Dead Heat (15 page)

EIGHTEEN

He won the complicity of the Harvest's headwaiter with an early arrival and an improbable romantic tale solidified by a sizable tip. The arrangements completed, he waited outdoors at a white, painted wrought-iron table on a chilly semi-enclosed patio still off-limits for the season. Pigeons foraged underfoot.

It wouldn't do for Lila to approach a seated Spraggue. She might have seen him going into the Sparhawk Street house; if so she'd back off, aware that a trap had been baited. He planned to wait until the headwaiter had relieved her of her coat, anchored her to the table with a drink. Then he might have a chance to get out enough words to convince her to stay.

She was late. He heard her heels tap-tapping on the concrete blocks of the path that passed the patio and froze, but she didn't glance his way. Instead of giving her the stature she lacked, her high heels accented the wobbly thinness of her ankles, made her seem more childish instead of more adult. She wore the same raincoat she'd worn the morning he'd read the anonymous letters, belt cinched tight, collar raised. Her corn-silk hair, her slightly receding chin, her wide-set blue eyes all made her look as dangerous as a waif in an orphanage, as murderous as Alice in Wonderland.

Before she passed out of sight, she fumbled in a maroon leather shoulder bag for a small leather case. From it, she removed a pair of glasses. Not attention-grabbing dark sunglasses, but rose-tinted aviator frames that subtly shortened her nose and broadened her face. She donned them with the practiced gesture of a woman schooled in pretense and yanked open the Harvest's front door.

Spraggue watched white paint flake off wrought iron.

She would be settling into the booth at the back of the front right-hand section of the restaurant, the part called Ben's Café. The waiter, following instructions, would have urged her into the seat facing away from the door. She wouldn't object to the table or the choice of seat. No one disturbed that table except the staff. Only the kitchen lay beyond it; the telephones and restrooms were elsewhere.

Curtain time. The black-vested waiter elaborately mouthed his readiness.

He'd succeeded in parting her from her raincoat. She wore a mannish pale blue shirt tucked neatly into a slim navy skirt. A schoolgirl outfit. A thin gold chain gleamed around her neck. She sipped at a glass half full of amber liquid and ice cubes.

“Hi,” Spraggue said easily as he slid into the booth.

She was startled. Her arm jerked and she hastily slammed her drink back on the table. “I'm sorry, but—” Her cheeks reddened. She thought it was a pickup. Then she stared up at him and her eyes narrowed even as her blush deepened.

“I wanted to talk to you—”

“I'm sorry.” She had the habit of apology. “I have to—” She half stood, remembered her missing raincoat, tried in vain to catch the waiter's eye.

“Michael Spraggue.” He held out his hand, but she didn't take it. “You already knew that.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “I don't mean to be rude, but I'm waiting for someone, and—”

He let his voice descend to Heineman's pitch. “I'm sorry,” he said in Heineman's drawl. “I didn't know any other way to get to see you.”

While she stared at him with her mouth slightly open and her cheeks burning scarlet, he nodded to the waiter who hovered just out of Mrs. Donagher's sight. Eager to play his role in smoothing over this lovers' quarrel, the waiter set steaming bowls of soup in front of them.

“It's great stuff,” Spraggue said encouragingly. “And I'd hate to eat it alone.”

She swiveled her head and peered suspiciously at the other diners.

“It would make quite a scene if you walked out now,” he said.

“It would? Or you would?”

“I might call out your name. Who knows? I might faint.”

A corner of her mouth twitched. She measured the distance to the door with her eyes, then said, “What do you want?”

“Sit down. People are getting curious.”

“I asked you what you were after.”

“A bowl of soup. A quiet lunch. The answers to some questions.”

“Such as?”

“Eat your soup. And smile a little. The waiter's getting anxious.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Better you shouldn't know.”

“I know who you are, Mr. Spraggue.”

He raised an eyebrow, spooned soup.

“I know that you used to be a professional busybody of sorts and that you gave it up. I've seen you on stage at the Harvard Rep. If I'd recalled your histrionic abilities, I would have handled ‘Ed's' phone call differently.”

“How differently?”

“I would have hung up.” She made an attempt at the soup, put her spoon down with a clatter against the china bowl. Spraggue started at the noise, looked up. For a moment he thought she would brave the thirty feet to the door and the threatened scene, but to his amazement, a slow smile spread across her face. “And then,” she said, after a long pause and in a manner nicely calculated to flatter, “I would have missed what promises to be an interesting afternoon.”

He wished he could snatch the rose-tinted glasses off her nose, divine in those blue eyes a reason for her sudden change in tactics. Not that the blue eyes were focused on him. No, she had a way of looking over him, behind him, through him—never at him. He was saved from immediate reply by the timely arrival of a bottle of Chateau St. Jean Chardonnay. The waiter, delighted by their apparent rapport, tried some clumsy banter; it fell flat.

“So,” she said confidingly, when the silence after the waiter's departure had stretched to the breaking point, “I suppose my husband hired you to do this.”

She might as well have dispensed with the question altogether and given the traditional
en garde
to begin the fencing match.

“To do what?”

“Let's not be naïve. To set me up.”

“You don't think he has any right to be curious about you and Heineman?”

“I hope you are not one of those people who believes that when a married woman agrees to lunch with a man other than her husband, there is something sordid going on.”

“I hardly believe in anything. Keeps me from being shocked.”

“So often the simplest explanation is the best. Once things start getting complicated—” She shook her head gravely, stared down at the tabletop, tilted her bowl slightly, and ate the dregs of her soup.

“Would you call this a complicated situation?”

“Only because I tried to keep it simple.”

“I don't understand.”

“I wanted to avoid just the misunderstanding that seems to be taking place.”

“In your husband's mind?”

“I don't think my husband would have hired you to check on any extramarital outings I might be arranging—not on his own. He knows me too well, knows I wouldn't fool around on principle.” She attempted a smile. “And knows I don't have the time. But he might have been convinced to do it by one of his aides, if said aide thought I might be up to something that would screw the precious campaign. One of his aides might have hired you himself, in which case that aide is going to be out the door so fast once Brian finds out—” She bit at her lower lip as if that were the only way she could stop the angry words pouring out of her mouth. She tried to make her voice light and inconsequential again.

“I'll soothe your fears,” she said, with a touch of sarcasm. “Eddie Heineman and I went to high school together. We did have a passionate affair; it took place half a lifetime ago and was consummated by hand-holding in the library.”

She was doing it again; looking at everything but him. Spraggue wanted to reach over and lift her chin, frame her delicate face with his hands, and force her to meet his gaze.

Instead, he hazarded a guess, said, “Why did you tell your old friend Ed that he might want to talk to me?”

“Ed didn't tell you …” Her sentence didn't end. It ran out of steam.

“Tell me what?”

She took her time answering and when she finally replied it was to his first question, not his second. “I was trying to help him out. He's new here. I mean, we went to school together years ago, in Lynn, but his people were from the South and they moved on. Didn't like it, the cold and the snobby Yankees. He wants to make a name for himself, so when all the reporters were going crazy about that horrible business at the reservoir and then you came over to the house, I thought, well, I thought I'd give Ed the inside track.…”

Plausible, but it didn't fit with the rest of the conversation, with her forced flirty tone, her searching manner. If she'd assumed then that her husband had hired him for protection, why was she now assuming that the senator had hired him to ‘set her up'? Set her up for what? The short end of a divorce settlement?

“You could have given him a bigger break, an exclusive interview with your husband.”

“No.”

“They don't get along?”

“It's not like that. It's not some stupid rivalry, for heaven's sake. They haven't even met.”

“Your dear old friend and your husband?”

“They're just separate parts of my life. I knew Ed before I met Brian. They have nothing in common. Politically, they're on opposite poles. Ed's as conservative as they come … and …”

“Yes?”

“And how would it look if people knew Ed and I were friends? If he supported Brian on the air, the audience would say that he was biased because of me.”

“But he doesn't support your husband, does he?”

“He tries for a balanced viewpoint,” she said, no inflection in her voice.

“Maybe,” Spraggue said, “he's biased against your husband because of you.”

“That's exactly the kind of thing people would say.”

Conversation waned when the main course, bluefish with ginger sauce, was served. From Lila's enthusiastic inroads on the fish, he diagnosed her silence as hunger rather than reticence, and soon she started talking again.

“I hope I've curbed your suspicions about my fidelity. It was childish, I suppose, not to want Brian to know about Ed.”

“Romantic.”

“Let's not use that word. Brian will have to know, I assume.”

“It depends.”

“On? Are you working directly for Brian or did Murray Eichenhorn pay the freight?”

“I still have a few more questions.”

“Oh.”

She handled silence well. She swallowed another sip of Chardonnay.

He monitored her alcohol consumption. Much as he had wanted a drink in front of her when he'd joined her, he'd been uneasy about ordering liquor for a woman his aunt had labeled a chronic alcoholic. He'd warned the waiter to give her a wide choice: Would she care for a drink, a cup of coffee, a glass of juice? She'd selected a Scotch on the rocks, taken an interest in the wine.… Could a chronic alcoholic drink socially? Had Mary gotten some inaccurate gossip?

“I wanted to know about Pete Collatos,” he said quietly.

“Pete? Does Brian think I fool around with every man in town? Do you have a list of names to interrogate me about?”

“Just tell me about Pete.”

“He's dead.”

“That's all you've got to say?”

“Look, what is this? I've explained about Ed. More than I should have. What does Brian want? I know he doesn't want a divorce. Good God, not now. Not with a Senate race in the offing. There's no reason for him to—”

The bluefish had been grilled over charcoal, crisp and hot on the outside, moist and buttery within. The sauce was piquant enough to cut the oiliness.

Mrs. Donagher tilted her knife and fork across her plate, carefully, one inch apart, their handles touching the white tablecloth. She said: “I think I've behaved like a fool.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I was talking to myself. I should do more of that, less talking to other people. You never said my husband hired you. You never did.”

“Right.”

“You never said anyone from his office hired you. And I went ahead and talked to you—Are you working for some gossipy newspaper?”

“No.”

“Who else would care about my friendship with some local reporter?”

“I'll be honest with you—”

“That'll be a change.”

“I haven't lied.”

“Go on.”

“I'm more interested in Pete Collatos than I am in Ed Heineman.”

“Dead is dead. There's nothing you can do about Pete.”

“You're not a seeker after justice?”

“Justice is so seldom tempered with mercy these days.”

“How much mercy does the person who murdered Pete Collatos deserve?”

“Isn't
murder
a strong word?” she said. “There are other explanations besides murder.”

“But dead is dead, regardless of the explanation.”

“Yes.” Her eyes darted everywhere, looking at everything but him. Her hands played with packets of sugar, twisted her wedding band, picked at bitten fingernails.

“What if the man or woman responsible for Pete's death were of, let's say, diminished responsibility?”

“A crazy person?” For once, she sounded defiant, as if she expected to be accused.

“Or a child,” he said. Donagher had reacted to the suggestion that one of his boys might have been the absent water giver. Would Lila do the same?

“A child?” she repeated, almost inaudibly.

“Yes.”

She stared hard at the table, poked a forkful of fish around her plate. “A child wouldn't have access to amphetamines.”

“A teenager might.”

“What are you getting at?” she said. She abandoned all pretense of eating. Her knife slid off the edge of the table and fell with a soft plop on the carpeting, but she didn't seem to notice.

“I spoke to your husband the day before yesterday.”