The tears were coming now. She tried to wipe them away from her cheeks with her fingers. “Purse,” she whispered.
I retrieved it from the front hall, set it on the table, and sat back down. She reached in for some tissue, dabbed her eyes, then went back in and brought out a pack of Winstons and a lighter. She got a cigarette between her fingers, but her hand was shaking too much to light it. I gently took the lighter from her, held it to the end of the cigarette.
She pulled hard on it, held the smoke in her lungs, let it come out her nostrils.
“I think I know who it was,” she said quietly.
“In the car? The woman?”
Miriam’s head went up and down a quarter inch. “Felicia.” Maybe thinking I was going to ask, she added, “His slut of an ex-wife. They kept in touch.”
“No,” I said. “I saw her this morning.”
Miriam’s damp eyes darted about, as though the answer were hidden here in the kitchen. “Then Georgina.”
“Georgina?”
“Blackmore. Georgina Blackmore. Her husband’s a professor at Thackeray. English something or other.”
Another connection between her husband and the college. First Clive Duncomb, now a Professor Blackmore.
“That little bitch,” she said.
“Is the professor a friend of the head of security out there?” I asked. “Clive Duncomb.”
Her eyes flashed for a second, then appraised me in a way they hadn’t up until now.
“Why would you ask about him?”
“You and your husband have entertained him and his wife, here, for dinner. You’re friends.”
Miriam Chalmers eyed me with the same level of suspicion she’d displayed when first finding me in the house.
“Why, exactly, are you here, in my house? You’re not with the police.”
“No, I’m not. I’m private.”
“You’re here at Lucy’s direction?”
“Someone was in the house,” I said, nodding. “Since news broke of the disaster, and it became known your husband was among the victims, someone got in. To get something.” I paused. “From the room downstairs.”
It was as though she’d been Tasered.
“What?”
She pushed back her chair so quickly ashes fell from the end of the Winston and landed on her dress. She got up, taking the cigarette from her mouth and clutching it in her fingers, and headed straight for the stairs.
I followed.
She’d only descended three steps when she caught sight of the bookcase out of its usual position, the secret room exposed.
“Oh my God,” she said. “No, no, no.”
She entered the room, saw the scattered DVD cases on the floor.
“This isn’t happening,” she said.
Miriam spun around, pointed at me. “Where are they? What did you do with those? What is it you want? Is it money? Is that what you want?”
“I don’t have them. But I’m guessing you might know who would.”
Miriam was trying to take it all in.
“Get out,” she said. “Get the fuck out of my house and tell Lucy I can solve my own goddamn problems.”
Thirty-nine
When Trevor Duckworth dropped off the Finley Springs Water truck at the end of his shift, he went around to the office to see if the boss was in.
He wasn’t.
“Do you have a number for him?” he asked one of the women in the office. A cell phone number was provided. He entered it straight into his own phone’s contacts list.
But he didn’t call Randall Finley right away. He had to think about whether this was the right thing to do.
It galled him that his father had been right. His dad had said the only reason Finley had hired him was that his father was a detective with the Promise Falls police. Finley wanted Barry Duckworth to feed him things, things about the department, that might help Finley when he went after the mayor’s job.
Trevor’s dad had said no when Finley asked him directly. But now Finley was coming at it another way. He’d had a chat with Trevor a couple of weeks ago, let him know that he was friends with the family of Trevor’s former girlfriend, Trish Vandenburg.
Finley described himself as Trish’s unofficial uncle. She’d told him things. She’d told him about the time Trevor had hit her in the face.
It was an accident.
Didn’t seem like it to Trish, Finley told him. She’d spent three days in her apartment waiting for the bruise to fade before she went outside. Trevor tried to explain that he’d thought Trish was going to slap him, so he’d brought up his hand to stop her, but ended up backhanding her.
However it might have happened, Finley said, it happened. But the onetime mayor made clear to Trevor that he had done him a favor. Trish had been wondering about whether to report the assault to the police, but Finley had persuaded her it was a bad idea.
But who knew? Finley said. She might change her mind one day. Trevor’s boss wanted the young man to know he’d keep his mistake under wraps as best he could, so long as Trevor was open to the idea of proving his gratitude.
Now Trevor sat in his apartment, phone in hand, thinking that maybe this was his chance to even things up with Finley. A way to show how grateful he was.
He made the call.
“Hello?” Randall Finley said.
“Mr. Finley, it’s Trevor.”
“Hmm?”
“Trevor Duckworth.”
“Hey there, Trevor. How’s it going?”
“Okay, I guess. Have you got a second?”
“For you, of course. What can I do ya for?”
Even though he was alone in his apartment, Trevor brought his voice down. “You remember that talk we had the other day?”
“Which talk would that be?” Finley said. Taunting him, Trevor felt. He knew exactly what he was talking about.
“You know. About Trish.”
“Oh, yeah, that talk. Of course.”
“I wanted... you said you did me a favor, and in return, you said if I ever heard anything that might be helpful to you, that if I passed it along, then we’d be square. You remember that?”
“I do.”
“Well, I kind of heard something tonight, when I was home. Something that my dad was telling my mom.”
Trevor’s hand was becoming slippery with sweat. He switched the phone to his other hand, put it to his left ear.
“What did you hear?” Finley asked.
“Okay, so you know the chief? Rhonda something?”
“Finderman. Rhonda Finderman.”
“Yeah, that’s it. So, three years ago, she wasn’t the chief. She was a detective, and she was in charge of finding out who killed Olivia Fisher.”
“Awful thing,” Finley said. “Just awful.”
“Yeah. So, I guess no one’s ever been arrested for that. And a couple of weeks ago, there was this other woman who got killed. Rosemary.”
“Rosemary Gaynor.”
“Yeah. My dad was telling my mom that it was the same person who killed both of them.”
“Is that so?” Finley said.
“Yeah. But my dad only just realized that, because he didn’t work the first murder, the Fisher one. But he was telling my mom that if the chief — Finderman?”
“That’s right.”
“He was saying that if Chief Finderman had been paying attention, she would have noticed the similarities between the two cases right away, but she wasn’t, or didn’t, and that kind of slowed my dad down.”
“Well, that’s something,” Finley said.
“But then he said, maybe he was expecting too much. Like, maybe it was just one of those things that fell through the cracks. I guess the chief wants some doctor to be blamed for both murders, and since this doctor is dead, it kind of closes the book on everything. You get what I’m saying?”
“I do. Trevor, that’s really remarkable. I do appreciate this.”