Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“Just another minute,” Garnet said. “I know you don’t trust us. I know that if I were to extend an invitation to our grandson to come stay with us for a week or two in the summer, at our beach house on the Cape, you’d be suspicious. I get that. So what we wondered was, would you be our guest, too? You and Carl could both come down. You could stay in the guest room. Would you feel comfortable with that? You’d love it there. I know we invited you and Brandon, and you were never able to find the time, but it’s quite beautiful and relaxing. We could take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Go to Edgartown.”

Sam took another look at the clock.

“I don’t think all of us being under the same roof would work very well,” Sam said, her eyes fixed on Yolanda. “And I don’t know if the owner could find someone else to run this place if I went away.”

Yolanda made a derisive scan of the premises. “How hard could it be to find someone to do this?”

Garnet shot his wife a look, then smiled understandingly at Sam. “Well, then, what if we were to come up here? Book a hotel, or maybe a resort around Saratoga. Someplace close to Promise Falls. We could give Carl a little vacation close to home. And we could book a room for you, too. We could make it close enough that you could drive in here every day, make sure everything’s running like clockwork.”

Sam didn’t get it. Why the change of heart? Were Garnet and Yolanda really on the level?

“What about all this talk of trying to take Carl away from me?” Sam said. “Would that end?”

Garnet smiled. “That hasn’t been productive, has it? We think there has to be a better way.”

“And Brandon would like to see his son,” Yolanda said.

Garnet gave her a look that suggested that was not on the agenda.

“Prison is no place for a nine-year-old boy,” Sam said. “One day, when Brandon is released, I’m willing to sit down and work out some kind of visitation arrangement. Despite what you may think of me, I don’t want to turn my son against his father.” Again, she looked at the clock. “I can’t be here another minute. I have to go pick up Carl.”

Garnet held up a hand. “Just wait. I think what you’re saying is very mature, very honorable,” he said. “I’m pleased to hear you say that. What we’re wondering is—”

“You’re not hearing me,” Sam said. “Carl will be looking for my car. When—”

Sam cut herself off. She suddenly understood what they were doing.

They were stalling her.

She stood, ran to the office at the back end of the Laundromat to grab her purse.

“Samantha!” Garnet said, standing. “Please! There’s more we want to say!”

She grabbed her purse, and as she headed for the alleyway out back where she kept her car, she searched it for her car keys. Once she’d found them, she pointed the remote at her car and hit the button to unlock it. The car was listing to one side. Both tires on the driver’s side were completely flat.

“No, no,” she said. “This isn’t happening.”

Behind her, standing framed in the back door of the Laundromat, Garnet and Yolanda Worthington smiled. “Got you good, you bitch,” Yolanda said.

They’re sending Ed. They’re sending Ed to the school to grab Carl and take him back to Boston.

I got back into my car, which I’d parked in a visitors’ spot at Felicia Chalmers’s building, and took out my notebook. I turned to the page where I’d written down the numbers Lucy had read out to me from Adam Chalmers’s phone bill.

There was one we hadn’t been able to connect to anyone. I figured, what the hell, and dialed it.

The number rang four times, then went to voice mail.

“Hi! This is Georgina. I’d love to talk to you, but I can’t take your call right now, so leave me a message!”

Cheerful. I chose not to leave a message. I called Lucy.

“Hi,” she said when she picked up. “Did you talk to Felicia?”

“Yeah. But I wanted to ask, does the name Georgina mean anything to you?”

“Georgina?”

“Yeah.”

“No, nothing.”

“Okay, just thought I would ask. I’ll check in with you later, okay?”

I pointed the car in the direction of Thackeray, on the outer edges of Promise Falls. Took the better part of twenty minutes.

It was the first time I’d been on the Thackeray grounds since returning to Promise Falls. I’d spent time out here when I was in my late teens and early twenties, although never as a student. I’d done two years at the state university in Albany before dropping out. If I could have gotten a degree in partying, I’d have done well, but things didn’t work that way. So I switched institutions, taking a six-month course at the New York State Police Academy, still in Albany. After graduation, I managed to get on with the Promise Falls cops.

Where I stayed until I screwed up, moved my wife, Donna, and son, Scott, to Griffon, a small town north of Buffalo, and went private. We had a few good years there, maybe the best I ever had or ever will, before darkness took them both away from me.

When I was a kid, we always thought of the Thackeray students as “them.” We were “us.” They were a bunch of stuck-up, elitist know-it-alls, but we were the street-smart locals. Until, of course, many of us locals attended the school. And even before that, we weren’t above heading out to campus pubs to try to pick up Thackeray girls.

I found one by the name of Donna who was willing to share her life with me. Until that life ended.

So I had mixed feelings driving out to the campus. I was in no mood for reminiscing. I wondered if my sister, Celeste, was right, that I wasn’t dealing with what had happened to Donna and Scott. I’d felt that I was. By burying it.

You couldn’t change the past.

I paid to park in the lot close to the admin building and found my way to the security offices. A young man on the desk took one of my business cards with him as he went into the office of Clive Duncomb.

I’d done more background reading on him before coming out here. His killing of a student predator, and the fact that he had not, at least so far, been charged with anything.

Seconds later, a man whose picture I recognized from the Internet came out of the office, hand extended.

“Mr. Weaver?” he said, holding my card by the edges between thumb and forefinger.

“Mr. Duncomb?”

“What can I do for you?”

“Mind if we talk in your office?”

He hesitated. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

“Could we talk in your office?” I said again.

With some reluctance, he led me in and pointed to a chair. “I don’t think we’ve met before,” Duncomb said.

“No,” I said. “I only recently came back to Promise Falls.”

“But you’re from here originally.”

“Yes. I grew up here.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Griffon. North of Buffalo.”

“No more jealous wives in Griffon wanting their husbands spied on?”

I forced a smile. “How about yourself? I’m picking up a bit of an accent.”

“When you’re from Boston, there’s no hiding it,” he said. “Let me guess why you’re here. It’s about the shooting.”

“Mason Helt?”

“Yeah. You working for the kid’s family? Insurance company? Which is it? Doesn’t matter — my answer’s the same. It was justified. That son of a bitch had one of my people on the ground, with a gun, and if I hadn’t done what I did, God knows what would have happened to Joyce.”

“Joyce?”

“Pilgrim. Joyce Pilgrim. I’ll tell you this. I’ve taken some heat for putting her out there in the first place to lure this guy out, but if I hadn’t done it, he’d still be out there, and who the hell knows what he might have done by now? Killed some poor girl, maybe.”