Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“And yet here you are at work, only a couple of days later.”

“What am I supposed to do? Sit around at home and mope? Look, Adam was an okay guy, and I feel sick about what happened, but you have to move on, you know?”

Duckworth asked, “What time did you get there? Last night.”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know. Maybe eight or nine? Maybe a little after that?”

“Did you get out of your car? Did you go up to the house? Knock on the door?”

“No.”

“What time did you leave?”

Felicia thought. “This man came by — he’s a detective? He’d been out to see me yesterday morning. Weaver? He came by and saw me, and that was when I left.” A lightbulb went off. “Hang on, is he the one who told you I was there?”

“You didn’t go back?”

“What’s this about?” she asked. “So what if I went out there?” When Duckworth didn’t answer right away, she said, “Look, I’ll level with you.”

He sat up in his chair. “Okay.”

“I’ve been telling my lawyer I should be entitled to something as Adam’s only surviving ex, to some kind of claim on the estate. He says it’ll go to the daughter, but there has to be a loophole somewhere, right? I mean, we were still in touch. I gave him emotional support. Right? So I was kind of checking out the neighborhood, seeing if there were houses for sale. Then I was going to look them up online, see what they were going for. I mean, I don’t know what Adam might have left. In terms of an estate, you know? He kind of went through money. But just in case, I wanted to—”

Duckworth leaned forward. “You didn’t see Miriam Chalmers arrive home last night? You’d left by then?”

Felicia’s mouth opened, but it took a few seconds for her to find the words she wanted to say. Turned out to be only one: “What?”

“Last night, did you witness Miriam Chalmers return home?”

“What — what are you talking about? Miriam’s dead. She died in the accident with Adam.”

“Miriam wasn’t killed in the drive-in bombing.”

“Oh no,” Felicia said.

“Oh no?”

She tried to recover. “I mean, wow. I had no idea she was alive. But wasn’t someone killed in the car with Adam? They said someone was with him.”

“Someone was. But it wasn’t Miriam.”

“Who?”

“Do you know someone named Georgina Blackmore?”

Felicia shook her head. “Georgina? I think Adam might have mentioned her, but... holy shit. This changes everything. I’m going to have to call my lawyer, tell him... I can’t believe this.” She cleared her throat, shuffled some car brochures on her desk, raised her head, an actress getting ready to shift roles. “Well, then, my heart goes out to Miriam. What a terrible tragedy for her. But at least she’s okay. So, maybe I’m not Adam’s only surviving ex-wife. And that’s fine. I probably wasn’t entitled to anything anyway. Not that this is about me.”

She went to reach for the desk phone, then pulled her hand back. “I don’t understand why you’re here. What difference does it make where I was parked or what I was doing last night?”

“Did you see anyone else, other than Mr. Weaver, last night, around the Chalmers home?”

“No. No one. What is going on?”

“You’re still Adam’s only surviving ex-wife,” Duckworth told her. “I wouldn’t call off your lawyer just yet. There may still be a silver lining in this for you.”

David Harwood was bordering on being proud of himself.

There were two TV news trucks out of Albany, each with its own camera operator and an on-air talking head, and reporters from the Times Union newspaper and WGY, the news-talk station. The vehicles were lined up along the street next to Promise Falls Park, the cascading water making the perfect backdrop for the news conference.

Okay, so maybe CNN wasn’t here. Matt Lauer hadn’t made the trek up from Rockefeller Center to do a live feed back to New York. But this wasn’t bad, David felt. He’d made some hurried calls to people he knew at the two TV stations, the newspaper, and WGY. He’d called some other news outlets, too, and they’d passed. But this wasn’t bad. Getting two TV stations here was definitely a plus.

David was chatting with the assembled press, telling them that the onetime mayor on the comeback trail had a couple of announcements to make. One, that he’d be running once again for mayor of Promise Falls, and two... well, they’d have to wait for that one. But they’d be glad they showed up.

“Mr. Finley will be here shortly,” David said, then excused himself to run over to see Finley, who was hunkered down behind the wheel of his car. David got in on the passenger side.

“We’re good to go,” he said.

“That’s all you could get here?” Finley asked.

“Are you kidding? This is better than I could have hoped for. Especially on such short notice. It’s only been a few hours since you decided this had to be done today.”

“Did you call Anderson Cooper?”

“Seriously?”

“I’m a good human interest story, David,” Finley said. “Everyone loves a comeback story.”

“If you were Richard Nixon coming back from the grave, that might get Anderson Cooper here,” David told him. “But you’re not. This is a good crowd. Not one but two Albany TV stations. I didn’t think that would happen. This is good, Randy. Trust me.”

“I guess,” he said.

“But there’s something I want to tell you. Before you go out there, I want to make something clear between us.”

“What?”

“Don’t ever pull that kind of shit you tried with me yesterday.”

Finley’s face was a mask of innocence. “What are you talking about?”

“Talking about my wife, about how much my son knows about her. Hinting that maybe you could be the one to fill him in.”

“I was just making conversation.”

“I told him last night. In fact, there wasn’t that much to tell. He’d already found out everything about her online. There aren’t any secrets anymore. So I’m telling you, don’t think you can hold that over me. You won’t ever blackmail me into working for you. You get that?”

Finley nodded slowly. “I believe I do. But, David, you’ve totally misjudged me here. I—”

“Save it for them.” David tipped his head in the direction of the gathered media. “We gonna do this thing?”

“We are,” Finley said, and pulled on the door handle.

They walked over together, David letting Finley lead the way. Finley smiled as he approached the small press pack, and at that moment David realized the huge mistake he had made.

The former mayor was going before the cameras alone.

Where were the supporters? Where were members of Randall Finley’s immediate and extended family? Where were the regular, everyday Promise Falls folk who wanted to see their town on the rebound? Why hadn’t David rounded up some people who’d lost their jobs because of the Five Mountains closing? How hard would it have been to find a few former coworkers who’d lost their jobs when the Standard went under?

Shit shit shit.

No, but wait. There was still time for all that. This was not Finley’s first and last news conference. There’d be plenty more. And the point of bringing out the media today was Finley’s bombshell. No sense confusing the message.

Whatever, exactly, that message was.

David hadn’t been able to get specifics out of Finley. He’d wanted to write his remarks for him, but Finley said he was going to do it off the cuff. He didn’t need a prepared speech. He didn’t need notes. A real politician, he told David, talks from his heart, not from a fucking teleprompter.