Family Honor - Robert B Parker (20 page)

In the kitchen my glassware had been broken on the floor.
My spice shelf had been emptied. My refrigerator door was open and the
half quart of milk I had left there was curdled. Rosie was very excited.
She was dashing around happily lapping the oil and molasses that had been
poured. I picked her up and held her in my lap and sat on the only chair
still upright.

They had come in probably trying to find a clue to where
I was with Millicent, and as they had searched and not found a clue, they
had gotten excited and vengeful and this was what they'd left me. It was
so unfair. It was like junior high school vandalism, simply mean. The vandals
got no benefit from destroying my home, and all my things that I had so
carefully picked out. All the things I had arranged and rearranged over
whole evenings of puttering and reputtering, just me and Rosie, like a
kid playing house, after Richie and I had separated. I was alone for the
first time in my life, sipping a glass of white wine and standing back
and looking, and seeing the way it all fit. The stuff I'd brought back
from antique dealers in New Hampshire, the cookware, gleaming and virginal,
that I had bought at Williams Sonoma, the things I had used to build a
new life, art books, paintings, the nice set of useful tools in a neat
metal tool box, that my father had given me when I moved in, all scattered
among the broken shards of "good china" that my mother had offered, so
I could entertain fashionably in my new place, even the very posed picture
of herself that my annoying sister had given me. I had loved all of it.
Too much, probably.

Richie had never cared much about stuff. But I did. I
cared about the place I had made for myself, where I could be a detective,
and be a painter, and be a woman, and be alone and take care of Rosie.
The lousy bastards. Momentarily I had a passionate desire to call Richie.
He'd fix it. But of course, I couldn't call Richie. After the momentary
madness, I didn't even want to call Richie. I put my face down against
Rosie's broad little back. She smelled good. I began to cry. She turned
her head and lapped my cheeks. I didn't mind crying. This was where I was
allowed to. My home. I could cry or get drunk, or make love, or be by myself,
or do anything else I wanted with no one to approve or disapprove. I didn't
need to call anyone. I was enough. I kept my face buried in Rosie's back,
and my arms around her. After a time I didn't feel like crying any more.

"Well," I said to Rosie, "so they've burned Tara, the
bastards. We can build it again."

Rosie wagged her tail. I got the cell phone out of my
purse and called my insurance broker.
 

"Thanks for coming," he said. "My mother lives with my
brother just down the hill, and I usually visit her on my day off."

"This is fine," I said.

"Can we go talk in the cafeteria," Otis said. "I haven't
eaten."

We went down to the hospital cafeteria. I got some coffee
and John Otis got a container of milk and a tuna sandwich.

"My mother always tries to feed me, but it's so unhealthy,"
he said. "Lot of fried stuff."

"Did Billie tell you why I wanted to talk with you?"

"About Millie," he said and smiled. "Millie and Billie.
Sounds like a sitcom."

He sounded vaguely British. There was no hint of a black
accent. Probably a condition of butlerhood.

"Billie says that man named Cathal Kragan came to the
house."

"Yes."

"With another man."

"Once."

"You know the other man's name?"

John Otis was very neat. He ate his sandwich with small
neat bites, dabbing at his lips neatly after every bite with a paper napkin.

He drank his milk from the cardboard container with a
straw. "No. He only came once."

"When?"

"About a month ago."

"Do you remember the car that they came in?"

"Mr. Kragan, when he came, would normally drive a Dodge
sedan. You know the funny cab forward kind."

"I've seen the ads. How about when he came with the other
man?"

"Came in a limousine."

"Did you happen to get the license plate number?"

"Yes. Special license plate. Crowley-8."

"Crowley limos?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"The big Boston outfit."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sunny. Please call me Sunny."

"The driver waited for them and drove them home."

"Did Kragan use a limo often?"

"No. Just that time."

"Did anybody else come in limos?"

Otis chewed his small bite of sandwich and swallowed and
drank a small sip of milk through his straw and put the milk back down,
and looked at me for a time without any expression. His eyes were black.
His dark smooth face had no expression.

Finally he said, "Why do you ask?"

"It's all I could think of," I said.

"The women came in Crowley limousines."

"Women?"

"Mr. Patton would often entertain women," he said. "They
always came in the same limo, Crowley-8. That's why I remember."

"Did Mrs. Patton join her husband," I said, "when he entertained
these women?"

Otis's smooth face didn't change, but somehow I knew he
was repressing a smile.

"Not that I know of."

We were quiet for a time. Otis finished his sandwich.
Doctors and nurses and ambulatory patients and visitors passed us as we
sat.

"My wife says you've promised not to reveal that we've
talked to you.

"Not unless I must."

"No one would hire us if they thought we talked about
our employer."

"So why take the risk?" I said.

"We feel badly for the little girl," he said.
 

Brian brought enough Chinese food to sustain the Ming
dynasty for a year, and we ate it sitting at my counter. Rosie joined us.
She could track Chinese food through a forest fire. I supplied some Gewurztraminer
to go with the Chinese food, and we drank some while we ate and looked
at a list of all homicides that had occurred in Massachusetts since the
day Millicent heard her mother order someone killed. There were sixteen
of them. Three appeared to be related. A man named Fitzgerald, a man named
O'Neill, and a man named Ciccarelli.

"Somebody's trying to push into Boston, from the outside,"
Brian said. "So far it's Dagos 2, Micks 1."

"It doesn't sound like my case," I said.

Three deaths were women, so we eliminated them. We eliminated
two because they were street gang killings, one because it was a murder-suicide.
We eliminated two armored-car guards in Agawam who had been killed during
a stickup. They'd taken one of the robbers with them. That left four that
might be the one that Betty Patton had discussed.

"Of course the killing might not have happened in Massachusetts,"
Brian said.

"Do you have a national list?"

"No."

"Can you get one?"

"What do you think?" Brian said.

"I think it's one of those things that sounds simple and
isn't." Brian smiled.

"So let's go with the list we've got," I said.

"Better than nothing," Brian said. "You eat, I'll read
them to you. Number one is Charles V. Powell, age forty-six, marketing
director for the phone company, works in Boston, lives in Duxbury. Married,
three kids, shot to death in the hall outside his girlfriend's apartment
in Charles River Park. Murder weapon was a .38. Our guys think the wife
did it. But nobody saw it and we can't find the gun. No residue on the
wife's hands."

"She could have worn gloves," I said.

"I know. Everybody watches television. Number two is Kevin
Humphries, a plumber, thirty-five years old, no kids, separated from his
wife. Runs his own business in Framingham. Shot while he was sitting in
his car outside a restaurant on Route 9. Two bullets in the back of the
head. Close range. Nine mm. Ex-wife's got an alibi. No suspects. Framingham
cops think it was a hit."

"A plumber from Framingham might do work in South Natick,"
I said.

"If they could get him to show up," Brian said.

"I know," I said, "if he was my plumber I'd know why he
was shot."

"Doesn't sound much like someone who'd be involved with
Betty Patton though," Brian said.

"Maybe she liked guys with pipe dope on their hands."

"Number three is a political consultant. Mason Blumenthal,
forty-one, single, lived in the South End, shot in the chest three times
with a .357. I was on that one. No leads, but I don't think he'd tickle
Mrs. Patton's gonads."

"Gay?"

"Probably."

"Lover's quarrel?"

"Probably."

"Is there one more?"

Brian ate a mouthful of chicken with cashews and swallowed
and drank some wine and then picked up the printout.

"Casper Willig," Brian read. "Forty-two years old, divorced,
two kids, ran a photo supply store in Worcester. Lived alone in Shrewsbury.
Found him in the trunk of his car parked in the garage at the Crown Plaza
Hotel in Worcester. Two slugs in the forehead and three in the chest. Behind
in his alimony. Behind in his child support. Maxed out on all his credit
cards--he had seventeen."

"Jesus," I said.

"Seventeen. Looking at his credit situation, Worcester
cops think he probably was behind to a loan shark."

"They kill you, they don't get their money," I said.

"So they don't like to kill you," Brian said. "I know.
Maybe he was supposed to be an example for others."

With his chopsticks Brian handed a piece of beef in oyster
sauce down to Rosie. She ate it carefully.

"If he weren't a plumber, I'd like the guy from Framingham,"
I said.

"You figure she was having an affair with someone?"

"There's the reference to what tingles her gonads," I
said. "What would be your guess?"

"Affair." Brian said. "You think she's too snooty to have
an affair with a plumber?"

"Snooty?" I said.

"Yeah. What's wrong with snooty?"

"I haven't heard anyone use that word since my grandmother
died."

"So I'm an old-fashioned guy," Brian said.

"Well," I said. "She's very snooty. But, you know how
some women are. If he's a hunk, the more working class the better."

"Like me," Brian said.

It was starting. I knew it would and now it had. I always
loved the feeling in my stomach when it started. Even if he wasn't Richie.

"No need to be so self-effacing," I said.

"You too snooty to be interested in a cop?"

"You have anyone in mind?" I said.

"I was thinking about me," Brian said.

"Yes," I said. "So was I."

Brian leaned forward and kissed me. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them he was off the barstool and standing beside me. Holding
the kiss, I slid off my stool and we embraced. The kiss stopped. We leaned
back against each other's arms and looked at each other.

Rosie insinuated herself among our ankles and panted up
at us.

"I know how she feels," Brian said.

"Does my breath smell of beef in oyster sauce?" I said.
"And you taste of Gewurztraminer," Brian said.

"A treat for all the senses," I said. "Perhaps I should
ask Rosie to stay in the bathroom for a little while."
"Will she yowl?" Brian said.

"No, but I might," I said.