The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “Because you’re stubborn.”

  “Are you sure he’s harmless?” I asked.

  “He’s harmless.”

  “And you don’t have a problem with it?”

  “Not me, boss.”

  “All right.”

  “So you want me to bring him back?”

  “All right means I’ll think about it some more.”

  Dan laughed at me, then segued into a big yawn, which made me yawn and reminded me of just how long this day had been. I stood up to stretch. “Let me ask you something else. If Ellen did find something out about Little Pete, does it stand to reason Big Pete would be involved?”

  “Little Pete wouldn’t know what shirt to put on in the morning if it wasn’t for his old man.”

  “That’s what I thought. I was speculating on how things might be different around here if we could blow both Petes out the door. Victor is incredibly annoying, but I’d still prefer dealing with him over Big Pete. And I can’t think of one good reason to have Little Pete around. He’s scary.”

  “I told you.”

  I went over to the window and shifted the angle of the blinds so that it would be harder to see inside the office, if anyone had been so inclined. It was already dark again. I hadn’t left the airport once in daylight. Come to think of it, it was dark in the morning when I came in. I was beginning to feel like a vampire. “Do you have any idea what Ellen may have had on father and son?”

  “Drugs.”

  “Really?”

  “I was thinking last night after I got home how out of the blue one day, for no reason, she starts asking me a bunch of questions about the Beeches.”

  “The Beechcraft? The commuter?”

  “Yeah. Those little mosquitoes we fly down to D.C. three times a day. Our last flight of the day connects to the Caribbean.”

  “Southbound is the wrong way for drug trafficking.”

  “It connects on the inbound, too. Her questions were all about the cargo compartments, capacity, loading procedures. I think she was trying to figure how much extra weight they could take. Maybe where you could hide a package. She also asked me for a copy of the operating procedures for the ramp.”

  “Wait a second…” I went to the overhead cabinet of my credenza and opened it. “She had her own procedures manual. It’s right here. Why would she want yours?”

  Dan came around the desk and pointed at the logo emblazoned across the manual. “Those are Majestic’s procedures.”

  “Not surprising, considering we are Majestic Airlines.”

  “We weren’t always, not here in Boston, anyway. She wanted my old Nor’easter manual. I gave it to her and now it’s gone.”

  “That’s very odd.” I slid the manual back onto the shelf. “You haven’t been Nor’easter for over two years.”

  He went back to his seat while I turned around, opened the file drawer in my desk, and thumbed through the plastic tabs. “Something was in here the other night having to do with Nor’easter … here it is.” When I reached down and pulled it up, all I had was an empty hanging file with a label. The Nor’easter/Majestic Merger file was missing. It was the only one that was. I showed Dan the empty file.

  “Could mean nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing around here means nothing.”

  I left the file on my desk as a reminder to ask Molly about it. “I don’t know about the merger or the Beechcraft or the procedures manual. What I do know is that you could go to jail for running drugs, to say nothing of losing your job.”

  I smiled at Dan and he smiled back. “I like the way you think, Shanahan.”

  “Are you free tomorrow night?”

  “Friday night? Are you asking me out on a date, boss?”

  “I got a call this afternoon from Human Resources in Denver. Ellen’s Aunt Jo in California was named as beneficiary in Ellen’s life insurance policy, and they were missing some information. Lenny wasn’t around, so they called me and I in turn offered to contact Aunt Jo for them. Jo Shepard is her name. She’s the older sister of Ellen’s late father. Did you ever talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know where to send the ashes?”

  “Lenny left me a message. He’s been dealing with her from the start.”

  “Yeah, from what I gather, Aunt Jo is older and doesn’t travel much. When Lenny called to inform her about Ellen, he offered the company’s assistance in handling her affairs. Selling her car, getting rid of the furniture, paying final bills. She took him up on his offer, had a power of attorney prepared and sent to him.”

  He slumped back in his chair and groaned. “We’ll never get into that house.”

  “Not so. She’s overnighting a copy to me. It should be here tomorrow.”

  The spark came back into his eyes. You could even have called it a gleam. “Are you shitting me?”

  “I explained to her who I was. I told her who you were and that we were here in Boston and we wanted to help, too. I figured it was worth a shot. She was more than happy to have all the help she could get, and since the power of attorney designates ‘authorized representatives of Majestic Airlines’ as her proxy, it will work for us, too.”

  Dan was shaking his head, taking it all in. “Jesus Christ, Shanahan, I can’t believe you did that. You’re all right, I don’t care what anyone says.”

  “I hope Lenny feels the same way when he finds out.”

  “Who cares what Lenny thinks? Better to ask forgiveness than permission. That’s what I always say.”

  “I care what Lenny thinks, and look how well it’s worked for you.”

  He bounced out of the chair and headed for the door, looking as if he had things to do and places to go.

  “I’ve already talked to Pohan,” I said, calling after him. He stopped just outside the door. “You call the landlord. We’ll need to get a key. And see if he knows how to change the code on the burglar alarm. If he doesn’t, call the security company. If you can get that done tomorrow, we can go tomorrow night—that is, if you’re free.”

  I could have seen his ear-to-ear grin in the dark. “I’ll clear my calendar.”

  Chapter Ten

  The sound of the car doors slamming cracked so sharply in the sleepy neighborhood, I halfway expected the neighbors to come out on their porches to see about the disturbance. While Dan went to get the key from the landlord, I stood by his car and stared up at the house. No one had closed the curtains in Ellen’s house or drawn the blinds, leaving the windows black, unblinking, the interior exposed to anyone who dared to approach. I had agreed to this search—I had made this search possible—but now that I was here, it seemed like a better idea in concept than in practice.

  Dan arrived and handed me the key. There was no ring, no rabbit’s foot, nothing but a slim, bright sliver that disappeared into the palm of my gloved hand.

  “Let’s go, boss. I’m freezin’ my ass off out here.”

  “Aren’t you…” I couldn’t find the right word because I knew he wasn’t afraid. A feeble gust of wind came up, sending long-dead leaves scuttling over the blacktop. “Aren’t you even a little uneasy about going in there?”

  “No. Why?”

  I looked up again at the forbidding structure. “I don’t know. I just think—”

  “Shanahan, you’re thinking too much. Follow me.” And he was off. When I caught up, he was waiting for me on the porch. While he held open the aluminum screen door, I used the light from the street to find the dead bolt. It was dim, but I could still see that the cylinder was as shiny as a new quarter.

  “New locks?”

  He nodded. “She’s the one who put in the security system, too. The landlord wouldn’t pay for it.”

  I took off my glove and touched the lock face. It felt cold. “Something must have scared her.”

  The dead bolt slid back easily, and the same key worked in the knob. A piercing tone from the security system greeted us. I knew that it was just a reminder to disengage the alarm. Even s
o, it felt like one last warning from the house, one last chance to turn back. Dan slipped past me and, reading from a minuscule scrap of paper, punched a six-digit code into the keypad on the wall. The buzzer fell silent, leaving the house so still I almost wanted the noise back.

  “I’m going to start in the basement,” Dan said, already halfway to the back of the house.

  “We need to reset this alarm,” I called, making sure he could hear me. “Wasn’t that the whole point of getting a new code?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He came back, referred again to his cheat sheet, and punched in a different string of numbers. “There you go, all safe and sound.”

  He was gone before I could respond. The air in the house was frigid. It felt dense and tasted stale, as if a damp breeze had drifted in from the ocean some time ago and never found a way out. And there was an odor. Faint. Sweet. From the body? How would I know? I didn’t know what a dead body smelled like.

  I shot the dead bolt, turning the interior knob on the shiny new lock Ellen had installed. She’d felt the presence of danger, taken reasonable precautions to keep it outside her door. But she had not been safe. If she had killed herself, then the real threat had been inside the house, inside with her. On the other hand, if she hadn’t killed herself—I wrapped my coat a little tighter—then it was really dumb for us to be in here.

  The rooms were slightly dilapidated, showing the house’s age, but the residue of grander times lingered. Chandeliers hung from high ceilings, although some of the bulbs were out. The decor, at least the part Ellen had contributed, was impeccable—simple, spare pieces placed in sometimes surprising but always perfect relation to one another. And unlike those of her office, the walls were not bare. They were hung with paintings and prints that were contemporary and seemed to be carefully selected. Edward Hopper had been a favorite, with his haunting images of urban isolation and people staring into the middle distance, into their own desolation.

  As I moved from room to room, I looked for evidence that intruders had been there. I saw no drawers open, no seat cushions askance. Still, I had an odd feeling that Dan was right, that the soul of the house had been disturbed, that Ellen’s sanctuary had been violated in some way.

  I had the same feeling upstairs, standing at the foot of her bed, staring at the brocade comforter and the elegant pile of matching pillows. I hadn’t made my bed once since I’d moved out of my mother’s house. I didn’t see the point. Ellen had made her bed either the morning of the day she’d died, or—this was a really strange notion—would she have taken time to make it before she’d gone upstairs to kill herself?

  The rest of the bedroom was predictably uncluttered, as was her bathroom, but when I opened her bedroom closet, I was stunned—and then I laughed out loud. I had finally found something about this woman that was authentic and unguarded and completely, delightfully out of control. Her walk-in closet was a riot. It wasn’t messy as much as … relaxed. Especially compared to the rest of the house. It was as if her compulsion to shop had fought a battle with her obsession for order. Order never had a chance. Hanging racks to the left and right were crammed with silk blouses and little sweaters and wool suits and linen slacks and one linen blazer that I found particularly swanky. Her shoes had completely overwhelmed the handy shoe shelf and escaped to the floor.

  It took a long time to search the closet—she’d owned a lot of handbags that I had to go through—and when I was finished, I didn’t want to leave. For one thing, it was warmer in there. But mostly, standing in that closet I recognized Ellen as a real person, a person who had an obvious weakness for natural fibers and good leather pumps. I could have gone shopping with this woman, and we would have had a good time.

  I was turning to leave when a single sheet of lined paper tacked to the inside of the closet door caught my attention. It had dates and distances and entries penciled in Ellen’s hand, and when I looked around on the floor, I had to smile. There were two pairs of well-worn, mud-covered running shoes, the expensive kind, lined up right next to her trendy little flats. Ellen had been a runner, too. I did what all runners do—immediately checked her distances against mine. I might not have had her discipline—she ran more often than I did and on a schedule as rigid as everything else about her life—but I had endurance. I ran farther.

  Something creaked in the ceiling directly above my head, something loud. Dan was supposed to be in the basement, but … there it was again. Loud, groaning footsteps. Definitely footsteps. I was on the second floor and the noise was coming from overhead, so either Dan wasn’t in the basement anymore, or—I flinched at the sound of a muffled thud—someone else was in the attic.

  I stepped quietly into the hallway. A door was ajar, framed by a light from behind. Through the opening I could see the wooden steps inside that climbed, I assumed, to the attic.

  More footsteps and then another loud crash. I held very still and listened, feeling every footstep in my chest as if it were my own ribs creaking under the weight rather than the dry hardwood planks overhead.

  “Is that you, Dan?”

  The second thud had a different quality, more like a deliberate kick, followed by “JesusChristsonovabitch. Yes, it’s me.”

  I let out the deep breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding, climbed the steep stairs, and emerged through a planked floor into the attic. It smelled of mothballs and lumber, and my eyes were drawn immediately to the apex of that familiar pitched roof where I knew Ellen had hung from a rope until Dan had come to find her.

  He was sitting on a trunk rubbing his shin. He must have left his coat and tie somewhere. His collar was unbuttoned and I could see the band of his cotton T-shirt. It was warmer in the attic than any other part of the house, except for Ellen’s closet maybe, but still cold. I picked my way over to where he was sitting, careful not to step off the planks.

  He looked up at me. “What do you think ‘fish’ means?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Look at this.” He handed me a page from a desk calendar for Monday, December 22, 1997, with the handwritten notation that said FISH 1016.96A.

  “Fish? I have no idea. Was this in her office?”

  “On the floor behind the desk.”

  “On the floor? Where’s the rest of the calendar?”

  “Gone. So’s the tape from her answering machine.”

  “Which one? Inbound or outbound?”

  “They’re both gone.”

  “Wow,” I said, “that sounds kind of … not random. As if whoever took them knew her and had talked to her on the phone. That wouldn’t be Little Pete, would it?”

  “It could have been if he was calling in threats to her.”

  “I guess you’re right. The rest of the house doesn’t look as if it’s been searched. If someone’s been in here, they were looking for something specific and they knew where to look.” I tapped the calendar page with a fingernail as I tried to think about what we hadn’t found. “Did you find any computer diskettes? Or maybe an organizer? Did she carry a briefcase?”

  “There’s no organizer or disks. Her briefcase is downstairs, but there’s nothing in it but work stuff.”

  “What about her car?”

  “It’s in the garage. I checked it a few days ago. There’s nothing in it.”

  I looked at the note again. Fish. What could that possibly have to do with anything? He waved me off when I tried to give it back to him. “You keep it. I’ll just lose it.”

  I stuck the calendar page into the pocket of my coat and sat next to him on the trunk. “You have no idea what they might be looking for?”

  “Not a clue.”

  The space was large for an attic. Several matching footlockers were randomly scattered around the floor, as was some old furniture, too tacky to have been Ellen’s. For an attic the place was clean, but still not the image I would want to take to my grave. Several cardboard boxes were stacked neatly to one side. “Have you checked these boxes?”

  “No. That’s
why I came up here. Want to take a look?”

  We went through the boxes and lockers. Each one had a colored tag, the kind the movers use for inventory, and it made me think about my own moving boxes, which had tags on top of tags. We found nothing that you wouldn’t expect to find in the attic—Christmas ornaments and old tax records and boxes of books and clothes. The most intriguing box was labeled personal mementos. I wanted to sit in the attic, take some time, and go through it piece by piece, but for reasons other than what we’d come for. I wanted to find out about Ellen.

  When we were finished, Dan and I sat on a couple of the lockers and looked at each other. Illuminated by the bare bulb from the ceiling, his face was all pale angles and deep hollows.

  “She didn’t have any shoes on.”

  “What?”

  “The rope was over that high beam there.” He pointed up into the apex of the roof. “One end of it, anyway. The other end was knotted around that stud. The cops think she climbed up on this and kicked it over.” He went over to one of the lockers and nudged it with his toe. “She was wearing some kind of a jogging suit thing, but nothing on her feet. They were white. That’s what I saw first when I came up the stairs. Her feet were totally white and … I don’t know … like wax or something. It’s funny because it was pretty dark up here, but there was light coming from somewhere.” He checked around the attic, finding a window at the far end covered with wooden slats, like blinds closed halfway. “Through there, I guess. She was facing me. Hanging, but perfectly still, which was weird. And her eyes … I thought your eyes closed when you died.” He bowed his head, and when he raised it again, the light over his head showed every line in his face. “When I think about that day, I still think about her feet. I’d never seen her bare feet.”

  He found the trunk again, sat down, and put his face down in his hands. “I’m so tired tonight.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I thought about what it must have been like for him standing by himself in the attic, looking at her that way. I wondered how something like that changes you. As I watched him rubbing his eyes, I found myself wishing I had known him before he had seen her that way.