Barry nodded, and said, “Tell me again, this thing about the book and Conrad.”

I laid it all out for him, slowly. How the guys who’d attacked me and Ellen wanted the copy of the disc Derek had found. So I’d thought it only made sense that they were the ones who’d come to the Langley house, to take away the computer Derek was given by Agnes Stockwell.

Except I’d since learned that the day the Langleys were killed, Albert Langley had given the computer to Conrad Chase. At least, I was thinking, that was what Conrad had told Ellen. Albert knew that what was on its hard drive would be of interest to Conrad, and he should have sole possession of it.

“So maybe the Langleys weren’t killed because of the computer,” Barry said. “It wasn’t there.”

“Well, Ellen and I were nearly killed because of the disc, and we didn’t have it,” I pointed out.

Barry put some pie into his mouth. “So if those guys had it wrong thinking you had the disc, they could have been wrong thinking the Langleys had the computer.”

“Maybe.”

“How do you know Albert Langley gave Conrad the computer?”

“Conrad told Ellen. When she gave him the disc.”

Barry chewed his pie very slowly. “But Conrad could have been lying. Maybe he actually acquired the computer after the Langleys were murdered. Or”-he swallowed his pie-“Ellen is lying when she says Conrad told her he already had the computer.”

“You think Ellen lied to me?”

“I’m not saying I think that, I’m merely raising it as a possibility. Listen, I love your wife. Her French toast is amazing. If I could get my wife to leave, get Ellen to come live with me, I’d be a happy man.”

“I thought you loved your wife.”

“I do. But she can’t make French toast worth shit.”

“Jeez, Barry, I think you’re off base here, about Ellen lying to me.”

“I’m just thinking out loud. Okay, let’s assume Conrad told her. But he didn’t have to have told her the truth. Let me ask you this: Who knew there was a copy of this so-called book on a disc?”

“Me, Ellen, and Derek, of course. Maybe his girlfriend Penny. Maybe her parents. Conrad figured it out, and there’s Illeana.”

“The onetime actress. Did you ever see her in Messed Up ?”

“No,” I said.

“Only thing she ever made during her short career that got her any attention, and that was mostly because she showed her tits. You can rent it at Blockbuster.”

“I’ll pass,” I said, eating through the whipped cream so that I could find my pie.

“What do you make of this Illeana?” Barry asked.

“A wolverine,” I said.

“Only met her once or twice, at things out at Thackeray. But she and her husband don’t want to talk to me. Too far down the food chain.”

“Cut grass for a living and see what happens.”

“Yeah, okay. So the reason I ask about her is, we got an ID off the dead guy in your shed, who your new buddy Drew put down, and his name was Morton DeLuca. From New York. And while we haven’t found his partner yet, we suspect he might be a guy named Lester Tiffin. They work together a lot, or so the NYPD tell us.”

“Tiffin?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Illeana’s last name is Tiff.”

“Yeah, I know that. She shortened it.”

“This guy, is he related to her?” I asked. “An ex-husband, a brother, or something?” I tried to put it together. “She brought in hired help-family-to get the disc back? Didn’t know Conrad already had it?”

“You’re getting ahead of me here. I’m going out there today to talk to them, to Conrad and Illeana. Not a word about this Tiffin guy to anyone, hear me? I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned it, but I’ve kind of fucked you around of late.”

“No shit. That’ll be fun, interviewing the college president and his wife.”

“That’s why I get the big bucks,” Barry said, washing his pie down with coffee. He reached for a napkin from the chrome dispenser, but there were so many jammed in there it shredded when he took it out. “Shit,” he said, and pulled out a handful. He dabbed at the corners of his mouth.

“I looked up the Brett Stockwell thing,” he said. “That kid who went over the falls. Like you asked.”

“Okay.” I was surprised he remembered.

“Not that much in it. He fell, hit his head on the rocks below, snapped his neck, would have died instantly.”

“But it was ruled a suicide.”

“There was no note, if that’s what you’re asking. But there were no obvious signs of foul play, either. No one saw anything or heard anything. They think it happened in the evening, maybe not that many people around here, although the walkway over the falls is a pretty popular spot for joggers and cyclists and what have you. A lot of interviews were conducted, with his mother, teachers, even Chase, and it seemed like maybe he was a bit of a troubled kid. Intense, moody. And creative. That doesn’t necessarily mean suicide, but some of the indicators were there.”

“Was there anything in the report that says he couldn’t have been thrown over the railing, pushed over?”

“No. I suppose it could have happened that way, but there’s nothing that specifically rules out aliens coming down and tossing him over, either.”