Bad Things Happen Page 25

He expected protest—the familiar admonition to turn himself in. But he heard her laugh softly, and then she added two words: “Be careful.”

  Chapter 32

  A bright yellow leaf broke free of a high branch and drifted down, spinning slowly through the autumn air. David Loogan followed its descent and at the last moment reached out and caught it on his palm. From his vantage point at the edge of the woods, he could see the Kristoll house: the lines of the slate roof, the broad windows, the path of crushed stone that led to the front door. He had watched the four guests arrive. Nathan Hideaway first, then Casimir Hifflyn and Bridget Shellcross in Hifflyn’s Lexus. Sandy Vogel had shown up last, and had parked her minivan away from the other vehicles. Laura Kristoll had come to the door to greet each of her guests.

  Loogan held the stem of the yellow leaf between his finger and thumb and spun it slowly. His car was parked on the side of an unpaved road about a mile away. He had left it there and had hiked up the side of a hill and through the woods. After a while he broke onto a path that he remembered—

  he and Tom had used it once to walk down to the river. He followed it up to the Kristolls’ backyard, then skirted around to the front. He had been waiting for more than two hours now. He wasn’t sure how long they would be. A leisurely brunch, he thought, and then a discussion of Gray Streets business. He spun the leaf side to side and let it go and watched it drift to the ground. Yawning, he stood on his toes and stretched his arms over his head.

  He had not slept well at the bed-and-breakfast in Okemos. His dreams had been troubled. In one of them, he had stood shoulder deep in Sean Wrentmore’s grave, holding Wrentmore’s pistol up to the moonlight. Now he leaned his back against the trunk of a birch and watched as the b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  front door of the Kristoll house opened. He had assumed and hoped that Sandy Vogel would be the first to depart. She was the outsider, the employee. The other four were old friends. He was right. Sandy came out; Laura waved her good-bye and went back in. Sandy, in her navy blue coat, walked down the crushed-stone path and got into her minivan.

  Loogan watched her drive away and then crossed quickly to the front door of the house. The knob turned and he slipped inside, through the entry hall, into the living room. He heard voices from the back of the house. He made his way past Tom’s study—empty. A right turn at the stairs and there was the dining room. Casimir Hifflyn was coming through the doorway. He saw Loogan and stopped short. Loogan put on a friendly smile. “You’re not leaving, are you, Cass?” he said. “You can’t leave. I just got here.”

  The curtains in the dining room had been drawn back, and the windows were panes of glass over canvases of autumn leaves, dots and strokes of orange and yellow and red. The plates from brunch had been cleared away to a sideboard, and the main table held a smattering of papers and copies of the latest issue of Gray Streets.

  “Don’t get up,” Loogan said, but they were already rising. Laura rushed forward to embrace him. He felt her fingers on the bare skin of his scalp.

  “David, are you all right?” she whispered. Nathan Hideaway clapped him on the shoulder. “The remarkable Mr. Loogan,” he said.

  “We’ve been discussing you,” said Hifflyn. “Where’s David Loogan? we’ve been asking ourselves. And how will we find someone to replace him?”

  “Don’t tell him that,” said Bridget Shellcross. “He’s back now. We won’t need to replace him.” She stood on tiptoe to peck him on the cheek. “We’ve mostly been talking about how ridiculous it is—that anyone could think you stabbed Michael Beccanti.”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous,” said Laura.

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  “But now you’re back,” said Bridget. “I hope that means you’ve been cleared.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, it’s a lot of nonsense,” Hideaway said. “We need to get you a lawyer, someone who knows how to handle the police.”

  “Nate’s right,” said Hifflyn. “Laura, why don’t you get Rex Chatterjee on the phone?”

  “I didn’t come here for a lawyer,” Loogan said. “Why don’t we all sit down.”

  Laura slipped her hand into his. “David, I’d be happy to call him.”

  “I don’t have much time,” Loogan said. “My car’s parked not that far away. If the police see it, they’ll be able to guess where I am. But there’s something—”

  Hideaway interrupted him. “That’s more nonsense: having to skulk around like a criminal.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Loogan continued. “It’s the only reason I came here. To warn you.”

  He drew a wooden chair out from the table and settled into it. The rest of them followed suit, returning to their places.

  “To warn us about what?” asked Casimir Hifflyn. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about what’s been going on in plain sight for the past two weeks. Tom, and Adrian Tully, and Michael Beccanti. Someone is murdering people associated with Gray Streets. ”

  Loogan spoke the words to the tabletop, then looked up to see Laura’s blue eyes regarding him intently.

  “And I don’t think it’s over yet,” he said. “All of us are at risk.” He let his gaze shift to each of the others. “The police are on the wrong track. They’re focusing on Sean Wrentmore. I thought he was part of it too, at first. But I’ve come to realize I was wrong. Wrentmore was an isolated case. Adrian Tully killed him, and Tom covered it up. But Wrentmore’s death has nothing to do with the other three: Tom’s and Tully’s and Beccanti’s. Those b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  three were all killed by the same person, and it’s somebody no one suspects.”

  Hideaway spoke up. “Are you saying you know who killed them?”

  “Yes,” Loogan said. “I figured it out yesterday.”

  He let the words hover in the air. Waited for someone to ask the obvious question.

  Laura obliged him. “Who?”

  Loogan turned to her. “It’s someone you just ate brunch with,” he said. Hiffl yn’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “That’s in poor taste, Mr. Loogan—suggesting that one of us is a murderer.”

  “No,” said Loogan, waving the idea away. “It’s not one of you. It’s Sandy Vogel.”

  Chapter 33

  Look s were exchanged around the table. Heads wagged from side to side. Indulgent smiles appeared. Hifflyn seemed about to speak, but Bridget Shellcross cut him off.

  “You can’t really expect us to believe that Sandy Vogel is a serial killer.”

  “I know how it sounds,” Loogan said.

  “Sandy is the mother of two teenagers,” Hiffl yn observed.

  “On the night Tom died,” said Loogan seriously, “he and Sandy Vogel were alone in the office together. As far as anyone knows, she was the last person to see Tom alive.”

  Laura frowned. “She left at five o’clock. It was after seven when Tom died.”

  “She says she left at five. I’m not sure the police even bothered to check her alibi.” Loogan shrugged the issue away. “And consider Adrian Tully. Someone convinced him to drive out to a cornfield late at night. Sandy Vogel is a good-looking woman. I don’t think she would have had any trouble luring him to a secluded spot.”

  “That’s awfully thin,” said Nathan Hideaway. “Just because she could have lured him out there, that doesn’t mean she did.”

  Loogan continued as though Hideaway hadn’t spoken. “And then there’s Michael Beccanti. He’s the clincher. Because Sandy had a motive to kill Michael Beccanti. It’s one of the oldest motives there is. They were lovers, and he left her for another woman.

  “I admit I’m speculating about Tom and about Tully,” he said. “But Sandy’s affair with Beccanti is a fact. I went to the Gray Streets office last b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  night and I got onto Sandy’s computer. The evidence is there. To
m told me the story once of how he met Beccanti. Beccanti was in prison, and he sent a fan letter to the magazine, and later he submitted stories. Sandy handled Tom’s correspondence. And at some point she struck up a relationship with Beccanti. It’s all there on her computer: the letters she wrote to him while he was in prison, then the e-mails they exchanged after he got out.”

  Loogan looked around the table—at Hideaway on his left, Laura across from him, Bridget and Hifflyn on his right. He had their attention. Casually he reached into the pocket of his leather coat. His canister of pepper spray was there, and Sean Wrentmore’s flashdrive. He would need them in a moment.

  “The relationship turned physical after Beccanti got out,” he said.

  “That’s clear from the e-mails. But gradually it went sour. Sandy began to suspect that Beccanti was seeing other women. He denied it at first, but she kept after him. Finally he confessed. He was seeing a woman named Karen, and it was serious. He broke things off with Sandy.”

  Loogan brought his hand out of his coat pocket and rested it on the tabletop—the flashdrive and the pepper spray beneath his cupped palm.

  “She took it hard,” he said. “She was especially angry when she found out that Karen was a much younger woman—and that Beccanti had gotten her pregnant. Sandy felt betrayed. She wrote him a long note about that. The language was telling. ‘You wounded me,’ she said. ‘You might as well have stabbed me with a knife.’ ”

  Bridget Shellcross shot him a skeptical look. “And that’s your proof ? That’s why you think she stabbed him?”

  “If anyone has a better explanation, I’m eager to hear it.”

  “Come now, Mr. Loogan,” said Hideaway. “Sandy’s not exactly a trained assassin. She’s a secretary.”

  “She’s a secretary now,” Loogan acknowledged. “Who knows what she might have been before? A Navy SEAL, or a Hollywood stuntwoman. What do any of us really know about her past?”

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  Hifflyn sat back in his chair with his arms crossed. “Even if she had a motive for killing Beccanti,” he said, “why would she kill Tom, or Adrian Tully?”

  “That’s the ingenious part,” Loogan said. “I think she planned this very carefully. She had been discreet about her affair with Beccanti. But she couldn’t be sure who Beccanti might have told. Someone might be able to connect them. If he turned up dead, she might be a suspect. So she found a way to disguise his murder—to make it look like part of a series.”

  Loogan reached for a saltshaker and stood it on the table in front of him. He stood the flashdrive beside it, and then the canister of pepper spray. He pointed to each item in turn. “Tom was first,” he said. “Then Tully. She had no motive to kill either of them, and no one suspected her. Then it was safe to go after her real target—Beccanti. No one would suspect her of that either.”

  He paused and looked at the pepper spray as if noticing it for the first time. He picked it up and a sheepish grin passed across his face.

  “I brought this along in case one of you decided you had a duty to call the police and turn me in. But you’re such a well-mannered bunch. I should have known I wouldn’t need it.”

  He slipped the canister back into his coat pocket. Then he picked up the fl ashdrive.

  “This is something Beccanti found in Sean Wrentmore’s condo. I still don’t know what’s on it—it’s password protected. Doesn’t matter. It’s a red herring.” The drive went into his pocket. “Like I said, Wrentmore’s death has nothing to do with the other three.”

  Laura stared at him from across the table. “David, do you really expect us to believe this—this wild theory of yours?”

  He looked off at the autumn colors beyond the windows. “I’ve done what I came for: I’ve warned you,” he said. “You can believe what you like. But if you think the killing is over, maybe you should think twice. If Sandy Vogel committed a series of murders in order to disguise her murder of Michael Beccanti, then who’s to say she’s finished?”

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  He pushed his chair back slowly and stood. “I’m not worried about myself. I’m going to walk out of here, and that’ll be the end of it for me. I’ve been staying in a place where no one’s thought to look yet, and tomorrow I’ll be gone. But the rest of you are vulnerable. She knows where to find you.”

  He took a last look around the table. None of them had risen with him.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said. “But if I’m not, one of you may be next.”

  When Elizabeth dropped by the squad room on Saturday afternoon, she found Sean Wrentmore’s mail in an orderly pile on her desk. At the top of the pile was a cryptic note from Alice Marrowicz: Looking into Wrentmore— Art Studio.

  She tossed her coat onto a filing cabinet and sat down. Beside Wrentmore’s mail she found a copy of a report that Shan had written up for the file on David Loogan. It told her something she already knew: Loogan’s cell phone company had traced his Friday-night call to an area south of Lansing. Loogan had left the phone turned on when he ended the call, and after a long search the Lansing police had recovered it from a movie-theater parking lot. They’d been unsuccessful in locating Loogan himself. Beneath Shan’s report, she found a note from Harvey Mitchum, telling her that the sneaker from the Nichols Arboretum wasn’t likely to lead anywhere. Mitchum had left it at the county lab for testing, and the technician he had spoken with thought the stain looked more like motor oil than blood.

  As she was reading Mitchum’s note, Alice Marrowicz came in. She seemed reluctant to approach until Elizabeth waved her over.

  “Alice. Sit down. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  Alice slipped into Shan’s chair. “I’ve done some investigating. Maybe I shouldn’t have. You only asked me to look at Sean Wrentmore’s mail.”

  “It’s all right,” said Elizabeth. “What did you find?”

  “A charge on his MasterCard bill—from the Art Studio. You may have missed it.”

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  “No, I remember that. I assumed he bought something to hang on his wall. He had a fondness for arty black-and-white photographs.”

  “The Art Studio is a tattoo parlor on Cross Street in Ypsilanti.”

  Ypsilanti bordered Ann Arbor on the east—the city’s rougher cousin. Elizabeth felt mild surprise at the thought that Alice was familiar with tattoo parlors there. Then she considered the woman’s penchant for long sleeves and sweaters and high-necked dresses, and realized how little she knew about what might lie underneath.

  She put the thought aside. “Wrentmore had a tattoo on his wrist,” she said. “A series of interlocking rings.”

  “He had another one besides,” said Alice. “He got it in September. I called the Art Studio last night, but the guy I talked to wasn’t the one who worked on Wrentmore. And they’re not big on record-keeping, so he couldn’t tell me anything. I tried again today, and Wrentmore’s artist was there, but he was reluctant to answer questions on the phone.

  “Tattoo artists are like shrinks, I guess. They believe in confi dentiality. Only they’re not so strict about it, because when I drove out there he agreed to talk to me. I guess I look like a trustworthy person.”

  “What did he tell you?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Sean Wrentmore got a freehand. That means a unique design, not some standard thing you pick off the wall. It was two words in black ink, on his left arm just below the shoulder. But the words were reversed, so you could read them in a mirror. That made it tricky, having to write backwards.”

  “I imagine it did,” said Elizabeth. “Were the two words ‘Adrian Tully’?”

  Alice looked momentarily confused. “No. Why would you say that?”

  “Because that’s supposed to be who killed him. It would be clever if he had the name of his killer tattooed on his arm.”

  Alice considered the idea solemnly. “No, it wasn’t that,” she s
aid, and then went quiet, seemingly lost in thought. As the silence drew itself out, Elizabeth had to smile.

  “What were the words, Alice?”

  Chapter 34

  The headstone of Tom Kristoll’s grave was a slab of granite, rough-hewn at the edges. But its face had been polished smooth and his name and dates engraved there. A clutch of roses lay before it on the grass, their petals dark and withered. And on a lip of granite at the base of the stone was another offering: a small bottle of Glenfiddich Scotch. David Loogan’s work, Elizabeth thought.

  The late-afternoon sun sent the headstone’s shadow long across the grass. Elizabeth looked up and saw Carter Shan lingering a dozen yards away, studying an inscription above the door of a mausoleum. She saw a pair of cars winding their way along the cemetery road and watched their progress until they reached the spot where she had left her car. Rex Chatterjee was the first to emerge. He took up a position at the edge of the road and folded his arms, and a breeze mussed his thick gray hair. Casimir Hifflyn got out of the second car, stopped for a few words with Chatterjee, and then began to make his way across the grass. He wore a suit of black wool and the wind caught the open front of his jacket. He wore a pale gray shirt underneath with no tie.

  He grinned shyly as he got close, and bowed his head, but when he stood before Elizabeth he met her eyes. “Hello, Detective.”

  “Mr. Hifflyn. Thanks for coming.” She looked past him at Chatterjee.

  “Your lawyer can come closer, if you want him. You don’t have to leave him way over there.”

  “He’d rather I didn’t talk to you at all, but we worked out an agreement. If it gets to the point where you read me my rights, I have to call him over here.”

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  “Then I’ll try not to read you your rights,” Elizabeth said.

  “This is better. Talking one-on-one. It’s more dramatic.” Hiffl yn looked down at the roses on the ground. “You must have a sense of drama, or you wouldn’t have asked me to meet you at a cemetery—at the site of my friend’s grave, no less—without explaining why.”

  He looked up again and his smile made crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. “Well, now I’m here. What will we talk about?”