Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(40)

“A lady with all the bells and whistles.”

“My mother and father tried for years to get her to see a shrink. Where they failed, Kent succeeded. The shrink put her on pills, and she got better. She had one of her patented anxiety attacks on her wedding day—I was the one who held her veil while she vomited in the church bathroom—but she got through it.” Janey smiles wistfully and adds, “She was a beautiful bride.”

Hodges sits silently, fascinated by this glimpse of Olivia Trelawney before she became Our Lady of Boatneck Tops.

“After she married, we drifted apart. As sisters sometimes do. We saw each other half a dozen times a year until our father died, even less after that.”

“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July?”

“Pretty much. I could see some of her old shit coming back, and after Kent died—it was a heart attack—all of it came back. She lost a ton of weight. She went back to the awful clothes she wore in high school and when she was working in the office. Some of this I saw when I came back to visit her and Mom, some when we talked on Skype.”

He nods his understanding. “I’ve got a friend who keeps trying to hook me up with that.”

She regards him with a smile. “You’re old school, aren’t you? I mean really.” Her smile fades. “The last time I saw Ollie was May of last year, not long after the City Center thing.” Janey hesitates, then gives it its proper name. “The massacre. She was in terrible shape. She said the cops were hounding her. Was that true?”

“No, but she thought we were. It’s true we questioned her repeatedly, because she continued to insist she took her key and locked the Mercedes. That was a problem for us, because the car wasn’t broken into and it wasn’t hotwired. What we finally decided . . .” Hodges stops, thinking of the fat family psychologist who comes on every weekday at four. The one who specializes in breaking through the wall of denial.

“You finally decided what?”

“That she couldn’t bear to face the truth. Does that sound like the sister you grew up with?”

“Yes.” Janey points to the letter. “Do you suppose she finally told the truth to this guy? On Debbie’s Blue Umbrella? Do you think that’s why she took Mom’s pills?”

“There’s no way to be sure.” But Hodges thinks it’s likely.

“She quit her antidepressants.” Janey is looking out at the lake again. “She denied it when I asked her, but I knew. She never liked them, said they made her feel woolly-headed. She took them for Kent, and once Kent was dead she took them for our mother, but after City Center . . .” She shakes her head, takes a deep breath. “Have I told you enough about her mental state, Bill? Because there’s plenty more if you want it.”

“I think I get the picture.”

She shakes her head in dull wonder. “It’s as if the guy knew her.”

Hodges doesn’t say what seems obvious to him, mostly because he has his own letter for comparison: he did. Somehow he did.

“You said she was obsessive-compulsive. To the point where she turned around and went back to check if the oven was on.”

“Yes.”

“Does it seem likely to you that a woman like that would have forgotten her key in the ignition?”

Janey doesn’t answer for a long time. Then she says, “Actually, no.”

It doesn’t to Hodges, either. There’s a first time for everything, of course, but . . . did he and Pete ever discuss that aspect of the matter? He’s not sure, but thinks maybe they did. Only they hadn’t known the depths of Mrs. T.’s mental problems, had they?

He asks, “Ever try going on this Blue Umbrella site yourself? Using the username he gave her?”

She stares at him, gobsmacked. “It never even crossed my mind, and if it had, I would have been too scared of what I might find. I guess that’s why you’re the detective and I’m the client. Will you try that?”

“I don’t know what I’ll try. I need to think about it, and I need to consult a guy who knows more about computers than I do.”

“Make sure you note down his fee,” she says.

Hodges says he will, thinking that at least Jerome Robinson will get some good out of this, no matter how the cards fall. And why shouldn’t he? Eight people died at City Center and three more were permanently crippled, but Jerome still has to go to college. Hodges remembers an old saying: even on the darkest day, the sun shines on some dog’s ass.

“What’s next?”

Hodges takes the letter and stands up. “Next, I take this to the nearest UCopy. Then I return the original to you.”

“No need of that. I’ll scan it into the computer and print you one. Hand it over.”

“Really? You can do that?”

Her eyes are still red from crying, but the glance she gives him is nonetheless merry. “It’s a good thing you have a computer expert on call,” she says. “I’ll be right back. In the meantime, have another cookie.”

Hodges has three.

10

When she returns with his copy of the letter, he folds it into his inner jacket pocket. “The original should go into a safe, if there’s one here.”

“There’s one at the Sugar Heights house—will that do?”