by Leslie Meier
“Tell me about it,” fumed Harold. “I know you don’t like Fluffy much, Inez, but you’ve got to admit she has a calming influence. All she has to do is sit in your lap and start purring and it’s better than a scotch and soda.”
“How would you know?” asked Inez. “You always have the scotch and soda, too.”
“I could use one now,” said Harold, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping his brow. “Maybe I should talk to that guy again. Make sure he hasn’t forgotten us.”
“The car’s here,” said Inez, pointing with a coral-tipped and bejeweled finger.
“So it is,” said Harold, stuffing the handkerchief in his pocket and taking his wife by the elbow.
In his haste, he missed the pocket and the handkerchief fluttered to the marble floor. Lucy quickly scooped it up and followed them outside to return it. She never got a chance.
“You’ve wrecked my car!” shouted Harold, grabbing the valet driver by the scruff of his neck and pointing to a ding on the door of his gold Lexus. “You’re gonna pay!”
The driver tried to wriggle out of his grasp, all the while offering a rapid-fire explanation in a foreign language. A language Harold definitely didn’t understand.
“Can’t you speak English? This is America, God damn it.” He gave the driver a shake and yelled, “We speak English!”
The manager hurried out of his booth, and Harold, distracted, let the driver go. He remained in place, gesturing with his arms and repeating his staccato explanation to the manager.
“He says it was like that; he didn’t do anything.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” demanded Harold.
“No, no, no,” insisted the manager. “But it is a small dent. Very small. You may not have noticed it until now.”
“I would have noticed,” growled Harold. “I’m calling the police! I want to file a report!” His face was beet red, and Inez was trying to soothe his temper by patting his arm. He shook her off and planted himself in front of the manager, shoving his face out and jabbing the man’s chest with his finger.
This was definitely not the time to return the handkerchief, especially since it was past time for her workshop. She’d mail it to him, or give it to Catherine. She certainly didn’t want to get involved in this scene, even though it made for fascinating drama. She reluctantly pulled herself away, stepping into a pool of sunlight. The handkerchief, she saw, was sparkling. When she held it closer to examine it, she sneezed. Cat hair. Inez wasn’t the only one covered with cat hair—the handkerchief was full of it.
“Dad, rest his soul, couldn’t be anywhere near a cat.” That’s what Catherine had said. But it seemed likely that Luther had been exposed to cat hair the night he died. Lucy remembered seeing Luther leaving the banquet room with a handkerchief over his face. Was it his handkerchief, or had Harold given him one of his? A handkerchief, if it was anything like this one, that was full of cat hair. And cat hair, Lucy knew, was one of the most powerful allergens. It could linger in carpets and furniture long after the cat was gone, even remaining in houses for years after the cat owners moved out.
What could Harold have been thinking when he handed Luther his handkerchief? wondered Lucy. What indeed? Had he simply not realized that the handkerchief would exacerbate Luther’s symptoms? Or had he done it deliberately, knowing full well that Luther’s inhaler was empty because he’d switched it? Murder by cat hair—could such a thing even be possible?
Lucy was debating whether she should call Detective Sullivan when she arrived at the workshop. She took a seat in the back and reached for her notebook, realizing she didn’t have the foggiest idea which workshop she was attending. A huge sense of guilt accompanied this realization; she had to admit she really wasn’t getting as much out of the conference as she could. She’d been too distracted by the murder, not to mention worrying about the situation at home. Ted wouldn’t approve; she knew he’d be furious if he knew.
She resolved to mend her ways and pay attention from now on. She cleared her mind and focused on the speaker at the front of the room, a thirtyish fellow with wire-rimmed glasses dressed in a blue Oxford-cloth shirt and khaki pants.
“First off,” he said, “you have to recognize the fact that the cops are only going to tell you what they want you to know. Take, for example, the murder of the priest in Roxbury a few months ago. The man who was charged with the killing was very popular in the community, a coach and teacher. They wanted to let enough information out so there wouldn’t be a public outcry that they’d arrested the wrong man, but they couldn’t risk prejudicing a jury, either. They had to walk a very fine line in that case.”
“Or that kid who murdered the lady next door,” offered the second panelist, a heavyset woman with bangs and oversize glasses. Her nameplate identified her as Eileen Rivers, a name Lucy recognized from her byline in Boston magazine. “He looked like a choirboy. Hell, he was a choirboy. Big for his age, though. There was a lot of sympathy for that kid.” She paused. “He stabbed that poor woman forty-seven times or something.”
Ed Murphy, the third panelist, looked like he’d been around for a while and had seen it all.
“It affects how we cover crimes, too. We didn’t run the little psychopath’s picture on the front page at the Herald—the powers that be decided it would upset the little old ladies who go to Mass every day.” He scratched his chin. “Thank God for DNA or that kid woulda walked. Public sentiment was so strong, the jury never could’ve convicted him. Not if they wanted to live to tell about it.”
Lucy was enthralled, leaning forward eagerly to hear every word. This was the workshop she’d been most excited about attending: “The Police Beat: Cooperating with and Getting Cooperation from Police and Other Local Officials.” She’d really been looking forward to it, especially considering that her own relations with the police in Tinker’s Cove weren’t especially good. She had only one friend on the force, Barney Culpepper, and she suspected even he found her a nuisance more often than not.
“Given the fact that the police are naturally going to be stingy with info, we have to figure out some ways to get them to be more forthcoming. Any ideas?”
It was the first panelist, looking for input from the class. He was also acting as moderator and was standing in front of the table where the others were seated. Lucy couldn’t see his nameplate and wondered who he was.
Only one hand was up, and Lucy was not surprised to see it belonged to Morgan Dodd. The girl reporter was so eager to talk that she didn’t wait for the moderator to recognize her.
“Well, I always find that one hand washes the other, you know. I think I can say I have a pretty good relationship with the Framingham police, and that’s because I give them a lot of coverage for Neighborhood Watch and the annual bike auction. It really pays off when we have a big story.”
“Framingham’s not Boston,” said Eileen, exchanging glances with Ed.
The moderator, however, nodded encouragingly at Morgan.
“It’s always good to do all that you can to develop good relations with the police,” he said, “but it can be dangerous to rely on them too much. If you can get information from somebody else—witnesses, family members, whoever—then you’ve got some firepower. If they know you’re going to print it anyway, sometimes they’ll be more forthcoming.”
“Isn’t that blackmail?” Lucy was surprised to hear her own voice.
The moderator stared at her, as if affronted, then smiled slowly.
“Any ideas on that?” he asked.
Hands shot up around the room. Soon a lively discussion was under way, which inevitably turned to Luther Read’s murder.
“I was a little surprised at the local coverage, especially the Globe,” said Lucy. “I guess murder isn’t front-page news in Boston.”
Everyone fell silent and Lucy knew immediately that she’d said the wrong thing.
“That was my story,” said the moderator. “I’m Brad McAbee.”
“Oops,” said Lucy, and e
veryone laughed. “I didn’t know that—I came a little late.”
“No problem. You’re right, of course. I don’t know if there’s a lot of pressure from the chamber of commerce or what, but it’s now company policy to put violent crimes on the Metro page, unless it’s someone very important.”
“Luther Read wasn’t important enough?”
“He probably was, actually, but he got himself killed late on Sunday night. There’s no way they’d change the front page except for the president…maybe.”
Everybody laughed again, recognizing the truth of what he was saying. The cry to stop the presses was heard a lot more frequently in movies than pressrooms because of the enormous expense involved.
“But what about Tuesday’s paper? There wasn’t much in that either. Are the police being especially close-mouthed?” asked Lucy.
“You could say that,” said Brad. “And I haven’t been able to follow my own advice of developing alternate sources. His family’s talking but it’s all spin. They’re in the business so they know the danger of talking freely to reporters.”
There were knowing chuckles from around the room.
“Part of the problem is that he got killed here, at the convention. If he’d died at home, I could talk to the neighbors. But here, I don’t know who knew him and who has an ax to grind. I could find out, if I had plenty of time, but my editor isn’t going to budget much time for this story.” Brad shrugged. “How about you guys helping me out—anybody got any theories? Have the cops got the right guy?”
That was the very question Lucy wanted to ask. The only person who raised a hand to answer was Morgan.
“I got it from a very reliable, official informant that they have ‘every confidence’ that they’ll get a conviction.” She nodded knowingly. “Figure it out. It had to be somebody close to him, somebody in the family, who could switch the asthma medication.”
Eileen and Ed were exchanging glances, as if they’d never heard anything so stupid in their lives.
“You’re young and obviously new to the business, but you can take my word for it that a lot of people at this convention know Luther Read has asthma,” said Ed. “It’s common knowledge.”
Instead of being insulted, Morgan nodded like a good student.
“Don’t forget, the cause of death hasn’t been officially determined,” cautioned Brad.
Lucy pricked up her ears.
“You mean it might have been something else?” asked Morgan.
“I have my doubts about the asthma theory,” said someone else. “How could the killer know he’d have an attack in the first place?”
“The murderer could have introduced an asthma trigger,” offered Lucy, thinking of the handkerchief. “If the murderer knew he was allergic to cat hair, for example…”
This was met with titters from the group.
“Cat hair! That’s a good one,” scoffed Morgan.
“How could the killer be sure he would have a severe enough attack to kill him?”
“Maybe time wasn’t important. Maybe the murderer was willing to try again if it didn’t work this time,” speculated Lucy, defending her theory.
“Again, that would seem to point to someone in the family, someone who knew there would be other opportunities,” said Brad.
“My sources in the BPD say Junior had it all: motive, means, and opportunity,” said Morgan. “Do you think this is just some sort of smoke screen?”
“Oldest trick in the book,” said Ed.
“The surer they are, the more likely it is that they’re wrong,” said Eileen. “Remember that drive-by, when the little kid was killed in his bed? Bullet went right through his little beating heart.”
Lucy was horrified, but from the cool reaction of the others she judged the shooting must be old news.
“Yeah,” said Brad. “They got a conviction on that one, and it wasn’t until some jailhouse snitch started talking that they realized they’d put the wrong guy away for twenty to life.”
“The bad news for Junior Read is that this case isn’t sensational enough to generate much interest, not enough gore,” observed Ed. “Remember the female torso in the Dumpster? Now, that was a story. And who could forget the weirdo who dropped the radio in the tub while his mother was taking a bath?”
“It wasn’t the radio that was so fascinating,” said Eileen. “It was the fact that he ate her for dinner afterward.”
Everybody groaned.
“And on that note,” said Brad, checking his watch, “we’ll break for lunch. Bon appetit!”
Lucy was gathering her things together when Morgan approached her.
“What did you think of the panel?” she asked.
“Pretty interesting, but I’m sure glad I cover crime in Tinker’s Cove instead of Boston.”
Morgan grinned. “No cannibalism cases?”
“Not so far,” said Lucy.
“You do seem to have some pretty interesting neighbors, though. Why don’t we have lunch together and you can tell me all about Junior Read?”
Lucy smiled. “So you’re beginning to think he might be innocent?”
Morgan shrugged. “Who knows? But I’m looking for a story, and it’d be a lot more interesting read if the cops have the wrong guy, right?”
“Right,” agreed Lucy.
“So what do you say? Can I interest you in some lunch? My treat.”
The very idea of food made Lucy queasy. Besides, she was still stinging from Morgan’s put-down of her cat-hair theory and didn’t want to share her inside information about the Read family.
“Thanks, but I’m not very hungry. I think I need some fresh air.”
“Well, catch you later,” said Morgan, taking off down the hall after Brad.
Lucy shook her head. That girl was certainly determined to break a big story and didn’t mind stepping on a few toes to get it. She’d better be careful, thought Lucy, because such tactics could backfire.
Lucy climbed up the stairs slowly, considering her options. She could take a walk, but the concrete sidewalks and busy streets weren’t appealing. What she really wanted, what she longed for, was a patch of green where she could soak up some sun. At home she was surrounded by grass and trees and flowers, but here in the city they were in short supply, most often confined to decorative planters. She wanted to surround herself with growing things; she wanted to escape the constant roar of traffic and the smell of exhaust.
She asked the doorman for directions to the nearest park and he instructed her to follow Arlington Street to the Public Garden. She soon found herself standing on the corner of Arlington and Boylston, waiting for a red light to stop the constant stream of traffic so she could cross to the park on the opposite side. Once she was safely inside the ornate wrought-iron fence, however, the sound of traffic receded and she inhaled the fresh scent of newly cut grass. She followed a winding path bordering a pretty pond and discovered a delightful little bridge. She paused at the railing, amazed at the unexpected yet familiar sight of water in the city. Not water fit for swimming, admitted Lucy, staring at the green, murky surface, but people could pay a small fee and cruise aboard the quaint swan boats. These ungainly watercraft wouldn’t do very well in Maine waters, she decided. They were little more than flat platforms for rows of seats, propelled by human pedal power. The driver sat in the rear, hidden between the molded halves of a large swan shape.
It was as if she’d seen this pond before, she thought, racking her brain. It finally came to her as she watched a little brown duck following one of the swan boats: it was the pond in Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings, a book she’d read hundreds of times to the kids.
The boat rides were a popular attraction, and many families were waiting in line. Lucy found a seat on a nearby bench and sat down, enjoying the slight breeze that blew across the water and watching the little children waiting with their parents. The very littlest were in strollers or backpacks, but the three- and four-year-olds were usually held firmly by the
hand. That didn’t stop them from jumping up and down, or stooping to examine the ground, or even attempting to pull each other’s hair. That was what one little freckle-faced boy was doing, yanking at his sister’s braids.
Siblings, thought Lucy, fingering the handkerchief she had tucked into her pocket. She couldn’t help thinking that Harold, Luther’s brother, was a far likelier murderer than Junior, his son. Having refereed countless squabbles among her own children, Lucy had no illusions about the power of sibling rivalry. Take Elizabeth, for example. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill Toby, if she could be sure of getting his room.
Impulsively, Lucy reached for the cell phone in her purse, then dug around until she found Detective Sullivan’s card. She dialed, only to be flooded with doubts when she heard his voice.
“This is Lucy Stone—you interviewed me Monday night.”
“I remember,” said Sullivan. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know if anything’s really up,” she replied, “but I thought I’d better call. I know this probably sounds foolish, but it’s better to speak up and be wrong than to be quiet and watch an innocent man be convicted, right?”
“Uh, right.”
Lucy studied the handkerchief. It was definitely covered with glistening white cat hair.
She took a deep breath.
“I happened to see Harold Read drop a handkerchief and I picked it up.” She paused. “It’s absolutely covered with cat hair.”
There was a long silence. Finally Sullivan spoke.
“Cat hair?”
“Yeah. Luther Read died because of an asthma attack, right? Well, cat hair is a very common allergen. In fact, I happen to know that he was extremely allergic to cats. His daughter told me so.” Lucy paused to catch her breath. “So do you want the handkerchief? What should I do with it?”