The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  Somewhere out of the steam I heard the voice of a woman, then the response of her little girl. I stuffed the box underneath the stiff sweatshirt and dropped the whole thing in the pile on the floor.

  There was more in the bottom of the locker, and as I shoved aside the rest of the socks, I felt a tingle, an all-over buzz because right there in the locker was a binder with the Nor’easter logo. It was Dan’s missing procedures manual, and when I saw what was underneath that, the tingle turned electric. Bulging, well used, and fuzzy at the corners, it was Ellen’s Majestic/Nor’easter merger file, the one that had been missing from her desk. I trolled around in the gym clothes, thinking the answering machine tapes might be in there. I was looking inside the socks when the trainer returned.

  “This is all I could find,” she said, holding open one of two brown paper bags.

  “That’ll work.” I quickly stuffed the clothes and toiletries into the first bag, the files, the video box, and the procedures manual into the second. “Thanks for your help.”

  A bag under each arm, I backed through the swinging locker room door, walked past Heather at the front desk, and out into the morning air, cool against the eucalyptus dampness on my skin and in my hair. The bag of clothes went into the trunk, the files up front with me.

  I didn’t even wait to get back to Boston. I pulled into the first coffee shop I could find—they’re called crumpet shops in Marblehead—ordered my morning tea, and started with the procedures manual. It was thick and dense and filled with pretty basic stuff, like how to load airplanes. I learned a lot about Nor’easter’s ramp procedures, which hadn’t been much different from everyone else’s, and nothing about why Ellen had found the manual so interesting that she’d taken it with her to the gym. It wasn’t exactly a book you’d prop up in front of you on the stair climber. Occasionally, I’d come across notes in the margins, but not in Ellen’s handwriting. They always pertained to information on that page, and I assumed they were Dan’s. But the first page of the Beechcraft section was marked with a paper clip. So was a diagram of the aircraft, which showed top and side elevations, positions of seats and the cargo compartments, forward and aft. But that was it. There was no indication of why it would be of interest to her.

  Almost an hour later, I was drowning in Irish breakfast tea. I’d finally broken down and bought a scone. I don’t like scones—to me they taste like warm rocks, sometimes not even warm—but it was all they had. What would have been wrong with serving a bagel or a piece of wheat toast? I was turning pages in the merger file, reading tedious notes, memos, legal documents, and remembering exactly what I had so disliked about my assignment in headquarters. Then I found it. Nestled in among the other papers was a check stub. It was dated April 1995. There was no name, but it was in the nice round amount of ten thousand dollars, and it had been issued by none other than Crescent Security, same as the name on the invoice I’d re-suspended twice. Molly had described Crescent Security as a nickel-and-dime firm that did background checks, which couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred bucks apiece. I tried to remember the amount on the invoice. I didn’t think it was more than a few hundred dollars. I knew it wasn’t anywhere near ten thousand.

  The shop had filled up since I’d been there, and several heads turned my way when my beeper went off. They looked at me as if my cell phone had gone off in church. I checked the display and was surprised not to see the number from Operations. It was a number that was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it, so I ignored it. With only a few pages left in the file, I wanted to get to the back. When I got there, I was glad I did.

  Stuck in the back of the file as if it didn’t belong there was a single sheet of paper folded in half. Handwritten in black ink on the white page was one paragraph.

  I think of how my life would be without him, and the thought of letting go scares me to death. I can’t think about it directly, so I creep up close to the thought, walk around the feeling, touch it, pull back. When I get too close, I have trouble breathing. My lungs fill up with something cold and heavy, and I feel myself going under. And then I think about my life before him, about the work that filled my days and the ghosts that walked the nights with me, and I feel myself going under again and the only thing that keeps my head above water is the motion of reaching up for him. And I can’t let go. Because when I’m with him, I exist. Without him, I’m afraid I’ll disappear, disappear to a place where God can’t save me and I can’t save myself.

  The air suddenly felt thicker, harder to breathe. Even if it hadn’t been in her handwriting, I would have known that Ellen had written those words. I recognized her voice—the longing in her voice. I read it again. Who was she writing about? Had he left her? Is that why she’d ‘disappeared’? Because she hadn’t known how to save herself? I put the page down, pushed back from the table, and leaned over. I took a few deep breaths, releasing each one in a long exhale. In my mind I saw Ellen writing those words. I saw her reaching out, reaching up for him and trying not to drown. What I couldn’t see was his face, the face of the man she was reaching for. And I couldn’t see him reaching back for her. She was reaching into emptiness, and I knew what that felt like.

  A large woman pushed behind my chair, trying to get by. She brushed against my shoulder, and her touch made me shrink away, pull into myself. It was time to go.

  Out in the car, I sat with the door open and the note in my hand, feeling the fresh ocean air on my face and listening to the calls of the seagulls. Up until then Ellen had been elusive to me, hiding amidst the color-coded labels and the calligraphic handwriting and the bare walls of her office. But on this page, in these words, she didn’t hide, and it was almost painful to see her so clearly, like looking into the sun after a long walk in the dark. I flipped the page over hoping for a signature or a date, some clue as to who inspired it. Nothing. It could have been written a month ago. It could have been written five years ago. I had a strong feeling based on nothing more than instinct that it was more like last month.

  I read it again, this time more slowly. There were no cross-outs, no corrections. The thoughts and words seemed to have flowed out onto the page fully formed, as if she couldn’t hold them back. Toward the end the handwriting loosened, almost a tangible representation of the author coming unraveled.

  Maybe Ellen had left a suicide note after all.

  “Harborside Hyatt, how may I direct your call?”

  No wonder the number on the beeper had been familiar. It was my own hotel.

  “This is Alex Shanahan. I’m a guest and someone from the hotel beeped me.”

  “Hold on.” I used the Muzak moment as an opportunity to turn up the volume on the cell phone so I could hear over the road noise. Traffic on Route 1A was beginning to build.

  “This is the front desk. May I help you?”

  I repeated my story to the clerk and waited after he, too, put me on hold.

  “Miss Shanahan, this is the concierge.” Yet a third hotel employee, this one female, and yet another opportunity to repeat my explanation.

  “We received an urgent fax for you this morning,” she told me, “with instructions to contact you immediately.”

  An urgent fax. How dramatic. Probably from Lenny. “Do you have it there?”

  “Yes. May I read it to you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It says, ‘Meet tonight, seven o’clock at Ciao Bella.’”

  My scalp began to tingle and my eyeballs went dry. Ciao Bella. The secret code word. “That’s it?”

  “Yes, it seems to be. There’s no signature or cover page.”

  “Could you look at the time stamp across the top and tell me where it came from?”

  “It was sent at nine-forty this morning from Sir Speedy in Nahant.”

  The meeting was on. “Thank you. Leave it there for me, and I’ll pick it up when I get in. Oh…”

  “Yes?”

  “One more thing. Where did you get my beeper number?”

  “It was
on the fax with the instructions to contact you.”

  “Okay, thanks again.”

  The steering wheel had become hard to manage because my hands were sweating so much. I couldn’t get the temperature right in the car, and the eucalyptus smell from my hair was too strong in the enclosed space. I should have taken my coat off for the ride back. I had no idea who Mr. Nahant was or even if he was a he, for that matter. Whoever it was, he knew my beeper number, which was a whole lot more than I knew about him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The hinges squealed, the door to the restaurant opened, and yet another party arrived at Ciao Bella not to have dinner with me. Fifteen minutes had stretched to thirty, thirty to forty-five. I had eaten too much bread with garlic-infused olive oil and watched a silent hockey game on the set over the bar. Anticipation had given way to frustration, frustration to starvation, and finally to ravioli. Twenty minutes after I’d finished eating, I was still there and still alone. I gave the waitress a big tip for holding her table so long and went out to Newbury Street.

  I’d wasted an entire afternoon clenched in nervous anticipation, pacing around my hotel room, speculating as to who the mystery man was and what he could tell me. I’d worked up a good head of anxiety, and now I had no place to put it. The bright New England Saturday had disappeared, turning first to gray, then to a cold, steady rain that had lasted all afternoon. It wasn’t exactly ideal weather for strolling, but it had stopped raining, so I decided to anyway.

  Most of the shops on Newbury were closed, but their elegant bay windows up and down both sides of the street were dazzling, especially dramatic on a moonless night. Filled with four-button Armani suits, Cole-Haan shoes, and soft leather Coach bags, the bright lights of commerce lit up the red brick sidewalk as the quaint iron street lamps never could.

  I lingered at a few of the windows and stopped at one to look at a pair of pleated slacks. I was trying to remember the last time I’d bought something for myself when I saw—felt, really—a quick, cutting movement out of the corner of my eye. The street was alive with foot traffic, but this was too quick for that leisurely pace, and more furtive, like a rat dashing for its hole. I searched the passing faces, but these were no more familiar to me than the ones at the restaurant had been. Too much pasta, maybe. Definitely too much tension.

  I forgot about the slacks and kept moving, bundling up against the gusting wind as I crossed Arlington and headed into the Public Garden. I’d been there a couple of times since I’d come to town. On the one occasion that I’d actually kept an appointment to look for an apartment, the realtor had made a point of walking me through twice, and for good reason. It was enchanting in daylight, even in winter. But at night when you’re already edgy and sluggish and overstuffed, it’s a different story.

  Inside the wrought iron fence, sheltered by the old trees, the wind died down and it was much quieter. Quiet enough that I heard the twig snap behind me. Or did I? It was hard to hear anything over the rising tide of panic pounding in my ears. Yes, someone was there, I was sure of it, and if I couldn’t hear him or see him, I could feel his presence the way you could feel a shadow moving across the sun.

  A tendril of a cold breeze found some exposed skin on the back of my neck and sent a wicked shiver underneath my jacket. He could be anywhere, behind a tree or a statue. The park was closing in on me, and at the same time I felt completely exposed.

  I put my head down and walked faster. I was listening and concentrating so hard that I almost rammed headfirst into a couple coming toward me. I had to pull up short and stop abruptly to let them pass. I turned to watch them. They were arm in arm, laughing and pushing close for warmth. Seeing the two of them together made me feel even colder and more alone.

  As I turned to go, a voice came out of nowhere: “You picked a bad place to meet,” he said—and he was talking to me. For a moment I couldn’t move at all. That’s the moment I considered running away as fast as I could. I probably should have. Instead, I turned back to find him.

  I scanned the area behind me and couldn’t see anything. My hands were stuffed into my pockets, and I could feel my shoulders squeezing together, could feel my body almost on its own trying to get narrow so I could hide in plain sight. I tried to swallow, but the cold air had long since stolen the moisture from the back of my throat.

  “That restaurant was too crowded.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “I work for you.” When he spoke again I spotted him, at least his silhouette, about twenty feet away next to a large tree and well back in the shadows. He was bulky and solid, built like a ramper and dressed in dark clothing. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew I’d heard the voice. I just wished I knew if that was good or bad.

  He stepped out of the dark. I strained to see as he walked out of the shadows. He came closer and closer, but I still couldn’t see. I was reconsidering the running-away alternative when he finally stepped into the light and I could see his face. It was a face I recognized. “John McTavish, right?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”

  I started breathing again; then I took off my glove and offered my hand. He quickly averted his eyes, as if this naked appendage, pale and vulnerable in the dim light, was a part of my body he wasn’t supposed to see. He made no move to return the gesture, so I stuck my hand back in my pocket.

  “How’d you know it was me?” he whispered.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I said, matching his whisper, “but I know who you are. I would remember anyone who stood up to Big Pete.”

  He was perfectly still, as I’d seen him in the ready room, the only movement coming from his eyes, quick and alert, locking onto the faces of occasional strangers who happened by, making sure, I presumed, they were strangers. It was disconcerting to see him this nervous.

  “Then why’d you send the fax?”

  “On a hunch. I found your note to Ellen on the fax machine at her house.”

  He thought that over. “You took a big chance.”

  I didn’t even want to think about all the chances I’d been taking. “Could we go someplace where it’s warm and talk about this? My ears are so cold they’re burning. I think that’s a bad sign.” I took a hopeful step in the direction of Charles Street, but he didn’t budge. He didn’t even turn in my direction.

  “Why’d you want to meet?” he asked.

  “I want to know why Ellen Shepard killed herself.”

  “Is that what you think? That she did that to herself?”

  I walked back and stood right in front of him, sniffling. My nose was starting to run from the cold, and I didn’t have any tissues. “Do you know otherwise?”

  He still wasn’t moving, and I knew what he was thinking. If he knew or he didn’t, why tell me? I reached back for what I’d been feeling the moment I’d sent that fax. “I’m having a hard time with the union, with Big Pete, and maybe even with my own boss. I’m feeling overmatched and I’m looking for help. That’s why I sent it. I need help, and I thought that if you were willing to help Ellen, you might help me, too.”

  He stood for a moment longer in his zippered jacket, T-shirt, and jeans, an ensemble that struck me as lightweight for the conditions. Then he offered his hand, big and callused, and I grabbed it. He wasn’t wearing gloves, but his skin was warm anyway. For the first time he looked me in the eye. “Let’s go,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”

  “Too many windows,” he explained, referring to Ciao Bella. “We would have been sitting right out on the street in one of the busiest parts of town.”

  “Would it be that bad to be seen with me?”

  “By the wrong people, yeah, it would.”

  No one was going to see us here. We’d tried two other places before he’d approved of this one, a basement space off Charles Street with exposed brick, a big fireplace, but no windows and only two patrons besides us. I noticed how tiny the coffee mug looked in John’s hands. I remembered his quiet confiden
ce as he’d stood in the middle of the ready room and stared down Big Pete. And now he was telling me there was something at the airport that scared him. We were sitting in front of the fire, but I couldn’t seem to feel its warmth.

  “I told you why I sent the message,” I said. “Why did you respond?”

  He set the mug aside and rested his arms on the table, making a solid piece of furniture feel rickety. “My brother, Terry… I heard Big Pete offered him up in a deal for Little Pete.”

  “He did.”

  “I also heard you didn’t take him up on it, so I figured you would maybe listen to the whole story before you made a decision.”

  “I’m more than willing to hear your brother’s story, but he’s not talking. I’m beginning to wonder if he was even at his own fight.”

  “He was there, and it’s a good thing.”

  I sat back and studied John’s face. It was a big face with a slightly crooked nose, a wide forehead, and a look of disgust that he was trying unsuccessfully to hide. “Little Pete was drunk, wasn’t he?”

  “They didn’t do the test. How’d you know that?” He looked at me hard. “Is someone else talking to you?”

  “No. I hear things. And next time, if there is a next time, there will be a test. The supervisor is being disciplined.”

  “For all the good that will do.”

  “Tell me what happened. If you want help for your brother, I need to know.”

  He let loose a long, dispirited sigh, then began, reluctantly, to tell me the story. “Little Pete was tanked up when he got to work that night. He sat in the bag room for a few hours drinking, from what I hear, about a dozen minis straight up. Myers’s Rum—dark, that’s what he likes. Then he got in a tractor, and while he was driving across the ramp, he fell out.”