Shades of Grey (11 page)

‘
Shhh!
’ They were all staring at her. One older man with a goatee was positively scowling, and Dulcie realized that the galling noise was coming from her phone. She reached into her bag and, with a quick fumble, turned it off. She shrugged and smiled; the silent version of an apology. The goatee guy shot her a look.

Two minutes later, a quick glance around the room showed only a dozen bald pates, five scruffy hairy ones, and one woman who seemed to be sleeping. Dulcie snuck the offending phone out of her bag and into her lap. The missed call had come from the Cambridge Police. Well, good. She had been hoping they would follow up on the drug angle. And now she might have more to tell them: about Alana and Luisa, about the ring, and the possibility that blue-blood Tim might have had compromising material on a Beacon Hill deb. Should she call them back now? The terminal in front of her had finished its search. More than two dozen citations linked her daytime employer and the word ‘fraud’. Most of them seemed to be news stories, the kind of reports that quoted insurance executives justifying their premiums by blaming consumer fraud. But one or two looked like they might go deeper. She hit ‘print’ and by the time she had gathered herself together and wandered over to the library’s print center, the sleek and silent machine had already spat out the pages. Stuffing them into her bag, she headed for the door.

‘Hello, this is Dulcie Schwartz. I’m returning Detective Scavetti’s call.’ There’d been a short queue at the exit as it was so close to closing time, and by the time the guard had checked Dulcie’s bag and let her through another fifteen minutes had passed. Dulcie stood on the Widener steps, looking up at the clouds.

‘Ms Schwartz? This is Detective Forrester. I’m afraid Detective Scavetti is gone for the day.’

Dulcie sighed. Maybe Tim’s case wasn’t that high priority after all. She’d left the quiet cool of the library for nothing. Even though the summer twilight was fading, the humidity remained oppressive.

‘But I do know he would like to speak with you. Could you come in tomorrow at ten?’

‘Of course.’ Tomorrow was Saturday and she’d have preferred to sleep in but at least she was getting somewhere. Maybe Scavetti would prove to be her knight errant, righting wrongs around him. ‘Did he get my message about the drugs? Something else has come up, too. There’s something about Tim’s old girlfriend—’

The voice on the other end cut her off. ‘I’m sure you can explain all that to Detective Scavetti. I don’t have his notes here. I just know that he is very insistent that you come in as soon as possible for questioning.’

‘
Questioning
?’ Dulcie straightened up. ‘Me?’ But the line was dead.

As if on cue, the clouds cracked open and it started to rain.

Ten

Dulcie was still standing there, holding the open phone and staring at the torrent pouring down from the edge of the library portico, when the little machine came back to life.

‘Hello?’ She heard the quaver in her own voice. Right now all news seemed like bad news.

‘Dulcie! I’m so glad I’ve caught you.’ It was her mom, breathless as usual. Life was a continual wonder, and a continual crisis, for Lucy Schwartz. ‘You weren’t at home and I was worried.’

‘I was in the library, Lucy. And you could have left a message. I’d have called you back.’ She glanced up at the sky. The rain didn’t look ready to stop any time soon. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve had a vision, Dulcie. And you were in it.’

Dulcie closed her eyes and leaned back against the cool stone of the library. A vision could mean a dream, or it could mean her mother and her buddy Nirvana had been hitting the peyote again. For purely mind-expanding purposes, Lucy would say, but over the years, Dulcie had been regaled with enough of her mother’s fantastical visions to make even
The Ravages of Umbria
seem tame. Inspired by her psychedelic experiences, Nirvana had been ordained as a priestess of some sort about a decade ago, but since the mail-order certificate listed her given name, Shirley, most of Nirvana’s religious experiences remained private.

‘A vision, Dulcie!’ Lucy repeated.

‘Yes?’ Dulcie drew out the one syllable. She didn’t want to encourage her mom’s craziness, but she knew she was going to hear it whether she asked or not.

‘You never believe in my visions, do you?’ Blessedly, Lucy didn’t wait for an answer. ‘But this one was different – very clear. And vitally important.’

Of course; it was always something major – someone who meant to do her harm or some secret that would lead to great treasure. Lucy never called her daughter with a vision that told her to take an umbrella, and Dulcie suspected that the calls had more to do with empty-nest syndrome than with any real psychic ability. Still, Lucy was her mother.

‘Uh-huh?’ Even without the prompt, Dulcie knew her mother would elaborate. She was just stretching out the drama.

‘There’s been an intruder in your house!’

Dulcie choked back a laugh. ‘Lucy, my room-mate was murdered in my apartment. Don’t you think this vision is coming a bit late?’ Tim’s death wasn’t a joke, she knew well. But a week and a half later, it was beginning to seem like history, and her mother’s visions – well, she shouldn’t get started on those. ‘And shouldn’t your warning have been for him?’

‘And how do you know he was the intended victim?’

Lucy’s words made Dulcie stand up straight. But with only a second’s pause, she answered, ‘Because he was a womanizing pig; because he may have been dealing drugs; because he was a spoiled kid who didn’t know how to take care of himself; and, I don’t know, maybe he was flashing a wad of cash on the street? Because it might have been a totally random thing.’ She wished she had more reasons to give. ‘Because the police don’t seem worried about my safety.’

‘The cops!’ Lucy made a noise that was half laugh, half dismissive snort. ‘As if they care about my baby like I do.’

Now she was back on familiar territory. ‘So, what would you have me do, Lucy? I got the sage smudges.’ She hadn’t burned them yet, but her mother didn’t need to know that.

‘I’m not sure, dear. That’s what really worries me. I see something with falling water.’ She probably heard the torrent over the phone, Dulcie told herself. Even standing back against the wall, she was getting splashed by raindrops bouncing back off the granite steps. ‘And I knew I had to tell you to look across it. Look across the water.’

‘So, there’s an intruder waiting for me across the water? Like the Atlantic? Or maybe the Charles River?’ The rain was letting up, and Dulcie realized she was hungry. ‘Any idea what he looks like? Or is he—’ She paused, trying to recall her mother’s Tarot deck. ‘A dark man, clad in motley?’ That was often a favorite.

‘Oh dear, I wish this had been clearer, Dulcie. I’m afraid I’m letting you down again. But I think the motley is wrong, dear. And I don’t really understand about the water. I just know I’m supposed to tell you this. Oh – and, dear?’ Dulcie waited, unwilling to encourage her mother to go on. ‘It’s not a man at all. The intruder is a woman.’

The sound of another incoming call helped Dulcie get her mother off the phone then, but not before she had promised to be careful – and to burn the first sage smudge that very evening. As a result, she missed the other call which, she was pleased to see, was not from some mysterious woman at all. It was from a Bruce Patchett.

‘Hi, Dulcie, this is Bruce – from the party? Would you give me a call back?’ Indeed she would, thought Dulcie, snapping the phone shut. But not here on the steps of Widener, where strange females might intrude. Lighter at heart than she’d been in ages, she started down the steps – and nearly wiped out. Her old flip-flops had long ago lost whatever treads they might have once had, and the wet stone was slick.

‘Watch your step, dear.’ Her mother’s closing words came back to her. Well, maybe Lucy knew some things after all, thought Dulcie, removing her flip-flops to walk barefoot down the cool grey steps.

By the time she’d gotten her customary post-library dinner – hot and sour soup and the yu shiang eggplant special from the Hong Kong – it seemed too late to call Bruce back. Just as well. Suze would approve of a little reticence. If it weren’t for the echo of her mother’s warnings, Dulcie would have been feeling quite smug as she unlocked her front door.

‘Honey, I’m home!’ She yelled into the empty air. This was her home, a place of comfort she’d created with Suze and with Mr Grey. ‘I’m here!’ Of course, anyone watching would know that she lived alone now. But, hey, maybe somewhere, somehow, Mr Grey would hear her and know that she’d resumed her old habits. She imagined how he would come running, chirping, at her voice. Ah, well. At least, it would amuse Helene.

Once again, Dulcie stayed up reading. The printouts on Priority proved worthless; their management seemed as efficient at covering up crime as Tim’s family. With a groan of disgust, she tossed thirty pages into the recycling bin. ‘Innovations in Fraud Protection’, indeed! But although Dulcie knew she should keep at it, or maybe get to sleep at a reasonable hour, the temptation to reward herself was simply too great. She deserved a little ‘Dulcie’ time, didn’t she? And one book in particular beckoned.

Two hours later, even her preferred subject was proving frustrating. There were only so many pages for Dulcie to go through, and these were maddeningly vague. So she went from rereading
The Ravages
to an essay and then to another book, which confused the issue more – and kept her up until past three.

Thus, it was nearly ten the next morning before she dashed out of the apartment, into decidedly un-mountain-like humidity. No time to call Bruce, Dulcie was already late for Detective Scavetti, and she’d only downed about a third of the large iced coffee she’d bought by the time she reached the police headquarters on Western Avenue. Toss or not? These were questions Hermetria never had to answer. But that girl was decisive, too, somehow managing to straighten out both her own finances and her personal crises, and so Dulcie took a long pull before tossing the plastic cup into the trash. She wouldn’t bring a beverage into a library, after all.

‘Ms Schwartz, thanks for coming in!’ The portly Detective Scavetti came forward to greet her even before she could give her name at the front desk. ‘Coffee?’

‘Oh! Sure.’ Following the large man off to a private office, Dulcie decided this wasn’t going to be that bad. Of course, the coffee – when it came – was thin and bitter. And Detective Scavetti looked way too stout to fit into knight’s armor, not to mention too close to bald. But he had been nice to offer.

‘Let’s go somewhere private, so we can really talk,’ he said, leading her into a small room with a table and a few plastic chairs. ‘Detective Forrester said you had something to tell me?’

‘Well, yes.’ Dulcie had a moment of confusion. ‘But you wanted to ask me some questions, too?’

He nodded, tossing a manila folder of papers casually down on the desk. ‘Paperwork, mostly. It can wait. Why don’t we start by talking about Tim Worthington?’

‘Tim.’ She took a breath. It was hard to conjure up her temporary room-mate as he had been. All she could think about was the last time she’d seen him. ‘It was so horrible. He was so still. It was like he wasn’t real anymore. But the blood . . .’ She closed her eyes. The bitter coffee had been a mistake.

‘I understand, Ms Schwartz. But why don’t we think about what he was like before.’ He paused, but she was stuck in her memory: the hand on the rug; the blood. ‘Ms Schwartz?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She forced herself to focus. ‘You had a question?’

‘Actually, you called us. You said you had something to tell us. Something about Mr Worthington and his girlfriend?’

‘Girlfriend?’ The room came back into focus. ‘
Girlfriends
is more like it.’ Thinking about the women she had met helped her see Tim as he had been. She breathed again, and then she could talk. She leaned forward, eager to share what she knew. ‘I don’t know what you’d call motive exactly. But it turns out Tim had been seeing at least one other woman behind his girlfriend’s back. And one of her friends told me that he might have had some compromising photos of her.’ She realized then that she’d forgotten to check her computer. A pity, it would have been nice to give something to the detective.

‘So, your room-mate was a real hound?’

She’d drifted for a moment. Say nothing but good of the dead, and all that. But the detective brought her back.

‘Ms Schwartz?’

‘Yeah, I guess he was.’ Dulcie swallowed. ‘Alana – that’s the girlfriend – thought they were serious. I mean, she’s now saying they were going to get married. But she can’t be
that
dumb.’

‘And you knew him much better, of course.’

Dulcie sipped at her coffee. It was pretty foul, but it was caffeine. ‘Well, I
was
his room-mate.’

‘And?’

She put her cup down. The fake cream had left a chalky taste in her mouth. ‘And what?’

‘Well, you’re young, single.’ He ran one hand over his thinning hair. ‘Tim was by all accounts an attractive guy.’

‘What? No.’ The thought – and the non-dairy creamer – made her mouth pucker. ‘We were not – repeat,
not
– romantically involved.’

‘Oh, that’s right.’ Scavetti pulled the folder back and opened it with one hand. He flipped through a few pages and seemed to settle on one. ‘I’d forgotten. Sorry. You two didn’t get along, right?’

‘Well . . .’ It was true, but it would be bad karma to spell out what a jerk Tim had been.

‘Your neighbor, Helene Duvoisier? She said he was pretty mean to you. Used to tease you about your pet cat?’

‘Yeah.’ The weight of the last few days hit her and she sighed. ‘Mr Grey.’

‘You still miss him.’ For a big guy, his voice was gentle.

‘Yeah, I do.’ Oh, God, was she going to cry?

‘That wasn’t very nice of your room-mate, then, was it?’

She shook her head and reached into her pocket for a tissue. Detective Scavetti leaned back and retrieved a box for her. ‘Thank you.’ She blew her nose.

‘That must have made you so mad.’ He kept talking, politely ignoring her distress. ‘And you come home from work, after a long, hot day. And here’s this rich kid, who doesn’t have to work, and he teases you about your cat?’