by Linda Barnes
Dorothy Jade Cameron, said deeply etched letters that would stand the test of time: 1956-1971. Fifteen years old. Younger even than her ancestor, Lucinda Eustachia.
How had they determined year of death? I wondered. If she’d disappeared in ’71, she couldn’t have been declared legally dead until ’78, seven years later.
The caretaker had finished raking his patch. I looked for him outdoors before heading toward the official-looking stone cottage. Cemeteries keep records. If you can’t recall the last resting place of some dearly beloved, a cemetery map is generally available.
I wanted more than a map.
He was drinking a can of Coke, his head tipped back, the folds of his chin wiggling as he swallowed. I waited, finally made a deliberate noise, dragging my shoe across the gravel.
“Yep?” he said, slapping the can down on a nearby countertop, looking as guilty as if he’d been caught wielding a bottle of Wild Turkey. “Can I help you?”
“Have you worked here long?” I asked.
“Yep,” he said, relaxing. “Best part of thirty-five years.”
“Are some of the plots memorial plots?”
“What do you mean?”
“No body buried there, just a stone marker, the way Paul Revere’s ‘buried’ in three, four places,” I said.
“We got ashes,” he said. “In the crematory.”
“No. I’m asking if all the stones, the monuments, are indicators that an actual body was buried here.”
“You better get specific with me, miss. Somebody in particular on your mind?”
“Dorothy Cameron. She was a writer, one book in 1970. Her tombstone says she died in ’71.”
“That’s right,” he said. “In the big plot. Died and buried in ’71. Pitiful thing when parents outlive a child.”
“It’s not a memorial stone. You’re sure? Are there records you can check?”
“I could but I don’t need to. I remember that funeral, because she was famous. Fine family. We used to get all the fancy funerals; now we’re almost plumb out of space.”
“There was a casket,” I said.
“Right,” he agreed, scratching the back of his neck, shrugging his shoulders like he was loosening them up, getting ready to go back to work with the rake. “I didn’t go to the funeral home or nothing, but I do remember it was a white casket, white lilies just mounded all over that grave. Everythin’ white, not a speck of color.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said.
“I been around a long time. But I remember. Maybe not what I ate for breakfast, you know, but a big funeral like that, keeping the press away and all, I surely do remember that.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning away, feeling the grocery sack hanging from my wrist turn into a heavy weight.
If Thea’s new manuscript was genuine, whose body lay under the marble stone? Was that what my client had meant when he said that he was sure someone had made a mistake? A mistake …
On the way out of the cemetery, keeping one eye peeled for the blue denim man, I saw it.
Adam Mayhew’s tombstone. His monument, rather. The engraving was directly at eye level. Ornate. Large. Anyone visiting the Cameron plot would have been sure to see it, maybe even remark on the detailed border, a ring of carved doves.
I took notes as to the date of birth and the date of death. I’m a detective after all. Then I found a phone booth and dialed the number my client had written down last night.
It was not in service within the 617 area code. I tried 508, the western suburbs, just to make sure. An automated voice told me to check the number and dial again.
7
On the overcrowded, overheated bus, and then on the blissfully air-conditioned Red Line car, possibilities thrummed through my brain, keeping pace with the speeding subway. Number one: My client was a liar and a fraud. Liar and fraud. Liar and fraud. The rhythm fit the rumble of the rail and the sway of the seats.
On the other hand—I tried to convince myself as the train emerged to cross the Charles River at the Longfellow Bridge—Mount Auburn Cemetery’s Adam Mayhew didn’t have to be my Adam Mayhew. The sun glinted off the golden statehouse dome and I closed my eyes, indifferent to the throng of rowdies boarding at Charles Street Station. Among local Brahmins, name repetition abounds. My blue-eyed bifocaled Adam might be Adam Mayhew, the third, the fourth, the fifth. Not to mention a totally unrelated Adam Mayhew.
Sure. I believe in coincidence. Right up there with the Easter Bunny, astrology, and long-term weather forecasts.
Did I believe in the detailed reminiscences of elderly caretakers? Would he remember a twenty-four-year-old funeral? He hadn’t volunteered to check any records. Why should he bother to lie?
I sighed, covering it with a fake cough as I observed my seatmate eyeing me speculatively. He wore a long beard, a skullcap, and a black cassock. A heavy cross on a metallic chain dangled to his knees. He looked as though he might be searching for converts, followers, donations.
Face facts: I have a suspicious nature. I gave it free rein on the T, but at no point did a broad-shouldered male, wearing an unnecessary jacket of any hue or packing a piece in a shoulder holster, make an appearance. The train was so crowded I couldn’t be absolutely sure he wasn’t on board, so I switched at Park Street, waiting eight minutes for the next jammed southbound cars, maintaining careful surveillance.
If it weren’t so damned hot in the tunnels I might join the MBTA police, enjoy the benefits of a regular paycheck.
But would they let me wear bizarre halter tops like Roz’s?
Would I wear one given the latitude? Given the body?
Sometimes Roz makes me feel like a gutless wonder; at other times a veritable saint, a reservoir of common sense. No wonder I value her presence in my life.
As I treasure Mooney’s.
Mooney’s simply one of the best cops around. Hadn’t been for him, I’d never have gotten into plain-clothes work, never have earned my detective’s tin. Or rather, I’d have earned it, I just wouldn’t have gotten it, passed over for some guy whose dear old dad and five Irish uncles put in time with the Boston PD.
The trouble with Mooney is he makes me feel guilty, as if I should have stayed a cop no matter what, because he really did climb on to a swaying limb for me. And I paid him back by quitting.
Guilt plays such a major role in my life that my Mooney guilt usually gets shoved to the back of the bus. But today, because I needed a favor, it crept stealthily to the fore, nudging me as I waited on the stoop by the gas pumps for a detective I knew, someone I could tail into the station without causing undue comment. While I climbed the stairs, automatically avoiding the creaky fourth step and the loose rubber runner on the sixth, I ran a mental credit check.
Who owed whom?
I had the uneasy feeling that I was down major points, and about to sink deeper. Maybe I ought to crawl into his office on hands and knees, a true supplicant. No. Cops love to gossip. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
“What do you want?” Mooney barked as soon as I opened the door. He glanced up warily, peering over tiny rectangular lenses. Noticing me notice them, he quickly lifted them off his nose and stuffed them in a desk drawer, out of sight.
Vanity: not quite one of the seven deadlies, but Mooney was seldom vain.
I merely raised an eyebrow. If I want help I usually invite him out for doughnuts; I don’t drop by unannounced, uninvited.
“Break up with the boyfriend?” he asked.
The best defense is a sneak attack; Mooney knows.
I ignored his question. I wouldn’t visit Mooney to discuss my sex life. He’s aware of that.
“How’s Sam?” he went on, mentioning another former flame since we were on the subject.
The subject of Sam Gianelli is a tender one. We weren’t an item when he got injured in an attack on the Green & White garage, but we’ve been off-again, on-again lovers for years.
“Convalescent center,” I said. “Palm Beach. Pl
ace looks more like a hotel than a hospital, but Sam’s pretty discouraged. They can’t seem to get his left leg to match the right one. A quarter inch off here, an eighth off there. Doesn’t sound like much, but makes it hell to walk. He’ll be pleased you care.”
“You’ve been visiting?”
“Why?”
“Well, actually, I was wondering whether his family’s got a contract out on you.”
I practically bit the tip off my tongue.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Triola nabbed a punk, thought he could use it to trade down to a misdemeanor.”
The guy at the drugstore, the one I’d assumed was DEA. The shoulder-holster man …
“I saved Sam’s life,” I protested.
“A few of the Gianellis might not see it that way,” Mooney said.
“Then they’re probably seeing about as well as you are. When’d you get the glasses?”
“It’s these frigging reports. Play havoc with your close-up vision. Don’t get any ideas. I can still outshoot you.”
“At any range,” I agreed easily. “You’re a great shot, Mooney.”
“And you need a favor,” he said, nodding his round Irish face, his stubborn chin outthrust.
“How’d you guess?”
“Need it bad,” he said. “You compliment me. You smile at me. Not like baring your fangs, either. A real smile.”
“Mooney—”
“So tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you’ve dropped the dork headshrinker and you desperately want me to take you to Mary Chung’s tonight for Suan La whatever she calls that stuff.”
“Mary’s is open?”
“Opened months ago. You haven’t been yet?”
“I didn’t know.” Mary Chung’s restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge, has been closed for years, ever since Biogen Labs made her landlord an offer he couldn’t refuse. Rumors of reopenings abounded. An entire Internet interest group was devoted to the cult of perpetuating rumors. Mary was in China. Mary had applied for a liquor license, application denied. Mary’d signed the lease on 443 Mass. Ave. No, she hadn’t. I’d long since given up, and believe me, my Mary Chung’s habit was tough to break. I was a solid twice-a-weeker, a Suan La Chow Show junkie. Mary serves a hot and sour wonton soup—Suan La Chow Show—that defines scrumptious. My grandmother—rest her soul—should forgive me, but it’s better than chicken soup for whatever ails you. Guaranteed to clear sinuses, drive away demons, halt meter maids on their appointed rounds. I almost forgot the reason for my visit in my eagerness to get to Central Square.
“I’ll take you to lunch,” I told Mooney. “My treat.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the offer,” he said, “but everything that lady cooks gives me heartburn.”
“It’s your taste in food that keeps us apart, Moon,” I said.
“Nothing wrong with vanilla,” he replied stubbornly.
“Yuck,” I said. “You probably eat Wonder Bread with mayonnaise, call it a sandwich. I confess: I want a favor. I’ve got a case that may or may not tie into an old disappearing act. Normally, I wouldn’t think the department’d still have paper on anything this old, but it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill missing persons.”
“We talking Judge Crater or Amelia Earhart?”
I sat on the edge of his desk. His visitor’s chair is a joke, designed to torture the fannies of unwary bureaucrats, keep their visits brief.
“Very funny,” I said. “I’m mildly amused.”
“How old a case?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Might as well get it over with. “Twenty-four years.”
Mooney stared at me for a while before shaking his head sadly. “Did you take out an ad in Soldier of Fortune? ‘Weird clients, weird cases? I specialize.’ What you ought to do is get back on the force.”
“Like you don’t get weirdos? Ten-year-olds killing nine-year-olds over a pair of Nikes?”
“Yeah, we get those,” he said. “Too many of them.”
“Let me take you away from all this, at least as far as Central Square,” I urged.
He shoved his chair away from his desk. Floorboards creaked. “Twenty-four years? Is my hearing going bad or what?”
“About as bad as your eyesight.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Take it easy. I just want to know who handled the investigation. I want to know if it’s ongoing or closed.”
I want to know why a man claiming to be related to the Camerons told me so many lies. I want to know the origin of the document I’m toting around in a Star Market plastic sack.
“Carlotta, cops here do their twenty, get down on their knees, thank the Lord, and retire full pension.”
“Not all of them,” I said.
“A few have heart attacks, get shot,” he said. “Buried.”
“Mooney, come on, some of these guys are married to the badge. Sure, it didn’t start out that way—the wife leaves, they never see the kids. What are they gonna do with their retirement? Sit in a motel room till they decide to eat a bullet? Who’s been here longest, that’s the guy I want you to introduce me to.”
“It wasn’t run-of-the-mill,” he said slowly.
“Right.”
“Then before we go any further, you name the case. Some pots we don’t stir.”
“Judge Crater,” I said.
No reaction. No hint of a smile.
“Thea Janis,” I said reluctantly, because I’ve become reluctant to tell a cop anything I don’t absolutely have to. I spelled it for him, because of the odd first name and the variety of spellings suggested by the second.
“Thea Janis,” Mooney repeated. I let him sit and worry the name for a while, see if it jangled his memory the way it had mine. “Hang on. Let me call Cold Case.”
“Cold Case?”
“They’re new. One sergeant and two dicks. They sift through unsolved files, revisit scenes, find missing witnesses. Sometimes, after eight, nine years, somebody’s willing to talk.”
He wedged the receiver between shoulder and ear, dialed.
Mooney’s office is one of the few enclosed spaces—other than the rest room—at the old Area D station in Southie, home of the homicide squad. It’s more attractive than the bathroom, but not much. It looks like somebody’s about to move in or move out, never like a regular place somebody works. There isn’t a single poster on the walls. Not a photo on the desk. Maybe I ought to buy the man a plant, watch it wither and die of neglect.
I listened to Mooney chat. Mostly he grunted, “Uh huh, uh huh.”
After he hung up he turned to me. “Cold Case is working a nineteen-year-old open murder,” he said. “Little boy strangled and dumped behind a liquor store. They’ve got no file on Thea Janis.”
“There ought to be a mountain of paper on this, Mooney.”
“Why?”
He was a brick wall. I wouldn’t get anything unless I told him. “Under another name,” I said. “Dorothy Jade Cameron.”
“Cameron,” Mooney said, snapping his fingers with satisfaction as the name clicked. “Whoa, have you been blowing smoke at me? Are you looking for whosis? Wonder boy’s wife? Marissa Cameron?”
“Is she missing?”
He ignored my question. “You’re telling me the Cameron family wants some old police business rehashed? Now? Bad timing, if you ask me.”
It was my turn to ignore his question. “Who’d be able to give me horse’s mouth stuff? If the cop in question’s retired, I could track him down.”
“Carlotta, do you have a legitimate interest here?”
“Not to get unpleasant, but none of your business, Moon.”
“Could be my business, Carlotta. The Cameron family’s involved in just about every slice of Boston government. Isn’t there a Cameron in the DA’s office?”
“Scared he’ll fire you?”
“Politicians, Carlotta, they can cook you so fast you don’t know you’re done till they yank the fork out.”
“I don�
��t see why any Cameron would object to making sure their sister or cousin or whatever got a decent investigation when she disappeared twenty-odd years ago.”
I worried my lower lip with my teeth. I’d almost said “died.” “Died” twenty-odd years ago.
“Disappeared,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t recall it.”
“She was a writer,” I said.
“Yeah. Thea Janis. That does ring a bell. But twenty-four years ago I was paying my government’s respects to Southeast Asia.”
“So that’s why you don’t have total recall, Moon.”
“This has nothing to do with the current hoo-hah,” he said. “I’ve got your word on that.”
I looked him straight in the eye and told the truth. “Everything I know about the governor’s race I read in the paper.”
He stared back, standing, giving himself a slight height advantage. “Woodrow MacAvoy,” he said.
I asked him to spell it.
“Surly old cuss,” he continued. “That’s the main reason I remember him. Retired a sergeant, swore he should have been superintendent. He handled the politicals, the hot seat stuff. Good public speaker. Could really sling the bull with the crime reporters. They’d think they had the whole story, but it was all flim-flam and mirrors.”
“If he was that good, I’m surprised he didn’t get to be superintendent,” I said.
“Does Mary cook anything that won’t burn my lips raw?”
His question caught me by surprise.
“You’ll go?” I asked.
“She do any food that’s not spicy?”
“Sesame lemon chicken. Crab Rangoon. Trust me.”
“Always,” he said. “That’s why I’m driving.”
8
We took Moon’s battered Pontiac instead of an unmarked unit, which meant I had to enter via the driver’s side and slide across the cracked leather bench. His passenger door is nonoperational, creased and rusted from an ancient accident. He holds to the Boston school of thought on auto repair: A perfect car equals a perfect target, so why bother?