I parked my car under a willow tree and stepped out onto the driveway. The air smelled of rotting fruit and woodsmoke. The front door swung open and Lily Kintner stepped out onto the porch. She was wearing old jeans and a turtleneck sweater. Her red hair was tied back.
I walked to the steps that led up to the porch, and she came down and met me.
“You’re a surprise,” she said.
“Well. I didn’t want to call, but I wanted to see you. I hope this is okay.”
“Of course. I’ll always be happy to see you. So will my father. I just . . . is there a reason you’re here?”
“I just finished a case that ended with me finding two dead bodies.”
“Okay,” she said. The sun was pushing its way through the clouds, and she squinted in the sudden light.
“I think I might have been set up. As a witness.”
“Who do you think set you up?”
“A woman named Joan Whalen, or Joan Grieve . . . that was her name before she got married. I wanted to get your opinion because I’m pretty sure she murdered her husband and her husband’s girlfriend.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding.
“Or maybe I just want to think that because if she didn’t then it was probably my fault that two people are dead. Sorry, I’m not making sense. I just needed to see someone and I thought of you.”
“Come in,” Lily said, and reached out and touched my shoulder before turning toward the house. I followed her inside.
Chapter 17
Richard
It had been five years since Richard had heard from Joan Grieve. He thought about her less these days, but still thought about her often. And then, during a Tuesday afternoon shift at Prince Hardware he looked up from behind the checkout desk and saw her looking at batteries. She glanced in his direction and their eyes met, and then she put the pack of nine volts she had in her hand back onto the rack and left the store.
That night, after eating a burrito in his basement apartment, he drove to the Fairview Library, a gothic brick building across from the congregational church in the small town he’d lived in since dropping out of Worcester Polytech after his sophomore year. There, he nodded at the lone librarian, a mannish-looking woman who once told Richard jokingly she was going to report him because he was always taking out the creepiest books they had. Since then he’d added her to his always growing kill list, and he’d imagined multiple times how he’d do it. He even knew where she lived and that she lived alone. It would be less trouble than changing a tire.
He turned right into the main wing of the library and climbed one of the four spiral staircases that led to the extended balcony that wrapped along three sides, and where the hardcover fiction was kept. There were two reading alcoves, one in each of the far corners of the suspended second floor, and Richard, after ducking down the Se–Tu aisle and grabbing a Dan Simmons book he’d read a few times, went and settled onto an upholstered chair. And he waited.
The Fairview Library was open until nine p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. At eight Richard wondered if Joan was coming at all. It was possible she had just wandered by mistake into the store where he worked. But if that had been the case, then why had she put down what she was looking at and left? Why had she given him that look?
He heard steps on the hardwood floors below, then listened as those same steps climbed one of the spiral staircases with the cast-iron risers. Richard stayed where he was. If it was Joan, she’d find him. The footsteps got closer, and now he was convinced it really was her, and his heart accelerated just a little bit. It had been many years, but meeting Joan Grieve in the library at the Windward Resort, and then at the Dartford town library all through high school, had been the most exciting, the most honest, moments of his life. He held the book in his lap but kept his eyes on the portion of the railed aisle that he could see.
And then she was suddenly there. She looked older, not physically really, but because of the clothes she was wearing and the way she held herself. She was in a charcoal skirt and a white blouse. She held a small leather purse. She smiled, and shook her head a little, almost as though she couldn’t believe he’d actually be here waiting for her. There was another chair in this alcove, at right angles to his, and she sat in it, turning her body to face him.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
He held up Carrion Comfort and said, “I was just looking at it. I’ve read it a few times.”
“Of course you have.”
“How are you?” Richard said.
Joan looked away briefly and Richard studied her pale neck, a blue vein visible in the fluorescent light of the library. Then she turned back to him. “Maybe you know this, but I got married.”
“I heard.”
“I married another Richard.”
“I heard that, too.” He smiled. “It was Richie Whalen, right? From school?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Although now he goes by Richard.”
“Uh-huh.”
Joan was quiet for a moment, and he remembered that they could do that together, be quiet, neither feeling the need to fill the silence. After a moment, Richard said, “So was it his name that attracted you to him? You only marry men named Richard?”
Her eyes got bright, and she pressed her lips together, then laughed out loud. It sounded dangerous in the quiet of the library. “Well,” she said. “I can’t remember exactly why I decided to marry him, but it was a big mistake.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I have no one to blame but myself. He’s a workaholic, which is fine, because he makes a lot of money, but it’s not fine because all he does is talk about work. If I have to hear one more thing about how to properly stage a house, or the current market trends, I’m going to kill myself. And he’s having an affair, not that I care about that, but I guess I care that he thinks he’s getting away with it. He’s just selfish and boring.”
“Yuck,” Richard said.
“What about you? How are you doing?”
Richard knew she was really only asking out of politeness, or maybe just to check that nothing terrible was happening in his life. He said, “My mother finally died, which was a good thing. And my stepfather moved to Florida. Another good thing. I’m still at the hardware store, but you know that already, obviously.”
“You should have a better job,” Joan said. It was just like her to say something like that to him. It didn’t upset him because they’d always been honest with one another.
“I like my job because nobody bothers me. Well, sometimes the customers bother me, but my boss never does. He doesn’t give a shit so long as I show up on time.”
“It sounds good, Richard. Sorry if I . . .”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’m doing okay. Sometimes I’m bored, but now that we’re meeting here, everything’s better. I’m pretty curious why you wanted us to meet.”
She moved her chair a little closer to him, and leaned in. “I want to kill my husband, and I know a way that I can do it, but I need your help.”
Those were the words that he’d expected to hear as soon as she told him that she was married. “You want me to kill him for you?”