The Widow's Mate

by Ralph McInerny

  5

  Brenda Kelly sat behind the counter that divided the reception area at Kruikshank and Sharp Investments from the financial gambling that went on behind her over phones and computers. Her head just cleared the counter, and she felt like John the Baptist after the dance, her body invisible to people coming in, as she answered the phone and dealt with the walk-ins. Some clients liked to just come in and sit, watching the parade of numbers that represented their security. The only rule of investing Brenda had learned when she worked for Wallace Flanagan was buy low and hang on. Buying and selling daily was for the big boys. The market itself took care of the small investor, lifting his boat with all the others. Brenda herself put her money exclusively into mutual funds and tax-free municipals. That was her advice to investors, which explained why she had ended up as a high-level receptionist. Kruikshank and Sharp liked lots of daily transactions, which spelled prosperity for the firm if not always for its clients.

  “It was Mr. Flanagan’s rule,” she had replied when her conservative approach was criticized by Mr. Sharp.

  Sharp’s forehead wrinkled. This was the ship Wally Flanagan had deserted to go into business for himself. After his disappearance, K&S inherited his clients, and Brenda as well. “You’re not working for Flanagan now,” Sharp said. He had a perpetual smile, but it did not radiate any cheer. Maybe he had gas on his tummy.

  By mutual agreement, she had been put at the reception desk. Among other things, she accepted checks that people brought in to add to their account and gave them a receipt, ignoring the phone while she was helping them. Her own smile, she was certain, radiated cheer.

  It was a boring job, she had no illusions about that, but she was single, without much of a family since her parents passed away, and like the clients of K&S her thoughts were on a nebulous future when she would retire and enjoy the fruits of her cautious investments. Florida? She hated Florida. Just somewhere sunny without a lot of bugs. Sometimes she thought she was thinking of heaven rather than retirement.

  Sylvia Beach, her closest friend at Flanagan’s, had not made the move to K&S, and that made Brenda the expert on the disappearance of her old boss. Not that she knew much more than anyone else, but over lunch with the other girls she could make a few facts go a long way.

  “It had to be another woman.”

  Brenda smiled enigmatically.

  “But his wife is beautiful!”

  “What has beauty ever done for me?” asked Laura, presumably a joke. Laura’s teeth rested on her lower lips; she wore huge out-of-style glasses and piled her hair in a kind of pyramid atop her narrow head.

  Brenda wondered what Sylvia would have said if she had been in on such conversations. Of course, that had been when Brenda first came to K&S, when the disappearance of Wally Flanagan was a hot topic. Time passed, and Wally was forgotten, which was maybe what he had wanted when he went away. Sylvia had been devastated. There had been something between Wally Flanagan and Sylvia, something that went beyond his restless generic interest in every presentable woman in the office. But Sylvia had decided to leave Flanagan Investments before K&S took it over. Like Wally, she seemed just to disappear.

  The afternoon Lieutenant Horvath came in the door, looked around, and then advanced on the reception desk, Brenda knew immediately who he was. The years hadn’t changed him much.

  “Do you remember me?” he asked.

  “Officer Horvath.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  Brenda gave him a salute.

  “You worked with Wally Flanagan.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where can we talk?”

  “We’re talking.”

  Horvath looked beyond her at the busy advisors, most with headsets so they could talk with clients and operate the computer at the same time. “Can you take a break?”

  Brenda took a break and led him down a hallway to the lunchroom. She realized that she had been expecting another such visit since the discovery of Wally’s body. She drew a cup of coffee for him and hot water for herself. When they sat, she began to dip a tea bag in the water and waited.

  “This is where Wally Flanagan got his start, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ve heard about him, haven’t you?”

  “I was at the funeral.”

  “Strange case. When he disappeared, there weren’t many leads, and we didn’t follow up on all those we had.”

  “Oh.”

  “What was that other girl’s name?”

  Girl? Well, she and Sylvia had been girls back then. “And I thought you were interested in me.”

  “I’m a married man.” His expression didn’t change. “But then Wally was a married man, too.”

  She nodded.

  “Sylvia Beach,” he said. He must have remembered her name all along. “There was some indication of something going on between her and Wally.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “You, for one.”

  “I did not!”

  “Not in so many words, but the suggestion was there.”

  “Wallace Flanagan was a very friendly man.”

  “Does the name Sandra Bochenski mean anything to you?”

  Brenda sipped her tea. Lukewarm. She would put a complaining note in the suggestion box. “No.”

  “Wally was having an affair with her. They planned to run away to California.”

  “No!”

  “Sandra Bochenski?” He looked at her to see if the name rang a bell now.

  “Why wasn’t that made known at the time?”

  “We didn’t know it then.”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  He explained it to her. Wally Flanagan disappeared, and then years later his body was found in a cement mixer at his father’s place of business. A dead body is of more interest than someone’s disappearance. “There are a lot of unaccounted-for years, and they could explain how he ended up in a cement mixer.”

  Brenda shuddered. She wished he would stop mentioning that. She’d rather think of Wally as he had been when she worked for him, a vibrant, good-looking man, even if he had preferred Sylvia to her. Frankly, the whole thing sounded pointless to Brenda. What good would it do if the police found out where Wally Flanagan had been between the time he disappeared and the discovery of his body, or parts of it, in a cement mixer?

  “I was looking over the record of the interviews we did with you back then…”

  “They were recorded!”

  “These are the notes we turn in while we’re working on a case. Did you know cops always end their day writing reports?”

  “And you keep them all?”

  “They’re all on the computer now.”

  “That’s spooky.”

  Horvath neither agreed nor disagreed, but Brenda felt that he liked the thought of those records no more than she did.

  “So you don’t know Sandra Bochenski. Is Sylvia Beach working here, too?”

  “Why do you ask questions you already know the answers to?”

  “To see if the answers you give are true.”

  “No, Sylvia Beach does not work here. She didn’t make the move when K&S took over Flanagan Investments. In fact, she quit before the move was made.”

  “What was going on between her and Wally?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Good girl. Let me tell you a little secret. Wally and I were kids together, same school, same class, same neighborhood almost. His wife was also in our class. This is more than professional curiosity for me.”

  She believed him. Not that the tone of his voice changed, or his expression. Maybe he always told the truth. It was clear to Brenda that when he spoke of Melissa Flanagan, something important from when he was a kid was involved. It was a strange thought, that a police investigation could have such personal meaning. Then it occurred to Brenda that she had a personal stake as well. She had worked for Wally Flanagan; she knew his wife, who had dropped by the office infrequ
ently and insisted on being introduced to everybody. The trouble was that this happened each time, and she didn’t remember those she had already met. Cy Horvath asked her again if she had ever heard of Sandra Bochenski.

  “There was something between her and Wally?”

  “She thought they were running off to California together.”

  “Maybe I did hear about her. Not by name, but Sylvia was worried. I don’t know what she expected, from a guy like Wally. Did she think he was going to leave his wife, his business, everything?”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “Sylvia? No.”

  After he left, Brenda went back to her desk, checked out a few sites on the computer, and then, just for the fun of it, checked the list of K&S clients. There it was, Sylvia Beach. The address given was in northern Minnesota, Garrison, wherever that was. There was a phone number, too. Brenda dialed it, and far off in northern Minnesota a phone rang—but then there was a squeal and a recorded message. This number has been disconnected. Hmm.

  When she reviewed Sylvia’s account, she learned that there had been fairly frequent transactions years ago, but then the account seemed to grow inactive. It continued to earn, of course. The question was, where were the quarterly reports sent? There was an e-mail alternative to snail mail. Brenda tapped out a message. Sheila! Greetings from Kruikshank and Sharpe. How long has it been? Drop me a line. Brenda K. But she felt as though she was the one dropping a line into unknown waters.

  6

  “Come on along, Boleslaw,” Luke said. “Maud and I are going for a beer.”

  “Is it okay?” Boleslaw seemed to think that he was confined to the building. Not that he could get very far by himself in his wheelchair.

  “Of course it’s okay,” Maud said, getting behind the chair and wheeling it toward the doors.

  Bringing Boleslaw along was Luke’s buffer against having to talk with Maud about yesterday when he had stumbled into the building. The sight of Maud made him want to blurt the whole thing out, but he wouldn’t have made much sense if he had.

  “Jogging!” she had cried, and it was like a punch line. She helped him to the elevator and into his room and told him to get into the shower.

  “I’m not that kind of date.”

  “Can you undress by yourself?”

  “Shame on you.”

  She pushed him into the bathroom and closed the door. He got out of his clothes, holding them up to the light to see if there were any signs of what he had just been through in Fox River. Under the shower, he let the water pound against him, keeping his eyes open so he could control his memories. He thought he heard a phone ringing, but then he always heard phones ringing when he was in the shower.

  Now Maud wheeled Boleslaw up the street to their dive, maneuvering him through the oncoming flow of pedestrians. The door of the bar was narrow, and Luke had to get in front and lift the chair to get it inside. Bolelaw’s eyes lit up at the sight of the bar, the illumined signs, the array of bottles on shelves behind it. Maud moved a chair and wheeled him up to a table and asked what he wanted.

  “A boilermaker.”

  “Sounds good.”

  It did sound good. Luke ordered one, too, but Maud stuck with just beer.

  After he put away his shot and washed it down with a swallow of beer, Boleslaw brightened. “I’m not supposed to drink.”

  “Who said so?”

  “The doctors.”

  “Are they afraid it’ll shorten your life?” Maud punched the old man’s arm. What was Boleslaw, eighty? Somewhere in there.

  “You’re in a wheelchair, not on the wagon,” Luke said. Boleslaw made him feel young.

  The Cubs were on, and Maud changed the position of Boleslaw’s chair so he could watch the game. That put her next to Luke.

  “Did you call Horvath?” she asked.

  “Call him what?”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Meaning you didn’t.”

  “No, and he didn’t call back.”

  “How would you know?”

  It was the kind of banter with Maud he loved, but now it seemed spoiled by what had happened in the apartment over the garage. The story had been in the Chicago Tribune that morning. When he saw it, he gave Maud the sports page and then put the front section behind his back.

  There was a protest from Boleslaw. The bartender had changed the channel to the news mid-inning. Maud got up to tell the bartender to get the damned game back, but then she just stood there, looking at the screen. It was a story about the body found in a garage apartment in Fox River. She turned and looked at Luke.

  “Later.”

  She sat down, still staring at him. He reached out to put his hand on her arm, but she pulled away. “Jogging!”

  Well, he had run back to his car and gotten the hell out of there. It was unnerving to have Maud staring at him like that. He said again, “Later.”

  “Now.”

  The batender flipped the game back on, and Boleslaw was distracted. Luke hunched toward Maud and told her what had happened. How easy it was once he started.

  Yesterday, after Melissa left, having told him she had let Greg Packer use the garage apartment, Luke seethed. He shed Maud and took the elevator to the garage to get his car. He couldn’t even remember the drive to Fox River, he was so damned mad. When he pulled into the driveway, he half expected to see Greg shooting baskets, but there was no one in sight. He got out of his car and slammed the door, hard, and then went around the back of the garage. The stairway door was open, and it seemed an insult, as if the guy couldn’t even close a door. The light in the stairway was on, another sign of indifference. There was a wrench halfway up the stairs; he could have stepped on it and lost his balance, broken his neck. Luke picked it up and went the rest of the way up the stairs. The door of the apartment was open, too, the son of a gun, air-conditioning the world at Luke’s expense. Then he actually stumbled on the body.

  He danced backward when he saw that it was Packer, eyes open but seeing nothing. His head lay in a pool of blood. Seeing a dead body in a funeral parlor, ready for viewing, was one thing, but this was a real shock. How long did he stand there, staring at the body of the guy he had driven here to throw out of this apartment? He must have thought of calling the police, he must have thought of warning Melissa, but what he did was turn and thunder back down the stairs and outside, where he realized that the wrench he was still carrying was smeared with blood. He hurled it into the weeds behind the compost heap. Then he was running down the drive to his car.

  On the way back to the Loop, he thought of Melissa. Might she go up to the apartment? Good God, she mustn’t get the shock he had. He should call her, but he couldn’t drive and use a cell phone at the same time. Then caution, caution and fear, set in. He could hear himself ranting to Melissa that he would throw Packer out of the garage apartment. Not that she would mention that to anyone, not now, not after she learned what had happened to Packer.

  When he got back to his building and pulled into the basement garage, he turned off the motor and sat behind the wheel for five minutes, trying to believe that he hadn’t seen what he had seen. Then he took the elevator, holding his breath when the doors opened in the lobby—but no one got in, the doors closed, and he rose to his apartment. He changed to tennis shoes, again took the elevator to the basement, and then got outside and began to run. He did it in little bursts, ten, twenty yards, then walking, every once in a while stopping to huff and puff. How long had it been since he had run? What the hell was he doing running now? Nothing he did made a lot of sense. Still, he kept up his imitation of jogging for a couple of blocks, then turned and struggled back to the building. He came through the revolving doors to find Maud, who told him he needed a shower.

  “So I took a shower,” he said to her in the bar, with Boleslaw on his second boilermaker and deep in the game.

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “No.”

  “Was your daughter at home?”

  “She’s
my daughter-in-law.”

  “Okay, was your daughter-in-law home?”

  “Maud, I should have told her.”

  “Why did Horvath call?”

  “What should I do?”

  She sipped her beer. She was thinking. “That’s the whole story?”

  “So help me God.”

  “Do you have your phone? Call Horvath.”

  “What’s his number?”

  “I wrote it down. It’s on a slip next to your phone in your apartment.”

  “When we go back. I need another boilermaker.”

  “So do I.”

  Boleslaw had a third, but then Maud was his designated driver.

  Later, in Luke’s apartment, Maud stayed with him while he called Horvath.

  7

  Sylvia Beach wore her hair in a crew cut, dyed blond, and nuts to Marco, she liked it. She suspected he did, too, though he grumbled that if he had wanted a boyfriend he would have shot himself. Macho, macho, but that was his great attraction. Sylvia had taken care of her body, and no one was going to mistake her for a boy. Marco hadn’t had two consecutive thoughts in his life, at least not ones he would put into words, and that was fine with Sylvia. She’d had her fill of brooding men.

  Her first impulse when she got the e-mail from Brenda Kelly was to ignore it. She didn’t erase it, though, and went back and read it a couple of times. Ever since she returned to Fox River, she had thought from time to time about looking up old friends, and, of course, Brenda would have been the first. Imagine her still plugging away at what they had done working for Wally Flanagan. Sylvia had learned how to be content doing nothing, but after hooking up with Marco, it was feast or famine, out on the town in his cool sports car, hitting the spots, and then a free-for-all in bed that could last for hours. Then she wouldn’t see him for a week or more, no word, no explanation; he just assumed she would be available when he was free.

  “Free from what?”

  He just looked at her, and his eyes went dead.

  “Forget I asked.”

  “No, you forget you asked.”

  All right, all right. That was another part of his attraction, the largest part, the danger. Who had ever grown up in Fox River and not heard stories about the Pianones? Not that she had really believed the stories back then; they were just part of local lore. Marco managed two of the river craft on which gambling went on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sylvia would have liked to try her hand, but hanging around where he worked was not Marco’s idea of a good time.