Nervous Water

by William G. Tapply

  “What happened?”

  “The dentist answered the phone,” he said. “I was hoping it would be Cassie, but it was him. Hurley. Richard Hurley’s his name. I said I wanted to talk to Cassie. He said she wasn’t there. I asked where she was, did he expect her back soon, I could call again. He says, ‘You better tell me who’s calling.’ So I take a deep breath and I say, ‘This is Moses Crandall, sir. I’m Cassie’s father.’ And with that, he says to me, ‘Listen, whoever the hell you are. I don’t know what you’re after, but you better leave us alone and not call here again or I’ll call the police.’ ” Moze looked up at me. “Then before I could say anything else, the sonofabitch hung up on me.” He looked at me. “What do you make out of that?”

  “Not a very friendly fellow.”

  Moze nodded. “Nope.”

  “Were those his exact words, Uncle Moze?”

  “Damn close to it.”

  “It sounds almost like…like he didn’t believe you.”

  Moze nodded.

  “Like he thought you were lying about who you were.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t like him much.”

  I smiled. “Did you try calling again?”

  He shook his head. “I s’pose I should, but I really don’t want to talk to that man again.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll see if I can talk to Cassie. Okay?”

  He nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.”

  He smiled. “Just tell her her old man misses her something fierce. Whatever’s going on, don’t matter to me. I just want to connect with my little girl again.”

  “Do you have a recent picture of her?”

  “Huh? What for?”

  I shrugged. “So if I see her, I’ll know it’s her.”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Hang on.”

  He got up and left the room.

  He was back a few minutes later. He handed me a four-by-six color snapshot. It showed Moze and a strikingly pretty dark-haired woman sitting side by side on what appeared to be a park bench. “Me and Cassie,” he said. “About three years ago. We were having dinner in Portsmouth. Cassie had a camera with her, asked a lady to take our picture. She mailed it to me a couple weeks later. I’d like to have it back.”

  “I’ll take good care of it,” I said.

  Three

  It was a little after six that Saturday evening when I got home from my visit with Uncle Moze. I left my car in its reserved space in the parking garage on Charles Street, walked the six blocks to Mount Vernon Street, climbed the hill, went in the front door, and called, “I’m home, kids.” When Evie didn’t answer and Henry didn’t come bounding out to greet me, I snagged two bottles of Sam Adams from the refrigerator, picked up the cordless telephone, and headed for the garden.

  When I opened the back door, I saw Evie on her hands and knees with her butt sticking up in the air, pulling weeds from the garden. She was wearing sneakers and overalls with, as far as I could tell, nothing underneath. Even in those baggy overalls, you could see that she had a perfect butt.

  Henry was snoozing under the table. When I stepped through the doorway, he raised his head, yawned, and started to scramble to his feet, but I pointed at him and held up my hand, and he lay back down.

  Evie continued weeding. She hadn’t heard me. So I put the beer bottles on the table, tiptoed up behind her, bent down, and stroked my hand over her ass and down between her legs. I expected her to jump, but her only reaction was to stick her butt up higher and push back against my hand.

  She remained there on her hands and knees and murmured, “Umm. Whoever you are, don’t stop.”

  I knelt beside her, leaned over, and nuzzled the back of her neck. “It’s me again,” I whispered. “Your friendly UPS deliveryman.”

  Without turning, she reached behind her and ran her fingers up the inside of my leg and over the front of my pants. “So it is,” she said. “And you brought me another big package.”

  I slipped my hand under the side of her overalls and cupped her breast.

  “I’m all sweaty and dirty,” she said.

  I kissed her behind her ear. “I love dirt and sweat. Good, honest smells. Earthy.”

  She turned, hooked an arm around my neck, and kissed me hard. “You smell good, too,” she said. “Fish and seaweed and salt. Working in the earth makes me horny. Shall we give one of the Adirondack chairs a try?”

  “Out here?” I said. “Under the open sky?”

  “We wouldn’t want to get the sheets dirty,” she said.

  The beers I’d brought out were lukewarm by the time we got around to drinking them, and the summer shadows had begun to lengthen inside the walls of our little backyard.

  “It looks nice,” I said to Evie, taking in the garden with a sweep of my hand. “You do good work.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “When I was a kid I did yard work for two bucks an hour,” I said. “Under the broiling sun. Eight hours a day for sixteen dollars and maybe a glass of lemonade. My old man had plenty of money, but he believed a boy should work. So I mowed, I trimmed, I raked, I weeded. I had five customers, one for each day of the week. After four summers of it, I promised myself I’d never touch a rake or lawnmower ever again.”

  “That’s why you don’t help,” she said.

  “A promise is a promise.”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t want help. I like weeding and stuff. I like the way it looks when I’m done. And it takes my mind off things.”

  “Any particular things?”

  “Terrorism, global warming, genocide in Africa. A couple of gray hairs I found the other day.” She touched her temple and smiled.

  “That’s it?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Tell me about your visit with your uncle.”

  So I told her about Uncle Moze and how he hadn’t heard from Cassie in a year and a half, and I showed her the photo Moze had given me.

  “She’s really pretty,” said Evie. “He hasn’t talked to her for a year and a half?”

  I nodded. “He figures he said something that alienated her. It’s eating him up.”

  “How awful for him,” she said. “So you’re going to help, is that it?”

  “I told Uncle Moze I’d try to talk with Cassie,” I said, “see if I can convince her to reconcile with him, or at least to talk to him. Uncle Moze is a nice old guy. He was always good to me. Treated me like a man when I was just a kid. Now he’s heartbroken. Cassie’s pretty much all he cares about.”

  “So what’re you going to do?”

  “I’ll do what anybody would do,” I said. “I’ll try to reach her on the phone, and if that doesn’t work, I guess I’ll head over to Madison and knock on the door.”

  I fished out the scrap of paper on which I’d scribbled Cassie’s two numbers, picked up the phone, and dialed her cell phone.

  It rang once. Then a husky female voice said, “Hi. It’s Cassie. Sorry, I can’t take your call right now. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you, I promise.”

  There was a beep, and then another female voice, this one sounding mechanical, said, “I’m sorry. This mailbox is full. Please try another time.”

  I clicked the phone off and looked up at Evie. “No answer. Her voice-mail box is full, just like Uncle Moze said. I wonder what that means.”

  “Some people never check their voice mail,” said Evie.

  “It wasn’t full a month ago, according to Moze.”

  Evie shrugged.

  “Maybe she lost her phone,” I said.

  “That could be,” she said. “Or it could be something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was kind of weird,” I said, “hearing her voice. I still think of Cassie as a toddler. She couldn’t have been more than two or three the last time I saw her. Not even talking in complete sentences. And now, suddenly…she’s all grown up.”

&
nbsp; “And how old were you?” said Evie.

  I nodded. “Thirteen, fourteen maybe.” I checked the scrap of paper and started to dial the other number.

  Evie reached out and grabbed my wrist. “Wait,” she said.

  I pressed the Off button. “What?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to call the house.”

  “Let’s think this through.”

  “What’s to think through? I want to talk to Cassie.”

  She tilted up her beer bottle, emptied it, and handed it to me. “Why don’t you fetch us another beer,” she said. “And while you’re at it, bring out my cell phone. It’s in my bag in the kitchen.”

  I went in, grabbed two bottles of beer from the refrigerator, found Evie’s cell phone, and took them back outside.

  Evie flipped her phone open. “What’s the number for the dentist’s house?”

  I dictated it to her.

  Evie pecked it out, then pressed her phone against her ear. She looked up at the sky for a moment, then said, “Yes, could I speak to Cassie, please?…Um, this is Evelyn Banyon. Is this Richard?…Me? I’m a friend of hers…Well, see, I knew her in San Francisco, oh, this was several years ago. I’m here in Boston now, visiting for a couple weeks, and I heard she was married, and I was hoping…Oh, I see. Well, when do you expect her?…Sure, okay, that would be great.” She recited her cell phone number. “Right. Good. Thank you. And congratulations, Doctor. Cassie’s a wonderful girl.”

  She took the phone from her ear, looked at it, and put it on the table. “He says she’s not there. He’s not sure when she’ll be back. He’ll tell her I called.” She took another swig of beer. “He was lying about something.”

  “You think?”

  She nodded.

  I reached for her phone. “My turn.”

  She put her hand on it. “Use a different phone.”

  “Why?”

  “What if he’s got caller ID? If you call from the same phone five minutes after I did, he’ll know something’s up.”

  “Something is up, honey,” I said. “Why should I pussyfoot around this fucking dentist? I want to talk to Cassie, that’s all. It’s pretty straightforward.”

  “You’d make a terrible hospital administrator,” said Evie. “I don’t know how you make a penny as a lawyer, I really don’t. Nothing is straightforward. Everything has angles and twists and shadows.”

  I smiled. “So what do you suggest, Signora Machiavelli?”

  “Maybe the dentist is telling the truth,” she said. “Maybe Cassie’s in the shower or out shopping or away for the weekend. If so, he’ll give her my message and she’ll call back, wondering who the hell this old friend from San Francisco is whose name doesn’t ring any bells, and I’ll hand her over to you, and you can talk to her.” Evie shrugged. “But, see, you might as well assume he’s lying, in which case, actually talking to Cassie is going to be trickier. You’ve got to keep your options open, that’s all. Try not to arouse his suspicion. Wait a couple hours, then call from a different phone. And you’ve got to decide whether you’re going to be her long-lost cousin or a lawyer with confidential legal information for her.”

  “But I’m both of those things, more or less.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s hardly the point. If one identity doesn’t do the trick, you’re going to need the other one.”

  I stared at her. “God, you’re devious.”

  She grinned. “Thank you. That’s very sweet.”

  After supper I went into my in-home office, sat at my desk, and dialed Richard Hurley’s house number.

  A woman answered with a cheery “Hello.”

  “Cassie?” I said. “Is that you?”

  “No, I’m sorry. This is Rebecca.”

  “I’m trying to reach Cassie,” I said. “I’m her cousin.”

  “Her cousin, huh?” Rebecca paused for a moment. “You better speak to my father. Hold on a sec, please.”

  A minute later, a man said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Hurley?”

  “This is Dr. Hurley, yes.” His voice was soft and cautious. “Who did you say was calling?”

  “My name is Brady Coyne,” I said. “I’m your wife’s cousin. I’d like to speak with her.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “Cassandra’s not here right now.”

  “It’s quite important,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “she’s still not here.”

  “When do you expect her?”

  “Look, Mr.—what was it?”

  “Coyne,” I said. “Brady Coyne.”

  “And you’re her cousin, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Cassandra has never mentioned you.”

  “We’ve been out of touch.”

  “And now…?”

  “Now I need to be in touch with her.”

  “It’s important, you say.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s urgent.”

  “I’ll take a message if you want.”

  “Yes. Thank you. Just ask her to call me, if you don’t mind.”

  He blew a quick, impatient breath into the phone. “What’s your number?”

  I gave it to him, and he repeated it back to me. Then he asked me to spell my name, which I did. “I’ll see that she gets your message,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When will you give her my message?”

  “First thing,” he said. “As soon as she gets home.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Look,” he said. “I’m in the middle of something here. I’ll be sure that Cassandra knows you called.”

  And with that he hung up.

  I leaned back in my desk chair and looked up at the ceiling for a minute. Then I fired up my computer.

  Ten minutes later the Internet Yellow Pages had given me both the home and the office addresses for Dr. Richard Hurley. His home, as Uncle Moze said, was in Madison. His office was in Cambridge.

  Ten minutes after that I printed out the MapQuest driving directions from my town house on Mount Vernon Street in Boston to Dr. Richard Hurley’s house on Church Street in Madison.

  Four

  Madison, Massachusetts, is a sleepy little community an hour’s drive west of Boston when the traffic is light, as it was on Sunday afternoon. No significant highway violates the borders of Madison. Aside from a few pick-’em-yourself apple orchards, several horse farms, a general store, a couple of churches, and untold numbers of psychiatrists and accountants with offices in their homes, there is no commerce in the town. It’s a green, moist, hushed place, famous for—and perversely proud of—its mosquitoes, with widely spaced expensive houses separated by stands of oak and maple and pine trees and manicured lawns. Madison is lushly populated with birds and deer and golden retrievers, a town where well-to-do people pay steep property taxes for the privilege of raising their animals and their children in insulated bucolic tranquillity.

  I arrived in the center of town, such as it is, around two in the afternoon. A big white Congregational church overlooked the village green, and Church Street, not coincidentally, ran along beside it. It descended a gentle hill past an elementary school, and where it bottomed out, across from a complex of soccer and baseball fields, I spotted a white mailbox with Hurley printed on it.

  I turned into the wide driveway and parked beside the four other vehicles—a new-looking Lexus SUV, a more elderly Chevy sedan with a baby’s carseat strapped in back, a battered Dodge pickup truck, and a sleek red Saab—that were lined up in front of a three-car garage.

  A dusty coat of tree pollen covering the Saab—but not the Lexus or the Chevy or the truck—suggested that the Saab hadn’t moved for a while.

  The house was a rambling contemporary featuring skylights, vertical cedar sheathing, fieldstone chimneys, and interesting roof angles. A curving walkway of big granite stepstones wound through azaleas and rhododendrons and thick groundcover to a double-wide
front door.

  I rang the bell, and a minute later a woman with an infant in her arms opened the door and peered at me through the screen. “Hi,” she said. She was tall and lanky and wore a sloppy T-shirt and baggy jeans. She had bare feet and blond hair and a pleasant, toothy smile.

  “I’m looking for Cassandra Hurley,” I said. “Is this the right place?”

  “It is,” she said. “But Cassie’s not here. Maybe I can help you?” She was about Cassie’s age, I guessed.

  I smiled perfunctorily at her baby. “I’m Brady Coyne. Cassie’s cousin. You’re Rebecca?”

  She nodded. “I don’t recall Cassie mentioning you,” she said. The baby on her shoulder gurgled. She patted his back, then smiled at me. “You’re the man who called last night, right?”

  “That was me,” I said. “Maybe I better talk with your father. Is he here?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll get him for you.” She opened the screen door. “Come on in.”

  I stepped into a flagstone foyer. Beyond it was an open area flooded with sunlight and bare of furnishings except for a giant Oriental rug.

  Rebecca turned her head and yelled, “Hey, Daddy. There’s somebody here for you.”

  She gave me a quick smile. “Don’t know if he heard me. Old goat needs hearing aids, but he won’t admit it. I’ll get him for you.” She turned and disappeared into the house.

  A minute later a man a little shorter than I appeared. He had wire-rimmed glasses and curly steel-colored hair. He appeared to be in his early fifties. He was wearing a pale green golf shirt and khaki pants. His chest and shoulders bulged under the shirt, and he had a flat stomach and a splendid tan.

  He held out his hand and smiled. “Richard Hurley,” he said. “Becca said you wanted to talk to me?” Up close, I reestimated his age. Judging from the creases on his throat and the crinkles around his eyes, he was closer to sixty. But he had the teeth of a teenager, as any conscientious dentist should. His eyes were a washed-out blue behind his glasses. They peered at me with neither warmth nor hostility.

  I shook his hand. “I’m Brady Coyne,” I said. “I’m a lawyer, and I—”

  “A lawyer, huh?”