The license plate on the man's white Hyundai Elantra—finally, something about the guy that wasn't gray—was for an Enterprise rental out of Portland. As a favor, Alex's contact in the FBI ran it down for them, and with some arm-twisting on Alex's part, the guy said he'd call in a favor himself and find out who'd rented it. Ten minutes later, while Gage and Alex were still busy trying to make sense of what, exactly, had just happened, the contact called back and said it was registered to Thomas Ridley out of Missouri, rented at Portland International Airport on Saturday. Alex's friend in the FBI would pull up as much information on him as they could and email it to Alex.
"Don't hold your breath," Gage said after Alex had hung up.
"Why's that?" Alex said. He still looked slightly shaken.
"Don't remember 1998?"
"Obviously not as well as you. What is it?"
"Don't feel bad. It happened in Manhattan. I was living there at the time and it was pretty big local news. A slimeball named Thomas Ridley shot up a hotel. Killed five random people and the concierge."
"Wow," Alex said. "And you think this guy . . . ?"
"Picked the name deliberately to send a message. It was just a few blocks from where I lived with Janet."
"Wait a minute. Not only did he pick the name of a deranged shooter, he picked a name he was pretty sure you would know even if other people might not. He also didn't even tell you the name, so he was figuring you'd find it out. That's . . . I don't even know what to make of it."
"Chess," Gage said.
"What?"
"I don't even know him, and it's like we're already playing chess. He's making moves. He's trying to intimidate me, showing that he's way ahead of me. The license plate was an obvious way to track him down, and he's telling me he's far smarter than that."
"I don't know why he bothered me so much. Even before I saw the gun—"
"I know. There's something about him."
"You think he killed Harriet Abel?"
"I don't know," Gage said. "Harriet was killed Thursday night. If he just rented the car on Saturday, it's not likely, but maybe that's just misdirection meant to give him an alibi. Maybe he put the sign on my car today, maybe not. The longer this goes on, the less I seem to know. Occam's Razor would say Harriet Abel's death is related, but I've learned over the years to be careful with assumptions. He may not be connected to any of it. You remember Anthony Bruzzi? It could be somebody like that, from my past. I made a lot of enemies during my time in New York."
"You did," Alex said. "But after all those years?"
"Bruzzi waited almost six years before paying me a visit."
"Bruzzi was in prison."
"Exactly my point."
"Well, who knows?" Alex said. "I do know one thing, though. I think I'll start keeping my piece up here behind the counter.
"Good idea. I think I'll be wearing my holster full time too."
"It's odd, though, isn't it?"
"What?"
Alex rubbed his mustache, his face gaunt and pale, looking more old and frail than Gage had ever seen him look before. "He just gave up the element of surprise. Why? If he wanted to preserve all of his options, that seems like a very amateurish thing to do."
"It does," Gage said. "Which is why giving up the element of surprise was not an impulsive thing to do. He does not strike me as impulsive. It was meant to throw me off balance. To send a warning. He's trying to show me what's going to come down on me if I don't back off."
An older woman with hair far too red to be natural entered the store, deposited a brown paper sack full of paperbacks on the counter, and proceeded to regale Alex with her harsh critiques of all the books as Alex sorted through them and tallied up her store credit. Gage drummed his fingers on the counter, thinking about Alex's question. Winne Rallins and bags of cash. The disappearing Brianna Hobart. The strange behavior of Alice Zeitel and her teenage granddaughter. New Shore Rentals, Inc. There were lots of threads to follow, but he couldn't make out how it was all connected, or if any of it was.
When the woman wandered into the stacks to look for her next victims, Gage and Alex talked a bit more in hushed tones. Gage asked Alex if he'd dig up anything he could on all the people Gage mentioned, plus if there was anything out there on New Shore Rentals, Inc., or the other companies that owned the real estate near Harriet Abel's house. For once Alex didn't even put up a pretense of resisting; whatever Ridley had done, he'd shaken Alex enough that he was willfully offering his help rather than being dragged into it. Gage didn't know if he felt good or bad about that. No matter how much he tried to make peace with his line of work, he still hated putting those he cared about at risk.
Of course, if he stopped caring about that, then it would say something about what kind of person he'd become.
Maybe someone like the Gray Man.
For Gage's part, he told his friend he was going to see if he could track down Brianna Hobart—or at least find out more about her. She was the biggest question mark right now, and he sensed that she had a story to tell.
When he was heading out the door, he paused.
"If Zoe calls again," Gage said, "make sure you tell her how important it is that she stays as far away from here as possible."
Gage had never been inside Emerald Beach Village until he drove his van past the chain link fence with broken brown slats and over the speed bump with the word SLOW painted on the uneven asphalt in fading yellow letters. From the highway, the mobile home park where Brianna Hobart's aunt, Lettie Carmine, lived, had always struck Gage as a dreary and uninviting place, so his expectations were already quite low. He just didn't expect it to be this bad.
It looked like something out of a third world nation after a war, or what was left after a tornado's carnage—except there had been no tornado, and certainly no war. The building marked Office with a wooden, hand-painted sign, looked more like a dilapidated wooden shed on wheels than a place to do business. A small deck and stairs must have once been attached, but only the support beams and the stains on the flaking white paint remained. The beams made him think of rotten teeth in a gaping maw of a mouth. A couple concrete blocks served as the stairs, crumbling and caked with mud and white-frosted mold. Blinking Christmas lights, red and green, lined the edge of the roof; half the lights were dark. Somehow the lights made Gage feel even worse, as if he was looking at an abused woman who was trying to hide her bruises behind heavy make-up.
And the mobile park only got worse from there.
It was not a big place, and its current state made it easy to get a good look at most of it. That was because half the spots were empty, the broken concrete infested with weeds and ringed with the junk that had been left behind: rusted-out barbecues, peeling tires, and cheap plastic chairs missing legs and cracked in the middle. He saw headless Barbies, crushed beer cans, and piles of dog dung left behind like land mines. The actual manufactured homes and trailers that occupied the rest of the village were part of a horror show of duct tape, ripped screens, and other ghastliness; the people peering out at him from the shadowed interiors didn't seem much better.
A man in a white tank top and greasy jeans sat on the blocks, smoking a cigarette and eyeing Gage suspiciously. He looked like James Dean if James Dean had gotten hooked on meth for a year and then run over by a truck—gaunt, scarred, and bruised, a pale withered remnant of a man that somehow still retained vestiges of his cool aloofness despite all that had happened to him. Approaching, using his cane because he thought he might have to ward off a stray dog or two, Gage tried to look friendly.
The man stubbed his cigarette into a clay pot. "Whatchya want, old fella?"
"Old fella?" Gage said.
"Sorry, I thought you was old at first. Got that cane and stuff."
"It's okay. I thought you were intelligent at first, and then you spoke."
"What?"
"I'm looking for Lettie Carmine. Can you tell me where she lives?"
The man scratched the rough stubble on his chin, a sound like a match being lit. If he knew he'd been insulted, he didn't show it. His eyes had the dull look of a mannequin's. "Yeah, Lettie, I know her. Big gal, likes to wear the moo-moos. I haven't seen her in a while. Lives in . . . um. Gosh, it just went out of my head. Let me think a second."
"Are you the manager?"
"Yeah. I mean, kinda. They between managers right now until they hire a new one. I don't get paid or nothing. Just get free rent."
"Sweet deal. How about that Lettie Carmine?"
"I'm thinking."
"All right. Should I wait in the van?"
"Huh?"
"How about Brianna Hobart. She lives with Lettie. Does that help you remember?"
"I don't know, man. Lots of people coming and going. Mostly going. People keep leavin'. Don't know why."
"I think I have some idea."
"What's that?"
"Never mind. When's the last time you've seen Brianna?"
"Brianna? What she look like?"
Gage described her. The James Dean wannabe scratched his chin some more. A wastrel of a cat, mangy, missing an ear, wandered up to the stoop and meowed loudly. The man slapped at it idly, and the cat scampered away.
"Don't do that," Gage said.
"Huh?"
"What you did to the cat. Don't do that."
"It's just a cat, man."
"And you're just a turd dressed up in clothes."
"Dude! That's—that's totally not fair. I don't know what your beef is, asking all these questions, but we don't need all that crap around here. We're just doing our thing, you know. You don't need to come in here with your attitude."
"Brianna Hobart," Gage said.
The guy stood up abruptly, flexing his slender tattooed arms. He probably meant it to appear menacing, but it was like watching a two-dimensional figure from a shooting range pop up unexpectedly—a surprise, sure, but nothing real behind it unless you wanted to pretend. "You need to leave, man. Now."
"Or what?"
"Or—or I'm calling the police."
Gage leaned against his cane. "Good. Then we'll go look in your trailer and we'll see what kind of drugs we find. I'm guessing they'll be quite a treasure trove of goodies in there, don't you think?"
All that fake bravado disappeared like so much smoke in the wind. The guy's eyes, already recessed and beady, sank into his gaunt face. His shoulders sagged; it was like watching wet cardboard collapse under the weight of its own moisture.
"All right, man, all right," he said. "We don't need to, ah, escalate things here."
"Great. I'm glad you feel that way. So Brianna Hobart?"
"Um . . . let me think now. I think . . . Yeah, the girl with the leather. The purple hair. Lots of metal in her face. I know who you're talking about now. The kid has a lot of attitude, always glaring at me like I'm like, you know, mud in her shoe. Good looking, though, for guys into that sort of thing. Nice ass. Nice tits. Yeah, yeah. I know her."
"She's sixteen."
"Uh huh. That seems about right."
"And how old are you?"
"What's that got to do with nothing? Oh, you mean the thing about the nice ass and tits. I'm just noting it, that's all. I'm not into jailbait or something. Not unless a girl lies. Can't do nothing about that. She comes onto me, tells me she's eighteen, nothing I can do about it."
Gage suppressed the desire to try to break the guy's head open like a melon. "So where does she live?"
He scratched his stubble. "You know, come to think of it, I haven't seen her in a while either. Her Mom—oh, I guess it's her aunt, huh? That Lettie woman, she didn't get out much anyway, but I'd see the purple-haired kid walking past to the road now and then. I think she walked everywhere. But man, I haven't seen her in a while. I don't know what to tell you."
"You can tell me where Lettie Carmine lives."
"Oh, right. Yeah. Well, I, uh . . . Oh! I remember now."
"It's a miracle."
"I think—think it's number 6, back in the corner, past the Miller place. The yellow one. You'll see it. I think there's like this pink flowerbox in front. You want me to come with you?"
"No."
"Oh. Okay. Hey, no hard feelings right? I'm just doing my job here. Just watching the place, didn't mean nothing. Not my problem if a girl has nice tits and ass, right? I mean, they're putting them out there for us to look at it and everything. Can't help noticing."
Gage left without comment. There was plenty he wanted to say, but there was no point in saying it to a barely sentient pile of human excrement. When you were done yelling at a mound of crap, nothing would have changed; it would still be a mound of crap.
He made his way cautiously to the back, passing houses and empty spots in equal measure, feeling tense, like he was walking through a refugee camp. A black lab, no collar, slobber hanging off the corner of its mouth, wandered up to him, sniffing his shoes, and then wandered away. He smelled what he was sure was marijuana, that pungent burnt grass odor. He heard the clink of beer bottles, a woman yelling, a child crying. The rest of the inhabitants he spotted, peering through screen doors, sitting on broken lawn chairs, did not raise his expectations any further than the James Dean wannabe, but at least they weren't speaking to him. Until they did, he could go on giving them the benefit of the doubt. He thought about Brianna trying to live in this place.
Only a handful of the spots were marked with numbers, hand painted in white on narrow wooden stakes at the end of each drive, but he had no trouble finding Lettie Carmine's manufactured house. The word house was quite a stretch, since it looked more like a shoebox that had been painted yellow, with a couple holes cut out for tiny aluminum windows and a door that might have once been blue but was now brown from mud stains.
A tan Ford Bronco with rusted bumpers was parked next to it. All the curtains were drawn. As he approached, a white cat darted from underneath the tiny deck built on the front and stood next to the door. At the next spot, a silver motorhome that looked as if it hadn't moved in years, he saw an older woman staring at him through partially open blinds.
Gage gave her a friendly wave. The woman moved away from the window.
"Nice people around here," he said to the cat.
The cat had no comment. He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked harder. Still no answer. He started down the two steps back to the gravel, intent on circling the building, when he heard the rattle of a screen door from the motorhome next door. The old woman, rail thin, with a shock of unnaturally blonde hair that poofed in all directions, made him think of a broom.
"You her brother?" the lady said.
"What's that?"
"Lettie's brother. I thought maybe she was with you."
"You haven't seen her?"
"Not in a while. I thought maybe she went to visit her brother. She said she had a brother in Seattle. She said he might be down soon to visit. I figured maybe her brother came to get her, why her car is here. She didn't like to drive anyhow."
"Have you seen her niece lately?"
The old woman snorted. "That little troublemaker? No, but she's not here most of the time anyway. Hardly at all in the last year or so. Before that, she was always running around with the bad kids—some of them not even kids. Twentysomething boys way too old for her. The only time they was here was when they was sitting on the front smoking and drinking beer and playing their music. Lettie just gave up on her. I used to complain all the time to the manager, but nothing happens."
"I've met the manager. That's not surprising."
"Eh?"
"When's the last time you think you saw either of them?"
The old woman scratched her chin. "Well, I don't know. I think I may have seen the girl a week ago. Yeah, I think it was last weekend. That's right! I was thinking about what to wear to church on Sunday, so it must have been Friday or Saturday. I only think about what I'm going to wear to church either Friday or Saturday. Heard a car engine running. It was late, and she came in the house to get something. I saw her through the kitchen window. I was up getting some water. I've had a dry throat a lot lately and sometimes—"
"Was she with somebody?" Gage asked.
"What's that?"
"You said she left real quick. The Bronco is still here, and you said there was a car. What kind of car was it? Who was in it?"
"Well, I don't know. It was dark."
"Was it just her?"
"Might have been. The car was left running, though. The headlights were pointed this way, so all I could see was a shape of a person. The glass was all fogged up too."
"Was it a car or truck?"
"Car, I think. Little thing."
"Color?"
She shook her head.
"And you know for sure it was Brianna?"
"Well, of course it had to be. Who else?"
"But you saw her?"
"Well . . ."
"Did this person have to unlock the door?"
"Yes! That's right. They had a key. Yeah, I couldn't see her very well, the porch light was out 'cause Lettie never gets around to changing the bulbs, but I saw her fiddling with the key. So it had to be Brianna. Who else would have a key? Maybe her brother, but you ain't her brother so we ruled that out, and that leaves Brianna."
The old woman folded her arms smugly, as if she'd just made a deduction worthy of Hercule Poirot. Gage, awed by her astounding perspicacity, felt obligated to give her a moment to revel in her triumph. It also gave him the opportunity to mull over the other possibilities. He may have been a second-rate detective compared to the Dame Sleuth of Emerald Beach Village, but it was important for his development as a private investigator-in-training that he at least attempt to solve this on his own.
"Did you hear any yelling?" he asked.
"What's that?"
"Did you hear them fighting?"
"No."
"How about in the week before? Any big blow-ups?
"Naw. It was like I told you, Lettie pretty much gave up on her. They fought some when Brianna came to live with her . . . oh, five years ago or so. But after that first year? Nope. Didn't have the fight in her, I think. Plus she had diabetes and a bad ticker. It would probably downright kill her."
Gage turned back to the door. Something about this felt very wrong. With all the curtains drawn and the blinds down, there was no seeing inside. Anything could have happened in there. He tried the door handle. Locked. The handle rattled badly, though; there was so much give and looseness that it probably wouldn't take much to open it.
"Hey now," the old woman next door said. "What you doing there? You can't just go in. Who are you anyway?"
"At this moment," Gage said, "I'm a concerned citizen. Did it ever occur to you that Lettie Carmine might be in trouble?"
"What's that?"
"You said she had a bad ticker. Did you ever think that maybe she could have had a heart attack?"
"Well, I . . ."
"Did anyone around here bother to actually check on her welfare, or is the only job of a nosy neighbor to spread gossip?"
The old woman's face turned purple around the edges and along her neck, as if heavy make-up blocked the rest of the color. "Well, now! That's—that's not at all a nice thing to say. She has a niece. A brother. People who should be—"
"Do you have a key to her place?"
"What? Of course not! Why would I—"
"If you care about Lettie at all, here's what you should do right now. Go inside the house and call the police. Tell them you're concerned something's happened to your neighbor and she might not be able to help yourself. I'm going to try to get inside." He rattled the knob again.
"Hey!" the old woman cried. "You can't just do that."
"Then call the police!" Gage shouted at her.
The old woman flapped her lips, her eyes big and wide, her hair like a flame, but she didn't say anything. Only when Gage threw his shoulder against the door—the wood frame crackled but did not give—did the old woman snap out of her paralysis. She fled into the house. If nothing else, maybe Gage had given her another reason to call the police. All the better.
He tried again. More crackling, a bit of splintering, but the door held. His shoulder ached from the impact. Using his legs was always a dicey proposition, but the urgency of the moment demanded it. He leaned on his cane and used his good leg, his left, to kick in the door. This time the crackling turned into a shriek of wood. The door still didn't give way, but it was progress. He kicked again. More splintering. This time he felt like shrieking, not because of the impact of his left leg, but the extra weight it put on his right and the way he'd torqued his knee.
The third kick finally did it. The door banged open.
He saw threadbare brown carpet, a futon covered in white cat hair, and a big screen TV that was the nicest and most expensive thing in the living room. No people. He started to take a step inside when the stench hit him—a wall of foulness, a putrid odor, some mix of human waste and rotting meat. Gage knew the smell, and it filled him with dread. He doubted any active threat remained, but he pulled out his Beretta just the same.
He found her in the bedroom, past a compact kitchen overflowing with dirty dishes and a bathroom piled high with rumpled towels. A narrow beam of light from the gap in the closed curtains sliced across the middle of her prone body like a beacon from a lighthouse showing him the way. She took up most of the bed, and it was a big bed, a California king that left little space for anything else in the room. He flicked on the light. Her eyes were closed, her brown hair up in her curlers, her thick-fingered hands clasped on the gold bedspread. She was pale and double-chinned, with moles on her cheek and neck.
"Lettie?"
No answer. There was no doubt the smell was coming from her, but he checked her pulse just the same. Nothing. That's when he saw the empty vial of pills next to the bed, along with a half filled glass of water. There was a note under the vial, written on a yellow sticky note. It was short, written in sloppy cursive in blue ink:
I can't take it no more. Sorry to everyone for everything. L.
Behind him, the cat meowed.
Later, after the police had arrived and secured the scene, after the usual barrage of rude questions and barely veiled accusations by Brisbane and Trenton with red and blue lights strobing across all of them in fading dusk, after at least some of the rubberneckers in Emerald Beach Village had started to drift back to their homes, Chief Quinn finally joined Gage at the tailgate of the chief’s F-150. After Gage's impromptu interrogation had mercifully ended, and all the various law enforcement officials were at least temporarily satisfied that he had nothing to do with Lettie Carmine's death, Gage had been leaning against the dusty blue truck for at least an hour. The sun, vanishing behind the manufactured houses and mobile homes to the west, had disappeared long ago, though some hazy purple light still remained.
Quinn still wore the blue denim shirt rolled up to the elbows and the rumpled blue jeans Gage had seen him wearing yesterday, though he'd tossed his unbuttoned trench coat on top and also wore a felt cowboy hat tipped backward on his head. In the gloom, the shadows under his eyes looked as dark as black tape. He leaned against the truck next to Gage, rubbing his chin. He said nothing for a long time before finally sighing.
"So tell me one more time why you were here," he said.
"It won't be any different than the last three times," Gage said.
"Humor me."
"I'm looking for Brianna Hobart."
"Why?"
"I told you why."
"Humor me again."
"She's a person of interest in the murder of Harriet Abel."
"A suspect?"
"I didn't say that."
"So what does person of interest mean, then?"
"It means exactly what I said. She's of interest to me."
"But you won't tell me more?"
"I'd tell you more if I could. All I can say is what I already told you. She's a troubled kid that Harriet Abel took under her wing. She'd recently been expelled from school for drug possession. She's a logical person to talk to, wouldn't you say?"
Quinn sighed. "The problem is, I'm getting that feeling again that you're holding out on me."
"Like I said, I'd tell you more if I could."
"Right. Implying you know more, but you're holding back for some reason."
"What does the M.E. think?"
Quinn shook his head, looking at the activity over at the house. It was hard to see more than a glimpse of faces coming and going. They'd set up a perimeter of barricades and yellow police tape, though Gage didn't know why. The three police cruisers and the medical examiner’s white lab truck crowding around the tiny Carmine place created a pretty effective barrier.
"What the M.E. thinks," Quinn said finally, "is none of your business."
"It's not a suicide, though, is it?"
"Gage—"
"Here's an obvious question. Would a woman about to commit suicide put her hair in curlers?"
"I'm not doing this with you. If you're not going to cooperate with me, you shouldn't expect me to do you any favors."
"I called the police, didn't I?"
"The neighbor called the police."
"Because I told her to. See, that's me being cooperative. What else do you want me to do?"
"I want you to tell me where Brianna Hobart is."
"I would if I could."
"There you go again."
Quinn started to leave. Gage, realizing he could only carry his natural distrust of the police so far this time, held up his hand. Quinn stopped, crossed his arms, and glared at him.
"All right," Gage said, "but I'm serious about why I'm here. I really don't know much more. I just want to talk to her. You already talked to Ms. Nosy Neighbor over there, so you know as much as I know about what was happening here the past few weeks. But I do know that Brianna was in town as late as today. I saw her at the church."
Quinn raised his bushy eyebrows. "Which church?"
Gage told him about his experience at the Western Pacific Unitarian Church. He explained why he'd gone there, that it had been Harriet Abel's church and he'd been looking for any threads to follow, and how he'd run into Brianna Hobart in the parking lot as she was obviously debating about going inside before changing her mind and heading toward Arrow Outlet Mall. Did he send you looking for me? That brief conversation with her, across the gulf of the road, remained intensely vivid in Gage's mind, but he left that part out, saying only that she ran when he tried to talk to her.
When he was finished, Quinn still seemed skeptical, his eyebrows dropping so low Gage could only barely see his eyes.
"Why do you think she was at the church?"
"Maybe because Harriet Abel was special to her, and she knew they'd be talking about her."
"You don't believe that, do you?"
"No. I think she wanted to talk to someone."
"Who?"
"I don't know. The way she was looking at the church, though—nervous, very alert—I think she was hoping to see someone in particular."
"Did she go to the church?"
"Reverend Bard said no."
"Did you learn anything else while you were there?"
"I learned I still don't like churches."
"Uh huh. Anything useful?"
Gage hesitated. Quinn saw that he was hesitating, and that made it worse. Now Gage needed to give him something, a tiny morsel of a clue, at least, something to keep them on good terms. Over at the trailer, the big body of Lettie Carmine was being loaded into the white van on a gurney by the M.E., a couple of uniformed officers, and even Brisbane and Trenton, the weight of the woman such that it took all of them working in concert, and even then it appeared to be a struggle. The medical examiner—a big, broad-shouldered black guy named Gus who Gage knew had played briefly in the NFL as a linebacker before blowing out his knee—still looked like he could have hoisted her up himself, so the woman really must have been as heavy as a palette of bricks. Gus didn't ask for help often.
"You might want to look into Alice Zeitel," Gage said, coming out in a slow drawl, as if each word had been pulled out of him like a dentist yanking out a bad tooth with a pair of pliers. That's exactly what it had felt like to Gage, who alternated between telling Quinn about Zeitel and New Shore Rentals, Inc., and ultimately settled on Zeitel because it seemed the weaker of the two leads.
"Who?"
"She was the secretary at the high school until recently. Or administrative assistant—whatever the correct term is nowadays. And her granddaughter, Trina. Something's not quite right there. She was holding something back from me."
"Like what?"
"If I knew what, then I would have said, right?"
"But there has to be some reason you think she's suspicious."
"Just a gut feeling. Her granddaughter's homeschooled. She drives a brand new Highlander. She flinched when I mentioned Brianna Hobart. It was nothing specific and everything together."
"A hunch," Quin said.
"Sure, whatever."
"That's all you can give me, a hunch? About a nice little school secretary?"
"It's all I have. I planned to talk to Alice again, but now you can get there first if you want. Have at it. Now how about you? Any preliminary analysis from the crime scene? We both know that woman didn't commit suicide."
The metallic clank of the van's back doors being slammed drew their attention. On his way to the driver side door, Gus gave them a friendly wave. They both waved back. Brisbane and Trenton glared at Gage. For fun, Gage waved at them too. Quinn took off his hat and turned it around in his hands, studying the felt as if looking for something and not finding it.
"It's all preliminary," Quinn said.
"But . . . ?"
"But, yes, it doesn't look like a suicide. It looks like she was asphyxiated—probably with a pillow."
"Murder."
"Yes."
"But we both know that Brianna Hobart didn't do this."
"We absolutely don't know that, Gage. It was just the kind of clumsy murder that somebody who'd watched too much CSI would try to pull off. So unless you can give me hard proof pointing to somebody else, she's going to be prime suspect number one."
Gage fell quiet. Something about what Quinn had just said—the kind of clumsy murder—made him think of Thomas Ridley. If he was a fixer or a contract killer, he certainly could have made Carmine's death look like a suicide if he'd wanted, so he never would have been so clumsy . . . unless that was all on purpose. The clumsy part of it might have been by design. He wanted it obvious that it was a murder, but not too obvious. Why? To point the finger at Brianna Hobart, that was why. It was the most logical reason, but Gage didn't know what the motive was. To flush her out? To send a message? To discredit anything she might say about some other secret, maybe involving Harriet Abel, maybe about something altogether?
Perhaps, Gage thought, he was taking these suppositions way too far. "How long was she dead?"
"A week. Ten days. Gus said he'll know more when he does a full autopsy."
Gage thought about Ridley's rental car. It had been rented Saturday, so once again that seemed to rule him out. One thing was for certain: Whatever was happening here, whatever had gotten Harriet Abel killed, Brianna Hobart was right in the middle of it. Gage couldn't rule out that Brianna might have killed both her aunt and Harriet, but he still didn't think she'd killed either. It just didn't make sense.
"What?" Quinn said.
"Huh?"
"You got a look on your face."
"I do?"
"Yeah. Like you’re holding out on me again."
"Just mulling."
"Mulling."
"Yeah, thinking things over."
"I know what mulling means. And what does all your mulling amount to?"
Gage shrugged. "Only that there's something much bigger going on here than two random murders, but I haven't the foggiest notion what it is."
"Oh, I think you have some notion."
"Nope."
"The great detective? Come on."
"Not this time, Chief. Scout's honor."
"Uh huh. Were you ever in the Boy Scouts?"
"Are you kidding? My issues with authority figures started when my father took my first rattle away."
"Right."
"I'm serious. He told me I kept trying to knock the cookie jar down with it, but I still never forgave him. I really loved that rattle."
Quinn pursed his lips. The white medical examiner's van drove away, on its way around the circle to the exit. One of the cops fixed yellow police tape across the front door. Another climbed into his police cruiser. Brisbane and Trenton headed toward Quinn, both warily, shooting furtive glances at Gage. In the fading light, their faces were masked in shadows. Gage had no desire to verbally spar with the Odd Couple tonight.
"Well," he said, heading toward his van, "Jeopardy! is on at seven, so I better get going."
"Hey, Gage. One thing."
"Yeah?" He'd only gone a few steps, and he stopped, looking back at the chief. "I really can't tell you anything else right now. I would if I could."
"Yeah, whatever. It's not that. Somebody . . . saw you and Ava walking into Ester Anne's yesterday."
"Is that so?"
"It is."
Gage detected no anger in Quinn's voice. He sounded perfunctory, almost formal. He studied the man's face carefully, what he could see in the dusk, the drooping eyebrows hiding the eyes, the deeply cut grooves along his cheekbones, the weight-of-the-world weariness pulling at his face, but all he saw was a somber resignation. Gage didn't know what to make of it. Rage he could understand. This? It baffled him. In any case, there was no point being evasive.
"Well," Gage said, "somebody saw correctly. I was doing some research at the library and she was very helpful."
"And you invited her to lunch."
"Actually, it was the other way around."
"Uh huh. Well, that figures."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means she's always been drawn to older, troubled men."
"Hey now, I'll cop to the troubled, but older? I'm not that much older than her."
"Old enough. Look, I'm glad she's got this job. Maybe she's on a new path. I hope so. She had a rough go after her mother and I got divorced. She was quite a wild child. Might surprise you, her being such a bookworm, but I could barely keep her in the house when we moved to Barnacle Bluffs. I'm pretty sure she was letting guys pick her up at the local bar, too. And she and Ginger—" He shook his head. "They fought like you wouldn't believe. And I wasn't—wasn't there for her like I should have been. That's why I'm glad she's in town now. Before Ginger got hurt, we'd started to build something. Not much. Just a lunch now and then. She's still wild, I think. Seems strong and composed, always has, but there's something wild underneath. I'm just saying, be careful."
It was more than Quinn had ever revealed to Gage about his private life, and judging by the pained expression he wore, it took a lot out of him to do it.
"Or what?" Gage said. "You'll come after me with your shotgun?" He chuckled, yet he paid close attention to Quinn's hands. Were they moving toward his holster? He thought he saw a twitch. "Look, it was just lunch. I figured she could use a friend, that's all. Trust me, you don't have anything to worry about."
It was more than Gage had wanted to say, and he felt irritated that he'd felt compelled to say it. What did it matter if he wanted to date Quinn's daughter? She was an adult. She could do as she pleased, and she was the one instigating things, not him. He doubted it would lead to anything significant—these things often didn't even when the woman wasn't related to the city's police chief—but there were certainly worse people in the world Quinn's daughter could date.
Quinn regarded him silently for a time, the darkness banding across his eyes like a blindfold. Brisbane and Trenton, who'd taken their time approaching, finally reached them, and Quinn rose from the side of the truck himself. When he spoke next, he was already turning away, walking toward his detectives.
"It's not me you have to worry about," he said. "Did she tell you what she did to that actor boyfriend's car after she found out he was cheating on her? She set the damn thing on fire."