Mansions Of The Dead (27 page)

“Can you take me to Somerville?” she asked the man behind the wheel.

He studied her for a moment and then he said, “Of course I can. I’m a cabdriver, aren’t I.” She smiled and got in.

As he pulled away from the curb, he watched her for a moment in the rearview mirror. “You look as though you’d seen a ghost,” he said, and she glanced up at her reflection in the mirror.

“No,” she said, “Not a ghost.”

SWEENEY FOUND QUINN’S ADDRESS
in the phone book once she got home. His little double-decker, in a section of Somerville that was only starting to be gentrified, was well kept, with rows of tulips and daffodils blooming all along a stone path, and a new door-mat printed with “Welcome.” The other houses on the quiet street were all tidy too, and there was a kind of Old World feel to the neigh-borhood—tiny front gardens, vinyl siding, a few with flamingoes or garden gnomes keeping watch.

Sweeney looked at her watch. It was eleven. She had no right to be bothering him at home, but she felt like she had to tell him what she had found out in person. Hell, he was a cop. He was probably used to getting interrupted at ungodly hours.

And besides, it appeared that he was still up. Lights burned in the house and she could hear a TV blaring from somewhere inside.

She knocked on the door and listened to footsteps come closer and closer. The inner, wooden door opened and a woman stood behind the glass, staring out at Sweeney. She had short blond hair that looked as though it had been dried in a hurricane, and a face that was distinctive for its high cheekbones and perfect skin. She was petite—no
more than five foot one or so, but she seemed somehow swollen, as though she had suddenly put on a lot of weight. She was dressed in sweatpants and a man’s flannel shirt and she had been crying. As soon as the door opened, Sweeney had a sense of crisis, the feeling that something disastrous had happened in this house. The woman stared at her.

“Is Detective Quinn here?” Sweeney asked.

“Who are you?”

“Can you tell him that Sweeney St. George is here to see him? It’s kind of an emergency.”

“What do you want?” The woman stared at her in silence for a couple of minutes and then said, “Who are you? Are you having an affair with him?” But she didn’t seem to be angry, rather she stared at Sweeney dreamily. “Do you love him?”

“I . . . No . . . I . . . ” She was starting to be consumed by panic when she heard Quinn’s voice from inside the house.

“Maura, who is it?” he called out. “What’s going on?”

The woman stared at Sweeney for another moment and then she just turned away, as though she had answered the door to find that there was no one there.

“Maura, hold on, I . . . ” Quinn’s voice came from a room somewhere inside the house and Sweeney just stood there in the doorway, unable to move.

“Who is it?” he called out in a panicky voice.

Through the open door, Sweeney saw him come into the room. He looked terrified, as though he didn’t know what he was going to find out there.

She stared.

Quinn was holding a very new baby. And as he stood there, staring back at her, as though she were the absolute last person he had expected to see on his doorstep, the baby began to whimper, and then to cry, horrible, despairing cries that seemed as though they could never be soothed.

“My wife . . . she’s . . . she’s had a hard time since Megan was born,” Quinn said finally.

After she had explained why she was there, Sweeney had sat down on the couch and held the baby while Quinn took his wife upstairs. She was still new-baby light and she stopped crying after a few moments and let Sweeney hold her in the crook of her arm and stroke her tiny hands.

“It was a difficult birth and she’s been kind of depressed,” he said, putting the baby into a little carrying cradle and setting it on the floor next to him. The room was overly warm, with floral wallpaper that was too busy for Sweeney’s taste and slipcovered furniture. On the wall over the couch was a shamrock encrusted plaque with the words “May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. May the rains fall softly upon your fields until we meet again. May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”

“That’s really normal, you know. The hormones and all.” The baby was making tiny kitten sounds, and Sweeney leaned forward to smile at her.

“Yeah, well, this is . . . something more serious. I don’t know.”

“Has she seen a doctor? Sometimes medication can help.”

“Yeah, yeah. I made sure she was seeing a doctor. She’s taking the antidepressants and all. It didn’t seem like it tonight, but I think she’s actually getting better. We were hoping that . . . Anyway, I’m sorry about . . . that.”

Sweeney wanted to say something that would make him feel not so ashamed and so she said, “I’ve got lots of depression in my family. Nothing shocks me.”

He smiled. “Good. So how did you figure out he was lying?”

“He mentioned something about finding Brad tied up with ropes.” She watched his face. “Not neckties.”

Quinn didn’t say anything.

“I know I probably wasn’t supposed to know about that, but Becca Dearborne called a few friends before you got to the apartment. I heard from a friend of mine that he was tied up with neckties.”

He stood up and went over to the window. “Shit. We were holding that information back. Half the kids in Boston probably know by now.” The baby started to cry and Quinn picked her up, hoisting her so she could peer over his shoulder and pacing around the living room as he talked. “I’ll have to talk to them again tomorrow. And don’t even ask if you can be there.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think I want to be there when you lay into them.”

He grinned. “You’re telling me.”

“I figure it has to be Camille,” Sweeney said. “I mean, she’s the one with the most to lose from being involved in this. It could be Drew, but somehow . . . I don’t know.I just don’t buy it.”

“You may be right. We’ll see,” Quinn said quietly. “I really appreciate your telling me all this.”

They were silent for a little while, watching the baby.

Finally Sweeney said, “There’s an idea I have and it’s going to sound kind of crazy to you, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. You remember the mourning brooch that said ‘Beloved Son, Edmund’?”

He nodded.

“Well, as you know I had been kind of interested in it and when we found out that the jewelry came from the Putnam family, I tried to figure out who the brooch had belonged to. It turns out that it belonged to Belinda Putnam, whose son Edmund died in 1888.

“Remember, the brooch had the dates of his birth and death on the back? March 4, 1864, to June 23, 1888. Well, I got interested in Be-linda Putnam so I went to Mount Auburn Cemetery, where the family has a plot, and I found Edmund’s stone.”

“Okay?” Quinn said, looking impatient. “And?”

“And the date of birth on his stone is different from the one on the
brooch. The stone says he was born on December 4 and the brooch says March 4, three months later.”

“It must have been some sort of mistake,” Quinn said. “I’m sure people got things wrong on gravestones all the time.”

“But remember the mourning necklace,” Sweeney said. “Belinda Putnam made it or had it made after her husband Charles died—in April 1863.” The implications dawned on him as Sweeney said, “I don’t think it’s humanly possible for a woman to be pregnant for twelve months.”

“So if the date on the brooch is right, it means that Edmund Putnam wasn’t his kid.”

“Yeah.”

“So you think Brad figured this out?”

“I don’t know. He may have been about to figure it out. I’ve looked at some of his notes for my class and I think he was looking into it. What if he had suspicions and expressed them to his family? What if someone in the family became concerned that he was going to reveal that their ancestor was illegitimate?”

“But what would it all mean? This was a hundred years ago. It’s not like they’d take back all the Putnams’ money, is it?”

“I don’t know. It would depend on what his will said. Charles Putnam had a brother and his descendants might have a case to make that some of the Putnam fortune should go to them.”

“Can you get hold of wills that old?”

“Well, I’ve done a bit of genealogical research and I know you can get copies of probate documents from the Massachusetts Archives. I suppose the birth records for Edmund Putnam might help too, though I imagine that if there was any kind of subterfuge, they would have filed a birth certificate with the earlier date.” She paused. “There may be another way, though.”

Quinn was rubbing the baby’s back and he looked up at her. “Yeah?”

“What if we could establish paternity by doing a DNA test?”

“But how could we possibly get samples from people who have been dead for a hundred and fifty years?”

“There’s the jewelry,” Sweeney said. “The necklace and the locket both have samples of Charles Putnam’s hair. All you’d have to do is take a small piece. It’s iffy—apparently you have to have a piece of the root, so if the hair was cut it won’t work. But if it was pulled out, there may be enough genetic material to do a test. There’s a chance anyway. You have access to a forensics lab, right? Apparently a small sample of hair is enough to tell us whether the two people are related. If they’re not, then we know that Edmund Putnam wasn’t the son of Charles Putnam. And if that’s true, and if Brad figured it out when he was studying the jewelry, it gives us a motive for his murder.”

“Okay, but even if I could do this, which I don’t think . . . But even if I could, where are you going to get a sample to compare it with?” he asked. “The Putnams are acting pretty suspicious, but I don’t think I’ve got grounds to request DNA samples.”

Sweeney waited a second. “Well, that’s what I was thinking. I’m sure that the lab has examples of Brad’s DNA, to compare later in case something turns up.”

Quinn raised his eyebrows and nodded, warming to the idea. “I don’t know. I have a friend down at the lab. Let me see what he says. But I’m not promising anything.”

“I know, I know.” She yawned. The clock over the television said 2
A.M
. “In the meantime, I’ll look into the probate and birth records, see if I can find anything.”

“I’ll let you know what my friend says.” The baby started fussing and he lifted her up in the air, holding her over his head and smiling at her. Her tiny, wizened face broke into something like a smile.

“It was nice to meet you, Megan,” Sweeney said, smiling at her too, then turning to Quinn. “She’s really beautiful.”

“Thanks.” He grinned, for a moment anyway, then got up and walked her to the door. “If you learn anything else, let me know.”

THE TEAKETTLE WHISTLED
.

Andrew Putnam sat up. He had dozed off for a moment, sitting at the kitchen table and reading the paper, and now he went to the stove and turned off the gas, then searched through four cabinets before he found the box of Earl Grey tea bags.

Normally, Greta was there to do it for him. But since Brad’s death, he’d been unable to stand having her in the house and he’d given her a month off to visit her mother in Munich. The kids had worried about him being alone, picturing him falling off the wagon no doubt. Cammie had even offered to move in for a while, but he had convinced her that he’d be okay.