“When’s the last time you saw Stefanie?” I asked, ignoring his weeping.
“What? Uh, yesterday. At her house.”
“Over on Rambling Rose?”
“Yes. It’s not actually her house, it’s one owned by Greenway’s company, they built a lot of the homes in that area a few years ago, but she lives there.”
“Is that where you’d have your… encounters?”
Carpington nodded.
“There’s a mirror on the ceiling,” I said. “In the bedroom.”
Carpington looked as though he was getting jealous. “So you’ve been with her, too.”
“No, can’t say that I have, but I’m guessing that’s how they got these pictures of the two of you. The camera was mounted behind two-way glass, looking straight down. I guess Greenway or one of his people was up in the attic while you two went at it, fired off the shots he needed, waited until you were gone, and came back down. Left the film with Stefanie to get developed.”
Carpington fiddled vacantly with papers on his desk. “I’m finished. It’s all over for me.”
“Could be. But for the moment, as long as these prints and the negatives don’t land in the wrong hands, you’re still okay. So I’ve got a few more questions. You saw Stefanie yesterday, at her house. What did you talk about? How was she?”
“We didn’t talk about that much. We just, you know. But she did seem, I don’t know, different.”
“How do you mean, different?”
“On edge, distracted. She had something on her mind.”
“Did she say anything?”
“I don’t know. Why does it matter? Why don’t you just ask her yourself?”
“I’m asking you. What did she say?”
“She wanted to know how much it would cost to fly somewhere. The Bahamas, or Barbados, San Francisco. She was throwing out all these names of places. I asked her if she was going on a trip, and she said maybe. She said she might be going away.”
“Alone, or with someone else?”
“She, she didn’t say. It’s almost like she was talking about running away. Like she was scared. But I may have read that wrong. Maybe she’s just planning a vacation. Maybe she’s going away with her boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend? She has a boyfriend?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure that she does, but I have this sense that there’s someone else. Someone she’s seeing. Or has been seeing.”
“That must hurt,” I said, “the idea that she might be unfaithful to you and all.” I thought Carpington might shoot me a look, but he missed the irony and kept staring down at his desk.
“No, I know what we’ve got and what the limits are. I know she doesn’t like me. I know why she’s doing what she’s doing. I’m not stupid. I mean, look at me. What are the chances a girl like Stefanie Knight would be interested in a guy like me?”
Well, he had me there, but I decided not to say anything. But what I was thinking was, Could this guy have any more motives for wanting Stefanie Knight dead? She was clearly part of some blackmail scheme against him. Maybe she’d been threatening to tell his wife about what they’d been up to. And there was the jealousy angle. Carpington figured she was seeing somebody else.
I was starting to feel better already. I was moving down from the number one spot on the list of possible suspects. “Sure, Detective,” I could hear myself saying in an interrogation room, “I stole her purse, but you want an even better suspect? Check out
But all that aside, I didn’t think he was the one who’d struck Stefanie in the head with a shovel. He just didn’t seem to have it in him.
I said, “You think this boyfriend was Rick?”
“Rick?” Carpington, who I thought couldn’t look any worse, moved toward bilious. “Don’t even talk to me about him. He’s a total psychopath. He’s insane.”
“We’ve met. To be honest with you, I don’t care much for him, either. We didn’t hit it off very well.”
“Let me tell you what he did to me. He took me to this house they’d started building-this was back when he and Greenway and Mr. Benedetto first started talking to me about needing some help at the council level and at the planning committee-and all that was done was the basement, which they’d capped off with the beams and plywood for the first floor, and he took me down a ladder to show me-there were no stairs yet-how the first stages of construction are done. And I’m looking around, and I notice Rick’s gone, and so’s the ladder, and I’m trapped down there, in this wide-open basement with a layer of wood overtop, and then Rick drops this snake-and I’m not talking about some little snake or something-but this giant snake into the basement.”
“Quincy.”
“Yes! That was its name! And he starts slithering around, and I swear to God, I was never so scared in my life. I started screaming at Rick to let me up, to put the ladder back down, but he stood up there, looking down at me through this hole where the stairs would go, and he just laughed. I was running around the whole basement trying to stay ahead of this snake, and Rick’s asking me whether they can count on my support at the council, and telling me that when I say yes, he’ll put the ladder back and come down and deal with Quincy. He’s the biggest snake I’ve ever seen.”
“Who, Rick? Or Quincy?”
Carpington almost smiled. “Mr. Greenway apologized for him later. Said he wanted our relationship to be more cordial than that.”
“The question was, do you think Stefanie is seeing Rick?”
“I suppose it’s possible; they went out a long time ago. Rick still keeps in touch with her mother, that’s who looks after the snake, I think. But I don’t think Stef wants anything to do with him anymore. I think she’s scared of him.”
“What about Greenway? I mean, she’s working with him every day in the office.”
“Maybe.” Carpington thought. “Or maybe Mr. Benedetto. He usually gets what he wants.”
“Greenway’s boss? Is that who you’re talking about?”
“That’s right. He’s the one who bought the land for the development. But he turns things over to Greenway, to get the actual subdivision going.” Carpington took another look at the photo, pressed his lips together. “I can’t believe she’d be in on something like that. I thought she was better than the others, than the rest of that bunch at Valley Forest.”
“Yeah, you must be very disappointed. You hang out with a woman whose coworkers resort to blackmail and drop you into basements with snakes, it must be a shock to learn she might be less than upstanding.”
“I have to talk to her,” Carpington said. “I have to find out why she’d do this to me.” He grabbed the one print, folded it in half, and shoved it inside his suit jacket.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I have more. But I think you’re wasting your time.”
“What do you mean? Has she left? Did she actually go away? It was only yesterday that she was talking about this.”
“No,” I said. “Stefanie’s dead.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but there were no words. He got up suddenly, shoved his way past me to get to the hallway. By the time I was out of my chair and had my head out the door, I could see him running down the hall for the doors to the parking lot.
WHEN I GOT TO THE DOOR, I spotted Carpington getting into a dark blue or black Cadillac. I ran to my Civic, got in, and debated my next move. I’d rattled Carpington’s cage, to be sure, and it seemed worth knowing what he’d do next. I’d set something in motion by letting him know I knew about his affair with Stefanie, and by telling him she was dead, and I wanted to see where it went.
He didn’t immediately race out of the parking lot, as I’d expected. I could see him in the car, punching numbers into a cell phone, waiting for someone to answer, then talking rapidly, waving his one free arm around inside the car. He talked for two, maybe three minutes, then threw the phone down. The brake lights came on, the Cadillac was put into drive and squealed out of the lot.
The Caddy had a lot more pickup than the Civic, which wheezed in pursuit. There weren’t many cars on the
