No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [133]
“So Enid, she’s nursed a grudge against Tess all these years, too.”
“She despised her for getting money she believed belonged to her. The two women she hated most in the world, and she’d never met either one of them.”
“So,” I said, “this story of yours, that you’ve never been back to Connecticut, even if you didn’t actually see Cynthia, that’s bullshit then.”
“No,” he said. “That’s the truth.”
And I thought about that for a while as we continued to drive on through the night.
46
Finally, I said, “I know you didn’t mail the money to Tess. It didn’t show up in her mailbox with a stamp on it. And you didn’t FedEx it. There’d be an envelope stuffed with cash in her car, another time she found it tucked into her morning newspaper.”
Clayton acted as though he couldn’t hear me.
“So if you didn’t mail it, and you didn’t deliver it yourself,” I said, “then you must have had someone do it for you.”
Clayton remained impassive. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back on the headrest, as though sleeping. But I wasn’t buying it.
“I know you’re hearing me,” I said.
“I’m very tired,” he said. “I normally sleep through the night, you know. Leave me alone for a while, let me catch a few winks.”
“I’ve one other question,” I said. He kept his eyes shut, but I saw his mouth twitch nervously. “Tell me about Connie Gormley.”
His eyes opened suddenly, as though I’d jabbed him with a cattle prod. Clayton tried to recover.
“I don’t know that name,” he said.
“Let me see if I can help,” I said. “She was from Sharon, she was twenty-seven years old, she worked at a Dunkin’ Donuts, and one night, twenty-six years ago, a Friday night, she was walking along the shoulder of the road near the Cornwall Bridge, this would be on Route 7, when she was hit by a car. Except it wasn’t exactly a hit-and-run. She was most likely dead beforehand, and the accident was staged. Like someone wanted it to look like it was just an accident, nothing more sinister, you know?”
Clayton looked out his window so I couldn’t see his face.
“It was one of your other slips, like the shopping list and the phone bill,” I said. “You’d clipped this larger story about fly-fishing, but there was this story down in the corner about the hit-and-run. Would have been easy to snip it out, but you didn’t, and I can’t figure out why.”
We were nearing the New York–Massachusetts border, heading east, waiting for the sun to rise.
“Did you know her?” I asked. “Was she someone else you met touring the country for work?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Clayton said.
“A relative? On Enid’s side? When I mentioned the name to Cynthia, it didn’t mean anything to her.”
“There’s no reason why it should,” Clayton said quietly.
“Was it you?” I asked. “Did you kill her, then hit her with your car, drag her into the ditch, and leave her there?”
“No,” he said.
“Because if that’s what happened, maybe this is the time to set the record straight. You’ve admitted to a great many things tonight. A double life. Helping to cover up the murder of your wife and son. Protecting a woman who, by your account, is certifiable. But you don’t want to tell me what your interest is in the death of a woman named Connie Gormley, and you don’t want to tell me how you got money to Tess Berman to help pay for Cynthia’s education.”
Clayton said nothing.
“Are those things related?” I asked. “Are they linked somehow? This woman, you couldn’t have used her as a courier for the money. She was dead years before you started making those payments.”
Clayton drank some water, put the bottle back into the cup holder