breaths.
And got back to it.
I went into Sheila’s phone’s call history. Arthur Twain said Sheila had called this guy Sommer the day of her accident, just after one.
I found a number in the history of outgoing calls. There it was, at 1:02 p.m. A New York area code.
I snatched up the receiver from my desk phone and dialed it. There was half a ring, and then a recording telling me the number was no longer in service. I hung up. Arthur Twain had said Sommer was no longer using that phone.
I got out a pen and a piece of paper and started writing down all the other numbers Sheila had called the day of, and the days leading up to, her accident. There were five calls to my cell, three to my office, three to the house. I recognized Belinda’s number. There was the Darien number I knew to be Fiona’s place, and another one I recognized as Fiona’s cell.
Then, as an afterthought, I checked the list of incoming calls on Sheila’s phone. There were the ones I would have expected. Nine from me-from the home phone, work phone, and cell. Calls from Fiona. Belinda.
And seventeen from a number I did not recognize. Not the number I believed belonged to Sommer. Not a New York number. All the calls from that number were listed as “missed.” Which meant Sheila either didn’t hear the ring, or chose not to answer.
I wrote down that number, too.
She’d been called by that number once on the day she died, twice the day before, and at least twice a day, every day, in the seven days leading up to her death.
I had to know.
Again, I dialed out from the house phone. It rang three times before going to voicemail.
“Hi, you’ve reached Allan Butterfield. Leave a message.”
Allan who? Sheila didn’t know anyone named-
Wait. Allan Butterfield. Sheila’s accounting teacher. Why would he have been calling her so frequently? And why would she have been refusing to take his calls?
I tossed the phone onto the desk, wondering what else there was to do. So many questions, so few answers.
I kept looking at the pills. Where would Sheila have gotten prescription drugs? How would she have paid for them? What was she planning to do with-
The money.
The money I socked away.
The only people who knew about the cash I had hidden in the wall were Sheila and myself. Had she gone into that? Had she used that money to buy these drugs with the idea of reselling them?
I opened my desk drawer and grabbed a letter opener. Then I went around the desk to the opposite corner of the room. I worked the opener into a seam in the wood paneling, and in a couple of seconds had a rectangular opening seventeen inches wide and a foot tall and about three inches deep.
I could tell, very quickly, whether the money stored between the studs was all there. I kept it in $500 bundles. I quickly counted, and found thirty-four of them.
The money I’d saved from years of under-the-table jobs was all there.
And so was something else.
A brown business envelope. It was tucked in behind the cash. I pulled it out, felt how thickly it was stuffed.
In the upper left corner, some writing: From Belinda Morton. And then, scribbled under that, a phone number.
I recognized it right away. I’d only seen it a couple of minutes ago.
It was the number Sheila had dialed at 1:02 p.m. the day she died. The number Arthur Twain said belonged to Madden Sommer.
The envelope was sealed. I worked the letter opener under the flap and made a nice clean cut, then stepped over to my desk and dumped out the contents.
Cash. Lots and lots of cash.
Thousands of dollars in cash.
“Holy Mother of God,” I said.
Then I heard the shot.
A shattering of glass.
Kelly screaming.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I was up the two flights of stairs in less than ten seconds.
“Kelly!” I shouted. “Kelly!”
Her door was still closed and I threw it open so fast I nearly pulled it off its hinges. I could hear Kelly screaming, but I didn’t see her. What I did see was shattered glass scattered across the floor and Kelly’s bed. The window that faced the street was a jagged nightmare.
“Kelly!”
I heard muffled crying and bolted for her closet door. I swung it wide and found her huddled in there atop a pile of shoes.
She leapt up and flung her arms around me.
“Are you okay? Honey? Are you okay? Talk to me!”
She pressed her head against my chest and sobbed, “Daddy! Daddy!” I was holding her so tightly I was afraid I’d break her.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you. Are you hurt? Did you get hit? By glass or anything?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “It scared me!”
“I know, I know. Honey, I have to see if you’re okay.”
She sniffed and nodded and allowed me to hold her a foot away. I was looking for blood and didn’t see any.
“You weren’t hit by the glass?”
“I was sitting there,” she said, pointing to the computer. Her desk was up against the same wall as the window, which meant that all the glass came in beside and behind her.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I was just sitting there, and I heard a car going really fast and then there was a big bang and all the glass came in and so I ran into the closet.”
“That was smart,” I said. “Hiding like that. That was good.” I pulled her into my arms again.
“What did it?” she asked. “Did somebody shoot at the house? Is that what happened?”
There were other people who’d help us get the answers to those questions.
“Well,” said Rona Wedmore. “We meet again.”
She arrived soon after several Milford police cars showed up. The street was closed off and there was yellow police tape cordoning off our property.
“Small world,” I said.
Wedmore spent several minutes talking just to Kelly. Then she wanted to talk to me privately. When Kelly looked frightened at the thought of being separated from me, Wedmore called over one of the uniformed officers, a woman, and asked Kelly if she’d like to see what the inside of a police car was like. My daughter allowed the woman to lead her away only after I promised her it would be okay.
“She’ll be fine,” Wedmore assured me.
“Really?” I said. “Detective, someone just tried to kill my daughter.”
“Mr. Garber, I know you’re very upset right now, which, if you weren’t, I’d think there was something wrong with you. But let’s take this a step at a time, and sort out what we know and what we don’t know. What we know
