Outwitting Trolls (7 page)

Sharon walked up beside Charles Nichols, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Charles?”

His head snapped around. He looked up at Sharon and frowned. “What do you want?”

“Charles, it's me. It's Sharon.”

He blinked at her. Then he said, “Oh. Sure. What are you doing here?”

“I came to visit with you,” she said. She bent down and kissed his cheek.

He neither resisted her kiss nor reciprocated it. He returned his attention to the television.

“This is my friend Brady Coyne,” Sharon said. “Brady, Charles Nichols.”

I stepped up and held out my hand.

Charles looked at it and shrugged. “I can't shake hands.” He tapped the cast on his right arm with his left hand. “I can't cut my food or hold a newspaper or get dressed. I can't even unzip my fly and take a leak. Whaddya think about that?”

I patted his shoulder. “I'm sorry. When do you get the cast off?”

He frowned at me. “Who're you, the boyfriend? She dumped my son for you, is that it?”

“I didn't dump Ken,” said Sharon. “It was…mutual. Anyway, that was ten years ago.”

“Actually,” Charles said, “I don't care. If you dumped him, I wouldn't blame you. So how come you picked today to visit me after all this time?”

“Is there someplace more private where we can talk?” Sharon asked.

“Why talk?” Charles asked. “Let's watch the ball game.”

“We've got to talk,” Sharon said, “whether you want to or not.” She grabbed the handles of Charles's wheelchair, released the brakes, and pushed him out of the room. I followed along behind.

“You could've waited till the end of the inning, at least,” he grumbled.

“It's nice,” Sharon said, “you're still so interested in baseball.”

“I'm really not. Never was.” He turned his head and looked at me. “Baseball is boring and irrelevant. But it's what there is. As you can see, there isn't much else around here. Am I right?”

I shrugged. “I like baseball.”

There was a balcony off the corridor on the other side of some glass doors. “How about out here?” Sharon asked.

“I don't care,” Charles grumbled. “I want to get back to my ball game. If you'd been considerate, you would've come when there wasn't a ball game on the TV. When there isn't a game, I'm bored out of my skull.”

I opened the doors, and Sharon wheeled Charles onto the balcony, where there was a round glass-topped table with a big
umbrella sticking out of it and four aluminum chairs. It overlooked the trout stream, and we had it to ourselves.

“This is nice,” Sharon said. “Doesn't the sun feel good?”

“I'm chilly,” said Charles.

“Oh, no,” she said. “It's quite warm out here, this nice sunshine, and sheltered from the wind.”

“Yeah,” he said, “well, I'm always chilly. It's my circulation. It's why I'm in this damn wheelchair. I can't feel my legs. They're numb, like hunks of wood. The numbness is moving up my body. They tell me when it gets to my vital organs, they'll stop working the way my legs have stopped. Then I'll need more than a damn wheelchair. Of course, this thing in my head will probably blow up first.” He looked up at me and winked, as if he and I were sharing some kind of secret.

I winked back at him.

Sharon sat in one of the chairs so that she was facing Charles. “I'm sorry I haven't visited you more often,” she said.

He shrugged. “I don't expect you to. It's not like I wake up every morning and say, ‘I wonder if today is the day Sharon will come for a visit?' Nobody visits me. Except Ellen. I don't know why she keeps coming to see me. She was here just a few days ago. She came when there wasn't a ball game on TV. She's a nice girl, Ellen is. But she's the only one. I don't care. I don't expect visitors.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “So this isn't just your basic visiting-old-Charles-on-a-Sunday-afternoon. You're here for a reason. You said you wanted to talk with me. What is it?”

Sharon glanced at me, then looked at Charles. She reached out and gripped his left hand, the one not covered with a cast, in both of hers. “It's Ken,” she said. “I'm sorry…” She shook her head. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“What?” asked Charles. “What about him?”

She cleared her throat. “He's…he died, Charles. I'm sorry.”

He glared at her. “What? What did you say?”

“Ken died last night,” she said.

Charles snatched his hand away from Sharon's grip. He put it over the lower half of his face and moved it up and down, as if he were trying to rub feeling into his cheeks. He was looking at her out of his pale, watery eyes. “He died, you said?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Charles swiveled his head and looked at me. “What's this got to do with you?”

“I'm Sharon's friend,” I said.

“Okay.” He returned his eyes to Sharon. “Last night, huh? So what happened? What did my son die of? He's not that old, for Christ's sake. I'm the one who's supposed to die, not him.”

“He was murdered,” said Sharon.

“Huh? Murdered?” Charles frowned. “Why?”

“They don't know. The police are working on it.”

Charles looked at me again. “What're you, a cop? Is that it?”

“No,” I said. “I'm just a friend.”

“You fucking her?”

“Charles,” said Sharon. “Please.”

“Well?” he said to me.

“No,” I said. “I'm not.”

“Great-looking woman, isn't she?”

I smiled. “She is, yes.”

“Maybe she was my son's wife,” he said, “but I used to think,
Oh, I wouldn't mind a piece of that. No sir.
”

“Charles, come on,” said Sharon. “Did you understand what I told you?”

“You said my son was murdered,” he said. “Maybe my body
parts have stopped functioning, but I haven't lost my mind yet, unlike most of the inmates in this place. I understand fine. I haven't seen Ken in…I can't remember the last time. Haven't even talked to him. After a while, a person becomes an abstraction, even if he's your son. Like he doesn't even exist. Weeks go by, Ken doesn't even pass through my mind. I know he's got his own life, but he's my only son and my heir, and you'd think…” He waved his left hand in the air.

We sat there looking out at the trout stream and the woods, and nobody spoke for a while.

After a few minutes, Charles said, “Murdered, you said?”

Sharon nodded. “Yes.”

“They don't know who did it, or why, is that it?” I noticed that Charles's eyes were watery.

“That's right,” said Sharon.

“Do they have a theory?”

Sharon cleared her throat. “One of their theories is that I did it.”

Charles looked at her and smiled. “You, huh?”

She nodded. “I found his body.”

“Why would you kill Ken?”

“I wouldn't,” she said. “I didn't.”

He wiped his left hand across his eyes. “It's a silly theory,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

“They haven't arrested you.”

“Not yet.”

“You got a lawyer, I hope.”

Sharon glanced at me. “Yes. A good one.”

Charles turned and looked at me. “You, huh?”

I nodded.

“You gonna get her off?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Did she do it?” he asked me.

“No,” I said. “She's innocent. Don't worry about her. She's going to be fine.”

“I wasn't worried about her,” he said. “I was just worried she might not come and visit me anymore. Look at her, will you? I always thought Ken was a dodo, letting her go.”

Sharon looked at me and rolled her eyes.

I smiled.

“Charles,” she said, “it's possible that the police might come to talk to you. Isn't that right, Brady?”

“It's likely,” I said. “Generally they try to talk with all of the victim's relatives and friends.”

“I didn't want you to hear about Ken that way,” Sharon said.

“I get it,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Look,” she said, “if there's anything you need, anytime, please just call me. Will you promise to do that?”

“I won't need anything,” he said. “Unless you can dig up a new body for me.” He slapped the arm of his wheelchair with his functional hand. “Let's go. Take me back to my ball game, will you?”

 

The afternoon sun was low in the sky when I pulled into the lot behind Sharon's building.

“Why don't you come up, have a drink?” she asked.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Thanks. I should get going.”

“Got a busy evening ahead of you, do you?”

I turned and looked at her. She was smiling.

“No,” I said. “I just don't think it's a good idea to mix pleasure with business.”

“Having a drink with me would be pleasure?”

I nodded. “I think it could be, yes.”

“I really didn't mean anything,” she said. “Sometimes a drink is just a drink.”

I shrugged.

“Are you involved with somebody, Brady?”

“I'm kind of between involvements,” I said, “but I'm, um, working on it. How about you?”

She shook her head. “I wouldn't mind. It's just I haven't met anybody. It can be hard for a woman of my age. There was a man a few years ago. It didn't turn out well.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “We had fun, and he was very good to me, very generous, but after a while I realized I didn't love him, that I never would love him, that I was just kind of indifferent toward him. There was no future in it. I wasn't interested in a  relationship with no future. When I told him, he took it badly.”

“Badly how?”

“He wouldn't take no for an answer. He kept sending me flowers, calling me at all hours of the day and night, and when I stopped answering the phone, he'd fill up my answering machine with his messages.”

“He was stalking you,” I said.

She nodded. “I guess that's what it was.”

“Did you go to the police?”

She shook her head. “He didn't threaten me. I wasn't afraid. I was just annoyed. Well, it was worse than that. I was furious. The man was wrecking my life.”

“You could've gotten a restraining order.”

“Well,” she said, “I didn't need to. Eventually he went away.”

“You were lucky,” I said. “Stalkers generally don't just go away.”

Sharon smiled. “He was, um, encouraged to go away.”

“Encouraged how?”

“Ellen was home from school—Wayne was a senior in high school, I think—and we were eating out, my kids and I, having a nice Italian dinner at Papa Razzi there by the Concord rotary, the three of us, Wayne and Ellen and I. We all got along with each other back then. So we were sitting there at our table at Papa Razzi and Gary appeared. I looked up, and there he was, leaning his elbow on the bar, and when he saw me, he smiled and lifted his glass to me. I just about hit the roof. My kids, naturally, wanted to know what was going on, so I told them. Well, Wayne excused himself, got up, and went over to Gary, and I don't know what was said, but after a few minutes, Gary turned around and walked out of there, and Wayne came back to the table and said I wouldn't have to worry about that guy anymore, and sure enough, it's been four or five years now, and I haven't seen Gary or heard a peep from him since then.”

“Wayne must be a persuasive guy,” I said.

“I asked him what he said,” Sharon said, “but he wouldn't tell me.” She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Sure you won't come up?”

I patted her hand. “Thanks. Maybe another time.”

She nodded. “Okay. Another time.” She hesitated. “Look, Brady. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your coming with me this afternoon. I don't know as I could've managed it without you.”

“You would've done fine,” I said. “I didn't do anything.”

“You were there for me,” she said. “I know it's way above and
beyond the call of duty. Not many lawyers would do that on a Sunday afternoon.”

“Friends would,” I said.

She leaned over, touched my cheek with her fingertips, and kissed the corner of my mouth. “Well, thanks, friend,” she said.

In the middle of the morning on Monday I was in my office working on my third mug of coffee and plowing through a stack of paperwork that Julie, my long-suffering secretary, had dumped on me, as she did on a regular basis in her role as the boss of my law practice, when the console on my desk buzzed. “It's Detective Horowitz,” Julie said when I picked up.

“Okay,” I said. “Got it.” I hit the blinking light and said, “Roger.”

“Nobody named Clem, Clement, Clementine, whatever,” he said without preamble, “registered at the damn veterinarian convention. You sure you got that name right?”

“Yes,” I said, “it's a lovely day, and I'm doing very well, thank you for asking. How are
you
?”

“Don't push me, Coyne,” he growled. “I'm trying to capture murderers here. You sure that name was Clem?”

“I'm quite sure that's what Ken called the guy,” I said. “Clem.”

“No idea, first name, last name, nickname, huh?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Well, we're striking out on it.”

“I asked Sharon,” I said. “It rang no bells with her.”

“Try again,” he said, and with that he disconnected.

After Horowitz hung up on me, I called Sharon's cell phone, and when her voice mail clicked in, I said, “It's Brady. Hope you're doing okay. I wanted to ask you to rack your brain again, see if that name Clem means anything to you. If you think of anything, let me know, please. The police are pretty interested in him, and we should both be happy to help them focus on suspects other than you.”

I returned to my bottomless stack of papers, and an hour or so later there came a soft one-knuckle rap on my door.

“It's unlocked,” I grumbled. “Just come in.”

The door opened, and Julie stepped in.

“What?” I asked.

“You don't have to be crabby,” she said.

“Paperwork makes me crabby,” I said. “It's your own fault.”

“You want to make any money,” she said, “you've got to do paperwork. You've got a visitor.”

“A visitor,” I said.

“A young woman. She wants to see you. She doesn't have an appointment. I told her she had to make an appointment, that you were busy all day. She said she'd just wait, if that was okay, and maybe a minute would open up when you could see her. I don't think she intends to leave.”

“Who is it?” I asked. “What's she want?”

“She says her name is Ellen Nichols. She wouldn't tell me what she wanted. She seemed to think you'd know.”

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“What?”

“I didn't tell you about our new client.”

“We have a new client?”

I nodded.

Julie shook her head. “You did it again? You took on a new client without telling me?”

“Well,” I said, “she's not exactly a new client. She's an old client with a new problem. We used to handle the legal work for the animal hospital she and her husband ran before they divorced. That was about ten years ago. Her name is Sharon Nichols?” I made it a question.

Julie frowned for a minute, then nodded. “Yes, I remember them.”

“Well,” I said, “Sharon's ex-husband, Kenneth Nichols, was murdered Saturday night, and that's their daughter out there. I'm sorry I didn't mention it before.” I stood up. “I need to talk to her.”

Julie followed me out into our reception area. Ellen Nichols was sitting on one of the sofas with her chin propped up on her fists and her elbows on her knees and a pair of big round glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was frowning at a laptop computer that was open on the coffee table. She was a younger, darker-haired version of her mother—the same flashing eyes and generous mouth and slender body.

I started over to her, and she looked up and said, “Mr. Coyne?”

“It's Brady,” I said. “Do you want to come into my office?”

“I know you're busy…”

“It's okay,” I said. “Come on in.”

Ellen Nichols shut her laptop, stuck it into her backpack, hooked the backpack over one shoulder, and followed me into my office. She sat on the sofa in the conference area by the big window that looked out on Copley Square.

I took the upholstered chair across from her.

Julie had trailed along behind us. “Can I bring you some coffee? Tea? Water?”

“Nothing for me, thank you,” Ellen said.

“I'm good,” I said. “Thanks.”

Julie left.

“Do you remember me?” Ellen asked.

I shrugged. “You were a lot younger when I did legal work for your parents.”

“I was just a kid,” she said. “My brother and I used to hang out with Billy and Joey.”

“Back in the neighborhood,” I said.

She nodded. “I guess I shouldn't have come barging in like this,” she said. She used her forefinger to push her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “I've got classes later this afternoon, so I was in the neighborhood, and I wanted to see you. If it's not convenient…”

“No,” I said, “it's all right. You're at BU?”

“That's right. I'm in a master's program. Elementary ed. Specialty in reading.”

“I'm glad you stopped in. I wanted to talk with you anyway. I'm very sorry about what happened to your father.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I'm kind of numb about it. Actually, the reason I'm here is my mother. I'm really worried about her. I mean, is she really a suspect? Are they going to arrest her?”

“She's a suspect, yes,” I said, “but the fact that it's been two days and the police haven't done anything makes me believe that they're not going to charge her, that they don't think they have enough evidence for an arrest.”

“I'm worried about how she's doing, too.”

“Her peace of mind, you mean?”

“Yes. Her…sanity.” Ellen leaned forward and squeezed my
forearm. “She's never been all that emotionally strong. She had a hard time of it when my dad moved out, and since then, she's had one bad relationship after the other. Not to mention all the heartache my brother's caused her.”

“Wayne,” I said. “Has anybody told Wayne what happened?”

“My mother said she couldn't reach him. I tried, too, but just got his voice mail. I left him a message, but he hasn't called me back.”

“If you can give me his phone number,” I said, “I'll see what I can do. I need to talk with him anyway.”

“Sure.” Ellen fished a BlackBerry out of her purse, poked some buttons on it, then asked, “Got a pencil?”

I went to my desk, picked up a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen, and said, “Shoot.”

She recited a cell phone number and a street address with an apartment number in Websterville, New Hampshire.

I wrote them down. “He's going to Webster State, is that right?”

Ellen nodded. “Neither my mother nor I have heard from him for a long time. She worries about him.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

“I'm not worried,” she said. “That's just how Wayne is. In his own world. I love my brother, but he's awfully inconsiderate.”

“How did Wayne and your dad get along?” I asked.

“Last I knew, not so good,” she said. “He blamed our dad for wrecking our family.”

“So he's estranged from all three of you.”

She frowned. “Our family's kind of a mess, Mr. Coyne. Even so, Wayne still deserves to know what happened.”

“Did you and your father have a good relationship?” I asked.

“It was hard for all of us,” she said. “I'm older than Wayne.
I saw it differently. When my parents split, I was sad about it, but I didn't blame anybody. My dad and I kept in touch, and we got together now and then.”

“In Baltimore?”

She nodded. “I went down and visited him a couple of times. Sometimes he'd come to Boston on business, and we'd make it a point to get together, have dinner or something.”

“What about this past weekend?” I asked. “He was at a conference up here. Were you going to get together with him?”

She shook her head. “I didn't even know about it. He didn't tell me. When my mother told me about it, it kind of hurt my feelings, that he'd tell her, make a plan to see her, but not me.” She gave me a quick smile. “She said they were thinking about getting back together.”

“How would you feel about that?”

“If it was true, you mean?”

“Why wouldn't it be true?”

Ellen rolled her eyes. “I always thought they hated each other. It's how I understood their divorce. So it didn't make any sense.”

“People change,” I said.

“I guess so,” she said. “I mean, if it was true, if they both felt that way, well, it would've been awesome.” She shook her head and blinked, and I saw that tears had welled up in her eyes. “Well, anyway,” she said, “that's never going to happen now.”

She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist. I handed her the box of tissues I keep handy for such occasions, and she took one and dabbed at her eyes with it. Then she blew her nose. She smiled at me. “Thank you. I'm okay. Sorry.” She fitted her glasses back onto her face.

“I wanted to ask you,” I said, “if you knew of anybody who had a problem with your dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he ever mention owing money to somebody,” I said, “or someone owing him, or his being threatened, or having any kind of conflict or disagreement with somebody?”

“You mean, like who'd want to kill him?”

I nodded.

“I haven't a clue,” Ellen said. “He had a whole life down in Baltimore that I didn't know anything about. I mean, like I said, I did visit him down there a few times over the years, but I never had any sense of what his life was like. I never met any of his friends or business acquaintances, and he never talked about things like that with me. I don't know if he had girlfriends, of if there was somebody special in his life, or anything along those lines.”

“He was killed up here,” I said, “not in Baltimore.”

“Well,” she said, “I just don't have any idea. I'm sure it wasn't my mother. That's all I know.”

“Do you know anybody named Clem?”

She frowned. “Clem?”

“Middle-aged man, friend of your father.”

Ellen shrugged. “No. Sorry. Clem doesn't ring a bell.”

“Did your father ever talk to you about business problems,” I said, “or schemes he might've had for earning money, or investments he made?”

Ellen smiled. “My dad was a vet, Mr. Coyne. He liked animals. That's what he was good at. I don't think he was very good at business, or had much interest in it. He was just a nice, uncomplicated man.”

“I expect the police will want to talk to you,” I said.

She nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

“They'll probably ask a lot of questions about your mother, and about your parents' relationship.”

“My mom being a prime suspect.”

“Right now she is, yes,” I said. “So I'd like to know of anything at all that you might say to them that could incriminate her.”

Ellen shook her head. “My mother couldn't hurt anybody, regardless of how justified she might be.”

“Do you mean you think she'd be justified to, um, to murder your father?”

“No, I didn't mean that.”

“Well—”

“I only meant,” she said, “that my mother suffered a lot when they split. She was angry and hurt. In her mind, it was all his fault.”

“In her mind.”

“That's how she saw it. It's still how she sees it. My mother has never faced up to her own responsibility for what happened. Oh, if you ask her, she'll say it was nobody's fault—but deep down, she's always blamed him. That's all I meant.”

“She's been angry with him.”

“Oh, sure. Furious. Ever since it happened.”

“And that's what you'll tell the police.”

Ellen looked at me. “Oh. I see what you mean. Well, what should I do?”

“It's easy,” I said. “Just tell the truth.”

“Well, sure. Except my mother…”

“People who are divorced from each other do tend to be angry and blame each other. It's normal.”

“Except,” she said, “my father got murdered.”

“He invited her to his hotel room,” I said. “That doesn't sound like angry people to me.”

She shrugged. “If it's true.”

“You think your mother's been lying to us?”

“Oh, no,” said Ellen. “That's not what I meant. I'm sure she felt that way. I mean, I think she believed it. All I meant was I wonder if my father felt the same way.”

“Do you have any reason to doubt it?”

“Look, Mr. Coyne,” she said. “I don't want to take sides here. I've never taken sides. I've always tried to show my parents that even if they didn't love each other, I loved them both, and that they could be good parents even if they weren't together. So please, don't ask me to speculate about either of them. It's hard to be objective about your parents, and particularly if one of them's just been murdered and the police suspect the other one of doing it. I only came here to be sure that my mother was being taken care of. She has a lot of faith in you. You will take care of her, won't you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“The legal stuff, I mean.”

I nodded.

“Thank you.” She stood up. “I won't take up any more of your time, then.”

“Why don't you leave me your phone number, in case I need to talk to you again.”

“Sure.” She told me, and I wrote it down. “Will you keep me posted?”

“If your mother wants me to,” I said.

“Oh, right. She's the client, not me. Sure. That's fine.”

“If you think of anything that might have some bearing on this…this situation,” I said, “please give me a call.”