As he swallowed I watched his Adam’s apple bob along the length of his throat. “My what?” he said.
“Your son-in-law,” I said. “I’m Cynthia’s husband.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and I could see how dry his mouth was. “Would you like a drink of water?” I asked quietly. He nodded. There was a pitcher and glass next to the bed, and I poured him some water. There was a straw on the table, and I put it to his lips, holding the glass for him.
“I can do it,” he said, grasping the glass and sipping from the straw. He took the glass with more strength than I expected. He licked his lips, handed the glass back to me.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“After ten,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you. You were sleeping pretty good there.”
“No harm,” he said. “They’re always waking you up here anyway, all times of the day and night.”
He took a deep breath through his nostrils, let the air out slowly. “So,” he said. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
“I think you do,” I said. “You’re Clayton Bigge.”
Another deep breath. Then, “I’m Clayton Sloan.”
“I believe you are,” I said. “But I think you’re also Clayton Bigge, who was married to Patricia Bigge, who had a son named Todd and a daughter named Cynthia, and you lived in Milford, Connecticut, until one night in 1983, when something very terrible happened.”
He looked away from me and stared at the curtain. He made a fist with the hand lying at his side, opened his fingers, clenched again.
“I’m dying,” he said.
“Then maybe it’s time to get a few things off your chest,” I said.
Clayton turned his head on the pillow to look at me again. “Tell me your name.”
“Terry. Terry Archer.” I hesitated. “What’s your name?”
He swallowed again. “Clayton,” he said. “I’ve always been Clayton.” His eyes moved down. He stared at the folds in the hospital linen. “Clayton Sloan, Clayton Bigge.” He paused. “Depended where I was at the time.”
“Two families?” I said.
I was able to make out a nod. Remembered some of the things Cynthia told me about her father. On the road all the time. Back and forth across the country. Home for a few days, gone for a few, back for a few. Living half his life someplace else…
Suddenly he brightened as a thought occurred to him. “Cynthia,” he said to me. “Is she here? Is she with you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t…I don’t know exactly where she is right now. She may be back home now, in Milford, for all I know. With our daughter. Grace.”
“Grace,” he said. “My granddaughter.”
“Yes,” I whispered as a shadow went by in the hall. “Your granddaughter.”
Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, as though in pain. But I didn’t think it was anything physical.
“My son,” he said. “Where is my son?”
“Todd?” I said.
“No no,” he said. “Not Todd. Jeremy.”
“I think he may be on the way back from Milford.”
“What?”
“He’s on his way back. At least that’s what I think.”
Clayton looked more alert, his eyes wide. “What was he doing in Milford? When did he go there? Is that why he hasn’t been here with his mother?” Then his eyes drifted shut and he started muttering, “No no no.”
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He raised a tired hand and tried to wave me off. “Leave me,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
His eyelids rose slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage. “This can’t happen… I’m so tired.”
I leaned in closer. I hated pushing an old, sick man as much as I hated Vince keeping an old, disabled woman prisoner, but there were things I had to know.
“Tell me,” I said. “Are Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
Slowly his head turned on the pillow and he looked at me. “No.” He paused. “Todd is dead.”
“When? When did Todd die?”
“That night,” Clayton said resignedly. “With his mother.”
So it was them. In the car at the bottom of the quarry. When the results of the tests comparing Cynthia’s DNA to the samples taken from the bodies in the car came in, we’d be getting a connection.
Clayton raised his hand weakly, pointed back to the small table. “More water?” I said. He nodded. I handed him the glass and he took a long drink.
“I’m not quite as weak as I look,” he said, holding the glass as though it were a major accomplishment. “Sometimes, when Enid comes in, I make like I’m in a coma, so I won’t have to talk to her, she won’t complain so long. I still walk a little. I can get to the can. Sometimes I even get there in time.” He pointed to the closed door on the other side of the room.
“Patricia and Todd,” I said. “So they’re both dead.”
Clayton’s eyes closed again. “You have to tell me what Jeremy is doing in Milford.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think he’s been watching us. Watching our family. I think he’s been in our house. I can’t say for sure, but I think he may have killed Cynthia’s aunt Tess.”
“Oh my God,” Clayton said. “Patricia’s sister? She’s dead?”
“She was stabbed to death,” I said. “And a man we’d hired to try to find out some things, he’s dead, too.”
“This can’t be happening. She said he’d gotten a job. Out west.”
“What?”
“Enid. She said Jeremy got a job, in…in Seattle or someplace. An opportunity. Had to go out there. That he’d come back and see me soon. That was why he wasn’t coming to visit. I thought…just not caring, that would be reason enough.” He seemed to drift off a bit. “Jeremy, he’s…he can’t help what he is. She made him what he is. He does whatever she tells him to do. She poisoned him against me from the day he was born… Can’t believe she even comes to visit. She says to me, ‘Hang on, just hang on a little longer.’ It’s like, she doesn’t care if I die. She just doesn’t want me to die yet. She’s been up to something, I’ve known it. She’s been lying to me. Lying to me about everything, lying to me about Jeremy. She didn’t want me to know where he’d gone.”
“Why wouldn’t she want you to know? Why would Jeremy have gone to Milford?”
“She must have seen it,” he whispered. “Found it, something.”
“What? Seen what?”
“Dear God,” he said faintly, and rested his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes. He moved his head from side to side. “Enid knows. Dear God, if Enid knows…”
“If Enid knows what? What are you talking about?”
“If she knows, there’s no telling what she might do…”
I leaned in closer to Clayton Sloan or Clayton Bigge and whispered urgently inches away from his ear, “If Enid knows what?”
“I’m dying… She…she must have called the lawyer. I never intended for her to see the will before I died… My instructions were very specific. He must have screwed up… I’d had it all setup…”
“Will? What will?”
“My will. I had it changed. She wasn’t to know… If she knew…It was all arranged. When I died, my estate, everything would go to Cynthia… Enid and Jeremy, they’d be left out, left with nothing, just what they deserve, just what she deserves…” He looked at me. “You have no idea what she’s capable of.”
“She’s here. Enid is here, she’s in Youngstown. It was Jeremy who went to Milford.”
“He’d do whatever she tells him to do. He has to. She’s in a wheelchair. She won’t be able to do it herself this time…”
“Do what herself?”
He ignored my question. He had so many of his own. “So he’s coming back? Jeremy’s on his way back?”
“That’s what Enid said. He checked out of a Milford motel this morning. I think we beat him back here.”
“‘We’? I thought you said Cynthia wasn’t with you.”
“She’s not. I came with a man named Vince Fleming.”
Clayton thought about the name. “Vince Fleming,” he said quietly. “The boy. The boy she was with that night. In the car. The boy she was with when I found her.”
“That’s right. He’s been helping me. He’s with Enid now.”
“With Enid?”
“Making sure she doesn’t call Jeremy, tell him that we’re here.”
“But if Jeremy, if Jeremy’s already on his way back, he must have already done it.”
“Done what?”
“Is Cynthia okay?” He got a desperate look in his eyes. “Is she alive?”
“Of course she’s alive.”
“And your daughter? Grace? She’s still alive?”
“What are you talking about? Yes, of course they’re alive.”
“Because if something happens to Cynthia, everything goes to any children… It’s all spelled out…”
I felt my whole body shiver. How many hours had it been since I’d talked to Cynthia? I’d had a brief chat with her this morning, my one conversation with her since she’d slipped away in the night with Grace.
Did I really know, with any certainty, that she and Grace were alive now?
I got out my cell phone. It occurred to me then that I probably wasn’t supposed to have it on within the hospital, but since no one even knew I was here, I figured I could get away with it.
I punched in our home number.
“Please, please have gone home,” I said under my breath. The phone rang once, twice, a third time. On the fourth ring, it went to voicemail.
“Cynthia,” I said, “if you come home, if you get this, you’ve got to call me immediately. It’s an emergency.”
I ended the call and then tried her cell. It went to voicemail immediately. I left her pretty much the same message, but added, “You must call me.”
“Where is she?” Clayton asked.
“I don’t know,” I said uneasily. I considered, briefly, calling Rona Wedmore, decided against it, called another number. I had to let it ring five times before there was an answer.
A pickup, then throat clearing, then, “Hello?” Sleepy.
“Rolly,” I said. “It’s Terry.”
Clayton, hearing the name “Rolly,” blinked.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Rolly said. “No problem. I’d just turned out the light. You’ve found Cynthia?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ve found someone else.”
“What?”
“Listen, I don’t have time to explain, but I need you to find Cynthia. I don’t know what to tell you, or where to have you start. Go by the house, see if her car’s there. If it is, bang on the door, break in if you have to, see if she and Grace are there. Start calling hotels, I don’t know, anything you can think of.”
“Terry, what’s going on? Who have you found?”
“Rolly, I’ve found her father.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line.
“Rolly?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I…I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.”
“What’s he told you? Has he told you what happened?”
“We’re just getting started. I’m north of Buffalo, at a hospital. He’s not in very good shape.”
“Is he talking?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it when I can. But you have to look for Cynthia. If you find her, she has to call me immediately.”
“Right. I’m on it. I’m getting dressed.”
“And Rolly,” I said, “let me tell her. About her father. She’s going to have a million questions.”
“Sure. If I find out anything, I’ll call.”
I thought of one other person who might have seen Cynthia at some point. Pamela had phoned the house often enough that I’d memorized her home number from the caller ID display. I punched in the number, let it ring several times before someone picked up.
“Hello?” Pamela, sounding every bit as sleepy as Rolly. In the background, a man’s voice, saying, “What is it?”
I told Pamela who it was, quickly apologized for calling at such a terrible hour.
“Cynthia’s missing,” I said. “With Grace.”
“Jesus,” Pamela said, her voice quickly become awake. “They been kidnapped or something?”
“No no, nothing like that. She left. She wanted to get away.”
“She told me, like, yesterday, or the day before yesterday-God, what day is this?-she might not come in, so when she didn’t show up, I didn’t think anything of it.”
“I just wanted to tell you to be on the lookout for her, if she calls you, she has to get in touch with me. Pam, I found her father.”
From the other end of the line, nothing for a moment. Then, “Fuck me.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s alive?”
I glanced at the man in the bed. “Yeah.”
“And Todd? And her mother?”
“That’s another story. Listen, Pamela, I have to go. But if you see Cyn, have her call me. But let me tell her the news.”
“Shit,” Pamela said. “Like I’m gonna be able to keep a lid on that.”
I ended the call, noticed that the phone battery was getting very weak. I’d left home in such a hurry I didn’t have anything to recharge it with, not even in the truck.
“Clayton,” I said, refocusing after all the phone chatter, “why do you think Cynthia and Grace might be in danger? Why are you thinking something might have happened to them?”
“Because of the will,” Clayton said. “I’m leaving everything to Cynthia. It’s the only way I know to make up for what I did. It doesn’t, I know, it doesn’t make up for anything, but what else can I do?”
“But what does that have to do with them being alive?” I asked, but I was already starting to figure it out. The pieces were starting, ever so gradually, to fall into place.
“If she’s dead, if Cynthia’s dead, if your daughter’s dead, then the money can’t go to them. It’ll revert back to Enid, she’ll be the surviving spouse, the only logical heir,” he whispered. “There’s no way Enid’ll let Cynthia inherit. She’ll kill both of them to make sure she gets the money.”
“But that’s crazy,” I said. “A murder-a double murder-that’d draw so much attention, police would reopen the case, they’d start looking into what happened twenty-five years ago, it could end up blowing up in Enid’s face, and then-”
I stopped myself.
A murder would attract attention. No doubt about it.
But a suicide. There wouldn’t be much attention paid to something like that. Especially not when the woman committing suicide had been under so much strain in recent weeks. A woman who had called the police to investigate the appearance of a strange hat in her house. It didn’t get much more bizarre than that. A woman who had called the police because she’d received a note telling her where she could find the bodies of her missing mother and brother. A note that had been composed on a typewriter in her own home.
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?”