Haunted Hearts (13 page)

She looked at McGuire. “So what happened to him, your crazy friend?”

“He hanged himself in his house. In the living room. One of the kids saw his body through the window, still twisting. The next week his house burned down. There was some talk that a couple of parents did it, just to destroy everything remaining of him. Because he was saying things to the kids that upset the parents.”

Ronnie smiled and stood up. “That's the best you can do?” she said. She carried her coffee to the sink and poured it out.

“Probably.”

“Didn't help him much, did it?” She was staring down at the drain.

“I thought about that,” McGuire said, rising from the chair. “But I just figured that's where his journey took him. To a rope in the living room. It's everybody's daily sadness.”

“Then leave me with mine,” Ronnie said. “Just go away and leave me with mine.”

McGuire thought about it in the long periods of wakefulness when it is always four a.m., in the mind, if not on the face of the clock. In the morning he rose early and dressed silently. Downstairs he could hear Ollie snoring, and he stepped into the chill of the morning. He ate breakfast in a restaurant on Boylston Street, dawdling over the morning newspaper and taking a long walk through Back Bay streets, enjoying the solitude.

Then he returned to his car and drove to the market area. He parked in the elevated garage and walked towards Quincy Market. It was just after nine o'clock. A few end-of-season tourists snapped pictures of Faneuil Hall, while others sat on benches, sipping from paper cups of hot coffee.

He bought a black coffee at one of the market stalls and walked along the narrow corridor, exiting on the harbour side and returning within the glass-canopied atrium forming the north wall of the market building, where the souvenir shops were located. First he saw the sign, Quincy Candles, and then he saw her, standing behind the tiny sales counter, attaching price stickers to candles in fanciful shapes and garish colours. He watched how she brushed her hair from her eyes with the back of one hand, and how she paused to stare through the atrium glass at the walls of the South Market, across the open cobblestoned plaza. He noticed she wore no jewelry, not even earrings, and something about her expression, as she watched people walk by on the other side of the glass, had a familiarity about it that chilled him.

McGuire finished the coffee, crumpled the empty cup in his hand, and entered the store, where Susan Schaeffer was bent over her work.

She looked up at the sound of his footsteps. Her smile at the sight of him changed to something else. “Hello.” Her hands fumbled for each other and finally clasped themselves together. “I'm sorry about leaving last night. I was enjoying myself, honestly.”

“I didn't get a goodbye.” McGuire picked up a wax candle molded in the shape of the Old State House. Did people really pay money for these things?

“It's difficult to explain . . .”

Two middle-aged women entered, clucking with approval at the souvenir candles. “Why don't you tell me later?” McGuire said, leaning on the counter and smiling at her. “We'll have that second Irish coffee we talked about.”

She smiled. The smile altered her age, her cloak of sadness, and even her beauty, enhancing it, and he felt that sense of privilege and vulnerability that the attention of a beautiful woman could create in him.

“I hear the weather's turning warm later,” he said. “Might be a good day for a walk along the Esplanade.”

“Oh, I'd love that!” Her face grew animated. “I haven't been there for so long . . .”

“Excuse me, miss.” It was one of the tourists, holding a wax candle shaped and painted to resemble Paul Revere astride his horse. “How much is this?”

“That's twelve dollars,” Susan said to the woman.

“I'll meet you here,” McGuire said.

“No, not here,” she said. “At the Hatch shell. Around two. Is that all right?”

“Do you have anything cheaper?” one of the women tourists interrupted.

“Okay,” McGuire said. “The Hatch shell.” He nodded to the women as he passed. “It's a bargain,” he said, and winked at her. He left the shop and turned to look at Susan, whose smile had grown wider, and he returned the smile, feeling he was doing something good, something right.

The receptionist almost leapt across her desk at the sight of McGuire when he entered the law offices a few moments later. “Mr. Pinnington is anxious to see you,” she said. “In his office. I'll tell him you're here.” McGuire glanced at the clock. It was well past ten a.m.

When McGuire reached Pinnington's office, Pinnington stood waiting for him, grim-faced and in shirtsleeves.

“What's up?” McGuire asked, but Pinnington said nothing until he closed the door behind him.

“You know they found Orin's car at the airport?”

Without being invited to sit, McGuire settled in one of the green leather wing chairs. Pinnington walked to his desk, rested a haunch on one corner, and stared at McGuire, his arms folded across his chest. “I heard,” McGuire said.

Pinnington remained looking at McGuire for a moment. There was no challenge in his eyes, only patience, and when McGuire said nothing, Pinnington spoke again. “The police confirmed he caught a flight to Washington, with a return ticket for the next day. He rented a car at Hertz and gave his local address as the Willard Hotel.”

“He wasn't registered there.”

“He wasn't registered anywhere.”

“And they haven't found the rental car.”

“Wrong. They found it this morning.” Pinnington looked down at his desk. “In the parking lot of a shopping mall near Weymouth.”

“He flies to Washington, rents a car, then drives it back to Weymouth, practically home, and leaves it?”

“Difficult to believe, isn't it?”

“I wasn't serious. How long's the car been there?”

“Nobody knows. A couple of days, maybe.”

“Fingerprints?”

“The police are checking.”

“Do they know about Annapolis? About Flanigan sending me down there?”

Pinnington rose, walked behind his desk, and sat in his chair. “That's been the subject of a discussion this morning between myself and the senior partners.”

“So they don't know.”

Pinnington shook his head.

“You could be concealing evidence. Hell of a note, one of the biggest, most prestigious law firms in the state concealing evidence . . .”

“Of what?” Pinnington's tone was sharp. “Of a man who gives a false address on a car-rental contract? And who doesn't return the car where and when he promised? It could be the same scenario you proposed a couple of days ago. We could have a lawyer who has broken under the strain of his career or his marriage or any damn thing. How can we reveal confidential information for something so trivial? Don't lecture me on the law, McGuire.”

“You're playing for time . . .”

“Don't lecture me on the law,” Pinnington repeated, aiming a forefinger at McGuire as though it were a weapon.

McGuire rose from his chair. “There's no lecture,” he said. “You're trying to work out the options. That's okay, I guess. But you and I both know that something serious is happening here. Maybe your facts don't say it, but my gut does.”

Pinnington sat back in his chair, his tantrum over.

“I'm taking the rest of the day off,” McGuire said. “You want me, try Zoot's. It's a bar on Boylston.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Lorna know about this? About Flanigan's car being found?”

Pinnington nodded. “She knows.”

“How's she taking it?”

“Not well. We sent her home. She couldn't stop crying. She was upset even before she learned about Orin's car being found.” Pinnington's eyes narrowed. “You wouldn't have anything to do with her state of mind, would you?”

“Probably.” McGuire closed the door behind him.

“Believe it or not, McGuire,” Sleeman said over the telephone, “I don't need another bottle of Scotch, thank you very much. What I need is this squirrel Hayhurst off the street, maybe off the planet.”

McGuire was sitting at the bar in Zoot's, a Bloody Mary in front of him, the telephone plugged into an extension. “So I'll buy you lunch,” he said. “The super cheeseburger. I remember hearing you say once that you'd give your right nut for one.”

“Yeah, when I was on surveillance for twelve hours straight.” He lowered his voice. “Jesus, I gotta get outta here sometime. Maybe I'll be at Zoot's around twelve, and maybe I'll let you buy me lunch and maybe I'll even have some scuttlebutt for you.”

“Maybe you're a hell of a guy.”

“Maybe I'll be selling shoes next week too, the word gets out and we don't nail Hayhurst.”

“What was that?” McGuire leaned towards Sleeman, whose mouth was filled with almost half a cheeseburger. “I couldn't understand a damn thing.” They were seated at the bar in Zoot's. The lunch-hour crowd buzzed and laughed behind them.

Sleeman held up one finger. With his other hand he replaced the remains of the largest, greasiest cheeseburger McGuire had ever seen on the plate and seized a glass of milk. He drank half of it before speaking. “I said it's a coin toss. Whether your lawyer buddy dropped the car or somebody dropped him. That's what Shuttleworth's saying.”

“Who's he?”

“New guy. Missing persons. He's okay. Anyway, he says the car was in a corner of the parking lot near a Burger King, keys behind the sun visor, your guy's overnight bag in the trunk, underwear, socks, clean shirt, shaving equipment. Not much.”

“Prints?”

Sleeman shook his head. “Thing's cleaner'n the pope's nose.”

“Who drops a car ten miles from his house and wipes his prints from it?”

“Not the guy who rented it. Why's he worry about prints? His name's on the contract.”

“So it's somebody else who leaves the car, doesn't want ID.” McGuire finished his coffee.

“Sure as hell. Thing is . . .” Sleeman removed about half of the remaining portion of the cheeseburger with another bite, and said something around his lunch that sounded to McGuire like “Suffers annooky.”

“Goddamn it, will you stop talking with your mouth full?” McGuire said.

Sleeman nodded, swallowed once, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, and leaned towards McGuire. “Listen, I got maybe fifteen minutes and then I'm due back on Berkeley Street, sittin' around waitin' for somebody to dump us something on Hayhurst. Jesus, I practically had to tell DeLisle I was goin' to my mother's funeral just to get away for half an hour.”

“What'd you say just now?”

Sleeman was about to consume the remainder of the cheeseburger, thought better of it, and set it aside. “I said Shuttleworth's a rookie.”

“You said that already.”

“So he's still playin' it as a missing. But you and I know, Joe, that a wiped-down car and an unopened suitcase after the guy does a vanishing act, that's not a missing. That's a dead. Right? Ten to one that's a dead. Am I right, or not?”

If the Public Garden is Boston's elegant outdoor living room, the Esplanade is the city's waterfront playground, a meandering grassland strip that separates the St. Charles River from the elegant brownstones of the Back Bay's most prestigious residential avenues. Near the eastern entrance of the Esplanade sits the Hatch bandshell, a massive wooden cornucopia. On summer evenings it fills with musicians ranging from hopeful folkies to symphony orchestras. As the Esplanade extends west towards Boston University, it grows less pretentious, and music lovers give way to touch-football enthusiasts, dog walkers, and romantics of all ages and pursuits.

It was almost two-thirty by the time McGuire found a parking space on Charles Street. True to the weather office's prediction, the day had grown soft and warm with the strange aura of melancholia and exhilaration that dominates a perfect New England autumn afternoon. The river shone blue, and the leaves on the maple and oak trees flashed gold and crimson against the sky.

She was sitting on a bench facing the river, her head back and her eyes closed, the sun flooding her hair as though it were lit from within. She wore a honey-coloured leather jacket over her sweater; a pair of sunglasses were propped on her head, crowning her hair.

McGuire approached her, letting her hear his footsteps to avoid surprising her. She blinked up at him and smiled as he neared the bench.

“Been here long?” he asked.

“Only a few minutes,” she said. “Isn't it beautiful here?” She crossed her legs and clasped one knee in her hands. “I just love it.” Her dangling foot moved in a steady nervous rhythm.

McGuire sat beside her and they admired the view of Cambridge across the river. She assured him she had eaten lunch already, a sandwich at the candle shop.

“Have you heard anything?” she asked. “About Mr. Flanigan?”

“Yes.”

“What is it? Please tell me.”

“They found the car he rented in Washington. It was in a parking lot near Weymouth.”

“Weymouth? What was he doing in Weymouth?”

“He wasn't there. Just his car.”

She looked away. “I don't understand.”

“Orin Flanigan caught a flight to Washington. He planned to stay overnight, but he rented a car instead. Which is pretty surprising.”

“Is it? What's wrong with renting a car in Washington?”

“Well, you can bet he wasn't headed downtown. Nobody rents a car to drive into Washington. Of course, Washington's only an hour's drive from Annapolis.”

She looked up and to her right, across the river.

“Ever been to Annapolis?” McGuire said.

“No.”

“Do you think Orin Flanigan went there?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you know any reason why he'd go to Annapolis?”

Instead of answering, she stared towards Cambridge.

“I went to Annapolis for Orin Flanigan,” McGuire said.

“I know.”

“He wanted me to find somebody for him. A man named Myers.”

“Yes.”

“He wouldn't tell me why, and he kept everything about it off the firm's books. Do you know why?”

“Because he was doing something he shouldn't.”

“What was that?”

“I think he was trying to get a little bit of revenge for me. And he was trying to save a woman from going through what I went through several years ago, and please don't ask me to tell you what that was.”

“Flanigan?” McGuire looked into the distance. “Orin Flanigan, big-city family-law lawyer, tries to play gumshoe? You're kidding me. What's really going on?”

He looked back at her. She was shaking her head, and her expression had hardened.

A wave of squeals and laughter exploded behind them. McGuire turned to see perhaps twenty young children racing towards the fenced-in playground, two women scurrying after them. The children began clambering over playground rides in the shapes of animals. They were laughing and shouting, some stumbling over their feet and others giggling at the joy, the euphoria, of being six years old and free in a playground on a warm autumn day.

McGuire turned from the children to look at Susan Schaeffer. At the arrival of the children, her expression had changed again. The hardness, the refusal to answer McGuire's questions, had dissolved into something else. Now she looked shattered, about to burst into tears. He reached for her, his hand gentle on her shoulder. “What's wrong?” he asked. “Just tell me what's wrong and maybe I can help.”

“Will you take me somewhere this afternoon?”

“Maybe. Where?”

She turned to look across the river. “To Cambridge. Harvard Yard.” She looked back at him. “Memorial Church in the New Yard. Do you know it?”

He said yes, and they walked back to his car on Charles Street.

In the car, crossing Longfellow Bridge over the river, she looked down at her hands. “Are you looking into Orin's disappearance? Has the law firm asked you to do that?”

“No,” McGuire said. “They haven't. If they did, I'd turn it down. I'd just get in the way of the police.”

“So all those questions you were asking me, they were for your own interest?”

“That's all.”

She stared ahead through the windshield. “Thank you.”

To enter Harvard Yard on a perfect autumn afternoon is to touch the hem of privilege. Verdant and sun-dappled among oak trees that were massive and ancient when the Kennedys arrived as freshmen, the Yard is both foreign and familiar. Lecture halls, residences, and chapels, all idealized examples of American Colonial architecture, echo the school's colours: crimson in their brickwork, and white in their carved wooden trim. Students and lecturers stride across lawns and along paths looking purposeful and relaxed, or recline on the grass, their backs against tree trunks, sweaters knotted around their waists or across their shoulders, books in their hands or on their laps, their hair long or their heads shaved, their clothes fashionably unfashionable, and for a short space of time in their lives they are as permanent as the buildings surrounding them.

A middle-aged man entering Harvard Yard on such a day grows conscious of his failings and deficiencies. Even now, the sight of the beauty and promise enjoyed by the privileged students nurtured McGuire's resentment and exposed his envy, feelings he had hidden for years. As he crossed the yard, McGuire managed to repress his anger towards those who shared this privilege, either as transient student or tenured professor. It had been years since he visited Harvard and, in spite of his envy for the students, he reminded himself that he loved the Boston area too much to ever move from it, that the weather and the traffic and the incessant political problems were a small price to pay for living in a place he knew he could never leave.

Susan Schaeffer spoke only once, to agree with McGuire that it was beautiful in the Yard, and they rounded University Hall towards Memorial Church, its white needle spire shining in the sun.

As they approached the building, McGuire heard organ music drifting towards them, something by Bach, he thought, or maybe Handel. Old music, anyway, rich and burnished by time.

The church dates back to 1931, a newcomer among the other structures in the Yard, but its architectural lines are directly descended from its oldest neighbours. Wide steps sweep up to the entrance. Inside, the pews march in puritanical lines forward to a surprisingly simple altar set close to the pews, as though defying the congregation to escape the wrath of the sermons.

There was another reason for the close proximity of altar and pews, and it was separated from the rest of the church by a filigreed screen: a massive Baroque organ, considered the best example of such an instrument in North America. The organ's great pipes soar upwards from a semi-circular console, all but the tops of the largest pipes hidden from view to those seated in the pews. Someone was playing the organ in sweeps of melody and curtains of chords.

Susan Schaeffer led the way into the church, the first time McGuire had seen her move with authority and poise. She paused at the end of one aisle and bowed, and McGuire halted behind her, drinking in the sight and the sound.

The church windows were open to the air, and the building was empty, save for the unseen organist at the console. The music, which had drifted lightly in the air outside the church, was now weighty and more authoritative. Bass notes seemed to begin in the very foundation of the building and rise upward through the floors and the pews, and higher notes drifted like ribbons among the open rafters. The organist was practicing; periodically he or she would stop at a phrase and repeat it several times before proceeding.

Susan Schaeffer sat in a pew midway up the aisle and closed her eyes. A slight smile played on her lips and the lines of her face faded. McGuire sat beside her, unsure of the purpose of their visit here. She had grown visibly relaxed and at peace. As had McGuire.

At one point the organist stumbled over an arpeggio, attempted to replay it, and stumbled again, and an explosive stage-whispered “Shit!” sounded back to the pews where McGuire and Susan were seated. Susan's shoulders hunched and shook with laughter.

They remained for perhaps ten minutes longer, then she rose and led him back down the aisle and out into the healing autumn air.

“What was that all about?” McGuire asked as they crossed Harvard Yard again. “Were you saying some kind of prayer in there or something?”

“No,” she said. She knelt to pick up a large maple leaf, turned pumpkin-orange by the onset of autumn, and she stroked its texture with her fingers as she walked. “Sometimes I just want a place where I can feel safe for a few minutes. Any church will do, I guess. But that one's almost always open, and I used to visit it years ago, on my own. I just wanted to visit it again today.” She bent with sudden laughter and reached a hand to his shoulder. “Wasn't that funny when the organist missed those notes? I mean, can you imagine if that happened in the middle of a service?”

“First time I saw you laugh,” McGuire said. “I didn't think you could.”

“I can laugh,” she said. “I love to laugh. I look for ways to laugh all the time.”

“You don't have to take me home.”

They were crossing Harvard Street, wending their way through knots of students towards McGuire's car. She thanked McGuire again, and told him she could take a bus downtown. “That was a very sweet thing to do, bringing me here.”

Instead of replying, McGuire guided her to the car. He paused before starting the engine. “Whatever you know about Flanigan's disappearance, you should tell the police. You know that, don't you?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Were you two having an affair?”

She smiled and closed her eyes. “No, we were not having an affair. That would have been impossible.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, Orin kept saying how I reminded him of his daughter. Do you know about his daughter?”

“Her husband murdered her.”

“Orin and his wife never got over it. They'll never get over it. How could they? They blamed themselves for what happened, and Orin blamed the legal system, which he is a part of, for the fact that her husband received such a short sentence. Four years, I think.”

“He told somebody you were an innocent.”

She looked startled. “Innocent of what?”

“I don't know. Sounds to me like he was trying to settle a score on his own.” McGuire started the car and eased out of the parking lot into traffic. “What's the connection between you, Orin, and this guy in Annapolis, Myers?”

“Please don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't ask me these questions.”

“Why not?”

“Because I like you. Because you've been nice to me.” She looked out the window, avoiding his eyes.

“Is he your ex-husband, this Myers character?”

“No.”

“Flanigan's specialty is child support. This Myers guy, is he running away from that?”

Another “no,” and she closed her eyes.

McGuire drove in silence and turned onto Massachusetts Avenue. He was angry with her for not opening up to him.

She sensed his anger and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“You say that a lot.”

“I know. I have a lot to be sorry for.”

“Like what?”

“Can I promise to tell you later?”

“Sure.” They were approaching the Longfellow Bridge. Across the river, the downtown buildings shone in the late afternoon sun. “Tell me some other things about you.”

“Like what?”

“Like why a woman like you hasn't had a date with a man for a couple of years.”

She withdrew her hand. “You can drop me off at the market, if you like.”

“You're not answering my question. And I'm not dropping you off at the market. I'm taking you home. No arguments this time. I'll just see you to your front door, all right?”

Almost in spite of herself, it seemed, she permitted a smile to shine through. “Now how is a girl going to argue with that tone of voice?”

“Where is it? Where do you live?”

“On Queensberry. Near the Fens.”

“Not a bad neighbourhood.”

“No, it's not.”

He drove up Boylston and onto Queensberry Street. On the way, she said, “I just realized that I don't know very much about you either.”

“Not much to know.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Well, I'm not a cop any more, and I'm not married any more either. I never voted for Reagan and I don't give a damn about what happens in Washington, Hollywood, or the music business.”

She smiled at him. “You've told me what you aren't and what you haven't done. You haven't told me what you are and what you want to do.”

“Hell,” McGuire said, “I'm still trying to work that out.”