Just One Look (Page 90)

So late at night, when Grace lies alone in their too-large bed and talks to Jack, feeling very strange because, really, she doesn’t believe he’s listening, her questions are more basic: Max wants to sign up for the Kasselton traveling soccer team, but isn’t he too young for that kind of commitment? The school wants to put Emma in an accelerated English program, but will that put too much pressure on her? Should we still go to Disney World in February, without you, or will that be too painful a reminder? And what, Jack, should I do about those damn tears on Emma’s pillow?

Questions like that.

Scott Duncan came by a week after Sandra’s arrest. When she opened the door, he said, “I found something.”

“What?”

“This was in Geri’s stuff,” Duncan said.

He handed her a beat-up cassette. There was no label on it but faintly, in black ink, someone had written: ALLAW.

They moved silently into the den. Grace stuck the cassette in her player and pressed the play button.

“Invisible Ink” was the third song.

There were similarities to “Pale Ink.” Would a court of law have found Jimmy guilty of plagiarism? It would be a close call, but Grace figured that the answer, after all these years, was probably no. There were plenty of songs that sounded alike. There was also a fine line between influence and plagiarism. “Pale Ink,” it seemed to her, probably straddled that blurry line.

So much that went wrong did—straddled a blurry line, that is.

“Scott?”

He did not turn toward her.

“Don’t you think it’s time we cleared the air?”

He nodded slowly.

She was not sure how to put this. “When you found out your sister was murdered, you investigated with a passion. You left your job. You went all out.”

“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t have been hard to find out she had an old boyfriend.”

“Not hard at all,” Duncan agreed.

“And you would have found out that his name was Shane Alworth.”

“I knew about Shane before all this. They dated for six months. But I thought Geri had died in a fire. There was no reason to follow up with him.”

“Right. But now, after you talked to Monte Scanlon, you did.”

“Yes,” he said. “It was the first thing I did.”

“You learned that he’d disappeared right around the time of your sister’s murder.”

“Right.”

“And that made you suspicious.”

“To put it mildly.”

“You probably, I don’t know, checked his old college records, his old high school records even. You talked to his mom. It wouldn’t have taken much. Not when you’re looking for it.”

Scott Duncan nodded.

“So you knew, before we even met, that Jack was Shane Alworth.”

“Yes,” he said. “I knew.”

“You suspected him of killing your sister?”

Duncan smiled, but there was no joy in it. “A man is dating your sister. He breaks up with her. She’s murdered. He changes identity and disappears for fifteen years.” He shrugged. “What would you think?”

Grace nodded. “You told me you like to shake the cages. That was the way to make progress in a case.”

“Right.”

“And you knew that you couldn’t just ask Jack about your sister. You had nothing on him.”

“Right again.”

“So,” she said, “you shook the cage.”

Silence.

“I checked with Josh at the Photomat,” Grace said.

“Ah. How much did you pay him?”

“A thousand dollars.”

Duncan snorted. “I only paid him five hundred.”

“To put that picture in my envelope.”

“Yes.”

The song changed. Allaw was now singing a song about voices and wind. Their sound was raw, but there was potential there too.

“You cast suspicion on Cora to distract me from pressuring Josh.”

“Yes.”

“You insisted I go with you to see Mrs. Alworth. You wanted to see her reaction when she saw her grandchildren.”

“More cage shaking,” he agreed. “Did you see the look in her eyes when she saw Emma and Max?”

She had. She just hadn’t known what it meant or why she ended up living in a condo right on Jack’s route to work. Now, of course, she did. “And because you were forced to take a leave, you couldn’t use the FBI for surveillance. So you hired a private detective, the one who used Rocky Conwell. And you put that camera in our house. If you were going to shake the cage, you’d need to see how your suspect would react.”

“All true.”

She thought of the end result. “A lot of people died because of what you did.”

“I was investigating my sister’s murder. You can’t expect me to apologize for that.”

Blame, she thought again. So much of it to go around. “You could have told me.”

“No. No, Grace, I could never trust you.”

“You said our alliance was temporary.”

He looked at her. There was something dark there now. “That,” he said, “was a lie. We never had an alliance.”

She sat up and turned the music down.

“You don’t remember the massacre, do you, Grace?”

“That’s not uncommon,” she said. “It’s not amnesia or anything like that. I was hit so hard in the head I was in a coma.”

“Head trauma,” he said with a nod. “I know all about it. I’ve seen in it lots of cases. The Central Park jogger, for one. Most cases, like yours, you don’t even remember the days before it.”

“So?”

“So how did you get into the front pit that night?”

The question, coming out of nowhere like that, made her sit up. She searched his face for a give. There was none. “What?”

“Ryan Vespa, well, his father scalped the ticket for four hundred bucks. The members of Allaw got them from Jimmy himself. The only way to get up there was to shell out a ton of dough or know someone.” He leaned forward. “How did you get into that front pit, Grace?”

“My boyfriend got tickets.”

“That would be Todd Woodcroft? The one who never visited you at the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“You sure about that? Because before you said you don’t remember.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it. He leaned closer.