A Crack in Everything Read online

  Roddie pushed past me and picked up his little girl. “Delia, why aren’t you in bed?”

  “‘Cause nobody tucked me in.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she stuck her thumb in her mouth. The other hand clutched a pink blanket, tiny fingers working up and down the silky border.

  “Where are Sam and Josh?”

  The thumb popped out, moist and shriveled. “In the playroom, and they won’t let me stay.” Her voice rose to a wail. “When’s Mommy coming home?”

  “Gotta go, Roddie!” I rushed across the hall, putting distance between Delia and me before she leaned over and drooled on me. “Call me about the survey.”

  Hefting his daughter, Roddie caught up with me under the portico. “I’ll stop by your office tomorrow. It’s not only the survey. I, uh, I need a favor.”

  I wondered if Roddie was getting cold feet. A fifth candidate had recently come out of nowhere, which meant extra work and a primary. “Is everything all right?”

  “Sure. It’s just…stuff.”

  Delia snuggled against Roddie’s shoulder, and I could see her relax in his arms. “Can I have a cookie, Daddy?”

  “‘Leven zillion cookies,” Roddie said, and gave her an Eskimo kiss.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his.

  What a campaign picture that would make, I thought, framing it in my mind. Worth at least a hundred votes.

  By eight twenty-two I’d parked in my Waltham lot, smoothed my hair, and smeared on lip-gloss. I mistrusted Chaz Renfrow but evidently I wanted to look good when we met again. This was brain stem stuff. I never try to analyze it.

  I jaywalked, wading toward Freddie’s Donuts through traffic that never winds down in this part of town. From a ragtop Jeep, music poured into the street, something as sultry and elemental as hot fudge. My spirits jagged up, and I stepped to the beat.

  Freddie’s door opened on a crowd of chowder and doughnut freaks, and one searching glance told me Chaz hadn’t arrived. I sat at the counter and nibbled the edges of an éclair that had no flavor, unless grease is a flavor. Three cups of coffee later, I checked my cell and found the battery had died. Freddie loaned me hers, and I called my service, but Deirdre was busy tonight; I had to leave her a message. Outside, my spine fused to the building, I waited near the entrance until nine fifteen.

  Annoyed at myself for short-shrifting Roddie and, I had to admit, disappointed, I walked back to my car. I’d been right to mistrust Chaz Renfrow. Not only had he stood me up, his outlandish check was still in my hobo bag. Twenty thousand dollars. Now what was I supposed to do about that?

  In the parking lot I changed my mind about heading home and went up to my office, where I reviewed documents for tomorrow’s early morning session with an ornery client and his landlord. Then I tried Deirdre again.

  She picked up on the first ring. “Susan, I tried to call you but your cell phone’s off. Beauford Smith left you a message.” Her voice was luscious with warning. “Keep away from Charles Renfrow.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why?” The Beauford I remembered swung between paranoia and euphoria with every twitch of a poll.

  “Because he’s a hypocrite and a bloodsucker.”

  A hard-driving businessman, in other words. I sighed. “Anything else?”

  “Renfrow…your friend laughed when he said it, but he called Renfrow an evil man.”

  My great-grandfather, born near Genoa, buried near Mendocino, would have warded off evil with a forked thrust of fingers. My own contemporary digits tapped the desk, but a decidedly noncontemporary chill scuttled briefly along my spine. “I better try Beauford again.”

  “Don’t bother. He was at some airport, changing planes. Wants you to meet him tomorrow morning, ten-thirty at Memorial hockey rink, so he can talk to you face-to-face.”

  “Hockey? In July?”

  “He’s coaching a summer league kids’ team. It’s the only way he can see you before he leaves for Brussels. Promise you’ll meet him, Susan. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Her worry allayed mine, the way sharing a burden lightens the load. “Deir, I appreciate your concern, I really do. I don’t suppose the sinister Mr. Renfrow tried to reach me?”

  “No one else called.”

  After we hung up I scoured the Web for Renfrow and NovoGenTech, but found nothing of interest except a photo of Chaz on NGT’s bare-bones webpage. There was a scanty list of his credentials, those of a few key employees, and three NGT phone numbers. But no private email address and no way to reach Chaz after hours. Dialing information got me nothing for Charles L. Renfrow anywhere in the state.

  ***

  Cicadas, and my own gloomy thoughts, masked the sound of footsteps until way too late. A hand fell on my shoulder. I swung around, my key pointed like a gun.

  “Chaz!” I dropped my arm. “What are you doing in my driveway? How did you find me? My address isn’t listed.”

  “I…I ran a credit check on you last week.”

  “You did what!” This kind of snooping riled me, especially as my credit was wobblier than a congressman’s knees.

  “I always look before I leap. Don’t be angry. Aren’t you planning to investigate me?”

  “That’s different. You came to me. On the spur of the moment, apparently.”

  “It was a sudden decision, but I had you in mind all along.”

  “Why me?” A kind of atavistic shame made me blush. I had trusted a stranger. Among Mediterranean types this was like putting ketchup on your spaghetti. “I’ve got a very small practice, Mr. Renfrow. You can afford one of the big boys. I don’t know what your game is, but count me out.” I opened my bag and rooted around for his check.

  “Susan, wait. You’ve never lost an election. I want your success.”

  Almost flattered, I hesitated. Renfrow wanted my success, not quite the same as wanting to win. A figure of speech, but the nuance seemed like a warning. Beauford jumped to mind: Bloodsucker. I held out the check.

  “You didn’t deposit it?”

  “Luckily, no. I’m sure it would’ve cost me a bounce fee.”

  “Susan…Susie…”

  “It’s Susan, and if you don’t take back your check, I’ll tear it up. How could you leave me hanging at Freddie’s Donuts and no way to call you? You don’t even have an unlisted number.”

  “Please. Let me…apologize. Explain.” The word seemed to relax him, explanations perhaps flowing more easily than apologies from Chaz Renfrow’s lips. “My home phone is in my housekeeper’s name. I’ll give it to you, and my cell phone number.”

  “A little late for that. Why didn’t you at least call my service?”

  “I ran into trouble. Since I had to wait for you, I decided to look at property in the old Navy Yard, in case NGT is forced out of Telford. The broker insisted on taking me to Cutters Island in Boston harbor. His launch lost power on the way back. Cost me an hour.”

  “And the dog ate your homework.”

  “I don’t have a dog.” His eyes stared unblinking into mine, and I was tempted to tell him hypnosis wouldn’t work any better than lies.

  “As soon as we docked, I called your office from my car, but no one answered so I came directly here. Have a little mercy, Susan.” His grin was jokey, self-deprecating, and somehow, gently enticing.

  I shook my head. “I’m just too busy to help you, Chaz. I can give you a few names. Beauford Smith does good work.” I watched for a reaction.

  “I know Smith, and I’m not interested.” He looked put out, mildly annoyed, as if Beauford were a fly too small for swatting.

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “You’re still angry. Couldn’t we start again? Won’t you be generous?”

  This was masterful: an appeal to my better nature, the
worst kind of flattery.

  The money helped.

  I relented. “Well, I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me.”

  “And I’m sorry if you thought I’d forgotten you. Look, we’ve already lost too much time. I’m going to suggest something wild. Let’s drive to Telford. We can talk on the way. If you’re going to help me, you’ll need to get a sense of NGT and the town.”

  “Can’t do it. I’m dead on my feet.” But even as I spoke I knew that, between the evening’s coffee consumption and my chronic insomnia, sleep was not in the cards tonight.

  “Traffic’s light this time of night. Forty minutes each way, thirty if I push. We’ll take a quick tour of NGT, and forget the town. I’ll have you home by one.” Chaz looked less polished than he had in my office. The jacket had vanished, his hair was windblown. His face was all planes and shadows in the moonlight. A soft humid breeze, the cicadas, his crooked front tooth, all goaded me.

  Still clutching my key, and the check, I followed him to his car, a little white number I’d noticed in my Waltham lot but had missed on the crowded Brookline street where I live. He told me it was an old SAAB Sonett that he drove once in awhile to shake the rust out. “They only built five with a back seat. It’s a semi-classic, like your Bimmer wants to be.”

  “Beemer.”

  “Beemer’s the motorcycle.”

  “I never heard that.”

  “You came late to the party. Check Bimmer online. I used to drive a 2002 back when they were rare. Not expensive, mind you. Just rare.”

  You say tomayto…I say Beemer.

  On our way to the Pike we stopped at my bank, and with Chaz standing by, I deposited his check. The ATM machine swallowed it whole, with an eerie metallic hum that sent shivers down my spine. Did those shivers mean, as my romantic half-Irish grandmother would say, that a banshee was howling over my grave?

  Nope, my own pragmatic little inner voice replied. It meant that I’d accepted money from a man I didn’t quite trust and was already, viscerally, regretting it.

  Chapter Two

  Never Say Die

  NovoGenTech occupied eighteen thousand square feet of glossy industrial park, but Chaz’s office was drearier than mine. There were metal shelves, a metal desk, two dark windows, and so many cinderblocks I figured the architect got his start in Albanian fallout shelters. Even the sofa was made of metal and petrified plastic. It chilled my behind, and I shifted discreetly.

  “We’re on the brink of creating, and cloning, a gene that prolongs life. What popular science writers call an immortality gene.” Chaz was slouched casually next to me, but his voice had a sharpness more authentic than his smiles. In easy English, he explained that his ex-wife Johanna had identified an enzyme associated with longevity. Now her lab was developing a drug to slow, if not stop, the aging process. “The irony is NGT could collapse before we finish our work.”

  He told me how he and Johanna had founded the company a dozen years ago and moved to Telford after they outgrew their Chestnut Hill College labs. “Grow or die, then and now,” he said. “We need to upgrade our facility, but last year a few NIMBYs screamed about unnatural life forms and Telford denied us a permit. Then the idiot mayor tried to revoke our current license.”

  Chaz left the sofa and took blueprints off a shelf. “NGT is as safe as houses, not to mention an economic bonanza for Telford.” He snapped the papers across his desk, and showed me new wings, filtration systems, an underground parking garage. “Our investors are threatening to pull the plug, Susan. My back’s against the wall. Either I resubmit these plans, or I get out of town.”

  “If you resubmit, you’ll have to take on the mayor.”

  “I knew you’d understand.” His smile made me feel like a kindergarten superstar. “If I defeat him, well, remember how Clint Eastwood became mayor of Carmel? They wouldn’t let him expand his restaurant, so he fought back. He won the election, and he got to expand. That’s my goal.”

  Chaz reassembled the blueprints in that painstaking way fanatics fold roadmaps. “If I run, the campaign will work as a forum for biotechnology. But if I lose I’ll sue Mayor Talbot Tremain personally. I will not be driven out by a sleazy windbag who’d trample his grandmother for a vote.”

  Chaz’s grim face made me think of Nino Biondi, client and friend, who’d been stonewalling his landlord on my time since the end of May. Was there something about me that attracted obstinate men?

  The water cooler burped.

  “See why I need you?” Chaz filled two of those paper cones that always remind me of party hats. “You’re a savvy campaign counselor, and you’re a lawyer.” He passed me a hat and sipped from the other. “Running for mayor personalizes my fight with Telford, and NGT’s counsel won’t handle my personal lawsuit.”

  “Conflict of interest,” I said. “They’ve got to look out for NGT.”

  “I am NGT.” Water glinted on his crooked front tooth. “For now, let’s cover all bases and say I and my company will both be your clients. If you’ll have us. I’ve heard nothing but good things about you, Susan.”

  “Who from? I’ve been wondering.”

  “Political Notes. That brief about you and your Ashcroft candidate. When I asked around, your name came up, and…truthfully?” His voice grew less assured, his smile tinged with melancholy. “It was an instinctual thing.”

  How could I fault him? I often flew by the seat of my pants.

  “What do you say? Should I stand and fight?” His eyes were magnets, and I was suddenly glad for the brass in me. “I can’t do it without you.”

  There were nuts and bolts matters he hadn’t considered, I said. Yes, the nominating petition was a hurdle, but the next steps were harder: “You’ll need strong endorsements. A fund raising drive. A campaign manager.”

  “My son Glenn’s taking next semester off from Dartmouth. He’s only nineteen, but he’s a little bit brilliant, in his way. He’ll manage my campaign.” Chaz crumpled his paper cone. “I can get endorsements when the time comes, and money won’t be a problem.”

  His confidence was as exhilarating as my new bank balance. “Okay. Miracles happen. You have four days to file. If you get the signatures, I’ll advise your campaign.”

  We shook on it, Chaz pumping my hand as if he’d bagged a great victory. But my offer had been prudently qualified. If Chaz collected five hundred valid signatures by Friday, I’d know everything that mattered about him and his chances.

  “One thing, Susan. For the time being, don’t mention my plans to anyone. I want to take hizzoner by storm.”

  “Stealth candidate, are you?” His calculation made me smile. Rookies often thought the element of surprise would disarm their opponents. “By Friday afternoon your secret will be public record.”

  Our tour began in the employee lounge, a simple space near Chaz’s office, where we helped ourselves to crackers and bouillon from a machine. “This is not the dinner I owe you for coming all the way out here tonight.”

  “All you owe me is a certified nominating petition.”

  “That too.” The dim light softened his eyes, changing their color from marble blue to chameleon gray.

  Outside Lab 45 we heard the soft clop of feminine shoes.

  “Who is it?” Chaz called.

  “Me.” A baby voice preceded the clopper. “I saw lights.” A woman about my age flowed around the corner in a cloud of Jasmine Musk. Her black hair rippled to her shoulders from tiny plastic clips. With every step, an evening bag the size of a lipstick swung on spaghetti straps, brushing her hip.

  Chaz kept his eyes on my face. “Susan, this is my assistant, Torie Moran.”

  Four-inch wedge sandals lifted her close to my height, five and a half feet on a good day. Her slim body was illuminated like a medieval manuscript in a gold and white dress dripping fringe. Fake, or p
ossibly real, diamond earrings dangled from her multi-pierced lobes.

  “Hi.” I brushed a speck of lint off my tee shirt. Torie didn’t acknowledge my greeting.

  Still looking at me, Chaz addressed her: “This is Susan Callisto. She’s an attorney helping with NGT’s expansion.”

  In a manner of speaking, I thought, remembering Chaz’s lust for secrecy.

  Torie flicked a glance at my shoulder, then moved in on her boss, touching his biceps with one finger. Images of the witch gauging Hansel’s flesh darted through my frivolous, probably envious, mind. “I saw your car,” she wisped.

  Chaz shifted his arm, and she tottered. She stepped on my foot, accidentally, I think, and now I picked up eighty-proof vapors Jasmine had masked.

  “Johanna’s party was un-fucking-believable. Forty-five candles. Almost burned the house down.” She giggled and leaned toward Chaz. “Bart Bievsky was all over her tonight. Johanna still likes it, in case you didn’t know.” Inch by inch, she invaded Chaz’s zone. Her voice whispered booze. “Poor Glenn.”

  His face blank, Chaz turned to me: “We store old equipment in Lab 45.” He opened the door and switched on a light. “Have a look around. I’ll just walk Torie to her car.”

  He didn’t actually shove me into the room.

  I wandered in a circle, glancing at a floor drain, crude metal shelves. The discards looked grimly domestic: dented funnels, a weird pasta scraper on a tapered handle, blue vinaigrette bottles. There was even a battered microwave oven. Most of a window ledge was smothered in Persian violets, a massive green and purple dome that put a little soul into the bleak room. Compared to this brawny specimen my office plants were the naked and the dead. Ignoring my spooky reflection in the pane, I walked over and poked among the roots, stirring up the erotic smell of dirt. Immortality my foot. Someday we’d all be plant food.

  At a sink at the end of a counter I rinsed my hands, then returned to the corridor: Susan waits while Chaz dallies, a familiar posture tonight. When I finally heard his approach I moved toward the sound, and we met at the corner.

  “I am sorry.” He clacked his keys against his palm. “We’ll have to take Torie back to the party. She’s too…disoriented to drive. I’ll give you the tour another time.”