Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (25 page)

She looked at me. "Well?"

"Your father didn’t say anything about the
porch."

She tried to make up her mind, then unlatched the
screen door and came out. She was wearing jeans a size too large for
fashion and a nondescript short-sleeved shirt that was poorly cut.
She plunked herself down in one of the chairs and crossed her legs,
foot jiggling nervously. I sat on the railing.

"Ms. Kelley, have you seen Braxley or his
friends?"

“
No, and I don’t want to, either. Which is why
I’m talking to you."

Her logic escaped me. "I want to ask you some
questions about Roy Marsh and his video equipment."

A little blood drained from her face. "Go
ahead."

"You and I talked at the house in Swampscott
after it was searched. You said the only thing you noticed missing
was the videocamera and its case."

"Uh-huh."

"Was the tripod gone, too?"

She worked her mouth, but just said, "Yes."

"After I left, did you notice anything else
missing?"

"No."

"How about Roy’s suitcase?"

"No. I mean, I don’t know. He had a bunch of
them, I didn’t really pay any attention, you know?"

"So one of the suitcases could have been missing
too?"

"Yeah, could have been. I was upset, you saw
me."

“
You said the last time you saw Roy was Sunday
night into Monday morning, about one A.M., right?"

"When I got home from work."

"Before the house was ransacked."

"Before . . . yeah, of course before. They
didn’t search the place till . . ."

"Till after Roy was dead?"

"Yeah." She recrossed her legs, still
twitching the dangling foot.

"You also said you spent the day, Monday, doing
errands and so forth, since it was your day off. You didn’t see Roy
at all."

"Right, right. He was up and gone before I was.
Like I told you."

"And then you came here, to your Dad’s for
dinner."

She chafed. "Right. Look, I’ve got to be in to
work by three-thirty and I got a lot of things to do first, so if--"

"Roy had the camera rolling when you and he made
love, didn’t he?"

She jerked, like a dog on a short leash.

I said, "The video equipment. Roy had it set up
in the bedroom of the house in Swampscott so he could tape you and
him together."

She remembered to breathe, but she had to try hard to
get everything else started again. "You didn’t . . .you didn’t
look at the tapes . . ."

"No, Ms. Kelley. I didn’t and I wouldn’t.
Hopefully, nobody else will either. Provided you confirm some
things."

She looked absent now, away from it all. "Things."
 
"The video equipment, the camera and
tripod and all, it was gone Monday morning when you woke up, right?"

"No."

"No?"

She shook her head to make me understand. "No,
no. It was . . . it was gone when I got home from the errands. I went
upstairs to take a shower and saw it was gone. We’d . . . he’d
had it set up on Sunday morning in the bedroom and it was gone. I
just thought . . ."

"That Roy had gone to see Teri Angel again?"

"Whatever her name was."

"According to one of Teri’s friends, Roy was
with Teri on Saturday night. He was with you Sunday morning and
night, then back again with Teri on Monday night?"

She lifted a hand, covering her eyes. "Look, Roy
liked . . . he had a lot of sexual energy. And demands."

“
When you saw Roy on Sunday night, he asked you to
stay at the house in Swampscott on Monday, didn’t he?"

Sheilah didn’t answer.

"He asked you to be there so he could have an
alibi, like on Friday afternoon with the cat."

"You don’t understand . . . what I was going
through. I loved him, and I didn’t want to believe what you said to
me at the hospital, about him doing that to her cat and threatening
his wife and the girl. So I asked him, and he . . . he hit me,
telling me if I really loved him, I’d trust him on something that
bad. That’s when I knew for sure he’d hurt the cat. When he told
me I should be trusting him."

"Then he asked you again to cover for him Monday
night?"

“
Yes, but he didn’t say why and I wasn’t about
to ask him after the ‘trust’ thing, so I told him I’d be there
and then I couldn’t, just couldn’t, I mean, what if it was going
to be his wife this time, or the little girl? So I called my dad and
came up here, then kept trying to call Roy, and not getting any
answer, then I got worried and I drove back down there and the phone
rang, the police . . ."

She seemed to stall and glide to a stop. She didn’t
cry, she just sat there, elbow on crossed knee, face buried in
upturned palm.

"Ms. Kelley?"

She stayed put.

"Ms. Kelley?"

No reaction at all. I got
up, thinking at least I’d have to be facing only one more woman Roy
Marsh had wrecked.

* * *

Stopping at a greasy spoon that looked like a failed
Dairy Queen, I ordered lunch. I also ran over what I had.

Sheilah Kelley’s admission about the camera and
tripod being gone before Marsh was killed made everything else come
together. I’d been assuming all along that whoever mugged me also
murdered Roy and Teri, and no one fit as the framer. That was because
only one person had the nerve and the attitude to set me up. Roy
himself.

Marsh has a bad day Friday, Hanna demanding the
house, me visiting him in the shower. Not exactly a choirboy, he
still doesn’t dare target Hanna or Vickie, especially after the cat
episode. So he decides the best way to come out ahead is to blackmail
Felicia, who wasn’t able to head Hanna off on the house. But
Felicia’s too smart to be tied into the drug buying in a traceable
way, so he needs concrete evidence of something else unworthy. From
Stanslield, Marsh knows Felicia refers clients to Teri. Maybe not
grounds for disbarment, but enough leverage to pry the price of the
house from Felicia. Then on Saturday night, Teri says something that
makes Roy realize that Felicia is also one of Teri’s crossover
freelancers and that Felicia’s next due to see her on Monday night.
That gives Roy all of Sunday and Monday to plan.

Roy comes to Boston to mug me for the gun and have me
as a fall guy if something goes wrong at the Barry. But then old Roy
somehow botches the camera/gun confrontation with Felicia and Teri.
Felicia grabs the video stuff and the drugs and takes off, leaving me
center stage in Roy’s bungled frame.

It all made sense if I could prove Felicia knew Teri.
Stansfield and probably other divorce clients would do, even if Patch
might not recognize Felicia as one of Teri’s regulars. And Felicia
had a very deep pocket, plenty enough to pay off J.J. and get Hanna
off the hook.

Feeling optimistic for the first time in four days, I
finished my meatball sub and soggy potato chips. Then I used the
outside booth to call my answering service. There was a message from
Ed, my friend at the South Boston courthouse. Now that I had
Stansfield tying Felicia to Teri, I really didn’t need Ed’s help
anymore. However, he must have jumped through hoops to get the
information for me that quickly, so I called him back.

"Clerk’s Office."

"Ed?"

"Ed? No, I think . . . just a second." The
voice yelled off the line. "Hey, Charley? Charley! Hey, you seen
Ed? Yeah, that’s what I thought." He came back to me,
conversationally. "Yeah, it’s like I thought. Ed’s covering
the second session, might be there all—hold it, he’s coming
through the door now. Hey, Ed?"

There was a clunking noise, then, "Hello."

"Ed, John Cuddy."

"Ah, oh, yes, Lieutenant, that file just came
in. Hold on, will you?"

"Thanks, Ed."

About twenty seconds passed. "Lieutenant?"

"Right here."

"Yeah, I got this so quick ’cause I knew you
really needed it. We don’t have no Federal fucking Express on
these, you know?"

"How does dinner at Arnheins strike you?"

"That should just about cover the postage, all
right. I got your ‘Papangelis, Theresa A.' right in front of me
here. Now, what do you want?"

“
Charge and date?"

"Soliciting, November of seventy-eight. Knocked
down to a disorderly, she agreed to facts sufficient."

"Meaning the lawyer basically got her off on the
soliciting charge in exchange for her admitting there were facts
sufficient to find her guilty of disorderly conduct?"

"That’s how I’d read it. Anything else?"

"Yeah, who’ve they got as her lawyer?"

"Oh, right. Just a second . . . Yeah, here it
is."

Ed told me, and the sky began to fall.
 

TWENTY-THREE
-♦-

The Pontiac looked more rusted, the converted garage
more shoddy. I opened the door without knocking, but there was no
cousin in the waiting area. Chris sat at the secretary’s desk,
efficiently hunting and pecking at a form in the typewriter and
looking up in embarrassment when he saw it was me.

"Jeez, John, this temp service, I gotta change—"

"l know, Chris."

"About the temp place?"

"No. About Marsh, Teri, everything?

His eyes went out of
focus. Standing shakily, he said, "Maybe we better . . . the
office."

* * *

I didn’t have to ask him to start at the beginning.
"It was the MS, John, swear to God it was. Don’t let nobody
kid you, you can’t fight something like that. Before, Eleni and I
were doing okay, hell, I was doing better than okay in the office by
the courthouse there. Then the MS hit her, and it all, I don’t
know, just dribbled away. The money, the clients, her and me."

"You represented Teri back in 1978, a long time
before the MS."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I did, but I didn’t start . .
. start going to see her then., That was just how I met her, doing a
courtesy thing for somebody up where she lived. Just like I got
involved with that fucking Marsh, helping somebody out."

"When did you first start seeing Teri?"

"Maybe a year ago. I had this closing in Boston,
at three. The lawyers down there, they think everybody’s in a
big-time firm, you know? They schedule everything figuring that the
guy on the other side’s just gonna catch the five-ten for
Wellesley. Or maybe is gonna go back to his State Street office and
put in another five hours before calling it a day. You come in like I
have to, though, that Route One’s a nightmare anywhere from four to
seven going north out of the city. So I finished up with the closing
at like four-fifteen and walked over to the Parker House. Have a few
drinks, wait out the traffic, you know?"

"I know. And Teri was there?"

"Yeah. Oh, not hooking or anything, the Parker
House’d never stand for that. No, she was just having a drink at
the bar, and some salesman with a garment bag under his stool was
kind of hitting on her, and she sees me and drops him to come over
and say hi."

Chris took a deep breath. "Christ, John, you
shoulda seen her. Beautiful, like somebody’s dream of what a woman
should look like. The legs, not like . . .anyway, we started talking
and drinking and I lost track of the time, and next thing I know
we’re in the Barry, and then all I know is that I feel like a man.
For the first time in years, I feel like a fucking god."

“
You kept on seeing her after that?"

"Yeah. Once, maybe twice a month. Always down
there."

"Even at that, must have gotten kind of
expensive."

"Oh, no. She wouldn’t . . . look, I didn’t
have any stars in my eyes or nothing. I knew what she was doing for a
living. But since I had helped that once, when she didn’t know her
way around, she . . . she saw me for free. Her pimp didn’t care
what she did free-lance, and Teri knew about Eleni, the MS and all."

"That night. I’ve got a pretty good idea what
happened, but I’d like to hear it from you."

Chris tilted forward in the chair, working his hands
like a man lathering with washroom liquid soap. "I went to the
bar association social, but with things not going so good for me,
professionally speaking, I figured the cocktail time would be a
better chance for getting some business than the dinner itself. You
know, happy hour, you can move around, work the room a little, but at
dinner, you’re stuck with whoever’s next to you or across the
table. So, I was going to duck out after the drinks anyway, the fire
alarm thing just gave me the perfect excuse for leaving."

"You were planning to meet Teri that night?"

"Yeah, she even called me here, which she never
did, called me from somewheres, insistent-like that I be there and on
time. That she wanted to . . . wanted to try something different. So
I got there all right, on time."