Nervous Water (8 page)

“His children?” I said.

He frowned. “Pardon?”

“You said ‘those two children of his.' They weren't hers?”

“No, no,” he said, “that's right. A boy and a girl. Rebecca and James. They were with his first wife. The one before Ellen. She died, also.”

“I met Rebecca and James,” I said. “They don't live here with him, do they?”

“No, no. Not anymore. Rebecca, she's married, has a baby, and James moved out recently. They come to visit now and then.” He looked at me. “You said you were interested in the, um, the third Mrs. Hurley. The present one. She's your cousin, you said.”

I nodded. “I haven't seen her in a long time. Heard she'd gotten married and moved to Madison recently, and I thought I'd look her up. That's all. I happened to be back in the neighborhood this morning, so I thought…”

He arched his eyebrows. “Back in the neighborhood, eh?”

I smiled. “More or less.” I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “It's very important that I talk with Cassie, Mr. Litchfield. If you have any idea at all…”

He looked up and down the street, then leaned his head toward me. “It's impossible not to hear the two of them,” he said. “Her, especially.”

“They argue?”

Howard Litchfield rolled his eyes. “She's got a mouth on her, that one. When they're going at it, my wife runs into the bathroom, turns on the ceiling fan, and shuts the door. She goes to church, my wife does.”

“What do they argue about?”

He shook his head. “I couldn't tell you. I hear the tone of their voices, the occasional vulgarity out of her, that's about it.”

“You wouldn't have picked up anything that might help me to track her down, would you?”

He shrugged. “I'm not one for gossip.”

“Anything at all, Mr. Litchfield,” I said. “It's really important.”

“Well,” he said, “there was something…”

“Whatever it is,” I said, “it's strictly between you and me. I promise.”

“This wasn't anything I overheard, exactly.”

I smiled. “What happened?”

“Well, okay,” he said. “It was two weeks ago last Saturday night, as I recall. Sometime after midnight. We always sleep with the windows open, and I heard voices and car doors opening and closing from next door. They weren't loud noises, mind you. My wife didn't even stir. More like voices that didn't want to be heard, and doors clicked shut, not slammed, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded.

He smiled quickly. “Now, okay, I can't help it, but I'm interested in things. Call me nosy. My wife does. So I got out of bed and peeked out the window.” He pointed up through the trees toward the roofline of his house, and I could make out the gray sky reflecting off some windows through the foliage.

“So you could see what was going on over here?” I said.

“Not clearly. There was a moon, but through the leaves all I could make out were shadows and now and then the movement of a light.”

“A light,” I said. “Like a flashlight?”

He nodded. “Maybe two flashlights. They kept turning them on and off.”

“The shadows,” I said. “They were people?”

“Two of them, I think,” he said. “They were going in and out of the house. They were talking in soft voices. Not whispering exactly. Mumbling. As if they didn't want to be heard. Not like when the two of them are having one of their yelling contests. At one point it looked like they were lugging something out of the house, and after a minute or so, the vehicle drove away, and then everything was quiet again.”

“Cassie and Hurley?” I said. “Is that who it was?”

He shook his head. “I didn't think so at the time, for some reason. It was how they seemed to be sneaking around, I guess.”

“You didn't recognize the people?” I said.

He shook his head. “It was dark. Through the trees. Just shapes.”

“Or their voices?”

“Like I said, they were whispering. I suppose it could've been Mr. Hurley and his wife. But I didn't think so at the time.”

“You said they were lugging something out of the house?”

He nodded. “That's what it looked like. Something heavy. Took two of 'em to carry it. You could hear them grunting.”

“Could you tell what it was?”

“It was hard to see. I wouldn't dare make a guess.”

The thought hit me: a dead body. Cassie's body. Hurley and his son, James, maybe, lugging Cassie's body out to the car.

Whoa, I thought. Slow down, Coyne.

“These people,” I said. “Their voices? Men, women?”

He shook his head. “Couldn't tell.”

“What about the vehicle? Did you get a look at it?”

“Not clearly. I just saw the headlights flash on and then it backed out of the driveway.”

“Dr. Hurley drives a Lexus SUV. Cassie drives that Saab. Was it either of them?”

He shrugged. “I really couldn't tell you.”

“So what do you make out of what you saw, Mr. Litchfield?”

He blew out a breath and shook his head. “Dr. Hurley's kids visit sometimes. The daughter—Rebecca—she's over there a lot, especially since she had her baby. At the time I just thought it was them, leaving late, trying to be quiet so as not to wake the neighbors. Which is probably exactly what it was, though it did strike me as”—he looked up at the sky for a moment—“furtive, I guess. Sneaky. I don't know what to make out of it.” He peered at me. “Now that I think of it, though, I don't recall seeing or hearing Mrs. Hurley since that night.”

Since then, I was thinking, the voicemail box on Cassie's cell phone had filled up.

“Have you noticed anything else?” I said. “Since that night, I mean?”

He shrugged. “Can't say I have. Just, her car, the red Saab, it hasn't moved in two weeks. Other than that?” He shook his head.

“Well,” I said, “I appreciate your sharing this with me.” I fished a business card out of my pocket and gave it to him. “If you hear or see anything else, or if you see Cassie, or if you remember anything else, would you please call me?”

He looked down at the card, then up at me. “You're a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“You said you were her cousin.”

“I'm that, too,” I said. “This has nothing to do with being a lawyer. I want to see my cousin, that's all.”

I had no intention of giving him any more information, and it didn't look as if I was going to learn any more from him. I glanced at my watch and frowned. “I've got to get going,” I said. I held out my hand. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Litchfield.”

He shook my hand. “No problem.”

I turned to go.

“Oh, Mr. Coyne,” he said.

I stopped. “Yes?”

“I won't say anything about seeing you snooping around over there.”

“I wasn't really…”

He was smiling at me. “It's okay. She's your cousin. You're worried about her.” He mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key.

I gave him a thumbs-up, went back to my car, backed out of Hurley's driveway, and turned onto Church Street, heading in the right direction this time.

When I got to the end of the street, safely out of Howard Litchfield's sight, I pulled over to the side, turned off the ignition, and slid Cassie's cell phone from my pocket.

It was one of those square folding models, so small I could almost close my hand around it. The little display window on the front was blank, and when I opened it, the inside screen was blank, too. I poked some of the buttons and nothing happened.

Either the battery was dead or the phone was broken. The former, I hoped.

I slipped it back into my pocket and started up my car, and as I drove home, I pondered the significance, if any, of what Howard Litchfield had seen. I arrived at no conclusions.

I also wondered if the garrulous old fellow could, in fact, restrain himself from telling everyone he ran into how this Boston lawyer had been prowling around the Hurleys' house, poking around in Mrs. Hurley's Saab, asking questions.

I decided that if the dentist got wind of the fact that I'd been snooping around, it might not be such a bad thing. Sometimes you've got to stir things up.

I got home a little after noon. When I went into the living room, I found Henry curled up in the corner of the sofa, pretending to ignore me. He was sulking. He had every right to sulk. I'd gone off without him.

When I snapped my fingers, he slithered off the sofa, came over to where I was standing, and sat.

I knelt down and scratched the magic place in the middle of his forehead. He licked my hand. Instant forgiveness. You've got to love a dog.

I was feeling bad about leaving Henry home when I went to Madison. He could've come with me. He loves to ride in my car. “Want to go to work with me this afternoon?” I said to him.

His ears perked up. “Go-to-work” was one of the many English phrases that Henry understood. “Get-in-the-car,” “go-for-a-walk,” and “don't-sniff-that-man's-crotch” were some others.

The Inuit, I've read, have about a hundred different words for “snow.” Henry had nearly that many for food and eating. Among them were “supper,” “dinner,” “breakfast,” “lunch,” “snack,” “eat,” “chew,” “treat,” “candy,” “meat,” “biscuit,” “bone,” “cookie,” “Alpo,” “steak,” and “doggie bag.”

Some people believe that dogs respond to intonation rather than pronunciation. They are wrong. I tested Henry. I said, “Henry! Want some broccoli?” using the same enthusiastic tone as when I said, “Henry! Want a bone?” The word “bone” caused him to scramble to his feet, trot over, poke me with his nose, and commence drooling. “Broccoli” barely elicited a quick, cynical arch of an eyebrow. Henry had tried broccoli once.

On the other hand, many times when Evie and I were sitting at the picnic table out in our garden toward evening sipping gin and tonics and sharing the mundane events of our workdays, I would say to Evie, without shifting out of our low-key conversational tone, “Well, I suppose I better go give him his supper,” not even mentioning Henry's name, and he would leap to his feet, poke my leg with his nose, then trot to the kitchen door where it all happened, his ears perked up happily and his little stub tail a blur of wag.

So having heard me mention going to work, he would not let me out of his sight. He followed me to the bathroom and sat outside the door while I showered, and then trailed me to the bedroom and watched me climb into my lawyer outfit.

For courtroom appearances I always wore a suit, of which I owned a dozen in various weights and shades of charcoal. For mediation sessions such as today's, however, I liked to dress more casually—a pair of chino pants, a cotton shirt, moccasins, no necktie. I believed that my informality enhanced the relaxed, cooperative mood that was crucial for effective mediation, just as a pressed suit, silk tie, and shined shoes fit the intense atmosphere of the adversarial courtroom.

After I changed, Henry and I went down to my in-home office, which had originally been the back bedroom off the kitchen, where the hand-carved wooden sign on the door read Brady's Cave. Evie gave me the sign shortly after we moved into our townhouse. “Every man should have his own cave,” she said.

Evie understood men—or at least me—better than any other women I'd ever known, which no doubt accounted for the fact that we had managed to share a home together for nearly two years in relative harmony.

My office was off-limits to everybody except me and Henry. Not even the cleaning lady was admitted. Evie could enter only upon invitation.

I kept my fishing gear and some outdoorsy clothes in the closet. My fly rods in their aluminum tubes were stacked in the corner. A wall of built-in shelves held my favorite books—mostly fly-fishing literature and novels and biographies. I had a twelve-inch television set for Red Sox and Patriots games, a CD player with powerful little Bose speakers, a reclining chair, and a minifridge loaded with juice and beer and Pepsi. There was a daybed for my naps and a dog bed for Henry's.

I had a desk in there, too, with a computer and a telephone. It sat in front of the window that looked out into our back garden. I'd been doing a lot of office work from home since Evie and I moved in. I liked watching the birds at the feeders while I talked on the phone with clients and other lawyers.

I sat at my desk. Henry lay down in the doorway, watching me, ever vigilant. I'd promised to take him to work with me, and he wasn't going to let me forget it.

I picked up the phone and dialed Roger Horowitz's cell phone.

It rang twice, then he grumbled, “Yeah, Horowitz.”

“Got a minute?” I said.

“Christ,” he said. “It's you.”

“I need some information.”

“This regarding a homicide?” Horowitz was a homicide detective for the Massachusetts State Police.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Because if it ain't,” he continued, “you might as well forget about it.”

“Lunch at Marie's,” I said. “You name the day.”

“I got a lotta shit going on here, Coyne. I'm not your fucking research assistant, you know.”

“Remember Marie's lobster ravioli, that nice cream sauce with the mushrooms?”

“Hard to forget,” he growled.

“So have you got time to make one phone call for me?”

“One?”

“That's it,” I said.

“It's always like that,” he said. “One phone call, and next thing you know I'm rescuing you from a burning building or something.” He blew a long, resigned breath into the receiver. “So who'm I supposed to call?”

“The police in Madison.”

“Madison? Nothing ever happens in Madison.”

“I want to know if they've got anything on a guy named Hurley. Dr. Richard Hurley. Lives on Church Street there. He's a dentist.”

“A dentist, huh?” Horowitz paused for a minute. “I hate dentists. So what're we looking for?”

“Anything. Domestic-disturbance reports, 911 calls, hassles with the neighbors, wrong way on a one-way street.” I hesitated. “Missing persons, maybe.”

“Missing?” I heard a spark of interest in his voice. “Who's missing?” For homicide detectives, “missing” sometimes meant dead, and “dead” often meant murdered.

“It's my cousin,” I said. “Her name's Cassandra Crandall. Or Cassandra Hurley, probably. She's married to the dentist, though I'm not sure she took his last name. And I don't really know that she's missing, but she might be. She seems to be.”

“Sleuthing again, are we?”

I patted my pocket where I'd slipped Cassie's cell phone. “I found her cellular phone,” I said.

“Whaddya mean, found?”

“It was in her car. I took it.”

“Christ,” muttered Horowitz. “You mean you stole it.”

“It doesn't work,” I said. “What do you know about cell phones?”

“I know you should put it back where you found it. Jesus, Coyne.”

“I just want to talk to my cousin,” I said. “It's pretty important.”

“Don't steal anything else,” he said. “I'll get back to you.” And he hung up.

Roger Horowitz never said “hello” or “good-bye.” He was all business and no courtesy. I liked that about him. Perfunctory gestures of courtesy are overrated.

 

I snapped the leash onto Henry's collar for our half-hour stroll to my workplace in Copley Square. There was absolutely no need to leash him. If I told Henry to heel, he'd stick by my side through an Alpo factory or a field full of pheasants. But Boston has a leash law, and it would be imprudent for a lawyer, an officer of the court, to flout the law, no matter how well behaved his dog happened to be.

When we walked into my office suite at ten of two, a mid-thirties man with thinning blond hair and a slender dark-haired woman of about the same age—Ed and Elizabeth Sanborn, my two o'clock mediation appointment, I assumed—were already there. Ed was sitting in the corner chair thumbing absently through my coffee-table copy of
American Angler
. Elizabeth was perched on the edge of the sofa with her knees pressed together and her purse on her lap, sipping coffee and staring blankly at the framed Ansel Adams print on the opposite wall.

Elizabeth had called me on the recommendation of Barbara Cooper, a lawyer she'd been talking with. She told me that Cooper thought she and Ed were good candidates for mediation, and they wanted to give it a try. She'd sounded skeptical, which was all right with me. I had more success with clients who didn't go into it thinking mediation would be easy.

I had met neither of them in person. From my brief conversation with Elizabeth, I knew they'd been married fourteen years, owned a house in Hingham, had two daughters and three cats, and kept a Boston Whaler moored in Scituate Harbor. He was a project manager for a building contractor in Braintree, and she was a part-time reading specialist in the local middle school.

I didn't know what issues had brought them to the point of divorce, nor did I care to know. For our purposes, those issues were irrelevant. Massachusetts is a no-fault-divorce state—although fault is never irrelevant to the two parties.

Julie introduced us. I shook hands with each of them, introduced them to Henry, ushered them into my conference room, and gestured to the chairs at the table. I told Henry to lie down on my old sweatshirt in the corner, which he did, offered the Sanborns something to drink, which they both declined, then went back out to the reception area.

“What's your take?” I said to Julie, who was peering at her computer screen. I jerked my head in the direction of the conference room.

“They arrived together. Talked a little. They weren't exactly holding hands. They seem more sad than angry.”

“Odds?”

She cocked her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Sixty-forty.”

“For or against?”

“For.”

“So if it doesn't work out…”

“If mediation doesn't work out for them,” she said, “it's because you screwed it up.”

I smiled. “Won't be the first time.” I took Cassie's cell phone out of my pocket and put it on Julie's desk. “This doesn't work.”

She picked it up and looked at it. “It's not yours. Where'd you get it?”

“It belongs to my cousin. My uncle's daughter.”

“Your sick uncle?”

I nodded.

“How's he doing?”

“Stable.” I shrugged. “Resting comfortably, as the medical professionals put it.”

“So your cousin gave you her broken cell phone?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Can you make it work?”

“What do you think I am?”

“You're a genius with electronic devices, among many other amazing things.”

“True, true,” she murmured. She flipped the phone open, poked a few buttons, closed it, turned it over in her hand. “Let's see what we can do.” She looked up at me. “Meanwhile, you better get in there and mediate.”

I flipped her a salute and went into the conference room.

Ed Sanborn was standing with his hands clasped behind his back rocking on his heels and gazing out the window. Elizabeth was seated with her hands folded on the table. When I entered, he turned around and she looked up at me.

I smiled at them. “Ready?”

Ed went over and sat across from Elizabeth. She looked at him for a minute, then dropped her eyes.

I took the chair at the end of the table, Ed on my left, Elizabeth on my right. “So what do you folks know about divorce mediation?” I said.

“You help us work it out,” he said. He was looking at her. “It saves us from arguing in court. It saves us lawyers' fees. We don't end up hating each other. It's better for the kids.” He looked at me and shrugged.

“That's about right,” I said. “You're both committed to doing it this way?”

They looked at each other, then at me, and nodded. His nod was emphatic. Hers struck me as tentative.

“Elizabeth?” I said.

“I'm willing to give it a try,” she said softly.

“It's not for everybody,” I said. “A lot of couples who start with mediation don't complete the process. There's no shame in that.”

“We understand,” said Ed. “We can do it.”

“To be clear,” I said, “I am not a marriage counselor. This is divorce mediation, not marriage mediation. This is about making your divorce happen as smoothly as possible. I don't know what brought you two to this point, and for our purposes, not only don't I care, but I don't want to know. I certainly don't make judgments. People who have decided to get divorced from each other always have a lot of things they don't agree on. If they didn't, they most likely wouldn't be getting divorced. We will not mention any of those issues here, whatever they are. They are off-limits, against the rules. We have just one purpose, and that is hammering out a divorce settlement you both completely understand and agree to and that will satisfy the judge when you go to court. Okay?”

They nodded. They seemed a bit intimidated by my standard lecture on neutrality, which was part of my purpose. I'd learned early on that many people entered mediation hoping to find an ally who'd help them vindicate themselves. That attitude doomed the process before it began.

“There are just five issues we'll be discussing here,” I said. “They are child support, spousal support, property, custody, and schooling.” I held up five fingers, then bent down one of them. “The state has a formula for child support, and unless there's some unusual and compelling reason not to, we will comply with the formula.” I bent over a second finger. “Spousal support—alimony—is negotiable. Insurance is part of it. Health and life.” I bent down the third finger. “Under most circumstances all property—all assets, and debts, too—held by the partners in a marriage are considered to be owned jointly. The usual division of marriage property is fifty-fifty. One of our most important jobs here will be to determine what everything you own is worth and then decide how we divide it all in half.” I bent down my fourth finger. “As for custody, you have two daughters. Have you discussed it?”