Act of God (30 page)

“Sure.”

“It’s something I never ask you about.”

“That’s okay.”

She took my right hand in both of hers. “The fireworks. What did they remind you of?”

I shrugged and looked away, trying not to breathe too deeply the cordite smell. “The war.”

“But what part?”

I looked back at her. “Specifically, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Watching her, I said, “I had to go out to a fire-base with one of my men, pick up an artillery lieutenant for some things he did to a bar girl in Saigon. The MPs liked to send an officer to bring back an officer.”

“Go on.”

“We had to stay over, wait for a chopper the next day. The Vietcong decided to hit the base that night. The first few rounds of mortar fire came in before the flares, guys running around, grabbing weapons, and trying to put on their boots. The mortars were behind a hill, and somebody called in a fire mission—artillery from another base—to knock them out. As I’m hunkered down, the flares are breaking over our heads, everything spotlit, like the lights panning a crowd at a rock concert.”

“Like tonight’s crowd on the river,” she said quietly.

“Like that. Only back then most of us weren’t watching. I couldn’t help it, though, Nance. The flares and the mortar rounds—I mean, guys were being killed and wounded all around me, and I was scared, but in its own way, it was … so beautiful.”

Nancy searched my eyes for a moment. “That’s the first time you’ve ever told me anything about your time over there. Really told me.”

“Like you said, it was the first time I was asked.”

She brought her hands up around my neck, mine going around her waist.

Nancy said, “Eugenia.”

“What?”

“Eugenia. My mother was reading a Russian novel the week I was born and convinced my dad that ‘Eugenia’ was the most beautiful middle name an Irish lass could have.”

I leaned into her, a hug rather than a kiss. “Your mom was right.”

“M
R.
P
ROFT.”

With the perpetual grin, he looked away from locking a nondescript two-door Ford Escort at the curb in front of the pharmacy. Looking back to the keys, Proft pocketed them under the white lab coat.

“Mr. Cuddy. You’re certainly the early bird, aren’t you?”

I’d been parked on the street for maybe twenty minutes. “I was hoping to catch you before things got too busy.”

“Is this about that Rush Teagle person?”

“Partly. I thought as my client you might also be interested to hear what I found out in Jersey.”

“Yes.” Proft frowned. “Yes, I should have led with that, shouldn’t I?”

I didn’t say anything.

He swung his head around. “Our bench, then?”

“That would do fine.”

The long legs carried him across the street like a spider moving to the corner of its web. Sprawling over the bench, he said, “Well, I guess you tell me, eh?”

I sat on the other end. “Just after I spoke to you last, I got a call from Traci Wickmire.”

“So did I.”

“You did.”

“Yes. Well, I imagine it was after you saw her. And Darbra’s somewhat … reordered apartment? I understand it was quite a mess.”

“You haven’t been over there.”

“No. But from what Traci told me, you went through it rather thoroughly.”

“You have any idea what someone might have been looking for?”

“None,” said Proft.

“It appeared that the somebody had a key to the place.”

“Perhaps it was Darbra herself, raging.”

“Over what?”

“Over whatever it is that’s made her vanish on us.”

I stopped. “What else did Wickmire tell you?”

Heels on the ground, Proft rotated the toe end of his Hush Puppies in the air, as though he were limbering up his ankles. “She seemed rather put out about the cat.”

“More like his litter.”

“Yes.” The grin curled some. “She even asked if I were interested in coming over and cleaning it up.”

“I take it you declined.”

“Perhaps we
are
getting to know each other, Mr. Cuddy.”

“How did you know about Teagle?”

“Various ways. One, my Escort was on the fritz, so I had to take it into the shop on Friday and was without transportation over the long weekend. I just picked up the car this morning, in fact.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“The mechanic said he couldn’t find a thing. Just a gremlin, I suppose.”

The curled grin.

I said, “So you had no way to get around the last few days.”

“Correct. Accordingly, I was pretty much housebound, and therefore heard about the Teagle incident via radio and television. I also received a call from a friend of yours.”

“From Homicide?”

“Yes. A rather gruff woman, from her telephone manner. Do you suppose she doesn’t enjoy her work?”

“What did you tell her?”

“Just what I’ve told you. I never met the man, though I wasn’t—and remain
un
—surprised that Darbra had one or more in her life.”

“I don’t suppose anybody was with you when Teagle was killed?”

“Not knowing when he was killed, I really couldn’t say, but I doubt it. I stayed in most of the time these last few days. You see, when you deal with people for a living, it’s awfully nice to be without them for a period, not having to say anything, just … living.”

I watched him.

“So, Mr. Cuddy, is this where I should ask about how you spent my money in New Jersey?”

“I found the place where she stayed. The motel owner there said—”

“What was the name of the place?”

“The name?”

“Of the motel, yes.”

“Why?”

“If Darbra has passed from us, I really would like to know the name of the last place we know she was happy.”

“Happy.”

“Well, yes. Aren’t people generally happy on their vacations?”

I took a breath. “Jolly Cholly’s.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“How positively … banal. How perfect for her.”

“The motel owner says she wasn’t alone.”

“She never has been for any considerable period.”

“He said Rush Teagle was with her.”

“Teagle?”

“Yes.”

Proft stopped, tapping a long index finger at the corner of his mouth. “No … no, that doesn’t seem right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, to hear you and your friend Detective Cross, this Teagle wasn’t a big-spender type.”

“You’d be right there.”

“Darbra wasn’t—but I suppose we should give her the benefit of the doubt and still use the present tense, shouldn’t we? Darbra
isn’t
the type to bring a toy with her to the toy store.”

I thought back to Teagle’s comment about bringing sand to the beach when he lied to me about going with her. “She’d have gone alone?”

“Or brought someone to buy toys for her.”

I thought about Abraham Rivkind and Roger Houle. “The motel owner also said that she was very friendly to everybody.”

“Friendly? You mean in a flirting way?”

“No. At least he said no. More outgoing.”

“Outgoing? Darbra would be outgoing only if it pointed the way to more toys for her.”

“Meaning more money.”

“Yes. She’s always been quite taken with money and what it could buy. We never had much as children, you see.”

“Until your mother died.”

“Yes, but we were hardly children when that happened.”

“I spoke to the officer who investigated her death.”

“Oh, good for you. What was his name?”

“I forget.”

Proft winched the grin up a little more. “Mr. Cuddy, you’re not coming to distrust me, are you?”

“He thinks it may have been more than an accident.”

“Then he and I disagree.”

No change in the grin. “Mr. Proft, the motel owner—”

“I’m glad we haven’t finished with New Jersey. It hardly sounded as though I’d gotten my money’s worth so far.”

I was getting good at taking deep breaths. “The motel owner said that he didn’t exactly see Darbra check out.”

“Leave the motel, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“How does that make a difference?”

Proft seemed to be going dense on me. “It means she may not have actually gotten back here that Saturday.”

“But you said her suitcase … ?”

“Yes. But if somebody, maybe Teagle, did something with her or to her, that somebody would have her keys and be able to make it look like she got back.”

“When really she never did?”

“It’s a possibility.”

Proft came up to speed. “Which would explain why no one heard from her. …”

“Except Teagle, supposedly.”

“And why she never changed the cat litter.”

“You thought of that, did you?”

He looked at me. “Seems obvious.”

“You also think it kind of strange that one man Darbra was seeing and another she might have been seeing are both dead the same way?”

“Teagle was killed with a poker, too?”

“Cross didn’t mention that to you?”

“No. Perhaps you should have warned me, before she spoke to me.”

“Warned you?”

The grin arched again. “As your client, don’t I warrant some prophylactic advice?”

“You want some advice, I’ll give it to you. You ought to think about the cat.”

“Think about it?”

“In case it needs a new home.”

“Isn’t that what pounds are for?”

“You wouldn’t want it, then.”

“I enjoy my life the way it is, Mr. Cuddy. Clean, pure. I dislike … encumbrances, animal or human.”

William Proft gave me his most engaging smile, but it was kind of hard to look at.

Over the receiver of the pay phone outside the pharmacy, I heard, “Homicide, Cross.”

“It’s Cuddy.”

“What?”

“Okay to talk to people other than my clients?”

“Yeah.”

I thought I heard her chewing. “Anything on the crime scene at Teagle’s that you can tell me?”

“Time of death’s kind of a wide bracket. Saturday morning to Sunday, at least four or five hours before you found him.”

“Prints?”

“The place was lousy with them, especially on the musical stuff.”

“How about the poker?”

“Nothing readable, except for some of Teagle’s own.”

“You doing eliminations on the guys in his band?”

“Yeah, we already had them in.”

“See them yourself?”

“Yeah. Not what you’d call appetizing young men, except maybe the drummer, he let his hair grow past the scalp-line.”

“You wouldn’t have a name and address on the one with the dreadlocks?”

“The Chinese kid?”

“I thought he might be Korean.”

“Uh-unh. Chinese. Howard Ling. But the whole band’s got at least partial alibis. Sixty anxious patrons, pounding their beers on tables, waiting for Teagle to show for the set.”

“I’d still like an address on this Ling.”

“Hold on.”

I tried Pearl Rivkind’s number, braced if her son Lawrence answered. But nobody did, and there was still no tape after ten rings. I hung up, thought about it, then decided to find their street.

It was in a subdivision built maybe a decade before, enough time for the shrubs around the houses and the trees between the lots to look as though they belonged there. The houses were mostly split-levels, the Rivkinds’ chocolate-brown garrison the exception with brass lampposts staked at the ends of a driveway that led up a modest slope to a two-car garage. The grass had been cut, and a Mazda sports car sat on the macadam outside the closed garage doors, but there were also three separate bundles of translucent green plastic on the lawn near the front stoop. Each bundle was the size of a piece of split firewood.

I left the Prelude at the end of the driveway and walked up to the car. The hood of the Mazda was in the shade. I felt the metal. Cool.

Moving along the path to the stoop, I checked the little green bundles.
Boston Globes,
for the last three days. I had a sinking feeling as I reached the stoop itself.

The bell produced a sequence of chimes inside, but nothing else. I knocked, waited, then knocked louder. Stepping down from the stoop into the shrubs, I shaded my hand at the glass in a front window. The repose of an empty house, something flickering from the rear of it like a fluorescent bulb about to go bad.

I was halfway around to the back when a cruiser with a rack of bubble-lights on its roof pulled up in front of my car, slanting in to block it and the driveway at the same time. Smooth.

The first cop out was a tall black male on the passenger’s side of the car, facing me. The driver, a shorter white female, stepped onto the pavement but kept her door and her options open.

The male cop said, “Mind coming down to see us?”

“No.”

I walked down the path and the driveway. The male cop stayed on my side of the car, the female standing in the angle of her open door, hands where I couldn’t see them.

When I was about ten feet from the male cop, he said, “Mind telling us what you’re doing?”

“I have some ID, inside left jacket.”

“Let’s see it.”

“I also have a Chief’s Special over my right hip.”

The black cop looked at me almost sleepily. “Nice of you to mention it.”

I went into my coat pocket for the holder, then stepped close enough to hand it to him. Reading, he said over his shoulder to the partner, “John Francis Cuddy, P.I. from Boston. Want to call it in?”

She said, “Right.”

I said, “Can I have that back?”

A sleepy smile. “When it checks out.”

A minute later the partner said, “He’s licensed.”

The male cop folded my identification and returned it to me. “What’s your business here?”

“I’m working for the woman who lives in that house.”

“And what would her name be?”

“Rivkind.”

“First name?”

“Pearl.”

“Husband and son’s name?”

“Son’s Lawrence, husband’s Abraham, but he’s dead. Mrs. Rivkind is about five feet tall, with—”

“You’re working for her, how come you’re visiting when she’s not here?”

“I didn’t know that.”

Over his shoulder again, the male cop said, “What do you think?”

“I think he’s legit.”

“Same.” Then to me, “Mrs. Rivkind and her son, they took a little time off, go away over the Fourth, put aside the memories for a while. The family’s been real active in town here, supporting this and that. People are real sorry about what happened, looking out for them now.”