“I can’t,” she murmured, drawing back. “Please.”
“The magic word is stop,” he reminded her, though he did stop without her saying it.
“I’m sorry. This is my first time since . . .”
“I know.” He brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. “I don’t mean to be pushy. It’s just, this was nice, you know?” He gestured toward the bed. “Really nice.”
Nice barely scratched the surface. “Well, maybe . . . Maybe we could do it again sometime.”
“You free tomorrow?” he asked.
She smiled, rested her head against his shoulder for a minute, then pushed away and went to redeem her wrinkled garments. “I have to do grocery shopping.”
“There goes the whole day.”
His sarcastic tone made her laugh. “Call me tomorrow. I might have some free time after I’ve braved the supermarket aisles.”
Once they were both dressed, Lainie finger combed her hair in the mirror above his dresser, hoisted the strap of her purse onto her shoulder, and left the bedroom with him, refusing herself a final glimpse of his bed. They descended to the garage level and climbed into the borrowed sedan. The drive to Rockford passed in silence, although whenever Stavik wasn’t shifting gears he let his hand rest on her thigh. His fingers were warm and covered a huge portion of her leg. She didn’t object to his touch, even though it made her want to beg him to turn the car around and return to his house.
Her own house was quiet and dark, just like every other house on her street. Even on a Saturday night, Rockford’s neighborhoods weren’t known for rowdy partying. Karen and Big Brad weren’t partying inside, if the absence of Brad’s car was anything to go by.
Stavik walked her to the front door. In the shadows under the overhang, he gave her one more deep, hungry kiss, then backed away. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised.
HE DIDN’T CALL. She finished her shopping by eleven, having stocked up on chocolate chip cookies and bananas in order to provide Sean Cavanagh with after-school noshes if he continued to show up uninvited at her house, and when she returned home, Karen reported that there had been no calls while she was out. She unpacked the groceries, put them away, fixed herself some fresh coffee, nodded farewell when Karen left to meet some friends at the Natick Mall, and thumbed through a few sections of the newspaper, carefully avoiding the City/Region section so she wouldn’t have to read any updates on Arthur’s murder.
The phone didn’t ring.
She reviewed her lesson plans for the following week and finished grading her class’s “dia-clams.” Still no call. She phoned her mother to chat, figuring that if Stavik tried her and got a busy signal, he could try again. Her mother described a particularly challenging small slam in no trump that she’d pulled off at bridge a few nights ago—“Only two tables made the contract, which was very good for us, master-point-wise”—and her volunteer work in the gift shop of the community hospital, and she reminded Lainie to remind Karen about the job possibility at Citicorp.
Lainie hung up. She stared at the phone. Uttered a few words she would never repeat in front of her students. Went out into the backyard with a soccer ball and kicked it against the rear wall of the garage for a half hour. Returned indoors. No messages on the answering machine.
All right, so he wasn’t going to call. Big deal. This wasn’t high school, and she wasn’t in love with him. Just because he’d said he would call didn’t mean he was obligated to. Just because he’d broken a promise didn’t mean she should wish her soccer ball was his head so she could go back outside and kick it against the wall some more.
She was a big girl. She’d had sex last night, for the first time in years. It had been great. She’d have sex again someday. Maybe next time, she’d have it with someone her own age.
Yet she remained angry and distressed, not because her heart was broken or her soul shattered, but because her faith in her own intelligence was undermined. She’d believed she and Stavik were good together last night. They’d enjoyed each other’s company. They’d become friends. Had she completely misread him? If she had, what did that say about her judgment?
She ordered herself to quit moping. Stavik had said no expectations, hadn’t he? And after all, he wasn’t a saint. Very few men were.
“DID YOU HEAR?” Nancy Van Doerr chirped on Monday morning when Lainie entered the Hopwell main office to run off photocopies of a handout on giant squids for her class.
She wasn’t in the mood for Nancy’s gossip. In fact, she wasn’t in the mood for much of anything. She’d spent too much time lately fretting over Arthur Cavanagh’s murder, Detective Knapp’s stupidity, and, during the past twenty-four hours, Bill Stavik’s asshole-ness. Merely thinking about the man who’d had sex with her and then misplaced her phone number dragged her vocabulary into the gutter.
She forced a smile as she rounded the counter and strode to the photocopy machine. “No, I didn’t hear,” she said, cringing inwardly at how bitter she sounded. None of Lainie’s problems were Nancy’s fault. She shouldn’t take her anger out on Nancy, even if the woman was a yenta.
“They’ve made an arrest in the Cavanagh murder.”
That brought Lainie to a halt. Nancy’s information about Arthur Cavanagh had been correct so far—and if this was correct, it would be the best news Lainie had received in days, because she hadn’t been arrested. “How did you hear that?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested.
“I hear everything,” Nancy said, smiling smugly and lifting a pocket mirror from a drawer of her desk. She inspected an eyebrow hair, groomed it with her pinkie nail, and returned the mirror to the drawer. “All roads lead to my ears, Lainie. I’ve got teachers, staff, parents, and kids marching in and out of here all day long. Besides, it was on the eleven o’clock news last night.”
Lainie hadn’t watched the news. She’d been in a bad enough mood last night without having to contemplate the state of the world.
She slid her squid picture into the copy machine and set the counter for twenty-five copies. “Who did they arrest? One of the environmentalists?”
Nancy shook her head. “I was so sure one of those tree huggers had done it. They’re such head cases. But no, it was someone who worked for Arthur Cavanagh.”
Lainie’s gut did a back flip. Someone who worked for Arthur Cavanagh? “Do you remember his name?”
“Umm . . .” Nancy closed her eyes, as if this would jolt her memory. “Nope, don’t remember. Anne Marie’s brother-in-law is on the Rockford Police Force. He told her Mr. Cavanagh’s workers didn’t like their boss much. And I gather the guy they arrested didn’t like him even more than any of the others didn’t like him.”
Lainie clutched the plastic frame of the copy machine and watched it spit a neat pile of giant squids into the tray. All these years, and she’d never known the school nurse was related to a Rockford Police officer.
Maybe Anne Marie knew the name of the Cavanagh Homes employee charged with the crime. If Arthur’s workers—plural—hadn’t liked him, why was Lainie dreading the likelihood that Stavik was the one they’d arrested?
Because he was the one the police had their eye on. He was the one they’d suspected all along. He was the one who’d left his footprints and his hair all over the murder scene.
She gathered the stack of squids and managed another feeble smile for Nancy as she left the office. She didn’t trust herself to speak, or even to open her mouth. If she did, she might throw up.
She made it to the faculty women’s room, staggered into one of the stalls, gaped at the toilet, and decided she wasn’t going to be sick, after all. If pictures of giant squid didn’t make her vomit, the possibility that she’d had sex with a man arrested for murder wouldn’t make her vomit, either.
She took several deep breaths to settle her stomach and willed her hand
s to stop shaking. Worrying wouldn’t do her any good. She would get through the rest of the school day, and then she would find out what was going on.
The first half of that agenda was fulfilled easily enough. Lainie was a teacher. She loved her students. She loved the way they squealed and made gagging noises when they viewed pictures of giant squid. She loved the way they discussed the chapter they’d read from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the way they tolerated one another’s idiosyncrasies: Matthew Belzig’s intensity, Hayden Blumenthal’s stammer, the ADHD kids’ rambunctiousness. They deserved one hundred percent of Lainie, and that was what she gave them.
But once they’d filed out the door and trooped off to their buses, the second half of Lainie’s agenda kicked in. She had to find out whom the Rockford Police had arrested.
She closed up her classroom, made it to the faculty lot without running into Nancy and being treated to an uninvited update on today’s headline, and shut herself inside her Volvo. A steady rain had begun to fall, misting the windshield and blurring her view of the athletic field. Not that there was anything to see there; no one played after-school soccer in the rain. She wondered whether her own practice was still scheduled.
Sheila would know if Coach Thomaston had cancelled the practice due to the rain. She might also know about the arrest. She was plugged into an entirely different network than Lainie—the stay-at-home moms’ network. Patty Cavanagh was a stay-at-home mom. Maybe Sheila had heard something.
Lainie pulled her purse onto her lap, lifted the flap and rummaged inside it for her cell phone. Her fingers felt something odd—a hard object stashed in the zippered inner pocket. She never stored anything in that pocket, but something was in it now.
Frowning, she tugged the zipper open and reached inside. And pulled out a flat, rectangular object.
A BlackBerry.
Oh, shit.
Chapter Thirteen
IF HYSTERIA WERE Lainie’s style, she would have been ready to book a nice, long cruise on the SS Funny Farm by the time she got home. However, her temperament tended toward composure and dignity. During the worst periods of Roger’s illness, she’d never snapped, never thrown plates, never screamed at her in-laws or the kids. She’d driven to Hopwell every day, taught her students, come home, and overseen Roger’s treatment. And kicked the hell out of soccer balls when necessary.
It was raining too hard today for her to kick a soccer ball outdoors, and she wouldn’t risk kicking one inside the house, given how much energy she had to burn. A single kick might take down the TV or smash a window. Besides, she didn’t have time to kick the hell out of anything. She was in possession of a BlackBerry.
Not her BlackBerry.
Perhaps not Arthur Cavanagh’s BlackBerry, either. She didn’t even know how to turn the damned thing on, let alone how to call up the data on it to see if anything stored in its circuitry identified its owner.
But just assuming it was Arthur Cavanagh’s BlackBerry, who would have hidden it in her purse? The answer to that question made her want to kick soccer balls until she dislocated all her toes.
At least Sean wasn’t lurking in her driveway today. She didn’t have it in her to be maternal and nurturing with him right now. Given the rain, he’d probably tucked his skateboard under his arm and ridden the bus home. Thank God for the lousy weather.
She locked herself inside the house, as if she expected the police to show up in riot gear and smash down the door. If that was what they wanted to do, her locks weren’t going to keep them out, but she felt safer with all the doors bolted. After double-checking the cellar door one final time, she returned to the kitchen, lifted the cordless, took a deep breath, and phoned Roger’s old firm. She still had the number memorized.
“I’d like to speak to Peter Cataldo,” she told the receptionist who answered. “It’s urgent.”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“No.” Most of the receptionists would recognize her name, and she wasn’t ready for them to learn about the mess she was in.
“I’ll see if he’s available,” the receptionist said reluctantly before putting Lainie on hold.
In less than a minute, Peter picked up. “Lainie?”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Anyone else would have identified herself. What’s up?”
“I found a BlackBerry in my purse,” she said, then explained the significance of her discovery.
“Did you touch it? Of course you touched it,” he answered himself. “Don’t touch it anymore. Where is it right now?”
“It’s lying on my kitchen table.” Staring accusingly at her, its glossy chrome-trimmed black frame and cute little monitor mocking her. “Should I wipe my fingerprints off it?”
“No. If you wipe your fingerprints off it, you’ll wipe off the fingerprints of whoever put it in your purse, too. Just leave it on your table. Don’t touch it. I’ll be at your house in twenty minutes.”
“There’s no way you can get here in twenty minutes without breaking every speed limit—”
“I’m a lawyer, sweetheart. I know how to break speed limits without getting in trouble. Sit tight. I’m on my way.”
Lainie sat tight for about five minutes. Then she paced the kitchen. Then she went to the bathroom and emptied her bladder. Then she returned to the kitchen, stared at the BlackBerry, and kicked one of the table legs. Her toe throbbed, and she took a deep breath and cautioned herself to stay calm.
How could she stay calm? She’d slept with a man Saturday night, and he’d hidden Arthur Cavanagh’s BlackBerry in her purse. Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .
“Stop it,” she said aloud. For one thing, she didn’t know it was Arthur’s BlackBerry. For another, she didn’t know Stavik had hidden it in her purse. For a third, she wasn’t religious.
Even so, a little prayer wouldn’t hurt. She sat at the table, folded her hands, closed her eyes because it seemed like a pious thing to do—also because she didn’t want to see the BlackBerry lying less than a foot away from her on the polished butcher-block surface—and tried to come up with a prayer.
“God, I’m a good person,” she whispered. “I don’t go to temple, or church for that matter, but I live a decent life. I work hard. I love my family. I love my students. I’m kind to strangers. So please, could you make this not be Arthur Cavanagh’s missing BlackBerry? Please?” She paused, then added, “Thank you.” Perhaps God would give her extra points for courtesy.
Peter rang her doorbell twenty-five minutes after she’d phoned him. She raced to the door and fumbled with the deadbolt, which was a little sticky from disuse. The last time she’d opened the front door was Saturday night—early Sunday morning, actually—when Stavik had brought her home and given her one final kiss. After slipping the BlackBerry into her purse. The son of a bitch. Oh God, oh God . . .
Peter wore a chic gray raincoat over his equally chic navy-blue blazer and beige trousers. Tall and thin, he had the sort of physique designed for stylish apparel, and as a partner in a law firm and a gay man with no dependents, he had the money to pay for top-of-the-line fashions. Even his shoes were chic, elegant leather loafers so highly buffed the raindrops beaded into clear pearls on their surfaces. His skin was perpetually tan, a tribute to his Italian genes rather than visits to tanning salons. “I don’t go to those places,” he swore. “UV rays cause wrinkles.” Skin cancer obviously didn’t scare him as much as aging.
“Lainie,” he said, running a hand over his dark, rain-soaked hair. He kissed her cheek, then scrutinized her. “You don’t look too bad, considering.”
“How did you expect me to look?”
“Like a mug shot,” he said, then laughed to let her know he was joking.
She wasn’t amused.
“Where is this evil implement?” he asked.
“In the kitchen. You
told me not to touch it.” She led him to the kitchen and he halted in front of the table.
“The question, Lainie, is how did it get into your purse?”
“I don’t know,” she said. That’s not a lie, God, she added silently. So don’t hold it against me.
“Let me rephrase the question,” Peter said, sounding disconcertingly lawyerly. “Who’s had access to your purse in the past few days?”
“Karen,” she answered. “I generally leave my purse on the kitchen counter when I get home from school.” She pointed to the area of the counter near the microwave. “Right there. But Karen doesn’t own a BlackBerry. And even if she did, why would she put it in my purse and not mention it to me?”
“Why indeed?” Peter gazed at the device as if he expected answers to appear on its screen. “Who else can get into your purse? Anyone at school?”
“I keep it locked in a desk drawer most of the day,” she said. “I’ll take it out if I’m going to the faculty lounge or the restroom, but other than that, it stays in the drawer.”
“Lots of kids have PDAs these days. Do you think this could belong to one of your students?”
“No,” she said glumly. “And neither do you.”
“Neither do I.” He gave her a long, hard look. “Who else could have put it there?”
“Bill Stavik,” she confessed, then lowered her eyes like a naughty child, awaiting his proclamation that she was grounded for a month.
Peter spared her a major scolding. “Bill Stavik was arrested for Cavanagh’s murder yesterday,” he said.
Peter was only giving voice to her suspicions, but the words still struck her with the force of nails from a nail gun. Stavik. That sweet, funny, sensual man. That man whose wife had deceived him, but who remained utterly devoted to his daughter. That man who resented Arthur Cavanagh’s destruction of the trees at his building sites, who resented Arthur’s treatment of his workers, who thought Arthur was a bastard—and who’d had access to Lainie’s purse on Saturday night.
Dead Ball Page 16
