Far From True

Twenty

Before stumbling upon the secret room, I’d been about ready to give up thinking I could help Lucy Brighton find out who’d been in her father’s house. Up to then, I had no idea why anyone would have broken in, or what they might have been looking for.

Now I had a pretty good idea what someone wanted.

Someone knew about that hidden room, knew what was in it. Namely, those discs, which, I was guessing, were homemade porno. It struck me that someone who’d go to all that trouble to get them was probably on them. And if so, knew Adam and Miriam Chalmers.

Knew them pretty well.

I asked Lucy to find, for starters, an address book and phone bills, while I went back to Adam’s office, dropped into the chair behind the desk, and started looking at e-mails on his desktop computer.

I clicked on the stamp icon, and immediately I was asked to enter a password. I decided to try “Lucy.” When that didn’t let me in, I called out: “Lucy!”

She was in the kitchen. Her father always paid the bills sitting at the kitchen table — he didn’t trust the Internet to pay for things online — and he kept old phone bills in the drawer there.

“Yes?” she said.

“It wants a password. And I tried your name.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Lucy said, “Try ‘Crystal.’”

I tried it. No luck.

“Nope!” I cried out.

Another short silence. Then, more quietly: “‘Miriam.’”

I typed in the letters. Again, no joy.

“Got any other ideas?” I said.

“I’m thinking.” I was guessing she was at least pleased that Miriam hadn’t been picked over her or her daughter. “Try ‘Devils’ Chosen.’”

“What?”

She repeated it. “That was the name of the motorcycle gang he was with years ago.”

I gave it a try. The first time, with an s apostrophe, didn’t work. I tried it again without, and still no luck. The third time, I used an uppercase D and C.

Bingo.

“I’m in,” I said.

I scanned the mail program. There were dozens of e-mails in the in-box, the sent file, and the trash. It would take hours to go through all of these, but the answer might be here.

The most recent — it had come in early this morning and had not been opened — was from a Gilbert Frobisher. He wrote:

That e-mail had been a reply to one from Adam, which had read:

The next one, which had been opened, had come in late yesterday afternoon. It was from Felicia Chalmers. I called out: “What did you say your father’s ex-wife’s name was?”

“Felicia.” Excitedly, “I’ve found the phone bills.”

“Look for numbers that come up a lot.”

I clicked on the e-mail from Felicia. It was short.

What I really wanted to find was an e-mail that said, “Hey, Adam, I’ve got a key. I’ll come by and get the discs.” But things were never that simple. But it was interesting that Adam Chalmers still kept in touch with his ex.

The next e-mail was a fan letter from someone who’d read one of his books, and wanted to know, if he mailed Chalmers a copy of it, could he autograph it and send it back? Adam had not responded. And there was an e-mail from Lucy herself, which read:

The message had been replied to. I looked in the sent file, found a quick note from Adam to his daughter saying, No prob.

I glanced through some of the more recent sent messages. A couple of replies to other fans who’d read and enjoyed one of his books. There was a request from an aspiring author, asking Chalmers to read his book. His reply read:

I continued scanning the e-mails, including those in the trash file. There wasn’t much there. Adam had purged most of the deleted e-mails from the computer. There were only about twenty in there, the oldest from six days ago.

This wasn’t proving to be productive.

Lucy came into the office. “There are three numbers that show up quite a few times on my father’s cell phone bill. Well, four, actually. But the fourth is Miriam’s cell, and that just makes sense.”

“What are the others?”

She read the first one out to me. I opened a browser on the computer and Googled it. If it was a landline, and not unlisted, there was a good chance whoever it belonged to would turn up.

Felicia Chalmers.

“Tell me about Felicia,” I said.

“Is it her number?”

I nodded.

Lucy Brighton stopped to think. “She still lives in Promise Falls, far as I know. I mean, I have nothing to do with her. We weren’t enemies or anything, but once she and Dad broke up, there was no reason to keep in touch. I think she’s got a condo somewhere around here. I think if she’d remarried, Dad would have mentioned it.”

“The two of them clearly have kept in touch. Did your father have financial obligations to her?”

“He gave her a lump sum when they divorced, but not all that much. I wouldn’t be surprised if he slipped her some money now and then. But there were no kids to worry about. And she was the one who’d pushed to get out of the marriage.”

“But she kept the name,” I said.

“Her own last name is Dimpfelmyer. What would you do?”

The Google search had brought up an address on Braymore Drive. I wrote it down in my notebook. Maybe Felicia was still trusted to have a key. And to know the code. Maybe Adam and Miriam’s sex life included his ex. A threesome. I could imagine Felicia might want those DVDs back. If she’d heard about Adam and Miriam getting killed at the drive-in, she wouldn’t want whoever had to empty the house — Lucy, presumably — finding those home movies. So she busted in, grabbed them, and ran out the back when Lucy got here.

It wasn’t a bad theory. And it was a good place to start.

“What’s the next number?” I asked.

She read it off. I did another Google search and came up with nothing. Probably a cell.

“Let’s have a look at the address book,” I said. Lucy handed it to me. I started flipping through the pages, looking for a number that matched the one she’d just given me.

I went through the entire book without getting a hit. I made a note of it, would check it later.

“What’s the last one?” I asked, scribbling it down as Lucy read it off to me. I went to the Google search field again and entered it. Again, no luck. Probably another cell. So I went back to the address book.

This time, I had better luck. And I only had to go to the Ds.

“You ever heard of someone named Clive Duncomb?” I asked Lucy.

She shook her head.

I turned again to my friend Mr. Google.

“Whoa,” I said, seeing a number of stories come up.

“What?”

“He’s the head of security at Thackeray. And a few days ago he blew some kid’s head off.”

“My God. Why?”

“If it was plagiarism, things have gotten a lot tougher than when I was at school.”

I decided to start with Felicia Chalmers.

She lived in the Waterside Towers condo development, about half a mile downstream from the falls in the center of town. To call it a tower was a stretch. It was a five-story building, which, with the exception of the water tower, was as tall as structures got in Promise Falls.

I parked in a guest spot and entered the outer lobby. No one was on duty, but that didn’t mean I was able to walk in. There was a directory and a panel of buttons by the second door. I found Felicia Chalmers in 502, which meant she was on the top floor.

I hated buzzers. If the woman didn’t want to talk to me, she wouldn’t have to let me in. It was a lot easier to say no to people when you didn’t have to see them face-to-face. And I didn’t want to have to explain, through a speaker, why I was here.

Someone was coming along the sidewalk, heading to the main door of the building. A middle-aged woman with a set of keys in her hand.

I leaned in close to the panel of buttons, appeared to be taking my hand away from one of them, and as the woman came into the building, I said, loudly, “Okay, then, I’ll be up in a second.”

I turned, smiled at the woman with the key. She unlocked the door, glanced my way.

“I’m just waiting to be buzzed in,” I said, making no move to try to sneak in as she pulled open the glass door.

“Oh, just go ahead,” she said, holding the door for me.

“Oh, thanks.”

I scooted in, then politely stepped aside to let her walk ahead of me as we headed for the elevator. The woman got off at three, and I stayed on until the doors opened at five. I got my bearings, figured that 502 was to the left, and walked down the carpeted hallway until I was at Felicia Chalmers’s apartment.

I could hear music inside as I rapped on the door.

Five seconds later, I heard a chain sliding back, and then the door opened. I had to adjust my gaze downward. In high heels, she might have been five-three, but she was barefoot and the top of her head was barely level with my chin. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was dressed in some turquoise workout clothes. Trickles of sweat ran down her temple.

“Yes?” she asked over the sound of Chicago performing “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”

“Ms. Chalmers? Felicia Chalmers?”

“How did you get into the building?”

I got out my ID. “I’m Cal Weaver. I’m a private investigator. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She put a hand on her hip. “About what?”

“About your former husband, Adam Chalmers.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “God, what’s he done? Wait, let me guess. There’s a woman involved. There’s always a woman involved one way or another.”

Shit.

“Ms. Chalmers, you haven’t heard?”

“Haven’t heard what?”

“May I come in?”

Worry washed over her face. She opened the door wide, let me in, and closed it. She went over to an iPod resting on a Bose stereo unit, muted it, then crossed the room to what I was guessing was the bedroom, and pulled the door shut.

Having completed those errands, she asked, “What’s going on?”

“The accident last night? At the Constellation Drive-in?”

“What accident at what drive-in?”

“Have you watched TV this morning, been online? Facebook, Twitter? Seen the news?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t watch the news. It’s all bad. And I’m not on those other things. About the only thing I use is e-mail. Please tell me what’s going on.”

“There was an explosion last night, at the drive-in. The screen came down on a couple of the cars. One of them belonged to Adam Chalmers. He was in the car with his wife, Miriam.”

“What?”

“Mr. Chalmers and his wife were killed. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you.”

“Adam’s dead?”

“I thought someone would have been in touch. Or that you would have heard somehow.”

“That’s impossible. Oh my God, this is awful. This is unbelievable. I was talking to him yesterday. I mean, not on the phone, but e-mail.” She shook her head. “God, I need a drink. Get me a drink.”

She pointed toward the kitchen.

“What would you like?”

“There’s a bottle of red in the rack there. Glasses on the right. Fill one of them to the fucking brim.”

She dropped herself onto an oversized couch, brought her feet up, and tucked them under her thighs. “Help yourself, too.”

I went into the kitchen, where I noticed three empty beer bottles standing in the sink. Given what she’d sent me in here for, beer didn’t strike me as her beverage of choice, but you never knew. Maybe she liked wine in the morning, and beer at night. But my beer theory was buttressed by the opened bag of spicy Doritos, rolled up and kept fresh with a rubber band. Didn’t seem to match the workout regimen.

I came back with a full glass of red wine. She downed half of it, handed it back, and said, “Top it up.”

I’d brought the bottle, and obliged. I sat down on a chair opposite her.

“You’re not having anything?”

“I’m good,” I said.

“I’d tell you I hate to drink alone, but you’re a detective, so you’d figure out I was lying pretty fast.” She shot a quick look at the closed bedroom door, then gave me a critical look. “Jesus, this is unbelievable. Tell me again what happened.”

I told her what I knew.

“Oh my God. The two of them crushed? And they’d have been in his old Jag. Oh, Jesus, he loved that car. If he were here now, that’s what he’d say was the most tragic part of this. Sure, Miriam getting killed, that’s bad, but he really loved that car.”

I didn’t know what to say. But I didn’t have to come up with anything. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Issues related to Mr. Chalmers’s death. As his ex-wife they may have some impact on you.”

She pursed her lips. That seemed to be good enough for her. “You know, I could see Adam dying any number of ways, but a movie screen falling on him?”

“What other ways could you imagine?”

Felicia shrugged. “Some old biker from his past killing him for ripping him off, maybe. A jealous husband who didn’t like Adam fucking his wife. Or maybe a former wife like me who was tired of listening to his bullshit. I don’t know. Take your pick.”

“Was there some old biker buddy from his past who got ripped off?”

“Shit, there were probably a bunch. Except Adam would have been smart enough to cover his tracks, or cover up the guy he ripped off with enough dirt that he’d never be coming after him, if you get my drift.”

“I think I do.”

She leaned forward. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Adam was a good guy. He just had one hell of a past, is all.”

“Why’d the two of you divorce? I gather you were the one who wanted out.”

She took another big swallow of wine. “And why, exactly, would I even answer that question? I don’t know who the hell you are or why you’re really here. Some bullshit about issues related to his death?”

I smiled. “Someone broke into your ex-husband’s home. After it became known that he’d been killed in the accident.”

Her eyes widened. “What kind of sick bastard does that? I’ve heard about something like that. Creeps who break into people’s houses when they’re at funerals. They know they won’t be home. People get home, all broken up over the death of a loved one, and their flat-screen TV and jewelry’s gone.”

“It wasn’t quite like that. This thief was looking for something very specific, in a very specific place.”

Felicia Chalmers blinked.

“Oh,” she said.

“I think whoever came into the house had a key, and knew how to deactivate the security system. Someone Adam or Miriam, or both, trusted.”

Felicia nodded slowly. “I see. And you’re wondering if I’m that person?”

“I’m wondering if you have any idea who it could be.”

“Well, it’s not me. I can tell you that much. Adam would surely have changed the locks after our divorce. I mean, probably. Although I don’t think he ever distrusted me. But once he married Miriam, I’ll bet she’d have wanted to be sure I could never get into that house.”

“You never tried?”

“Of course not. I had no reason. I probably still do have a key somewhere, but I can’t say whether it would work or not.”

“Could you find it?”

“Now?”

I nodded.

A sigh. She got off the couch and went into the kitchen. I could hear her rummaging around in a drawer. “Maybe I got rid of it,” she said, loud enough for me to hear. “Oh, wait. I think this is it. Oh, looks like I’ve actually still got two of them.”

She returned to the living room with a key held between thumb and forefinger.

“May I have that?” I asked. “I’d like to see if it actually works.”

Felicia hesitated.

“If you’d like to call his daughter, Lucy Brighton, to confirm I’m legit, that’s fine with me,” I said.

She hesitated another second, then decided it was less trouble to trust me than to take the time to learn the truth from Lucy. “Here, take this one. I don’t need it.”

I did. I slipped it into the pocket of my sport jacket.

“Let me try asking again. Why did you and Adam get a divorce?”

She studied me for a few seconds, then gave a what-the-hell shrug. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I just couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t take what?”

“The lifestyle.”

“I’m sorry. What lifestyle?”

“The lifestyle,” she said.

Now I was the one shaking my head. “I don’t understand. Are you saying Adam Chalmers was gay?”

“No, no, no. Although I suppose he was bisexual to some point. I mean, you’d kind of have to be.”

“Wait, are you talking about wife-swapping?”

She frowned. “That’s what they used to call it in the dark ages. But that’s not a very politically correct term anymore. Made women sound like baseball cards. It’s not wife-swapping, but spouse-sharing.”

“Like group sex?”

Felicia looked at me like I was five. “Where are you from? Mayberry?”

“Enlighten me.”

“The lifestyle is when one couple meets up with another couple for sex. Okay, it could be three couples. Anything more than that and I guess it would be an orgy. Adam always liked to keep it to two other couples. You have six people, and there are quite a number of permutations, even more if the men are into men and the women are into women. Or at least give it a try. Everything consensual, more or less — at least that’s what they pretend. Everyone fooling around with each other, right in the open, no one going behind anyone’s back to have an affair. Supposedly. The openness, the freedom, actually makes relationships stronger. Gets the urge to stray out of your system. You indulge your fantasies with your partner’s blessing.”

“Supposedly.”

“Some spouses go along because it’s what their partner wants. They tell themselves they’re into it, too. But... not so much.”

“Like you.”

Felicia shrugged, knocked back some more wine. “You think it’s all out in the open, that that would eliminate the need for an actual affair. Why sneak around behind your spouse’s back when you can fuck someone else right in front of her? But with Adam, it was the secrecy he liked. That was the thrill. So even if he was banging his best friend’s wife right in front of him, the real thrill was to do it someplace else when he wasn’t there.”

“Is that what Adam did?”

She smiled sadly. “Oh, yeah. He had to see women outside the playroom. When I learned he was doing that, I’d had enough. I wanted out.”

“The playroom,” I said.

Felicia took a moment to size me up, wondering how much I knew. “You found it,” she said.

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes, as though trying to picture it. “It all seems so silly, when you think about it. And a little bit tacky, I guess. But Adam felt those activities deserved to be relegated to a special room. Like it shouldn’t taint the rest of the house. But it had to be hidden. He didn’t want anyone wandering in there by mistake.”

“I saw the DVD player. And the camera equipment under the bed.”

“Adam liked to record sessions,” she said, opening her eyes. “We’d play them back sometimes, with guests. Kind of like reviewing a football game play by play.”

“So everyone knew they were being videoed. The camera wasn’t hidden.”

Felicia shook her head.

“The DVDs are gone,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“I think that’s what someone was after. Those DVDs.”

“Christ on a taco,” she said.

“That worries you?”

“Not me. Not personally. When we split up, Adam gave me any video he had of me, of us, either alone or with others.”

“How do you know he didn’t hold something back? Didn’t make copies?”

“Because I just know. Adam, for all his faults, was a more or less honest guy. At least with me. If he said he gave me everything, he did. And he never put anything online, never did computer files. He knew that kind of stuff always got hacked or sent by mistake. He liked hard copies, no pun intended.”

“And you destroyed them? The discs he gave you?”

“I did.”

“You’re sure?”

She scowled. “I told you.”

“Because I’m trying to recover those DVDs, or be assured that they’re no longer in existence.”

“Who for? No, wait, you already mentioned Lucy.”

I nodded.

“She wants them?”

“She’d be happy knowing that they’ve been destroyed. She doesn’t have to get them back. But we need to know who took them to get that kind of assurance.”

Felicia softened. “Sure. Look, I’m telling you the truth. Adam gave me any discs from our time together and I smashed them into a million pieces. They went out in the trash years ago.”

“Who else was on them?”

I was thinking that if the couples participating in the lifestyle with Adam and Felicia were still taking part with Adam and Miriam, I’d have some likely suspects where the missing DVDs were concerned.

Felicia shook her head. “I know what you must be thinking, and I don’t think it’s going to help. There were two other couples we saw back then. One moved to Paris around that time — she got transferred — and I don’t think they ever came back. And the other couple, there was kind of a big falling-out because she was the one Adam saw on the side.”

“On the side.”

“Yeah. Any discs from back then that featured those people also featured me, so they’d have been the ones Adam gave me.”

“When you were married to Adam, did he ever trust another couple enough that he’d give them a key to the house?”

She nodded. “The ones who moved to France. Adam gave him a key. In case we were away, it was someone who could check the house, if he didn’t want to trouble Lucy.”

“Do you know who Adam and Miriam were involved with more recently?”

“How would I know that?”

“Because you and Adam still talked. At least through e-mails.”

Her eyes widened for half a second. “It’s true, but I don’t think Miriam knew. She’d have been pissed.”

“I saw your exchange from yesterday. You said someone needed time to think something through. What was that about?”

“Jesus, you really are a detective. I was talking about Miriam. They were having some ups and downs.”

“The same kind you were having? Another woman?”

“He didn’t get too specific, but probably. Maybe that’s why he took her to the movies. Trying to smooth things over. Christ, maybe he took her to the drive-in to rekindle some of what they used to have, and they ended up dead.”

“You think Adam was interested in starting up a relationship with you again?”

She nearly choked on the wine. “Hardly. Been there, done that.”

I looked at the closed bedroom door, held it for two beats. “And you’ve moved on, anyway.”

Felicia followed my gaze, smiled. “I’ve moved on more times than I can count.” She put the glass to her lips and tipped it back.

“Had you and Adam always kept in touch since the divorce?”

She shrugged. “We stayed friends.”

“Did he give you money?”

The look she gave me suggested I’d just asked how much she weighed. “Money?”

“Beyond whatever settlement you had when you divorced.”

“It was a lump sum. But—” She paused for more wine. “But occasionally, when I needed a little help, he’d be there for me. He just didn’t want Miriam to know.”

“Did the two of you continue to be intimate?”

She grinned. “That is so charming. Intimate. You mean, were we still fucking?”

“Yes.”

She pursed her lips provocatively, then retracted them, perhaps realizing that whatever hookups she and her ex had had, there would be no more. “There was the occasional itch,” she conceded. “But mostly, he just liked to talk.”

Her expression turned sorrowful. “He felt I was one of the few people who understood him. Who knew that even if he behaved badly, he wasn’t a bad person.” She sniffed. “He was just a big boy, is what he was. I mean, he had problems. Some people would probably want to label him, say he had some sort of sexual addiction problem. You ask me, he just always wanted to be nineteen. I think he missed his bad-boy biker days.”

“What’d he do back then?”

“You don’t know?”

“No,” I said.

“He ran girls. Prostitution. Made a lot of money out of it, too. He’s always liked the ladies, one way or another.”

“I didn’t know.”

Despite whatever sorrow she was feeling, she managed a smile.

“It was how me met,” she said. “Adam wasn’t the only one who reinvented himself.”