The Death of an Ambitious Woman (9 page)

Baines was on Ruth’s cell phone in the morning before she even reached her office. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

Ruth pulled her car to the side of the road. “I’m looking for a missing man.” There was silence from the other end, until Ruth added, “And trying to find out how and why a woman died.”

“She died because her speeding car crashed into a stone wall,” Baines replied in an exasperated tone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to link this Pace guy’s disappearance to the Kendall woman’s death?”

Ruth took a steadying breath. “Because I knew you’d react exactly as you’re reacting now, and I need to find Al Pace and I’m going to find out what happened to Tracey Kendall.”

“What’s the husband’s position on all of this?”

“Mr. Kendall believes his wife’s death was a tragic accident.”

“As do I,” Baines concluded. “But now you’ve got everyone who watched the evening news last night believing this mechanic killed her. From what I understand, you have no idea where the mechanic is, no forensics, no proof of any kind.”

“That’s not true. After the broadcast last night, we got several calls from people who’ve seen Pace in Salton Beach.”

“Great. Let’s draw another jurisdiction into this mess.” Baines took a breath and continued his tirade. “I’m not sure you realize how out of control this is. Since yesterday, I’ve had calls from Jack Holden, a Susan Gleason who says she is, ‘speaking for the Kendall family,’ and some swill named Alexander Powell, Sr., who says you’re harassing his daughter-in-law.”

“I’ve had one conversation with her.”

“That’s the way it goes at this level. If you had more experience with cases like this, you’d know. How many actual murders have you had in New Derby in the last five years?”

“Six,” Ruth answered, “as you well know because your office prosecuted every one of them.”

“Let’s see if I remember—domestic, domestic, mob hit, domestic, domestic, and a john who kills a prostitute at a hotel just inside your city limits, neither of them from New Derby.”

“And those murders don’t count?”

“Do any of your victims profile even close to Tracey Kendall or her friends? Do any of them have that kind of money and reach? That kind of appeal to the public and press? Believe me, if you’ve never been involved in a case like this before, you have no idea the amount of crap that’s going to rain down on you. Why are you bothering the Kendall woman’s friends, anyway? According to your theory, your man Pace murdered her because they were lovers.”

Ruth was silent.

“Make this go away,” Baines commanded.

“Or what?”

“Do I really need to spell it out?” There was a click and Baines was gone.

At headquarters, Ruth sat in her parking space for several minutes, breathing deeply and waiting for the bright red splotches of color on her cheeks and neck to fade before she went inside. Baines was always infuriating and never more so than when he made threats. He was probably on the phone with Mayor Rosenfeld right now, complaining about her. She would have to deal with the mayor as well.

When Ruth’s cheeks stopped burning, she glanced in the rearview mirror, decided she was fine, and got out of the car. When she reached the big front doors, she squared her shoulders and put a smile on her face.

Lieutenant Lawry was standing behind the front desk managing a second visit from Mrs. Thurmond Bentley, by now known throughout the station as “the dog poop lady.” She was obviously perturbed, and Lawry’s high color indicated he wasn’t happy either.

“Mrs. Bentley, I didn’t tell you my officer would do anything this time,” Lawry explained. “I said he would confirm what you reported and we would take it from there.”

“And did he confirm it?” the old lady asked.

“Just a minute.” Lawry bent to pick up the phone, waggled his neat, white eyebrows at Ruth, punched a button on the console, and spoke. “Is Officer Cable back? Would you be kind enough to send him to me?”

Young Cable reported promptly. At six foot four, he towered over both Mrs. Bentley and his lieutenant. “Did you go out to Maple Drive this morning?” Lawry asked him.

“Why, of course he did,” the little woman exclaimed. “I could see him parked right across the street!”

“And what did you observe, Officer?” Lawry continued, as if Cable had answered the question.

“A white male, late thirties/early forties, came out of Number 296,” Cable replied, glancing at his notebook. “He was accompanied by a large canine.”

“A Great Dane the size of a horse, you mean,” Mrs. Bentley muttered.

“A very large dog,” Cable concurred.

“On a leash?” Lawry asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then what happened?”

“The man and the dog proceeded to Number 306 Maple Drive.”

“What time was this?”

“Eight
A
.
M
. exactly, sir.”

“Go on.”

“The dog walked into a patch of dead ivy—”

“Pachysandra,” Mrs. Bentley corrected.

“—where the dog took a huge—”

“Ahem,” Lawry interjected, reddening.

“Moved his—”

“Ahem.”

“Defecated,” blurted Cable, by now as red as Lawry. They both exhaled heavily.

“All of that is true,” the old lady confirmed, “and I only have one question.WHY DIDN’T YOU ARREST HIM WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE?”

“Mrs. Bentley,” Lawry answered, recovering, “it is not, in general, New Derby practice to arrest people for violating leash laws. In fact, it is not even our practice to fine people the first time they are caught.”

“The first time!”

“They are caught,” Lawry reiterated. “Officer Cable, tomorrow would you—”

“I’m not on again until Monday.”

“Ah, right. Monday, then, would you proceed to Maple Drive at eight o’clock, and if you observe this behavior again, would you issue a warning to the owner?”

There was a fractional pause while the three of them looked at each other.

“Fine,” said Mrs. Bentley, “do it your way. But I’ll tell you now, it will not work.” With that, she turned and marched away, with Cable bobbing and weaving around her, trying to beat her to the heavy door to open it for her. Lawry put his head in his hands.

Ruth regarded her lieutenant sympathetically. Perhaps Baines was right. This was what policing in New Derby was all about—Citizens with Too Much Free Time and dog poop. Had she overreached herself by insisting on pursuing the Kendall case with its high-profile victim, lack of evidence, and flimsy connections? Was she in the process of demonstrating at the worst possible moment that she couldn’t handle the chief’s job? Ruth remembered Mrs. Abbott’s advice—“If you act like the chief, you will be the chief,”—and beat the doubts back down.

“Any sign of Pace this morning?” she asked her lieutenant.

“Nothing yet,” Lawry replied. “It’s early.”

At eleven o’clock, when Ruth and Moscone arrived for their appointment with Jack Holden, Brenda O’Reilly gave them one of her wonderful smiles. “Jack wasn’t sure if you’d be coming,” she said. “I’ll tell Ellie you’re here.”

Ellie Berger appeared instantly and whisked them out of the reception area. “Jack’s on a conference call. He’ll just be a minute. You can wait in my office,” Ellie stammered as she rushed them down the hall.

Ruth and Moscone sat in the same chairs they had used the day before. Ellie Berger was at her desk, playing with a string of paper clips. Her fidgeting had a contagious effect on Moscone, who tapped his fingers on the chair arm and upped the ante by jiggling his extended right foot at warp speed. Ellie, as if responding, began shifting rhythmically on her haunches. Ruth sat quietly until she couldn’t stand the collective effects of the paper-clip clinking, bottom shifting, finger-tapping, and foot-gyrating a moment longer.

“Mrs. Berger, you seem nervous,” Ruth remarked.

Ellie smiled apologetically. “Does it show? Jack’s on a call and he didn’t give me any instructions. I don’t think he was expecting you to come after he talked to District Attorney Baines this morning. The district attorney assured him—”

“Yes, I know, I spoke to the D.A. myself this morning,” Ruth interrupted, controlling her irritation. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to imply that we wouldn’t be thorough in investigating Mrs. Kendall’s death.”

“Well, yes, I’m sure,” Ellie answered, though she didn’t seem so sure. “Anyway, I hope bringing you in here was what Jack wanted. I don’t think he’d want you waiting in the reception area. I’ve been making so many mistakes lately I’m not sure of myself. It’s so unlike me, really.”

“Mistakes?” Moscone asked.

“Well, he wasn’t happy I let you talk to Kevin and Jane. And he was even angrier yesterday afternoon when Stephen Kendall came by and I let him—”

“Stephen Kendall was here?”

Ellie Berger nodded. “He came to get Tracey’s personal things, you know, from her office. He had some boxes. I didn’t see how I could say no, even though it did seem awfully soon, so I let him. Jack was furious. He went on and on about the partnership, confidential information, proper procedures.” The office manager shrugged her soft, round shoulders.

“What did Kendall take?”

“I didn’t look in the boxes. I wasn’t going to make a fuss. Proper procedures! As long as I’ve been here, this place has been run as a family business. I’m not going to change now.”

“Did Stephen Kendall say anything to you?”

“Well, sure. What you’d expect. ‘Thank you for your kind thoughts,’ ‘We’ll let you know about the arrangements.’ That sort of thing. And they did. That nanny called back later to say the funeral is at two
P
.
M
. tomorrow at Second Unitarian.”

Jack Holden’s office was lush—leather club chairs, Oriental carpets, and antiques. In a photo on the desk, Holden gazed out, flanked by a smiling wife and three adolescents. A heavy cabinet held a TV silently flashing pictures while stock market numbers crawled across the bottom of the screen. At the windows, open drapes revealed Willow Road from where it emerged along the side of the building, down the steep hill, and past the sharp curve at the accident site, until it disappeared into the underpass under the railroad.

Holden came out from behind the massive desk, smiling, right hand extended. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” After shaking only Ruth’s hand, he moved them to a cherry conference table and offered seats. “Did Ellie get you coffee? Tea?”

“Coffee would be great,” Ruth answered. Holden opened the door and called to Ellie Berger to bring in coffee and then settled himself at the head of the conference table. Ruth studied him. What she saw confirmed her impression of the day before—a good-looking man fighting a losing battle with middle age. His facial skin was as red in repose as it had been in anger, and it contrasted eerily with the blue, blue of his eyes. His suit was well cut, but couldn’t quite disguise the heft of his midsection. He had a football player’s build that would run easily to fat. Ruth imagined it was a constant struggle to hold the line.

“Before we begin, I must apologize for yesterday,” Holden said. “I’ve been under a lot of strain since Tracey died, as you might guess. I’m worried about the business, the clients, employees—” He waved his hand toward his closed office door, indicating everything beyond it.

Ruth weighed the information. Certainly, the unexpected death of your business partner, the concerns of your clients, and needs of your employees could create a pressure-cooker environment that might cause you to lash out. But somehow, the yelling Jack Holden felt more real than the polite, contained man offering them coffee now.

Ellie Berger came in carrying three full Fiske & Holden mugs and coffee paraphernalia on a tray. When she put it down, Holden thanked her politely and asked her to close the door on the way out.

“You know, I wasn’t sure if you were coming.” Holden spoke only to Ruth, ignoring Moscone. “I called my friend Bob Baines this morning. He didn’t seem to think the investigation would amount to much.”

“How did you and Tracey Kendall meet?” Ruth asked, deliberately not responding.

“Oh.” Holden shifted in his chair, appeared to consider, and then answered. “She came to me about a job. She was Tracey Noonan then. I don’t know how she heard about me. For a long time I was under the impression she’d known my sister at boarding school, but it turns out they’d just missed each other. Hildy graduated before Tracey started. In any case, I liked her, and I knew immediately I could use her.” Holden leaned forward in his chair, warming to the story. He put his elbows on the table. Ruth noted the starched crispness of his French cuffs fastened by gold cufflinks emblazoned with a school crest. She couldn’t make out the name. Prep, college, or business school, she wondered.

“We weren’t in these offices then. My father owned that little colonial building on Wembly Street in Derby Center, just off Main. The office was four blocks from the house I grew up in. He ran Fiske & Holden as a suburban branch of a national brokerage house. In those days, your friends were your clients and your clients were your friends. They’d stop by the office every Saturday morning to smoke cigars and talk about how the markets performed that week. In the early years of the business, if one of Dad’s customers met with an untimely demise, he had almost certainly named two of Dad’s other customers as trustees, and the circle was unbroken. They continued to funnel the investment business through Dad.