Tight Lines

by William G. Tapply

  “Mary Ellen had a big portrait of Charles in her condominium. It occupied a place of honor on her wall.”

  “She was a complex person, even as a child,” said Susan. She looked up at me. Her smile was wan. “Probably no portraits of her mother, huh?”

  I put my arm around her shoulder and held her against me. I didn’t answer her question. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry, dear Brady. You came here to cheer me up. I haven’t been very cooperative, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s okay, Susan.”

  “It’s just that when you’re at the end of your life you have nowhere to look except back. And what I see doesn’t please me.”

  “We don’t always get to pick our lives for ourselves,” I said. “We bumble through them, doing the best we can at the time. Second-guessing ourselves is pretty fruitless.”

  She snuggled against me. Her voice became dreamy. “She loved him, you know. She worshipped him. And all he ever did for her, all he ever gave her, was money. It’s not what she wanted. I—I tried to make her a good person. She hated me for it. It wasn’t fair. But somebody had to try. At least I tried. He wouldn’t.”

  Her voice trailed off. I continued to hold her. After a few minutes, I realized she was sleeping. I eased myself off the sofa and lifted her thin legs up onto it. She shifted, moaned. I tucked the comforter around her, propped a pillow under her head, and left the room.

  Terri invited me to stay for a drink. I declined. I wanted to put some distance between myself and the old Ames mansion in Concord.

  23

  WHEN I GOT BACK to my apartment that evening, the little red light on my answering machine was winking. Blink, blink, pause, blink, blink, pause. Two messages. I took off my jacket and tossed it onto the sofa. My necktie followed it. My shoes tumbled under the kitchen table.

  Then I went into my bedroom and stripped down to my underwear. I tried to decide who I wanted to be trying to reach me. Either of my sons. Even if they wanted money, or wanted to complain about their mother. I always liked to hear from them. Or Terri. But I’d just seen Terri.

  I pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt and padded back to the living room in my stocking feet. I pressed the button on the machine.

  “Brady, it’s Gloria” came the first voice, as though I needed her to identify it. “It’s Tuesday, a little before seven. Give me a call. I’m here all evening.”

  There was a beep, then another voice, this one belonging to a man. “Ah, Mr. Coyne, this is Dave Finn here. Remember? Your mugger?” He laughed. “Mary Ellen’s friend. I wanna talk to you, huh? You, um, shit, I guess I gotta try you again. I ain’t got a phone. Anyways, like I said, I’ll try you again. I guess that’s the message.”

  The machine clunked and rewound its tape. I went to the cabinet and took down my bottle of Rebel Yell. I poured an inch into a tumbler, plopped three ice cubes into it, and sat at the table with it. I took a long sip, lit a Winston, stared out the window at the dark ocean, and then pecked out the Wellesley number.

  Gloria answered with her throaty “Hello?”

  “Hi, hon.”

  “Oh, Brady. Thanks for getting back to me.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t know. The boys, whatever.”

  “The boys are fine, as far as I know. Of course, I never hear from William.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “Well,” she said after a pause, “the reason I called was just to check on your thinking about the house. You said you’d get back to me. It’s been over a week.”

  It sounded to me like an accusation. Gloria had a way of making the most innocuous statements sound like accusations. And no matter how outlandish her accusations were, or how clearly I realized that they were not intended to be accusations, they always made me feel defensive. “A week?” I said. “You sure?”

  “Positive. We had lunch a week ago Friday. I think I told you I could wait a couple weeks. But I just figured maybe you’d made up your mind, and I’d really like to know.”

  “Well,” I said, “I honestly haven’t given it much thought. I’ve been pretty much preoccupied with a very complicated matter for a client.”

  “If you don’t want the house, you can just say so.”

  I didn’t want the damn house. I didn’t have to give it any thought whatsoever. But for some reason I was reluctant to say it. “Give me a few more days. It’s a difficult decision.”

  “Fine. Call me by Friday, then, okay?”

  “Sure. Will do. Listen, is Joey around?”

  “Joseph is hardly ever around. Since he got his license…”

  “Well, give him my love.”

  “I will, Brady. Talk to you by Friday, then, huh?”

  “You bet.”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  I might, I thought as I hung up the phone. I might forget.

  The phone rang a few minutes later. When I answered it, a woman’s voice said, “Brady?”

  I couldn’t place the voice. I was vaguely disappointed to realize it wasn’t Terri. “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “Robin McAllister. I tried you a few minutes ago. Your line was busy. Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “What’s up, Robin?”

  “It’s Warren. I’m—concerned.”

  Oh, shit, I thought. She’s found out about Mary Ellen. “We can meet somewhere, if you want,” I said.

  “You name it.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  She hesitated. “How about that revolving lounge on top of the Hyatt on Memorial Drive? What’s it called?”

  “The Spinnaker,” I said. “Cute, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Cute. That’s more or less equidistant for us, I think.”

  “That’s fine. When?”

  “An hour?”

  “Okay.”

  I had to change my clothes again. I avoided a necktie by pulling a sweater over a shirt. I shrugged into a sport jacket and drove over to the Hyatt.

  The Spinnaker Lounge on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency rotates at the rate of about one revolution every fifteen minutes. Some people find it disconcerting. Some people claim to get motion sickness up there. But it offers a good and ever-shifting view of the Charles River and, beyond it, the city. I can pick out my office building from up there.

  Robin McAllister was already there, rotating. She was wearing a red dress with a low neckline. She had makeup around her eyes. I had never seen her dressed up before. She looked spectacular.

  I sat across from her. “Hi,” I said.

  She smiled. “Thanks a lot for coming,” she said. “I had to talk to somebody…” She waved her hand in the air. “Somebody discreet.”

  “A lawyer.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Somebody—a friend. Who knows what’s going on.”

  She knows about Warren and Mary Ellen, I thought again. I didn’t want to be in the middle of this one.

  “Where’s Warren tonight?” I said.

  “It’s Tuesday. He’s got his seminar at the hospital on Tuesdays.”

  “Right. I remember.”

  A waitress came to the table. Robin asked for a glass of white wine. I ordered a bourbon old-fashioned.

  When the waitress left, Robin reached across the table and touched my hand. “He’s taking this hard.”

  “This?”

  “The death of his patient there. That young woman.”

  “Mary Ellen Ames.”

  She nodded.

  I revised my guess. She didn’t know. But she suspected.

  “Brady,” she said, “what’s going on? Do they think she killed herself? Warren won’t talk about it. He just broods. It’s unlike him. He acts—guilty, or something. Was it suicide?”

  “I don’t know. They haven’t figured it out. It coul
d be. They haven’t discounted murder.”

  Her eyes widened. “Murder,” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  “Do they have a suspect?”

  “Not really. Which means, at this point, that everybody’s a suspect. They’re trying to sort it out.”

  “I thought she drowned.”

  “She did. I guess it was probably an accident. They just haven’t said so officially yet.”

  Our drinks arrived. After the waitress left, Robin said, “No wonder Warren’s upset. I don’t know what to say to him. I’d like to help. Make him feel better. He’s taking it so hard. I wish he’d talk to me. But he’s so damned circumspect and proper when it comes to his patients.”

  “I guess all you can do is love him.”

  She smiled. “That’s easy. But I worry about him. He hasn’t even gone fishing lately. He used to go every Sunday. It was good for him. He’d always come back rejuvenated.” She touched my hand. “You could take him fishing, Brady.”

  I nodded. “Sure. I could do that.”

  “Would you?”

  “I’d be happy to. Maybe not this weekend, but soon.”

  “Don’t let on that we talked about it, okay?”

  “Of course not.”

  “He wouldn’t want me to be doing this. He’s a very private man. Very proud.”

  “I understand.”

  We sipped our drinks quietly for a minute or two. Then Robin said, “Brady?”

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s anything you can tell me that will help me to understand, to help him—will you?”

  “There’s not much, Robin. Like I said, they’re just trying to rule out suicide or murder, that’s all.”

  “But if something should come up?”

  I shrugged. “Within the boundaries of my profession, sure, I’ll tell you.”

  “Thank you. You’ve made me feel better.”

  We finished our drinks and took the elevator down to the parking garage. Robin gave me a quick hug and drove away.

  I got home around eleven. Dave Finn called a little before midnight. When I answered the phone, he said, “Man, I hope you can tell me that what I think I’m hearing ain’t true.”

  “You heard about Mary Ellen, then?”

  I heard him expel his breath. “Oh, shit. It’s true, then, huh?”

  “She’s dead. Yes. How did you hear it?”

  “I’m a cop, remember?”

  “I understood you were suspended.”

  “I didn’t tell you that, did I?”

  “No.”

  “Well, yeah. I got shafted is what happened. Suspended without pay. I mean, I didn’t do nothin’ everybody else doesn’t do. Anyways, that’s not important. I want to know about Mary Ellen.”

  “You haven’t been interrogated about it?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “I gave your name to a state policeman.”

  “Oh, boy. Thanks. Just what I need. Who, Horowitz?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, nobody questioned me. I just caught a rumor that Horowitz was investigating something. Not even her name. It just—sounded like her. I figured, I’m so worried about her I’m just imagining it. God. It is her, then.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  “She drowned in a pond in New Hampshire.”

  “No way she drowned. She was a fuckin’ porpoise in the water.”

  “I’m just telling you what I was told.”

  “Only way that girl drowns is if someone holds her head under water. Even then, I doubt it. She’s a strong kid.” He paused. When he spoke next, his voice had a brittle edge to it. “They trying to make it out she killed herself?”

  “I don’t think so. They haven’t figured out how it happened. I guess that’s still a possibility.”

  “Like hell it is. She was in great shape. She was going to her shrink there like every day, talking about the future, happy and laughing all the time, just a happy kid. I’m telling you, Mr. Coyne, she didn’t drown by no accident, and she didn’t commit suicide, either.”

  “There’s only one other possibility, Dave.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He whooshed out a breath into the receiver. “I wasn’t a detective for twenty-two years for nothin’, you know. Somebody killed her is what happened.”

  “Well, okay. The sixty-four-dollar question, then.”

  “Who? Hell, I oughta be able to figure that out. Gotta think about it.”

  “Well, when you do, let me know, okay?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe what else?”

  “Lissen. I was gonna marry that girl. What’d you do, somebody killed the girl you were gonna marry and you figured out who it was?”

  “I’d turn him over to the authorities.”

  His laugh was ironic and short. “Well, pal, I usta be one of them authorities of yours, and I know how all of ’em operate, and I’ll tell you this. If I was looking for justice here, the authorities ain’t where I’d be looking.”

  “Well, I’m not one of those authorities, myself,” I said. “So maybe you could share your insights with me before you go searching for justice.”

  “Maybe I will. I’ve got your number.”

  “I don’t have yours, though,” I said.

  “I ain’t got one is why. I’m living in a trailer, for God’s sake. You go six or eight weeks without a paycheck, you’ve gotta scramble a little. Friend’s letting me stay here for a while. I’m out here in the boonies. Little trailer in the woods. I’m at this friend’s house right now. Just down the road from my cozy happy home. And I gotta get off, because they’re getting ready for bed. So look. Anything comes up, maybe I’ll give you a jingle.”

  “Okay. Do that.”

  I hung up the phone slowly. Another vote against an accident and against suicide. By process of elimination, a vote for murder.

  Dave Finn didn’t sound like a man who had murdered his girlfriend. But I still didn’t like the way he sounded. He certainly sounded capable of murdering somebody.

  24

  “THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE to hear about those toxicology screens,” said Horowitz when he called me the next morning.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “What’d they find?”

  “Small amount of alcohol. Equivalent of one shot of booze, can of beer, glass of wine. She wasn’t drunk. Traces of cocaine and marijuana, too, but the ME says that was old stuff, not relevant to her death. But something pretty interesting.”

  Horowitz paused, so I said, “Well, I trust you’re going to tell me.”

  “You mentioned that drug Pertofrane, right?”

  “Yes. She had a prescription. It’s an antidepressant.”

  “Well, the ME ran a screen for Pertofrane, and guess what?”

  “Come on, Horowitz.”

  “Well, he found it. Not just in her blood, but in her stomach, too. You understand what that means?”

  “Obviously. She took her medication the morning she died.” I hesitated. “Well, sure. I know exactly what it means. It means, assuming the drug was doing its job, that she wasn’t depressed. And if she wasn’t depressed, she’d be unlikely to kill herself. Hell, if you’re intending to kill yourself, you probably aren’t real conscientious about taking your medicine anyway.”

  “The ME agrees with you.”

  “Also,” I said, “it means she was home the same day she died. The prescription bottle was still in her medicine cabinet on Beacon Street. So she must have gotten up, taken her pills, then driven up to Teal Pond. Where, eventually, she drowned.”

  “Yup,” he said. “They found her little Porsche tucked under the pine trees beside her cottage.”

  “And of course they’re doing all sorts of forensics on the car and the cottage, right?”

  “Hell,” said Horowitz, “I don’t know about that.”

  “But,” I said. “Somebody must have killed her. That’s the only explanation left.”

&n
bsp; “The New Hampshire guy is going for an accident, Coyne. Everything points to it.”

  “Except for the fact that she was a strong swimmer.”

  “So she panicked. Got a cramp. Who knows?”

  “Christ,” I muttered.

  “Well,” said the cop after a moment, “I just thought you’d like to know.”

  “Did those toxicology screens show anything else?”

  “You know how they work,” said Horowitz. “They’ve gotta be looking for it if they’re gonna find it. They always check out alcohol, coke, grass, some of the other nasty stuff. That’s routine. I told them to look for Pertofrane. If they hadn’t of looked, they wouldn’t of found it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do? Me? In this case, I’m doing what the ME asks me to do. It’s his case. It’s all I can do. And he’s not asking me to do anything. He said thanks for all my help, he can handle it from here. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “Coyne, it’s not like I’ve got nothing else to worry about.”

  “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

  “Yeah, well I got a boss here, you know. And he’s already pissed about all the time I’ve taken away from a whole bunch of good high-profile Massachusetts cases to help out our friend up there in New Hampshire. So…”

  “You agree with me, don’t you?” I said. “You think somebody murdered her, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe I do. But it’s their case.”

  “This doesn’t seem right.”

  “Tell it to the judge, Coyne.”

  I had nobody to tell it to. But I thought about it for the rest of the morning, and I was still thinking about it after lunch when Julie buzzed me. “Call on line one,” she said. “An attorney named Elizabeth McCarron.”

  I pressed the button and said into the phone, “Brady Coyne.”

  “Mr. Coyne,” she said, “I have just spoken to Susan Ames’s associate, a Miz Fiori, and she asked me to confer with you.” She had a deep voice that managed to sound both sultry and masculine. “I wonder if I could buy you a drink at, say, around six this afternoon.”