A Crack in Everything Page 25

  Michael hesitated, clearing his throat of mountain pollen or something. “If you need me, I’ll come back right now.”

  “Not necessary. Chaz can’t hurt me, or anyone, and Glenn is in custody.”

  “Wait, let me start over. When they told me the risk you took, I wanted to grab you and hold you tight, and then arrest you for reckless endangerment. For chrissake, Susan—you waltzed into that house with a corkscrew in your hand?”

  “Once I heard Delia scream, I had to help her.”

  “You’re not a cop. You’re not even a…baton twirler.”

  Baton twirler. For Michael, this kind of fuddlement was pinning his heart to his sleeve. I uncovered my own. “I missed you last night.”

  “If anything happened to you I…I’d…”

  “I was almost certain the killer didn’t have a gun.”

  “Almost doesn’t even count in horseshoes.”

  Smoke was wisping up from the toaster, more proof that cooking is a risky affair. Still feeling heroic, I stuck in a fork and rescued the bread. “I never seriously suspected Glenn,” I said, scraping burnt crumbs into the sink. “I still can hardly believe it. Torie and Chaz. Lauren left for dead.”

  “And you.”

  I touched my wounded breast. “He seemed so…innocent.” I didn’t mention Michael’s two-killer theory, which I’d doubted from the start.

  “We found a microtome blade in the Baird’s kitchen,” Michael said. “It’s from NovoGenTech, but not the one that killed Torie. So far there’s no physical evidence linking Glenn to the murders.”

  “He confessed. That ought to be worth something.”

  “Only for Torie. And if his mother has her way, he’ll recant.” Michael painted a familiar scenario: Johanna’s lawyers and psychiatrists were busy. If they did a good job, Glenn might be acquitted. And he steadfastly denied killing his father.

  While I cruised the kitchen, washing pears and looking for the honey jar, Michael told me about his interview with Darcy Villencourt. She’d been eager to talk, he said, because after the office meeting with me, Glenn had became so agitated she began to doubt his sanity.

  “Should I take offense?”

  “Well, I’m mad about you myself,” Michael murmured, and all alone in the kitchen I blushed.

  “Um,” I said. “You better finish telling me about Darcy while I can still pay attention.”

  “Where are you, exactly?” he said. “We’ll have phone breakfast.”

  “That sounds naughty, Michael. I’m leaning over the sink, eating a pear. Now how did Glenn upset Darcy?”

  “I’m standing outside a gas station, eating a doughnut.” He sighed and told me Darcy’s story: Glenn claimed he had evidence linking Bart Bievsky to the murders—Torie’s sandal, his father’s watch. Other items he claimed he’d found in Bievsky’s car. All safely stowed in New Hampshire. When Darcy insisted he tell the police, Glenn went wild. Started yelling that the time wasn’t right, but that when it was, he was going to “get” Bart.

  “So why didn’t she call the police?”

  “She wanted to be loyal, so she convinced herself Glenn was making it all up. Aggrandizing himself. She knew he hated Bart for dating his mother. But all it took was a call from me to open the floodgates. And now I’m in New Hampshire scouting mountain tops.”

  “I’m guessing you’re not wandering aimlessly.”

  “Darcy gave me precise directions to Glenn’s secret campsites,” he said. “That girl is a marvel of clarity. So far I’ve found two, nothing stashed at either.”

  Over coffee, I told him about Lombard’s threat. “He called you my nosy friend, which tells me you uncovered his connection to Chaz.”

  “Mr. Lombard and I had a smoke together the other morning.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “He likes Macanudos.”

  I licked the honey spoon. “If only you could prove he orchestrated Chaz’s attack on Nino.”

  “Be hard.” Michael chuckled. “Maybe he keeps an incriminating diary.”

  How irritating, people who laugh at their own jokes. “I’d settle for an off-the-record admission.” And thirty pieces of silver for Nino. “If Glenn didn’t kill his father, Lombard could’ve done it. He had motive and opportunity. Chaz backed out of their deal and left him with an empty building. Cost him millions. And the rope was handy in the Lexus.”

  “Run that by the detective in charge. I’ve got a mountain to climb.”

  I had a moment of fear. Mt. Washington was notorious for sudden storms. Don’t go, I wanted to say, as if I might lose Michael too, on a mountain they’d call a foothill in Nepal. “Be careful,” I said. “Promise me.”

  “Worrywart. I’m taking the easy way up. Cog rail train.”

  ***

  Riding high after breakfast with Michael, I punched in Deirdre’s number, ready to apologize for my bad temper. Last week’s substitute server answered, and apologies died on the vine. “Where’s Deirdre?” I said.

  Ms. Uzi didn’t know but put me through to Mirabelle Communications where a woman informed me that Deirdre Wilcot had taken an indefinite leave from her franchise.

  “Awfully sudden, wasn’t it?”

  “She’s back in the hospital. Had a relapse last night.”

  “Hospital! What’s wrong?”

  “Her disability, you know. Our handicap program—”

  “What do you mean? How can I reach her?”

  But Mirabelle couldn’t give out that information. The best they could do was tell Deirdre I wanted to hear from her.

  I tidied the kitchen, automatically rinsing and drying while I worried about the soft-spoken woman I’d never met, who nonetheless, I realized, had become a friend. Deirdre must have lied to me about her travels. Were they disappearing acts? “Boxes” where she “compartmentalized” until that famous inner balance was restored? Until allopathic medicine did what it could to heal her?

  ***

  Later, when I called Nino I learned, no surprise, that Benny hadn’t given him my message. He was too busy to discuss Lombard and Renfrow…until I bribed him with a trip to Russo’s, greengrocer to the stars.

  I found him waiting on the sidewalk in front of Tavola, string bags dangling out of his pocket. On the drive to Watertown, he rested his eyes. He looked hung over, and I didn’t press him. There would be time to talk after we shopped.

  Inside Russo’s, Nino perked up at the sight of all those edible jewels heaped high in wooden bins. While I roamed the attached greenhouse for water-averse office plants, he filled a cart with incipient Tavola specials. Twenty-five minutes later, carrying a miniature three-pronged cactus, I joined him at the register.

  “I’m quitting on a high note,” he said, piling tomatoes and escarole in front of a curly-haired cashier who tallied up faster than he could unload. I thought he meant his shopping spree until he added: “Give ’em my best cooking till the end of summer, then I’m gone.”

  “What’re you talking about? Where are you going?”

  “Florida, or maybe Ischia.”

  The cashier handed over Nino’s slice of the register tape. From a large black leather change purse, the kind moths fly out of in old movies, he extracted a wad of bills and peeled off the exact amount. Accustomed to three-figure vegetable deals, the cashier whipped Nino’s money into her register, then rang up my sale.

  “I’m gonna retire,” he said.

  “You? Never.”

  “Believe it. I’m not the same since that sonofabitch put me in the hospital.”

  “You’re depressed. That’s natural after a brush with death.”

  “What death? I’m old. Don’t bounce back so high anymore.”

  Since the cactus was a business expense, I handed over my credit card. The curly head sho
ok back and forth. “Can’t charge less than fifty dollars.”

  I opened my wallet, but Nino was quicker.

  “I got it.” He slapped ten dollars on the counter and waited, palm out, for his change. If he heard my thanks, he didn’t acknowledge it.

  A crate of cherries nudged my elbow as the next person in line claimed counter space. I moved forward, so close to Nino I could smell the Brylcreme in his hair. “Zi’ Neen, let’s talk before you make a decision.”

  “I’ve already decided, don’t you listen? Lombard’s gonna pay for my retirement. If he won’t, I’ll enforce the Cambridge deal you made for me.” He hoisted his bulging string bags and left the cart behind. “And I got one more lawyer’s job for you.”

  “What’s that?” I carried the overflow, the white eggplant, the blossom zucchini, the rapi, the melons. Wrapped in paper, the cactus fit snugly inside my hobo bag.

  “I need a will.”

  “Al Volpe can find someone to help you.”

  “Just a simple will. I want it ready before I retire. Gotta make sure Benny’s taken care of. And a little something for you.”

  “Me?” Good. That let me off the hook. “Beneficiaries shouldn’t draw up the will,” I said. Not that I wanted anything from Nino, who was going to live forever.

  We pushed through the double swing doors to the parking lot.

  “Come talk to me about it, anyway. I got papers I want you to look over.”

  “I can probably stop over tonight. Let me call you later.”

  Careful of slippery lettuce leaves underfoot, we walked down an exit ramp behind a fleet of delivery trucks. Nino refused my hand and kept three steps ahead.

  “About the Cambridge deal,” I said. “You were dead right about Chaz Renfrow wanting something from me, only it wasn’t what you thought.”

  “What did I think?” He slowed, and I came up beside him.

  “Sex.”

  “Sex.” His whole face twisted around the word. “That’s how much you know. Right away, I pegged your friend for a user. Saw it in his eyes. I thought he’d hurt you. That’s as far as I thought.”

  Off the ramp, Nino quickened his pace and reached the car first.

  “Well, whatever you thought,” I said, “sex was the last thing on Chaz Renfrow’s mind. He used me to get to you. You’re the one he hurt.”

  “I know who he hurt.” Standing by the trunk, he kept a close eye on me. “What’d he need you for?”

  “To sign the deal. He wanted to lease Lombard’s building, and you stood in the way.”

  “Why’d he want such a falling down piece of junk?”

  “Location, location, location. Lombard’s building is next door to one of world’s great research centers, hospitals, laboratories, scientists. A natural fit for NGT. Plus, Brookline has no laws regulating biotechnology.”

  “Schifoso,” he said, and a few other dark Italian words I’d never heard but understood tonally. “Your friend looked familiar the night you brought him in. When Benny told me who beat me up, I remembered where I saw him. He came nosing around Tavola couple months ago, the toad brought him.” He loaded the trunk and slammed the lid, then climbed in beside me. “Your friend didn’t look like muscle, or I would of figured him out on the spot.”

  My friend. Even in death Chaz had the power to irk me. I let out the clutch. “I didn’t figure him out either. He tricked me into signing that deal with Lombard.”

  “How, tricked you?”

  I gave him my spin on all that had happened. “Renfrow wanted you in the hospital.”

  Nino was sitting straight as a stick, hands on his thighs. “He wanted me dead.”

  “I don’t think he cared either way. If you died, he was golden. If you survived…well, he took a chance on me and hit the jackpot. Persuaded me to ‘take charge’ of your life and sign the new lease. You have to admit, Cambridge was a very good deal for you.”

  “It was a good deal, wasn’t it?” He turned a shoulder my way, but kept his eyes on the windshield. “A good deal for everybody.”

  “Still is, if you want it.” We crossed Bridge Street and I drove toward Brighton along the Charles River, invisible behind buildings and trees.

  “No, no. It’s time to get out of the restaurant business.”

  “Benny acts like you’ve promised him Tavola.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know he’s not ready to take over,” I said. “He needs more time, and so do you. You reopened way too soon. By the end of summer, you’ll be your old self.”

  He shook his head. “Things never go back the way they were. Even Lombard knows that. I already told him I’ll forget Cambridge, and everything else, for the right price.”

  I glanced at him. “Thirty pieces of silver?”

  “For such a little pitcher, Benny’s got big ears. Yeah, I told Lombard fifty thousand cash. I gave him a week to think over my offer. If he’s willing to do something for Benny, he can pay me less. Otherwise I’ll sue.” Nino folded his arms across his chest, an icon of intransigence. “Since your friend got himself killed, the toad is running scared.”

  “Chaz Renfrow was not my friend!” If this kept up, I’d have to put a disclaimer out on the Web. I swerved onto Boylston and Nino grabbed the handhold. “Lombard is scared,” I said, “because he knows he’d be a prime suspect if the police hadn’t arrested Chaz’s son.”

  I told Nino about Glenn. “That boy was on a tear. He even attacked me. Nineteen years old. Unreal.”

  “All that violence on TV. They see it, they wanna be killers.”

  “But Glenn seemed so sweet, gentle as St. Francis.”

  “Why would a saint want to kill you?”

  “He thought I was involved with his father.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Christ, Nino! What if I was? Is that a reason to kill?” My foot hit the gas, but the Beemer balked until I pumped the pedal. “Chaz Renfrow was my candidate. Nothing more.” And a whole lot less.

  I made a wide U-turn and pulled up in front of Tavola. “If you need help with Lombard, let me know. I’ll negotiate for you.”

  “I’m lucky you’re in my corner,” he said, putting a foot on the pavement. “For such a young girl, you sure know how to bargain.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Dire Thoughts

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said, but since Gordon Brenner had unexpectedly decided to join us and hadn’t yet arrived, I was actually early. I was speaking to the top of Odette’s head, which was bowed over a coffee table heaped with crudités and campaign files. “I stopped by City Hall for new lists, and political buzz.”

  “My buzz first.” Her hand darted from baby carrots to olives to radishes bristling with stems. She selected a radish and twirled it in a dish of coarse salt. “Gordon passed me some lawyer’s scuttlebutt about young Renfrow. Claims he killed Torie Moran to protect his family after she made threats at his mother’s birthday party.”

  “It so happens I was there that night. Torie seemed drunk or drugged, certainly loose enough to put the moves on Chaz right in front of me. If she threatened Johanna, Glenn could’ve listened in unobserved.” I explained how Glenn had sat on the shadowy porch under an open window. “Torie had some kind of smoking gun video about toxic spills. A friend of hers claims she was a real crusader, getting ready to blow the whistle on NGT.”

  Odette shook her head, earrings clacking against her jaw. The radish hung from her fingers. “Not whistle blowing. Blackmail.”

  Blackmail, so melodramatic, so at odds with Torie’s financial stake in NGT. I’d considered, then dismissed it. Now I savored the word. Blackmail confirmed all my prejudices. But as I sipped my wine, an image of Torie’s crumpled body pierced my memory. Bleak satisfaction eroded to pity for the hapless dead.
>
  “Apparently Johanna offered stock,” Odette said. “But Torie insisted on cash.”

  “Which NGT didn’t have. The ship was sinking. Torie wanted to get hers and get out.”

  “And Glenn cast himself as white knight.” Odette finally chomped down on the radish, washing salt off her lips with more wine. “Appalling! But good news for Roddie.”

  “How do you figure? Roddie’s still under a cloud. Glenn insists he did not kill Chaz.”

  “Susan, you’re a skunk at the garden party. Of course that young man is going to deny it. Patricide! What a horror!”

  A bottle of French country red sat on a tray at her elbow, and she made a pass at my nearly full glass. When I declined, she jutted her chin at the folders and notebooks tumbling over celery sticks on the table. “Let’s get rolling,” she said. “Trust me. Our candidate is not going back to jail.”

  Her enthusiasm lifted my mood. Elections are for winning, I reminded myself. Halfway through a list of untapped prospects, the doorbell rang, and Gordon Brenner walked into the room. Odette put a glass of wine in his hand, and we retired to the kitchen for a French country lunch.

  “Glenn wanted to prove he was the man his father hoped he could be, right down to the bay rum,” Gordon said. Through a mouthful of pommes vinaigrettes he told us that after Johanna’s party, Glenn broke into Torie’s condo and tore the place apart while she slept. “He was smart enough to wear lab gloves.”

  “And stupid enough to kill.” Odette tugged angrily at an earring.

  Gordon patted his mouth with a napkin. “Kitchen’s the most dangerous room in the house. Did you know that?”

  This was something I’d long suspected, and I nodded encouragingly.

  “When no blackmail evidence turned up…” Gordon paused while Odette heaped more pate´ on his plate. “Glenn woke Torie with a paring knife. Terrorized her into admitting she kept the smoking-gun video buried inside a plant pot in Lab 45. Turned out not to be true, according to Glenn, anyway. No video under the violets, but there was an alarm pad behind a shelf, and Torie planned to use it once they drove back to NGT.”