Widow’s Walk (5 page)

“Si?”

“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m working for Mary Smith. You do her housecleaning.”

“I clean for Mr. Smith,” she said. “Fifteen years.”

“Not Mrs. Smith?”

“She come along. I clean for her, too.”

“The police think she murdered her husband. What do you think?”

“I think I am very impolite. Please come into my house.”

“Thank you.”

She took me to the kitchen in the back of the house and made me some coffee. The woodwork and cabinets were stained a dark brown and gleamed with many coats of varnish. The vinyl tile flooring was made to look like quarry tile and gleamed with many coats of wax. I sat at a glistening white metal kitchen table and drank from a mug with a Red Sox logo on it.

Esther Morales sat across the table from me and had some coffee, too.

“Are you with the police?” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’m a private detective hired by the lawyer who represents Mrs. Smith.”

“So you are trying to help Mrs. Smith?”

“I’m sort of trying to find out the truth of what happened,” I said.

“She killed him.”

“You know that?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you know,” I said.

“Mr. Smith was a very nice man. He was very pleasant. He paid me well and gave me nice presents on the holidays.”

I nodded.

“Then she came,” Esther said.

“Yes?”

“She is not nice.”

“How so?” I said.

Esther frowned. I realized that she didn’t understand the expression.

“What wasn’t nice about her?” I said.

“She was bossy. She yelled at me. She yelled at Mr. Smith.”

“What did she yell about?”

“She would yell about money.”

Why should they be different.

“Anything else?” I said.

“I could not always hear them and, sometimes, when people speak too fast or speak oddly, my English…” She shrugged.

“How about Mr. Smith? He ever yell at her?” I said, “No. He was very kind to her. Sometimes she would make him cry.”

“They have friends over?”

“She did,” Esther said.

Esther disapproved of the friends.

“Female friends?” I said.

“No.”

“How about Mr. Smith?”

“Only the young men.”

“Young men?”

“Yes. He helped them. He was a, I don’t know the word in English. Mentor.”

“Same in English,” I said. “He mentors young men?”

“Yes. He is very generous. He helps poor boys to go to school and learn to do work and get ahead.”

“And they came to his house?”

“Yes. He would teach them at his home.”

“How about Mrs. Smith. She ever teach them?”

Esther was too nice to snort, but she breathed out a little more than normal.

“And why do you think she killed him?”

“For money.”

“His inheritance?” I said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Money he would leave her.”

“Yes.”

“Was there a gun anywhere around the house?”

“I did not see one.”

“Do you know anything I could use to prove that she killed him?” I said.

“She is a bad woman.”

I nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Just what I have told you.”

“Do you know anyone else who might have killed Mr. Smith?”

“No. It was she.”

I finished the last of my coffee.

“This is very good coffee, Mrs. Morales.”

“Would you wish more?”

“No. Thank you very much. I’ve kept you long enough.”

Esther walked me to the door.

“She is a terrible woman,” Esther said.

“Maybe she is,” I said.

I thanked her again and left and walked back toward Codman Square past a dark blue Ford with its motor on, to the convenient hydrant where I had parked my car.

Rita Fiore let me in when I rang the bell. She was spectacular in a slim black and green polka-dot skirt and a bright green blouse.

“Mary asked me to sit in on your meeting,” Rita said.

“Doesn’t she get it that we’re on the same side?” I said.

“I think she doesn’t like to be alone with people.”

“They might use a big word?”

“Kindness, now,” Rita said. “Kindness.”

We went into an atrium that looked over the small spectacular garden that someone maintained for Mary in the not entirely nourishing soil of Beacon Hill.

Mary stood when we came in. She was wearing high-waisted gray slacks and a white silk scoop-neck T-shirt. She was barefoot. A pair of black sling-back shoes were on the floor near the couch. One of them was upright. The other had fallen over.

“Oh, Mr. Spenser,” she said, and put out her hand like a lady in a Godey print. “It is so lovely to see you. I mean it. It’s really lovely.”

“Gee,” I said.

“Will you have coffee?”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m trying to cut back.”

“Good for you.”

“Brave,” Rita said.

I ignored her.

“Mrs. Smith,” I said. “Do you ever eat in a restaurant located in a store?”

“Louis‘,” she said. “They have a lovely cafe. I often have lunch there.”

One point for DeRosa.

“Do you know a man named Roy Levesque?” I said.

“Who?”

“Roy Levesque.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You went to high school with him. Dated him for a while, I believe.”

“Oh, that one.”

“Yes.”

Mary sat, quiet and attentive and blank. It wasn’t like talking to a dumb seventh-grader, it was like talking to a pancake.

“You still see him,” I said.

Mary smiled and shrugged.

“Old friends,” she said. “You know? Old friends.”

“Whom you just a minute ago said you didn’t know.”

She smiled and nodded. I waited. She smiled some more. Rita crossed her legs the other way.

“Tell me about the young men that your husband, ah, mentored,” I said.

Rita glanced at me. Mary smiled some more.

“He was so kind to them,” Mary said. “He’d been a lonely little boy, I guess, and he wanted to make it easier for other lonely little boys.”

“He give them money?” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know. I really never had much to do with our finances.”

“Help them out going to school? Maybe?”

“I’ll bet he did,” Mary said. “He was such a generous man.”

“He’d not been married before?” I said.

“No. He was a confirmed bachelor,” she said. “Until he met me.”

“Do you know why?” I said.

“Why what?”

I took in some air. It was tinged with her perfume, or maybe Rita’s, or maybe both.

“Do you know why he was a confirmed bachelor?”

“No.”

She shook her head. Eager to please. Sorry that she couldn’t supply more information.

“Do you know that he’d taken in a partner at the bank?”

“Oh no, I know nothing about the bank, or any of the other things.”

“Other things?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She laughed. “Nathan was always up to something.”

“Do you know what they were?”

She shook her head.

“Are you sure you won’t have coffee?” she said.

I shook my head. I was sure I needed a drink.

“Do you stay in touch with any other people from your high school days?” I said.

“Well, Roy.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not really.” She smiled again. “I’ve reached out to them, but they aren’t, um, comfortable in my, ah…” She made a circular gesture with her hands.

“Circles,” Rita said.

“Oh, yes, thank you. Sometimes I have such trouble thinking what I want to say.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said. “You know Felton Shawcross?”

“Felton? I don’t think so.”

“CEO of a company called Soldiers Field Development Limited.”

“I don’t really know anything about companies,” she said.

“He was on the list of friends you had Larson give me.”

“Oh, well, mostly Larson keeps that list. They are people who contribute money to things and when I have a big charity event, Larson invites them.”

“So you don’t know Shawcross?”

She shook her head sadly.

“Would Larson have consulted your husband on that invitation list?” Rita said.

I could tell she was getting bored. She didn’t like being bored. Her voice had a small edge to it.

“I don’t really know. They were certainly pals,” she said. “They might have.”

“Larson come to you through your husband?” Rita said.

Asking questions was better than sitting around crossing her legs.

“Yes,” Mary said. “He’s so really nice, isn’t he?”

“Really,” Rita said.

“How did he know your husband?”

“Oh God, I don’t know. Some businessy thing.”

Hard questions made her panicky. I moved on.

“Could you tell me how much your husband left you?” I said.

“Money?”

“Yes.”

“Oh I couldn’t possibly imagine,” she said. “You’d have to ask Brink.”

“Brink?”

“Yes.”

“Who is Brink,” I said.

“Our financial advisor.”

“What would be his full name?” I said.

“Oh, I’m so used to him just being Brink. He’s a really old friend.”

“His name?”

“Brink Tyler. I think Brink is short for Brinkman.”

“And where would I find him?”

“He’s got an office in town here,” she said.

“Under his own name?”

“No he works for a big company.”

“Called?”

“Excuse me?”

“The name of the company,” I said.

“Oh, Something and Something,” she said. “I don’t know.” She frowned for a moment. “I have his phone number though.”

“That would be fine,” I said.

She stood gracefully and walked regally out of the room.

“I need a drink,” Rita said.

“Right after we leave,” I said.

Mary came back into the room with a pale green sheet of notepaper, on which she had written a phone number in purple ink. Her handwriting was very large and full of loops. I folded the paper and tucked it into my shirt pocket.

“Are you familiar with Marvin Conroy?” I said.

“Marvin?”

“Conroy,” I said.

The little frown came back. She thought about the name.

“No,” she said. “I’m really not.”

We talked for a while longer. Mary remained eager and impenetrable. Finally neither Rita nor I had anywhere else to go. We thanked Mary and assured her that we were making good progress, which was a lie. We were making so little progress that I would have been pleased with bad progress. Mary walked us to the door and said she really hoped she’d been a help. We said she had, and left and went to the Ritz bar and had two martinis each. From our seat in the window I could see a black Lincoln Town Car, double-parked with its motor running, on Arlington Street.

They made many kinds of martinis here and would serve you a small sampling of three if you wished. Susan and Estelle both wished. Hawk and I stuck with the old favorite.

“I love how they look in the glass,” Estelle said.

Hawk smiled and didn’t say anything. Hawk could be comfortable not saying anything for longer than anyone I’ve ever known. Oddly his silence didn’t make you uncomfortable. It was somehow natural to him. Susan was silent, too. That didn’t make me uncomfortable either, but it wasn’t natural to her. She had already drunk the first little martini, which was sort of a pale green, and had begun on the pink one. This, too, wasn’t natural to her. Normally she would nurse those three little martinis for the night. It looked like the conversation was up to me and Estelle.

“You’re a doctor?” I said.

“Yes. I run a fertility clinic in Brookline.”

“Been running one of those most of my life,” Hawk said.

“I know,” Estelle said. “And it’s fine work that you do.”

The waitress came and took our order. Susan seemed not very interested in the menu. She said she’d have what I had. The black river glistened in the light sprawl from the city. I could see the Citgo sign, which had become famous solely by being visible behind the left-field wall at Fenway. To the right the gray towers of Boston University stuck up too high.

“You okay,” I said to her softly.

She shook her head.

“Want to talk about it?”

She shook her head again.

“Want to go home?”

Shake.

I patted her thigh. She picked up the pink martini and finished it. There were tears in her eyes.

I said, “Hey.” And put my arm around her shoulders. Probably the wrong move. She’d been holding it together before that. Now she began to cry. There was no noise. Just tears on her face and her shoulders shaking. I tried to pull her a little closer so she could cry against my chest. She didn’t want to. We sat for a moment with my arm around her, patting her far shoulder.

“You like to be alone?” Hawk said.

Susan shook her head.

We were quiet. Susan took her napkin from her lap and wiped her eyes.

“Is my makeup fucked?” she said.

Estelle looked at Hawk. Hawk smiled.

“She coming out of it,” he said.

“You look fine,” I said.

“I’m sorry to be such a jackass,” Susan said.

“Is there anything I can do?” Estelle said.

“No. Thank you.”

“You want to talk?” I said. “You want to leave it be?”

“I don’t want to talk,” Susan said, “but I fear that I must. You can’t suddenly burst into tears in the middle of dinner and offer no explanation.”

“You can if you want to,” I said.

Susan shook her head. “I lost a patient today,” she said.

No one said anything. Estelle looked like she might, but Hawk put his hand on her thigh and she didn’t.

“A boy, nineteen years old. He killed himself.”

“Did you know he was suicidal?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you feeling that you should have done more and better?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know why he killed himself?”

“He was gay, and he didn’t want to be,” she said. “That’s why he was seeing me. He desperately wanted to be straight.”

“Isn’t that a little outside the scope of your service?” I said.

As she talked she began to focus on the subject, as she always did, and in doing so she came back into control.

“It is hideously incorrect to say that one can help people change their sexual orientation. But in fact I have had some success, in doing just that.”

“Helping gay people to be straight?” Estelle was startled.

“Or straight people to be gay. I’ve had some success doing both. The trick is over time to find out where they want to go, and where they can go, and try to achieve one without violating the other.”

“I’ve never heard that,” Estelle said.

She was genuinely interested, but there was that sound in her voice that doctors get which says, in effect, “If I haven’t heard of it, it’s probably wrong.”

“No one is willing to incur the vast outrage that would ensue,” Susan said.

“It’s your experience,” Hawk said.

“One ought not to have such an experience,” Susan said. “And if one were stupid enough to have it, one should surely not talk about it.”

“Shrinks, too,” I said.

“Hard to believe,” Hawk said.

“We’ve all known people who were married,” Susan said, “and left the marriage for a same-sex lover. Why is it so impossible to imagine it happening the other way?”

“But who would be gay, if they could choose?” Estelle said.

“That is, of course, the existing prejudice,” Susan said. “But it also implies that those who led straight lives could have chosen not to before they did.”

Estelle didn’t look too pleased about existing prejudice, but she didn’t remark on it.

“I guess, as I think of it, that if a gay person entered into a straight relationship I’d assume it was only a cover-up.”

“As if gay is permanent but straight is tenuous,” Susan said.

“I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before,” Estelle said.

Susan nodded. “It’s a hard question,” she said.

“Kid making any progress?” Hawk said.

Susan smiled without pleasure.

“Yes. But it wasn’t the direction he’d come to me looking for.”

“He was discovering that maybe he wasn’t going to change?” I said.

“Yes.”

“You did what you could,” Estelle said.

“I wonder if he’d have been better off without my help,” Susan said.

“The rescue business is chancy,” I said.

Susan smiled at me slowly, and patted my forearm.

“It is, isn’t it,” she said.