Dead Ringers (7 page)

“The Realtor, yeah.”

Wheeler had been preparing the listing on Nick's apartment in Somerville. Kyrie tapped the phone screen twice and the radio cut off as the message began to play through the car speakers.

“Hey, it's Derek. I know you said not to bother calling, but I can't just let it go.”

Nick sat up a bit straighter. The Realtor sounded angry.

“I'm not gonna swear at you or anything,” the message continued. “I'm a professional. But I've rarely been so tempted to throw professionalism aside. I have no idea what I could've done to piss you off so much. We've barely started this process. You didn't even give me the opportunity to really try to sell your place. If you want to go with someone else, that's fine, but you didn't have to be so rude about it. That's all I wanted to say, I guess. You won't hear from me again.”

The message ended and '70s pop started streaming through the car speakers again. Brows knitted, Nick turned to stare at Kyrie.

“What the hell was that about?” he said. “He's talking like I fired him.”

“You didn't?”

“Of course not.”

“Well,” Kyrie said with an amused shrug, “someone did.”

 

TWO

Tess emerged from the conference room with a cup of cold coffee. She'd barely taken a sip during the meeting and now she just wanted to dump it in the sink and start over. Her skirt had been riding up—maybe because she'd been fidgeting in her chair—and she needed a few minutes in her office to adjust it and just exhale. All through the meeting, the rain had pattered the windows and streamed down the glass, distracting her. She stretched now, arching her back for a count of thirty before holding her left arm across her chest to give the shoulder some relief.

“Hey, Tess, got a minute?”

It took her a second to realize she was being addressed. Smoothing her skirt, aware that the zipper was out of alignment and irritated by it, she turned to face Eli Pinsky. At sixty-three, he continued to defy those who thought he ought to step down from the management of the Bostonian Society, a nonprofit association whose staff worked with museums, architects, local government, and the historical society to research, promote, and preserve the city's rich history. They hosted parties, lobbied politicians, recruited corporate and wealthy individual sponsors, and marketed Boston to the media, but the staff put just as much effort into research, sometimes hands-on. That was the stuff that intrigued Tess the most—exploring abandoned T stations and leafing through centuries-old blueprints—and she knew it was the part Eli Pinsky enjoyed the best as well. The short, portly man with his walrus mustache and round spectacles still had the passion for all aspects of his job, and she was glad he hadn't bent to pressure.

“What can I do for you, Eli?” she asked.

Her boss glanced around to make sure that the others departing the meeting moved on to their offices or wherever else they were headed.

“Just wanted to check on you,” he said.

Tess frowned. “Check on…?”

Eli fixed her with a fatherly gaze. “You weren't in the meeting.”

“I was two seats away from you.”

“That's not what I meant, Tess. Your head's not in the game today. I'm not saying you were falling asleep, but all I could think about every time I looked at you was what it felt like to be sitting in the back of my high school geometry class while the teacher droned on. I didn't think I was as boring as that guy, but today I sure felt like I was about the least exciting orator on the planet.”

Flushing, feeling guilty, she smiled apologetically. “You're not boring, Eli. It's a rainy Friday and I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Plus my back's acting up. But I swear I wasn't ignoring you.”

“I'm not offended,” he assured her, “and I'm as susceptible to rainy Fridays as the next guy. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. You're not usually one to space out, so I wondered if something might be wrong. Something more than the usual aches and pains, I mean.”

Tess felt a pang in her heart at the man's sweetness. From someone else, the approach might have been some kind of passive-aggressive management technique, but she'd known him long enough to see his sincerity.

“I'm fine,” she promised. “Maddie, too.”

The urge to kiss his rough cheek came over her, but she resisted. It would have been entirely inappropriate in the office. Instead, she grasped his arm. “You're a kind man, Eli.”

“This isn't a job for me,” he said, and she knew that words would follow, just as they always did. “It's a calling.”

“Me, too. Except on rainy Fridays. Then it feels like work.”

They both laughed and Eli glanced around to make sure they weren't being overheard.

“If you want to knock off early, I won't tell the boss,” he said.

“Thanks,” she whispered theatrically, “but I don't want to risk it. That guy's an ogre.”

Eli stroked his mustache, enjoying their playacting, and wished her a fruitful afternoon—the sort of sentiment that would sound silly coming from anyone but him. He headed for his office, though she knew he would stop in the staff galley and make himself a cup of tea on the way, maybe grab a couple of Milano cookies. They were his greatest weakness.

It occurred to her that she loved the balding, gray-haired little man, and she marveled at how fortunate she was to have a boss who inspired such feelings. Suddenly, rainy or not, Friday didn't seem quite so depressing.

The morning had not started well. She'd slept less than five hours and woken at half past four, shoulder hurting so much that she was unable to fall back to sleep. When Maddie had dragged her sleepy self into the kitchen two hours later and Tess had told her that she'd have a babysitter again that night, the little girl had sulked over her waffles. Tess had offered her a choice of three different juices to go with her breakfast and her daughter had huffily replied that she didn't care, didn't like juice, and didn't like Erika, the babysitter she had always adored beyond all reason. In retrospect, Tess knew there were a dozen things she ought to have said to reassure the girl, and to remind her that she loved spending time with Erika. Exhausted as she was, she'd let impatience get the best of her.

“Honey,” she'd said, “it's important.”

Her little girl, not yet seven years old, had cocked her head, tossed her hair to one side to give her mother a searing glance, and said, “
I
used to be important.”

The memory cut at Tess's heart. She walked to her office window and stared out at the rain-veiled city and the sea of black umbrellas on the sidewalk below. Maddie's remark had led to a stream of further reassurances and eventually she had gotten the girl to smile and later to laugh. Erika would entertain her, and Tess knew Maddie would eat better for the babysitter than she ever did for her mother. Still, the words had hurt. How had her baby girl become so smart, so fast? Attitude and sass were going to become a part of their daily ritual—Tess could see it coming—but that was all right. Mothers and daughters sparred all the time. It was perfectly natural.

Still, she had considered canceling on Lili a dozen times. Going out two nights in a row made her feel neglectful.

Yes, you're such a bad mom,
she thought.

Maddie knew Tess loved her. She'd been four at the time her parents divorced and barely remembered what life had been like before it. Tess knew her daughter's irritation stemmed from how much she hated to be left out of anything, to feel like she might be missing something fun. But it was their weekend together, and she had promised to make up for it, to devise some adventure for them to share, and Maddie's ire had been mostly extinguished.

It'll return,
Tess thought.
Just wait till she's twelve or so.

Oh, boy.

Her cell phone buzzed and she glanced at it, not recognizing the number. A shudder went through her, a lingering uneasiness. Her modus operandi was to let unknown calls go to voice mail—ninety-nine percent of them were scams, surveys, or sales—but cold curiosity prodded her and she answered.

“Hello?”

“Too early for a Newcastle?” asked a male voice.

Tess's tension evaporated. A small laugh bubbled up from inside her. “Alonso?”

“You remembered my name.”

“You only served me two beers,” she said. “I don't start forgetting guys' names until at least the third pint.”
God, what are you saying?
“Which isn't to say I do a lot of drinking, or meet a lot of guys whose names I want to remember.”

Now she was babbling. Tess slumped against her desk, closed her eyes, and promised herself she'd remember that he'd called, even though he wasn't likely ever to make that mistake again.

“So … you wanted to remember me,” Alonso said.

Tess perked up. “Apparently.”

“Sometimes women flirt with the bartender and then they remember that he's just a bartender.”

She heard the edge of resignation in his voice. Alonso seemed like a generally confident, good-natured man, but she reminded herself that nearly everyone had their demons of doubt. The only people she'd ever met who weren't sometimes crippled with self-doubt were the same assholes whose certainty invariably led to disaster for those around them, if not for themselves.

“I'm glad you called, Alonso.”

“Since your friend Lainie gave me the number—”

“Lili,” Tess corrected, privately ecstatic that he'd remembered her name and not Lilandra's. The opposite had so often been true.

“—I wasn't sure I should call.”

“Tuesday,” she said before she could stop herself, privately terrified.

“Sorry?”

The pain in her back flared and she felt the scars on her chest and shoulder tingling and aching as if they were far more recent than they were. More than two years had passed since the accident. She wanted to hide in her closet, certainly had no intention of letting a strange man see her naked. So why did the thought make her want to smile?

“My ex takes my daughter on Tuesday night. If you want to have dinner or get drinks or something, and you're not working, that's the next time I'm free.”

Alonso chuckled softly. “You asking me on a date, Tess?”

“I'm at work right now, so I thought I'd hurry things along.”

“If you like Thai, I know a place.”

Tess forced herself to breathe, forced away all the ugly scenarios that she imagined when she thought about anyone seeing her without her clothes on. “I love Thai. Seven o'clock?”

It had been a very long time. She wasn't ready to have sex, but she told herself she was being a presumptuous fool. Alonso might spend ten minutes with her and want to run for the hills. Even if he liked her, who was to say she would do more than kiss him?

Your vibrator says so,
she thought, and stifled a laugh. Guys had hit on her plenty of times in the past two years, but they had almost universally been swaggering asshats, or just flirting to pass the time. Reflex flirting, married men keeping in practice.

“I'll text you the address and I'll see you there on Tuesday,” Alonso said.

“Sounds good,” she replied. “I'm glad you called.”

“So am I.”

He hung up without the sort of awkward, diminishing farewell small talk most people indulged in. Tess liked that. Thus far, there were a lot of things about Alonso she liked. Suddenly her rainy Friday didn't seem quite so dismal.

Until she remembered Lili, and the plans they'd made for after work.

The butterfly of anxiety in her chest began to beat its wings again.

 

THREE

It was midafternoon before Nick could get Derek Wheeler to call him back. He'd left three messages on the drive home from North Conway, dropped Kyrie off in Allston, where she shared a place with two other Boston University grad students, and gone back to his Somerville apartment. He taught classes Monday through Wednesday and usually held office hours on Thursday and Friday, even as he tried to finish the manuscript for
18th Century Boston,
the book he'd been researching and writing for nearly four years. But he and Kyrie were in the midst of making important decisions about their life together, and canceling his office hours for this week had allowed them to steal away on Wednesday afternoon and spend two nights and one lovely day in the White Mountains. He was sure that autumn in England held its own charms, but though he'd grown up in Florida, he'd grown to love the seasons of the American Northeast, and would miss them.

Oxford,
he thought. An image of Maddie twirling in delirious circles swam into his head and hesitation plagued him again. Not doubt, really, but worry.

Since arriving home, he'd walked to the market to pick up some essentials, done a load of laundry, and put away the clean dishes that had been in the dishwasher since he had left on Wednesday. He felt the pull of his desk from the second bedroom he used as an office. There were e-mails to answer and research materials to catalog, now that he was getting closer to finishing the book, but he had promised himself that he wouldn't work at all today. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Kyrie had work of her own to do and they'd agreed that Saturday would be a day apart, to focus.

He had just started to surrender to the inexorable pull of his desk when Wheeler finally phoned him back.

“Thanks for calling,” Nick said as he answered.

“You left three messages. Didn't seem like you were giving up, though I don't know why. You made it pretty clear you didn't want me to call you.”

“I never said that, Derek—”

“Are you calling me a liar, Mr. Devlin?”

Nick hesitated, disturbed by the real anger in the man's voice. He moved into his desk and slid into his chair. “Listen, I don't know what's going on here, but the last time you and I talked was Monday and at that point, we were very much on the same page.”