Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (26 page)

I plucked the box second from the top, leaving the top one and its dust undisturbed. Professional gift wrapping had covered the box and lid separately, so I could open the box without tearing paper.

I did.

And blinked at a silver iPod.

That was it.

What the hell?

I thumbed the power switch on. The little screen told me only that the battery needed juice.

I opened another box.

Same deal, right down to the iPod's silver color.

Then a third, just to be dead sure.

Looked at my watch. I'd been inside nearly five minutes.

Get out.

I did.

But I took two boxes with me. Two was the right number—if Rinn opened the drawer, which I doubted she did often, the stack wouldn't look different.

There was something going on with these damn iPods.

*   *   *

You don't feel the I-got-away-with-it-again rush until you're away from the home, counting the cash and planning where to fence the rest. That's the way I recall it, anyway. But my memory's not always so hot where those days are concerned.

I was sitting in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot on Concord Street in Framingham. Had backed my truck into a slot so I could watch the street and check for cruisers. My cell's charger didn't fit the iPods, so I was staring at them, wondering why they'd felt worth taking.

When in doubt, call Randall.

He picked up on three.

“I tossed Peter Biletnikov's home,” I said. “Including Rinn's quarters. Found something you should see.”

“Slow down there, my good man,” Randall said. His voice wasn't quite normal.

I said, “Everything all right?”

“As rain. I'm squiring the party in question even as we speak.”

I said nothing for a while. My ears began to whine. Finally: “You're with her? With Rinn?
Now?
”

“Rinn, Peter, Haley, and little Emma. We're on a window-shopping expedition in Wellesley. Rinn's a native, you may recall.”

“Why'd she haul you along? Where do you fit?”

“Personal security was mentioned.”

“Horseshit.” I thought for maybe three seconds. “She likes you the way you like her. She brought you along as a power play, something to shove in Peter's face. He's gritting his teeth and taking it. Am I right?”

“Astutely guessed as usual. Hang on, she's telling me something.”

Back-and-forth chatter while he covered the phone with the heel of his hand.

When Randall came back on he said, “Would you care to join us? An invitation has been proffered.”

“You don't sound too thrilled about that.”

“I'll take that as a no?”

“No. Yes. I mean, yes, I'm coming. You on the main drag there, where everything costs an arm and a leg?”

“The very one.”

“Fifteen minutes.” I clicked off.

Randall was hanging out with Rinn? If you looked at it one way, it was no surprise. He was doing as I'd asked, and doing it with extra thoroughness.

But her
husband
was along for the ride?

Yikes.

Poor bastard.

No way was I going to miss it.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Lord, she is a perfect little thing. Aren't you, Emma? Aren't you a perfect little thing?”

The woman leaning over the navy-blue stroller was a friend of Rinn's parents. Twenty years older than me, she looked five years younger. Straight blond hair, blue eyes, toned arm muscles in a green silk T-shirt.

That's how they grow 'em in Wellesley. Rinn must feel right at home in Sherborn. She'd moved from one of the state's ritziest towns to another.

I'd found them—most of them, anyway—on Washington Street, the main drag.

“Where's Peter?” I'd asked Randall when I climbed from my truck, which was the only non-Prius or -BMW in sight.

He jerked his thumb at a restaurant across the street, Blue something.

“He got hungry?” I said. It was barely noon.

“Thirsty,” Randall said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yes,” Haley said. “Oh.”

I had a dozen questions for Randall, but they had to wait—we glided down the sidewalk in a pack that felt, I could tell, as awkward to Haley and Randall as it did to me.

Not to Rinn, though. She was the queen bee. She moved and smiled like there was an invisible documentary team trailing her. She'd greeted me with a better kiss than I deserved. Then she'd tried to get me to ooh and ah over a new baby blanket. It was no bigger than a bath mat, and it cost a hundred and forty bucks. I had a hard time oohing.

When Rinn spotted her parents' friends, she snapped the stroller from Haley's grasp and trundled ahead, leaving the rest of us to grouse amongst ourselves. That's when I figured out the real point of the trip: for Rinn Biletnikov, formerly Brittania Whitney of Wellesley, to show the hometown gang what a model mommy she was.

At the same time, though, she'd brought Randall, disguised as security. I didn't know where the two of them stood—they hadn't had a chance to do much more than flirt—but her decision to parade him through her hometown clicked with things I already knew about her. The split in her soul that Crump had mentioned, half of her wanting to be Little Miss Picket Fence while the other half whiffed cocaine with rough trade.
Look at me, I'm with my hubby and my baby … and this studly black dude
.

A man holding two Starbucks cups crossed the street and handed one to the blond woman. The man kissed Rinn's cheek, then leaned over the stroller and said most of the things his wife had said already. They made a good couple: the man had snow-white hair, but all of it. Pro haircut, Polo T-shirt, Rolex Daytona, no belly.

He glanced at me, Haley, and Randall, then asked Rinn when her folks were coming up from Longboat Key. I guessed it wasn't unusual for a young mom in Wellesley to go shopping with a nanny and two guys who looked like security.

Rinn: chatting, poised, easy, looking like she belonged here and nowhere else. She was something to see. Had me half-convinced she was ready to join the Garden Club. It was tough to picture her sniffing cocaine in a crappy UMass apartment.

Emma stepped on Rinn's buzz, though, by crying out.

Then again, louder.

The couple said “Awwww” and laughed understandingly. Next to me, Haley took a half step forward, then froze. She clenched and unclenched her hands.

I said, “You going to help her out?”

Haley's eyes never left the stroller. “Rinn said to let her handle things. She wants all of Wellesley to think she's a real mommy.”

I looked at Randall. He shrugged.

We watched.

Rinn's shoulder blades tightened, but she kept conversing.

That was fine for a minute or two, but Rinn kept it up even as Emma's crying grew throaty, insistent.

The man and woman seemed puzzled now. They looked into the stroller, then back at Rinn, waiting for her to do what moms do.

Still, Rinn ignored Emma. She kept talking about problems at the marina on Longboat Key.

Emma's squalling gained momentum, volume.

Finally, the blond woman said, “Is the little sweetie hungry?”

Rinn acted as if she'd just noticed. She reached into the stroller like she was baiting a bear trap. She lifted Emma, but not like any mother I'd ever seen—she plucked her from the stroller by the waist and held her at arm's length, elbows locked. She half-glanced back at Haley.

I said, “Now?”

“I don't know,” Haley said, damn near crying. “Rinn told me three times to back off while we're here. Things get ugly when I disobey her.”

But while she spoke, the three of us crept closer like a bunch of kids playing red light–green light. I guess we won, because we didn't stop until we'd made ourselves part of the group.

A look passed between the couple. The woman, anyway, had seen through Rinn. She said she remembered those days well and that Rinn should kiss her folks for them. She tried to smile while she said it, but didn't have much luck. The couple walked away whispering. The man looked back once.

Emma's squalls were now making people across the street stare. The baby was twisting, torquing, red-faced. Even I knew her head shouldn't be whipping around like that.

Haley couldn't stand it anymore. She took Emma from Rinn, held the baby against her own chest, supported her head. She rocked. She cooed. She reached in a shoulder bag and came out with a bottle.

Rinn looked at me, then at Randall. She breathed through flared nostrils, tears at the corners of her eyes.

“Fine,” she said. “Fucking fine.” And she crossed to Starbucks.

Right in the middle of the street, stopping traffic in both directions—but cars don't honk in Wellesley—she spun and said, “Haley!”

“Shit,” Haley said. I'd never seen her flustered this way. She looked at me. Looked at Randall.

“Haley!”
Rinn again.

Looking miserable, the nanny shoved Emma into my arms and trotted after Rinn.

“That went well,” Randall said.

I ignored him.

I'd been hit by lightning.

It's the only way to describe the feeling. Holding a baby.
That
baby, anyhow.

She was ignoring the bottle, which I handed to Randall. She was holding tiny fists to her chest, gazing at me with blue eyes.

I gazed back.

I couldn't do anything else. The lightning strike had taken me places, put me places, racked me with recollections and visions and half dreams and I don't know what else.

I was Emma. I was me now. I was six-month-old me. I was my mother in Mankato,
holding
six-month-old me. I was everything, everybody, everywhere. I was all of it, all of
them
.

If I could describe it better, I would.

Mostly, though, I was … warm. Not warm now, in Wellesley springtime sunshine. Warm in Mankato. Six-months-old warm, mother's-arms warm.

I was loved completely.

I was forgiven completely.

I was pure.

“Are you all right?”

Randall's eyes told me he knew something was up.

I wanted to explain.

How could I?

I wanted to stay wherever that feeling took me.

But it ebbed.

It took everything I had to shift gears.

“You got an iPhone charger in your car?” I said.

“Of course. Why?”

“Tell you later. Take the two little boxes from my pocket.” I shoved my hip at him.

He shrugged, reached, pulled. “Soon as you can,” I said, “juice those up enough to tell me what's on them.”

“Juice what?”

“You'll see.”

“Do I get to ask what the hell's going on?”

“Do I get to ask why you're sporting around with Rinn Biletnikov? And her husband, for crying out loud?”

“I was
supposed
to cozy up, was I not? I have. And I've learned things. Things I'll tell you later.”

“But the
husband
. Seems to me enough people have made him a doormat.”

Randall's face went shiny, which meant he was mad. And maybe feeling guilty. “Rinn's invitations carry a certain insistence, a certain urgency.”

“She's a spoiled brat who's never been told no.”

“There's a whole boatload you don't know about her. Come to think of it, though, that's seldom a barrier for you.”

“She's also married.”

“Not in any meaningful sense.”

“A
ha
!” I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a horse noise. “I get it. You two been having deep chats?
Meaningful
chats?”

“Don't be an asshole, amigo. And smile. Here comes Haley.”

I handed her the baby and stomped across the street to find Peter. The lightning jolt I'd felt when I held Emma faded so quickly I wondered if it was real.

*   *   *

Other than a pair of old-timers eating grilled cheese sandwiches at the far end of the bar, he was the only customer. He stood with one foot propped on the brass rail. The white-shirt, black-slacks bartender, a gal with a brown ponytail sticking out directly above her left ear, was slicing lemons and filling bowls with maraschino cherries.

When Peter spotted me in the mirror, he slapped the bar hard. “There he is! Come join me, friend.”

Experience told me he was on his third stiff one—deep into I Love You Man, ready to cross the border to Fuck 'Em All and Fuck You Too.

He hoisted his highball. “Join me.”

I said, “Nah.”

“Too early for you?”

“Too late.”

He spent five seconds figuring it out, then barked a laugh. “I forgot! A teetotaler. A dedicated alcoholic, and don't you forget it.”

I said nothing. It was starting, and I had to let it run its course. I wanted to see, for the first time, Peter Biletnikov act the way he felt—not the way he thought he should act.

Booze'll do that for you.

“This temperance,” he said. “It does not suit your persona.”

“What do you mean?”

He set down the drink, balled his fists, and flexed his arms like a weightlifter. Or a gorilla. “Conway Sax, man's man. He-man.
All
man. You really ought to be a two-fisted drinker to complete the pose, don't you think?”

Man. Man. Man. Pose.
If I hadn't known already about Peter Biletnikov's problem, I would have figured it out then and there.

I thought while he babbled about Hemingway and real men and the good old days. Everything about him—job, house, wife, the string of pretty young women he liked to be seen with—looked right from the outside. But it was all a series of shells. Where it counted, he didn't consider himself a man.

Next thought in the chain: Emma. Rinn had said Peter was her father. But she'd said it on the fly, had tried to breeze her way past it.