No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [118]
A woman like that who killed herself, well, it wasn’t hard to figure out what that was about. It was about guilt. Guilt she must have lived with for a very long time. After all, how else did one explain her being able to direct police to that car in the quarry if she hadn’t known, all these years, that it was there? What possible motive would anyone else have for sending along a note like that?
A woman this overwhelmed with guilt, would it be any surprise if she took her daughter’s life along with her own?
Could that be what was in the works?
“What?” Clayton asked me. “What are you thinking?”
What if Jeremy had come to Milford to watch us? What if he’d been spying on us for weeks, following Grace to school? Watching us at the mall? From the street out front of our house? Getting into our home one day when we were careless, then leaving with the spare house key so he could get in whenever he wanted. And on one of those trips—I recalled my discovery during Abagnall’s final visit to our house—tossing the key back into the cutlery drawer so we’d think we’d just misplaced it. Leaving that hat. Learning our e-mail address. Writing a note on my typewriter, leading Cynthia to the bodies of her mother and brother…
All these things could have been accomplished before we had the locks changed, the new deadbolts installed.
I gave my head a slight shake. I felt I was getting ahead of myself. It all seemed so incredible, so diabolical.
Had Jeremy been setting the stage? And was he now returning to Youngstown to pick up his mother, so that he could take her back to Milford to watch the final act?
“I need you to tell me everything,” I whispered to Clayton. “Everything that happened that night.”
“It was never supposed to happen like this….” he said, more to himself than me. “I couldn’t go see her. I promised not to, to protect her…. Even after I died, when Enid found out she was getting nothing…there was a sealed envelope, only to be opened after I was dead and buried…. It explained everything. They’d arrest Enid, Cynthia would be safe….”
“Clayton, I think they’re in danger now. Your daughter, and your granddaughter. You need to help me while you still can.”
He studied my face. “You seem like a nice man. I’m glad she found someone like you.”
“You need to tell me what happened.”
He took a deep breath, as though steeling himself for a coming task. “I can see her now,” he said. “Staying away won’t protect her now.” He swallowed. “Take me to her. Take me to my daughter. Let me say goodbye to her. Take me to her, and I’ll tell you everything. It’s time.”
“I can’t take you out of here,” I said. “You’re all hooked up here. If I take you out of here, you’ll die.”
“I’m going to die anyway,” Clayton said. “My clothes, they’re in the closet over there. Get them.”
I started for the closet, then stopped. “Even if I wanted to, they’re not going to let you leave the hospital.”
Clayton waved me over closer to him, reached out and grabbed my arm, his grip firm and resolute. “She’s a monster,” he said. “There’s nothing she won’t do to get what she wants. For years, I’ve lived in fear of her, did what she wanted, scared to death of what she might do next. But what do I have to fear anymore? What can she do to me? I’ve so little time left, maybe, with what I have, I can save my Cynthia, and Grace. There are no limits to what Enid might do.”
“She won’t be doing anything now,” I said. “Not with Vince watching her.”
Clayton squinted at me. “Did you go to the house? Knock on the door?”
I nodded.
“And she answered it?”
I nodded again.
“Did she seem afraid?”
I shrugged. “Not particularly.”
“Two big men, coming to her door, and she’s not afraid. Didn’t that seem odd?”
Another shrug. “Maybe. I suppose.”
Clayton said, “You didn’t look under the blanket, did you?”
42
I got out my cell again, called Vince’s. “Come on,” I said, feeling awash in anxiety. I couldn’t raise Cynthia, and now I was panicking that something had happened to a guy who only yesterday I would have viewed as a common thug.