Truth Be Told (Jane Ryland) (38 page)

Jane was outside Liz McDivitt’s office.
Well, of course. She was covering this. They’d made McDivitt’s name public a few hours ago.

Jake stood in the lobby, watching the customer lug her bags out the door, watching the tellers behind their cages, but thinking of Jane, and their crisscrossing lives. How they kept showing up at the same place, but never together. This time, if he waited, they could be together. There was only one row of elevators. Eventually Jane would have to appear. They could get everything out in the open.

He’d wait.

His pocket buzzed. A text. From Bing Sherrey.
SFSG,
it said. So far so good. Eager for his turn, Jake wondered how this would all unfold. If they could solve Liz McDivitt and Gordon Thorley? That’d be a good week’s work. Big headlines about Lilac Sunday. The kind his grandfather never got to read.

He needed to dig into Grandpa’s files again. He needed to read those articles he’d gotten from the newspaper archive guy. Where were the people Chrystal Peralta interviewed years ago? What might they know? He needed to track her down. He needed to call Peter Hardesty, insist on a meeting.

He sighed, watching the light go from red to green on the aluminum elevator doors, willing them to open. Willing Jane to step out, look at him, run to him.

They opened. Empty. They closed.

Too much to do. He couldn’t wait.

“Bye, Jane,” he whispered.

54

“What does Detective Brogan mean by this, Mr. Thorley?” It had taken Peter Hardesty an hour of the highest-level arm-twisting to arrange this jailhouse meeting. Now, after Brogan’s phone call, Peter didn’t feel like waiting for answers. “Your sister indicated you were both struggling financially. But bank documents show that the Sagamore house—the house you own jointly—is
not
in financial peril. In fact, someone recently bailed out the place.”

Recently. As in, right before Thorley confessed. Peter’s imagination did not have to try very hard to come up with explanations. But conjecture was a waste of time. He needed the truth.

Ignoring the question, Thorley swirled a white paper cup in front of him, the black coffee inside already staining the cheap low-bidder jailhouse paper cup. His skin had gone yellow-gray, even his hair looked drab, as if the swampy atmosphere of the jail cell had sucked all the color out of him. And the instinct to fight.

“You can listen to me or not,” Peter said. “But I’m your lawyer. On your side. And my responsibility is—”

“Your damn responsibility is to do what I say.” Thorley talked to the coffee cup. “So far you’ve sucked.”

Thorley finally looked at Peter. Gave a hack of a cough, just one, cleared his throat. “All you’ve done is stall. Opposite of what I want. I want to hurry the hell up, do my time, take the punishment. Get on with it. Maybe I should fire you.”

“You can’t fire me, because you didn’t hire me, remember? And I talked to Doreen, only yesterday.” Peter tried another tack, leaning forward across the table, extending his hands to bridge the gap. “Listen, Gordon? Did you get into your house by using the pansy pot key? I guess you remember your childhood, right? Doreen does, too. She almost cried when she thought of it. She’s scared for you, Gordon. Your family wants you home. You know that, don’t you? Do you really not love them back?”

Thorley took a sip of coffee, stared at the wall.

“All right. Let’s try this, pure and simple.” Peter crossed his arms across his chest. “The cops called me about those mortgage payments.”

“So?”

“So this wasn’t my discovery. It’s theirs. You think the cops are going away?”

“So?”

“You can ‘so’ me all you like,” Peter said, pointing at Thorley. “If you want to ignore me, your privilege. But the cops are not going away. Someone suddenly paid your mortgage, sir. You were in foreclosure. Now you’re not.”

“I don’t live there,” Thorley said. He knocked back the last of the coffee, crumpled the cup, looked for somewhere to throw it. No wastebaskets in the meeting rooms, Peter knew. Nothing an angry inmate could use as a weapon.

The crumpled cup stayed on the table. Thorley began to pick at its seam, peeling away a soggy layer of paper.

“I know you don’t live there,” Peter said. “But your family does.”

“So?” Gordon sneered out the word. “You saw the place, right? You see she’s not that desperate for cash, right? That big TV. She hired you, right? So Mr. Lawyer, why don’t you—and the cops—ask
her
who paid the mortgage?”

“But—,” Peter began. Doreen
had
seemed desperate. And she didn’t seem to know about the rescued mortgage.

“Guard!” Thorley called out.

A face appeared at the door, the same cop who’d told Peter day before yesterday they called Thorley “the Confessor.” “Yeah?”

“I’m done,” Thorley said. “Get me outta here.”

*   *   *

“They’re all like this? The foreclosed houses?”

Jane stood, hands on hips, across the street from 310 Bentonville Street, pretending to be looking at the scenery with TJ. This split-level, with its two scrawny trees and sagging iron porch railing, was on the list of the foreclosed houses owned by Atlantic & Anchor bank, the REOs that she’d sent her photographer to scout.

If people were getting murdered in empty bank-owned homes, maybe there was something to be learned from the homes themselves. Who’d owned them, what they looked like inside, if there was some kind of connection. What if the bad guys—Aaron? Hardin McDivitt?—were renting out empty homes for use as, what, drug-dealing hideouts? Manufacturing meth? Prostitution? Jane’s reporter brain could concoct a million ideas. What TJ had discovered wasn’t any of those things.

What he discovered was—

“Yup, not empty,” TJ said. “I didn’t go up to the doors, but look. Cars, mail. Bikes. Curtains. People are living there. I got shots of all of the exteriors. Made a list. Like, ten of ’em. So far.”

“You rock, Teege, thanks.” Jane contemplated the house, the neighborhood, the puzzle. Pushing five in the afternoon, some kids played up the block, tossing a ball across the narrow street, playing Keep Away from a bounding black Newfie, their laughter and teasing half-comprehensible. A mom, or babysitter, maybe, sat on the porch steps watching, coffee mug in hand. Your typical neighborhood. Where people lived in houses that were supposed to be empty.

“On Waverly Road, where Shandra Newbury was found—just thinking out loud here,” Jane said. “That house was empty. The deputies were cleaning it. And that first house, on Springvale Street, where Emily-Sue Ordway fell. Empty. Treesa Caramona, empty.”

“Yeah,” TJ said. “But Emily-Sue, that was an accident. The place was under renovation. Something broke.”

“Yeah, okay. But Caramona. That wasn’t an Atlantic & Anchor Bank house.” Jane pursed her lips, calculating. “And where Liz McDivitt was—found. Not A&A either. But the ones I had you look up—”

“Are,” TJ said.

“Are. So Emily-Sue and Shandra are connected. Maybe. And Liz and Caramona. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” TJ said. “Listen, is there anything else? If you’re not going to solve three murders any time soon, I’m off at five.”

“Oh, sorry Teege. I’m spacing,” Jane said. “No, listen, go. Thanks. Download your video. I’ll look at it when…” Her phone buzzed in her tote bag.

“Okay,” TJ said. “See you back at the barn tomorrow.”

She dug for her phone with one hand, waved TJ good-bye with the other. “Jane Ryland,” she said.

“Miss Ryland? Colin Ackerman, from the bank?”

“Oh. Hi.” What’d he want? Jane had given him her card, of course, but—

“You’re looking for Aaron Gianelli? Might I ask why?”

Shoot. Naturally, the damn PR guy was gonna interfere.

“You know no one from the bank is allowed to speak to the media”—Ackerman drew out the word—“without getting permission from me. You’re aware of that, correct?”

“Well, sure. But in this case—” This was no biggie, she’d only wanted a reaction to Liz’s death. Kind of. But that was her story now, and she was sticking to it. “You know he was friends with Elizabeth McDivitt,” Jane went on.

“We are not commenting on that matter,” Ackerman said. “The family has requested privacy. As you know.”

“I only wanted a comment from him about—”

“As I said. Any comments come through me. Mr. Gianelli is not available. Anything else?”

Jane could picture Ackerman, that gelled hair and just-too-expensive tie. Weren’t public relations people supposed to help the public relate? “There is, actually,” Jane said. “Weirdest question of the day, I bet.”

Jane took a last look at the house, headed for her car. Coda would be glad to see her, even though the cat always pretended Jane didn’t exist. Peter had said he’d call about dinner. An intriguing prospect. Wonder what Jake was doing? She didn’t care, if he didn’t care what she was doing. And he didn’t seem to.

“Weirdest? I doubt that,” Ackerman said. “But try me.”

Jane clicked open her car door, slid behind the wheel. “Okay. I’m wondering about the banks REOs,” she said. She stared ahead, imagining she could see Ackerman’s face.

Silence. Then, “What about them?”

“Do you ever rent them?”

“Do
I—
”

“You know what I mean. Does the
bank
ever rent them?”

“Why?”

Jane let the phone fall into her lap, annoyed. He didn’t have to be so nasty about it. She picked it up again.

“We’re looking into…” She paused, trying to figure out how to phrase it.

“No,” he said. “We don’t rent them.”

Jane paused, calculating her next move. “So what would it mean if we’ve discovered—”

“We have a real estate agency, however, that does. Short term, of course. They do it for several banks. Why leave the homes empty? It’s simply efficient business.”

Jane’s shoulders sagged. Not as exciting as drug-dealing meth-making prostitutes. But way more likely.

“Which agency?” Jane asked, because that’s what a reporter would do. She saw her exciting exclusive evaporate in front of her. The agency was probably Mornay and Weldon, the company Shandra Newbury had worked for. Which is why she’d been at the house.
Bye-bye story.

Silence.

“Mr. Ackerman?” It didn’t matter, she guessed, but now she wanted to know.

“I can get that information for you in the morning, if you’ll call me then,” he finally said. “It’s after five. We’re closed.”

And he hung up.

*   *   *

“Don’t say a word.” Ackerman’s voice came through Aaron’s cell phone. “Don’t react, don’t yell, don’t freak out.”

What the hell now?
Aaron had spent at least half an hour walking the sweltering streets of Boston, finally winding up at the Pidge, a rathole of a bar down by the waterfront. A couple of construction workers, all canvas and sunburn, gave him the snake-eyed once-over—
outsider
—as he pulled up a bar stool. Some hockey game filled one big screen, and a black-and-white replay of a Celtics win on another.

He was three beers into it now, and had made and unmade his mind too many times to count. The beers weren’t helping, and yet they were.

“I just talked to Jane Ryland,” Ackerman went on. “You know who that is?”

“Queen a’ Sheba?” Aaron said. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Why was Ack making him guess? Say what he had to say.

“Where are you?” Ackerman’s voice was a whisper.

“Can I guess again?” Aaron felt like laughing, some reason.

“Shit. Listen. Gianelli. Jane Ryland is a reporter. She was calling you.
You.
And thank the bank employees’ freaking handbook your Mindy or whatever her name is—”

“Mandy?” The assistant in his office. What was this about?

“Had the sense to call me instead of you. Listen up. Jane Ryland is a sneak and a liar. Like every reporter. She’s at the
Register.
You know, Jane Ryland, the one who used to be on TV. She purported to be asking you about Liz McDivitt—bad enough, but that I could deal with. But then she asked about the REOs. Whether the bank rents them. How the hell did she—why is she asking about that?”

“How the frig do I know?” Aaron hunched over the bar now, one hand cupped over the phone, the other covering his face. The place stank of beer, and he probably did, too, and now—the bartender, a batter-faced bodybuilder with cheap tattoos and a once-white apron, swiped the bar in front of him with a striped towel and pointed, inquiringly, to Aaron’s empty glass. “Sure,” he said.

“Sure what?” Ackerman said.

“Not you,” Aaron said. “What’d you tell her?”

“What d’you think I told her, asshole?” Ackerman said. “I’m the PR guy. I told her no comment. But it’s not what I say that matters, it’s what
you
say. Do not—I repeat—do not talk to her. Or to anyone else. Say it’s bank policy, which has the added benefit of being the truth.”

There was that truth thing again. Aaron smiled into his empty glass. Did Jane whoever really call? Or was Ackerman trying to prevent him from telling his side of the story? If Aaron didn’t talk, it’d look like he was hiding something. Wouldn’t it?

Aaron accepted the beer, his fourth? Fifth? Who cared. Toasted to his future. “My lips are frigging sealed,” he said. Even though that was a lie.

“We’ll take care of her,” Ackerman said. “Reporting is a dangerous job. I’ll call you when I know more.”

And he was gone.

Aaron clicked off his dead phone, stared at the numerals on the keypad. This whole idea had seemed logical at the outset, easy to justify, the bank with so much money, him with so little. When Ackerman presented it, he’d made it feel reasonable, even brilliant. Certainly safe enough. But then, what happened to Lizzie—that was horrible. Like, horrible. And Ackerman was behind it. Waverly Road, too. And the other one. Now he was threatening some reporter? A little tinkering with bank finances, that was one thing.

But—his mind could hardly face the concept. Murder. And he was going to get blamed. Ackerman always talked about “we.” Who the hell was
we
?