Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (6 page)

Just before the intersection, the photocopy shop
appeared on the right, but from the low lighting inside, it wasn't
open. I'd intended to ask about Dees first at Plymouth Willows
anyway, but why wouldn't an independent businessman have his place up
and running by noontime? Beyond the crossroads was The Tides, where
Olga Evorova told me she'd first met Dees. Pretty hungry by now, I
had to have lunch somewhere, and I found a parking space next to it.

The interior of The Tides was pretty generic: an
oblong pub bar in the back, burled walnut veneer on both the walls
and the booths against them. Benches for the booths stood high, with
brass coat hooks screwed into the wood and cream-colored Formica
covering the tables. Paint-by-numbers beach prints were framed and
almost centered under brass wall sconces. The midday-meal crowd
seemed mostly retirees lounging in the booths and people who drank
their lunches lounging at the bar, which wasn't tended just now.

I took a stool across from a booth that held the only
teenagers in the place, a pair of girls wearing the kinds of outfits,
hairdos, and jewelry you'd find on the cover of a science fiction
magazine. The Tides was quiet enough that I could hear their
conversation, even though they weren't trying to project.

One had purple hair, purple rouge, and purple
lipstick, her yellow-and-green-striped sweatshirt torn at the
shoulder, the matching athletic pants torn at the knee. "God, it
is such a bummer about your dad."

The second girl—metallic platinum with dark roots
but dressed in a long-sleeved black T-shirt, ankle-length black
skirt, and black combat boots—pushed the remains of a garden salad
around on her plate. "Hey, like tell me about it, awright?"

"But it's just so wicked unfair, Kira. I mean,
you are seventeen years young, you know? This is supposed to be the
most awesome time of your life."

"So. I'm gonna have to wait a while."

"But all the school you're missing—"

Putting down her fork, Kira said, "Look, Jude, I
have to get back, and you got class in like ten minutes."

"Awright. Where's our check?"

A brunette waitress in a frilly white blouse and pink
stirrup pants came out from what I guessed to be the kitchen, Jude
paying cash for both meals. As the girls left, the waitress moved
behind the bar. Oyster and clam shells were sticking up from a bed of
crushed ice garnished with some lemon wedges and parsley sprigs. She
smiled at me from the far side of thirty. "What'll you have?"

The nametag on the blouse read "Edie."
Glancing toward the booths, I said, "Double duty?"

A shrug, but she kept the smile shining, maybe
because it was her best feature. "Used to do it on the
airplanes, I can do it here. Drink?"

I nodded at the draft pulls. "Harpoon."

"You got it."

Edie sidled over to the freezer and pulled out a
ten-ounce mug with frost coating its sides. Curling her lower lip
under her front teeth, she concentrated on drawing the ale, reminding
me of a kindergarten kid with finger paint. After topping the mug,
then spilling some off and topping it again, she brought the drink
over to me, first slapping a napkin down on the wood.

"Menu, or would you like something from the raw
bar?"

I looked toward the bed of ice. "They fresh?"

"Hey, they're not just fresh, they're still
alive in there. That's what makes it so hard to shuck them." She
picked up a short, sturdy knife. "When I stick this in, they're
still holding on to the insides of the shell. If they were dead, the
shells'd be open, like you see on the beach by the tideline."

"And since they're still alive in there . . ."

"I'm really breaking their grip by cutting their
heads off at the neck."

"Glad I asked."

Edie laughed. "So, the raw bar's out?"

"For today, anyway. How are your burgers?"

"Dead. Definitely dead."

"Medium, then. No fries, green salad."

"Watching your weight?"

I decided to establish a little more of my cover
story.

"Have a long afternoon ahead of me."

"This town, all the afternoons are 1ong."

Given the inflection, I thought Edie might be
floating an invitation. Liking the way she did it, I still didn't
want to mislead her. "I'm checking out how a management company
runs one of the condos around here."

"Checking out?"

"I'm a private investigator."

"No kidding?"

"Here's my identification?

Edie unfolded the little leather holder, her lip
under the front teeth again, reading the laminated card before
handing it back to me. "Which complex you interested in?"

"Plymouth Willows."

The remains of Edie's smile froze. "Don't know
much about how that's going."

"You don't."

"No. I live the other way."

One of the retirees motioned for another round, and
Edie moved stiffly to fill his glass before taking my food order to
the kitchen. It was a while before she came back out, busying herself
rearranging shells on the bed of ice that had looked fine as they
were.

I said, "How about just directions, then?"

Edie kept her eyes on the ice. "Directions?"

"To Plymouth Willows."

She spoke mechanically, toward the shells. "We're
on Main Street here. Take Main south to the little bridge over the
river. About a mile after the bridge, just past the . . ."

Something was giving her trouble. "Just past the
bluff on the left, you'll hang a right and go down maybe another mile
and a half to the Willows sign on your left."

"Sounds easy enough."

"You miss the turn and keep going straight,
you'll get to the gore."

"What's the gore?"

"It's a blip on the survey maps that . . .
somebody did for all the development down here in the eighties. The
gore's like a bog with swampy water around it."

Another customer called out her name. To me, Edie
said, "Sorry, but I'm going to be kind of busy here." She
didn't sound sorry.

I nursed the ale, and Edie circulated, studiously
avoiding my end of the bar until a lighted bell chimed above the
liquor bottles, causing her to go back into the kitchen and reappear
with a hamburger plate.

As she set it in front of me, I lowered my voice.
"Did I push the wrong button or something?"

"No," a little too quickly. "I'm just
busy, like I said."

"You wouldn't happen to know anybody who lives
at Plymouth Willows, would you?"

Edie looked up, guarded. "You mean, like for you
to talk to?"

"Yes."

"Maybe Andy Dees. He runs the photocopy up the
street."

Perfect. "Thanks, I'll try him."

I thought she wanted to
say something else, but another customer got her attention, and I
finished my drink and meal without speaking to her again.

* * *

The southern tip of downtown ended at the bridge Edie
mentioned, which aroed over a dry riverbed and a stagnant harbor.
Fishing and lobster boats were beached at peculiar angles on the
sandbars by the low tide. No one was on the docks, and I had the
feeling that the boats hadn't been anywhere recently, even when the
water level was more cooperative.

I drove over the bridge and south another mile or so,
the road curving left to create a "scenic overlook." I
pulled the Prelude into the small parking area but left the engine
running. Getting out and walking to the railing, I looked down a
bluff perhaps forty feet high onto rocks the size of Buicks. Given
the tide, most of the rocks were exposed, scumlines around their
middles. There was a freshening sea breeze, the smell of salt heavy
and bracing in the air. A couple of long-haul barges were sloughing
toward Boston, but no pleasure craft, motor or sail, despite the nice
weather.

Back in the car, I left the lot and continued south.
Taking the next right, I measured off two miles before realizing I
must have missed the Plymouth Willows sign that should have been on
my left. I came instead to the “gore," as Edie had called it,
a deep swamp surrounded by cattails and reeds, the road hooking left
over an old wooden bridge spanning it. There were tire tracks at the
edge of the mocha water, cars probably parking there at night as boys
with new driver's licenses tried to practice their manhood on girls
like the pair back at The Tides. Following the road left and over the
bridge, I wasn't sorry to see the gore fade in the rearview mirror.

The macadam rose to climb a bowl-like hill, and I
entered Plymouth Willows from what was functionally its back door,
near the tennis courts (nets up) and pool (water drained). The hill
I'd climbed provided a postcard backdrop to the complex, the trees
mostly hardwoods, here and there a pine or two. A small prefab house
sat between the courts and the pool, but otherwise Plymouth Willows
seemed to be laid out like a giant shamrock. The roads were looping
cul-de-sacs with clusters of townhouse units distributed around each
leaf of the shamrock. I counted four townhouses per cluster, four
clusters per leaf. Symmetry u
ber alles
.

The architecture was all gray, weathered shingles,
striving also for that Nantucket motif. The only variations were the
color of the doors and window trim, which went from red to yellow to
blue to white, depending on which cluster in the leaf you were
passing. I drove around all the cul-de-sacs, spotting the address
Olga Evorova had given me in one of the yellow-trimmed clusters with
a nice view of the opposite hillside. There were only a few
ornamental willows on the grounds, but everything looked well kept,
shrubbery trimmed and grass mowed. While I realized Hendrix
Management should most likely be thanked for that, what struck me was
how few of the units seemed to be occupied. There were no garages,
yet only a handful of cars. Most people might be at work, but many
windows had no drapes or curtains in them. And no FOR SALE signs on
the front lawns, either.

Then, driving back toward unit number 42, I caught a
break.

A man came out the townhouse's front door, juggling a
box and some paperwork as he pulled the knob closed behind him. He
roughly tit the description my client had given me, and the burden of
the box and paperwork slowed his walk down the path to a crawl.

Pulling over and reaching under the newspaper on the
passenger's seat, I retrieved my camera. I'm not a terrific
photographer, and the man I took for Andrew Dees was some distance
away, but with a Pentax K-frame long lens I can do simple, candid
stuff well enough. I rolled down my window, the air much warmer again
now that I was a few miles from the ocean.

Dees showed clearly through the viewfinder: dark hair
and prominent brow, straight nose and strong chin. I snapped off
three head-and-shoulders portraits before he reached his car, a brown
Toyota Corolla hatchback. Dees lifted the hatch, dropping the box and
paperwork inside, then closed it and walked to the driver's door. He
turned once in my direction, and I got a fourth shot of him before he
climbed behind the wheel and drove off toward the front of the
complex.

I was leaning down to slide the camera back under the
newspaper when a male voice next to my window said, "You like to
take pixtures?"

If the voice had been normal, I probably would have
jumped. But it was squeaky and shy, and somehow it didn't startle me,
despite being so close by. I looked up into the sort of face we'd
have casually called "retarded" when I was growing up, the
compressed features and crimped ears and hanging jaw of a Down's
syndrome child.

Only the person standing next to my door wasn't a
child. At least thirty, on a stumpy frame of five-six or so, he had a
few strands of gray in the brown hair that lay flat along the ears. I
couldn't see the rest of his hair because he wore a red, white, and
blue New England Patriots ballcap down tight, almost to the eyebrows.
The rest of his outfit was a one-piece maintenance jumpsuit in faded
green, the name "PAULIE" stitched in yellow thread over the
left top pocket. He had a rake in his hands, and I realized he was
gripping the handle tightly, nervously.

"Well, do you?"

I said, "Do I like to take pictures?"

A blink and a nod.

"Yes, I do."

"Me too."

"Paulie?"

"That's me." He let go of the rake with his
right hand and traced over the embroidery. "My last name's
Fogerty, but that's not on there."

"You work here?"

A blink and a nod again. "I'm the super."

Fogerty said it proudly, and I remembered Boyce
Hendrix telling me he ran a lean ship except for thesuperintendents.

"Mr. Eh-men-dor showed me."

"Who?"

Paulie gestured toward the cluster of townhouses
where I'd seen Andrew Dees. "Mr. Eh-men-dor."

"What did he show you?"