No Safe House (28 page)

He didn’t try to be her friend. From the beginning, he just tried to treat her with respect. Didn’t bullshit her. When she asked him once—this was more than seven years earlier, before he got shot—whether he was going to marry her mother, he could have said something like, “Well, we’ll see, your mother and I care about each other a great deal, and we don’t know at this point where it will lead blah blah blah.”

But instead he said, “I got no idea. If I had to make up my mind today, I’d say there’s no way. I got enough people nagging me as it is. But I like her. And you’re okay, too.”

Another time, she asked him flat out whether he was a criminal.

“That’s how you make your living, right? I mean, this body shop thing, that’s just bullshit. A legit business to cover up all the
other stuff that you and Bert and Gordie and Eldon are up to. Am I right or am I right?”

He took a second. “You’re right.”

Jane nodded appreciatively. “That was a test.”

“Huh?”

“I just wanted to see if you’d lie to my face. I don’t like what you do, but at least you’re honest about it.”

A pistol. That’s what she was.

Maybe he was a fool to believe this, but he thought his directness had, over time, won her respect. And once he had that—and it sure as hell didn’t happen overnight—he believed she came to feel something stronger. Was he kidding himself, or did she love him back?

Vince thought she did.

He knew he didn’t come across as an educated guy. He’d barely finished high school, and never attended any institution of so-called higher learning. But he liked to read, and the shelves of his beach house were lined with books. History and biography, mostly. Vince liked to read about how important people made decisions, and took comfort in the fact that even smart people, as often as not, made the wrong choices.

Whenever it was his birthday or Christmas, Jane bought Vince a book. Everybody else tended to buy him scotch. He’d said to her once, “You know I’m a thinker, not just a drinker.”

But what had really touched him was that last year, when her mother was still alive, before things got bad, Jane had bought him a book for Father’s Day. The huge Keith Richards memoir
Life
. She’d written inside:
For a guy who rocks, a book about another guy who rocks. Love, Jane
.

She’d never bought him anything for Father’s Day before.

This year, Father’s Day had come in the weeks preceding Audrey’s death. Jane’s opinion of him had clearly taken a hit. There was no gift this time.

She hates me
.

She hated him because he’d let his mother down. Let Jane down, too. Plus, there was the business of the house. A nice two-story up in Orange, on Riverdale Road, just off Ridge, not far from the shopping center. Audrey had owned it when she met Vince, and after moving in with him kept the place and rented it out.

When she died, Jane assumed the house would go to her, but her mother had willed it to Vince. Jane figured he’d do the right thing and give it to her, and in the normal course of events he would have, except for one thing.

Bryce
. Bryce Withers.

There was something about that kid Vince didn’t like. It wasn’t just that he was a musician. No, that was giving him too much credit. He played in a band. Calling him a musician, that suggested schooling and training. Talent. Vince didn’t believe Bryce needed any of those things to play in a band.

Turned out Vince was right. One night he’d wandered into a bar where they were playing. Energy Drink, they called themselves. What the hell kind of lame-ass name was that? Vince never told Jane he’d seen them play. He wanted to get a handle on this guy who was sleeping with his stepdaughter. What he heard convinced him Bryce was more of a noisemaker than a musician. You could put a guitar in a monkey’s hands and it’d produce the same kind of music.

No, that was unfair to the monkey.

Jane was making something of herself. She’d landed a good job with a local advertising agency. Not making a fortune, not yet, but doing better than her boyfriend, who Vince had pegged as a first-class mooch. Someone willing to live off his girlfriend’s earnings. And, by extension, any money or property she happened to come into.

Like her mother’s house.

If she married this clown and they moved into that house,
and then split up and had to sell the place, this dickhead would end up getting half of what had been left to Vince in the first place.

Vince was okay with everything going to Jane. But not Bryce.

So he hung on to it and endured Jane’s disdain. Soon as she broke up with Bryce—and sooner or later she’d have to see the light—he’d sit her down, tell her the house was hers.

It had been weighing on him.

But now there were new problems. Chief among them was the money missing from the attic of the Cummings house.

“Vince?” More rapping on the frosted glass.

“What?”

“Bert here.”

Vince put the glass and bottle away, slid the drawer shut, took another couple of deep breaths. He was okay. He was a rock again. He could see this through. Start what you finish, his father used to tell him.

He came around the desk and opened the door. “Gordie told me you had some trouble.”

“Yeah. I thought nobody was home.”

“Cops?”

“I don’t know what happened after I left.”

Vince needed to know.

“What’s happening with Eldon?” Bert asked. Gordie was standing right behind, looking anxious.

“Eldon’s dead,” Vince said.

Stunned silence for two seconds, then “Fuck me” from Gordie.

“What happened?” Bert asked.

“He took the news badly,” Vince said. “He started acting crazy. Making threats. Blaming me for what happened. Accusing me. I think he was getting ready to call the cops.” He took a breath. “I did what I had to do.”

Bert looked disbelievingly at his boss. “Wait. Are you saying … you fucking killed Eldon?”

“We’ll have to deal with him later,” Vince said. “Right now, we got other priorities. You two need to pay the dog walker a visit. He’s the only one I can think of who’s got a key and knows the security code for that house. See if he got a little too ambitious. And I’m gonna have to call an old girlfriend and try to talk her out of calling the cops if it’s not already too late.”

HEYWOOD
Duggan parked his car on the street behind a row of downtown Milford storefronts. His office was tucked in back of a shop that sold wedding dresses, with a ground-floor entrance a few steps from a Dumpster. It wasn’t much more than a ten-foot-square room, with a bathroom he had to share with the women who ran the dress shop. He had a desk, a computer, two chairs, and a filing cabinet, and never met prospective clients here. But it was a good place to get paperwork and research done.

As he got out of the car and headed for his office entrance, his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen, saw who it was, and answered.

“Mr. Quayle,” Heywood said, phone in one hand, keys in the other.

“I did it,” Quayle said. “I called the son of a bitch.”

Was there any point in telling him he shouldn’t have done that? Not now. “What’d he say?” Heywood asked.

“He was spooked. I rattled his cage, no doubt about it.”

Heywood fiddled with his keys, singled out the one for his
office. “Rattled because he didn’t know what the hell you were talking about, or rattled because you’d found him out?”

“Definitely the latter. Once I told him about the vase being dusted for fingerprints.”

“You didn’t really tell him that.”

“I did. I told him you were doing that right now.”

Heywood sighed as he slipped the key into the lock. It didn’t turn the way it usually did. Had he forgotten to lock up the night before?

“Mr. Quayle, that was a foolish thing to do. Listen, I just got to my office. I’ll call you back in an hour or so.”

He slipped the phone back into his jacket and pushed open his office door.

There was a woman sitting in the chair behind his desk. She looked at him and smiled.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Heywood asked.

That was when he felt something cold and hard, but no broader than a dime, press up against the back of his head. When Heywood went to turn around, the man holding the gun said, “I wouldn’t.” And then he closed the door.

The woman said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I’m only going to ask it once. So I want you to listen very carefully to it, and then I want you to think very carefully about how you answer. What I do not want you to do is answer my question with a question. That would be very, very unproductive. Do you understand?”

Heywood said, “Yes.”

The woman said, “Where is it?”

GRACE
was ecstatic about the text messages from Stuart Koch. Cynthia, only recently up to speed on our troubles, was eager to put a good spin on them, too.

“So she didn’t do it,” Cynthia said, unable to conceal her enthusiasm. “Grace didn’t shoot that boy. And no one else did, either. He’s okay.”

We’d left Grace in her bedroom and gone into our own, closing the door almost all the way. “So it seems,” I said.

“And you said Vince told you that he was going to see that the broken window at that house got fixed. So it’ll be like it never happened. No one ever has to know what a stupid thing our girl did. And she’s going to learn from this—I truly believe that. She’ll never do anything like this again.”

Cynthia shook her head in exasperation. “And there’ll have to be some new rules around here. Strict curfews. When she goes out someplace—
when
we let her go out someplace—we’re going to know
where
she’s going,
who
she’s going to be with, how long she’s going to be there,
when
—”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll have her fitted with one of those ankle bracelets. We can sit on the computer all night and watch where she goes.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This happened on your watch,” she reminded me.

“I’m aware of that,” I said.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault,” she added quickly. “It’s as much mine, because I haven’t been here.” She took a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m just glad we’re past this part. At least now we don’t have to spend the day getting Grace a lawyer.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “You don’t see this as good news?”

“Sure, yes, of course it is. I don’t want to be the one who bursts the bubble. But it was just a text.”

“What are you saying?” Her face started to fall.

“It’s not like Grace actually talked to him.”

“Yeah, but it came from Stuart’s phone,” Cynthia said.

“I know.”

“Grace seemed to think it was him. These kids, they probably have their own kind of ‘voice’ when it comes to texting. You can tell who it is by the short forms they use and everything.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Let’s say Stuart’s okay. He’s hiding somewhere until things blow over. What’s that got to do with someone trying to break into the house?”

Cynthia looked off to the side, as though the answer were written down on a pad on the bedside table.

“Maybe the two things aren’t connected,” she said. “This mess happened with Grace, and someone tried to break into our house.” She paused. “A coincidence.”

“Which would mean we
should
call the police,” I said. “Because the reason Grace and I wanted you to hold off is because we thought it had something to do with her, and we didn’t want
police involved until things had sorted themselves out or we had Grace a lawyer. You want to call the cops now?”

I could see her struggling with it. She rubbed her mouth, then briefly put both hands on the top of her head, as if she had the world’s worst headache and was trying to keep her brain from exploding.

“God, I have no idea. If that man really has nothing to do with what happened to Grace, then we
should
call the police. He could return, or break into someone else’s house, or—hell, I don’t know.”

“But …”

She stood, went into the bathroom, ran some water into her hand and scooped some into her mouth. I followed, stood in the doorway.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” I said. “If Stuart’s alive, why didn’t Vince just tell me? He could have said the kid’s okay, but instead ordered me to let the matter drop. If he’d just told me Stuart was fine, I probably would have dropped it. I wouldn’t have gone looking for him this morning, at the hospital and his apartment.”

I paused, thinking it through. “Maybe that’s why we got the text. Vince found out—don’t ask me how—I was nosing around, and came up with that idea.”

“So it was Vince texting Grace, on Stuart’s phone.”

“Vince, or one of his bunch.”

“Oh shit,” she said, bracing herself on the countertop with her hands, looking at me in the mirror.

“We still have to know,” I said. “With certainty.”

The phone in the bedroom rang, startling both of us. I got to it first. The ID declared the caller to be unknown.

I picked up. “Hello?”

“Is your wife there?”

I knew the voice.

“What do you want?”

“Just put her on,” Vince said.

Cynthia was standing in the bathroom doorway, mouthing, “Who is it?”

I held out the receiver. “Vince,” I told her.

Her eyes went wide. She reached out, put the receiver to her ear. “Vince,” she said.

She let me put my head up next to hers so I could hear both sides of the conversation.

“Cynthia,” he said. “I need to know whether you’ve brought in the police. Are they there now?”

“Why would I have called the police, Vince?”

“Because there was an incident. At your home. Not your apartment. About an hour ago.”

“That’s right,” she said. “There was. How would you know about that?” She gave me a quick look.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“No,” Cynthia said. “The police are not involved.” She paused. “Yet.”

Another pause, at Vince’s end. Was that a sigh of relief?