And Leave Her Lay Dying (10 page)

“Not that often.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “Look, that rumour about the two of them sleeping together, sister and brother. I don't buy it, you know?”

“Why not?”

“Come on, McGuire. That kind of stuff happens in Kentucky maybe, up in the hills. But not in Boston. Besides, when he first came in here he said he was living in Cambridge. It was that jerk Milburn who started the story about them sleeping together. And Andy, there was something about him.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. I just had the feeling he was too cultured for anything like that.”

“How did he act when he was here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he try to pick up women? Did he get drunk? Was he loud?”

“None of the above.” She waved her hand in the direction of the dining area. “He sat over there and drank soda water and lemon by himself. The only woman I ever saw him talking to was poor Frannie.” She looked quickly to the rear of the bar, then back to McGuire. “You know, that was the night Jennifer was murdered. He stayed until closing. Frannie was always stopping at his table and talking to him that night. Stars in her eyes. She came and asked if she could leave early because Andy was going and they wanted to walk home together. I said sure, what the hell, she might get lucky. Poor kid deserved it.”

“Was Jennifer here that night?”

“No. I remember Andy saying he was waiting for her but she never showed. So he left with Frannie.”

McGuire finished his chowder. “You say he was only in here a few times?”

“Yeah. The first week or so, they used this place to leave messages. Jennifer would come in, ask if Andy was here. Then she'd leave a message. ‘Tell him to meet me back at the shop,' she'd say.”

“The shop?”

“Where she worked. Irene's over on Newbury Street. It's closed now. I hear it went bankrupt. Anyway, she'd leave this message for him to meet her somewhere. You know . . .” She looked away and frowned before turning back to McGuire and whispering: “It's easy to think they had something going. Frannie was the first woman Andy really talked to here. And after Andy came on the scene, Jennifer would have nothing to do with any of the guys here. Not a thing. She'd sit here at the bar raving about him to me or one of my girls maybe, saying what a wonderful guy he was, sweet, sensitive, a hell of a catch for some woman. Like she was in love or something. So maybe . . .” She shuddered. “Hell, who knows?”

A waitress brought a check and money to the bar and Marlene turned to use the cash register. “You've got to understand, McGuire. Jennifer would have used anybody to get what she wanted. Even her own brother.”

McGuire drank his beer, lost in thought, until Marlene returned to her post in front of him.

“You know what I think, McGuire?” she whispered.

“What do you think?”

“I think somebody killed both of them. And made it look as though Andy did it. I mean, first Jennifer's killed, then her mysterious brother disappears. Hell, I'm no J. Edgar Hoover but let's face it, even I would have the bloodhounds out looking for her brother if that's all I had to go on.”

McGuire dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Why not just assume the brother did it himself? Isn't that more logical?”

“Not a chance,” she said, scooping the money from the counter and turning back to the cash register. “Because I'll tell you, honey. Andy, he was too sweet a guy to do anything like murder. He'd run from his own shadow.”

McGuire cursed the cold rain that lashed his face as he left Pour Richards and crossed Massachusetts Avenue. Two blocks east, he entered a glass-and-steel office building and rode the elevator alone up eighteen floors while he tried to identify the name of the popular song seeping through the elevator speakers. When he couldn't, he convinced himself that the failure was due to the graceless style of modern song writers and not early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Upton Insurance occupied three storeys of the building. On the eighteenth floor, McGuire stepped into the firm's dark-panelled reception area and asked the receptionist for Gerry Milburn.

Within a few seconds, a door facing McGuire across the wide vestibule area opened and a slightly-built man in tweed jacket, striped tie and slacks entered, his eyes darting here and there as he walked, avoiding McGuire's. McGuire guessed he was thirty-five, perhaps thirty-seven years old. “Your name McGuire?” he asked in a hoarse whisper when he reached the detective.

McGuire reached for his identification. “Joe McGuire, Homicide—”

“I know, I know,” the other man hissed impatiently. “What the hell do you want with me? Nobody told me you were coming!”

McGuire studied the man before answering. Milburn's hair was prematurely grey and his eyes were magnified by tortoiseshell glasses. One hand never left his trouser pocket, where it jingled loose change nervously.

“Well, I'll tell you, Milburn,” said McGuire quietly. He tilted his head and smiled at the other man. “I need to ask you a few questions, you see. But I understand that you're a busy guy and all that, so I'll make a deal with you.”

For the first time, Milburn's eyes found McGuire's. “What's that?”

“We do it here or we do it down on Berkeley Street.”

Milburn swallowed, and his eyes began their dance again. “All right,” he said without whispering. His voice was surprisingly high and thin. “Maybe five minutes. But not here. Jesus, not here.” He led McGuire to an elevator, still jingling coins in his pocket.

The elevator doors opened and three men, talking among themselves, began to exit. Milburn changed personalities almost instantly; his thin lips broke into a smile and both hands reached out to seize the shoulder of the tallest man leaving the elevator.

“Roger, you bandit!” Milburn said. “I didn't think you'd be back until later. How did things go in Hartford?”

“Good, Gerry. Real good,” the man replied, not breaking his stride. “I'll fill you in later.”

“How about lunch tomorrow? I owe you,” Milburn called after the man, who nodded without turning around.

In the elevator alone with McGuire, Milburn said, “That guy is the next senior vice-president of operations. And what I don't need right now is to be seen with a cop!” He punched the button for the seventeenth floor.

McGuire began to speak, but thought better of it. He watched Milburn carefully during the short ride, noting his nervous mannerisms and the tension that seemed coiled within his body.

The elevator doors opened to a small grey lobby with several doorways lining the walls. Milburn turned quickly to the right, away from a vast open area where men and women sat at identical desks punching the keyboards of identical computer terminals, and entered a washroom. McGuire followed to see him checking toilet stalls, confirming that they were unoccupied.

“Okay,” Milburn said sharply, turning back to McGuire and leaning against a sink, his arms folded in front of him. “Five minutes. Nobody worth anything will see us talking on this floor. What the hell do you need from me?”

“You knew Jennifer Cornell?” McGuire began pleasantly.

Milburn slipped his hand back into his trouser pocket, where the loose change began its jangly rhythm again. “Come on, I told you guys everything last summer. Cripes! How often do I have to repeat it?”

“What's troubling you, Milburn?” McGuire asked in the same friendly tone. “You got something to hide?”

“I've got nothing to hide!” Milburn spat at him. “The night she was murdered, I was home with my wife.”

“Then you've got lots to hide, haven't you?” McGuire interrupted.

Milburn glared back, then looked away.

“You're an ambitious man, Milburn,” McGuire said calmly. “Probably have, what? One, two kids? Nice house, maybe out in Norwood? Commute to work every day with the same gang of guys? Got a good job with a solid conservative outfit that wouldn't exactly make you employee-of-the-month for screwing around with a woman you picked up in a bar, especially a woman who was found murdered one Sunday morning.”

He leaned closer to Milburn until he was just inches from the other man's face.

“Now you talk to me, Milburn. Or I'll have my next interview in the office of your buddy upstairs, good old Roger the Bandit.”

The jangling stopped. Beads of sweat flooded Milburn's upper lip, and one hand shot up to push his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he said, still defiant. “But make it snappy. Somebody might come in here, and get the wrong impression.”

McGuire arched his eyebrows, smiled, and jutted out his bottom lip as though he found the idea amusing. “How often did you see Jennifer Cornell?”

“What do you mean?”

“Meet her. Go back to her place and sleep with her.”

“Hey, give me a break here.” Milburn's eyes glanced at the washroom door. “I only met her three times. I was only at her place twice.”

“And the third time?”

“She said she was waiting for her brother.”

“So she didn't want anything to do with you.”

“That's how she acted. She said Andy was her whole life since he came back from California.”

“And you were jealous of him.”

Milburn gathered himself up and turned to speak directly at McGuire. “I saw something in Jennifer nobody else saw,” he said, his voice losing its edge as he talked. “There was a warm, attractive woman there. And she saw something in me. That's what she told me.” He studied his fingernails. “But then came her brother, and before that some TV producer.”

“Fleckstone?”

Milburn nodded. “He was using her. Anybody could see that. There was no way he was going to make her a star.”

“Why were you so angry with her brother?”

Milburn walked away, past the row of sinks. “I saw his stuff in her apartment the second time I was there. His luggage. His clothes. She even showed me a watch she bought for him. Big gold Cartier. The only bed was a pullout sofa. There was no place else to sleep. And she told me to leave because Andy was coming home any minute. She didn't want Andy to find me there. I mean, what would
you
think?”

“I'd think it was none of my business. By the way,” McGuire added, “did your wife know about you and Jennifer?”

Milburn pivoted and pointed at McGuire. “I'd say that was none of
your
business!” he barked.

McGuire nodded. “Could be. But you have to admit, it'll be easy to check.”

His face white, Milburn looked around in mild panic, as though searching for an escape route. “Hey, you can't do that,” he muttered. “Come on, you can't just go into a man's home and spill stuff like that.” Grasping the sides of a sink, Milburn dropped his head and stared into the drain.

“Just tell me what I want to know, Milburn,” McGuire said, walking slowly towards him. “And I'm gone.”

Milburn exhaled noisily. “Her brother was a faggot,” he said bitterly.

“Really?”

“You could tell by the way he walked. Kept to himself. Hardly talked to guys in the bar. Never paid attention to women.”

“Doesn't make him gay.”

“He was a pussy. When I challenged him he ducked away from me. Wouldn't let me near him.”

“Tell me what happened,” McGuire said. He leaned against the wall and watched Milburn's face as he talked.

“I called Jennifer one night. I wanted to see her, just talk to her, and she told me to . . . She didn't want to see me. So later that night I went to Pour Richards alone. I'm sitting at the bar and all I'm hearing about is Jennifer's brother Andy, what a sweet guy he is. And then Marlene, the owner, said he'd moved in with Jennifer and I thought, ‘That's not right, sleeping together like that,' and I went after him.” Milburn began washing his hands, still avoiding McGuire's eyes. “I'd had too much to drink. Normally I wouldn't do something like that. I walked over to him and I said, ‘You can't be Jennifer's brother, you son of a bitch.' I don't know, I forget what else I said.” He ripped a paper towel from the dispenser and began drying his hands.

“And Andy took off.”

“Yeah. Right out the door.”

“And when Jennifer came in she was ready to hit you with a bar stool.”

Milburn nodded. He tossed the paper towel at a waste container and missed. “Anything else?”

“Two things. Where were you the night Jennifer Cornell was murdered?”

Milburn leaned on the sink again and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His mouth had grown slack and his grey hair no longer looked premature. “I told you guys last summer.”

“Not me you didn't. Where were you?”

“I went to a movie.”

“With whom?”

“By myself.”

“On a Saturday night? A married man with . . . how many kids?”

“Two. Two boys.”

“Name the movie.”

Milburn closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “I wasn't at a movie.”

“Damn right you weren't.” McGuire walked away a few paces, then returned to Milburn in three quick strides. “So where were you?”

“I went looking for Jennifer. I stopped at the bar and saw her brother, sitting in the corner by himself. I went outside and waited to see if Jennifer would show up. She didn't, so I went back to her apartment building and rang the bell. There was nobody home, or maybe she just didn't want to answer the door. But I could hear music playing in there. So I sat on a bench across the street by the Fens and watched the building for a while.” He shrugged and half-smiled in embarrassment. “Then I bought a bottle of booze and took it back to the bench and drank it. I woke up about two o'clock and there were still lights on in her apartment. I went to a pay phone and called her and Jennifer answered. She sounded happy; she was laughing. She told me to call her back early in the week, she couldn't see me just then. I had the feeling there was somebody else with her. So I went home.”

He looked up at McGuire with tears on his face. “That's the truth, McGuire. I swear it. That night . . . That night almost cost me my marriage. The next day I heard she was found murdered.”

Laughter erupted from the washroom entrance as two men entered, one holding a sheet of paper for the other to read over his shoulder. Milburn turned away quickly, tore off another paper towel and brought it to his face. The two newcomers glanced at him, then at McGuire, and walked in silence to the urinals.

Distancing himself from the men, Milburn approached McGuire. “What was the other thing?” he asked in a low voice. “You said you had two things. What else was there?”

McGuire bent to retrieve the ball of paper towelling Milburn had tossed at the waste container. “Pick up your trash,” he said, tossing it in the man's face.

The wind had dropped, taking the temperature with it. Outside on Massachusetts Avenue McGuire walked through a swirl of snowflakes. At Newbury Street he trudged east to Dartmouth. The flakes were now no longer melting on contact with the pavement but were beginning to transform the city into a soft white sculpture, clinging to bare tree branches, settling on parked cars and on the heads and shoulders of pedestrians.

Just beyond Dartmouth, McGuire found Irene's Dress Shop on the elevated first floor of a restored brownstone. He slipped once on the snow before grasping the cast-iron railing and pulling himself up to the darkened door.

The letter taped on the inside of the glass was headed “Raymond D. Robinson, Attorney” in flowing script, with an address in the Hancock Tower. All enquiries regarding Irene's, according to the short typed message on the letter, were to be directed to the office shown on the letterhead.

McGuire shielded his eyes and peered through the glass into an empty store littered with cardboard boxes, empty display cases and several hundred plastic hangers on metal racks.

He entered a bar next to Irene's and used a pay phone to call the lawyer. A woman with a heavy British accent answered, took his name and put him on hold long enough for him to finish sipping his double Scotch, neat. She returned to announce that Raymond Robinson would be pleased to see him in his office at ten the following morning to answer any questions on behalf of his client Irene Hoffman.

McGuire leaned against the wall and tried to assemble all he had learned about the woman found dead in the Fens two seasons earlier. She had been a frightened woman, unstable perhaps. And yet Jennifer Cornell could also attract the attention of a television producer who used women like he used his video equipment, and infatuate a minor insurance executive to the point where he would risk his family and his career.

McGuire had known women like her in his life. During a short and stormy second marriage, he had been wedded to one. She hadn't been unstable, though, only too young and too beautiful, too in love with the thrill of turning men's heads to be satisfied with the attention McGuire paid to her. It had been his total attention, total devotion. No, he had to admit, not total. And not enough. Not enough to keep her from walking out five years ago, leaving him to work in a Florida nightclub where the patrons weren't sullen and middle-aged but young and challenging and loved to dance.

He looked around the bar, searching for the kind of companionship that began with eye contact, and estimated the average age of the patrons at twenty years less than his own. Wasn't anybody in the world born before nineteen-sixty?