Idyll Hands

by Stephanie Gayle

  “Great,” he said. “We’ll touch base in the morning, your office. Before Mike gets in.”

  A secret meeting in my office? What would the guys think? And then I laughed because thanks to Mrs. Dunsmore, they’d probably think Wright was trying to weasel his way out of the fitness requirements.

  DETECTIVE MICHAEL FINNEGAN

  SUNDAY, MAY 23, 1999

  1400 HOURS

  The house on Wood Street smelled of linen spray and potatoes. The alarm inside the entryway was disabled. “Ma?” I called. A radio upstairs played easy listening. I followed the sound to the bedroom I’d shared with David so many years ago. It was now the sewing room. My mother’s machine and fabrics lived here, alongside tubes of giftwrap. In bygone Christmases, she’d made us save the bows and tags from our presents for future use. A recycler before anyone used the word. The radio sat to the right of the sewing machine. White fabric spilled from beneath the machine’s needle. My mother made curtains, as wedding gifts or housewarming presents.

  “Hello?” she called. “Bobby?” Why did it hurt that she expected my brother? He lived closest, kept tabs on her. She poked her head around the doorframe.

  “You got new glasses,” I said. The frames were blue and huge. Her pale eyes were tiny behind them.

  “Marcy helped me pick them.” She touched the sides, shyly. “Aren’t they something?”

  “They certainly are.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek and a hug. She felt delicate in my arms, almost brittle. “Ma, the alarm was off when I came in.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming! I’d have made cookies.” Classic avoidance technique.

  “I don’t need any.” I hadn’t nursed a sweet tooth in years, but it was impossible to convince her. “The alarm won’t work if you don’t turn it on.” The neighborhood was safer than it had been when I was growing up in it. But my dad was dead, and Ma was alone in the house.

  “Come down to the kitchen.” She walked ahead, her pace quick as ever. “Did you hear about Megan? She’s engaged.” Megan was my niece via my sister Carol. That explained the curtains.

  “To anyone I know?” It was unlikely. I’d moved away twenty-one years ago. Only came back for holidays, weddings, and funerals. Most of the houses on our street had turned over to new owners. I recognized very few faces from the old days.

  “His name is Pete Danforth. He’s from New Hampshire. He sells computers.”

  Maybe one of Carol’s kids would come out right. Her oldest son, Jimmy, was an addict, and her middle child, Allison, had been in five colleges and still had no degree. “Megan still teaching?”

  Ma opened a cabinet. “Yes, third grade now.”

  Family photos hung on the walls, a procession of us kids through school, onto jobs and spouses, holding babies, our hair graying. Carol’s hair didn’t gray, because she colored it. Susan’s hair didn’t gray, because her last photo was from junior year of high school.

  “Hey, Ma, why don’t you sit? Take a load off?” I needed to tell her the news, and I wanted it done with, to be on the other side of this awful conversation. She ignored me and set the kettle to boil. Set two teacups on the table. She patted my shoulder as she wandered past, on her way to the silverware drawer.

  “David was asking about you,” she said.

  “Was he?” I hadn’t spoken to my older brother in ages. He’d been elsewhere last Christmas. That was the one time I usually saw him. “How are you feeling, Ma?” She’d complained of hip trouble when I’d seen her in February.

  “Fine, fine.” This from the same woman who’d sat through Carol’s confirmation while her appendix ruptured. I didn’t trust her self-assessments.

  “Hip bothering you?” I prompted.

  She gathered the kettle and poured hot water into the teapot she’d received as a wedding gift. The pot had nicks and chips that spoke of its long service. “It’s worse when it’s cold. Mrs. McDonald had her knee replaced last week. She’s at a rehab facility now.”

  She finally sat down, and I took a breath. “Ma, there’s a cop who’s looking into Susan’s disappearance.” The words fell out of me.

  She stared at the teapot’s four-leaf-clover pattern. “Why? Has there been news?” Her voice rose. In it, I heard what I least wanted to hear: hope.

  “He’s learned something we didn’t know back then.”

  “What?”

  I took her hand, gently. “Susan was pregnant when she left.”

  “Pregnant? By whom?”

  “I don’t know. Lucy confirmed it.”

  “Lucy?” The shock in her voice. Oh, how I wished I could spare her it. Wished I could spare her all of what was coming. But I had to keep going.

  “Lucy said Susan was going to have an abortion. Planned to come home after it.”

  “Susan … pregnant,” she repeated. Her eyes flew to the picture of Susan on the wall. “She was moody around that time, but I thought it was teenage hormones, not …” She paused. “She was sick, twice. Told me she’d eaten bad Chinese. And I fell for it. I was worried about Carol, with her second child. You remember how sick she was back then. Oh, Lord. I was focused on Carol, and poor Susan was carrying a baby too. My poor girl.” Her hands trembled.

  “Oh, Ma.”

  “You have no idea who the father was?” she asked. “Not Andy Moretti, no matter what your father thought, God rest him.”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Well, maybe a new set of eyes will help.” Jesus wept—she sounded like the chief. “It can’t hurt. And, who knows?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” I tried to temper her outlook.

  “My hopes are my own, Michael Patrick Finnegan. Now, I know you did everything you could to find your sister. But if I want to believe she can be found, that’s my own business.” She wiped at a tear that had escaped her eyes, and adjusted her crazy eyeglass frames.

  “I just don’t want you hurt, Ma.”

  She sniffed. “Susan vanished twenty-seven years ago. I don’t expect that she’ll come sailing through that door, smiling. Telling us what wild adventures she’s gotten up to. I’m not foolish. The best I can hope for is a body I can lay to rest near your father and grandparents. That’s all I want. To find her and lay her to rest.”

  Shame made my skin cold. All this time, I’d assumed she’d hoped we’d find her alive. She knew better. She’d been on this planet for seventy-four years, most of them in a neighborhood where bad things happened and where there was a code: you didn’t talk to the police. It made my early days on the force interesting. But she’d seen it—organized crime, the busing crisis, the rise and fall of drug dealers—and she’d survived it, along with the loss of her youngest child and her husband.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She reached for me. The back of her hand was a road map of ropy veins and age spots. Her fingers caressed my knuckles. “You’re a good boy, Mikey. None of this was your fault.”

  I didn’t believe it. I could’ve called in Susan’s disappearance that first day. Ma had asked, had pleaded. But Dad had sided with me. What if it was a repeat of the last time? He knew what it would mean for me at the station. As if it mattered. As if my super would’ve cared all that much. Lord knows, I’d seen cops use their influence for things more trivial than a missing sibling.

  “An abortion,” she whispered. “Where would she have gone?”

  I didn’t tell her about the Combat Zone, the area of Boston known back then for pimps, drugs, and nudie flicks. No need to add that image to her mind.

  She said, “Have some tea.” I was a coffee guy. But I’d drink it down, if it would make her happy. “So, when will this policeman be showing up?” She took a sip of her tea.

  “Not sure.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s my boss.”

  “The gay one?” She leaned forward. “I’ll get to meet him?”

  “Please don’t call him ‘the gay one.’” God, he’d hate that.

  She put her hand to her chest
. “As if I would. I’m so interested to meet him. He’s from New York, isn’t he?” Aging or not, her mind was a steel trap. “I wonder if he knows the Kilcunneys. They moved there back in ’89 or was it ’90? Yes, it was 1990. It was right after the roof got repaired.”

  My fears morphed. No longer worried about my mother’s heartbreak, I was concerned with how she would interact with the chief.

  “Does he have a boyfriend? Oh, stop.” She flapped her hands at me. “I’m not going to ask him that. I’m just curious.”

  “We don’t discuss his love life.”

  “Probably doesn’t ever talk about it. Poor dear.” Poor dear? “Reminds me of Mr. Sheehan.”

  “Mr. Sheehan.” Why did I know that name?

  “Your history teacher. Susan’s, too. Lovely man. Used to volunteer at the nursing home. Beautiful tenor voice.”

  “He was gay?”

  “Of course. Got the stuffing kicked out of him one Thanksgiving. His attackers told him to get out. They said they didn’t want a ‘fairy’ destroying the neighborhood. They sent him to the hospital with two broken ribs.”

  “Who did?”

  “Adam McKee and his gang.”

  “I never knew that.” Mr. Sheehan. Now I remembered. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, long after they fell out fashion. He liked to quote dead presidents. He’d been a good teacher. “Did he leave?”

  She gave me a grim smile. “Wasn’t safe for him to stay. Think he moved back west, where he was from.” She set her teacup down. “You look tired.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Not always. Just the past ten years.”

  That cracked a smile. She always knew how. “Too many ex-wives,” I said.

  “I don’t know why you married so often.” She refilled her teacup. “You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Einstein.” Ma was the only other person who read books like I did. Well, Susan had, too.

  “Einstein, huh? Why you gonna listen to a dummy like him?”

  She swatted my hand and laughed. Her crazy blue frames moved with each short ha!

  “You should visit more often,” she said.

  True, but my heart couldn’t bear it. Being in this house, with that picture of Susan from junior year, rebuking me from the wall. There were no pictures of her aging past sixteen, no photographs of her in a white gown or holding jolly bald babies. It was my fault.

  No, my heart couldn’t bear it. But I’d never tell her that.

  CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

  MONDAY, MAY 24, 1999

  0750 HOURS

  Matt ate toast so dark it verged on charred. Its crunch set my teeth on edge. I sipped my coffee and asked, “You going into work?” It was nearly 8:00 a.m. He was usually out of the house by now, having run and done his weights set. This morning he’d lain in bed until I poked him awake.

  “I’m going in a little late. Got to stop at my place first. You?” he asked.

  “Headed to the station. Need to check in on a case.”

  “The body in the woods?”

  “Yeah, that,” I said, keeping my promise to Finny not to discuss his sister. I glanced out the window. Clouds turned the world gray and promised rain. The phone rang. Matt snorted. “You’ve got to get a phone that wasn’t designed for the blind.” The phone had oversized numbers, a legacy from my house’s former elderly owner.

  “Why?” I asked, before taking the call.

  “Hi, Thomas.” Damien Saunders greeted me. This was a surprise. I glanced behind me. Matt stood, finishing his toast.

  “Hi,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Good, thanks. I hear your men found a body in the woods. Must be causing quite a stir.”

  “Now everyone thinks the ghost stories are true.”

  “A ghost? How wonderful. Idyll really does have everything.”

  “Seems like it.” Matt left the room, humming.

  “By the by, I wondered how your romantic gesture went,” he asked.

  “The flowers?”

  Matt walked into the living room, his duffel on his shoulder. He swiped up his cards. He’d insisted on more poker lessons last night and had wanted to play with his own deck. I lowered my voice. “They were a hit.” I wanted to tell him how I’d sent them to Matt’s office, and how he’d endured some whistles and high-fives, along with some dirty looks. But I didn’t feel right spilling all that with Matt seven feet away.

  Matt grabbed his jacket and mouthed, “Almost done?” He tapped his watch.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Oh, of course. Don’t mean to keep you. Good-bye, Thomas.”

  “Bye.” I hung up the phone and said, “Taking off?” to Matt.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Dix,” I said. “Giving an update on the clamshell case.”

  “Thought you told me that was all sorted.”

  “It is, but the neighbors are still upset. Complain the smell hasn’t gone yet.”

  Matt glanced at the phone and frowned. “Buy ’em some air fresheners.” He touched my cheek and said, “Be a good boy, huh?”

  “Where’s the fun in that? See you tonight?”

  “Can’t. I told my brother I’d help him install his new home-entertainment system. He’s clueless when it comes to tech.”

  “Luis?” He had two brothers and a sister.

  “He promised his wife would make me pastelón.”

  Outside, the skies had grown darker. Rain meant the last of the pollen would be washed away at last. Matt waved before he hopped into his SUV. A minute later, I got in my car and headed for the station to debrief with Wright.

  When I got to work, the men were all aflutter about the exercise plan. One said, “Drop and give me twenty!” as I passed. I stopped and looked for the offender. The laughter dried up under my stare. Good.

  Detective Wright came to my office later. He stopped and rubbed his shin. “Ow.”

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  He took his hand from his leg. “Banged my leg this morning. Stupid toy car was on the floor. I rolled onto it and pitched forward. My shin collided with the coffee table.”

  “And you want another kid,” I said. Three kids meant more toys to trip over.

  “Hey! Who told you?”

  Oops. “No one. I overheard you talking. Congratulations.”

  He looked as if he was examining my kind words for flaws. “Thanks.”

  Maybe we should skip the small talk. “We need to figure out where Susan went for her abortion.”

  “Do we know anything?” he asked.

  “Combat Zone.”

  “Rough area, back then.”

  “Her boyfriend might know where she went.”

  “Except no one knows who the boyfriend is,” he pointed out.

  “I have a few notes on guys who were suspected of being involved, and then rejected.”

  “Let me see the original notes,” he said.

  “They’re in your car trunk. Two boxes.”

  “What? How?”

  “You’re kind of careless with your keys, Detective. Must be Idyll rubbing off on you.” I’d swiped the keys from his desk when he went to the restroom ten minutes ago. It had taken only a few minutes to put the boxes in his trunk.

  “I’ll find out who she was seeing,” he said, his voice all confidence.

  I almost asked how he thought he could pull that off, where other, more senior detectives from the Boston Police Department had failed. Not to mention myself. And then I realized how Finny must’ve felt when I snatched his sister’s case and discovered she was pregnant. How much it must’ve hurt to feel that he’d failed her. He’d never found her, and he never even knew why she left.

  “Find the baby daddy,” I said, “And I’ll buy you a drink.”

  He shook his head and said, “Uh-uh. I find the baby daddy, and you
buy me a bottle.”

  “Deal.” I stuck out my hand. He eyed it. Good God. Did he think he’d catch something if he touched me? “Cooties cost extra,” I told him. Then I dropped my hand to my side and said, “Keep me updated on the Colleen case, yeah? Mayor is already breathing down my neck.”

  He muttered about the mayor’s priorities and exited my office.

  Good. Let him chase down the phantom father of Susan’s baby. I had other plans. An ace up my sleeve. Detective Lawrence Carmichael, from my old precinct. He’d worked Homicide, but before he suited up for the majors, he worked Vice. Some of his favorite stories were about abortionists he’d put out of business. Detective Carmichael was hardcore Catholic, and he believed he was saving souls by locking up men with scalpels. Kind of interesting since he also couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and had likely benefitted from such doctors.

  When I called my old precinct’s number, I was surprised when they put me straight through to him. Carmichael had been on the verge of retirement when I’d left, in 1996. Some cops have to be carried out, feet first. Looks like he’d be one.

  “Detective Carmichael, Homicide,” he barked. The sound of that sharp New York bite brought him to my eyes. Too-wide tie, thinning hair, and eyes with pouches that spoke of poor sleep.

  “Hey, Lawrence, it’s Tommy. Tommy Lynch.”

  “Tommy,” he said. “This is mighty unexpected.”

  “How you doin’? How ya been?” I asked, with each word my newly adopted Idyll speech patterns chipping off like a poorly applied coat of paint.

  “Fantastic. Staring down the barrel of retirement, and my prostate is giving me hell.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Listen, you worked Vice back in the sixties and seventies. Busted a lot of backdoor clinics, yeah?”

  “Sure did. Must’ve put twenty of them bastards into jail. Those were the days.”

  “I hear that. Look, I’ve got a stone-cold missing persons case out of Boston, and it looks like the girl went to see a doctor. I wondered—”

  “They kick you off the force down there?” he asked.

  “What? No. I—”