The 6:20 Man

Chapter 54

The 6:20 was delayed for five minutes by some problem at the station; then it lumbered on its way.

Later, the train slowed and then stopped. Devine looked out at Cowl’s pool area. It was empty this morning. No meditation for Montgomery in a bathing suit. And Cowl might have already fled the country, if he had indeed killed Stamos.

As the train remained motionless, Devine once more checked the video feed on his phone. Area 51 was still dead as a doornail. What the hell had happened between his looking at the feed the previous morning on the train ride in to find everything firing away, to his checking the feed as he arrived in the city only to find Area 51 shut down?

Devine decided to call Montgomery to check on her.

She answered on the fourth ring, sounding groggy.

“Sorry it’s so early,” he said apologetically.

“No, it’s okay. What’s up?”

“I passed by Cowl’s house this morning. And you weren’t out by the pool. But it made me think of you. Just wanted to touch base with you to make sure everything was okay. And whether you’d heard back from Cowl.”

“I haven’t heard from Brad. And I’m fine. I stayed in the city last night.”

“I was surprised that you were out by the pool yesterday after everything that had happened the night before. I forgot to ask you about that when we had lunch yesterday. But Stamos’s murder sucked up all the oxygen.”

“Well, that wasn’t my call.”

“Come again?” Devine said sharply.

“Brad texted me at like three in the morning and told me to be out by the pool before six forty-five. Luckily I wasn’t really sleeping and heard the text come in. I texted him back and told him I’d do it.”

“Wait a minute, he wanted you out by the pool in time for my train to come by?”

“I don’t know about that, he just told me the time.”

“Michelle, why didn’t you tell me about this at lunch yesterday?”

“With everything else going on, it didn’t seem important.” She yawned. “It still doesn’t, at least to me.”

“Not important! I told you that he might have murdered Stamos, or at least found her body.”

“I know that,” she shot back. “But how can that be connected to him texting me about going out by the pool? I mean, what would that matter? And he didn’t tell me where he was, so I had nothing to tell you on that score.”

“But didn’t that make you suspicious? That after maybe finding a body, or killing a woman, he took the time to text and tell you to be out by the pool by a certain time the next morning?”

“Look, if you want the truth, Brad has a voyeur fetish. He wanted guys checking me out. I lied to you about that train. I knew about the gap, that people could see me. Some men get off on that, and Brad is one of them. So I parade around in my bikini when Brad tells me to, and he pays me well for it. And it’s not like he asks me to do it all the time. It’s actually pretty rare, although it has been more often lately.”

“But he wasn’t there to see it last time.”

“But he has cameras around the property. I figured he was going to watch later, like it’s his own little porn video.”

Devine shook his head, and then something occurred to him. Something maybe crazy, and then again maybe not. “Do you pick the bikinis to wear, or does Cowl?”

“I do.”

Devine looked deflated. His theory had just gone down in flames.

“But Brad picks the colors.”

He tensed once more, his adrenaline racing. “He picks the colors?”

“Yes. I don’t like red or emerald green. They’re not really my colors. I prefer blue. The only green I wear is lime, and that’s only in the summer when I’m tanned. But Brad likes me in those colors.”

“And he tells you when to go out by the pool in the bikinis?”

“Yes. Like I said, he has a fetish.”

“Is it always by six forty-five?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Okay,” he began. “Let’s go over the chronology. Last Friday, before they found Sara’s body, you were wearing a green bikini. Correct?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s right.”

“And you weren’t by the pool on Saturday.”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t take the morning train in on Sunday, but were you told to sit out by the pool then?”

“Yes.”

“Red bikini?”

“Um, correct.”

“I was told on Saturday that Sara’s death was due to homicide, not suicide.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I don’t see the connection.”

“Then on Monday morning, I saw you wearing a green bikini.”

“That’s right, I was. Just like Brad told me to. I was surprised because normally it wouldn’t be that frequent. Most of the time weeks would go by. And this goes back to last summer. We met in August, and that’s when I moved here.”

“I think I know why the frequency picked up.”

“Why?” she asked curiously.

“Because people started dying. Now, you were by the pool on Tuesday, but you had on a blue swimsuit. Why that color?”

“That was all me, not Brad. Like I said, blue is my favorite color.”

“But why were you by the pool if Cowl didn’t tell you to be?”

She smiled impishly. “I decided to have some fun after you told me about all the guys checking me out. I mean, I knew they were, but I knew you’d be on the train, too. So I decided to put on a show and then flip everybody off.”

He shook his head. That’s why it didn’t fit the pattern. “Okay, then on Wednesday you were by the pool with the red bikini?”

“Yes. That was when Brad texted me late and told me to get over there.”

“So Stamos was dead, Cowl probably knew about it, and you got the message to be by the pool in your red bikini?”

“I must be pretty dumb, because I don’t see where all this is going, Travis.”

“I think you got the message from him to wear the red bikini because he had found Stamos’s body.”

Her face screwed up in confusion. “Why are you so fixated on me and my bikinis? It’s just one of Brad’s quirks, like I said. He has a lot of them, let me tell you,” she added wearily.

Devine sighed and sat back. “You ever heard of Hermes?”

“The people who make the handbags?”

“No, the Greek god.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“He was the cleverest of the gods. He was their interpreter. And he was also their messenger.”

“Again, so what?” said Montgomery in a puzzled tone.

“So, at the most basic level, Michelle, green means go. And red means stop.”