Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“Oh my,” Lucy said.

I glanced back at the empty DVD cases. “Yeah. Looks like your father’s home movies are missing.” I thought a moment. “My guess is, someone was looking for the DVD they wanted, heard you come in, slipped out of this room with the discs, slid the shelf back into position, and took off out the back door.”

She nodded slowly.

“He probably figured he had time to go through the discs. Maybe they were labeled. Then he heard the door open, and he left these cases scattered all over the place.”

I studied her.

“Are you sure you didn’t know about this?” I asked. “You haven’t received a phone call since what happened at the drive-in? Someone offering to sell these back to you.”

Lucy shook her head. “Nothing like that. I swear.”

Maybe the call had yet to come. But did blackmail really make sense? The ones you’d want to blackmail, if you had these discs, would be Adam Chalmers and his wife, Miriam.

But they were dead.

“At least now we know what they were after,” I said. “We know what was taken. Do you want to bring the police into it now?”

Her mouth opened in horror. “God, no.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Find these DVDs. Find out who has them. I don’t have any idea what’s on them and I really don’t want to know. But we need to get them back, and they need to be destroyed. There can’t be anything on them that I’d want anyone to see.”

“Your father’s reputation is important to you.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “I mean, it’s partly that, but...”

“Your daughter,” I said.

Lucy nodded. “If these get out somehow, I can survive the embarrassment. But what about Crystal? You know how things are these days. Everything goes viral almost instantly. And even kids know what’s happening. I can’t bear the taunting she might endure, the humiliation. Or that she might go online one day and see this stuff herself, if that’s what the person who took those discs plans to do. To put them up on YouTube.”

“Sure,” I said.

I wondered where to start. Who might know about this secret room? The guy who built it, perhaps, although Adam Chalmers might have done the work himself. A cleaning lady, maybe, or a person authorized to come into the house to do some kind of repair work? But how would they know the room even existed? And if they did, why would they want the discs?

Who’d care about acquiring videos of Adam Chalmers and his wife getting it on? Especially after they were dead.

And then it hit me.

Adam and Miriam weren’t the only performers.

There were supporting players.

Angus Carlson had exited the Thackeray College admin building and was almost to his car when he heard someone yelling in his direction.

“Excuse me! You!”

Carlson was the only one crossing the parking lot, so there was a pretty good chance that whoever was shouting was shouting at him. He stopped and turned. The man he knew only as Peter, the one he’d pegged as a Thackeray professor who’d been talking to Duncomb, was trying to get his attention.

“Me?” Carlson said, pointing to himself.

Peter nodded, closed the distance between them. He was panting.

“Sorry. I was waiting for you to come out of Clive’s office, but I guess I missed you, didn’t realize you’d already left. Had to run when I spotted you. You’re with the police? You’re a detective?”

“That’s right,” he said. Acting detective, but he didn’t see any need to point that out. “Who are you?”

“Oh, I’m Peter Blackmore. Professor Blackmore.” He extended a hand and Carlson took it. “English literature and psychology.”

“Okay.”

“I wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions. Kind of hypothetically.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“If someone is missing, how long do they have to be missing to be, you know, official?”

“Official?”

“Officially missing,” Blackmore said.

“Who are we talking about here?” Angus Carlson asked.

“It’s just a hypothetical.”

“Hypothetically speaking, is this missing person a four-year-old girl who didn’t show up at nursery school, a ninety-year-old man who wandered away from a nursing home, or a husband who ran off with his secretary?”

Blackmore blinked. “It’s none of those.”

“The point I’m trying to make is, it depends. A kid fails to show up for school, the police jump on it right away. You have to move quickly on something like that. An old guy who wanders off is pretty urgent, too, but at least with him you’re less worried that he’s the victim of an abduction. And the husband who runs off with his secretary, well, that’s not really a concern of ours at all. Depending.”

“I see,” Blackmore said, thinking.

“Maybe if you could be more specific.”

“It’s a bit like the third one you mentioned, but not exactly. Do I have to wait twenty-four hours before reporting someone missing? That’s what I’ve heard. That you have to wait twenty-four hours. Or is it forty-eight?”

Carlson shook his head. “That’s a TV myth. You can report someone anytime you want. If there’s reason to believe a crime was committed, that this missing person is in danger, the police will act right away. Was a crime committed in connection with this hypothetical disappearance?”

Blackmore paused, looked away. “Not that I know of, I guess. She just hasn’t come home.”

“Is it your wife, Professor? Is that who’s missing?”

He swallowed, hesitated, then said, “Maybe. I mean, yes, it’s my wife, but I can’t say for sure that she’s actually missing.”

“What’s her name?”

“Georgina Blackmore.”

“When did you last see her?” Carlson was reaching into his pocket for his notebook.

“Uh, yesterday morning, when I left home to come out to the college.”

“Does Mrs. Blackmore have a job?”

“Yes, yes, she does. She’s a legal secretary. At Paine, Kay and Dunn.”

“Did she show up for work yesterday?”

“She did.”

“You talked to her through the day?”

“No, but I was talking to them — to her employers — today, and they say she was there yesterday.”

“But she didn’t come home last night?”

“I don’t exactly know that.”

Carlson cocked his head to one side. “How would you not know that?”

“I didn’t go home last night. I stayed overnight here at the college. In my office.”

“You slept in your office?”

“I wasn’t sleeping ,” he said. “I was working. It’s a habit of mine. I was preparing a lecture that I’m to give this afternoon on Melville and psychological determinism.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When I’m preparing a lecture, I work through the night. So I didn’t go home. I had a short nap around five this morning.” He started to raise his right arm and bend his head down, like he was going to give himself a sniff, then stopped himself. “I’ll head home and freshen up after I give my lecture.”

“Did you speak to Georgina at any time? On the phone? Did you text back and forth?”

He shook his head. “I don’t text. I don’t know how.”

“You don’t have a cell phone?”

Blackmore dug into his pocket, brought out an old flip phone. Carlson guessed it was at least ten years old. “I do, but I don’t even know if you can text with it. I think maybe it takes pictures, but all I ever use it for is to make and receive calls.”

“So you haven’t spoken to your wife since yesterday morning, and you haven’t tried to call her since then, either?”

Blackmore shook his head. “I tried this morning. After her office phoned me. They have my number. They wanted to know if I knew why Georgina hadn’t come into work.”