Chapter 7: Gwen Opens the Door
Harlow advised against going directly to Gwen.
She said we needed to bring what we had to the police first — the note, the photograph, the receipt, the sealed envelope, and Roy Pell's recorded statement — and let them make the approach.
I agreed.
And then I went anyway.
Daniel drove.
He didn't try to talk me out of it.
He just pulled up in front of the house on Carver Street and turned off the engine and said, "I'm coming in with you."
"No," I said.
"Wait here."
The house was small and well-kept.
Window boxes with dead flowers from the previous season.
A mat at the front door that said WELCOME in faded letters.
I stood on the step for a moment.
Then I knocked.
She answered quickly, the way people do when they've been watching from a window.
She was seventy-eight years old.
Her hair was white and her face had folded inward the way faces do with age, but her eyes were exactly the same.
That flat, decided look.
The look Clara had described in the note.
She saw me and went completely still.
"Hello, Gwen," I said.
She didn't speak.
"Can I come in?"
"How did you find me?" Her voice was careful.
Controlled.
"It doesn't matter." I held up the photograph.
The one with her and Clara, three days before the trip.
"I found something in the house.
I thought you should know."
She looked at the photograph for a long time.
Something moved behind her eyes — not guilt, not quite.
Something more calculated than that.
She stepped back and let me in.
We sat in her front room.
She didn't offer anything.
She sat across from me with her hands folded in her lap and waited.
"I found Clara's note," I said.
"The one she hid in our daughter's mattress.
I found the receipt from the lawyer.
I found the envelope she left with him — with Roy Pell's name in it."
Not a flicker.
"I've spoken to Roy Pell," I said.
The hands in her lap tightened slightly.
That was all.
"He told me about the job you hired him for.
He told me about the second man.
He told me about the letter you've been holding over him."
"Roy Pell is a liar," she said.
"He's a criminal with a record.
Nothing he says can be trusted."
"Clara trusted her own handwriting," I said.
"She trusted a sealed envelope with a lawyer.
She trusted that I would find it someday."
"Clara was paranoid." Gwen's voice was flat.
"She always was.
She imagined threats where there were none.
She took a letter about a legal dispute and turned it into a conspiracy."
"She's de@d, Gwen."
"She dr0wned.
It was a tragedy.
I grieved for years."
"You hired a man to threaten her on a road."
"I hired no one." She met my eyes without blinking.
"You have a piece of paper with a name on it, written by a woman who was frightened and irrational.
You have the word of a convicted criminal.
You have nothing."
"The police will decide what I have."
Something shifted in her face then.
Just slightly.
The calculation becoming something harder.
"You're an old man with a bad heart," she said.
"You've been alone for forty years.
You found some papers in a box and you've convinced yourself of a story because you need one.
Because living with an accident is harder than living with a villain." She leaned forward slightly.
"Go home.
Sell the house.
Move in with your nephew.
Let it go."
I stood up.
"I'm going to find out what happened on that bridge," I said.
"Whatever it costs me."
She stood too.
"Then you'll spend whatever time you have left on something that will only hurt you more."
I walked to the door.
My hand was on the handle when she spoke again.
"The letter Roy is so worried about," she said.
"I want you to know it's very detailed.
Very convincing.
The police will have questions for him that will take years to sort out.
Years he doesn't have at his age."
I turned around.
"Is that a threat?" I said.
She smiled for the first time.
"It's a fact."
I left.
Daniel was waiting at the curb.
I got in the car and he looked at my face and didn't ask anything until we were two streets away.
"She still has the letter," I said.
"And she's not afraid."
"Then we make her afraid," Daniel said.
My phone rang before I could answer.
It was Harlow.
"The second man's name," she said.
May you like
"I found him.
And he's been talking to a journalist for the past six months."
