The Big Dig

by Linda Barnes

  Part of me wanted to see the gold disk in Walsh’s pocket, and part of me wanted to wait for Fournier’s family, but a glance at an important document and a chance to see Liz Horgan’s home at the same time …

  “I could do it,” I volunteered. “Bet it’s in my job description, too. Where should I bring it once it’s signed?”

  “Would you?” A slow smile spread over Marian’s lips as she glanced at the room full of men. “You are just too good to me. First the vet, now this. Could you bring it to me here?”

  “Not a problem,” I said.

  “Oh, but—”

  “But?”

  “I was hoping to see Tess. And Krissi.”

  Tess was the dog, Krissi the kid. “Up to you.”

  “I have this little book I bought Krissi, a dog book. Would you mind—”

  “If it weighs less than fifty pounds, I’ll take it.”

  “And if I wrote her a note?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you’d need to give it to her—not her mother, you know what I mean?”

  “Absolutely.” I gave her a selfless smile and almost missed the speculative glance Walsh aimed in my direction.

  Chapter 17

  Marian might have grabbed a cab or ridden the Green Line. I chose a more roundabout route, taking the Red Line to Cambridge and stopping off at home first.

  Gerry or Marian might have phoned Liz, told her to expect immediate delivery, so I quickly steamed the flap, removed the single staple from the top lefthand corner, copied the seven sheets, replaced the staple, and neatly resealed the envelope. I gave the document only a cursory scan before sticking it into a blank envelope and placing it underneath the Yellow Pages in the bottom drawer. I noted that Elizabeth Horgan’s name was listed first among principals of Horgan Construction.

  There’s no quick and easy path from Cambridge to Brookline. By the time I’d twisted through back streets into Allston, it was raining again, a light spitting sleet that did nothing to improve traction. If Liz asked what had taken so long, the weather gods had given me an excuse.

  Brookline is a money town, but it’s not Weston or Dover—isolated, white, and removed from the fray—too close to Boston for that. North Brookline is almost big city, apartment buildings and two-families, a scattering of college dorms. The real money hangs south of Route 9 near The Country Club with a capital T, a golf course that recently conceded the need to integrate. I checked the address Marian had scribbled. Definitely south.

  In my guise as a cabbie, I’d driven computer gazillionaires home from the airport, left them in the shadow of their gated mansions, but I don’t think I appreciated how much money there was in construction till I saw the Horgan place. Land in the Boston area is scarce and pricey, and this house crowned two acres. Not much if you’re talking Kansas farmland, but two acres of Brookline equals property taxes, plus.

  The house stood on a rise, two storeys of elegantly weathered brick in front, probably three in back, rambling and spread out, with enough windows to make some heating-oil company ecstatic. Two tall chimneys smoked above the shingled roof. The long driveway divided into a circle and took a dive under a porte-cochere. As I eased under its sheltering arm, I felt like Cinderella arriving at the ball.

  Halogen lamps popped and lit, almost blinding me. My neck prickled and I wondered where the closed-circuit TV camera was hidden. The front door opened before I had a chance to push the bell, and Liz Horgan stared at me blankly. Her disheveled hair was shoved off her face, held back with a headband. When I got close enough I could smell the liquor on her breath. She smelled as though she’d been holding her own private wake for Kevin Fournier.

  “What do you want?” There was no welcome in her voice.

  “Marian needed your signature, and—”

  “I told her to send the damn thing by messenger. I told her I was—”

  “I was coming out this way,” I lied, wondering if Marian had slipped one over on me, seen an opportunity to get me in trouble with the big cheese. “What a beautiful house. Is there a pool or a garden out back?”

  It should have been a lead-in to “Won’t you come in?” but Liz wasn’t having any. She went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “Oh, what’s it matter? I’m sorry. In this weather, too. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I thought you were—”

  She spoke softly, almost as though she were talking to herself, and I thought she might answer if gently prompted. “You thought I was …?”

  She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. “Never mind.”

  “I’m not sure if both you and your husband need to sign this, or just you,” I went on. “Maybe Mr. Horgan ought to take a look at it, just in case. I don’t want Marian to bite my head off.”

  “Gerry’s not home. Give it to me.” She ripped the envelope open, started to read. I could have taped the thing shut for all the care she paid to the fastenings. She had to be freezing in corduroy slacks and a sweatshirt, with terry house slippers on her feet. The porte-cochere kept the rain at bay, but the wind was high and even in my zipped parka, I was far from warm.

  “Would it be okay if I, um, use a bathroom?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “It’s—the house is such a mess.”

  I gazed at her pleadingly, until with visible reluctance, she opened the door.

  An Oriental rug lay crookedly across the marble-tiled foyer, one corner flipped up to trip an unwary guest. A broom rested against a wall near a scattering of cigarette ashes. The flowers in the vase drooped. I peered through an archway into a vast living room where elaborately carved chairs were shoved haphazardly against walls. A huge, white sofa piled with laundry sat next to an ebony Steinway.

  “It’s on the left,” Mrs. Horgan said sharply. “Two doors down. The light’s on.”

  A place this size had to come with a housekeeper or two, so the mess intrigued me. It was all of a piece with Liz Horgan forgetting to sign important documents, running late for meetings. I almost tripped over a dog-dish half-full of water.

  The bathroom had marble tile, too, and delicately flowered wallpaper. The basin was scalloped like a shell, the fixtures bronze. There were two rustic landscapes on the walls, no medicine cabinet to rummage. It was the kind of fancy powder room used only by guests, but the effect was spoiled by a black leather travel case perched on the back of the toilet, a silver-backed brush, and a can of spray deodorant.

  The travel case contained an outdated prescription vial, an antibiotic prescribed for Gerald Horgan. The hair in the silver-backed brush was short salt-and-pepper. Someone had used the basin to shave in.

  Not laundry. The mound on the white sofa could be wadded sheets and blankets if Gerry Horgan were sleeping on the couch, shaving in the powder room. I flushed the toilet, ran the sink, and wondered how much on-site tension could be accounted for by marital discord.

  Had marital discord shoved Fournier off the scaffold staircase? There was a puffiness to Liz Horgan’s eyes and face and I wondered if she’d been crying as well as drinking, sitting alone in her gigantic house.

  There was no buzz of TV or radio. No music, no evidence of Marian’s favorite child, the photogenic Kristal, the girl to whom I’d been instructed to secretly pass Marian’s message. The big empty house made me sad. It meshed into Paolina’s failed fairy tale of me and Sam, another broken promise. A house like this ought to enclose a happy family, I thought, a welcoming dog, a daughter cheerfully practicing piano while dad poked at the fire in the fireplace.

  I pasted a smile on my face. “This place, has it ever been photographed for a magazine?”

  “No.”

  “Do you play the piano? Or your daughter?”

  “The papers are signed.” She indicated the door, but I ignored the cue. “I stopped by Kevin’s wake; it was really nice. I know the family must have appreciated it.” I was aware that I was piling it on, talking too much, but I couldn’t seem to make an impression, get any reaction out of the woman beyond alcoholic befuddlemen
t. “Oh, and I almost forgot, I brought something for Kristal.”

  “What? Give it to me!”

  “Hey!” Her hand had clamped around my wrist like a vise. She regarded it as though it belonged to a different person, disengaged her grip slowly.

  I rummaged in my backpack. “Look, it’s no big deal. Marian asked me to give her a book. I’m just doing her a favor.”

  “I’m sorry. I misunderstood. That’s very kind of Marian. I’ll give it to her.”

  “If she’s home, I’d love to give it to her in person. Marian talks about her a lot. I have a little sister around the same age, at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Does Kristal go to Brookline High? Or one of the private—”

  I was trying to prolong the encounter, to see whether the phone would ring, or the doorbell, to find out why she wanted me gone so badly. I wasn’t prepared for the anger that flooded her face.

  “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  “Marian needed your signature—”

  “I’ve already signed the damn thing.”

  “I needed to use the bathroom. Sorry.”

  “Did you see everything you wanted to see? Krissi isn’t home. Gerry isn’t home. Give me whatever the hell Marian sent, and tell her to keep her goddamn gifts to herself from now on, or give them to Gerry at the office.”

  Her fingers had refastened themselves around my wrist, but I don’t think she knew she was exerting pressure. I let my umbrella and backpack clatter to the floor and gave her a little pressure in return, a taste of the cop’s come-along hold. She dropped my hand like it was on fire.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Which agency did we get you from?”

  Same question O’Day had asked. I answered, and with her hand to her mouth, she muttered words I wasn’t sure I caught, maybe “they told me,” or “they warned me.” She’d had way too much to drink.

  “I’ll see you Monday,” I said.

  “You goddamn snoop.” Her hands fell to her sides as though she’d lost control of them. “You’re fired. Don’t bother coming in anymore. You are fucking fired.”

  Slowly I picked up my things. “Mrs. Horgan,” I said, “I work for you. If there’s anything I can do to help—”

  “You can get the hell out.” She didn’t slam the door on my heels, but she came close.

  I drove back to Southie wondering who had warned her to keep an eye out for snoops. Thinking maybe Happy Eddie Conklin might have slipped her the word. Wondering if he’d shared the bulletin with her husband.

  I dropped the envelope off at the near-empty pub to Marian’s grateful hug. She’d had a bit to drink as well and clung to a tattooed ironworker named Dave. Between giggles, she told me she’d given Leland Walsh my phone number. She hoped I didn’t mind.

  Here’s the beauty of working two jobs: Get fired and you’ve got something to fall back on. I drove to Dana Endicott’s Beacon Street address, thinking my navy suit would blend in well in such an elegant neighborhood. It was Saturday; she might have gotten back from New York, probably wouldn’t be at a board meeting. I was planning to ring the bell, accept no excuses, search Veronica’s room. Find out why Rick Garrison had laughed and called Dana a bitch.

  An ambulance and a cop car were parked out front, cherry lights flashing.

  Chapter 18

  The Area A squad car was vacant. The ambulance, from the same company that had responded at the Dig, idled. I swung into a tow zone and surveyed street numbers. The emergency vehicles were parked directly in front of Dana Endicott’s four-storey brownstone, and the door to the brownstone was ajar.

  I punched on my emergency flashers and exited the car in one motion.

  There was movement in the doorway, a squeak of rolling wheels, and I had the sensation that I was back in the shadow of the overhead highway, watching orange-clad figures lift a prone and motionless Kevin Fournier. The illusion lasted a long heartbeat before I realized that the woman on the gurney was conscious, waving her hands in protest.

  “Please, I’m fine.” Polite as always, Dana Endicott.

  A stocky woman in a shapeless sweater followed the procession down the narrow walk, arms folded over saggy breasts, a stream of Spanish pouring from her lips.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “Take off, lady,” the thin-lipped EMT responded automatically.

  “I’m a friend. Is she all right?”

  “Will be if you quit blocking the way. Move it.”

  I stepped aside.

  “Miss Carlyle?” My client reached out and grasped my hand, her grip reassuringly strong.

  “Yes.”

  “Please, stay, wait for me. Esperanza, stay with her. Help her. Show her—”

  “Señorita, please. I come with you.”

  “Stay with … my friend.”

  They lifted her into the back of the ambulance, a pressure bandage over her left eye. There was a trickle of blood from the short dark hair, more than a trickle, over her ear, down her neck. Blood soaked the collar of her pale beige cardigan.

  Esperanza watched them drive off, biting her thumb, shaking her head, murmuring “Ay Jesus, Dios mio,” over and over until I said, “¿Hay policias en la casa?” Are there policemen in the house?

  “Ay! Los chupos!” She ran back inside and I followed.

  To enter the vast room in which we stood, we’d passed between the glass walls of enormous twin fish tanks. If I hadn’t been tailing the quick-moving Esperanza so closely, I’d have stopped to gasp at the bubble and hiss of compressed air, the darting colorful fish. On the far wall, a painting over the fireplace blazed with shades of yellow and red, colors that rivaled the exotic fish. The high ceiling had pale wooden beams hung with crystal chandeliers. Half an acre of Oriental rug framed champagne-colored sofas and upholstered chairs, enough to seat thirty, maybe more. There were other paintings on the walls, and I hoped I’d have time to study them more closely.

  The short cop spoke slowly, as though he were talking to a child. Esperanza’s calculating eyes took in his assumption, and her English, which had been good, began to deteriorate as she decided to play it dumb. I might not have recognized the ploy if I hadn’t seen it demonstrated so often by Marta, Paolina’s mother, a resourceful woman who loses her English in a flash if a conversation doesn’t go the way she wants it to go.

  “She is no moving. There is blood.”

  “Show us where you found her.”

  “I call nine-one-one. I tell you what I know, all I know. No más.”

  There was a smear of blood on the polished wooden floor at the foot of a back stairway. I watched the cops quickly inspect the steps, searching for some defect, a wrinkle in the green runner. The tall cop scribbled notes in his incident book and seemed content. Esperanza tried to hold back a shudder when he asked her name.

  She gave it reluctantly. “You go, now, por favor.”

  “Should we call someone? Her husband, a brother?”

  “No. You go now.”

  “They’ll take her to Mass General. You need the number?”

  “I’ll find it,” I said. I knew it by heart.

  “Good thing you found her.” The short cop smiled at Esperanza.

  The smile really scared her. “Virgen Santisima.” She crossed herself as she locked the door behind him, leaning against the wood as if she needed the support. I couldn’t decide if she was in her thirties or forties. Her dark eyes looked old.

  “¿Estas bien?” I said.

  “Me siento desmayar.” I feel dizzy.

  “Te preparo te.” Let me make you some tea.

  My Spanish isn’t going to win any prizes, but it helped to separate me from the cops, made me into one of us, not one of them. The fear in her eyes faded, and we climbed the stairs to the kitchen, one flight up, passing through a dining room worthy of Architectural Digest, not showy, but beautifully designed with warm woods and deep colors. The kitchen had pale yellow walls and counters that were either granite or something pretending to be granite.
The refrigerator was camouflaged as a cabinet, copper pots hung from an iron rail, and the two sinks gleamed.

  Over Esperanza’s protests, I made tea, and tried to convey the idea that the best way to help Miss Dana would be to give me free rein in the house. Suspicion flooded her eyes again; she suspected me of being a real estate agent, and Miss Dana had said nothing about selling her beautiful house. Worry pressed her lips into a thin line, but she conceded there would be no harm if I examined the place while she watched.

  The very lowest level, she explained, was the old servant’s quarters. Not that Miss Dana had servants, very modern, she was, and Esperanza came in only four days a week to help. She kept some clothes there, in one of the small bedrooms. There was also the wine cellar. No one lived down there. She would, of course, live in if it were asked, dress in black like a maid, work every day if Miss Dana wanted, but this way was good, too. She worked for other people, too. She lived with her sister, her sister’s family.

  The street level had the spectacular aquarium room, a smaller sitting room, a music room with two Steinway grands. The place was the goods; it made Liz Horgan’s Brookline mansion look hopelessly nouveau. I climbed to the next level, an increasingly nervous Esperanza my shadow. The silver centerpiece on the dining room table had probably been fashioned by Paul Revere. Each book in the panelled library looked like it had been dusted that morning.

  “You look here, okay? I must work.” The smile on Esperanza’s lips didn’t make it to her eyes.

  I waited one minute, two, followed her quiet footsteps to the next level.

  Light flooded the landing. The ceiling was high, the roof opened by skylights, the room jammed with plants, asparagus fern, palms, spider plants, more than I could name. The furniture was rattan, the upholstery flowered. The air smelled of potpourri. Two large Teddy bears, seated at a round table set with a sprigged china tea service, added to the impression of a grown-up doll-house, a secret garden. One wore a straw bonnet, the other a fitted cloche. A passageway led to a master bedroom with vine-painted walls and pale green carpeting. To one side, a separate sitting area had the look of an enclosed patio, with huge windows and rattan lounge chairs.