"I was. I was working at Boulevard magazine. And then I came home when Mother got ill." I noticed his expression. "But Mother's terrific. Really. I think she's going to be one of those survivors who are going to be better than before."
"That's great, Sally."
"Excuse me, you guys," Doug's ignored friend said, "but I gotta see a man about a horse," and he headed off to the men's room.
"Who's that?" I asked.
"You don't recognize Castleford High's former star quarterback?"
"That's not Red!"
"The one and the same."
"Oh, my God, he looks terrible! And he's been sitting here and I didn't even recognize him."
"He is terrible."
"Really?" I looked over to see the empty Scotch glass at Red's seat.
"And he's living with his parents again."
"Oh, boy, that's not good." And then I had to laugh. "I've been living with my mother, so I don't know why I'm being critical."
"That's different, Sal."
"I just found a place, actually. Remember the old Brackleton farm?"
"The one with the stables.
"The cottage is up for rent. And it's not bad. So I was thinking if I stayed awhile, I might rent it."
He looked at me seriously. "Is that a possibility?"
I felt dizzy, the attraction came back so strongly.
I love him, I heard myself say in my head. I want him back.
And so here I am, still in Castleford, dating my high-school sweetheart.
The honking is coming from the Cadillac Seville, which has just pulled onto the side of the road. The driver's window rolls down. "Well, Sally Harrington, I haven't seen you in a million years. How are you?"
It is Mrs. O'Hearn, a neighbor. "I'm good, thank you. How are you?" I look both ways and then walk Scotty across the street to talk to her.
"Good, good," she coos. Then she smiles, lofting an eyebrow. "I hear your mother's keeping company with a professor these days."
My back stiffens. Mother would hate the idea that people are talking about her. "Well, after being a widow for twenty-one years, I think it's time she went on a date, don't you?"
"Well now, who is he? Someone told me he teaches at Quinnipiac."
"Wesleyan. He teaches physics."
"Oh, he's an intellectual." Her eyebrows go up. "And he's divorced, or...?"
"He's a widower. For three years, I think."
"Ah-ha. I see. And his name?"
His name is none of your business. "Um, Malcolm Cleary. They call him Mack."
"And you like him?"
"Yes, very much."
"I just find this such extraordinary news, after all these years," she marvels.
"Well, he's certainly not the first man to ask her out," I say, thinking of how Mr. O'Hearn's eyes sometimes trailed after my mother.
Mr. O'Hearn is the richest man in town now, a multimillionaire who built a huge estate up in the hills. It's hard to believe that twenty-four years ago he was struggling to get started in building and demolition, and that it was my father who gave him his first job. It had been strange watching the O'Hearns get so rich while we got so poor.
(Rather, while we were "without money." Mother has always insisted on the distinction. "Poor” means you have no money and no prospects for ever getting it. Being without money is simply a transitional period until your hard work pays off." The longer I live, the more I think Mother is right.)
"Well," Mrs. O'Hearn says, "I suppose it's time Belle thinks about the later years."
I frown and Scotty pulls at the leash as much as to say, Let's get away from this dame, I don't like her.
"It's so difficult to be alone at our age," Mrs. O'Hearn says. "I know you young people don't mind it, but it's really—Well, let's just say there are advantages to having a good marriage." She smiles. "And are you seeing anyone special? How old are you now, Sally?"
"Um, yeah, I'm seeing someone," I say casually, backing away from the car as if Scotty's pulling is too much for me to handle. "Things are very good in our family, Mrs. O'Hearn. I'll tell Mother you were asking about her."
"Oh, do, bye-bye!"
As she roars off, I wonder if she knows that people in town say Mr. O'Hearn keeps a former waitress in the apartment over the antique store he bought for his daughter.
"So what do you say, boy?" I ask the dog. "Do we run home now?"
Scotty dances.
"Okay, but take it easy, I'm really out of shape." And we start to jog homeward.
Nothing is more beautiful in summer than central Connecticut as night falls. The sky above the mountains glows pink, red and orange, and the rest of the horizon turns a royal blue, darkening quickly toward velvet black. The stars twinkle, and the moon, if it is round, kindles a quiet, almost holy light.
Suddenly it is dark, but we can still see in the shadow-light. I let Scotty off his lead. As we jog along, winding off on Bafter's Lane, toward home, I become acutely aware of the smell of summer—that green smell of central Connecticut. It is the trees and the grasses and the wildflowers and the earth that make this smell. When I lived in Los Angeles, even on the most beautiful nights, I always smelled clay in the air, and I suspected the air was never clean, not even right after a rainstorm.
You'd think I was a farm girl.
Well, maybe in ways, I am. On the Harrington side we had two hundred years of gentlemen farmers; on Mother's, three hundred years of farming, but nothing too gentlemanly about it until about sixty years or so ago when Mother's father was the first to go to college.
Scotty and I make good time on the lane and I say, what the heck, let's take the back trail, and we cross the field where the strip-mining is going on. Here the air is heavy with the smell of stone. Fieldstone, gravel, granite—the massive deposits have been hiding under four feet of topsoil that in itself had produced enough rocks in the l700s for the Brackletons to build a wall around their entire farm. That same rich, fertile topsoil, which grew hundreds of thousands of bushels of com and beans and squash and tomatoes and cucumbers is now gone. It's been sold by the ton and is now growing a lawn, I hear, at a high-ticket condo complex over in Cheshire.
Scotty and I veer away from the mining, taking the trail through the woods, through the pine forest, over the soft needles, around the spiky remains of the pine branches that have fallen, down through a swampy bit and then up through the woods proper. It is spooky now. Halfway through the trail I nearly wipe out, turning my ankle on a rock, and so I slow to a walk and Scotty doubles back to make sure I am all right.
"Ugh!" I utter. "Geez-Louise, Scotty, I'm a basket case," I say, chest heaving. "I've got to do something. I'm going to be like Lardo the Water Buffalo if I don't do something."
I smile then.
The outside lights of the cottage are on. That means Doug is here and I'm glad. I need to talk over the events of the day with him. And, with any luck, I might be able to talk him into making me his specialty, a ham and mushroom and spinach and cheese omelette.
Scotty runs ahead to investigate, leaving the woods and loping across the yard. Doug's Volvo is parked out front. Scotty runs around to the back of the cottage; I hear him bark twice and then he is quiet. I walk around the cottage, trying to normalize my breathing.
And there is Doug, sitting on the backstairs, and next to him is Crazy Pete Sabatino, the fugitive wanted for murder.
13
"I found him behind the woodpile," Doug says.
Pete is hunched up on the stairs, balancing a bowl of chicken noodle soup on his lap, which he is trying to eat while keeping his eyes on me at the same time.
"Hello, Pete," I say, doing some stretches. I can't see Doug's face clearly in this light, but I can imagine his expression. Why does this guy keep coming to you?
"I'm on the lam again," Pete says breathlessly between slurps of soup.
I nearly burst out laughing, it sounds so melodramatic.
"He hadn't eaten," Doug s
ays. "I found the soup. That's all he wanted."
"Pete," I say gently, sitting down on the stair below his. "This is my friend Doug Wrentham."
The spoon in Pete's hand stops in midair. "I know." He shoves the spoon into his mouth, making a metallic clicking noise as the spoon hits his teeth.
"Doug is an assistant D.A. in New Haven. In other words, he's an officer of the court."
"Technically," Doug adds, "all lawyers are."
"Yes," I say, "but Pete, this one's a lot more an officer of the court than most. So be careful what you say. Because he'll tell."
"I have that lawyer you got me," Pete says. He puts the spoon down on the step with a clatter and drinks right out of the bowl to finish the soup. Then he lowers the bowl to look at me. "He got the police to release me this morning, but then they got to the police and sent them back to my house to get me again."
"Who got to the police?" Doug asks.
Pete wisely does not answer. Instead he places the bowl carefully on the step beside him.
"You think they told the police something?" I ask Pete. "Something that made the police want to arrest you?
Crazy Pete nods. "See, they want the police to put me in jail. Because then they can get me like they got James MacDougal."
"The Whitewater guy?" Doug says. "He died of a heart attack."
Pete lowers his voice. "They withheld his medication and it killed him."
Doug looks first to me and then back to Pete. "Who withheld his medication?"
I am cringing in anticipation of his answer—The Masons—but Pete fools me.
Pete shakes his head. "You don't want to know. It's better you steer clear of this." He nods in my direction. "It's too late for her."
The telephone is ringing in the house and I get up, grateful for the diversion. I've told Doug about Crazy Pete and his conspiracy theories, but now that Pete and I are involved in a real-life murder, it doesn't seem so funny anymore. Any real information he has needs to be carefully sifted from all the chaff he carries in his head.
I glance at the kitchen clock as I pick up the wireless phone. Nine twenty-five. "Hello?"
"Sally? It's Cassy Cochran calling. I'm sorry to bother you, but I knew you were going to try to call me later and I'm stuck here at a function with my husband and we're going to be a lot later than I thought. So I wanted to try and reach you and find out what's what with the piece for Expectations."
"Oh, that," I say, trying to refocus.
The woman laughs. "You sound utterly sick of it already."
"Oh, no," I say quickly. "It's just that it's been a long day and—" I drop my voice and turn away from the open window, moving toward the living room. "I just got home from a run to find a suspect on my doorstep talking with my boyfriend—who happens to be an assistant D.A."
"You're joking!"
"No," I whisper in all seriousness.
"Your boyfriend's not working on the case, is he?"
"No."
"Well," she says, "what are they doing, the suspect and the assistant D.A.?"
"Doug gave him some chicken noodle soup." I start laughing. I can't help it.
She is laughing, too.
"And the strangest thing is, Cass— Mrs— Ms. Cochran—"
"You were right the first time—Cassy. Please, call me Cassy."
"Well, the strangest thing is, Cassy," I say, "is that nothing, I mean nothing this big has happened in this town for two and half years. And then the second I have this big chance to do a great piece for Expectations, all hell breaks loose and I can't seem to get rid of this story. It's following me!"
"Did you get a chance to talk to Verity?"
"Yes. And she was not pleased. I called while she was at some cocktail party at the Four Seasons—"
"Oh, right," Cassy Cochran murmurs. "Her husband's celebrating. He's, uh, taking over Clarendon Cosmetics."
"Oh," I say. "I didn't realize that was Corbett."
"No one was supposed to," she says.
Do I detect disapproval in her voice? "Did they want to be taken over?"
"Well-frankly, no." A pause. "I have a friend who's worked there a long time. It's not necessarily a good thing. But, you know, their stock's been way down because of global trade problems... "
I look over my shoulder and see that Doug is standing in the doorway. "I'll be there in a second," I promise. "Sorry about that," I say back into the phone.
"Are you talking to the suspect or the boyfriend?"
I laugh. "So where are you? You said you were at a function."
"I'm just outside the coatroom at the Pierre Hotel. My husband's brother is launching a new magazine and we're having a post-party dinner that's going on forever. It's family, you know, difficult to duck. Besides, he's a good guy."
"Which brother is this? Norbert?"
"Heavens no!" she nearly cries. "No, it's Beau."
"Ah, the one in California," I say, to show her I've been doing my research. "You must have a very hectic life," I continue. "What with the network and all of your husband's responsibilities."
"We don't have to harbor fugitive killers or anything, though," she says.
I really like this woman and feel like I could talk with her for hours. Unfortunately, this is not the time.
"So—Cassy—I better tell you what Verity told me."
"Yes, please do."
"She says she's counting on the piece for the February issue. So we have to get to work now. Which, when you think about it, is very flattering to you, since February's the big advertising issue after Christmas, presumably the one everyone reads."
"Oh, you shouldn't tell me that," she groans. "Nothing against you, Sally, but I'm starting to get nervous about this."
"I should think there'd be something wrong with you if you weren't."
A sigh on the other end.
I'm trying to visualize this big-shot executive sighing in the coatroom of the Pierre Hotel, but I've never been there so I can't imagine it. All I know about the Pierre is that Rose Kennedy had an apartment there for years.
"Well," I say, "I got leave from the paper. So I'm free to meet with you whenever you are available."
"Are you sure? What about the convict?"
"Oh, he'll be fine. As a matter of fact, I'm seriously considering packing my bags and coming into the city for a few days to get away from all this nonsense."
"What is today?" Cassy asks herself. "I've got my book here... Let's see, tomorrow's Wednesday. A nightmare. Thursday's... Well, not so bad. I've got some time in the early afternoon. And Friday, I've something in the morning, but... Listen, Sally, if you're serious, I can do an hour on Thursday, say one-thirty. And then two hours on Friday. That will at least get us started."
"Great!" I declare, suddenly feeling very excited. This would be so cool. "And you want to do it at DBS?"
"Well, come in on Thursday to the office and let's see how it goes." Which means, I know, Let's see if we get on, if I trust you, or if I decide I'd really like to keep you as far away from my home as possible.
I don't blame her. It's a little disconcerting how well we get on already, but I remind myself Cassy is not a movie star or anything, whose ego I'm used to; she's a self-made professional woman.
"I've also worked up a preliminary list of people I'd like to talk to," I say.
"Let me guess," Cassy says. "My ex-husband."
"Well, uh, yes."
She laughs. "I figured. Well, look, tomorrow, why don't you fax your list to my office and I'll go over it before you come? I'll prepare some numbers and addresses for you."
"That would be great."
"And if you want to talk to anybody here at DBS, we can check and see if they're going to be around the next couple of weeks."
"That would be great."
"So, let's see— I assume you might want to talk to Alexandra."
It is so weird to hear the name of the national anchorwoman, Alexandra Waring, said so casually.
"Yes. That would be great."
"Well, I know she's around. I'll see what her schedule's like. And what about Jessica?"
"Jessica Wright? That'd be fabulous."
"Okay. She's a little tougher right now, only because she's doing a special series and she's doing some of it out of town."
"Oh, I can go there. To wherever," I say quickly.
"Ah," Cassy says approvingly, "so Verity has actually assigned a budget to this piece."
"Yes. Seriously, I think this is a big issue for them."
"Huh. Well, that is flattering. Okay, so who else do you want to talk to?"
"Kyle McFarland? He was your executive news producer?"
"Who's moved on," Cassy says. "He's in London." She laughs. "Which might be fun for you."
"London, eh? Well, I just might talk to him on the phone then, if that's all right."
"Okay. Who else?"
"Your CEO, Langley Peterson."
"No problem."
"Your husband."
She laughs. "Oh, are you in for it. He'll talk your ear off. But no problem, Jackson will be around."
"Your son, Henry."
"He's in Chicago, but sure."
"And I've got your mother written down."
"Ugh. I was afraid of that. Well, let's talk about that one on Thursday, Sally. Of course you can talk to her, but perhaps I should explain a little about where my mother's coming from before you do."
I put a star next to Catherine Littlefield's name and then circle it three times. She would be key. "Your old boss at WST in New York."
"Fine."
"Your old boss in Chicago?"
"Going back to the prehistoric ages, are you?"
"And then I've got a list of others I wanted to ask you about," I say. "Your roommate in college, and some of your friends, new and old. High-school boyfriend, people like that."
"Hmm. Sounds ghastly, but we'll talk about it on Thursday. Fax me the list." And she recites the fax number before we get off the phone.
I have a lot to do before the day after tomorrow. But most of all, right now what I need is sleep.
I jot down some notes on my desk and walk back to the kitchen to hang up the phone. Doug is waiting there, leaning against the counter. "He's gone," he says. "He took off into the woods."
Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5) Page 10