Trace (TraceWorld Book 1) (16 page)

She vaguely recalled Grayson’s question to her about why she still lived in Redfort. She’d said it felt familiar and safe. She wanted to laugh. Familiar, certainly, but safe? The richest man in town was dead, his body moved for no apparent reason. It seemed like desecration. No one was safe. The real reason she’d come back here despite her loathing of the place was something she didn’t like to talk about. After college, at the moment when you were supposed to go forth into a world of possibilities, Nola was starting to see the world as full of death, quite literally. She thought about how it might be to go to a new city, excited and optimistic, only to have that same cold horror creep over her as she found yet another place on earth where a human life ended, and then another, and another. This was not the kind of thing you could tell your twenty-two-year-old peers, though, without being mocked. Her friends were all equally skeptical about the idea that a glorious world of opportunity lay ahead of them, and nobody seemed particularly critical of Nola when she returned to Redfort, but none of them would really, truly be able to understand why she did so. People died in Redfort, too, obviously, but the impact was blunted by the dull familiarity she felt every day of her life here.

Into the dullness and blankness Culver Bryant intruded once more. She couldn’t help it; she’d focused her life entirely on his disappearance for the last week. And despite the main mystery’s being solved, she seemed to know less now than before. Why would anyone move Culver’s body? If Culver had been murdered, wouldn’t his killer try to dispose of the body? Perhaps the murderer would have thought that too risky. Better to have the authorities put the police case to rest entirely by having the death declared suicide. But again, unless the killer was incredibly naïve, they would have had to kill Culver the same way as his apparent method of suicide: carbon monoxide poisoning. There would be an autopsy, and any drugs would be found in his system. If they somehow threatened Culver—maybe telling him that if he didn’t do as they said, they’d go after Maureen—still that left unanswered the question of why they would move the body. No, it made no sense. Culver couldn’t have been murdered. But if he killed himself in Grayson’s garage, how did his body end up in a garage in Greenbriar?

Ahead of her the lights and siren of an approaching ambulance took her momentarily out of her reverie, and she pulled to the curb. As she watched it pass, she thought, perhaps for the first time with any real depth, about what Culver Bryant had been like as a human being. She imagined the terrible sadness of the man who had died thinking himself a failure, whose last moments on earth were spent feeling bad about the suffering he caused rather than his success. When she considered him in this light, she felt alternately devastated and angry. Culver Bryant had arranged his death in a careful manner reflecting his caring nature. He wanted his brother to find him, probably because he wanted to spare his wife the agony, Nola guessed, and because he trusted his brother even if they had never been close. Culver was not murdered, no, but whoever moved his body had shown a callous disregard for the man that went beyond the mere technicality of committing a felony.

Noting that she had pulled into a street-side parking space, Nola shut off the engine and reached for her phone. At least there was one other person in the world who could be counted on to feel some outrage. Perhaps Lynette had even done her a favor by making a scene in front of the detectives; it meant Nola could break cleanly away from them and do her own thing from now on.

“Hi, Lynette. It’s Nola.”

“Oh! Hi there!”

Nola glanced at the screen to make sure she’d called the correct number. It was the correct number, all right, but this was not the mad-as-hell hissing-and-spitting Lynette who’d charged into the station that morning. This Lynette sounded almost chirpy. “Um, hi. I thought maybe we should talk about some of the things I found out about Culver.” Nola wondered fleetingly whether she was moving into business matters too quickly and should have prefaced with condolences, but Lynette’s upbeat tone had thrown her.

There was a pause. “Oh, that.”

That?

“Look, thanks for your help and all, but . . . never mind.”

Never mind?

“I’ll still pay you, of course,” she added. “Is, like, five hundred OK?”

For what?
Nola hadn’t specified any “rate,” hadn’t promised any specific sort of information, and hadn’t delivered
any
information. Was Lynette drunk or high? She sounded lucid. Was someone in the room with her so she couldn’t speak freely? Possibly, but her tone suggested otherwise. Nola realized that what had started out as bubbly and upbeat was now turning into something else: dismissiveness. Lynette was bored with the conversation, with the topic in general. She had no use for Nola and, it would seem, no longer any use for Culver. She had moved on.

Dismissive quickly became impatient in the face of Nola’s stunned silence. “Look, I’m kind of in a hurry here, so stop by Tryst when you get a chance and I’ll pay you.” When Nola still hadn’t responded, Lynette made a small sound of irritation and ended the call.

For several minutes, Nola sat in the car, dimly aware of the sounds of the city around her but not quite registering any of it. She felt drained, empty. When thought returned to her, she wondered again what Culver Bryant’s last moments in his car had been like. It seemed impossible to imagine. And yet it was all too easy to understand. One had only to witness how those supposedly closest to him reacted after his death. His mistress had been more upset about being ignored than bereaved. His business partner seemed too slick to have any strong sense of grief. His widow was so stoical it was hard to know what she was feeling. And his brother, of course . . . his brother had used up the last living part of him.

When Nola turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb, she turned left instead of right at the next intersection. Right would have taken her home; left would eventually bring her back to Greenbriar. She drove with a sense of purpose but not much conscious awareness. There was no reason for her to see where Culver Bryant’s body was found, nothing to be gained, especially since she knew he hadn’t actually died there. But something compelled her to go there. Someone needed to give Culver Bryant’s death the recognition he deserved.

Though at some point in the future this would be a gated community, there was no gate at present, and Nola easily moved through the unfinished neighborhoods toward the area Vincent Kirke had prevented her from seeing. She supposed there would still be police tape around the particular house she was looking for, and even if it had been removed, it would probably still be easy to find. There would be telltale signs of people having walked around it and cars having parked nearby. Sure enough, a flutter of yellow at the end of the road caught her eye, and she headed toward it.

A second later, someone ran out from behind a house into the road in front of her.

If Nola had not just witnessed an accident only hours ago, she might not have been so careful, but as it was, she reacted instantly, slamming on the brakes and swerving away. Still it took her a moment to recover her faculties, and in that time the person she’d almost hit, who had much more presence of mind than she possessed, appeared at her door.

“I had a feeling you’d be coming out here.”

15

It was Vincent Kirke.

“I understand you worked out some kind of deal with Lynette. So have I. Now I need to work one out with you.”

Nola stared at him, wondering just how crazy he was to jump out in front of a moving vehicle, albeit one moving very slowly. Then she wondered just how dangerous he was. Nothing he had said had suggested a threat, and his tone hadn’t been aggressive. There was urgency in his voice and in the expression on his face, but he wasn’t looming menacingly over her or reaching for the door handle to yank her out of the car.

Her uncertainty must have been palpable, because Vincent stepped back and spoke more calmly. “I just want to talk to you, that’s all. I’m sorry for the business with the car, but I really need to talk to you before you report to the police again. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“What exactly is the
right
idea?”

“If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll tell you. You don’t have to get out of the car. Just shut the engine off so I know you won’t take off before you hear what I have to say.”

Nola took stock of the situation as quickly as she could without breaking eye contact with Vincent. She was in a car, with her phone on the seat next to her. He, on the other hand, was out in the open, apparently unarmed, though Nola took note of a suspicious bulge in one of the pockets of his North Face jacket. It might be a cell phone or gloves, or it might be something else entirely. She made her decision. She locked her door, rolled down the window just enough so that she could hear him better but he still couldn’t get an arm through the opening, and put the car in “park” without shutting off the engine. Then she spoke.

“Did you kill Culver Bryant?”

“No. He did that himself. I found him.”

“And you moved him.”

“Correct.”

Nola wasn’t sure she believed him, but she didn’t think it would be wise or productive to question him on this. Before she could ask the next, obvious question, Vincent added, “And you are the only person who could figure that out.”

Nola shook her head involuntarily. She wasn’t the only person, of course, but Vincent wouldn’t know this. He did know, somehow, that she was a tracist. Nola wondered how he knew, but that wondering had a lot of competition from the other questions roiling in her brain.

Her phone beeped an incoming text message. She took a lightning-quick glance at it: Grayson. She didn’t pick it up.

“I knew you’d come back here eventually,” Vincent continued quickly, “and when you did, you’d know Culver Bryant didn’t die here. And then you might remember your little visit to Greenbriar and what you didn’t get to see—and who kept you from seeing it. Even if you didn’t suspect me, you’d still tell the police the body must have been moved, and that would get the ball rolling on a brand-new inquiry.”

It probably wouldn’t have done any good to explain that the police wouldn’t listen to her ever again. “They’ll find out anyway,” she said. “The autopsy report—”

“Won’t be completed right away, and even if they do determine the body had been moved, which isn’t a given, they still won’t know who moved it. If they figure out it was me, I can simply say I didn’t want his body to be found by Lynette or Grayson because it would have upset them. Even if they don’t buy it, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. There’s too much money involved.”

“Look,” she said, barely knowing what she was going to say next. “If I’m ‘working out a deal with you,’ I need information. I don’t work for the police anymore. I work on my own.” As soon as she’d said this, she realized it was true. Now she had nothing to lose by pushing forward. “You moved the body. Where did you find him?” She already knew the answer to this but figured it was wise not to let Vincent know everything she did.

“His brother’s house. Where he was sure to be found immediately. All I did was delay that a little.”

Nola hesitated. “Why did you go to see him in the first place?”

“Culver called me that night. He sounded, well, terrible. I don’t know how else to describe it. At first he mostly seemed upset about his wife, that she’d found out about Lynette, that Lynette was pressuring him to go away with her, that he didn’t want to hurt either of them, though he was most concerned about hurting Maureen. But then he suddenly said, ‘And I know about Greenbriar.’ Before I could say anything, he added, ‘Make it right, Kirke,’ and hung up. I tried calling him back, but he had turned his phone off.”

“I knew I had to talk to him right away, so I drove over to Grayson’s house. I remembered he was supposed to meet Lynette there. As soon as I pulled into the driveway, I saw that Culver’s car wasn’t there but the garage door was closed, and I heard an engine running. And I knew what had happened.”

Nola took a deep silent breath. “And so you went in and found him dead?”

Vincent looked her straight in the eyes. His tone was level when he said, “Yes.” But in the few seconds of silence before he had answered, Nola understood something about what had happened that night. Vincent found Culver dead, yes, but that was because he waited so that there would be a greater likelihood that Culver would be dead.

She had no way to prove this. The neighbors had been questioned and nobody had seen anything, because nobody had been looking. And Nola certainly wasn’t going to ask Vincent. He would deny it. Who would admit to such a thing? If he did admit it, Nola would know she was in serious trouble. He wouldn’t tell her everything unless he thought it didn’t matter what she knew.

When she didn’t react, he continued, his posture a little more relaxed. “You want to know the funniest thing about all this? Cars. Too many of them, too few of them, none of them in the right place. Once I drove Culver’s body out to Greenbriar I’d be stuck there, and I couldn’t innocently call someone to pick me up without them wondering what I was doing out there without my car—which would be back at Grayson’s place. So I took a chance—a good one, I knew—and went over to see Maureen.”

Maureen Bryant was in on it?

“I don’t know much about Maureen—nobody does,” he said. “Even Culver always said she would keep her secrets to the grave. But all that means, I figured, is the one thing Maureen wants more than anything else is privacy. So I made a deal with her. I said I’d keep quiet about the fact that Culver had killed himself right after she confronted him about Lynette, so she wouldn’t look like the cold, cruel bitch the press would no doubt make her out to be. I also said I’d keep certain other potential scandals from seeing the light of day. For her part, she drove me to Grayson’s, then drove out to Greenbriar to pick me up after I’d set everything up.”