Page 113 of Not a Word

“Thirteen, fourteen.” She chuckled nervously, eyes still on the gun. “Any other questions? Just ask. You put that away and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

He nodded, picked up the gun, and shot her in the forehead. She toppled from the chair onto the floor.

Crane stood, gathered all the scattered magazines that still bore Catherine’s name and home address and put them back into the box. Talk about stupid. He would take the box with him when he left.

He put in a quick call to Catherine.

“Yes?” she said anxiously when she picked up.

“It’s done.”

“Who was she?” Catherine asked breathlessly.

“A friend of your son’s,” he said. “Evelyn Corby’s niece.”

“Oh god.”

He could sense the wheels turning in Catherine’s head.

“It was her,” Catherine said. “She did it.”

“So it would seem.”

Silence from Catherine’s end. After a moment, he asked, “Are you home?”

“Yes.”

“Stay there. We have a few things to go over.”

“Yes . . . okay.”

Crane ended the call. Best to have her stay put. Easier to find her there later after he’d dealt with the other two.

Thirty-Nine

Yesterday

It had been a chance encounter. Two years earlier.

Brent Chartwell had been taking his classic Barracuda for a spin. The last time he’d taken it for a drive, the front wheel alignment had felt off, the car dragging to the right when he briefly relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, even when the road was dead flat. He wanted to see whether he’d been imagining it. If the alignment was indeed off, it would cause uneven wear on the front tires, and he didn’t want that.

Damned if it wasn’t still doing it, so he drove straight on to a mechanic he’d trusted in the past with his baby. He didn’t have an appointment, and if Harry couldn’t take him right away, he’d leave the car there and take an Uber home.

When he went into the small office, there was a woman at the counter in the middle of a conversation with Harry.

“But can’t it be, like, patched or something?” she asked. “I have to get an entire new muffler?”

“Be like trying to hold a piece of wet toast together with jam,” Harry said. “It’s shot. It’s all gotta be replaced or you’re gonna go down the street sounding like a Sherman tank.”

“How much is that going to cost?”

Harry told her.

The woman bit her lip and shook her head slowly. “Do they have to be new parts? Do you have any older parts that would work for now?”

“Look,” Harry said, his voice not without sympathy, “I’ll give you a break on the labor, but there’s nothing I can do on the parts. You wanna think about it?”

She nodded, and as she turned to leave, quickly wiping a single tear from her cheek, Brent got a good look at her.