“Maybe. I mean, maybe instead of going for a drink, they were just going to take a walk.”
“But if that’s where they’d planned to meet, Belinda wouldn’t have called you to ask where she was,” Wedmore pointed out. “She’d have called to say she’d found her car, but that Ann wasn’t anywhere around.”
“Yeah, yeah, that makes sense,” Darren agreed.
“So that brings me back to my question. What would Ann have been doing down at the harbor? Is it possible she was going to meet someone else before she was going to meet up with Belinda?”
“I… I can’t think of anyone.” Darren Slocum was crying again. “Rona, look, I don’t think I can do any more… I’ve, I’ve got a lot to do…”
She looked out her windshield at Darren’s pickup, noticed the For Sale sign in the window. Looking out, from between the living room drapes, was Emily.
“This must be a terrible thing for your daughter,” Detective Wedmore said.
“Ann’s sister, she lives in New Haven, came over around five in the morning,” he said. “She’s helping pull things together.”
Wedmore reached out and patted Slocum on the arm. “You know we’re going to do everything we can.”
Slocum looked at her with bloodshot eyes. “I know. I know you are.”
He watched Wedmore drive away and once she had turned the corner he got out his cell and punched in a number.
“Hello?”
“Belinda?”
“Oh my God, Darren, I still can’t-”
“Just listen to me. You have — ”
“I’m going out of my mind,” she said breathlessly. “First, that man comes to see me, threatens me, and then you call at four in the morning and tell me Ann-”
“Would you just shut the fuck up for a second?” When there was silence at the other end, Darren continued. “Rona Wedmore is coming to see you.”
“Rona who?”
“She’s a Milford police detective. I know her. She’s coming to see you because she knows you and Ann were talking, that you and she were going to meet up.”
“But-”
“You tell her it was just girl talk. Maybe, I don’t know, you had a fight with George or something and needed to talk. Nothing about the business, or that guy who visited you.”
“But, Darren, what if he killed her? We can’t just-”
“He didn’t kill her,” Darren said. “It was some kind of accident. She fell into the water and hit her head or something. But listen to me, you don’t talk about the other things. Not one word. Are we clear?”
“Yes, yes, okay. I got it.”
“And tell me again what Glen said when you talked to him last night.”
“He said… he said the car didn’t burn up. Sheila’s purse, it wasn’t lost in the fire. And he said there was no envelope in it.”
“He actually said that?”
“That’s right,” Belinda said, her voice breaking.
Darren thought about that. “So there’s a chance the money’s still around somewhere.” He paused. “Or maybe Glen’s already found it.”
THIRTEEN
Kelly’s cell phone was sitting next to her mouse. She tapped a few commands into it, then handed it to me. “I paused it,” she told me. The image on the small screen was narrow and vertical, like a mail slot flipped sideways. In the sliver of image, I could make out a bedroom, a bed in the foreground.
“Why does it look like this?” I asked.
“The closet door was only open, like, a crack,” Kelly said.
“Right, okay. So how do I make it go?”
“Just press-here, let me do it.”
She thumbed something, and the image began to move. Kelly’s hand must have been shaking slightly as she filmed, for the sliver of light moved side to side, the bed shifted up and down.
Beyond the bed, a door opened.
“This is when Emily’s mom came in,” Kelly said. “Okay, now she’s sitting on the bed.”
The woman was probably no more than four feet from the closet door. She reached for something just out of camera range, and now she had a cordless phone in her hand. She entered a number and put the phone to her ear.
The sound quality was poor. “Hey,” Ann Slocum said. “Can you talk? Yeah, I’m alone.”
“Can you make this any louder?” I asked Kelly.
She frowned. “Not really.”
“… your wrists are okay,” Ann said. “Yeah, wear long sleeves until the marks go away.”
“See?” Kelly said. “She’s not sick. She’s not coughing or anything.”
“… about next time… can do Wednesday, maybe-”
“This is when she got the other call,” Kelly said.
“Shh.”
“… okay, later-Hello?”
“Right here.”
“Kelly, quiet.”
“Right here, she kind of looks over and-”
“Shh!”
“-us… down for a new deal if you’ve got something else to offer.” At this point, Ann glanced in the direction of the closet.
And then the image disappeared.
“What happened?” I asked.
“That’s when I put my phone down. When she looked over at me. I got scared.”
“Was that when she stopped talking?”
“No, she hadn’t actually seen me yet. She talked a little more. About the other stuff I told you. Where she got real mad and everything.”
I handed the phone back to her. “Can you download that into your computer?” She nodded. “And then can you email it to me? As a file or something?” Another nod. “Do that.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“Why do you want me to send you the video?”
“I just… I might want to look at it again later.”
From downstairs, Fiona shouted, “Is everything okay?”
“Just a minute!” I shouted back.
Kelly bit her lip and asked, “So what should I do about Grandma and Marcus?”
“What do you want to do?”
She hesitated. “If I can’t do anything about Emily, I guess I could go out with them for a while. But if I did, could you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” I said. “What?”
“Could you find out what happened to Emily’s mom?”
I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get involved in that, but I promised, “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“What’s happened?” Fiona demanded when I returned downstairs.
I told the two of them what little I knew. That Kelly’s friend’s mother had died, but I didn’t know under what
