Free Harry Dolan by Bad Things Happen Page A

shape of an elm tree on the front lawn. A few stubborn leaves clung to the branches. The sight was strangely familiar. She had an elm on her lawn at home.
    She turned her attention back to Loogan and saw that he was watching her. He was clean-shaven and his copper-colored hair was trimmed and he had on a blue Oxford shirt and khaki pants. He looked like a man who would never be out of place. Put him anywhere, Elizabeth thought, and he would blend in. Put him in an office or a laboratory—or on a construction site, loping along with a wooden beam balanced on his shoulder.
    She reached for her bag and took out a pen and a notebook.
    “It’s an unusual name,” she said. “Loogan.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Sounds like it might be Dutch.”
    “It may very well be Dutch.”
    “The people I’ve talked to,” she said, “seem to know very little about you.”
    “Really?”
    “Sandy Vogel, for instance. The secretary at Gray Streets. She said you were a cipher.”
    “I haven’t gotten to know Sandy as well as I probably should.”
    “Laura Kristoll—well, she’s a different story. She knows something about you.”
    On the coffee table between them, their cups were untouched. Loogan’s right hand rested on his knee. He raised it and looked at his palm in the light of the floor lamp.
    “I’ve never heard the name Waishkey before,” he said. “What sort of name is that?”
    “It may very well be Dutch,” Elizabeth said dryly. “Where were you last night?”
    “Last night?”
    “I stopped by here, hoping to speak with you.”
    “I went to visit Laura Kristoll.” Loogan’s attention was focused on his palm. He curled his fingers into a fist.
    “That’s interesting,” Elizabeth said. “What’s the matter with your hand?”
    “It’s nothing. I have a sliver.”
    “Does it hurt?”
    “It’s a distraction.”
    “How did you get it?”
    “From taking apart a picture frame this morning.”
    “Why were you taking apart a picture frame this morning?”
    “It’s not important,” Loogan said. “I’m sure there are other things you’d like to ask me.”
    “Indulge me.”
    He looked up at a framed photograph above the fireplace. “Tom gave me that,” he said. “I took it apart this morning, then put it back together.”
    The photograph was of flower petals and bits of paper and colored glass. The glass reminded Elizabeth of the beads around her neck.
    “Why would you do that?” she asked him.
    “It’s irrational. I was looking for something.”
    “What?”
    “A message, I suppose. Tom is gone. That’s the only thing I have from him.”
    “You thought there might be a note concealed in the frame?”
    “I told you it was irrational.”
    “Did you find a note?”
    “All I found was this sliver.”
    “You should take it out.”
    “There aren’t any tweezers in this house.”
    Wordlessly, Elizabeth dug through her bag for a pair of tweezers. She crossed to where Loogan was sitting and bent over his open palm. In the lamplight she worried at the sliver with her thumbnail. After a moment she was able to get a grip on it with the tweezers and draw it out.
    Loogan rubbed his palm. “Thank you.”
    She returned to the sofa and dropped the tweezers in her bag. A scent lingered in her memory, the scent of soap and fresh-scrubbed skin.
    “You visited Laura Kristoll last night,” she said. “How long were you with her?”
    “An hour, maybe ninety minutes,” he said.
    “What did you talk about?”
    “We talked very little. She cried a good deal.”
    “She must have told you that her husband didn’t commit suicide. He was killed.”
    “Yes.”
    “Yet this morning you were looking for a note from him.”
    “I’m not saying it makes sense.”
    Elizabeth looked again at the photograph above the fireplace. “When did he give you that?”
    “More than a week ago now.”
    “What was the occasion?”
    “There wasn’t an occasion. It was a token, I guess you’d say. Of