And She Was (24 page)

“I’m not
just doing my job
. You want to conduct business, go to Starbucks.” Her voice sounded exactly like the serial killer’s from
Silence of the Lambs
.

Trent said, “Hey, is she one of those librarians with the cute little glasses and the tight skirt with the garters underneath?

“You mean a librarian from a porn movie?”

“Uh . . .”

“No. No, she is not.”

“Sssh!”

Brenna went back to the list. The Westchester number, the one Carol had called so many times. “It’s Graeme Klavel—the PI she hired.”

“Damn, you are so good with phone numbers,” Trent said. “I should take you to clubs. Chicks could give me their digits, they’d go right into your brain . . . I wouldn’t even have to break eye contact to put ’em in my phone.”

“I can only remember the numbers, Trent,” Brenna said. “I can’t make them give you their
real
ones.”

“Hilarious.”

“So anyway, it looks like he was working for her recently—not just whenever it was he got her the police file. There was that lunch at Blue Moon, but all these calls before and after.”

“She had him looking for Iris. Explains why she never called you.”

“I’ll call Klavel again after we hang up.” Brenna was now looking at the three calls Carol had made to Buffalo. If this bill were any indication, she didn’t like to spend a lot of time on the phone—most all her calls lasted five minutes or less, yet the ones to the Buffalo number were thirty, twenty-five, and thirty-five minutes respectively.

“You looking at Buffalo?” Trent said.

“Read my mind.”

“Sssh!”

Brenna looked at the librarian. “Careful—you might break a tooth.”

“I checked those Buffalo calls,” Trent was saying. “They’re all to someone named Millicent. Bet it’s that aunt Wentz told us about.”

Brenna said, “Did you ever find out what she spent forty-two eighty-nine on at that convenience store?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

“Carton of cigs.”

“
Really
?”

“Hey, she was a charitable lady. Cigs are expensive. The owner says somebody picked them up. I assume Aunt Millicent.” Trent went back to the phone bill. “That one at the top of page 2 is to Carol’s friend Gayle Chandler and the rest are mostly errand calls—dry cleaners, beauty salon, some French grocery store in Bronxville. Except for this one Tarry Ridge number—7651.”

Brenna scanned the list. During the last few days of her life, Carol Wentz had called the number eleven times, each call lasting ten seconds or less. “Why does she keep calling and hanging up?” Brenna said.

“Got me.”

“Do you have information on it?”

Trent gave her a name: Willis Garvey. An address: 225 Morning Glory. Not anyone Nelson had ever mentioned, and not a neighbor. In fact, once Brenna Google-mapped it, she saw that Morning Glory Road was located in the Waterside Condominiums complex—about as far away from the Wentz house as you could get and still be in Tarry Ridge.

After ending her call with Trent, Brenna printed out the phone records and placed them in her bag, along with a few more copies of the age-enhanced Iris Neff photo.

“
In a library, we observe library rules!
” the librarian shouted after her, her voice echoing.

Brenna turned, gave her a “Ssshhh” that lasted a solid ten seconds as the hulking woman stared, saucer-eyed. “Hypocrite,” Brenna said.

Once outside, Brenna tapped Graeme Klavel’s number into her cell phone. Again, she got the answering machine with the Klavel Investigations message.
Some business this guy must do, never answering his phone
. She left him another message and headed for her car, ready for her next step. A simple one.

I
f Brenna were a fan of conspicuous consumption, the Waterside Condominiums would have blown her out of her chair. As it stood, the place gave her a headache. Apart from maybe a handful of trees and the marble sign out front, the property was virtually unidentifiable as the dozen luxe but understated homes she’d driven to ten years ago—the peaceful, out-of-the-way spot Lydia Neff liked to visit every morning in order to, as her neighbor (and apparent town gossip) Gayle Chandler had put it, “meditate by the fountain.” The marble sign that read “Garden” was gone—along with, Brenna imagined, the garden itself and all the other elements of the complex that had been somewhat restrained. There were still grounds here, yes—but they were endlessly rolling, painstakingly landscaped grounds that would have been at home in Versailles. The gated recreation area was now the size of a country club, with tennis courts that rambled on for acres.

There was something grotesque about the Waterside Condos now—the residential equivalent of that once-beautiful actress with the overzealous plastic surgeon. And while Brenna couldn’t help but remember the original, she doubted many others did. With this type of rapid, unfettered expansion, the people living with it tend to suffer from post-traumatic amnesia.
What are you talking about? It’s always looked like this . . .

Following Lee’s polite orders, Brenna winded her way past malachite lawns bedecked with rose bushes and topiaries, past mini mansions with multiple chimneys and bulbous turrets and chandeliers glistening from behind bay windows that stretched up three, four, sometimes even five stories. But her mind wasn’t on any of it . . .

Willis Garvey
. The name kept taking Brenna back to tenth grade, to the smell of Pine-Sol mingled with her history teacher Mrs. Carmody’s rose hips perfume, the cold, hard waddle of Brenna’s hinged metal desk pressing into her knees as she watched Sophia DelVechio start her oral report on Marcus Garvey . . . Completely pointless memory, but the syndrome didn’t discriminate, with Sophia DelVechio as alive in Brenna’s mind as Jim ever was, or Morasco, or Grady Carlson, and all of them more so than her father, more so than Clea . . .

225 Morning Glory Road crept up on Brenna and slapped her in the face. She’d been driving on autopilot, following Lee’s instructions with Sophia DelVechio’s yawn-inducing oral report running through her mind from start to finish. (Too bad an in-depth description of the Pan Africa movement wasn’t something Brenna needed right now, or she’d be in great shape.)

Brenna pulled to a stop in front of the Garvey home. Like all the others in the complex, it was white and muscular, flexing out of its smallish lot in a way that was almost obscene. The car in the driveway was a car you’d expect at a house like this—2008 black Esplanade, assiduously waxed. Brenna had no doubt she’d be able to use the hood as a makeup mirror should she so desire.

Brenna recalled the Wentz house—so decidedly nonshowy, save for the kitchen. She thought about Carol Wentz’s 2002 Volvo, a car known for its good mileage and high safety ratings that had probably never seen a coat of wax since its showroom days. Why had Carol been calling these people and hanging up? Why had she been calling them at all?

She rang the doorbell, and a maid answered, in uniform. It was one thing to hire a housekeeper, quite another to make one wear a blinding white dress and bib apron. What was this,
Masterpiece Theatre
? All she needed was a doily on her head. The maid was very short and of Hispanic descent and could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty. “Can I help you?” she said, eyeing Brenna warily, her gaze moving from Brenna’s hands to her pocketbook and resting there, no doubt expecting the stack of Jehovah’s Witness flyers.

“I need to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Garvey, please.” Brenna dug around in her purse for her wallet and slipped out a business card. “Is either one of them home? I noticed the car in the driveway.”

The maid’s eyes narrowed. “There is no Mrs. Garvey,” she said. And as if on cue, a Greek sculpture of a man appeared behind her—golden hair tousled just so, bright green eyes glittering out of his chiseled face like the chandelier in his gargantuan window, sparkling white polo shirt setting off a perfect tan—he could have been a CEO, but only if real CEOs looked like CEOs as described in romance novels, so perfect and gleaming that Brenna couldn’t look him in the eye without blinking repeatedly.
This is who Carol Wentz called and hung up on eleven times?
“Mr. Garvey?”

“Yes?” His smile was bright enough to make Brenna’s pupils contract.

“I’m Brenna Spector.” She handed him the business card. “I’m working with the police on the Carol Wentz murder.”

“Yes?”

“Did you know Carol Wentz?”

“No. I mean, I’ve certainly heard of her, on the news and all. But no.” He frowned at her. “Why?”

Brenna said, “She seemed to know you.”

The frown deepened. “Would you like to come in?”

“Please.”

Garvey nodded at the maid. She promptly left. Brenna followed him into the great room and gasped—she couldn’t help it. Everything in the entire space was white—from the chandelier, staircase, and balcony to the puffy chairs and handwoven rug, to the sparkling floorboards, to the Ionic columns framing the white brick fireplace. All of it tailor-made to show off Garvey’s tan, it seemed, save for the two Emmys on the mantelpiece and the small collection of pictures—Christmas card–worthy photos of the same boy and girl at different ages, the boy younger and always with a goofy grin, the girl more serious and straight-backed, both of them immaculately dressed, with Garvey’s golden good looks.

“My kids,” Garvey said. “Justin and Emily. I’m divorced, but I get them most weekends—they’ll be here tonight, in fact.”

“Actually,” said Brenna, “I was looking at the Emmys.”

He smiled. “Daytime Emmys. They’re a dime a dozen.”

“You’re on a soap?”

He nodded. “
The Day’s End
.”

“My mom’s favorite!”

“Well, you can tell her you met Dr. Shane Kirby.”

“I will.” Brenna went back to her purse. “To tell the truth, I don’t talk to my mother all that much. But next time I do . . .”

“I will have eliminated an awkward silence.”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s what soap operas are for.” Brenna heard the smile in Garvey’s voice, the smoothness. He knew she was about to ask him questions about a murdered woman and yet here he was, grinning and calm, interview-ready.
Actors
. She wondered what his ex-wife thought of that quality, but more she wondered what Carol Wentz had thought of it. Carol, with her haunted eyes and her sad little marriage and her secret obsessions, buried beneath quilting supplies and community work . . . “Willis?”

“Will. Willis is my given name, but I can’t hear it without thinking of that kid on
Diff’rent Strokes
. Remember that show?”

“Sure I remember it,” said Brenna. “Did you ever know Lydia Neff?”

He blinked at her. “I thought you came here to ask me about Carol Wentz.”

“I did.”

“Well, I didn’t know Carol Wentz. And I don’t know . . . what was the name you just said?”

“Lydia Neff.”

“I don’t know her, either.”

Brenna removed the phone records from her purse, her gaze moving up and onto his calm face, the green eyes placid as glacier water.

“You’ve got to understand,” Garvey said. “I just moved out from L.A. in January to be closer to my kids. I barely talk to anybody out here except the
Day’s End
people, let alone anybody from Tarry Ridge.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know Lydia Neff is from Tarry Ridge?”

The eyes went harder. “I assumed.”

Brenna unfolded the phone records and pointed out the 7651 number. “This is your number, right?”

He swallowed. “Yes. How did you . . .”

“Carol Wentz’s phone bill from right before her death,” Brenna said. “Help me out here. Why would she make eleven calls to you in three days if you don’t know her?”

He stared at her. “I have no idea.”

Brenna gave him a good, long look. Some of that icy perfection melted off him. His eyes were no longer hard. In fact, Garvey looked a little frightened.

“You sure you never met Lydia Neff?” she said. “She has a daughter named Iris who disappeared around eleven years ago?” Brenna removed one of the age-enhanced photos of Iris Neff from her bag and showed it to him. “This is the way Iris would look now, but she also looks very much like her mom.”

He stared at the picture, and then back at Brenna—as if she’d just presented him with a test in advanced physics, written up in ancient Sanskrit. “No . . .”

For now, at least, Brenna believed Garvey. It was hard not to, helpless as he looked, this facile actor at a complete loss for words. Maybe Carol was calling Garvey for reasons that had nothing to do with Iris. This was real life after all—not
The Day’s End
. Not everything made sense. Not everything fit together. Maybe Carol Wentz was a woman with more than one secret, with more than one obsession. “She could have been a fan,” Brenna offered.

Garvey shook his head. “I never received any of these calls.”

“They look like hang-ups,” Brenna said. “Maybe your housekeeper answered them.”

“Nobody answered them,” he said slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“This is my second line. Only my agent uses it.” Garvey took a breath, stared at Brenna. “My second line is a fax machine.”

A
s she was driving out of the complex, Brenna called Trent. “I need you to check the Tarry Ridge directory, come up with a list of phone numbers one or two digits off from Willis Garvey’s.”

“Oh man. First the thrill of talking to Subaru dealers and now
this
.”

“What’d I tell you about sarcasm?”

Trent sighed. “So that number from the phone bill . . .”

“It’s a soap star’s fax machine.”

“Oh. My. God. You’re telling me that Willis Garvey is
the Will Garvey
? Dr. Shane Kirby?”

“You watch soaps
and
Tyra Banks. Excuse me but do you actually do any work over there when I’m not around?”

“Hello, it’s called TiVo.”

Brenna exhaled. “So, what’s the word from the dealerships?”

“Nada, señorita. Ten years ago, it was all about SUVs in the ’burbs—no wussy little K-cars. I found maybe half a dozen Vivios sold per year at those dealerships, three tops would be Bistros—none of ’em light blue.”