by Unknown
Glancing at the TV, I thought about turning on the news, watching the celebration of finding Max, but decided being there had been enough.
I finally dealt with my feet, cleaning the cuts and scrapes as best I could. I had to butterfly one particularly bad gash on my left foot. It probably needed stitches, but I figured Detective Lieutenant Holliday had probably spread word to hospitals to be on the lookout for a woman with foot injuries.
The irony of it all was that I had a doctor sleeping in my bed—but I refused to wake her up. Even if she were sober, I’d still let her sleep. In keeping with the Valentine family legacy of secrecy, I couldn’t let anyone know I had been at Wompatuck tonight. I’d already risked a lot by going. I just had to hope no one would ever find out it was me.
With that thought, I finished cleaning up, changed into pajamas, and brought a pillow and blanket out to the couch. I was going to be getting up early and didn’t want to disturb Em.
I shut off all the lights and crawled under my blankets, a smile still playing at my lips. Max was safe and sound. I’d found him.
Grendel hopped up on me and began kneading my stomach. Odysseus ran a marathon on his wheel. I tried to keep thoughts of the skeleton out of my head. Tonight was a night to bask in the glow of happiness.
As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn’t help but agree with Em. That damn wheel did make so much noise.
THIRTEEN
Em was still out cold by the time I left the next morning. I knew she had called in sick, so I let her sleep in. Grendel had abandoned following me around as I got ready in favor of curling up with her.
His affection was easily swayed.
I retrieved Grendel’s uneaten Twinkie from under the table, threw it away, and left a note for Em on the counter, asking her not to leave before we could talk. There was something going on with her, and I wanted to find out what it was, see if I could help; I’d be back in a couple of hours, planning only to work half a day. I wanted to check on Lola and follow up with Raphael to see if he’d made plans for a date.
My feet ached. I took two Advil and doctored my wounds as best I could, nearly using a whole tube of Neosporin in the process. I suppose I should be glad my toes hadn’t been frostbitten, but it was hard to be grateful when every step I took hurt like hell.
I pulled a fresh pair of jeans from the dryer, shimmied into them, and layered on a cami, a T-shirt, and a faux suede blazer Marisol had bought me for my birthday. Temperatures had dropped into the lower thirties and the heavy clouds on the horizon hinted at snow.
I drove to the commuter boat terminal, trying not to think about the night before. Today was a new day. I’d go to work, make a few matches, and hope no more clients would want to fire me.
Raphael was waiting for me at the Long Wharf Marriott. As I slid into my seat, he eyed me.
“Long night, Uva?”
“You could say that.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
There was no countering that.
He stopped to avoid hitting a jaywalker. “Were you limping?”
“Stubbed my toe this morning.”
“Could be broken, want me to take a look?”
He’d bandaged almost every cut I’d had when I was little. “No. It’ll be okay.”
The radio was set to WEEI, a sports station. Callers were talking football, already boasting about the Patriots.
“Did you call Marcia last night?” I asked.
“I did.”
“And?”
“She seems lovely.”
Brake lights lined the street ahead of us. Pedestrians rushed by. Everyone in a hurry to be somewhere, the quicker the better. “Are you going out?”
“This weekend.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it,” I said.
“Just nerves, Uva.”
“You’ll do fine!”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Just be yourself. She won’t be able to resist.”
We inched along with the traffic flow. The clouds hung low in the sky, and I wished it would snow. There was nothing more beautiful than the city covered in a blanket of white.
He adjusted the volume on the radio, turning it down. “Did you hear they found that little boy?” he asked casually.
Too casually.
“That’s wonderful!” I said, carefully wording my response. “How? Where?”
“In the park where he went missing. A woman appeared out of nowhere, guiding the little boy’s father and a police officer to where he was.” He watched me closely out of the corner of his eye.
I swallowed hard.
15 times 3 is 45.
54 minus 6 is 48.
“How did she know where he was?” I asked, trying to sound curious.
“No one knows, Uva. The police want to talk to her. The parents want to thank her. The little boy says he’d never seen her before, so it seems she had nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“Wow.”
Raphael seemed intent to keep talking about Max.
“He’d been in the hollow of a tree trunk since realizing he was lost,” Raphael said. “He remembered his parents told him to stay put if he ever became separated from them.”
“Just like you always told me.”
Smiling, he went on. “He’d heard voices calling for him but was too scared to talk to strangers.”
“You always told me it was okay to talk to someone in a uniform. Do you remember the time I got lost in the art museum and couldn’t figure out why the man in the uniform wouldn’t help me?”
“I found you speaking to a wax replica of Paul Revere in full regalia. Yes, I recall. You were four. And a hellion.”
“I was not!”
“Your memory, Uva. Not so good.”
Rolling my eyes, I breathed in relief. I’d managed to change the subject away from Max O’Brien. I picked up the Herald lying folded in between the seat. The headline read: Little Boy Found. I didn’t read the story but did linger on the photos of Max and his parents. I flipped to the gossip page, my breath held, hoping Preston Bailey hadn’t gotten her byline.
Several celebrities were in town, a socialite was out clubbing the night before, making a fool of herself, and there was a little paragraph about the King of Love, Oscar Valentine, taking his wounded heart out of town. Nothing about me—no pictures, no mention of me taking over the company. Nada. I was beyond glad. Maybe Preston Bailey had nothing on me at all.
My success at diverting Raphael’s train of thought was short-lived. “They don’t know where the woman is. Vanished after the boy was found. Supposedly she left behind her shoes.”
Even as he said it, my feet ached at the memory. “Her shoes?”
“The detective is meeting with a sketch artist today to come up with a composite.” He stopped at a red light and slid a knowing look my way. “Maybe someone will recognize her.”
My stomach flipped. “That’d . . . that’d be good.”
“Anything you want to tell me, Uva?”
It was obvious he knew it was me who’d found the little boy. Time to ’fess up. “You are superhuman, you know that? How’d you know it was me?”
“I suspected, but didn’t know for sure until I saw you limping. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know, Pasa. I guess I rather liked knowing I did this on my own. I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone.”
He nodded. “Understandable. But now tell me everything.”
I laughed. And I did tell all—about finding Max. I didn’t say a word about the skeleton. One revelation was enough for the day.
Raphael pulled up in front of Valentine, Inc. He leaned over, kissed my forehead. “I’m proud of you. You did good, Uva.”
I smiled. “I know.”
I asked him to meet me back here at eleven. That should give me enough time to get some files in order before heading home to talk to Em.
Preston Bailey was nowhere to be seen as I swiped my ID card. I climbed to the sec
ond-floor landing and paused, looking up.
Go up and say hi? Be strong and get to work?
The pull was irresistible.
I knocked on the third-floor door, calling out, “Sean?”
Cinnamon scented the air as he yelled, “Back here!”
His office door was open. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw two official-looking men sitting in the chairs opposite Sean’s desk.
“Honey, there you are. I was just telling these nice gentlemen all about you. Lucy, this is Detective Chapman and Detective Kolchowski of the Weymouth Police Department.”
I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice. “Hello, Detectives. No need to get up,” I said as they started to rise. The last thing I wanted to do was shake their hands. No telling what I’d see.
“Ms. . . .” One of the detectives—I didn’t know which one—looked at his notebook. “Valentine, is it?”
“Yes?”
“We’re here about the body you and your boyfriend found last night.”
I glanced at Sean.
“Honey, I know you wanted to stay out of it, but a witness had my license plate number.”
Again with the “honey.” I took if for what it was meant—a hint that he had told the detectives we were a couple. Still, it twisted my heart into a confused knot.
“Why did you want to stay out of it, exactly, Ms. Valentine?” the bigger of the two detectives asked. He was thick—not fat—with keen eyes, thinning hair, and a chipped tooth on otherwise really nice teeth.
I stepped into the office. The chairs were all taken, and Sean offered me his. The seat was still warm. He sat on the edge of his desk.
“You may have heard of my father, Oscar Valentine,” I said, making up an excuse on the spot.
“The matchmaker?” the other detective asked. This one was big, too, but his bulk tended toward fat. He wore rimless glasses, a long mustache, and a suit that had seen better days.
“Yes. He’s had a bit of bad press lately. I didn’t want to add any more stress to his weak heart. The gossip columnists would have a field day if they knew. So I wanted to keep it quiet. What did it matter who found the body?”
“Nothing,” the one with glasses said, “if you had nothing to do with putting it there.”
I opened my mouth, snapped it closed. It was probably best to say nothing at all, rather than be goaded into making rash comments.
The other detective tapped his notepad. “What breed of dog do you have?”
“A Yorkshire,” Sean answered.
The mustachioed detective scribbled. “May I speak to you in the other room, Ms. Valentine?” he asked.
Rising, I said, “Sure.”
They probably wanted to make sure Sean and I had the same story. I hoped he had stuck to the truth as much as possible.
“Could you run through the events of last night?” the detective asked, once we were settled in a conference room. He stood. I sat.
“Sure. Sean picked me up at the dock. We decided to go for a walk with Thoreau, the dog. Not long after we started walking, Thoreau broke free, dashed into the woods, and started barking. We tried to get him to come, but he wouldn’t budge. Curious, Sean went and got a shovel from the car and started digging. When he hit a bone, we left and called the police.”
“Does Mr. Donahue often keep a shovel in his trunk?”
I shrugged. “I don’t often go looking in his trunk. We’ve only been dating a little while.”
“Have you walked the dog at this park before?”
“No,” I said. “Why choose it?”
“A friend recommended it to me.”
“Who?”
Shit! “Marisol Valerius.” I’d have to call her ASAP.
“Do you find it odd that a dog would find a body buried so long?”
“How long has it been there?”
He hesitated, then didn’t answer.
“Do you know a woman named Rachel Yurio?”
Rachel Yurio? A spark of memory lit a corner of my brain. Michael had mentioned her name to me the day we met. She’d been the sidekick of bad-girl Elena.
Rachel was the one in the grave? How? Why? And again, why did she have Michael’s ring?
“I’ve heard of her,” I said. “How?”
“Through a client.”
“Who?”
I hesitated.
“I can come back with a warrant, Ms. Valentine.”
“Michael Lafferty.”
“And how does he know her?”
“Old friends, I believe.”
“Girlfriend, boyfriend?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“How long has Mr. Lafferty been a client?”
“A couple of days.”
“You’ve only known this man a couple of days, yet you and your private-eye boyfriend suddenly, coincidentally, dig up his dead girlfriend?”
It sounded horrible put that way. “They were just friends,” I said lamely.
“How well do you know Michael Lafferty?”
I didn’t like where this was headed. “He didn’t have anything to do with her death,” I stated.
The detective stared at me a long time. I let him.
Finally, he said, “And just how do you know that?”
How could I explain? I couldn’t without revealing my abilities, and even then there was doubt the detective—or anyone—would believe me.
“I just—he’s not the type.”
Squinty-eyed, he scribbled in a notebook. “I think we’re done for now. Is there a number I can reach you if I have more questions?”
I gave him my home number; then he walked me back to Sean’s office. Dropping a business card on the desk, he said, “Don’t leave town. Either of you.”
Sean saw them out. I was sitting in his desk chair when he returned. “Charming, aren’t they?”
“The body apparently belongs to Rachel Yurio,” I said.
“Yeah. They found a purse with ID in the grave, and apparently she’s been missing for years.”
I toed the rug. “She’s a friend of a client. Or she was.”
Sean’s shoulders stiffened. “A client? Who?”
I told him pretty much what I told the detective, including all Michael had told me about Elena Hart and Rachel tormenting Jennifer.
“And you just happened to know where this girl was buried?”
I said, “Strange coincidence, right?”
“Coincidence.”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. Trying to evade his stare, I dialed Marisol at her clinic. She didn’t answer her cell. I left a message.
“If any detectives come asking about me, you told me that Great Esker Park was a good place to walk a dog. And you might want to think about how you know the park. And you might want to erase this message, just in case.”
I was going to face twenty questions when she listened to that voice mail.
“Lucy,” Sean began.
I held up a hand. “I can’t explain it.”
“You’re going to tell me how—”
I cut him off. “Maybe someday. For now I need more help.”
“You’ve got some nerve, Lucy Valentine.”
I knew.
“What did you need?”
“I need to hire you.”
“For what?”
“I think I may have just implicated my client as a murderer. I’ve got to fix this mess before my father gets back.”
Before I caved under Sean’s intense scrutiny, I hurried out of his office. Downstairs, I shoved open the door to Valentine, Inc., and found Dovie sitting at Suz’s desk, a stack of files in front of her.
“No Suz?” I asked.
“She called and will be in later today.”
“You’re not matchmaking, are you?” I pointed at the files.
“Nah. Just looking to see if there are any good candidates for me.”
I laughed. “I thought you’d sworn off men after Grandpa died.”
“I swore off getting married—not men. It might be time to start taking dating seriously. I’m not getting any younger.”
Not true—thanks to her plastic surgeon.
“First Raphael, now you. Seems like love is in the air.”
She held up a few folders. “Want to have a look-see for yourself? I heard your date with Butch didn’t go so well.”
News traveled fast. “I had to leave. I took a rain check. But he’s not my type, Dovie.”
“And who is?”
Sean.
I avoided the question. “There’s no point in dating at all. Not with our family’s track record in the marriage department.”
“Who said anything about marriage?” she asked. “It’s okay to have a little fun once in a while. A little va-va-voom once in a while.”
“I’ll pass.” I didn’t think I could va-va-voom if I tried.
Bangle bracelets jangled harmoniously as she shook her arm at me. “I met a man the other day. He’s perfect for you. I’ll bring him by sometime.”
There was no sense in arguing. I headed for my office. “Oh, and no eavesdropping today.”
“Spoilsport.”
I was stopped in my tracks by the image on TV. It was a split screen, one side showing a composite sketch of someone who looked remarkably like me and the other side showing a picture of the shoes I’d left behind in the woods.
I shut off the TV, hoping Dovie hadn’t seen. “How about we listen to CDs today?”
“Fine, fine,” she said, deep into reading a file.
Flipping on the stereo, I pushed the CD button. My father had five discs set to go. As soft jazz filled the office, I tried telling myself that the sketch didn’t look that much like me. Just a little. Through the mouth mostly. And I’m sure hundreds of women owned heels like mine.
In my office, I sat behind my desk and pulled Michael Lafferty’s phone number. I reached his answering machine at home. I hung up before leaving a message and tried him at work, an auto body shop near Weymouth’s Jackson Square. Whoever answered told me Michael was busy and would have to call me back. I left my name and cell number and told him it was urgent.
I had to warn him before the police got to him.
Trying to bide my time, I pulled the file for Lola Fellows. Nervous, I dialed. She answered on the third ring, with a harried and terse, “Yes?”
