Dead Ball

by Judith Arnold

  Why would Patty have hired a private investigator to trail her husband while he rebuffed the sexual advances of a paid escort? Why would he get together with the prostitute more than once, when he didn’t want to have sex with her?

  Bree had said, “I’d call him, ask if he wanted to get together, and he’d always say yes.” Why had she called him? Because Patty had paid her to?

  Lainie’s head hurt. The questions jumped up and down before her, noisy and disorganized, reminding her of her ADHD students.

  She pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. After driving a few blocks, she turned off the main road and stopped. She couldn’t concentrate on the traffic with all those questions bouncing around her skull.

  If Patty had hired Jackson Bray to investigate Arthur’s extramarital activities, she must have been thinking in terms of a divorce. But his extramarital activities had been relatively tame—maybe too tame to justify a divorce. So Patty had killed him instead.

  Lainie weighed and measured that theory. It came close to fitting the situation, but this wasn’t horseshoes, and close didn’t count.

  If Patty had killed Arthur, why would Bree think Patty owed her money?

  Sean had told Lainie that his mother had wanted a divorce, but his father had said she’d never go through with it because if she did, he’d leave her penniless. That sounded like a pretty decent motivation for Patty to kill him. Arthur’s death would get her out of a bad marriage without depriving her of his money.

  But if she’d decided to murder him and inherit his money, why go through the charade of hiring Jackson Bray to try to catch Arthur in flagrante delicto with Bree? Why waste time with Bree at all? Why not just kill him?

  The answer teased, just beyond her reach. She was missing something essential, some key that would unlock the truth. She wondered how Freddy the Pig, Nancy Drew, or Encyclopedia Brown would solve this riddle in a fourth-grade mystery novel. Those great juvenile-fiction detectives didn’t have to deal with prostitutes and frustrated wives and executives with carpentry nails fired into their brains. Lainie wished she could swap her mystery for one of theirs.

  Maybe the answer lay with Arthur, with something in his character. She’d never really known him—and given what she’d heard about him from people who did know him, she should probably be grateful for that. He’d been an unpleasant man, a bully of a boss, and generally uninvolved in his son’s life. Who might offer different insights about the man? Who could explain to Lainie why Arthur Cavanagh’s wife would kill him?

  Arthur Cavanagh’s other wife.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “JESUS, LAINIE, what are you doing?”

  “I’m sitting in my car and talking to you on my cell phone,” Lainie said.

  Through the windshield, she observed two white-haired ladies in spiffy sneakers power walking laps up and down the street. Strutting through malls was a popular exercise routine among the elderly, and the Burlington Mall was less than a mile away. But the two women Lainie watched from her car had made the choice Lainie would have made: working out on a quiet suburban road, soaking in the fresh air and the natural scenery rather than hiking through an enclosed shopping emporium with linoleum floors and piped-in music. Each time the two women reached the corner and U-turned, Lainie sent them a silent cheer.

  “What you’re doing is aging me,” Peter moaned. “It’s reached a point where I feel a new wrinkle forming every time I hear your voice.”

  “So get a Botox injection. I’m not doing anything illegal, Peter, and I’m not being difficult. All I did was ask if it was true that divorces are a matter of public record.”

  “And you want to know this why?”

  “I want to talk to Arthur Cavanagh’s first wife. I need her name. If their divorce is part of the public record, you could look that up for me, couldn’t you? I’d look it up myself, but I’m sitting in my car right now. I don’t have a computer handy, and my phone isn’t picking up a WiFi signal.”

  “Even if it was, digging up people’s divorce records isn’t that simple.”

  “But for a lawyer like you, it isn’t that hard, either, is it?”

  He mumbled something under his breath. Louder, he asked, “What are you going to do if I find out her name?”

  “Talk to her. That’s all.”

  “That’s all,” he repeated incredulously. “Roger was my dear friend, and I can’t for the life of me decide whether he would want me to humor you or slap you until you came to your senses.”

  “He would never want you to slap me,” Lainie said.

  “You’re right.” Peter sighed audibly. “Give me your cell number. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”

  He called back as promised, and provided her with the name Gretchen Donner and an address in Newton Center. “I’m warning you, Lainie,” he added, “if you do something that requires bail money, I’m not going back to your mother-in-law for it. I’ll leave you to rot in jail.”

  “I love you, too,” she said before disconnecting, bidding a tacit farewell to the strutting seniors and pulling away from the curb.

  South of Burlington and west of Boston, Newton was a small city partitioned into villages. She drove through the villages of West Newton and Newtonville before veering into a Newton Center gas station to obtain directions to the address Peter had given her. The clerk inside the gas station had greasy hands and reeked of cigarette smoke, but he was knowledgeable about the area. The directions he gave her were pretty straightforward.

  Two turns later, she found herself stuck behind a school bus that stopped every couple of blocks to disgorge children. The clock on her dashboard read three fifteen, and the sun sat happily in the western half of the sky. If Lainie’s life were her own, she’d be shutting down her classroom right about now, her mind still dancing with the intriguing and humorous observations of her students, their breakthroughs, their setbacks and victories.

  Her life wasn’t her own, however. Not even her drive was her own, since she had to creep along behind a school bus that traveled ten miles per hour except when it wasn’t moving at all.

  What if Gretchen Donner wasn’t home? Bree Daniels hadn’t been home when Lainie had arrived at her townhouse, although she’d showed up after not too long. Did Lainie deserve to be lucky twice?

  At last she veered away from the school bus and into a quiet neighborhood of modest homes. Spotting the house bearing the address Peter had dug up for her, she wondered whether when Gretchen Donner had shed her husband and his last name, she’d also shed the Cavanagh Homes concept of what a dwelling should be. Her residence was a small post-World War II brick ranch on a quarter-acre lot, with a single car garage and a weedy front lawn in desperate need of water and fertilizer. Lainie pulled onto the cement driveway, shut off her car, and prayed for Gretchen Donner to be home.

  A woman answered the door within seconds of Lainie’s ringing the bell. Short and plump, with dark, woolly hair that hadn’t been trimmed in some time, she didn’t look like anyone Arthur Cavanagh would have married. Her pudgy body was draped in a caftan made of some raw burlap-like fiber, and unlike Patty’s multi-carat eternity ring, this woman’s jewelry appeared to have been plucked from the bargain bin at the dollar store—a necklace strung of plastic beads and a tarnished silver ring that resembled either a leaf or a mangled coke spoon. The woman’s eyes were clear and bright. Lainie chose to believe the ring was a leaf.

  “Hi,” she said, infusing her voice with warm cheer. “I’m looking for Gretchen Donner.”

  “You’re looking at Gretchen Donner,” the woman replied through the screen door.

  “Hi,” Lainie said again, smiling wider. She contemplated her Smith alias, then decided that anyone who’d survived marriage with Arthur deserved the truth. “I’m Lainie Lovett. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions about Arthur Cavanagh.�
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  “Why should I answer questions about Arthur Cavanagh?”

  More truth was called for. “I was charged as an accessory to his murder,” Lainie informed her. “I’m innocent, and I’m trying to unearth the facts that will clear me.”

  Gretchen Donner inspected her through the screen door, reached some sort of conclusion, and unlatched the door for Lainie. Stepping inside the living room, she discovered the house’s interior was as modest as the exterior. The furniture was old, faded, and lived-in, rather like Lainie’s furniture, and the rooms were pleasantly messy, particularly the dining room, which was visible from the living room through an arched doorway. Piles of papers covered nearly the entire surface of the oval table. Lainie hoped the house had an eat-in kitchen, because the dining room was clearly not being used for dining.

  “Have a seat,” Gretchen said, gesturing toward one of the overstuffed sofas. Lainie sat and felt the soft cushions swallow her. “Would you like some tea? I’ve just made a pot. It’s the herbal stuff—it won’t cure cancer, but it won’t keep you up all night, either.”

  Lainie decided she liked Gretchen. She’d much rather drink tea with her than eat butter pecan ice cream with Bree Daniels. “Thanks, that would be nice.”

  Gretchen vanished through the dining room and into the kitchen. Lainie couldn’t see her, which meant she couldn’t see Lainie. Liberating herself from the sofa cushions, she wandered around the room. A fireplace was built into the outer wall, and although it was empty of ashes, it was sooty enough to inform Lainie that it got regular use. Prints of paintings by Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer hung on the walls. Knickknacks filled the shelves and the fireplace mantel—glass figurines, dried flowers in painted jugs, a corncob doll, a primitive llama carved out of soapstone. Despite the clutter, everything was dust-free.

  Lainie inched toward the dining room, straining to read the papers piled on the table. She couldn’t make out the print on even the nearest pages without entering the room, and if she did that, Gretchen would see her snooping. Instead, she backed away and told herself to channel her curiosity into the business at hand: finding out what about Arthur Cavanagh would make his wife, as opposed to his foreman or his wife’s soccer teammate, kill him.

  Gretchen swept into the living room, carrying a bamboo tray which held a chunky ceramic pot, a bowl, and a small pitcher and two matching mugs.

  “What a pretty tea set,” Lainie said, resuming her seat on the couch. “It looks handmade.”

  “I bought it at a craft fair, so it probably is. Then again, you never know.” Gretchen laughed. “I suspect there are factories in some third world country that specialize in making pottery that looks handmade, and they pay their workers nine cents an hour.” She poured the tea, asked Lainie if she wanted sugar or milk, and when Lainie said no, passed the mug across the coffee table to her. Then she fixed a cup for herself and sat in an easy chair facing Lainie. “So, you’re the one they found the BlackBerry on.”

  “Yes.”

  “My lawyer has kept me apprised. Messy business, isn’t it.”

  “I’m hoping to clean up the mess.” Lainie leaned forward with some effort, since her tush was so deeply imbedded in the sofa’s upholstery. “Ms. Donner—can I call you Gretchen?”

  “Call me whatever you want,” Gretchen said. “I’ve been called plenty in my day.”

  “By Arthur?”

  Gretchen laughed again. “No, he was always civil with me. He called me Gretch. Sometimes Gret. I wasn’t crazy about Gret, but Gretch was all right.”

  Lainie ran through the questions vying for attention in her mind, then tossed them aside. “I’ve got to admit, you’re not what I expected.”

  “What did you expect? Someone like Patty?”

  “Well . . . yes.”

  “I suppose I was more like her when I was Art’s wife. He was an executive clawing his way to the top, and I did my best to be a proper executive’s wife. I wasn’t very good at it, though.”

  “You seem like a much earthier person. That’s a compliment,” Lainie said.

  “In that case, thank you.”

  “Can I ask why you and Arthur divorced? I don’t mean to be nosy, but I think marital problems between him and Patty were what led to his murder.”

  “If they had marital problems, I wouldn’t know anything about it.” Gretchen sat back in her chair and rested her mug on her knee.

  “But you would know about your marriage to him.”

  “During my marriage to him, he was a piece of scum,” Gretchen said, then smiled. “Charming, bright, handsome, occasionally witty. But always running around, chasing skirts, scoring every chance he got. If he’d cut a notch in the bedpost for every woman he’d screwed after marrying me, the bed would have been reduced to toothpicks by the time we got divorced.”

  “I see.” No, Lainie didn’t see. Why would he have cheated on Gretchen, yet been so adamantly faithful to Patty? Patty might be more glamorous, she might be thinner, but Gretchen had a sweet face and an attractive smile, and when Arthur had married her, she’d been a lot younger than she was now.

  “Even so, I don’t know if we would have gotten a divorce if Patty hadn’t gone and gotten pregnant. I wasn’t able to have children, and Arthur was such a workaholic he didn’t seem to mind that we were childless. But once Patty told him she was carrying his child, he felt he ought to marry her.”

  “You must have felt terribly betrayed.”

  Gretchen shrugged. “I made my peace with Arthur long ago.”

  “That was probably wise.”

  “A lot of alimony can buy peace. He paid a very high price for knocking Patty up.”

  Lainie gazed around her at the house’s humble furnishings and wondered what Gretchen had done with her alimony jackpot. She certainly hadn’t spent it on housing. “I’m sort of surprised to hear that Arthur was cheating on you. I keep hearing how faithful he was to Patty. I don’t see how Patty could have transformed his personality so drastically.”

  Gretchen laughed again. “She didn’t. Her lawyer did.”

  “Oh?”

  “Art was convinced she’d gotten pregnant deliberately so he’d be forced to marry her. Not that he doesn’t deserve half the credit for creating that son of theirs. But he felt she was after his money, and she’d trapped him. So he insisted on a prenuptial agreement. If she divorced him, she’d get nothing. Child support for the boy, but that was it.”

  “Arthur told you this?”

  “I was his wife for fifteen years. He shared things with me, even after we split up.”

  Lainie nodded. Her head was aching again, struggling under the weight of so much random information. “Why would a prenup keep him from cheating on her?”

  “Her lawyer insisted on a clause in the agreement saying that if she caught him screwing around, she would be entitled to half of his wealth in the divorce. He couldn’t very well not agree to that. If he did, it would be like saying he was planning to cheat on her.”

  “So . . . the only way she could divorce him and get alimony was if he cheated on her?”

  “She must have felt it was a good insurance policy,” Gretchen said. “After all, he’d cheated on me. Cheating was something he did a lot of.”

  “And if he didn’t cheat, she couldn’t divorce him without losing access to his money?”

  “That was how the prenup was worded. Art saw it as a challenge. He joked that the one thing that could keep his fly zipped was money. He liked money even better than sex.”

  Lainie saw a glimmer of logic, like a beam of sunlight flickering through the foliage of a dense forest. If she followed that beam, she’d find her way out into the clearing.

  Patty and Arthur had a lousy marriage, according to Sean. Also according to him, his mother couldn’t divorce his father because if she did, she’d wind
up broke. Unless Arthur cheated on her. If he had an affair, then she could leave him and take a big chunk of his money with her.

  So she’d hired Bree Daniels to lure him into cheating. And she’d hired a private investigator to document the affair. Only there hadn’t been an affair, because Arthur had refused to have sex with Bree.

  Which meant the only way to get out of the marriage was to kill Arthur.

  “I’m a teacher,” she told Gretchen. “Fourth grade. I used to think fathoming ten-year-old kids was tricky. It’s a breeze compared to fathoming adults.”

  “Kids don’t like money quite so much.”

  “I’m not sure about that.” Lainie smiled and shook her head. Her students fussed over their clothes, their video games, who had the most elaborate birthday parties, and whose parents owned the most ostentatious home entertainment centers. They lived in oversized houses and traveled to their soccer games in gas-guzzling SUVs that were too wide for Rockford’s picturesque back roads. Their parents dreamed of sending them to Harvard, because a Harvard degree would improve their odds of maintaining the family’s level of wealth. “Greed is all around us,” she said.

  “But we can resist it if we try,” Gretchen said.

  Lainie sipped the last of her tea and placed her empty mug on the tray. “That was delicious,” she said. “And I appreciate your letting me pick your brain.”

  “My pleasure,” Gretchen assured her. “I feel terrible about Arthur’s death, but I don’t want the wrong person to go to prison for it. I have the feeling you’re the wrong person.”

  “Thank you.” How gratifying it was for a near stranger to express such faith in Lainie’s innocence. She was tempted to fling her arms around Gretchen, but she thought that might startle the round little woman in her homely caftan and her plastic necklace. Instead, she extended her hand.

  Gretchen shook it. “Good luck, Lainie. I hope you can clean up this mess.”

  “I hope so, too.” Lainie started toward the front door, then hesitated. “It’s none of my business, but what did you do with all that alimony you got from Arthur?”