Tight Lines

by William G. Tapply

  “Brady,” she said, “really. I think you better talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Please?”

  “Shit,” I muttered. Then I said, “Okay. All right. For you.”

  “Line two.”

  I sighed, pressed the button, and said, “Bonjour, hon.”

  “Brady, you said you’d call me today.”

  The usual accusation. But something else in her voice made me hesitate. Something subtle that fuzzed her anger. It sounded like fear. “Right, hon,” I said. “I was going to call you. I hadn’t forgotten.” A lie. “But listen. I’m really busy right now. Can I get back to you?”

  “About the house?”

  “Yeah. We’ll talk about it. Look—”

  “Forget it, Brady.”

  “No, I promise. I’ll call you.”

  “Forget the house, I mean.”

  “Well, actually, I didn’t—”

  “Oh, shit,” she mumbled.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you crying?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Brady.”

  “You are crying. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. The house isn’t for sale, that’s all. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  “What happened? The condo deal fall through?”

  “Yeah. That’s it. The deal fell through.”

  “Well, too bad. But condos aren’t that hard to come by. You should be able to find another one.”

  She laughed quickly. “There was no condo, Brady.”

  “But you said…”

  “I didn’t have the courage to be honest with you. There was no condo. There was a man.”

  “Oh, yeah, okay.”

  “That’s the deal that fell through.”

  “Robert, huh? The lawyer?”

  “Richard,” she said quickly. Then she paused. “How did you know?”

  “Billy told me.”

  “Well, God damn it, you could’ve told me you knew.”

  “I figured if you wanted to tell me about it you would have.”

  I heard her let out a long breath. “Yeah. I guess I was embarrassed or something. I knew you wouldn’t approve of him.”

  “What difference would that have made?”

  “Jesus, Brady,” said my former wife, “I wish I knew. But for some reason it mattered to me.” She laughed quickly. “Isn’t that something?”

  “That’s something, all right,” I said quietly.

  “Maybe we can have a drink sometime, huh?”

  “Sure. I’d like that.”

  “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, hon.”

  “You’re right. So I’ll let you buy. I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You didn’t want the house, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You could’ve told me.”

  “I suppose I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s nice, I guess.”

  “Naw,” I said. “It’s just cowardice.”

  After I hung up with Gloria I swiveled around to look out the window. It’s not much of a scene—mostly concrete and steel and glass. But on a clear day there are treetops off in the distance, and when the sun is low in the afternoon I sometimes can catch a glimmer of the Charles River. Glimpsing the treetops and the water usually comforts me.

  On this Friday afternoon heavy clouds hung low over the city and darkness was seeping in early. No comfort there.

  With a sigh, I rotated back to the Morgan will.

  Julie stayed late to reinforce my good behavior. Before she left, she loaded up my briefcase. “Hey,” I said. “If we don’t watch it, I’ll be all caught up.”

  “That’s the idea, buster,” she said.

  I watched the Celtics on TV that evening. At halftime I tried Jill Costello’s number. Her machine answered. Her message was curt and cautious—she told me that I had reached the number I had dialed, that I should leave my name and number, and she’d get back to me.

  I did as instructed.

  The Celtics beat the Hawks in a close one. I was in bed before midnight. Jill did not return my call.

  I woke up early. A nor’easter had blown in overnight. Hard pellets of rain clattered against the glass sliders that overlooked the gray angry harbor. A good day for paperwork.

  At noon Terri called me. “Still coming?” she said.

  “Sure. Looking forward to it.”

  “Know how to get here?”

  “Boy, am I dumb,” I said. “No. You never told me, and I forgot to ask. I guess I would’ve called you.”

  “Well, I’m not at Susan’s, and my number’s unlisted, so you would’ve had a problem.”

  She lived in an apartment complex on Route 2A in Acton. It was very close to Ciao, the Italian restaurant where we had dined. I agreed to get there around six-thirty.

  I fooled around with my paperwork for the afternoon, and gave myself an hour to get to Terri’s. I stopped at a liquor store on her street and bought two bottles of red wine recommended by the clerk. And I was ringing Terri’s buzzer at precisely six-thirty.

  She buzzed me up and greeted me at the door. She was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt. She gave me a quick, nervous smile and a perfunctory hug and took my hand. “Come on in,” she said. “Let me show you around.” She lived in a cramped two-bedroom apartment. Her living room was decorated with cheap museum posters and worn furniture. Houseplants were clustered at the single window. There was a circular dining room table in the end near the kitchen. A boom box on top of a bookshelf was tuned to a classical music station. It was playing a Mozart piano concerto.

  Melissa had the smaller of the two bedrooms. Stuffed animals of every imaginable species slept on her bed and huddled on the floor. Colorful pictures, most of them featuring smiling people and stiff-legged horses and lollipop trees and spectacular rainbows, were tacked on her walls.

  Terri’s bedroom featured a king-sized water bed.

  Savory aromas wafted from the narrow stand-up kitchen.

  We ended up in the living room where we had started. “Pretty nice,” I said.

  She shook her head. “It’s not nice. It’s an apartment. I’d like to have a house in a neighborhood. Not for me, but for Melissa. But I had that choice.” She shrugged. “Drink?”

  “We can try the wine.” I gave her the bag that I’d been carrying.

  She took out the two bottles and looked at the labels. Then she smiled at me. “I don’t know much about wine.”

  “Me either. The clerk recommended them. Said they’d go perfectly with gnocchi.”

  “We’ve got time for a glass. We can eat in a few minutes.”

  We sat side by side on the sofa sipping our wine and listening to the music and not saying much. Terri seemed preoccupied, and I didn’t try to intrude on her thoughts.

  Her gnocchi were light and tasty and her sauce rich and spicy. It was delicious, and I told her so repeatedly.

  “My grandmother’s secrets,” she told me. “She came over from Calabria when she was about fourteen to marry the man her parents had decided on, a cobbler from the village who’d come over a few years earlier. She brought her recipes with her in her head and gave them to all of us. She never wrote them down, and neither have we. It’s a pinch of this, a handful of that, and keep testing, make sure it feels right and tastes right, and if it doesn’t, you add more of this or that until it does.”

  “The gnocchi I’ve had usually end up feeling like hunks of lead in my stomach,” I said. “This is different.”

  “Sure. It’s made from potato, the way it’s supposed to be.”

  We sat at the table for a long time after we’d finished eating, sipping wine and exchanging family stories. Terri’s father was Calabrian, her mother Irish. She’d been raised Catholic. Four years at the University of Vermont had cured her of religion. She’d majored in history, minored in math, met Cliff her se
nior year, worked as a secretary until Melissa was born. Since then she’d done temp work. That’s how she’d got the job with Susan.

  “Best job I’ve ever had,” she said. “Susan pays the agency, which pays me. But she also pays me extra, under the table. She says I’m worth more than the agency pays me.”

  I smiled. “That’s Susan.”

  After a while we cleared the table and did the dishes. When we were done, Terri said, “Do you play cribbage?”

  “Sure. I’m the cribbage champion of Fort Smith, Montana. All the fishing guides play.”

  We played five games at the dining room table. I pegged out on the fifth game before she had a chance to count her double run. “Well,” said Terri, “I guess you’re the cribbage champion of Acton, Massachusetts.”

  “You were a worthy opponent.”

  She sat back and propped her feet up on the seat of her chair. She hugged her legs and gazed at me. “Well,” she said.

  I smiled at her and nodded.

  “I think,” she said quietly, “that we need to talk about something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean,” she said, “we’ve had three dates now, and I invited you to my place, cooked for you, my daughter’s spending the weekend with her father. So…” She shrugged.

  “Look,” I said.

  “No. Please. Let me try to say it. I’d like to go to bed with you—”

  “Terri—”

  “Let me finish. I’m attracted to you. I like you a lot. I’ve got—I’m normal, okay? I don’t have hang-ups.” She shifted in her seat and reached for my hand. She held it in both of hers. “I haven’t been with a man since Cliff, Brady. I’m not particularly happy about that, but there just hasn’t been anybody I’ve liked enough. To me, making love is just that. It’s not sex. It’s—well, it’s loving.” She squeezed my hand and peered at me. “Am I making any sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Wow,” I said. “What a question.”

  She shrugged. “Unfair?”

  “No. Fair.” I smiled. “Do I love you? I’m not sure. It’s been a long time. It’s been a long time since I could even say I wasn’t sure.”

  She nodded. “Me, too. It feels good. But I’m not sure what it means. So—can we wait?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we see each other a lot, do things together?”

  “I’d like that.”

  She got up, came around the table, and sat in my lap. She kissed me softly on the mouth, then put her arms around my neck and rested her cheek on my shoulder. I stroked her back and kissed her hair. She undid the top few buttons on my shirt and slithered her hand onto my chest.

  “Hey, Brady?” she murmured.

  “Yes, General?”

  “Pretty soon, I think.”

  I nuzzled the nape of her neck. “I certainly hope so,” I said.

  29

  A LOUD BUZZ AWAKENED ME. I slapped at my clock radio, but the buzzing continued. I picked up the telephone and heard a dial tone. The smoke alarm? The timer on the oven?

  I hauled myself out of bed and stumbled into the living room. Sunlight was streaming in through the big glass sliders that looked easterly toward the ocean, so bright that it hurt my eyes. The rays came in at a low angle. It was early.

  The buzz was coming from the intercom that connected me to the security guy in the lobby. I pressed the “talk” button and said, “What is it, Eddie?”

  Then I pressed the “listen” button. “Hey, Mr. Coyne. There’s a guy here wants to see you.”

  “Jesus, what time is it?”

  “It’s, ah, ten after seven.”

  “Today’s Sunday, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, who’s there?”

  “Mr. Sylvestro.”

  “Jack Sylvestro?”

  “Yes, sir. Right.”

  Jack Sylvestro was a Boston homicide detective, a rumpled Peter Falk sort of guy who had once investigated a case that I was involved in. We had become friends in the process. “Okay,” I said into the intercom, “send him up.”

  I opened the door for him, then went back to my bedroom and slipped on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I was loading the coffeepot when I heard him rap on the door and say, “Hey, Brady.”

  “Come on in,” I called. “I’m in the kitchen.”

  Jack Sylvestro is a big, shambling, bearlike man whose diffident, almost apologetic manner belies his quick incisive mind. “Looks like I got you up, huh?” he said as we shook hands.

  I nodded. “Coffee’ll be ready in a minute or two.”

  He slouched into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Me,” he said, “I been up all night.”

  I sat across from him. “I’m not that perceptive this time of day,” I said, “but I’ll bet this isn’t a social call. And if it isn’t, that means it’s business. And that means bad news of some kind, because homicide cops hardly ever bring good news.”

  He grinned wearily. “Aw, I was just in the neighborhood, figured I might scrounge a cup of coffee.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s up, Jack?”

  “What’s always up, my line of work. Young lady got herself killed.” He rolled his head on his shoulders. “How’s that coffee coming?”

  “It’s ready.” I got up and poured two mugs full. I brought them back to the table. “I hesitate to ask,” I said, “but what does it have to do with me?”

  He sipped some coffee and sighed. “Your business card was tacked on the wall beside her telephone. There was a message from you on her answering machine.” He shrugged.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Jill Costello?”

  He nodded.

  I blew out a long slow breath. “She’s been murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered. I looked up at him. “Her husband?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “We got a call last night. Security guy in the building. Seems that folks were trying to get ahold of Mrs. Costello all day. She’s the super in the building. Supposed to be available on Saturdays. Finally someone got worried. Security guy had a key, went in, found her, called us. This was, I don’t know, maybe eleven, eleven-thirty last night. I been there ever since.”

  “What happened?”

  Sylvestro cocked his head and looked at me. “Where were you yesterday, Brady?”

  “Me? Shit, I was right here all day. Staying out of the rain, trying to catch up on my paperwork. I was visiting a friend in Acton in the evening.”

  “See anybody during the day? Talk to anybody?”

  I shook my head. “Hey,” I said. “You think…?”

  He smiled. “Nope. I’m just hoping to figure out when the lady was alive. When’d you talk to her last?”

  “I saw her a week ago. She left a message on my machine a couple days ago. Sometime Thursday. I got her message in the evening, late. I called back Friday and left a message. Christ, Jack, what happened?”

  He held his coffee mug in both hands near his mouth. “It was pretty neat and tidy, Brady. A single stab wound up under the rib cage into the heart. A filleting knife. From a set in her kitchen.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Hard to figure. The ME guesses she’d been dead about twenty-four hours when we found her.”

  “Meaning it happened Friday night?”

  “Yeah, sometime Friday night, early Saturday. Look, were you her lawyer or something?”

  I shrugged. “Sort of. She was in the middle of a divorce. I agreed to advise her.”

  “Not your usual sort of client,” he said mildly.

  I smiled. “You don’t miss much, do you? What happened was, I ran into her, we got talking, she told me her situation, and I agreed to—”

  “Were you involved with her?”

  “Me?” I shook my head. “No. She was lonely, unhappy, afraid of her husband. Christ, she could’ve been my daughter.” A
nyway, I thought, I’m involved with Terri Fiori, whatever that means.

  “How’d you say you ran into her?”

  “I don’t think I did say. I was trying to contact a person who lived in the building.” I stopped. “It’s a long story. You want to hear it?”

  “Yes. I think I better. I also want more coffee.”

  I refilled our mugs and told Sylvestro all about my search for Mary Ellen Ames, her death, and my frustration with the case. I told him that Mary Ellen and Jill Costello had been “involved in a relationship.” That was the euphemism I chose. Sylvestro just nodded at my clichéd word choice. I also told him that John Francis Costello had tried to beat me up one evening when I came out of Jill’s apartment, that he had threatened me and, according to Jill, her, too.

  Sylvestro listened without interrupting. When I finished, he said, “We’re holding the husband. It’s pretty clear-cut. Naturally, he says he didn’t do it, and he’s got a lawyer who’s gonna get him bailed out. Soon as the ME can pin down the time of death, we’ll have a better handle on it. The guy works at a restaurant in the evenings. But he’s off around midnight and not back until four in the afternoons, so it just depends. He admits he went over there on Friday night and banged on her door. Claims she didn’t answer, and he didn’t get in. Could be just covering his ass in case we come up with a witness who saw him there.” Sylvestro shrugged. “This fight you and him had, we’d probably want a deposition from you, okay?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. It wasn’t a fight, though. He attacked me. I never had a chance to get a poke at him.”

  “Yeah,” he said abstractedly, “too bad.”

  “He said he’d kill both of us.”

  Sylvestro peered at me for a moment. “Look,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Would you mind coming over there with me?”

  “Where?”

  “Her apartment.”

  “I guess so. Why?”

  “You’ve been there, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, you’re about the only person we can find who’s been inside. Maybe you’ll notice something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Shit, Brady, I don’t know. Something missing? Something out of place? Something that’s there now that wasn’t there before?”