I shook my head. “No, honey. Close, though.”
“Are you in love with somebody?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
She smiled. “A bad one, huh?”
“I blew it, Sylvie. It could have worked. But I sabotaged it.”
“Do you want to tell Sylvie all about it?”
I looked up at her. “Yes.” I nodded. “I’d really like to.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m at the Ritz.”
She bent down, took my face in her hands, stared into my eyes for a moment, then kissed both of my cheeks and my mouth. Then she straightened up, turned, smiled quickly over her shoulder, and walked out of my office.
The Conleys lived in a big white hip-roofed colonial house on a winding, wooded country road near Nine Acre Corner in Concord. I never would’ve found it without the map Lyn Conley had drawn for me.
A gunmetal gray Lexus, a black Jeep Grand Cherokee, and a red Honda Accord, all new-looking and shiny, were parked side-by-side in the wide driveway in front of the attached three-car garage. A sprinkler rotated on the front lawn, going tick-tick-tick in the hush of the late suburban afternoon.
I parked on the road, got out, stomped on my cigarette butt, and went to the front porch. The inside door was open, and through the screen came the muffled thump-thud of rock music from some distant room inside.
I rang the bell, waited, and a minute later a face materialized on the other side of the screen. “Hello?”
She was short, on the pudgy side, fourteen or fifteen, I guessed. Her sand-colored hair was damp, and she was wearing a Michael Jordan basketball jersey and running shorts.
“I’m Brady Coyne,” I told her. “I’m here to see Mrs. Conley.”
“You that lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Linda. Mom’s upstairs. She might be asleep.”
“I believe she’s expecting me.”
She shrugged, then turned and yelled into the house, “Hey, Daddy. That lawyer’s here to see Mom.” Then she disappeared.
A minute or two later Lyn Conley came to the door. “Brady,” he said. “Come in, come in. Gretchen’ll be down in a minute.”
He pushed open the screen door and held it for me, and when I stepped inside he clapped my shoulder as if we were great old pals and steered me through the hallway and out onto the deck that hung off the back of the house. “Thought you could talk with Gretch out here, catch a little breeze. Mosquitoes won’t be too bad for another hour or so. Beer or something?”
“Coke, if you’ve got it.”
He nodded. “Have a seat. She’ll be right with you.”
The deck was furnished with a gas grill, a round table with a folded-up umbrella poking out of it, and half a dozen sturdy wooden outdoor chairs lined up along the railing. I sat in one of the chairs.
The Conleys’ back lawn sloped down to a broad expanse of meadow, which gradually merged into marshland. The silvery ribbon of the Sudbury River glimmered in the distance. A pair of cardinals pecked at sunflower seeds in a feeder that hung from a big maple tree.
“Sir?”
I turned. A teenage boy—he looked sixteen or seventeen—was standing behind me holding a can of Coke and a tall plastic glass filled with ice cubes. He was about my height, but skinnier, of course. A silly blond mustache shadowed his upper lip. Otherwise he would’ve been a handsome kid.
I held out my hand. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Brady Coyne.”
He nodded and shook my hand. “I’m Ned. Here. Dad said you wanted a Coke.” He handed it to me.
“This is great. Thanks.”
He flopped into the chair beside me. “Boy, that’s something, isn’t it? What happened to Auntie Kaye?”
I nodded. “How’s your mom doing?”
Ned rested his forearms on his knees and leaned toward me. “I don’t know. She’s been in the bedroom all day. I peeked in on her a couple times, but she was asleep. They gave her some sleeping pills or something.”
“You know the Fallons pretty well?”
“Me? Oh, yeah. All my life. Their kids are a little older’n us, you know. Erin’s like eighteen and Danny’s about twenty. “We’re good friends. They’re like us. Their family, I mean. Real close. My parents and Auntie Kaye and Uncle Mick still hang out. Well, they did, until they split.” He shook his head and blew out a quick breath. “So dumb. Makes no sense, you know?”
“You mean, what happened to Kaye?”
“Well, jeez, yeah. That’s unbelievable. Obviously. But what I meant was how adults think they’ve gotta choose up sides. It’s like, okay, Dad can’t be friends with Auntie Kaye anymore because that’d be disloyal to Uncle Mick, so Mom has to stick with Auntie Kaye. I mean, they all used to be really good friends. All of us did. Divorce really sucks.” He looked at me. “Well, I guess murder sucks, too, huh? That why you’re here?”
I nodded. “Mick is my client. I need to talk to your mother.”
“Why?”
“I need to know what happened.”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not obvious at all.”
“How come they didn’t arrest him?”
“Ned, I can’t—”
He suddenly pulled his feet off the table and stood up. “Uncle Mick killed her, and the cops are dicking around, and you want to get him off.” He stood there, frowning down at me. “Right? He did it, right?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think he did it.”
“Who else, then? I saw on TV—”
“Neddie?” The soft voice came from behind me.
I turned. A woman—Gretchen Conley, I assumed—had stepped out onto the deck. She was a big woman, nearly as tall as Ned, fleshy and big-boned, with short brownish hair streaked with gray. She was wearing baggy jeans and a man’s blue Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up above her elbows. Her face was puffy and her eyes were red—from crying, I assumed—but she gave me a little smile and nod.
Ned went over to her and put his arm protectively around her shoulder. “You don’t have to talk to him,” he said. “He’s just some lawyer who’s trying to keep a—a murderer out of jail. I told him you’ve been through enough already.”
She looked up at him and patted his arm. “It’s okay, sweetie. Really. I’m fine. Mr. Coyne needs to talk to me.”
Ned frowned at her, then turned and glared at me. “Why don’t you just leave her alone?”
“Ned, please,” said Gretchen.
He shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He kissed her cheek, gave her a quick hug, and without another word he stalked back into the house.
Gretchen plopped into the chair beside me. “Teenagers,” she mumbled. “I apologize for his rudeness.”
“He seems like a good kid,” I said. “He’s upset, that’s all. He’s concerned about you.”
She nodded. “He was very fond of Kaye. It’s hard for him. For all of us.”
Just then I heard a car starting up from the front of the house, the whine of an engine, the sudden squeal of rubber on asphalt.
Gretchen smiled and shook her head. “Well,” she said, “I assume you want to talk with me about last night.”
“I know you’ve gone over it all with the police,” I said, “and I hate to have to put you through it again. But I’m Mick Fallon’s lawyer—”
“It’s all right,” she said. “Please. Anything I can do that will help convict the monster who did this to Kaye…”
“Why don’t you just tell me about Kaye.”
Gretchen Conley and Kaye Fallon had been classmates and friends in college, and they’d settled in neighboring towns when they were married. Their families had gotten together regularly over the years, taken vacations together, grown into middle age together.
When Kaye and Mick split, Gretchen said, it was a shock to her and Lyn. It became awkward. She liked Mick, but she’d felt that Kaye needed support. So she and Kaye had
started getting together, just the two of them. They met for dinner weekly. Mostly, Kaye talked about her confusion, how she still cared for Mick, but how he’d grown distant and inattentive, how the mystery and romance were all gone, and how she’d woken up one morning depressed to the point of suicide at the thought that she’d have to grow old married to Mick Fallon.
“Suicide?” I said.
Gretchen shrugged. “That was a figure of speech. Kaye was always a pretty upbeat person.”
“So after they split,” I said, “you didn’t see Mick?”
“No. Lyn used to get together with him sometimes. He never came around here.”
“And Lyn didn’t keep his friendship with Kaye?”
She shook her head. “We wanted to keep them both as friends, but it felt as if we had to split them between us, take sides. Kinda silly, when you think about it.”
“Was Kaye seeing anybody?” I said.
She gazed out over the meadow, shook her head, then shrugged. “Kaye was a very private person, even with me. There were some things we just didn’t talk about.”
“But she talked about her problems with Mick.”
She cocked her head and smiled at me. “Those are things that women talk about, Mr. Coyne.”
“So you don’t know if Kaye had a boyfriend.”
“No.”
“Did it ever occur to you that she might?”
She shrugged. “It was none of my business. It was Kaye’s business. If she’d wanted to talk about it, okay, I’d’ve been more than happy to listen. If she didn’t…”
I nodded. “Did she ever indicate that she suspected Mick of cheating?”
“Well,” she said with a smile, “it wouldn’t really be cheating if they were separated, would it?”
“I guess it would depend on their agreement.”
“As far as I know, they didn’t have any agreement on that,” she said. “Mick is a very jealous person. It wouldn’t have been anything they could’ve discussed. Anyway, Kaye never said anything about Mick having a woman. He just wanted her back. At least, that’s what she believed.”
“Tell me about last night.”
She told it to me pretty much the way Horowitz had. “I’ve never been so—so utterly shocked in my life,” she said softly. “I was horrified. It was—it still is—an absolute nightmare. All that blood from such a little body.” She shook her head. “Kaye was always so, so alive. It still doesn’t quite seem real.”
“You had a key to her house,” I said.
She nodded. “She went away for school vacation week in February and asked me to feed her cat, water the plants.”
“Did Kaye have a key to your house?”
“No. I never went away. Two kids, a busy husband…” She shrugged.
“Where did Kaye go in February?”
“Somewhere in Vermont, I think. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing. She liked cross-country skiing.”
“She went alone?”
Gretchen shrugged. “As far as I know.”
“Did she talk about it?”
“Not much, actually. I gathered she didn’t have that much fun.”
“She didn’t…?”
“Meet someone?” Gretchen smiled quickly. “If she had, I doubt she would’ve told me.”
“You know the police think Mick killed her,” I said.
“It’s logical, isn’t it?”
“What do you think?”
She looked up at me. “Who else?”
“Mick says he didn’t do it,” I said. “If he didn’t, somebody else did. You were Kaye’s closest friend. Maybe she mentioned something to you.”
“She was afraid of him,” said Gretchen. “He was furious that she wanted to divorce him. He threatened her.”
“Threatened her?”
“Yes. She told me that more than once he’d said he simply would not allow her to divorce him. After the deposition last week, he called her and screamed at her. Accused her of getting him in trouble, of trying to ruin him, said he wouldn’t let it happen.”
“You know Mick,” I said. “Do you think he could do this thing?”
Gretchen stared out over the backyard. The shadows were growing long, and the sharply angled rays of the setting sun painted the meadow and marsh in rich glowing shades of orange. “Before the deposition,” she said softly, “I’d’ve said no way. Mick loved Kaye more than any man I’ve ever known could love his wife, including my own husband. He adored her. But I think he believed she’d betrayed him, violated something sacred between them. And Mick always had a quick, awful temper. He’s a huge man, you know.” She looked up at me. “Lyn told me the same thing. That Mick just snapped after that deposition.”
“Can you think of anybody else?” I said.
“Who’d want to murder Kaye?”
I nodded.
She smiled softly and shook her head. “No. She was a substitute teacher, Mr. Coyne. She played bridge, worked out at the health club, grew tomatoes, cried at old movies on cable, read Jane Austen novels. Mainly, she was a mother and a wife and a homemaker. She was sweet and funny and warm. Everybody loved her. You couldn’t help it. People like Kaye Fallon don’t get murdered.”
I didn’t say anything, and after a moment, Gretchen said, “I know, I know. They do and she did.” She frowned. “Well, there was that boy…”
“What boy?”
“I don’t know his name. Kaye taught at a regional high school out towards Worcester. She was what they call a permanent sub, which meant she worked every day wherever she was needed. She generally filled in for someone who was hospitalized or on maternity leave or something and going to be out for a long time. A couple years ago she filled in for a special ed teacher. One of those small classes full of misfits—what they euphemistically call ‘special,’ you know? Kids with emotional problems, A.D.D., dyslexia. Mostly she tutored them, helped them with stuff for their regular classes, made sure they got from here to there when they were supposed to. Anyway, I guess there was one boy who had quite a crush on her.”
“What happened?”
Gretchen shrugged. “At first he’d come in after school when she was getting ready to leave, ask her for help. Then he’d walk her to her car, carry her stuff for her. He was older than the other students—eighteen or nineteen—history of truancy, had dropped out a couple times. I guess one time he tried to kiss her, and—”
“He tried to kiss her?”
“It was one of those times he walked her to her car. Kaye didn’t take it very seriously, but when she told Mick about it, he threatened to go to the police if she didn’t do something about it. So Kaye spoke to her principal, and he got that boy out of her class.” Gretchen shrugged. “Kaye was awfully cute, and she was a very caring person. I can see why a boy might confuse her caring with—I don’t know, with another kind of interest, I guess.”
“Would Kaye flirt with a student?”
“Flirt?” She narrowed her eyes at me, then let them slide away. “Kaye was not a flirt. She was actually quite demure. But she was very attractive and warm. She could make you think you were the most interesting person in the world just by smiling at you. Kaye always got a lot attention from men. All her life. I don’t think she was even aware of how men looked at her.”
“So this boy might think—”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s possible.”
“She never mentioned the boy’s name?”
She frowned. “She might have. I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”
“Can you think of anybody else? Anybody at all?”
“Somebody who’d want to kill her?”
“We’re not dealing with logic here, Gretchen,” I said. “Just anybody she might’ve had some kind of conflict with. Somebody with a motive—no matter how twisted. Somebody who might’ve been angry with her.”
Gretchen let her head fall back against the chair and gazed up into the darkening sky. “I used to get angry with her sometimes. But I loved her.”
“So did Mick,” I said.
“I can’t think of anyone.” She shook her head. “Just Mick, I guess.”
Seven
AROUND NOONTIME THE NEXT day I went out to the reception area. Julie was on the phone. When she looked up at me, I arched my eyebrows at her, and she held up a finger.
A minute later she hung up. “So how’s it feel, putting in a full morning at the office, actually accruing billable hours?”
“That’s very funny.” I give her a quick fake smile. “Listen. Would you see if you can get the principal of Dolley Madison Regional High School on the line for me?”
“Huh? Where’s that?”
“Not sure, exactly. Somewhere out around Route 495, towards Worcester.”
“So you can’t call him yourself?”
“Sure I can. But in my experience, high school principals fancy themselves busy, important people, and they’re more likely to take a call from someone who’s at least equally busy and important. Busy, important people have their secretaries place calls for them. See?”
“Move over Machiavelli.” Julie smiled. “So what’m I supposed to tell this principal?”
“Tell him Attorney Coyne must speak with him. Impress upon him the gravity of the matter, but say nothing about what the matter actually is. You’re good at that.”
“You got that right,” she said. She grinned. “Gravity, huh? So what is the matter, actually?”
“It concerns the Mick Fallon thing.”
Julie nodded. “Okay. That’s certainly grave. I’ll get right to it.”
I refilled my coffee mug, went back into my office, swiveled my chair around so that I could gaze out the window and daydream about trout streams and mayflies, and I’d barely gotten into it when my console buzzed. I rotated back to my desk and poked the flashing button.
“I’ve got Dr. Ronald Moyle on line two.” said Julie. “The principal of Dolley Madison Regional High School his own self.”
“Wow,” I said. “The actual principal. Excellent.”
I hit line two and said, “Mr. Moyle?”
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