Love Nest
Authors: Andrew Coburn
LOVE
NEST
Andrew Coburn
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
For my wife, Casey Coburn
,
and our kids, Cathleen, Krista, Lisa, and Heather
.
Phyllis McGovern, the late Stanley Greenhalgh, and Trentwell Mason White, Ruth Hitchings, Julia Danley, Bella Copolla, Peter Skolnik, Ned Chase, Dominick Anfuso, and everybody at Bishop’s, for help past and present.
W
illiam Rollins had a solitary drink at the bar in Rembrandt’s Restaurant in Elm Square. The square was in the prosperous and prideful town of Andover, twenty miles north of Boston. The restaurant was in a former funeral home, Lundgren’s, where twenty years ago Rollins had wept over the twin caskets of his parents. He might have stayed for another drink had the young bartender not placed the telephone in front of him and quietly informed him that he had a call. The peremptory voice on the line said, “Get over here.”
He did not hurry. He handed over a small plastic disk to the girl in the cloakroom, deposited a modest gratuity in the dish, and waited with catlike calm for his coat. He was neat and trim in a vested suit, wore amber-tinted eyeglasses, and had the bloodless look of a corporation lawyer. When his coat came, he checked the pockets to make sure his scarf and gloves were there. He trusted no one. From the corner of his eye he noticed a familiar face or two in the queue waiting for tables, but he strode away without speaking. His temperament did not favor his being the first to offer a greeting. Aloofness was a virtue.
His car, babied from the day he bought it, was an eight-year-old Mercedes in near-perfect condition. He drove it slowly through a set of lights into downtown Andover, which was mostly closed up for the night. Male mannequins in worsteds and tweeds, smiling placidly through the glow of Macartney’s display windows, suggested solid citizens of the town. Lem’s Coffee Shop, which closed at six, was a mere slat of light. Citizens Bank, where he had several accounts, stood shrouded in darkness except for the glimmer of the electronic teller. The clock outside the bank told him the time, eight-twenty, and the temperature, twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
The night held all the chill of November, a month he loathed. His parents had perished in November. The only poet he read with feeling called it “the month of the drowned dog.” He saw it as a ghastly time, each day sinking inward, nothing growing, nothing alive, the year diminished to a stub. A couple of Novembers ago he had contemplated ending it all and would have done so had his mother not murmured from the grave,
Don’t be a fool
.
He cruised through a second set of lights at the Gulf station. The red brick of the post office loomed on one side, the glass front of Barcelos Supermarket on the other. He accelerated when Main Street began its rise toward Phillips Academy, of which he was an alumnus, friendless during his four years there, his status awkward as a day student. Had it not been for his mother, he never would have stuck it out.
Beyond the academy grounds he turned right onto Hidden Road, soon fastened onto Porter Road, and a few minutes later veered down a choice cul-de-sac. He coasted into a circular drive lined with the woolly nighttime shapes of shrubs and left his car near a three-stall garage. Grass deadened his steps in his shortcut to the front door. The house was a brick colonial, formidable in its dimensions and pretentious in its colonnaded front. The voice that had summoned him was Alfred Bauer’s. Bauer’s wife opened the door.
“Hello, William.”
He stepped in and stood under a chandelier. “I’m expected.”
Harriet Bauer smiled with lips pushed out by large, handsome teeth that were always visible. She was fair-haired, big-boned, somewhere in her late thirties, with a broad Germanic face and wide-apart eyes. She was wearing a sweat suit, which did not surprise him. The Bauer family was into body-building — Nautilus, aerobics, yoga, calisthenics. Beneath her baggy suit was a belly like an iron plate and a sturdy pair of endless legs that would have suited a dancer. Her husband, who had turned fifty, could execute push-ups on one arm, and their strapping sixteen-year-old son looked murderous when bare-chested. She said, “Alfred will be with you in a minute.”
“He made it sound urgent.”
“Yes,” she said, her smile curiously bright, as if nothing in the world could discompose her. He knew she could achieve a high through her own physical activity. “Come,” she said.
The house was skillfully laid out, one room developing grandly into another, with furniture of eye-catching lines and cheerful colors. A mirror wedged into white oak recorded his passage into the study, where fiery logs gave a blush to the walls. As she helped him off with his coat he smelled the liniment she had rubbed on herself and found the odor disconcertingly pleasant.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, and he shook his head, his ear keyed to an insistent pounding high in the house, a kind of thump and clatter muffled by distance, which took him a second or two to fathom: her son’s stereo. He raised his eyes.
“It all sounds so angry, so … desperate. Not music at all, is it?”
“Kids love it.”
“Yes, it sells,” he concurred, aware of nuances in her manner, none he could quite figure out, though he had known her and her husband for ten years, had been in business with them for three, and was privy to secrets; some they had divulged, others he had divined. Unused to being kept waiting, except by them, he said dryly, “I’m never really positive who’s in charge — you or Alfred.”
“That’s something you shouldn’t worry about.”
He agreed with a curt nod and sat down. She remained on her feet, her legs smartly spaced, the drawstring on her sweat pants pulled tight.
“The young woman who did typing for you last summer, you remember her, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, guardedly.
“She was special to us, William, but what was she to you? Anything?”
“A name in my Rolodex. She wasn’t much of a typist, and I quit calling her. Why do you ask?”
Abruptly Harriet Bauer moved closer to the fire, which infused her with its glow and sparked a dry glitter in her hair. She regarded him at length. “She seemed the sort you’d have taken an interest in.”
“No,” he lied.
“I’ll accept that with a reservation.”
“Do as you please.”
“And assume you won’t be too upset to learn she’s dead. Apparently she was murdered.”
He felt his lips go dry. At the same time he was aware of the sudden and silent presence of Alfred Bauer in the doorway, but instead of looking in that direction he leaned his face toward the fire, as if the pattern of flames held meaning. He said something to Harriet Bauer but in a deformed voice that curled in on itself and limited its clarity.
She said, “My son knows. We told him straight off. That’s why he’s playing his music. His shrink says it shields him.”
Rollins peered up at her through his tinted spectacles as his right shoulder sank to one side, as if the future held only absurdities. “How,” he asked in a short whisper, “how did it happen?”
“We don’t know all the facts yet.”
“Where?”
“The Silver Bell. That makes it awkward, of course. For all of us.”
He shuddered outwardly. Inside he wept. He watched the long curve of Harriet Bauer’s hand sweep hair from her forehead. He said, “It has nothing to do with me.”
“Do you really believe that?”
At the moment he believed in nothing. Nothing was real except the vibrations emanating from the faraway stereo. That and a blend of fragrances. Firewood erupted on the grate and effused its essence, the minty breath of liniment hung cool. Alfred Bauer had not budged from the doorway, but the bay rum on his shaved jaws wafted its bouquet well into the room.
“You’re not simply our lawyer, William. You’re our associate.”
Something seemed to touch him, to gather him in the chair, as if the young woman for whom he had denied feelings were giving him a posthumous embrace. “Yes, I will have something. Bourbon, please.”
“Alfred anticipated that.” Her tone altered slightly. “By the way, don’t ever underestimate us.”
Alfred Bauer, soft on his feet like a heavyweight in fighting form, stepped into the room with a glass of Old Grand-Dad in his hand. Chest pelt shone like armor from his half-open shirt. His head was bald and domelike, his eyes an improbable baby blue, his voice a muscular baritone. He said, “William would never make that mistake.”
With an expression of strain and a restless stance, Detective-Sergeant Sonny Dawson said, “Jesus, I don’t have the stomach for this.”
“You think I do?” the medical examiner said, bending over the bed on which the abused body of a young woman lay flat and narrow, her dark auburn hair spread wide over a pillow. “I mean, do you think I like it? This kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen.”
“Nineteen,” Dawson whispered to himself.
“What?”
“I’m agreeing with you.”
The bed was queen-size, and the room was in a rear of the Silver Bell Motor Lodge, which was girded by spruce and pine in the Ballardvale section of Andover, near Interstate 93. The young woman’s leather shoulder bag was on a night table but held no identification. Suede boots stood beside the chair where her clothes had been tossed. Her underpants were nothing more than a cobweb. Her jeans were designer, her charcoal sweater monogrammed with an
M
. Her coat was in the open closet, nothing in the pockets except a pouch of keys.
“She must’ve been sweet,” the medical examiner said and traced a gentle finger over her bruised face. The eyes were open. “She died hard.”
“I can see that.”
“Not an ounce of fat on her, nothing to cushion the blows. Look, you can tell ribs are broken.”
Dawson went into the bathroom, where an aging uniformed officer named Billy Lord was dusting for prints. “Can I use the sink?” Dawson asked and without waiting for an answer ran water and doused his face. Then he flashed a crooked smile. “What’s the matter with me, Billy? Am I getting old?”
“I don’t know, Sonny. You forty yet?”
“I’m getting there.”
“You got no belly. That says something.”
“I don’t eat a lot.”
“Seems to me you’re in pretty good shape.”
“Not at the moment.” He ripped off some toilet paper and patted his face dry in front of the mirror. His eyes, unmistakably green, gave him a zealous look. As a student at Boston University, a neat beard exalting his features, he had resembled a youthful Christ. Now, nearly twenty years older, the face clean-shaven, lean, and economical, honed sharp at the edges, he looked every inch a cop — with the possible exception of his hands. They were long and expressive, tooled, it would seem, for gentle business. He ran one through his dark hair. “Town like this shouldn’t have homicides, d’you know that, Billy?”
“Town’s growing, has been for years. Can’t stop it, Sonny. You could stand in the middle of Main Street and blow your whistle, developers would run you over. Who’d pick you up? Me and the chief maybe, no one else.”
“But I can bitch. I’m allowed to do that.” He tossed the sodden tissue into the wastebasket. “How are you doing there?”
Officer Lord looked up with large, flat eyes. Hunkered down, he had the body of a bullfrog. “Not terrific. I think everything’s been wiped.”
“Keep at it,” Dawson said and rubbed a crick in his neck while continuing to stare at himself in the glass. Again he pushed back his hair, but it quickly reverted to its natural fall, damp and limp over his forehead. Then he opened his check sports jacket and hiked up his trousers, which were burdened by the weight of his holstered revolver. He seemed to be delaying his return to the victim.
“Sonny!”
His name rang in his ears. It came from the medical examiner who was preparing to leave. Dawson stepped swiftly out of the bathroom and gazed at the bed. “That was fast.”
The medical examiner closed his black bag and reached for his overcoat. “All I have to tell you at this point is she’s dead.” He struggled with his coat. “Help me, huh?” Dawson helped him. “You probably want to know how long she’s been dead. I don’t know. Maybe three hours. You want to know the cause? Probably internal hemorrhaging. Whoever beat her didn’t hold back. The weapon? I’d say bare fists.”
“Can’t you close the eyes?”
“Why? I’ll only have to open them again.” The medical examiner shifted his bag to his other hand. “What’s the matter? You’ve seen bodies before?”
“Not many.” Dawson stared at the stillness of the distorted face, at the austere lay of the limbs, at the rigidity of the toes. His voice went strange. “What d’you think, Doc, is that a person anymore?”
“Don’t ask me silly stuff.”
Dawson’s crooked smile returned. “You know what my last case was? Obscene calls. Teacher from the high school was getting one a night, same muffled voice. Turned out to be a kid in her class.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“But it’s ironic.”
“Why’s it ironic?”
“Just is, Doc.”
They tramped to the door together. The medical examiner raised his coat collar. He did not have much hair on the top of his head, just wisps, and he had a staved-in appearance, which made him look older than he was. “It’s been a lousy month, Sonny. My wife missed Megabucks by a single digit, and our dog died, a blessing really. The poor thing was crippled up and half blind. And, of course, Reagan was reelected. That says a lot about the country’s mentality. Oops, I should be careful. You probably voted for him.”
“In a moment of madness.”
“Maybe you’ll luck out and live to regret it.” The medical examiner smiled and threw open the door. Three cruisers were parked in a straight line, their dome lights bubbling blue in the chill air, and farther away officers in fur-collared jackets were questioning guests. An ambulance waited nearby. “You know, Sonny, I think she was a hooker.”
“I know she was.”
The medical examiner, who had stepped out into the cold, glanced back in surprise. “How do you know?”
“I did her a favor once.”
“Then you know her name.”
“Melody,” he said.
• • •
After placing another log on the fire, Harriet Bauer left her husband and William Rollins to themselves, mounted wide stairs, and followed a long, airy passageway to her son’s room, where stereo speakers hung from the walls. Hard rock pounded at her from every side. “Turn it down!” she shouted. He did, but not enough. “Turn it off!”
“You said
down
,” he protested in a voice that caught.
“Now I mean
off
,” she said, semaphoring the words. He obeyed, and the sudden silence was as much a shock to her ears as the music had been. “How are you doing?”