A Crack in Everything Page 14

  “Oh? Did Lombard admit something?”

  “Mind your own business. Times up! That’s all I got to say to you.”

  Instead of making awkward goodbyes, I sipped my soup. Fiery strands of egg bonded to the roof of my mouth. “Look, Nino,” I burbled through ice I’d dug out of my water glass. “I’m worried about you. Two people associated with me are dead. I’ve been hurt. What if you’re wrong about Lombard? You could still be in danger. Maybe because of me.”

  His face seemed to soften, and he gave my wrist a little tap. “Watch out for yourself, hear me? You trust too much. Like that guy you brought here, drank all my grappa.”

  “But…haven’t you heard?” My surprise faded. Nino didn’t keep up with the news, said it depressed him. He put his hands on his knees, and I told him what I knew. When I finished, he shook his head.

  “Bad things come with that man. I warned you.” Quintessential Nino logic: a nugget of reason surrounded by chaos.

  “But I’m not dead, Nino. Chaz is.”

  “You got lucky for once.” He stood up, something final in his stance. “Finished?”

  “I’ll leave,” I said. “Just want to tell you I’m working on getting your old lease back.”

  “I got it back.”

  Surprise licked my face. “I…wonderful! What happened?” But I knew. Judge Odette’s magic hat.

  “The toad said I could stay.”

  “So you won after all.”

  “Yeah, I won.” He picked up my bowl. “I got a new lawyer. I want my papers back.”

  My hand froze on the table. “I…I’ll put everything in the mail.”

  We left the bar together. I tried to pay, but Nino wouldn’t touch my money. The ball was in his court now. No way could I come back again with my hat in my hand. At the door I waved to Benny who held up a spatula and rocked it back and forth like a tiny rubber flag. From Tavola’s hidden speakers, a tenor began to soar. Just what I needed. Puccini, and sobbing.

  Outside, I paused at the MediRX window display, walkers, portable potties, crutches, guaranteed to set your heart aflutter. An arrangement of plastic braces looked oddly festive trimmed in pink and white velcro. I thought about Spaal’s gym and physical fitness. How maybe I should join while I was still continent and ambulatory. How infinitely preferable was the treadmill to the walker.

  My left eye began to throb. I went inside for aspirin and almost fell over a stack of Saveur magazines, August issue, I noted, transfixed by a cover of flaky raspberry jewels on a crystal platter. Impulsively, I decided to bake whatever that thing was for dessert tonight. I grabbed a magazine, along with two rolls of Lifesavers, and a jumbo bottle of generic aspirin.

  Next to the pharmacy counter, a persimmon-haired woman was bent over a ledger making pencil checks. Her fingernails were green, her eyelashes Betty Boop. To my surprise, the word “Pharmacist” was stitched on her dustcoat lapel in thread that matched her nails.

  “Hi,” I said, and she looked up, eyes a glittering, contact lens blue. I dumped my selections on the counter.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” she said. “After all those scorchers.” She closed the ledger and whipped her nails across the register keys.

  I paid her, astonished that, in a world awash in sugar, Lifesavers cost more than aspirin. Luckily, I had more headaches than sweet teeth. “Get much business these days?” I asked, feeling particularly human after lunch with Nino.

  “Used to be busier before the building emptied out. Restaurant still brings us a few customers. But I gotta tell you, on Saturdays, by three o’clock this whole block is dead.”

  “Where did everybody go?”

  “Landlord’s getting ready for a major new tenant.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “It’s been hush-hush, but we think one of the hospitals is coming in.” She tilted her head toward the medical district just up the road. “This building is perfect for outpatient clinics. It’s got the square footage. Parking, and public transportation a block away.”

  It made sense, and it explained why cheapskate Lombard had bought out his tenants with such a free hand. A hospital would make valuable improvements to his building and then, the clincher, pay him ten times his current rent.

  “Are you moving?” Like Alice in Wonderland, the more I probed, the curiouser I got.

  “We stay. Headquarters hinted we’re part of the deal. My guess is, whoever’s coming in will either buy up our parent company or give us a service contract.”

  “Why all the secrecy?”

  “Wondered myself. Maybe the new tenant wants to get all his ducks in a row before the neighbors find out. Zoning is a patchwork around here.”

  For all her green nail polish, the lady seemed aware and informed, someone I might after all trust to fill my prescriptions, though maybe not to shut up about them.

  “Tavola Rustica hasn’t moved,” I said, an assertion I hoped would draw out more canny speculation.

  “I’m betting the new tenant wants it,” she obliged. “There’s a trend away from cafeterias in hospitals.”

  In my car, I opened the Lifesavers, curiosity unsatisfied. If Nino had still been my client, or even my friend, I’d have called Peter Lombard and asked why he changed his mind about Tavola’s lease. Not for a minute did I believe that a satellite hospital was interested in Nino’s restaurant. On the other hand…I crunched into gear and headed for Waltham…who cared what I didn’t believe?

  ***

  Not even Boris’ Bakery did business on weekend afternoons in July, but here I was, juggling my hobo bag and two towering coffees from Freddie’s. At the end of the hall, bedpans and walkers fresh in my mind, I veered away from the elevator and galloped up the stairs. Coffee beaded through the little holes on top of the cup covers.

  News of today’s temperature drop hadn’t reached my office, so steamy my hair puffed out like chestnut cheese doodles. I carried the coffees to the kitchen area and at last watered my long-suffering plants. At my desk, I cut Johanna a check for seventeen thousand dollars, and that simple act relieved the uneasiness I’d felt since I’d let Chaz woo me with largesse. I remembered how he’d stood over me while I deposited his check, how I’d shivered to the ATM machine’s eerie hum. Radix malorum est cupiditas. The root of all evil is greed, as we English majors learned from The Canterbury Tales; law school notwithstanding, accepting Chaz’s money had made me feel greedy and sad, proving that even lawyers get the blues.

  Now I stretched out on my screened-in sofa with Saveur, sipping coffee and yawning over fish stews and lemon pies and hand-rolled noodles. I tried to visualize my mother’s pasta scraper. What had I seen in Lab 45? Michael said he’d check with his Evidence crew.

  A pleasant heaviness tugged at my lids. Beside me, the fan stirred my hair. Fingers…how dreamy…scar on his cheekbone, taw marble eyes. No. Chaz was marble eyes, blue like Cordy’s. I closed mine. The minutes stretched out like taffy. Saveur slipped from my hand. I thought about lemon pies and Delia’s eyes.

  I woke with a start to find Johanna standing over me, an overnight bag in her hand, something floral in the air. “I knocked, but you didn’t hear me,” she said.

  A moment of fuddled panic kept me from speaking. Had I sensed her presence and pulled myself out of a nightmare? In this shadowy corner of the room, her bony nose and short dark mane gave her a Delphic look. I half expected her to launch into prophesy.

  “Um…” I said, as she stepped away from the sofa and gave me breathing room. The little creatures scrabbling in my gut settled down. I rubbed sleep from my eyes.

  When I was fully awake, I offered to reheat the spare coffee, but Johanna declined. “I don’t have time. I’d just like my check.” Her expression was not quite avid. In ivory linen and bittersweet silk, everything spotless and eggshell smooth, Johanna was dressed to chair
a board meeting. Next to her, I was a bag lady in training.

  “How did you get in?”

  “Through the side entrance.”

  “I mean my office.”

  “When you didn’t hear me, I turned the knob and came in.”

  “I could swear it was locked.” I walked over and checked the button bolt. Down, but not all the way. I pressed my palm against the door and listened for the click, then led Johanna to a client chair.

  Her hands settled in her lap, not clenched exactly. She glanced around. “Is this a loft?”

  “Some call it a penthouse.”

  She didn’t crack a smile.

  I adjusted a standard waiver-of-claim, and after a close reading, she signed. Then I gave her the check, which she examined long enough to be sure of the comma and decimal point.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s a small amount, but kingdoms have foundered for want of a horse.”

  Very poetic. Should have alluded to Shakespeare myself and taken a round twenty percent.

  By two-thirty she was ready to leave. “Do you have a phone book? I need to rent a car. Glenn has mine. He and Darcy stayed overnight in New Hampshire. Some kind of sunrise ceremony on top of a mountain, I gather.” She seemed embarrassed. “I thought it would be simple to rent a car in Weston. It wasn’t. I took a cab here. Cost me the earth, and now I’ll have to pay again. I can’t afford to lose another day at my lab.”

  With seventeen thousand in hand was Johanna angling for a ride? While she searched Yellow Pages, I had a noble impulse, only a little tainted by ulterior motive. I wanted Chaz’s nominating papers to wave in Michael’s face. I especially wanted another discreet look through Lab 45. If I forgot about raspberry pastry, I could Beem her back to Telford and still be home in time for dinner.

  “Don’t bother renting a car. I’ll take you,” I said, and told her why, the part about my kind heart, and the part about Chaz’s nominating papers. Lab 45 was not mentioned.

  To my surprise, she declined. The rental company had a customer pickup service, and she gave them my address. Glancing a last time at the check, she zippered it inside her bag. “The irony is, while I pay for cabs and car rentals, the police still have the Lexus.”

  “Where’s the Sonett?”

  “In my driveway. It’s too unreliable for me to risk driving into the city. Glenn wants it, but I’ll have to sell that money sponge.” She hurried to the door. “I’ll look for those papers,” she said. “If I find them, I’ll mail them to you.”

  Twenty minutes later, while I was recalculating my debt payments, Odette called with grim news: Roddie’s campaign manager had jumped ship. “Because of that business with the police. I’ve agreed to take over until Roddie decides whether to stay in the race.”

  “Roddie’s thinking of quitting? Without talking it over with me?”

  “Losing his manager really shook him, Susan. And your, uh, friendship with one of the investigators bothers him, too.”

  I tossed my empty paper coffee cup at the wastebasket, and missed by a Massachusetts mile. “I don’t mix my private and public lives. If Roddie doesn’t understand that, I’ll explain it to him right now.”

  “Give him time to work things through, Susan. He relented and hired my nephew, just to handle the media. They’ve started nosing around, and Lauren has gone into a funk. Roddie isn’t sure she can stand up to the pressure. And he’s worried about the children.”

  Reluctantly, I agreed to wait until tomorrow. “He’s done nothing wrong,” I said. “He’d be a fool to quit.”

  “Exactly what I told him. All the same, I am glad he called Gordon.” She cleared her throat. “Susan, whatever happens, I want to thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “You’re the one deserves thanks. I heard about Froy.”

  She laughed. “Well…”

  “And Nino’s lease. Lombard’s letting Tavola stay in Brookline.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, “but much as I’d like to take credit, I haven’t called Peter yet.”

  “Must be Nino’s new lawyer.” Someone far more effective than his old one.

  I locked up and left for home.

  Nosing out of the parking lot, I spotted Johanna in front of the building, twisting her ring and watching traffic flow by. Her skirt was wrinkled now, and it bagged over her knees just the way mine did. She looked vulnerable, and very tired.

  I leaned out the window. “Hey!”

  She twisted around, her face a mix of hope and disappointment.

  “What happened to your rental car?” I shouted

  “They didn’t come. I’ll have to call a cab after all.”

  “Bad luck.” I opened the passenger’s door, and this time, she accepted the ride.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Visualize Whirled Peas

  “Had lunch?”

  “Brunch with Cordy at Idlebrook.” Johanna pushed her glasses up into her hair, brown and thick, like some New England critter’s winter pelt. Afternoon glare threw shadows around her head, sharpening her profile.

  “Your mother-in-law’s a lovely woman, beautiful eyes. Must have been hard on her, the breakup of your marriage.”

  “Not at all. She couldn’t grasp the idea. Cordy is not fully compos mentis, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  Compos mentis. Getting, and keeping, it together. Had I really seen beauty in Cordy’s empty face? Eyes may or may not mirror the soul, but in Cordy’s I had seen Chaz. Before age stole her memory, she’d probably been as magnetic as her son.

  “For Cordy, nothing changes now. Every day she waits for Charles; and for all his faults, he was a good son. If only he’d been as good a husband, or father.” Melancholy softened Johanna’s voice, but not her self-possession, which made her impossible to warm to. From the corner of my eye I saw her press a hand to her cheek, though I couldn’t imagine her crying.

  “If you want to talk, I’m a good listener,” I said. I’d be the mythical stranger who offers an insight, then gets off the bus before you do.

  She found a Kleenex and blew her nose. “Charles was a monster with smiling eyes. He cheated on me so smoothly I only found out that first time when he left a draft email open on his computer. The love-mail, I called it. No address or name, just a few honeyed phrases he probably lifted from a book.”

  “It’s possible he wanted you to find it.”

  She nodded. “To punish me for using his computer. For invading his space.”

  For snooping, did she mean? “Or maybe he invented a lover.”

  “No. His affairs were compulsive.” She brought out a compact, which opened under her thumb. Brittle chimes tinkled out. A musical compact? I couldn’t help staring.

  “Present from Glenn. When he was a little boy, he used to save up his allowance and order doo-dads from those on-line catalogs.” In the angled mirror, she powdered her face, dabbing her chin so fiercely I figured she’d pounced on a zit.

  “Chaz was awfully proud of him,” I said. “Told me how Glenn was going to manage his campaign, how he made the Dean’s List at Dartmouth.”

  “Dean’s List?” She clamped down the lid on a thin middle C. “From the day Glenn entered college, he’s been on academic probation. He has so many incompletes they’ve suspended him.”

  Another of Chaz’s white lies, though this one bothered me more than the lie about being divorced, which was almost the truth, give or take a quibble. Hold on, Susan, I chided myself. A lie that was almost the truth? That’s called sophistry, and it leads to sleaze and corruption and SNL sketches of national candidates. A lie is a lie is a lie.

  “As a boy,” Johanna went on, “Glenn was a bundle of so-called disabilities, ADD and the like. He’s still shy. Gravitates to bossy people like that Darcy.”

  The Beemer hesit
ated, but I stayed in the left lane and managed to pass a slow-moving truck without triggering the rumbles and spurts that might interrupt Johanna’s narrative.

  “Father and son couldn’t have been more unalike,” she said, circling her finger over the compact in a way that seemed obsessive to me. “Charles was a brilliant student and a gifted athlete. High school quarterback. College lacrosse. He plays…played tournament tennis. Glenn couldn’t live up to his father’s achievements, let alone his expectations.” She stopped, but I had only to wait, to drive, to not intrude.

  “Charles never forgave him. The cruelty started when Glenn was very young. Barbed jokes. Humiliations. Charles walked out on Little League games the minute Glenn dropped the ball. By the time he was twelve, Glenn refused to play any sports at all.”

  “Poor kid.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’ll speak one good word of the dead. Charles thought his cruelty would help Glenn ‘shape up.’ When it didn’t, Charles became more confronting. Once, he lost control and slapped Glenn in front of a friend. All this took a terrible toll. Glenn even developed a little stutter.”

  The highway narrowed, and within seconds traffic began to crawl. I slid into first, careful not to stall. “Johanna, you’ve just told me in so many words why Glenn might want to murder his father.”

  She laughed out loud. “Everyone wanted to murder my husband.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “The staff, anyone who knew him well. But Charles was more valuable to us alive. If I’d wanted him dead, I’d have done him in long ago.”

  “Because of how he treated Glenn?”

  She took a sudden interest in the highway, half-smiling at something I couldn’t see from the driver’s side. “I know you’re pumping me, Susan.”

  “No, I…”

  “Oh, why the hell shouldn’t I talk to you? I need to talk.”

  The car in front of us advanced, and now I saw the bumper sticker that had caught her eye. Visualize Whirled Peas. Peas, murders, lies, the joke was on me. For all my probing, I could visualize the mash-up, but the world on its rightful axis eluded me.