Widow’s Walk s-29

by Robert B. Parker

  “So why do you think she didn’t do it? Other than professionalism.”

  “It just doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t feel right. If she did it, wouldn’t she have a better alibi than I was downstairs watching Channel Five?”

  “You said she wasn’t very bright.”

  “She appears to be very dumb,” I said. “But wouldn’t she have at least faked a break-in? Window broken? Door lock jimmied? Something? How dumb is dumb?”

  Susan smiled. “I would say that there is no bottom to dumb.”

  “You shrinks are so judgmental,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But some of us are sexually accomplished.”

  “Nice talk,” I said. “In front of Pearl.”

  “Pearl’s deaf as a turnip,” Susan said.

  “And a blessing it is,” I said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I went back to my list of names. A number of Mary Smith’s 226 other best friends didn’t know her at all. They could be handled by phone. Some weren’t available. Some needed to be called on. None appeared to be an ex-boyfriend. The last call I made was to a woman named Clarice Taggert, who was the director of corporate giving at Illinois Federal Bank. I met her in the bank cafeteria, where she was drinking coffee at a table near the door. I had described myself on the phone and she stood when I came in.

  “You said you looked like Cary Grant,” she said.

  “You recognized me when I came in,” I said.

  She grinned. “You don’t look like a banker,” she said. “Want coffee?”

  We took our coffee to a table. She was a strong-looking black woman in a pale gray pantsuit with a white blouse. She wore a gold chain around her neck. There was a wide gold wedding band on the appropriate finger.

  “What can I do for you?” she said.

  “Tell me about Mary Smith, Ms. Taggert.”

  “Clarice,” she said. “You don’t vamp around much, do you?”

  “I did that on the phone,” I said.

  “Mary Smith was a very good hit for various charities.”

  “She was generous?”

  “More than that,” Clarice said. “She was generous with her own money, and active in getting other people to give.”

  “How so?”

  “She was always eager to throw a fund-raising party.”

  “Like?”

  “One of the things she did was to host a gourmet dinner at her elegant home in Louisburg Square, prepared by a celebrity chef from one of the restaurants. Sometimes there would be a celebrity there-sports, local television, politics, whoever they could snare. And people would pay X amount of dollars to attend. They’d get a fancy meal, and a house tour, and, if there was a celebrity, the chance to eat dinner with him or her.”

  “That’s why she has a PR guy,” I said.

  “You have to understand Mary,” Clarice said. “She isn’t very bright.”

  “That I understand,” I said.

  “And she has no training in being a rich upper-class lady.”

  “Which she wasn’t,” I said, “until she married Nathan Smith.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And the charity work?” I said.

  “Part of becoming a wealthy Boston lady.”

  I nodded. Clarice drank some coffee. Her eyes were big and dark. She had on a nice perfume.

  “Where’d she grow up?” I said.

  “I think someone told me she lived in Franklin.”

  “I asked her for a list of her friends,” I said. “She gave me a guest list, on which you are the final name. You a friend of hers?”

  “Not really. Each year, the bank designates a certain sum of money to be distributed to deserving charities. I’m the one decides who gets it.”

  “So she woos you for your money.”

  “The bank’s money,” Clarice said. “But yes.”

  “You wouldn’t put her on a list of your best friends.”

  “I don’t dislike her. I feel kind of sorry for her.”

  “Because?”

  “Because she’s entirely confused by the world as it is. She thinks it is like the one she has seen in the movies and the women’s magazines. She’s always been sexy, and she thinks it matters in the world she’s entered.”

  “Gee,” I said. “It does in my world.”

  “I would guess that,” she said. “But not in the world of the wealthy Boston lady.”

  “What matters there?”

  “Money, pedigree, or the illusion of pedigree.”

  “How do you fare in that world,” I said.

  “I don’t aspire to it,” she said.

  I nodded again. The room was full of well-dressed women getting coffee and salads. Most of them were young and in shape. Young professional women were a good-looking lot.

  “Cute, aren’t they,” Clarice said.

  I grinned. “So, would you put Mary Smith on a list of friends?”

  She smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

  We were both quiet, drinking our coffee.

  “Do you think she has friends?” I said.

  “I think she thinks the people on her guest list are friends,” Clarice said.

  “And the people she knew in Franklin?”

  “Low-class would be my guess,” Clarice said.

  My coffee cup was empty. So was Clarice’s. I remained alert to the panorama of young professional women.

  “Sex apparently does matter in your world,” Clarice said.

  “Does to me,” I said.

  “Are you married?”

  “Sort of.”

  “How can you be ”sort of“ married?” Clarice said.

  “We’re not married, but we’re monogamous.”

  “Except for the roving eye,” Clarice said.

  “Except for that,” I said.

  “Live together?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Love each other?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long you been together?” Clarice said.

  “About twenty-five years.”

  “So why don’t you get married?”

  “Damned if I know,” I said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Pequod Savings and Loan was essentially a suburban bank. It had branches in Concord, Lexington, Lynnfield, and Weston. There was a home branch next to a gourmet takeout shop on the first floor of a good-looking recycled manufacturing building in East Cambridge, near Kendall Square. A clerk passed me on to a bank officer who questioned me closely and passed me on to the home-office manager. In less than an hour I was sitting in the office of the vice president for public affairs.

  She was a good-looking smallish woman with thick auburn hair and large dark eyes and a wide mouth. She was wearing a pale beige suit. Her nails gleamed with polish. She had a big diamond on her right hand. An engraved brass sign on her desk read AMY PETERS.

  “Would you care for coffee?” she said.

  I had decided to cut back on coffee. Three cups in the morning was plenty.

  “Yes,” I said. “Cream and sugar.”

  “How about milk and sugar?” she said.

  “Oh well.”

  She stood and went out of the office. The pants of her beige suit were well-fitted. On her desk was a picture of two small children. On a shelf in the bookcase behind her desk was a picture of her with Bobby Orr. There was also a plaque recognizing her as Pequod Person of the Year. When she came back in carrying the coffee, she brought with her the vague scent of good cologne. She gave me one cup and took the other around behind her desk and sat and had a sip.

  “So,” she said. “You are a private detective.”

  I had some coffee. It wasn’t very good. I had some more.

  “I am,” I said.

  She smiled. Her teeth were even and very white.

  “And what are you detecting here at the bank?” she said.

  “You know that Nathan Smith has died,” I said.

  “Yes. I understand that he was murdered.”
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br />   “Do you understand by whom?” I said.

  “Whom? What kind of private detective says ”whom“?”

  “Handsome intrepid ones,” I said.

  She looked at me steadily for a moment, as if deciding whether to buy me. Then she smiled a little. “The papers say it was his wife.”

  “They do,” I said.

  “And what do you say?”

  “I say I don’t know. Tell me about Nathan Smith.”

  “Whom do you represent?” she said and smiled, pleased with herself for saying “whom.”

  “I’m employed by Mary Smith’s attorney,” I said.

  “So you are predisposed to assume she’s innocent.”

  “Me and the legal system,” I said.

  “Oh… yes… of course.”

  “So what was Nathan Smith like?” I said.

  “He owned this bank,” she said. “His father owned it before him and I don’t know how many generations back beyond that.”

  “Un-huh. So who owns it now?”

  “His estate, I assume.”

  “Who’s running it now?”

  “Our CEO,” she said, “Marvin Conroy.”

  “Does he have any ownership?” I said.

  She nodded. “He’s a minority stockholder,” she said.

  “How about you?”

  She smiled. “I’m an employee.”

  “Any other minority stockholders?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. I’m here for public relations. I’m not privy to all of the arrangements Mr. Smith made.”

  “It sounds like there were some,” I said.

  “If there were I don’t know of them,” Amy Peters said.

  “But you might speculate?”

  “Public relations directors don’t get ahead if they make improprietous speculations.”

  “What kind of banker says ”improprietous“?” I said.

  She smiled and there was in the smile the same sense I’d had before, that she was considering whether I’d be worth the purchase price.

  “Handsome sexy ones,” she said.

  “I’m a detective,” I said. “I already noticed the handsome part.”

  “And the sexy part?”

  “I surmised that.”

  “Good,” she said.

  I smiled my most engaging smile at her. If you have an ace you may as well play it. Oddly, Amy Peters remained calm.

  “What sort of private arrangements could a banker make?” I said.

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Have you been with the bank long?” I said.

  “Ten years.”

  “Before that?”

  “I did PR for Sloan, Simpson.”

  “Brokerage house?” I said.

  “Yes. Am I a suspect?”

  I smiled. Just the routine smile. If the A smile hadn’t overwhelmed her, I saw no reason to waste it.

  “No.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “Information is the capital of my work,” I said. “I don’t know what will matter.”

  She nodded.

  “I went to Middlebury College, and Harvard Business School. I have two daughters. I’m divorced.”

  “So you knew Nathan Smith before he was married.”

  “I knew him professionally. He didn’t spend a lot of time at the bank, and when he was here, he didn’t spend a lot of time with the help.”

  “Who did he spend time with?”

  “I don’t really know. I work here. I worked for him. My job is to present the bank to the public in as favorable an image as I can. I do not keep track of the owner, for God’s sake.”

  “And you’re doing a hell of a job of it,” I said.

  She started to speak and stopped. “Goddamn you,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “Y. I am supposed to be a professional and you’ve waltzed in here and smiled a big smile and showed me your muscles and all my professionalism seems to have fluttered right out the window.”

  “I didn’t show you my muscles,” I said.

  “I saw them anyway,” she said. Beneath her perfect makeup there seemed to be a hint of color along her cheekbones.

  “Are you married?” she said.

  “I’m, ah, going steady,” I said.

  “Going steady? I haven’t heard anyone say that in thirty years.”

  I shrugged.

  “How long have you been going steady?”

  “‘Bout twenty-five years,” I said. “With a little time out in the middle.”

  She leaned back a little in her chair and looked at me in silence for a considerable time.

  Finally she said, “Of all the banks, in all the world, you had to walk into this one.”

  “We’ll always have Cambridge,” I said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There had been something lurking behind what Amy Peters had said. She knew something about Nathan Smith. I didn’t know what it was yet. I drove out of the parking garage next to the bank. A moment of brightness flicked past me from across the street and I looked over at a black Volvo sedan across from the entrance. I thought I saw binoculars, which would account for the reflected flash. I turned onto Broadway toward the Longfellow Bridge. The car didn’t move. As I got on the bridge I checked the rearview mirror and the Volvo was there, two cars back.

  I punched up the number for the Harbor Health Club on the car phone. Henry Cimoli answered.

  “Hawk there?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “Intimidating the patrons.”

  What’s he doing?“ I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I said.

  In a moment Hawk said, “Un-huh?” into his end of the phone.

  “I’m on the Longfellow Bridge,” I said. “I think I’m being tailed by a black Volvo. Mass plates, number 73622. I’m going to park at the health club and go in. I want you to pick up the Volvo, if they leave. See who they are.”

  “You care if they see me?” Hawk said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Hawk said.

  On the Boston end of the bridge, to make sure, I went straight up Cambridge Street and through Bowdoin Square and down New Sudbury Street and back down Canal Street toward the Fleet. On Causeway Street I turned right and headed back through the North End. It was a way to get to the Harbor Health Club that no one would take. The black Volvo was still behind me.

  When I started at the Harbor Health Club I was still boxing, and it was a dark ugly gym where fighters trained. Now I wasn’t boxing anymore. The club was three stories high, and they had valet parking. I gave my car to the valet and headed in. I didn’t see Hawk. But I didn’t expect to. Inside I went up to the second floor where there was a women-only weight room across from the snack bar and cocktail lounge, and looked down into the street from the front windows. The Volvo was there, idling across the street.

  Henry, wearing a white T-shirt and white satin sweatpants, joined me at the window. Henry used to box lightweight, and it showed in the scar tissue around his eyes and the way his nose had thickened. The T-shirt showed how muscular he still was. Which is not a bad thing in a health-club owner.

  “Hawk already left,” Henry said.

  “I know.”

  “You working on something?”

  “I am.”

  Henry looked down through the window. “The black Volvo tailing you?”

  “Un-huh.”

  “What kinda crook tails somebody in a Volvo?” Henry said.

  “Hawk’s going to tell us,” I said.

  “I get it,” Henry said. “You ditch them here and Hawk picks them up and then you’ve got a tail on the tail.”

  “Pretty smart,” I said. “For a guy who got whacked in the face as much as you did.”

  “Never got knocked down though,” Henry said. “You gonna work out?”

  “Maybe later,” I said. “Isn’t it sexist to have a women-only weight room?”

  “I think so,” Henry said.
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  The Volvo waited for two and a half hours, into the rush hour, until a cop pulled his cruiser up behind it and gave a short wail on his siren and gestured them to move the car. Which they did.

  I looked down at the evening commuter traffic trying to jam past the Big Dig construction for a while and then went to the snack bar and had a turkey burger. Healthful.

  I called Frank Belson while I waited and asked him to check the plate numbers on the Volvo. I ate another turkey burger. Belson called me back. After two hours and twenty minutes, Hawk came into the snack bar and slid onto the stool beside me.

  “Went down to Braintree,” hawk said. “Shopping center right there where 3 and 128 fork off the expressway. Parked in the lot. Got out, got in another car, drove back up the expressway to a place called Soldiers Field Development Limited.”

  “Would that be on Soldiers Field Road?” I said.

  “How’d you guess that?” Hawk said.

  I smiled modestly and looked at the floor.

  “You get the plate number?” I said.

  “You didn’t tell me to get no license plate number,” Hawk said.

  “I was being racially sensitive,” I said. “I didn’t want to sound patronizing.”

  “Yassah,” Hawk said and recited the plate number. Hawk never wrote anything down. As far as I could tell he never forgot anything.

  “You get anything on the car they dumped?” Hawk said.

  “Stolen car,” I said.

  “They being careful,” Hawk said. “Tail you with stolen car. Dump it. Swap cars.”

  “Not careful enough,” I said.

  “‘Course not,” Hawk said. “How they gonna be careful enough when they up against you and me?”

  “They didn’t make you? I said.

  Hawk looked at me without speaking.

  “No,” I said. “Of course they didn’t. They actually go in the development company?”

  “Un-huh.”

  “And didn’t go right on through and come out the front and get in a waiting car and drive off?” I said. “Leaving you confused and uncertain?”

  “Un-un.”

  “You got a good look at them?”

  “Un-huh.”

  “So you’d recognize them if you saw them again.”

  It wasn’t a question, I was just thinking out loud. Hawk made no response.