“Half an hour,” I repeated. “And there’s one more thing.”
He glanced at me anxiously.
“Bring your mother.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” I pulled the truck over to the side of the road and stopped. “Get out.”
“Here? This is, like, nowhere.”
“That’s right.”
He climbed out of the truck. I saw him in my rearview mirror, talking on his cell phone, as I drove off.
They were at my door in thirty-seven minutes. I was actually prepared to give them forty-five before making the call to Wedmore. The two boys, looking very nervous, were accompanied by Corey’s mother. Bonnie Wilkinson was pale and haggard. She eyed me with a mixture of contempt and apprehension.
Rick had a paper bag in his hand.
I opened the door and motioned for them all to come in. No one said anything. Rick handed me the bag. I unrolled the top and looked inside.
The gun.
I said to Bonnie Wilkinson, “They filled you in?”
She nodded.
“If it were just him,” I said, nodding to Rick, “I’d call the cops. But I can’t turn him in without turning in your boy.” The kid had just lost both his father and his brother. I couldn’t be part of dumping any more grief on the Wilkinson family, regardless of the crippling suit the mother had filed against me.
“But if either of them ever tries anything like this again, if they so much as look at my daughter the wrong way, I will press charges.”
“I understand,” Mrs. Wilkinson said.
Rick said, “What am I going to tell my dad when he notices his gun’s missing?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Mrs. Wilkinson told Rick. No one spoke for a moment. Finally, she said, “I didn’t know Corey was going to do something stupid like this. I’d never have allowed it.”
I was going to tell her I knew that. I was going to tell her that I appreciated that her strategy was to kill us in court, not on the street. But all I did was nod.
It seemed we were done here. As they started to turn for the door I said, “Rick. One last thing.”
The kid looked at me, scared.
“Lose that ball off your antenna before the cops spot it.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Shortly after they left, the phone rang.
“Mr. Garber, Detective Julie Stryker here.” The woman investigating Theo Stamos’s murder. “I have a question for you. Why might Theo Stamos have been writing a letter to you?”
“A letter?”
“That’s right.”
“Was it threatening? I’d told him he couldn’t work for me anymore. You found a letter like that?”
“It was shoved under some papers on the kitchen table. Looks like he was making notes about what to say to you in a letter, or maybe on the phone. Getting his thoughts in order.”
“What did the notes say?”
“He appears to have been trying to draft some sort of apology, maybe even a confession. Can you think of anything he might want to confess to you?”
“I told you about that house he wired for me that burned down.”
“There was an incident between the two of you the other day. I spoke to a Hank Simmons. Mr. Stamos was doing some work for him.”
“Yes.” I had a feeling she might find out about that sooner or later. “I confronted him with some news. I’d just heard from the fire department that electrical parts he’d installed were no good. It was what caused the fire.”
“You didn’t mention this earlier.” Stryker didn’t sound pleased.
“I told you about the electrical parts.”
“According to Mr. Simmons, you cut some… rubber testicles off Mr. Stamos’s truck?”
“Yes,” I said.
A pause, then, “I can’t say I blame you there.”
Talking to her, I realized, was probably unwise. Hang up and call Edwin, I thought. I really might need a lawyer. Was my confrontation with Theo about to make me into a murder suspect? After all, I’d been up there, too, to his trailer. I’d found the body. Was Stryker thinking I had something to do with his murder?
But if she considered me a suspect, would she be interviewing me over the phone? Wouldn’t there have been a police car parked out front, waiting for my return?
And of course, they did have Doug in custody.
“So is that what the apology’s about?” I asked. “The fire?”
“Hard to say. At the top of the page is your name, and under that some words. Let me read you what he wrote. Keep in mind, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Just phrases jotted down in very messy handwriting. And he wasn’t much of a speller, either. Let’s see here… Okay. ‘Mr. Garber, you judged me, not fair’ and ‘sorry about Wilson.’ Who’s Wilson?”
“It was the Wilson house that burned down.”
“Okay. Then, ‘just trying to make a living’ and ‘thought parts up to’ and it looks like c, o, maybe a b, and-”
“Probably ‘code.’ The parts were up to code, he thought.”
“And ‘can’t cover it up anymore.’ Does that make sense?”
“No,” I said.
“And then the last thing scribbled down is ‘sorry about your wife.’ Why would Theo Stamos be sorry about your wife, Mr. Garber?”
I felt chilled. “Is there anything else?”
“That’s it. What’s he got to be sorry for where your wife is concerned? Is she there? Would you be able to put her on?”
“My wife’s dead.” I heard the bleakness in my voice.
“Oh,” said Stryker. “When did she pass away?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“That recently.”
“Yes.”
“Had she been ill?”
“No. Her car got hit in a traffic accident. She was killed.”
I could sense her interest growing. “Was Mr. Stamos at fault in that accident? Would that be why he was sorry?”
“I don’t know why he would say that. He wasn’t driving the other car.”
“So he wasn’t involved in the accident?”
“No… no,” I said.
“You seemed to hesitate there.”
“No,” I repeated. What the hell did it mean? Why had Theo written that? Of course, plenty of people had said something along those lines to me in the past weeks. Sorry about Sheila. But it was out of context here. It didn’t make sense.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Now I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you sure about Doug? Do you really think he killed Theo?”
“We charged him, Mr. Garber. There’s your answer.”
“What about the gun you found in the car? I’ll bet, even if it’s the gun that killed Theo, that Doug’s fingerprints aren’t on it.”
A pause. “What makes you say that?”
“I haven’t been there for Doug lately. But I am now. I don’t think he did it. He hasn’t got it in him to kill somebody.”
“Then who did?” she asked. When I couldn’t think of an answer, she sighed. Then she said, “Well, if you come to some conclusion, give me a call.”
There was a banging on the front door.
“Betsy,” I said, in surprise, as I opened it.
She stood there on the porch, a hand on one hip, looking like she wanted to punch my lights out. There was a car idling at the curb, her mother behind the wheel.
“I came for Doug’s truck,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“The police got my car, they took it to some crime lab or something, and I need wheels. I want Doug’s truck.”
“Come by tomorrow,” I told her. “When I’m at the office.”
“I got a set of keys for his truck, but I don’t have a key for the gate. Give me that and I can go get it.”
“Betsy, I’m not giving you the keys to anything. Your mother can drive you around until tomorrow.”
“If you don’t trust me and think I’m going to run off with all your precious little power tools, then come on down and unlock the place so I can get the truck. Won’t take five minutes.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeated. “It’s been a long day and I have things I have to do.”
“Oh, really,” she jeered, hands on both hips now. “It’s been a bad day for you. First I lose my home, and the day after that my husband gets arrested for murder. But you’ve had a bad day.”