I jumped in before Ade socked him. “Noah, what do you want?”
His flirty expression vanished as he turned to me with irritation. “Well, I didn’t realize you were mad enough to throw the police at me.” My stomach dropped. “Some detective came by asking me questions about where I was Sunday night around dinnertime and after. I explained that I’d had company here and therefore couldn’t have murdered your date.” I bet he’d been with that horrid blonde woman again. “Why the hell would you even have mentioned me to the police?” he continued. Boy, he was mad. Good.
“Well,” I said as casually as I could manage, “Detective Hurley asked me some questions, and somehow your name came up. I mean, they are the police. They have to be thorough.” I grinned smugly at him.
“Yeah, well this detective started asking me all about paint. Whether I’d painted anything lately, if my office had been painted, and on and on. And I was more than happy to inform him that the person who does all the painting around here is you! I told him all he had to do was go upstairs and look at your apartment.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about or why he’d ask you about paint. But apparently you’ve survived your brush with the law, so just relax, Noah,” I fired back.
“Well, now that you’ve had your little revenge, you can leave me out of your police conversations,” he said as he turned and headed back downstairs—but only after giving Adrianna the once-over again. “It was nice seeing you.”
Adrianna took a step forward as though she was going to leap after him and clobber the jerk. I grabbed her hand but couldn’t stop her from yelling, “Don’t you even look at me, you big, dirty male slut!”
“Stop, Ade!” I said, laughing. “You’re the one who said it’s not worth it.”
“Oh God! He is so annoying. In fact”—she paused dramatically—“I found Noah threatening and potentially violent just now! He very well could have murdered Eric.”
“Don’t be idiotic. You may have been threatening and potentially violent just now, but Noah wasn’t. Of course he didn’t murder Eric. He has no motive whatsoever. He obviously doesn’t give a damn about me and apparently had his hands full with Tank-Top Woman at the time of the murder.”
“Fine,” she conceded. “He didn’t murder Eric. But I don’t know what you were thinking hooking up with him.”
I shook my head at my own idiocy. “I have no idea either. I really don’t.”
After Adrianna left, I sat in the sunshine on my makeshift balcony and finished my coffee. The phone rang twice, but I let voice mail pick up. The third call finally got me out of my chair. “Yes,” I answered irritably.
“Chloe? It’s Detective Hurley here. From the other night.”
“Of, course. Hi.” Like I knew thousands of detectives all over Boston. I bet that damn Noah had tried to incriminate me in Eric’s murder. Why did I have to paint everything? Hurley was probably calling to say he was on his way over to arrest me. Wait. Wouldn’t he just show up with handcuffs?
“Listen, I’m just calling to check in. To see if you remembered anything else from Sunday.” He sounded tired, and I had a suspicion that his hair was as wild and uncombed as when I’d met him. He struck me as a chronically chaotic-looking person.
“Honestly, not really. Um . . . I think I told you everything I could think of.”
“Can we just go over who you saw at the restaurant again? Tell me all the staff members you can remember seeing.”
I listed off everyone I’d met: Joelle, Tim, Garrett, Cassie, Ian, and the kitchen staff I’d seen but hadn’t actually met.
“So only one chef? Or one person in a chef ’s coat?” Hurley asked.
“Well, I don’t know. I know Garrett was wearing one, obviously, but I think the other guys in the kitchen were wearing them, too. Only theirs weren’t as nice. You know, cheaper looking. But I wasn’t paying much attention, to be honest with you. Does that help?” I felt like a lousy witness. If I’d known these sorts of details were going to become important, I’d have studied everyone there.
The detective continued. “Okay, now about the phone call Eric had. Could you go over that again?”
Again, I had nothing to offer this earnest detective—except a slight concern about Noah’s casting suspicion on me with his paint comment. “Um, listen. My neighbor, Noah, just stopped by. He said you came over and were asking him about paint? Was there paint in the men’s room? On that knife? I didn’t see any on Eric’s body at all. Or on Eric, for that matter. Before. And Noah said he told you that I paint all the time. In fact, I was painting last weekend. Calm, brown tones. I was trying to tidy up my place. Give it a little bit of a Zen feel, you know. But I took a shower before I saw Eric, of course. I hope you don’t think I did anything wrong.” I was blathering on in what increasingly felt like the manner of a murderer trying to convince the police of her innocence.
“No, you’re not a suspect at this time. But I can’t comment on the investigation.” Sounded like some phrase he learned in detective school. But at least I was off the hook. He continued asking me about other people I’d seen that night, and I did my best to describe everything and everyone I could remember. None of it seemed helpful, and I was pretty sure that none of my information was going to blow this case wide open, as detectives and reporters said in second-rate TV shows.
Detective Hurley released a loud sigh. “Okay, Chloe. Look, please call me if you think of anything at all that you remember. Even if it seems unimportant, okay?”
Although I doubted that I’d recall any crucial clues, I assured him that I’d call if I thought of anything new. I hung up, convinced that would be my last contact with the murder investigation.
SEVEN
I’D just finished my shower when the phone rang again. I wrapped a towel around myself, grabbed the phone, and stared at the caller ID. Rafferty, P. What? Did I even want to answer this?
“Hello?”
“Is this Chloe?” a shrill female voice asked.
“Um, yes. Who is this?”
“Oh, Chloe, this is Eric’s mother, Sheryl Rafferty.” She muffled a sob. “I spoke with Timothy Rock yesterday. I got your last name.” She stopped for a second and added, “From him. And found your number in the phone book.” She started crying harder.
“Oh, Mrs. Rafferty, I am so sorry about Eric. I just can’t imagine how devastated you must be.” Why was she calling me? What in the world was I supposed to tell this woman? Your son was dreadful and pompous during the two hours I knew him, and then I found him with his throat slit on a men’s room floor?
“Well, dear,” she managed to continue, “Eric’s father and I knew he’d been dating.” She paused. “Dating someone serious. Well, not someone serious. Or not necessarily a serious person, that is. Dating seriously. There. And Timothy told us who you were. I know you must be just as heartbroken as we are. His parents. He was our only child, you know. I had the understanding . . . well, I may have misunderstood. Well, no, I didn’t. I had the sense that this may have turned into a more permanent relationship. Cut short by Eric’s death. But it’s consoling to know that after all, he found great love. During his life.” As opposed to after his demise? Although the bereaved Mrs. Rafferty claimed to be consoled by the thought of her son in love, this notion sent her into another loud gale of moaning.
I couldn’t blame her, obviously, for her tears, and I attributed her evident confusion to grief. Losing a child must be unimaginably painful. No wonder Mrs. Rafferty sounded so fragmented. I had to do whatever I could to comfort her and decided that a nod-and-smile-and-agree-with-everything attitude would be the kindest approach. And very social workish. “This must be awful for you. Please let me know if I can do anything for you,” I said in my best soothe-the-grieving-mother voice.
“Well, actually, Chloe, I want your advice. About the funeral. I’m sure you want to be involved. So I thought I’d let you know that Madeline Rock . . . Do you know her? From Magellan, it’s called. It’s a restaura
nt. She offered me her executive chef, a Josh something-or-other, and his staff to do the food. Catering. For the gathering at our home after the funeral. Now, Eric was a fan of Timothy’s. But what do you know about this Madeline? What do I tell her? Of course, Eric is my only child, and I adored him to pieces . . . such a precious and wonderful son, but truthfully, Eric and I did not have the closest relationship in terms of day-to-day life. Or else we would have met you by now, of course. So, I’m not sure what he would want.”
Okay, I’d hardly known Eric, but I did know that he had loved food and loved the whole restaurant business, and had seemed quite fond of Magellan. Furthermore, I felt certain that Eric wouldn’t have refused the offer of free food. Who was I to talk? But why was his mother soliciting my advice, anyway? What ulterior motive could Madeline Rock possibly have that should arouse suspicion and require a consultation with me? The notion of a gourmet-catered funeral was a little odd, but it always struck me as peculiar that death was customarily surrounded by tons of food. When someone died, were the surviving loved ones hit with sudden cravings for casseroles and fruit salads? Still, after a death, visitors expected be fed and, more than that, fed well. When our neighbor Ray died, my mother was highly irritated at the pathetic spread served at the family’s house. Mourners were offered tea and crustless minisandwiches. “Protestant sandwiches,” my mother had declared, by which she meant skimpy offerings. “This isn’t tea with the Queen of England, for God’s sake. They could spring for something more filling.”
“I’m sure Eric would have been thrilled with that idea,” I told his mother. “He was just praising Magellan’s chef the other night. Eric was quite food oriented, as you know. He took me to Essence to see what I thought about his investing there. He talked a lot about the quality of the food at Magellan, and he was hoping Essence would reach that status. So, he’d want you to accept Madeline’s offer. I can’t think of a more fitting way to remember Eric and celebrate his life.”
“Oh, thank you. I knew Eric’s girlfriend would have the answer. Now, my husband, uh, Eric’s father is here. He’d like to speak to you. We’ll see you on Saturday at the funeral home. Ten a.m.” Mrs. Rafferty gave me the name and address, which I reluctantly wrote down. Having resigned myself to attending the funeral of my supposed beloved, I hoped that there wouldn’t be an open casket. Ugh. I’d already seen the poor man dead once. That had been enough.
“Okay, here’s Phil,” she said as she passed the phone to her husband.
“Chloe? Phil Rafferty here.” Eric’s father had a loud, gruff voice and shouted his words through the phone lines. “You must be quite shook up. Awful situation for all of us, but we’ll get through it together. Listen, I’m a bit concerned about Veronica. Has she been bothering you?”
“Veronica? Um, I don’t know much . . .” I started. In fact, what I knew about Veronica was almost nothing. I remembered that she was the bookkeeper at Essence and Magellan, and that was about it.
“That ex-girlfriend of Eric’s is a pain in the neck. Couldn’t get over him when they broke up. Has she been bothering you? Trying to break you up? I’m convinced that girl will show up at the funeral and steal your thunder, so to speak.” Bookkeeper Veronica was welcome to play the bereaved girlfriend. Someone should, maybe, and I was going to have a pretty hard time acting forlorn.
“No, no. I haven’t heard anything from her at all. No trouble whatsoever,” I said truthfully. “Listen, Mr. Rafferty, Eric and I didn’t know each other that well,” I began slowly.
Ignoring what I’d just said, Mr. Rafferty replied, “Eric’s mother and I know how special you were to him. You’re part of this. We’ll all grieve together,” he assured me. Lucky me.
“Well, I need to get going, actually. I have school today. Orientation. I should probably run.”
“You’re so strong. So strong,” Phil repeated. “I can’t believe how well you’re holding up. Looking forward to finally meeting you on Saturday. Better late than never, I guess, huh?”
Relieved to have that unusual call over, I hung up. I couldn’t believe I had to go to this funeral. And what was I going to wear? Every black dress I owned was more appropriate for doing tequila shots than for honoring the dead.
But today I had that damn social work school orientation. Who decided we needed orientation at eight fifteen in the morning? And what the hell were we going to do until four that afternoon? I figured that all the men there would probably be gay, so I didn’t bother dressing up. Jeans, T-shirt, and Keds. Yes, Keds had been over with for years, but I didn’t care. Cheap, easy, went with everything. Hair in ponytail. I grabbed a light jacket and was good to go.
I took a notebook and a pen, and drove the few miles to school only to discover that Tuesday’s orientation sucked as much as I thought it would. I spent two hours in an auditorium listening to a series of progressively more boring speakers. The dean of the school made the mandatory welcome speech, which was about as scintillating as his welcome letter had been. The head of the library tried to present a virtual tour of the library’s many state-of-the-art features, but her computer kept freezing, and we were left to gaze at a close-up of the book-drop slot.
At noon we broke up for lunch and were presumably expected to mingle and discuss our life’s dreams of saving the oppressed. As I hid in a corner, I looked around and noticed that everyone else was much more dressed up than I was; the others were treating this event as a foray into the professional world of suits and ties. Earnest students were gathered in groups, probably to share their hopes for the year’s academic pursuits. I felt so much like a wallflower at a high school dance that I wished I’d brought along a flask of peppermint schnapps—in high school, at least, it would’ve made me the most popular kid there.
We’d been handed massive notebooks full of graduate school information. Mine included my schedule of classes, which ran Wednesday through Friday, and the contact information for my “field placement,” social work speak for internship. I’d forgotten about that. Monday and Tuesday were designated “field placement” days on which we were thrown into the trenches and expected to put into use the skills we were learning in the classroom. I’d been given a placement at the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace and was to call Naomi Campbell (I swear that was her name) before Monday. Why was everything social work related required to have the longest possible title? And it was in downtown Boston, which probably meant I’d have to take the T, since parking downtown was either impossible or too expensive to do on a regular basis.
I spent the hour from one to two seated with three other students in my advisor’s office. His name was Dick Dickers, and I passed that hour wondering what kind of parents do that to a kid. So his name was probably Richard, and Rick Dickers wasn’t much better than Dick Dickers, but with a last name like that, the kind thing to do would have been to avoid anything that sounded remotely like Dickers. There were millions of names out there for parents to choose from: James Dickers, Adam Dickers, William Dickers . . . although Willy Dickers would probably have sent gradeschoolers into whoops of laughter. I was sure he’d been called Dicky Dickers by children throughout the public school system. Parents should name their children responsibly. Like, if my parents had had a son, they clearly couldn’t have named him James, a choice that would have resulted in a baby Jimmy Carter crawling around. But poor Dick Dickers had been doomed to a life of students being too distracted by his name to hear any of the important information he had to impart regarding his availability as an advisor to overworked social workers. As I was leaning against the back of the hard wooden chair in Mr. Dickers’s office and not listening to what he was saying, it occurred to me that when it came to naming babies, the parents of the United States had collectively lost their minds and didn’t want to find them. In particular, no one wanted advice on what to name a child, as my sister Heather could attest. When she was pregnant with her first child, her friend Ruth had rejected every name Heather had come up wit
h because it had reminded her of some celebrity. Donald had made Ruth think of Donald Trump, Theodore had led to Ted Kaczynski, and she’d even gone from Jennifer to Gennifer Flowers. When Heather and Ben had finally decided on the name Walker, Ruth had immediately said, “Oh, like Walker, Texas Ranger?” Heather had been totally fed up by then and had shouted back angrily, “Yes, EXACTLY like Walker, Texas Ranger!” Ruth was not consulted or informed about baby number two’s name until after the birth certificate had been signed.
I made a minor attempt to focus on Mr. Dickers until eventually my ill-named advisor wound up his spiel on future course selection and started clamoring about plagiarism and its consequences. When he finally wrapped up his warnings, my school chums and I shuffled out of his cramped office.
From two to four that afternoon, I was supposed to attend the Peer-to-Peer Networking Social, which as far as I could tell was yet another opportunity to socialize, this time with advanced graduate students who’d share their wisdom with us newbies. I was irked enough at having to be here in the first place to bag the social. My plan for the next two years was to go to class and go directly home, and there was no way I was hoping to network with serious academic types who’d try to suck me into joining repulsive-sounding clubs such as, incredibly, something called the Social Work Student Class Spirit Committee. As I scampered out of school, I was already dreading the classes I had coming up over the next three days.
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