Maximum Security (2 page)

Louisa Rawlings and I will meet today, Friday the thirteenth. When I looked at the calendar earlier this morning, I assured myself there was no significance to the date. Now that I’m in our office driveway, I realize I’ve reassured myself twenty-five times. But I still don’t believe me.

Harry and I have only one associate in our office and we call him “the Kydd.” Kydd is his last name. His first is Kevin, but I can’t recall the last time anyone used it. Even he doesn’t mention it anymore.

The Kydd hails from Atlanta, Georgia, and he’s probably the hardest-working young lawyer on the East Coast. He always beats me into the South Chatham farmhouse that serves as our office building, and today is no exception. His nearly new, red pickup truck is parked in the driveway when I arrive, the passenger side of the cab’s bench cluttered with casebooks and files he apparently took home last night.

Like Harry, the Kydd stands about six feet tall, but unlike Harry, he looks as if his last decent meal is a distant memory. He’s slouched in a chair in the front office when I come through the door, lanky legs stretched out in front of him. His chair is one of two facing an antique pine table, and Harry’s seated on the other side of it. He’s just hanging up the phone.

“That was Louisa,” he says. “I told her you’d be over there shortly.”

“Over where?”

“Her house.”

“We’re meeting at her house?”

Harry shrugs. “Meet where you want,” he says, “but I thought her house would make sense. You’ll have to get the layout at some point. Things happened there.”

“Things?”

He shrugs again. “Herb left from their dock the day he disappeared. And he wrote the note there—or he left it there anyhow.”

“Note? What note?”

“The suicide note.”

For a split second I freeze, staring at Harry, my jacket halfway off. “There’s a suicide note?”

He nods.

“The missing husband left a suicide note and you didn’t bother to mention it?”

“There’s a lot I didn’t mention, Marty. It’s complicated. I want Louisa to tell you herself.”

“
Whoa,
Kimosabe,” the Kydd says.

He’s been watching late-night
Lone Ranger
reruns again. He has the Tonto impersonation nailed.

“Time-out.” The Kydd apparently thinks Harry and I need the word
whoa
translated. He sits up straight and pounds his hands together in an emphatic T. “What the hell are you two talking about?”

When the Kydd says
hell
it always sounds like
hail
. I constantly marvel at the fact that two and a half years on Cape Cod hasn’t put so much as a dent in his Southern drawl. I drape my jacket over the chair next to his and take a seat, holding my hands out toward Harry, giving him the floor. This is his story to tell, after all.

“New client,” Harry says to the Kydd. “Dead husband, missing body. Cheap insurance company, suspicious cops. Marty’s representing the bereaved widow.”

“I said I’d meet with her, Harry. I didn’t say I’d represent her.”

He bites his lower lip.

“Did you tell her I’d represent her?”

He looks up at the ceiling, as if trying to remember. “I may have,” he says.

The Kydd shakes his head at Harry. “I don’t get it. If Marty’s representing this woman, why is it that you know the facts and Marty doesn’t?”

Not much slips by the Kydd.

Harry looks across the desk at me, as if I might field the question for him. I arch my eyebrows and stare back.

“The client called me,” he says to the Kydd, “and told me the story, but I didn’t think…I thought…”

“Attorney Madigan recused himself,” I pitch in. “He feels a bit conflicted.”

The Kydd glances over at me, then turns his questioning stare back to Harry.

“This woman and I…” Harry begins once more. He stops, though, seemingly unable to locate the next word, and runs both hands through his thick, tangled hair.

The Kydd scoots forward in his chair, looks at me again, then leans across the desk toward Harry, curiosity burning in his baby blues.

Still, words seem to elude Harry. He waves one hand in front of his face, suggesting he won’t bore us with his long tale. “Years ago,” he says.

The Kydd appears confused for a moment, but then his mouth spreads into his signature grin. It’s lopsided. “You
dated
her?”

“And then some,” I tell him.

He leans back on two legs of the chair and puts his hands behind his head, elbows akimbo. His grin tilts even farther to one side. “Let me make sure I have this straight,” he says, squinting at Harry. “Our new client is a former love interest of yours.” He twists in his chair, turns his squint toward me. “And
you’re
going to represent her.”

“Love interest,” I say, watching Harry. “That’s nice, Kydd, poetic, even. I like it.”

The Kydd sits up straight again, the front legs of his chair hitting the floor hard. He claps his hands together and laughs, then hoots. “We’re all okay with this?” His expression suggests we’re out of our minds.

More than once I’ve overheard the Kydd on the phone telling his Southern relatives that the goings-on in our Yankee law office never cease to amaze him. The look on his face at the moment tells me we’ve outdone ourselves this time. “Yeah,” I say. “We’re swell.”

“Of course we are,” Harry adds. “We’re adults.”

“Sure.” The Kydd wipes the grin from his face and lowers his voice to a deep bass. “So am I.”

“No, you’re not,” Harry fires back. “Adulthood begins at forty, not a minute sooner.”

“I’d love to stay and debate,” I tell them, getting to my feet. “But it seems I have an appointment. Where does she live, Harry?”

He grimaces and looks up at the ceiling again.

I’m tired of this case already. “Harry, you told the woman I’d come to her house. That means you have to tell me where she lives.”

He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, as if the information I’m asking for will appear there sooner or later. “On Easy Street,” he says. The Kydd hoots again.

“That’s cute, Harry. I’m sure she does. But where’s her house?”

Finally, he tears his gaze from the ceiling and leans forward. “I’m not kidding,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut as if he’s in pain. “She lives on Easy Street.”

The Kydd stands and opens the pine table’s single drawer. He pulls out a street map of Chatham, unfolds it on the tabletop, and runs a finger down the alphabetical list of streets.

I stare at Harry while I put my jacket back on. He opens his eyes and nods up at me, apparently trying to convince me he’s serious.

“Harry, I was born and raised in this town. There’s no such street.”

“Oh yes, there is,” the Kydd announces, pounding a pen on the map.

I bend over and follow his gold Parker to a spot in Chatham-port, past the country club. It’s one of the most exclusive areas in our affluent town. And there it is. Barely long enough to display its short name on the map. Easy Street. I’ll be damned.

“What’s the address, Harry?”

He doesn’t answer. When I look up, he’s inspecting the ceiling again.

This is getting old. “The number?” I prompt. “On the house?”

“It’s number one,” he says.

Well, of course it is.

Fox Hill Road is aptly named. A handful of estates enjoys expansive grounds here, and the fox population thrives on the smaller creatures who share the lush landscape—squirrels and rabbits, mostly, along with the occasional household pet. I hit the brakes to slow my old Thunderbird when a healthy-looking vixen with a thick red coat trots into the road ahead. I hit them harder and come to a complete stop when two kits emerge behind her, their noses to the ground, oblivious to my car’s approach.

The mother fox stands still in the middle of the road, like a traffic cop, and stares up at me while her young ones cross in front of her. She seems entirely untroubled by my presence. Once the kits reach the safety of the bushes, she saunters after them, in no hurry whatsoever. She pauses before taking cover, looks back at me, and seems to nod. A thank-you, maybe. In this part of town, even the foxes are well bred.

A mile farther down Fox Hill Road, the rolling green hills of Eastward Edge Country Club come into view. The club’s oceanside golf course is touted as one of the most prestigious—and scenic—in the world. In the summertime, well-heeled golfers enjoy exclusive use of these hills, their compact carts rolling along narrow paths like busy ants. But in the winter, when the club is dormant and its members have fled to kinder climates, all that changes.

After winter snowstorms, the locals claim these slopes. They come by the truckload with sleds, toboggans, and cross-country skis, their thermoses filled with coffee, hot chocolate, and brandy. When my son was younger, we’d spend entire days here each winter, surrounded by friends and neighbors, hurtling down white hills toward the icy blue of the winter ocean, then climbing back up to do it all over again. Inevitably, Luke’s lips would be near-purple, his fingers and toes on the verge of frostbite, before I could convince him to call it a day. Luke and his friends still make a beeline for Eastward Edge after every winter storm, but in recent years they’ve traded their toboggans and skis for snowboards. And that makes me a spectator.

Just beyond the golf course, Strong Island Road forks off to the left, leading to one of Chatham’s busy town landings, where fishermen of all stripes unload their catches. I bear right instead and stay on Fox Hill as it narrows and snakes along the water’s edge. I’ve never been on this portion of the road before. It’s no more than a sandy spit, and just when it seems that land is about to disappear completely, Easy Street opens up on my left. I hesitate for a moment, my stomach still questioning the wisdom of this meeting, and then I turn in.

It’s clear at once that precious few of us can aspire to live on Easy Street. The road hosts only a trinity of homes. Number three appears first, on my left, a stately colonial on manicured grounds. It’s sealed up for the season, sheets of plywood nailed over its windows and doors to protect them from Cape Cod’s fierce winter winds.

I pass number two next, on the right, a pristine, newly shingled saltbox surrounded by dozens of hydrangea bushes, their few remaining blossoms a faded blue. It too stands abandoned, its cobblestone driveway empty, its shutters closed, waiting for the warmth of summer to lure its absentee owners back to Chatham’s charms.

Number one is on the left at the end, on the water. It’s a gem. A classic Cape with a gambrel roof, a waterside deck, and a floating dock, it’s obviously an antique that’s been painstakingly restored. I park the Thunderbird in the oyster-shell driveway and head for the side of the house, intending to knock on the kitchen door as Cape Codders always do. The front door opens first, though, just as I reach the steps to the deck, and a woman’s voice stops me in my tracks.

“This way,” she calls at my back. “Right this way. I am some kind of happy to see you, darlin’.”

It’s a Lauren Bacall voice: deep, throaty. But that’s not what makes me freeze. She sounds like the Kydd. Louisa Rawlings is Southern.

She’s cut the distance between us in half by the time I turn around. Long, certain strides carry her toward me, across a brick walkway, her full red lips glistening. She’s in tight black slacks and heels, her long-sleeved white silk blouse tucked in at her belted waist. Louisa Rawlings is six feet tall if she’s an inch. No, taller; she’s even taller than Harry.

And she’s stunning. Statuesque.

“You must be Mrs. Nickerson,” she says, extending her hand. Her French manicure is perfect. So is her makeup. And her shoulder-length, auburn hair.

I’m not quite sure how to respond. My mother was Mrs. Nickerson. “Marty,” I tell her as we shake hands. “Please. Call me Marty.”

“Marty it is,” she says, latching on to my arm as if we’re old sorority sisters reunited at last. “Let me tell you right now how grateful I am for your help, Marty. Harry Madigan says you’re the very best.”

I feel myself tense when Harry’s name rolls so easily off Louisa Rawlings’s tongue, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She leads me back across her brick walkway and through the front door. As we enter the foyer, I remember she’s only lived on Cape Cod a month. She doesn’t know, yet, that we don’t use our front doors. We come and go through kitchen doors, always.

I follow her down a short hallway and through the living room. It’s sparsely furnished in beiges and ivories, each piece looking as if it were created specifically for the spot it occupies. Huge wood beams and uncomplicated moldings throughout the room have been restored, not replaced. The same is true of the dark wooden mantel above the fireplace, as well as the two ovens built into the hearth beside it. And the soft pine floor, though refurbished, is the original. I can tell by the width of the boards, by the way they dip and slant, and by the square heads of the nails that secure them.

We pass through the kitchen next, where top-of-the-line appliances and granite countertops meet the old-world charms of a butcher block table and an antique built-in hutch. On the other side of the kitchen is an enclosed sunroom, a porch of sorts, with screened windows to filter the ocean breezes on warm summer nights. Louisa stops at the entry and steps aside, waving me in ahead of her, a gracious hostess. She follows and shuts the double doors behind us.

The windows are closed against autumn’s chill and the sunroom is warm, bathed in the golden glow of Cape Cod’s singular morning light. The room’s oversized, curtainless windows frame an unobstructed portrait of Strong Island and the open ocean beyond. A half dozen white wicker rocking chairs, all with cushions that mirror the vibrant blue of the water, face the glass. If there’s a more breathtaking view on the Cape, I haven’t seen it.

“Sit down, darlin’. Make yourself at home. What can I pour for you?” Louisa turns her back to me and walks toward a brass tray on the white wicker table by the windows. It holds a thermal coffee pitcher and an electric teapot, along with two cloth napkins that match the cushions. When she faces me again, she’s arranging bone china cups and teaspoons on saucers. I sink into one of the rockers and set my briefcase on the slate floor.

“Coffee,” I tell her. “Coffee would be great.”

Her golden tan defies the calendar. Above her scooped neckline hangs a single strand of cultured pearls and a lustrous matching gem rests on each earlobe. She’s perfect. My stomach was right; I shouldn’t have come here.

“Cream and sugar?”

“No, thanks. Black is fine.”

“That’s how you keep your girlish figure,” she says, looking up from the table and smiling.

I don’t want to have this conversation with Louisa Rawlings.

She hands me a cup of coffee and a napkin, then eases into the rocker across from mine. “Me, on the other hand,” she says, crossing her long legs and working her tea bag, “the only reason I drink tea is so I can have lots of cream and sugar.”

She needn’t worry; the calories seem to know where to go. I don’t say so, though. I don’t plan to discuss
live
bodies with Louisa Rawlings. Not mine anyway. And certainly not hers.

Once she’s settled in her rocker, I set my cup and saucer on the edge of the side table, pull a legal pad from my briefcase and a pen from my jacket pocket. It’s time to get to know a few things about Louisa Coleman Powers Rawlings.