“Yeah. Poor Aaron,” Stephanie said. “They worked together on the REO stuff. He manages the empty houses, you know?”
Aaron. “Great guy, seemed like,” Jane said, as if she knew it all along. She pulled out her notebook, studiously looking at a blank page. REOs, the properties the bank owned, the ones they’d foreclosed on. Jane knew all that from her foreclosure research. That’s what Liz had told her, too, though it hadn’t seemed significant at the time. “Aaron. I’m not sure I got the last name right.”
“Gianelli? With a G?”
“Right.” Bingo. Aaron Gianelli. Got you. Maybe he knew what Liz had been up to. Not that Jane would ask him directly. But the “mistakes” she’d heard about from Liz’s clients-maybe Gianelli was involved in it, too. Whatever “it” was. Maybe Liz had told him about the bank’s mistakes? Or maybe Aaron had told her. Did her father know?
“I’d love to talk with Aaron,” Jane said. “About poor Liz. Is he here today?”
“He is, I think. Want me to bring you to-?” Stephanie stood, lifting a pink cardigan from the back of her chair and wrapping it across her shoulders. Then she sat down again, the chair squeaking in protest. “I need to call him first. But it should be okay. Because it’s Liz, after all.”
Right, Jane didn’t say. Because it’s Liz.
Jane watched her punch buttons on the phone, waited as she navigated through explanations and inquiries.
“Okay, Mandy, I’ll let her know he’s out and that you’ll give him the message. Like I said, Jane Ryland. From the Register. Her number is…?” Stephanie looked up, eyebrows raised.
Jane gave her the cell number, instead of the Register, to make sure she didn’t miss the call.
This Aaron Gianelli was about to be her new ally-or perhaps her new enemy. She’d needed to find out which.
Should he stop at Liz McDivitt’s office before he left the bank? Just for show? Jake pushed the elevator button for floor 3. The cops were looking for a killer, after all, and it was reasonable there’d be evidence, clues, of some kind there. Maybe he should send in Crime Scene with a roll of yellow tape to seal the place.
But whatever was in Liz’s office was already taken care of, the Supe’s strategy session had assigned someone else to all that. Officer Canfield was also on the job, handling Liz’s apartment. Even Bing Sherrey had an assignment. Jake’s instructions would come soon, depending.
So while the McDivitt case progressed elsewhere, step by step, Jake was at the bank only to look into Gordon Thorley. He’d spent the last hour reading the mortgage records a harried PR flak, Colin Ackerman, finally agreed to provide-the same public paperwork available at the Registry of Deeds, Jake had insisted. He’d pulled out the old “I could get a warrant, but do you really want that?” routine.
Ackerman finally agreed, and all the better for Jake, even seemed in a big hurry to get out of the place. He’d left Jake in an opulent conference room, in the care of some prepped-out intern-looking kid who zoned out to whatever was on his earbuds the minute Jake tucked into the file. The documents had told the story. Part of it, at least.
Gordon Thorley’s house in Sagamore was deeded to him and his sister, Doreen Thorley Rinker, the sister who’d hired the lawyer. It had tumbled into arrears, then foreclosure. But a few months ago, the checks started arriving, paid back in full and currently on time, and they’d bailed themselves out. Gordon Thorley’s family had suddenly come into money. That was worth some investigation. Problem was, he couldn’t question Gordon Thorley about it without alerting Peter Hardesty. Lawyers.
When the elevator doors opened on the third floor, he pushed the close button again. No need to scope out Liz McDivitt’s office. But with an inch of space between the closing doors, he caught a glimpse of a desk in the hallway and a woman’s back.
Jane. Jane?
The doors closed.
What was Jane doing at the bank? He stabbed the open button, almost without thinking, stabbed it again. But the elevator was already moving.
The doors opened, but at the bank’s echoing lobby. Almost three thirty, a few tellers snapping rubber bands around wads of counted cash, one helping a white-haired woman who’d deposited three, no four, lumpy shopping bags on the tile floor and was shoveling rolls of paper-wrapped coins into a fabric pocketbook.
Jane was outside Liz McDivitt’s office. Well, of course. She was covering this. They’d made McDivitt’s name public a few hours ago.
Jake stood in the lobby, watching the customer lug her bags out the door, watching the tellers behind their cages, but thinking of Jane, and their crisscrossing lives. How they kept showing up at the same place, but never together. This time, if he waited, they could be together. There was only one row of elevators. Eventually Jane would have to appear. They could get everything out in the open.
He’d wait.
His pocket buzzed. A text. From Bing Sherrey. SFSG, it said. So far so good. Eager for his turn, Jake wondered how this would all unfold. If they could solve Liz McDivitt and Gordon Thorley? That’d be a good week’s work. Big headlines about Lilac Sunday. The kind his grandfather never got to read.
He needed to dig into Grandpa’s files again. He needed to read those articles he’d gotten from the newspaper archive guy. Where were the people Chrystal Peralta interviewed years ago? What might they know? He needed to track her down. He needed to call Peter Hardesty, insist on a meeting.
He sighed, watching the light go from red to green on the aluminum elevator doors, willing them to open. Willing Jane to step out, look at him, run to him.
They opened. Empty. They closed.
Too much to do. He couldn’t wait.
“Bye, Jane,” he whispered.
54
“What does Detective Brogan mean by this, Mr. Thorley?” It had taken Peter Hardesty an hour of the highest-level arm-twisting to arrange this jailhouse meeting. Now, after Brogan’s phone call, Peter didn’t feel like waiting for answers. “Your sister indicated you were both struggling financially. But bank documents show that the Sagamore house-the house you own jointly-is not in financial peril. In fact, someone recently bailed out the place.”
Recently. As in, right before Thorley confessed. Peter’s imagination did not have to try very hard to come up with explanations. But conjecture was a waste of time. He needed the truth.
Ignoring the question, Thorley swirled a white paper cup in front of him, the black coffee inside already staining the cheap low-bidder jailhouse paper cup. His skin had gone yellow-gray, even his hair looked drab, as if the swampy atmosphere of the jail cell had sucked all the color out of him. And the instinct to fight.
“You can listen to me or not,” Peter said. “But I’m your lawyer. On your side. And my responsibility is-”
“Your damn responsibility is to do what I say.” Thorley talked to the coffee cup. “So far you’ve sucked.”
Thorley finally looked at Peter. Gave a hack of a cough, just one, cleared his throat. “All you’ve done is stall. Opposite of what I want. I want to hurry the hell up, do my time, take the punishment. Get on with it. Maybe I should fire you.”
“You can’t fire me, because you didn’t hire me, remember? And I talked to Doreen, only yesterday.” Peter tried another tack, leaning forward across the table, extending his hands to bridge the gap. “Listen, Gordon? Did you get into your house by using the pansy pot key? I guess you remember your childhood, right? Doreen does, too. She almost cried when she thought of it. She’s scared for you, Gordon. Your family wants you home. You know that, don’t you? Do you really not love them back?”