by Linda Barnes
I grabbed the statuette, holding it tightly, as though it were the only solid thing in this whole damn case, and maybe it was. What else did I have? A fistful of blackmail notes hidden between the layers of T.C.’s litter box. What was the term Roz had used to describe Chaney’s clinical trials? Double-blind, that was it. I felt like I was groping in the dark. If Denali hadn’t been the person she claimed to be, was my client off the hook? I didn’t think so. No. He might be off the hook for screwing a student under twenty, but that was the least of his problems now. He was in danger of getting caught on a sharper hook—for running down Benjy Dowling.
Footsteps. I glanced up as Roz came pounding down the stairs, her hair dyed a brassy gold, which looked almost normal till she turned around and displayed the blue stripes in back. She started talking as soon as she entered the living room: “Mrs. Guzman knew all about the quinciana. Leon called and wanted to know whether you could—”
“Where is Harsha Lake?” My inquiry stopped her.
“Is there a prize?”
“Find an atlas,” I said. “My aunt had one. It’s in the guest room, I think, or—”
“Find it faster on-line,” she said.
“I don’t care how you do it. Just find out where it is, what race was held there in 1987, and who won this trophy.”
“Right now?” she asked. “But I was going to—”
“I’ll try the atlas; you go on-line.”
My great-aunt’s old National Geographic Atlas, which I found after a lengthy search under a clump of laundry in Paolina’s room, went straight from Harsewinkel, Germany, to Harskamp, Netherlands. When I hurried back to the living room, Roz was still hunched over the screen and the girls hadn’t appeared to claim their perfume. I tried the New Hampshire number again, left another message for Helen Orza, used the word urgent again. I considered calling Leon, leaving him a message, too, saying I was thinking of him but was too busy to talk, too busy to meet. I knew what he’d think of that. I wished we’d known each other years ago, maybe when I was in school, when life wasn’t so hectic.
I didn’t know how to tell him that finding out who’d won a race in 1987 on a lake I’d never heard of took precedence over spending time with him. I only knew it was true. I could pretend it was otherwise, but who the hell would I be pretending for? I ate leftover Chinese food, drank a Rolling Rock. The phone rang just as the two girls came parading down the stairs. I waved them off, holding up my index finger to indicate I’d only be a minute, and answered.
A man. I’d been hoping so hard for the female PI, I’d convinced myself it would be her. If this guy was selling aluminum siding, he was going to get an earful.
“Hey, Miss Carlyle, right? You called to speak to Helen Orza?” If I’d had to pick one word to describe his voice, it would have been gravelly. If I’d gotten a second choice, I’d have gone for annoyed.
“Yes.”
“From Massachusetts, right? Six one seven?”
“Yes.”
“You seen her?”
“I want to speak to her. I’m a private investigator, and I’m wondering if we might be tugging on ends of the same case.”
“Oh. She come to see you when she was there?” He also sounded like he’d had more than one beer.
“No.”
“Well, thanks for calling.”
“Wait a minute. Who are you? When can I speak to Ms. Orza?”
“Hell if I know. Sorry, sorry. It’s been a long day and I thought maybe—” His voice drifted off.
“When do you expect Helen in?”
“I dunno. Long time since she’s gotten a call.”
“Who are you? Do you work with Helen?”
“Not all the time, but sometimes. I’m freelance, pretty much.”
“Would you know if Helen was working for a woman named Chaney? Margo Chaney?”
“Name’s not familiar. Don’t ring a bell, ya know? If you’ve got something you want Helen to work on, maybe I could help you out. Anything Helen could do for you, I could do. Pretty much. I’m not licensed like her, but I’m good. I’m Phil. Phil’s my name.”
“Phil what?”
“Gagnon.”
I wrote it down. “Phil, you have a number for Helen down here?”
“Ah, no.”
“You have access to her files?”
“Well, yeah, but I—I don’t know if I should—”
Shit. He sounded dumb as a brick, and slow to boot. “Phil, what’s your address? What city are you in?”
He rattled numbers and streets. Epping, New Hampshire.
“Listen, Phil. I’m going to be in your office in an hour, maybe less.”
“What?”
“You or Helen should be there to meet me. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“What’s that mean, worth my while? I’m not sitting on my fanny no hour.”
“Solid money,” I said, “for solid information. I need to know who Helen’s working for in Boston. You’d be able to tell me that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” Phil Gagnon allowed.
“An hour.” I drive fast, and New Hampshire’s not far. I wasn’t sure, but I thought Epping was near Exeter. Had a speedway. Near Rockingham Park, too.
“It’s gonna cost you at least a C,” he said.
“Fine.” I hung up before he changed his mind. If he were smart, he’d have waited and let me make the first offer.
Paolina still looked old enough, sexy enough to bring a lump to my throat, but she’d toned the tramp factor way down. I convinced her that she’d look better with her hair styled differently, then finished her off with a light touch of perfume. I gave Aurelia only a cursory glance before anointing her as well. I didn’t want Gagnon to get tired of waiting and leave.
CHAPTER 30
I could have dialed Leon, arranged to eat dinner at Centro, quiet, with a candlelit table, savory soup, flavorful pasta. We could have hashed out our troubles over martinis or a bottle of Italian red, come back to my place, spent a very agreeable night. I could have driven to New Hampshire in the morning.
Instead I took Cambridge Street to the Monsignor O’Brien Highway and the O’Brien to the Gilmore Bridge, all the while trying to isolate the concrete facts, the line-by-line justification for jumping behind the wheel now, at the tail end of rush hour, but all I could locate was a deep and undefined sense of urgency, a cloud of menace, a visceral tug.
I’m not given to premonitions. I disregard shooting stars, looming ladders, and black cats that stray across my path. Shit like that annoys me, if it has any effect at all, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to follow up on the Orza business immediately. I felt uneasy, for Chaney and for myself. The prickles down my spine I’d experienced on and off since visiting Dowling’s buddy Church were strong, an undercurrent I couldn’t ignore.
I cast a glance at the rearview mirror. It was twilight and growing darker by the minute. Only a few drivers had flicked on their headlights. Cars seemed gray and shadowy in the fading light. I reached into the compartment under the center armrest, grabbed a tape at random, got Rory Block’s I’m Every Woman, and stuck it in the deck.
Whenever I head north from Boston, I try to take the coast road, old route 1A, so I can hug the coastline, watch the small fishing boats dart out to sea and back to port. I admire the grace of the sailboats, but the small fishing boats are my favorites, the working boats. Today, opting for speed over beauty, I took Route 1 to Interstate 95, the impersonal eight-lane monster roadway. I felt the lure of the coast towns as I passed the tempting signs, pictured the rocky Gloucester coast, the long, low dunes of Crane’s Beach in Ipswich. The speed limit was sixty, the traffic doing seventy. The drivers in the left lane were doing eighty and so was I. I watched for state troopers, slowed whenever passing southbound drivers flashed their lights in the universal warning, and made it as far as Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in good time.
The sun sank slowly, the clouds growing suddenly pink before giving up their color as the sky turned gra
y. Headlights bloomed and I added mine to the glow, stretching my spine and yawning from the sheer repetitiveness of the broken white lines and speeding cars. I love to drive, but highway driving’s not my thing, no challenge to it, just join the herd and press the pedal. I consider city driving a competitive sport. I relish narrow, curvy coast roads. I took the Route 101 exit toward Exeter and the Hamptons, put my car on autopilot and my mind on the Chaney case.
Five months ago, in January, something must have happened, something must have changed at Improvisational Technologies. Their long-term security service had been suddenly deemed inadequate and Foundation had been hired instead. Foundation wasn’t a small-time outfit, nor was it cheap. Spengler had insisted it was a real gig, not window dressing. Possibly Chaney’s affair with Denali Brinkman had been cooling down at about the same time. The lovers had supposedly split a month before she died in the April blaze. The fire department’s response time had been compromised by a spate of false alarms. Chaney got the first blackmail note, then the second, then hired me to stop the blackmailer.
There were false alarms the night Benjy Dowling died, as well. Dowling had cleaned offices at Impro under an assumed name. Denali Brinkman had been close to Chaney, but then she got close to Dowling. Dowling was an ex-con, who always got caught because he gilded the lily. According to his parole officer, the man couldn’t leave well enough alone.
I took the Route 125 exit, fewer cars on the road now, three ahead of me, a couple in the rearview mirror. I hoped Helen Orza would be waiting at her office when I got there, but if not, I’d deal with Phil Gagnon. On the tape, Rory Block sang an a cappella spiritual called “Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down,” and it seemed as if I could almost see Denali Brinkman’s face superimposed over my faint reflection in the windshield, the grainy face in the news photo, the beautiful face in the shot I’d gotten from Theodore Fitch, the lawyer.
“Who are you?” I thought, and was surprised to find I’d spoken out loud. Too much solitude. Too many miles over too much road. Where did you come from, girl, and why did you lie about your age? Was Denali your given name? When and why did you decide to become Denali? How did you make the cut at Harvard? How did you die? What did you mean in that last cryptic note—“Time to delve for deeper shades of meaning”?
I made a right onto a narrow road more to my liking, killed the music, picked up my cell phone, and punched in Danny Burkett’s number. He was off duty, so I tried his home number, which I’d gotten courtesy of Roz.
He didn’t sound pleased to hear from me. Quite possibly, he’d have preferred a call from my tenant.
“You find Dowling’s TransAm?” I asked.
“Not a trace. Coulda been stolen. It’ll turn up. They always do.”
“You read the autopsy report on Denali Brinkman?” I asked.
Silence. “Yeah. Why?”
“You wonder why she was so badly burned?” A car passed on my left and I quickly checked my speedometer. I hate it when cell-chatting drivers slow way down. I was doing better than the limit. Guy probably knew the road better than I did.
Burkett said, “It doesn’t keep me up nights. One of the fire guys, he said maybe she soaked a sheet in gasoline, spread it over herself from top to toe. That was one woman who wanted to die.”
“What if she didn’t?” I said.
Silence. “You there?” I didn’t think I’d fallen into a cell-reception black hole, but his lack of response made me wary.
“Yeah.”
“Come on, let’s take it without our buddy Benjy Dowling, without the boyfriend who turns up and tells the sad story. I looked at the tox screen, and she was positive for benzos. Could have been Rohypnol, you know, ‘roofies,’ that date-rape shit.”
“This wasn’t rape, Carlyle. It was suicide.”
“It looked like suicide. But think about it. How do you get somebody to lie down quietly and not make a fuss no matter what the hell you do to her? You give her that roofie shit, she’s out of it in maybe twenty, thirty minutes. You cover her with a sheet soaked in gasoline.”
“Gasoline she bought herself at the station on Mount Auburn Street, telling that whole tale about running out of gas when she had no fucking car.”
“Benjy Dowling’s TransAm could have run out of gas. Benjy could have sent her to the station, told her the guys would raz him but that a girl would get sympathy.”
“That’s weak.”
“But possible. Don’t you think Dowling was a little too helpful?”
“You think he killed her?”
I’d been conscious of lights in my rear window for some time, slowly gaining on me. I hadn’t sped up; I was going fast enough for this road. There were plenty of places where the yellow line gave way to a broken line and passing was possible.
“I think he was involved,” I said.
“And she wrote herself a snuff note because he asked her to? What is this shit? Who are you working for?”
This time when I glanced in my rearview mirror, the headlights were almost on top of me. They changed to brights, dazzling my eyes. The bastard wasn’t slowing down, either, wasn’t pulling out to pass. I floored it and swore.
“What’s the hell’s that?” Burkett said. “Where are you?”
“Burkett, listen, I’m on the road. I’ve got a drunk or some lunatic on my tail.”
“You on the Artery?”
Damn it. I let go of the phone, grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, and wrenched it to the right. The road here was tight, suddenly hilly and narrow. Dark, fewer streetlamps, fewer cars. The vehicle behind me was bigger than my Toyota, some kind of small truck, or maybe an SUV. It smacked against my rear bumper and for a moment I was almost lifted off the road. Then the car came down with a thud and a sag of the rear axle.
I had to wrestle the wheel just to keep the car on the road at this speed. If I accelerated, I didn’t think the tires would hold the tight turns. On the other hand, if I didn’t speed, I’d get rammed.
I steadied the wheel, pressed the accelerator, consciously relaxed my shoulders, and ordered myself, Breathe, damn it, breathe. Telephone poles zipped by the windows, trees, fields bordered by stone fences. By the time I spotted turnoffs, it was too damn late to take them, and even if I could have taken them, where the hell would I have been headed? Signs passed in unreadable blurs. I honked at a Honda, pulled out, and passed him at a lunatic speed, the SUV on my tail. Use your cell, I silently told the Honda’s driver. Call the cops. Turn me in. I could hear Burkett squawking from the phone somewhere on the seat, but I couldn’t lift a hand off the wheel.
“New Hampshire,” I yelled. “I’m in New Hampshire. Epping, I think. No, I’m not on the main drag; I took a left and then a right fork. I don’t know what the hell the name of the road is!” I kept up a crazed monologue, describing the surroundings. No urban landmarks, no Store 24, no Citgo sign, just stands of dark oak and maple, aspen and birch, mile markers that flashed by too quickly to read. Where were the gas stations, the other cars, the hunky truck drivers with CB radios? This was southern New Hamspshire, not the Great Sandy Desert. This stretch of road was probably well travelled six nights a week, and I’d picked lucky seven.
I crested a hill, saw the diamond yellow sign too late, then the sharply curving arrow to the left. Still, I might have made the adjustment if the SUV hadn’t bounced off my rear fender, shoving, pushing, grinding me into the guardrail with a metallic shriek. The guardrail ended too soon, abruptly, and then my car left the road and I was braking and steering through trees, careening downhill. There were saplings at first; small, they broke like matchsticks, making sharp cracking sounds. The car bucked and leaped. My head smacked the padded ceiling, then something harder. I strained to keep my hands on the wheel. Larger trees loomed. Turn off the ignition! I had to turn off the damned ignition, but how the hell could I with my hands tight on the wheel, clamped to it like a bolt? How could I let go? I rode the brake, tried to guide the car down a treeless path on a wooded slope
at night, bring it safely to a halt.
Impossible.
CHAPTER 31
I may have been conscious when the ambulance came. I have a bumpy memory of people and noise and searing pain, of figures in jumpsuits and hands probing and testing, of getting strapped onto a gurney, but the images faded in and out, clear, then fuzzy, and then something was over my face. I struggled against the mask and the restraints, fought against going down, down.
I knew he was in the room when I woke the second time. Before I opened my eyes, I knew by the scent, by the hand on my wrist, by the gold band of a pinkie ring that Sam Gianelli was present, so I kept my eyes closed for one delicious second longer, unwilling to let go of the fantasy.
He was there when I opened my eyes, seated in a metal chair at the side of my narrow bed. I blinked, shut both eyes quickly, reopened them to narrow slits. Without turning my head, I could see the sharp creases in his gray pants, the pearl buttons on the deep blue shirt. Gold cuff links. A lock of hair at his left temple had lightened almost to silver. The sight of it made my throat contract, my eyes blur.
The room was small and the smell, aside from the faint odor of bay rum, said hospital. White walls. No windows. Machinery crowded the space to my left, but I wasn’t hooked up to any monitors. No tubes.
“What are you doing here?” I spoke softly because I didn’t want the illusion to shatter, turn into some intern or resident who looked like Sam.
No response. I moved my right arm, then my left. My left shoulder felt odd, not so much painful as stretched. It was difficult to swallow. I wanted to ask whether I was going to die. Was that why he’d come? To watch me die? I felt logy and awful and my mouth tasted like the inside of a copper pipe.
“What the hell did they give me?” I spoke louder this time, resigned to the unreality of the image. If he were real, why hadn’t he answered?
“‘Where am I?’” he said gravely. “That’s what you’re supposed to say.”
It was Sam’s voice, gravelly and deep. I turned my head. He looked rock-solid and steady, unfazed, but relieved, too. Familiar, but different. A little older. The tentative crease in his forehead was now a definite one. Uptilted wrinkles faded in and out at the corners of chocolate-colored eyes. A faint gray tint shaded the flesh beneath them. His chin was just as stubborn, his mouth soft and full-lipped. His suit jacket hung on the back of the wooden door.