“Well,” I said to Rosie, “so they’ve burned Tara, the bastards. We can build it again.”
Rosie wagged her tail. I got the cell phone out of my purse and called my insurance broker.
CHAPTER 37
John Otis called my new answering machine and left a message that if I wished to talk with him, he’d meet me in the lobby of New England Baptist Hospital. I arrived at the appointed time and sat down. There were half a dozen people in the lobby, including the woman at the information desk. New England Baptist specialized in orthopedics and a lot of people came and went on canes and crutches and walking casts. At about ten minutes past the hour, John Otis came in. It took me a moment to spot him without his white butler’s coat. He looked carefully around the room before he walked over.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “My mother lives with my brother just down the hill, and I usually visit her on my day off.”
“This is fine,” I said.
“Can we go talk in the cafeteria,” Otis said. “I haven’t eaten.”
We went down to the hospital cafeteria. I got some coffee and John Otis got a container of milk and a tuna sandwich.
“My mother always tries to feed me, but it’s so unhealthy,” he said. “Lot of fried stuff.”
“Did Billie tell you why I wanted to talk with you?”
“About Millie,” he said and smiled. “Millie and Billie. Sounds like a sitcom.”
He sounded vaguely British. There was no hint of a black accent. Probably a condition of butlerhood.
“Billie says that man named Cathal Kragan came to the house.”
“Yes.”
“With another man.”
“Once.”
“You know the other man’s name?”
John Otis was very neat. He ate his sandwich with small neat bites, dabbing at his lips neatly after every bite with a paper napkin. He drank his milk from the cardboard container with a straw.
“No. He only came once.”
“When?”
“About a month ago.”
“Do you remember the car that they came in?”
“Mr. Kragan, when he came, would normally drive a Dodge sedan. You know the funny cab forward kind.”
“I’ve seen the ads. How about when he came with the other man?”
“Came in a limousine.”
“Did you happen to get the license plate number?”
“Yes. Special license plate. Crowley-8.”
“Crowley limos?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The big Boston outfit.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sunny. Please call me Sunny.”
“The driver waited for them and drove them home.”
“Did Kragan use a limo often?”
“No. Just that time.”
“Did anybody else come in limos?”
Otis chewed his small bite of sandwich and swallowed and drank a small sip of milk through his straw and put the milk back down, and looked at me for a time without any expression. His eyes were black. His dark smooth face had no expression.
Finally he said, “Why do you ask?”
“It’s all I could think of,” I said.
“The women came in Crowley limousines.”
“Women?”
“Mr. Patton would often entertain women,” he said. “They always came in the same limo, Crowley-8. That’s why I remember.”
“Did Mrs. Patton join her husband,” I said, “when he entertained these women?”
Otis’s smooth face didn’t change, but somehow I knew he was repressing a smile.
“Not that I know of.”
We were quiet for a time. Otis finished his sandwich. Doctors and nurses and ambulatory patients and visitors passed us as we sat.
“My wife says you’ve promised not to reveal that we’ve talked to you.”
“Not unless I must.”
“No one would hire us if they thought we talked about our employer.”
“So why take the risk?” I said.
“We feel badly for the little girl,” he said.
CHAPTER 38
The insurance company had sent a clean-up team to my loft and while I was short some paintings, and there was no extra-virgin olive oil in the cupboards, and the good china hadn’t been replaced, yet my home was livable again. Rosie and I were there, waiting for Brian Kelly. It was a business meeting, but he offered to bring Chinese food. I took a shower. I was thoughtful about my underclothes. And I put clean sheets on the new bed.
Brian brought enough Chinese food to sustain the Ming dynasty for a year, and we ate it sitting at my counter. Rosie joined us. She could track Chinese food through a forest fire. I supplied some Gewürztraminer to go with the Chinese food, and we drank some while we ate and looked at a list of all homicides that had occurred in Massachusetts since the day Millicent heard her mother order someone killed. There were sixteen of them. Three appeared to be related. A man named Fitzgerald, a man named O’Neill, and a man named Ciccarelli.
“Somebody’s trying to push into Boston, from the outside,” Brian said. “So far it’s Dagos 2, Micks 1.”
“It doesn’t sound like my case,” I said.
Three deaths were women, so we eliminated them. We eliminated two because they were street gang killings, one because it was a murder-suicide. We eliminated two armored-car guards in Agawam who had been killed during a stickup. They’d taken one of the robbers with them. That left four that might be the one that Betty Patton had discussed.
“Of course the killing might not have happened in Massachusetts,” Brian said.
“Do you have a national list?”
“No.”
“Can you get one?”
“What do you think?” Brian said.
“I think it’s one of those things that sounds simple and isn’t.”
Brian smiled.
“So let’s go with the list we’ve got,” I said.
“Better than nothing,” Brian said. “You eat, I’ll read them to you. Number one is Charles V. Powell, age forty-six, marketing director for the phone company, works in Boston, lives in Duxbury. Married, three kids, shot to death in the hall outside his girlfriend’s apartment in Charles River Park. Murder weapon was a .38. Our guys think the wife did it. But nobody saw it and we can’t find the gun. No residue on the wife’s hands.”
“She could have worn gloves,” I said.
“I know. Everybody watches television. Number two is Kevin Humphries, a plumber, thirty-five years old, no kids, separated from his wife. Runs his own business in Framingham. Shot while he was sitting in his car outside a restaurant on Route 9. Two bullets in the back of the head. Close range. Nine mm. Ex-wife’s got an alibi. No suspects. Framingham cops think it was a hit.”
“A plumber from Framingham might do work in South Natick,” I said.
“If they could get him to show up,” Brian said.
“I know,” I said, “if he was my plumber I’d know why he was shot.”
“Doesn’t sound much like someone who’d be involved with Betty Patton though,” Brian said.
“Maybe she liked guys with pipe dope on their hands.”
“Number three is a political consultant. Mason Blumenthal, forty-one, single, lived in the South End, shot in the chest three times with a .357. I was on that one. No leads, but I don’t think he’d tickle Mrs. Patton’s gonads.”
“Gay?”
“Probably.”
“Lover’s quarrel?”
“Probably.”
“Is there one more?”
Brian ate a mouthful of chicken with cashews and swallowed and drank some wine and then picked up the printout.
“Casper
Willig,” Brian read. “Forty-two years old, divorced, two kids, ran a photo supply store in Worcester. Lived alone in Shrewsbury. Found him in the trunk of his car parked in the garage at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Worcester. Two slugs in the forehead and three in the chest. Behind in his alimony. Behind in his child support. Maxed out on all his credit cards—he had seventeen.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Seventeen. Looking at his credit situation, Worcester cops think he probably was behind to a loan shark.”
“They kill you, they don’t get their money,” I said.
“So they don’t like to kill you,” Brian said. “I know. Maybe he was supposed to be an example for others.”
With his chopsticks Brian handed a piece of beef in oyster sauce down to Rosie. She ate it carefully.
“If he weren’t a plumber, I’d like the guy from Framingham,” I said.
“You figure she was having an affair with someone?”
“There’s the reference to what tingles her gonads,” I said. “What would be your guess?”
“Affair,” Brian said. “You think she’s too snooty to have an affair with a plumber?”
“Snooty?” I said.
“Yeah. What’s wrong with snooty?”
“I haven’t heard anyone use that word since my grandmother died.”
“So I’m an old-fashioned guy,” Brian said.
“Well,” I said. “She’s very snooty. But, you know how some women are. If he’s a hunk, the more working class the better.”
“Like me,” Brian said.
It was starting. I knew it would and now it had. I always loved the feeling in my stomach when it started. Even if he wasn’t Richie.
“No need to be so self-effacing,” I said.
“You too snooty to be interested in a cop?”
“You have anyone in mind?” I said.
“I was thinking about me,” Brian said.
“Yes,” I said. “So was I.”
Brian leaned forward and kissed me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them he was off the barstool and standing beside me. Holding the kiss, I slid off my stool and we embraced. The kiss stopped. We leaned back against each other’s arms and looked at each other. Rosie insinuated herself among our ankles and panted up at us.
“I know how she feels,” Brian said.
“Does my breath smell of beef in oyster sauce?” I said.
“And you taste of Gewürztraminer,” Brian said.
“A treat for all the senses,” I said. “Perhaps I should ask Rosie to stay in the bathroom for a little while.”
“Will she yowl?” Brian said.
“No, but I might,” I said.
CHAPTER 39
The Framingham plumber was the best bet, so I started with him. A Framingham detective with gray hair and sideburns let me into Kevin Humphries’ office in a storefront off Route 126. The detective’s name was Bob Anderson. The office was two rooms. The front room was full of plumbing supplies and tools scattered around a yellow pine desk with a file drawer. The back room had a bed, and a bathroom, which looked as if Kevin had added it recently.
“He was apparently living here after the separation from his wife,” Bob told me.
“Not well,” I said.
“But quiet,” Bob said. “I got seven kids.”
“Well, Kevin won’t be using the place anymore,” I said.
“I know. His wife won’t come near it. Says he was, excuse the language, a rotten prick when he was alive, and dying didn’t change that. So here it sits like he left it, until something happens with his estate.”
I nodded.
“I guess I’ll nose around for a while,” I said.
“I’m supposed to stay here while you do, but I could use some coffee.”
“Go for it. I won’t steal anything.”
“We got a call from a Boston detective.”
“Brian Kelly?”
“Yeah. Area C. Says you’re working with him and he’ll take responsibility for you.”
“Brian’s a sweetie,” I said.
“Yeah,” Bob smiled. “Me, too. I’ll be over there in the coffee shop. Gimme a yell when you’re through.”
When he had left with visions of lemon-frosted scones dancing in his head, I went to the sloppy desk and opened the file drawers and took out the files. They were a series of manila folders with no designation on the tabs. The folders were bent and stained, and the work orders and receipts in them were not arranged in any order that I could recognize. I began to go through them. It was slow work. Many of the work orders were folded over, sometimes two or three times, as if they had been jammed into a shirt pocket. A lot of the paper made no sense to me. It referenced plumbing procedures or tools or supplies that I knew nothing of. But I could read the names on the slips and after an hour and a half, back nearly two years, I found a work order for Patton in South Natick. It appeared to be a matter of installing a full bath downstairs. It was marked paid in full.
Because I’m thorough, I went on back through the rest of Humphries’ files. He kept them going three years back. There was nothing else that told me anything. But Mrs. Patton had agreed that a man should be killed. A man was killed and he had a connection to the Pattons. How big a coincidence was that? I went out of the office and closed the door and walked across the parking lot to the coffee shop. Anderson was having a piece of pie and some coffee at the counter.
“Something to eat?” he said.
I slipped onto a stool beside him.
“Tea,” I said to the counter woman. “With lemon.”
The woman nodded with the hint of contempt that counter people always show when you order tea.
“Maybe,” I said. “Do you have any pictures of the plumber?”
“We got some nice crime scene shots,” Anderson said.
“Swell,” I said. “Always the best kind for identifying somebody.”
“And we blew up a couple photos from his wedding.”
“Can I get those?”
“Sure. What’d you find?”
“He did some plumbing work for a client of mine.”
“You think the client might have had something to do with his death?”
“Maybe.”
“Gimme a name.”
I shook my head.
“Not yet,” I said.
“I could put the question a little different,” Bob said.
“I’ll tell you as soon as I know something. Right now all I have is suspicion.”
“I could still put the question a little different.”
“Please give me some room,” I said. “If it turns out there’s a collar, I promise you’ll get it.”
Anderson didn’t say anything.
“And I pay for the pie,” I said.
“Bribing an officer?” he said.
“You bet,” I said.
“Coffee, too,” he said.
“Sure thing.”
“Too rich to turn down,” he said.
He took a card from his shirt pocket and gave it to me.
“You get something conclusive, you call me first.”
“Unless I can’t,” I said.
“You don’t bend a hell of a lot, do you?”
“No more than I have to,” I said.
I gave him my most enticing smile. Nothing wrong with feminine wiles. Maybe I should bat my eyes.
CHAPTER 40
I showed the pictures of Kevin Humphries to Millicent. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, a little grainy from being enlarged, but still clear enough for identification. He was wearing a gray tuxedo with black velvet lapels and a ruffled yellow tuxedo shirt with pearl studs. His hair was longish and his neck looked strong. Millicent wri
nkled her nose.
“God, who’s that?” she said.
“I was hoping you might recognize him,” I said.
“Him? Ugh.”
“Why ‘ugh’?”
“He’s such an Italian Stallion.”
“I don’t think he’s Italian.”
“Well you know, he’s so hey-let’s-have-a-couple-brewskis.”
“Low-class?”
“Yeah, and so macho man.”
“How can you tell all that from the picture?”
“I don’t know, I just can.”
“Like an ink blot,” I said.
“What?”
“You know, those tests where they show you an ink blot? Ask you what it looks like?”
She shook her head.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I assume you don’t know him.”
“No. Am I supposed to?”
“He’s a plumber,” I said. “Worked once at your house.”
“I don’t pay any attention to plumbers,” Millicent said.
“I was more wondering if your mother did.”
“My mother? A plumber?”
Rosie had a half-chewed tennis ball which she was pushing around the floor in hopes that I might be inspired to throw it for her so she could chase it. She pushed it under the chair by my feet and looked at me. I sighed and picked it up and rolled it down the length of the floor. Rosie dashed after it, skidding on the rug by the television set as she went.
“I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but I think it needs saying. You really probably can’t make judgments about people by the way they look or what they do for a living or what country their ancestors came from.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve grown up in circles that probably made such judgments all the time. Judgments about class, and income, and race, and religion, and work history. It’s not your fault, but if you’re going to outgrow your family you need to stop doing that.”
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