40
When no one came
to answer the door after half a minute or so, I looked at Vince. “Try it again,” he said. He indicated the ramp. “Might take a while.”
So I rang the bell again. And then we could hear some muffled movement in the house, and a moment later the door was opening, but not wide, not right away, but haltingly. Once it was open a foot or so, I could see why. It was a woman in a wheelchair, moving back, then leaning forward to open the door a few more inches, then moving back some more, then leaning forward again to open the door wider yet.
“Yes?” she said.
“Mrs. Sloan?” I said.
I put her age at late sixties, early seventies. She was thin, but the way she moved her upper body did not suggest frailty. She gripped the wheels of her chair firmly, moved herself deftly around the open door and forward, effectively blocking our way into the house. She had a blanket folded over her lap that came down over her knees, and wore a brown sweater over a flowered blouse. Her silver hair was pinned back aggressively, not a stray hair out of place. Her strong cheekbones had a touch of rouge on them, and her piercing brown eyes were darting back and forth between her two unexpected visitors. Her features suggested that she might possibly have been, at one time, a striking woman, but there exuded from her now, perhaps from the strong set of her jaw, the way her lips pursed out, a sense of irritability, maybe even meanness.
I searched her for any hints of Cynthia, but found none.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Sloan,” she said.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” I said. “Mrs. Clayton Sloan?”
“Yes. I’m Enid Sloan,” she said. “You’re right. It’s very late. What do you want?” There was an edge in her voice suggesting whatever it was, we could not count on her to be obliging.
She held her head up, thrust her chin forward, not just because we towered over her, but as a show of strength. She was trying to tell us she was a tough old broad, not to be messed with. I was surprised she wasn’t more fearful of two men showing up at her door late at night. The fact was, she was still an old lady in a wheelchair, and we were two able-bodied men.
I did a quick visual sweep of the living room. Knockoff colonial furniture, Ethan Allen Lite, lots of space between the pieces to allow for the wheelchair. Faded drapes and sheers, a few vases with fake flowers. The carpet, a thick broadloom that must have cost a bundle when it was installed, looked worn and stained in places, the pile worn down by the wheelchair.
There was a TV on in another room on the first floor, and there was a comforting smell coming to us from farther inside the house. I sniffed the air. “Baking?” I said.
“Carrot cake,” she snapped. “For my son. He’s coming home.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s who we’ve come by to see. Jeremy?”
“What do you want with Jeremy?”
Just what
did
we want with Jeremy? At least, what did we want to
say
we wanted with Jeremy?
While I hesitated, trying to come up with something, Vince took the lead: “Where’s Jeremy right now, Mrs. Sloan?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m afraid we’re the ones asking the questions, ma’am,” he said. He’d adopted an authoritarian tone, but he seemed to be making an effort not to sound menacing. I wondered if he was trying to give Enid Sloan the impression he was some kind of cop.
“Who are you people?”
“Maybe,” I said, “if we could talk to your husband. Could we speak with Clayton?”
“He’s not here,” Enid Sloan said. “He’s in the hospital.”
That took me by surprise. “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. Would that be the hospital we saw driving up here?”
“If you came up by way of Lewiston,” she said. “He’s been there several weeks. I have to take a taxi to see him. Every day, there and back.” It was important, I guessed, that we know the sacrifices she’d been making on her husband’s behalf.
“Your son can’t take you?” Vince asked. “He’s been gone that long?”
“He’s had things to do.” She inched her chair forward, as if she could push us off the porch.
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” I said. “With your husband.”
“My husband is dying,” Enid Sloan said. “Got cancer all through him. It’s only a matter of time now.” She hesitated, looked at me. “You the one who phoned here? Asking for Jeremy?”
“Uh, yes,” I said. “I’ve been needing to get in touch with him.”
“You said he told you he was going to Connecticut,” she said accusingly.
“I believe that’s what he said,” I told her.
“He never told you that. I asked him. He said he didn’t tell anybody where he was going. So how do you know about that?”
“I think we should continue this discussion inside,” Vince said, moving forward.
Enid Sloan held on to her wheels. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do,” Vince said, and put both hands on the arms of the chair and forced it back. Enid’s grip was no match for Vince’s force.
“Hey,” I said to him, reaching out to touch his arm. I hadn’t planned for us to get rough with an old lady in a wheelchair.
“Don’t worry,” Vince said, trying to make his voice sound reassuring. “It’s just cold out on the porch, and I don’t want Mrs. Sloan here to catch her death.”
I didn’t care much for his choice of words.
“You stop that,” Enid Sloan said, swatting at Vince’s hands and arms.
He pushed her inside, and I didn’t see that I had much choice but to follow. I closed the front door behind me.
“I don’t see any easy way to pussyfoot around this,” Vince said. “You might as well just ask your questions.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Enid spat at us.
I was taken aback. “Mrs. Sloan,” I said, “my name is Terry Archer. My wife’s name is Cynthia. Cynthia Bigge.”
She stared at me, her mouth half open. She was speechless.
“I take it that name means something to you,” I said. “My wife’s, that is. Maybe mine, too, but my wife’s name, that seems to have made an impression.”
She still said nothing.
“I have a question for you,” I said. “And it might sound a bit crazy, but I’ll have to ask you to be a bit patient here if my questions sound ridiculous.”
Still silent.
“Anyway, here goes,” I said. “Are you Cynthia’s mother? Are you Patricia Bigge?”
And she laughed scornfully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Then why the laugh?” I said. “You seem to know these names I’m mentioning.”
“Leave my house. Nothing you’re saying makes any sense to me.”
I glanced at Vince, who was stone-faced. I said to him, “Did you ever see Cyn’s mother? Other than that one time, going out to the car that night?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Could this be her?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes, focused on her. “I don’t know. Unlikely, I think.”
“I’m calling the police,” Enid said, turning her chair. Vince came around behind it, went to grab for the handles, until I waved for him to stop.
“No,” I said. “Maybe that would be a good idea. We could all wait here for Jeremy to return home, and ask him some questions with the police here.”
That stopped her wheeling the chair, but she said, “Why should I be afraid to have the police come?”
“That’s a good question. Why should you be? Could it have something to do with what happened twenty-five years ago? Or maybe with more recent events, in Connecticut? While Jeremy’s been away? The death of Tess Berman, my wife’s aunt? And a private detective named Denton Abagnall?”
“Get out,” she said.
“And about Jeremy,” I said. “He’s Cynthia’s brother, isn’t he?”
She glared at me, her eyes filled with hate. “Don’t you dare say that,” she said, her hands resting on the blanket.
“Why?” I asked. “Because it’s true? Because Jeremy’s actually Todd?”
“What?” she said. “Who told you that? That’s a filthy lie!”
I looked over her shoulder at Vince, whose hands were on the rubber grips of the wheelchair.
“I want to make a phone call,” she said. “I demand that you let me use the phone.”
“Who do you want to call?” Vince asked.
“That’s not one of your business.”
He looked at me. “She’s going to call Jeremy,” he said calmly. “She wants to warn him. That’s not such a good idea.”
“What about Clayton?” I asked her. “Is Clayton Sloan actually Clayton Bigge? Are they one and the same person?”
“Let me use the phone,” she repeated, almost hissing like a snake.
Vince held on to the chair. I said to him, “You can’t just hold her like that. It’s, like, kidnapping, or confinement, or something.”
“That’s right!” Enid Sloan said. “You can’t do this, you can’t barge into an old lady’s house and hold her like this!”
Vince let go of the chair. “Then use the phone, to call the police,” he said, repeating my bluff. “Forget about calling your son. Call the cops.”
The chair did not move.
“I need to go to the hospital,” I said to Vince. “I want to see Clayton Sloan.”
“He’s very sick,” Enid said. “He can’t be disturbed.”
“Maybe I can disturb him long enough to ask him a couple of questions.”
“You can’t go! Visiting hours are over! And besides, he’s in a coma! He won’t even know you’re there!”
If he were in a coma, I figured, she wouldn’t care whether I went to see him. “Let’s go to the hospital,” I said.
Vince said, “If we leave, she’s going to call Jeremy. Warn him that we’re waiting here to talk to him. I could tie her up.”
“Jesus, Vince,” I said. I couldn’t condone tying up an elderly disabled woman, no matter how unpleasant she seemed. Even if it meant never finding the answers to all my questions. “What if you just stayed here?”
He nodded. “That works. Enid and I can chat, gossip about the neighbors, that kind of thing.” He leaned over so she could see his face. “Won’t that be fun? Maybe we can even have some of that carrot cake. It smells delicious.” Then he reached into his jacket, took out the keys to the truck, and tossed them my way.
I grabbed them out of the air. “What room is he in?” I asked her.
She glared at me.
“Tell me what room he’s in, or I’ll call the cops myself.”
She gave that a moment’s thought, knew that once I got to the hospital I’d probably be able to find out anyway, then said, “Third floor. Room 309.”
Before I left the house, Vince and I exchanged cell phone numbers. I got in his truck, fiddled with getting the key into the ignition. A different vehicle always takes a minute or two to get used to. I turned on the engine, found the lights, then backed into a driveway and turned around. I needed a moment to get my bearings. I knew Lewiston was south of here, and that we’d gone south from the bar, but I didn’t know whether continuing in a southerly direction would get me where I had to go. So I backtracked up Main, cut east, and once I’d found my way back to the highway, headed south.
I took the first exit once I saw the blue “H” in the distance, found my way to the hospital parking lot, and entered by way of the emergency department. There were half a dozen people in the waiting room: a set of parents with a crying baby, a teenage boy with blood soaking through the knee of his jeans, an elderly couple. I walked right through, past the admissions desk, where I saw a sign indicating that visiting hours had ended a couple of hours ago, at eight, and found an elevator to the third floor.
Chances were good that someone was going to stop me at some point, but I figured if I could just make it to Clayton Sloan’s room, I’d be okay.
The elevator doors parted onto the third-floor nurses’ station. There was no one there. I stepped out, paused a moment, then turned left, looking for door numbers. I found 322, discovered the numbers got bigger as I moved on down the hallway. I stopped, went back in the other direction, which was going to take me past the nurses’ station again. A woman was standing with her back to me, reading a chart, and I walked past as noiselessly as possible.
I looked for numbers again. The hallway turned left, and the first door I came to was 309. The door was partly ajar, the room mostly in darkness except for a neon light mounted to the wall next to the bed.
It was a private room, one bed. A curtain obscured all but the foot of the bed, where a clipboard hung on a metal frame. I took a few steps in, beyond the curtain, and saw that there was a man in the bed, on his back, slightly raised, fast asleep. In his seventies, I guessed. Emaciated-looking, thinned hair. From chemo, maybe. His breathing was raspy. His arms lay at his sides, his fingers long and white and bony.
I moved around to the far side of the bed, where the curtain gave me cover from the hallway. There was a chair near the head of the bed, and when I sat down, I was able to make myself even more invisible to anyone passing by the room.
I studied Clayton Sloan’s face, searching for something there that I was unable to find when I looked at Enid Sloan’s. Something about his nose, perhaps, a trace of cleft in his chin. I reached out and gently touched the man’s exposed arm, and he made a slight snorting noise.
“Clayton,” I whispered.
He sniffed, wiggled his nose about unconsciously.
“Clayton,” I whispered again, rubbing his leathery skin softly back and forth. Inside his elbow a tube ran into his arm. An IV drip of some kind.
His eyes fluttered open, and he sniffed again. He saw me, blinked hard a couple of times, let his eyes adjust and focus.
“Wha…”
“Clayton Bigge?” I said.
That not only brought his eyes into focus, but made him turn his head more sharply. The fleshy folds of his neck bunched together. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“Your son-in-law,” I said.
41
As he swallowed
I watched his Adam’s apple bob along the length of his throat. “My what?” he said.
“Your son-in-law,” I said. “I’m Cynthia’s husband.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and I could see how dry his mouth was. “Would you like a drink of water?” I asked quietly. He nodded. There was a pitcher and glass next to the bed, and I poured him some water. There was a straw on the table, and I put it to his lips, holding the glass for him.
“I can do it,” he said, grasping the glass and sipping from the straw. He took the glass with more strength than I expected. He licked his lips, handed the glass back to me.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“After ten,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you. You were sleeping pretty good there.”
“No harm,” he said. “They’re always waking you up here anyway, all times of the day and night.”
He took a deep breath through his nostrils, let the air out slowly. “So,” he said. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”
“I think you do,” I said. “You’re Clayton Bigge.”
Another deep breath. Then, “I’m Clayton Sloan.”
“I believe you are,” I said. “But I think you’re also Clayton Bigge, who was married to Patricia Bigge, who had a son named Todd and a daughter named Cynthia, and you lived in Milford, Connecticut, until one night in 1983, when something very terrible happened.”
He looked away from me and stared at the curtain. He made a fist with the hand lying at his side, opened his fingers, clenched again.
“I’m dying,” he said.
“Then maybe it’s time to get a few things off your chest,” I said.
Clayton turned his head on the pillow to look at me again. “Tell me your name.”
“Terry. Terry Archer.” I hesitated. “What’s your name?”
He swallowed again. “Clayton,” he said. “I’ve always been Clayton.” His eyes moved down. He stared at the folds in the hospital linen. “Clayton Sloan, Clayton Bigge.” He paused. “Depended where I was at the time.”
“Two families?” I said.
I was able to make out a nod. Remembered some of the things Cynthia told me about her father. On the road all the time. Back and forth across the country. Home for a few days, gone for a few, back for a few. Living half his life someplace else…
Suddenly he brightened as a thought occurred to him. “Cynthia,” he said to me. “Is she here? Is she with you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t…I don’t know exactly where she is right now. She may be back home now, in Milford, for all I know. With our daughter. Grace.”
“Grace,” he said. “My granddaughter.”
“Yes,” I whispered as a shadow went by in the hall. “Your granddaughter.”
Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, as though in pain. But I didn’t think it was anything physical.
“My son,” he said. “Where is my son?”
“Todd?” I said.
“No no,” he said. “Not Todd. Jeremy.”
“I think he may be on the way back from Milford.”
“What?”
“He’s on his way back. At least that’s what I think.”
Clayton looked more alert, his eyes wide. “What was he doing in Milford? When did he go there? Is that why he hasn’t been here with his mother?” Then his eyes drifted shut and he started muttering, “No no no.”
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He raised a tired hand and tried to wave me off. “Leave me,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
His eyelids rose slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage. “This can’t happen…. I’m so tired.”
I leaned in closer. I hated pushing an old, sick man as much as I hated Vince keeping an old, disabled woman prisoner, but there were things I had to know.
“Tell me,” I said. “Are Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
Slowly his head turned on the pillow and he looked at me. “No.” He paused. “Todd is dead.”
“When? When did Todd die?”
“That night,” Clayton said resignedly. “With his mother.”
So it was them. In the car at the bottom of the quarry. When the results of the tests comparing Cynthia’s DNA to the samples taken from the bodies in the car came in, we’d be getting a connection.
Clayton raised his hand weakly, pointed back to the small table. “More water?” I said. He nodded. I handed him the glass and he took a long drink.
“I’m not quite as weak as I look,” he said, holding the glass as though it were a major accomplishment. “Sometimes, when Enid comes in, I make like I’m in a coma, so I won’t have to talk to her, she won’t complain so long. I still walk a little. I can get to the can. Sometimes I even get there in time.” He pointed to the closed door on the other side of the room.
“Patricia and Todd,” I said. “So they’re both dead.”
Clayton’s eyes closed again. “You have to tell me what Jeremy is doing in Milford.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think he’s been watching us. Watching our family. I think he’s been in our house. I can’t say for sure, but I think he may have killed Cynthia’s aunt Tess.”
“Oh my God,” Clayton said. “Patricia’s sister? She’s dead?”
“She was stabbed to death,” I said. “And a man we’d hired to try to find out some things, he’s dead, too.”
“This can’t be happening. She said he’d gotten a job. Out west.”
“What?”
“Enid. She said Jeremy got a job, in…in Seattle or someplace. An opportunity. Had to go out there. That he’d come back and see me soon. That was why he wasn’t coming to visit. I thought…just not caring, that would be reason enough.” He seemed to drift off a bit. “Jeremy, he’s…he can’t help what he is. She made him what he is. He does whatever she tells him to do. She poisoned him against me from the day he was born…. Can’t believe she even comes to visit. She says to me, ‘Hang on, just hang on a little longer.’ It’s like, she doesn’t care if I die. She just doesn’t want me to die yet. She’s been up to something, I’ve known it. She’s been lying to me. Lying to me about everything, lying to me about Jeremy. She didn’t want me to know where he’d gone.”
“Why wouldn’t she want you to know? Why would Jeremy have gone to Milford?”
“She must have seen it,” he whispered. “Found it, something.”
“What? Seen what?”
“Dear God,” he said faintly, and rested his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes. He moved his head from side to side. “Enid knows. Dear God, if Enid knows…”
“If Enid knows what? What are you talking about?”
“If she knows, there’s no telling what she might do….”
I leaned in closer to Clayton Sloan or Clayton Bigge and whispered urgently inches away from his ear, “If Enid knows what?”
“I’m dying…. She…she must have called the lawyer. I never intended for her to see the will before I died…. My instructions were very specific. He must have screwed up…. I’d had it all setup….”
“Will? What will?”
“My will. I had it changed. She wasn’t to know…. If she knew…It was all arranged. When I died, my estate, everything would go to Cynthia…. Enid and Jeremy, they’d be left out, left with nothing, just what they deserve, just what she deserves….” He looked at me. “You have no idea what she’s capable of.”
“She’s here. Enid is here, she’s in Youngstown. It was Jeremy who went to Milford.”
“He’d do whatever she tells him to do. He has to. She’s in a wheelchair. She won’t be able to do it herself this time….”
“Do what herself?”
He ignored my question. He had so many of his own. “So he’s coming back? Jeremy’s on his way back?”
“That’s what Enid said. He checked out of a Milford motel this morning. I think we beat him back here.”
“‘We’? I thought you said Cynthia wasn’t with you.”
“She’s not. I came with a man named Vince Fleming.”
Clayton thought about the name. “Vince Fleming,” he said quietly. “The boy. The boy she was with that night. In the car. The boy she was with when I found her.”
“That’s right. He’s been helping me. He’s with Enid now.”
“With Enid?”
“Making sure she doesn’t call Jeremy, tell him that we’re here.”
“But if Jeremy, if Jeremy’s already on his way back, he must have already done it.”
“Done what?”
“Is Cynthia okay?” He got a desperate look in his eyes. “Is she alive?”
“Of course she’s alive.”
“And your daughter? Grace? She’s still alive?”
“What are you talking about? Yes, of course they’re alive.”
“Because if something happens to Cynthia, everything goes to any children…. It’s all spelled out….”
I felt my whole body shiver. How many hours had it been since I’d talked to Cynthia? I’d had a brief chat with her this morning, my one conversation with her since she’d slipped away in the night with Grace.
Did I really know, with any certainty, that she and Grace were alive now?
I got out my cell phone. It occurred to me then that I probably wasn’t supposed to have it on within the hospital, but since no one even knew I was here, I figured I could get away with it.
I punched in our home number.
“Please, please have gone home,” I said under my breath. The phone rang once, twice, a third time. On the fourth ring, it went to voicemail.
“Cynthia,” I said, “if you come home, if you get this, you’ve got to call me immediately. It’s an emergency.”
I ended the call and then tried her cell. It went to voicemail immediately. I left her pretty much the same message, but added, “You
must
call me.”
“Where is she?” Clayton asked.
“I don’t know,” I said uneasily. I considered, briefly, calling Rona Wedmore, decided against it, called another number. I had to let it ring five times before there was an answer.
A pickup, then throat clearing, then, “Hello?” Sleepy.
“Rolly,” I said. “It’s Terry.”
Clayton, hearing the name “Rolly,” blinked.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Rolly said. “No problem. I’d just turned out the light. You’ve found Cynthia?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ve found someone else.”
“What?”
“Listen, I don’t have time to explain, but I need you to find Cynthia. I don’t know what to tell you, or where to have you start. Go by the house, see if her car’s there. If it is, bang on the door, break in if you have to, see if she and Grace are there. Start calling hotels, I don’t know, anything you can think of.”
“Terry, what’s going on? Who have you found?”
“Rolly, I’ve found her father.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line.
“Rolly?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I…I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.”
“What’s he told you? Has he told you what happened?”
“We’re just getting started. I’m north of Buffalo, at a hospital. He’s not in very good shape.”
“Is he talking?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it when I can. But you have to look for Cynthia. If you find her, she has to call me immediately.”
“Right. I’m on it. I’m getting dressed.”
“And Rolly,” I said, “let me tell her. About her father. She’s going to have a million questions.”
“Sure. If I find out anything, I’ll call.”
I thought of one other person who might have seen Cynthia at some point. Pamela had phoned the house often enough that I’d memorized her home number from the caller ID display. I punched in the number, let it ring several times before someone picked up.
“Hello?” Pamela, sounding every bit as sleepy as Rolly. In the background, a man’s voice, saying, “What is it?”
I told Pamela who it was, quickly apologized for calling at such a terrible hour.
“Cynthia’s missing,” I said. “With Grace.”
“Jesus,” Pamela said, her voice quickly become awake. “They been kidnapped or something?”
“No no, nothing like that. She left. She wanted to get away.”
“She told me, like, yesterday, or the day before yesterday—God, what day is this?—she might not come in, so when she didn’t show up, I didn’t think anything of it.”
“I just wanted to tell you to be on the lookout for her, if she calls you, she has to get in touch with me. Pam, I found her father.”
From the other end of the line, nothing for a moment. Then, “Fuck me.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s alive?”
I glanced at the man in the bed. “Yeah.”
“And Todd? And her mother?”
“That’s another story. Listen, Pamela, I have to go. But if you see Cyn, have her call me. But let me tell her the news.”
“Shit,” Pamela said. “Like I’m gonna be able to keep a lid on that.”
I ended the call, noticed that the phone battery was getting very weak. I’d left home in such a hurry I didn’t have anything to recharge it with, not even in the truck.
“Clayton,” I said, refocusing after all the phone chatter, “why do you think Cynthia and Grace might be in danger? Why are you thinking something might have happened to them?”
“Because of the will,” Clayton said. “I’m leaving everything to Cynthia. It’s the only way I know to make up for what I did. It doesn’t, I know, it doesn’t make up for anything, but what else can I do?”
“But what does that have to do with them being alive?” I asked, but I was already starting to figure it out. The pieces were starting, ever so gradually, to fall into place.
“If she’s dead, if Cynthia’s dead, if your daughter’s dead, then the money can’t go to them. It’ll revert back to Enid, she’ll be the surviving spouse, the only logical heir,” he whispered. “There’s no way Enid’ll let Cynthia inherit. She’ll kill both of them to make sure she gets the money.”
“But that’s crazy,” I said. “A murder—a double murder—that’d draw so much attention, police would reopen the case, they’d start looking into what happened twenty-five years ago, it could end up blowing up in Enid’s face, and then—”
I stopped myself.
A murder would attract attention. No doubt about it.
But a suicide. There wouldn’t be much attention paid to something like that. Especially not when the woman committing suicide had been under so much strain in recent weeks. A woman who had called the police to investigate the appearance of a strange hat in her house. It didn’t get much more bizarre than that. A woman who had called the police because she’d received a note telling her where she could find the bodies of her missing mother and brother. A note that had been composed on a typewriter in her own home.