The Big Dig (14 page)

Back home, I shivered and
stamped my feet, trying to restore feeling to my toes as I steamed open Marian's note. I made cocoa from boiling water and a packet of mix, sat at the kitchen table to read.

The first postscript read:
“How are all the stiffs at Goldsby?”
The second:
“How's Tess? She's soooo cute.”
I was glad I'd made cocoa; at least I'd gotten something from the steam. Why on earth had Marian been secretive about a few scrawled sentences? Why would such an innocuous note need to be delivered directly into the girl's hand?

I curled my fingers around the mug, let the warmth seep into my palms. I'd brought the contract bid into the kitchen, the one I'd Xeroxed and stashed under the Yellow Pages. I took out the seven photocopied pages, worked my way through sentences chock-full of contract-specific RFPs, DSCs, and permanent IPCS signage. Performance bonds. PERT schedules.

“Is that chocolate?”

Roz, my tenant, appeared in the doorway, lured by the smell. Other people show up with their hair wrapped in a towel, you assume shampoo. Roz, you assume hair dye. I wondered what shade she was attempting. Sometimes she experiments with her own dye blends, with unusual and unexpected results. She opened the fridge, regarded the contents solemnly before yanking a jar of peanut butter from the cupboard.

“There's more cocoa, if you want it. What do you think of this?” I handed her the note.

“It's in code,” she guessed.

“I doubt it. Did I get anything by messenger?”

She shook her head. “No calls, no packages.”

Shit. I'd have to call my man at the morgue, use up more favors, the valuable coin of my trade.

I said, “You talk to those EMTs?”

“They're very cool.”

“Fournier.”

“Man who fell. Didn't say a word.”

“What else?”

She'd been busy with the Dun & Bradstreet. I glanced through her report, stopping to run a finger over the officers of Horgan Construction. Gerald Horgan was listed as CFO, Elizabeth as CEO. Leonard Horgan, Gerry's dad, headed the board of directors. The company was closely held, and the smallest venture to assemble a large number of Dig contracts. That meant they had bid low; the process was competitive.

When I say small, I don't mean a mom-and-pop operation. The other players were huge multinationals like Bechtel/Parsons/Brinkerhoff, national firms with New England roots, like Perini. Modern Continental, a direct competitor, was the largest contractor in New England.

I read on. Horgan specialized in state-of-the-art equipment designed for confined work spaces. They had become slurry wall specialists by virtue of their Dig work, now had road and tunnel contracts across the New England states, a bridge project in New York.

So what were both their chief officers doing on one site?

“Anything that's not in here?” I asked Roz.

“They recently hired new counsel. Bates, Eppes, Morgan.”

“Where'd you get that?”

“Lexis-Nexis.”

Bates, Eppes, Morgan is the firm most hired by local businesses thinking of putting together a prospectus and going to the market. “Interesting. Good job.”

The cocoa was almost cold; I'd lost my taste for it. I glanced at my watch, did some calculations, pushed the cup away. “Roz, you gonna be here awhile?”

She tapped her towel turban, nodded.

“Ring my cell if anything's messengered from Foundation Security.”

“Okay.”

“And how's this for vague? I want to know about a girl, last name James, don't know her first name, died, say in the past five-ten years. In the nineties. Went to high school in Tewksbury, graduated.”

She made keyboarding motions with her peanut-butter-smeared fingertips. “Okay, but—”

“But what?”

Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “You gonna let your hair grow out your regular color or what? I could maybe—”

“No, thanks.”

Upstairs, I removed the jacket of my funeral suit and tossed the creased white blouse in the hamper. I didn't want to wear the same thing I'd worn to meet Sam at Raquela's. It seemed like bad luck. I chose a deep green sweater that looked better when my hair was red. At least I could take my hair out of its topknot, let it swing free.

I left early. I had time for a stop on the way.

Instead of entering the Charles
River Dog Care lot, I parked by the river near the Cambridge Victory Gardens and walked back, crossing Soldiers Field Road at the Everett Street lights, hugging my arms against the cold. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were heavy and threatening.

I'd asked questions in two different places and then Helen James, Veronica's mother, had gotten a phone call. In an hour, I was due to meet Leland Walsh at the first place. I reviewed the people I'd met at the second, pictured them in my mind, the slightly pompous owner of Charles River Dog Care, Rogers Walters, helpful up to a point. Harold, Veronica's coworker, quiet in his gray scrubs, driver of the dog bus. When I'd given him my card, offered him a quick fifty for Walters's client list, I'd felt sure he'd call. Walters had admitted to paying lousy wages, yet Harold hadn't tried to get in touch.

I skirted massive puddles on the sidewalk. The gray light was starting to fade from the sky. The wind picked up and rustled the bare branches of a small beech.

No matter what had happened since the night she'd disappeared, Veronica—according to my client—had packed for the weekend and left under her own steam. If she'd intended to spend time with a new lover, she might have tried to keep Dana in the dark so as not to louse up her rent-free arrangement. If she'd spent the weekend with a new lover, where had she met—my mind started to say
him
, but I wrenched it in another direction. Not
him
, quite possibly
her
. There was another woman who worked at Charles River Dog Care, a part-timer, Erica Mullen. I wanted to speak to Erica, see Erica, learn about Erica. I wanted their client list, too, wanted it more than I'd wanted it yesterday. There was something about those dogs at Dana Endicott's, barking at me, but supposedly silent during a home invasion.

What was the deal? Had Veejay told the new lover about Dana's fabulous home? Had the lover lifted Veejay's keys, decided to take a look for herself? Were Dana's stocking-masked men real or fabricated? The concussion was real. There was
some
truth to my client's words. But not all the truth. No, not all.

I passed Boylston Auto, and my mind took off on another tack. Could Veronica have seen something that led to her disappearance? The area had two auto body shops, and body shops go with crime like dogs go with bones. Both shops seemed deserted, with locked bays and darkened windows. None of the car-theft rings I'd investigated as a cop had ties to either place. They weren't known as chop shops.

Directly across the street from Charles River Dog Care stood a cut-rate gas station, with an insurance company to one side and a square brick office building on the other. I studied the sign in front of the office suites. Two accountants, another insurance broker, a chiropractor. A glass-fronted bank held down the corner lot and the only other nearby shop was a Store 24. The cocoa seemed a distant memory, and the idea of wrapping my cold hands around a large takeout coffee appealed almost as strongly as the idea of a look around Charles River Dog Care. I promised myself coffee later, strolled casually down the driveway. The parking lot was empty, even the painted school bus gone. The back door was shielded from Trade-All Auto Body by a low wall. A squat brick shed blocked the view on the other side.

I'd checked the lot for Veronica's Jeep the last time I'd visited, but ignored the shed, assuming it belonged to the body shop next door. Now I reconsidered. At first glance, it looked abandoned, overgrown with dead ivy, but when I examined the ground, I made out faint tire tracks on the gravel. Gray garage doors opened to one side, and vines had been cleared from the path. I rattled the two old-fashioned garage doors, tried to lift them, failed.

The only windows were small, high rectangles, centered over each door. I was debating how to get up for a view, whether to fetch my car and climb on top, when I noticed a pile of cinder blocks behind the garage. I hefted one, estimated how many I'd need to reach the necessary height, started moving and arranging in earnest. Three on the bottom, then two, then one. I steadied the pyramid, stood back to regard my handiwork.

From the ground it was hard to tell if the windows were smoked glass or filthy glass. I yanked a wad of Kleenex from my backpack, swiveled to make sure I was alone and unobserved before beginning the climb. Two seagulls wheeled over the river. Tires hissed on wet pavement as cars sped along Soldiers Field Road. The blocks teetered once, but the structure held, and in a moment I was perched on top, nose pressed to the glass, staring in, seeing nothing. I tried a Kleenex, rubbing vigorously. It turned black and I tried another.

The school bus was inside, with at least one other vehicle beside it, almost out of sight, but certainly tall enough and dark enough to be a black Jeep. I clambered down, moved the blocks to a new position in front of the second door, ascended with more Kleenex and this time, from the depths of my backpack, a flashlight.

It was some sort of SUV, hard to see, dark blue or black, maybe a deep green. I peered and stared and tried to shift to a vantage point where I could get a better outline of the vehicle, see a logo. The flashlight beam reflected off the window glass and only by shielding my eyes with my hand could I make out the green-and-white New Hampshire license plate, a New Hampshire plate that made it the wrong car. I bit my lip and descended, cursing a fresh tear in my pantyhose, more eager than ever to get some fact, some suggestion of a fragment of a clue, if only to compensate for the ripped hose.

I visualized the office, the file cabinet with employee Erica Mullen's address and phone number inside, along with addresses and phone numbers for an entire group of people, female and male, who'd had regular contact with the missing Veronica. Down a narrow staircase, across a cage-lined room. So close. I pressed the bell to the side of the door, counted to thirty slowly. Pressed it again, put my ear to the glass, listened for the sound of barking. Not a breath. I hadn't noticed an alarm when I visited the first time. The lock on the door was a simple one, an old friend, ripe for the picking.

The sky was almost dark. In fifteen minutes I'd need my flashlight just to find my way back to the car. I shivered and considered Store 24 coffee, the simple lock, the file cabinet, the client list.

The small window to the left of the entrance was high enough so no thief could break it and reach inside to unlatch the door. I fetched a cinder block from my pyramid, balanced it on the narrow end, and stepped on top. I glanced down, at an angle, searching for the telltale blinking red light.

The hairless, silent dog stood a foot away from the door, mouth open, tongue protruding, ears alert. I sucked in a breath and almost toppled off the cinder block. A weimaraner, I thought, well-trained, stealthy. I prefer guard dogs that bark. No wonder they had no alarm.

I hopped down, abandoning any thought of a break-in. Was it legal, keeping a silent secret hound? I imagined some run-of-the-mill injured burglar trying to sue for damages, represented by some sleazy lawyer with the nerve to stand up in court and proclaim that Walters owed it to the public to post a warning sign.

On the whole, I thought he should post a warning. The lock was a simple one, almost an engraved invitation.

I returned my cinder block to the stack, climbed once again, sighted carefully on the NH plate, scratched its numbers and letters on a scrap of paper which I tucked carefully into my pocket. My cell rang while I was shifting the blocks again, restacking them behind the shed. It was Roz. Eddie and Foundation Security had come through with the autopsy report. I checked the time. Traffic willing, I could pick up the report and change panty hose before heading to Raquela's. I passed the Store 24 in a hurry; I'd grab coffee some other time.

Traffic was beyond lousy and
I got stuck at every light, behind some jerk who just
had
to brake at the first hint of yellow. I made it to the waterfront eighteen minutes late, opted for an overpriced garage rather than a time-eating parking-place search. I raced through frigid streets, hurrying toward Raquela's, entered, and peered into the darkened bar. Might as well have gone the cheap route. Leland Walsh was later than I was, unless he'd grown tired of waiting and departed.

Maybe he'd despised the glossy interior at first sight, decided no good could come of a relationship rooted in a dating bar. The loud and brassy music, designed to cover those awkward silences, had scared him off. The lighting was too low, the plants too healthy. I grabbed a cigarette, found matches at the bar, and lit up.

Probably he'd been delayed.

Carl, the bartender, gave me a nod and asked whether I'd seen Veejay. When I said I hadn't, he sighed. He hated to admit he'd been wrong, but he hadn't figured her for the type to leave him in the lurch, and he wasn't wrong about a lot of 'em either, I shouldn't take him for a fool. Wouldn't surprise him if she turned up sick or been in some kinda accident.

“You notice a black guy in here earlier, tall guy, waiting for somebody?”

He shook his head no.

“Anybody phone with a message for a tall woman?” I caught myself in time; I'd almost said “a redhead.”

“Nope.”

“Good.”

I ordered a Harp on tap, took a seat at the far end of the bar. The couple at the closest table was deep in conversation, the bar stool next to mine vacant. No one paid particular attention as I slid the manila envelope out of my bag, removed the enclosed autopsy report.

Neatly typed. Black words on white paper. Clinical Diagnosis, Gross Diagnosis, Clinical Summary. I was grateful for the cool, detached jargon, grateful I hadn't witnessed the cut. Oh, I've done it. The new medical examiner's digs on Albany Street are much improved, a far cry from the airless cubicles at the old mortuary. The building is clean, modern, and efficient, but I'll contentedly give it a miss till they invent an air-conditioning system that eliminates odors.

Kevin Frederick Fournier, 27, well-nourished Caucasian male, right parietal depressed skull fracture. Subdural hematoma in right parietal region. Multiple small intracerebral hematomas. Cause of death: cerebellar tonsillar herniation. The pages gave me plenty of facts: duration of hospitalization, date and time of death, date and time of autopsy, name of prosector. Useless facts that explained nothing, gave no evidence to contradict the simplest explanation: He fell on his head and died.

When a crime isn't handled as a crime, it's harder to crack, and this one had been labeled an industrial accident from the get-go. Not only that, it had been handled in a hurry. If Fournier had been dead at the scene, at least there would have been photos of his body in situ.

You work with what you've got. The ME had checked for defensive hand wounds, for skin fragments under the fingernails. No evidence he'd put up a struggle. If he'd made a last desperate lunge at an assailant intent on shoving him off the scaffolding, he'd made no contact. His clothing had been thoroughly examined. Boots, socks, jeans, turtleneck, sweatshirt with hood. Windbreaker, gloves. Nothing out of the ordinary. I wondered if the insurance investigators had requested the hand and clothing work, or if Eddie had.

The most interesting facts dealt with time, time of injury, time of death. They seemed to confirm Marian's earlier speculation. Fournier hadn't walked on-site early, fallen, and been found within a short span. His body temperature at the time of hospitalization indicated he'd been on the ground for hours.

There were photographs enclosed in a separate envelope, up-close shots of the head wound. I thumbed through them quickly, shielding them, thinking that if I saw myself from afar I'd tsk-tsk over the woman gazing at porno pics.

“Hey, you again!” Heidi's voice came from over my right shoulder. She must have approached on tiptoe. I smothered the photos against my breasts.

“You're in here a lot all of a sudden.” Her voice was cool, and I took a closer look at her regular features, reconsidering. I'd never thought of her as other than Veejay's coworker, a casual friend.

I reinserted the stack of photos in their envelope, facedown. “I'm a private cop, looking for Veronica James, Heidi.”

I read disbelief in her eyes, followed by suspicion. She didn't glance away, or try to avoid my gaze. I didn't see any reaction that I'd classify as a guilty one, but I've been fooled before.

She slid onto the vacant bar stool beside me. “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

“I wish I knew. She's missing.”

“As in kidnapped? Is she rich or—”

“I didn't say anything about kidnapping.”

“Right. That was dumb. It's just—I dunno. When I first saw her, I thought she kinda looked like somebody, not like a celebrity exactly, but—”

“Who?” I said softly.

She bit her lip and stared into the mirror. “I dunno. You know, you see faces all the time, like on TV. I mean, she didn't look like a movie star or anything.”

“And she didn't date men.”

Her eyes fastened on my beer glass, stayed there. “Hey, whatever. Doesn't matter to me. None of my business.”

“You knew?”

“I wondered. She seemed kind of immune, you know? But don't get any ideas. The two of us, we talked at work, and that was it. I fuck guys. Sometimes I wish the hell I didn't, but that's the way I am.”

“Is there a scene here, a gay night?”

“Here?”
She glanced around. “It's guys and gals, here. Hooking up. Escort services, prostitutes, maybe. I dunno. I don't see guys with guys here. Women with women, I dunno. I wouldn't really notice, unless they're feeling each other up.”

The South End is Boston's gay male community—restored row-houses, good restaurants, low crime. The dyke bars are mainly in Jamaica Plain. Brookline has a lesbian population, but one so free of crime it's largely off my map. I ran through a mental list of friends, contacts, acquaintances.

Heidi stood. “I gotta get back to work.”

“Did Veejay ever mention a man named Peter?”

“Nope.”

“What about her family? A sister who died?”

“Never said a word.”

“Did she say anything that seemed unusual, odd?”

“Doesn't everybody? She was crazy for dogs, talked about dogs. If I think of anything else, I'll tell you. I've got customers.”

I watched her walk away, black slacks, white tee. People are difficult enough to peg in their choice of clothes. Stick them in a uniform, and it's really tough. Heidi wore makeup and dangly earrings. Her fingernails were polished. She seemed distinctly feminine. And so did Dana Endicott.

I ordered another beer, waited twenty more minutes, wondering whether Leland Walsh had stood me up because he'd discovered I wasn't Carla after all. I studied the autopsy report, frustrated by my inability to read conclusions into its multisyllablic words. Contents of pockets. Key ring, fifty-two cents change, six aspirin tablets in a tin, a bag of jelly beans.

Start off for work one morning with a plastic bag of jelly beans, never see home again. The damn bag of jelly beans made me swallow a lump in my throat. And a key ring. The gold disk he'd given Leland Walsh looked like something you might hang on a key ring. I tried to recall the design, stared at my watch one more time, finished my beer. Leland Walsh had forgotten. I regretted the extra care I'd taken with clothes and makeup. Dumb. The electricity I'd felt was a one-way jolt, nothing reciprocal.

As I stood it seemed that I could hear Walsh's voice, so close his breath tickled my ear, telling me Raquela's would be a great choice, because it was so near the site. The site was closed tonight, Sunday night, so why should that make a difference? I slapped cash on the bar to cover the bill and moved quickly toward the door.