Chapter 6: What Roy Pell Kept
Roy Pell lived in a single-storey house at the end of a gravel road, the kind of place that looked like it had been chosen for its distance from neighbors.
Harlow went alone the first time.
She told me afterward that he had answered the door before she knocked — he had seen her car from the window.
He was a big man, still broad across the shoulders despite his age, with pale eyes that moved to her hands before her face.
"Mr.
Pell," she said.
"My name is Harlow.
I'm a private investigator.
I'd like to ask you about a woman named Gwen and a job you did for her approximately forty years ago."
He started to close the door.
"I have the receipt from the lawyer," she said.
"And I have the name Clara wrote down before she disappeared.
Your name, Mr.
Pell.
In her handwriting.
Sealed in an envelope she left with her attorney."
The door stopped moving.
"I'm not here to arrest you," Harlow said.
"I'm here because the man who lost his family deserves to know what happened.
And because I suspect Gwen has not been generous to you over the years."
A long silence.
He opened the door.
Harlow sat at his kitchen table for two hours.
She recorded the conversation with his knowledge.
When she came back and played it for Daniel and me, I had to ask her to pause it twice.
Roy Pell's voice was flat and unhurried, the voice of a man who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had quietly decided he was done with it.
*Gwen hired me to frighten the wife.
That was the job.
Frighten her enough that she'd pressure the husband to sign the inheritance documents.
I approached the wife on the road.
I told her what Gwen wanted.
She didn't cry.
She just looked at me and said, "My children are not part of this." I told her they were if she didn't cooperate.*
Harlow's voice on the recording: "What happened on the day of the trip?"
*I don't know.
That's the truth.
Gwen called me two days before and told me the job was finished.
She said the wife had agreed to sign.
She paid me the second half and told me it was done.
I didn't ask questions.
That was how the work went.*
"But you knew something had happened."
*When I saw it on the news — the car on the bridge, the search — I knew.
But I had no proof of anything.
I hadn't touched anyone.
I hadn't been near that bridge.
All I had done was talk to a woman on a road.*
"And Gwen?"
*She called me once, about a month after.
She said if I ever spoke about it, she had a way to make sure I was the one who went to prison for it.
She had a letter — she said she had written a letter naming me as the one who ran them off the road.
She said it was with her lawyer, to be opened if anything ever happened to her.*
The recording paused there.
I had asked Harlow to stop it.
"She framed him as insurance," Daniel said.
"She's been holding it over him for forty years," Harlow said.
"That's why he kept quiet.
And that's why he talked to me.
Because he's seventy-one years old and he's tired."
"Does he know who ran them off the road?" I asked.
Harlow looked at me steadily.
"He has a name.
He says Gwen hired a second man for that part.
Someone she found through a contact he gave her — which means he's connected to it, even if he wasn't there." She paused.
"He's willing to give us the name.
But he wants something in return."
"What does he want?"
"He wants the letter Gwen has.
He wants it destroyed before anyone goes to the police.
He knows he can't walk away clean, but he wants a chance to tell his side before she does."
I looked at Daniel.
He looked at me.
"Tell him we'll do what we can," I said.
"But I'm not making promises to a man who threatened my wife and my children on a road."
Harlow nodded.
"I told him the same thing." She reached into her bag and placed a folded piece of paper on the table.
"He gave me the name anyway."
I opened it.
The name meant nothing to me.
May you like
But the address beneath it was in the same town where Gwen lived.
They had been neighbors for two years.
