Judgment of the Grave (15 page)

That was why she’d been relieved, Quinn realized. She’d thought he was breaking up with her. Would she be happier if something had happened to him? It was a good question, he realized. “Who else knew about your relationship?”

She looked up at him, confused. “Nobody. What do you mean?”

“I mean, did anyone know about the relationship? Other than the two of you?”

“I don’t think so. We were pretty careful. He didn’t care so much. He wanted to go out to dinner and things like that, but I felt funny about it. I didn’t want it to get back to Pres or…” She stopped. “I don’t think anyone knew.”

“Not even his wife?”

“According to him, she had no idea. But I can’t see how she didn’t suspect something. I mean, he was gone for days on end.” There was blame in her voice and Quinn wondered if she’d been similarly duped. He’d found that people were the quickest to condemn behavior or traits they despised in themselves.

“What about your ex-husband?”

“No. I don’t think so.” She gave an ugly, sarcastic grin that put Quinn on edge. “Not that he would care.”

He studied her for a minute. He wanted to get out of there. There was something about her face when she’d talked about her ex-husband that made him feel ashamed. “Thanks for being so honest with me. I may get back in touch with you. In the meantime, if you hear from Mr. Churchill, please let me know.” She nodded, though he wasn’t at all convinced that she would.

He got up to leave, but she stayed in her chair, twisting a piece of her short hair above her ear and staring at the table. “Hey,” he said. “I just thought of something. When you met up with him, where did you meet? Not at your house?”

“No. I was always afraid that Pres was going to come home and find us.” She looked up at him and gave a little smile. “I’m embarrassed to tell you, but we met in the woods. Behind my ex-in-laws’. It’s private and you can get to it from the road on the other side. There’s this little…the clubhouse, they call it. My ex-husband built it when he was in high school and they’ve kept it up over the years. There’s a couch and everything.” The smile faded. “It was where my husband used to meet his mistress…his wife. I always liked the irony of that.” He could see it dawning on her a second after it dawned on him. “Wait,” she said, “I just realized. The body up in the woods. It was near the clubhouse.” She stared at him and he could see her trying to process it, trying to figure out what Kenneth Churchill could have had to do with the body in the woods. “You don’t think…?”

The problem was that Quinn didn’t know what to think.

Sweeney was watching CNN when Quinn got back to his room. She was stretched out on his bed, wearing his fleece jacket, which he’d left hanging over the desk chair, and he found himself annoyed suddenly that she’d made herself so at home, though he knew it was ridiculous. She had done him a huge favor.

“Thanks so much for taking care of her,” he said quietly. Megan was sleeping in the Pack ’n Play, one hand shoved in her mouth. He felt his stomach contract with love as he looked at her. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. She was good. We went for a walk downtown and then came back here and she fell asleep on the floor, so I put her in her playpen. I hope you don’t mind—I borrowed your jacket. It was kind of cold and I didn’t want to leave her.”

“No, that’s fine. She have a bottle?” He leaned over the side of the playpen and touched his daughter’s hair.

“Yeah. Just before she went to sleep. So, what did you get from her?”

“They’d been seeing each other since the winter,” he said after a moment, sitting down across from Sweeney in the desk chair. “The weekend he disappeared, she told him not to call her anymore. She was worried about her son. From what I can tell, she felt like it would have been a betrayal of her son to have another relationship.” He glanced, quickly, at the sleeping Megan.

“But it seems like it was part of their routine,” he continued. “They had ended things a few times before, either because of Pres or because he was feeling guilty about his wife and son. He always called, anyway and they always…saw each other.” He felt himself blush. “But not this time. This time he didn’t call. I’m almost a hundred percent she doesn’t know where he is. She was too surprised. You can’t fake that.”

“Did anybody know about them?”

“She doesn’t think so. She made an incredible effort to make sure Pres wouldn’t know. She seemed really concerned about it.”

“Why?” Sweeney asked him. “Why would she be so concerned? Lots of kids’ parents date after they get divorced.”

“He was married. She was probably ashamed of that.” He was silent for a minute, then said, “I think I understand. It’s like when you…when your kid is already dealing with something that’s…really bad, like Maura, or like her son being sick, well, you feel like you have to make it up to them somehow. You have to be extra good. You have to give them all of you.” He paused. “She’s still in love with her ex-husband. It was really weird. She’s so angry at him. But she clearly still loves him. It was kind of sad, actually.”

“I wonder how he feels about her,” Sweeney said.

“From what she said, he left her for someone else. So he must have fallen out of love with her.”

“It’s not usually that simple.”

He looked up and found her looking troubled. “Yeah, well, I just wish I knew what Churchill was doing that weekend. Where did he go after he left the encampment?”

“He was doing research, right?” Sweeney said. “So he must have gone off to do something on Josiah Whiting.”

“This guy who told me about the affair said he was going to look at graveyards.”

She sat up. “But I don’t understand what it was he was looking at. Okay, so I’m looking into his gravestones because I’m interested in the way his death’s-head designs change. But Kenneth Churchill isn’t an art historian. So, why was he interested in Whiting’s designs?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “You’re the academic. But I’d imagine if you’re studying someone’s life and that someone was a gravestone maker, you’d want to study his gravestones.”

“I suppose,” Sweeney said. “Do you have any idea what his book was about?”

“Everybody I’ve talked to says that he was working on something that was going to ‘change the scholarship,’ something ‘explosive.’”

“Well, in the context of academia, that can mean anything,” Sweeney said. “In the art world, you can be explosive by asserting that someone was influenced by painter A rather than painter B. But it’s interesting that he used those words. He must have been planning to prove that Josiah Whiting wasn’t who we thought he was.”

“And who was that?” Quinn asked.

She sat up on the bed and fluffed his pillows behind her. Again, he felt a flash of annoyance, that she’d taken some kind of liberty. “A Revolutionary hero. A stonecutter.”

He stood up and went over to the window. It was dark outside and he stared back at his reflection. Even in the glass, he could see the bags under his eyes. “It’s funny, isn’t it? That Josiah Whiting disappeared and then Kenneth Churchill is writing about him and he disappears too?”

“Yeah. If we knew what he was working on, we might be able to, I don’t know, kind of retrace his steps. See who he talked to. Did you ask the wife about any other research materials? Even if he has his laptop and all of his research materials with him, there’s got to be something.”

“Nothing. I searched his BU office and his home office pretty well, although…”

“Although what?”

“Well, it’s just that most of the home office was pretty messy, newspapers and books and everything all over the place, but the desk wasn’t. It looked like someone had cleaned it off.”

“You think he took everything related to the book with him when he left.”

“I don’t know. Why would he do that?” Quinn rubbed his eyes. “Why would he take it all with him?”

“If he didn’t want anyone to know what he’d found out?”

“But that’s ridiculous. We’re talking about someone who’s been dead for two hundred and fifty years.”

“I know,” Sweeney said. “Listen, I’m working on this gravestone thing, anyway. I could just kind of…I don’t know. Put myself in his shoes and try to figure out who he was talking to and what he found out.”

“Would you do that? You don’t know how much that would help me out.”

“Sure. When I talked to George Whiting the other day, he said that Kenneth Churchill asked him about whether Josiah Whiting and John Baker could have been spies for the British. George Whiting was pretty pissed off about it, but there might be something there. I’ll look into it a little bit more. Oh, hey, I was going to tell you, I was looking around in one of the tents that sells uniforms today and I asked the guy if he could tell me anything about the guy in the woods. From his uniform, I mean. He said that the uniform wasn’t very well made, that it was probably made by a reenactor himself rather than by a real tailor. He described it as the kind of thing that ends up in a thrift shop. So, I was thinking, maybe you should ask around at all the thrift shops in the area. See if they sold the uniform to the guy in the woods.”

“That’s a good idea. Thank you.” Christ, he was tired. He yawned and Sweeney yawned too, then smiled and got up, leaving a rumpled depression in the center of the bedspread. “Hey, I just remembered something. Kenneth Churchill’s wife said he went to London back in May, to do research on the book.”

“London? London, England?”

“That’s what she said. I thought it might help you.”

“That’s weird.” She yawned again. “I’m going to bed,” she said, slipping his fleece jacket over her head and handing it to him.

“Thanks again for watching Megan.” He was embarrassed suddenly. “Thanks for this afternoon too. The thing with the doctor guy.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” She looked down at the floor and her hair fell in front of her face. “It was kind of awful. I could see him starting to do it and I…thought I should get you out of there.”

He looked up at her, and when she met his eyes, he said, “It’s funny how certain things bring it up. I cut myself on a piece of wire in the basement a couple of weeks ago. Gashed myself good. There was blood everywhere and I just flipped out. I was yelling and…and crying like a baby. Thank God Megan was taking her nap. I was embarrassed as hell about it.”

He watched her, seeing something cross her face that he couldn’t quite identify. Sadness. Pain. She almost winced and then she nodded. “For me,” she said. “It’s loud noises. Cars backfiring. That kind of thing. And the smell of, you know, gunpowder. Explosives.” The room was very quiet, and all he could hear was Megan’s even breathing from her playpen. Quinn was confused. What was she talking about? She must have seen it on his face because she went on, her head bowed, a few pieces of her red hair falling out of her ponytail and onto her cheek.

“Remember that night at that bar where they were having a session,” she said after a minute. “When I told you that I was engaged to an Irish guy who played music?” He nodded. “Well, he died. In a bombing. Right in front of me. I probably should have died too. But I didn’t.”

He stared at her, not sure what to say.

“It was almost two years ago now. It gets better. It really does.”

“I’m so sorry.” He wanted to touch her, put an arm around her or something, but he wasn’t sure how she’d take it, so he stayed where he was and watched her face.

She got up and went to the window. “So, you said you’re doing okay, but how are you really doing?”

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. It’s better now. Like I said, having Megan helps. I have to keep it together for her. Although these days, I’m not doing a very good job of balancing home and work.” He told her about Havrilek’s ultimatum. “So I gotta figure out what happened to this guy. I mean, I guess my job’s on the line.” He rubbed his eyes. “It seems so strange somehow. That he would just take off. I always heard about people taking off on their wives and kids. Even investigated a few of ’em myself. But now, after Maura, I just don’t understand how you could do it. I guess I’m figuring this guy’s got to be dead. But then the question is, Where is he?”

Sweeney stood up to go and as she closed the door behind her, he looked around at his room, at his sleeping daughter. And he whispered it again to himself, “Where the hell is he?”

When she got back to her room, Sweeney sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, thinking about what Quinn had told her. He had asked Cecily Whiting if anyone else knew about her relationship with Kenneth Churchill. She didn’t think so, but did Pres know? She remembered being twelve. She had always known when her mother was seeing someone new. It was small things, extra attention paid to her perfect makeup, whispered phone conversations, a feeling sometimes in the middle of the night that there was someone else in the apartment. Children were amazingly astute observers of parental behavior and were able to pick up on things that adults didn’t even know they were doing. What were the chances that Pres hadn’t known? Pretty small, probably.

Sweeney suddenly remembered telling Pres she wanted to write something about Josiah Whiting. He’d hesitated, and thinking back on it, she was almost sure that he had been about to say something about Kenneth Churchill. She could ask him, but she didn’t like the idea of bringing up such a painful subject.

She got ready for bed and dialed Ian’s number, but he didn’t answer and the voice mail picked up after four rings. She waited for a second after the beep, then said, “Hi. It’s Sweeney. You must be out on the town. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about last night. I was tired and I, well…I’m not as much of a raging patriot as I sounded. So, anyway…So, I miss you.” She paused, about to hang up. “Hail, Brittania!”

She sat in the middle of the bed for another few minutes, holding the phone, feeling strangely bereft. He had as much right to be out as she did, but it was two in the morning in London, for God’s sake. Where was he?

She scrolled through her phone book and when she reached Toby she pressed
SEND
.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s Concord?”

“Okay. Where are you?”

“At home. Why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to bug you if you were out.”

“It wouldn’t be bugging me.” She could hear the sound of his banging a door closed in the background.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning.”

“Toby, why do you always clean when you’re talking to me? You do it when I’m there and you do it on the phone too.”

“I don’t know.”

“Can’t you just sit and talk to me? Am I so boring that you have to do something else?”

“You’re definitely not boring.” She could hear the sound of water, the bathtub, she thought, and she could see him perfectly, wearing old sweatpants and a T-shirt, his unruly dark hair falling over his forehead, his glasses misted up from the water. She felt a sudden sense of longing for Toby. She missed him. They hadn’t seen much of each other lately. He’d been on a writing jag and she’d been working hard.

“So, what’s going on with you? How’s the writing going?” she asked him.

“Really good. I had such a good day of writing. I think I’m pretty near to a rough draft. Are you talking to Ian while you’re out there?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because I was thinking that you guys have been talking a lot lately and I was thinking that if you continued to talk even when you were away from home that it would really mean something. That it would be like your relationship translated, if you know what I mean.”

“We don’t have a relationship. We’re phone buddies.”

“Hmmm. Well, it’s interesting to me, is all. What’s going on with your stonecarver guy?”

Sweeney told him about what had been going on. When she was finished she said, “So, you should come out and visit. It’s nice out here. We can have dinner at this inn I’m staying at.”

“Okay. How about Wednesday?”

“Yeah. Good. That’ll be fun.” She listened to him scrubbing something and then said, “Hey, you never told me what happened with Lily.”

“I didn’t?”

“No. You just said things didn’t work out.”

“Oh, yeah, well. She said that I was still hung up on you. That until I wasn’t hung up on you anymore, I wouldn’t be able to really be there with her. Something like that. Sounded like psychobullshit to me.”

Sweeney didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “But we didn’t even…”

“No, we never did. Lily said that was the problem, that it just kind of hung out there, that we’d never resolved it one way or the other.” There was a heavy silence on the phone and then he said, “God, my sink is really disgusting.”

“Toby!” Sweeney didn’t know what to say, so she listened to him scrubbing out the inside of the sink. Finally she lay down on her side, the phone still to her ear. “So, are you coming out on Wednesday?”

“Yeah,” he said. “If I’m done with this floor by then.”

She laughed and hung up on him.