“Yes.” She stood as the bus approached. “Oh yes, I knew Andy.”
“What was he like?”
“Beautiful. Sensitive.” She waved at the bus and walked to the curb. “Everything Jennifer wasn’t.”
The bus stopped at the curb and an overweight woman in a heavy woollen coat stepped out to help three young children down the steps. The last child to emerge was a girl about five years old. Her round face, framed in tight blond curls, shone as she reached her arms out to Frances O’Neil. “Fanny! Fanny!” she cried. Frances swept her up, and the child’s tiny arms wrapped tightly around her neck.
“This is Kelly,” Frances said, turning to face McGuire. “Kelly, say hello to . . . I’m sorry.”
“Joe,” McGuire smiled. “Just call me Joe,” and he offered his hand to the little girl.
“Hi, Joe!” Kelly smiled, and Frances lowered her to the sidewalk.
The bus pulled away as the three, Kelly clinging tightly to Frances’s hand, began walking around the curve of the sea wall back to the house.
“Tell me about Jennifer and her brother,” McGuire said.
“What do you want to know?” They were moving slowly, matching their pace to the child’s short methodical steps.
“How did they get along?”
“Wonderfully,” Frances replied. “They loved each other. Everyone could see that. They absolutely loved each other.”
“Did that include physically?”
“I beg your pardon?” She looked at him, shocked. “Do you mean . . . the two of them . . . ?” Looking away towards the harbour, her shoulders began shaking.
McGuire reached to touch her, but when she turned he saw that she was laughing, not sobbing as he expected. “Sorry,” she said. “It just struck me funny, what you said.”
“I don’t understand. You think incest between a brother and sister is funny?”
Her demeanour changed abruptly. “No,” she said quietly. “No, that’s not what I meant at all.”
“What did you mean?”
Kelly asked to be carried and Frances lifted her again and kissed the child gently on the cheek. “You had to see them together,” she said, quickening her pace. “You couldn’t understand unless you saw them side by side. Jennifer so independent and tough, yet so talented. And Andy the opposite: kind, gentle, sensitive.” She blinked back tears. “And ethics. Andy had very high ethics.”
“Were you attracted to Andy?” McGuire asked. They had reached the house and he could see the sister standing behind the aluminum storm door watching them, her arms folded across her chest.
“Yes, I was.” Frances lowered Kelly to the ground. “Go to Mommy,” she instructed. “Tell her I’m coming.” They watched the little girl scamper up the steps.
“Where is he?” McGuire asked.
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
She looked at him, her expression saying nothing. “Gone. Disappeared. Just gone, that’s all.”
“Do you have any idea where?”
She shook her head. Tears flooded her eyes.
“Do you think Andy was responsible for his sister’s death?” McGuire asked.
“Oh yes.” Frances dabbed at her nose with a torn tissue. “Oh, I’m sure of that.”
“And he’s never tried to contact you?”
“No, and he never will,” she said, biting her lip. “Sometimes I dream he will, but he won’t. I’m sure if it.” She wiped the tears from her face. “Is there anything else?”
“You’ll call us if he ever does, won’t you?” She nodded silently. “Here’s my card. If he tries to reach you or you think of anything else, call me right away.”
She took his card and turned without a word to walk up the steps. Kelly, her jacket removed and a cookie in her hand, waved merrily at him from behind the picture window.
McGuire smiled and raised his hand to return the greeting before getting into his car.
“You here for chili or to arrest me for serving you the last bowl?” Marlene Richards threw her head back and laughed, a sailor’s laugh, coarse and vulgar. “What can I get you, McGuire?” she asked, after leaning towards him, her arms on the counter. “We’ve got clam chowder today. Shucked the clams myself last night.”
“Just bring me the kettle and a long spoon,” McGuire replied. He sat on the same bar stool as before. The noon-hour crowd had dispersed, leaving most of the tables empty.
“And a frog beer to go with it?”
McGuire smiled. “And a frog beer.”
She brought him a cold Kronenbourg and a thick china bowl spilling over with chowder, a pat of butter floating in its own golden puddle on top.
“Well?” she asked after he sampled his first spoonful.
“Good,” he said. “Damn good,” and he meant it.
“Jesus, I used to look forward to hearing that in bed. Now I only hear it in my bar.”
“I just talked to Frances O’Neil,” McGuire said after another spoonful of chowder.
Marlene’s smile faded and a look of concern flooded her face. “How is poor Frannie?”
“All right, I guess. Is she always so tense?”
“Frannie? Yeah, she’s always been wound up like an eight-day clock on Sunday morning. She tell you she used to teach school?”
McGuire took a long pull on his Kronenbourg and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, she told me that. Told me a few things about Andrew Cornell too.”
“You think he killed Jennifer?”
“He had something to do with it. Shows up suddenly, then drops out of sight as soon as she’s killed. All his belongings were gone. Not a thing in her apartment except his fingerprints.” McGuire looked up at her, his spoon poised over the bowl of chowder. “Tell me more about him. How often was he in here?”
“Not that often.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “Look, that rumour about the two of them sleeping together, sister and brother. I don’t buy it, you know?”
“Why not?”
“Come on, McGuire. That kind of stuff happens in Kentucky maybe, up in the hills. But not in Boston. Besides, when he first came in here he said he was living in Cambridge. It was that jerk Milburn who started the story about them sleeping together. And Andy, there was something about him.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I just had the feeling he was too cultured for anything like that.”
“How did he act when he was here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he try to pick up women? Did he get drunk? Was he loud?”
“None of the above.” She waved her hand in the direction of the dining area. “He sat over there and drank soda water and lemon by himself. The only woman I ever saw him talking to was poor Frannie.” She looked quickly to the rear of the bar, then back to McGuire. “You know, that was the night Jennifer was murdered. He stayed until closing. Frannie was always stopping at his table and talking to him that night. Stars in her eyes. She came and asked if she could leave early because Andy was going and they wanted to walk home together. I said sure, what the hell, she might get lucky. Poor kid deserved it.”
“Was Jennifer here that night?”
“No. I remember Andy saying he was waiting for her but she never showed. So he left with Frannie.”
McGuire finished his chowder. “You say he was only in here a few times?”
“Yeah. The first week or so, they used this place to leave messages. Jennifer would come in, ask if Andy was here. Then she’d leave a message. ‘Tell him to meet me back at the shop,’ she’d say.”
“The shop?”
“Where she worked. Irene’s over on Newbury Street. It’s closed now. I hear it went bankrupt. Anyway, she’d leave this message for him to meet her somewhere. You know . . .” She looked away and frowned
before turning back to McGuire and whispering: “It’s easy to think they had something going. Frannie was the first woman Andy really talked to here. And after Andy came on the scene, Jennifer would have nothing to do with any of the guys here. Not a thing. She’d sit here at the bar raving about him to me or one of my girls maybe, saying what a wonderful guy he was, sweet, sensitive, a hell of a catch for some woman. Like she was in love or something. So maybe . . .” She shuddered. “Hell, who knows?”
A waitress brought a check and money to the bar and Marlene turned to use the cash register. “You’ve got to understand, McGuire. Jennifer would have used anybody to get what she wanted. Even her own brother.”
McGuire drank his beer, lost in thought, until Marlene returned to her post in front of him.
“You know what I think, McGuire?” she whispered.
“What do you think?”
“I think somebody killed both of them. And made it look as though Andy did it. I mean, first Jennifer’s killed, then her mysterious brother disappears. Hell, I’m no J. Edgar Hoover but let’s face it, even I would have the bloodhounds out looking for her brother if that’s all I had to go on.”
McGuire dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Why not just assume the brother did it himself? Isn’t that more logical?”
“Not a chance,” she said, scooping the money from the counter and turning back to the cash register. “Because I’ll tell you, honey. Andy, he was too sweet a guy to do anything like murder. He’d run from his own shadow.”
Chapter Twelve
McGuire cursed the cold rain that lashed his face as he left Pour Richards and crossed Massachusetts Avenue. Two blocks east, he entered a glass-and-steel office building and rode the elevator alone up eighteen floors while he tried to identify the name of the popular song seeping through the elevator speakers. When he couldn’t, he convinced himself that the failure was due to the graceless style of modern song writers and not early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Upton Insurance occupied three storeys of the building. On the eighteenth floor, McGuire stepped into the firm’s dark-panelled reception area and asked the receptionist for Gerry Milburn.
Within a few seconds, a door facing McGuire across the wide vestibule area opened and a slightly-built man in tweed jacket, striped tie and slacks entered, his eyes darting here and there as he walked, avoiding McGuire’s. McGuire guessed he was thirty-five, perhaps thirty-seven years old. “Your name McGuire?” he asked in a hoarse whisper when he reached the detective.
McGuire reached for his identification. “Joe McGuire, Homicide—”
“I know, I know,” the other man hissed impatiently. “What the hell do you want with me? Nobody told me you were coming!”
McGuire studied the man before answering. Milburn’s hair was prematurely grey and his eyes were magnified by tortoiseshell glasses. One hand never left his trouser pocket, where it jingled loose change nervously.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Milburn,” said McGuire quietly. He tilted his head and smiled at the other man. “I need to ask you a few questions, you see. But I understand that you’re a busy guy and all that, so I’ll make a deal with you.”
For the first time, Milburn’s eyes found McGuire’s. “What’s that?”
“We do it here or we do it down on Berkeley Street.”
Milburn swallowed, and his eyes began their dance again. “All right,” he said without whispering. His voice was surprisingly high and thin. “Maybe five minutes. But not here. Jesus, not here.” He led McGuire to an elevator, still jingling coins in his pocket.
The elevator doors opened and three men, talking among themselves, began to exit. Milburn changed personalities almost instantly; his thin lips broke into a smile and both hands reached out to seize the shoulder of the tallest man leaving the elevator.
“Roger, you bandit!” Milburn said. “I didn’t think you’d be back until later. How did things go in Hartford?”
“Good, Gerry. Real good,” the man replied, not breaking his stride. “I’ll fill you in later.”
“How about lunch tomorrow? I owe you,” Milburn called after the man, who nodded without turning around.
In the elevator alone with McGuire, Milburn said, “That guy is the next senior vice-president of operations. And what I don’t need right now is to be seen with a cop!” He punched the button for the seventeenth floor.
McGuire began to speak, but thought better of it. He watched Milburn carefully during the short ride, noting his nervous mannerisms and the tension that seemed coiled within his body.
The elevator doors opened to a small grey lobby with several doorways lining the walls. Milburn turned quickly to the right, away from a vast open area where men and women sat at identical desks punching the keyboards of identical computer terminals, and entered a washroom. McGuire followed to see him checking toilet stalls, confirming that they were unoccupied.
“Okay,” Milburn said sharply, turning back to McGuire and leaning against a sink, his arms folded in front of him. “Five minutes. Nobody worth anything will see us talking on this floor. What the hell do you need from me?”
“You knew Jennifer Cornell?” McGuire began pleasantly.
Milburn slipped his hand back into his trouser pocket, where the loose change began its jangly rhythm again. “Come on, I told you guys everything last summer. Cripes! How often do I have to repeat it?”
“What’s troubling you, Milburn?” McGuire asked in the same friendly tone. “You got something to hide?”
“I’ve got nothing to hide!” Milburn spat at him. “The night she was murdered, I was home with my wife.”
“Then you’ve got lots to hide, haven’t you?” McGuire interrupted.
Milburn glared back, then looked away.
“You’re an ambitious man, Milburn,” McGuire said calmly. “Probably have, what? One, two kids? Nice house, maybe out in Norwood? Commute to work every day with the same gang of guys? Got a good job with a solid conservative outfit that wouldn’t exactly make you employee-of-the-month for screwing around with a woman you picked up in a bar, especially a woman who was found murdered one Sunday morning.”
He leaned closer to Milburn until he was just inches from the other man’s face.
“Now you talk to me, Milburn. Or I’ll have my next interview in the office of your buddy upstairs, good old Roger the Bandit.”
The jangling stopped. Beads of sweat flooded Milburn’s upper lip, and one hand shot up to push his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he said, still defiant. “But make it snappy. Somebody might come in here, and get the wrong impression.”
McGuire arched his eyebrows, smiled, and jutted out his bottom lip as though he found the idea amusing. “How often did you see Jennifer Cornell?”
“What do you mean?”
“Meet her. Go back to her place and sleep with her.”
“Hey, give me a break here.” Milburn’s eyes glanced at the washroom door. “I only met her three times. I was only at her place twice.”
“And the third time?”
“She said she was waiting for her brother.”
“So she didn’t want anything to do with you.”
“That’s how she acted. She said Andy was her whole life since he came back from California.”
“And you were jealous of him.”
Milburn gathered himself up and turned to speak directly at McGuire. “I saw something in Jennifer nobody else saw,” he said, his voice losing its edge as he talked. “There was a warm, attractive woman there. And she saw something in me. That’s what she told me.” He studied his fingernails. “But then came her brother, and before that some TV producer.”
“Fleckstone?”
Milburn nodded. “He was using her. Anybody could see that. There was no way he was going to make her a star.”
“Why
were you so angry with her brother?”
Milburn walked away, past the row of sinks. “I saw his stuff in her apartment the second time I was there. His luggage. His clothes. She even showed me a watch she bought for him. Big gold Cartier. The only bed was a pullout sofa. There was no place else to sleep. And she told me to leave because Andy was coming home any minute. She didn’t want Andy to find me there. I mean, what would you think?”
“I’d think it was none of my business. By the way,” McGuire added, “did your wife know about you and Jennifer?”
Milburn pivoted and pointed at McGuire. “I’d say that was none of your business!” he barked.
McGuire nodded. “Could be. But you have to admit, it’ll be easy to check.”
His face white, Milburn looked around in mild panic, as though searching for an escape route. “Hey, you can’t do that,” he muttered. “Come on, you can’t just go into a man’s home and spill stuff like that.” Grasping the sides of a sink, Milburn dropped his head and stared into the drain.
“Just tell me what I want to know, Milburn,” McGuire said, walking slowly towards him. “And I’m gone.”
Milburn exhaled noisily. “Her brother was a faggot,” he said bitterly.
“Really?”
“You could tell by the way he walked. Kept to himself. Hardly talked to guys in the bar. Never paid attention to women.”
“Doesn’t make him gay.”
“He was a pussy. When I challenged him he ducked away from me. Wouldn’t let me near him.”
“Tell me what happened,” McGuire said. He leaned against the wall and watched Milburn’s face as he talked.
“I called Jennifer one night. I wanted to see her, just talk to her, and she told me to . . . She didn’t want to see me. So later that night I went to Pour Richards alone. I’m sitting at the bar and all I’m hearing about is Jennifer’s brother Andy, what a sweet guy he is. And then Marlene, the owner, said he’d moved in with Jennifer and I thought, ‘That’s not right, sleeping together like that,’ and I went after him.” Milburn began washing his hands, still avoiding McGuire’s eyes. “I’d had too much to drink. Normally I wouldn’t do something like that. I walked over to him and I said, ‘You can’t be Jennifer’s brother, you son of a bitch.’ I don’t know, I forget what else I said.” He ripped a paper towel from the dispenser and began drying his hands.
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