I had the truck nearly emptied when I noticed a couple of cardboard boxes, about the size a dozen bottles of wine would come in, tucked up close to the cab. I crouched down and walk-squatted the length of the truck bed. You spend enough time in construction, you can walk in the back of a pickup like that without getting a groin injury or pulling a hamstring.
Once I reached the boxes, I got down on my knees. I wasn’t sure whether this was stuff from Doug’s house or something he’d already had in the truck that belonged to the business. So I folded back the cardboard flaps and had a peek inside. There was a lot of crumpled newspaper, which had been used as packing material. I took out bits of paper to see what it was protecting. The box was filled with electrical parts. Coils of wire, outlets, junction boxes, light switches, parts for circuit breaker panels.
It might have been interesting to read some of the stories on the newspaper scraps, but they were all written in Chinese.
It wasn’t immediately obvious these parts were all junk. As knockoff electrical bits went, they looked pretty authentic. But sitting in the back of Doug’s truck, studying them, I was able to spot things that didn’t pass muster. The circuit breaker parts, for one, had no certification marks on them. Anything legit would have had them. The color of the plastic used for the light switches was off, not consistent throughout. You handle parts like these long enough, you just know.
I had a terrible, sinking feeling. There was something Sally had said. “What if someone gave him the wrong parts and he couldn’t tell the difference?” Maybe Theo hadn’t been in the business long enough to spot this kind of thing, to have an instinctive feel for it.
Shit.
What the hell was junk like this doing in the back of Doug’s truck? Was he the one who’d substituted parts like this on the Wilson job? Had he done it on any others?
I slid the two boxes along the truck bed until they were positioned on the tailgate, then carried them, stacked one atop the other, to my own vehicle. I tossed them into the back, put up the tailgate, then locked the shed, the office, and the gate that led into the property.
I called Doug on his cell phone, hoping his service hadn’t been cut off for nonpayment. Surely the bill had been one of those tucked, unopened, in his kitchen drawer.
I got lucky.
“Yeah, Glen?” He sounded weary.
“Hey,” I said. “You get settled in with Betsy’s mom?”
“Yeah, but man, this is no way to live. She’s got five fucking cats.”
“Have any luck at the bank?”
“They were closing when we got there, so we’re going to go first thing in the morning, try to talk some sense into them. This is totally unfair, man, really.”
“Yeah. Listen, I need to see you.”
“What’s up?”
“We need to talk, in person. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment, but it’s important.”
“Yeah, well, I guess.”
“I can drive up to Derby, but I don’t know where your mother-in-law’s place is.” Doug gave me an address. I was pretty sure I knew the street. “Okay, I’m heading up there now.”
“Can you stay for a beer?” he asked. “Because, listen. That thing I said the other day, kinda threatening you, that was out of line, you know? I feel bad about that. Elsie-that’s Betsy’s mom-she’s got some beer in the fridge and she says I can take three a day out of there. I’ll save you one.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “See you in a bit.”
It wasn’t that far to Derby, but it felt like a long drive. I’d really wanted to lay all this on Theo. I’d never liked the guy, and I’d never been that crazy about his work. If the fire had to be blamed on him, well, that suited me fine. Even considering that Sally was supposedly going to marry the guy.
I would never have wanted Doug to be the bad guy. I wondered what my father’s reaction would have been to finding out that one of his supposedly most loyal employees had done something that could destroy the company.
He’d have fired his ass, that’s what he would have done.
I found the street, turned down it, and about halfway up, in a driveway on the left, I spotted Betsy’s Infiniti. I wondered how much longer she’d have that. I could see a ten-year-old Neon in her future.
I parked in front of her mother’s house, a brick two-story. A Siamese cat was watching the street through the front window. I went up the drive and was about to knock when the door opened.
“You made good time,” Doug said, a cigarette dangling between his lips. “Usually you run into some rush-hour traffic this time of the day.”
“The roads were pretty clear.”
“Which way did you come? When I come, I usually take-”
“Doug, cut it.”
“Yeah, sure, okay. But you want that beer?”
“No.”
He took a long drag on the cigarette, then threw it to the ground. Smoke continued to waft up from it.
“Listen, I really appreciate your help this afternoon, and for kind of, you know, defusing a tense situation. If you hadn’t been there, I swear, I don’t know what I might have done to Betsy.”
“Emotions were kind of running high,” I said.
