Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

Because he had nothing else on for tonight, Randy said I might as well take the Grand Marquis home with me. Saved calling Ellen for a lift, or seeing whether Derek could pick me up with the truck if he and Drew were done for the day.

As I was coming out of the underground parking, there was a thin, silver-haired woman standing there, and when she saw me behind the wheel, she flagged me down. Powering down the window, I recognized her as Elizabeth Hunt, Conrad Chase’s literary agent. Who’d met up with him after the Langley funeral.

“Mr. Cutter,” she said. “I’m so glad I was able to catch you. I was told I might find you at city hall.”

“You’re looking for me?”

“I wonder,” she said, almost apologetically, “if I might have a moment of your time.”

I was blocking the ramp and there was no obvious place to pull over, so I motioned for her to come around to the passenger side and hop in. She walked around the front of the car and got in next to me.

“I’ll just pull ahead,” I said.

“Oh, just drive around the block a couple of times,” Elizabeth Hunt said. “Then you can drop me off right where you found me.”

“Sure.”

“So you’re working for the mayor now. I understand from Conrad that’s a job you used to have.”

“At one time,” I said. “You’re still here. I saw you at the funeral, but figured you’d have gone back to New York by now.”

“I’m still staying at my place on the lake. This is supposed to be a bit of a holiday, but Conrad’s found a way to make it a busman’s holiday,” she said, and then smiled awkwardly. “He’s nearly finished with his manuscript and he’s a bit anxious as he nears the end of the process. I don’t know whether you know a lot about writers-I’m sure you do from your wife-but sometimes they need a bit of hand-holding.”

That was a bit hard to picture with Conrad, but I let it go.

“And I just wanted to say, I hope you and your wife are all right, after that horrible incident out at your house the other night,” she said.

I glanced over at her. “Yes,” I said. “We’re fine.”

“And your son, the charges have all been dropped.”

I nodded, made a right turn.

“You must be wondering what the hell I want,” she said.

“I figure you’ll get to it,” I said.

“First of all, I have to tell you, I’m here because Conrad asked me,” she said. “I told him, ‘Conrad, don’t worry about this,’ but he can be very persistent. And a bit of a pain in the ass.” She sniffed.

I had no idea where this was going, but decided I’d just drive.

“Conrad thinks very highly of you,” Elizabeth said. “He has a great deal of respect for you.”

I looked over at Elizabeth. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Evidently, your opinion’s important to him.” There was something in her voice that suggested she was as surprised as I was.

I shook my head. “He has odd ways of showing it.”

“He says you don’t believe he wrote his first book,” she said bluntly.

When she didn’t say anything, I guessed she expected me to respond. “That’s right.”

“So why’s that?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t see any reason to get into it. Let’s just say yeah, he’s right, I don’t think he wrote it.”

“That’s a very serious allegation,” Elizabeth said.

“So sue me.”

“There’s a lot of buzz about his new book. It’s not very helpful, tossing around allegations that the man is a fraud.”

I shrugged. “You really think anyone’s going to listen to a grass-cutting chauffeur?”

“Maybe not.”

“Ms. Hunt,” I said, growing weary and wanting to get home to see how Derek’s first day on the job with Drew had gone, “cut to the chase, no pun intended.”

“He wants you to read his new book,” she said. “You and your wife, Ellen, but you in particular.”

I glanced over at her again. “He mentioned something about that. I thought he was kidding.”

“He’s not. I think he feels he has to prove something to you. He wants you to read it, and then, I guess, you’ll believe that he wrote A Missing Part, too.”

“I’m sure he did write this book, and I don’t care.”

Elizabeth Hunt sighed. At that moment, I felt some sympathy for her. It wasn’t her fault Conrad Chase was an asshole. “I could make the book available to you on disc, I could e-mail it to you, or I could give you an actual paper copy of the manuscript.”

“I’m not interested,” I said.

“All right then,” she said. “I asked.”

I flashed her a smile. “You can tell him you gave it your best shot.”

We rode along in silence for a moment. I was heading back to the ramp where she’d first spotted me.

She said, “You really despise him, don’t you? You think he’s a fraud?”

I thought about that as I steered the car over to the curb. “I think he’s worse than a fraud,” I said. “I think he’s a killer.”

Elizabeth Hunt blinked. She had nothing to say. We were back where we’d started from. She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out.

“He doesn’t talk much,” Derek said over a dinner of baked chicken and rice. “I mean, Drew’s a good guy and all, and he’s a really good worker, like, I could hardly keep up with him, but he doesn’t have a whole lot to say.”

“I’ve noticed,” I said. “I don’t think he’s a very happy guy.”

“I thought we’d have lots in common,” Derek said, “because we’ve both done time.”

“Derek!” Ellen said. “You have not done time .”

“I was in jail,” he said. “Not for as long as Drew, but I was there.”

“You were never convicted of anything,” Ellen told him. “Drew was. That’s a big difference. He did something wrong. You didn’t.”

“Yes I did,” Derek said. “I did plenty wrong.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Ellen said. I couldn’t have agreed more.

“I asked him about what it was like, killing that guy, the one who scared you the other night,” Derek said.

“Jesus, Derek,” I said. “Don’t ask him stuff like that. He’s probably having a hard time dealing with it.”

We were all quiet for a moment, until Ellen asked, “What did he say?”

“He didn’t really say anything,” Derek said. “He just asked me a question instead, what it was like, being in the Langley house when they all got killed.”

If Derek could ask difficult questions, I suppose Drew was entitled to do the same.

“And what did you say?” Ellen asked.

“I said I’d probably have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.”

Ellen reached out and grabbed Derek’s arm and squeezed. I was about to do the same, but the phone had started ringing.

We’d been pretty much ignoring the home phone the last few days, not eager to talk to reporters, or endure abusive comments from the nutbars of Promise Falls who knew how to block their caller ID. But now that all the charges against Derek had been dropped, and that fact was becoming increasingly known, we weren’t quite so anxious every time we picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” I said.

“It’s Barry.”

“Hi,” I said. I didn’t want to say his name out loud, expecting it would spark angry scowls from Ellen, if not Derek as well.

“You and Ellen busy?” he asked.

“Just finishing up dinner,” I said.

“I need you to come into the station. Got somebody for you to have a look at in a lineup.”

“Who?”

“Maybe the partner of that guy who ended up dead in your shed. How’s an hour?”

“We’ll be there,” I said.

I hung up and told Ellen. She went white. The idea of being anywhere near the other man involved in the attack on us, even if there was a sheet of one-way glass separating us from him, filled her with dread.