Act of God (7 page)

I walked past a black door with a couple of locks showing through it and a single brass “1” at eye-level, a red blotch in the outline of what might have been another “1” next to it. After a full morning of using my knee, the joint seemed okay going upstairs, wobbling only on the way down them, but I still took it easy. At the first landing were three doors marked in brass 21, 22, and 23. Climbing to the second landing I could see only a 32 and a 33, because the door to 31 was swung in.

I knocked on the jamb of the open door.

From somewhere inside, the trilling voice said, “That’s why I left it o-pen,” a lift to the last syllable.

The apartment had a short corridor beyond the door, which I closed behind me.

The voice said, “Just throw that bolt, o-kay?”

There was a deadbolt, and I turned it.

“Find me if you can,” again with the last syllable rising.

I found myself not looking forward to spending time with a Flipper impersonator.

At the end of the short corridor, the apartment branched right and left. To the right was another short, darker corridor with two doors, both closed, that I assumed led to bedroom and bath. To the left was brighter, a gift of sunshine from the front of the building having southern exposure.

Walking left, I entered a living room/dining area. A small gateleg table and one straight-backed chair stood outside a kitchen barely big enough for the appliances in it. The scent of potpourri wafted from the stovetop, the gas on underneath it even though the outside temperature was pushing seventy-five. The living area had framed, artsy photos of women in aerobic tights on the walls and sectional furniture upholstered in what looked like the hide from Tonto’s pinto pony. The furniture was arranged in no apparent pattern, with a corner piece facing me, two side pieces together against a wall, and a second corner piece literally facing the corner, a plush dunce chair.

In the center of the room, on another side piece, a petite woman sat Indian-style, her ankles under the opposite thighs and a small computer on what there was of her lap. She had kinky hair that ran to strawberry blond, barely shoulder length but tousled like she’d just gotten out of bed. Her clothing consisted of blue jeans with tears through the knees and a green flannel shirt so many sizes too big that she had to roll the sleeves twice for them to end at her wrists. The woman inclined her head downward, consulting a spiral notebook that lay folded over next to the little computer.

“Ms. Wickmire?”

She looked up, big eyes and a broad nose over a coy smile on thin lips. “Found me.”

“I had a lot of hints.”

The smile lost some of its coyness, then regained it. “You’re the detective, right?”

“Private investigator.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Detectives are on police forces. I don’t have any official status.”

“Is that like a
Miranda
warning?”

“Is what?”

“Your telling me you don’t have any … ‘official status.’ ”

“No. As long as I didn’t show any hoked-up ID or misrepresent myself, I could let you go on with whatever false impression you drew yourself.”

“Wild Bill told me your name was Cuddy.”

“John Cuddy.”

“Does that mean that I get to call you by your first name?”

More coyness, but without any body language to go with it, as though she were trying to act out a
Magnum, PI
or
Rockford Files
but had been given only her dialogue, not any stage directions. “Ms. Wickmire, you can call me anything you like.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re
not
flirting with me?”

“Maybe because neither of us is.”

Wickmire lost the smile entirely, then hit a few keys on the computer and a switch on its side. “Since it looks like you’ll be here awhile, I’ll conserve the battery.”

I took her comment as an invitation to sit, which I did in the corner piece in front of me. “That a laptop?”

She shook her head. “Next generation. A ‘notebook,’ though I’m told there’re now ‘subnotebooks’ for the executive who’s really on the go.”

The lifting voice again, the sarcasm more evident face-to-face. I said, “And you’re an executive not on the go?”

Wickmire closed the cover of the computer and set it and the spiral notebook aside, bringing her feet out from under her. The feet were bare, the nails painted a salmon pink approximating the shade of her hair. “Wild Bill didn’t tell you much about me, did he?”

I took out a pad just a little smaller than hers. “You can speak freely.”

She seemed to catch herself starting to smile, then didn’t. “I’m a free-lance writer, Mr. Cuddy. Right now I’m working on an article for
Boston Magazine
about the local charities. We’re going to separate the needy from the greedy.”

“Catchy.”

Wickmire seemed to measure something. “You aren’t exactly trying to butter me up, are you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“When I came in here, you played at being playful without seeming to mean it. Then you seemed to settle down somewhere around witty, so I’m just going along till I figure out what’s going on.”

“I don’t think you’d be a fun interview.”

“I don’t know how much your audience would be interested in reading.”

“Somehow I doubt that. But, like you said, let’s ‘figure out what’s going on.’ Darbra’s what’s going on for you, right?”

“I’ve been hired to find her, and most of the people I’ve talked with seem to point me toward you.”

“Ask your questions.”

“How did you and Ms. Proft come to know each other?”

“Boy, we’re starting way back, huh?”

“It’s usually the best place.”

“Okay. How. We met in college. Drama class. I was taking it because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself: actress, playwright, muckraking journalist. Darbra was a little more focused, and, of course, she went further with it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, she used to do summer stock on the Cape or up in New Hampshire, Vermont. You know,
The Fantasticks
and that kind of schmaltzy stuff, where you fiddle around with the costumes and makeup while you’re also the star for the week.”

“How long did the acting last?”

“Not long. Darbra’s big on looks, but short on talent. I saw her once. She kind of … overplayed things, in order to stand out, you know?”

Pretty frank for a good friend talking to a stranger like me. “You stayed in touch after school, then?”

“More or less. We both settled in the area. She bounced around, workwise. Mostly Mac-jobs.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Mac-jobs, like the fast food. Office temp, morning shift in a health club, the kind of short-term stuff that’s all your generation will let our generation have the chance to do.”

I’d forgotten. “How long have you lived here?”

“About a year? Yeah, about. We were both looking at the same time, and these like identical one-bedrooms came up in this building. I guess I saw the ad first, in the paper, and Darb was having lunch with me, and we came over together to see them. We liked both places, so we tossed a coin, and I won.”

“You won?”

“The higher-floor unit. Less noise from the street.”

“You both were looking at one-bedrooms?”

Wickmire suddenly grew cautious. “That’s right.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Well, a free-lance writer and a free-lance everything, I’d have thought two college friends might try to room together, save some money.”

A shrug that didn’t quite come off. “Prices were right, the recession and all. Besides, our allergies don’t match.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Darb has a cat. I’m allergic to their dander.”

“What’s her allergy?”

The coy smile. “I’ll let you guess when we see her place.”

Moving right along. “Ms. Proft talk with you much about work?”

Another shrug, this one real. “What’s to tell? Boring, boring,
bor
-ing, except for one special somebody.”

“Who?”

“She won’t tell me. Darb’s like that. I came in on her once, on the phone, talking baby sweet talk to somebody. She was rolling her eyes, and I tried to make her laugh, but she held on till she hung up, then she and I roared till I thought we’d pee our—uh-oh, did I shock you?”

“Not yet.”

“Gives me something to shoot for.”

Again the rising voice. “Ms. Wickmire—”

“I decided I’d rather you call me ‘Traci.’ ”

“Traci.”

“I mean, if I can call you anything I want, you should be able to call me anything you want, right?”

The rising voice was the only coloring on the flirting lines, because she didn’t deliver them with anything else. “Traci—”

“And I’ll call you ‘John.’ ”

“Traci, she never told you who at work it might have been?”

“No, I just asked her, ‘Who the fuck was that, your sugar daddy?’ Oh-uh, I just used ‘fuck.’ Now I have shocked you.”

“My generation doesn’t shock that easily, all the practice we’ve gotten holding yours back.”

Wickmire rubbed the knuckles of her toes. “I think you’re a lot more clever than you show at first, John.”

“What did Ms. Proft—”

“As long as we’re so flexible with names, can we call her ‘Darbra’?”

“Fine.”

“I mean, it’s a super name, and there’s at least a chance she’s dead, so why not speak nice about her?”

The air felt a little cold. “You think she’s dead?”

“I don’t know. But she is missing, and you started me way back in college with her, so I have to think you believe it’s a … ‘distinct possibility.’ Why do you think I’ve been telling you all this so straight?”

“Traci, what exactly did Darbra say when you asked her who the man on the other end of the phone was?”

“I don’t know, something like, ‘Yeah, kind of.’ ”

“Kind of what?”

“Kind of her sugar daddy, I guess.”

“Do you remember when this was?”

“A month, six weeks ago. It was no big thing with Darb, John.”

I took some notes. “What was no big thing?”

“Talking to a man on the phone. She had her share.”

No lift to that sentence. “She saw a lot of men?”

“Saw them, touched them, fucked them. There, if that doesn’t shock you, I don’t know what will.”

“How many?”

“We could check her bedpost for notches.”

“How many recently that you know of?”

“How many. Well, sugar daddy, whoever he is. The married guy, and—”

“What married guy?”

“This guy, lived out in the suburbs somewhere. They were a thing almost since we moved in here. I used to see him when he’d come in to Darb’s for a little … what did you call it when you were young, ‘trysting’?”

Not even formally. “Can you describe him?”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t his name be a little more help to you?”

I looked at her. “It would.”

“Okay. His name’s Roger Houle. It sounds like ‘jewel,’ but it’s spelled like French.”

“H-O-U-L-E?”

“I think so.”

“Address?”

“I don’t know, but you can find out easy enough.”

“How?”

Wickmire looked at me as though I should be sitting in the sectional piece facing the corner. “They used to phone each other all the time to set up ‘logistics,’ Darb said he called it. All you have to do is check with Ma Bell, right?”

Not quite as easy as that. “Okay—”

“’Course, he’s not going to be much help to you, John.”

“He’s not?”

“Uh-unh. Darb broke up with him, oh, a month ago, maybe?”

I thought about it. “Before or after the ‘sugar daddy’ call?

She took a moment. “After. I remember thinking, ‘Well, it’s a good thing she still has her sugar daddy.’ ”

“Did you say that to Darbra?”

“No.” Wickmire seemed indignant. “That would have been pretty insensitive of me, don’t you think?”

“Whose idea was it to break up?”

“I don’t know, but probably Darb’s.”

“Why?”

“Men who are stupid enough to get involved with her don’t usually walk away from her. She said it was a real screamer, though.”

“What was?”

“The breakup. In a restaurant yet, can you picture it?”

“Which restaurant?”

“Some place over by her job. Funny name …”

“Grgo’s?”

“That’s it. Yeah.”

I didn’t really want to ask the next question. “This special somebody from the furniture store, the ‘sugar daddy,’ could he have been the man who was killed there?”

Wickmire wiggled her toes. “I wondered about that, even kind of hinted around it, you know, but Darb won’t say. I can tell you this. She was really upset about it.”

“About the killing, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You were with her that night?”

“The night the man was killed, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, we went out to the movies.”

“What time?”

“About seven, got back at nine-thirty, ten, and I’m just about through my apartment door when she calls to tell me the cops were on her answering machine about it.”

“The cops were.”

“Right.”

“No other messages?”

“She didn’t mention any.”

“But she was upset.”

“Yeah, but you have to know Darb.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was more like ‘Aw fuck, what do I do now?’ not ‘Ohmigod, my poor boss just got killed.’ ”

“Okay. So we’ve got the sugar daddy and Roger Houle. Any other recent men?”

“Just her new boytoy.”

Boytoy. “Who’s that?”

“Rush Teagle.”

For some reason the name sounded familiar. “You know how I can find him?”

“You’re probably sitting about thirty feet above him.”

One of the names by the mailboxes. “He lives here.”

“Basement apartment. That way he can practice without driving the rest of us nuts.”

“Practice what?”

“Guitar. He’s got this band. I think he’d like to call it ‘Rush,’ but that was already taken, you know?”

“How long has Darbra known Teagle?”

“I’m not sure. He’s been sniffing around her awhile, but I don’t think they were making it until a few weeks ago.”

“After the breakup with Houle?”

Wickmire gave the impression she was concentrating hard on my question. “About the same time, I think.”