Well Bred and Dead

by Catherine O'Connell

  My suite was decorated in nineteenth-century style, brightened throughout by vases of fresh cut flowers. I went directly to the window and took in the view for which I was paying so dearly. Public Garden was a canvas of red and yellow. I watched the swan boats glide through the lagoon beneath canopies of weeping willows, my eyes tearing with nostalgia. Henry and I had stopped in Boston on our way home from our last visit to Paris, a bittersweet trip hastily arranged to beat his ever accelerating deterioration. Almost like a child, he asked to ride one of the touristy boats. Halfway across the lagoon, he was struck with fear and grabbed me, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe. My heart had nearly broken as I realized that his holding onto me was an effort to hold onto the last remnants of his life and his sanity. It wasn’t long after that trip that he was gone.

  Unpacking hadn’t taken long, as I had brought only one suitcase on this trip, hoping to keep my visit brief. When I had finished, I put in a call to Lizbeth Parker, a Boston Brahmin who attended Radcliffe with Sandy St. Clair and me. She was delighted to hear my voice, and we made a date for lunch at Anthony’s Pier 4 the next day at noon.

  That done, it was time for business. After my experience in England, I decided the phone book was as good a place to start as any. Locating the Greater Metro Boston phone book in a nightstand, I turned to K for Kehoe. There were dozens listed. I don’t know what else I might have expected in an Irish town. Looking under Patrick, the given name of Daniel’s father, I found nine of them. I didn’t know if I was being overly optimistic to think he might be among the living, but if the British Ethan Campbell’s mother was still alive, and Terrance Sullivan’s grandfather lived until ninety-eight on a diet of sausage grease, one never knew.

  I began dialing. I was fortunate to get an answer at about half the numbers I called, but that was as far as my luck went. Of the five people I spoke with, no one knew anything about a Daniel Kehoe. I left messages on the answering machines of the rest. Not ruling out the possibility that Daniel’s father was dead but his mother still living, I started calling the Moiras. Then the Marys. Then the initial Ms. After exhausting them I called every remaining Kehoe in the book, a daunting task as there were nearly seventy. This turned out to be another exercise in futility and by the time I finished, my efforts had brought me nothing more than an impossibly tired finger and an earache.

  With hunger setting in, I made one final call. To room service. I ordered up a Caesar salad and a half bottle of wine, and soon after finishing them fell into a deep sleep.

  The next morning I awoke at the highly untoward hour of five A.M. My body clock had not yet reset itself from my European jaunt. After dialing room service again for coffee and toast, I got back on the phone, calling the numbers where there had been no answer the day before. I discovered early morning is a good time to find people. It is also a good time to learn about their temperaments as some recipients were none too pleased to be awakened at such an early hour. Naturally, I made my apologies for the intrusion, feeling in all sincerity that those who do not want to be disturbed should leave their answering machines on and turn their phones off. Regardless, not one Kehoe I spoke with was acquainted with the family of Patrick, Moira, and Daniel.

  I decided to switch to plan B and try another tactic from Bury St. Edmunds. I would pay a visit to the address given on Daniel’s birth certificate. Though it had been the Kehoe family residence ages ago, perhaps whoever lived there now could be of help. I naively thought it couldn’t hurt to try. I dressed for my lunch with Lizbeth later on, and went down to the concierge to get directions. When I told him where I wanted to go, a peculiar look crossed his face.

  “You don’t want to go down there, ma’am,” he stated.

  “I don’t?”

  “Well that part of Dorchester isn’t really safe.”

  Thinking he was being ridiculous, I ignored his warning. After all, I had braved Ethan’s borderline neighborhood in my beloved Jaguar. This time I was driving a rental car that was of no concern to me. I insisted he give me directions. He reluctantly pointed out a route and advised me to stay on the main thoroughfares. I thanked him and went out front where the valet retrieved my car.

  The concierge’s directions were most accurate, but as I neared my destination, I began to understand the reason for his concern. His description of the area as “run-down” was charitable. Most of the buildings were boarded up and the streets were littered with glass. With the concierge’s words resounding in my ears, I stopped for a traffic light and noted a large group of young black men milling in front of a burnt-out building. Their sullen faces reminded me of the youths I saw with Detective Malloy at Area Three Headquarters, their expressions alienated and angry. They stared at me in a hostile manner that made me uncomfortable, so I ran the red light—certain that any police officer would forgive such an understandable action.

  As it was, I needn’t have worried about the police. I never saw any. Sticking to the concierge’s directions, I made a couple of turns and pulled up at 2365 Simmons St. It was a dull red-brick townhouse in an unending row of bland townhouses, structures that looked as if the architect had decided any use of imagination or vision would be wasted here. This neighborhood was quite different from Ethan’s, which I was beginning to think of as merely eclectic. An underlying sense of danger in the air urged caution. I studied the garbage and empty liquor bottles in the gutter, and looked up and down the block. The street was deserted. Acting contrary to my self-preservation instincts, I figured since I had come this far I might as well go all the way.

  I forced myself out of the car and up the cracked walkway to the townhouse door. A rusted barbecue grill sat on the front stoop. In the upstairs windows sheets hung in lieu of drapes. My knock was answered by a fatigued-looking black woman holding a baby. The gray at her temples and the deeply etched lines in her face told me the baby most likely wasn’t her own. She stared at me as if I had just fallen from the sky.

  “Who you, the Avon lady?” she asked, her eyes unabashedly taking in my lunch ensemble, a canary yellow suit and black patent leather slides. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the wisest attire for blending into the ghetto.

  “Good morning. I hate to disturb you. My name is Pauline Cook, and I was hoping you might be able to help me.” I willed myself to maintain my composure. “I’m trying to locate some people who lived at this address some years ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A little over sixty years. I couldn’t be sure of when they moved out.”

  The woman actually laughed out loud. “Ain’t nobody here from sixty years ago. They was some run-down houses tore down ’bout thirty years back to make way for these here places. I remember, see, ’cause I was already living round here back then, not in this here building, but one further down the way.”

  Though I had come to realize the absurdity of my presence on this street, there was one more question still going begging. “I wonder, would you happen to know if this part of the city has always been…well…lower income?”

  She made no attempt to hide the contempt on her face. “No, honey, this is where all the rich people used to live. Then it got too expensive so they up and moved to Beacon Hill.”

  The baby in her arms began crying, and I fancied my welcome had worn out. I thanked her for her time and hurried back to the safety of my car. Pulling away from the broken down curb, I wondered what had possessed me to come to this part of the city. What had I hoped to find? One fact was indisputable. If Daniel Kehoe and my friend Ethan were one and the same, he certainly hadn’t been born into an elite family. There was a shortage of aristocracy in this neck of the woods.

  I consulted the map for the best route to the harbor where Lizbeth and I were meeting for lunch. I wanted to take the Southeast expressway, but after making a series of turns I realized I had missed a street somewhere and was now lost. And if possible, the neighborhood I now found myself lost in was even more run-down than the one I had just left. The houses were beyond
uninhabitable, the streets lined with windowless, abandoned wrecks. Seized by panic, I began driving aimlessly in an attempt to get out of the area, not even considering a stop sign a suggestion.

  To my great relief, I finally turned onto what appeared to be a major artery. I pulled up behind a stopped car at a traffic light where yet another pack of male youths milled about on the corner. It appeared the young residents of this neighborhood had nothing so arcane as jobs to occupy their time. I looked in the rearview mirror at the car behind me. The faces inside it were as darkly intimidating as the faces on the street corner. I nervously urged the light to change, wishing I had been smart enough to leave space between myself and the car in front of me so I could maneuver out of the trapped situation if I wanted to.

  And then the voices started, taunting noises coming from the group at the corner. I tried to ignore them, pretended not to hear them, but they grew more insistent, more threatening until they merged into one frightening chorus of Lady…Lady…Lady. Realizing my purse was sitting on the seat beside me, I hoped at the very worst this would be a smash and grab. And if that was not the worst, what would be? Gang rape? Murder? Days as a hostage in some filthy basement with rodents crawling over my legs? My heart pulsed in my ears, and I kept my eyes fixed forward, as if by refusing to acknowledge their existence, they might go away. Then, my peripheral vision picked up a movement outside the window followed by a steady persistent knock. I turned my head ever so slightly and saw a very dark young man wearing a purple knit cap framed in the window. His pupil-less eyes were level with mine, his broad lips repeating the chant. “Lady, lady….”

  I lifted my chin in noble defiance.

  “Lady, you got a flat.”

  It was then I noticed the car listing to the driver’s side. Something I had run over on one of the side streets must have punctured the tire. I nodded helplessly at the young man poised beside me and opened the window a crack.

  “Could you tell me how bad it is?” I ventured.

  “Oh, it be flat. Completely. But only on the bottom.”

  Choosing to ignore his ill-placed humor, I asked, “Could you direct me to the nearest service station?”

  “Lady, there ain’t a gas station for a good mile. You wreck the rim if you drive on it, if you can even steer. It be the front tire.” As I sat there in numb disbelief, he shocked me by saying, “No worry lady, me ’n my boys, we change it for you.”

  The light had turned green, the car in front of me was gone, and the ones behind me were driving around the scene. By now four young men were gathered around my car. They were of various shapes and sizes, but they shared one common trait. They were all darker than a moonless midnight. I scanned the street in hopes of seeing a police car, but should have known they only made their appearances when one was parked in front of a fire hydrant, never when one’s personal safety was at stake. Despite my ever-increasing terror, I had no choice in the situation. The option was to drive unfamiliar crime-ridden streets at five miles an hour in search of what might be a nonexistent gas station.

  Taking my purse firmly in hand, I got out of the car. Without so much as asking, the young man in the purple cap climbed in. I wondered if that was the last I was going to see of the car, but he simply reached into the glove box and pushed the button to open the trunk. A moment later, there were dark men swarming all over the vehicle. I watched in amazement as they took the trunk apart in a symmetry of blind precision and unearthed tools and a spare tire. Within ten minutes they had jacked the car up and replaced the flat tire with a nice round one. One of them brought the bad tire to me and pointed to a six-inch nail sticking out of it. Then, in less time than it took to take it apart, they reassembled the trunk and even put the hubcap back in place.

  “There you go, Paul-line, good as new,” said the youth in the purple cap whose name I had learned was Jesse.

  “I can’t thank you enough, “I said.

  “My pleasure,” said Jesse. “Couldn’t have nobody messin’ up that nice suit.”

  Realizing it would only be fitting to give the young men something for their efforts, I opened my purse and took out my wallet. Cash strapped as usual, all it contained was a twenty and several ones. My hand wavered back and forth above the bills before I finally settled on the twenty. “This is for you.”

  His smile was broad, his white teeth radiant in his dark face, as he waved off the money. “Do somebody else some time,” he said, holding the car door open for me.

  After climbing in I sheepishly asked for directions back to the turnpike. A moment later, I was pulling away, thinking of how a despicable creature like Desmond Keifer could hold me up for five dollars to check on a dead friend, while a hardened street character would turn down a twenty for a life-saving mission.

  The world could be a strange place.

  Lizbeth was fit as ever and rail thin, her ash blond hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, her skin rosy as if she had just climbed off one of her thoroughbreds. She was quite a contrast to me in my couture suit, casually dressed in slacks and a cashmere blazer. The only thing missing was her riding crop. Over a cold lobster salad and a glass of Taittinger I related the story of Ethan’s death and my search for his true origins.

  “Daniel Kehoe. It doesn’t ring a bell. Terribly Irish isn’t it? Like looking for a needle in a haystack in this town.”

  “Well, yes, and judging from the area in which Daniel Kehoe started out life, I don’t think you would have ever come in contact with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His first home was in Dorchester. I just came from there.”

  “You went into Dorchester by yourself? Honestly, Pauline. What possessed you? You might have been hurt going into that area.”

  “Oh, Lizbeth, don’t be so narrow-minded. Just because people are poor doesn’t necessarily make them evil. In many ways I think the people who live there are a lot less treacherous than some of the rich people we know.”

  “Oh, speaking of treachery, you’ll never guess who I was seated next to at the fundraiser for the Boston Pops last week—Andrew Spector of all people. It was most awkward. It was his first social function since he was acquitted of his wife’s murder. I didn’t have a clue what to say to him. Honestly, what would you say? ‘Congratulations on getting away with it?’ We all know he killed Josie, and the worst part is he got all her money. The kids are fit to be tied. Anyhow, as I said, it was a most awkward situation.”

  “So, did you speak with him?”

  “Well, of course I did. The man was seated next to me. I couldn’t be rude. But he is horrible.”

  Lunch stretched out for a couple of hours as we caught up on affairs, who was having them and who wasn’t. Lizbeth and I seldom talk about anything really important. For all her money and education, she is poorly versed in such matters as art or politics, and is even less interested in them. Her world revolves around horses, but since I have no interest in the equines whatsoever, our conversations generally consist of vacation spots and other people. In our circles, the two are usually inextricably intertwined. Since we had already covered other people, the talk moved to travel. She had just returned from two weeks sailing in Tahiti aboard Randolph Williams’s yacht and told of Randolph’s young, beautiful, and overly endowed fourth wife who not only sunbathed topless but took most of her meals in the same state.

  “Warren actually missed his mouth the first time she came to lunch au naturel. He dropped an entire forkful of cerviche onto his white linen shorts,” she laughed.

  “I just can’t imagine. Were they her own?”

  “I don’t believe so. They defied gravity. That didn’t seem to put off any of the boys though. They stared at those titties like they were the holy grail. I was ready to kill the woman. She got Warren so riled up that he pestered me the entire trip. No one was happier than I to be back on terra firma, away from his priapism and back to my horses.”

  The afternoon had melted away by the time we asked for the check. Though
I made a gesture to grab for it, Lizbeth insisted on picking up the tab. Afterward, we walked out onto the pier, the dense smell of sea salt filling our nostrils, a mild ocean breeze tugging at our hair.

  “What are you going to do next, Pauline? About your friend’s mystery origins, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure. I’m fresh out of ideas. It doesn’t appear Ethan was related to any of the Kehoes who still live in the Boston area.”

  “What about his mother’s maiden name? Perhaps she has relations here.”

  I berated myself for my lack of cleverness as of late. In England, Terrance had led me around by the nose. Now it was Lizbeth, whom I hadn’t given credit for having the genius to do much of anything other than look good and ride horses, coming to my aid. I told her that her idea merited thought, and we kissed cheeks and swore eternal friendship before parting ways.

  Then I was back to the hotel and the telephone, and she was off to her beloved horses.

  14

  Getting Warmer

  The Boston phone book listed even more McMahons than Kehoes. I found myself gaining appreciation for phone solicitors as I repeated my story until I thought I would take leave of my senses. But I was to learn that tenacity does indeed pay off. At my thirty-third McMahon a woman named Emily told me that she had indeed known Moira Kehoe, wife of Patrick, mother of Daniel. In an accent that combined the dropped r’s of Boston with soft lilt of an Irish brogue, she told me Moira had been a cousin of her husband—“may he rest in peace.” When I asked the widow McMahon if I might come over and speak with her, she assured me that a visitor would be most welcome. She also suggested that some refreshment might be in order, and could I pick up some beer along the way as she hadn’t been to the store recently. The price of a six-pack was a small sum to pay considering what I had spent in my quest thus far, and so I asked how to get to her house and which brand of beer she preferred.