Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

“Yeah. There are some e-mails from a guy named Oliver Grogan. Owns some sort of fabric shop in Saratoga. Looks like they met at a trade show in New York and she’s bought some stuff from him. There’s a lot of flirting back and forth in the e-mails, from both of them.”

“Do you think he might be the man she was seeing?” She caught herself. “Possibly seeing?”

He gave her a look of weary thanks. “I’m certainly going to check him out. The trouble is, it’s all spelled out there in the file, with his name and address and everything. I find it hard to believe that if she was seriously thinking about… someone in a romantic way, she’d leave an electronic trail. I mean, she referred to the man by a code name, for chrissakes, like she was Agent 99 or something.”

Clare chose her words with care. “That doesn’t mean she was skilled at covering her tracks.”

“Oh, she was skilled all right. Seven years, and I never suspected a thing. Not a damn thing.”

“Do you really think… is it possible Lyle could be involved?”

He gestured toward a pad of paper he had covered with notes. “In the e-mails to her sister, she never reveals who Mr. Ooo, Sweep Me off My Feet is. But I’ve developed a time line for the dates she mentions seeing him.” He looked at Clare full on, now. “It could-the times correspond to-it could be Lyle.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what to believe. Seven years MacAuley’s been my right-hand guy. The closest thing I had to a friend until you came along. I went to the mat with the aldermen to get him promoted to deputy chief. Now I find out the bastard was nailing my wife.”

“You only have Debbie’s word for that. Has it occurred to you she might have told you that deliberately? To hurt you?”

“As in, she made it up to get back at me?”

“Yes.”

“You heard her. She wasn’t lashing out at me, she was defending her sister. Besides, I don’t think she had any idea who Lyle was. Other than the guy Linda was-” He shook his head, his throat working. “I just can’t believe it,” he said finally. “I can’t believe she had an affair and I never knew. She always seemed so”-he spread his fingers flat against the air, miming a pane of glass-“transparent to me.”

Clare opened her mouth to deliver a consoling word but snapped it shut again. She imagined she could see his pain, spiky and fragile, spreading through him like frost lines along the frozen surface of a lake. Right now, he needs clarity instead of comfort, she reminded herself.

“Did you find anything else?”

He sat still for another moment, then gave himself a shake and turned toward the monitor.

“More e-mails to and from her sister. She was pretty mad at me.”

“That can’t have been a surprise.”

He sighed. “It wasn’t.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing that twigged me. I looked at her Internet history, the stuff she had bookmarked. Lots of fabric sites, lots of other drapery business sites. The only thing that might be related to Mr. Sandboy is a sort of regional craigslist-you know, lots of personals and help-wanted ads. Vacation housing swaps and things for sale. Pet sitting and snow shoveling.”

“Did she have a profile in there?”

“Not that I could find.”

“Maybe she was using it to find more seamstresses for her business.”

He shook his head. “She always hired her workers locally before. By word of mouth.”

“Had she taken on a job that was bigger than usual? Something that might have caused her to turn to other ways of finding seamstresses?”

“Her last big job was doing the draperies and whatnots for the Algonquin Waters resort.”

“Is she replacing them in the sections they’re rebuilding?”

“She will.” He winced. “I mean, she would have. From what I understand, they’re still doing the finish work in the parts of the hotel that were destroyed in the fire.”

Clare nodded. She had been there, at the resort, the night an explosion and fire wrecked the grand ballroom and a sizable portion of the ground floor. She’d be surprised if it was ready to reopen by the spring.

“If there’s anything else pertinent in her computer files, I’m not seeing it.” Russ tapped the notepad again. “That leaves me with three leads to follow up on. Oliver Grogan, which is probably the weakest of the bunch. Aaron MacEntyre, the kid who was with Quinn Tracey when he allegedly drove his snowplow past my house and saw a car parked in the drive. Another one that’s not likely to get me anywhere. And finally, the mystery car itself.”

“What do you know about it?”

He fished his cell phone from his pocket. “You’re going to tell me that.” He tossed the phone to her.

“Me?”

“I got three calls from the station while you were away. One of ’em’s going to be”-his lips tightened whitely around the words-“Lyle. With whatever he dug up on the car.”

“You… don’t want to hear his voice?”

He gave her a look that could only be described as dry.

“Ah.” She put the pieces together. “You don’t want to hear anything from the state investigator.”

He tapped his nose. “Smart girl.”

She hit the menu button and selected “listen to messages.” The phone connected to his voicemail. “What’s your PIN?” she asked.

“Eleven fourteen.”

His birthday. She keyed it in. The first message was from Harlene. She was asking him to call in and report his whereabouts. She sounded odd. Far too formal and respectful. The next one-“Chief? It’s Lyle,” the recording said. She gestured for Russ to pass the paper and pen. “The license you gave me belongs to a 1990 Buick LeSabre registered to Audrey Keane. Her address is 840 Bain-bridge Road, Cossayuharie. She’s got a clean record and no priors.” He paused. Clare could hear the hiss of the recording. “Things are pretty hectic here. I’m going to sit on this until you let me know what you want to do. Call me if you need anything.”

Clare jotted the information down and tilted the pad toward Russ as the next message played. “Chief Van Alstyne?” It was a woman’s voice, crisp and sharp as a winesap apple. “This is Emiley Jensen. I need to talk to you about the ongoing investigation as soon as possible. Please call me when you get this message.”

Next was the familiar sound of Margy Van Alstyne, her usual matter-of-fact tone sharp with worry. “Russell? It’s your mother. What in the Sam Hill is going on? I’ve had two calls from Harlene, trying to find you. That’s not like you. I know you’re feeling bad, sweetie, but I promise things will get better. If you don’t want to deal with work, come on home and I’ll bar the door and take the phone off the hook so no one can bother you. Please don’t… do anything foolish. I love you. Call me back.”

“Your mom is worried about you,” Clare said, closing the voicemail.

“I’ll call her.” He studied the paper. “Anything else from the station?”

“Lyle’s not going to tell anyone about the license of the car until you contact him.”

Russ grunted.

“Is the state investigator named Jensen?”

“Emiley Jensen. Emiley-with-an-extra- e , my contact said. The extra e stands for expedite, as in, seeing this case to a quick close by pinning Linda’s murder on the most expedient-there’s another e -suspect.”

“You.”

“Uh-huh.”

She handed him his cell phone. “What can I do?”

He looked at her a long moment, then snorted a half-smothered laugh. “You’re something else, you know that? If I get hauled in and charged-which, by the way, I fully expect will happen-you’d be an accessory.”