A Stranger at the Door (A Rachel Marin Thriller) Page 8

  Tally jabbed her thumb at Serrano. “Adult men aren’t always known for their conversational skills.”

  Serrano shot Tally an annoyed look, but it was for show. He knew Tally was using him as a whetstone so she could sharpen her rapport with Gabrielle Vargas.

  “What was your relationship with Matthew Linklater like?” Tally said.

  “I’m not sure if you could really call it a ‘relationship,’” Gabrielle said. “I knew after the second time we went out, we might not have been what you’d call ‘destiny.’ He was so uptight. It was like dating a pair of corduroys.”

  Tally laughed. Serrano said, “What’s wrong with corduroys?”

  Tally locked eyes with Vargas, and they shared a sly smile.

  “So why did you continue to see him?” Tally asked.

  Vargas shrugged. Her arms unfolded just the slightest bit. She was loosening up. Times like this, Serrano couldn’t help but think that his partner was a remarkable detective. She was one of the toughest people he’d ever met, but when the situation called for it, she had the bedside manner of a doctor putting an anxious patient at ease before a risky procedure.

  “I’m going to sound awful saying this, but he was there,” Vargas said. “He wasn’t a bad man. I’ve dated those. Too many and for too long.”

  “Haven’t we all?” Tally said.

  Gabrielle said, “Despite his oddness—is that a word?—he was kind. He was gentle. And he listened, and most importantly, he asked questions. Most men don’t do that. You can finish a bottle of wine and an entire charcuterie board and realize the person sitting across from you hasn’t asked you a single question other than ‘Are you going to eat that?’”

  Tally laughed. Gabrielle continued.

  “At my age, it’s all divorced dads who bring their baggage to dinner, or the older men who would rather date girls the age of their granddaughters. And then there are the cubs who have mommy hang-ups. And don’t get me wrong. You can have fun with younger men. But Matthew . . . he didn’t have any baggage. No moaning about an ex-wife or alimony payments during dinner. No catching him scrolling through a dating app when you get back from the bathroom. Matthew wasn’t the kind of guy who would sweep you off your feet. But I think as you get a little older, your priorities change. The men who say they’d die for you are the ones who assume every text message is from an ex-lover. Give me kindness, decency, and stability over grand, emotionally volatile gestures.”

  “You and Matthew met online, right?” Serrano asked.

  She nodded, closed her eyes, and smiled as though conjuring up a memory. “My son convinced me to try the apps,” she said. “I told him they were for high schoolers and pervy middle-aged men. But my friend Marjorie met her boyfriend on one, and they just got back from Cabo, so I figured, What’s the harm? But if I had a dollar for every ‘U up?’ or unwanted picture of a man’s junk, I could sail to Cabo on my yacht.”

  “So Matthew was different,” Tally said.

  “Let’s just say sometimes a follow-up question is the biggest turn-on,” Gabrielle said with a sad laugh. She wiped tears from her cheeks. “When I told him I liked nature documentaries, the next day Matthew sent me a link to ten of them on Netflix that we could watch together. When I said I’d had a rough day, he told me to tell him about it and sent me his list of his favorite nature-sound playlists. Sometimes it’s nice to know you can still be surprised.”

  “Ms. Vargas, I hate to ask, but I have to. Did you and Matthew Linklater have a sexual relationship?” Tally asked.

  Gabrielle nodded. “Planning a romantic evening when you have a teenager is like planning a wedding, only more complicated. I would have to organize a sleepover for Antonio at his friend Peter Lincecum’s house at least three weeks in advance. Antonio always fought me like hell, said Peter lived in a dump and his father was an asshole and why couldn’t they just stay here. You only get to play the ‘because I’m your mother and I said so’ card a few times. But I guess it’s better than getting a cheap motel room.”

  Then it seemed to hit Gabrielle Vargas all at once. Her eyes grew red and watery, and she held her hands against her face as she began to sob. Tally held a tissue out to her before she even knew to ask.

  “Thank you,” Gabrielle said, wiping her face. “What happened to Matthew . . . I have a hard time believing that kind of evil exists in the world. The only ones who deserve that kind of pain are those who do terrible things to children.”

  “We agree,” Serrano said.

  “And that’s why we’re here, Ms. Vargas,” Tally said, leaning forward, taking the woman’s hands in hers. “You were one of the last people to see Mr. Linklater. We’ve spoken to his colleagues at the school, his neighbors, and his friends, and outside of his classes and the occasional jog, nobody saw him in a social setting.”

  “See what I mean about being surprised?” Gabrielle said. “I didn’t even know he ran. Now I can’t help but picture Matthew ambling down the street in a pair of silly Lycra jogging shorts. He had the palest legs.”

  “When you saw him on Monday,” Tally said, “did Matthew say anything that stood out? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Like what? What do you mean by out of the ordinary?”

  “Anything that he might have been concerned about. Or upset about,” Serrano continued. “Or something he said that might have concerned you. Was he nervous? Did he seem distant or distracted? Or even scared?”

  “Definitely not scared,” she said. Her eyes went to the ceiling as she thought. “He talked a lot about his job. About his students. There were a few of them he really seemed to have high hopes for. One in particular . . . what was her name . . . Penny Wallace. He said she was absolutely brilliant. Some people just go to work for a paycheck. I could always tell Matthew took his work home with him.”

  Gabrielle didn’t notice the smile that spread across Tally’s face. She couldn’t have known that Penny Wallace was Detective Tally’s stepdaughter. But Serrano could practically feel his partner’s heart swelling.

  “It sounds like Matthew was truly a devoted teacher,” Tally said.

  Vargas nodded. Serrano sensed a twinge of regret in Gabrielle Vargas’s face, a measure of remorse that things never quite gelled between her and Matthew Linklater. Serrano knew firsthand, though, that you could admire, respect, even want to love someone, without being able to fully lose yourself to them.

  “Back to my question,” Serrano said. “Can you recall anything Mr. Linklater said that struck you as odd or memorable?”

  Gabrielle Vargas recrossed her arms. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He talked mostly about work. Papers to grade, tests to score, things he still had to finish before the end of the school year. I . . . I really don’t know, Detective.”

  “Please think,” Serrano continued. “Anything at all. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that lead to the biggest breakthroughs.”

  Gabrielle sat there. Serrano could tell she wanted to say something but, for some reason, hesitated.

  “Gabrielle,” Tally said. “For Matthew.”

  She looked up at Tally, her eyes soft, filled with sadness and remorse. Finally she spoke.

  “Something was under his skin at dinner,” Gabrielle said. “But he seemed more annoyed and angry than scared or upset. I didn’t think much of it because being a little ticked off about your job is hardly something to call the FBI over.”

  “What was it?” Tally said.

  “He was talking about how teaching was so different now than when he first started. Mainly about how expectations were different than reality. That sometimes he felt like he had to be both a teacher and prison warden at the same time and that the system was broken for these kids. That there were higher expectations for teachers than parents. Parents could screw up their kids in any number of ways and never get called on it. But if a teacher made one mistake, no matter how small, their livelihood could be in jeopardy.”

  “What brought this on?” Serrano asked.
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  “He said he hated having to step in for absentee parents. Parents treating school like it was just taxpayer-funded day care. That too many kids were being left behind. Parents letting their kids get exploited.”

  “Exploited? How?” Tally said.

  “He said over the years he’d come to be able to tell which kids came from bad homes. They had this empty look in their eyes, like the fighting and cruelty they saw on a daily basis had made them numb. Made them angry. And that anger made them vulnerable. Susceptible to people who could . . . take advantage of it.”

  “Ms. Vargas,” Serrano said, “I get the sense there was something specific that put this on Matthew Linklater’s mind that night. We need to know exactly what he was referring to.”

  Gabrielle’s lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry. It’s just, when I hear you say the word was, it’s hard to talk about Matthew in the past. We held hands the other night. He kissed me right outside this building and said he couldn’t wait to see me again. That he wanted to do things right this time. How do you grieve for someone you could have loved but never got a chance to?”

  “There’s no right or wrong way to grieve,” Serrano said. “Sometimes the grief itself honors their memory.” Gabrielle Vargas looked at him, her eyes practically begging for some sort of understanding. Serrano could tell she’d responded to the gravity and tenor in his voice, and it made him believe that she had also known this kind of sadness.

  She nodded. “I like the sound of that.” She paused, then said, “Matthew talked about a boy. Benjamin something. Riddick or Rudder.”

  “Ruddock?” Tally said.

  “Ruddock, that’s it. Benjamin Ruddock.”

  “What did he say about Benjamin Ruddock?” Serrano asked.

  “He said he didn’t like the kid. Which was odd for him to say. I’d heard him talk about a lot of the students in his classes but never heard him flat out say he didn’t like one of them.”

  “Did he say why he didn’t like Benjamin Ruddock?”

  “I asked him that. He said the Ruddock kid was smart. But not book smart. Smart in the way a Mafia captain or drug dealer might be smart. Like he knew how to manipulate people. Get kids to follow him. Make them do what he wanted them to.”

  “Did Matthew elaborate on that?”

  “No,” Gabrielle said. “I asked him to. He said, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’”

  “So he obviously had a legitimate reason to be concerned about Benjamin Ruddock,” Serrano said. “He wasn’t just airing petty gripes about his students.”

  “Whatever it was, it wasn’t petty. And when I pried, he just changed the subject.” She paused. “After what happened to Matthew, maybe it was to protect me.”

  Tally and Serrano looked at each other.

  “It’s strange,” Gabrielle said. “I’m remembering all these things he said more clearly now than when he actually said them.”

  “That’s not uncommon with grief,” Serrano said.

  “You sound like you’ve experienced your own,” Gabrielle replied.

  “I have.”

  “How did you get past it?”

  Serrano offered her a warm smile. “I’ll let you know when I do.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Evie Boggs sat in the northwest corner of the Moonlight Diner, on the corner of Willowbrook Place and Daunton Road. The outside of the diner looked like a detached retro railway car, covered with artificially rusted, curved metal. A sign in a pink 1950s-era font read DINE HERE atop the entrance. The interior was lined with red padded stools and a stained wooden countertop. The booths were fitted with cherry red Naugahyde vinyl. Evie found a small tear in the seat of her booth. She stuck her finger in, pulled, and ripped it open a little wider.

  Evie’s waitress had offered a tip-friendly smile when she ordered. Over the next forty-five minutes, Evie had received five coffee and two water refills. She had gone to the restroom twice. She was so hungry her stomach hurt, but she did not want to eat in front of these men in fear that she might vomit. One of the men she was waiting for she had never met. She had once held a knife to the other one’s neck in his own home. To this day, she wished she had followed up on the threat and swiped the blade across his fleshy throat.

  Finally, two men entered the diner. They both smiled when they saw Evie. She took a breath and placed her trembling hands beneath the table where the men could not see them. Evie did not fear the men because of what they could do to her. She feared them because of what they had promised to do to people she loved.

  The one approaching on Evie’s left was about five foot seven, 240 pounds, with shoulders so wide and thick a skateboard could rest across them. His walk was more of a side-to-side lurch, like a wrecking ball at the end of a wire.

  The one on her right was six foot five, willowy thin, his gray-brown hair parted as if by machete. He moved with a kind of grace that reminded Evie of shades rustling near an open window. Viewed from behind, you would assume the men were strangers, perhaps having struck up a friendship after having met by chance at a bar. But from the front, one look at the sharp, intelligent yet malevolent hazel eyes, the thin noses, and the pursed lips, and you would know immediately that despite the difference in size, they shared the same blood.

  The tall man slid into the booth across from Evie. She felt his knees press up against hers. The shorter man slid in next to her, his meaty arm forcing her uncomfortably into the side of the booth. The tall man’s knees held her in place from one side. The shorter man’s bulk held her from the other. She was trapped.

  “Long time,” the shorter one said.

  Evie said nothing.

  “Ms. Boggs,” the tall man said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “It’s not like you gave me a choice,” Evie said. “Besides, you’re late.”

  “No. We arrived exactly when we meant to,” the tall one said. “My name is Randall. I know you’ve . . . met . . . my brother, Raymond.”

  The shorter man, Raymond, took Evie’s coffee cup, swallowed the dregs, then placed it back in front of her.

  “Too much cream,” he said.

  “You’re free to get your own,” she said. “On me.”

  “I like my coffee the way I like my money,” Raymond said.

  “How’s that?” Evie said.

  “Taken from someone else,” Raymond responded, taking a sip of Evie’s water.

  “You guys should go on tour. But I really hope you didn’t ask me here just to take my beverages. They do have Uber Eats in Ashby.”

  “I like her,” Raymond said with a smile, a dribble of water leaking from his mouth and sliding down his chin.

  “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full,” Evie said. “If you recall, I almost gave you another mouth, about six inches below that one. Maybe I should have.”

  Raymond smiled. “I was wondering if she would still be feisty.”

  “And if you don’t give us more information,” Randall said, “the next thing in your mouth will be a palm full of your son’s hair after I tear it from his head.”

  Bile rose in Evie’s stomach. She tasted it in her throat.

  “You don’t need to make threats. I’m here. I’m cooperating.” Evie dug her nails into her knuckles, anger and fear and adrenaline coursing through her.

  “So cooperate. What have you learned about the current predicament?” Randall asked.

  “I’ve only been in town two days,” Evie replied. “I’ve told you everything I’ve learned.”

  “And that is not nearly enough. We cannot have people looking into our business.”

  “They wouldn’t be looking into your business if you were better about keeping your business quiet.”

  Randall ignored the comment and said, “Have you learned who is investigating the untimely death of our friend Mr. Linklater?”

  Evie took out her cell phone, opened the photo app, and scrolled through seventeen photographs.

  “Detectives John Serrano and Leslie Tally of the Ashby Poli
ce Department. They’re officially working the Linklater murder. They’ve been interviewing all of Linklater’s colleagues and associates.”

  “Are they capable?” Randall asked.

  “Seems so,” said Evie.

  Raymond frowned and looked at his brother. Something seemed to pass between them that did not require words.

  Randall shook his head.

  “No. Disappearing the detectives will only draw more suspicion and law enforcement participation.”

  Raymond seemed disappointed by his brother’s response.

  “What do you know about these particular police?” Randall said.

  “A bit,” Evie replied. “It’s a small enough city that people talk. I’ve put together files from public documents—newspapers, city council meetings.”

  “You can send it to Mr. Brice,” Randall said.

  Evie nodded.

  “You really shouldn’t use so much cream in your coffee,” Raymond said. “It masks the natural flavor of the beans.”

  “This is a joke, right?” Evie said. “You came to lecture me on coffee prep?”

  “She’s very combative,” Randall said.

  “Very combative,” Raymond added.

  “She does not have very much foresight,” Randall said. “Given what we know about her.”

  “No, she does not,” Raymond said.

  “Enough,” Evie said, sighing. “Sitting with you two is like watching Gossip Girl with a brain injury. Anyway, digging up dirt on cops is not easy. Make too much noise and people notice, word gets around, and the cops circle the wagons. And if I get on the cops’ radar, then guess what? You guys are on their radar. I would assume you’d prefer to stay beneath their radar.”

  “That would be preferable,” Randall said.

  “Most preferable,” Raymond replied.

  “Highly preferable.”

  “Ugh. I need a Xanax and a crowbar to the face talking to you two,” Evie said.

  “In the event that you cannot get much closer to the police,” Randall said, “what is your plan to stay ahead of this?”

  “The woman Matthew Linklater wrote the day he died.”