Now You See Her (27 page)

This stops me. This is not mere historical curiosity but circumstantial evidence. The newspaper accounts make it clear that
Edmund Wight was probably one of the storm victims, a casualty of this blizzard of 1888. The weekly Monday Club dinner was
his responsibility. He probably set out in good faith on Monday from Marlborough Street, and then hours later struggled back
toward the Back Bay in driving, drifting snow. Exhausted, Wight most likely took sick from his exertion in the storm. Grippe
and bronchitis are diseases brought on by chills. Let’s say he made it back to Marlborough, took to his bed, failed to respond
to the beef tea and toddies and plasters doubtless administered. His strength ebbed, and he died on the seventeenth of March,
buried on the twentieth. He wouldn’t actually have died in the storm, but from it, of it.

My own arms and neck suddenly prickle, my teeth chatter as I shiver. Not from picturing myself in the blizzard, but from a
thought. If I am right, the piece of cloth in Tania’s chestnut casket connects with Edmund Wight. If I’m right, the cloth
remnant pulled from the rafters is an actual relic of the storm. It’s the remains of Wight’s improvised outerwear. It marks
his desperate effort to protect himself from the blizzard that brought on his death.

If I’m right, the stiff, filthy rag signals the spirit of Edmund Wight continuing in the Marlborough house. It has spoken
to me, telling me that Wight is both ice-cold and deeply disturbed. The disturbance, of course, could come from the guilt
of a man who engineered Charles Dehmer’s death in the coach “accident.”

Guilt alone, however, would not express itself in smashing the Arnots’ valuables. The breakage means anger and hostility.
The house is haunted. Edmund Wight’s ghost is there. The Bostonian is furious, and a ghost has no deadline. Outside of time,
it can rage into perpetuity. No wonder the Marlborough house goes on the market so often.

The summer hour with the Blizzard of ’88 has been a historic distraction, an interlude while I await Devaney’s call. It might
prove useful for Meg, but my task now is to exit the library and walk to Barlow Square on high alert to detect surveillance.

Exiting the library on Boylston, I duck panhandlers and cross the granite library plaza. At the Copley T stop entrance, a
man with thick brown hair pauses and disappears down the steps. My heart stutters. He’s the guy working on his car on my block
this afternoon.

Isn’t he? Isn’t the tan shirt the same? Commuters jostle and swirl down the T station stairs. He’s gone. I should have scrutinized
more carefully the facial features of the sidewalk mechanic.

Or maybe I’m just imagining things, chilled from the library episode. As for the walk back, forget it. My plans are suddenly
changed. I’m heading for the precinct house on Harrison Avenue. I’ll walk there and sit myself down and wait for Devaney and
refuse to budge until he comes out.

At Columbus, I wait for the walk sign, and nobody halts behind me. On to Kneeland, where I mix in the pedestrian flow, an
odd lot of walkers and dogs and vehicles. A horn sounds, a German shepherd barks. Everyone is minding their own business.
Young women with gym bags alight from a van and enter a social center. Their laughter is lovely, like flowers. I make a left
and find myself the sole pedestrian on the sidewalk as I climb the steps of the fortress of a precinct house on Harrison.

“Detective Devaney is not available? Then I’ll be happy to wait.” The desk sergeant’s nod is indifference itself. Her nameplate
says “V. Ramirez,” and her hair glows with henna highlights set off by the blue of the uniform. She turns back to her computer
screen, and I sit against a far wall in one of the plastic chairs that bump the lower back. The clock says 5:38. Uniformed
cops come and go without a glance in my direction. I spend twenty minutes with a well-thumbed USA Today, then go to the water
fountain, mostly to remind Sergeant Ramirez of my existence. She doesn’t look up. From the plastic chair, I call Devaney on
my cell phone and leave the message that, unlike Elvis, I haven’t left the building. It’s 6:17 p.m. My stomach grinds and
growls.

“Well, Reggie.”

“Well, Frank. I should’ve brought a sleeping bag.” By now, it’s 7:02. With his jacket over his shoulder, his catsup red tie
loosened, his shirtsleeves rolled, Frank Devaney looks like a man stuck at a roadblock. When I say, “I wanted to catch you
in person for a few minutes,” he grunts. “I walked here,” I add. As if foot power means anything. “It’s important, Frank.
I have a message.”

“A psychic message?” I shake my head. “Then how about tomorrow?”

“This won’t wait. How about right now?”

We go into a stuffy side room with a Formica table scarred with cigarette burns. I sit. He straddles a chair. “Okay, what’s
up?”

“Two things. A woman who worked catering jobs with Alan Tegier has important information for the police. Brenda Holstetter.
She’s a server at the Renaissance restaurant off Stuart Street. Frank, why aren’t you writing this down?”

Reluctantly, he makes a note. “What else?”

“The witness who says he was with Alan Tegier at the poolroom the night he disappeared is a notorious liar. His name is Rudy
Cavitch. He’s a local legend in Woburn.”

“So you’ve been to Woburn.”

“And to Chestnut Hill to the Dempsey house. I think Bernard Dempsey is involved in Tegier’s murder. Possibly his wife’s death
too.”

Devaney gnaws a knuckle and studies my face. “So correct me—you did actually feel psychic vibes at Dempsey’s house?” I shake
my head no. “How about Woburn? Not at Tegier’s house?”

“Don’t insult me, Frank. I talked with Alan Tegier’s stepmother. Alan was enrolled in Dempsey’s secret medical trial for severe
skin problems. Dempsey injected him and swore him to secrecy. The injections affected his state of mind. He became withdrawn
and moody.”

“Which doesn’t make it criminal.”

“Advent Tissue Science must be investigated. Dempsey has a corrupt past. He was involved in a laboratory scandal. Data was
falsified. And there’s more: the restaurant server, Brenda Holstetter, says Alan Tegier cleaned carpeting at night at Eldridge
Place. Frank, he worked for Carlo Feggiotti.”

“Feggiotti… the guy who’ll spring Faiser?”

“You don’t seem interested.”

Devaney crunches two Tums and says “appetite suppressant” as if I don’t know it’s dinnertime. “Not to insult you, Reggie,
but there’s too much CSI and New Detectives and God knows what. It’s nuts. Everybody’s a detective.”

Against better judgment, against judgment itself, I hear myself blurt out, “Okay, listen to this. Sylvia Dempsey knew Jordan
Wald. She introduced him at the Newton Home and Garden Alliance.”

I could lip-synch Devaney’s comeback. “A garden club that invites the politician responsible for environmental laws in the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts—am I supposed to investigate that too?” He tugs his open collar and starts to rise. “Reggie,
let me drive you home.”

I am silent all the way from the precinct house to Barlow Square. “Frank, that station wagon…I may have been followed by a
brown-haired man who worked on that car.”

“The Olds?” Its hood is half raised. Devaney double-parks, and we get out. A hammer lies on the pad on the walk. The brown-haired
man is nowhere around. Frank leans to see the VIN number. “I’ll run it through the DMV and NCIC.” In minutes, he makes calls
and says, “It’s clean. Nothing to worry about.”

“Who’s the owner?”

“Oh no. No, you don’t. No more going to knock on strangers’ doors. Reggie, you’re going way too far. You gotta pull back.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder and faces me with a kindly gaze. “Take my advice, get some rest. Walk in the Public Garden.
Go to the museum and look at the impressionists.”

“Monet’s water lilies won’t solve murders.”

“That’s the point. Look, we’re grateful for the tip about the lying Woburn witness. We’ll definitely look into it. But I’m
going home now. My new slow cooker is turning shoulder chuck into boeuf bourguignon. You take care. I mean it. Take care.”

It’s nearly 8:00 p.m. when I walk Biscuit down the block and see that the Olds front passenger door is open. Two thin legs
with pointy black oxfords stick out toward the sidewalk. Then he sits up, this evening’s Olds mechanic. He’s a wiry, short,
sallow man in a gray T-shirt and black pants. He picks up a wrench and nods as I pass, then pats Biscuit with a hand whose
nails are spotless. A mechanic without one drop of grease under his nails?

My skin prickles as Biscuit and I circle back around. Wrench in hand, the man fiddles with the radio buttons as if tuning
in a station. Biscuit dawdles to sniff the tires, but I tug her leash and double-lock my door. Nightlong, I keep an eye on
the station wagon, a hulk in the darkness on my block. The Oldsmobile is intrusive, as if it’s giving off bad energy, a feng
shui violation. I look out my front window at midnight, then again at two, and finally in the predawn hour. It looks like
a docked gunboat, and I sense someone inside it. The small dark man? The brown-haired one?

Could both men camp in the car to watch me? No, that’s nuts. A man who works on his car, he’s in the American tradition. He
pulls up at a curb and uses his know-how with his own tools, even in Boston’s gentrified South End. His buddy lends a hand
and tunes in to a Sox game. I saw the hammer, the wrench, the pad on the sidewalk.

That’s it, I realize, the source of my unease. From yesterday to today, no actual work seems in progress. The wrench and hammer
look more like props.

If Tania’s right, Jeffrey Arnot is enraged enough to have me watched. Do the men track my whereabouts for Arnot? Is Carlo
in on it?

Or do they work for Bernard Dempsey? Had he somehow found out that I went to Alan Tegier’s house? He could try to drive me
frantic with crude intimidation. If Dempsey killed his wife and caused Alan Tegier’s death, who would stop him from coming
after me?

* * *

The Olds station wagon is still there this morning at eight, and I decide to call Stark, who promises to come check it out.
At nine, he’s still not here. I think about the two handguns in Jo’s file drawer. Should I get bullets?

I step into the study, pull down the blinds, and look at the guns. The Colt looks too John Wayne, a western period piece.
The .38 revolver, though, looks usable. It seems ice-cold, the barrel a steel gray-blue. Biscuit whines as I pick it up. I’m
just aiming it at the microwave when the door knocker sounds. I shove the gun in the drawer.

It’s Stark at the door. The dog is overjoyed. “Thanks for coming.” He roughs her belly. “It’s that Oldsmobile station wagon
down the block. I think I’m being watched.” He scratches her ears. “Down there … down the block.” But it’s gone. There’s not
a trace of it. We stand at the open door. “This morning I walked Biscuit past it. Maybe it dripped oil. We could go see.”

“Whatever you want.” Stark’s is the tone of voice people use with the mentally ill.

“No, really, Stark. Yesterday a brown-haired man seemed to work on it, and then a short dark man. Detective Devaney checked
the car out. It’s not stolen or linked to a crime. I think the two men were here to watch me.”

“Who?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“Guys work on cars.”

“Of course. Of course they do.”

“Guys like to install a fuel pump, put on a muffler. I do a lot of my own work on Fatso.”

“Yes.”

He jams his hands in his jeans. “You want me to hang around? You want a ride someplace?”

“Yes…I mean no.”

“How about if I take Biscuit for the day? You get some rest. I’ll bring her back anytime you say. You take it easy. Call me.”
I watch him get the dog harness from the motorcycle saddlebag, strap the dog in, pull on his gloves and helmet, drop the visor,
start the engine, wave, and ride off, with Biscuit’s eager little nose to the air.

On Barlow Square, a roofer is at work across the grassy median. A dry cleaner makes a pickup. Nobody else is outside. If I
screamed, who would hear? Who would run to the rescue? Who safeguards me as I race against a killer’s clock?

A
rainy summer evening ought to feel nice. Open the windows, smell the wet earth, hear the muffled hum of the city. Instead,
I watch the black VW Beetle that now circles Barlow Square every six to eight minutes, its driver a man or woman with a ponytail.
I first noticed it while walking Biscuit after Stark brought her back and left. That was an hour ago. The slot occupied by
the Olds is now filled by a sedan with a Boston College sticker, and the “mechanics” are nowhere in sight. But the VW is identical
to my own car, eye-catching in the way one’s own possessions command attention. The driver seems to be circling for a parking
spot.

In fact, Trudy Pfaeltz pulled out twenty minutes ago. I watch from my front window as the Beetle twice bypasses her huge vansize
space. At 8:14 p.m., the Beetle circles for the third time this hour. Though it’s darkish gray outside, I haven’t switched
on any lamps, instead watching the street in the vanishing light and counting reappearances from the window frame.

Could this Beetle actually be my very own car? I’d parked two blocks over and, of course, locked up. I haven’t driven it since
the night of Tania and the rafter cloth.

Would Dempsey try to terrorize me this way? Would Jeffrey Arnot? Or Carlo? And why? To lure me out into the street? Rattle
me? Do me harm?

I want to walk the two blocks to find out whether a thief taunts me with my own automobile. But I linger in the safety of
my own home. Well founded or absurd, fear is fear. The sounds of struggle that I heard May 3 could have been Alan Tegier’s
death throes. So much for aiding Henry Faiser if I, too, end up in a barrel of beef fat.

Biscuit paces the floorboards, sensing my mood, puzzled by the darkening of the rooms. I scratch her neck, try to pick her
up. She’s having none of it and takes shelter under the love seat.

I try to settle down by thinking of the lessons of my sixth sense. There’s my burning rib, my painful thumb, even the ice-cold
message of the century-old rafter cloth. Signs and signals, every one, but coded. They may be linked or not. Their logic is
veiled. There’s a Buddhist saying: the mind knows what the body feels.