Bad Things Happen Read online

  He turned around to face her. “Sandy Vogel,” he said. “Don’t laugh. Hear me out. Suppose Tom’s murder had nothing to do with Sean. Suppose Sandy killed Tom, and Adrian, and Beccanti too. Suppose she had a motive for killing Beccanti—they had an affair, and he threw her over for a younger woman. She killed the others to disguise the fact that Beccanti was her real target.”

  Elizabeth looked past Hifflyn at a far-off willow, at the branches swaying with the wind.

  “Did you come up with that just now?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “It sounds like something Tom might have printed in Gray Streets. ”

  “I think he did, more than once,” said Hifflyn. “It’s a variant of a standard scenario: covering up a murder by making it look like part of a random series.”

  “You don’t really think it’s plausible.”

  “It’s as plausible as the idea that I killed Tom because he wanted to tell the police about Sean. You’ve got as much hard evidence against Sandy Vogel as you have against me. None.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “You’ll have to do better than that, Mr. Hiffl yn. You’re not going to help yourself by making up stories about Sandy Vogel.”

  “I didn’t make it up,” he said, lifting the sleeve of his jacket to look at his watch. “Listen, where does this leave us? Am I under arrest?”

  “No.”

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  “In that case I need to go, much as I’d like to stay and convince you I didn’t kill Tom Kristoll.” He got out his keys. “My wife is back from her trip to Europe. She flew into New York last night, and she arrives in Detroit today. I need to pick her up.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I mention it in case you’ve decided I have to be followed. I don’t want to alarm you when I drive to the airport.”

  His tone was light, detached. His composure had returned to him—if it had ever really left.

  Elizabeth mimicked his detachment. “You’re not planning to flee the country then?”

  “I don’t think I’ll need to. And I’ve left my passport at home anyway.”

  He turned to walk back toward his car. She walked with him.

  “My wife is flying on Northwest,” he said casually. “Flight 1479, in case you’d care to check my story. I’d just as soon you didn’t follow me. But you’ll do as you like. I think your time might be better spent on other things.” He tossed his keys in the air and caught them. “You might look into that story about Sandy Vogel, for instance. I didn’t make it up. I heard it from David Loogan.”

  Chapter 35

  The three cars made a slow train rolling along the cemetery road: Rex Chatterjee in the lead, then Hifflyn, then Elizabeth and Shan. At the end of the road Chatterjee turned left, heading toward downtown. Hifflyn turned right. Shan followed him, tapping out a leisurely rhythm on the steering wheel. In the passenger seat, Elizabeth went over what Hifflyn had told her about Loogan’s visit to the Kristoll house earlier in the day. They got on the interstate with Hifflyn and drove east. Shan listened skeptically to the details of Loogan’s peculiar story about Sandy Vogel.

  “She and Beccanti were supposed to have had an affair?” Shan said.

  “According to Loogan,” said Elizabeth.

  “And he said he had proof—letters and e-mails from her office computer.”

  “Right.”

  “But Loogan didn’t show any letters,” Shan said. “If there really were letters, you’d think he would print out copies. To prove he was telling the truth.”

  “I don’t think there are any letters, Carter.”

  “No. So what’s Loogan up to?”

  “He’s trying to draw out Tom Kristoll’s killer,” Elizabeth said. “He goes to see Hifflyn and the others, thinking one of them could be the killer. He tells them a far-fetched story about Sandy Vogel. He doesn’t expect them to believe it.

  “But telling the story achieves a couple of purposes. In the first place, it reminds everyone that Loogan is still around. Michael Beccanti was stabbed 2 6 6 h a r r y

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  for getting too curious about Tom Kristoll’s death, but Loogan’s still kicking. And the details of the story aren’t accidental. Loogan tells them he’s been on Sandy Vogel’s computer. That’s his way of reminding them he still has access to the Gray Streets office, he has a key. And Hiffl yn remembered two other things Loogan said: He’s been staying someplace no one’s thought to look, and he intends to leave town tomorrow.”

  “He was putting the killer on notice,” Shan said.

  “Right. He was saying: If you want me, come get me at Gray Streets. And if you’re going to do it, do it tonight.”

  Shan’s fingers ceased their tapping on the wheel. “But it’s not going to work, is it? It would be foolish for the killer to show up there tonight. That’s just what Loogan wants.”

  “He’s counting on the killer to be overconfident. It doesn’t matter.” Elizabeth flipped open her cell phone and started to dial a number. “The killer may not show up. But I think Loogan will.”

  Two hours later, Elizabeth stood alone on the porch of Loogan’s rented house. Black stillness behind the windows. Both doors locked. His street was quiet.

  Twelve blocks away, Harvey Mitchum sat in a café across from the Gray Streets building. He had a clear view of the lobby doors. Kim Reyes was watching the service entrance in the back. Ron Wintergreen had gone up to Tom Kristoll’s office on the sixth floor. None of them had seen any sign of Loogan yet.

  Elizabeth and Shan had followed Casimir Hifflyn all the way to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. They had seen his wife, a slim woman with exotic, Mediterranean features, waiting with her bags in front of one of the terminals. They had watched him greet her, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around. Elizabeth thought about following the pair home. She considered sending a patrol car to watch Hifflyn’s house. But she wasn’t b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  sure what good it would do. As Rex Chatterjee would have reminded her, Hifflyn had the right to go wherever he wanted.

  She returned with Shan to City Hall, where arrangements for the Gray Streets surveillance were under way. She told Owen McCaleb she would like to join in, and he said she would have her chance.

  “Harvey, Kim, and Ron will handle it for now,” he told her, “but I don’t intend to make them stay there all night. If Loogan doesn’t put in an appearance by one a.m., there’ll be a second shift. You’re on it.” He glanced at Shan. “You too. I suggest you go home and rest up.”

  But Elizabeth had gone to Loogan’s house instead. It had been an impulse. And now, standing on his porch in the mild night air, she began to doubt that he would show up at Gray Streets. She realized that part of her didn’t want him to. Didn’t want him to be caught in the trap she had helped set.

  She walked down his steps and got into her car and started the engine. She circled his block and aimed the car toward home, but when she got there she kept on driving. The house looked fine. Lights on in the kitchen. She dialed her own number and talked to Sarah. All was well. She told her daughter she would be home in a little while. She had errands. South and east, she cut across Ann Arbor to Carpenter Road. She passed the restaurant with the half-moon sign and found the turn that would take her to Sean Wrentmore’s condominium. Ash trees flanked the entrance, their bark peeling. She coasted along, cleared a speed bump. A couple, well dressed, climbed into an SUV: sharp young professionals off to revel with other sharp young professionals on a Saturday night. Elizabeth rolled slowly through a long curve of parking lot and when she drew near to Wrentmore’s condo she saw a familiar car. David Loogan watched a figure approaching in his rearview mirror. He turned his head in time to see the passenger door opening. 2 6 8 h a r r y

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  A soft voice said, “If you knew what you were doing, you would have disconnected the dome light. Now we’re bound to attract all kinds of attention.�
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  “Hurry up then,” he said, “and shut the door.”

  The dome light went out. Laura Kristoll leaned toward him, her breath sweet in the semi-dark. She closed her eyes and he kissed her. He got his arms around her inside her open coat, ran his hands over her body, down her legs.

  “David,” she said, sounding injured. “You’re a romantic bastard, aren’t you? I don’t have a gun.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, drawing back from her. “How did you find me?”

  “You wanted to be found. That line about staying somewhere no one’s thought to look yet. That was a clue. It had to be somewhere they should have thought to look, and there are only so many places that could be.”

  She gazed through the windshield pointedly. There, up a short slope, beyond some pine trees, they could see the sliding glass door at the back of Sean Wrentmore’s condo.

  “It’s been empty for the past month,” she said. “A perfect hiding place. Is it really where you’ve been staying?”

  “No.”

  “But you wanted them to think so,” she said. “Nate and Cass and Bridget. You wanted to lure one of them out here, and now you’re watching to see if anyone takes the bait. You don’t really think one of them killed Tom, do you?”

  “I intend to find out.”

  “What if someone comes, but decides not to use the back entrance? What if they knock on Sean’s front door?”

  “Then they’ll find that nobody’s home. What do you want here, Laura?”

  “I want to help you. I’ve got some money with me. I thought you could use it if you’re leaving town.” From a pocket of her coat she took an envelope and laid it on the dash. b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  “There’s two thousand there,” she said. “I can send you more later.”

  He didn’t reach for it. “What do you want, in exchange for two thousand dollars?”

  The wounded tone again. “Bastard. The money’s yours. You don’t have to give me anything.”

  He tried to study her face in the dimness. “I don’t have Sean Wrentmore’s flashdrive here. It’s hidden somewhere safe. I couldn’t give it to you now even if I wanted to.”

  “Meaning you don’t want to,” she said mildly. “But that’s all right. I trust you to hold on to it.”

  “What do you think it’s got on it?”

  “It must be Sean’s manuscript.”

  “Sure,” said Loogan. “What else could it be? But it’s Sean’s drive, so it would be Sean’s version. Not the edited one.”

  “I don’t want any copies of that manuscript fl oating around,” she said.

  “Not in any version.”

  “You still think you can publish it?”

  “In a few years. When things cool down.”

  “But you gave a statement to the police about Sean’s death. Did you tell them the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “And they weren’t curious about the manuscript? It’s the reason Sean died. They didn’t want a copy?”

  “They haven’t asked for one. Not yet.”

  Loogan said nothing for a moment. Then: “If they ask, what are you going to give them?”

  “I’ll figure something out,” Laura said. “People have sent a lot of manuscripts to Gray Streets over the years. We only publish short stories, but they send us novels anyway. The discs pile up, and we don’t always get around to sending them back.”

  He let her have a long, appreciative stare, and she laid a hand on his 2 7 0 h a r r y

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  shoulder. “I’m telling you this because I trust you, David. And to show you I’m serious. Sean’s novel—the edited version, Tom’s version—is going to be published in a few years. I’m going to make sure of it. For Tom’s sake.”

  A van cruised through the parking lot. Loogan watched it in the rearview mirror. He watched a family approach the entrance of the restaurant with the half-moon sign. He heard a snatch of distant music as the restaurant door opened.

  “I believe you,” he said, turning back to Laura. “Mostly. I’d believe you all the way, except for one thing. The police found my fingerprints in Adrian Tully’s car.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He reached over to brush his fingertips against her golden hair. “Tully was at your house, the night Sean Wrentmore died. But he left before I got there to help Tom with the body. So far so good. But Tully didn’t leave in his own car. It stayed behind. A blue Civic hatchback. Tom put it out of sight in your garage, and it would have stayed there if I hadn’t asked so many questions. Tom didn’t want to tell me that the body in his study was Wrentmore; he said it was a thief who had broken into the house. How did the thief get there? I wanted to know. Did he have a car? He did have a car, naturally, but Tully had driven away in it. Tully took Wrentmore’s car to dispose of it. Isn’t that right?”

  “I guess it must be. I don’t really know all these details, David.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “You weren’t there. Well, Tom didn’t want to explain everything to me, but he had to account for how this thief had gotten to his house. So he improvised. Tully’s blue Civic became the thief ’s car, and Tom and I would have to get rid of it, along with the body. I drove the Civic, and we left it in front of a run-down apartment building, assuming it would be stolen. I wiped my fingerprints off the steering wheel, but I left a plastic shopping bag in the backseat. Just carelessness. That’s how the police found my prints.”

  He drew his hand back from her hair. “Here’s the funny part. The other b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  day I looked up Adrian Tully’s address and drove by there—it’s a run-down apartment building. It’s where Tom and I left the blue Civic. Tom chose the spot; he drove ahead of me in his own car.” He waited a beat. “We delivered Tully’s Civic right to his doorstep.”

  “Tom had a sense of humor,” Laura said. “But I’m not sure what your point is.”

  “Maybe I’m the only one who’s interested in all these little details. But I’ve been mulling them over. Think about Sean Wrentmore’s car, for instance. It hasn’t been found. Where did Tully leave it?”

  She looked away. “I don’t know. I guess he would have picked a rundown neighborhood, just like you did.”

  “You can do better than that. Dumping a car is a two-person job. You helped him do it.”

  A few seconds ticked by while she sat unmoving. Nothing to read in her profile. Then she turned to him and gave him a sorrowful look up from under her brow.

  “I’m not going to deny it, David. I came home from the university that night and found the three of them in the study: Sean dead on the floor. Adrian in a corner, hugging his knees, and Tom pouring himself a drink. I did what needed to be done.”

  “No,” said Loogan crisply. “You were never at the university that night. You were in the study, with Adrian and Sean. I don’t know where Tom was. But you were there, because you were the one who edited Sean’s manuscript. You were the one trying to convince him to accept the changes.”

  She almost wavered then, he thought. But she said, “No. Tom was the editor.”

  “Anyone can be an editor,” Loogan said. “You don’t have to go to school for it. It’s something that happens to you, like falling down a well. Tom told me that. I have a good memory for these things. You and I talked about editing once. You said you like it when a manuscript needs work. When you can see right away what’s wrong and how to fix it. You make the changes and they’re so obviously right that the author can’t argue, not if he has any sense. 2 7 2 h a r r y

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  But Sean Wrentmore didn’t have any sense. He argued. Are you the one who hit him with the bottle?”

  Laura shrank away from him, sat facing forward with her coat tight around her.

  “I suppose I deserve that,” she said in a hollow voice. “You have grounds to think the worst of me. But I’m not that ba
d. Adrian’s the one who hit him. It happened fast. I couldn’t stop it.”

  She faced him again and he thought he could see tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, David. I was wrong to lie to you—to say I wanted Sean’s novel published for Tom’s sake. I want it for myself. I know I handled things badly, but I never meant for anything to happen to Sean. And the work I did on his manuscript—I don’t regret that. You can’t tell me that was wrong. I know what I accomplished. I won’t apologize for wanting to see it published.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said. “Go home, Laura. Keep your two thousand dollars. Publish your novel, if you think you can. I won’t try to stop you.”

  The envelope still rested on the dash. Neither of them looked at it. But she said, “Take the money, David. You need it.”

  “I don’t want it,” he said. “There’s only one thing I want from you, but I don’t hold out any hope of getting it. So let it go.”

  She leaned close to him. “What? What do you want?”

  “A straight answer to a straight question. Do you know who killed Tom?”

  In the gray shadow-light of the car, her eyes narrowed and a pulse beat at her temple. Her lips parted but no words came from her. Loogan watched her open the car door, and the dome light blazed white on the cool, smooth porcelain of her skin. Before she got out, she turned to him again and drew back her right hand very deliberately and slapped him hard across the face. Chapter 36

  A hundred yards away, on the other side of Sean Wrentmore’s condo, Elizabeth approached a car parked off by itself beneath a crab-apple tree. The man in the car saw her and pushed a button to unlock the passenger door. Roy Denham grinned as he cleared his thermos and his newspaper from the seat.

  “Detective Waishkey,” he said, brushing crumbs onto the floor.

  “Detective Denham,” she said. “Any sign of our friend?”

  “None at all. But I’ve only been here an hour or so.”

  Elizabeth settled in and pulled the door shut. The car’s interior smelled of smoke, and stubs of cigarettes filled the ashtray. Denham lowered his window to clear the air.

  “I just came from Loogan’s house,” Elizabeth said. “I half expected to see you over there. What brought you here?”