Hell Bent (14 page)

“You think somebody murdered him?”

She shrugged. “There’s no other explanation, is there?”

“Like who?” I said. “Why?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“We can talk to Detective Boyle, but …”

She shook her head. “He probably won’t put much stock in my theory about the suicide gene. He’ll just look at the evidence.”

“You’ve got to admit,” I said, “the evidence is quite compelling.”

“When I was talking to that policeman last night,” Alex said, “I hadn’t thought this all the way through. I was … I don’t know … stunned. I didn’t mention any of this. I wasn’t really thinking about the Gussie I knew. I couldn’t get the image of him out of my head. His—all that blood, the gun on the floor.” She shook her head. “So I’m sure he went away with the impression that I accepted it. That I believed Gus did it, I mean. But I don’t. I don’t believe it.”

“Do you mean you don’t
want
to believe it?” I said.

“Wishful thinking? Is that what you’re saying?”

I shrugged.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You tell me,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I hardly knew Gus,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, “but you’re good at that. You can size people up. You get people right off. Your first impressions are almost always on target. So what was your take on my brother?”

I shrugged. “He had a lot of good reasons to kill himself.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“You saw him,” I said. “There was nothing to suggest anything except suicide.”

“You’re still avoiding my point,” said Alex. “I wasn’t talking about evidence. I was talking about him. Gus. The person.”

“Well,” I said, “just from being with him, if I didn’t know any of the facts of his life, and if I hadn’t seen him last night, I guess I’d say that he was a fighter and a survivor. Some of the things he told me, it seemed as if he was planning on living. He was thinking about the future.”

“He
was
a fighter,” Alex said. “Exactly. So let’s think about
the null hypothesis. Let’s start with the assumption that he didn’t kill himself.”

“If he didn’t,” I said, “then somebody else did.”

“That’s right.”

“Meaning he was murdered.”

“Yes.”

“We can’t ignore the evidence,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. Let’s take the so-called evidence and see how it can be explained if we assume somebody murdered my brother.”

“Start with his e-mail to Claudia yesterday, then,” I said.

Alex shrugged. “Easy. Somebody else sent it.”

“From Gus’s computer?”

“Sure,” she said. “That’s possible. Whoever killed him. A note, to make it look like suicide. What else?”

“All of it,” I said. “Means, motive, opportunity. The who, what, where, when, why, and how of it. I mean, just for starters, who’d want to kill him? And why? What could anybody gain by killing Gus Shaw? Where’s the motive?”

Alex shrugged. “That’s exactly the question, isn’t it?”

“No, listen,” I said. “The cops always say, the commonest things most commonly happen. It’s like the golden rule of investigating. Occam’s razor. The principle of simplicity and straightforwardness. Shave away all of the irrelevant assumptions and extraneous information to the bone and work with what’s left.”

“Thank you, Aristotle,” she said.

“Sorry. Did I sound pompous and condescending?”

“No more than usual.” She smiled. “I understand what you’re saying. But there has to be a corollary to Occam, something like: Sometimes things are
not
simple. Sometimes uncommon things actually
do
happen. Right?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“And even when all of the so-called evidence seems to be pointing in one direction …”

“You’re right,” I said.

“So are you going to help me, or what?”

“Help you …?”

“Figure out who killed my brother.”

I smiled. “You’re hard to say no to.”

She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m just asking for your help.”

“I know that,” I said. “Look. Let’s see what the medical examiner comes up with first. If his verdict is suicide, then we can decide what to do.”

She nodded. “And if he says it’s
not
suicide …”

“In that case,” I said, “the police will be all over it.”

We stopped at the parking garage at the Alewife T station at Fresh Pond so Alex could retrieve her car. Then I followed her to the Best Western hotel near the rotary in Concord. She pulled into the parking area in front, and I slid my car in beside hers.

She got out and came over to my window. I rolled it down. “You want to come up?” she said.

I shook my head. “That’s okay. I’ll wait here.”

“I’ll be a while,” she said. “I’ve got to wash my hair. There’s a coffeemaker in the room, and a TV.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said.

She reached through the open car window, touched my arm, and then turned and went into the hotel.

There was a little gas station/convenience store next door to the Best Western. I walked over, bought a cup of coffee and a skinny Saturday
Globe,
and took them back to my car.

I read the paper and sipped my coffee while Alex washed her hair.

It was close to an hour later when she came out and climbed into my car. “Your hair looks good,” I said. “Clean.”

She smiled quickly. “You’re making that up. Men never notice things like that.”

I shrugged.

“I just talked to Claudia,” she said. “She didn’t sound that pleased about us going over.”

“I imagine she’s totally blown away,” I said. “Maybe the idea of entertaining company …”

“I’m not company,” Alex said. “I’m her sister-in-law. We’re old friends. She knows she doesn’t have to entertain me.”

“I meant me,” I said. “I’m a stranger. Not only that. I’m Gus’s divorce attorney. Claudia doesn’t need that. Why don’t you go ahead without me. It’ll be easier for both of you.”

Alex was sitting in the passenger seat beside me gazing out the front window toward the front of the hotel. Big pots of rust-colored chrysanthemums lined the pathway from the parking lot to the entrance. “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?” she said.

“I hope you’re not worried about hurting my feelings,” I said.

She turned and looked at me. “I worry about hurting everybody’s feelings. It’s my curse.”

I reached over and patted her arm. “My feelings aren’t hurt. You go ahead. Give me a call afterward, tell me how it went.”

“I wanted you to meet Claudia and the girls,” she said. “I’m disappointed. Well, I guess this isn’t a good time.”

“Why?” I said.

“Why what?”

“Why did you want me to meet them?”

She looked at me and frowned. “They’re my family. They’re all I’ve got now. Now that …”

“Sure,” I said. “I would like to meet them. There will be a better time.”

“I can tell you right now,” she said. “It’s going to be hard. For Claudia, I mean. I know they were getting divorced, and I know Gus behaved badly, but I’m sure she still loved him. She has to be feeling …”

“Guilty?” I said.

“Don’t you think?”

“I’d be surprised if she weren’t,” I said. “I’m feeling guilty. I bet you are, too.”

Alex nodded, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Okay. I think you’re right. It’s better if I do this by myself. I’m sorry you had to drive all the way out here and wait in your car. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Please do.”

“So,” she said. “Big plans for the weekend?”

I nodded. “I’ve got a million things to do.”

She smiled. “Well, thanks for everything. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten through last night without you.”

“That’s what friends are for.”

I did not have a million things to do. I had very little to do. Since Evie left back in June, my weekends had been empty. I’d managed to get away for a few Sundays of trout fishing with Charlie McDevitt, and I spent one long July weekend surf casting and clamming with J. W. and Zee Jackson on Martha’s Vineyard. Mostly, though, I spent my weekends plowing through the paperwork that Julie always insisted I bring home, and watching a lot of ball games on TV, and reading some books.

Before Evie came along, I lived alone and never felt lonely. Since Evie left for California, I felt lonely much of the time, and
especially on weekends. Henry was good company, but he wasn’t Evie.

That afternoon Henry and I piled into my car and drove out to Bolton Flats, which was a several-hundred-acre expanse of field, forest, and marshland on the other side of Route 495 near Clinton. It was what they called a Wildlife Management Area, owned and operated by the Commonwealth’s Fish and Game Department for hunting stocked pheasants. Since the hunting season wouldn’t open for another two weeks, Henry and I had the place all to ourselves. He ran and I walked, and after about three hours of fresh air and exercise, both of us were panting.

When we got home I checked my voice mail for messages. There were none.

I spent a couple of hours at the desk in my office slogging through some of the paperwork Julie had given me, and then, as a reward for my diligence, I heated a can of Progresso minestrone soup for my supper.

I was watching a Saturday night college football game and sipping a glass of bourbon when Alex called.

“I just wanted to say good night,” she said.

“How’d it go with Claudia?”

“I ended up spending the whole day and staying for supper,” she said. “We took Juno and Clea to Concord center and walked around and did a little shopping. They aren’t quite sure what it all means. The girls, I mean. They’re pretty young, and they haven’t seen much of Gus lately.”

“Did you get a sense of Claudia’s, um, take on it?”

“You mean,” she said, “does she believe that Gus killed himself?”

“Yes, that’s what I meant.”

“She’s the one who got that e-mail yesterday, don’t forget. I think by the time she called to tell me about it she’d already
decided Gussie had done something to himself.” Alex hesitated. “Yesterday. Wow. It seems like it was a long time ago.”

“A lot has happened,” I said. “So what are your plans?”

“Plans?”

“You going to hang around for a while?”

“Until we figure out what happened with Gus,” she said. “Absolutely. Besides, I’ve still got a lot of research to do on my novel.”

“I’ll be here,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“We’ll have dinner.”

“That would be nice.” Alex was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Well, good night, Brady. Thanks for everything. Sleep well.”

“I think I will,” I said. “You, too.”

I slept well and woke up late on Sunday. It was another perfect New England autumn day, so I took a carafe of coffee and the Sunday
Globe
out to the patio and read all of it.

In the afternoon I watched the Patriots clobber the Dolphins. Then I spent an hour fooling around with my briefcaseful of office paperwork. In the pile of documents was a copy of the letter we’d sent to the Nashua office of AA Movers, which reminded me that I’d have to bring Doug Epping up to date on the unhappy developments in his case against them.

Alex called just as I was stuffing everything back into my briefcase. She’d spent the day with Claudia and her nieces, she said. State police detective Boyle and his partner came by in the afternoon to interview Claudia. Alex took the little girls out to the backyard while the cops were there. She said that they took a printout of the e-mail Gus had sent to Claudia on Friday.
Otherwise, Claudia didn’t want to talk about it, and Alex didn’t ask.

I had the sense that if I’d asked Alex to come over for a drink or supper, she would’ve said yes. But I didn’t ask, and she didn’t mention it.

We promised to touch base the next day, then hung up.

I made an omelet for supper, found
From Here to Eternity
on a cable channel, and mourned Montgomery Clift’s premature death, as I always did when I saw him on the screen.

The movie ended at eleven. Eight o’clock on this Sunday evening in Sausalito, California. I picked up my cell phone, flipped it open, closed it, bounced it up and down in my hand. I had stopped trying to call Evie a long time ago. I didn’t like imagining her screening her calls and not answering when she saw it was me. I didn’t like hearing her voice mail inviting me to leave a message and deciding not to leave one because I knew she wouldn’t call me back.

Well, I wanted to do this. I poked out her cell phone number. It had a 617 area code. Boston. Unless by now she’d had it changed, in which case my call wouldn’t go through.

I hit Send. It rang five times. Then came her familiar, businesslike message. “It’s Evie. I can’t come to the phone. Leave a message and I’ll get right back to you.”

I took a deep breath, and after the beep, I said, “Hey, babe. It’s me. I got your letter. I guess it didn’t surprise me. It’s okay. I want you to do what you need to do. And I’m good. You don’t need to worry about me.” I hesitated, cleared my throat. I wasn’t saying any of the things I wanted to say. “Look,” I said. “We really could talk. It’s kind of dumb that we don’t. I wouldn’t try to lay any guilt trips on you or beg you to come home or tell you how lonely I am. Nothing like that, honest. I mean, I’m not lonely. I’m good. It would just be nice to talk.
We could do that. We don’t need to keep avoiding each other, at least as far as I’m concerned. Well, I just wanted to tell you that. I hope Ed’s doing okay. I hope you’re doing okay. We’re good here. Me and Henry. I’m trying to live my life, just like you want me to.” I stopped, thought for a minute, then shrugged and hit the End button on my phone.

Before bed, I let Henry out. While he sniffed around and squirted on the bushes, I stood on the deck, looked up at the sky, and tried to locate Snoopy and Elvis and the Green Ripper. But it still just looked like a random chaos of stars up there.

I
spent all of Monday morning in court and didn’t get back to the office until around two in the afternoon. Julie was on the phone when I walked in. She lifted a finger and smiled, and I gave her a quick wave, poured myself a mug of coffee, and went into my office.