When her computer red-flags the accident on Newbury Street, Maggie’s reaction is mixed. At first glance the facts are disturbing and the claim promises to be more of a hassle than the routine settlement. Still, she can’t help feeling a slight stab of excitement, a throwback to her days on the police force. “Interest,” she tells herself, considering the circumstances, that a man is dead. “Excitement” would be crass.
Lucky for her, a little digging shows that her old partner was the responding officer, and Hank is known for his diligence. She has always liked that about him. Admired that. Misses it. She misses a lot of things about being a cop, and she picks up the small stack of papers, thumbs through it. Her hand shakes, making the papers rattle loudly in the quiet room. She sticks both palms down flat against the cheap veneer of her desk.
The wife took out a substantial life insurance policy on the deceased just weeks before, and her signature stares up at Maggie from a policy dated November 16. Karen Louise Lindsay. It isn’t an uncommon situation, not since the economic downturn, but there’s enough money involved to warrant a little probing. If it is a suicide, there’s no payout. What better smoke screen than to have your wife take out the policy?
Maggie gets up to close the door. Her office is barely more than a cubicle, but these days, in this place, having an office at all is a big deal. There is a door, but no real privacy; the walls are papery and thin. It’s a decent company, reputable enough, but to Maggie it seems very bare-bones. Cheap. There’s always that initial knee-jerk inclination not to pay out claims, to find a loophole, which Maggie might just have.
At thirty-four, she’s one of the youngest investigators at the company. “Probably the sharpest of the lot,” her boss has told her more than once, attributing this to Maggie’s time with the Boston PD, and that had helped, but she has always been good with people. “My family was dysfunctional,” she says if someone mentions her ability to flush out facts. “That’s key,” and then she always laughs, but, really, Maggie thinks, there is some truth to this. She’s learned to think outside the box, to be alert, adaptable, to understand that things are not exactly what they seem. There’s always more, there’s always the crap lying just below the surface that can mess you up or worse if you’re not ready for it. There’s always that next trip wire—
She scrolls through her scant contacts and finds Hank’s number. “Hi,” she says into his voice mail. “It’s Maggie. Call me when you have a minute.” Her voice sounds much more glib than she actually feels. It’s this job. She sounds phony, even to herself. Superficial, which she attributes to being here too long—she’s beginning to not know how to turn it off, this work identity. She pushes back from her desk, and the flimsy swivel chair scoots on the bumpy fake wood floor, a little wavy if she looks across the room. The wheels make a strange, scratching sound against a layer of blond wood. The walls are beige. The shade at the one small window is also beige. She’s put up posters from the Coop down at Harvard Square. Three van Goghs and a Gustav Klimt she found one weekend, but the atmosphere is mostly beige. The job is beige. Life is a trade.
But being a soldier was not her first choice, either. In fact, it was the last thing Maggie Brennan ever thought she’d do. It was a surprise, being called away. Deployed—an odd word. To be deployed. Like a missile. Like a bullet. Blown away, like a dandelion in the wind, like a thought or a whisper, like the girl she was before they sent her to Iraq. She’s different, now, from who she used to be, heading out with her friends to the beach on days too nice to waste in class, smoking weed in the bedroom with the window open, batting the smoke toward the screen with the backs of her hands, giggling on the way to the refrigerator, she and her best friend. Lucy. Lucy in the sky.
She finishes her Coke and nearly gags. It’s flat from sitting open on her desk. “Hey, Hank,” she says, when he calls her back. “Can you ditch Johnson for an hour at lunch?” Johnson is Hank’s new rookie partner. Needy, from what Hank’s told her, “And meet me on Newbury? Noon? And, Hank,” she says when her old partner says fine; he’ll be there. “Bring a copy of your report on that accident in Back Bay. The fatality on Friday, the, um, the ninth?” She looks back at the claim. “Male. Forty-nine years old. Businessman. Lindsay, Joseph Dylan.”
“Sure,” he says. “There must’ve been a hundred accidents that night. No kiddin’. Calls coming in every minute or two. Jeez.”
“I don’t doubt it. You should see the claims.” Maggie leans back. The chair squeaks. “Just call me on my cell when you get to Newbury and we’ll decide where to go from there. Oh, and Hank,” she says, just before he clicks off. “Lunch is on me.”
She buttons her coat and pushes through the back door to the parking lot. It’s icy still, but not as bad as the week before. The snowplows and sand trucks have been busy, at least on Commonwealth, and she heads downtown to the company Joe Lindsay and his partner owned. On the way she glances at the few facts she jotted down before she left her office. Edward. The partner was Edward Wells. Home Runs Renovations. Summer Street. She eases her foot on the brake. She’s barely moving anyway. Traffic is at a crawl. The inside of her car is cold, even though the heater’s up as high as it will go and she makes a mental note to take it in to get it worked on. Soon.
She looks around, taps her fingers on the steering wheel. Okay. The office is here on Summer. Joseph Lindsay lived in Waltham. So what was he doing in Back Bay on a night when everyone else in the city was trying to stay off the streets? She remembers the storm, remembers unwrapping her pastrami sandwich as the wind howled outside the window, her mother calling to make sure she was in for the night. Bad storm coming.
She runs her fingers through her dark hair and fluffs it out a little, glancing in the rearview mirror. It’s a good hair day. At a traffic light she puts on lipstick, digs around for a small plastic Clinique compact, and brushes blush across her cheeks, looks up at the glass storefronts that line the road, at people walking swiftly down the sidewalk, chins tucked into coats, intent on getting quickly to their destinations.
Maggie parks and locks her car door, reaching down to straighten her boot. It’s a new pair; they pinch her toes, but who knew she’d be doing so much walking? Most days she sits behind a desk. Restless. Today she’s grateful for the change. The air is fresh, cleaned by the snow the night before. She limps up the steps to Home Runs, stopping to adjust her boot again once she’s inside. “Edward Wells?” she says to a woman with red hair. “Insurance matter,” when the woman hesitates, when she tells Maggie that her boss just lost his partner.
“I won’t stay long,” Maggie promises. She smiles. “A couple of quick questions so we can settle on this claim. I’m Maggie, by the way.”
“Jeananne.” The woman sighs, delivers her to the partner’s office, and Maggie follows silently, her boots sinking in the plush and pricey carpeting.
She nods a thank-you to Jeananne and steps inside the doorway, but just barely. “Mr. Wells?” She takes another step into the large, imposing room. “Maggie Brennan.” She extends her hand. “From Mass Casualty and Life. I’m sorry.” She tries to meet his eyes. “So sorry about your partner. I won’t take up much of your time.”
Edward nods. He turns his back, leaving Maggie standing in the doorway. She clears her throat.
“What is it?” Edward asks her reflection in a tall glass window.
She clears her throat again, coughs a light little cough. “Is there anything you know that might shed light on Mr. Lindsay’s accident?”
He shrugs. “It was an accident. What more is there to say?”
“Why would your partner be in Back Bay on a night like that Friday? In the middle of a snowstorm?”
“I have no idea, Ms. Brennan.” He turns around finally.
“Was he having problems?”
Edward looks away. Not fast enough, though. There’s something in his eyes. He seems to consider her question for a second or two, and then he shrugs, “Well,” he says. “The company was losing money. Still is.
Joe was doing everything—we were both doing everything we could to keep the place running, but . . . Yes, Ms. Brennan. There were problems.” He stops. “Exactly why are you here?” Edward turns and really looks at Maggie for the first time, at the coat from Urban Outfitters, the new boots, the rakish, flowered scarf, a Christmas present from her mother, and suddenly Maggie sees herself the way Edward Wells must see her, as intrusive and blasé. Wet behind the ears.
“Checking on the claim,” she says. “Actually two claims. And it’s standard in a situation like this, Mr. Wells.”
“On a traffic accident?” Edward shakes his head. “Why are you really here?”
“Looking for answers.” Maggie knits her eyebrows together, tries to look official. “Was he depressed?” she says, before Edward can ask her exactly what kind of answers. “Was Mr. Lindsay depressed?”
“Do I look like a psychiatrist, Ms. Brennan?”
“You were partners,” she says. “Friends, no doubt. In your opinion, was Mr. Lindsay depressed lately?”
Edward shrugs. “I wouldn’t necessarily—know that, but I suppose it’s possible. Likely, under the circumstances. I suggest you ask his wife.” Edward turns back to the window. “Karen. Any help you need to settle things for her, just let me know. The poor woman must be . . .”
“Thanks,” Maggie says. “Again, I am sorry for your loss.”
Edward shifts, half-turns—a nod to civility, before he goes back to staring at the white world outside the pricey window.
“I like the name,” Maggie says in the doorway. “Home Runs Renovations.” She glances at a Red Sox banner on the wall above Wells’s desk.
“Thanks.” Edward half-turns again. “We used to go to games a lot, back in the day. Joe and I. He loved Fenway Park.”
In the hall Maggie looks at her watch. “Ladies’ room?” she asks the red-haired woman. Jeananne appears to be the office gossip, flitting up and down the hall, and Maggie watches as she talks with a small, thin woman wearing yellow snow boots. The woman smiles, but her eyes are large and dark, her face noticeably pale. She reaches to touch Jeananne on the arm and they both laugh. She’s vibrant, dazzling, even, but her eyes drift here and there as if she’s looking for something. Someone, maybe.
Maggie hesitates. Questioning these women now might give her some idea who Joe Lindsay was. No. She hobbles on, the boots stabbing at her toes. They both seem very emotional, still raw. She roots around in her bag for a small notebook, jots down Yellow Boots and Jeananne, so she’ll remember to catch up with them later—preferably when they’re not together.
She finds the ladies’ room at the end of the hall and grabs a wad of toilet paper to stick between her throbbing toes. An empty office stands off the main hallway with its door ajar and Maggie nudges it open but doesn’t go inside. Lindsay’s, she guesses. A woman with blond hair stares out accusingly from a photo in a thin gold frame on a desk beneath the window.
“I’ll walk you out.” Edward Wells stands behind her in the hallway, and Maggie smiles.
“Thanks,” she says. “Got a little turned around there for a minute. Was this Mr. Lindsay’s office?”
Edward nods. He gestures for her to go ahead of him on the plushy carpeting, and together they glide toward the lobby. The receptionist nods. She’s on the phone. “I guess you haven’t heard,” she’s saying to the caller, and then she lowers her voice. “Mr. Lindsay has just died. Yes,” she says. “It was. A great shock. A horrible accident . . . the ice . . . Yes,” she says again, after a few seconds. “Dorrie. Dorreen Keating. She can answer your questions. Probably knows as much as Joe did about the— Right. The two of them were working closely just before he— Of course,” she says. “Is that with two t’s or one, Mr. Androtti? Got it. I’ll make sure to give this to Dorreen. You have a nice day.” Edward stops.
“I assume you can find your way from here,” he says to Maggie, and then to the receptionist, “Never mind, Lola. I’ll take that to Dorreen. I’m headed up her way.”
“Sure,” Maggie says, “I’ll be fine. Thanks for giving me your ti—” But Edward turns his back as if she has already gone. He does not shake her hand.
VI
MAGGIE
Maggie pulls up her coat collar and steps outside to brave the cold, hurries to her car. Snow blurs the harsh, sharp edges of the newly renovated area as she makes her way through it to Back Bay. She slows down at Newbury. Her cell blares out a rap song. It’s Hank, standing on Newbury and Berkeley. “Johnson’s gone off on his own,” he tells her. “I’m all yours for the next hour.”
She pulls over. Hank opens the passenger side door and slides in quickly, pushes the seat back to accommodate his long legs, his lanky body. He closes the car door behind him, but the cold comes in, drifts up from his clothes. “Hey, Maggie,” he says. He smiles. “Like old times, eh?” He blows on his hands. His hair is grayer than Maggie remembers, a little thinner on top.
“Yeah.” She smiles. “Yeah. Just like.”
“So, here’s a copy of that accident report,” Hank says, dropping three stapled sheets of paper on the seat and reaching over to tilt the heater vent straight on him. His face is red. Snow clings to his shoulders and drips onto the front seat.
“Anything?”
He shrugs. “The car slid on black ice, hit a tree at nine twelve P.M. Likely death on impact from a blow to the head. The airbag on the passenger side opened but not the one on the driver’s side. It was a hard hit, but nothing the airbag couldn’t have absorbed. It was an Audi. Old, but still an Audi. Not too shabby, right? Wonder why the airbag didn’t open.”
“Me, too.” Maggie glances at the stapled papers. “I’ll take a look. Where’ve they got it?”
“O’Brien’s in Southie,” Hank says. “Oh. Something else.” He leans back and stretches his legs out under the dash. “There were two Starbucks cups in the front seat, contents splashed across the dash, the airbag, the upholstery. Smelled of coffee and hot chocolate, both.”
“Okay. So there was someone else in the car. Or Lindsay was bringing a cup back to the office. Was there a lid?”
“Nope. No lid. Lotsa blood on the steering wheel, the seat, running down the driver’s arm. A few drops in the fabric.”
“Who called it in?”
Hank shrugs. “No telling. A woman, but she didn’t give her name. ‘Very upset,’ it says in the report. But there were people crawling out of the woodwork by the time we got there, so it could’ve been anyone.”
Maggie nods. “I’m thinking there might be footage from the shops on Newbury and around the corner. Maybe something from that night. So . . . since you’re a cop and I’m not . . .”
“There was mention of a lunch?”
“Right,” she says. “It was a total bribe.”
“Then I’m your man,” Hank says, and they head for the sidewalk in front of a café. “How about we start here?”
Some of the shop owners on Newbury don’t have security cameras, and most of the ones that do didn’t have them turned on that Friday night. Or they bought a camera and never figured out how to run the thing, or the sister’s son’s friend meant to come over to set it up and never did. One young guy the next street over says his uncle has a security camera and it was turned on, but the uncle’s in Florida and won’t be back until sometime next week. The nephew takes both their cards, sticks them behind the register, where, Maggie figures, the uncle will find them months from now and toss them in the trash.
Hank manages to wolf down lunch, two coffees, and a doughnut in various eateries. When his hour is almost up, they hit pay dirt at a clothing store displaying summer clothes—go figure—and two or three nearly naked mannequins in the window, their long legs white against the backdrop of a dark blue curtain. Yes, the owner tells them. Yes, his camera is fully operational. Yes, it was turned on the night of the bad storm. “Just in case,” he says, shaking his head. “When things shut down. That’s when the serious crimes occur,” which Maggie doesn’t think is actually
true, since criminals don’t like snowstorms any more than anyone else. Besides, she thinks, this guy’s display window wouldn’t bring someone in the front door on a good day, let alone through a window with a hammer on a bad one.
“Great,” Hank says. He’s got his coat unbuttoned, his hat off. “Mind if I take a look?”
They stand, leaning their elbows on the glass counter in front while the store owner pulls up the footage from January 9 on his iPad. There’s a lot of snow, so much that nothing else is really visible. Every once in a while, someone scurries down the sidewalk—a vague blob, or, occasionally, two blobs together. Only a small wedge of street is covered by the camera and even this, the owner says, is just a glitch. “The wind,” he tells them. “It knocked the awning, the camera. Everything.”
And then there it is, the Audi, spinning for a second in the milky night. They can’t see the tree. They don’t see it hit. There is only the absence of motion. Nothing, for a stretched-out second, and then things flying. Like an explosion. Debris fills the screen.
After that, there’s nothing but white, and, behind it, the passenger-side door, part of the right front tire, turned outward at an ugly angle. Seconds pass. The storm seems to pick up, so much so they nearly miss the movement of the door. And then it opens slightly and closes, as if it’s being pushed hard from the inside, jammed shut from the wreck. Finally, the door flies open and a figure slides out to the ground, makes its way through the debris, a figure with a heavy coat, a covered head, a female, judging by the size. Together the three of them watch a small blurry figure hurry from the wrecked car down the street and quickly out of sight.
The Other Widow Page 4