And he was pretty sure he was. The pain was receding. He saw that he had missed one last fry, snatched it up, and tossed it into his mouth before heading out to his car.
At the station, he ran down the plate Lionel Grayson had written on a scrap of paper. It was from the Honda van belonging to the man who’d complained angrily about a drive-in movie he’d deemed inappropriate for his children.
Did it make sense that someone unhappy about a film’s content would blow up a drive-in? Not really, Duckworth thought. And yet, someone had a reason. Duckworth knew that whatever the bomber’s motive was, it wasn’t going to be rational. So Angry Dad was as good a place to start as any.
The van was registered to Harvey Coughlin, of 32 Riverside Drive. When Duckworth Googled the name, a LinkedIn business listing popped up. Harvey Coughlin, assuming it was the same man who owned the Honda, was the manager of PF Lumber and Building Supplies. Duckworth knew the place. A few years ago, when he’d attempted to build a deck onto the back of his house, he’d bought all his wood and hardware at PF Lumber. And the contractor who’d come in to dismantle and redo everything Duckworth had done had also gotten what he’d needed at PF.
Duckworth figured there was a better chance of finding Coughlin at work than at home.
Once he’d talked to him, he had one more person he wanted to drop in on.
“I think Harvey’s out in the yard somewhere,” said the woman at the checkout.
Duckworth noticed a microphone on the counter in front of her that he guessed she could use to page the store manager. “Can you get him on this?” he asked.
The woman glanced at the microphone. “I could.”
“Would you, please?”
The woman sighed. She picked up the mike, and through the store her voice rang out. “Harv. Front counter. Harv to the front.” She looked at Duckworth and said, “He should be around in a minute or so.”
It took three. A short, heavyset man in a plaid shirt and jeans with a HARVEY name tag strode up. Duckworth was watching for him and said, “Mr. Coughlin?”
“Yeah?” he said, with more cheer in his voice than the woman who’d paged him.
“I’m Barry Duckworth,” he said, adding quietly, “Promise Falls police.”
Harvey’s eyes widened. “Oh, hi. Good to meet you.” He offered a hand and Duckworth took it. “This about the thefts?”
Duckworth suggested they move away from the cashier so they could talk more privately.
“You’ve had trouble here?”
“Yeah. Twice in the last three months. Guys coming in sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Making off with stacks of plywood. Not easy to do that without attracting some attention. You caught somebody?”
“Sorry. That’s not why I’m here.”
“What is it?”
“A few weeks ago, you took the family to the Constellation.”
“The drive-in?”
“That’s right. You heard about what happened last night.”
“Heard? It’s all anybody’s talking about. But like you say, I was there a few weeks ago, but not last night. I can ask around, see if anybody here went last night, if it’s witnesses you’re looking for.”
“Do you know who Lionel Grayson is?”
Harvey Coughlin looked blank. “No idea.”
“He’s the manager — or he was the manager — of the Constellation. He says you and he spoke a few weeks ago. When you were unhappy about a film you thought was inappropriate for your kids.”
His face drained of color. “Jesus, you’re here because of that?”
“I wanted to ask you about that conversation. Mr. Grayson says you were very upset.”
“I–I mean, yeah, I was angry. But it wasn’t a big deal or anything. I mean—”
“Mr. Grayson thought it was a big enough deal to make a note of your license plate.”
“No way.”
“Why don’t you tell me your version of what happened?”
“I — you don’t seriously think I had something to do with what happened up there, do you?”
“Just tell me what happened.”
He thought back. “It was nothing. I just — Jesus, I just thought it was wrong to be showing a movie with a whole lot of the f-word after they’d run a kids’ movie. You know? Tiffany, my daughter? We have a hard time getting her to settle down. You think she’s going to fall asleep after the first movie, but she doesn’t, so she’s wide-awake, and everyone is saying ‘fuck’ this and ‘fuck’ that, so we had to leave and I wanted my money back and I looked for the manager on the way out and, you know, let him know I wasn’t happy.”
“What did you say?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Did you tell him you were going to take your complaint elsewhere? To the town?”
Harvey shrugged. “I might have.”
“Were you shouting at him?”
“I might have raised my voice a little. But shouting? I don’t know that I was shouting.”
“Did you follow it up? Did you make a complaint with anyone?”
He shrugged. “No. I was just blowing off steam. By the next morning I’d kinda forgotten all about it.”
“Do you lose your temper like that a lot?”
“I don’t think I lost my temper. No, I don’t do that.”
“You sell explosives here?” Duckworth asked.
“What?”
“Dynamite? Anything like that?”
“No, we don’t sell anything like that at all,” Harvey said. “What are you trying to say?”
“But you’d know how to procure it, I imagine. People always having to bring something down to put up something new.”
“Listen to me. I would never, ever, ever do anything like that,” Coughlin protested. Duckworth could see fear in the man’s eyes. “People were killed up there. You think I would kill people because I was upset about a movie?”
“Somebody did it,” Duckworth said. “Maybe it was because their popcorn wasn’t buttered enough.”
He shouldn’t have said that. All he could think of now was buttered popcorn.
Next stop: the widow of Dr. Jack Sturgess.
Duckworth wasn’t looking forward to the interview. The woman had been through a lot. Not only had she lost her husband, but she’d had to endure the destruction of her husband’s reputation.
There was no doubt he’d murdered two people. There was the nursing home employee turned blackmailer, and the old lady who lived next door to him.
But had he killed Rosemary Gaynor, too? If it turned out he had, then he was Duckworth’s number one suspect in the Fisher murder, too. He’d already been turning this over in his head, however. Killers tended to repeat their methods. Sturgess had used lethal injection in one murder, a pillow in another.
Gaynor and Fisher had not died so easily.
There was a For Sale sign on the front lawn when he parked out front of the handsome two-story house. Ten seconds after he rang the bell, Tanya Sturgess opened the door. She was dressed in a pair of gray sweats, graying hair pulled back, several damp strands hanging over her eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “You.”
They had met, of course, during the investigation that had followed her husband’s death.
“Mrs. Sturgess,” he said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“I’m sure you are. Well, you better get it out of your system because I’m getting out of here as soon as I can.”
“May I come in?”
“Why the hell not?”
She left the door open as she turned and went back into the house. Duckworth noticed the moving boxes everywhere. Framed pictures leaned up against boxes, square shadows on the walls where they’d once hung. Three rolled-up area rugs were in the living room.