Linwood Barclay - Far From True

I asked Lucy to find, for starters, an address book and phone bills, while I went back to Adam’s office, dropped into the chair behind the desk, and started looking at e-mails on his desktop computer.

I clicked on the stamp icon, and immediately I was asked to enter a password. I decided to try “Lucy.” When that didn’t let me in, I called out: “Lucy!”

She was in the kitchen. Her father always paid the bills sitting at the kitchen table — he didn’t trust the Internet to pay for things online — and he kept old phone bills in the drawer there.

“Yes?” she said.

“It wants a password. And I tried your name.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Lucy said, “Try ‘Crystal.’”

I tried it. No luck.

“Nope!” I cried out.

Another short silence. Then, more quietly: “‘Miriam.’”

I typed in the letters. Again, no joy.

“Got any other ideas?” I said.

“I’m thinking.” I was guessing she was at least pleased that Miriam hadn’t been picked over her or her daughter. “Try ‘Devils’ Chosen.’”

“What?”

She repeated it. “That was the name of the motorcycle gang he was with years ago.”

I gave it a try. The first time, with an s apostrophe, didn’t work. I tried it again without, and still no luck. The third time, I used an uppercase D and C .

Bingo.

“I’m in,” I said.

I scanned the mail program. There were dozens of e-mails in the in-box, the sent file, and the trash. It would take hours to go through all of these, but the answer might be here.

The most recent — it had come in early this morning and had not been opened — was from a Gilbert Frobisher. He wrote:

Heard about that crazy drive-in explosion on CNN this morning. Wow. Hope no one you knew was up there. Hell of a way to put Promise Falls on the map. Talked to your old editor at Putnam, who says if you have anything kicking around, any ideas, they’d be willing to talk, but she was not overly optimistic. You haven’t done a book in five years, your name recognition has slipped some, but still, if you had something good, she’d look at it. But she can’t guarantee the kind of advance you had in the past. Not so much money up front, but with the right book you could cash in on the back end. So, start thinking. Talk later.

That e-mail had been a reply to one from Adam, which had read:

Gilbert, my man, I could use some good news. If we don’t get some nibbles soon, I’m going to have to start burning the furniture. I need to live in the manner that not only I have become accustomed to, but Miriam, too. Can’t you start circulating some of the early books around again to the studios, see if there’s any interest? God knows they don’t actually have to be made into movies. A bit of option money would hold me over nicely. And go back to Debra at Putnam. Sound her out. Tell her I have a great pitch, a knockout idea, but I want to see some money on the table before I tell her what it is. I know it’s a bit of a pig in a poke, but she owes me.

The next one, which had been opened, had come in late yesterday afternoon. It was from Felicia Chalmers. I called out: “What did you say your father’s ex-wife’s name was?”

“Felicia.” Excitedly, “I’ve found the phone bills.”

“Look for numbers that come up a lot.”

I clicked on the e-mail from Felicia. It was short.

Nice to talk to you. I’d like to say you’ll work it out, and maybe you will, but you do have kind of a track record, you know. Maybe she just needs some time to think things through. But I wish you all the best. Call me if you want, like you need my permission. Love, Felicia.

What I really wanted to find was an e-mail that said, “Hey, Adam, I’ve got a key. I’ll come by and get the discs.” But things were never that simple. But it was interesting that Adam Chalmers still kept in touch with his ex.

The next e-mail was a fan letter from someone who’d read one of his books, and wanted to know, if he mailed Chalmers a copy of it, could he autograph it and send it back? Adam had not responded. And there was an e-mail from Lucy herself, which read:

Hi Dad: Is it okay if Crystal comes over Saturday? I’ve got a conference workshop thing I really need to go to, and if she could spend the afternoon with you, that’d be terrific. So long as you and Miriam don’t have anything planned. I’d really appreciate it. I’d drop her off around eleven and pick her up by four.

The message had been replied to. I looked in the sent file, found a quick note from Adam to his daughter saying, No prob.

I glanced through some of the more recent sent messages. A couple of replies to other fans who’d read and enjoyed one of his books. There was a request from an aspiring author, asking Chalmers to read his book. His reply read:

I can’t think of anything I would rather do than set aside eight or more hours for no compensation whatsoever to read a book about which I know nothing from a complete and total stranger. Do you have friends who have written books, too, that you could send along with yours? Please gather them all up and send them to me, but I want actual paper manuscripts because it has been my experience that the e-mailed ones are much harder to keep lit when you put them in the fireplace to get the logs going.

I continued scanning the e-mails, including those in the trash file. There wasn’t much there. Adam had purged most of the deleted e-mails from the computer. There were only about twenty in there, the oldest from six days ago.

This wasn’t proving to be productive.

Lucy came into the office. “There are three numbers that show up quite a few times on my father’s cell phone bill. Well, four, actually. But the fourth is Miriam’s cell, and that just makes sense.”

“What are the others?”

She read the first one out to me. I opened a browser on the computer and Googled it. If it was a landline, and not unlisted, there was a good chance whoever it belonged to would turn up.

Felicia Chalmers.

“Tell me about Felicia,” I said.

“Is it her number?”

I nodded.

Lucy Brighton stopped to think. “She still lives in Promise Falls, far as I know. I mean, I have nothing to do with her. We weren’t enemies or anything, but once she and Dad broke up, there was no reason to keep in touch. I think she’s got a condo somewhere around here. I think if she’d remarried, Dad would have mentioned it.”

“The two of them clearly have kept in touch. Did your father have financial obligations to her?”

“He gave her a lump sum when they divorced, but not all that much. I wouldn’t be surprised if he slipped her some money now and then. But there were no kids to worry about. And she was the one who’d pushed to get out of the marriage.”

“But she kept the name,” I said.

“Her own last name is Dimpfelmyer. What would you do?”

The Google search had brought up an address on Braymore Drive. I wrote it down in my notebook. Maybe Felicia was still trusted to have a key. And to know the code. Maybe Adam and Miriam’s sex life included his ex. A threesome. I could imagine Felicia might want those DVDs back. If she’d heard about Adam and Miriam getting killed at the drive-in, she wouldn’t want whoever had to empty the house — Lucy, presumably — finding those home movies. So she busted in, grabbed them, and ran out the back when Lucy got here.

It wasn’t a bad theory. And it was a good place to start.

“What’s the next number?” I asked.

She read it off. I did another Google search and came up with nothing. Probably a cell.

“Let’s have a look at the address book,” I said. Lucy handed it to me. I started flipping through the pages, looking for a number that matched the one she’d just given me.