Maximum Security (8 page)

The Kydd looks sad as he closes the steam room door, as if he’s saying good-bye to an old friend. But then he brightens and points to a door across from it. “Look at this,” he says, pushing it open. “A completely separate room for the throne. Can you believe it?”

Again the grin. I turn my back on him to follow Louisa, but then think better of leaving him to his own devices in the Queen’s Spa. “Hey, Tonto,” I call over my shoulder. “Saddle up and ride.”

The crush of tires on oyster shells draws Louisa to the beveled window above her kitchen sink. She lifts the muslin curtain away from the glass and then drops it almost at once. “Must be lunchtime,” she says, turning to face the Kydd and me. “Anastasia’s here.”

Car doors slam and, instantaneously, a high-pitched, eardrum-piercing yelping begins. It takes on a regular rhythm as it nears the house: two short, one long.
Yip-yip-wail; yip-yip-wail.
“Oh good,” Louisa adds, the corners of her glossy lips turning downward as her eyes roll up. “She brought the beast.”

The front door opens and then slams. Heavy footsteps clomp toward us through the living room, lighter ones following a short distance behind. Louisa doesn’t budge. She stays planted in the kitchen with us, leaning against the sink with her eyes raised to the heavens. It seems she’s not particularly pleased about her Sunday-afternoon callers. She’s in no hurry to greet them.

Anastasia strikes a pose in the kitchen doorway, one arm raised to the full height of the entry, “the beast” poking its diminutive head out from under her flowing black cape. She’s a large woman, not as tall as Louisa, but much broader, bigger-boned. Her straight black hair is parted down the middle, early-Cher-style, and it hangs well past her buttocks. Her pallid complexion is unblemished and she likes eyeliner. Lots of it.

“Jeepers, creepers,” the Kydd mumbles. I glare at him. He has the good sense not to finish his rhyme.

Louisa laughs. “My sentiments exactly,” she says in a low voice. She turns a radiant smile toward the doorway, but her dark eyes don’t participate. “Anastasia,” she croons, “what a treat.”

“Save it,” Anastasia bellows in a full baritone, “for someone who gives a damn.” She barrels into the kitchen and a slight, denim-clad fellow ambles in behind her. He wears narrow glasses and his wispy gray hair is pulled back into a skinny ponytail that hangs to the center of his shoulder blades. He’s the beatnik boyfriend, no doubt; the about-to-be, on-the-verge, any-minutenow, runaway-best-selling-murder-mystery author.

Anastasia sets her pooch free on the kitchen floor. It’s a miniature poodle, shaved bald except for black muffs above its paws and a matching pillbox hat. Jackie O would be flattered, no doubt. It scampers around the room, takes in the scent of each of us, and then scurries to the hat rack in the corner and lifts its leg.

“Oh for the love of God,” Louisa says, closing her eyes against the sight. “Get that animal out of here.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the beatnik volunteers at once. He rests a hand on Louisa’s forearm, as if that might make her feel better. Louisa glares at his hand as if it’s a branding iron, but the boyfriend doesn’t notice; he’s looking at the creature in the corner. “Lucifer,” he singsongs, “bad, bad dog.”

Bad, bad dog yawns and lies down on his stomach, his front paws stretched out toward us. He plans to stay awhile.

Louisa shuts her eyes again and the ponytailed boyfriend hustles to the opposite side of the kitchen. Without hesitating, he opens an end closet and finds a spray bottle of disinfectant and a roll of paper towels. It seems he’s done this before.

Anastasia laughs, unties her long cape with a flourish and tosses it on the counter, next to the toaster, as if it belongs there. She’s dressed entirely in black, from the high collar of her calf-length dress to the tips of her thick-soled, ankle-high boots. She settles on the edge of a stool across the counter from mine and begins removing her elbow-length gloves, one finger at a time, all the while examining the Kydd and me as if we’re for sale.

“Marty Nickerson and Kevin Kydd,” Louisa says. “This is Herb’s daughter, Anastasia.”

Anastasia has lost interest in our faces by the time the brief introductions are made. She’s pulling her long gloves across her palm, looking into our open briefcases instead, as if something of hers might be in one of them.

“And that,” Louisa continues, extending a hand toward the hat rack, “is Lance Phillips. Same as the screwdriver,” she adds, “but no relation.”

Lance waves at us, still on his knees wiping up the mess. “Pleasure,” he mumbles.

Not so, apparently, for Anastasia. Her upper lip curls back when she looks at us again. “You’re
lawyers
?” she asks. Her tone suggests the word is synonymous with
shysters
.

We both nod, guilty as charged.

She turns accusing eyes on Louisa and drops her gloves into her lap. She’s quiet for a moment, pulling her lustrous locks over one shoulder, utter contempt displayed on her face. “My father is dead,” she spits, “lost at sea. And his merry widow is talking to lawyers.”

“Don’t sputter, dear,” Louisa answers. “It doesn’t become you.”

“Why are you talking to lawyers?” Anastasia continues. “Are you worried about
money
? Afraid there won’t be enough to keep you in style,
Mrs.
Rawlings?”

“No one’s worried about money, dear.” Louisa’s voice is even, her words measured, as if she’s coaxing a toddler out of a tantrum. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Another set of tires crunches in the driveway and Louisa turns to lift the muslin curtain from the window above the sink once more. She smiles through the glass and then faces us again, but doesn’t tell us who’s here.

Anastasia gets up to see for herself. “Oh my!” she exclaims, pressing her fingertips to her cheeks in mock shock. She turns toward Louisa and glares. “What a surprise. The indelible husband.”

Louisa laughs, seemingly oblivious to her stepdaughter’s malignant stare. “Glen Powers is here,” she says to the Kydd and me. “He’s my ex-husband.”

“
Ex
-husband?” Anastasia shouts the word, though she’s standing almost on top of Louisa and only a few feet from the Kydd and me. Her hair billows around her like a shroud. “
Ex
-husbands disappear, don’t they? Or at least take a little time off?”

Louisa doesn’t react, so Anastasia tries her luck with the Kydd and me. “Not this guy,” she tells us. “Not for a goddamned minute. She divorced this guy so she could marry my father…”

Anastasia points at us for emphasis, and I notice for the first time that her fingernails are extraordinarily long, painted the color of bruised plums.

“…and what does
Powers
do?” she continues. “He takes her out to dinner.” She pauses for a moment and leans on the counter, winded. “And we’re not talking about a onetime event here,” she adds. “He does it every month.”

“Anastasia, you mustn’t talk out of turn,” Louisa says calmly. “It isn’t ladylike.”

“Every month,” Anastasia repeats.

“The third Thursday of each month,” Louisa says, dismissing Anastasia with a wave of her hand, “Glen and I get together for a bite to eat. Herb’s partners hold a dinner meeting on that night each month, so he never minded. In fact, Herb rather liked Glen. They were both big on the boating scene. They got on quite well.” She tosses her head toward Anastasia. “His prim and proper daughter, though, finds the whole thing scandalous.”

“It’s unnatural,” Anastasia says. “It’s sick.”

“So Glen Powers never remarried?” I ask Louisa. These are the first words I’ve squeezed in since Anastasia arrived.

“He did,” Louisa says, “a year or so after we divorced. But it didn’t last.”

Anastasia throws her arms in the air. “What a surprise! The pitiful man’s still stuck on his first wife, the one who ditched him for the rich guy. The pitiful man takes her out to dinner whenever she’ll allow it. And the pitiful man’s second marriage didn’t last.” She sends an exaggerated shrug to the Kydd and me. “Go figure.”

The doorbell rings and the sounds of the front door opening and closing tell us the caller is letting himself in. Anastasia shakes her long locks. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” she yells out.

Louisa closes her eyes and looks like she’s praying for patience. She leaves her post at the sink and heads toward the living room, apparently eager to greet this particular guest. Glen Powers reaches the kitchen doorway before she does, though. “Louisa,” he says, taking her hands in both of his, “I just heard. Good God, are you all right?”

Anastasia snorts and looks up at the ceiling. “All right?” she repeats, shaking her heavy tresses again. “Look at her. Does she seem broken up to you?”

Glen Powers doesn’t let on he hears. Louisa leads him into the kitchen and introduces him to the Kydd and me. He offers each of us a firm handshake and then turns to the surly stepdaughter. “Anastasia,” he says, “it’s so nice to see you—as always.”

She growls at him. It’s a real one—guttural, menacing—but Powers seems unfazed; he doesn’t even look at her. He scans the room instead, as if he expects to find someone else here. His eyes alight on the boyfriend, who’s now holding Lucifer near the scene of the crime. “Lance,” he says, giving him a short wave, “I knew you’d be in the neighborhood.”

Lance returns the wave by lifting the dainty dog and it emits another
yip-yip-wail
.

Glen Powers turns back to Louisa. He’s handsome, fifty-something, blue-eyed and sandy-haired, with a well-toned body that suggests it sees the inside of a gym a few times a week. “Let me help,” he says. “I’m here for as long as it takes, staying at the Carriage House.”

The Carriage House is an antique bed-and-breakfast near the center of Chatham and it’s the ultimate in casual elegance. Even now, in mid-October, Glen Powers is lucky to get a room there. If it were July, he’d have had to book a year in advance.

“Let me help,” he repeats. “What arrangements have been made so far?”

“Arrangements?” Louisa looks blank.

Anastasia smacks her maroon lips and steps closer to Glen. He backs up. “Hello-o-o?” she chants, her baritone down to a bass and her face too close to Louisa’s. “When people die, it’s customary in civilized societies to make
arrangements
. A wake? A memorial service?”

Louisa shakes her head. “But we haven’t found Herb yet,” she says. “We don’t have his body.”

“His body?” Anastasia plants her hands on her substantial hips and pivots toward the Kydd and me, her heavily outlined eyes opened unnaturally wide. “My father wanted to be cremated,” she tells us. “The whole family knew that.” She tosses her hair toward Louisa. “Even
her
.”

“That’s true,” Louisa says, “but still.” She shakes her head. “It seems like we should find him first.”

“My father’s been dead a week,” Anastasia snaps at her. “And you haven’t even
begun
to make arrangements?”

Louisa looks uncertain, as if she thinks perhaps Anastasia has a valid point, as if the idea of a funeral hasn’t occurred to Louisa before now.

“Well, of course you haven’t,” Anastasia continues. She turns toward the Kydd and me, and a synthetic smile spreads across her face. “You’ve been
way
too busy commiserating with your
lawyers
.”

Glen Powers clears his throat. “Maybe now’s not a good time to discuss it,” he says to Louisa. “Let’s talk over dinner.”

Louisa looks at the Kydd for a moment and then back at Glen, shaking her head. “Not tonight,” she says. “I’m afraid I’m rather exhausted by all of this.”

Anastasia laughs and turns toward Lance. “What did I tell you?” she demands. “It’s a good thing we came down here.
We’ll
have to take care of my father’s arrangements. His waif of a wife is
way
too exhausted.”

I can think of a lot of words to describe Louisa Rawlings.
Waif
isn’t one of them.

Lance nods a silent agreement toward Anastasia, something I suspect he does often, and the beast yips again.

“Tomorrow, then,” Glen says to Louisa. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“We’ll see,” she answers. “Let’s talk in the afternoon.” Her glance at me is almost imperceptible. “I have a rather busy morning.”

Glen Powers seems eager to take his leave. He bids all of us good-bye, even Lucifer, and then heads out of the room far more quickly than he entered. “I’ll see you out,” Louisa says.

The Kydd turns to me as soon as they’re gone. “I’d better get started on that research,” he says. His eyes, though, send a more desperate message. Let’s get the hell out of here, they scream. Fast.

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had about enough of
Family Feud
too. I nod at him and we both stand to repack our briefcases.

Lance and Lucifer remain stationed against the far wall as we pack up, Satan’s namesake momentarily soothed by Lance’s constant stroking. Anastasia strolls to the kitchen sink, where she yanks the curtain aside to watch Glen Powers and Louisa in the driveway. When a car door slams, she drops the curtain and shakes her shiny hair. “
That
guy,” she says to no one in particular, “is a
special
kind of stupid.”

Harry’s old Jeep sits alone in the office driveway when I arrive at eight o’clock. It looks worse than usual, as it often does on Mondays. Whenever he has a free Sunday, Harry four-wheels down Nauset Beach and stakes out a remote spot. He spends the day, the evening, and sometimes the wee hours of the next morning surf casting for stripers, blues, or whatever’s biting that week. He went yesterday. The Jeep’s mud flaps are sand-caked and the bottom half of its olive green chassis is white with the chalky residue of salt water.

The front office is empty. I leave my briefcase and jacket on one of the chairs and head for the kitchen in search of coffee. Harry’s office door is open and he’s laughing out loud on the telephone. Harry is one of the only people I know who’s immune to Monday-morning malaise. I wave to him as I pass, fill my mug from the pot he’s brewed, and return to lean in his doorway. He gestures for me to come in and sit.

That’s more easily suggested than done. The two chairs facing his desk are piled high with files, legal pads, and photocopied cases. One is topped off with a crumpled deli bag and an empty chocolate milk carton, litter from a prior day’s lunch. We all suffer from a chronic lack of administrative help in this office. Harry’s case is critical.

I lean against his wooden bookcase instead. He tells the person on the other end of the line to forget it, he’ll take his chances in court. He hangs up and laughs again. “She’s a piece of work,” he says.

Enough said. The person on the other end of the phone was Geraldine Schilling, Barnstable County’s District Attorney. She’s a piece of work by anybody’s standards; a pain in the ass by Harry’s. He must be feeling charitable this morning.

“She wants Rinky to do time,” he reports. “Sixty days.” He shakes his head at the telephone.

Rinky is Chatham’s only homeless person and he’s homeless by choice. He’s a tortured soul who prefers the streets and the woods to the shelter repeatedly offered by locals. He also prefers the voices in his head to anyone else’s conversation. Rinky rarely speaks to anybody the rest of us can see. Court documents dub him Rinky Snow, but no one seems to know where the surname came from. I secretly harbor the notion that it stems from the stuff he sleeps on half the year.

“He could do worse,” I tell Harry.

“Not in October, he couldn’t.”

Rinky has lived on Chatham’s streets since his return from the Vietnam War in the mid-sixties. It didn’t take long for the year-rounders to recognize his latent wounds. By unspoken agreement, we look the other way when Rinky spends the night in the woods on town-owned property, and when he drinks from a brown paper bag in public, and when he utters the occasional obscenity to an unsuspecting tourist.

Even the cops are in on the arrangement. They turn blind eyes to Rinky’s antics too—unless it’s winter. In winter they pick him up whenever they can, haul him in, and hold him as long as his transgression-of-the-moment allows. That way he won’t freeze to death during our frigid winter nights. Come spring’s thaw, they once again look the other way like the rest of us.

Harry’s been representing Rinky for decades. Rinky’s never done time as early as October, and Harry doesn’t intend to let him start now. Hell, sixty days starting now barely taps into the cold season.

But Rinky’s transgression-of-the-moment is more serious than usual. When two vacationing women approached him on Saturday night to ask for directions, he took a knife from under his coat and caressed its six-inch blade. As Harry sees it, Rinky didn’t actually threaten the visitors—he simply exercised poor judgment in sharing his prized possession with them. The two women don’t see it that way.

Of course, in Rinky Snow’s universe he could just as easily have been brandishing a bayonet—or a banana.

Rinky will be arraigned later today, but he’s not my concern at the moment. Harry will take good care of him, as usual. “Where the hell is the Kydd?” I ask.

Harry shrugs. “Haven’t seen him. I thought maybe you two went straight to the station.”

I shake my head. “We’re not going to the station. We’re meeting Walker here. At ten.” I lean forward and look out the window to see if the Kydd’s truck has pulled in yet. It hasn’t.

“Walker agreed?” Harry asks.

“Agreed to what?”

He smiles up at me. “Agreed to meet here?”

I’m distracted. Harry’s amused by that. So now I’m annoyed. “Of course he agreed. Why wouldn’t he?”

Harry’s smile broadens, but he says nothing. I know what he’s thinking. Mitch Walker agreed—at least in part—because he knows Louisa Rawlings is a force to be reckoned with. Walker has met her only once, but with Louisa, once is enough. Besides, he knows where she lives and that means he has a pretty good handle on her net worth. Money matters, especially at the earliest stages of a criminal investigation.

I decide to ignore Harry’s apparent amusement. I’ve no interest in discussing Louisa Rawlings’s many assets with him.

“The Kydd picked a hell of a day to sleep in,” I say as I head out of his office.

“Don’t worry,” he answers my back. “He’s done your warrant research.”

“How do you know that?” I turn and lean in the doorway again.

“He was here yesterday,” Harry says. “A man on a mission.”

“Yesterday? I thought you went fishing yesterday.”

“I did. But not until late afternoon. I stopped in here first for an hour or so to check messages and pick up a little.” He sweeps the room with one arm, as if he might have a shot at a job with Merry Maids.

I laugh out loud. I can’t help it. It’s scary to think this is the
after
-cleanup picture.

He frowns when I look back at him, apparently insulted. “Anyway,” he says, “the Kydd was already working when I got here and he was still hard at it when I left. He said he would be tied up last night. Wanted to get the job done by the end of the day.”

This information should make me feel better. But for some reason I can’t articulate, it doesn’t.

“And he looked like the future of civilization depended on the results of his research,” Harry continues. “So I think you can relax.”

I’m not relaxed. Harry’s news unsettles me. The Kydd made a point of telling me he had no plans. But so what? Plans develop sometimes. And why the hell should I care anyhow?

Harry rests his head against the back of his tall leather chair and looks up at the ceiling for a moment. “You know,” he says, pointing his pen at me, “I think maybe the Kydd has found himself a woman.”

“A what?”

“A woman,” he repeats, laughing. “You’ve heard of the species?”

I stand up straight in the doorway. As usual, my stomach races ahead of my brain.

“Think about it,” he continues, smiling and tapping the pen in his palm. “Big plans for last night. Working like hell so he could keep them. Later to the office than usual this morning. I smell a romance brewing.”

I’m speechless.

Harry winks at me.

I don’t wink back. The Kydd’s red pickup—parked in Louisa Rawlings’s driveway early yesterday—pops into my head. Morning dew undisturbed.

Harry chuckles. “Maybe my offer to hook him up with a good-looking inmate got to him, scared him into finding a sweetheart on his own.”

Now I see different scenes: the Kydd matter-of-factly negotiating the hardware on the double doors of Louisa’s veranda; his familiarity with the steam room switches in the Queen’s Spa.

I force myself to answer Harry. “Maybe you’re right,” I tell him. But I hope like hell he’s wrong. And it’s not because I begrudge the Kydd a love life.

I hurry back to the front office, grab my briefcase and jacket, and head out the door. Harry’s wrong, I tell myself. And so am I. It’s as simple as that. We’re just plain wrong.

 

The lean red fox in the road ahead hesitates when my Thunderbird speeds toward him and then he darts back into the bushes he came from. He’s staring after the car when I check the rearview mirror, his head and neck sticking tentatively into the road. He lifts his aristocratic snout in the air as he reemerges, apparently unhappy about riffraff in the neighborhood.
Slow down,
I tell myself. Even the wildlife deems this errand ridiculous.

And it is. The Kydd knows better than to get involved with a client. And what interest would Louisa Rawlings have in a boy little more than half her age? For God’s sake, she’s old enough to be his mother. Hell, she’s old enough to be his big brother’s mother too.

My head hurts.

But my stomach feels worse. It knots when I pull into the Rawlingses’ driveway. The Kydd’s red pickup is here, right where it was yesterday, roof and hood dew covered. Its windows are fogged, just as they were yesterday, and tiny dew-fed rivers once again trickle down the misty glass.

The front door of Louisa’s house is closed, but predictably unlocked, and I barge in as if I’m a one-woman SWAT team. From the foyer, I hear the steady pelting of water in the first-floor shower. I pause for just a second—haste is often an effective substitute for courage—and then crack open the door to the master suite.

Apparently Louisa got first dibs on the Queen’s Spa. The Kydd is ensconced in her king-size bed, leaning against a mountain of pillows, the lilac sheets pulled up to his stomach. He’s naked above the sheets, one arm draped over Pillow Mountain, his hand pressed against a bedpost, a lit cigarette dangling between his fingers. I didn’t know he smoked.

He jumps about a foot and a half when the door squeaks.

“Jesus Christ, Marty. What the hell are you doing here?” He bolts upright in the bed, yanks the sheets up to his chest, and damn near drops his cigarette underneath them in the process.

“What am
I
doing here?” I find it hard to believe we’re having this conversation. “What am
I
doing here? That’s not
really
the question, is it, Kydd?”

He says nothing for a moment, stares down at the sheets he’s clutching as if he’s never seen them before, and then returns his gaze to me. His expression suggests he’s genuinely surprised to realize he’s not wearing a suit. “Please,” he says finally, swallowing hard and pointing toward the bathroom door. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you outside.”

“You’ll meet me
in
side,” I tell him. No need to invite the neighbors to this gathering. There aren’t any neighbors at the moment, of course. But still. “In the sunroom,” I add.

He nods like a bobble-head doll. He’d agree to meet me in Hades right now if it’d get me out of Louisa Rawlings’s boudoir. He throws his long legs over the side of the bed farthest from me, careful to keep the sheets pulled up above his hips.

“And Kydd.”

“What?” He twists back toward me, then jumps up and does a little dance behind the sheets. He really did drop his cigarette this time. “What?” he repeats.

“Don’t forget your goddamned pants.”

 

“Are you out of your mind, Kydd?” I slam the sunroom doors and don’t wait for an answer. It’s pretty clear that he is. “She’s a client, for Christ’s sake.”

“But she won’t be,” he says. “Not after today.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.” I don’t normally hiss, but it comes naturally at the moment.

The Kydd’s wearing faded blue jeans and a short-sleeved under-shirt. He’s barefoot and beltless. “Marty,” he says, his tone suggesting this is nothing more than a minor misunderstanding, “Louisa didn’t have anything to do with her husband’s death.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“This is your professional opinion?”

“It is,” he says, his grin not nearly sheepish enough.

I throw my hands in the air.

“Marty,” he tries again, “she didn’t. And it’s obvious she didn’t. Mitch Walker will see that as soon as he talks with her this morning. That will be the end of this whole damned thing. She won’t be a client anymore.”

The sunroom doors open. Enter Louisa, elegant as ever, even with wet hair. She’s in a pale blue dressing gown—satin. It hangs to her ankles, clings to each curve along the way. “Marty,” she says, sounding genuinely happy to see me. “Good morning.”

Good morning
? Has the world gone tilt?

“Oh,” she says, looking from the unshaven, almost-dressed Kydd to me. She seems to recall—slowly—the connection between the two of us. “Oh, dear,” she adds after a pause. “This is awkward.”

“No,” I tell her. “We passed
awkward
a long time ago, Louisa.”

The doorbell. This is swell. With any luck it’s a delegation from the Board of Bar Overseers, preferably with a
Cape Cod Times
reporter in tow. A photographer would add a nice touch too. This is a Kodak moment if ever there was one.

Louisa turns to answer the bell, but she hesitates at the sunroom doors. “Perhaps you should wait here, Kevin,” she says to the Kydd.

He nods.

“Kevin?”
I repeat, gaping at him.

“It
is
my name,” he says.

I leave him standing shoeless in the sunroom and follow Louisa’s blue satin sashay toward the persistent chimes of the doorbell. My stomach is already knotted, but the knots develop knots of their own when I see that she’s headed toward the kitchen door. It’s a Cape Codder who’s come to call, a local, and whoever it is has given up on the doorbell and has started knocking. Hard.

Louisa’s kitchen door has a dead bolt at eye level, but apparently it isn’t engaged. The persistent knocks of the visitor push the door partially open as we approach. Louisa gets to it ahead of me and pulls it open the rest of the way. Her polite smile suggests it’s Avon calling. “Can I help you?” she says.