Chapter 45
quinn
Colt Smith is still a good-looking man. Quinn’s preferred women since a revelatory encounter at boarding school when she was twelve, but even she can see his son, Mac, has a great deal to look forward to in old age.
At almost seventy, Colt’s hair is still the colour of new pennies, barely starting to grey at the temples.
His eyes are the same piercing blue as her own – although in his case he has a matching pair – and he’s tall, with a confident swagger.
He reminds her of a sheriff in a spaghetti Western, especially with that white Sam Elliott moustache and the huge silver belt buckle at the waist of his jeans.
She can see why the seat-sniffing matrons of Stowebury throw their knickers at him; although, from what she’s heard around town, he likes his women young.
‘Come through,’ he says.
Quinn misses nothing as she and Phil walk through his home.
It’s always interesting to see what people give away about themselves without knowing it: in the photos they choose to frame, the paintings they hang on their walls, the knick-knacks they collect.
The photos on Colt’s brag wall – Colt with Bernie Sanders; Colt with Trump way back at the start of his 2016 campaign; Colt with Ben and Jerry at their eponymous ice-cream store – tell her this is a man who has powerful friends, and who wants everyone who steps foot in his home to know it.
Unlike Jesse Spencer, however, Colt doesn’t go in for ostentation: his home is a pleasant but unremarkable stone farmhouse dating back to 1827, according to the carving over the front door.
The furniture is good, but not antique. Colt clearly has a taste for modern art, carefully curated to suit the age of the house, but none of it is instantly recognisable.
His wealth is written in the small details: a collection of delicate, carved ivory Japanese netsuke on a small side table.
The first-edition Huckleberry Finn stacked without any particular care amid the Mickey Spillane and Tom Clancy novels.
The Chihuly vase filled with stale water and wilting late-September roses.
And the three thousand acres of farmland rolling away from the house in every direction, of course.
Colt leads them into a small sitting room, its French doors thrown open to the stone terrace to let in the crisp autumn air.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ he asks.
‘Not for me,’ Quinn says.
Phil is already lengthening the legs of his tripod. ‘Mind if I set up?’
‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to tell you much,’ Colt says, taking a seat on a large, primrose-yellow sofa and flinging his arm across its back. ‘But I’m fine with you recording it, either way.’
Quinn sits opposite him, tucking her winged arm neatly into her waist with her good hand.
She encountered Colt a few times in the immediate aftermath of the accident – he was particularly effective at shutting down the media, though Quinn didn’t find that particularly suspicious at the time; he’d lost his grandson, after all – but this is the first time she’s interviewed him one-on-one.
Behind her, Phil sets up his camera, working quickly and unobtrusively.
He busies himself with light levels and sound tests and camera angles, but all three of them know this interview will never see the light of day.
Quinn’s not here for anything Colt will tell them on the record.
This is just a first date, to feel each other up and decide if they’re going to fuck each other later.
She knows it, and she knows he knows it, too.
‘According to Tara Connelly you saw her husband, Luke, two days before he disappeared,’ she says.
If she was hoping to catch him off guard by diving straight in without a few warm-up soft balls, she’s shit out of luck.
‘That poor woman,’ he says, not missing a beat.
‘You mean his wife?’
‘Left alone with two small babies. Tough break. They say Luke lit out with a maid from the Colonnade Motel; least, that’s what I heard.’
‘Why did he come to see you?’ Quinn asks.
‘It’s been a minute,’ Colt says, with the air of a man too busy to sweat the details. ‘Not sure I recall.’ He shrugs. ‘Coulda been any one of a number of things. I got a lot of interests in this town.’
‘His bank accounts haven’t been touched,’ Quinn says. ‘No one’s used his social security number since he vanished. His family insist he’d never have left his children without a word.’
‘Things aren’t always what they seem,’ Colt says. ‘Don’t mean something bad’s happened. Folk let their imaginations run away with them.’
‘Bret Connelly doesn’t strike me as a man to let his imagination run away with him.’
‘Known old Bret a long time. Luke, too. This is a small town,’ Colt says. ‘’Tween you and me, Bret hasn’t been himself since his wife died. Not that I blame him for that. Took me years after I lost my Janey. But Bret spends more time in the Taproom than he should. He’s half-seas over most nights.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as a drunk, either.’
‘Well, I guess you’d know,’ Colt says.
Clearly she’s not the only one who does her homework; Colt knows about her personal history. She can see it in his smirk.
He’s enjoying the cat-and-mouse, Quinn realises. The risk. She’s interviewed enough charismatic psychopaths – CEOs, heart surgeons, politicians – to recognise the signs.
‘You own Maple Sweet Brewery, right?’ she says.
‘Built it from the ground up.’
‘There’s a lot of waste from a brewery,’ Quinn says. ‘Solid waste, like spent grain, hops, yeast. And then there’s the wastewater, of course, which can contain high levels of organic matter and pollutants like cleaning agents and chemicals.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been making good use of Google,’ Colt says.
His posture is still relaxed, but she doesn’t miss the sudden cooling of the handsome blue gaze.
‘You’re required to follow specific regulations for the storage, transport and disposal of waste before discharging it into the sewer system or the environment,’ Quinn says.
‘Is that a question?’
‘No, but this is: did you break the law, Mr Smith?’
‘I’m dang sure everyone at Maple Sweet Brewery is in full compliance with both state and federal regulations,’ Colt says.
‘But what I’m not sure about is what this has to do with the tragedy last summer, Ms Wilde.
You gave me to understand you wanted to discuss the town’s recovery, not gossip about a missing husband, and repeat unfounded innuendo about my business. ’
‘You lost a grandson, Mr Smith. I’m sure you want to see justice served.’
‘Sometimes this world is a harsh place,’ he says.
‘Terrible things happen to good people. But casting about for someone to blame don’t make the pain go away.
The lawyers ran my son out of town. They took his wife’s good name and trod it in the mud.
My son and his wife lost their only boy, and then the vultures took what was left. You call that justice?’
It’s the first time she’s believed a word the man has said. Whatever else he’s lying about, his grief and anger are real.
A moment later, the smooth mask is back in place.
‘I’m a little confused here, Ms Wilde,’ he says. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what you really want to know and save us both some time.’
‘Did Luke Connelly find out you’d been illegally dumping waste in Lake Champlain, Mr Smith?’
‘No.’
‘Did he come here and confront you about it?’
‘No.’
‘Did you make him an offer he couldn’t refuse?’
‘Am I the Godfather of Stowebury?’ He chuckles.
‘No, Ms Wilde. I did not threaten or bribe Luke Connelly. He’s not at the bottom of Lake Champlain in a pair of concrete boots.
I suspect the truth is a lot more mundane.
But whatever it is, it has nothing to do with me.
And even assuming someone at my brewery was dumping waste into the lake, I still fail to see how that’s connected to the accident. ’
‘So do I,’ Quinn says. ‘But that doesn’t mean it isn’t.’
Colt stands. ‘I really want to help you,’ he says, ‘but I think we’ve reached the end of the line here.’
‘Fair enough,’ Quinn says. ‘We have an interview with Jesse Spencer in thirty minutes, so we’ll get out of your hair.’
It’s a complete fabrication, an ad-lib Quinn has invented on a whim; but unexpectedly the jab lands. A flash of something passes through Colt. It’s a micro-reaction and he covers it well, but Quinn’s been doing this job for years.
The mayor and the town’s biggest business owner in bed together. Hardly a surprise. Colt has no reason to be concerned even if she digs into it; he must know an international news organisation like INN wouldn’t give a shit about a local story on small-town corruption.
So why the sudden flare of unease?
There must be something else going on that Jesse Spencer knows about. Some vulnerability Colt doesn’t want exposed.
Now she definitely wants to talk to Jesse.
Colt’s phone starts to buzz.
‘I need to get this,’ he says. ‘Show yourselves out.’
‘Appreciate your time,’ Quinn says.
She pulls up Iris Gray’s number on her phone as Phil starts to break down his camera set-up.
Colt’s going to warn Jesse not to talk to her, of course, but it doesn’t matter; she bets Iris knows what’s going on.
It may have nothing to do with Luke Connelly’s death, of course.
A man like Colt Smith has a lot of secrets.
But as she often says, Quinn doesn’t believe in coincidence.
Her call to Iris goes straight to voicemail, and Quinn doesn’t bother to leave a message.