Nervous Water (16 page)

Horowitz went over to talk to them. When he came back, he said, “Okay, we're done here.” He looked at me. “Let's go.”

I looked at him. “Go where?”

“You know how it works,” he said. “We need you to go over what happened again for us so we can get it on tape.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I told you everything. Gave you several useful clues, even.”

He shrugged.

“It's Thursday night, for Christ's sake, and—oh shit.” I looked at my watch. It was ten after seven. “How about we do this another time.”

Horowitz gave me his humorless Jack Nicholson grin. It meant: Fuhgeddaboudit.

“I gotta call Evie, then,” I said. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket.

“Wait'll we get outside,” he said. “I want to clear the area.”

Marcia Benetti stayed behind with the forensics team. The rest of us trooped down the hallway and descended the flight of stairs. Henry took the lead. He was limping. When we got outside, he stopped and looked at me.

I waved my hand. “Okay.”

He hobbled over to some shrubbery that he'd obviously had his eye on.

I sat on the steps and pecked out our home phone number.

It rang twice. Then Evie picked it up.

She said, “Yes?”

“Honey,” I said. “It's me.”

I heard her blow out a breath. “Where are you? I made a reservation. Julie told you, right?”

“She did,” I said. “Dinner. Nola's. Terrific. Look. Something came up. It's kind of a long story. Right now I'm with Horowitz, and he insists—”

“Horowitz?”

“There's been a homicide.”

“What?”

“A homicide, honey. A murder.”

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“Who—?”

“Nobody you know. I'll tell you about it when I get there.”

“When will that be?”

I looked at Horowitz. “How long is this going to take?”

He shrugged. “Hour, hour and a half.”

“I should be home around nine,” I told Evie. “Why don't you call Nola's, see if you can reschedule for, say, ten.”

“You gonna be up for this?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Ten,” she said. “Sure. Okay.” She hesitated. “You sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine.”

I heard her blow out a long breath.

“You're upset with me,” I said.

“Nope.”

“I can tell,” I said.

“Not upset,” said Evie. “I was worried. We had a date and you weren't here. Now that I know it was only some silly homicide, I feel ever so much better.”

I decided this wasn't the best time to tell her I'd been whacked on the head, never mind that Henry had been kicked. Evie understood cruelty to humans. She didn't like it, but working in hospitals, she saw it every day.

Cruelty to animals bewildered and infuriated her.

 

I followed Horowitz and Cohler to the Brookline police station, where I repeated everything I'd told them before. They asked me a lot of questions and caught me in a few contradictions and several memory lapses.

When they finished with me, Horowitz walked outside with me to the parking lot beside the station. It was a little after eight thirty, and darkness had fallen over the city. The tall lamps that lit the lot threw orange pools of light onto the blacktop.

“You okay?” Horowitz said when we got to my car.

“I'm fine.”

He looked at me and nodded. “Keep your nose out of this case, Coyne. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him. “I mean it. This is a fucking murder here.”

“Gotcha, Roger. Don't worry about it. I know you'll solve it quickly.”

He peered at me for a moment, then shrugged, turned around, and headed back into the police station.

At Cohler's insistence, Henry had waited for me in the car. A police station was no place for a dog, she said, even a particularly nice one such as Henry.

When I slid in behind the wheel, he uncoiled himself from where he'd been snoozing in the backseat and licked the back of my neck.

“How's the leg?” I said to him.

He gave me a couple more licks.

“Hungry?” I said.

Magic word. He sat down and began to drool. It was way past his supper time.

Mine, too.

 

Evie and I got home from Nola's in the North End a little after midnight. We sat side by side in our Adirondack chairs out in the garden in the soft yellow light of a full July moon. Henry curled up in the narrow space between the chairs.

We talked about the food we'd eaten, and the food we wished we'd had room in our stomachs to eat, and then we tilted back our heads to the night sky and didn't talk at all.

I kept seeing Grannie Webster slouched in his chair, a splotch of wet blood on his chest, his dead, staring eyes already glazing over.

Evie reached over and groped for my hand. “You okay?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. I gave her hand a squeeze.

“Your head feel all right?”

“Fine. I little wine helps, you know?”

She chuckled softly. “You think Henry's all right?”

“He ate a good dinner. When dogs eat heartily, it means they're all right.”

After a while, we went inside, unplugged all the telephones in the house, went to bed, and made love.

Evie went to sleep almost instantly.

I lay awake for a long time.

Friday morning. I got to the office at five of ten. Ed and Elizabeth Sanborn, my ten o'clock divorce mediation appointment, were waiting for me. They were sitting side by side on the sofa sipping coffee. Two very large people could've sat between them without feeling crowded, but still, the fact that they were sharing the same sofa spoke a kind of body language that I took as a positive sign. The previous time when they were waiting they'd put as much space between each other as the size of the room allowed.

I said hello and shook hands with each of them, then went over to Julie's desk, where she was squinting at her computer monitor.

She looked up and frowned at me. “What happened to your head?”

I touched the butterfly bandage on my forehead. “I fell down, banged it on the edge of a chair.”

Julie opened her mouth, then thought better of it. “You had a call while you were gone.

“Who called?”

“Dr. Richard Hurley.”

“What's he want?”

“Wouldn't tell a lowly secretary. Just said it was important. He sounded agitated. Wanted you to call him right away.” She handed me a slip of paper. “Here's the number. He's at his office. Said to give the receptionist your name. She'll interrupt him.”

“Agitated how?” I said.

Julie shrugged. “Eager. Anxious.”

“Okay,” I said. I turned to Ed and Elizabeth, who were sitting there watching me, and said, “I'll be with you in a minute.” Then I went into my office.

I sat at my desk and poked out the number Julie had written down. When the receptionist answered, I told her it was Brady Coyne, returning Dr. Hurley's call.

“Oh, yes, sir,” she said. “Please hold on. I'll get him for you.”

A minute later Hurley said, “Mr. Coyne?”

“Yes. Returning your call.”

“Sir,” he said, “I don't appreciate your lurking around my house and harassing my daughter.”

“Lurking,” I said. “Harassing.”

“I'm tempted to report you to the police.”

“This is why you called me?” I said.

I heard him blow out a breath. “No,” he said. “I'm sorry. We're both after the same thing, I guess. I'd like to talk to you.”

“I've got clients waiting for me right now.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I've got a patient in the chair. I didn't mean now. Not on the phone. What about this afternoon? Can you free yourself up? Let me buy you a drink?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Cassie,” he said.

When I suggested we meet at two in the Oak Bar at the Copley Plaza, he agreed instantly. This struck me as significant. For me, it was a three-minute stroll from the office. For him, it meant a drive or a cab ride into the city from Cambridge in Friday afternoon traffic or, even worse, stuffing himself into a standing-room-only subway car.

I wondered if he knew that he was a suspect in Grannie Webster's murder.

Come to think of it, I wondered if he had actually done it.

Well, maybe I'd find out. As Yogi Berra would say, Richard Hurley had something on his mind that he wanted to get off his chest.

 

Without being told, Ed and Elizabeth Sanborn took the same seats across from each other as they had the previous time.

I sat at the end of the table between them. “Did you both do your homework?” I said.

They nodded.

“Did either of you run into any problems?”

“Ed's got an IRA and a 401 (k),” said Elizabeth. “Are those considered joint property?”

I nodded. “Investments, insurance, retirement plans. Both of you. Just assume that everything is jointly owned.” I glanced at Ed. He was staring down at the top of the table. “Ed? You with us on this?”

He looked up. “Can I say something?”

I nodded.

“It's about our marriage,” he said, “not our divorce.”

“I tried to make it clear last time—”

“I can't go on until I say what I've got to say.”

“You want to talk to me,” I said, “or Elizabeth?”

“Elizabeth.”

I stood up. “I'll leave the room. Let me know when you're done.”

“Please stay,” said Elizabeth.

I looked at Ed.

He nodded. “Yes. Please.”

I sat. “I'm not a marriage counselor,” I said. “I don't give advice. I don't take sides.”

“We understand,” said Elizabeth. She looked at Ed. “What do you want to say?”

He cleared his throat, then looked at me. “This all started because Elizabeth—”

“Don't talk to me,” I said. “Talk to your wife.”

He smiled quickly and turned to Elizabeth. “This all started,” he said, “when you told me about your…your affair with Harry. It was like a kick in the balls. I didn't have a clue. I felt stupid. Betrayed, sure. But mainly stupid. Stupid and naive. I didn't think you'd keep a secret from me. I just…trusted you. My first reaction was to say I was getting a divorce. I expected you to argue with me. But you didn't. That was the worst part. That you just said okay.”

Elizabeth's eyes were brimming with tears. “And what the hell did you—?”

“Let me finish,” said Ed. “See, it was all about my ego. Macho me. No woman cheats on Ed Sanborn.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then returned his gaze to Elizabeth. “I don't want a divorce, honey.”

Elizabeth's cheeks were wet. But she stared evenly at him and said nothing.

“There's something you need to know,” Ed said.

“I do know,” she said softly.

His head jerked back. “You know what?”

“I know about you and Celia Franklin.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “How long have you known?”

“Over a year.”

“So is that why you and Harry…?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe. It wasn't even so much the—the infidelity. It was the fact that you carried it off so smoothly. You had this giant secret, and I didn't have a clue. First it made me feel stupid, and I hated you for that. Then it made me feel like I ought to have a secret, too.”

“Why didn't you say something?”

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “To tell me. To admit it. I thought—”

“Hold on,” I said. I stood up. “This has nothing to do with me. You guys take your time. Use this room for as long as you like. You're off the clock.” And I walked out.

When I closed the door behind me, Julie looked up. “What's going on?”

“You're amazing,” I said.

“I know. What this time?”

“You had the Sanborns pegged. Elizabeth was having an affair. Ed just confessed that he was having one, too.”

Julie nodded. “So what're they going to do?”

“I guess that's what they're talking about in there. What do you think?”

“They're going to go for it.”

“The divorce?” I said.

“The marriage, dummy.”

 

Twenty minutes later my office door opened, and Ed and Elizabeth came out. They said they were going to try to make their marriage work.

I shook their hands and wished them luck.

After they left, Julie said, “Told you so.”

I stuck my tongue out at her.

 

I keep my .38 Smith & Wesson Chief's Special revolver in the safe in my office. I leave it loaded, except for the empty chamber under the hammer. I've killed two men with that gun. Both were evil men who would have killed me. I've never regretted killing either of them. Not that I don't think about it sometimes.

After Ed and Elizabeth Sanborn left, I went back into my office, opened my safe, and took out my Chief's Special. I was remembering Grannie Webster sitting in his office chair, a splotch of red on his chest.

I was remembering the quick pain and the slow, spinning blackness when I got whacked on the head.

What I was mainly remembering was the cold hard muzzle of a gun pressed against the side of my head, and the sharp, evil snick of the hammer being cocked beside my ear.

I hefted my revolver in my hand, ran my thumb over its smooth blue barrel, crooked my finger around the trigger, raised it in both hands, and aimed it at a bus that was creeping down Boylston Street outside my office window.

“Bang,” I whispered.

Then I lowered it, wiped the finger smudges off with my handkerchief, and put it back into the safe where it belonged.

 

I called the ICU at Maine Medical a little after noontime, and when I gave my name, said I was Moses Crandall's nephew, and asked how he was doing, the nurse said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Coyne. I have some good news for you today.”

“Excellent,” I said. “I need some good news.”

“Dr. Drury was in this morning,” she said, “and he put in an order to move Mr. Crandall to the floor.”

“The floor,” I said.

“The regular part of the hospital. He'll be out of intensive care.

“That means he's getting better, right?”

“It means…well, yes. In essence, that's what it means. It's good news.”

“Today?” I said. “Will they move him today?”

“As soon as a bed opens up. Today or tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And if you don't mind me saying so, I hope we never have to talk again.”

She laughed. “I don't mind at all.”

 

I'm never late. When I was in school, I always wrote my papers a few days early so I'd have time to revise them. I pay my bills when they come in. I show up early for appointments.

I don't consider this a virtue. It's a neurosis, the vestige of some old Puritan ethic that nowadays is quite dysfunctional. In a world where being “fashionably late” is a sign of status, my compulsive promptness just ends up aggravating me. As regularly as it happens, I still have no tolerance for people who mean “one o'clock” when they say “twelve thirty.”

Julie keeps telling me it's the way of the world, and not only should I get used to it, but I should get in step with it. People mistrust the motives of someone who's on time, she says.

If you ask me, being late, trying to control a situation by making somebody wait for you, is pure hostility. Passive aggression.

I can be as aggressive as the next guy. I understand and respect active aggression. But not the passive kind. Passive aggression is for cowards.

So it took all my willpower to wait in my office until two thirty—a half hour after the time we agreed to meet—before I walked across the plaza from my office to the bar in the Copley Plaza Hotel, where, judging by the agitation I'd heard in his voice on the phone, Dr. Richard Hurley would already be waiting for me.

The Oak Bar was dim and hushed and less than half full in the middle of a Friday afternoon. In a few hours it would be mobbed and noisy and swirling with cigar smoke.

I stood in the doorway for a moment to let my eyes adjust from the bright afternoon sunshine outside. I spotted Hurley at a table against the wall.

I went over and sat across from him. He was wearing a green blazer over a pale blue shirt with a paisley necktie. An untouched martini sat in front of him.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said. His eyes slid up from mine and focused on my forehead for a moment. I waited for him to ask about the little butterfly bandage, but he just blinked and looked down at his drink.

I had to swallow my knee-jerk impulse to apologize for keeping him waiting. “What's on your mind?”

“You want a martini?” he said. “The martinis are excellent here.”

“Why not,” I said.

He lifted a finger, and a waiter appeared. “A martini for my friend,” said Hurley.

When the waiter left, I said, “We're friends?”

He picked up his martini glass, looked at it, then put it down. “Look,” he said. “You and I got off to a bad start. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about James.”

“James already apologized,” I said.

Hurley arched his eyebrows, then shrugged. “Well, I do, too. It's just, when your wife leaves you…” He picked up his glass again, and this time he took a sip. “You don't like to acknowledge that. Especially to strangers. It's embarrassing.”

“You saying Cassie left you?”

“So it seems. I was at a convention in Springfield that weekend. When I got home Sunday afternoon, she wasn't there. She left me a note. All it said was, ‘Please don't try to look for me.' ” Hurley tried to smile. “No explanation. No apology. Nothing. I didn't see it coming. Even now, over two weeks later, I still can't figure it out. I thought we were doing okay.”

“So,” I said, “you're doing what she asked? You're not looking for her?”

“Would you?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. It would depend.”

He shrugged. “Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't know where to start.” He shook his head. “It's up to her. I'm trying to reconcile myself to the fact that she's gone for good. If she decides to come back, of course, I'll welcome her with open arms.”

“The note. It was her handwriting?”

He blinked. “Well, sure.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Hell no,” he said. “When I read it, I was furious. I ripped it up and threw it away.”

“Furious,” I said.

“Wouldn't you be? I mean, okay, if your wife's going to pack up her clothes and leave you, wouldn't you think she might at least have the courtesy to tell you face-to-face?”

“She took some clothes with her?”

He nodded.

“Anything else?”

“I don't know. Whatever she might've taken, it was just her stuff. I haven't tried to figure it out. There were a bunch of empty hangers in her closet, that's all.”

“She takes clothes,” I said, “but she didn't take her car?”

“I know. Taking some clothes makes me think she'll be gone for a while. Leaving the car makes me think she'll be back.” He smiled quickly. “She might not love me, but I always thought she loved that car.”