A Catered St. Patrick's Day (10 page)

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Authors: Isis Crawford

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“No. One of those little things, but even they’re pretty expensive.”
“And k>
“Because my dad is thinking of buying one, so he was talking to him about it.”
“Interesting,” Sean said, turning back to Dwyer.
“Anything else?” Dwyer asked him. “Or can I get back to work?”
“As a matter of fact, there is one more thing. Your stepdaughter.”
“I was waiting for that,” Dwyer said. He took another puff of his cigar and exhaled.
Marvin began to cough. “Do you mind?” he said, waving the smoke away with his hands.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Dwyer said. “No offense meant, but if it bothers you why don’t you wait outside.”
“And no offense taken,” Marvin said as he shot up from his seat and started for the door. “I’ll be in the hearse,” he told Sean. And then he was gone.
Both men watched him go.
“Nice kid,” Dwyer said after the door closed. “Nicer than his dad.”
“That’s for sure,” Sean agreed. He leaned over and tapped the ash from the cigarette out in the ashtray.
“He’s like my son. Sensitive.” Dwyer took his cigar out of his mouth for a moment and regarded it before jamming it back in. “I’ll tell you one thing. They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.”
“Cigars?”
“Guys.”
“Agreed. They certainly don’t,” Sean concurred. “For that matter, they don’t make anything like they used to. Look at cars. You used to be able to do an oil change by yourself. Now you have to take it to a mechanic.”
“I hate sushi,” Dwyer said suddenly. “But that’s all my granddaughter wants to eat.” He shuddered.
“Thank God Bernie and Libby don’t like it,” Sean replied. He made a face. “You’d have to stick a gun to my head to get me to eat raw fish.”
“It costs a lot too. And for what? Nothing as far as I can see. What’s wrong with meat loaf?”
“Or mac and cheese?” Sean asked.
“You know what I like about Libby’s and Bernie’s food?” Dwyer said.
“No. What?” Sean said.
“Besides the fact that it tastes good, you can tell what you’re eating. It’s not weird. Nothing like bacon ice cream or oxtails with lavender butter or that raw stuff one of my daughters-in-law is trying to push on me. Bah.”
Sean couldn’t think of anything to add, so he didn’t.
The two men sat and smoked in companionable silence for a few moments, then Dwyer said to Sean, “You really expect me to tell you how to find Liza when she’s obviously disappeared because she didn’t want to be involved in this mess?”
“I’m not the police, remember?”
“So what I tell you is just going into a sealed box and no one is going to hear anything about it? Give me a break. You’re working for the defense. Your guys are going to want her to testify.”
“Isn’t that the right thing to do in this case?”
Dwyer snorted. “Spare me. You’re not talking to a sixteen-year-old kid now, you’re talking to me. If Liza skipped, she must have had a reason.”
“So you know where she is?”
k="1 ha“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Dwyer said.
“But you have an idea.”
Dwyer spread his hands apart. “Come on, Sean, give me a break. Let it alone.”
“You said it wasn’t a problem when I spoke to you on the phone earlier.”
Dwyer looked away. “It wasn’t then.”
Sean’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Oh my God, I don’t believe it. You called Anne and told her.”
“No. But I told you, it’s like she’s some kind of witch or something. She called just after I hung up on you.”
“And you told her?”
“What do you think? Of course I didn’t. All I said was that you were coming by. You know to, like, make conversation. But that was enough. She threw a fit.”
Sean leaned forward and stared into Dwyer’s eyes. “The kid is a jerk.”
Dwyer shrugged apologetically. “You know it and I know it, and I even think in her heart Anne knows it, though she won’t admit it to herself.”
“That’s what mothers do,” Sean observed.
“So it would seem, but I still can’t talk about her. It wouldn’t be right. I have to live with the woman.”
“It also wouldn’t be right if Duncan Nottingham went to jail for Mike Sweeney’s murder and Liza could get him off.”
“If that were the case she wouldn’t have run.”
“So you’re saying that Duncan is guilty and that he was putting pressure on Liza to lie for him? Is that what you’re saying?”
Dwyer shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “Well, let me put it this way. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case. Duncan always was a violent kind of guy. He was involved in that brawl down at Baker’s Field. In fact, I was told he started it.”
Sean snorted. “That’s a hell of a lot different than holding someone’s head under and drowning them and you know it, so don’t give me that guff. Anyway, when it comes to brawls, you certainly didn’t shy away from participating.”
“Neither did you,” Dwyer said.
Sean laughed. “In the bad old days.”
“They were a lot of fun,” Dwyer said.
“Yup,” Sean said. “They certainly were. Not for the other guy though.” He was silent for a moment, remembering the time Dwyer put a guy in the hospital with a fractured jaw and a broken arm. Then he said, “So what’s Liza up to now?”
Dwyer shrugged. “A little of this. A little of that.”
“I heard she dropped out of college.”
“She said she thought the classes were a waste of time.”
“I heard they were going to kick her out for drinking and drugging, so she decided to drop out first.”
Dwyer raised an eyebrow. “Drugging? Is that a word?”
“I think you’re trying to beg the question here.”
“And not succeeding.” Dwyer studied his fingernails. “Look, what can I say? The kid is a screwup. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t entitled to opt out if she doesn’t want to deal with this Sweeney thing.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“I’m glad we agree on something.”
“Look, all I want to do is talk to her. You can give k Yo gl her my number and tell her to call me.”
“I can’t,” Dwyer said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. She’s not speaking to me.”
“How come?” Sean asked.
Dwyer grimaced. “If you don’t mind, I don’t want to get into it right now.”
“Not a problem,” Sean said. He shifted his weight in the chair to get more comfortable. “I mean if we were talking about it, I’d be wondering if her not speaking to you had anything to do with the fact that she was supposed to buy into one of your franchises. That you were going to go fifty/ fifty with her.”
Dwyer sat up a little straighter. “Where’d you hear that?”
Sean smiled and shrugged. “You’re not the only one with sources, you know. People talk.”
Dwyer straightened out his tie and patted it down. “I was doing it as a favor for her mom.”
“And what happened?”
Dwyer sighed. “What happened was that when push came to shove, Liza didn’t have the money. Wanted me to front it for her. Swore to me she’d pay me back. Hah. I had to tell Anne that wasn’t going to happen. It was not, as you can guess, a very pleasant conversation.”
“I can imagine,” Sean said. “Where was she going to get the money from?”
“Her trust.” Dwyer shook his head. “In my opinion, no one should give anyone control of their money until they’re thirty-five. Forty would be even better. By that time they might develop some common sense.”
“So what happened to the money?” Sean asked him.
“As far as I can tell, Liza lost it.”
“How?” Sean asked. “What did she do? Misplace her piggy bank?”
Dwyer didn’t say anything.
“Drugs? Bad investments?”
Dwyer remained silent.
“Both?”
Sean read the expression on Dwyer’s face and knew that the answer was a yes. “I hear Sweeney and Duncan did a lot of coke.”
“So do lots of other people,” Dwyer pointed out, neither denying nor substantiating the charge as he took his cigar out of his mouth and knocked off the ash.
“And,” Sean continued, “I hear they both lost a lot of people a lot of money.”
“That’s not so uncommon these days either,” Dwyer said. “I mean who gives thirty-year-old guys all this money and provides no oversight? That’s like leaving an eighteen-year-old kid loose in a whorehouse. And on the other side, I think that all those people who lost their shirts—okay, not all but some—deserve what they got. Use some common sense, people. Perform due diligence. I mean you can’t think that things are always going to go up. That’s not the way the universe works.”
Sean didn’t reply to what Dwyer had just said even though he agreed with every word. He was too busy working out his next sally, so he just sat and studied the bare wall behind Sweeney’s desk and thought. It was like playing chess. The trick was to keep two to three moves ahead.
When he’d figured out his approach, he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and said, “If I recall correctly, Liza is a vindictive little thing.”
“Like her mom,” Dwyer said promptly.
No denial there, Sean thought as the koug">
At the end of the minute Dwyer sighed. He picked a shred of tobacco off his lower lip and carefully deposited it in the ashtray. He’s milking this for all it’s worth, Sean thought as he watched Dwyer. Another minute went by.
Finally Dwyer said, “I heard Liza had a friend called Renee Conner she liked to hang out with over in Stuyvesant.”
“You happen to have an address?” Sean asked, careful to keep his voice casual, careful to not give even the slightest indication that he’d won the game.
“Ostrom. Astrom. Something like that.”
“Thanks,” Sean said.
Dwyer waggled a finger at him. “Just remember you didn’t hear this from me.”
“What’s to hear?” Sean said. “We’re just two old guys shootin’ the breeze.”
“That we are,” Dwyer said. “That we are.”
“And if you’re lying to me I’ll come back and hurt you,” Sean told him as he levered himself out of the chair and reached for his cane.
Dwyer nodded toward the cane. “With the sword you have in that?”
“Exactly.” Sean winked at him. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I’m reaching for the phone to call Anne right now.”
“And while you’re at it, don’t forget to call the girls and tell them,” Sean said.
“Yeah.” Dwyer shifted his position. “They’d be real pleased.”
Sean smiled. “They’d never believe it.”
“You’re right. They wouldn’t,” Dwyer agreed.
“Too quaint,” Sean reflected.
“But very effective.”
“Sometimes the old ways are the best ways,” Sean said.
“Yes, they are,” Dwyer agreed.
“For some reason I find that comforting,” Sean said.
“Me too,” Dwyer said.
And both men laughed at the thought.
Chapter 10
 
M
arvin was daydreaming about what he and Libby were going to have for dinner—he was hoping she’d make roast chicken en cocotte with plenty of potatoes, carrots, and fennel strewn on the bottom of the pot—when he saw Sean come out of Dwyer’s place. Marvin opened the door to get out and help him, but Sean waved him off, telling him he could manage by himself.
“I’m sorry about leaving like that,” Marvin said to Sean once he was seated in the hearse. “All that smoke was getting to me.”
Sean grunted. “Probably better that you weren’t in there anyway. Dwyer might not have talked if you were.”
“What did he say?”
“Once I threatened him with my sword cane he spilled the beans.”
Marvin turned to stare at Sean.
“Jeez. I’m kidding,” Sean said, taking in Marvin’s expression. “Honestly.” Sean hit the dashbo nh="ard of the hearse with the flat of his hand. “Now power this thing up. We need to go to Stuyvesant.”
“Stuyvesant?” Marvin repeated. “What’s in Stuyvesant?”
Sean leaned over, grabbed the handle on the hearse’s door, and slammed the door shut. “A possible lead, and I stress the word possible.”
“But that’s fifteen minutes away,” Marvin objected.
“I know that,” Sean said. He thought about smoking another cigarette and decided against it. Moderation in all things. Well, actually now that he had gotten old, he didn’t have any choice. Before it used to take him a good night’s sleep to bounce back from whatever. Now it took him four days—if he was lucky. “I have, after all, lived in this area most of my life.”
“But, Mr. Simmons, I thought we were just coming here,” Marvin complained, thinking of all the paperwork he had waiting for him back at the funeral home.
These days, dying was a bureaucratic nightmare. The days when you could just dig a hole and plant someone in the ground were long gone. Now there were endless forms to fill out. And cremations? He didn’t even want to think about the paperwork for those.
“We were and we did and now we’re going there. That’s what police work is. Going from point A to point B to point C. And while you’re at it,” Sean said as he buckled up his seat belt, “see if you can find a listing for a Renee Connor on that new snazzy phone you just bought.”
Marvin tried, but didn’t come up with anything.
“That’s okay,” Sean told him. “I really didn’t expect you to. No one lists in the phone book anymore. We’ll do things the old-fashioned way.”
“And what’s that?” Marvin asked as he backed out of the parking space.
“By knocking on doors and asking people questions.”
“Sounds like fun,” Marvin told him.
Sean gave him a sharp look and realized he wasn’t kidding. “It is,” he told him. “It’s one of the things I liked most about my old job.”
Stuyvesant was a small town that numbered five thousand people. The town consisted of a seven-block main street full of nondescript shops, as well as a supermarket, a pharmacy, a small library, a liquor store, and three churches. Most of the houses were traditional wooden colonials with small lawns and slightly larger backyards. With one or two exceptions, none of the houses stood out. None were particularly grand or particularly inexpensive. They were all defiantly middle of the road. Even the plane trees and ginkgos along the side streets were unremarkable.
Stuyvesant’s commercial area was a short walk from the Metro-North train station, which made sense since the town largely functioned as a bedroom community for New York City. Unlike Longely, however, the people who lived there tended to be lower and middle management types. Sean thought maybe that was why the town had fewer services and shops than Longely and the ones that the town did have were strictly utilitarian.
He figured that the people in Stuyvesant worked longer hours and came home later, which meant that by the time they got home all they had time to do was have a quick bite to eat, watch a little TV, and go to bed, before getting up the next day and doing it all over again. Recently, Stuyvesant had voted to combine its police department with Longely’s as a money-saving initiative, and although the volunteer fire department was safe for the moment, Sean had hear sSean>
As he and Marvin drove through Stuyvesant Sean reflected that this was a perfect place to hide out. The place was large enough so new people wouldn’t stick out and, more importantly, its population tended to come and go quickly, people moving up when they found better-paying jobs. Basically, unless you lived in Stuyvesant there was no reason to go to Stuyvesant. The place was like the Bronx. Everyone knew where it was, but no one wanted to visit.
Marvin found Ostrom Avenue quickly enough. Fortunately for Sean’s and Marvin’s purposes, the street was only three blocks long. Marvin parked the hearse carefully to avoid getting any dents in it—nothing worse than a banged up or dirty hearse, his father always said—and he and Sean started knocking on doors. Because it was early afternoon, most people weren’t home yet and the people who were home hadn’t heard of Renee Connor. Sean and Marvin had done almost a block and a half without any positive results and Sean was beginning to tire when they got lucky.
The man who answered the door at 249 was about thirty-five, with stubble on his chin and graying sideburns. He was wearing running pants, a T-shirt, and jogging shoes, and was holding a mug in his hand. The mug was clearly handmade and carried the inscription Best Dad in the World on it. Sean put him down as someone who had lost his job and was now a stay at home dad. That opinion was confirmed when a small boy and a fat yellow labrador came running out and joined the man at the door a moment later.
“Daddy, Daddy,” the little boy said, pulling at the hem of the man’s shirt. “Abby just ate the roast chicken off the counter.”
Sean looked down at Abby. Abby wagged her tail. She did not seem at all repentant. In fact, she seemed rather happy.
“Abby, did you do that?” the man asked.
Abby wagged her tail even harder. Clearly the answer was yes. The man cursed under his breath.
“You said a bad word, Daddy,” the little boy cried.
“Listen,” the guy told Sean, “sorry, but I gotta go.”
“One question,” Sean said, not feeling it was necessary to point out the obvious, which was that since the chicken was already gone, the damage had been done. “I’m looking for Renee Connor. Would you know if she lives around here?”
“She’s away somewhere,” the man replied. “But there’s some lady house-sitting for her.”
“Which house is Renee’s?” Sean quickly asked.
“The blue and brown one down at the end of the next street. And now,” the man told him, “I really have to go.”
Sean could hear the man say to his son, “Your mother is going to kill me,” as he was closing the door.
“It’s all right, Daddy,” Sean heard the little boy reply. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell her it was my fault.” Then the door shut and Sean couldn’t hear anymore.
“Let’s drive down,” Marvin suggested.
Which Sean thought was an excellent idea. So that’s what they did.
“You think we’re going to find Liza in there?” Marvin asked as he parked near the corner of the block the man in the house had indicated.
“We’ll see,” Sean said as he got out of the hearse.
The house they were looking for was the fourth house from the corner. It was blue and brown with a small lawn that was bordered by a chain-link fence. The house was in good repair, and as they s ant wapproached the front walk Sean was cheered to see two cars parked in the driveway, one of which he feverently hoped was Liza’s.
“What are we going to say to her?” Marvin asked Sean.
“How do you mean?” Sean asked absentmindedly. He noticed, or thought he noticed, that the front door was ever so slightly ajar. Well, sometimes people went into their houses and didn’t close the door after themselves firmly enough so the lock didn’t catch. Maybe this was one of those cases. Or maybe not.
“I mean,” Marvin said, “what are we going to say? Are we going to march up to her and introduce ourselves and tell her why we’re here? It seems to me that if we do that, given the circumstances, she might just take off again.”
“We’ll see,” Sean said as he noticed that the mailbox was full. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about things. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“I think we need a plan,” Marvin countered while he and Sean mounted the porch steps.
“We might not need a plan,” Sean said grimly.
Marvin turned to him. His eyes widened. “Why? I don’t understand.”
“Think about it, Marvin.”
Marvin shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Sean didn’t reply. All of his attention was focused on the house. He slowly approached the door. When he got close enough he reached into the mailbox and took out a couple of pieces of mail and checked the addresses.
“Isn’t what you’re doing illegal?” Marvin asked nervously.
“Not unless I keep the letters,” Sean told him. “Although most people would consider getting rid of junk mail doing them a favor.”
“So does Renee Connor live here?” Marvin asked.
“According to Pizza Hut and GEICO she does,” Sean said as he slipped the flyers he’d taken out back into the mailbox. “The question,” Sean continued, “is whether or not Liza is staying here.”
Marvin looked at his watch. “Okay. But if she’s not, we can’t look anymore today. I have to go back to work.”
“I thought you liked doing this kind of thing,” Sean said.
“I do,” Marvin said with feeling. “It’s just—” Then he stopped talking as he watched Sean put his hand up and ring the doorbell. No one answered. He could hear the bell echoing in the house. There was no TV or radio on. The place was silent.
Sean rang the bell again. Still nothing.
“I guess we should go,” Marvin said, turning to leave.
Sean shook his head.
“But no one’s home.”
Sean put out his hand, grasped the doorknob, and pushed. The door opened. This, Sean decided, was not a good sign.
“I don’t think we should go in there,” Marvin said to him.
“Stay out here if you want,” Sean told him as he took a step inside. Suddenly he wasn’t tired anymore. His adrenaline had kicked in.
“This is really not a good idea,” Marvin continued.
Sean ignored him and took another step inside.
“What if someone’s here who’s not supposed to be?” Marvin protested.
“Like the big bad wolf?” mocked Sean. He was now in the hallway. The first thing that hit him was how cold the place was. It was the same s wa wo temperature inside and out. He wondered if the heat was off.
“I just think—” Marvin started to say, but Sean raised his hand and cut him off.
“Enough,” he said to him. “I know what you think about what we’re doing. You’ve already told me. At length. But I’m doing it anyway. So what I want to know is whether you’re in or you’re out. Because if you’re out, that’s fine. I won’t hold it against you. But then wait outside. I can’t think when you’re going on the way you are. So what’s it going to be?”
“In,” Marvin said promptly. He recognized a losing battle when he saw one.
“Then let’s go,” said Sean, continuing on.
“I think I should be in front,” Marvin said. “You know . . . because ...”
“Because why?” Sean asked in a scarily pleasant voice. “Because I’m old? Because I’m senile?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Marvin protested.
“Then what did you mean?”
“Nothing,” Marvin said, taking a step. “It’s just that Libby ...”
“Libby, what?”
“Nothing.” Marvin bit his lip. He gave up. Clearly, anything that he said was wrong.
By now he and Sean were in the hallway. Sean noted that the floor plan was typically colonial. A central hall, which led to the stairs, separated the living room and the dining room.

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