The Marlboro Man: A Moira McElvaney Mystery

by Derek Fee

  ‘Something changed recently.’ Jean looked at the handkerchief and was about to hand it back when she realised it was soiled.

  ‘It’s OK you can keep it,’ Moira said quickly.

  Jean tried a smile to say thanks, but it didn’t come off right. ‘About three months ago he got a new client that he was very excited about. I’d never seen Greg like that. He was talking about selling the business and going travelling. He’d never mentioned such stuff before. Our house has always been adequate for us. And now our son is studying engineering at Carnegie Mellon and our daughter is in her final year at high school, we’ll soon have it to ourselves. Why should we want to move away? And I never considered travelling outside the US. I don’t even have a passport.’

  ‘You told the police about the new client?’ Moira asked.

  Jean dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief. ‘Yes. But they can find no details of any new client. It seems like Greg was doing some deals outside the usual work of the practice.’

  ‘What kind of deals?’ Brendan asked.

  ‘He was selling containers for this mysterious client. Or so it appears. The police are baffled since they can find no sign of the client. Not only that but they can’t find anyone who claims to have bought a container from him. It’s a real mystery. Please, you have to help me find Greg. The police have given up. I’m sure you think that he’s run off with some floozy. At least that’s what they seem to think. They keep saying that he’ll return home when he gets fed up.’

  Moira could empathise with the woman’s desperation. The omens were not good. Two weeks was a long time to be missing. Most of the leads would have gone cold and newer investigations would be taking precedence. The police file would be kept open, but no advancement would be made unless some new evidence was forthcoming. Posting a reward would only bring every flake in Miami out of the woodwork and deflect the police from finding a valid lead. Moira looked at Jean’s pained expression, and then saw that Shea was looking expectantly at her.

  ‘You’re the expert here,’ Shea said when they locked eyes. ‘I’m ready to fund an investigation. Will you help?’

  ‘I’m sure there are top-notch private investigators in Boston,’ Moira said. ‘My advice would be to hire one of them.’

  ‘There are, but I want to be part of the investigation,’ Shea said. ‘And that seems to be out of the question.’

  Moira’s eyebrows rose. ‘You’re joking. Take my advice and leave it to the professionals.’ She was aware that in missing person’s cases, the police are the professionals – they have the resources. ‘If Greg Gardiner has gone on the run, you can bet this magnificent house that it wasn’t on impulse. He probably had a plan and that means it’ll take a considerable effort to find him. What I’m trying to point out is that even with expert help and substantial resources your cousin’s husband might never be found. And that’s if he went on the run on his own volition.’ She stopped and thought about how to phrase her next point. Whatever way she did it Jean Gardiner was going to be affected. ‘There’s always the possibility that Greg has disappeared because someone doesn’t want him around.’

  ‘You mean he may be dead?’ Jean collapsed in a fit of wailing.

  Brendan shot a look of admonishment at Moira. She shrugged her shoulders, then went to Jean and hugged the crying woman. ‘I’m sorry, but you have to face the fact that you may never see your husband again. In my experience, it’s likely that if the police can’t locate your husband, then neither can we. Most cases of missing persons don’t end well.’

  Jean stopped crying and dried her eyes. Moira stepped back and Jean looked up into her eyes. ‘But there is a chance that he’s lying somewhere in a hospital hurt or with amnesia.’

  Moira wanted to say that the amnesia scenario only plays in Hollywood.

  ‘Of course there is.’ Shea was on his feet. He lifted his cousin up from her chair. ‘You’re emotionally drained. That’s enough for today.’

  Jean broke away from his grip and turned to Moira. ‘Thank you for being honest with me. Everyone except Miami PD has been sugar-coating the pill. Frank only wants to help. I trust you and if you don’t want to help, I’ll accept it.’

  Moira was at a loss. She didn’t want to completely dash this poor woman’s hopes, but she had to be realistic. She was a police detective from Northern Ireland. She had no standing in the United States. Hell, she was in the country on a non-immigrant visa. If she took a dollar for doing a job, she’d probably be deported. ‘I’ll talk to Frank.’

  Jean shook hands with Moira and Brendan and allowed Shea to lead her back through the house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  T he sun was at almost full power and a canopy was released that provided shade for the terrace. Moira was pacing up and down. She was more than a little pissed off that the weekend had been arranged to recruit her on a wild goose chase. She hadn’t enjoyed the interview with Jean Gardiner. She didn’t like the feeling of powerlessness that emanated from the woman. It also didn’t feel good to turn down the kind of person she had joined the police force to help. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect, however, had been that hearing the story of the missing husband only emphasised how much she was missing her career as a police officer. As a young girl, she knew that she would be attracted to the caring professions. Her first thoughts had centred on nursing, but she rejected that idea after watching ten or so episodes of a hospital soap. After university she tried social work, but the bureaucracy constantly stifled her attempts to help her clients. Then she found her true calling. As a police officer, she could help people and work at putting wrongs right. She walked up and down the terrace mulling over why she should help Jean. There were police officers out there who were trained to find runaway adults. They knew the lie of the land. They spoke the same language as the street people. She knew the few blocks surrounding Brendan’s apartment in Cambridge and that was it. What exactly did Shea and his cousin think that she could add to their mindless expedition?

  Moira had been able to sense Jean’s desperation. And she could understand it. Everybody went through life expecting everything to remain the same. The children returned home from school at four o’clock. If they don’t appear at five past four the butterflies start beating their wings in the mother’s stomach. At four-thirty the panic has already set in and at five o’clock the police are called only for the children to appear at five past five. Jean Gardiner was way beyond that stage. One only had to look at her to understand that she hadn’t been able to compute the fact that her husband had disappeared and might never re-appear. There was also the fact that finding someone who wants to get lost can be well-nigh impossible, especially in a country as vast as the US. It was easy to agree with the conclusion of Miami PD that he was either in Seattle, Brazil or dead. She doubted his wife would ever find him again. And that made her feel powerless and angry.

  Brendan watched Moira as she paced back and forward. He had never met anyone with her levels of empathy. He knew that she was churning inside wondering how she could assuage Jean’s pain. He was also aware that Moira was suffering withdrawal symptoms. It wasn’t homesickness – that was something she would get over – it was her damn job. Every time he saw the faraway look on her face he knew that he had been responsible for taking her away from a job she loved. A simple weekend away to Martha’s Vineyard had managed to bring the whole issue to the fore. He looked up as Shea walked through the glass double doors that led to the terrace. ‘Jesus Christ, Frank, I had no idea that you were going to pull something like this. You hung Moira out to dry.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Shea fell into one of the chairs. ‘You built Moira up as this supercop and I just wanted to get an opinion from her.’

  ‘That is so much bullshit,’ Brendan said. ‘You were setting her up. Your cousin is grasping at straws and you held out Moira as someone who could find her husband.’

  Shea sat forward. ‘OK, maybe I’ve been a bit of an asshole. But I thought that if we pooled our different skil
ls we could do a better job than Miami PD. For Christ’s sake, one of the qualifications for joining the police force in this country is a low IQ. You think some overworked Miami detectives are going to spend their time concentrating on the disappearance of an accountant from Boston? Fifty thousand adults go missing annually in the United States. Some turn up, but a hell of a lot vanish without a trace.’

  ‘Call the FBI,’ Brendan said. ‘Get private detectives on the case, but leave Moira and me out.’

  Moira stopped pacing. She returned to the table and sat. ‘It’s OK, Brendan. I don’t need a knight in shining armour to protect me.’ She turned to Shea. ‘You’re a clever guy, Frank. You have all these degrees from MIT and Harvard. What the hell gives you the idea that you can solve crimes?’

  ‘I didn’t say that I could solve Greg’s disappearance, but I do have skills and I have access to people who have the skills I don’t possess. Don’t forget I spent three years in jail with some of the top criminals in the country, and I didn’t pass the time twiddling my thumbs. We may not find Greg, but we can sure as hell try.’

  Moira sat quietly for a moment. Maybe this weekend was preordained. She needed something to get her teeth into and unfortunately it wasn’t sitting at the rear of a lecture theatre listening to details of crimes and the psychology behind them. She was a practitioner, not a theorist. Fate has a funny habit of tossing challenges in the way, and there was a certain attraction in Shea’s unexpected proposition. There wasn’t a hope in hell of finding Gregory Gardiner if he didn’t want to be found, but it was certainly more her to be out there searching than sitting in a lecture theatre.

  ‘Now, wait just one goddamned minute,’ Brendan had seen that look on Moira’s face before. ‘Please tell me that you’re not taking Frank’s half-assed proposal seriously. What about the course? I thought that you were interested?’

  Moira could see the concern on Brendan’s face. She knew how he felt. She had experienced the same feelings when she had made the decision to follow him to the US. Things were good between them, but were they good enough for her to give up the job she loved? Perhaps accepting Shea’s proposal would prove to be the first chink in the armour. ‘I haven’t made up my mind. It might be a wild goose chase, but it’s what I do. Or to be more exact it’s what I used to do.’ And maybe what I really want to do again, she thought.

  Shea watched the two lovers. It was apparent that Moira hadn’t broken completely with her past life in Northern Ireland. ‘We’ll give it one month. If we don’t find Greg, or at least discover what has happened to him in that time we’ll give it up.’ He looked at Brendan. ‘You can spare Moira for a month, can’t you?’ The look on Brendan’s face was enough to tell him that he might be jeopardising one of his oldest friendships.

  ‘This is crazy.’ Brendan couldn’t believe that Moira was taking the idea seriously. He turned to face her. ‘Ever since I’ve known Frank he’s been involved in some scheme or other. At school, he was the class representative, he edited the school magazine. He’s like a shark, always moving forward, afraid of what might happen if he stops. The court took away his business so now he’s looking for something else. Right now, the search for Gregory Gardiner is that something else. But in a week’s time it might be looking for a gold mine in northern Thailand.’ He put his hand out and touched Moira’s hand. ‘This is make-work for Frank. Something to keep his grey cells active until something else comes along. Don’t get drawn into his game.’

  Shea smiled. ‘You’re a hell of a good psychologist, and there’s a lot of truth in what you say. I do thrive on challenge and although I’ve only just met Moira, I can recognise a kindred spirit. If you care about her happiness, you’ll encourage her to take up my offer. It’s one month at the most.’

  Brendan looked at Moira. She was staying silent. It was an inauspicious silence. He knew that Shea was right, and he knew that if he cared for Moira and her happiness he wouldn’t stand in her way. But he was also aware of the risks. He interlaced his fingers in hers. He loved her so much. But if that were really true he would have stayed in Belfast. He turned to Shea. ‘You are one asshole, Frank, but you’re right. I have no right to interfere in Moira’s decision.’

  ‘When can we start?’ Moira said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  T he remainder of the day was tense. Brendan and Shea went sailing in the afternoon. Moira’s Irish paleness wasn’t consistent with either sunshine or sea breezes, so she borrowed a computer and set out to find everything there was on the Internet and social media concerning Gregory Gardiner. It wasn’t much. Gardiner was old-school and hadn’t bothered to create an online presence. She started with the latest news postings, which were of the ‘Businessman goes missing in Miami’ variety. And there weren’t many of them. She located two short articles from the Sun Sentinel. No body had been located and the Miami PD had drawn a blank, so the story had been spiked. She printed off the articles and searched back further in time. There was one mention of Gardiner in the Boston Globe, where he was named as an attendee at a national conference of auditors. She searched LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and found accounts for several Gregory Gardiners but not the right Gregory Gardiner. As Jean Gardiner had indicated, her husband seemed to be the epitome of the boring accountant. If she were a real US policewoman, she would have interrogated the social security databases, she would have dug up Gardiner’s birth certificate and his tax returns and contacted his bank for a list of his transactions. Then there would have been his phone records, landline and mobile. That’s the route that Miami PD would have gone through if they had the time and the inclination.

  She took up a legal pad and listed the items she needed to formulate a picture of Gregory Gardiner. Beside each one she added the sources she felt could provide the information, and in a third column the person who might have access to the details. Jean Gardiner would be a major asset in building up the picture Moira needed. Therein lay another problem of this investigation. In missing person cases, the first person who falls under suspicion is the partner of the missing person. They were going to have to depend on assistance from someone who to the outside world was desperate to locate her husband but who might, in reality, be the person responsible for his disappearance.

  Moira shut down the computer and picked up the printouts and the legal pad. It was a poor return for the hours she had put in. Maybe joining Shea’s undertaking wasn’t the smartest decision she had ever made. She wasn’t just thinking about how difficult it was going to be to find Gardiner, she had noticed that there had been no goodbye kiss from Brendan when he and Shea had headed for the dock. Her partner hadn’t taken her decision well and he was using passive–aggressive techniques to get his point across. She sometimes wondered whether Brendan remembered that she had majored in psychology at university. She was aware of his game and she knew how to give it back. She walked to the front of the terrace and sat in an Adirondack chair facing the ocean. Just a day ago she had been relatively happy in her new life. Relatively was a big word. Frank Shea had inadvertently opened a sore that she had been ignoring.

  Moira’s experience with men hadn’t been positive. It was only after she married her childhood sweetheart that she discovered his controlling nature. When she rebelled against it, the abuse turned from mental to physical and the whole affair ended with her husband in jail and her marriage in the toilet. She wasn’t about to relive that experience. Brendan knew about the scars her marriage had left on her. Maybe there was a side to Brendan that she needed to explore.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A t precisely ten minutes to nine on Monday morning, Moira entered the lift in a prestigious building on Huffington Avenue in downtown Boston, having passed the regulation vetting by the concierge. As the lift began its ascent to the penthouse, Moira reflected on the weekend. There had been some level of rapprochement between Brendan and Shea by the time they returned from their afternoon sail and the rest of the weekend passed relatively serenely. Shea cho
se to eat out and invited some friends to join them, so they all enjoyed the food and company at the Red Cat Kitchen and it took the focus away from the elephant in the room. Brendan seemed to have accepted her decision but maintained a coolness that didn’t auger well for the future.

  Moira left the lift and found herself in a corridor with four doors. The ubiquitous Justin held one door open for her and then led her through a large living room and from there to an equally large outdoor terrace, where the table had been set for breakfast. Shea was seated at the table looking out over Boston and the Charles River. The view was stunning. He was dressed in what she took to be his regular uniform of white cotton shirt and blue jeans, accompanied by a pair of expensive-looking tan moccasins.

  He stood as soon as she approached. ‘Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘About an hour ago.’ Justin pulled back a chair and Moira sat. ‘I know this is extremely gauche of me, but how much did you pay for this place?’

  ‘Eight million.’ Shea retook his seat and poured Moira a cup of coffee.

  ‘Now I’m sorry I asked.’ Moira took the cup and sipped the coffee.

  ‘This will be our centre of operations while we look for Greg. I was going to lease a small office downtown, but then I thought, what the hell, we have space in the condo.’

  ‘This is a condo?’ She took the legal pad out of her tote bag.

  ‘So they tell me. Where do we begin?’

  She passed across the photocopied articles from the Sun Sentinel. ‘This is all I could find online. Our Gregory Gardiner has no presence on the web and since we don’t belong to law enforcement we’re going to have to work that much harder to develop a profile. We’re definitely going to need Jean for that. I’ve made a few notes.’ She passed over the legal pad.

  Shea read quickly and passed the pad back. ‘You’re good. I wouldn’t have thought of half the items on your list.’