A Crack in Everything Page 21

  Hope and excitement danced along my spine, but I quickly repressed them. Bievsky had been courting Johanna. Did Glenn have an agenda here besides a thirst for justice?

  “Are you going to tell me how you know?”

  When he didn’t answer, I said: “Your father was strangled with mountaineer’s rope.”

  He flinched, but the police would be even blunter.

  “Was it Bart’s rope?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bart was in Boston Saturday with your mother. They had dinner together and spent the night in town. Or did they lie to the police?”

  Carefully, not looking at me, he placed the pencil on top of Darcy’s newspaper. “My father was murdered before they ever sat down to dinner. I found his body.”

  I hadn’t seen it coming. “When?”

  “Around seven.”

  Without any help from my fingers, my mind calculated the time difference. Seven p.m. in Boston meant five p.m. in Denver. Roddie’s jet wasn’t even off the runway. If Glenn was telling the truth, Roddie was in the clear.

  The misery in Glenn’s eyes quelled my joy. “Tell me what you saw,” I said.

  He breathed in, almost a sob. “I thought he was asleep at his desk. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘wake up.’ I touched his hand. It fell away from his face…I saw his eyes and…I ran away.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Because I was…I needed advice. I went back to Darcy’s.”

  “We were together all night,” Darcy said. “And most of the day.”

  Glenn plucked at his jeans. “After they found my dad, I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mother, or anyone except Darcy. My plan was to prove Bart Bievsky killed him, or at least set the police on his trail, but now I’m not sure what to do.”

  He was telling half-truths. I could feel it. If Johanna knew her son had found Chaz’s body, she’d know how bad it could look for him, and maybe for her. And if he really hadn’t told her, maybe it was because he suspected, not only Bart, but her.

  “Did your mother drive to Boston with Bart that Saturday?”

  Don’t be a fool, his eyes said, blue like his father’s but soft like his mother’s, the only soft thing about Johanna. He shook his head. “She came in with my father in the morning to take care of some real estate for NGT. Dad went back to Telford. He had meetings, with some of the researchers. And with Bievsky. Mom spent the rest of the day in Boston, shopping, going to the MFA. It was her first real day off in months.”

  In other words, Johanna had been alone. She might have been anywhere, even back in Telford. And Glenn might be throwing sand in my eyes. But if he was willing to tell the police about finding his father’s body…sand or not, that was good news for Roddie.

  I got up. “I’m going to call Mr. Baird’s lawyer.”

  “But I haven’t finished.”

  “Please don’t say anymore. I can’t keep your confidences.”

  Darcy whispered in Glenn’s ear, and I left them to mull over their options.

  “Wait! Susan!” Glenn shouted.

  “What is it?”

  From my desk I could hear them murmuring, their voices indistinguishable until Glenn’s rose above the whispers. “Will I be arrested for not reporting the murder?”

  I walked back and put my head around the screen. “We’ll get you a lawyer. You’ll be fine. But Roddie Baird has already spent one night in jail.”

  “What about my mother? I don’t want her dragged into this. Smeared in the press like…like that Lauren Baird. The newspapers made her sound like some kind of…slut.” He quoted from the Globe story in a singsongy voice: “‘Renfrow’s close friend.’ What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t want them saying my mother is a ‘close friend’ of Bart Bievsky.”

  “I won’t tell Roddie’s lawyer anything except the time you found your father’s body. But you’ll have to talk to the police.”

  “I need to think about this,” he said.

  “Just tell the truth,” I shot back on my way to the phone. “Your mother can handle the fallout.”

  I phoned Gordon and learned that he’d be in court all day. “Have him call me the minute he gets back. Tell him I have information that clears Roddie Baird.”

  Three stories below, lunch hour traffic was beginning to clog Moody Street. Gordon’s cookie had tided me over, but now I was hungry, and Glenn and Darcy had a starved look about them. “Glenn!” I called. “Darcy! Want some lunch?”

  No answer.

  “I could order calzones from the bakery downstairs!”

  Another thirty seconds blinked by.

  “Glenn?” I walked back to the screen.

  They were gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Truth And A Bluff

  Far away, an exit door slammed, and I realized chasing after them was pointless. I couldn’t force Glenn to tell anyone else what he’d told me. I had a sudden desire to hear Michael’s voice. Passing over yesterday’s childish scene in my driveway, I went back to my desk and tracked him down at the Framingham barracks.

  “I was about to call you.” He was cool, cutting right to the chase: “Forensics examined the drain from Lab 45. They found a strand of silk fringe. Thought you’d like to know.”

  “From Torie’s dress?” I paced the length of the window wall.

  “Looks that way.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Fantastic. Torie was dead, and I was capering over a clue. “Now do you believe I saw a microtome blade?”

  “I’d have told you if I doubted.”

  “But you stepped away from the investigation.”

  “Nothing to do with you. Nothing much, anyway. Shea and I have our differences. Always have.”

  “You mean Tyre is a bumswipe and you’re not.”

  “I mean maybe you were my pretext for letting go.” I could almost hear him smile. “Don’t get too worked up about the fringe. Could have fallen off Torie’s dress any time.”

  “Like she always came to work in a flapper outfit.”

  “Fringe isn’t all we found. The drain’s mildly radioactive. EPA’s been notified.”

  “So Beauford was right. Maybe his video will finger Torie’s killer.”

  “That would be Renfrow,” Michael said, and I didn’t contradict him. Chaz was dead, and if Michael was right, maybe a primitive justice had after all been served. Justice for Torie, but so far, not for Roddie.

  I told Michael about Glenn and Darcy’s visit. “Glenn knows something about his father’s murder that will clear Roddie Baird,” I said. “Someone should talk to Darcy Villencourt, too. Glenn seems to confide in her.”

  “I’ll pass it on to Tyre.”

  There came a silence neither of us knew how to fill. Then Michael said, “That Persian violet you like so much? Somebody severed its roots.”

  “Torie’s killer?”

  “Or someone with a grudge against houseplants.”

  ***

  On my way to coffee with Nino and Al I detoured past the Coast Guard base. Patrol boats, troop carriers, sea gulls, flags, anything that streamed, fluttered or flew held my eye. A sentry blocked access to the piers, but he was friendly, and we exchanged pleasantries before I strolled on to the USS Constitution, a three masted frigate ready to sail in 1797 now anchored forever in place. Destiny without destination…the thought depressed me.

  I plowed across Atlantic Avenue and cut through an alley that opened like a portal onto the exuberant anarchy of Hanover Street. The North End is a little knob of Boston lapped on three sides by hubbub and water. In this enclave, commerce and cheer stand in for destiny, and now the spirit of the place took hold of me. Tacking around women on sun-chairs and men in fedoras, I ambled toward Caffe Vittoria. For the moment, murder a
nd the meaning of life were mere motes in my eye.

  Like the harbor, the caffe hadn’t changed since I stopped coming to town; there was one door for evening crowds and one for the neighborhood, which I opened. Nino and Al sat at a table in the smoking alcove, drinking espresso and clipping the ends off cigars.

  “Wuzzup, guys?” I said, choosing a tone I felt appropriate for the occasion.

  Al circled his palm in the air, and the waiter seated me. “I’ll have exactly what they’re having,” I told him, and Nino frowned because he knew I meant the cigars.

  “You sure?” The waiter, an old man from an old land, glanced first at Nino, then at Al who had folded his arms on the table and was dimpling at me.

  “Okay,” Al said, after the waiter left. The dimples disappeared, and he gave his cuffs a dramatic push up his wrists. “I want you two to make up. How about it, Susan?”

  I locked my hands under the table. If Nino extended his, I’d think about it.

  The waiter brought coffee only, forcing me to ask pointedly for my cigar.

  “Bring ossi di morte,” Nino told him, maybe hoping to distract me with dead men’s bones, my favorite cookie, light as air, as nutty and dry as, well, old bones. Non-Italians like Michael have been known to call them punishment cookies.

  I stirred sugar into my cup.

  Al shook Splenda into his.

  “So,” Nino said.

  “Well,” I said.

  The cookies arrived. No cigar.

  “Come on,” Al said, and everybody started speaking over everybody else. “…free rent…villiaco…wait, wait…”

  The first round went to Nino. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  “Me either.” I started to get up, but Al put one hand on my arm and the other on Nino’s shoulder.

  “What’s going on here? What’d she do to make you so mad?”

  Nino rattled his tiny cup. “While I was in the hospital, she betrayed my trust. That’s all. Nothing much.”

  “I negotiated a fabulous deal!”

  Al cut me off. “Neen, you’re misunderstanding something. Susan cares about you.”

  A fake smile began to work around Nino’s mouth. “Ah, it’s finally getting clear in my mind. She betrayed me because she likes me.”

  “You are impossible!” I snapped a cookie in half and dropped both pieces on the table. I would have said more, but Al jabbed a finger at Nino.

  “Your landlord loves to sue. What do you think would’ve happened if he got a judgment against you while you were sick?”

  “I wasn’t sick. They beat me up.”

  “Thank you. That’s my next point. You think it was Lombard’s people who beat you up?”

  “I know it was.”

  “Good, good. Then don’t you think Mr. Lombard would’ve finished what he started?” Al puffed his cigar, waving smoke away from his eyes. “Bribery fails, somebody trashes your apartment. Violence escalates, and you end up half-dead in the hospital. Enter Susan.”

  Like an impresario introducing his diva, Al flourished a palm at me. My hidden face crossed its eyes and stuck out its tongue. “Before Lombard can sue your comatose ass off, she uses her power of attorney and gets you the moon.”

  “Hey, Mr. Volpe. She didn’t convince me, and neither can you.”

  Al threw up his hands. He had rekindled all the old anger, not worth a good cigar. “All right, all right. Susan made a mistake. Can’t you forgive a mistake?”

  “No mistake! She knew what she was doing.” Nino’s chin quivered, stirring my pity.

  Why stand on pride? I had bigger problems than this little old man who needed me whether he knew it or not. Unconditional surrender would appease him, and I suddenly came close to giving it. “Look,” I started to say, not at all sure what would follow.

  With a sound that froze my next thought, Al scraped back his chair. “You are a tough customer, Nino. For argument’s sake, I’ll concede that Susan betrayed you.”

  “Al, don’t you dare—”

  “Shut up, Susan.” Al’s voice swept over the table and stirred the cookie crumbs. “Okay, Nino. Let’s assume Susan deliberately signed your rights away. But that was then. Now Lombard wants you to forget about the new lease and stay in Brookline. So you’re back where you started.”

  “So what?”

  Like the sun after a storm, Al’s dimple appeared. “So why not forgive her?”

  Nino sifted crumbs, crushing them to powder between his moody fingers.

  “Come on, Neen. Whatta you say? You always did have a hard head.”

  “Maybe the hard head saved my life.” Nino’s hand strayed to his bandage. “Beh,” he said at last. “I always thought Susie was the best lawyer in town.”

  I came up with a few weasel words of my own: “I only meant to help, Nino.”

  He closed his eyes for a minute, an old man taking a New York nap. When he opened them, I passed him the files I’d brought in case peacemaking failed. “You wanted these.”

  He pushed them away. “You keep ’em.”

  “Your new lawyer will need them.”

  “What new lawyer?” he said.

  And that was as close as he came to forgiving me.

  “See, that wasn’t so hard, and here comes Susan’s reward.” Al brought out his briefcase and handed me a folder. “Here’s what I got on Glendel so far. Hope it helps.”

  “You’re an angel,” I said. “Thank you. For everything.”

  I finished my coffee, pocketed two cookies, and looked around for the waiter. “Excuse me,” I called, as he ducked behind a pillar. “I really would like my cigar.”

  To my astonishment, he brought it.

  “How much?” I pulled out my wallet.

  “Twenty-two dollars,” he said.

  “Oh, forget it.” There had to be cheaper ways to tweak the paesans.

  “My treat,” Al said, calling my bluff.

  Nino snorted.

  ***

  Tucked off Hanover was a shaded courtyard with a gurgling fountain, and a bench just long enough for me and my hobo bag. I opened Al’s folder and quickly scanned the ranks of Glendel officers, minority shareholders, creditors. Was one of them a murderer?

  The next page listed Glendel’s holdings. With handles like GenEra and MediGen and Prototech, they sounded like part of the biomedical industry, a nice fit with NGT. Were they having “growing pains” too? I read the names over, and this time, one of them leaped out at me: MediRX. Betty Boop’s drugstore.

  MediRX and Tavola Rustica were the only tenants left in Lombard’s building. Was Lombard a missing link in the chain of lies Chaz had forged around me? I found Lombard Associates in my address book and dialed. His secretary answered in her precise, slightly hostile voice, and I asked for her boss. She put me on hold. When she came back she’d discovered that Mr. Lombard had unfortunately just left for the day.

  My watch said four-forty, and since I knew that Peter Lombard rarely left his office before seven, I said, “Tell him it’s an emergency!”

  Without a word, she put me on hold again. Seconds later she was back, stiff as an outhouse door. “I couldn’t catch him. I suggest you call tomorrow morning, around eight.”

  “Maybe you can help me. I need information about his Boylston Street property. What’s the square footage?”

  “Mr. Lombard owns several properties on Boylston.”

  “The Tavola Rustica building. It’s about ninety thousand square feet, am I right?”

  She hung up on me.

  Next, I called Long Harbor Realty. Gentleman Jay himself answered, which proved my luck wasn’t always out to lunch. Jay was about as effusive as you’d expect him to be toward someone who didn’t know a boat from a launch.

  “
Quick question,” I said. “Is Long Harbor being sued by Lombard Associates?”

  There was a long silence, followed by an irritated sigh. “That’s really none of your business.”

  “Look Jay, in a day or two, the police will be asking you the same question.”

  “When the police ask me, I’ll answer. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

  If the answer had been no, Jay Jennings would gladly have said so. I decided to track down Nino’s landlord.

  ***

  I parked behind the nondescript two-story building from which Peter Lombard ran his real estate empire, Lombard Associates painted in gold letters on a second floor window. It was the only commercial property in a manicured area of brick houses and chemical lawns. I headed for the entrance, certain that Nino’s landlord was hard at work, plotting lease buy-outs and rent increases at his mahogany desk.

  At the far end of the lot an engine sputtered to life. A maroon Mercedes of roughly the same vintage as my BMW was chugging backward out of its slot, leaking diesel fumes into the air. Cheapskate Lombard probably replaced his cars every forty years, or maybe his wife drove the new ones. The Mercedes rotated like a groaning old battleship until it pointed at the exit. Long fingers protruded from the driver’s side window and flicked ash off a cigar.

  “Peter!” I trotted toward the car, which ground to a halt at the sound of my voice.

  Lombard stuck his head out. “What is it? I’m running late.”

  “About Nino Biondi’s new lease.” I stood close to the car with my hand on the roof. A wisp of cigar smoke rose toward my face, a pleasant smell, though Lombard probably thought I disliked it. “Why did you change your mind?”

  “Because I found out you didn’t have his okay when we talked.”

  This was a lie, but I didn’t call him on it. He shifted into drive and the Mercedes lurched forward. “Everything’s hunky-dory,” he said. “Mind your own business. Biondi’s gonna stay where he is.”

  “With all the goodies you gave him for Cambridge, why should he stay in Brookline?”

  “Talk, talk, talk. Step aside, Susan. I gotta go.”