Authors: Jeremiah Healy
“Maybe Davison again.”
“Mr. Davison left for Colorado a few minutes after you left him.”
“But he had somebody else to drive him to the airport.”
“Just to Bedford. He likes to fly himself, in his private plane, when he can.”
“This the seaplane?”
“No. He has several others. All set?”
“Yes. Can I get one of those?”
The smile that could grow on you. “Maybe the garment bag? It’s lighter than the briefcase, believe me.”
“Cute car.”
I said, “A compromise between sporty and comfortable.”
“Like you.”
We were riding down 128 in the Prelude with the moon-roof back, not too much traffic yet. I half turned to look at her.
Antonelli laughed. “Sorry. That must have sounded like a come-on.”
“A little. I’m flattered, to be honest.”
“Flattered, but spoken for.”
This time I didn’t look at her. “Schoonmaker must be better than I thought.”
“I didn’t get that from Dwight. Gil Lacouture told me how he found you.”
“Through Nancy.”
“Is that her name? He just said a classmate that you were seeing.”
“Lacouture tell you much else about me?”
“No, but I think that’s because he didn’t know much else to tell.”
“Most of the rest you can get from Schoonmaker’s dossier.”
Another laugh.
I said, “What’s so funny?”
“Dossier. That was how the Polish word for it was translated when I was over there.”
“You travel a lot, too?”
“Do I … ? Oh, you mean like Steve. No, not as much. This was in the mid-seventies, my family went to stay for a while.”
“Unusual back then, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I was the only American girl in our neighborhood there. But my grandmother still lived in Warsaw, and so they let my dad come over, teach English in one of the ‘progressive’ schools, the kind of place the government would put on the official tour for visiting dignitaries. I was barely into my teens, but I remember how it stood out against the rest of the city.”
“Dreary?”
“Oh, you can’t imagine. The people were wonderful, they’d give you the shirt off their back. But the buildings were so drab, the air so polluted. The food was all vegetables and starches, the milk came in clear bottles and wasn’t homogenized. And there was never any ice in anything, you drank everything warm. I remember when I first got there and asked for an ice cube, my grandmother said, ‘You don’t want to catch a cold, do you?’ ”
“How did you get your name?”
“The ‘Anna’ came from the Polish side, the ‘Pia’ from my mother’s, who was Italian-American. When my parents divorced, I took my mother’s last name. Defiance, I guess.”
“They divorced over in Poland?”
“Oh, no. No, divorce was frowned upon. As was birth control, but only partly because of the Catholic Church. Everybody wanted to have big families.”
“To impress the state?”
“No. For shopping.”
“I don’t get you.”
“If you had a lot of kids, each could stand in a separate line to get the one or two types of food that each store sold.”
I shook my head.
Antonelli said, “A different way of life.”
“Seems you’ve come a long way from it.”
“I have.”
“You like living on the Hill, commuting out to DRM?”
“It’s great, actually. I get the advantages of city living, but I’m commuting against the traffic, so I can always get a seat on the train. And the trains run often enough I don’t need a car to get to work or try to park when I get home.” A different element came into her voice, almost flirty again. “Are you interviewing me yet?”
“Let’s say I’m starting now.”
“All right.”
“Just one question.”
“Just one?”
“Then, depending on your answer, maybe a few more.”
Antonelli hesitated before saying, “Ask it.”
“Your home phone number, is it unlisted?”
Another hesitation. “Yes. Why?”
“I’m wondering how Steven Shea managed to call you at your place that Friday night from jail.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t home when he called, so he left a pretty urgent message for me. I called him back at the jail up there, was kind of surprised that they put me through so late.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s not?”
“No. What I’m wondering is, how could Shea call your number if it’s unlisted?”
A quick answer, very casual. “He probably had his address book.”
“No. He said they didn’t even let him bring that with him from the house.”
“I … I guess he must have called DRM, then. Gotten it from Security.”
“Maybe.”
“And therefore maybe not?”
“I’m thinking that he had it memorized.”
“Memorized?”
“Must have called it pretty often, too, to be able to remember it under the kind of pressure he was feeling that night.”
“Just what are you getting at, Mr. Cuddy?”
“Whatever happened to ‘John’?”
“Your insinuations are what happened to ‘John.’ What are you really asking me?”
“Let me catch you up on my afternoon, counselor. After old Keck and I shot the shit for a while, he allowed as how he really didn’t buy the competitor-caper theory, and Ty said he just didn’t have a clue. All that was to persuade me there was no party line on this theory, which Dwight nevertheless did his boy-scout best to sell me without apparent success. That leaves me with trying to help a client whose own business allies are covering the corporate ass rather than his own. That makes me just a little testy, if you get my drift.”
“Is your drift always this vulgar?”
“Only for effect.”
“It’s not working.”
“Sure it is. You didn’t even try to defend the competitor theory.”
Antonelli’s voice grew a little softer. “I’m glad you saw through it.”
“I take it the idea wasn’t yours.”
“I can’t say anything else about it.”
“Client privilege?”
Antonelli nodded.
I eased the Prelude off 128 and toward the cloverleaf ramp to Mass Pike east. At the tollbooth, I gave the attendant a dollar and got back fifty cents.
As I accelerated through the gears, I said, “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I made sure Steve got the best lawyer up there.”
“Why not a heavy hitter from Boston?”
“That Saturday morning, I called one I knew from school who’s at a firm that specializes in white-collar stuff. Woke him up, actually. He told me an out-of-state lawyer wouldn’t cut it in rural Maine. He gave me a couple of names in Portland, but the one I could reach—from a rest stop on the Maine Turnpike, by the way—said even an out-of-town lawyer was dicey up there. He gave me Lacouture and two others.”
I said, “Lacouture’s ‘out-of-town.’ ”
“Yes, but I went with Gil because he said the right things when I spoke to him, and Steve already knew him from the real estate deal on Marseilles Pond.”
“All those phone calls, you happen to make one to Tyrone Xavier?”
“No.”
“Neither Friday night nor Saturday morning?”
“No. Not till everybody got together at DRM the following Monday.”
“Any reason?”
“For not contacting Ty?”
“Yes.”
“He was Steve’s assistant, but I didn’t think of him as helping with the mess Steve was in legally.”
“That sounds a lot like Schoonmaker’s reasoning.”
“It might, but it’s not. Believe me.”
I said, “You don’t think Shea’s the killer, do you?”
“No. And neither do you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of how you handled things back there, with all of us in the conference room. If you thought Steve did it, you’d have just smiled and gone along, stamping the ticket to show you’d made the DRM stop. Maybe even have tried to ingratiate yourself with Dwight or Mr. Davison toward throwing a little business your way in the future.”
“And instead?”
“Instead you came on like the terrier that smells a rat. I liked that.”
“Any reason why anybody at DRM would have it in for Shea?”
Antonelli took her time. “No.”
“Anna-Pia, I think that’s a fib.”
“Think what you like.”
“You and Shea friendly?”
Up front this time. “Yes.”
“See each other socially?”
“In a business way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’d see him for lunch when we were both in the building. DRM events at hotels or trade shows. Drink after work once in a while.”
“Weekend at his place in Maine?”
Frosty now. “Just the one company thing.”
“Where everybody played with the crossbow?”
“Not everybody.”
“I forgot. Was that the only time you’d met his wife, Sandy?”
“No.”
“Where else?”
“In passing here and there, company things.”
“Any reason anyone would have for killing her, then covering it with the Vandemeers as camouflage?”
“Not that I know of.”
“How about the Vandemeers themselves?”
“Never met them.”
“Steve talk about them?”
“Only … what does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know till I ask. They were killed, too. Maybe they were the targets, and Sandra Newberg—and Steve, if he’d been there—the camouflage.”
“Then the answer is no. I only knew they were all friends.”
“Just friends?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Another insinuation, I guess. Was there anything more than friendship between any of The Foursome?”
Frosty became icy. “How would I know?”
“The police think there was.”
“What police?”
“Probably everybody on the investigation up in Maine. It seems Steve’s neighbor saw evidence of hanky-panky across the side yards, and she told the Calem cops about it.”
Antonelli didn’t speak for about half a mile, which even at sixty miles an hour is a longish time. I slowed down for the last toll, tossing the two quarters from the first booth into the wire basket for this one.
Antonelli said, “Did Steve say anything to you about it?”
I upshifted. “Why?”
“Never mind.”
“Ms. Antonelli—”
“Whatever happened to ‘Anna-Pia’?” Frosty had become glacial.
Quietly, I said, “What is it you’re not telling me?”
“I don’t know what—”
“Steve Shea knew your home number by heart. I think that means he had a habit of calling you there, confiding in you away from work. What did he tell you that he hasn’t told me?”
“It’s not … It’s up to him to tell you what he wants.”
“More client privilege?”
“If you like.”
“What if I tell Lacouture, and he subpoenas you?”
“Even if the process would be effective here, I’d still decline unless Steve releases me from the bond of confidentiality.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s the law.”
“I get the feeling we’re not saying different things there.”
Antonelli started to reply, then didn’t.
I stayed in the quiet tone. “I think I know part of what Steve told you.”
“Good for you.”
“Yes, but not good for him.”
Antonelli turned to me, straining against the shoulder belt. “What do you mean?”
“I just said the neighbor reported hanky-panky to the police, not who the participants were. The neighbor says it was Hale Vandemeer and Sandy Newberg, but you didn’t ask me. That makes me think Steve must have told you about his friend and his wife. So far, I believe the cops know only that Hale and Sandy were having an affair. If Steve’s knowing about the affair comes through to the authorities in Maine, his motive goes big league.”
Antonelli turned back to the windshield, crossing her arms. “Just take the Copley exit. I’ll grab a taxi at the hotel.”
Moving into the right lane, I searched the lawyer’s profile for some idea of what she knew, but her eyes were closed. Shuttered, one might even say.
A
FTER DROPPING
A
NNA-
P
IA
A
NTONELLI
at the Copley Plaza’s cab-stand, I decided against driving back to Calem to see Nicky Vandemeer. I went to the office instead, finishing some paperwork on other cases and trying to reach Nancy. She was closeted with three witnesses toward the continuation of her conspiracy trial the next morning. I spent a quiet night in the condo with take-out Pizzeria Uno and the Red Sox. Roger Clemens delivered on the mound at the same level he disappoints off the field.
By eight
A.M.
Friday I was parked in front of the Vandemeer house on the cul-de-sac. The grass was a little higher, the flowers a little deader. I looked across the street at Mrs. Epps’s windows but couldn’t see any curtains moving.
I walked to the Vandemeer front door and got smart. I opened the mail slot and listened first. Stereo blasting what sounded like salsa music, dampened by some walls.
I rang the bell twice, then started on the door. Somebody’s feet trod up to the inside, and I heard “Jesus fucking Christ” as the door opened and then “The fuck happened to your key?”
The voice was high and keening, the boy standing in front of me anywhere from fifteen to eighteen. About five-ten and scrawny, he wore a pair of jeans that didn’t fit him well and a black U2 sweatshirt with the sleeves shoved up past the elbows. His brown hair was long on top, a lock even looping across his forehead, but almost shaved around the ears and toward the back. The eyes were blinking rapidly, giving his wan face a rabbity effect.
I said, “Nicky Vandemeer?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
I put my foot against the door. “Who were you expecting?”
He started to push. “Hey, like get the fuck out of here!”
Bracing my left palm against the paneled wood, I exerted lateral pressure until the door gave and the boy went backward. I moved into the house. The door was almost silent as I closed it, just a push button on the inside edge plate to lock and unlock it. Not a neighborhood overly concerned about security. The salsa music was coming from somewhere deep inside the house, maybe a basement gameroom like Shea had.
Vandemeer said, “I’ll call the cops!”
“Actually, that’s why I’m here, Nicky. I thought we might have a little talk about your pajama party in the house next door.”