Familiar Friend

by Cristina Sumners

  T.N.K. Public Relations was housed in an attractive building of glass and brick, not more than ten years old, and furnished with ample parking. Luxury, thought Tom.

  In the foyer he was greeted by an attractive receptionist who examined his credentials with some consternation but who calmed down considerably when she heard his story.

  “I don’t see that there should be any trouble about that. If anybody at this firm rented a stretch limo, it would have been to meet some of our clients at the airport and take them around, that’s a thing we do frequently. Let me just see. We’ll start with Mr. Taylor.” She pressed a button on the array before her. “Julie? Can you tell me if Mr. Taylor rented a stretch limo for clients last Sunday? Are you sure? Because there’s a policeman here asking, so it’s important. Thanks.” She pressed the button again and shook her head at Tom. “Not Mr. Taylor. I’ll try Mr. Norton now. Sharon? Can you tell me if Mr. Norton had a stretch limo rented for clients last Sunday? Yes? At Newark? Well, there’s a policeman here asking about it. Could you come out and talk to him? Thanks.”

  In about ten seconds a severe-looking woman of about thirty-five came striding out of a corridor that led from the foyer back into the private recesses of T.N.K.

  “What’s all this? The police?”

  Tom introduced himself, and explained that it was just routine, an attempt to eliminate rented stretch limos from the inquiry.

  “Well, then. Mr. Norton rented a stretch limo from Avis at Newark Airport on Sunday to pick up some important clients of ours who were flying in from the West Coast and who needed to be wined and dined, that sort of thing. Apparently they wanted to see Philadelphia. There’s no accounting for taste. So that’s where Mr. Norton took them. Is that what you needed to know?”

  “Yes, thanks. And then they came here?”

  “No, as far as I know they’re still in Philadelphia.”

  “And Mr. Norton is with them?”

  “No, he’s back at work but he’s not in the office right now.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s all I need. Thanks very much.”

  Tom departed in haste for Harton. He wanted to speak to Patrick Cunningham about how he acquired Tracy’s glass and when Tracy’s glass acquired ice cubes.

  Back at T.N.K. Public Relations, a red LeBaron convertible pulled into the space just vacated by Tom’s old Ford, and a tall man with tired eyes got out and walked into the building.

  “Hello, Joel,” said the receptionist. “You just missed a policeman. He was here asking questions about your stretch limo, of all things. The one you rented for those West Coast clients who wanted to go to Philadelphia. But Sharon answered all his questions and he went away.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Tom would not have been able to drive around New Jersey with a mind clear enough to think about ice cubes, nor would he have been able to enjoy the antics of the Forces of Evil, had he had any inkling of the activities of Nick Silverman that Friday.

  The District Attorney, upon leaving Tom’s office, had returned to his car and used his cell phone to call his office and tell them to make arrangements for the Newman girl to see a hypnotist. He had then left the car and walked to a coffee shop on Main Street, where he had enjoyed a coffee and Danish and a fit of resentment. Something would obviously have to be done about Tom Holder.

  He paid his bill and walked back to the police station, intending to have another go at bringing the intransigent Holder into line, but the Chief had gone to interview one of his neighbors who had reported seeing his wife. “But it’s probably nothing,” Pursley told the D.A. “The old lady’s ninety-four, and she’s claiming she saw Mrs. Holder get into a stretch limo and drive off, so obviously the Chief isn’t taking it very seriously, I mean, how could he? The old lady’s obviously nuts. But he’s gone to talk to her because nobody else has reported seeing Mrs. Holder at all, and I guess he’s hoping that maybe if he talks to her he can make some sort of sense of what she’s saying and figure out what she really did see. If she saw anything at all, that is.”

  “I see,” said Silverman meditatively. “Thank you, Sergeant.” Pursley went away. After a moment, the D.A. turned to another officer, one who he had reason to believe would have less personal loyalty to Tom, and asked, “Could you please bring me Chief Holder’s personnel file?”

  It was an unusual request, but the District Attorney had the authority to make it, so the officer obliged. Silverman took the file out to his car to be assured of privacy and began to look through it. A few minutes later he took it back into the station and returned it to the policeman who had given it to him, and seven minutes after that he was being shown into the office of a surprised Father Mark Randall at St. Margaret’s Church.

  “How do you do, Mr. Silverman; Mark Randall; very pleased to meet you, sit down, sit down. I would ask what brings you to St. Margaret’s but I suspect it must be our unfortunate connection with the murder of Mason Blaine.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Randall. That’s a good guess, but actually it’s mistaken. I’m here in connection with the disappearance of Louise Holder.”

  “Oh, yes, that! Shocking! And so distressing for Tom, of course. How can I help you?”

  “Well, as both the Holders are members of this church, I assume that some of the people in the church are going to be friends of Mrs. Holder, and can talk to me about how she was feeling, where she might have gone, that sort of thing.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Mr. Silverman,” Father Mark began tentatively, “I can see that you are not personally acquainted with Louise Holder.” There was another pause. “I want to be careful in how I put this. I’m not sure Louise has any friends, per se. People are kind to her for Tom’s sake, but she is, ah, a bit eccentric.”

  “Ahhh,” Silverman breathed. “I see.” He thought for a moment. “Still, I would like to speak to some members of the church about her. Can you suggest a list of church people who would have known her for several years?”

  Father Mark considered. “I suppose the easiest thing would be to give you a list of vestry members and mark the ones who’ve been in the church for more than, say, four years. Would that do?”

  “Vestry?”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. The vestry is our governing committee, so to speak. Every three years we elect new members to serve for another three years.”

  “So the vestry members are the leaders of your church?”

  “You could say that.”

  Nick Silverman agreed that a list of vestry members, marked as suggested, would be perfect for his purposes, and a few minutes later he left St. Margaret’s with just such a list in his pocket.

  He spent the day hunting these good people down in their homes and places of business and questioning them. Depending upon their personalities and upon the attitude he perceived them to bear toward Tom Holder, his interrogation methods ranged from the sly and insinuating to the brutal and badgering.

  The result of this activity was that when Tom arrived back at the station after having stopped for a very late lunch, he found the D.A. in his office waiting for him, trying—and failing—not to look smug.

  Tom knew instantly that he was in trouble. The only question was, how much?

  “Hello, Nick,” he said levelly.

  “Hello, Tom. Where’ve you been?”

  “Checking out some things. Doing some thinking about the case. What brings you back here?”

  “Sit down, Tom.”

  Tom circled his desk and sat down. He became aware of his heart beating.

  “Tom, I’m really sorry about this, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to suspend you from duty, effective immediately, pending a satisfactory resolution to the investigation of your wife’s disappearance. Of course you’ll—”

  “You son of a bitch! You’re out of your mind! You’re doing this over Louise?”

  “Calm down, Tom. I have no choice. The circumstances are just too damning. She’s been missing too long. You failed to report her disap
pearance. You’re a police officer in the public eye. I couldn’t permit you to run the investigation by yourself; we could be open to the accusation of conflict of interest. So this morning I took a hand myself. I went over to your church and got the names of twelve people who have known you and your wife for more than four years and I talked to them today. Tom, of those twelve people, no less than eight of them—Tom, no less than eight of them stated to me that they believed it was possible that you have killed your wife. Tom, these are your friends. These are people from your own church. Now, what do you expect me to do under these circumstances?

  “As I was trying to say when you interrupted me, you’ll be on full pay while we investigate. And Tom, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you killed her. But we have to safeguard the reputation of law enforcement in this county. I’m sure you understand that. So go on home; we’ll appoint a replacement to cover for you temporarily.”

  Tom had turned to stone. His anger at Silverman had evaporated. Eight people at St. Margaret’s thought he had killed Louise?

  Which eight?

  Where had Nick Silverman gotten a list of people at St. Margaret’s to talk to?

  “Tom, you need to go.”

  Silently, Tom rose and walked out of his office. His feet did not seem to feel the floor.

  Nick Silverman traveled happily back to Trenton and set in motion arrangements for somebody to step into Tom’s shoes until he, Nick, could solve the Mason Blaine case. Meanwhile Louise Holder would surely be located—not too soon—and there would be a satisfactory ending all around and Tom Holder could go back to his job when he was no longer raining on Nick’s parade.

  The minute he made the first phone call, of course, the news started ricocheting through the system, and precisely twenty-three minutes later it reached one of the crime scene labs where Sid Garvey happened to be working.

  Sid looked at his supervisor and said, “Amanda, I just got a migraine headache. Also, I think I’m gonna throw up. And my knees are shaking, and I can feel an attack of—”

  “Go, Sid, take the rest of the day off. And tell him we all think it’s dirty politics and as for me, I’ve half a mind to drop a cyanide ice cube in Nick Silverman’s next martini. Tom Holder’s a good man. You tell him that from me. You hear?”

  There were several comments of a similar nature from the rest of the people in the room as Sid headed for the door.

  “Thanks, Mandy. Thanks, guys. I’ll tell him.”

  On his way to Harton, Sid stopped at a liquor store and bought the most expensive bottle of Scotch they had. It was his firm belief that a man should never drown his sorrows in anything cheap.

  Meanwhile, Kathryn’s last afternoon seminar had concluded, she had gone home, visited with Tracy, graded some papers, and gotten restless. She wanted to know what was going on with the homicides and with Louise’s disappearance. This was the time of day when Tom frequently called and invited himself over for tea and conversation, but the time ticked by and there was no phone call. Finally, unable to contain herself, she called the station and asked to speak to him.

  “He’s been what?”

  “Suspended. Pending the investigation into the disappearance of his wife.”

  “What—wha—wha—Is he under some sort of suspicion?”

  “Not from anybody here at this station,” said the voice at the other end of the line with rather an edge.

  “Then who did this?”

  “The District Attorney.”

  “The District Attorney,” Kathryn pronounced trenchantly, “has his head up his ass.”

  “I don’t know who you are, lady, but I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “I’m somebody from Tom’s church.”

  “Well, I’m glad to know that, because it was people from the Chief’s church who got him into this. The D.A. said he talked to a lot of people from that church, and eight of them said they thought the Chief had bumped off his wife.” (Somebody had been listening at the door, but the woman talking to Kathryn wasn’t about to let that bit of information slip.)

  “What?”

  The woman jerked the phone away from her ear. “I’m glad to hear not everybody feels that way,” she said.

  “I don’t believe he found eight who feel that way,” said Kathryn with feeling. “Listen, thanks.” She hung up and scrambled in her desk for her St. Margaret’s directory and punched Tom’s home phone number. She let it ring fifteen times, but there was no answer. This did not convince her, however, that he was not at home. Making a note of the address, she headed out of the house for her car.

  She pulled a map of Harton out of the glove compartment, located Tom’s street, and set out for his neighborhood. A few minutes later she was driving down the modest road looking at numbers. There was Tom’s. It was a white frame house with blue shutters and a neat lawn. There were a couple of trees of the kind that are planted in new subdivisions and designed to grow to great heights quickly; Kathryn didn’t know what kind they were. Against the house there were some bushes, trimmed so that they did not obscure the windows. The property was completely unpretentious but well cared for.

  There was a car parked at the curb in front of it, a black SUV; Kathryn parked behind it, got out, went up the walk, and rang the bell.

  Sid had arrived approximately three quarters of an hour earlier, and during that time he and Tom had done extensive damage to the bottle that Sid had brought with him. On the principle that a man should not have to drink alone, Sid had phoned his wife, who had encouraged him to stay there and administer medicinal spirits to dear Tom as long as was necessary, up to and including all night, and by no means drive home while alcoholically impaired but rather spend the night on the Holders’ sofa.

  Thus encouraged, Sid had kept up with Tom glass for glass as they had torn to shreds the character, intelligence, and motives of the District Attorney. When the telephone rang, Tom had announced unequivocally that he didn’t want to talk to anybody, but Sid had suggested that it might be Louise, so Tom had risen and stumbled rapidly into the kitchen for the phone.

  The caller ID said “Koerney.” His heart skipped a beat. She had never called him at home. She must have called the station first. They would have told her the news. Christ, how humiliating! But she would know he didn’t deserve it. That’s why she was calling. His hand hovered over the receiver. But no. He’d had about a third of a bottle of Scotch. He hesitated through four more rings, then about-faced and returned to the living room.

  “Just somebody from church,” he told Sid.

  “Persistent bastard, isn’t he?” Sid remarked, refilling Tom’s glass.

  It was about eleven minutes later that the doorbell rang, and Tom was even better lubricated by that time.

  “Whoever that is, tell ’em to go away.”

  Sid went, and came back.

  “I dunno, Tom. She’s gorgeous enough to be therapeutic. Maybe we should let her in. Somebody named Kathryn?”

  “Oh Christ! Oh Jesus H. Christ! I can’t let her see me like this!”

  Sid Garvey was a perceptive man. This anguished cry from his old friend conveyed to him a world of hitherto unguessed-at information. He decided cowardice was not the answer. He grabbed Tom’s arm.

  “You can sober up faster than any man I know. Get upstairs and splash cold water over your face and drink three glasses of it. I’ll put on some coffee and stall her till you get down. Go!”

  Tom went.

  Sid went back to the door and invited Kathryn to enter. “Tom’s gone upstairs for a minute,” he explained. “Come on in to the living room and have a seat. I’m about to make some coffee. We were drowning our sorrows, as you can see.” He gestured toward the Scotch bottle and glasses, since it would have been foolish to try to pretend they weren’t there, as it would have been equally foolish to try to pretend that he himself was sober. “Oh, I’m sorry. Sid Garvey.” He stuck out a hand.

  Kathryn took it firmly, and gave Sid Garvey a serious looking over. She
liked what she saw. He was a small man with a big nose and black hair slicked back over his head and he was never going to win any beauty contests, and besides, it was clear he’d had more Scotch than he needed, but he was looking her square in the eye without apology. And the eyes she was looking into were full of intelligence.

  “Kathryn Koerney,” she replied, meeting that steady gaze. “I’m so glad Tom has a friend to be with him.”

  “You’re from Tom’s church?” Sid asked. Kathryn had not changed out of her working wardrobe and was therefore still dressed like a priest.

  “Yes, but I’m not officially on the staff there. I teach at the Seminary. Look, why don’t I come into the kitchen with you? Then we can talk while you make the coffee.”

  So it was that by the time Tom got back downstairs and came into the kitchen, Sid had filled Kathryn in on the full perfidy of District Attorney Nick Silverman, and Kathryn was so full of righteous indignation on Tom’s behalf that she had earned Sid’s undying approval.

  “Tom! I can’t believe this! What a snake! Here, have some coffee, this Silverman person I mean, what a loathsome, venomous, idiotic, asshole!”

  Sid stared at her for a second, then cracked up laughing. Tom, more accustomed to Kathryn’s vocabulary and to her forceful expressions of opinion, realized what an impression she must be making on his friend, who had probably never seen a woman priest before and would no doubt be expecting an entirely different standard of behavior. Looking at Sid, roaring with laughter, he too began to laugh, and he laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Kathryn stared at both of them. “It’s not funny,” she said crossly.

  “Oh, yes it is,” Tom disagreed with her as he recovered. “And God, how I needed that.” And then, in an act of great boldness, he put down the coffee mug she had just handed him, placed his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Oh, drink your coffee,” she said, still cross, sitting down at the table. “Now, what are we going to do about this?”