Authors: Jeremiah Healy
“It was … it was just so much like what … the way Beth looked the last couple of months, just before she couldn’t get up by herself and move around. And he was so little, Nance, and so down. Depressed, I mean. So I tried to lighten it up for him, and he just looked at me. He’d been through the thing before, I don’t know how often, but I’m pretty sure that what they told him didn’t get any better. And I thought of Beth, of how … hopeless it was all the time that we wouldn’t talk about how hopeless it was. And I couldn’t keep talking to the kid, Nance, I had to get out of there. And I went to Nautilus, and that was some help, but not much.”
I suddenly realized how long and hard I’d been looking into Nancy’s eyes, losing something in them. And getting something back, too. Getting back a lot more than I’d left there. “God, Nance, I just felt … scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“No. I mean, I’m not scared of what’ll happen with the knee and shoulder. It’s more because …”
Nancy cocked her head. “Because of what, John?”
“Remember when Renfield was hurt, you got drunk and told me how scared you were about leaving him at the vet’s for the operation?”
“Because it hit home how fragile life could be?”
“Right. Well, since Beth died, in a sense I haven’t been scared.”
“You haven’t been?”
“Everything I cared about, the one person I cared about, she’d already been taken from me.”
“There was no way for anything to hurt you anymore.”
“Right. Well, I just realized something.”
“What?”
“I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Nancy’s eyes moved left-right-left on mine. “You feel scared?”
“More that I could be scared again. That I could be scared of losing you, because I’m talking with you the way I talked with her, the way she let me talk with her.”
“John, you’ve always been able to do that with me.”
“Not quite, Nance. I’ve always been allowed to talk with you like that, because you were open to it. I’ve just never been able to feel that I could, and I covered for it by lumping it under professional conflicts of interest, the public prosecutor and the private investigator. I never really opened up with you, because I didn’t want there to be another person I was afraid to lose, another person I could be scared to not have be a part of me.”
More tears, but through a smile. “You know what?”
“What?”
“I think I like you better when you can be scared.”
“From what I remember of it, it’s not such a bad way to be.”
She came in for a kiss. “Not a bad way at all.”
M
OST OF
F
RIDAY MORNING
was spent working on other cases in my office. About eleven, I went down to the Prelude and took the Southeast Expressway to Route 128, the beltway around Boston. At Route 24, I turned south for Sharon. Reaching the main drag, I found the pharmacy where William Proft worked. There was a pay phone outside it, and I tried Pearl Rivkind’s home number. No one answered, and no tape machine broke in to take a message. I hung up and walked inside the pharmacy.
It was the kind of place every town had before the chains took over. Newspapers and magazines in racks at the front, two elderly men casually reading without buying while a young girl yawned at the cash register. On the right wall was a preserved if nonfunctional soda fountain with a gray marble top and chrome accessories. Aisles of greeting cards, hair and skin products, cold remedies, and so on, but without signs to tell you what was where because you’d shopped there long and often enough to know. The prescription counter was at the back and elevated above its cash register, William Proft’s balding, sandy-haired head nearly brushing the suspended ceiling above him.
I stood at the prescription register for a full minute before he looked up from what he was doing and noticed me.
“Mr. Cuddy.”
“Mr. Proft.”
He looked down in front of him. “I’ll be just a moment.”
“Your dime.”
Proft came back to me. “Or at least half of it is, but still a good point. This can wait.”
He descended what seemed to be four steps, then opened a gate in the elevated counter to reach my level at the register. He wore a buttoned-down blue shirt under a white lab coat with a pocket protector and three different colored pens in it. “What can I do for you?”
I glanced around the store. “Slow morning.”
“Yes. I frequently say I’m the only drug pusher I know who isn’t swamped by customers.”
The perpetual grin curled some more, to show he thought his remark clever even if I didn’t think it funny.
“Still,” I said, “it might be nice if we could speak somewhere a little more private.”
A conspiratorial nod. “I’m about due for a break, and there’s just the best coffee shop a few doors down.”
“Hazelnut blends?”
“You remembered.”
“And the coffee shop will be confidential?”
“Ah, no. At least, not assuredly. It is a nice day, though. Perhaps a bench outside?”
“Fine.”
I followed Proft to the front of the pharmacy, where he advised the young girl that he was going on break, her acknowledging the information with another yawn. On the sidewalk, he led me to the coffee shop, even treating me to an iced-tea-to-go before we settled on a municipal bench without too much pigeon guano staining it.
Proft tore a small triangle in his coffee’s plastic cover, as though he were worried about spills on a bumpy ride. “So, have you made any progress?”
“Some. I found out that you and your sister weren’t exactly close.”
A tentative sip. “I told you that.”
“Other people said she hated you.”
“Who?”
“People in a position to know.”
“Ah, that sounds like dear Auntie Dar.”
“I also found out that you and your sister shared a hefty policy on your mother.”
“That’s correct.”
“Mind telling me how that came about?”
“Mother felt insecure after our father left. The policy was her security blanket for us.”
“How did she die?”
“From what I was told, Mother was sunbathing on the roof of her apartment house. She got too close to the edge. Or just tripped.”
“Or was pushed?”
The grin curled a little more. “Or jumped, for that matter. God knows Mother had a hard enough life to justify it. But I’ve always preferred ‘fell.’ ”
“Because the insurance company wouldn’t have paid off on a suicide?”
“And for sentimental reasons as well. She was my natural parent, after all.”
“You say you prefer to think she fell. Is that what you believe happened?”
“Rather late in the game to make a difference, wouldn’t you think?”
“I don’t suppose you remember the name of the police officers who investigated?”
“After six years?”
Darlene Nugent had said five. “It would save me some time.”
Another sip, less tentative. “And your time is my money, correct?”
“Half of it, anyway.”
The grin curled toward the corners of his eyes. “You know, Mr. Cuddy, I do enjoy speaking with you. Sparring, if you like, even if I am paying handsomely for the privilege. But I must say, I don’t see what Mother’s death has to do with Darbra’s disappearance.”
“Turns out you and Darbra have crossover policies on each other.”
“I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t found out about those from Auntie Dar.”
“You might have told me.”
“Why?”
“So I had a better fix on why you wanted your sister found.”
“No, Mr. Cuddy. My motivation should be immaterial to your investigation. What matters is that you find my sister, not why I want her found.”
“Maybe it’s material to the condition you want her found in.”
“Dead, you mean?”
“A life policy generally requires it.”
Proft set his cup on the bench. With a labored sigh, he stretched his long arms and legs, the left hand dangling off the end of the bench, the right trailing along the top of the back rest. “Our mother made Auntie Dar promise to maintain those policies. Why? I’m sure that consciously it was more security blanket, to provide for the survivor in the event one sibling lost the other. However, I’m equally sure that Mother was aware of the … absence of love between Darbra and me, and therefore subconsciously Mother was insuring more than our lives. She was insuring, via Auntie Dar, that in the event one sibling dropped out of sight, the other would have a reason to look into it.”
“Money as the motivation for concern.”
“It works, Mr. Cuddy. My retaining you is proof of that.”
“I also found out how Darbra got the job at Value Furniture.”
“My suggestion to Pearl Rivkind, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“So that would have been another nice thing for my client to tell me.”
“For one of your clients to tell you, certainly. But, if you’ll recall, you spoke with Pearl first, and when you didn’t ask me about how Darbra came to be at the store, I naturally assumed Mrs. Rivkind had already satisfied your curiosity on that point.”
Nicely done. Even with some law school training, though, Proft had to have thought the thing through in advance of us getting to the bench. “Why’d you put in the good word?”
“With Pearl, you mean?”
“Yes.”
A casual shrug. “I knew my sister was looking for work, and I thought Mr. Rivkind might have a job for her.”
“How’d you know your sister was out of work?”
The grin curled a little more. “Given that dear Darbra and I don’t get along that well?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ah, Mr. Cuddy, you seem to be better at your job than I could have hoped. I’m very glad I hired you.”
“I’d be very glad if you answered my question.”
Another sigh. “Darbra called me a few months ago, rather out of the blue.”
“About what?”
“Well, Auntie Dar’s birthday was coming up—oh, so it must have been more than a few months ago, mid-March to July One … yes, three and a half months ago. In any case, Darbra thought it would be a good idea for me to call Auntie Dar and find out if everything was still in order about the insurance policies.”
“Meaning, was Darlene Nugent still paying the premiums on them.”
“Precisely.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did you call your aunt?”
“No. No, I was grateful to be reminded to send some flowers for the occasion, but I thought that checking up on the policies seemed rather … tacky, so I told Darbra I’d leave it to her, if she wished.”
“Tacky, but you still asked Mrs. Rivkind about a job for her.”
“I thought the discipline of a well-managed store might be good for my sister.”
My face must have shown what I thought of that one.
“Oh, all right, then. I was just trying to have some fun.”
“Fun.”
“With Darbra’s ways, I thought she might … liven things up a bit at Value.”
“Stir up trouble, you mean.”
“I really didn’t know.”
“But if Darbra caused trouble at the store, and you’d recommended her to Pearl Rivkind, you might have lost the Rivkinds’ business.”
“Lost … ? You mean, at the pharmacy?”
“Yes.”
“You overestimate my sense of … entrepreneurship? I’m just a lowly employee, Mr. Cuddy. The pharmacy losing a customer over a little prank on my part really wouldn’t trouble me a great deal.”
The explanation made sense, so long as you believed William Proft was that kind of guy. “It was your idea that you and Mrs. Rivkind come to see me together.”
“I recall I did tell you that.”
“You wanted her in on it because you thought I wouldn’t take you on alone.”
He returned to his coffee. “Because of my personality. Or perhaps lack of it, as some have commented in the past.”
“And if I did take you on alone, you were afraid I’d drop the case once I found out the real reason you wanted Darbra found.”
“And you would have, wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t reply.
Proft’s grin turned smug. “So, you see, I was right. Having Mrs. Rivkind as a joint client not only saved me half your fee, it also kept you on my case.”
“Half right.”
“Half?”
“I’m still on the case, both for your sister and Mrs. Rivkind’s husband. But I’ve mostly eliminated possibilities rather than discovered new ones. I think I’m going to have to take a trip to New Jersey.”
“I don’t envy you.”
“But the trip will be for Darbra, not for Abraham Rivkind.”
As Proft caught on, his grin evaporated. “But surely the money we’ve already given you is sufficient—”
“It’s sufficient, all right. But the trip to Jersey is going to be funded by you. Entirely.”
“Not fair.”
“Call it client discipline.”
“I’m being punished?”
“Yes.”
Proft simply watched me for a minute, the eyes hungry from whatever he was thinking about. “Very well. It’s nothing I couldn’t have predicted, and had I hired you entirely on my own, I would have had to pay the full freight anyway.” Another sip of coffee. “Besides, what can it cost as a percentage of what I might receive?”
As much as I can milk it for, I thought.
After William Proft went back into the pharmacy, I tried Pearl Rivkind’s number again with the same negative result. When I called my answering service, there was no message from her but an “urgent” one from Traci Wickmire. I hung up and dialed the number she’d left.
“Hel-lo?”
The trilling voice. “Ms. Wickmire, John Cuddy.”
“I thought I told you to call me ‘Traci’?”
“Traci, my answering service said—”
“I know. Was ‘urgent’ the right word to use?”
“What?”
“Was ‘urgent’ the right word. I never dealt with a private investigator before, and even though I’ve used ‘urgent’ as an adjective in articles, I didn’t know if that was the right word to get across what I meant.”
The upward lilt on the last word. “What did you mean?”
“Well, I went in to feed Darb’s cat this morning, right?”
“Yes?”
“Somebody’s trashed her place.”
“Trashed it?”
“I checked the thesaurus in my computer, and I think ‘ransacked’ is the right word, but it sounds kind of funny saying it out loud over the telephone. Maybe you should come see for yourself.”