A Crack in Everything Read online

  “Not your work. The feeling you gave me that I was no more important…but hey, no less either…than one of your clients.”

  “You’re being unfair. Gil never minded my work.” He’d love me forever, Gil used to say. We were mates, a pair of comfortable old gloves that ought to cling to each other.

  “Jesus! Him again?” Michael walked so far away his shirt and the wallpaper blended in fine blue stripes. “Don’t you ever get sick of that story? Maybe Gil didn’t mind your detachment because it was just like his.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Why don’t you explain? What do you call it when two people spend most of their time apart because one of them needs to climb down volcanoes so he can feel alive?”

  “Gil never climbed down volcanoes. He led responsible, ecological expeditions.”

  “He babysat bored rich people. You were his stopgap. You filled in the blank parts, while he was setting up his next gig. And you loved the arrangement. That’s not detached?”

  “You’re wrong,” I said, the only defense I cared to make. I had confided too much in Michael, and now he was spinning my own words back at me. “We weren’t detached from each other.”

  “Well, you were detached from me.”

  “I wasn’t. I needed time. I…what about you? You know what’s going on here? You wanted me to fall in love with you, and you wanted to think on it.”

  “Psychology’s not your strong suit, Susan.”

  He looked so sad standing there; suddenly telling the truth became more important than protecting myself. “You were completely in my life. I think about you every day.”

  “Then why haven’t you called?”

  “You’re the one went away. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I don’t know. Pride. Inertia.”

  Just like me.

  He pushed the pillows aside and took their place next to me, nothing resolved except his arm around my shoulder and my head on his collarbone.

  “I’ve been missing you.” He spoke into my hair, and I wrapped one of my own heavy arms around his waist.

  Me too, I started to murmur, but his kiss cut me off. Scratchy.

  Afraid of my own need, I pulled back. “Maybe we should have that tea,” I whispered, and slowly, like a receding tide, he let go of me.

  ***

  I must have slept. Dimly, I heard the front door bell chime, then the crash of the knocker. By the time I tottered to the window whoever it was had gone. I got back into bed, and next time I woke, the phone was ringing. I grabbed it. Michael had said he would call.

  But it was Roddie Baird. I turned on my good side and listened, amazed, while he stormed, because Roddie always kept calm, one of his strengths as a candidate. “No, I’m not in Colorado,” he snarled. “I fell off the mountain, and the techies sent me home.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “A few scratches. My real gripe is, I come back and find that sonofabitch Froy has plastered his goddam putrid pink bumper stickers all over my street. My own street!”

  “Didn’t you call him on it?”

  “Yes. And I’m sorry, Susan, I know it’s not cool, but I blew up. I told him he won the golden asshole award, and you know what he says? ‘Is that an endorsement?’ he says. Susan, he laughed in my face.”

  “He’s goading you. Wants you to complain to the media so he can get some publicity. Even negative coverage gives him a boost.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Tear down the stickers.”

  “I tried that. Somebody passed me in a car and yelled, ‘Shame on you.’”

  I clucked my tongue. “Can’t do it in broad daylight, Roddie.”

  “Susan, do you really expect me to creep around after dark, like a…peeping Tom?” He paused. “What if the police catch me?”

  “It’s not against the law to take down illegal signs.”

  “Not everybody knows that. I didn’t know that. I don’t want a run in with the cops, let alone the voters.” Another loaded pause. “If only I could get some help.”

  “All right, all right,” I said. The pills had worn off, my fears receded to a pinprick, and the prospect of a raid was juicing me up. “I’ll drive, you rip ’em down. Be ready tonight at the stroke of eleven. Wear your cape and your mask.”

  He was embarrassingly grateful.

  It was past time to get out of bed. My stitches burned, but I could convalesce on the fly. I needed to figure out which parts of Newton to hit after dark. We couldn’t tear down, let alone find, every bumper sticker in a city with three hundred miles of roads. Plus, I was starving.

  The fridge and cupboards were bare, so I got dressed and grabbed my hobo bag. Drugstore candy, a big box of Giggles, would hold me while I cruised around Newton, reconnoitering Froy. I left through the side door and almost missed the little white bag on the front porch, something green sticking out the top.

  The green thing was florist’s tissue, wrapped around a double bunch of daisies and a note. Sorry no orchids. BeeCee’s does deli better than flowers. He signed it M. No love, and no scent from the daisies, but I pushed my face into the tissue and inhaled anyway.

  ***

  Wag’s definition of Boston: an island surrounded by Newtons. This is just true enough to confound a California native like me. Newton is an edgy alliance of villages with names like Newton Lower Falls, Newton Highlands, Newton Corner, Newton-by-the-T: thirteen in all, each with it’s own commercial center, activist organization, parking problems. And bunches of aldermen, which is good, for the city and for my business.

  I cruised through every one of those villages, the Beemer unusually cooperative at speeds of fifteen and twenty mph. By dusk I’d mapped out a route.

  On the stroke of eleven I tapped the bronze fleur de lys against the Baird’s French farmhouse door. This triggered a scuffling sound, and a child’s wail: “I don’t want you to go!” Five-year-old Delia up at this hour?

  Roddie let me in. A crummy looking Lauren, all bare feet, stringy hair, and drooping gym clothes, drifted through the dining room, moving like a sleepwalker straight for Delia. Behind her, the big yew wood table was still strewn with voter surveys.

  I offered a general hello that was generally ignored, though Roddie did raise an abashed eyebrow at me just as Delia, in yellow smiley-face pajamas, lunged for his legs. Roddie patted her hair, his hand a mass of purple scratches from his fall off the mountain. “I won’t be long, sweetie,” he said, but Delia sobbed against his knee.

  The tension was so thick, I almost grabbed Roddie’s other knee and started whining myself. “Maybe we should do this tomorrow night.”

  But Roddie managed to console Delia with bribes: stories Lauren would read her right now, a trip to Drumlin Farm next Sunday, “and after we feed the ducks, we’ll have chowder at Legal, as much as you want.” He patted his bulging middle. “Delia and I love to eat. She stays skinny, though. Like her mother.”

  Kid’s spoiled, I wanted to say, but I didn’t really believe it. Delia had the melancholy air of an uncherished child. I remembered my own status as youngest child, growing up in the shadow of a smart, successful much-older sister. I’d always felt like the family footnote.

  In the car, Roddie told me Delia had left her blanket at a friend’s house and was having trouble sleeping without it. Then his head swiveled right. “Stop! There!”

  I’d already spotted it, a gigantic pink tapeworm: Froy, stuck to a tree. Roddie ripped it down, and we zapped three more on our way to the Front: intersections on thoroughfares that led to the Mass Pike and Route 9.

  Like the rank amateur that he was, Froy had slapped most of his stickers on wooden utility poles, and the rough surfaces made for easy pickin’s. I’d pull close to the target, scanning for nonexistent passersby. Roddie w
ould jump out, claw down the sticker, then jump back in, keeping the door slightly open to save precious seconds next time I stopped.

  For a chubby burgher who’d fallen off a mountain, Roddie was nimble, and we swept through the night like avenging politicians. By one o’clock the back seat was littered with Froys. Then we cut over to Centre by way of Bellevue, and our luck ran out.

  “Will you look at that,” Roddie gasped as we converged on Bellevue at Claremont.

  “I see, I see.” As if anyone could miss the postal holding box plastered with Day-Glo pink Froys. The neighborhood itself was dark, overgrown bushes on all sides, the only streetlight shining directly over the box. As I surveilled, a carriage house across the way lit up like Christmas. A scrawny woman came out, trailing an overfed beagle on a leash.

  “Hurry up,” I whispered to Roddie who had hit the street and was scraping his fingernails along the top row of Froys, probing for a break that wasn’t there because bumper stickers mate with metal.

  “They won’t come off,” he moaned.

  Gil’s old Swiss Army knife was handy in the glove box, but before I could toss it out, the woman started to shout. “You there! What are you doing?”

  Her oh-so-entitled voice made me want to growl low in my throat, like her dog. I eased the Beemer into deepest shadow and joined Roddie on the street. “Sweetie, I told you this wasn’t a mailbox.” I yanked his sleeve, and we power-walked back to the car.

  “Did you put up all these horrible signs?” the woman called after us.

  Her dog barked and barked.

  We covered Commonwealth Avenue as far as Heartbreak Hill, and at one-forty I drove Roddie home. “Finish the job tomorrow night,” I said. “Get Lauren to help you.”

  “Lauren.” His smile was impenetrable, almost worthy of Chaz.

  After he went inside, I drove straight back to Bellevue. No self-righteous biddy was going to thwart my candidate. This time I had the neighborhood, and the postal box, to myself. The Swiss Army knife might have worked, but the only blade I could unfold was the corkscrew, which scratched but couldn’t pierce. That left the graffiti option.

  With a Magic Marker from my bag, I turned an O into a frowny face with fangs. This, unfortunately, made Froy look kinda cute. Warping Froy into Fraud was too hard. In the end, I simply changed every Froy to Frog, and when I stood back, they looked exactly right.

  Chapter Ten

  Balancing Act

  Just after dawn, I dialed Michael’s number. I was coming to enjoy these little one-way chats; his voice mail listened respectfully, didn’t make sarcastic remarks, always let me know when I’d gone on too long.

  “The daisies are beautiful,” I said, gazing at the vase on my night table. I touched the petals, wondering where Michael could be at this hour. Not in Tucson, and that would have to do me. “Call me at home, anytime,” I said. “I’m taking another sick day.” My stitches did kind of pinch this morning, and the only boss I had to please was me.

  At eight-thirty, I went out to BeeCee’s and came back with coffee, tea, two power bars, and three pounds of the apples on special this week. Back in my kitchen I scoured yesterday’s Globe, which my vacationing landlords had neglected to cancel; in Regional News, I found an account of Chaz Renfrow’s death. The story ended with a recap of the Torie Moran case and a quote from “detective in charge” Lieutenant Michael Benedict of the state police. “We haven’t ruled out robbery as a motive,” he’d said for the record, which was news to me.

  By noon my breast began to burn, though the pain had an itch in its tail, a sure sign of healing. Last night’s gallop through Newton had worn me to a nub, and I curled on the sofa for a quick nap. When I awoke, it was twenty past six. Mondays didn’t get any duller than this. I suddenly wanted to chew over the attack on me, and the murders, but I couldn’t think of a soul to call except Michael, and I’d done enough of that for a while.

  I maundered back to the kitchen, wondering why I’d lost touch with most of my Massachusetts friends. Maybe because, to a person, they were married or in committed relationships, while I had become a skeleton at the feast. Many of them were social network addicts. After Gil died, I’d joined Facebook myself, only to spend hours exchanging banalities with people I’d friended for no reason except the body count. Virtual friends were about as satisfying as virtual lovers. So I suspended my account.

  My itch to talk was inflaming like hives, and I finally fell back on my answering service. Deirdre might not be a physical presence, but she did have vocal chords. Through two mugs of coffee I talked, leaning against the counter, anticipating fuzzy words of assurance. But when it came, Deirdre’s advice was strangely categorical, for Deirdre: “Put murder out of your mind.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I poured another refill and carried it to the table.

  “It is easy. I do it all the time. When something upsets me, I drop it in a box and lock it away till my inner balance holds steady.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. Fuzzy was back. Inner balance sounded awfully like inner peace, and what did that mean? Ten seconds of calm before reality stormed in. I sipped my coffee, a beverage Deirdre maintained was unhealthy. I’d sooner give up breathing.

  “Balance,” she insisted. “Equilibrium. That’s what healing’s all about. You’ve been wounded. Literally. Once you heal, you’ll be ready to open the box and look at the murders.”

  “That doesn’t work for me, Deir. Something pushes me, I push back right away.” Which was a kind of balancing act, now I thought about it. “Why would someone kill two people and almost nail me? Michael talks robbery, but I know he’s got his eye on the campaign. And I hate to admit it, but that does make a kind of sense, at least on the surface.”

  “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “Okay then, answer me this: if Chaz’s wife, or even his son, murdered him, how does the campaign fit in?”

  “Like an onion.” She paused. “The campaign could be a layer.”

  A layer, an onion. I wanted precision, not pastafazool. “And Torie Moran?”

  “It’s layers all the way down, Susan. The thing about layers is they both reveal and conceal. Peel them off carefully, one by one, and you’ll uncover the truth.” And then, rather conveniently, Deirdre had to cut me off to service a call. When she came back, she mentioned her vacation. “I’m so excited,” she said. “I leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow! You didn’t say a word to me about a vacation.”

  “I’m sure I mentioned it. Don’t worry. The franchiser will handle your calls.”

  Worse and worse. I hated Deirdre’s substitutes, sticklers who used voice mail or machines during hours not covered by my contract. “Where’re you off to this time?”

  “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” she chanted, and her words rang a faint Freshman bell. “Two guesses.”

  “India.”

  “Noooo…”

  “The zoo?”

  “The poet. William Blake.”

  Of course, Blake, much anthologized, not that I knew his poems. I’d majored in English, but aside from Chaucer and Donne, I’d dabbled mostly in writers of prose…and from prose, as Jane Austen might say, it was an easy step to law school.

  “There’s an exhibition of his paintings and manuscripts at the National Gallery.”

  “You’re going to Washington? In July?”

  “London, eight days and seven nights.”

  Wow. The answering service business must be booming. In January, Deirdre had gone to the Caribbean, and in April to New Mexico. I couldn’t even manage a weekend in Truro.

  ***

  Michael finally called at eleven. “Took a chance you’d be up.” His voice was thick with exhaustion. “I just got home.”

  Home was Wycherly, an hour west of Boston. Michael had moved there from Tucson two years
ago, coming in as chief of police. Though he worked for the staties now, he’d stayed on. Rent was low, for a converted barn whose absentee owners liked having a cop on site. “Everything okay? Your…uh, stitches…?” His words mumbled out, as if my wound couldn’t be mentioned except in a hush.

  “Honestly, it’s just a scratch. After you left, I did some pretty active canvassing with one of my candidates.” I was deliberately vague. Michael hated graffiti.

  I asked how the investigations were going.

  “Renfrow never filed his nominating papers,” Michael said, and that sad fact, that broken promise, brought Chaz’s death home to me more finally even than Michael’s description of the murder. My candidate no longer existed; already his taw marble eyes, his will to win, were growing fainter my mind.

  “That narrows time of death, doesn’t it?” I said, as if I could justify Chaz’s faith in me by helping to solve his murder. “He died before five o’clock on Friday, or he’d have filed.”

  “You’re assuming he intended to file.”

  “Michael, I guarantee it.”

  “Let’s don’t speculate. I’ll know more after the lab reports are in.”

  “Didn’t you speculate about robbery? I read it in the Globe.”

  “The victims were robbed, but I didn’t release the details.” He confided that Torie Moran’s diamond earrings had been torn from her ears, and that Chaz’s Patek Philippe and his Lexus were missing.

  But Michael hadn’t called about the murders. “I’ve been thinking about us,” he said solemnly, as if “us” were an inquiry, and “thinking” meant gathering evidence. He retracted the hard words he’d thrown at me yesterday: It wasn’t actually a crime to care about my work, he allowed. And like him, I was entitled to my history. “I’ll try to be careful about stepping on ghosts,” he said.

  “Me too.” I meant his ex-wife, and Nancy the pretty blonde wrangler. If there were other wraiths in the woodwork, I hoped he wouldn’t whistle them up.

  “I’d like us to start over.” He hesitated. “On neutral turf, if you’re willing. I can steal a few days here and there. We could do a little mountain camping. Hike to waterfalls. Share a sleeping bag.”