Back in the hallway, he saw a closed door and, checking behind himself to be sure Mrs. Eldwin was keeping busy with her bottle, he went to open it. Behind it were stairs leading to the basement. He unsnapped the strap on his holster and switched on the light.
As he descended, he could see the basement wasn’t anything like the one in the video. It was upholstered and furnished: almost a separate apartment. There was an expensive-looking bar with four stools behind it and it was fully stocked with good whiskies and other liquors. A couch faced a fireplace and there was an end table stocked with interior design magazines. At the far end of the room stood a stationary bike and a rowing machine. He walked over to the bar and stood beside it. It was difficult to imagine the Eldwins as big entertainers, and he concluded that all of this, all this good living, was for them alone. There was a pair of birthday cards standing on the bar. He picked one of them up. It was one of those cards with an earnest, rhyming message on the inside on the subject of the inverse relationship between the recipient’s age and her beauty. The handwritten note said, You’re a flower that blooms more beautifully every year. I’m grateful for everything you’ve given me, my love, even if I’m the toadstool in your garden. Lots of love, Colin. Wingate stared at the card. Every relationship was a mystery.
He returned upstairs and put his cap back on. “Find what you were looking for?” she asked him.
“I wasn’t looking for anything,” he said. “Just seeing if anything jumped out at me.”
She swayed a little. He imagined she’d been able to get a couple more stiff drinks into her while he’d been snooping. “Did anything jump out at you?”
“No.”
“Well, then you can have that drink.”
He sat down at the table and let her pour him one. She put it down in front of him, but he didn’t touch it. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Before wasn’t personal?”
“I was just wondering how the two of you afford all of this. I mean, Colin isn’t a successful writer -”
“Yet,” she said.
“Right, yet. And you take in dogs. Does that pay well?”
“It pays okay. But not enough for all this,” she said, sweeping her arm out. “That’s what you’re asking?”
“Yes.”
“My parents died in a car accident six years ago and I got everything, including a large settlement. It was our chance to start over. I put everything into this house I thought he’d like to have. But I guess it’s not enough.”
“I’m sorry. About your parents.”
“You lose everyone eventually, or they lose you. There’s nothing to be done about it.”
He stood out on the sidewalk, looking back at the house. From the front, a nondescript, one-storey bungalow on a country sidestreet. There was no hint that a crazy, heartbroken woman lived behind that door, nor a man who could inspire the kinds of passionate feelings he’d seemed to inspire in his wife and, by her report, others. The world of the case had fully opened up now; so many parts of it were in motion. In his mind, he saw the elements moving over each other, emerging out of the fog of hints, beginning to jockey for position in the play of cause and effect, relationships and connections…
Suddenly, he realized why the view of the back garden had rattled him. In the most recent chapter of the Bass Lake story, the father had brought the body to a house with a flagstone path and a fountain. And – he turned and looked behind himself – a willow tree. There was one across the street, a huge, healthy willow with a wide trunk, its long green leaves cascading over the lawn it stood on. It was as if Eldwin had rearranged the elements of his own house for his story. There was nothing strange about that – writers had to draw on something. What was strange was that he’d had a fictional character bringing a dead body here, to his house.
He looked back toward the bungalow. He was imagining Mrs. Eldwin ranging madly through that huge backyard, waving a half-empty bottle of Grand Marnier at the heavens. They needed something else to fall into place now, something that would bridge the unknowns. He reached into his pocket with a gloved hand and removed the computer mouse he’d stolen from Eldwin’s office. He felt he already knew what Fraser would tell him when he ran the prints. He got back into his cruiser and pointed it east.
15
Her alarm went off at 5 a.m. Someone had reprogrammed the LED clock beside the bed to flash HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLD GIRL. She was sixty-two.
She brushed and washed up and in the time between getting out of bed and coming out of the bathroom, a glint of red dawn had appeared in the corner of the window. For the rest of Wednesday, she’d waited by her phone in her office like some disappointed prom queen, but no one of interest had called. She’d spent part of the afternoon obsessing over how much blood, exactly, it would take to paint the message they’d seen. Surely, it was too much blood? For the rest of the day, the site had shown the vile sequence over and over. By the time the night shift came in, Bail and Renald and Wilton had figured that the quantity of blood required to make such an image was at least two pints. That was a fifth of a normal person’s blood. They were killing him. And she was waiting for news that wasn’t coming. She felt that she was being played for a fool and for the first time on this case, it began to feel personal.
She’d taken her cruiser home and planned to make a drive-through breakfast at the Timmie’s on 41, a birthday breakfast, perhaps, a double-double and an actual donut. Yes, a Boston Cream for her birthday, even if it was going to be 6 a.m.
You catch more flies with honey. She’d sugar herself up and go to meet Chip Willan and be super-sweet. That never worked with Ian Mason, but Mason had been spiritually diabetic: niceness never worked with the man. Maybe the new commander could be charmed.
Just the same, a pill to pave the way, she thought. She dressed – full uniform – and opened the sidetable drawer, but she realized she’d left them in a jacket pocket. Or she thought she had: they weren’t in the jacket either. Strange. She got down on all fours (not so bad, she thought, an impossible pose even a week earlier) and searched under the bed, but it was dark, and even with all the lights on, she couldn’t see into the middle of the space. She checked the other side. Nothing. Well, there was still the loose stash of Percs and Ativans and sleeping pills piled in a little pyramid inside the bathroom medicine cabinet. But when she opened the mirror, instead of the jumble of welcoming blue and white and yellow pills, there was a little bottle of extra-strength Tylenol and a note taped to it. “Fuck,” she said, snatching it down.
The note, in her mother’s hand, said, “Happy birthday old girl. It’s a brand new day. See you at dinner.”
She gripped the red-and-white Tylenol bottle in her hands, squeezing it to keep from shouting, and then she threw it against the wall behind her. She pulled a muscle in her middle back doing it, and found herself on one knee on the bathroom floor. “Goddamnit, Mother.” The top of the bottle had burst off and a spray of white, useless pills was rolling around on the cold tiles. “Goddamnit.” She reached forward carefully, grabbed a small handful of them, and stood. The space between her shoulderblades was cramping and uncramping. She popped three of the pills and washed them down with a handful of water. Just for that, she was going to have a greasy breakfast sandwich, too.