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Authors: William G. Tapply

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“I enlarged it on my computer. It looks like the roof of a Volkswagen Beetle.”

“It looks like Albert's car,” said Ellen. “When was this photo taken?”

“Friday or Saturday.”

“So that's where he is,” she said.

“It's where he was on Friday or Saturday, apparently.”

In my head, I popped up a mental map of New England and tried to figure how I might drive from Boston to Mount Monadnock in southwestern New Hampshire. There were a lot of ways to get there. One fairly direct route would take me through the Willard Brook State Forest between Townsend and Ashby, Massachusetts.

“Does Albert own shotguns?” I said.

Ellen looked at me. “You're not thinking â¦”

I didn't say anything.

She nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact. He has quite a collection of shotguns. He considers them works of art. Shotguns are very expensive. They're Albert's only extravagance.” She paused, then added, “As far as I know.”

“He's a hunter, you said.”

“Birds. He doesn't hunt animals.”

“You hunt birds with shotguns.”

“Well, sure. He uses some of his guns for hunting, I guess. I never paid much attention. Doesn't seem to me he's done much hunting in recent years. Albert and my father used to
go hunting together. Once in a while he came home with a couple of ducks or something, and when he did, he cooked them himself. He always made a production out of it. Said that preparing the birds he'd shot elegantly and eating them ceremoniously was a way of honoring them. He cooked wild rice and found some fresh asparagus and bought an expensive wine, and I must say, they were unfailingly delicious.” Ellen narrowed her eyes at me. “I know what you're thinking, Brady Coyne. It's crazy.”

“One of us has to be objective,” I said.

“Albert keeps his shotguns locked up in a steel cabinet in the basement. He's got the key.”

“Maybe he keeps one at his camp,” I said.

“Maybe he does. I don't know. But even if he does â¦”

“I need to talk to him,” I said. “The sooner the better.”

“Well,” she said, “I wish you would. You might be thinking about who blew out that poor man's tire with a shotgun, but that's not what I'm thinking about.”

“I know.”

“Brady,” said Ellen, “will you find Albert for me?”

“I don't know if I will,” I said. “But I'll try.”

EIGHT

B
y the time I got home from my visit with Ellen, Evie had already left for work. On the bottom of the note I'd written for her she'd scribbled: “Tonight's my turn,” followed by several X's and O's.

That meant she loved me and would take care of dinner.

I put on a fresh pot of coffee, and while it was brewing I opened my big Rand McNally Road Atlas. I flipped to the index for New Hampshire and ran my finger down the list of New Hampshire towns. Southwick wasn't listed. It puzzled me until I deduced that towns with populations under five hundred didn't qualify for mention in the Rand McNally index. I guess you've got to draw the line somewhere.

I turned to the state map and finally located Southwick about halfway between Keene and Peterborough in the southwestern quadrant of the state. Just one roadâit didn't even have a route numberâpassed through the town. There appeared to be no straightforward way to get to Southwick from Boston. A series of state highways and secondary roads that included Route 119 through the Willard Brook State
Forest in north-central Massachusetts looked as direct as any.

I figured it would take a little over two hours to drive from Boston to Southwick no matter what route I took, although in late September on those winding two-lane country roadways if you found yourself behind a caravan of station wagons full of out-of-state foliage worshipersâwe New Englanders called them “leaf peepers”âit could add an hour to the journey.

By now it was a few minutes after nine, so I called Julie at the office. My only appointment for the day, she said, was the Randolph St. George divorce, and he wasn't due until eleven-thirty. I told her that's when I'd be there, and when I was done with St. George I'd probably leave for the afternoon.

She didn't even argue with me. Since Evie and I started living together, my formerly slave-driving secretary had become somewhat more tolerant of my halfhearted commitment to hanging around the office, hustling for new clients, and accruing billable hours. Julie valued romantic love and domestic bliss above billable hours, even, and I guess she figured that since I'd “settled down,” as she put it, working at home was a respectable alternative to going to the office, as long as I could convince her that I actually worked.

Well, I was grateful for her new attitude. It made no sense to me, of course. But I never pretended to understand how women think.

After I hung up, I poured a mug of coffee, fired up my computer, and printed out all the documents Gordon Cahill had e-mailed to me. When I finished I had a stack of papers half an inch thick.

Then I went looking for the Southwick, New Hampshire, connection.

I started with Albert's phone bills. From his office at Tufts he'd made several calls to Durham, New Hampshire, and a couple of others to Hanover, in the previous three months. The University of New Hampshire was in Durham, which was over toward the seacoast on the opposite side of the state from Southwick. Dartmouth College was in Hanover on the Vermont border, more than seventy miles north and west of Southwick.

I discounted those calls. I figured Albert talked with colleagues in the history departments of many universities in many states, and calls he'd made to Ithaca, Ann Arbor, South Bend, Austin, Berkeley, and a dozen or so other college towns confirmed it.

He'd made no other phone calls to anywhere in New Hampshire from either his home or his office. The phone bills didn't list calls he might have received, of course.

Four months' worth of credit-card receipts showed not a single purchase charged in the state of New Hampshire. As well as I could determine, Albert paid cash for the gas he put into his car, so I couldn't tell where he'd been.

His bank statements included photocopies of every check Albert had written in the previous four months. Not one check had been made out to a New Hampshire business or deposited in a New Hampshire bank. Nor had he made any unusually large deposits into or withdrawals from his accounts.

By now I had a stiff neck and eyestrain. Poring over documents and interpreting the significance in them was an important part of the private investigator's job. Gordon Cahill and other gumshoes I knew constantly complained about the tedium of their work. I didn't envy them. We lawyers spent a lot of time squinting at musty old lawbooks and agonizing
over the difference between a semicolon and a comma, but I wouldn't think of swapping jobs with any PI.

I wondered if Cahill had intended to point out something in these documents that explained Albert's “weird” behavior recently. If so, I couldn't see it.

I certainly saw nothing to suggest that Albert was hiding something worth committing murder to keep secret.

I ended up with two possible conclusions: One, Albert's visits to his New Hampshire hunting camp were no more than what they appeared to beâinnocent weekend getaways; or, two, Albert had been scrupulous about covering his tracks. He could've made phone calls from a pay phone or cell phone. He could've paid for everything in cash.

I hoped it was the former. I knew I'd feel a lot better if I was positive that Gordon Cahill hadn't died doing the job I'd hired him for.

So would Ellen Stoddard.

I glanced at my watch. Ten-thirty. I went back to the phone records and dialed the number for Albert's office at Tufts.

It rang five or six times before his voice mail answered. I didn't leave a message.

The phone book gave me the central number for Tufts University in Medford. I rang it and asked to be connected to the history department.

A woman answered, said I'd reached the history department and her name was Terri. She sounded downright cheerful.

I asked to speak to Professor Stoddard.

“He's not here right now,” Terri said. “Do you want his voice mail?”

“I tried his office,” I said. “He wasn't there. I need to speak to him directly. It's important.”

“I can leave a message in his box, if you want.”

“Have you seen him today?”

“Um, no. But I think he has a class this morning. Hold on a minute â¦ yes. Colonial History, nine to ten-fifteen. He's supposed to be having his office hours now. You tried his office, you say?”

“I did, yes. Do you know if he was in class?”

“Well,” she said, “he didn't call to say he wouldn't be. Wait a minute. Nellie?” It sounded as if she'd lowered the phone, but I could hear her say, “You had Colonial with Dr. Stoddard today, right?”

I heard another voice, too muffled to understand, and a moment later Terri said to me, “Hm. He didn't show up for class. That's not like him, not to call in.”

“It's not?”

“No. Professor Stoddard is very conscientious. Well, did you want to leave a message?”

“Tell him to call his wife,” I said.

I took Henry for a leg-stretcher on the Common, and when we got back home, I changed into my office pinstripe, stuffed my jeans and sneakers into an athletic bag, and started for the door.

Henry was sitting there looking at me.

“Not today,” I said to him.

He stood up and prodded the door with his nose. His little stubby tail was a whir.

“It's the athletic bag, isn't it?” I said to him.

He sat down, cocked his head, and perked up his ears.

“Oh, okay,” I said. “I could use the company.”

So Henry heeled along beside me while I retrieved my car from the garage on Charles Street, where I rented a space by the month, and he rode in the backseat while I drove to my parking garage in Copley Square, and he heeled again from the garage to my office.

We got there in time for Henry to curl up on my old sweatshirt in the corner, and for me to be sitting at my desk pretending to study legal documents, the very model of a busy Boston barrister, when Randolph St. George, my day's only appointment, arrived at eleven-thirty.

Randy and Susan, his wife of twenty-nine years, were divorcing. Massachsetts is a no-fault state, so the reasons for the St. Georges' split were legally irrelevant. Still, they were emotionally critical to Randy. A week after the wedding of their youngest daughter, Susan told him that she'd put up with him without complaint for all those years, and now she wasn't going to do it anymore. She'd already talked to an attorney. The papers were being drawn up.

Randy claimed he never saw it coming. The first time he came to me, he was steaming with fire and brimstone. He wanted to fight it.

I reminded him that it didn't work that way. In Massachusetts, if one party wants a divorce from the other, it happens. All that's left is working out the details of the settlement.

Randy said okay, fine. She wanted a settlement? He'd give her nothing. How's that for a damn settlement?

I told him it didn't work that way, either.

So over the past couple of months there had been a lot of back-and-forthing between me and Barbara Cooper, Susan's
lawyer, working out the details, and what it finally came down to was the collection of watercolors by various semiwell-known Cape Cod artists that Randy had given to Susan over the years as birthday, anniversary, and Christmas presents.

Randy claimed that since he'd bought them, by God, they were rightfully his and he intended to have them.

Susan, of course, claimed that inasmuch as Randy had given them to her, they were hers, and she had no intention of relinquishing them.

Well, divorce always has that effect on people.

When Julie ushered Randy St. George into my office, he was, as usual, huffing and puffing in wounded indignation. The issue for Randy wasn't really a collection of watercolors. It was the inconceivable absurdity of the notion that any woman would not want to be married to him.

I let him vent for about five minutes. Then I said, “She's not going to change her mind, you know.”

“It's ridiculous,” he grumbled.

“Doesn't matter. We've got a date at Concord District Court, and on that day, which is a little over a month from now, November 3, a Thursday, at ten A.M., regardless of how ridiculous it is or what you want, you're going to get divorced. All that's left is the division of assets.”

“I want those damn watercolors,” he said.

“So does Susan,” I said. “We got two choices. You and Susan can agree on what to do with them before November 3, or we can have a trial and let Judge Kolb decide.”

“Fuck it,” said Randy. “Let's have a trial.”

“Knowing Judge Kolb,” I said, “he'll just send us out to the lobby to work it out, and if we can't, he'll bring us back into court and make us argue about it for a long time in excruciating
detail, and when we're done, he'll give all the paintings to Susan. Judge Kolb gets irritated whenever these things aren't ironed out ahead of time, and he's a notorious wife's judge, so he'll probably give Susan a lot of other stuff you thought you were going to keep, too. Meanwhile, Attorney Cooper and I will pile up a lot of billable hours arguing our old arguments that won't get us anywhere.”

Randy ran the palm of his hand over his bald head. “So I get screwed no matter what. I'm losing my wife, and I'm losing my possessions, and it's costing me a shitload of money.”

I nodded. “It's the way of the world, I'm afraid.” I leaned across the conference table and tapped his arm. “Look,” I said, “it's time to put aside all the hurt feelings and the self-righteous indignation and the vindictiveness. Let's settle this thing, huh?”

Randy frowned. “You're my lawyer. You're supposed to stand up for my rights.”

“Well,” I said, “as I've been trying to tell you for two months now, your legal claim to those paintings is questionable at best. An old friend of mine used to say, âWhen you're right, go for the kill. When you're wrong, go for the compromise. ' You're pretty much wrong here. But I bet we can convince Susan to compromise on the watercolors.”

“Hm,” he said. “Compromise. Goes against my grain.”

“Then let's just give her the damn paintings and be done with it.”

He waved that idea away with the back of his hand. “I spent a lot of money on those things.”

I shrugged.

After a minute Randy said, “Compromise how?”

“Pretty obvious,” I said. “You take half the collection, she takes the other half.”

“That's not compromising,” he said. “That's admitting defeat.”

“Well, then,” I said, “we could cut each painting up the middle, give each of you half. Judge Kolb would love that.”

“Be serious,” he said.

“I am serious.”