The Big Dig (Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries Book 9)

by Linda Barnes

  Light flooded the landing. The ceiling was high, the roof opened by skylights, the room jammed with plants, asparagus fern, palms, spider plants, more than I could name. The furniture was rattan, the upholstery flowered. The air smelled of potpourri. Two large Teddy bears, seated at a round table set with a sprigged china tea service, added to the impression of a grown-up doll-house, a secret garden. One wore a straw bonnet, the other a fitted cloche. A passageway led to a master bedroom with vine-painted walls and pale green carpeting. To one side, a separate sitting area had the look of an enclosed patio, with huge windows and rattan lounge chairs.

  The housekeeper knelt beside a flowered chair, arranging cushions on the rug. I shoved them aside, and examined the darkness on the pale green wool.

  “Por favor. No llames a la policia.” Esperanza swallowed quickly. Her tongue went to the corner of her mouth.

  I told her, in careful Spanish, that lies to the police were one thing, but lies to a friend of Miss Dana’s were another. I couldn’t help Miss Dana unless I knew the whole truth of the matter. Blood didn’t lie, and the blood on the carpet told a different tale than the one she’d given the cops.

  She bit her lip.

  “Cops don’t need to know everything,” I added, more gently. “A person doesn’t lie for no reason.”

  “Es verdad. I find her here.”

  No sharp corners on the rattan furniture. The carpet was deep and soft.

  “I find her here, like she is sleeping. Habia mucha sangre. There is blood. I call policia, but then she wakes, and she is so angry that I call. She says I must help her downstairs, quick.”

  If Dana Endicott had been struck with a weapon, it had disappeared. There was nothing sharp or heavy nearby, no ashtray, no vase, no fireplace tongs.

  “She says I tell them she fall downstairs. But I no lie. I say only I find her, and she is there. Is no lie.”

  There are liars and then there are liars.

  “I had to call policia,” she insisted. “Miss Dana’s eyes are not right.”

  Each of the nightstands was strewn with personal items. Four cardboard cartons were stacked to the right of the huge four-poster bed.

  I see cases as giant jigsaw puzzles. Each fact is a tiny uniquely shaped piece, each one matters. Dana had stalled, prevented me from seeing Veronica’s room. Veronica’s “ex” had reacted harshly to Dana’s name. I’d assembled some pieces, but now it looked as though I’d fitted them together incorrectly.

  They shifted: Dana didn’t want cops up here, didn’t want me examining Veronica’s room. Because Veronica’s room was her own. The neat cardboard cartons hadn’t been brought by intruders intent on theft. Realizing she couldn’t put me off forever, Dana must have decided to move Veronica’s stuff, down the hall, or to another floor. Why bother with such a deception, now, when family newspapers shriek of gay sex clubs and deviant Scout troops?

  If a wife disappears, the husband is always a suspect. Their relationship made it more likely that Dana was involved in Veronica’s disappearance. But she had come to me, initiated the investigation. I considered the wealth of the surroundings, the value of the house, the paintings, the silver. Wondered if someone were trying to get to Dana through Veronica, blackmail her.

  “Señorita,” Esperanza said pleadingly, “no llames a la policia.” Don’t call the police.

  “If you don’t want me to call, you have to answer my questions truthfully.”

  “Sí. Ay, Santa Madre, Virgen Santisima.”

  “Who was here besides Miss Dana when you came?”

  “No one. Truly. No one.”

  “Not Miss Veronica?”

  “You know Miss Veronica?” she said eagerly.

  “Yes.” More than one liar in this room.

  “She is not here.”

  “What was on the floor?”

  “Nada, only trash, papers from the drawer.”

  No one knows a house like the one who cleans it. I instructed her, by her faith in the Virgen Santisima, to look around, tell me if anything was missing, anything, no matter how small an item.

  She turned in a tight circle, her eyes traveling over each console and armoire, searching each surface while I tried to imagine what had gone awry in this cool oasis. Had Dana, busily packing the boxes, heard footsteps on the stairs, glanced up? Had she known the intruder, greeted her warmly?

  “Las fotografias.” Esperanza’s troubled voice broke into my thoughts.

  “What pictures?”

  “I don’t know who is in them, but pictures Miss Veronica keeps on her table. Yano están las fotografias. They are gone.” She gestured with her hands, maybe five-by-seven, maybe smaller. She had dusted them only yesterday, she thought. In silver frames that needed polish.

  I said, “Tell me, today, when you came in, was the door locked?”

  “Sí.”

  “The alarm set?”

  “No.”

  “And the dogs? Are they gone?”

  She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Dios mio, I forget. Los perros. I put them in the back closet, Miss Dana tells me to do this, so policia no hurt them.” She was off, clattering down the stairs, calling the animals by name as though they were children.

  I followed, but didn’t make it to the basement. The dogs stopped me, wagging their tails, barking, sniffing, curious about the interloper. Esperanza pointed out Veronica’s Tandy, fifty pounds of intelligent-looking beast, face like a shepherd, body like a husky. The two golden retrievers barked and pushed their snouts against my legs. The Lab, older, lay gracefully on the rug.

  Four dogs running free in the house. I used my cell phone to call Mass General. Patient Information was sorry but they could tell me nothing about Dana Endicott. No such person had been admitted.

  I hung up and tried another number, the number of the man who’d given me the scoop on Kevin Fournier’s condition. He put me on hold, then told me a Dana “Smith” had been admitted through Emergency with a concussion. She’d been taken directly to the VIP floor and would spend the night.

  Could I get in to see her?

  He thought it likely I’d be admitted; she’d given my name as next of kin.

  Chapter 19

  Gloomy, rainy, Sunday morning.

  I made the effort to sleep late, to soothe myself with thoughts of a day minus typing and filing, but I rolled and tossed, punched the pillow, and finally sat up in disgust. Liz Horgan had fired me, Dana Endicott was in the hospital; a rotten track record all around.

  I’d assumed last night that giving my name as next of kin meant Dana Endicott wanted to talk. I’d assumed wrong. She didn’t want to talk; she wanted to hide, from any of her associates at any of her uptight boards, most of all from her parents, who knew nothing about her real life, who would never know anything about her real life if she had any say about it. Her mother, especially, would be dismayed. The DAR lady had no clue about her daughter’s lesbianism. Dad might someday run for office as a conservative from a conservative district. She’d given my name because the powers-that-be required her to fill in the next-of-kin blank, Veronica was gone, and I posed no threat being merely an employee.

  What had I learned from my long Saturday night at Mass General? That they get most of the gunshot wounds in the city, but I already knew that. I’d been taken there myself, bleeding on a gurney. My leg throbbed in the cold hallway, the overheated waiting room. I learned that the VIP area is well-guarded. I’d done some fancy talking to gain access.

  I actually saw my client for less than ten minutes, during which time she professed that nothing was different, nothing had changed, except that now I must see that it was more urgent than ever that I find Veronica. Now I’d fully appreciate that this was no careless departure. Veronica loved her; adored her; she loved Veronica. It was, she insisted, a committed relationship. Veronica would never leave her without a word. Certainly she would never leave for a week or a month or any time with a man. She’d dumped Rick Garrison for Dana. She had no use for men, wouldn
’t waste five minutes on anyone named Peter.

  And what had happened at the house? Who had hit her? We’d wasted little time on falling-downstairs fantasies. Men, she said. Burglars. Faces bulgy, like in films. Men in stocking masks. I played along. How many men? Did she recognize them, by any chance?

  She thought two. Two that she’d seen, anyway, but it was over so quickly that she couldn’t describe, much less hope to identify them. She’d caught only the barest glimpse, terrified they would kill her, rape her. The doctors said that, except for the wound in her scalp, she was unharmed. It was a casual break-in—they happen—and if nothing valuable was missing, well, that was simply because Esperanza’s arrival had scared them off.

  I listened quietly till her voice lagged.

  “What about the dogs?” I asked.

  Well, yes, of course, Veejay would never leave the dogs. She had already told me that. Really, she was getting tired.

  “No. I meant, what about the dogs in the house today?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did they bark? Go after the men who attacked you? Did they sit there and drool?”

  “The dogs.” She’d closed her eyes, kept them closed so long I thought she might have fallen asleep.

  When I asked her again, she pressed the button attached by a cord to her mechanical bed, told the responding nurse how terribly exhausted she was, and had me politely ejected.

  I got up and dressed, hauling out a black suit from the back of the closet. Kevin Fournier’s graveside rites were scheduled to begin at eleven. I came early by prearrangement, to meet with Happy Eddie, found his big beige Oldsmobile parked near the side gate of Saint Joseph’s, on the VFW Parkway, motor idling. As I pulled alongside, he rolled down the window, shouted for me to come inside; he had coffee.

  I found a parking place further down the street, moved from my car to his.

  “Ya take it regular, right?” He handed me a Styrofoam cup. I suspected he had doughnuts stashed in the car as well, an observation that owed less to intuition than to the sprinkling of powdered sugar on the lapel of his navy suit.

  “Crappy day. Geez, the rain. Gonna start up any minute again. Ya got news for me?” He produced a Dunkin’ Donuts box, offered a choice of glazed or jelly.

  I described the scene with Liz Horgan between bites of glazed doughnut, watching Eddie closely to see if I could tell how much of the story he already knew. He handled his face like a pro, plus he had a coffee cup and a doughnut to hide behind. I wasn’t sure.

  “She went ballistic,” I concluded. “Fired me. I don’t think there’s a way to get back in her good graces.”

  “Well, she was drinkin’,” he said hesitantly.

  “She wasn’t falling-down drunk. She’ll remember.”

  “Damn.”

  “You might have to put somebody else in, Eddie.”

  “You said her husband’s sleepin’ on the couch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I been there,” he said ruefully. “Whaddaya think, it’s just family shit, ya can give ’em a clean slate?”

  I brushed sugar off my fingers. “I think I haven’t seen the autopsy report. They’re burying the man today, Eddie. They must have done the post. You got it?”

  “Haven’t read it yet.”

  “I want it.”

  He sipped coffee. “Well, if you’re off the site …”

  “I can get my own copy if I have to.”

  The funeral home procession entered the gate and pulled to one side of the curving road. Seven cars followed the hearse, less than I’d expected from the size of the gathering at the pub. Maybe the family had requested a quiet graveside send-off. Maybe the weather had discouraged crowds. Maybe the Dig honchos had wanted the funeral hurried up, kept silent. Eddie gave me a nod and we got out of the car, keeping behind a screen of fir and hemlock. I might be off this site, but it would do me no good to be seen with Eddie, identified as one of the inspector general’s troops. The calendar said the first day of spring had come and gone, but there wasn’t a hint of it in the yellow-brown grass of Saint Joseph’s. The wind whipped the branches of the evergreens and it started to rain in earnest. I’d left my umbrella in the Toyota.

  “Eddie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll go in and clean out my desk tomorrow. She has to let me do that, right? I’ve been making a list of trucking companies. I can grab that, review it. And—”

  “What?”

  “Is there some kind of tape recording, a phone number drivers can call, that gives them a Dig update, a traffic update?”

  “I don’t think so. Commuters can check the Web site, and the newspapers run a daily column. Why?”

  I was thinking about the phone call I’d intercepted on Liz Horgan’s cell phone, my second day in the trailer. I didn’t reply.

  The rain settled into a steady beat. The first car following the flower-covered hearse was a rental limo. A somberly dressed fiftyish couple emerged. The man helped the woman from the car and they held hands, stunned and pale. A young man in military uniform patted the woman’s left shoulder. He’d made it home in time to bury his brother.

  Eddie said, “I’ll put ya on another site. I forget, ya scared a heights?”

  “I want to stick with the Horgan thing.”

  “She fired ya, kid.”

  “There’s stuff I can do without being on-site.”

  “Yer not trying to stiff me, are ya? Tell the truth, Carlotta. That damn Fabian hire ya for security at Faneuil Hall? I hear he’s hiring every freelance in town, payin’ more than I can.”

  “Nothing like that, Eddie.”

  “Shit. It’s the friggin’ timing’s got ’em worried. April nineteenth. Patriot’s Day. The Wacko Waco bunch has been quiet lately, ya know? The foreigners are out there, blowing up embassies and shit, but the homegrown nuts come out to play on Oklahoma Bombing Day. I mean, if I’m a crazy, what would I like better than to watch a bunch of ex-presidents fly through the air? Plus ya got half the regular cops dressed up like Minutemen, all to hell and gone in Lexington.”

  The cemetery workers had erected a green tent and covered the brown grass with rolls of green astro-turf, leading to the gravesite. It kept mud off shoes, but looked oddly out of place, as though the mourners were thinking of playing a round of mini-golf after the coffin disappeared into the ground. The rain came down more heavily and people slid gratefully under the tent, closing, then reopening their umbrellas as they realized how inadequate the shelter was. The parents sank into the first row of folding chairs. The brother remained standing, with military stiffness.

  “Can I do some follow-up, Eddie?”

  “And no questions asked?” He sighed. “Let me think it over.”

  Liz and Gerry Horgan were there, with Harv O’Day and Dennis Marcantonio and three or four men who had the look of construction workers, men I might have recognized in jeans and hard hats. Liz wavered on her heels, took a seat at the end of the row. She looked like she was ready to pass out.

  “What do you figure happened with Liz yesterday, Eddie?”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “I was a good temp, Eddie. I went out of my way to help, and then wham.”

  “Drunks,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Is she a drunk?” He’d admitted to a relationship with the old man, but was he a family friend? Exactly how much did he know about Liz and Gerry?

  “Hey, Carlotta, ya know what I mean. Somebody’s been drinkin’, they do stuff. Who understands it? Look, I’m not blamin’ ya for what happened. Your pride wounded?”

  “A little. I mean, I wasn’t that obvious, Eddie.”

  “Hey, there’s gossip makin’ the rounds. Ya know, people say the FBI’s got people on the Dig, the attorney general’s got people. Ever since the financials went berserk, there’s rumors, investigations, subpoenas, grand juries, you name it. Maybe somebody gave her the tip.”

  “Maybe she’s worried her husband’s having her watched,�
�� I said quietly. “Followed.”

  “A divorce thing? I could ask around.”

  “I’ll do it, Eddie. And I’m definitely gonna see the autopsy, right?”

  “I’ll messenger it. And if there’s nothing there, maybe you can write me up a report about how it’s probably a personal thing between husband and wife.”

  “Since when is stuff walking off-site a personal thing between husband and wife?”

  He was silent. I hadn’t read the contract bid yet, but I wondered whether Horgan Construction was going in as a woman-owned enterprise, whether that designation gave them a leg up in the contract wars. Maybe Liz and Gerry were trying to hold it together till they landed another contract.

  “I’m gonna go,” Eddie said. “Damn cold rain. Call me when you got the report ready.”

  “Send the post-mortem to my house.”

  Chapter 20

  I’ve done my share of funerals: my mom’s, singing and wailing and chanting; my pop’s, a sea of blue uniforms; my Aunt Bea’s, quiet and dignified. Even with time, they don’t blur together; each is a frozen chunk of time. I’ve viewed my share as a cop, too, from mob jobs where you note the license plates, to hit-and-runs where you wear the full dress uniform to let the family know you take the crime seriously. I’ve seen graveside fainters, graveside screamers, slapped cheeks, wrestling matches, and once a real brawl that knocked a frocked priest off his feet.

  I decided to join the crowd, but stay near the rear, off to one side, the better to watch without being watched.

  Eddie had said nothing about searching for a tape of Fournier’s voice to send to the FBI lab along with the inspector general’s hotline tapes. Either he was playing it close to his vest or doing nothing at all, hoping I’d let it go, hoping the Horgans could bury the accusations along with the man, go on as if nothing had happened.

  It was getting colder, the rain changing to slush. I plunged my hands deep in my pockets and felt the faint crackle of paper. I’d given Liz the book Marian had sent to her darling Krissi, but not the note that went with it, the note I’d been instructed to deliver in person. I ran my fingertips over the sealed flap. Marian wasn’t among the sparse crowd under the tent. When I went to clean out my desk I’d give it back to her, apologize. After I steamed it open and read it. The priest’s voice rose and an answering sob came from Fournier’s mother in the front row.