Linwood Barclay - Far From True

David had to talk to him, try to make him understand that his efforts to raise his profile ran the risk of backfiring spectacularly. The problem was, Finley wasn’t very good about accepting advice. The man simply did not listen to anything but the big, stupid voice in his own head. David wondered whether it would be worth talking to his wife, Jane. Finley didn’t talk about her much, and ignored David when he suggested bringing her into the discussion. Maybe Jane Finley could persuade her husband to dial it back a bit. Although, David guessed, she might well have been trying to do that through their entire marriage.

“What do you mean, which part?” Arlene asked.

“Nothing,” David said, sitting at the kitchen table, scanning news stories on the drive-in disaster on his laptop. “It was all bad. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“There’s just been so much sadness,” she said, pouring a coffee for herself.

David knew she was really talking about her sister, Agnes, not what had happened at the drive-in. Agnes wasn’t the first to jump to her death from Promise Falls, and probably wouldn’t be the last, but her suicide had attracted more attention than any other in recent memory. First of all, as the boss of the local hospital, she’d been a prominent member of the community. But when it came out that she’d tricked her own daughter into believing her newborn baby had died, she was labeled a monster.

David believed the judgments being made about his aunt troubled Arlene nearly as much as her sister’s death. Arlene herself had called Agnes a monster shortly before she’d killed herself.

David figured Agnes had known it to be true. Unlike the town’s former mayor, Agnes had had a capacity for shame.

But in the days since Agnes’s death, Arlene had been trying to come to understand her sister, trying to figure out her motivations. “She wasn’t a completely terrible person,” she’d said several times in recent days. Trying to convince herself, as much as others, David suspected.

But while Agnes was very much on Arlene’s mind, she wasn’t occupying David’s thoughts. He was thinking about last night’s disaster, his job, and one other matter.

Sam Worthington.

He’d been reaching out to her, trying to explain he hadn’t done anything — at least not intentionally — to betray her. Someone had evidently taken pictures through her kitchen window of the two of them having sex, and now the pics were being used as evidence that she was somehow an unfit mother.

He felt sick about it.

He’d tried calling her several times, left messages. He’d considered knocking on her door, but the first time he’d tried, before he’d ever actually met her, he’d found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun. The last time Sam spoke to him, she’d promised him the next time he showed up, she’d pull the trigger.

He’d been considering dropping by her place of work. Sam wouldn’t shoot him in the middle of the Laundromat, would she?

David wasn’t sure he was cut out for this much drama. He’d had more than enough of it with his now late wife, Jan. The whole episode with Marla and her baby had left him shaken. And working with Finley was no bucket of joy, either. His reporting days hadn’t prepared him for this kind of unrelenting stress. He’d never been a war correspondent. He hadn’t been Woodward or Bernstein. He’d always been a small-town reporter.

“I don’t know if I’m up to all this,” he said.

“What’s that?” his mother asked.

“Nothing.”

“Have you talked to your father lately?” Arlene asked.

“Of course. I talk to him every day. We all live together, Mom.”

He was sorry as soon as he said it.

“Don’t you worry. We’ll be gone soon,” she said. “Another few weeks and we’ll be out of your hair. Your father says they’re coming along really well with the work. They’re ahead of schedule.” A pause. “Lucky for you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. And yes, I talk to Dad. Why?”

“I don’t mean the simple day-to-day stuff. I mean really talked to him.”

“Yeah, I have. Back when I was debating whether to accept the job with Finley, Dad and I had a heart-to-heart. He was the one who said I should take it.”

“So now you blame your father that you’re having to deal with that man?”

“I didn’t say that,” David said. “It was my decision. I needed a job. Why are you worried about Dad? What’s going on?”

“He just has a lot on his mind. You should talk to him sometime about it.”

“Is he okay? Is this about his heart?”

Arlene shook her head. “His heart’s fine.” She waved a hand at him. “Forget I even brought this up.”

He was about to pursue this further when his cell phone, resting facedown on the table next to the laptop, vibrated. He turned it over, looked at the screen.

“Shit,” he said.

There was a time when his mother might have reprimanded him for that, but not today.

“Him?” she asked.

David nodded. He picked up the phone and put it to his ear.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Genius!” Randall Finley said. “Sheer genius!”

“I’m sorry, Randy. What are you talking about?”

“Your idea about setting up a fund! To help the drive-in disaster victims! They ate that right up. I was on the fucking Today show. Some of the Albany media are already running with it.” He laughed. “Bringing you on wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

“Randy, I—”

“I was just kidding about that. Hiring you, that’s one of the smartest moves I’ve made lately. You got good instincts.”

“I’ll make sure the account’s up and running first thing,” David said. “I already talked to the bank, let them know we’d be doing this.”

“Good, good. What you need to do now is — maybe some big company wants to cough up a few thousand or something. We need to get a picture of them giving me the check. Why don’t you start calling around? You know what? Call Gloria Fenwick. She’s wrapping up Five Mountains. Ask her if her bosses would like to make a generous contribution so we’d have something to remember them by other than abandoning our community.”

I hate myself, David thought.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

“We’ll touch base a little later. But I’m going to be unavailable at lunch.”

David didn’t know about any lunch meeting the would-be mayor had. He was supposed to keep him up-to-date on any changes in the schedule. “What’s going on?”

“I’m meeting with Francis. Frank.”

“Frank who?”

“Frank Mancini.”

David put the index finger of his free hand on the laptop track pad. He scrolled back up a story he’d been reading, looking for something he’d just come across.

He found this:

The drive-in property had recently been sold to Mancini Homes, presumably for a housing development, although that could not be confirmed. The company has not returned calls, or answered e-mails, regarding its plans.

“You there?” Finley asked.

“This is the Mancini Homes guy? A developer?”

“That’s right.”

“The one who’s bought the drive-in land.”

“Yeah,” said Finley, a hint of caution in his voice.

“If you’re meeting with him to discuss the accident, I should be there. I need to know what your strategy is here, Randy. How are you planning to spin this?”

“This has nothing to do with what happened, David,” Finley said.

“If it’s got nothing to do with it, why are you in a rush to set up a meeting with this guy?”

“I’m not in a rush,” Finley said. “This meeting was set up a long time ago.”