To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,35
we pick him up now?”
“His construction foreman is on his way down to pick him up.”
“Well, we’re in Binghamton. We won’t be home for another couple hours or so.” I wanted to stop by Elizabeth Potter’s home and ask her a few questions before we headed back to Wachobe.
“Did you learn anything new?”
“Yes.” I proceeded to fill Ray in on our meeting with Wayne Engle and the fact that I saw him at the Watkins Glen festival. “Can you call your friend Ken and ask him if he has any pictures of the crowd so we can try to spot Wayne?”
“I can call him. He’s not going to appreciate your interference in his investigation. And he’ll want to know everything you’ve learned. Are you prepared to tell him?”
Yikes! “Never mind. Maybe we can get pictures from another source.”
I hung up with Ray and looked at Cory. “Brennan got his bail money together. His foreman’s on his way to pick him up.”
“Good.”
I looked at the yearbook still clutched in Cory’s hand and thought about the check registers he’d spread on my desk yesterday. “Not good.”
“Why?”
“Cory, if you think the check registers and this yearbook are evidence that needs to be hidden from the sheriff’s department, don’t you think Brennan will be thinking the same thing, too?”
The puzzled expression on Cory’s face quickly changed to horrified.
“When he finds them missing, what’s he going to think?”
Cory’s eyes closed. “Oh my god, I’m dead.”
THIRTEEN
CORY WANTED TO RACE home and replace the items he’d taken from Brennan’s. I knew we wouldn’t make it in time without risking a serious accident. Instead, I convinced Cory to plug Elizabeth Potter’s home address into his GPS and follow the directions over there, hoping we’d learn something of use.
But minutes later when he pulled out in front of an oncoming car that swerved to narrowly miss us, I realized just how dangerous it was to ride with an agitated driver. “Cory!”
He pulled over to the side of the road. “You drive. I can’t concentrate.”
We hopped out and ran around the car. I slid in and adjusted the driver’s seat position. Cory put the passenger seat all the way back so he was almost lying flat. I pulled out and continued to follow the instructions from the GPS.
“What am I going to tell Brennan when he realizes that I took his stuff?”
“The truth.”
“What if he never speaks to me again?”
Any answer I thought of would be nothing more than empty reassurances. I opted for silence. When we arrived at Elizabeth’s townhouse fifteen minutes later, Cory asked to remain in the car, claiming he felt sick.
I walked up the sparkling white gravel sidewalk to the front stoop, taking in the old-fashioned orange brick townhouse and cracked cement porch, trying to guess her rent. I estimated it at the lower end of the scale.
No one answered when I rang the front bell. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Elizabeth, no doubt, had a day job.
Across the street, a row of mailboxes sat, numbered to correspond to the townhouses. I considered leaving her a note. As I hesitated, the neighbor’s door opened and an elderly woman in a light blue housedress poked her head out.
“Are you looking for her?” She jerked her finger at Elizabeth’s door.
“I am. Is she at work?”
The woman nodded.
“Do you know where she works? I could call her there.” I smiled, hoping to convey I was worthy of this woman’s trust.
Her blue-veined hand on the door knob trembled as she thought. I wondered if she had Parkinson’s or the like. “In an office downtown. She used to come home every night around five thirty, but now she’s got a young man. She might not come home at all. Would you like me to give her a message?”
“No, thank you. I’ll call her instead.”
“Suit yourself.” She closed her door.
Another dead end. Frustrated, I couldn’t resist kicking some of that sparkling white gravel all over the lawn on my way back to the car.
_____
Cory remained silent for most of our ride back to Wachobe. We stopped in Watkins Glen to get gasoline, drinks, and a few snacks. I purchased the area newspaper, curious to see what, if anything, it had reported lately about Gleason’s death. Although Cory offered to drive when we got back in the car, I refused. He didn’t seem any less agitated than he had earlier. In fact, his knee bounced up and down the whole ride home.
As soon as we reached my house, I relinquished the wheel to