Lucy turned the machine on and waited for it to warm up, listening to the quiet whir as she stared out the window. She couldn’t believe it, Donovan was dead. How? And how on earth had one of her knives ended up killing him?
A siren broke into her thoughts as a black and white squad car drove down Salem Street and past the restaurant windows. Is that related to Donovan? Is his body still at the church on the next street over? She shuddered at the thought.
The machine finally beeped, indicating it was ready. She grabbed two of the disposable cups from under the counter and brewed the coffee into them. Her customers received their espresso and coffee in white china cups, but Lucy kept disposable ones underneath the bar for her staff. They preferred it anyway, since they could take the coffee with them when they left at the end of the night.
She grabbed the cups and made her way back to the office, where Officer Fitz was waiting for her, leaning against the door jamb.
“Listen, Lucy, I have to ask. Do you know how Mr. Fagan ended up being stabbed with a knife from your restaurant?” He looked directly at her as he took the coffee from her.
“Officer Fitz, I honestly have no idea. He could have taken it with him, I suppose? I don’t know why he would, though.” She blew on the coffee, and swirled it around in the cup, trying to cool it off.
“Is it possible someone here had a problem with him? Could another of the employees have followed him last night? Maybe a dispute over...tips or something?”
“Officer, no. My employees don’t squabble over tips. Most of them have worked here for at least a decade, if not two. Besides, the tips go through me. The servers don’t share among themselves, I take the tip out for the kitchen and add it on to everyone’s paychecks myself.” Lucy felt her voice getting louder as she spoke. “Besides, I’ve known most of these people since I was a teenager. Not one of them is capable of such a...such an awful thing.”
“Okay, okay, I believe you!” Office Fitz raised his hands in mock defeat, sloshing his coffee over the rim of the cup. He slurped the spilled coffee off his hand and smiled at her. “Listen, I really do believe you. But the fact is, a man is dead and I have to find out why. And I know you knew him well, and I’m sorry to have to put you through this.”
He leaned against the door jamb again, still smiling at her. Lucy didn’t like how comfortable he looked, drinking coffee and relaxing in her office.
Something occurred to Lucy. “Office Fitz, all of my employees have lockers downstairs in the basement. There might be something in there that could point you in the right direction to contact his family. Would you like to go downstairs and check?” she offered.
“Yes, definitely. That could be really helpful. Can we go right now?” he asked.
“Follow me.” Lucy pivoted into the stairwell directly next to the office door. She went down the stairs, flicking the light switch at the top as she went. She didn’t check behind her to see if the officer was following.
They reached the bottom of the stairs where Lucy flicked the last light switch, illuminating the entire room. In front of them, across the room, was a bank of lockers that Lucy’s father had purchased from a Catholic school that was shutting down back in the nineties. To the left was the stone foundation of the building, blank except for a small window high up in the center that opened into the street. Off to the right was another doorway that led to the wine cellar.
Lucy crossed the flagstone floor, Officer Fitz close behind. “Do you know which is his locker?” the officer asked.
“Of course, Officer Fitz. You seem to keep forgetting the fact that most of these people have been here since my father ran the restaurant. Some of them longer than I’ve been alive. Things don’t change too often around here.”
Lucy reached the lockers and immediately pinpointed the larger one in the middle, with ‘Donny’ scrawled on it in permanent marker. Someone had written it years ago; Lucy didn’t even know who. She opened the locker with one hand and stepped back so Officer Fitz could see inside.
“No locks? Interesting,” he observed as he peered inside.
“Officer, yet again, no secrets around here. My employees are closer to siblings than to coworkers. They don’t lock their lockers.” Lucy shook her head at the officer’s unwillingness to accept what she was saying.
The locker was almost empty. A pair of dress shoes, well worn, sat on the bottom shelf, with a something tucked behind them. It was a bright blue and purple ball cap. It had a logo on it, a baseball with two bats crossed behind it and a baseball player’s helmet perched jauntily on the ball. On the back, where the hat was adjustable, the words ‘Redmond, MA’ were embroidered.
Redmond? Interesting, Lucy thought. Redmond was a town south of Boston, in an area called the South Shore, famous for its beaches and seafood.
“Damn,” muttered the officer as he used the tip of his pen to move the hat and shoes around. “Nothing in here that will help.”
He straightened and turned back towards the stairs. “Oh well,” he said, “Thank you for bringing me down here, I really appreciate it.”
They started back up the stairs together. As they reached the top, Lucy started to speak.
“Officer, is there anything else I can help you with? I’d like to get dressed and get started with my day. I have to figure out how to tell my staff that Donovan is dead, and I have to find someone to cover his shift tonight. In fact, I guess I have to get someone to cover all of his shifts.” That probably sounded a little callous, Lucy thought. Oh well. I’ll never see this guy again.
“That’ll be it for now, ma’am. Thank you very much for the assistance. We’ll try to get in touch with his aunt. If needed, is there a good number I can reach you at?” the officer asked.
Lucy stepped into the office and grabbed one of her business cards from her desk. “Here you are, Officer. Email, phone, everything is on there. You also know where I live.” She handed over the card and crossed her arms, waiting for him to leave.
“Thanks very much. Have a good day. I’ll be in touch regarding any developments.” With that, Office Fitz headed towards the back door where they had entered, dropping his now-empty coffee cup in one of the trash barrels in the dishroom.
Lucy sighed and locked up the door to her office again. She waited until the officer had left before heading out the back door herself and up to her apartment.
She sat back down on the couch and sighed. Donovan, dead? What do I even do? she wondered.
Lucy picked up the phone and dialed, tapping her fingers against her pajama-clad thigh while it rang. Finally, an answer on the other end. She spoke, “Ally? I need you to come over.”
Chapter 3
By five o’clock, the dinner service was starting to pick up. Lucy and Ally had made the announcement earlier, before the restaurant opened. They gathered all the staff in the dining room, and broke the news while the staff ate together. Every mid-afternoon, before the restaurant opened, Ally pulled together a meal for the staff, and they all ate out in the dining room. It was a great way for the staff to bond and keep close, and it was also a great time to make announcements. Usually, it was reminders about using the time clock and remembering to scrape the crumbs off of tables between courses, but today the announcement about Donovan was dark. The staff had reacted with gasps and tears, but as Lucy spoke to them, she couldn’t help but remember Office Fitz’s words. Did anyone look like they weren’t surprised by the news? She hated that he had forced her to wonder such awful things about her staff.
Now that the restaurant was open, Lucy’s mind was caught in thoughts of Donovan’s death. She was standing behind the bar, watching her staff as they worked. They didn’t like it when she was on the floor, but it was good to remind them all she was paying attention. A movement caught the corner of her eye; one of the servers was waving her over. She made her way across the room, turning sideways to slide between tables and pasting a smile on her face. The server who had waved was Janice, another long-time employee. Lucy r
ecognized the couple that she was standing with, the Morton’s. They were an older couple who came in every Sunday after church and a stroll along the waterfront. Damn, Lucy thought, I wonder if they go to St. Mark’s.
“Mr. and Mrs. Morton, welcome! How is everything tasting today?” Lucy raised her voice a little, knowing that the husband was a little hard of hearing.
“Everything is excellent, Lucy, dear, as usual. We were wondering, though, where is Donovan? He didn’t tell us he was taking time off.” Mrs. Morton asked, with a concerned look on her face.
Oh man, Lucy thought. She had expected questions from the customers, but not so soon. It hadn’t even been a day. She smiled a little wider and bent down a little bit, so she was closer to eye level with the couple.
“Mrs. Morton, I have some terrible news. I hate to have to tell you this, but Donovan passed away last night. He...he’s gone.”
Mrs. Morton gasped while Mr. Morton choked on a sip of his wine. “What? What happened? Oh my goodness. Was he ill?” Mr. Morton spoke now, his first words since Lucy had approached. He was always the quieter of the two.
“He wasn’t ill. The police don’t know exactly what happened yet, but they think it was foul play. He was stabbed.” Lucy wasn’t sure, exactly, if she should be sharing so many of the details that she had learned from Officer Fitz, but he hadn’t told her to keep them quiet. Besides, she had told everything to Ally, so the entire kitchen staff would know all the details by now and every restaurant employee in Boston’s North End would know them by morning.
“How horrible. How truly dreadful. I am so sorry for your loss, Lucy. We will miss him. Donovan was always so good to us.” Mrs. Morton used her napkin to dab a tear from her eye.
Oh, settle down, Mrs. Morton. You only knew him as a handsome man with a fake Italian accent who gave you too many complimentary glasses of white wine, Lucy thought to herself. Out loud, she spoke, thanking Mrs. Morton for her kind words and moving away from the table as quickly as she could. She returned to her spot behind the bar, knowing that any minute the tourists would arrive and there would be a line out the door.
Chapter 4
Lucy was sitting again, in her office chair, her nightly ritual. She could hear the servers outside, jostling around and shuffling their receipts and sales reports together for her, but they were more subdued than usual. Many of them had looked up to Donovan, with his easy-going ways and steady demeanor. Everyone else had gone home, and so the servers were the only staff left in the restaurant, aside from a few dishwashers who were working on cleaning the floors. The servers had to stay until their last tables left and then flip the restaurant and get it ready for the following night. They would put out the linens and set the tables, put the bottles of white wine in the wine coolers under the server stations, refill the salt and pepper shakers, everything it took to get the restaurant ready to open again. However, this time they did it with a little more energy—tomorrow was Monday, the day the restaurant was closed and so everyone’s day off.
Intuitively Lucy stood up and stepped outside the office. “Hey guys?” she called out. The servers all stopped what they were doing and looked at her expectantly. “Hey guys, I just wanted to say thank you for all of your hard work. I know it was a tough night without Donovan. Everyone really stepped up and I really appreciate it. I know we’re all going to miss Donovan, and it’s going to be hard to move forward without him. He was really one of the few who kept this place going.” She paused and swallowed hard, feeling tears start to prick behind her eyes.
“But we have to keep going, and we have to remember Donovan. We have to remember how much he loved this place and carry that love forward with us, and use it to remember him.” She tried her best to smile at everyone and waved. “Now go home! We had a great night and tomorrow is Monday…have a great day off, everyone.” Lucy went back in to the office and sat down, collecting the server’s papers and stacking them up in front of her. The kitchen got quieter as the last of the employees left for the evening. Ally had left earlier, so Lucy was all alone in the office. Once all the servers had left, she reached out and switched on the portable radio that sat on the desk between her computer and Ally’s. This was her favorite time of the night, when the rest of the world was asleep and she was all alone to finally get some work done.
Close to two a.m., Lucy leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Finally done. She’d had an early start this morning, thanks to Office Fitz, and was exhausted. She considered making another cup of coffee. No, she thought, if I can’t remember how many cups I’ve had today I probably shouldn’t have another. Her eyes still closed, her mind started to wander, remembering her last conversation with Donovan. He had seemed calm, relaxed, certainly not a man involved in something that was about to get him murdered. Lucy’s thoughts drifted back over the years she had known Donovan, and how hard they had both worked to get this restaurant on the map, until she fell asleep right there in her desk chair.
Crash! Lucy woke with a start and opened her eyes. What was that noise? She rubbed her eyes and shifted around in the chair, trying to loosen up her stiff back. Ugh, why do I always fall asleep in this damn chair? she thought to herself. Lucy listened, but didn’t hear anything else. The noise must have been a part of whatever she was dreaming about.
Lucy got up and left the office, locking the door behind her. She walked over towards the back door, pausing as she passed the stairs down to the basement, what was that light down there? Had one of the servers left the basement light on again? They all knew the rule, last one to leave turns out the light. Oh well, Lucy thought, sure, guys, I’ll get it, no problem. She started to head down the stairs, ignoring the loud creaks as the treads protested against her weight. As the noise rang out, all of a sudden the light she could see over near the lockers flickered and shook, almost like it had been moved. At the same time, Lucy noticed something that looked wrong. There was a shadow over near the corner where there shouldn’t be anything at all.
Lucy took another step downwards, and the light and the shadow both took off towards the back wall, where there was a window in the upper part that opened out to the street.
“Hey, stop!” Lucy shouted as she ran down the stairs. What she would do if they did stop, she had no idea. “Stop, get back here!” She got to the bottom of the stairs and took off across the room just as the shadow, which was now looking more and more like a person, got to the window. They jumped up and grabbed the sill, pulling themselves through with surprising athleticism for someone so tall. Lucy got to the window just as they stood up outside and took off down the street.
“Goddamn it!” Lucy cursed out loud to an empty room. What had they been after? The lockers were down here, but so was all the wine for the restaurant - some bottles worth thousands of dollars. Lucy turned around and surveyed the room, looking for anything out of place. The door to the wine cellar looked just fine, still locked like she had left it after dinner service.
The lockers, however, were another story. Half of them hung open, and Donovan’s locker was missing its door altogether. A pair of bolt cutters lay abandoned on the floor where the intruder must have dropped them. Maybe that had been the noise that awakened Lucy. The floor under the window shimmered with shattered glass.
Shit, she thought. What did they get? She surveyed the lockers. Most of them still seemed full, or at least, they still had plenty of things in them. She touched the corner of Donovan’s nearly empty locker. I should pack up his things and take them upstairs.
Lucy looked again at the nearly empty locker. Wait a second. The only thing in Donovan’s locker was the pair of dress shoes she had noticed that morning. The hat, the one with the eye-catching logo and bright colors, was missing. Weird, Lucy thought. Who on earth would steal a ratty old baseball cap, but leave the nice-looking shoes?
Suddenly, a thought popped into Lucy’s head. Damn. The cops are going to come back. Twice in one day. What are the neighbors going to think?
Chapter 5
>
“Hello again, ma’a…I mean, Lucy.” Office Fitz smiled as he greeted Lucy. This time, he wasn’t alone. He was accompanied by another officer in a uniform, and a man in a suit. “Lucy, these are my colleagues, Officer Simmons and Detective Carter. Detective Carter is handling Donovan’s case. Since these two incidents seem related, he’ll be investigating the break-in as well. Officer Simmons is here to assist, and I came along to make all the introductions.”
Officer Simmons was tall and lanky, with blonde hair. He was pale, with a long face and a sharp nose. His ill-fitting uniform was tucked into his pants and cinched tight with a dark belt.
Detective Carter was the total opposite of the officer he stood next to. He was short and round, with dark hair and a red face. He tugged at the red and blue striped tie around his neck, loosening it as he read the notebook in his other hand. Lucy recognized it as the notebook that Officer Fitz had been taking notes in this morning.
“Ms. Moretti, Officer Fitz here has briefed me on the conversation you had this morning. I’m very sorry for your loss.” Detective Carter paused and sniffled before continuing. “Can you tell me what you saw this evening during the break-in?” He handed Officer Fitz’s notebook back as he spoke,
Lucy took a deep breath. “Well, detective, it was right around two, maybe two fifteen this morning. I was sitting here, in my office. To be honest, I was sleeping.”
At this, Officer Fitz, standing behind the detective, smiled. “I heard this loud noise from the basement, maybe the window breaking, and I started to go downstairs. Whoever it was heard me coming and ran towards the window. I tried to stop them, I don’t know why, and they grabbed the windowsill, and climbed out. I didn’t see who it was.”
Murder at St. Mark's Page 2
