Yeah, that was it.
When we passed through Winsted again, we asked Grace whether she wanted something to eat, but she shook her head no. She wanted to go home. Cynthia and I exchanged worried glances. We would take Grace to see a doctor. She’d been through a traumatic incident. She might be suffering from mild shock. But before long, she was asleep, and gave no indication that she was having nightmares.
A couple of hours later, we were home. As we made the turn into our street, I saw Rona Wedmore’s car in front of our house, parked at the curb, with her behind the wheel. When she spotted our car, she got out, eyeing us sternly with arms folded as we turned in to the driveway. She was waiting for me by the car when I opened my door, ready, I suspected, to start peppering me with questions.
Her expression softened when she saw me wince as I slowly got out of the driver’s seat. I hurt like hell.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “You look awful.”
“That’s pretty much how I feel,” I said, touching one of my wounds gingerly. “I took a few kicks from Jeremy Sloan.”
“Where is he?” Wedmore asked.
I smiled to myself and opened the back door and, even though a couple of my ribs felt as though they were about to snap, took a sleeping Grace into my arms to carry her into the house.
“Let me,” Cynthia said, now out of the car herself.
“It’s okay,” I said, taking Grace to the front door as Cynthia ran ahead to unlock it. Rona Wedmore was trailing us into the house.
“I can’t carry her anymore,” I said, the pain becoming excruciating.
“The couch,” Cynthia said.
I managed to set her down there gently, even though I felt I was going to drop her, and despite all the jostling and talking, she didn’t wake up. Once she was on the couch, Cynthia tucked some throw pillows under her head and found an afghan to throw over her.
Wedmore was still just watching, courteously giving us a moment. Once Cynthia had tucked the afghan around Grace, the three of us rendezvoused in the kitchen.
“You look like you need to see a doctor,” Wedmore said.
I nodded.
“Where’s Sloan?” she asked again. “If he assaulted you, we’ll have him arrested.”
I leaned up against the counter. “You’re going to need to call in your divers again,” I said.
I told her pretty much all of it. How Vince had spotted what was wrong with that old newspaper clipping, how that had led us to Sloan and Youngstown, my finding Clayton Sloan in the hospital, Jeremy and Enid’s abduction of Cynthia and Grace.
The car going over the cliff and down into the quarry, taking Clayton and Enid and Jeremy along for the ride.
There was only one small part I’d left out, because it was still troubling me, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. Although I had an inkling.
“Well,” Rona Wedmore said, “that’s quite a story.”
“It is,” I said. “If I were going to make something up, trust me, I’d have come up with something more believable.”
“I’ll want to talk to Grace about this, too,” Wedmore said.
“Not now,” Cynthia said. “She’s been through enough. She’s exhausted.”
Wedmore nodded silently. Then, “I’ll make some calls, see about the divers, be back later this afternoon.” To me, “You get over to Milford Hospital. I could drop you off if you like.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go in a little while, call a cab if I have to.”
Wedmore left, and Cynthia said she was heading upstairs to try to make herself look half respectable again. Wedmore’s car had only been gone a minute when I heard another one pull into the drive. I opened the front door as Rolly, wearing a long jacket over a blue plaid shirt and blue slacks, reached the step.
“Terry!” he said.
I put a finger to my lips. “Grace is sleeping,” I said. I motioned for him to follow me into the kitchen.
“So you found them?” he said. “Cynthia too?”
I nodded as I went hunting for Advils in the pantry. I found the container, shook some out into my hand, and ran a glass of cold water from the tap.
“You look hurt,” Rolly said. “Some people will do anything to get a long-term leave.”
I almost laughed, but it hurt too much. I popped three pills into my mouth, had a long drink of water.
“So,” Rolly said. “So.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So you found her father,” he said. “You found Clayton.”
I nodded.
“That’s amazing,” he said. “That you found him. That Clayton’s still around, still alive, after all these years.”
“Isn’t it, though,” I said. I held back telling Rolly that while Clayton had been alive all these years, he was no longer.
“Just amazing.”
“Aren’t you wondering about Patricia, too?” I asked. “Or Todd? Aren’t you curious to know what happened to them?”
Rolly’s eyes danced. “Of course, yes, I am. I mean, I already know they were found in the car, in the quarry.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But everything else, who killed them, I figure you must already know about that,” I said. “Otherwise, you’d have asked.”
Rolly’s look grew grim. “I just, I don’t want to bombard you with questions. You’ve only been home a couple of minutes.”
“Do you want to know how they died? What actually happened to them?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Maybe in a minute.” I took another drink of water. I hoped the Advils would kick in soon. “Rolly,” I said, “were you the one who delivered the money?”
“What?”
“The money. For Tess. To spend on Cynthia. It was you, wasn’t it?”
He licked his lip nervously. “What did Clayton tell you?”
“What do you think he told me?”
Rolly ran his hand over the top of his head, turned away from me. “He’s told you everything, hasn’t he?”
I said nothing. I decided it was better for Rolly to think I knew more than I actually did.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, shaking his head. “The son of a bitch. He swore he’d never tell. He thinks it was me that somehow led you to him, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s reneged on our arrangement.”
“Is that what you call it, Rolly? An arrangement?”
“We had a deal!” He shook his head in anger. “I’m so close. So close to retirement. All I want is some peace, to get out of that fucking school, to get away, to get out of this goddamn town.”
“Why don’t you just tell me about it, Rolly? See if your version matches Clayton’s.”
“He’s told you about Connie Gormley, hasn’t he? About the accident.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We were coming back from a fishing trip,” Rolly said. “It was Clayton’s idea to stop for a beer. I could have done the drive home without stopping, but I said okay. We went into this bar, we were just going to have a beer and go, and this girl, she starts coming on to me, you know?”
“Connie Gormley.”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s sitting with me, and she’s had a few beers, and I ended up having a few more. Clayton, he’s kind of taking it easy, tells me to do the same, but I don’t know what the hell happened. This Connie and I, we both slip out of the bar while Clayton’s taking a leak, end up out back of the bar in the backseat of her car.”
“You and Millicent, you were married then,” I said. It wasn’t really a judgment, I simply wasn’t sure. But Rolly’s scowl made clear how he’d taken it.
“Once in a while,” he said, “I’d slip.”
“So you slipped with Connie Gormley. How’d she end up going from that backseat to that ditch?”
“When we…when we were done, and I was heading back to the bar, she asked me for fifty bucks. I told her if she was a hooker she should have made that clear from the outset, but I don’t know if she even was a hooker. Maybe she just needed the fifty. Anyway, I wouldn’t pay her, and she said maybe she’d look me up sometime, at my home, get the money from my wife.”