by Linda Barnes
“That means somebody else mailed it. Who? Why?”
“Suppose,” Spraggue said slowly, “Pete stuck it in the mail Sunday, Sunday night. The post office doesn’t pick up mail Sunday night.”
Sharon took a pocket calendar out of her purse. “Monday, then, the nineteenth.”
“Patriot’s Day,” Spraggue said. “No mail.”
“So Pete could have mailed it before he …”
Spraggue stared at the smaller envelope, the three lines of typed text: Senator Brian Donagher; 55 Sparhawk Street; Brighton, MA. “He did mail it … he must have mailed it right after he called me.…” Spraggue pushed his dinner plate away, smoothed his scarlet napkin over the tablecloth. He placed the two envelopes on it, side by side, then placed the smaller one above the larger one.
“What is it? What do you see?”
“Look.” He tilted the envelopes in her direction. “Look at the typing. The envelope with Donagher’s name on it. Then the one Pete typed with your name on it. They were typed on the same machine. See that blocked o, that off-center t?”
“What does it mean?”
“Your brother knew who sent the warning letters to Donagher.”
Sharon held her water glass to her lips, sipped, set it down with unsteady fingers. “You think that’s why he was killed?”
He blew out a sigh of exasperation. “No. I don’t think so. Dammit, I don’t know. I’ve been working on the theory that he was killed because of something he learned while he was a cop, when he was working with the Arson Squad. Now this.”
“Confuses everything?” she said and Spraggue wanted to lean over and kiss her for the sympathy in her voice.
“Yeah. Not only do we get our choice of how your brother died, we get our choice of why somebody killed him.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
She was holding her ground at one of the small round tables in the lobby where they’d agreed to meet after the show. Her caramel-colored sandals, hooked over the metal rung of a folding chair, impeded the progress of a surly teenager who pushed a broom impatiently across the polished floor. The sweeper couldn’t have been more pointed in his invitation to depart. Sharon ignored him and smiled up at Spraggue with such warmth that he didn’t bother with his planned apology about how long it took to part spirit gum from skin.
“Terrific,” she said. “I laughed out loud and I applauded my hands red. I’d almost forgotten what a real play with real actors was like. And you! I didn’t even recognize you as the doctor—what’s his name? Niko Mikadze, or Mika Loladze? How many roles did you play?”
“Four. Right in the program, ma’am.”
“I’m glad you did the prologue. It’s so rarely done like that, with the actors assuming the roles for the story right onstage.”
“Ah. You know the play.”
“I wish I could bring my kids to see it.”
“Your kids?”
“Oh.” She laughed. “Not my kids, the ones I teach. No biological kids.”
“Maybe you can.”
“Nope.”
“Why so definite?”
She ticked the reasons off on stubby, unmanicured fingernails: “Bad language; money; logistics; location. The parents of the kids I teach are Boston’s suburban escapees. They’re convinced that entering the city limits is tempting fate. They gobble up every newspaper account of crime in the evil city. If you are not raped, you will be mugged. If you are not mugged, your car will be stolen, vandalized, and burned.”
“Where did you park, by the way?”
The teenager had fetched a mop and a bucket of water. He glared at the lobby’s intruders, prepared to spill water on their feet if that were necessary to evict them.
“Behind the Harvard School of Education. They never used to require the relevant sticker.” Awkwardly, she stuck out her right hand for a handshake. “Thank you for the play. I did enjoy it.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean you should run away this instant and check on your car.”
“Well …”
“Come have a drink with me.”
She consulted the slim gold band on her wrist. “It’s late. Even the places around here should be closed by now.”
“My house is five minutes’ walk.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re still high from the applause.”
“Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.”
“If I did come, it would be just for a drink, just to talk.”
“Just for a drink. Just to talk,” he echoed.
“I shouldn’t leave my car at the school,” she said, weakening.
“We’ll get it now. You can park in my driveway.”
The floor washer was so pleased by their departure he started whistling.
They strolled down Appian Way in the cool night breeze, staggering over the uneven brick sidewalk. Spraggue used it as an excuse to take her arm.
“Did Pete ever talk about me?” she asked.
“Enough so I knew he had a sister who didn’t like him being a cop.”
She drove her battered Dart like a veteran of Boston traffic. He gave her directions: a right on Brattle, another on Fayerweather.
“This house,” he said. “The top two floors are mine.”
“I like old houses.”
“Are there old houses in Chelmsford?”
“My husband’s choice. He didn’t like anything older than twenty. I found out later that held for women as well as houses.” She had a warm, low laugh without a trace of self-pity.
“Don’t slam the car door. I try not to let my downstairs neighbor know when I come in; it keeps her guessing.”
“Does she guess about who you come in with, too?”
“She’s no nosier than the usual tenant.”
“It’s your house?”
“Yep.” Spraggue touched the lightswitch and led the way up the stairs. “My house, my hobby. I started by fixing up the first floor apartment. My enthusiasm waned by the time I moved upstairs.”
“It’s a lovely place,” she said. Then she got flustered and asked abruptly about progress on Pete’s case. Spraggue wondered if she’d been out with a man since her divorce, whether her jitters were the result of a rotten marriage, bad experiences since then, or just a reaction to the past week.
“First, the drink,” he said firmly. “Tell me where else you’ve seen Brecht.”
She sat on a jade green cushion that set off her coral dress, insisted she’d be more comfortable there than in the huge brown chair, shrugged off his apologies about the lack of furniture. She’d gone to college in Oakland, bought a subscription to San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater with money earned as a part-time typist. They’d done Mother Courage and The Good Woman of Setzuan. Years later, she’d seen a memorable student production of Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts.
She took a firm grasp on her wineglass, reddened as if she’d only just realized she’d been talking for some time, and asked how long he’d been acting. Then she realized she’d tried the question before, at the restaurant, and blushed redder still.
“That’s a tough one,” Spraggue said from a recumbent position, head on blue cushion, across the room. He’d settled some distance away from the nervous woman, convinced that any attempt to get closer would have terminated the evening. When he’d approached to hand her a wineglass, she’d backed off. “Would you accept ‘all my life’ as an answer?”
“Not a very good one.”
“A long time, then.”
“Why did you go into acting?”
“I guess the usual reasons. I didn’t know who I was—and I had the unsettling feeling that if I did, I wouldn’t like myself very much. So I started being other people. And I was good at it. And by the time I decided I liked myself well enough to possibly do something else, all I was trained for was acting.”
“Well,” she said, “I thought you were very good tonight.”
“Thank you. Good is exactly what I am.”
She started to say something, stopped, and took refuge in the wineglass. “You don’t sound pleased about it,” she said finally.
“Pleased, displeased, what difference would it make? I’m a good actor, not a great one. On a wonderful night, I am very good. I hold my own with the Harvard Rep, but I don’t shine, I don’t blaze out the way Underwood does—”
“He played Azdak?”
“You didn’t have to check the program for that one.”
“He had a much more forceful, more interesting part than you did.” Her words spilled out so quickly that she coughed.
“He had the kind of part I’ll never play. He has that something extra that all the technique in the world can’t give you. Me, I’m more a chameleon than a star.”
“A chameleon is a useful thing to be.”
“Part of it’s my training. I learned to act in England. I was taught to fit the proper form to the passion, not to seek the passion and worry about the form later. And part of it is just something lacking in me.”
“Passion?”
He wished it were earlier in the evening. Or later in a relationship that hadn’t had such a rocky beginning, so he could ask her to stay the night.
“Forget it,” he said. “I shouldn’t talk after performances. Or drink.”
“I’m enjoying the conversation. Or I was.”
“Sorry.”
“The applause gave you a lift. You’re hitting the corresponding low.”
“You’re kind.”
She looked away, motioned towards the two cardboard boxes near the kitchen door, used them as an excuse to turn the conversation away from her virtues. “Why did you bring that stuff over from Pete’s apartment?”
Spraggue sighed. Collatos might as well have been in the room with them, between them when they walked side-by-side down the street. “Because I don’t understand it. He had no business having police files in his closet. Hiding them. And they’re old files. From before Pete ever thought about being a cop …”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” she said. “It’s all I can ever remember: Pete playing cop.”
“I thought I’d go through them, see if I could make any sense out of them. If you don’t mind.”
She coughed again, straightened up on her cushion, and looked around the room, puzzled.
“Do you smoke?” she asked.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. No ashtrays. But—” She closed her eyes and inhaled, said, “Don’t you smell it?”
“No.”
She forced a grin. “I’m overly sensitive to smoke—allergic, I guess. But I could swear …” She sat as still as a portrait on her jade green cushion. Her brow wrinkled and she breathed in deeply, nostrils flared. “Definitely. Not cigarettes, but something burning—”
It happened fast. Not only could Spraggue smell it, he could see the faint mist rise through the room, hear the crackle of the flames. He eased the front door, the door to the stairway, open a scant two inches, saw only a wall of flickering yellow tongues. He slammed it shut, grabbed Sharon by the hand, pulled her along to the kitchen, soaked towels in the sink.
“Put this over your nose and mouth.”
She chewed the color off her lower lip, said faintly, “Will we have to jump?”
“Not if we can get down the back stairs. God, I hope Mrs. Wales isn’t sleeping.” He pounded on the floor, yelled “Fire!” twice in a voice that would have thundered off the rail of the third balcony. He helped Sharon drape the dripping towel across her face. “Listen, it may be smoky in the hallway. You might not be able to see. Hold on to me. I know the way.”
“Okay,” she said, firmly gripping his right hand.
He pressed his other hand against the back door. The wood was so hot it scorched his palm. Fire at the front door, fire at the back. Was the first floor of the house completely involved in flame or had the fire sprung from two sources? Why hadn’t the smoke alarms sounded their shrill warning? Why in hell had he invited Sharon home? When he knew he’d been followed earlier, when his shadow might be connected to an arson ring?
“Can you climb trees?” he asked.
“Yes—when I was a kid—What are you doing? Why can’t we use the stairs?”
“We’ll have to go out a window.” He led her back into the dining room. The big, center window was still sealed with plastic tape against last winter’s icy draughts. He removed half the paint on the window frame ripping it off, then heaved up on the sash. His shoulders protested, but it didn’t budge. Stuck tight.
“Back off,” he said, grabbing a chair. “I’m going to break the glass.”
It resisted, finally shivered into a thousand glittering shards. He ran the legs of the chair around the edges of the frame to dislodge the jagged remnants.
Then he remembered Pete’s files, trapped in cardboard boxes on the floor.
“No,” she said, sensing his intent, “don’t go back for anything. Let’s just get out of here. Nothing’s worth it—”
“Careful of the glass,” he said. “Get your head out the window and scream for help. I’d rather climb down a fireman’s ladder than an oak tree.”
The boxes were near the kitchen doorway. The smoke, the towel over his mouth made breathing difficult. He reached around and tucked the ends of the towel more firmly under his shirt collar. A stream of sweat inched down his back.
He’d brought the boxes in from the cab one at a time. Now, he hefted one on top of the other, knelt beside them, and jerked them both off the ground. He staggered back toward the window. The top box blocked his vision.
“Out of the way!” he said to Sharon. His words came from between clenched teeth. He bent his knees and consciously straightened his back. His arms felt like they were about to pull out of their sockets. He positioned himself in front of the window. “Give the top box a shove. Now. Good.”
They both pushed the second box off the sill, heard it thud in the darkness, a long way down.
The room was getting murky, hazy with stinking smoke. They crouched on the floor, towels pressed to faces, hanging out the window, yelling.
He could hear Sharon screaming with part of his mind, see the smoke rising with another, was dimly aware that the towel had slipped down over his shoulder. Fireman’s ladder or no, it was time to get out.
“Okay,” he said to Sharon. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” She stared out the window. “I can’t see.”
“Just below the sill—here, reach out and feel it—the ivy is as thick as your wrist. About four feet down, it intersects with a tree branch. It’s a good, solid, sturdy climbing tree. I use it when I lock myself out.”
“You first, then,” she said. “You’ve got experience.”
“Get your shoes off. I’ll go down as far as the tree and then I’ll wait for you. Okay?”
She nodded. He tried to gauge the depth of fear in her eyes, but they were opaque. Reason said he should be the first to climb down, so that he could coach her along the way. But what if she panicked, froze?
The door to the kitchen burst into flame.
Spraggue tossed his shoes into the night, crawled out the window. His shoulders ached. Bark scraped his fingers raw; awkward twigs poked at his eyes and mouth. He remembered the upward climb as a frolic; executed always in daylight, with only inconvenience at risk, it had nothing to do with this nightmare descent.
He grabbed the tree trunk, hollered: “Now!”
Framed in ghostly firelight, she balanced on the sill. He could hear her feet scrabbling for holds in the wall’s ivy spiderweb, count each of her rasping breaths. He called her name, caught her ankle as it snaked down into his reach, and set her foot on a strong, adjacent branch.
They talked each other down to the blessed ground.
TWENTY-NINE
Every light in the Chestnut Hill mansion was aglow, from the round stone turret to the flood lamps on the lawn to the old-fashioned gas lampposts that lined the driveway like runwa
y beacons for a weary pilot. Aunt Mary had answered his 3 A.M. phone call, delighted at the prospect of a late-night chat. Her tone had altered with his message. She must have woken the house.
He screeched the car to a halt at the peak of the curve near the front steps, flicked off the headlights, put a hand on Sharon’s shoulder. She had drowsed through most of the journey from Cambridge. He didn’t know if her sleep was feigned or real, a normal or abnormal reaction to shock. For someone who’d had to deal first with her brother’s death, then with narrow escape from a burning building, he thought she was doing fine. Let her sleep. Let her unconscious try to sort out the muddle.
Sleep, exhausted as he was, held no lure for him—not with the memory of the inferno racing like a just seen movie behind his eyes, not with the acrid smell clinging to his hair, his clothes, not with the aching rasp of smoke caught in his throat.
The scenes replayed themselves, loops of film trapped in his memory: the gust of flame that had burst through the second floor window not two minutes after their escape; the frenzied search for Mrs. Wales, finally found, safe and crying, huddled like a bag of old clothes on the front lawn; the sucking, crackling hiss of tearing flames; the eerie light. The scream of approaching fire trucks. The utter, total helplessness. The relief. The rage.
Oh, but the fire had spread quickly, so fast he never doubted for a moment it had been set. Every face in the nightclad crowd of neighbors, he’d scrutinized, searching for the familiar face of the raincoated man. Only neighbors, arms crossed defensively across their chests, murmuring in fear and wonder. When a section of the roof collapsed in a shower of sparks, they’d breathed a long drawn-out “ah!”, like spectators at a fireworks exhibition.
The windless night, the streaming hoses, the battering, breaking axes wielded by the black-slickered firemen, had kept the blaze from spreading to surrounding homes.
He tried not to run through the final loop of film: the dismal corpselike remains of the house, streaming water and smoke. Shattered windows. Muddy grass. It ticked on through the projector and he felt a cold, hating rage, a bitter anger he’d hoped never to feel again.
Sharon stirred and mumbled. His hand was too heavy on her shoulder.
