Authors: G. H. Ephron
Annie climbed the front steps and crossed the dark front porch. She got a penlight from her bag and turned it on.
SHORTSLEEVES
was handwritten on a piece of weathered masking tape above the middle doorbell. She rang. A dog barked from above.
The barking got louder, and there were sounds of paws scrabbling down steps and heavier footsteps. Someone peered out through the small glass panel in the door.
“Who are you?” came in a man's voice from the other side of the door, barely audible over the dog's snuffling and yapping.
“Mr. Shortsleeves?” Annie said.
There was no answer.
“My name is Annie Squires. Sorry to bother you, I was looking for Brenda”âAnnie wasn't sure which last name to useâ“Mulvaney.”
“There's no one hereâ”
“Brenda Klevinski?” Annie tried.
The dog sneezed and fell silent, and there was whispering from behind the door. “Are you a friend of hers?”
Annie didn't hesitate. “Yes. I know she lived here a while back. Is she in?”
There was the sound of more whispering, then shuffling. The lock clicked open. When the door opened, an elderly man and woman peered out at her. The man had thick white hair, and his brown cardigan hung from stooped shoulders. Despite the woman's blond hair, she was probably about Annie's mother's age. She had on a white apron covered with dancing green apples. The fierce beast she held in her arms was a squirming white toy poodle. The house breathed out the savory smell of roasting chicken.
“She doesn't live here anymore. But if you find her, would you let us know?” the woman said.
“Sure, butâ” Annie said, feeling thoroughly confused.
“It's been so long,” the woman said, her voice fretful. “We meant to take it all to the post office, but then, well, you know how it is, one thing and another.”
“Pardon me?” Annie said.
“Her mail,” the man said.
Mr. and Mrs. Shortsleeves explained that when they moved into the apartment six years earlier, there had been a small but steady stream of mail for the former tenant. For weeks they left it out for the mailman to return.
“We were here about a month when a big envelope came from Sears,” Mrs. Shortsleeves said. “It was photographs. You know, family portraits. I handed it to our mail carrier myself. I wanted to be sure that she got the package. That's when he told me she hadn't left a forwarding address. I felt so bad, knowing those pictures were going to get thrown away. I was sure she'd have wanted to have them.”
The stream of mail dwindled, they told Annie. But still, every couple of months, there'd be something else. They knew there was no point in giving it to the mailman, and they couldn't bring themselves to throw it away, so they'd set it aside. Annie's heartbeat quickened at this news.
“If you find her, would you tell her? We'd much rather see her get her mail than send it back. They might not even take it after all this time,” Mrs. Shortsleeves said.
“I'll let her know,” Annie said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I'm sure I'll track her down soon.” Annie made as if to leave, then hesitated. “I suppose I could, I mean, if you'd like me to take it to her ⦠if you wouldn't mind?”
“Oh, would you?” Mrs. Shortsleeves said.
Mr. Shortsleeves was less easily gulled. He gave Annie a penetrating look as if he were trying to see down into Annie's soul and determine if she was trustworthy.
“I'd be glad to take it,” Annie said. “And if I don't find her in the next couple of weeks, I'll bring it to the post office myself. I promise.”
Mrs. Shortsleeves whispered something to her husband. He whispered back. It was decided. They led Annie up to the apartment. The door was standing open. Annie stepped inside and waited in the living room.
This was the apartment where Joe and Brenda Klevinski had lived together, where their marriage had gone sour. This was where Joey had grown from baby to toddler to little boy. She looked around. Had Joe Klevinski been the idiot who covered the living room walls with ersatz wood paneling. It made the room, with its handsome bay window, feel closed in and claustrophobic.
Mrs. Shortsleeves put the dog down. It ran circles around Annie, sniffing at her pant leg and growling. Probably smelled cat. Annie scratched the dog's head and pushed it firmly away.
Mrs. Shortsleeves opened the door to a coat closet while Mr. Shortsleeves carried over a stepladder.
Annie moved to the window. She could imagine Brenda standing there, looking out. The corner lot across the street was neatly divided into rectangular spaces, now a tangle of spent tomato plants and withering squash vines. A community garden. Had Brenda had a plot there? Had she helped Joey plant carrots and radishes?
“Here it is,” Mrs. Shortsleeves said, pulling a large cardboard box off the closet shelf. She climbed down and handed it to Annie.
Annie lifted the flapâthe box was nearly full.
“Thanks,” Annie said. “Just curiousâwhen you first looked at the apartment, was Brenda still living here?”
“Oh, no. It was empty. Spic-and-span. Remember, Paul? Brand spanking new kitchen, too.”
“Clean as a whistle,” Mr. Shortsleeves said. “Mr. Donahue told us the previous tenant moved out without telling him. Only way he knew was the rent checks stopped coming.”
“Donahue is the landlord?”
“Was. Now it's his son. Lives up in Andover.” Mr. Shortsleeves clucked disapproval. “He's let this place go to hell in a handbasket, that's for sure.”
Annie thanked the couple and left. Before returning to her car, she tried the other building tenants. Upstairs were college students. Downstairs lived Hilda Blake, a thickset woman who looked as if she might have posed for the buffalo nickel. She remembered Brenda Klevinski.
“Mousy little thing,” she said, sniffing. “Rarely left the apartment. Husband was ⦠polite.”
Damned with faint praise,
Annie thought.
Through the open door, Annie could see Hilda Blake's living room. Knickknacks crowded every doily-covered surface. There were Hummel figurines, cut glass bowls, a pair of lamps with puffy, stained-glass shades that glowed garish red, yellow, and green. The place made Annie's teeth itch.
“We have only two left! This gorgeous bellaluce fancy cut ring⦔ said a perky voice from within the apartment. It was the TVâthe Shopping Channel.
“You lived right under them. You must have”âAnnie hesitatedâ“heard things.”
“I don't listen.” Hilda Blake pressed her thick lips together and gave Annie a sharp look. “And I don't gossip. What would be the point, anyway. They're long gone.”
“You knew they were divorced?”
Hilda Blake blinked. “Oh. So that's why I didn't hear⦔ She cleared her throat. “No, I didn't.”
Hilda Blake's apartment would not have been a place Brenda could come for refuge.
“So you wouldn't have any idea where Brenda Klevinski went when she moved out?”
“He's the one who moved out. Came one night with a moving van and cleaned the place out.”
“He moved out at night?”
“Guess he worked days.” Hilda Blake shrugged.
Wouldn't want to get mugged outside Hilda Blake's front door. She'd probably just turn up the TV to drown out the noise.
Later that night, while the meatball sub she'd picked up on her way home was congealing in the bag on the counter, Annie sat at her kitchen table. She'd sorted Brenda Klevinski's mail.
Bills were in one pile, offers to open new credit card accounts in another, a pile of quarterly statements from Fleet Bank in another, and finally a pile of miscellaneous junk mail. There were no party invitations or birth announcements, no Christmas cards or letters. Nothing from Joey's school. Not a single handwritten envelope addressed to Brenda Klevinski.
Why were there only three credit card bills but a thick pile of bank statements? She fingered the most recent MasterCard bill. It was postmarked six years earlier. She pushed aside doubtsâripping off mail was certainly illegalâand opened it. The statement had an overdue balance of $104.30. Where were the subsequent bills? Maybe Brenda paid off the balance and closed the account before she left town, or maybe she changed the billing address.
Apparently she'd never informed the bank of her move. The most recent bank statement was postmarked a month ago, and addressed to Brenda Mulvaney. The account in her maiden name was still open. Not a big deal. Lots of people moved and neglected to close out old bank accounts. When Annie was scrambling to pay bills right after she and Chip went into private practice, she'd done some work recovering inactive bank accounts, often for relatives of people who'd died intestate. Nine times out of ten, her bill exceeded the amount remaining in the dormant account.
Annie tore open the most recent bank statement. She suppressed a gasp when she saw the balance. Brenda's savings account held more than twelve thousand dollars. That was probably a whole lot more than the legal bill she owed Rachel Bernstein.
One by one, Annie opened the rest of the statements and spread them out on the table. Other than monthly interest accruals, the account hadn't been touched in six years.
Tomorrow first thing, Annie promised herself, she'd have a chat with S. Mulvaney, or whomever she found hanging out in Worcester at Brenda's previous address. With any luck, there'd be a relative or family friend who'd take the pile of mail off her hands and offer some reassurance that Brenda was alive and well and keeping a healthy distance from her ex.
But as Annie sat back and surveyed the statements, she found herself increasingly uneasy. Twelve thousand dollars was a lot of moneyâmoney Brenda would have needed if she'd run away.
It was ridiculous, really. Brenda had taken off years ago. So why did Annie want answers yesterday? That was easy. She remembered Klevinski cruising down the street, Jackie waving and hopping into his car.
Sophie misses him
had been her excuse. How long would it be before she dropped the restraining order? Allowed him to move back in? By the time the beatings resumed, it would be too late for buyer's remorse. This time, Sophie could get seriously hurt in the cross fire.
Annie glanced over at the bank statements. Not a single penny touched in all these years. Why? The obvious answer was that Brenda either couldn't access her money, or had no more need to. She remembered the neighbor Hilda Blake's comment:
He's the one who moved out. Came one night with a moving van and cleaned the place out.
Finding out what had happened to Brenda and Joey Klevinski no longer seemed optional. What if ⦠Annie felt queasy as she took the next logical step. Maybe it was more than furniture that Joe loaded into that van. Suppose he killed them. It would have been easy to camouflage Brenda's body in a pile of bedding. Joey could have fit into a laundry basket. Then what? Somehow he disposes of them and goes home to Jackie and Sophie? Jackie and Sophie. She remembered hearing an expert talk about killers:
after each murder it becomes easier to kill again.
She hadn't known how to help her friend Charlotte, and Charlotte's mother had died. The same thing wasn't going to happen to Jackie, not if Annie could help it.
21
P
ETER LEANED
against the back wall of the room he now thought of as “the situation room” at the police station. He'd much rather be having dinner with Annie at Casablanca, garlicky hummus and pita bread to start, then savory lamb shank with a glass of good zin, and the whole night stretching before them. Instead he was drinking a cup of lousy coffee in a room packed with police officers from Cambridge and Boston, staties, and federal agents.
“How long is this going to take,” one of the uniformed officers asked Neddleman, adding a belated “sir?”
“We'll get through as quickly as we can,” Neddleman said. He looked taller, somehow, standing at the podium, his steady gaze keeping these guys in their seats. Impatience prickled in the air like static.
Peter tuned in and out as, in rapid succession, officers took turns firing off progress reports. They were checking on white scooters but hadn't found the dented one they were hoping was out there. About a half-dozen faces had been dropped from the gallery of suspects and as many new ones added. They were still looking for Harvard Harry.
An explosives expert got up to speak. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his long nose and waited until the room fell quiet. “We're dealing here with a homemade bomb,” he said. “These types of devices fall into one of two general groups of explosive materials⦔ As he droned on, a couple of officers took out cell phones. Side conversations sprouted.
Neddleman interrupted. “Could you cut to the chase? We need to get these guys home to sleep or back out on the street as soon as possible.”
The explosives expert blinked several times as his brain shifted gears. He began again. “The devices used in the law school and courthouse bombings were highly effective devices that use basic materials anyone can get their hands on. Nothing fancy, a bit old-fashioned, a couple of nine-volt batteries and a homemade timer.”
He nodded and a projector turned on. A drawing of an open briefcase containing wires and a hodgepodge of batteries, wrapped packets, and a clock appeared on the wall. “This is approximately what it might have looked like. It would have been pretty heavy, maybe twenty or thirty pounds.”
Peter would be up next. He tried to study the copy of the email he'd printed out, but found it difficult to focus. He was a neuropsychologist, never met a test he didn't like. He was at home in the hospital, in a courtroom facing a jury, even in jail going one-on-one with a defendant. Here he was completely out of his element, out of his league even. Every single guy in this room knew more about criminal behavior than he ever would. Neddleman had reassured him: that was exactly why they needed him. They weren't dealing with your garden-variety crook.