Of course, Dorrie thinks. The hot chocolate strewn from one end of the front seat to the other. Brennan must know about it. “His wife, maybe? Karen?”
“I’m telling you this because whoever was in the car with Mr. Lindsay could be in danger. I don’t know about the details—who it was, why it was—and I don’t care. I’m just saying whoever was in the car could be in trouble.”
Before Dorrie can reply, there’s a racket outside on the street. Mug Me comes alive with customers running to windows and grabbing coats, with the baker taking off his apron, hurrying out from behind the counter. Someone overturns a chair, running for the door. Brennan’s face goes white. The dread that Dorrie’s felt all day intensifies.
“What happened?” She stands up. “What?” she says again, but no one answers. She rushes to the window but there are too many people crowded up against it, blocking it with their bodies. She can’t see out. Behind her, Brennan shakes her head, but more as a gesture of confusion than an answer. Dorrie grabs her bag and puts on her coat, leaves Brennan alone at their table, alone in the coffee shop, as she pushes through the door and outside to the street.
There’s a huge crowd. Where have they come from, all these people? Dorrie can’t see anything at all. A minute or two later, an ambulance rounds the corner with its sirens blaring. Two police cars are parked at an angle across the road. They’ll have to move, Dorrie thinks. Fast. They’re blocking the ambulance. She feels a hand on her back and whirls around. Brennan stands beside her.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Dorrie takes a few steps forward. “Of course. Can you see what—?” But Brennan is already gone, nearly out of sight inside the crowd, talking with the cops. Dorrie pushes forward through the jumble of bodies. And then she sees it.
Her coat.
Oh God no!
The Goodwill coat lies on the street, its sleeves together, as if someone’s folded it carefully and set it in a pool of slushy crumbly snow. Red. Red snow. Dorrie’s eyes shift slightly to the left, take in the jumbled hair, the small gloved hand. Jeananne.
She pushes past the onlookers and tries to reach her friend, to whisper in her ear, to let her know she’s not alone, that everything will be okay. Jeananne! She’s on her knees. Jeananne! But they nudge her away. Someone pulls her, tugs her backward. Brennan. “They need the space,” she says, but Dorrie pulls against her, slaps at her. She’s screaming; she can barely hear Brennan. Her words are tiny disconnected chunks of sound. Like ice. Like snow. “I’m here. Jeananne. I’m right here!”
There’s so much noise around her. Dorrie only catches bits and pieces of accounts, of witnesses’ reports. A car, she hears, a dark sedan. So fast! a voice says. Out of nowhere. Braked at the last second. Too late. Didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down.
Dorrie watches as the paramedics slide the stretcher inside the ambulance and close the door. The police cars are already gone and the ambulance takes off. Its sirens blare. Brennan stands beside her with her hands balled up in fists. Her yellow sweater is a sad and blatant contradiction to the blood that runs along the street beneath her feet; her skin is deathly pale. “Jeananne!” Dorrie screams again, her voice muffled by the sounds of the ambulance, the murmurs of the crowd, “I have to go to the hospital,” she says. “I have to let her know I’m there.”
Brennan nods. She gestures toward a car pulled against the curb, closer to Home Runs. “I’ll drop you.” But Dorrie shakes her head, declines the offer.
When they part ways on the sidewalk, when Brennan opens her car door with a trembling hand, Dorrie stops. She turns around. “Brennan,” she says. “It was mine. The coat. She was wearing my coat.”
XXI
MAGGIE
Maggie does not at first pull away from the curb. Instead she sits with her hands on the steering wheel, the key stuck in the ignition. She doesn’t turn it. The inside of the car is silent. Cold. People walk along the sidewalk as if nothing has happened, as if a young woman wasn’t run down minutes earlier on this same street. Maggie stares through the windshield where flakes drift down like afterthoughts. She doesn’t really see them. She doesn’t see the sky, gray and cloudy after such a bright white start, the blue sky, the blazing sun covered now by clouds. She doesn’t see any of this. What she sees is Jeananne’s body hurled into the air. She sees it even with her eyes closed, the small body being tossed into the sky, landing like a rag doll on the pavement.
She shakes her head. That isn’t right. She didn’t see it happen. She didn’t see the car. She didn’t even see Jeananne until she stooped down next to Dorrie to get her out of the way, to give the EMTs a chance to do their jobs.
Her brain is filled with bodies exploding outward toward the sky, with screams and blood and broken people, broken lives, broken minds. She reaches for the key and starts the ignition. She looks at her hands shaking on the steering wheel, takes a deep breath and then another and another. She turns on her iPod, lets the music fill her head, lets Modest Mouse drive out the memory of Iraq, the Humvee—the image of Jeananne lying on the pavement, her eyes closed, her face drained of color, dull in the faded brightness of the day, as if she was already gone.
She glances at her watch. Twelve. The birthday party will be starting. Timmy will be tearing through his presents, his plastic soldiers, horses, blocks, the Fisher-Price piano Maggie’s sister bought for him, the paints and drawing table, clothes from Maggie’s mom. She looks over her shoulder at her own gift sitting on the backseat, the caterpillar light that projects the galaxy, so Timmy can look up at night and see the universe change colors on the ceiling over his bed. Maggie runs her hand through her hair and sticks on her dark glasses, even though the light outside is dim. She puts the car in gear and slowly pulls away from the curb.
She leaves the party after only an hour. Early but her nephew barely notices. He’s busy with a dump truck with a noisy horn. “Who gave him that?” Maggie asked her sister, as the horn beeped endlessly across the living room. “You piss somebody off?” It was uncomfortable being there. She doesn’t really get along with Dave, her sister’s husband. Even so, the neighbors were nice enough, the kids were cute. It was good to see the family, even though her mother kept an eye on Maggie the whole time. “You okay?” her mother asked her every five minutes or so. “You look a little pale.”
She was glad to go. She’s glad to be heading back to the flimsy office, the numbers that wait for her in black and white across the page. Today she’s grateful for her boring job.
She thumbs through a stack of claims she needs to look into and then she phones Home Runs. “This is Maggie Brennan,” she says. “The woman who was hit. Jeananne. Is there any word on her condition?” No, the woman on the other end says. Not that she’s heard, anyway. Not so far. She’s a temp, she says, so she’s not really in the loop, and Dorrie hasn’t come back to the office yet. “Shall I have her call you?” she says, but Maggie tells her no. She’ll check back later.
She makes a few more phone calls, walks down to talk with a couple of the guys at the end of the hall, and then stares at the two claims on Joseph Lindsay in the file on her desk.
On impulse, Maggie rifles through her purse and finds the number for the bakery near Newbury. “Hey,” she says, when a young man answers the phone. “This is Maggie Brennan. I spoke to you about the security tapes from the night of the accident over on—yeah. Right. Your uncle back yet?”
It takes only a minute for the uncle to find footage from the Friday night Joe Lindsay died. “Craig Zant,” he says, extending his hand to Maggie and then again to Hank when he ducks in. Hank’s on duty; he comes in only long enough to get the ball rolling before he heads back to the squad car, where his impatient partner waits.
Craig is cordial, but he’s anxious to get this over with. He’s hung a little CLOSED sign on the front door and a few people have already had their hands on the knob before they noticed the sign. “Nine o’clock on,” Maggie says. “That’s all I need to see.”
There isn’t much. Lots of darkness, lots of snow. They stand together at the counter, staring at Craig’s iPad, watching snow and night as customers repel off the bakery door. The owner huffs and puffs and fidgets. “What exactly is this all about?” he wants to know, and Maggie tells him there was a fatality that night—“a death over on Newbury.”
“We aren’t actually on Newbury, in case that escaped you, young lady,” the owner says, antsy. Grumpy. The nephew was much nicer, but he isn’t here, only the uncle. Craig. You get what you get.
“Wait!” Maggie says. “Freeze it!” And just that quickly she is there. Under the awning, right in the light. Damn. Maggie couldn’t have posed her any better. She stares straight ahead, and then she reaches up, pulls her hat down low across her forehead, and it’s stained with something dark. Blood. No doubt about it. Dorrie stands there staring at herself in Craig Zant’s shop-front window in that one square of dusty light. Right onstage, like the actress she is. “Thanks,” Maggie says. “Possible to send me a copy?” She writes her e-mail address down on a paper bag, buys a couple of pastries, leaves an extra ten dollars on the counter.
In the car she turns on her iPod, concentrates on Iron and Wine. That damn coat. “It was mine,” Dorrie turned around to tell her on the street. “She was wearing my coat.” At the time, Maggie hadn’t gotten the whole picture. She hadn’t known then that the coat Jeananne was wearing was the same coat Dorrie wore the night Joe Lindsay died.
She feels restless. Edgy. She isn’t ready to go home, but it’s late now to go back in to work. She thinks about driving to Waltham, interviewing Lindsay’s widow, but decides against it. Instead she stops in front of Mass General. She’ll go in. See how Jeananne’s doing. She pulls into the ER parking lot. She gets out of the car and locks it carefully behind her. She even takes a few steps toward the door before she hears the siren, sees Jeananne’s body sprawled across the street—and then that day in Baghdad, her friends behind her in the Humvee, when she thought she’d driven them to safety, when she turned around to tell them they were all okay, they’d made it out, and saw they were all dead. Her insides shake. Her stomach feels as if she’s being stabbed, as if she’s under fire in a combat zone. She doubles over, ducks down. When she gets back to her car, she sits behind the wheel for a minute and sweat covers her forehead, her face. She reaches over to open the glove compartment and pulls out an unopened pint of Absolut she keeps there for emergencies, for panic attacks that hit her sometimes without warning, that terrify her, paralyze her. She twists at the cap and her fingers tremble and slip. She can’t get a grip. She leans back against the seat and concentrates on slowing down, on breathing in and breathing out, until her heart stops pounding, until she is exhausted. Drained. She sticks the untouched pint of Absolut back in the glove compartment and stares out the windshield toward the street.
XXII
KAREN
Karen wakes up thinking about Tomas. She smiles. For a moment she is only here, suspended, reaching for the edges of a dream. Before she opens her eyes into the brightness of another day, before the guilt from her indulgent dream settles in, she lets herself drift. She stretches, burrowing deeper under the covers. She forgot to set the thermostat before she went to bed, and it can’t be more than fifty-five degrees. She did sleep, though. Maybe it’s a good thing, Tomas being back in her life. Even if it’s only a fairly loose connection, a friendship, even if he still wants more from her than she can give, although, after yesterday, she’s not so sure he does. He tramped off much more eagerly than she’d expected. Of course, he had to get to work. Or maybe he has someone else in his life by now. And Karen can deal with that. Tomas was always so intense—this might be better in the long run. She smiles, gathers the comforter around her as she stumbles to the hall and pumps up the thermostat with Antoine at her heels. “I know,” she says, “I know, Antoine,” and together they head for the kitchen. She opens the back door and Antoine streaks outside as her cell buzzes on the counter.
Karen grabs the phone on the second ring. She knew he’d be like this, unable to back off, to give her space. “Tomas?”
“Nope. Sorry. It’s Maggie Brennan.”
Oops. “Sorry. Thought you were someone else.”
“Right,” Brennan says. There’s a pause, and Karen thinks about telling her what happened the night before, that there was a car parked on a side street with its lights aimed at her living room window. “I thought I’d drop by if it’s all right with you.”
Karen hesitates, but only for a few seconds. For all she knows, it was Brennan out there snooping around the night before or someone else from the insurance company. Maybe they’ve got her under surveillance. Maybe they think she had something to do with Joe’s death. Maybe they saw her standing in the crowd after the accident. No. She won’t say anything.
“Say in an hour?”
“Sure,” Karen says. “Do you know how to get here?”
“Yeah,” Brennan tells her. “It’s a pretty straight shot from Boston.”
Brennan’s managed to eradicate all thoughts of Tomas, any remnants of lightness leftover from the day before. Karen dresses, grabs a cup of coffee, puts two glasses on a fancy painted tray, heats up a streusel she finds in the freezer, and digs out butter and coconut spread.
An hour later, Brennan knocks on the door. Once inside, she extends her hand. “Maggie,” she says. “Nice to meet you,” and Karen is surprised at how friendly the woman looks. So young. So unlike what she’d pictured. Antoine yowls from Joe’s office, where Karen’s stuck him for the moment with his plaid doggie bed, one of several scattered through the house.
“Just coffee,” Brennan says, as Karen leans to pour orange juice. “It’s cold as—” She doesn’t really say what it’s cold as, but she doesn’t have to. The front yard looks like a tundra. “Black,” Maggie says, and she wraps her hands around the large cup to warm them.
Karen gestures toward the streusel. “Please,” she says. “Help yourself.”
“Can we sit?” Brennan wonders. “I’ve got a couple things to go over with you.” Karen nods, and together they walk to the living room, food in hand. They sit down on the couch.
Brennan clears her throat. “As I told you on the phone, there seem to be some irregularities surrounding this claim. In my opinion, with what I’ve seen up to now, it appears your husband’s death might not have been an accident.”
So Edward was right. Karen feels her face turn red, her cheeks burning. “Oh,” she says. “My God. I knew he was upset about the business, but I didn’t realize . . .”
“You didn’t realize what, Mrs. Lindsay?”
“Karen. Please. Call me Karen. That he was really that unhappy. Not unhappy enough to take his own—I mean, Edward told me you might decide Joe’s death was a suicide, but I didn’t believe him.”
“Actually, I’m inclined not to think it was a suicide at this point.”
“Wait.” Karen stares at Maggie Brennan, who used to be a cop. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying at this point it looks like what happened wasn’t just random. But that’s only my opinion. I could be wrong. I tend to see things in a gloomy light sometimes. I was a cop,” she says, “and a—” She bends over the coffee cake and cuts herself another slice. “Do you mind? This is really—”
“Please,” Karen says. “Finish it! I don’t need the calories. What were you going to say? You were what? A cop and what?”
“A soldier.”
“Really.” Karen doesn’t say this as a question, but as a verification, an indication that she’s heard her. She can so see Brennan as a soldier. “Excuse me,” Karen says, and she grabs a couple of plates, heads for the kitchen, grateful for a moment to herself. Not just random. What the hell? “So where did they send you?”
“Iraq,” Brennan says, and Karen barely hears her from the kitchen. “I joined the reserves in college.”
“Was it a surprise, then?” Karen pours another cup of coffee. “Being called up? Be
ing sent to—?”
“Yeah,” Brennan says. “Totally.”
Karen takes an extra few seconds leaving the kitchen, still processing what Brennan said. Or, really, what she didn’t say. Did someone murder Joe? This seems not only unlikely, but unbelievable. Of course Brennan isn’t sure. Inclined to think, she’d said. Karen sets down the coffee and notices that Brennan’s hands are shaking when she picks it up. Coffee sloshes over the sides of the cup and she sets it back in the saucer.
“Hot,” she says. “I’ll let it cool down for a minute.”
“What makes you think my husband’s death wasn’t an accident?”
“The brake line. Someone used a tie-wrap to fasten it against the— basically, it was rubbing against something that would eventually scrape through the line. Which it did. The brakes went out on that side so when your husband tried to stop, most likely jammed his foot down on the brake, the car went into a spin and out of control.”
“How did you happen to notice the, um—?”
Brennan makes another attempt with the coffee and this time her hands aren’t shaking quite so much. Still, Karen thinks. She’s clearly got some issues, most likely from Iraq. All these kids coming back . . . “Just happened to spot it,” Brennan says. “My family worked on cars all the time. Brothers with old heaps. Boneshakers. Older brothers. I watched them a lot. Would Joe have done it? Do you think your husband messed with his own brakes?”
Karen considers. “I don’t think so. He was complaining, though, about them not being right. He asked me to take his car back into the shop, but I didn’t. I kept meaning to, but . . .”
“So maybe he thought he’d do a quick fix?”
Karen shakes her head. “He wasn’t good at all with cars.”
Brennan looks at her. “This wasn’t exactly a good job.” She stands up. “Listen,” she says. “Thanks for the coffee cake and everything. The—um—coffee. I’m afraid I won’t be able to close the case until I have more information.”
The Other Widow Page 14