Linwood Barclay - Far From True

He told me again.

I let that sink in for a moment. “And you found my card there.”

“That’s right.”

I thought about Lucy, and whether she’d yet tried to get in touch with Miriam about funeral arrangements. I hoped she wasn’t planning to drop in on her in person. But if the house was a crime scene, she wasn’t going to be able to get close to it. Still, a heads-up was in order. She’d be as stunned as I’d just been.

“Someone needs to know this,” I told Barry. “Right away.” I got out my phone and dialed Lucy’s house.

“Cal?”

“Something’s happened,” I told her.

“What?”

“Have you tried to call Miriam?”

“I’m kind of working up to it.”

“Don’t. Miriam’s dead.”

A stunned silence.

“You there?” I’d managed, so far, to avoid saying Lucy’s name in front of Duckworth.

“But wait,” she said. “You mean she was killed at the drive-in? They were right the first time? But you saw her. You told me you saw her. You talked to her.”

“I did. It happened later.”

“God, no.”

Barry ran a finger along his plate, gathered up a few crust crumbs and some leftover cherry pie filling, and licked it.

“Cal, how...? Was she killed?”

“Yes. I’m going to have to tell the police why I was at the house.”

“You’ll have to tell them... about that room?”

“My guess is if they haven’t found it yet, they will.”

“Tell them whatever you have to tell them,” Lucy said.

“I’ll call you later,” I said. “I’ll know more then.”

My coffee arrived as I was putting my phone away.

Barry was tapping my business card. A slow, steady beat.

“I gave her my card,” I said.

“When?”

I hesitated. Even though I had Lucy’s blessing to tell Barry everything, it was in my nature to want to hold things back.

Barry said, “You know I could take you in. You were clearly in that house, maybe the last person to see her alive, and that could make you a person of interest.” He smiled. “But I like ya. So talk to me. When did you give her the card?”

“Last night,” I said. I gave him the time. Barry took out his notebook and scribbled something down.

“Why’d you go out to see her?”

“I didn’t.”

Barry cocked his head. “You weren’t going out there to see her husband, were you?”

“No,” I said. “I knew he was dead. The drive-in thing. I thought she was dead, too.”

Barry said, “So you dropped by to leave your card in case one of them came back to life?”

I explained that I was already in the house. That I had been hired by Adam’s daughter, Lucy Brighton. Told him why.

“You found the room?” I asked.

Barry, stone-faced, said, “We found a room.”

“They called it the playroom,” I said. “Adam and Miriam were part of the lifestyle.”

“The lifestyle.”

Now it was my chance to lord it over someone who didn’t know. “Sex with other couples. Looks as though someone busted in, got into the room, and took some DVDs. Home movies, it looks like. Right after the screen came down. Lucy asked me to get them back.”

Barry nodded slowly. “Did you?”

“No,” I said.

“I thought you were good at this,” the police detective said.

I forced a smile. “The client, wisely, I think, decided there wasn’t much point in investing a fortune in their pursuit. I have an idea where the DVDs ended up and don’t believe they pose a risk. My guess is they’ll be destroyed.”

“Destroyed by someone else who was on them,” he said.

“That’s my thinking,” I said.

“You know who?”

I shrugged, drank some coffee. “I’ve got my suspicions. But I wasn’t sure that it mattered in the overall scheme of things.”

“It might now,” Barry said.

“It might,” I said.

“You going to tell me?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“I’ll pay for your coffee if you tell me,” he said. “You know what I make, and what a grand gesture that is.”

“I think maybe the guy who runs security for Thackeray might have an interest.”

“Duncomb?” Barry asked.

“You know him?”

“We’ve crossed paths.” He appeared deep in thought for a moment, then studied me. I had a feeling he was debating whether to trust me. We had a history — a good one, for the most part, going back to when we worked together — so I figured he’d eventually decide I wasn’t his number one suspect.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Your opinion.”

“Okay.”

“If your wife was missing, and you didn’t know where she was, and you were hanging out with a friend of yours hoping she’d turn up, would you be sitting around watching movies? Because I think that’s what they were doing when I showed up last night.”

I took another sip of coffee.

“I think it’s unlikely,” I said. “Which one has the missing wife?” I asked.

“The professor. Peter Blackmore.”

“What’s the wife’s name?”

“Georgina,” Barry Duckworth said.

“She was killed in the car with Adam,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Did they know that when they were sitting around watching movies?”

“I don’t think so,” Barry said. “I broke the news.”

“You thinking maybe they weren’t watching a Bruce Willis festival?”

“I don’t think so. Blackmore hid the discs so I wouldn’t see them. So why, at a time when you have to be wondering what’s happened to your wife, do you sit around watching homemade porno?”

I thought about that. “This is going to cost you more than a coffee.”

“You want a piece of pie? I’m thinking I might have another.”

“Okay,” I said.

Barry waved the waitress over. “I’ll have a piece of the cherry,” I said. “Can you put some whipped cream on it?”

“Jesus, like I’m made of money,” Barry said.

“Sure thing,” the waitress said. “How about you?” she asked Barry.

“You got blueberry?”

“Yup.”

“I’d have a slice of that.” As she walked away, Barry said, “Maureen says I need to eat more fruit.”

“So what was the question?” I asked.

“Why do you sit around watching homemade porn when you should be worried about your missing wife?”

I gave that a second. “Because there’s something on the DVD that worries you even more.”

“Yeah.”

While Barry was thinking about that, I had something on my mind that I hadn’t decided to put on the table yet.

I was thinking about Felicia Chalmers sitting in her car down the block from Adam and Miriam’s house before I got there last night. Before Miriam showed up. Before Miriam was murdered.

I’d seen Felicia drive away in my rearview mirror.

Now I was wondering if she might have gone back.

Clive Duncomb found Peter Blackmore in the professor’s office around ten.

“Where the hell have you been?” Duncomb asked him.

Blackmore was in the same clothes he’d been wearing the night before. He was seated in the computer chair behind his desk, staring absently into the room. Looking in Duncomb’s direction, but not seeing him.

“I’m talking to you,” Duncomb said. “I went into the kitchen after talking to Miriam — with some very good news, by the way — and you were gone. Where the fuck did you go?”

Blackmore mumbled something.

“What?”

“Driving,” he said. “I went for a drive.”

“For the rest of the whole fucking night?”

“I guess. I drove around. Isn’t this a free country?”

“You were supposed to go identify Georgina. Did you do that? Did you identify her?”