Man With a Squirrel (21 page)

“He's talking about the people he's working with; not you, idiot,” Sam reassured her.

Molly reminded Fred as he was leaving that he was in line to spend the evening with Terry and Sam. “Ophelia's back,” she said. “She and I have something to do tonight. Tomorrow, if you're free, she wants to introduce you to Byron Ponderosa.”

“Byron Ponderosa?” Fred asked. “Oh, Jesus. The painter. He followed her back?”

“They're coming for Sunday tea, which may turn to supper. This is me giving you fair warning, in case you want to be busy elsewhere, such as on the far side of the moon.”

*   *   *

At Mountjoy Street, Clay waited until Fred had a chance to settle in. Fred had allowed a backup of auction catalogs and journals, and hadn't examined this week's
Newtowne Bee.
It was almost eleven when Clay made his appearance, wearing a dark blue suit a cut above those favored by His Royal Majesty the Prince of Wales. Clay's shirt was as white and free of care as Eunice Cover-Hoover's skin. His necktie would inspire Cleopatra.

“You would have telephoned had there been progress,” Clay assured himself.

Fred nodded. “Either we penetrate their security and locate Sandy Blake, or we figure out the game Cover-Hoover is playing with the help of the wide receiver Manny. Molly's checking the Cover-Hoover foundation, which is called Adult-Rescue, Inc. You've heard of it?”

Clay shook his head. “It may not be the sort of thing I hear of. But I enjoyed success. Last night I conferred with a dear friend who understands such things, and who makes a specialty of knowing the comings and goings in Boston's bedrooms. As I suspected, Marek Hricsó has been a recent fixture in Madeleine Shoemacher's. At his insistence she purchased a grand piano to replace her old one, and she invites a group in once a month to hear Marek Hricsó perform. She will buy him anything he wants. She will buy
him
if he is for sale.”

Clay looked over Fred's shoulder at the photograph of a putative Constable landscape sketch being offered next week by a small auctioneer in West Newton. “The guy's got to try,” Fred said. “People will come to look at it, and then buy a bureau, or a moose head for the den.” He flipped a page.

“You are aware we may lose our advantage on the Copley,” Clay said.

“We have no advantage to lose. Except the two-thirds you own, which at best can never be more than flawed—and we have to remember that only the first section was purchased. The second part was handed to me, and it's hard to decide whose it is, since we didn't pay for it as yet. But be that as it may, just to finish up—Marek was at Madeleine Shoemacher's the night Oona Imry met her match?” Fred asked. “You confirmed that specifically?”

Clay shook his head. “I will do it.” He reset the white handkerchief in his breast pocket. “I do not know Madeleine Shoemacher well; but that can be my part of this project. The other part—the worship of Satan and so forth—I am uneasy, Fred, being a Unitarian, with issues touching on the next world, or the netherworld, or manifestations of the spirit. They seem an irrational excess.”

Clay was a once-a-year presence in the congregation of Boston's Unitarian Chapel of George the Divine.

“Some of us non-Unitarians are with you on that, Clay.”

“I have accepted Roberto's invitation to look at what we have collected so far. The other, I have decided, must wait while the two of us are engaged in the present brouhaha.”

“The other?”

“The Vermeer,” Clay said.

“Right. Let's by all means ease up on that. Let's not test the picture or anything rash.”

“Very well, Fred, if that is your advice,” Clay finished. “It is best we conserve energy and concentrate. You will keep me informed of developments concerning the last part of my Copley?”

Fred nodded toward Clay's departing back.

Clay said, “I would confer with you further but I promised lunch to Roberto Smith. Is there an establishment you recommend in New Bedford?”

“I know a Chinese place in back of the bus station where, last time I was there, you could order a side of gravy with your meal. They gave you bread, too—two slices of Bunny Bread. Most Chinese places are too cheap to…”

“Never mind,” Clay said. “Roberto will know.”

Clay went into the slow wind and rain.

Fred drove to Cambridge and watched Kwik-Frame until the discouraged woman with red hair returned and Manny left for lunch. He gave her a few minutes to get settled and put her apron on before he carried in his piece of cloth.

“Remembered it this time,” Fred said, chuckling as he pulled it out. The animals on it were either pigs or monkeys. They were so stylized it was hard to be sure. Fred's portion was a yard square. He spread it across the desk.

“Do you have a style of frame in mind?” the discouraged woman asked. “Or you'd like me to suggest something?”

“Boardman Templeton?” Fred said.

“Gone to lunch.”

“That's OK.”

So Manny was short for Boardman Templeton, treasurer of Adult-Rescue, Inc. Interesting. Not, by this time, surprising.

“Can you suggest a molding you think might be good? It's going in a room that's mainly green and pink. Or maybe in the blue room.” Terry might not like it after all.

The woman came out from behind the desk and led Fred to the section of wall where ready-made corners hung for show samples. “You want gold?”

“Something austere. A pink Nielsen? Does the name Ann Clarke ring a bell?”

The woman gave a start; a distinct ping. “Oh,” she said, “Manny's mentioned my name.”

Fred gestured toward a black wood corner resembling painted bamboo. “Or we could try an Eastern look, to be exotic,” he suggested. “That would go with the animals, which are exotic. What do you think they are?”

“They're insects, not animals.” Ann Clarke took the corner and led Fred back to the desk. The recording secretary of Adult-Rescue, Inc. showed Fred how his selection would look, criticized his choice, suggested two other possibilities, and finally took his order for the fake bamboo, working out what the punishment would be on the basis of the price per foot, the cost of Boardman Templeton's labor, and the outlay for four thirty-four-inch stretcher bars from Bob Slate Stationer. “You gotta leave room to overlap,” she explained. “What we call a tacking edge. That's why it's going to be smaller than the cloth. You want reinforcing crossbars so it doesn't warp?”

“Sure,” Fred said. “Oh, shit!” In a moment she was going to arrive at the place on the order where she would record the customer's name, address, telephone. Fred smacked his forehead and checked his Timex. “Gotta ram quarters in the meter. Be right back.”

He rushed out.

*   *   *

Clarke is a name on Copley's list all right, Fred told himself, getting into his car. He drove some distance from Kwik-Frame over to the mall at Fresh Pond. He did not want Manny Templeton to see him back in the neighborhood this soon. He sat in his car and looked at the pay phone in front of Brooks Drugs.

I ought to call Detective Bookrajian, he thought, and tell him maybe Marek's covered for that night. But I can wait until Clay gives me the all-clear. Maybe wait until I have the Copley, too.

He tried calling Dee Glaspie at home, but raised only Walter, who told him, “They've got Dee working the Saturday shift. She's on her beat now. I just ate chicken and chick peas with her. We had a late lunch.” It was two-thirty. “It was an Indian place in Central Square and I understand she's working toward MIT on Mass. Ave., Green Street, Franklin—on the river side anyway. I left her a half-hour ago.”

Fred cruised the streets between Central Square and MIT until he spotted Dee's small, energetic, and unmistakable body moving briskly in uniform along the main drag, near Metropolitan Storage. Fred double-parked and flagged her. At his invitation she sat in the passenger seat. “They let you register a car like this?” she asked.

“Insured and everything,” Fred told her. “Listen, Dee, can you do me a favor? Get on that little box of yours that you check licenses and registrations on, and run some names for me. Can you do that?”

“You can have five minutes,” Dee said. “I'm ahead of schedule. It doesn't matter anyway. Someone is getting to the meters with quarters before I can nab the violators. It's today's student prank, working out how I vary my route. I prefer it when they put the president's yacht on the dome of Hayden. We have quotas to meet.”

Fred gave her the names Cover-Hoover, Boardman Templeton, and Ann Clarke. “I'm looking for home addresses,” Fred said.

Dee fiddled with the gadget she carried on her hip. It looked like a small, state-of-the-art bomb. She said, “See? Hooks right in to the registry. Here's Fred Taylor. You still living on Chestnut Street in Charlestown?”

“Yes, Officer.”

“You have an outstanding parking ticket dated January three of the present year?”

“Guilty.”

Dee ran a complex sequence of seventeen buttons on her contraption, taking four seconds to do it. “You're all right now,” she said.

“Thanks, Officer.”

“That'll be five dollars. Just kidding.”

Traffic slouched past them in the steady drizzle while Dee occupied herself. “Templeton and Cover-Hoover live together,” she said. “La di da, on Brattle Street, no less, except no, a number this low has to be a top-floor apartment in the Square. No big deal.”

Fred said, “They've used the address of Cover-Hoover's office.”

“The lady has a car, a green Lance-Flamme two years old. She's doing well.”

“Registered where?”

“Oh, same address. No unpaid tickets. I could put some on her record if you want, so there's a notice out that if we find the car we can boot it. You want that?”

“It's tempting. Maybe I'll pass for now.”

“What's the last one?”

“Ann Clarke. Clarke with an
e.
”

“Alexandra? No, here's Ann. Same address. Ménage à trois.”

“Sandy,” Fred said. Sandy, Alexandra. Blake was her slave name, Cover-Hoover had said, meaning she'd been married. “You saw an Alexandra Clarke?”

Dee caught the movement in his voice. “You want me to pick it up again? Yes, Alexandra Clarke. On Hay Street. At the same address there's Martin Clarke too—no, his license to drive was revoked or expired. There's still a car registered in his name, though, a Ford Temper, blue, seven years old. As long as he's not driving, maybe he'll trade for yours.”

“Same address,” Fred said. “Martin Clarke?”

“With an
e,
right?”

“Right.”

“Right, then. Martin Clarke, apartment two. He'd be late seventies. You know him?”

“Oh, shit!” Fred said. “Maybe I do. Tell me, Dee. How good is Bookrajian?”

“He's good. If I follow you, you don't want to tell him anything you don't want him to know.”

25

Fred was torn. It was Saturday afternoon at three o'clock. He had a number of directions to go. The name Clarke figured so prominently in the Copley story—it was his wife's maiden name after all—that he wanted to settle down with books and charts and genealogies and get a line on Ann Clarke; and now Alexandra and what had to be their father, Martin Clarke. But his heart was jaundiced with dismay. He didn't want this thing to go where it was going.

He compromised and stopped in at Molly's library, and wrote a note she'd get when she came in Monday.

Molly:

Here's a question. I have two ends of a string—Ann Clarke, and her sister Alexandra, daughters of Martin Clarke—that maybe connect to the portrait. Copley married into a Tory family named Clarke. Question: Who's the guy, and are my people Copley's relatives?

Regards, Fred

Marek's assignation with Madeleine Shoemacher on the night of Oona's death had not yet been confirmed. That was another loose end. The Cover-Hoover enterprise, and its ability to spirit away a living person into the bosom of loving-caring—that warranted attention also.

Fred drove to Hay Street. The top buzzer was still without identifying name beside it. No response. The second floor, where Martin Clarke was listed by the Registry as owner of a vehicle, offered the name Mukerjee, and did not answer. First floor gave him Cubit-Miller-Henry, who showed herself through the glass window of the entrance door. She looked him over out of a bright pink face that seemed sleepy: a woman of about forty, wearing a gold stretch corduroy jumpsuit; and pregnant. She opened the door only enough so they could talk through the crack.

“Ms. Cubit-Miller-Henry?” Fred asked. She indicated assent. “I'm looking for Martin Clarke,” Fred said. “I understand he lives on the second floor.”

“He did,” the woman said. “Moved out a few years back, I don't know where to. Daughter's taking care of him. He can't hack it. Too old. Loony. Mail comes for him but the daughter, she picks it up. The other one.”

“The other daughter. That's Sandy?”

“Top floor.”

“She said her name is Blake.”

“Was Blake, for about ten minutes. I don't know how that guy stuck with her as long as he did. Once they were married he pulled out.”

“You wouldn't know where she is?”

“If she isn't upstairs, she's running in circles around the planet Pluto,” Fred's informant said. “The way she carries on, I put my earplugs in half the time I'm home.”

“Who's on the second floor?”

“Guy's never here. Lives with his girl. The place is for when his mother flies over. Student. Foreign. Business school. They're gonna own us. Hump like maggots, all of them. You know how they are.”

“Blake, the husband, how do I find him?”