Chapter Eleven
I managed to catch her before she hit the sidewalk. The man, who looked very much like the Wade Cadwallader I’d just identified in the photo from the L.L.Bean parking lot, exactly like him in fact, rushed toward us.
“Oh, my God, Imogen! What’s wrong with her?” His even features puckered with concern.
“She thought you were dead.”
“Oh, my God!” he repeated, getting it. Together we moved her to the bench in the waiting area. The dispatcher had already called over to the fire department and two big firemen dashed into the room, elbowing Wade and me out of the way.
“What’s her name?” the younger of the two demanded, taking her pulse.
Cadwallader seemed paralyzed, eyes bulging.
“Imogen,” I told them. “Imogen Geinkes.”
“Imogen. Imogen!” the fireman repeated. “Are you with me?”
Imogen’s eyes fluttered open. She turned her head wildly, stopping when Wade came into view.
He rushed to her side. “I’m here.”
The door to the multipurpose room flew open and Flynn appeared.
“Identical twins!” I shouted at him. “You might have told her. She’s gone for twenty-four hours thinking her boyfriend is dead. Look at that poor girl!”
I pointed dramatically at Imogen, who was, at that moment, looking anything but distressed. In fact, she and Wade looked like they were trying to remove each other’s tonsils. With their tongues.
“She seems okay.” The firemen burst out laughing as they walked away.
* * *
“Eww, yuck!” More than two hours later, Imogen and Wade were making out again, though they’d moved their location to my mother’s living room couch, much to Page’s disgust. “Get a room,” she muttered.
I’d brought Imogen back to the house with me. Wade had arrived over an hour later, after his meeting with Sergeant Flynn. Imogen introduced him to my mother.
Wade took Mom’s hand and stared deeply into her eyes. “Mrs. Snowden, thank you for taking Imogen in.”
“Call me Jacqueline, please. I’m so sorry about your brother. A twin. It must be difficult.”
Wade’s voice was low and serious. “He was a dangerous man. He’s been in and out of prison since he’s been an adult. Trouble all his life.” He turned toward Imogen. “That’s why I never introduced you. I didn’t want you to know him.”
“Still,” Mom persisted, “he was your brother.” Wade hadn’t let go of Mom’s hand. He had a conman’s smooth moves. My misgivings about him, formed from Imogen’s descriptions of his behavior, before I’d even met him, solidified.
“Believe me, I tried to have a relationship with my brother. But he was incapable of caring about anyone but himself. He took every opportunity he could to blame me for the illegal things he did, to throw me under the bus. The only way I could live my life was to separate myself from him. My only living relation.”
“You poor thing!” Imogen cried.
Finally, Wade dropped Mom’s hand. “Jacqueline, is there a place in the harbor where I can stay through the holiday?”
There was. There were lots of places. But before I could get the words out of my mouth, Mom said, “Don’t be silly, Wade. You’ll stay here.”
When Mom took off for work, the make-out session on the couch resumed, and I took refuge in the kitchen.
“What the heck?” Livvie asked as she put her amazing butter cookies into a tin.
“Crazy,” I confirmed.
“I cannot imagine what that poor girl has gone through in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Me neither,” I had to admit. Wade, on the other hand, didn’t seem disturbed or regretful at the loss of his twin. In fairness, though, as he said, he’d worked hard to distance himself.
“This has been one weird day,” Page remarked. “I think it’s been the weirdest day ever.”
* * *
I went to work. Chris was already deep in prep when I arrived.
“How was your day?” he called.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He put his knife down. “Try me.”
By the time I finished my story, his mouth was open and his eyes wide. It really was preposterous. Identical twins. A good twin and a bad twin. It was mythological.
That evening we had another good night at the restaurant. Imogen and Wade arrived around seven, clearly intent on having a date night. As I plated Wade’s salad, Chris leaned into my prep area. “So those two are definitely back together.”
“Yup. It’s on.”
“I thought he was a moody louse.”
I stared at their booth. “Apparently he’s been forgiven.”
I delivered their starters, scallops wrapped in bacon for her, salad for him. “Thank you, Julia,” Imogen said as I backed away to give them their privacy.
While they ate, I went about my work, but I did look over to check on them from time to time. I noticed that Wade held his fork in his left hand. Not British-style, but tines upward. His grip was awkward, the way some left-handed children’s were, though most southpaws, in my experience, looked more natural and comfortable by adulthood.
Flynn wandered in at close to nine. Obviously off duty, he sat at the bar and ordered a Sam Adams.
“I’m surprised to see you here.” I pushed the bottle toward him.
He picked it up and took a swig. “Why? You’re the only restaurant open for dinner in the off-season.”
“How flattering.”
I handed him a menu and went off to take a dessert order. Profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce or orange-juice cake. Livvie was outdoing herself. What would we do in the weeks or months she’d need to take off after the baby was born?
By the time I served Flynn his entrée, the crowd had thinned considerably and I lingered at the bar. He and I watched as Wade politely held Imogen’s new coat. Laughing and waving good-bye, they left through the front door.
“You never answered my question,” I reminded him.
“Which question?”
“About whether it was just extraordinary interstate cooperation that found Wade Cadwallader so quickly, or whether he was already known to the New York City police.”
Flynn gazed thoughtfully at the door they’d just left through. “You have your doubts about him?”
I noticed he hadn’t answered my question. “Yes.”
Flynn, in a mellower mood than this morning, leaned back on his barstool. “It’s a sad story, like so many I have to read. Wade and Wayne Cadwallader. The twins’ father is unknown. Their mother was young, and who knows, maybe she could have handled one kid, but twins? She voluntarily surrendered them into the foster system the first time when they were six months old. After that, it was a patchwork. Sometimes she had custody, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes they were placed together in a foster home. Other times they were separated. She finally died of bad luck and bad life choices when they were twelve.”
So far, everything that Wade had told Imogen was true. His father had never been in the picture and his mother was dead. He’d left out a lot, but he hadn’t lied.
“From twelve on it gets interesting,” Flynn continued. “They started out placed together, but Wayne was removed from the home after less than a year and sent to a group home.”
“What does that mean?”
“We don’t know, officially. Wayne’s juvenile record is sealed, but it’s clear he was a troubled kid. He had multiple arrests as an adult, starting with burglary and moving on to armed robbery and assault.”
“Wade told Imogen he had to separate himself because his brother tried to frame him for his criminal activity.”
“I believe it. Wayne’s file reads like a classic psychopath’s. Both brothers were math whizzes in school. Genius level. Wayne eventually went to work as a moneyman for the Russian mob.”
“A moneyman for the mob? Sounds like the kind of job that could get a person murdered.”
Flynn nodded. “Exactly. Moneymen rarely retire. The NYPD and the feds are working sources trying to find out if there’s any chatter around about missing money, rivalries, and so on.”
“And Wade?” I asked.
“Wade graduated from high school, went to college, and got a master’s degree. He has an actuarial job with a big insurance company. He’s really made something of his life. Your friend is involved with the right Cadwallader.”
I hesitated, not sure if I should say anything. I had no proof, just a suspicion. Finally, I spilled it. “That’s just it. I’m not sure she is involved with the right Cadwallader.”
Flynn’s smooth brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
Across the room behind the lunch counter, Chris had finished cooking for the evening. There was still a ton of cleanup to do, but he wandered over and joined me behind the bar.
I cleared my throat. “I think, without knowing, Imogen was dating both Wade and Wayne.” The two of them stared at me, so I continued with my theory. “Imogen described a guy who was nearly the perfect man when they met online and continued that way through the spring and summer in New York. Then he turned moody. Sometimes he was his lovable self, other times he was withdrawn, curt, barely aware she was alive.”
Chris shook his head. “So you think sometimes one turned up for a date, and sometimes the other one? Wouldn’t she know? They looked alike, but it seems to me a girlfriend would know.”
“I think in normal circumstances, she would have known. But I think Wayne impersonated his brother in order to deliberately fool her.”
“Why would he do that?” Flynn folded his arms across his chest. I could tell he was skeptical, but not completely dismissive.
“I suspect Imogen’s parents are quite wealthy. She may even have money of her own. Perhaps Wayne found out his twin had got himself a good thing and decided to horn in on it. To marry her under false pretenses. If he’d gone through with it, something quite awful might have happened to Imogen not long afterward.”
Chris rested his dimpled chin in his hand. “But how would that even work? She’d certainly notice she was getting calls and texts from two different numbers.”
“Lots of people have two phone numbers,” I responded. “They carry a work phone and a personal phone, or they have a cell and a landline. Wayne would have found a way to explain it.”
“But if he was trying to charm her into marrying him, why did he act like a jerk?” Chris asked.
“I think he was quite charming most of the time he was with her, but since it was, fundamentally, an act, he couldn’t keep it up. Sometimes his real character asserted itself. Like when her office holiday party descended into chaos because of the tainted eggnog. He bailed and left her to face the consequences when she needed his support the most. That’s when she broke it off.”
“Wow.” Chris leaned against the back bar. “That’s quite a theory.”
In that moment, the penny dropped. “Wait a minute. What if . . . what if the impersonation is still going on? What if that’s Wayne with Imogen right now?” That would explain the terrible feeling I’d had about Imogen’s boyfriend almost from the moment I’d met him. I turned to Flynn. “What if the man you said is a classic psychopath is at my mom’s house this very minute?”
Flynn had listened to Chris and me talk without saying a word. He wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of saying I might be onto something, but he pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the bar. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ve got to make some calls.”