The Stranger (17 page)

A
dam drove past
MetLife Stadium, home of both the New York Giants and New York Jets. He parked in an office-building lot about a quarter of a mile down the road. The building, like everything around it, was on old swampland. The smell was pure New Jersey lore and the reason for much of the state’s misconception. The odor was part swamp (obviously), part chemical from whatever had been used to drain the swamp, and part dorm bong that never got rinsed out.

In sum, seriously funky.

The 1970s-era office building looked as though someone had taken the Brady Bunch’s house as inspiration. There was a lot of brown and the kind of rubberized flooring that might have been
snapped into place. Adam knocked on the door of a ground-level office overlooking the loading dock.

Tripp Evans opened it. “Adam?”

“Why did my wife call you?”

It was odd to see Tripp out of his normal element. In town he was popular and well-liked and important within the small worlds he inhabited. Here he looked strikingly ordinary. Adam knew Tripp’s story vaguely. When Corinne was growing up in Cedarfield, Tripp’s father had owned Evans Sporting Goods, located in the center of town where Rite Aid now was. For thirty years, Evans was the place where all the kids in town got their sports equipment. They also sold Cedarfield varsity jackets and practice gear for the high school teams. They opened two other stores in neighboring towns. When Tripp graduated college, he came home and ran the marketing. He made Sunday circulars and came up with special events to keep Evans relevant. He paid to have local pro athletes come in and sign autographs and greet customers. Times were good.

And then, like for most mom-and-pop operations, it all went south.

Herman’s World of Sporting Goods came in. Then Modell’s opened on the highway, and Dick’s and a few others. The family business slowly withered and died. Tripp had landed on his feet, though. His track record helped him nab a position at a big Madison Avenue advertising firm, but the rest of his family suffered greatly. A few years ago, Tripp moved out to the suburbs to open his own boutique firm, to quote Bruce Springsteen, here in the swamps of Jersey.

“Do you want to sit down and talk?” Tripp asked.

“Sure.”

“There’s a coffee shop next door. Let’s take a stroll.”

Adam was about to argue—he wasn’t in the mood for a stroll—but Tripp started on his way.

Tripp Evans wore an off-white short-sleeved dress shirt flimsy enough to see the V-neck tee underneath. His suit pants were the brown of a middle school principal’s. His shoes looked too big for his feet—not orthopedics but one of those comfortable, less expensive brands that aimed for faux formal. In town, Adam was used to seeing Tripp in his clearly more comfortable coaching gear—the polo shirts with the Cedarfield Lacrosse logo, the crisp khakis, the baseball cap with the stiff brim, the whistle around his neck.

The difference was startling.

The coffee shop was an old-school greasy spoon, complete with a waitress who kept her pencil in her hair bun. They both ordered coffees. Just coffees. This wasn’t the type of place that served macchiatos or lattes.

Tripp placed his hands on the sticky table. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“My wife called you.”

“How do you know this?”

“I checked the phone records.”

“You checked . . .” Tripp’s eyebrows jumped up a bit at that. “Are you serious?”

“Why did she call you?”

“Why do you think?” Tripp countered.

“Was it about this whole stolen-money thing?”

“Of course it was about this stolen-money thing. What else would it be?”

Tripp waited for a reply. Adam didn’t give him one.

“So what did she say to you?”

The waitress came by, dropping the coffees with a thud that caused some to splash onto the saucer.

“She said that she needed more time. I told her I’d stalled long enough.”

“Meaning?”

“The other board members were growing impatient. Some wanted to confront her more aggressively. A few wanted to go to the police right away on a more official basis.”

“So how long has this been going on?” Adam asked.

“What, the investigation?”

“Yes.”

Tripp put some sugar in his coffee. “A month or so.”

“A month?”

“Yes.”

“How come you never said anything to me?”

“I almost did. Draft night at the American Legion Hall. When you went nuts on Bob, I thought that maybe you already knew.”

“I had no idea.”

“Yeah, I get that now.”

“You could have said something to me, Tripp.”

“I could have,” he agreed. “Except for one thing.”

“What?”

“Corinne asked me not to.”

Adam stayed perfectly still. Then he said: “I just want to make sure I understand.”

“Let me see if I can help, then. Corinne knew that we were looking at her for the theft, and she made it clear that we shouldn’t tell you,” Tripp said. “You understand just fine.”

Adam just sat back.

“So what did Corinne say that morning when you called?”

“She asked me for more time.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“No. I told her time was up. I had tried to hold the board back long enough.”

“When you say the board—”

“All of them. But mostly Bob, Cal, and Len.”

“How did Corinne respond?”

“She asked—no, I think a better word might be
begged
—she begged for another week. She said she had a way to prove she was completely innocent, but she needed more time.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Truth?”

“Preferably.”

“No, not anymore.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought she was trying to find a way to pay it back. She knew we didn’t want to press charges. We just wanted it to be made whole. So yeah, I figured that she was contacting relatives or friends or something to raise the money.”

“Why wouldn’t she come to me?”

Tripp didn’t reply. He just sipped his coffee.

“Tripp?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“This makes no sense.”

Tripp just kept sipping his coffee.

“How long have you known my wife, Tripp?”

“You know the answer. We both grew up in Cedarfield. She was two years behind me—the same year as my Becky.”

“Then you know. She wouldn’t do this.”

Tripp stared into his coffee. “I thought that for a long time.”

“So what changed your mind?”

“Come on, Adam. You used to be a prosecutor. I don’t think Corinne started out to steal. You know how it is. When you hear about the sweet old lady stealing from the church tithing or, heck, the sports board member embezzling, it isn’t like they set out to do it. You come in with the best of intentions, right? But it creeps up on you.”

“Not Corinne.”

“Not anybody. That’s what we always think. We’re always shocked, aren’t we?”

Adam could see that Tripp was about to start into some philosophical spiel. For a moment, Adam debated stopping him, but maybe he should let go. Maybe the more Tripp talked, the more Adam would learn.

“But, let’s say, for example, you stay up late at night to schedule the lacrosse practice. You’re working really hard and maybe you’re in a diner, like this, so you order a coffee, just like the ones we have in our hands, and maybe you forgot your wallet in the car and figure, what the hell, the organization should pay for it anyway. A legitimate expense, am I right?”

Adam didn’t reply.

“And then a few weeks later, some referee doesn’t show up at a game in, say, Toms River, and you lose three hours of time covering for him, so hey, the least the organization can do is pay for your gas on the ride down. Then maybe it’s a dinner because you’re far away from home and the game ran late. Then you need to pay for the pizzas for the coaches when the board meeting makes you all
miss dinner. Then you need to hire local teens to ref the little kids’ games, so you make sure your teen gets the job. Hey, why not? Who better? Shouldn’t your family benefit from all this volunteering you’re doing?”

Adam just waited.

“So you keep sliding like that. That’s how it starts. And then one day you’re behind on a car payment and what do you know—your organization has a big surplus. Because of you. So you borrow some money. No big deal, you’ll pay it back. So who are you hurting? No one. That’s what you fool yourself into believing.”

Tripp stopped and looked at Adam.

“You can’t be serious,” Adam said.

“As a heart attack, my friend.” Tripp made a project of looking at his watch. He threw some bills on the table and stood up. “And who knows? Maybe we’re all wrong about Corinne.”

“You are.”

“That would thrill me to no end.”

“She asked for a little more time,” Adam said. “Can you just give it to her?”

Tripp quietly sighed and hitched up his pants a bit. “I can try.”

A
udrey Fine finally said
something relevant. And that led to Johanna’s first real lead.

Police Chief Johanna Griffin had been right about the county guys. They had put on their spouse blinders and zoomed in on Marty Dann for the murder of his wife, Heidi. Even the fact that poor Marty had a rock-solid alibi for the timing of the killing hadn’t dissuaded them. Yet. They had assumed a “professional hit job” from the start, so now they were digging into poor Marty’s phone records and texts and e-mails. They were asking around the offices of TTI Floor Care about his recent behavior, about his contacts, about where he went out for drinks or lunch, that kind of thing, hoping to find some connection between Marty and a possible hit man.

Lunch was the key.

Not where Marty had lunch, though. That’s where the county boys had messed up again.

But where Heidi ate lunch.

Johanna knew about Heidi’s weekly lunch with the girls. She had even gone a time or two. At first, Johanna had dismissed it as indulgent, as a privileged waste of time. There was some of that. But these were also women who wanted to bond with other women. These were women who made it a priority to make their lunch hour last a little longer so that they could share time with friends and connect to something other than their own family or career.

What was wrong with that?

This week, the lunch had taken place at Red Lobster and included Audrey Fine, Katey Brannum, Stephanie Keiles, and Heidi. No one noticed anything unusual. According to all of them, Heidi, fewer than twenty-four hours from being murdered in her home, had been her usual ebullient self. It was an odd thing talking to these other women. All of them were beyond devastated. All of them had felt that they had lost their closest friend in Heidi, the one person whom they could confide in, the one who was the strongest among their friends.

Johanna felt that way too. Yep, Heidi was magic. She was one of those people who made all those around her feel somehow better about themselves.

How, Johanna wondered, does one bullet take out a spirit like that?

So Johanna met with the entire lunch group and listened to them give her nothing. She was about to call it a day and see if she
could uncover some other lead, something else the county boys wouldn’t consider, when Audrey remembered something.

“Heidi was talking to a young couple in the parking lot.”

Johanna had been drifting off, lost in a memory. Twenty years ago, after much trial and error, Johanna had gotten “miracle” pregnant through IVF. Heidi had been with her at the ob-gyn when she’d gotten the news. And Heidi had been the first person Johanna had called when she’d miscarried. Heidi had driven over. Johanna slipped into the passenger seat and told her the news. The two women sat in the car and cried together for a long time. Johanna would never forget the way Heidi lowered her head onto the steering wheel, her hair spread out like a fan, and cried for Johanna’s loss. Somehow they both knew.

There would be no more miracles. This pregnancy had been Johanna’s only chance. She and Ricky ended up never having any children.

“Wait,” Johanna said. “What young couple?”

“We all said our good-byes and we got in our cars. I started pulling out onto Orange Place, but this truck zoomed by so fast, I thought it’d take my front grille off. I looked in the rearview mirror, and I saw Heidi talking to this young couple.”

“Could you describe them?”

“Not really. The girl had blond hair. The guy had a baseball cap on. I figured that they were asking her directions or something.”

Audrey remembered nothing else. Why would she? But the entire world, especially the parking lots of chain stores and restaurants, had video cameras. Getting the warrant would take time, so Johanna just went to Red Lobster on her own. The head of security put the video on a DVD for her, which felt a little old school, and
asked for it to be returned. “Policy,” he said to Johanna. “We need it back.”

“No problem.”

The Beachwood police station had a DVD player. Johanna hurried in to her office, closed the door, and jammed the DVD into the slot. The screen came to life. The security guy knew his stuff. Two seconds into the video, Heidi appeared from the right-hand corner. Johanna gasped out loud at the sight. Something about seeing her dead friend, alive, teetering as she did on those heels, made the tragedy too real.

Heidi was dead. Gone forever.

There was no sound on the tape. Heidi kept walking. Suddenly, she stopped and looked up. There was a man in a baseball cap and a blond woman. They did indeed look young. Later, the second and the third and the fourth time Johanna watched the tape, she would try to make out their facial features more, but at this height and this angle, there wasn’t much to see. Eventually, she would send it to county and let them get their computer guys and techno-whizzes to get whatever they could from the tape.

But not just yet.

At first, watching silently, it did indeed appear as though the young couple was asking for directions. That might make sense to a casual observer. But as time passed, Johanna felt the room chill. The conversation was taking much too long for this to just be about directions, for one thing. But more than that, Johanna knew her friend. She knew her mannerisms and her body language, and right now, even watching silently, Johanna could see that they were both all wrong.

As the conversation continued, Johanna grew more and more
still. At one point, Johanna was sure that she even saw her friend’s legs buckle. A minute later, the young couple got into their car and drove away. For almost a full minute, Heidi just stood in the lot, dazed, lost, before she got into her car. From her angle, Johanna could no longer see her friend. But time passed. Ten seconds. Twenty, thirty. Then, suddenly, there was movement in the front windshield. Johanna squinted and moved closer. It was hard to see, hard to make out, but Johanna recognized it now.

Heidi’s hair spread out like a fan.

Oh no. . . .

Heidi had lowered her head to the steering wheel, the same way she had done twenty years ago when Johanna had told her about the miscarriage.

She was, Johanna was certain, crying.

“What the hell did they say to you?” Johanna asked out loud.

She backed up the tape now and watched the young couple pull out of the parking lot. She slowed it down and then hit the pause button. She zoomed in, picked up her phone, and dialed in the number.

“Hey, Norbert,” she said, “I need you to run a license plate for me right away.”