Why would Liz have gone in? Was she meeting someone? Who? Who had the key? Liz? Or the “someone”? Liz was in love, that was clear at the interview. But murders weren’t about love. They were about hate. Or fear. Or power.
Did someone hate Liz McDivitt? Or fear her? Or need to control her? Or was she in simply the wrong place at the wrong time?
The front door of the house opened, Jake came back onto the porch. The young officer, arms folded in front of her chest, appeared a shoulder width behind him. Jane signaled TJ, finally, twirled a finger in the “roll tape” sign.
But Jake went back inside. What the hell was going on? Jane shrugged, waved TJ off. The TV blonde was still working the crowd, hadn’t even approached the porch to check with the cops. Poor thing. The eleven o’clock news was looming. Jane felt that deadline, after all these years, without even checking her watch.
But for Jane, this night was about Liz McDivitt.
Jane sighed, trapped where she was until Jake emerged again. It wasn’t her job to solve this crime, of course, but she couldn’t resist. This was more than a news story. Liz McDivitt was someone she knew. It felt almost like her responsibility.
More frustrating, if she told Victoria Marcotte about the connection, would she be yanked from this story, too? But Liz had been Chrystal Peralta’s source.
Maybe Liz hadn’t been killed here. Maybe that happened somewhere else, and the bad guy stashed her in this empty house, figuring no one would ever go inside. How would they know that? Who would have a key? Maybe no one had a key. Maybe, realizing the house was vacant, they’d broken in. Broken in? She nodded, envisioning how that could have worked, and all the evidence it would’ve left behind. Jake would know. And he could tell her.
Jane flipped through her notebook, checking for anything, anything, from Liz she might have missed.
Then she saw them.
The names of McDivitt’s clients, the names Liz had tried so diligently to protect, the names that Jane had already matched to phone numbers. And addresses. She ran a finger down the list, wondering if-no. None of them matched Kenilworth. Or Waverly. So much for that idea.
Still. Maybe the list was not worthless. If she were doing a story on Liz McDivitt, these names now provided instant interview prospects. Too late to call them now, but tomorrow she’d have a head start on everyone.
The door opened again. She watched Jake survey the street in front of him, one hand shading his eyes. He batted something away, probably one of the moths, its mothy plans disturbed by the lights and the people and the intrusion.
“I’m with you, moth,” Jane muttered. Not how she’d envisioned this evening, either.
Jake’s eyes locked on hers. He raised a palm, beckoned her toward him.
Finally. Now she’d get some answers.
47
What the hell was Jane’s phone number? Peter could instantly recite the number from his childhood home in Ithaca, which his mom insisted on calling Melrose 6-5175, and the number from his first apartment at Stanford, (312) 551-0104. Dianna’s, he’d never forget. Sometimes he still thought about calling her. But cell phones made it unnecessary to remember current numbers. There was no reason to remember, because they all were stored in the handy dandy phone. He hardly remembered his own.
As the green highway signs flashed by, VISIT HISTORIC PLYMOUTH, then NEXT EXIT PEMBROKE, he could picture his cell phone, right now, on Doreen Rinker’s scarred kitchen table. Where he-idiot-had left it more than an hour ago. He hadn’t even thought about the damn phone, had decided to zone out to NPR and give his brain a break on the way back to Boston. Eventually, mired in the as-promised hellish traffic, he realized he’d be amazingly late. Even later than he’d already warned Jane when he talked to her from Rinker’s house. He reached for his phone, in full denial as he patted every one of his pockets, anger growing as he kept the Jeep in the center lane by steering with one elbow, then, finally, accepting his loss. Jane’d be fuming. Or worried. Or both. There was no way to contact her.
Okay, not quite true. He could stop at a Burger King, or whatever joint was off the closest exit, and use the pay phone-did they still have those? He’d call 411-did they still have that?-get the number for the Register, and call her there. But that would make the whole ordeal take even longer, half an hour, no matter how efficiently it all happened. Maybe he should just try to get to Boston faster. He hit the accelerator and froggered into the fast lane, inciting a symphony of angry honking.
“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, apologizing to the universe in general. Thing was, he needed the damn phone. Not only was Jane’s number stored in it, but Thorley’s, and the police lockup, and Sandoval’s, and Jake Brogan’s. Technology. He reconsidered. The technology worked okay, he had to admit. It was his brain that was failing.
The traffic parted, because the universe runs on irony, and the concrete barriers strobed by, highway signs taunting him with the geographical reality. Boston, thirty miles. That meant now it would take about as long to get to Boston as it would to get back to the Cape. Point of no return.
He could turn around, go back, get the phone, and then call Jane. Maybe cancel the whole thing, since it’d be far too late for dinner-or anything-by the time he went back across the bridge to Sagamore and retrieved the phone-if Doreen Rinker was even home!-and drove back to Boston.
He was an idiot. Jane would never forgive him. Well, she would, of course, to her it was only dinner. The real source of his frustration, he admitted, he’d hoped this dinner might lead to more than business. So much for that idea. He needed the damn phone.
Decided, then. Peter swerved off the highway, veered right onto the off-ramp, made the loop past the deserted BK, where a forlorn sign promised Two-fer Tuesdays, decided against the seedy gas station Dunkins’, and headed back toward Sagamore. He needed his phone. No faster way to get it than to retrieve it himself.
The glowing numerals on the dashboard clock clicked forward, underscoring his defeat. Gordon Thorley was in custody. Elliot Sandoval was in custody. The only good thing that had happened to Peter in years was about to be disappointed in him.
What else could go wrong?
“I’ve got nothing more for you.” Jake needed to go back inside the Kenilworth house, get his own eyes on the situation. What Canfield had described was the definition of a frigging can of worms, but he was trapped on the porch. Like some kind of news target, with him the center mass.
Jane had commandeered the top step of the porch, manning the front lines, stationed against the spindly wrought-iron railing. TJ, whose shouldered camera might as well be his weapon, hovered behind her on the closest flagstone, and that new reporter from Channel 3, Kimberly something, led the charge of the new arrivals. The picture of high-heeled determination, microphone in hand, camera guy keeping up, hot to score whatever news tidbit Jake could be convinced to offer. If it’d been just Jane on the story, he might be able to slip her something-how could he not? But two reporters, that changed the equation. What he told one, he’d have to tell the other. And the answer to that, now, was absolute zero.
“Nothing,” he repeated. Jane would never accept this, but protocol was protocol. Especially since they were not alone. “You’ll have to call headquarters.”
“Jake, are you kidding me? Nothing?” Jane clamped her hands to her hips, giving him that look. She paused, and for a moment, her voice softened. “Did I-are we-is there something-?”