Nervous Water (13 page)

“You're staying here while she's…away?”

She gave me a quick frown, as if I'd said something unbelievably stupid. “Danny and I have our own little place in Westford. It's close by.”

I noticed that Becca was wearing a wedding ring. “What about Danny's dad?”

She smiled. “He's in the Middle East right now. He's a reporter. He's always overseas.” She shook her head. “Wherever there's danger, that's where he wants to be. I keep telling him, now that he's a daddy…”

“That's got to be hard,” I said.

She nodded. “It is. Danny's hardly even seen him. But it's not as if I didn't know what it was going to be like. So it's nice to have family close by, you know?”

“Like your brother?” I said.

“James?” She flapped one hand in the air, apparently dismissing James. “I hardly see him. Once in a while I run into him here. Like the other day when you were here. He's got his own life now. He's got an apartment in Chelmsford.”

“Since when?”

“Since Cassie moved in. Is that what you mean?”

I nodded. “Was that his idea?”

“What, moving out, getting his own place?”

I nodded.

“Why are you asking?”

I shrugged. “No particular reason.”

Becca smiled. “James pretty much lost his cool the other day when you were here.”

“He apologized. Not a problem.”

“He thought you were harassing our father.”

“I suppose I was.”

“Well,” she said, “I think it was just a mutual thing. Him moving out. Cassie made it pretty clear that she was uncomfortable with him.”

“And your father went along with that?”

“What Cassie wants, Cassie gets.” Becca frowned. “I'm sorry. I forget my manners. Can I get you an iced tea or something?”

“Sure,” I said. “Iced tea would hit the spot.”

She went over to the refrigerator. “You're still trying to catch up with her, huh?” she said over her shoulder.

“I am,” I said. “I'm concerned. I've been talking to everybody I can think of.”

“Oh, I'm sure she's fine.” She was pouring from a pitcher into a tall glass filled with ice cubes. “Cassie can take care of herself.”

“You don't have any idea where she might be, do you?”

“Me?” She smiled. “Not a clue.” She muted the TV, then came over and put the glass of iced tea in front of me. She sat across from me, picked up a Cheerio off the baby's tray and put it into his mouth.

“Your father doesn't seem to know anything about his wife, either,” I said.

“I try to keep my nose out of my father's marriages,” she said. “So who've you been talking to? Besides Daddy, I mean.”

“And you,” I said.

“Right.” She smiled. “And me.”

“Well,” I said, “her former boyfriend, for one.”

She frowned. “He was a, um, black man, wasn't he?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

She shook her head. “Cassie mentioned him a couple times. He's a college professor, I think. I always wondered if she still had a thing for him.”

“After marrying your father, you mean?”

“I guess I was just feeling overly protective. You know, being suspicious of my daddy's pretty new wife.” She popped another Cheerio into Danny's mouth. “It's not that I think Cassie was being unfaithful or something.”

“I wondered about that,” I said. “I just came from the Madison police station.”

She frowned at me. “The police?”

I nodded.

“Wow,” she said. “You really are worried, huh?”

“I am,” I said.

“You think something…?”

“I don't know what to think.” I took a long gulp of the iced tea. “So your father. How's he dealing with it? With Cassie being gone?”

“Oh,” she said, “I don't think I should talk about anything like that. That's pretty personal. You'll have to talk to him.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I suppose you're right. What about you?”

“Me?” She shook her head. “It's upsetting to me because it's upsetting to him. It's none of my business, really, except I want my father to be happy.” She put her elbows on the table and her chin on her elbows, and she leaned toward me. “So how come you're doing all this?”

“Looking for Cassie, you mean?”

She nodded.

“Her father's in the hospital. I want her to know about it.”

“What's wrong?”

“Heart attack,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Cassie's your cousin, so, um, he's your uncle, right?”

“Yes. He's in pretty bad shape. Keeps asking for Cassie.”

“Is he gonna make it?”

“They think so. He's still in the ICU.”

“Well,” she said, “I hope he's okay.”

I drained my glass of iced tea. “When do you expect your father?”

“Well, like I told you, he works late on Wednesdays. He should be here around eight.”

“And he's going to have a nice lamb roast waiting for him,” I said. “Lucky guy.”

“Oh, he's a good old dad,” she said. “And with his wife not here…” She waved her hand in the air. “Who wants to get home after spending ten hours inside people's mouths and have to open a can?”

I looked at my watch. It was a little after six. I pushed myself back from the table and stood up. “Tell your father I dropped by and I'd appreciate it if he'd give me a call, would you?”

“Sure. Of course.” She started to stand up.

I held up my hand. “Relax. I can find my way out. Thanks for the iced tea.”

“Any time,” she said. “Good luck with Cassie.”

“Thank you.” I picked up a Cheerio from Danny's tray and held it up so he could see it.

He looked at it cross-eyed, and I flashed on my two boys back when they were infants in high chairs. Two or three lifetimes ago. They were men now.

Danny opened his mouth. I dropped the Cheerio on his tongue. He gummed it, swallowed, then laughed.

I turned to leave.

“I hope your uncle's going to be okay,” said Becca.

“Thank you.”

She followed me to the front door and held it for me. “If I hear anything about Cassie or something,” she said, “I'll let you know.”

“That would be great,” I said.

I went out to my car, and as I backed out of the Hurley driveway, I saw that Becca had stepped out onto the porch. She was smiling and waving at me.

After I pulled into the traffic on 128 I took out my cell phone and called Evie at home.

She picked up after several rings.

“It's me, babe. On my way home.”

“Oh, good. Where are you?”

“In Lexington. I should be there in half an hour. Just wanted you to know.”

“I picked up a couple of nice ribeyes at Deluca's,” she said. “If you'll grill 'em, I'll bake the potatoes and throw together the salad.”

“Sounds great,” I said. “Gin and tonics first, though, huh?”

“Goes without saying.” She hesitated. “Is everything okay?”

“Yep. You?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Everything's great.”

 

I rubbed the steaks with kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper and grilled them over mesquite charcoal outside, aiming for medium-rare. While the steaks sizzled, Evie and I sipped our gin and tonics. I asked her how things were at work.

She said, “Busy,” and waved her hand in the air. She really didn't want to talk about it, she said.

She asked about Uncle Moze and Cassie. I told her about my conversations with Grantham Webster and Lieutenant Tony Hazen and Rebecca Hurley, and Evie watched my face and nodded…and I had the profound impression that she hadn't heard a word I'd said.

We ate at the picnic table in the garden. I'd learned to love ribeyes above all other cuts of beef on a weeklong fishing trip in Montana many years ago. Henry loved ribeyes, too. There's a lot of fat on a good hunk of ribeye. Henry got the fat. Cholesterol didn't worry him.

By the time we finished eating, night had fallen and our little walled-in garden was awash in moon- and starlight.

“How about another drink?” I said to Evie.

“No, I don't think so,” she said.

“Ah, come on,” I said. “Here we are, just the two of us—well, Henry counts, making it three—here we are, a beautiful summer's night, stars and moon and all. Let's have a brandy or something.”

“I don't want a drink,” she said. “Thanks anyway.” She stood up. “I need a bath.” She turned and headed for the back door. Then she stopped. “There's a message for you in our voicemail. I meant to tell you earlier.”

“Who's it from?” I said.

“A man calling himself Grannie,” she said, and she went into the house.

I went in, found the phone, and got our voicemail. One message. I clicked to hear it.

“Mr. Coyne,” he said, “it's Grannie. Grantham Webster. I am wondering if you could meet me tomorrow at four o'clock in my office. That's Thursday afternoon. I think I might have something to report to you. No need to confirm. I'll be there anyway.”

I went into my office and dialed the two numbers for Grannie on my list from Cassie's cell phone. No answer at either his cell or his office. I left no message. He'd be there at four, and so would I.

 

At nine o'clock on Thursday morning I called the hospital. Uncle Moze was still “stable” and “doing as well as could be expected” and “resting comfortably” and, no, he wasn't able to talk on the telephone yet. I couldn't persuade the nurse to elaborate on her platitudes, nor could she tell me when they might move him out of the ICU. I asked her to have Dr. Drury give me a call, and she promised to give him my message, though she didn't promise that he'd actually call.

 

I walked out my front door about nine thirty, headed for my office. I was about halfway down Mount Vernon Street when someone came up behind me and grabbed hard onto my left arm, just above the elbow.

I whirled around. My right fist was clenched, and I was about to take a swing at him when I saw that it was James Hurley.

“Let go of my arm,” I said.

He let go and held both hands up in the air. “Sorry,” he said.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

“So you sneak up behind me and grab me?”

“Shit,” he said. “I'm sorry. I did it again. I just wanted to talk to you.” He shrugged. “But I heard you've been asking questions about me, and I don't like that. It makes me a little mad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tony Hazen. The cop. You were asking him about me.”

I looked James Hurley up and down. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“Huh?” Then he smiled. “Sure. Why not.”

We walked down to the Starbucks on the corner of Charles and Beacon. James ordered some kind of fancy brew with froth on top. I got black coffee, house blend. We took our cups across the street to the Common and found a bench.

“I didn't go to Tony Hazen to ask about you,” I told him. “I was asking about your father.”

“I heard it was about me.”

“How'd you hear that?”

He shrugged. “It's a small town. I got friends on the force.”

“Well,” I said, “your name did come up. I learned some things about your family.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“I'm just trying to find Cassie,” I said. “She's my cousin, and she's your stepmother. So you might say we're all family.”

He laughed. “What did you find out?”

“Your mother died,” I said. Howard Litchfield was actually the one who told me that, but I didn't want to bring him into it. “Then your stepmother died, too.”

He looked out over the common. The angled morning sunlight filtered down through the trees, spreading patches of light and shadow on the grass. “What's that got to do with Cassie?” James said.

“I don't know.”

“It's really none of your business,” he said. “What happened to my mother.”

“It must have been rough on you and your sister.”

“More for her than me,” he said. “I was pretty young when our mother died. It didn't really hit me the way it did Becca. I was sad about Ellen, but, you know, she wasn't really our mother. Becca took it pretty hard.”

“Ellen's death, you mean?”

“Both of them.”

“She seems to be doing pretty well now,” I said. “She's got her baby and her husband, and now that Cassie's gone, she's got her father to take care of.”

James laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“Becca doesn't have any husband,” he said.

“She said—”

“What, the foreign correspondent? The brave globe-trotting reporter who travels from one war zone to another writing prizewinning stories? Is that what she told you?”

I nodded. “Something like that.”

“Look,” he said, “Becca doesn't even know who Danny's father is.”

“None of my business,” I said.

“I agree,” he said. “Just, her stories, you know?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess you can't blame her for lying about that to a stranger.” I drained my coffee cup. “Was there anything else you wanted? Because I'm going to be late for work if I don't get going.”

James Hurley shrugged. “I just wondered what you were doing, talking to the police.”

“Why? You got something to hide?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Nothing that they don't know. I just don't like people snooping around my family.” He smiled. “But like you say, you're sort of family, too.”

“I'm just trying to track down Cassie,” I said. “It had nothing to do with you.”

He nodded. “If I hear anything, I'll let you know.”

We stood up and shook hands. Then he started down the pathway leading to the Park Street T station, and I turned and headed in the opposite direction, to Copley Square.

When I got to the office, Julie said that Evie had called. Her message was that she loved me, she was sorry for being so grouchy lately, and she'd made reservations for dinner tonight, eight o'clock.

“Nola's,” she said. “She's taking you to Nola's.”

“It's in the North End,” I said. “Italian place.”

“I know. Isn't that nice, Evie making the reservation like that? Saying she's sorry?”

“It is nice,” I said. “It makes me happy.”

Julie was smiling expectantly. She liked to see me happy, and she liked knowing that my relationship with Evie was harmonious.

But mainly, Julie wanted me to tell her what it was exactly that Evie was sorry about.

I would've told her if I'd known.

Lieutenant Horowitz had also called, Julie said, asked what my schedule was for the day, and then insisted that she schedule me for lunch with him at Marie's for twelve fifteen. It was, he'd said, a matter of extreme urgency.

Julie said she knew Horowitz better than to believe what she called his “extreme-urgency bullshit” and that we had a law practice here.

I told her that he was just collecting a debt, and anyway, Roger Horowitz was not the kind of guy who lingered over lunch no matter who was buying, but after lunch I had an appointment and wouldn't be back to the office, so she might as well take the afternoon off.

Julie opened her mouth, then closed it. She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I will.”

 

When I got to Marie's, I looked around the crowded dining room and saw an arm wave from a booth in back. I went over and slid in across from Horowitz. He was talking on his cell phone. He held up a finger at me, mumbled something into the phone, then clicked it off and stuck it in his jacket pocket.

He craned his neck and looked around, and Sophie, our regular waitress, a dark-eyed business management major at Northeastern, appeared almost instantly at our table. “Ready to order now, guys?”

Horowitz, of course, ordered the lobster ravioli. I asked for a spinach salad.

When Sophie left, Horowitz said, “Spinach salad? You turning into some kind of vegetarian freak?”

I shrugged. “I grilled ribeyes last night, for your information. I happen to like spinach salad. Besides, it's got bacon in it.”

He shook his head. “Since Evie came along,” he said, “I hardly know you.”

“Same old me,” I said. “Maybe marginally healthier.”

“Yeah,” he said, “and all settled down, verging on henpecked. You still go fishing whenever you want?”

“I never went fishing whenever I wanted. I want to go fishing all the time. And I'm not henpecked.”

Sophie put a basket of bread on our table. Horowitz fished out a slice, ripped it in half, poured a little olive oil on his bread plate, swabbed the bread in it, and stuffed it into his mouth.

I broke off a piece of bread and dipped it in oil for myself. The oil had rosemary and another herb I couldn't identify in it. I decided I could make a meal on Marie's bread and oil.

We talked about the Red Sox until Sophie brought Horowitz's lobster ravioli and my spinach salad. We ate in silence for a few minutes.

Then between bites Horowitz said, “You know your cousin is the dentist's third wife?”

I nodded. “The previous one died of an asthma attack. He had another one before her who was the mother of his two kids.”

“Hazen told you about the second one, died in Madison, huh?”

“Yes. I got the details. Hazen was very cooperative.”

“He was?”

I smiled. “He was okay. Answered my questions. He seems to respect you.”

“You don't know what happened to the first wife?”

“She died, too. Hurley has bad luck with wives.”

He shook his head. “The first wife committed suicide. Hazen didn't tell you that?”

“No, he didn't. Suicide, huh?”

Horowitz consulted his sheet of notes. “Hurley and his family were living in Arlington at the time. This was back in eighty-four. One Tuesday morning in October after the dentist went off to work and the kids left on the school bus, the wife—her name was Loretta—she closed the garage door, started up her soccer-mom van, sat behind the wheel, and swallowed half a bottle of Valium. The daughter—Rebecca—she found her mother when she got home from school. Called her father. Hurley. The dentist. He went home, then called the cops.”

“There was an investigation, of course,” I said.

“We investigate all suicides,” he said. “As you know.”

“And?”

“And the ME signed off on it. No question it was a suicide.”

“Was there a note?”

“Yep.”

“What'd it say?”

He shrugged. “I don't have those kinds of details, Coyne.”

“So you don't know why she did it?”

“Why do most people?”

“Most people don't,” I said.

He smiled. “Depression. Despair. What I understand from reading the studies, it's more what's inside their heads than what's going on in their lives. Bad brain chemistry. Almost anything can set it off.”

“I'd like to know what set off Loretta Hurley.”

“Too late to ask her,” he said.

Sophie cleared away our plates and brought our coffee. We declined dessert.

“So Hurley's had three wives,” I said, “and two of them are dead.”