The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(22)

And I still thought about Lily every day.

I got out of my car, locked it behind me, and strolled down the main drag of Concord. It was a little too early for lunch. Besides, part of me wanted to go look at the place where my life had nearly ended, just curious to know how it would make me feel. I reached the rotary at the end of Main Street and looked up at the hillside cemetery that loomed above the town. The day was windy and dead leaves were piling up against the headstones. I was about to cross over to enter the cemetery through its narrow stone gate but decided against it. The memories from that day were still fresh in my mind, and I didn’t need to stand in the exact spot in order to process what had happened. I’d come to accept the reasons that Lily did what she did. I remembered the surprise of seeing her approach me, the almost gentle feel of the knife sliding into me, and Lily’s words in my ear. I’m sorry.

My phone buzzed in the pocket of my jeans, and I pulled it out to see I’d just missed a call from a number I recognized as Joan Whalen’s landline. She told me, toward the end of our meeting in my office on Monday, that the best way to contact her was by calling her on the landline in her home, but only during the daytime hours. She was a freelance interior decorator who worked out of a home office.

I walked to the Concord River Inn, half a block away, and sat on a stone bench just outside of the old inn’s front entrance. I called the number back.

“Hello?” Joan said.

“Hi, it’s Henry Kimball. Is this Joan?”

“Oh, thanks for calling me back. Richard’s out and I wanted to check in.”

I gave her the rundown, omitting the time I’d spent with Pam at the cocktail lounge at the Taste of Hong Kong. Instead, I simply told her I’d watched Pam for the majority of the previous day, and I was shadowing Richard today, and he was on what looked like a legitimate work-related call in Sudbury.

“He told me he had a new listing there.”

“I will say,” I said, “that keeping an eye on your husband or Pam is probably not the most efficient way to confirm your suspicions.”

“What do you mean?”

“For one thing, maybe they only get together every two weeks. That means I’ll need to have eyes on one of them the majority of every day, and it could be a long time before anything is confirmed.”

“Is that a problem?”

A cloud moved over the sun and the air temperature did one of those sudden drops that are commonplace in New England in October.

“It shouldn’t be, but I will say that it increases the chances of my being spotted. Unfortunately, there are only so many spots with a view of the Blackburn offices in Dartford.”

“I can’t really speak for Pam,” Joan said. “But my husband wouldn’t notice an elephant parked across the street from his office. One weekend I painted his study walls when he was away, and he never noticed.”

“That’s good to know. I’ll primarily be keeping an eye on him. It’s time consuming, though.”

“Are you telling me it’s a lot of money?”

“Well, I am billing by the hour, so yes, I’d say it’s adding up.”

“I don’t care about that. Besides, what other choice is there?”

“Do you know your husband’s pin number on his phone?”

“I do.”

“We could install spyware on it that would tell us—”

“I’ve looked at his phone,” Joan said, jumping in. “He’s not bright, but he’s bright enough to not send texts with the woman he’s sleeping with. I’m pretty sure all their arrangements are made in person at the office.”

“Probably,” I said, and briefly thought about how affairs might now be the last human relationships that are not being exclusively conducted via computers and smartphones.

“Definitely,” Joan said, a little breathily, and I wondered if she was out for a walk. Then I remembered she was speaking on her landline.

“So I’ll continue with what I’m doing,” I said, “and keep an eye on Richard’s daily movements.”

“Yes, please, and thank you. Honestly, I’ll be shocked if you find out that he’s not secretly meeting Pam. My guess is that they meet on Friday afternoons. Sorry I haven’t told you that sooner but it’s only a guess on my part.”

“Why do you think Fridays?”

“He belongs to a gym that he doesn’t go to very often. It’s called For Life Fitness in West Dartford. He usually goes in the morning at the beginning of the week, but lately he’s been coming home on Friday nights having been to the gym.”

“You think he’s going there to take a shower?”

“That’s exactly what I think. Otherwise I’d smell her on him, which I probably would, because he knows how good my sense of smell is. And the other thing is that on those Friday nights he’s just a little too affectionate with me. I mean, he’s not super obvious—he doesn’t bring me flowers or anything—but I can read him well enough to know he’s feeling guilty.”

“This is all good to know,” I said.

“But don’t just wait until then. For all I know they’re going to get together tomorrow.”

“Right. Okay, will do. I’ll get in touch with you the moment I learn anything.”