“Did you have a lot of people you did insurance work for right here in Promise Falls?”
Gaynor shrugged. “Maybe two, three dozen.”
“Those clients included the Fisher family. Isn’t that right?”
“Fisher?”
“Walden and Elizabeth Fisher.”
“Uh, yes, I think, maybe—”
Andover stepped in. “What’s going on, Barry?”
“I just wanted to know if Mr. Gaynor was the insurance agent for Walden and Elizabeth — she passed away recently, by the way — Fisher. Were you?”
“Yes,” he said. “There was a hundred-thousand-dollar policy on Beth — on Elizabeth — that was paid a while ago.”
“So you know the Fishers.”
“I do,” he said.
“So then you would also have known their daughter, Olivia.”
Bill Gaynor’s head slowly went up and down, once. “I did. But she didn’t have life insurance. Of course, she was on the family’s automotive policy. Their car insurance.”
“Right,” Duckworth said, taking a sip. “But even though Olivia didn’t have a life insurance policy, as someone who worked with the family on their insurance needs, I’m sure you must have reached out to them at the time of her death. To offer your sympathies, see how they were managing.”
Gaynor looked at his lawyer, as though seeking guidance. He said to Duckworth, “Well, sure, of course. I felt terrible for them.”
“And you kept in touch with the Fishers after.”
“Like I said, we still handled the life insurance policies for Beth and Walden. After Beth passed away, Walden canceled his policy. He said there wasn’t much need for it. He didn’t have anyone left to provide for.”
“Did you know Olivia well?” Duckworth asked.
Andover raised a palm. “Just what kind of fishing expedition is this, Barry?”
“Olivia’s murder remains unsolved. We haven’t given up on it. Mr. Gaynor, I thought it would be worth talking to you to see if you might remember anything that might help us in the investigation. Maybe Olivia confided in you. Told you something that didn’t seem important then, but does now.”
“I barely remember her,” he said.
“Maybe this will help.” Duckworth took from his jacket a reproduction of a three-by-five high school yearbook photo of the dead woman, placed it flat on the table. “This was from her senior year, before she went to Thackeray.”
He glanced at it. “Sure. I mean, I remember what she looked like, but I don’t even know if I ever had a single conversation with her. Does this have — you’re not thinking that what happened to Rose was in any way connected to her, are you?”
Duckworth tossed it back to him. “Do you think there might be a connection?”
“You think whoever killed Rose also killed the Fisher girl?”
Duckworth tapped the picture with his finger. “You notice anything interesting about her?” he asked Gaynor.
“Interesting?”
“Maybe it’s just me,” the detective said, “but you look at her hair, the shape of her face, she reminds me a bit of your wife.”
Gaynor studied the picture, then looked Duckworth in the eye. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s going on?”
“We’re done,” Andover said.
“Did Jack kill both of them?” Gaynor asked. “Is that what’s going on?”
“No,” Duckworth said. “I’ve pretty much ruled him out.”
“Then—” He stopped himself. “Jesus, you think I killed Rosemary? You think I killed my wife? And this girl? What the hell is wrong with you? I barely knew Olivia, and you know I was in Boston when Rose died. You know that!”
“Bill, enough,” Andover said, putting his hand on the man’s arm. “Enough!” He looked at Duckworth and said, “For God’s sake, leave the poor man alone. You got someone out there killing animals and blowing up drive-ins, but you’re in here harassing a man who lost his wife. You must be proud.”
Duckworth retrieved the picture, put it in his jacket, pushed back his chair, and stood. “I want to thank you both for meeting on such short notice. You mind tossing those coffees in the trash on your way out?”
By the time he reached his desk, the phone was ringing.
“Duckworth.”
It was the front desk. “There’s a guy here wants to see you. Martin Kilmer. Says he’s Miriam Chalmers’s brother.”
One of the four people killed at the drive-in. Her body had yet to be positively identified. Duckworth said he would be right out.
Martin Kilmer was about forty, trim, six feet tall, and decked out in an expensive suit, a white shirt, a silk tie, gleaming black dress shoes.
“Mr. Kilmer, I’m Detective Duckworth.”
“I got a call from Lucy Brighton, my sister’s stepdaughter,” he said abruptly. “She told me about the accident. She identified her father, but didn’t identify Miriam. So I’m here. How the hell did something like this happen? A goddamn screen falling over?”
“We’re still trying to find that out.”
“I want to see her,” he said.
Duckworth said, “I’ll take you.” He put in a call to the morgue so that they knew they were on their way.
On the drive over, Duckworth felt the need to warn Miriam Chalmers’s brother that identification might prove difficult.
“Why?”
“Your sister sustained... the screen came down right on top of the car. A Jaguar convertible, with the top down. She wasn’t afforded much in the way of protection.”
“You telling me her face is all smashed in?” Kilmer asked bluntly.
“Yes.” Sometimes, trying to be sensitive was a wasted effort.
“Then how the hell do I identify her?” the man asked.
“Maybe other distinguishing features. A birthmark? A scar?”
“Christ, it’s not like I saw my sister naked a lot. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t married that son of a bitch.”
“You didn’t like Adam Chalmers?”
“No. He was too old for her, first of all. And there was his past.”
“His biker days.”
“I know they were long ago, but they go to character.”
“What do you do, Mr. Kilmer?”
“Stocks,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Duckworth’s cell rang. “Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah, hey, Barry, it’s Garth.”
Garth worked in the police garage. Actually, a wing attached to the police garage, where vehicles damaged in accidents were towed and inspected.
“Hey, Garth.”
“You know that old Jag from the drive-in?”
Duckworth glanced at his passenger, who had used this opportunity to take out his own phone. He was looking down at the screen, sweeping his finger in an upward direction. It didn’t look like e-mails. More likely an app for stocks.
The detective pressed the phone more tightly to his ear. “Yeah.”
“Okay, so, it was crushed pretty bad. They managed to get the bodies out, but we’ve been going through the car, and it took some doing, but we finally got the trunk open, which wasn’t easy since the whole back end of the car kind of got all smooshed together. We were kind of anxious to get in there so we could stop the ringing.”
“Ringing?”
“Like a cell phone. We could hear it in the trunk. Figured one of the two deceased — well, most likely the woman — must have left her purse back there since the interior of one of those cars is so damn tiny. There was another phone, up by the driver, but it was all smashed to pieces.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So why I was calling is, we pried open the trunk, and it was a purse, and we figured you’d want to return it to the family or something like that.”
Duckworth said, “Okay, I’ll get back to you.”
He ended the call, put the phone into his pocket, and said to Kilmer, “Sorry.”