Too Close to Home

He grinned. “I like you, Cutter, even though you hate my guts. I’ll pay you twice what I used to. Council’d never approve it, but I can find the money someplace. That’s probably a hell of a lot more than you’re making pushing a fucking mower.”

That gave me pause. I didn’t know how long Derek’s legal problems might continue. And even if they didn’t go on long, Natalie Bondurant was going to cost us a good chunk of change regardless. The lawn business was okay, but it wouldn’t pay as well as my old salary doubled.

“Let me get back to you,” I said.

Randy flashed me a huge smile, made a fist, and tapped me on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You need time to grieve.”

He punched me again in the shoulder. “You’re a pistol, that’s what you are.”

Part of me didn’t want to be bothered, but I couldn’t help but think about Lance, and why he was dead. I couldn’t see any way that he might be mixed up in the murder of the Langleys or the missing computer.

I felt a headache coming on when Barry came down to talk to me. Again, I was dragged away from Drew so that I could be spoken to privately.

“What are you doing with that guy?” Barry asked me, tipping his head in the direction of my new employee.

“He was in the right place at the right time, more than once,” I said. “You ever think things happen for a reason? I didn’t used to, now I’m not so sure. I had an accident out front of his mother’s house, he helped me out, I found out he needed work and I gave him some.”

“He robbed a bank,” Barry said.

“So you said. I’m not planning to get him to do my taxes or make my deposits.”

Barry shrugged. “Your call.” He cleared his throat, a signal that he was about to switch gears. “Tell me about this little spat you had with Lance,” he said.

“The other day, the mayor took me for a drive, and when we got back, Lance was pushing my buttons and my elbow found its way into his stomach. He got back at me a couple of days later. Hid behind my trailer when I was out on a job, sucker punched me, left me rolled up in a ball on the street. And then I returned the favor while he was reading the sports pages.”

“You two never did get along.”

“No.”

“We found somebody lives next door says she heard something yesterday, late afternoon, just before six. She was getting ready to watch the news, heard a shot, didn’t hear another, didn’t think another thing about it.”

“Just like you said,” I said.

“I suppose you can account for your whereabouts at that time?” Barry asked.

“I’ve got a witness who can put me at my place right about then,” I said.

“Not the dead guy I found in your shed, I hope.”

“No, he came later. One of your cops. The one you had babysitting the house. He was leaving about that time, packing it in, talked to me on the way out.”

Barry nodded. “Well, there you go.” I thought he was done, and then he said, “That lady, watching the news. She did more than most people. She actually got up, went to her door, and opened it to stick her head out, just to be sure.”

“But she didn’t hear the second shot, so she sat back down.”

“Yeah, pretty much. But she thought she heard a man’s voice. Thought she heard him say one word.”

I waited.

“She heard someone say ‘shame.’”

I let the word bounce around inside my head for a second. I thought back to what Natalie Bondurant had told us after she’d spent some time interviewing our son.

“Derek,” I said. “That’s what he heard someone say, in the Langley house.”

“I know,” Barry said.

I ran my hand over the top of my head. “Barry, there’s so much going on, I can’t keep it all straight.”

“You and me both,” he said. He said I was free to go and turned to walk away, then stopped and looked back. “There might be some good news about your son today,” he said.

I started to open my mouth to ask, but Barry held up his hand. “I got nothing else to tell you.”

“Then let me ask you about something else,” I said, closing the distance between us. “There’d be a report somewhere, wouldn’t there, about Brett Stockwell taking a header off Promise Falls?”

“Ten years ago?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose so.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Barry studied me for a couple of seconds. “Let me see what I can do.”

THIRTY-ONE

We still managed to get another yard in before lunch. Drew threw himself into his work. I couldn’t help thinking that if he’d put the same energy into robbing banks as he did into cutting yards, he’d have a shitload of money tucked away someplace by now. I was going to phone Ellen about Lance, but decided she didn’t need any more news to distract her from dealing with Natalie Bondurant, and getting our son sprung from jail.

For lunch, we drove back down by the river, just down from the falls, even got the same picnic table.

“So that was the mayor,” Drew said, taking a drink from his water bottle. “Finley.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you used to work for him.”