Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (27 page)

The receptionist turned to me. "Mr. Dani's
secretary will be right with you. Would you care to take a seat?"

I was sitting on an unyielding silk-covered settee
over an acquamarine carpet under a print of a fox hunt when a young
woman came around the corner. She did not remind me of Diana Rigg.
She reminded me of Whoopi Goldberg. Until she talked, at which point
she reminded me of Diana Rigg, too.

"Mr. Cuddy?"

"Yes."

"I'm Rita Knox. Mr. Dani can see you in a few
minutes. Would you please come with me?"

I followed the dreadlocks back through a rabbit
warren of common corridors. Kangaroo-pouch enclosures of secretaries
sat outside windowed offices of lawyers and windowless offices of
paralegals.

At the midpoint of one corridor, Rita Knox slowed
beside a closed door and looked back over her shoulder at me,
swishing the braids. "Mr. Dani is on long distance. Please have
a seat and let me know if I can help you with anything."

There was another silk settee, the cushions on this
one also stiff as a board. Several people coming down the corridor
slowed hesitatingly near the adjoining office, then walked by
quickly, eyes averted from a man in his early fifties who was putting
his wall plaques into a brown and green packing box. My day to catch
people on the move.

When the corridor was empty, I spoke to Knox. "I
don't want to impose on Vincent at a bad time. How is he holding up
under the strain of his niece's death?"

The secretary shook her head. "He's doing so
well, the poor man. They were quite close, but he hasn't missed a
beat here."

"Did you know her?"

"No. Well, yes, but only over the telephone. I
must say, every time I think of talking with her that day, it is as
though a ghost crossed my grave."

I tried to keep my voice light. "You talked with
her the day she died?"

"Yes." Knox took a breath, her eyes tipping
me that this was a story she'd told before, a story she relished in
that guilty way we all have. "She called here that afternoon,
just before I left. Mr. Dani was in a meeting, so I left her message
for him on the spike."

"Sorry?"

Knox held up a six-inch message spike with a brass
base.

"This. We still don't have a voice-mail system,
so I impale his messages on it." A devious little smile, then
she seemed to remember the story she was telling. "Poor girl."

I needed to be careful here. "That happened to
me once in the Army. I spoke to somebody at noon, and then at dinner
I heard he'd died. I kept asking myself, was there something in his
voice that day that said he knew his time was coming?"

"The very same with me! I've been saying to
myself, 'Was there something in her voice?' But she sounded fine.
Even buoyant, like a girl her age should. So full of life and — "

At which point the office door opened and Vincent
Dani stood there, the balding head lifted an inch higher than eye
level, as though he were trying to sense the words that had been in
the air before he interrupted us.

"Mr. Cuddy, I can give you only a few minutes."

I stood. "A few minutes should do it."

Dani looked at his secretary for a moment, then just
said,

"
Rita, hold all my calls."

"Yessir."

His office was rectangular, but some sort of shaft
for the bui1ding's structural integrity ran at a diagonal to the
ceiling, creating a lean-to effect on that side of the room. The
opposite surface was more standard, covered with framed prints of
grouse, pheasant, and quail. At least there were no polo fields or
yacht basins. Outside his window, six other skyscrapers eclipsed most
of the horizon. His view between them was a thumbprint of Boston
Harbor and a hundred yards of Logan Airport runway.

Dani settled behind a cherry desk with Scandinavian
lines. The credenza, desk chair, and both client chairs were of the
same grained wood, the third hue in the Oriental rug beneath us
picking up the cherry color. The underlying wall-to-wall carpeting
that continued in from the hall was beige, as were his lowboy file
cabinets and shelving. He had a personal computer on the credenza,
not much of anything beyond a telephone complex and pen set on the
desk.

Dani looked at me, the hair thin and the eyes sharp
but the face expressionless, again the only emotional part of him his
lips, which twitched a little. Dressed impeccably in another Brooks
Brothers suit, this one gray with a houndstooth pattern, he gave the
impression of a man who had seriously considered a hair transplant
only to decide, rightly, that it would make him look silly.

"Well, Mr. Cuddy?"

"I've been out to the building. Your cousin and
I did a walk-through, and I have a couple of questions."

"Ask them."

"How many people have a key to Mau Tim's
apartment?"

Even his lips suggested he expected that one. "I
wouldn't know. She wasn't supposed to give them out."

"To your knowledge, who has a key?"

"Certainly Cousin Ooch. Perhaps the downstairs
tenant-they were good friends."

"Her agents?"

"The modeling agency? Perhaps, but I don't see
why."

"Her current boyfriend?"

"If she had one. Or more than one. As I told you
before, I really didn't know much about her social life."

"How about you?"

The lips danced. "Me?"

"Yes. You're a trustee of the building, right?"

"I am a trustee in a paperwork sense, yes. But
Ooch would take care of all the . . . on-site matters."

"You have any keys to the building?"

A pause. "I imagine I must have a front door key
somewhere."

"How about the second floor?"

That stopped the lips cold. "The sec — ond
floor?"

"Yes. The guest suite or whatever you call it."

Vincent Dani stared at me, then said, "What does
that have to do with a burglary on the third floor?"

"Probably nothing"

Dani's mouth opened, but nothing came out. His
silence was interrupted by a tap-tap-tap on the office door. I turned
halfway to see a man lean across the threshold. His hair was that
maize color blond turns to when most of us just get gray. He wore
round wire spectacles and a jaunty bow tie on a white shirt so
starched it rode his chest like body armor. I bet myself that his
first name would be a last name.

"Vincent, terribly sorry to disturb you, but I'm
just back from Washington and now off to London and I did want to
congratulate you on joining the partnership."

The man's voice was as crisp as the starch in his
shirt, the crackle of a no-nonsense, North Shore Yankee.

"Uh, oh, thank you, Whit. I appreciate your
support."

"Support well deserved, Vincent, well deserved."
Old Whit seemed to make the next statement for my benefit.
"Contributions like yours cannot go unnoticed. Or unrewarded."

Dani was uncomfortable about Whit loitering in his
doorway. For his part, Whit seemed to be reminded of something by his
last comment. The man looked to the right outside Dani's door and
then spoke more softly. "I believe this is Charlie's last day .
.

"Thanks, Whit, I've already had the chance to
wish him well."

"Right. Right then. In that case, I'll be off."

Old Whit sent a smile and a nod my way and I'm sure
had forgotten about me by the time he'd taken ten steps. Dani was
coming back to me when I said, "Charlie the guy next door?"

"Uh . . . yes." `

"A little young for retirement."

"He's not retiring. He's . . . leaving the
partnership."

"The rest of you voted him out."

Dani's lips did another dance. "The rest of
them. I didn't have anything to do with it."

"They voted you in but him out?"

"Law is a business, Mr. Cuddy. Charlie was . . .
is a competent technician, but not a rain-maker. He brought it on
himself, never developing any portables he could — "

"Portables?"

"Clients he could take with him to another firm.
If you develop clients who come to think of you as their 'real'
attorney, they'll follow you to a new firm. Since those clients would
follow you, your current firm would never let you go, would want you
to Stay, leveraging associates and paralegals on your matters to
maintain a given level of billings."

"And Charlie didn't do that?"

"No."

"And you did."

"To the extent currently expected of me."

"Like through your brother's mall development
company."

"Among others."

"But his as the first among equals?"

Dani's lips tightened. "I don't suppose that's
really any of your business, is it?"

I decided to take a different tack, hopefully without
sinking Rita Knox. "Tell me, Mr. Dani, did Mau Tim call you the
week she died?"

The lips seemed almost to fold inward, a man not
wearing his false teeth. "About what?"

"About your making partner here."

"No."

"How come?"

"Because I called her."

"You did."

"Yes."

"From where?"

Darxi's lips danced a third time. A lot of people
don't know that the telephone company keeps track of all local calls,
but I was willing to bet that Vincent Dani did.

He said, "I'm not sure."

"Not sure where you were when you called your
niece about making partner here?"

"That's correct."

"Okay. When did you call her?"

"I don't recall the exact day."

"Was it the same day you were voted the
partnership?"

Something inside Dani seemed to stop for a moment, a
robot who'd just had his power switched off by remote control. Then
he said, "I believe I've given you all the time I can spare
today." He pushed a button on the telephone complex and spoke
toward it. "Rita, could you show Mr. Cuddy back to the
elevators?"
 
 

-21-

I'VE HAD SOME ROUGH EXPERIENCES WITH VETERNARY
HOSPITALS over the years. This one was sparkling clean and very busy.
Two women in yellow smocks careened around behind a large reception
counter, the benches in the reception area arranged obliquely,
presumably to minimize the warfare between pets of different species
and temperaments. The area was full, a lot of yelping and mewling and
chirping in the air as I spoke to the closest woman behind the
counter.

She said, "What?"

"I'm here to pick up a cat."

The woman moved to a flattened card file. "What
name?"

She sounded like the impatient voice on the
telephone. I said, "The owner's name is Meagher, Nancy."

"No. I need the cat's name."

"Oh. Meagher, Renfield NMI."

"NMI?"

"No Middle Initial."

I got a look like somebody put vinegar in the ice
cream.

"Here he is. Just a minute," The woman
picked up a phone and hit two numbers. "Donny? Julie. I need
cage number seventy-three, cat, gray tiger . . . Yes, in a carry-box
. . . Right."

Julie put down the phone and slapped a carboned
invoice on top of the counter. "The total's at the bottom."

I looked at the bottom and said, "God in
heaven."

The woman said, "What's the matter?"

"The amount of the bill."

"The cat had bilateral knee displacements."

"But this is more than the Bears spent on Gale
Sayers."

When she said, "Who?" I said never mind and
took out my checkbook.

Julie had just given me the pink copy of the invoice
when a scuzzy-looking kid I took to be Donny appeared from behind a
door. He was carrying a cardboard container that resembled a Dunkin'
Donuts Munchkins box magnified five times. There were airholes an
inch in diameter on the short ends of the box, and one clawless gray
forepaw coming through one of the airholes, trying to bend it back.

I said, "That's him, all right."

At the sound of my voice, Renfield cried a little
from inside the container. I began to think that my picking him up
might not have been such a hot idea.

Donny reached behind the reception counter and handed
me a little plastic lampshade and a strip of gauze bandage.

"What's this for?"

The kid said, "When you get home, you put it
over the cat's head."

"Somehow I don't think he's in the mood to
party."

"No, man. You put the thing over his head, small
end down on his neck, then run the gauze through the slits on the
thing there and pull on it a little — "