“Yes, that’s him. I’m sure of it.”
That had been Tuesday morning. I’d called the sheriff, then driven up myself. Daggett was still nowhere to be found. Not at either of the construction sites that he was supervising, and not at his home, one of a string of rental cottages that he owned along Kennewick Beach. White paint and green trim. Made me think of my own childhood vacations at Wells Beach, just a little farther north. When it was clear he wasn’t home, and wasn’t coming back anytime soon, I tried out the key I’d found hidden in Ted Severson’s bedroom drawer. It fit Brad’s cottage door. Why did Ted have a key to his general contractor’s house? Had they been having an affair? I peered into the tiny, immaculate cottage but didn’t enter yet. A local judge granted a warrant just after his lunch break and we searched the place, finding nothing.
I’d been kicking myself all day that I hadn’t acted faster after Miranda gave me Brad Daggett’s name. I should have brought his mug shot immediately to Rachel Price, but Miranda’s halfhearted identification hadn’t left me with much hope. Of course, now it seemed abundantly clear that Miranda only identified Brad because she felt she had to, and she was covering herself. And she must have been the one who had warned Brad to stay away from his house and turn off his phone. It was the oldest story in the book. The wife had had her boyfriend kill her husband. The curveball was that hidden key in Ted’s drawer, the key to Brad’s cottage in Maine. Was it Miranda’s key and she had hidden it in her husband’s drawer? Possible, I supposed.
By early afternoon, we’d put an all-points bulletin out for Brad and his vehicle. His ex-wife had been interviewed, plus several employees and work colleagues. No one had seen him since the previous day at lunch, when he’d bought a large meatball sub at a pizza place in York that he frequented. He’d disappeared.
I left Maine late in the afternoon, taking I-95 back down toward Boston. On the way, I received an excited call from Billy Elkins, the officer I’d tasked with looking into Lily Kintner, the woman that Miranda Severson said she knew in Winslow, Massachusetts. He’d found out a lot. Lily Kintner worked at Winslow College in the library department, apparently under the name of Lily Hayward. But she owned a house on Poplar Road in Winslow under her real name. Most importantly, Ted and Lily had shared a flight back from London on the twentieth of September. I pumped my fist in the car, then took down her address.
Asking Billy to check passenger manifests had been a total hunch, but an educated one, and I couldn’t believe that it had paid off. As soon as Miranda had identified Lily Kintner as the one person she knew who lived in Winslow, I had wondered if Lily Kintner was the same Lily Kintner who was the daughter of David Kintner, easily my favorite living novelist. I didn’t know much about Kintner’s daughter, just that her name was Lily, and that she was born in America while David had been living in Connecticut, married to an American artist named Sharon Henderson. Mather College was in Connecticut, and if Lily was Miranda’s age, then she’d be just about the right age to be Kintner’s daughter.
The thing about David Kintner was that he wasn’t just famous for being a novelist; he had become infamous for accidentally killing his second wife in a drunk driving accident in England. It had been huge news in England, less so in America. I followed it because I was a fan of his books. He’d done time and just been released, less than a month ago. It would make sense that his American daughter had flown over to London to see him. I had also learned from Miranda Severson that Ted had flown to London recently for work, so it occurred to me that Ted and this Lily Kintner had possibly met on an airplane. I had Billy take a shot and check the manifests, and got a hit. After a fruitless day trying to find Brad Daggett, it felt good that some detective work had actually paid off. She must have been the reason he traveled to Winslow that day, even though she probably had nothing to do with his death.