Broken Promise: A Thriller

Forty-three

Duckworth thought, I’m an idiot.

He’d just pulled up in front of the house where he’d been told by the Thackeray College registration office that he could find Derek Cutter, when he realized what he should have asked Sarita Gomez’s landlord, Mrs. Selfridge, she of the magnificent banana bread.

When Duckworth had left the station that morning he’d dragooned a female officer and put her on the phones to call nursing homes in and around Promise Falls to try to find where Sarita worked. It had occurred to him that, even if they were to call the right place, someone might deny employing a person here illegally.

It was on the way to interview Derek that it hit him.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said to himself.

He pulled right over to the curb, a couple of blocks away from Derek’s address, and got out his notebook and phone. He found Mrs. Selfridge’s number and dialed.

She answered on the third ring. He identified himself.

“Oh, hello, Detective,” she said. “If you’re wondering if Sarita’s come back, she hasn’t. She’s paid up to the end of the month, but I’m thinking I should start looking for a new tenant. I got a feeling she’s flown the coop for good.”

“You might be right,” Duckworth said. “I wanted to thank you again for that banana bread. I was wondering, would you be willing to part with the recipe? And if you say no, I’m pretty sure I can get a subpoena.”

That made her laugh. “I don’t even have it written down. I just do it out of my head. But I guess I could come up with something.”

“And there’s another thing,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this yesterday. Your phone, that Sarita used?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like you to go through the call history. Calls in and out.”

“I could do that,” she said. “You want me to do that before or after I get you the recipe?”

“Before,” Duckworth said, with some regret. “Sarita probably made, and received, calls from the nursing home where she worked. Once we have that number, we’ll know her employer. And there may be other numbers, too, that might help me find her.” He paused. “And when I do, I can ask her whether she’s going to keep the room.”

“Oh, I’d really appreciate that.”

“You have the card I left with you?” he asked. She said yes. “Okay, if you’d take down those numbers and e-mail them to me, I sure would appreciate it.”

Mrs. Selfridge said she would get right on it, and Duckworth said good-bye.

Idiot, he thought again. He wanted to plead overwork. Juggling too many cases at once. A murder, a fatal shooting at Thackeray, strange goings-on in the night at Five Mountains. Dead squirrels, for God’s sake.

And then there was the home front. How the hell did his son end up working for that asshole Randall Finley? That son of a bitch couldn’t be trusted. There had to be a reason he’d hired his son. Sure, Trevor would be a good hire for any company, but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to drive a truck. Finley could have hired anyone for a job like that. Why Trevor?

While he waited for Sarita’s landlady to get those numbers, he’d continue on to Derek Cutter’s residence. The young man’s name had surfaced twice in the last day, in two separate investigations. Not only had he been identified as the man who’d gotten Marla Pickens pregnant, he was also reported to be a friend of Mason Helt, the student Clive Duncomb had shot in the head.

Duckworth had much to discuss with Derek.

He was about to put the car in drive when his cell rang.

“Duckworth.”

“Hey, Barry. Cal Weaver.”

There was a voice from the past.

“Son of a bitch. I knew you were back. I’ve been meaning to call.”

“Everyone’s busy,” Weaver said.

“Where you living?”

“You know that used bookstore downtown? Naman’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Above it.”

“Okay.”

“I was living at my sister’s for a while,” Weaver said. “But that was temporary till I got my own place.”

“I knew you’d moved back from Griffon,” Duckworth said. “I heard about what happened there. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” Weaver said. “Listen, you’re working the Rosemary Gaynor murder.”

“I am.”

“Neponset Insurance has asked me to look into it. Bill Gaynor works for them, and all their insurance is with them as well.”

“Okay,” Duckworth said.

“There was a million-dollar policy on Ms. Gaynor. Before there’s a payout to Mr. Gaynor, there’s the usual due diligence.”

“Of course,” Duckworth said.

“But from what I understand, this one may be a bit of a slam dunk,” Weaver said.

“I’m in the middle of my investigation, Cal. No charges yet.”

“But this Marla Pickens is looking good for it.”

“She’s a suspect.”

“She had their baby,” Weaver said. “And it wasn’t the first time she pulled a stunt like that. Am I right?”

“You are.”

“Look, I don’t want to get in your way on this, and I’m not doing an active investigation of my own, not at this stage. I’m hanging back, monitoring developments, waiting to see if there’s an arrest. I wanted to give you a heads-up, is all.”

“Appreciate it,” Duckworth said. “Listen, we should have a beer sometime, get caught up.”

“Sure,” Weaver said noncommittally, and ended the call.

Duckworth was thinking he should have reached out to his old friend before now, but even more than that, he was thinking Bill Gaynor wasn’t going to have any trouble paying for a new nanny to look after Matthew.

A million bucks.

When Duckworth bumped into David Harwood coming out of Derek Cutter’s place, he asked him what he was doing there. “Trying to find out what happened, same as you,” the former reporter said on his way to an old Taurus parked on the street.

Duckworth found Derek waiting for him at the door to his apartment.

“Hey, Derek,” Duckworth said. “How you been?”

“Okay.”

“How’s your dad?”

“Okay.”

Once upstairs, Duckworth asked about Marla Pickens. Derek said, “I’ll tell you what I just told the other guy.”

Which he did.

Then Duckworth turned to Mason Helt. “I hear you guys were friends.”

“They fuckin’ executed him; that’s what I hear,” Derek said.

“Did you know Mason was stalking women on campus, attacking them?”

“You think if I knew something like that I wouldn’t say something about it?”

“So you had no idea.”

“No. I still don’t believe it. I’ve got some experience with being accused of something I didn’t do.”

Duckworth felt he’d apologized enough years ago for all of that. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

“Maybe two weeks ago? We ran into each other and he invited me to his place for a couple of beers.” Derek moved his lips in an out. “He said he got this weird kind of job. Sort of an acting thing. We’d been taking some theater classes together.”

“What kind of acting thing?”

“I asked him. I said, ‘Like in amateur theater? Something on campus or off?’ I even wondered if he’d tried out for some kind of commercial or something like that.”

“Which was it?”

“Well, none of those. Mason said it was a private thing. I thought, Maybe it’s got to do with sex, you know? Like maybe some old guy’d hired him to come to his house and dance or strip or do some kinky kind of role-play.”

“Why would something like that come to mind?” Duckworth asked. “Have you ever been asked to do something like that?”

“Geez, no. It’s just because he was so secretive about it, it made me wonder. But I kept asking him about it, and what he would say was, it was kind of like, you know when they hire actors to pretend they’re sick and medical students have to figure out what they’ve got?”

“I’ve heard of that.”

“Like what he was doing was part of a study or something. But he also implied it was a bit risky.” He shook his head. “He sure turned out to be right about that.”

“Did Mason say who hired him?”

“No, but he said he’d be able to buy me a few rounds for the next few weeks on what he was getting paid.”

It fit with what Joyce Pilgrim had told him. Mason, just before Clive Duncomb shot him, had said he wouldn’t hurt her. That the attack was some kind of gig.

“Mason was wearing a hoodie when he was shot,” Duckworth said. “With the number twenty-three on it. You ever see him wearing that?”

“That’s weird that you should bring that up,” Derek said.

“Why?”

“That time I ran into him, he’d been to some sports store in Promise Falls. Where you can buy stitch-on letters for varsity jackets, that kind of thing. He had this white plastic bag, and I asked him what was in it, and he said it was for the gig, but he wouldn’t show it to me. But he had to leave the room for a second to take a leak, and I peeked inside, and it was two numbers. The way they were in the bag, they made a thirty-two, but yeah, could just as easy be twenty-three.”

“So whoever hired him, for whatever it was he was supposed to do, he had to be wearing that number.”

“I guess,” Derek said. “Why would someone do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the significance of twenty-three?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s a reference to Psalm Twenty-three,” Derek offered.

“You’re going to have to help me there,” the detective said. “I sleep in on Sunday mornings if I’m not on duty.”

“Well, I haven’t been to church in years either, but my parents used to send me to Sunday school when I was really little. Psalm Twenty-three is the one that goes ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ And there’s that part that talks about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but not fearing any evil. You know?”

“It rings a bell,” Duckworth said.