Act of God

confirmation for now. There were also some things you didn’t know about, of course. A couple of people told me Darbra was somebody who couldn’t leave well enough alone, who couldn’t resist trying to do someone else’s idea one better. She probably figured she had a little more experience in the area than you did, thanks to her mother’s situation, but I’m thinking she probably also didn’t quite trust love to be enough. So Darbra didn’t just get a job with Value Furniture, she seduced one of the bosses into an affair with her, to make it look like she was in the process of acquiring another ‘sugar daddy’ and easing off with you long before the breakup scene at Grgo’s. She also wanted a little extra alibi the day of the killing, somebody to convince the motel owner at the Jersey shore that she was ‘in the shower’ that Friday night when she would have been on the Amtrak coming back from her flight to Washington. Maybe also some help with the videotape and transportation while she was in Jersey itself. So, about a month ago, Darbra started up with Rush Teagle and brought him into the ‘vacation’ part of the plan. Given how Teagle behaved, I think he must have been promised a couple thousand dollars by Darbra for helping her, because he bragged about being in line for some new money to his band before the fact. That Friday night at the motel, though, he probably waited for Darbra till he fell asleep, maybe from all the beer the motel owner saw in the room. I’m guessing that the next morning, Teagle woke up, saw Darbra wasn’t back, and turned on the TV while he tried to figure out what to do. The plane crash would have been on any news broadcast along the Northeast Corridor, and Teagle must have realized what happened. He threw his and Darbra’s stuff from vacation into his convertible and hightailed it back to Boston.
    “From your reaction the first time we met, Rog, you had no idea about these other men in her life. You didn’t even know Abraham Rivkind had been killed, because it happened while you were out-of-state on business, and I’m betting Darbra didn’t breathe a word of it to you, for fear of making you skittish about her being close to two deaths in a few weeks’ time. Unfortunately, though, the Friday your wife died here Darbra also inconveniently ‘forgot’ to bring back to you Mrs. Thorson’s videotape of the party. Do you think Darbra thought of that tape as insurance, too, Rog? Insurance on your honorable intentions toward her? Either way, there were other little quirks, like Darbra staining the motel sink with her hair dye and coincidentally getting a seat on the plane too close to a woman who bathed in perfume, forcing Darbra to move because of her allergy. But these other things, Rog, they were nothing compared to the biggest quirk of all, the ultimate irony.”
    I looked up at the urn. “The fact that the plane, the one your wife would have been on, goes and crashes, completely by accident, killing Darbra in her place.”
    Houle moved his head a few degrees at a time, like a bolt being turned by a ratcheting wrench. He stared up at the urn.
    I said, “When I visited here last Thursday and told you Darbra had ‘come back’ to Boston after you knew she’d died, it really rocked you. I took it for sincere reaction to the death of the woman you loved, and it was. On account of Darbra, that is. But that made you realize that Darbra could have left the party videotape, and maybe other incriminating evidence as well, in her apartment. So you went there, used your keys, and ransacked the place. When you didn’t find the tape, you tumbled to another unpleasant possibility. There might be somebody else in on the game, the somebody turning out to be Rush Teagle.”
    Houle spoke for the first time in a long time. “Bastard.”
    “I was the one who told him about Darbra’s place being searched, and he seemed awfully interested. Unfortunately, I’m also the one who told you the name of the young guy Darbra was seeing. When an unidentified young guy calls to blackmail you using the videotape, you kind of put two and two together, maybe even noticing his name over a buzzer at the apartment house when you went there to toss Darbra’s place. You go along with Teagle over the telephone, then return to the apartment house and unlock the front door of the building with your key. You use some kind of ruse to get Teagle to open his apartment door in the basement. What’d