Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

The server set the refills on the table and whisked away the empties. Agent Hill tasted hers and grimaced. “Gross. This is yours. How do guys drink that craft beer shit?”

“How do you drink those piss-weak sorority beers?” Joe countered.

She pushed the plastic cup away. “Never mind. Look. I’ve been dealing with Wingfield for eighteen months, flattering him, fending off his not-so-subtle advances, giving him what he wants. When we met, I told him I was a former NYPD officer, who left the force under shady circumstances. The former-cop part is true. Anyway, he’s a narcissistic sociopath. He surrounds himself with people who feed his ego. Because he’s a crook, he assumes everyone else is a crook.”

Joe DeCurtis looked dubious.

“Okay. I don’t have time to screw around trying to convince you that I’m for real. I need you to introduce me to Letty Carnahan. Like, right away. Wingfield is not a patient man. He wants her dead, and he wants it done right away. If I’m gonna pull this off, I need her to trust me. I need you to trust me. Otherwise, this whole thing falls apart. And Wingfield literally gets away with murder.”

“You’re asking a lot,” Joe said.

“Yeah, I am. But consider the alternative.”

“Which is what?”

“We’ve been over this already. If Letty Carnahan doesn’t cooperate, I take her back to New York with me, and hand her over to the New York cops. Maya goes to child protective services. And you, Officer DeCurtis, will face charges of obstruction of justice, harboring a fugitive, and whatever other crimes I can come up with. Even if the charges don’t stick, your law enforcement career is over.”

Joe exhaled slowly and pushed his chair away from the table. “I’ll talk to her,” he said.

“You do that,” Agent Hill said. “I need an answer by noon tomorrow.”

29

THE LIGHTS WERE STILL ON inside unit 11. Joe tapped lightly at the door, and a moment later she opened the door a crack with the chain lock still engaged.

Letty didn’t look happy to see him. “What now?”

“I know you’re still pissed at me about the pool furniture, but we really need to talk,” he said, keeping his voice low.

She glanced backward into the apartment. “Can’t it wait until morning? I just got Maya to sleep.”

“Sorry, it really can’t. This is important.” He paused. “We need to talk about Evan Wingfield.”

Her eyes widened. “Okay, come on in. We can sit out on the patio and talk without disturbing Maya.”

She was dressed in loose-fitting pajama pants and a T-shirt, and her hair was mussed. She clasped her hands around both knees, perched uneasily, like a bird, on the rusty metal chair.

“How long have you known?”

“I knew something was up with you the first night you got here. But I didn’t figure out that you were her sister until later that first week. That’s when I found out about Tanya’s death and the fact that Maya was missing.”

“Why didn’t you arrest me, or turn me in?”

“I would have, at first. But Ava insisted you were good people, right from the start. She would have kicked my ass. Plus there was Maya. And then you jumped Mrs. Ben Dover in the parking lot and kept her from splitting my head in half. And you saved Harry Bronson’s life, making him chew that aspirin. I decided to wait and see what happened. Mostly, I guess, I was trying to figure you out.”

“Let me know when that happens. I’m still trying to figure me out too.” She paused. “I didn’t kill Tanya.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Back in New York, I had a standing Sunday-morning playdate with Maya. We’d go to the park, or out to breakfast. Just the two of us. But that morning, Tanya texted me that Maya’d had a rough night, and she wanted her to sleep in. She also mentioned Evan was coming over.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Very. Things had gotten really bitter between them, with all the lawyers and everything. He’d made some nasty threats. But she said he wanted to talk things over between the two of them, to get things settled. Tanya thought that meant he was going to give in and let her take Maya with her to California.”

“She was moving to California?”

“Yeah. She wanted to get away from Evan, restart her acting career. She’d rented a house, found a new agent out there … she was begging me to move with her.”

“Okay, so what happened next?” Joe asked.

“She was supposed to text me that morning, to let me know he was gone. But when I didn’t hear from her, I got worried. I called and texted, then finally went over there. I had a key, so I let myself in. And that’s when I found her.…”

Letty ducked her head and began to cry. “She was…”

Joe leaned forward and grasped her hands. “It’s okay.”

Her chest was heaving as she struggled to get the words out. “Blood. Around her head. And then I looked up, and oh God. Maya was standing at the top of the stairs, crying.”

“Do you think she saw what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Letty said, her voice catching. “It all happened so fast.”

“Okay,” he said. “But why didn’t you call the cops, when you found her?”

“Because I knew, right away. It was Evan. Tanya told me, if anything bad ever happened to her, it would be Evan. She made me promise, swear, that if anything happened, I would take Maya and go.”

“Go where? Did she tell you to come down here, to the Murmuring Surf?”

Letty shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“How exactly?”

She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her T-shirt. “You had to know Tanya. She was … complicated. She liked secrets. You never knew the whole truth with her. A few months ago, when things were really bad between her and Evan, she told me she was afraid of him. Because he wouldn’t ever let go of Maya. Not because he actually loved her, but because Evan thought she was, like, his property.”

“Did Wingfield physically threaten to harm her?”

Letty shrugged. “With Evan, it was more intimidation. Like, ‘You can never win against me. I’m rich, and I’ll mow you down.’ So she had a plan B.”

“Which was?”

“A few months ago, after Christmas, when I was at her place, she took me into her closet. She had this bag, hidden in one of her boots. She called it her ‘go-bag.’ It was stuffed with cash, and this big diamond ring Evan gave her as a push present when she had Maya. And she told me, if anything ever happened to her, to grab the bag and Maya and get the hell away from Evan and New York.

“I thought it was just Tanya, overreacting. Being dramatic. Turns out this one time, she was right. I didn’t even have a plan. I threw some clothes for Maya and me in a suitcase. I took Tanya’s car, the Mercedes. I drove it to Newark, and just left it in a parking lot near the airport with the keys in it. Then I rented a car at Hertz, and eventually dropped it off in Raleigh. I bought the Kia there, and paid cash, then I started driving down here. Maya cried most of the way. We spent the night in a motel along the way, and then I ended up here. You know the rest.”

“Why do you think Evan didn’t grab Maya, after he killed Tanya?” Joe asked.

“He didn’t know she was there. Evan knew about our Sunday playdates. It’s probably why he went over there that morning, because he figured Maya wouldn’t be around.”

Letty started to weep. “But she was there the whole time. Oh my God. Maya was there when he killed Tanya.”

“Maybe Maya was asleep,” Joe said, hoping it was true. “Maybe she didn’t see it.”

“I wish I hadn’t seen it,” Letty said, rubbing her arms and shivering. “It was awful.”