Haunted Hearts

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “Well, whatever it is, you won’t find it with that Schaeffer woman.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “A lot. A lot more than you know, believe me.” Her voice dropped in tone and volume. “You two deserve each other,” she said, and the line went dead.

  He woke the next morning trying to piece together elements of dreams that lingered in his memory like commuters who had missed their train. After showering and dressing, he came downstairs just as Ronnie walked out of Ollie’s room, carrying his empty breakfast tray, her head down. They passed in silence.

  “You’re finally awake,” McGuire said, entering Ollie’s room.

  “Got tired a sleepin’.” Ollie was looking out the window at his view of Massachusetts Bay. “How you doin’?”

  “I’m okay . . .”

  Ollie’s eyes flicked towards McGuire. “C’mere,” he whispered.

  McGuire sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Something’s bothering Ronnie,” Ollie said. “I don’t know what. Maybe one of those woman things. Maybe something more.” He lowered his voice even further. “She’s even quit her paintin’ class. And she’s damn good at it too. Whattaya think? Why’d she do that?” Ollie turned his head in his slow, painful way to face McGuire. “You wanta talk to her? I think maybe she’s lonely, what with you bouncin’ on mattresses from here to Rhode Island every night.”

  “Ronnie’s strong.” McGuire stood up. “If she’s got a problem, she’ll figure out how to deal with it.”

  Ollie’s good arm flopped towards McGuire, the fingers of his hand outstretched. “No, no, Joseph. Not this time. I’ve lived with that woman thirty years. I know when she’s feeling pain, and that’s what she’s feeling right now. A lot of it. So help her, Joseph. Get her to talk, get her to laugh again, okay? Okay?”

  McGuire nodded, reached for Ollie’s hand, and let the other man squeeze his in return, Ollie holding McGuire in the grip of his hand and his eyes. “Talk to you later,” McGuire said, and Ollie nodded.

  He found Ronnie in the kitchen reading a newspaper, a cup of black coffee growing cold in front of her. McGuire sat and stared at her until she lowered the newspaper and looked back at him. “What?” she said.

  “Ollie wants me to talk to you, see if I can cheer you up a little.”

  “So try.” She raised the coffee to her lips, sipped it, made a face, and lowered it again.

  “The guy loves you.”

  “You think I stopped loving him? You think I ever stopped?”

  McGuire looked away, remembering. “When I was a kid, back in Worcester,” he said, “there was a strange man who lived alone in a house across the street. I don’t know what he did for a living, don’t know if he was a pervert like some of the neighbours said, but he was definitely different. He would talk to me and the other kids like we were adults, and he would talk to our parents like they were kids. He’d see the parents dressed up in the evening, going out for a movie or something, and he’d call across the street to them. He’d say things like, ‘Going out to play are we? Going to the playground maybe? Swing from the monkey bars?’ He’d drive the parents nuts.”

  “Fascinating.” Ronnie folded her arms.

  “One day he grabbed my shoulder as I walked past him on the sidewalk. I was maybe twelve years old, and he just stared at me at first, not saying anything. I wasn’t afraid of him. None of us kids were. He wasn’t threatening, just different. I asked him what he wanted. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘You are allowed any thought. Every thought you have is a worthwhile thought. You are not responsible for what you think. You are only responsible for what you do.’ Then he walked away.”

  Ronnie avoided his eyes.

  “If he saw one of us kids not looking happy, if we were upset about something, he’d say ‘Having your daily sadness, are you? Having a daily dose of sadness?’ Our parents would tell us to stop moping around, but he’d treat it differently. He made it sound as though it were all right to be sad sometimes.”

  McGuire smiled at the memory.

  “Once, when we were talking, he told me I should love not being what I really wanted to be, because then I would find out what I needed. It took me a long time to get my head around that one.” McGuire became more animated, the memories of his strange neighbour fueling his thoughts. “Another time, I talked to him about space travel, because I was reading a lot of science fiction, Buck Rogers stuff. He listened for a time and then he said, ‘Always travel to your inner nature. That’s the only journey worth taking. Forget the space station.’ I’ve remembered that. All those years. Sometimes, when I start thinking about some crazy idea that might make me happier than I am, I tell myself to forget the space station. When I start dreaming about things I should’ve done or somebody I should’ve been, I tell myself that I’m just trying to live on the space station. Helps me forget about it and start dealing with reality again.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Joe.” Ronnie glared up at him. “Dump your philosophy on somebody who wants it.”

  McGuire inhaled deeply and released it. “What he said is the kind of thing that stays with you over the years. When you’re twelve, you don’t know what the hell somebody like that is talking about, but you can’t forget it, either. Then, thirty years later, it starts to make sense. Forget the space station.”

  She looked at McGuire. “So what happened to him, your crazy friend?”

  “He hanged himself in his house. In the living room. One of the kids saw his body through the window, still twisting. The next week his house burned down. There was some talk that a couple of parents did it, just to destroy everything remaining of him. Because he was saying things to the kids that upset the parents.”

  Ronnie smiled and stood up. “That’s the best you can do?” she said. She carried her coffee to the sink and poured it out.

  “Probably.”

  “Didn’t help him much, did it?” She was staring down at the drain.

  “I thought about that,” McGuire said, rising from the chair. “But I just figured that’s where his journey took him. To a rope in the living room. It’s everybody’s daily sadness.”

  “Then leave me with mine,” Ronnie said. “Just go away and leave me with mine.”

  McGuire thought about it in the long periods of wakefulness when it is always four a.m., in the mind, if not on the face of the clock. In the morning he rose early and dressed silently. Downstairs he could hear Ollie snoring, and he stepped into the chill of the morning. He ate breakfast in a restaurant on Boylston Street, dawdling over the morning newspaper and taking a long walk through Back Bay streets, enjoying the solitude.

  Then he returned to his car and drove to the market area. He parked in the elevated garage and walked towards Quincy Market. It was just after nine o’clock. A few end-of-season tourists snapped pictures of Faneuil Hall, while others sat on benches, sipping from paper cups of hot coffee.

  He bought a black coffee at one of the market stalls and walked along the narrow corridor, exiting on the harbour side and returning within the glass-canopied atrium forming the north wall of the market building, where the souvenir shops were located. First he saw the sign, Quincy Candles, and then he saw her, standing behind the tiny sales counter, attaching price stickers to candles in fanciful shapes and garish colours. He watched how she brushed her hair from her eyes with the back of one hand, and how she paused to stare through the atrium glass at the walls of the South Market, across the open cobblestoned plaza. He noticed she wore no jewelry, not even earrings, and something about her expression, as she watched people walk by on the other side of the glass, had a familiarity about it that chilled him.

  McGuire finished the coffee, crumpled the empty cup in his hand, and entered the store, where Susan Schaeffer was bent over her work.

  She looked up at the sound of his footsteps. Her smile at the sight of him changed t
o something else. “Hello.” Her hands fumbled for each other and finally clasped themselves together. “I’m sorry about leaving last night. I was enjoying myself, honestly.”

  “I didn’t get a goodbye.” McGuire picked up a wax candle molded in the shape of the Old State House. Did people really pay money for these things?

  “It’s difficult to explain . . .”

  Two middle-aged women entered, clucking with approval at the souvenir candles. “Why don’t you tell me later?” McGuire said, leaning on the counter and smiling at her. “We’ll have that second Irish coffee we talked about.”

  She smiled. The smile altered her age, her cloak of sadness, and even her beauty, enhancing it, and he felt that sense of privilege and vulnerability that the attention of a beautiful woman could create in him.

  “I hear the weather’s turning warm later,” he said. “Might be a good day for a walk along the Esplanade.”

  “Oh, I’d love that!” Her face grew animated. “I haven’t been there for so long . . .”

  “Excuse me, miss.” It was one of the tourists, holding a wax candle shaped and painted to resemble Paul Revere astride his horse. “How much is this?”

  “That’s twelve dollars,” Susan said to the woman.

  “I’ll meet you here,” McGuire said.

  “No, not here,” she said. “At the Hatch shell. Around two. Is that all right?”

  “Do you have anything cheaper?” one of the women tourists interrupted.

  “Okay,” McGuire said. “The Hatch shell.” He nodded to the women as he passed. “It’s a bargain,” he said, and winked at her. He left the shop and turned to look at Susan, whose smile had grown wider, and he returned the smile, feeling he was doing something good, something right.

  The receptionist almost leapt across her desk at the sight of McGuire when he entered the law offices a few moments later. “Mr. Pinnington is anxious to see you,” she said. “In his office. I’ll tell him you’re here.” McGuire glanced at the clock. It was well past ten a.m.

  When McGuire reached Pinnington’s office, Pinnington stood waiting for him, grim-faced and in shirtsleeves.

  “What’s up?” McGuire asked, but Pinnington said nothing until he closed the door behind him.

  “You know they found Orin’s car at the airport?”

  Without being invited to sit, McGuire settled in one of the green leather wing chairs. Pinnington walked to his desk, rested a haunch on one corner, and stared at McGuire, his arms folded across his chest. “I heard,” McGuire said.

  Pinnington remained looking at McGuire for a moment. There was no challenge in his eyes, only patience, and when McGuire said nothing, Pinnington spoke again. “The police confirmed he caught a flight to Washington, with a return ticket for the next day. He rented a car at Hertz and gave his local address as the Willard Hotel.”

  “He wasn’t registered there.”

  “He wasn’t registered anywhere.”

  “And they haven’t found the rental car.”

  “Wrong. They found it this morning.” Pinnington looked down at his desk. “In the parking lot of a shopping mall near Weymouth.”

  “He flies to Washington, rents a car, then drives it back to Weymouth, practically home, and leaves it?”

  “Difficult to believe, isn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t serious. How long’s the car been there?”

  “Nobody knows. A couple of days, maybe.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “The police are checking.”

  “Do they know about Annapolis? About Flanigan sending me down there?”

  Pinnington rose, walked behind his desk, and sat in his chair. “That’s been the subject of a discussion this morning between myself and the senior partners.”

  “So they don’t know.”

  Pinnington shook his head.

  “You could be concealing evidence. Hell of a note, one of the biggest, most prestigious law firms in the state concealing evidence . . .”

  “Of what?” Pinnington’s tone was sharp. “Of a man who gives a false address on a car-rental contract? And who doesn’t return the car where and when he promised? It could be the same scenario you proposed a couple of days ago. We could have a lawyer who has broken under the strain of his career or his marriage or any damn thing. How can we reveal confidential information for something so trivial? Don’t lecture me on the law, McGuire.”

  “You’re playing for time . . .”

  “Don’t lecture me on the law,” Pinnington repeated, aiming a forefinger at McGuire as though it were a weapon.

  McGuire rose from his chair. “There’s no lecture,” he said. “You’re trying to work out the options. That’s okay, I guess. But you and I both know that something serious is happening here. Maybe your facts don’t say it, but my gut does.”

  Pinnington sat back in his chair, his tantrum over.

  “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” McGuire said. “You want me, try Zoot’s. It’s a bar on Boylston.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Lorna know about this? About Flanigan’s car being found?”

  Pinnington nodded. “She knows.”

  “How’s she taking it?”

  “Not well. We sent her home. She couldn’t stop crying. She was upset even before she learned about Orin’s car being found.” Pinnington’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with her state of mind, would you?”

  “Probably.” McGuire closed the door behind him.

  “Believe it or not, McGuire,” Sleeman said over the telephone, “I don’t need another bottle of Scotch, thank you very much. What I need is this squirrel Hayhurst off the street, maybe off the planet.”

  McGuire was sitting at the bar in Zoot’s, a Bloody Mary in front of him, the telephone plugged into an extension. “So I’ll buy you lunch,” he said. “The super cheeseburger. I remember hearing you say once that you’d give your right nut for one.”

  “Yeah, when I was on surveillance for twelve hours straight.” He lowered his voice. “Jesus, I gotta get outta here sometime. Maybe I’ll be at Zoot’s around twelve, and maybe I’ll let you buy me lunch and maybe I’ll even have some scuttlebutt for you.”

  “Maybe you’re a hell of a guy.”

  “Maybe I’ll be selling shoes next week too, the word gets out and we don’t nail Hayhurst.”

  “What was that?” McGuire leaned towards Sleeman, whose mouth was filled with almost half a cheeseburger. “I couldn’t understand a damn thing.” They were seated at the bar in Zoot’s. The lunch-hour crowd buzzed and laughed behind them.

  Sleeman held up one finger. With his other hand he replaced the remains of the largest, greasiest cheeseburger McGuire had ever seen on the plate and seized a glass of milk. He drank half of it before speaking. “I said it’s a coin toss. Whether your lawyer buddy dropped the car or somebody dropped him. That’s what Shuttleworth’s saying.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “New guy. Missing persons. He’s okay. Anyway, he says the car was in a corner of the parking lot near a Burger King, keys behind the sun visor, your guy’s overnight bag in the trunk, underwear, socks, clean shirt, shaving equipment. Not much.”

  “Prints?”

  Sleeman shook his head. “Thing’s cleaner’n the pope’s nose.”

  “Who drops a car ten miles from his house and wipes his prints from it?”

  “Not the guy who rented it. Why’s he worry about prints? His name’s on the contract.”

  “So it’s somebody else who leaves the car, doesn’t want ID.” McGuire finished his coffee.

  “Sure as hell. Thing is . . .” Sleeman removed about half of the remaining portion of the cheeseburger with another bite, and said something around his lunch that sounded to McGuire like “Suffers annooky.”

  “Goddamn it, will you stop talking with your mou
th full?” McGuire said.

  Sleeman nodded, swallowed once, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and leaned towards McGuire. “Listen, I got maybe fifteen minutes and then I’m due back on Berkeley Street, sittin’ around waitin’ for somebody to dump us something on Hayhurst. Jesus, I practically had to tell DeLisle I was goin’ to my mother’s funeral just to get away for half an hour.”

  “What’d you say just now?”

  Sleeman was about to consume the remainder of the cheeseburger, thought better of it, and set it aside. “I said Shuttleworth’s a rookie.”

  “You said that already.”

  “So he’s still playin’ it as a missing. But you and I know, Joe, that a wiped-down car and an unopened suitcase after the guy does a vanishing act, that’s not a missing. That’s a dead. Right? Ten to one that’s a dead. Am I right, or not?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  If the Public Garden is Boston’s elegant outdoor living room, the Esplanade is the city’s waterfront playground, a meandering grassland strip that separates the St. Charles River from the elegant brownstones of the Back Bay’s most prestigious residential avenues. Near the eastern entrance of the Esplanade sits the Hatch bandshell, a massive wooden cornucopia. On summer evenings it fills with musicians ranging from hopeful folkies to symphony orchestras. As the Esplanade extends west towards Boston University, it grows less pretentious, and music lovers give way to touch-football enthusiasts, dog walkers, and romantics of all ages and pursuits.

  It was almost two-thirty by the time McGuire found a parking space on Charles Street. True to the weather office’s prediction, the day had grown soft and warm with the strange aura of melancholia and exhilaration that dominates a perfect New England autumn afternoon. The river shone blue, and the leaves on the maple and oak trees flashed gold and crimson against the sky.

  She was sitting on a bench facing the river, her head back and her eyes closed, the sun flooding her hair as though it were lit from within. She wore a honey-coloured leather jacket over her sweater; a pair of sunglasses were propped on her head, crowning her hair.