Speak Ill of the Living Page 11

  “He plays better than I do.”

  Eddie poured coffee into a heavy crystal wine glass and gulped it black. Instantly, he felt his mood brighten. It was all in his head; there was no way the caffeine could enter his bloodstream that quickly. But what did it matter how it worked, so long as it did? He put the glass down with a hearty, “Ahhh!”

  Bobbi picked up the bag of coffee beans and read the label. “From Zimbabwe? Is this a joke?”

  “Everybody thinks the best java is South American,” Eddie said. “But the African coffees can compete with the best from anywhere.”

  She dropped the bag on the counter. “Give me sweet tea and I’m fine.” She opened Eddie’s freezer and looked over the bags of beans. “Where do you get all these weird coffees?”

  Eddie sipped his second cup. “The Internet—I buy everything on-line.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of identity theft?”

  “My identity they can have, it’s my money I can’t afford to lose.” The caffeine was starting to thaw Eddie’s brain. “I thought you were going to be here at seven.”

  She closed the freezer and opened the refrigerator. “No, we have to be there at seven. I’m here early to make sure you’re awake for our cab. Are these sweet pickles?”

  “I’m sick of cabs,” Eddie said. “I’m going to call a buddy of mine for some transportation on loan, while I look for a car I can afford.”

  Bobbi opened the pickle jar and sniffed. She frowned. “Sour dills,” she said, and put the jar back.

  “Our strategy today should be simple,” Eddie offered. “I lay out the truth for Mrs. Lime and then ask for her help. No con job, no lies.”

  Bobbi rolled her eyes. “That is soooo boring,” she said. “And what will she think if we admit we’re interested in her husband’s abduction because it might overturn Henry’s murder conviction? Won’t she be insulted?”

  “We don’t have to say that part,” Eddie said. Bobbi’s eyes twinkled, and Eddie realized he had already nibbled away at his own his plan to tell Mrs. Lime the truth. He felt an uncomfortable heaviness in his stomach. “Now hold on a second—”

  The telephone rang.

  “Hold that thought,” he said to Bobbi, and then answered the phone. “Hello, this is Bourque.”

  “Eddie?” said a nasally voice. “It’s Lew Cuhna.”

  “Lew?” Eddie was surprised. Cuhna had never called him before. He looked to Bobbi, shrugged, and then held up one finger, to ask for one minute of patience. She nodded and busied herself organizing Eddie’s Washington Post on the breakfast table.

  Eddie said, “How are you, Lew? Your paper has looked good the last couple weeks.”

  “Forget all that,” Cuhna said. “I’ve left you messages just in case, but I can’t take it anymore. We gotta talk, Ed.”

  “I haven’t gotten any messages. Do you mean my cell phone?”

  “No, no—it doesn’t matter. I need to see you right away.”

  “I’m on my way out. How about this afternoon?”

  “Fine, fine. At my office, two o’clock?”

  Eddie grabbed a pencil and looked around for paper. There was none. He scribbled a note to himself on the countertop. “Your place at two. What’s this about, Lew?”

  “See you there.” He hung up.

  Eddie put the phone down.

  “Sounds to me like you have a friend in trouble,” Bobbi said.

  Eddie rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Not exactly a friend.”

  A car pulled up outside, tires crunching on the sand at the side of the road.

  Bobbi stood and looked out the window. “Our cab is early,” she said. “Let’s help your brother before you help anybody else.”

  As she walked past the piano, a little gray arm shot out and plucked the dragonfly from her hair. Bobbi grabbed her head. “He stole my pin!”

  The General jumped down from the piano with his prey in his jaws. Eddie lunged for him, but the cat was ridiculously quick when he wanted to be. The General changed directions like a jackrabbit, flashed between Eddie’s legs, and vanished into the bedroom. Eddie stumbled into the coffee table, knocked over his chess set and cracked his shin. The coffee table tipped on two legs, then slowly turned over and crashed to the floor. Eddie staggered over the up-turned table, lost his balance, tucked into a partially controlled somersault, and came to rest on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  He didn’t move.

  “Are you hurt?” Bobbi asked.

  He pointed. “I’m noticing some cobwebs up there.”

  ***

  Sandra Lime lived in a low, sprawling modern home, behind a chest-high stone wall of such meticulous construction that there wasn’t a crack between the stones big enough to stick your thumb in. Two white concrete lions guarded the driveway. Behind the walls, the yard was landscaped minimally with dogwoods, white pine, and clumps of fern. There was a kidney-shaped putting green in front of the house with six practice holes marked with flagsticks.

  Eddie pounded the knocker three times. After a few moments, the chain and deadbolt began to rattle from within, and Eddie whispered to Bobbi, “I do the talking, and we tell the truth.”

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “Most of the truth,” Eddie corrected himself.

  The gigantic doorman looked like a professional football player moonlighting for extra cash in the off-season.

  They followed him to a sunroom, where Sandra Lime was waiting. She was short and petite, maybe five foot four, with a pointy chin and thin, colorless lips. Her skin was smooth and perfect, her eyes a striking deep brown. Her hair was speckled with gray, and cut as short as Eddie’s. The style might have looked too boyish on a less attractive woman, but on her, it worked. She wore a tailored grey pants suit, over a white blouse and a simple string of pearls.

  “You’re the writer,” Sandra Lime said to Eddie. Her voice was ragged, too old for the rest of her.

  Eddie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am is for old ladies,” she said. “Call me ma’am again and I’ll sic Vincent, my doorman, after you.” She didn’t smile.

  Was that a joke?

  “And you’re the assistant,” Sandra Lime said to Bobbi.

  “I am,” she said. “But you must be Sandra’s daughter. Is your mother available?” She smiled sweetly.

  “You I like,” Mrs. Lime said in the same sharp tone. “Follow me. We’ll talk in the den.” She spun and marched off.

  Bobbi turned to Eddie, flashed a smile full of teeth and followed Sandra Lime. Eddie came last, taking his time, peeking into a room with greenhouse-style windows, a library with rows of built-in bookcases and a bathroom that smelled like strawberries. The den was a pine-paneled room crammed with burgundy leather furniture, a liquid plasma television hung like a painting, and a six-sided poker table covered with red felt. Original watercolors of yachts and seashores decorated the walls.

  It had the feel of a hunting lodge, comfortable but not over-the-top. Eddie recalled Roger Lime’s biography—he had grown up a street hockey player in the middle-class Lowell Highlands neighborhood; his wealth was earned, not bred into him. And despite his reputation as a hard businessman, many people who knew Lime insisted that the bank president didn’t take himself too seriously.

  “I want a chamomile,” Sandra Lime announced. She put her hands on her hips.

  Eddie couldn’t decide if she was offering a round of tea.

  “Milk and three sugars in mine,” Bobbi ventured.

  “Nothing here,” Eddie said.

  Sandra left without another word. When Eddie was confident she was out of earshot, he leaned to Bobbi and said, “This is strange.”

  “She’s a little strict, maybe, but I wouldn’t say strange.”

  “No, I mean look at this place—obviously her husband’s game room, yet there are no pictures of him anywhere.”

  Bobbi glanced around. “I hadn’t noticed.”

&
nbsp; “There were no pictures of Roger Lime in the hall, or any of the other rooms we passed, either.”

  “Maybe she put them away because they were too painful to look at.”

  Eddie was about to argue the point, but stopped when Sandra Lime returned with a tall chrome teapot on a silver tray, and two clear glass mugs.

  “Fix it how you want it,” she told Bobbi.

  They reclined on leather. Sandra Lime sipped clear tea, and then got to the point. “I don’t know what you’re writing about my husband, Mr. Bourque, and I don’t care. I would only caution you that the final chapter has not been written, and if you publish a piece prematurely, you are sure to be embarrassed.”

  Eddie took out his notebook. “How do you mean?”

  She stared through him. “I mean that Roger has jerked me around with one childish prank after another for more than twenty years of marriage and I’m sick of it.”

  Eddie fought the urge to give Bobbi the I-told-you-so glance. He focused on Sandra Lime. Her forehead was tight, her left hand balled into a little fist, her right gripping the mug tightly.

  Bobbi interjected, “So your husband was a joker?”

  Sandra wet her lips with her tongue. “His immaturity was charming at first, when I was young. Back then he seemed childlike, not childish. For an overeducated girl raised by nuns in parochial school, Roger was…” She looked away in thought; had a sip of tea, “…he was liberating.”

  She paused. Eddie thought about prodding her with a question, but decided to wait. Silence can be a great inquisitor; it inspires people to explain.

  Bobbi interrupted the quiet: “But he went too far, right?”

  Sandra frowned at the question. Eddie ground his teeth.

  Don’t blow it, Bobbi!

  She didn’t. Sandra Lime started a story:

  “Five years ago, Roger was out sailing, alone, off the coast of Hull, when he ran up onto a sandbar—I think he was drunk, but I’ve never proven it. He left the boat at low tide and waded to shore, ran into an old fraternity friend, and went off to drink port wine and play darts, or some such thing. The Coast Guard found his boat, abandoned, saw some fish blood on the deck, and concluded that Roger must have hit his head and dropped overboard.”

  Sandra Lime paused to warm her tea with a splash from the teapot.

  “The report of his accident made the radio,” she said. “Roger thought it was the most hilarious joke. He could have called in and reported himself safe, but instead he had his friend drive him home so he could watch me mourn for him.” She stared out the window with narrow eyes. “I should have thrown a party. That would have shown him. I swore that I’d leave the very day he ever pulled a stunt like that again.

  “The whole matter was a terrible embarrassment when it made the paper around here, and the Coast Guard sent a bill for ten thousand dollars in reimbursement for the time they spent searching for him.” She sighed, angrily. “Roger paid them in nickels—he thought it was funny.”

  “I don’t remember seeing that story,” Eddie said.

  “You were working in Vermont,” Bobbi reminded him.

  “So last spring,” Sandra continued, “when the police said he was abducted, I was unable to be afraid. When they told me he was dead, I was unable to mourn. When I opened his will and saw that he wanted his ashes buried in a green coffin…” She trailed off and looked into her tea.

  Bobbi was sitting forward, like she was about to spring at Sandra Lime.

  She’ll get there, Bobbi…take it easy!

  Sandra whimpered, then quickly caught herself and said flatly, “When will that man stop tormenting me? I picture his funeral in my head and I wonder if he was there, in a disguise, counting the tears on every face to see who missed him most. I just want to know that he’s alive, so I can get out of this purgatory, between widow and wife. I just want to slap his face and file for divorce.”

  She thinks it’s a joke.

  Mrs. Lime thought her husband had arranged his own kidnapping. There was certain logic to the theory—it would be easier to hide a man who wanted to be hidden. He could vanish for a few months, maybe with a mistress in the Bahamas, and then return in pictures as if by magic—or by miracle. But Sandra was overlooking something.

  “What about the bones?” Eddie asked. “In the car. Those were somebody’s bones, if not your husband’s.”

  She looked at Eddie, wide-eyed at what the question implied. “Roger is sick,” she said, suddenly defending him. “But he wouldn’t have killed someone over a prank.” She looked at Bobbi, who nodded with gentle reassurance.

  Bobbi said to her, “Your husband could have paid somebody to steal a skeleton from an old family graveyard—not that it’s right to do that.”

  “A crime,” Sandra agreed, “but not murder.”

  Both women looked to Eddie, as if waiting for him to validate what they both believed for their own reasons—that Roger Lime had faked his own abduction. “I don’t know,” Eddie said, softly, though he wanted to believe as badly as they did.

  Chapter 13

  The cab left Eddie and Bobbi on Merrimack Street, in downtown Lowell, in front of the Dunkin Donuts. It was a short walk for Bobbi back to her hotel, and an even shorter walk for Eddie to get another coffee. It was getting close to noon, and Eddie remembered that they hadn’t eaten.

  “Do you want a hot chocolate or a slice of pizza?” he offered. “There’s a good place around the corner.”

  “Too much to do, too much to think about,” Bobbi said. “I’m going to try to call Henry, if he has any phone time left.” She stared at him. “Your brother is one stubborn son of a bitch, but I’m going to try my best to convince him it’s worth fighting for his freedom.”

  Eddie knew what she was saying. She wanted him to talk to Henry. He looked to the gum-stained sidewalk. “You’re his wife,” he said. “I barely know him.”

  She laughed softly.

  Eddie couldn’t see the joke. “What?”

  “You barely know him?” she said, tears in her eyes. “Ed, you are him. Jesus—the two of you are like little clones.”

  “Huh? Because we’re both gullible?”

  “Yes, that’s one thing. There’s about a million others.” She reached for him, stroked his neck tenderly one time. “I talk to you and I hear Henry. Like him or not, he’s your family. And I promise that if you got to know him, you’d like him.”

  Eddie sighed heavily. “For my whole life, Henry has been my dark secret,” he said. “My closest friends in this city think I’m an only child.”

  She stepped back and looked at him intensely.

  “I see it now,” she said. “The shame—a lifetime of it—weighing you down. You’re afraid to let it go. How come?”

  She waited. Eddie wouldn’t answer. She answered for him: “Your shame is some kind of badge of honor for you. ‘Look at me,’ you can say, ‘I’m so good, not like that nasty person in jail.’”

  She had struck close to the truth, but hadn’t reached deep enough. “That’s not exactly right,” Eddie said, surveying inside himself for the answer. He couldn’t see it; it was hiding from him.

  Bobbi let out a deep breath and then slumped a little. “Enough berating on my part,” she said. “For now.” She playfully punched Eddie’s shoulder. “Just think about it. You have nothing to lose and a brother to gain. I’ll bet he’d give you a battle across a chessboard.”

  Eddie smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want lunch?”

  She nodded and hurried off. “I’ll be in touch. Thanks, little brother-in-law.”

  It wasn’t like Bobbi to turn down free food, but Eddie didn’t complain. He had a meeting with Lew Cuhna in just over two hours, and he had to solve his transportation problems.

  But first, more coffee. He bought a hazelnut with cream, and then used his cell phone to dial Durkin at The Daily Empire.

  After four rings came the answer, “Yo.”

  “Durk,
it’s Eddie Bourque looking for another favor.”

  Durkin chuckled. “The ink truck doesn’t come again for two weeks, skinny boy,” he teased. “Can you fit in my duffle bag?”

  “Different kind of favor—not newspaper files.”

  “Wanna see if you can fit in the bag anyway?”

  Eddie smiled. “That’s it, old man,” he said. “I will beat you with your own crutches if you don’t shut your friggin’ pie hole and listen for two seconds.”

  Durkin laughed like a revving chainsaw: “Ha-ha-ha-HAAAAA! HAA!”

  “I need transportation,” Eddie said, “and I know you’re something of a gear head. Can you save me from blowing any more beer money on cab fare?”

  “Mmmm,” Durkin said. Eddie could picture him stroking his stiff beard. “Possible, Bourque. What’s your criteria? Fast? Roomy? Off-road capability?”

  “Cheap.”

  “Ha! Cheap we can do. A buddy I served with in Vietnam just croaked—God rest his soul.” Durkin quietly blessed himself, “…name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” He continued, “So my buddy’s widow gave me his wheels, which I can’t use because my left leg is stuck in a cypress tree about nine thousand miles from here, and I haven’t had time to modify the vehicle. You can take it as a loaner, until we can track down something you might want to pay for.”

  “I need it now,” Eddie said.

  “Of course you do, you demanding little bastard. You know Tony’s place?”

  “The Italian restaurant?”

  “Naw, the other Tony. The auto-garage.”

  “I thought the cops shut him down for making book.”

  “He’s open again. Got acquitted after a witness refused to testify—he got cold feet.”

  “Better than cement feet, I guess,” Eddie said.

  “Meet me at Tony’s in twenty minutes and I’ll hook you up with a new ride.” Durkin chuckled in a way that put a lump in Eddie’s throat.

  ***

  Tony’s place was a one-story white clapboard garage that sagged in the middle. There were two rusted double-gravity gas pumps outside that probably hadn’t moved fuel since Henry Ford stopped here for a fill-up. The side lot was dirt and weeds, with dark oil spots and a row of junked cars—old Buicks, first-generation mini-vans, an ancient green Packard with what looked like bullet holes in the door and—Eddie gasped!—a Chevy Chevette, with four flat tires and patchwork body of Bondo and primer.