“We sent out the bits and pieces left from that circuit breaker panel for analysis, and it was all rubbish. Wire was so thin, once you applied some current to it, it melted away to nothing. We’re seeing more and more of this. I don’t mean us, here in Milford, although this stuff is around. But across the country, it’s getting bad. Some of the stuff going into new houses, man, I wouldn’t use it in my dog’s house. Listen, Glen, I have to send this on to the insurance company, you know.”
“I know.”
“And once they find out that house had equipment in it that didn’t meet code, they’re not going to pay up. In fact, they might just cancel your entire policy. They’re going to figure, if you put that kind of shit in one house, maybe you’ve put it in any other house you’ve built.”
“I didn’t put that crap in, Alfie.”
“Not you. Glen, I’ve known you long enough to know you wouldn’t knowingly do this, but somebody working for you did.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got a good idea who. He’s not working for me anymore.”
“Anybody else that guy is working for, they need to know,” Alfie said. “He wires up enough houses with that knockoff shit, sooner or later someone’s gonna die.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Alfie.”
I flipped the phone shut and tossed it onto the seat next to me.
I wanted to find Theo Stamos. I wanted to find Theo Stamos and kill the son of a bitch. But, seeing as how I was now going through Bridgeport, Theo was going to have to wait while I paid a visit to someone else.
Belinda Morton couldn’t believe it when Glen Garber told her he’d put the money in the mail. An envelope with sixty-two thousand dollars? Surely he wasn’t crazy enough to trust all that cash to the mailman. But maybe that was his way of making a point, of showing how angry he was with her.
Not that she could blame him.
She’d just been about to head out for an appointment to show a condo to a couple in their thirties who’d had enough of living and working in Manhattan, had found jobs in New Haven, and were looking for something with a view of the Sound. She phoned and said she’d had a family emergency and had to race home.
And she was almost out the office door when this guy showed up.
Said his name was Arthur Twain, that he worked for some private investigation or security company or something, and he wanted to talk to her about Ann Slocum, and fake purses, and whether she’d been to any purse parties, and did she know that the money that went to buy knockoff products supported organized crime. She could feel herself sweating right through her clothes, even though it was barely sixty degrees out there today.
“I’m sorry,” she said, probably ten times. “I don’t know anything about this. I really don’t.”
“But you were a friend of Ann’s, weren’t you?” Twain persisted.
“I really have to go, I’m sorry.”
Ran to her car, squealed out of the lot so fast she nearly ran down a woman on a bicycle.
“Calm down calm down calm down calm down,” she kept telling herself. She would have to call Darren, tell him about this Arthur Twain, ask him what she should say if he came to see her again.
She hoped that when Glen said he’d put the money in the mail, he meant the mail slot of her home. She got out of the car so quickly she didn’t even bother to close the door. If she hadn’t needed her keys to get into the house, she’d have probably left the motor running.
She ran to the door, nearly rolling over on a heel, tried three times to get the key into the slot before she was able to turn it. She swung the door open, looked down onto the floor where the mail always fell.
Nothing.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said. She half stumbled three steps into the house and allowed herself to fall onto the stairs, leaned up against the railing and felt herself starting to shake.
Just because the money wasn’t there didn’t mean it had been lost, she told herself. Maybe Glen still had it. Maybe he was planning to drop it off later. Maybe he was on his way.
And maybe the son of a bitch really had put it into the mail. That would be just like him. If there was one thing she’d learned from being friends with Sheila all those years, Glen did have a bit of a self-righteous streak in-
She heard a noise in the house.
It sounded as though it had come from the kitchen.
She froze, held her breath.
Someone was running water into the sink. There was the sound of a clinking glass.
Then someone called out, “Honey? That you?”
Belinda felt a weight being lifted off her chest, but only briefly. It was George. What the hell was he doing home?
“Yes,” she gasped. “It’s me.”
He rounded the corner and saw her collapsed on the stairs. He was in the same suit he wore the day before to the funeral. A different shirt, but still with French cuffs, bands of brilliant white between his hands and sleeves.
“You scared me half to death,” she scolded him. “What are you doing here? Your car’s not in the driveway.”
