“What kind of payment?”
“We offer to buy him dinner,” said Angel.
“We send him a gift card for Domino’s?”
“No,” said Louis, “we meet him.We spend an evening in his company.”
I could think of few things I wanted to do less, short of losing a toe.
“Why?”
“Because he’s lonely,” said Louis.
“With good reason,” I replied.
“Don’t be like that,” said Angel.“We’re all on the spectrum.”
“But we’re not all way out there on Southwood’s end of it.He’s like those colors only birds can see.”
Angel and Louis regarded me impassively.I tried to wait them out, but like the poet, I had miles to go and promises to keep.
“Fine,” I said.“But nowhere expensive, and if an awkward silence drags on for longer than five minutes, I get to leave.”
Thus it was agreed, even if the mystery of Brightwell’s involvement persisted.Then it became my turn to talk to Angel and Louis, this time of Spero.
“You think they killed Scott Theriault to hide fraud?”Louis asked.
“It doesn’t fit, but neither does Scott’s death make sense as an accident.First, he goes north instead of south.He might have been trying to get to Canada, which is thirty-five or forty miles, but if so, why consume a quantity of alcohol he knows will render that impossible?No, I’m coming around to Ward Vose’s way of thinking: Someone force-fed Scott Theriault enough hardliquor to incapacitate him, then drowned him, but it wasn’t over money.”
“So what does it leave?”Angel asked.
“If I had to guess,” I said, “it leaves Mallory Norton.”
Chapter 84
Louis and Angel returned to their apartment.They offered to help with whatever was happening in The Plains, but while I would have welcomed their company, I didn’t see what dragging them all the way up to the Kennebec Valley would achieve, beyond making the locals nervous.While that might have been fun, so far the locals had done nothing to deserve it.
The relationship between Roger Teal and Edward Kenney continued to worry me, though putting eyes on them would be dull, time-consuming work.The Fulcis would take it on—they were remarkably stoic men, until they weren’t—but while Alcock could be persuaded to sign off on their hours, I’d end up knowing only where Teal and Kenney went, and perhaps who they met, but not what was said once they got there.Also, the Fulcis were suited to surveillance that allowed them to work from a fixed position, like a house or stationary vehicle, but once they began to move around, they attracted attention.Only a blind person could be followed by the Fulcis and fail to spot them, and even then it would have to be a blind person without a dog.Finally, properly monitoring two men required four to six people, which Alcock was certainly not going to sanction.
After some thought, I came up with a solution, which was to track the vehicles, not the men.Back in the not-so-dim and distant past, tagging a car was a complicated, costly, and unreliable affair, but thanks to advances in technology, illegally monitoring someone’s vehicle had never been cheaper or easier.The most recent long-life car trackers in my collection cost $300 each, used 4G connectivity and a mobile app, had a fifty-day battery life if set to ping at five-minute intervals, and could be mounted without tools on any metal surface via three high-strength neo magnets.I still wouldn’t be any wiser about conversations between Teal and Kenney, but it’s better to know something than nothing, and I might be able to piece together a lot based on where theywent.
I called Tony Fulci, explained what had to be done, and asked him to come pick up the trackers as soon as he could.He said he’d be there within the hour, and he was as good as his word, arriving after forty minutes dressed in a sports jacket, a pressed white shirt, khakis, and brown Sperry top-siders.His hair was freshly cut and he smelled of cologne that if not itself expensive, was based on a fragrance that might have been.He looked like someone who was trying desperately not to get thrown out of a country club.
“You didn’t have to get all dressed up for me,” I said.“Flowers would have been enough.”
“I’m going to lunch,” he said.His face, red at the best of times, darkened toward beetroot.
“In Kennebunkport, with the Bushes?”
“No, with Faith.You know, the woman from that night at the Bear.The night of the, uh, altercation.”
“You mean the dislocation,” I said.It was an unusual dating tactic, but it must have worked.“How has her ex taken the rejection?”
Tony jammed his massive fists in the pockets of his khakis, as though storing hams.
“He left town.”
“Willingly?”
