Whitt looked toward the wedding shots again. "Don't think I'm going senile, but somehow the years since she's been gone kind of, I don't know, run together."
I took a little beer. "You said the fire was eleven years ago?"
Back to me. "What? Oh, right. Tragedy. Katie was better friends with Nibur and Ellen than I was, being off working all the time. But they were fine people, and when the flames took them, well, we had some money set aside, and Katie said, 'Wouldn't it make sense to buy their lot rather than see somebody else build on it?' So we did."
The slow, sad shake. "Hit the daughter real hard, especially after what happened to her roommate up at the university."
"The daughter?"
"Yes. She wasn't up there a year I don't believe, when her roommate died."
I leaned forward. "Died how, Vern?"
"In a fall. Terrible thing. Broken neck, I think it was."
"Do you remember the roommate's name?"
"No. No, I don't, but it was the brother who found her."
"The roommate's brother?"
"No. Lana's. Steven was up there too. His senior year, if I'm remembering the spread right."
I stared at Whitt. "Steven Stepanian is Lana's brother?"
"And devoted to her, he was. Always taking her places, even when they were in their early teens, then him coming home from the university when he was up there and she was still in high school down here. A nicer pair of youngsters you couldn't have wanted. Katie and me weren't able to have kids, but I'll tell you something. I can't imagine being prouder of my own than I was of them, handling all that tragedy piled one on top of the other."
My voice sounded hollow to me as I said, "Handled it how, Vern?"
"Well, at Nibur and Ellen's funeral, big brother looked crushed every time he was alone, but by his sister's side, he stood tall, arm around her shoulders or holding her hand, just being strong for her and their parents' sake."
"The children weren't hurt in the fire, then."
"No. I was working the night shift—twelve to eight for Republic over in Clarkston—but Katie told me all about it when I got home. She had the good sense to spray the garden hose on the side of our place nearest them. By the time the fire engines arrived, the flames next door were shooting a hundred feet in the air. Started in the kitchen, they figured afterwards, right below the parents' bedroom. Steven got himself and his sister out in time, but the parents—well, I guess that was God's plan."
"God's plan?"
"Sparing the younger generation. Letting the children live while taking Nibur and Ellen."
"And this happened after Lana's roommate died."
A strange look from Whitt. "Yes, like I told you. Then Katie and I made the offer to Lana and Steven, and you could tell they were relieved by it."
"Relieved."
"I told them I'd take care of the demolition and the carting, so they needn't have any worse dreams about the place than the fire'd already caused. I didn't say that last part out loud, of course, but Katie did to me." A small smile. " 'Katie did'—there I go again."
"Vern, what happened after that?"
“After we bought, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Well, like I said, Katie passed on pretty suddenly, and that left me—"
"I'm sorry. I meant, what happened with the Stepanian children."
Whitt scratched his head, which stirred Chief Joseph some, and his owner reached down and scratched the dog's head too. "I heard they used the money from the estate to move back east."
"You mean the money you paid for the land?"
"And the insurance on the house, since they didn't rebuild. I believe Katie also told me once that Nibur and Ellen had some life insurance on themselves. It'd make sense."
"What would?"
"Well, having the beneficiaries be the children if the mother and father both died together, right?"
After the parents stumbled on what they might have suspected themselves but refused to believe, would have wanted not to believe. The existence of the relationship that got their daughter's roommate killed in the first place.
* * *
I drove back to Moscow and found the Best Western University Inn on a main road near its intersection with a street named "War Bonnet." I checked in and asked the desk clerk if the restaurant was still serving. He looked at his watch and said politely that it was, but I might want to hurry.
Inside, I ordered the prime rib, but I don't remember much else about the meal or the wine I had with it. I do remember thinking about the Stepanians of Plymouth Willows. How much they resembled each other in appearance and mannerisms. How determinedly “normal" Lana projected herself to be the first time we met, not wanting to seem like a "gossip" about other people's personal lives. How her answers to my questionnaire were off just enough to finesse me, including mentioning the developer's bankruptcy but not his "suicide" or his "background checks" on the original purchasers. How carefully both Stepanians acted that second time, telling me only a little bit about the argument coming from the unit of the man they knew as Andrew Dees. But not nearly everything about what they must have heard said by the man and the woman arguing with him. Nor what Lana and Steven might have feared threatened their "normal" existence, and what they might have done about it.
After dinner, the polite clerk at the front desk hailed me. "Mr. Cuddy, did you get one of these?"
A printed, mustard-colored card. "What is it?" I said. "Just a little survey we do. Don't worry, you can read it in your room. Have a good evening, now."
My room turned out to be only a few doors down the corridor. Once inside, I took off my watch, realizing how late it was back in Boston. I tried Nancy's number, anyway. Her answering machine clicked on immediately, giving me a chance to leave a message.
"Just calling from Idaho to say I love you."
When she didn't pick up, I hung up. After showering, I was trying to decide whether to postpone bed long enough to let my hair dry when I noticed the mustard-colored thing I'd laid on the night table.
It was a WARM & FUZZY CARD, the management wanting me to share any "great guest moment" a member of the hotel "team" had created during my stay. A nice touch from awfully nice people, but the way things had gone so far in Big Sky Country, I didn't expect to be completing it.
=24=
Outside the United terminal at Logan, Primo Zuppone said, "Cuddy, you look like shit warmed over."
"Thanks. How about some music?"
He checked all the mirrors of his rented Lincoln as we moved onto the loop road. "I'm not into music right now, you don't mind. I'm more into survival. Where the fuck you been?"
"Studying the effects of jet lag."
"What?"
As we took the back way toward the tunnel, and eventually the city, I told Zuppone about the trip to Idaho and what I'd discovered.
"You're saying that Ozzie and Harriet turn out to be . . ." Primo shook his head, as though he were trying to clear it. "So, it's them?"
"Probably."
"What's with 'probably'? We gotta know for sure, right?"
"Right."
"Well, how do we do that?"
"I've had seven hours in the air to think about it."
* * *
"Hello?"
"Mrs. Stepanian?"
"Yes?"
"This is John Cuddy. I interviewed you and your husband at Plymouth Willows regarding Hendrix Management?"
"Oh. Oh, yes."
"I was wondering if the two of you would be home tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Yes. I have some information that you might like to hear before anyone else does."
"Information? What kind of—"
"Let's say seven-thirty at your place?"
"I don't know if Steven can—"
"See you then."
I hung up the pay phone outside the grocery store in East Boston. Thankfully, too, given how much colder the air had gotten in just the thirty-some hours I'd been away. From th
e driver's window of the Lincoln, Primo said, "We set?"
"Just one more call."
I dialed Nancy's number in Southie, leaving a message on the answering machine that I was back in Boston and would call her later.
After I got in the passenger's side, Zuppone put the gearshift into drive, and we pulled slowly away from the curb.
"Where to now, Cuddy?"
"My place."
"To pick up your Honda?"
I looked at him. "Among other things."
Primo said, "Good idea," then checked all his mirrors.
* * *
Opening the front door of unit 41, Lana Stepanian angled her head and shoulders to peer around me. "I don't see your car."
"I wanted to talk with Paulie Fogerty first, so I parked over by his house. It was such a nice night, I decided to walk from there."
I brushed past her then, moving into the living room with its marshmallow furniture. We seemed to be alone.
"Your husband couldn't make it?"
Lana Stepanian joined me, perching on the arm of an easy chair. Alert. "Steven had a meeting for the School Committee that he just couldn't reschedule."
"I know how that can be." Going by the closet and downstairs bath to the sliding glass door, I looked through it onto the rear deck, then tried the handle. Locked. I slipped the latch and slid the door open.
Stepanian stayed where she was but twisted her torso toward me. "What are you doing?"
I made a ceremony of sliding the door shut solidly, then clicking at the lock. "Just making sure he hadn't come back unexpectedly?
"Steven?"
I returned to the living room, Stepanian turning again as I took the chair across from her. It swallowed me, but then I wasn't banking on being able to get up quickly.
"Steven."
"But, Mr. Cuddy, I told you he's at a meeting."
"So you did. Meaning he's not upstairs or hiding in the closet, either."
She just watched me.
"Right?" I said.
Stepanian folded her arms irritably across her chest. "I think you'd better tell me what you came to tell us, and then leave."
I liked that she wanted to hear what I knew first.
"Mrs.—can I call you Lana, by the way? It'll make the rest of this flow a lot more easily."
Carefully enunciating each syllable, Stepanian said, "Whatever will be quickest."
"We have to start some years back, when you were still a teenager, maybe even early teens. You fell in love, and, dream of dreams, the love was reciprocated. You were very happy, but also very worried, because the two of you weren't supposed to be in love. Not that kind of love, anyway, and so you had to be very careful as well."
No reaction.
"But I guess you were also a terrific actress, and your lover an actor, because while perhaps one or both of the elders suspected, the neighbors didn't, and probably when you were able to be together at college, you must have thought, 'Now we can live a little more' . . . what, Lana, 'normally'?"
Still just a stony look.
"But then that darned roommate of yours. Did she come back to the dorm unexpectedly? I'm guessing it would have been something like that. And you couldn't explain it away, not what she saw. So, you two had to kill her, but make it look like an accident, a fall. Tell me, Lana, was she the first?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Wel1, she's the first I can identify, anyway. So you're obviously distraught, or putting on a good act of it, and the next time you and the lover come home, the elders maybe have started sounding out the word, and they don't like what it seems to spell. They confront the both of you, and a second 'accident' becomes necessary. Only you have the good sense to realize that another fall, especially two other falls, would look awfully peculiar, so this time it's a fire, one that nearly takes you too, but for the heroism of your lover."
Stepanian's cheeks flushed, almost as if the flames from that night were in front of her still. "Steven's parents died—"
"—in a lite that conveniently wiped out not just the elders, but also all kinds of family photos and potentially embarrassing other stuff that would show the idyllic lovers started life as brother and sister."
Her lower lip trembled. "You're saying crazy things."
"I don't think so, Lana. You and Steven sell the devastated house and lot to sympathetic neighbors, nice little bonus on top of the insurance policies. Combined, a nest egg for the new couple to start a 'normal' life in the East, about as far as one can get from Idaho. Big university here, nobody likely to pay much attention to a 'married' woman studying Spanish—a good choice of major, too, so she could pass as somebody with Latino roots. Then settling down afterwards, Steven with the more demanding job that might require a background investigation, you content with a simpler career of temping. Shallow maybe, but no risky credentials checks, either. The normal life of a normal couple, something that seems very important to both of you. No children, of course, given concerns of what a union of such close blood might produce. Tell me, Lana, which of you had the operation?"
A flinch.
"Even without kids, though, a couple could learn how to—'compensate,' I think, was the word you used when we first talked. Dedicated School Committee for him, lower-profile condo trustee for her, plus some charity-begins-at-home stuff like helping Kira Ehnendorf with her father. Your unit here may have lost a lot of its resale value, 'trapping' you at the Willows, but everyday life was so natural, so normal. Until the developer who built this place began to have financial problems."
“Yale Quentin committed suicide."
“Only by trying to save his little empire through looking into the backgrounds of his original purchasers, to show his bank what solid citizens they all were. Did Quentin come to you directly, or did he just nose around Steven at work?"
No response.
"Whichever. You and your husband decide old Yale has to go too, and the 'scenic overlook' provides a perfect setting. You probably held your breath for a while after his death, but when nobody kicked the sleeping dog, it was time to relax and get back to normal again. At least until Andrew Dees moved in next door."
"Andrew was nothing to us."
"But something of a mystery, nonetheless. A loner, the man ran his own business, yet didn't try to be part of the community toward encouraging customers. He acquired a ladyfriend over the summer, which probably reassured Steven and you somewhat. Even though you were a little leery of Dees, you didn't see how he was any threat to you, the way your roommate and your parents and even Yale Quentin had been. Then I came on the scene."
The lower lip trembled some more.
"I showed up here with my 'questionnaire,' supposedly interested in how the Hendrix company managed Plymouth Willows but asking about things that couldn't have much to do with the complex itself. Personal questions, even probing ones. I have to tell you, Lana, my little survey wasn't designed to find out about you and Steven. It was just meant to give me cover for asking the same questions about Andrew Dees. But you couldn't know my intentions. All you knew was that something about me felt wrong. So up went your antennae, testing the wind for what it could tell you."
Stepanian started to speak, then stopped.
"Something to add, Lana?"
A shake of the head.
"Anyway, after my first visit, you and Steven probably began paying more attention to what was going on around the 'cluster.' Noticing Dees acting more strangely, maybe overhearing him on the phone or in person in his unit, yelling things. Things you might have caught only bits and pieces of, maybe while sitting out on the rear deck, reading in your lounge chair. Things that troubled you, because you couldn't understand the context in which he was saying them."
Stepanian just watched me.
I said, "Then last Thursday night, you and your 'husband'—"
"Don't say it like that!"
"What, Lana? The word, 'husband'?"
She didn't reply.
"Last Thursday, you and . . . Steven became aware of an argument next door. Not just one-sided, either. Dees and his ladyfriend, from what you could hear. Only you couldn't hear that well. Tell me, did you try to improve the acoustics? Did you maybe take a kitchen glass and put it up against your party wall? Did you hear something that set you and Steven off?"
Stepanian flinched again.
"I'm guessing you did. I'm guessing Dees was yelling something about his ladyfriend retaining a private investigator. Maybe, 'You hired somebody to investigate me and my neighbors?' Outraged, he would have said that loudly enough for you to hear it. And you both sensed another problem, another threat to 'normal' life as you lived it. The 'we-met-at-BU' cover you weaved was credible, but a little flimsy. Tug on the string, get on a plane, and the fabric of your and Steven's life together starts to unravel fast. Intolerably so, just like it would have when Yale Quentin started nosing around."
Stepanian gnawed on her lower lip.
"And so you must have decided pretty quickly what to do. Based on what happened next, I'm thinking that Dees also yelled something on Thursday night about worrying that he'd have to take a quick trip, even including ladyfriend coming with him, That gave you and Steven all the inspiration you needed. The roommate fell, the parents burned, the developer crashed his car into the sea. The newest threat would just . . . disappear."
Stepanian's lip lost some more skin.
"The only thing was, you had to deflect attention from Plymouth Willows. It couldn't look like they disappeared suspiciously, because then somebody might start poking around here after them. So you and Steven took lady-friend's Porsche to the airport, carrying what were probably the suitcases missing from Dees' unit. Steven is close enough in size and coloring to pass for Dees at a distance, especially with a stranger, but you gilded the lily a bit by having Steven wave to the parking attendant. That was a mistake, Lana, since Dees himself would never have done that. And his ladyfriend would have insisted on driving her own car. Which brings us to why you used the Porsche.
Because it was more conspicuous, easier for somebody to find at the airport and start the trail there instead of here?"
Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy Page 27