Isolation (15 page)

“And I put up thirty percent of the money?”

“No, you put up fifty percent of the money. Maybe sixty, if you keep talking. I can do this without you. It'd be hard, but I could round up the money. You, on the other hand—Tommy, you can't get nothing from a bank while you've got those fines hanging over your head. You need me more than I need you. But think about the money to be made. Liz wasn't a bit of good at running a business. She was too nice. You and me, we could rake it in.”

“I want a bigger cut.”

“Tough shit.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Having consulted the Internet, Faye now knew that Oscar Croft had earned every cent of his money. A reporter had quoted him as saying, “I grew up in the house my great-great-grandfather built in 1852. It was drafty and the roof leaked, but we were glad to have it. It stayed in the family until my father lost his job at the hardware store. By that time, I had my building supply business, so Father came to work for me, but we couldn't afford to keep the house in the family. Three years later, I could have afforded any house in Ashtabula, any house in Ohio, maybe. But that one was gone, torn down to make room for a highway exit ramp. I'd give anything to have it back.”

He'd gone on to describe its mid-nineteenth century woodwork and its plastered walls, and the historic preservationist in Faye had almost liked him. She stopped liking him when she probed a little deeper in Oscar's Internet persona and got a look at the news coverage for his sexual harassment suit. It had been quickly settled and a gag order meant that the truth was bottled up forever inside Oscar and his accusers, but he would always be a man who had been accused of rubbing himself all over women who depended on him for a paycheck.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Faye reminded herself. Then she read that Oscar's wife of thirty years had left him as soon as the suit was settled. He might or might not have been guilty, but the person who knew him best had behaved as if she believed the accusers. Or maybe Oscar was just a garden variety son of a bitch whose wife had been waiting for an excuse to walk out. There was no way to know.

In the years after the divorce, websites of lifestyle magazines based in the big Ohio cities—Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati—showed an unbroken stream of photos of Oscar at formal fundraising galas, wearing bespoke tuxes as he got ever older and his dates got ever younger. And ever blonder. Faye wondered how he'd managed to find a historical tour guide who wasn't just young and pretty, but also blond.

A casual web search for Delia's name turned up the website for her business,
Journeys of Self-Discovery
. The site was very simple. If Faye had to guess, she'd say that Delia had built it herself, but it didn't look amateurish.

Delia was a historian, and historians tend to possess writing skills, so her company's stated philosophy was straightforward: “They say you can't go home again, but they're wrong. I can take you there.” This statement was backed up by photos of Delia with happy customers who had given her quotes like, “Delia found a half-brother I didn't know I had!” and “I was adopted, but now I finally know where I come from. I can't tell you how much peace that gives me.”

A photo of Delia did its part to sell her services. It is useful to be beautiful. But the photo was taken in a library where Delia sat behind a computer and surrounded by paper. It said, “I'm not just eye candy,” while also saying, “If you care about how your tour guide looks, this face hasn't stopped any clocks lately.”

Next to the photo was a bio stating that she had studied for her PhD at Ohio State. Having a PhD of her own, Faye recognized this to be code for “I took a bunch of classes, but I never finished my dissertation.” In other words, she was letting people think she had a credential she didn't. This seemed a little underhanded for a woman who cultivated an image that said, “I'm wholesome and sweet. Is there an illegitimate child or a convicted murderer on your family tree? Was your great-aunt abandoned in an asylum? Trust me with your family's darkest secrets.”

Delia gave Faye only an instant to feel judgmental about her shaky credentials as a historian, because the next sentence in her website bio said, “When I lost my husband, I couldn't face the stresses of academia, so I started this business. Five years later, I couldn't be happier, and my clients seem happy, too. Let me take you on your own journey of discovery.”

Very young widows carry a certain kind of tough memory. Car wrecks. Soldier husbands killed in the line of duty. Rare and quick cancers.

Whatever her story was, Delia had found a way to move ahead. At the moment, she was moving ahead by putting herself in close proximity to a man who had been accused of some pretty serious things. Faye hoped Delia was as smart as she seemed, because she herself wouldn't be anxious to go on an extended business trip with Oscar.

***

While walking from Oscar's rental house to his car, Rainey checked his phone and saw that he had a voice mail. He hit the phone's touch screen. A high and reedy woman's voice said, “My name is Wilma Jakes and I can meet you at the marina any time you want to talk. It's where my business is. Was. Ain't been much business since Liz got killed. I want to talk to you about what happened to her. I don't know who killed Liz, but I do know somebody that didn't.”

Steinberg was studying his own phone, but Rainey didn't wait for him to finish reading his e-mail. “We need to get back to the marina.” Then he hit the button that would return Wilma's call so that he could tell her to meet him at the marina in an hour.

Steinberg, still reading, said, “Damn straight, we need to get back to the marina. I need to find Tommy Barnett.” After a quiet moment spent staring at the little screen, he slid the phone in his pocket. “I sent some divers out to retrieve the cans of waste that I watched Barnett throw overboard. They just sent an e-mail to say that that they found the spot easy, even without the GPS coordinates I gave them. It's marked by a long oil slick heading out toward the islands. And while they were out there? They found another big slick marking the spot where somebody threw some more crap into the Gulf. They're pretty sure it just happened. Is Barnett really dumb enough to keep doing this?”

Steinberg backed out of the parking slot much faster than necessary and slammed the car into gear. Rainey thought this was hot-tempered behavior for a scientist.

“I'm not sure it's a question of dumb,” he said to the angry scientist. “It may be a question of desperate. It may be a question of a man trying to get rid of something he can't let anybody see.”

“Hazardous waste? Or evidence of a murder?”

“Maybe both. Maybe we're really lucky that some of the stuff he dumped has floated to the surface. Maybe that slick is leading us to something else Barnett is trying to hide. Tell your divers to take a lot of pictures. And tell them to bring us everything they see that doesn't belong under the water. Every last thing.”

Pulling up his own e-mail, Sheriff Rainey saw that Faye Longchamp had overloaded his inbox. Each message contained a link that highlighted something sketchy about Oscar Croft. He would have been annoyed that she'd e-mailed him five times to give him information that was in the public record, but this would have been unfair. One of those e-mails told him something he didn't already know.

Rainey needed to speak to the detective in charge of the Internet arm of the investigation of Liz's murder. He needed to tell her that an amateur was doing a better job than she was.

Rainey had known about Oscar's sexual harassment charge since the day he started this investigation. He also knew that the timing of the man's divorce made his accuser look like the wronged party.

He had known about the high-profile lawsuit that had threatened to sink Oscar's business, too. His detective had gotten him a stack of details about the supplier who had sued Oscar's company for a fortune, claiming in vain that the man had cancelled a big order and refused to pay for the hefty expenses incurred before the cancellation. Oscar had won that fight, but was it because he was in the right or was it because he hired a bunch of expensive lawyers?

His detective had also done a good job of running down information on the driving-under-the-influence incident that had drawn a slap on Oscar's wrist, because that's how seriously drunk driving was taken in the disco years. She had not, however, found out about Oscar's other divorce, and she had not investigated the important difference between Ohio divorce law and Florida divorce law.

In both Ohio and Florida, two partners can dissolve their union with a graceful, no-fault dissolution, but angry Ohioans have another option that Rainey would call the take-no-prisoners approach. They can opt for a divorce that airs the wronged party's grievances and makes sure that they are always available to curious eyes.

Faye Longchamp-Mantooth had found out that this was what Oscar's wife had done. She had aired every grievance that had led to their divorce. Presuming Oscar Croft was capable of shame, he had to be sorry that she'd chosen that tactic. Anyone motivated enough to check the public record would know that the first Mrs. Croft had based her petition for divorce on Oscar's infidelity, and her private detective had provided reams of salacious proof. Public records in Ohio would, forever after, include evidence that Oscar Croft had enjoyed the company of a barely legal blonde more than he enjoyed the company of his wife.

Sheriff Rainey had seen a lot in his years on the job, but he'd rarely seen such graphic testimony in a file that didn't involve a criminal action. If Oscar Croft's divorce had been a movie, there was no way that the movie industry would let it sneak by with just an R rating.

Rainey was grateful for the information, because Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth was correct that it was pertinent to his investigation of Liz's murder and Emma's attempted break-in. Both incidents had occurred very near Oscar Croft's rented house and very shortly after he came to town. This proximity, combined with the man's undeniably uncomfortable history with women, made him a person of interest, and this didn't even take into account the fact that Rainey had witnesses saying that Croft had seemed attracted to both Liz and Emma.

If Sheriff Rainey had to choose between knowing his wife was in the presence of Oscar Croft or Sly Mantooth, he believed he would choose the ex-con.

***

It didn't get any easier for Faye, walking up the dock where Liz had died. Fish gathered around the posts under her feet. She wondered whether they heard her footsteps and were hoping that Liz had come back to give them their daily basket of stale dinner rolls.

Beer cans were starting to accumulate in the parking lot. This place had been her friend's life and now it was a hangout for underaged drinkers. The windows of Liz's upstairs apartment overlooked that parking lot. Faye could see Liz now, hanging her bright orange head out the window and bellowing at beer-swilling loiterers. The window was closed, and it had been closed since Sunday night. The air conditioner hadn't run for days, so the apartment had to be sweltering and damp. If nobody had emptied the closets of her clothes—and who would have done that?—they were mildewing by now.

She had timed her arrival right. Gerry and the sheriff pulled off the highway before she'd walked the few steps from her boat to the parking lot. Faye had brought them information that she hoped might help them find Liz's killer. She hoped they were grateful.

***

Sheriff Rainey thought back to the e-mail he had sent Faye Longchamp-Mantooth, responding to her messages about Oscar Croft's divorce and his other legal woes. Had he mentioned that he was on his way to the marina? He must have, because here Faye stood, uninvited.

She shook his hand, then pulled her satchel off her shoulder. Reaching into it, she said, “I have those photos you wanted.”

Rainey looked around for Steinberg. He was already standing in front of Tommy Barnett's maintenance shed. Just standing there. He was pretending like he was studying the padlock on the door and the oily stains on the concrete pad out back, but Rainey thought he really just wanted to get close to the greasy stains on the concrete pad behind the shed. He couldn't manage it because the pad was surrounded by a chain-link fence, but he looked like he wanted to cut that chain-link fence real bad.

“Detective, there's nothing to see over there. The man has taken his hazardous waste out to sea, and we're going to nail him for it. Come over here and help me look through some pictures taken before Tommy Barnett and his sludge flew the coop.”

The three of them sat together on a bench, stomping down the dried grass at their feet. With Faye in the middle and a lawman on either side, Rainey and Steinberg watched as she flipped through a fat envelope full of family photos. The top one was a sucker punch, because it showed Liz hanging out the kitchen door of her bar and grill, the same door where Joe had found wet footprints on the night she died. She was leaning down to scoop up little Michael in mid-toddle. Sly was jogging to keep up with his grandson. Joe must have been holding the camera.

“I mostly just wanted to bring a picture of Liz,” Faye said. “You know…to remind you that she was a real person who should still be here. But look at this,” she said, pointing to the lower left corner of the photo. The person holding the camera had been standing on the dock and a small portion of Tommy's fenced-in storage pad could be seen. Two fifty-five-gallon drums were visible. Faye handed the photo to Gerry who was obviously dying to study the words printed on the side of the drums.

“Take it,” she said. “Maybe it will help you figure out what kind of gunk he was dumping.”

“You give him too much credit,” Gerry said, holding the picture inches from his eyes. “You presume that the chemicals that are in the drums are the same as the chemicals that are on the labels. Who knows what Tommy put in there? But this is a start.” He looked up from the photo and met Faye's eyes. “Thank you. Thank you for going to the trouble of bringing these pictures to us.”

“You said you'd tell me what you learned about the contamination on my property. I thought returning the favor was the least I could do.”

“Yeah. Um…about that.”

Faye said nothing, just cocked an eyebrow to encourage him to talk.

“Did Nadia tell you the lab results on the wood you wanted us to analyze?”