Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
Thirty minutes later, I pulled my minivan into the parking lot of a three-story building in a condominium complex halfway between the Metro station and the mall. I squinted to read the number on the sign out front. There had been several Brendan Haggertys listed in Northern Virginia, but only one had a public profile that presented a likely match. Brendan had told me he lived in a one-bedroom condo on a third floor, though after a quick loop through the parking lot, I hadn’t seen his white Volvo anywhere.
I parked in front of the address Vero had written on her notepad. A vicious wind sliced across my face as I climbed the three-story stairwell to what I hoped was Brendan’s unit. I shivered, teeth chattering as I rapped on the door. There was no sound on the other side, and I knocked again, louder this time.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Vero: Did you find him?
Finlay: I’m at his condo, but his car’s not here and no one’s answering the door.
Vero: Try opening it.
Finlay: That’s against the law!
Vero: It’s only breaking and entering if it’s locked. Otherwise, it’s only entering, which is probably a misdemeanor.
I didn’t justify that with a response.
Vero’s ringtone blared from my phone. I connected the call, desperate to silence it. “Look in his windows,” she said before I could speak. “He’s probably pretending he’s not home.”
I leaned around the side of the building and peeked over the railing. “The blinds in the windows of his balcony are open, but I can’t see inside. The angle’s all wrong.”
“How far away is it?”
“At least four feet.”
“That’s nothing. Get closer.”
“It’s three stories up, Vero!”
“So? You climbed out our dormitory window at the police academy!”
“We fell!”
“You survived.”
“And what happens if Brendan’s home?”
“Then you can drag his lying ass back here to pick up his damn grandma.”
Wind whipped my hair over my face as I peered over the ledge. Brendan’s balcony was only a few feet away, and the railing looked sturdy. I’d traversed far more terrifying terrain in the ceiling of a chop shop in Atlantic City. At least here, no one was trying to shoot me.
I checked the stairwell again. Then the ground below. There wasn’t a soul in the parking lot. No one coming or going from the building, as far as I could see. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
I slipped my phone in my pocket before I could talk myself out of it, muffling Vero’s voice inside the thick layers of my coat. I climbed onto the ledge. The ground wavered below me, much farther down than it had seemed a moment ago. I gripped the side of the building for balance, shut my eyes, and swung a leg out sideways, clinging to the brackets of a drainpipe as I searched for the metal railing with my foot. The heel of my sneaker caught the slick surface of the top rail. My stomach dropped as the rubber sole slipped, the force of my sudden lurch pulling the drainpipe away from the wall.
I yelped, groping for a fingerhold as brackets and screws tumbled to the sidewalk below with soft clink s. My nails raked the brick facade, mortar and grit collecting under my nails until they caught the edge of a shutter.
“ Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down,” I whimpered, my heart flapping furiously against my ribs as I eased a foot back onto the railing. With one final sideways step, I threw myself over the top of it and collapsed onto Brendan’s balcony.
“Finlay! Say something. Anything!” Vero’s shouts were frantic and tinny in my pocket as I lay motionless on the cold, wet decking.
My hands shook as I retrieved my phone from my pocket. “I’m not dead,” I said between ragged breaths. At least, I didn’t think I was.
“Where are you?”
“On Brendan’s balcony.”
“See anything?”
“Other than my life flashing before my eyes?” I pushed myself to my feet and peered through the slats in Brendan’s blinds. A single lamp was on in his living room. The kitchen was dark, the counters clean of clutter. I could just make out one side of his crisply made bed through his open bedroom door. “No sign of Brendan. I don’t think he’s home.” I tested the doorknob. “But we have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I’m stuck on Brendan’s balcony.”
“Can’t you just go back the way you came?”
“The drainpipe broke. My only hope for getting out of here is a fire truck ladder or a key to his condo.”
“Good idea. Stay where you are. I’m calling the maintenance office.”
“You’re doing what?!”
“They’ll send someone out to help you. All you have to do is pretend you live there. Tell them you’re Brendan’s girlfriend and you went outside to get some air and accidentally locked yourself out of his condo.”
“No!”
“You have a better plan?”
I peeped over the railing. The balcony below Brendan’s was at least fifteen feet down. A low rumble of thunder echoed in the distance.
“There is one other way,” Vero suggested, “but only if you’re willing to be flexible on that whole breaking-and-entering thing.”
A fat raindrop plunked down on my head. “Absolutely not!”
“Would you rather I call your boyfriend to come save you?”
“Fine. You can call Javi, but tell him to hurry. It’s starting to rain and it’s freezing out here. The last thing I need is for the cops to find my frozen corpse on Brendan Haggerty’s balcony.”
“Look at the bright side,” she said as the sky opened and it started to pour. “At least you won’t stink.”
Exactly twenty-eight minutes later, a white panel van eased into the condominium’s parking lot, its windshield wipers slapping away the heavy rain. It made a slow pass through the complex and parked beside my minivan. The driver’s side door opened and Javi got out. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses, a grease-stained pair of blue coveralls, and his baseball cap low over his eyes. I rocked back and forth to stay warm, watching from Brendan’s balcony as Javi retrieved a toolbox from the back of his van. His eyes climbed the side of the building, searching for me as he approached. I hugged my knees against the driving rain, my teeth chattering. I considered getting up and waving to him, but my clothes were plastered to my body and I couldn’t feel my toes. Javi’s steps faltered when he spotted the drainpipe dangling from the side of the building. He quickened his pace to the stairs.
The next few minutes felt like an eternity. The balcony door swung open. Javi pulled me upright and dragged me into Brendan’s condo. My face tingled at the rush of warm air as he closed the balcony door behind us and quickly shut the blinds. He took a throw blanket off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around me.
“Sit down,” he said, depositing me in an armchair and turning up the thermostat on the wall. The digital display illuminated as Javi adjusted the temperature, cranking it up to seventy degrees from the cool fifty-five it had been set to. “It’s fucking cold in here,” he said with a shudder as he knelt in front of me.
I managed a hoarse laugh. Compared to the temperature outside, Brendan’s living room felt like a spa. My whole body had started shaking and my skin prickled as the blood crept back into my extremities.
“How long have you been out there?” he asked, pushing back my wet sleeves.
“F-f-feels like f-f-forever.” I could hardly feel my face, and my words came out in a stutter.
He took my hands in his, turning them over to examine the pads of my fingers. His were probably still warm from the car, but if they were, I couldn’t tell. “You’ll be fine,” he said, peeling off my drenched sneakers to examine my toes. “Do I want to know what you were doing out there?”
“Probably not.”
A muscle worked in Javi’s jaw. He had a history of scrapes with the law, and I hated the idea of involving him in any more of mine. “Don’t move,” he said, securing the blanket around me. “I’ll find some towels.”
Touching anything inside Brendan’s condo didn’t feel wise, but I was too cold to care as Javi left me in the living room while he searched Brendan’s closets. Doors opened and shut down the hall, followed by the sound of a dryer tumbling to life. The heat had clicked on and warm air rustled the fringed edges of the blanket. Sinking to the floor, I pressed my hands to the nearest vent, relishing the rush of warmth to my fingertips. Under the light from the lamp on the table beside me, I watched the color slowly return to my skin.
I paused, my gaze catching on the lamp cord. It was connected to a timer, the kind that turned lights on and off at preprogrammed intervals. The same kind Vero and I had used the night we’d snuck out to bury Harris, when we’d wanted to trick Mrs. Haggerty into thinking we were home.
I winced at the needles of pain that shot through my toes as I stood and shambled to the thermostat. It had been set low—economically low—as if Brendan hadn’t planned to be home anytime soon. I peeked in the kitchen. The counters and sink were spotless, the coffeepot clean. I hobbled inside and opened the fridge, finding only condiments, pickles, jams, and jellies. No leftovers. No fresh produce or sandwich meats. Nothing that might spoil.
The trash can under the sink was empty. All of them were. Even the one in Brendan’s bathroom.
No toothbrush or toothpaste in the holder.
Vero was right. Brendan had skipped town and abandoned his grandmother.
Pain lanced through my feet as I made my way back to the sofa.
Javi emerged from the laundry room, his phone pressed to his ear and a pile of hot towels in his arms. “I’ve got her. She’s fine… Well if you’re feeling that grateful, I can think of a few things we could—Vero…?” He frowned at the screen on his phone and shoved it in his pocket. “She wants you to call her,” he said, arranging the hot towels around my feet. “I’ve got to go. I promised Ramón I’d be at the shop thirty minutes ago. Do you have your phone?”
I nodded. “Thanks, Javi.”
He gathered his toolbox but hesitated when he reached the door. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“If someone you really cared about asked you a question, and you swore to them you’d never lie to them or do anything to hurt them, but you knew the answer might really mess things up, would you tell them?”
“Oh, wow. I really don’t think I’m the best person to ask.” I was still struggling with that question myself.
“You’re the only person I can ask. And you know Vero as well as I do.”
“What about Ramón?”
Javi pulled a face. “I can’t ask Ramón. He’d remove my nuts with a bolt cutter if he even thought I’d say anything that would hurt Vero, but she’s pissed at me because I won’t tell her anything about the people I dated after she left for college.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do, Finlay. I want to be honest with her—I promised her I would—but having that conversation with her feels like walking through a field of land mines. If I tell her everything, she’ll probably hate me. But if I don’t, she’ll think I’m trying to hide something from her. Either way, I’m screwed. I don’t know what she wants from me.”
“Maybe all she wants is a little reassurance. Maybe she just needs to know you’re willing to be honest with her, even if it feels like a risk. She’s taking a risk, too,” I reminded him. “Maybe she just needs to know that it’s worth it. That no matter what happened in the past with someone else, nothing is more important to you than your future with her .”
He looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers as he stared at his purple bat ring. “People keep giving me shit about it, but I haven’t taken off this ring since the day I put it on. I meant every word I said to her that night. I just want her to trust me.”
“Then you have to trust her, too,” I pointed out. “Tell her why you’re holding back. Then let her decide how much she’s ready to hear.”
He nodded, his shoulders rising and falling with a sigh, as if he’d come to some decision. “Thanks,” he said, giving the condo one last look. “Remember to wipe the place down before you go.” He drew his baseball cap low over his eyes, slipped out the door, and locked the dead bolt behind him.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and speed-dialed Vero.
“You were right,” I said when she answered. “Brendan’s gone. It looks like he plans to be away for a while.”
“We are not getting saddled with that woman. Go through his things and figure out where he went. He’s probably hiding out at some fancy hotel with room service, celebrating the fact that someone else is watching his grandma.”
“There’s not much to search,” I said, carrying my phone through Brendan’s condo. He was tidy for a bachelor. It was almost suspicious how little there was, come to think of it. Who doesn’t have some bills sitting on a counter? A stack of crumpled receipts or a notepad left beside a phone? I picked up the receiver in the kitchen and thumbed through the menu to access the call log, but like most landlines, it contained a dozen telemarketing calls, scam numbers, and one from a time-share resort in Florida.
I hung up the receiver, hugging the blanket around me. The condo was spotless, not a single crease in the hotel-quality duvet or a crumb on the counter. Not a speck of spit on the bathroom mirror or toothpaste in the sink.
The only stray item in his bedroom was a newspaper left on the dresser. It had been folded open to the local politics section. I picked it up, doing a double-take at the photo on the page.
Brendan smiled brightly in the image, his crisp black suit jacket and burgundy tie standing out against the pale blue backdrop of his headshot.
Executive Director of Local Non-Profit Announces a Run for City Council.
“Huh,” I mused. “Riley and Max were right. Brendan’s running for local office. Looks like he submitted his petition to the city in January. The official announcement hit the paper last week.”
“Maybe Brendan’s campaign manager would know where he is.”
“There’s a number in the article. Hold on. I’ll call you right back.” I disconnected from Vero and dialed the number for the campaign office I’d seen in the article. I got routed through several phone trees before a human finally answered.
“I’m trying to reach Brendan Haggerty,” I said. “I’m a close friend of his grandmother and it’s urgent that I speak with him but he’s not answering his phone—”
“Mr. Haggerty is on leave for a personal matter.”
“Do you know where I might find him?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have that information.”
“Did he say when he’ll be back?”
“I don’t expect him until next week. Would you like to leave a message?”
I had already left him several, including one from his grandmother’s phone. Brendan obviously didn’t want to be found. “No, thank you.”
I disconnected and called Vero back. “No luck. All they would tell me is that he’s away on personal business.” The timing felt awfully suspect. Who takes a week of personal leave on the heels of a major career announcement?
I remembered Riley’s warning to me behind Mrs. Haggerty’s house… that Brendan Haggerty was running for office and the public deserved to know what had happened in his grandmother’s community. But why? Had they only been concerned with his transparency as a candidate? Or had they suspected there was more to Brendan Haggerty’s story?
I skimmed the rest of the article, which contained a brief rundown of his qualifications, including a mention of his participation in the citizen’s police academy a month ago. If he was posturing for an election, his participation in a program like that would look good on his platform. And the fact that he’d attended it with his elderly grandmother would have held promise as a heart-tugging human-interest story before she’d been arrested. I searched the article for any mention of Mrs. Haggerty, but her name was noticeably absent.
“Check in the closet,” Vero suggested. “That’s where all the sleazy politicians hide their skeletons.”
I opened Brendan’s closet and riffled through his hangers. His shirts had been pressed and sorted by color. His loafers were polished and organized on racks. “Nothing odd in here. It’s neat as a pin.”
“There’s no such thing as a clean politician, Finlay. Keep looking.”
Hangers screeched as I pushed aside his suit jackets, revealing a small cardboard filing box in the corner of his closet. I lifted the lid. There was a collection of newspapers and clippings inside it. “I think I found something.” The headlines of most of the news articles were recent, dated within the last few weeks.
“What is it?” Vero asked as I picked one up and skimmed it.
Body of Missing Local Man Is Found Buried in South Riding. Under the headline was a photo of Gilford Dupree. There were several clippings in the box about the silver-haired businessman, some containing photos I’d already seen on the TV news, others containing grainy shots that appeared to be screen grabs from social media pages. Below them, I found a handful of articles that predated the discovery of Dupree’s remains. Most had been published the year he went missing. Human-interest pieces about the quiet mortgage broker who’d mysteriously disappeared from a local park, each article culminating in pleas for witnesses to call his wife with any information.
“There must be a dozen articles here. They’re all about Gilford Dupree.”
Vero’s laugh was bitter. “Of course Brendan was following the news. The lying jerk was probably praying his grandma would be indicted so he’d have an excuse to get rid of her.”
“He wasn’t just following it, Vero.” I struggled to convey in words why this hidden stash of articles was so disturbing to me. “It’s like he was collecting details about the case. Like he was scouring the news for information about the crime.” Like he was studying it. Names and dates had been circled. Every small detail of the case that police had disclosed had been highlighted. Notes had been furiously scribbled in the margins—odd forms of shorthand that were hardly legible.
Was he trying to exonerate his grandmother by solving the investigation himself?
Or was he trying to stay one step ahead of it?
The observation Vero had shared with me earlier that morning began to take on new significance as I stood in Brendan’s closet.
He couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
“What if Brendan isn’t hiding from his grandmother?” I asked. “What if he’s running from the cops?”
“What do you mean?”
“Brendan said he was the only relative of Mrs. Haggerty who lived close by. He used to visit her all the time. What if he needed a convenient place to hide a body? Somewhere familiar. An easy place to dig on a privately owned lot where no one was likely to go looking?” Hadn’t Vero and I done the same thing when we had accidentally become saddled with Harris Mickler’s corpse? We’d buried him on my ex-husband’s sod farm. The unplanted ground had been soft, recently tilled. It was the easiest, safest solution we could come up with, and it had worked for us, too, at least until someone dug him up. “What if Brendan killed Gilford and hid the body in his grandparents’ yard?”
“I thought you said the police ruled him out.”
“That’s what the file in Nick’s apartment suggested, but it didn’t say anything about an alibi.”
“Well that’s just great,” Vero said through an exasperated sigh. “If Brendan’s the killer, there’s no way he’s coming back to pick up his grandmother. I vote we call the damn detective’s number on that business card, tell him Brendan Haggerty skipped town, his grandmother is a pain in our ass, and let the cops figure out what to do with both of them.”
“We can’t call the police about this! What are we going to say? That I broke into the man’s condo, snooped around, and found something suspicious when I searched his closet?”
“We’ll just have to give them a compelling reason to search it themselves. Put everything back where you found it, wipe the place down, and come home. It’s almost lunchtime and I can’t think on an empty stomach.”
My heart leapt into my throat. “Wait, what did you say?”
“I said, I’m starving and I—”
“Not that! What time is it?”
“Eleven fifteen. Why?”
“No, no, no, shit !” I looked down at my drenched clothes, as if by some Cinderella magic, they might turn into something suitable to wear. “I’m going to be late to my meeting with Sylvia!”
“You didn’t tell me you were meeting with—”
I disconnected the call, put the articles back in the box, and frantically straightened the hangers.
There was no time to run home to change. No time to stop at the mall to go shopping for clothes. I had forty-five minutes to wipe down every surface in this condo and get to Union Station before my literary agent killed me.