Haunted Hearts

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  McGuire approached her, letting her hear his footsteps to avoid surprising her. She blinked up at him and smiled as he neared the bench.

  “Been here long?” he asked.

  “Only a few minutes,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful here?” She crossed her legs and clasped one knee in her hands. “I just love it.” Her dangling foot moved in a steady nervous rhythm.

  McGuire sat beside her and they admired the view of Cambridge across the river. She assured him she had eaten lunch already, a sandwich at the candle shop.

  “Have you heard anything?” she asked. “About Mr. Flanigan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it? Please tell me.”

  “They found the car he rented in Washington. It was in a parking lot near Weymouth.”

  “Weymouth? What was he doing in Weymouth?”

  “He wasn’t there. Just his car.”

  She looked away. “I don’t understand.”

  “Orin Flanigan caught a flight to Washington. He planned to stay overnight, but he rented a car instead. Which is pretty surprising.”

  “Is it? What’s wrong with renting a car in Washington?”

  “Well, you can bet he wasn’t headed downtown. Nobody rents a car to drive into Washington. Of course, Washington’s only an hour’s drive from Annapolis.”

  She looked up and to her right, across the river.

  “Ever been to Annapolis?” McGuire said.

  “No.”

  “Do you think Orin Flanigan went there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know any reason why he’d go to Annapolis?”

  Instead of answering, she stared towards Cambridge.

  “I went to Annapolis for Orin Flanigan,” McGuire said.

  “I know.”

  “He wanted me to find somebody for him. A man named Myers.”

  “Yes.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me why, and he kept everything about it off the firm’s books. Do you know why?”

  “Because he was doing something he shouldn’t.”

  “What was that?”

  “I think he was trying to get a little bit of revenge for me. And he was trying to save a woman from going through what I went through several years ago, and please don’t ask me to tell you what that was.”

  “Flanigan?” McGuire looked into the distance. “Orin Flanigan, big-city family-law lawyer, tries to play gumshoe? You’re kidding me. What’s really going on?”

  He looked back at her. She was shaking her head, and her expression had hardened.

  A wave of squeals and laughter exploded behind them. McGuire turned to see perhaps twenty young children racing towards the fenced-in playground, two women scurrying after them. The children began clambering over playground rides in the shapes of animals. They were laughing and shouting, some stumbling over their feet and others giggling at the joy, the euphoria, of being six years old and free in a playground on a warm autumn day.

  McGuire turned from the children to look at Susan Schaeffer. At the arrival of the children, her expression had changed again. The hardness, the refusal to answer McGuire’s questions, had dissolved into something else. Now she looked shattered, about to burst into tears. He reached for her, his hand gentle on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Just tell me what’s wrong and maybe I can help.”

  “Will you take me somewhere this afternoon?”

  “Maybe. Where?”

  She turned to look across the river. “To Cambridge. Harvard Yard.” She looked back at him. “Memorial Church in the New Yard. Do you know it?”

  He said yes, and they walked back to his car on Charles Street.

  In the car, crossing Longfellow Bridge over the river, she looked down at her hands. “Are you looking into Orin’s disappearance? Has the law firm asked you to do that?”

  “No,” McGuire said. “They haven’t. If they did, I’d turn it down. I’d just get in the way of the police.”

  “So all those questions you were asking me, they were for your own interest?”

  “That’s all.”

  She stared ahead through the windshield. “Thank you.”

  To enter Harvard Yard on a perfect autumn afternoon is to touch the hem of privilege. Verdant and sun-dappled among oak trees that were massive and ancient when the Kennedys arrived as freshmen, the Yard is both foreign and familiar. Lecture halls, residences, and chapels, all idealized examples of American Colonial architecture, echo the school’s colours: crimson in their brickwork, and white in their carved wooden trim. Students and lecturers stride across lawns and along paths looking purposeful and relaxed, or recline on the grass, their backs against tree trunks, sweaters knotted around their waists or across their shoulders, books in their hands or on their laps, their hair long or their heads shaved, their clothes fashionably unfashionable, and for a short space of time in their lives they are as permanent as the buildings surrounding them.

  A middle-aged man entering Harvard Yard on such a day grows conscious of his failings and deficiencies. Even now, the sight of the beauty and promise enjoyed by the privileged students nurtured McGuire’s resentment and exposed his envy, feelings he had hidden for years. As he crossed the yard, McGuire managed to repress his anger towards those who shared this privilege, either as transient student or tenured professor. It had been years since he visited Harvard and, in spite of his envy for the students, he reminded himself that he loved the Boston area too much to ever move from it, that the weather and the traffic and the incessant political problems were a small price to pay for living in a place he knew he could never leave.

  Susan Schaeffer spoke only once, to agree with McGuire that it was beautiful in the Yard, and they rounded University Hall towards Memorial Church, its white needle spire shining in the sun.

  As they approached the building, McGuire heard organ music drifting towards them, something by Bach, he thought, or maybe Handel. Old music, anyway, rich and burnished by time.

  The church dates back to 1931, a newcomer among the other structures in the Yard, but its architectural lines are directly descended from its oldest neighbours. Wide steps sweep up to the entrance. Inside, the pews march in puritanical lines forward to a surprisingly simple altar set close to the pews, as though defying the congregation to escape the wrath of the sermons.

  There was another reason for the close proximity of altar and pews, and it was separated from the rest of the church by a filigreed screen: a massive Baroque organ, considered the best example of such an instrument in North America. The organ’s great pipes soar upwards from a semi-circular console, all but the tops of the largest pipes hidden from view to those seated in the pews. Someone was playing the organ in sweeps of melody and curtains of chords.

  Susan Schaeffer led the way into the church, the first time McGuire had seen her move with authority and poise. She paused at the end of one aisle and bowed, and McGuire halted behind her, drinking in the sight and the sound.

  The church windows were open to the air, and the building was empty, save for the unseen organist at the console. The music, which had drifted lightly in the air outside the church, was now weighty and more authoritative. Bass notes seemed to begin in the very foundation of the building and rise upward through the floors and the pews, and higher notes drifted like ribbons among the open rafters. The organist was practicing; periodically he or she would stop at a phrase and repeat it several times before proceeding.

  Susan Schaeffer sat in a pew midway up the aisle and closed her eyes. A slight smile played on her lips and the lines of her face faded. McGuire sat beside her, unsure of the purpose of their visit here. She had grown visibly relaxed and at peace. As had McGuire.

  At one point the organist stumbled over an arpeggio, attempted to replay it, and stumbled again, and an explosive stage-whispered “Shit!” sounded back to the
pews where McGuire and Susan were seated. Susan’s shoulders hunched and shook with laughter.

  They remained for perhaps ten minutes longer, then she rose and led him back down the aisle and out into the healing autumn air.

  “What was that all about?” McGuire asked as they crossed Harvard Yard again. “Were you saying some kind of prayer in there or something?”

  “No,” she said. She knelt to pick up a large maple leaf, turned pumpkin-orange by the onset of autumn, and she stroked its texture with her fingers as she walked. “Sometimes I just want a place where I can feel safe for a few minutes. Any church will do, I guess. But that one’s almost always open, and I used to visit it years ago, on my own. I just wanted to visit it again today.” She bent with sudden laughter and reached a hand to his shoulder. “Wasn’t that funny when the organist missed those notes? I mean, can you imagine if that happened in the middle of a service?”

  “First time I saw you laugh,” McGuire said. “I didn’t think you could.”

  “I can laugh,” she said. “I love to laugh. I look for ways to laugh all the time.”

  “You don’t have to take me home.”

  They were crossing Harvard Street, wending their way through knots of students towards McGuire’s car. She thanked McGuire again, and told him she could take a bus downtown. “That was a very sweet thing to do, bringing me here.”

  Instead of replying, McGuire guided her to the car. He paused before starting the engine. “Whatever you know about Flanigan’s disappearance, you should tell the police. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Were you two having an affair?”

  She smiled and closed her eyes. “No, we were not having an affair. That would have been impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, Orin kept saying how I reminded him of his daughter. Do you know about his daughter?”

  “Her husband murdered her.”

  “Orin and his wife never got over it. They’ll never get over it. How could they? They blamed themselves for what happened, and Orin blamed the legal system, which he is a part of, for the fact that her husband received such a short sentence. Four years, I think.”

  “He told somebody you were an innocent.”

  She looked startled. “Innocent of what?”

  “I don’t know. Sounds to me like he was trying to settle a score on his own.” McGuire started the car and eased out of the parking lot into traffic. “What’s the connection between you, Orin, and this guy in Annapolis, Myers?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t ask me these questions.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I like you. Because you’ve been nice to me.” She looked out the window, avoiding his eyes.

  “Is he your ex-husband, this Myers character?”

  “No.”

  “Flanigan’s specialty is child support. This Myers guy, is he running away from that?”

  Another “no,” and she closed her eyes.

  McGuire drove in silence and turned onto Massachusetts Avenue. He was angry with her for not opening up to him.

  She sensed his anger and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You say that a lot.”

  “I know. I have a lot to be sorry for.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can I promise to tell you later?”

  “Sure.” They were approaching the Longfellow Bridge. Across the river, the downtown buildings shone in the late afternoon sun. “Tell me some other things about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why a woman like you hasn’t had a date with a man for a couple of years.”

  She withdrew her hand. “You can drop me off at the market, if you like.”

  “You’re not answering my question. And I’m not dropping you off at the market. I’m taking you home. No arguments this time. I’ll just see you to your front door, all right?”

  Almost in spite of herself, it seemed, she permitted a smile to shine through. “Now how is a girl going to argue with that tone of voice?”

  “Where is it? Where do you live?”

  “On Queensberry. Near the Fens.”

  “Not a bad neighbourhood.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  He drove up Boylston and onto Queensberry Street. On the way, she said, “I just realized that I don’t know very much about you either.”

  “Not much to know.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Well, I’m not a cop any more, and I’m not married any more either. I never voted for Reagan and I don’t give a damn about what happens in Washington, Hollywood, or the music business.”

  She smiled at him. “You’ve told me what you aren’t and what you haven’t done. You haven’t told me what you are and what you want to do.”

  “Hell,” McGuire said, “I’m still trying to work that out.”

  When they reached Queensberry, she pointed to a brownstone several doors from the corner, and he pulled to the curb just beyond it. She touched his arm again. “Tell me if you think Orin’s dead,” she said. Her mood had grown somber again.

  “If he isn’t, he’s doing a hell of a good job faking it,” McGuire said.

  She burst into tears and collapsed against his shoulder. He encircled her in his arm and recalled something Ronnie had said when he moved in with her and Ollie several months earlier. “You’re a fixer,” Ronnie told him. “You want to fix things between people. That’s why you became a cop and that’s why you couldn’t stand being a cop. You couldn’t stand it because there are too many things you can’t fix when it comes to people. Ollie, he doesn’t care when people are ruining each other’s lives, he keeps his mind on the people who count to him, like you and me, but not the whole damn world. You’re different. You want to fix it and you can’t. And that’s what makes you angry.”

  He had smiled at her words then, thinking there was maybe some truth to them, remembering how as a child he wanted to fix his parents’ destructive marriage; wanted to make each love the other and so, perhaps, begin to love him too; wanted his father to stop drinking and his mother to stop despising her life.

  Susan finished dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, and she leaned to kiss McGuire’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re not what Orin said at all.”

  “What did Orin say about me?”

  She reached for the door and opened it. “Orin said you were tough as nails. But you’re not at all, are you?”

  “I’ll come by, see you tomorrow,” McGuire called to her as she closed the car door.

  He pulled away from the curb and she stood watching him leave. Then she walked towards the brownstone. She climbed the steps and rang the brass bell, her head still down, waiting for someone to come to the door so she could enter.

  McGuire arrived at Revere Beach just after six o’clock, glancing at the empty space in the driveway where Ronnie’s car should have been.

  When he entered the kitchen, he saw the note propped against a sugar bowl on the small table, his name written in her neat script on the envelope. He held it lightly in his hands for several seconds, as though it were about to burst into flames, then tossed it back on the table and walked to Ollie’s room and the sound of the evening television news.

  “Just in time for today’s disasters,” Ollie said, shifting his eyes from the screen to meet McGuire’s. “So far, we got a drive-by shooting in Dorchester, a murder-suicide in Charlestown, and that kid who took you on, Hayhurst? They think he’s the guy who pistol-whipped a couple of schoolteachers from Iowa.” His face clouded. “You look like you’ve had your own fill of troubles. What’s up?”

  “Nothing special.” He sat on the chair beside the bed. “Where’s Ronnie?”


  Ollie turned his eyes back to the television screen. “Gone back to her painting class. That’s a good sign, ain’t it? That she’s feelin’ better?” Ollie agreed with his own assessment. “Sure it is,” he said.

  If he asks, I’ll tell him, McGuire told himself. If he doesn’t ask, I’ll keep my mouth shut. When Ollie didn’t speak, McGuire said, “Ronnie give you dinner?”

  “Oh sure, sure. She fed me. I’m okay.” He turned his head to McGuire. “Listen, you want to go out for a while or something, you go ahead. I’m all right. There’s a ball game on tonight, Sox and the Tigers.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be going out,” McGuire said. He rose from the chair.

  “You can, you know. I’m all fed and changed.” Ollie’s good hand tilted towards a plastic bowl of candies. “Ronnie left me some wine gums here. I’m all set.”

  McGuire was almost at the door when Ollie called his name. “You and Ronnie,” he said when McGuire turned around, “you’re worried about me, aren’t you?”

  “No more than usual,” McGuire said.

  “Well, you’re worried about something. Both of you. I can tell. Listen, if it’s me, forget it. Don’t worry about me, okay? Ronnie’s applied to get me one of those motorized wheelchairs, she tell you that? I said I’d never get my butt into one of those things, but I was watching a commercial about the Florida Keys. I never been there, the Keys. I thought, Damn, I’d like to sit under a palm tree for a week this winter and look at the ocean, watch the pelicans dive for fish, see the sun go down.”

  McGuire stood, waiting.

  “So we talked about it, and Ronnie said it would do me a lot of good. I said maybe you’d come along with us, maybe you’d find a whole new herd of widows and divorcees to chase down there. What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t like Florida,” McGuire said.

  “Hell, this ain’t Florida. It’s the Keys. Different place altogether.”

  “Ronnie’s right,” McGuire said. “It’ll do you a world of good.”

  He closed the door behind him and returned to the kitchen, where he eyed the envelope before picking it up again and opening it, making as little noise as possible. I would have told him, McGuire assured himself. If he’d asked, I would have laid it all out for him. He unfolded the small sheet of note paper.