Good as Dead(27)

“A scone sounds wonderful. I just have to finish something in the kitchen,” I said, which was true. Andy never cleaned up after himself, and I hated coming back to dirty plates and counters. “Five minutes?”

“Perfect.” She smiled and turned to go. As she started down my front path, I noticed she walked with a limp, as if her left knee couldn’t bend all the way. The shame in my chest hung so low I nearly tripped over it.

I closed the door. Andy immediately popped his head out of the kitchen. He was smiling. And not just because of the sandwich.

“Don’t,” I started, and he laughed.

“If you’re not back in an hour, I’ll call the SWAT team,” he teased.

“Maybe she’s not a murderer,” I conceded. “But I still bet her new boyfriend is the one buying me flowers.”

His smile turned sad. “Sorry it’s not me,” he said. And I could tell by his rueful expression that he meant it.

“I’ll fill you in after,” I assured him, ignoring his apology.

“I’m sure you will,” he said with a sly smile. And I was grateful that we’d have something to talk about that would not end in a fight.





JACK


Three months ago

The first order of business was to hide the car.

I had a four-car garage, so it was no problem just to stash the SUV in one of the spaces until we figured out our next move. Evan said the next forty-eight hours would be critical in terms of witnesses coming forward or the police finding evidence. The victims, he said, would be “dealt with,” then reminded me there were things we couldn’t control. So we would just have to sit tight.

Once safely inside the garage, I inspected the vehicle. Of all the cars I had bought in my lifetime, this one was by far the biggest—an oversize SUV with a full third row and enough horsepower to pull a boat. Not that I had a boat. I wasn’t really a boat person, but I liked having the ability to pull one if I needed to. My day-to-day car was a Porsche 911 convertible coupe, which was so compact it probably would have fit inside the SUV in its entirety. I shuddered to think what the collision would have been like had it happened in the convertible instead.

I walked to the front of the SUV to inspect the point of impact. The behemoth’s front bumper had taken the Cherokee’s door clean off, yet surprisingly barely had a mark. The headlights were both still intact, and there was no visible damage to the hood or passenger-side tire well. As far as I could see, there were no remnants of red paint anywhere on the car that could link the two vehicles together. Of course I wasn’t in the business of investigating, or covering up, crimes. A trained eye might very well have noticed something I didn’t.

If no witnesses came forward to identify the car, it was still possible there was forensic evidence at the scene. I looked closely to see if anything might have fallen off—the hood ornament, a side view mirror, a strip of trim. They would likely find something. All I could do was hope it wouldn’t be enough to positively ID the vehicle and trace it back to me. Because then they’d figure out what I was really hiding, that I was guilty of something else entirely.

I wondered how long and hard the police would look for the perpetrator. Murder investigations sometimes take years. Cases go cold, then suddenly warm back to life with an unexpected recollection or new piece of evidence. How determined would the cops be to solve the case? And how foolish was I to think this would eventually just go away?

I remember hearing a case about a prominent real estate developer who was murdered in his home in White Plains. Detectives interviewed the dead guy’s neighbors. One of them recalled seeing an unfamiliar car parked across the street that morning—a white Camry. His security camera had a picture. I guess there were a lot of white Camrys in the state of New York, because two years later they still hadn’t found it. So they put the case on ice.

I don’t know what compelled the detective to reopen the file after those two long years—pressure from the family? A spell of boredom? But he did, and this time he found something—a tiny detail he’d originally overlooked. The Camry had a transponder in it—a flat, white box glued to the windshield that allowed the car to cruise through tolls and be charged automatically. With that one distinguishing element, using security cameras across the tristate area, the detective was able to track that Camry all the way from the crime scene to a rental car outfit over three hundred miles away. It took six more months, but they caught the guy, and two years later he was convicted. When I read the story, the murderer was awaiting the death penalty in a maximum-security prison. All because of that little white box.

I didn’t know what was going to give us away, but I had no doubt there was something out there that could. It was just a matter of if someone found it.





CHAPTER 15


“Your ten o’clock is here,” my assistant said, poking her head into my office. “He’s early,” she added, to make sure I knew I didn’t have to rush. I looked at my watch. It was only 9:40. I was already impressed.

“You can bring him back,” I said, eager to get the day started.

I didn’t have to come to the office every day—I could read scripts at home—but I liked being on the lot. I had been in the movie business for almost thirty years, but I was still enamored with the process. A movie set was like the human body, with all its organs—costumes, sets, props, lights—working in harmony to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. Making movies was nothing short of magic—we literally created whole worlds—and I loved seeing them come to life.