The Accident

TWENTY-FIVE

I stood up, so angry I was shaking. The idea that Sheila had any dealings, even so much as a phone call, with a thug like Sommer was deeply disturbing to me. And I’d already had enough troubling revelations about Sheila.

“You’re wrong. Sheila didn’t call that guy.”

“If she didn’t, someone using her phone did. Did she lend her phone out to people?” Twain asked.

“No. But-it doesn’t make sense.”

“But your wife has purchased knockoff purses?”

I remembered when I was standing in the closet on Friday, wondering whether it was finally time to do something with Sheila’s things. There were dozens of purses in there.

“There might be a couple,” I said.

“Would you mind if I looked at them?”

“Why?”

“When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn to spot certain characteristics. Just as someone could note the differences between a Coach and Gucci bag, I can sometimes notice differences between a bag made in one factory in China versus a bag made somewhere else. It gives me an idea which counterfeiters are making more of a dent in the market, for one thing.”

I hesitated. Why help this man? What difference did it make now? If anything, Arthur Twain was going to tarnish Sheila’s memory. Why help him do that?

As if reading my mind, he said, “I’m not here to hurt your wife’s reputation. I’m sure Mrs. Garber never knowingly broke the law, or intended to. This is one of those things like, like stealing cable. Everyone does it, so no one thinks that there’s anything-”

“Sheila never stole cable. Or anything else.”

Arthur held up a defensive hand. “Sorry. It was just an example.”

I said nothing, ran my tongue over my lip. “She hosted a party here,” I said. “Once.”

Arthur nodded. “When was that?”

“A few weeks-no, a couple of months before Sheila died.”

“When you say hosted, did she sell the merchandise? Or did she turn that over to someone else?”

“Someone else.” I hesitated, wondering whether it was fair to drag anyone else into it. Except the person I was going to name was as immune from prosecution as Sheila. “A woman named Ann Slocum. A friend of Sheila’s.”

Arthur Twain looked up something in his Moleskine. “Yeah, I have that name here. My information is that she was in regular contact with Mr. Sommer. I’ll be wanting to talk to her, too.”

“Good luck,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“She died the other night.”

For the first time, Arthur looked taken aback. “When? What happened?”

“Late Friday night, or maybe early Saturday morning. She had an accident. Got out to check a flat tire, stumbled off the pier.”

“Oh my. I didn’t know.” Twain was taking it all in.

So was I. The day that Sheila died, she’d put in a call to some kind of mobster. A man Twain was telling me was a suspect in a triple homicide. I thought about what Edwin had said, quoting Conan Doyle. How when something seemed impossible, the other possibilities, no matter how improbable, had to be considered.

Sheila had called a suspected killer. And before the day was out, she was dead.

She hadn’t died the way the people in those photographs had. She hadn’t been shot. No one had walked up to her and put a-

A bullet in her brain.

That wasn’t what had happened to her. She’d died in an accident. An accident that had never made sense to me. Sure, all fatal accidents seemed senseless to those who were left behind to grieve. The deaths seemed so random, so cruelly arbitrary. But Sheila’s accident was different.

Her accident went against character.

Sheila would never have gotten drunk enough to do what they claimed she did. Deep in my heart, I was certain of that.

Was it possible? Was it conceivable Sheila’s death wasn’t what it appeared to be? That while it seemed to be an accident, it was actually-

“Mr. Garber?”

“I’m sorry?”

Arthur Twain said, “You were going to let me have a look at some of those purses your wife had?”

I’d forgotten. “Wait here.”

I went upstairs, passing by Kelly’s room. She had left her door open and was sitting at her desk, on the computer. I stepped in. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she replied, her eyes on the screen. “What does that man want?”

“He wants to see some of your mom’s purses.”

She looked at me, alarm flashing across her face. “Why does a man want to see Mom’s purses? Does he want one for his wife? You’re not giving them away, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you selling them?” Her tone was accusing.

“No. He just wants to see them. He tries to find out who makes fake designer purses and put them out of business.”

“Why?”

“Because the people who make them are copying the originals.”

“Is that bad?”

“Yeah,” I said. Here I was, making Arthur’s arguments when moments earlier I’d been trying to knock them down. “It’s like, if you copy off another kid’s work at school. It’s not your work.”

“So it’s cheating,” Kelly said.

“Yeah.”

“So Mom was a cheater because she had some?”

“No, your mother was not a cheater. But the people who make those bags are.”

Kelly was struggling with a decision. I was guessing it was whether to like me again. “I’m still mad at you.”

“I understand.”

“But can I help you?”

“With?”

“The purses?”

I motioned for her to follow me to Sheila’s closet. There were about a dozen bags on the shelf above the hangers, and as I handed them down to Kelly she ran the straps up her arms. She looked pretty adorable, lugging them all down that way to the living room, struggling to keep her balance as she did so.

“Well, look at you,” Arthur said as Kelly nearly stumbled into him. She dropped her arms and let the bags fall into two heaps on either side of her.

“Sorry,” she said. “They’re heavy.”

“You’re a pretty strong girl to carry those all the way downstairs.”

“I have big arm muscles,” Kelly said. She demonstrated, adopting a muscleman pose.

“Wow,” he said.

“You can feel,” she offered.

“That’s okay,” he said, keeping his hands to himself. “Your mother had a lot of purses.”

“This isn’t all of them,” Kelly told him. “Just the ones she liked. Sometimes, if she had a purse she never used, she would donate it to the poor people.”

Arthur looked up at me and flashed a brief smile. “These bags here, are they ones that your mom would have bought in the last couple of years?”

I was about to say I wasn’t sure, but Kelly spoke up first. “Yes. This one,” and she picked up a black one with an oversized black leather flower on it that was labeled Valentino, “she got when she went into the city with her friend Mrs. Morton.”

Some friend.

“You can tell it’s not real,” Kelly said, opening the bag, “because there’s no label inside telling you where it was made, and the lining isn’t as nice, and if you try real hard you can peel the sticker off on the outside.”

“You’re good at this,” Arthur said.

I said, “I’m raising Nancy Drew.”

“And this one Mom got after the party Emily’s mom had at the house,” Kelly said.

Arthur made a close inspection. “A pretty good Marc Jacobs copy.”

Kelly nodded in astonishment. “My dad would never be able to tell something like that.” She glanced up at me.

“And this one,” Twain said, “is an excellent Valentino knockoff.”

“Oh my God,” Kelly said. “You’re like the only dad in the world who would know that! Are you a dad?”

“Yes, I am. I have two little boys. Well, not so little anymore.”

She held up one of the purses. “Mom also really liked this one.”

It was a tan fabric bag with leather trim, a slender strap, a mosaic of “F” symbols all over it.

“A Fendi,” Arthur said, holding the bag to inspect it. “Nice.”

“A good copy?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Not a copy at all. It’s the real deal. Made in Italy.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Arthur nodded. “Your wife might have found it on sale, but if you were to buy this on Fifth Avenue it would run you two thousand dollars.”

“Grandma bought that one for Mom,” Kelly said. “For her birthday. Remember?”

I didn’t, but that explained it. Fiona wasn’t the type to buy anything but the real deal. She’d be as likely to buy her daughter a knockoff bag as take her to lunch at Wendy’s.

As Twain dropped the bag on the floor, it made a sound. Like something rattling around inside it.

Jesus, I thought. Not another pair of handcuffs. I wouldn’t know what to make of that kind of discovery. But the rattle had not sounded metallic.

“There’s something in here,” he said, grabbing it by the strap.

I reached over and took it from him. “Whatever’s in there was Sheila’s,” I told him. “The bags may be your business, but what’s in them isn’t.”

I left Kelly and Arthur Twain in the living room. I went into the kitchen, undid the clasp on the top of the purse, and opened it wide.

Inside, there were four plastic containers, each one about the size of a jar of olives.

Each one carried a different label. Lisinopril. Vicodin. Viagra. Omeprazole.

Altogether, hundreds and hundreds of pills.