Act of God (14 page)

“You mean, what the policies would pay?”

“Yes.”

“The same for everybody, a hundred thousand.”

“Payable?”

“Half to each.”

“So when your sister died …”

“Darbra got half, and Will-yum got half.”

“And now?”

“And now Will-yum dies and Darbra’s up a hundred, and vice versa.”

“You don’t participate?”

“Hey, I pay the premiums, pal, which isn’t so easy, this place not exactly being Tiffany’s, you know? Matter of fact, I may have to expand the stock.”

“Expand?”

“Into the seventies. God, it makes me gag. Imagine having to put up posters of the Bee Gees and Travolta and carry fucking leisure suits?”

“But you don’t get anything if either your niece or nephew dies.”

“No, like I said. I promised Barbra, and a promise is a promise, but I think it’s kind of … I don’t know, ghoulish to bet against the generation behind you, despite all this stuff I try to peddle from when we were young.”

I didn’t quite follow her, but I didn’t want to get involved in another talk about inventory. “Ms. Nugent—”

“How about ‘Darlene,’ okay? I feel ancient enough already with this conversation.”

“Darlene, I’m sorry to have to open old wounds, but how did your sister die?”

“How?” Nugent began to play with the ends of her hair, which were down around her waist. “The how’s easy. She went off the roof of her apartment house.”

“Where?”

“Down in Quincy. That was the Nugent sisters for you, both of us ended up living in historic towns, Barbra down by the Adamses’, me by the witches.”

“Suicide?”

“Not how the cops saw it. She was up there to sit in the sunshine, bathing suit and all. Two kids into their twenties, and Barbra still had a figure for it. Not like …” Nugent let go of the hair. “Anyway, she was up there on a weekday, by herself, and they figure she went to get up from her chair and pitched over the edge. Ten stories to the ground.”

Nugent’s voice had become elevatorlike, no emotion at all in it. I said, “Before, you started to say ‘the how’s easy.’ ”

“What?”

“You said the how’s easy.”

“Oh, right. The how is she fell like a hundred feet. The why is like a hundred thousand.”

“The policy.”

“Yeah. Or I guess fifty thousand, huh, since they never liked each other enough to get together and plan something.”

“You think Darbra or William killed your sister?”

“Right. For the money.”

“But the police didn’t.”

“No. There was one, he kind of swung with me on it. But the cops couldn’t do anything about it, and the insurance company had to pay, too, because there was no—what do you call it, ‘physical evidence’?”

“And no eyewitnesses.”

“Except the one who did it. Either could have given Barbra that push. Imagine that, killing the woman who brought you into this fucking world?”

“Do you remember the names of anybody from the insurance company?”

“Are you kidding?”

“How about the police officer?”

“You mean the one who was with me on it?”

“Yes.”

“Christ, no. That was what, five years ago? Let me tell you, five minutes after you leave, I won’t even remember yours.”

“How about the name of the insurance company?”

“Same.”

“You don’t remember that, either.”

“No. No, it’s the same company as now, as the policies on Darbra and Will-yum.”

Nugent reeled off one of the big national outfits, which would make things both easier and harder. I said, “The police officer was from Quincy, though?”

“That’s where it happened.”

“I mean, he wasn’t from the State Police.”

“Oh. Let me … No, no he was from the Quincy cops, account of I remember that’s what it said on his car.”

Time to change the subject. “Can you think of any reason your niece would disappear?”

“Not unless it had to do with a man. Darbra’s a slut, you could even see it in her as a kid. We’d go shopping or ride the train—she loved the trains, even just the subways like the Red Line from Quincy into Boston? And you’d watch her, and she’d be watching the men. Any size or shape, age or color. She’d just watch, really like … concentrating. At first I figured it was because she never knew her own father, you know? She didn’t have one around the house—and my sister was real good about that, though my guess is she’d had her fill of men with her husband and how he turned out—but Darbra now, she wasn’t just watching them, she was … studying them, maybe? Trying to figure out what they were like, maybe
what
they liked. And she found out they liked her, and she became a real slut. Sorry, but there’s just no other word for it.”

“Darlene—”

“Hey, you know the difference between a slut and a bitch?”

“No. I—”

“A slut is somebody who sleeps with everybody in town. A bitch is somebody who sleeps with everybody in town except you.”

I waited for her to finish laughing. “You know any of the men in Darbra’s life?”

“Not by name. Not at all, in fact. I just know there must be some, nonstop and probably overlapping. The kids nowadays, they have an expression for people like Darbra. They say, ‘A-tisket, a-tasket, the condom or the casket.’ Thank God we didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff in our day, huh?”

“Right. You know anything about your nephew’s life?”

The two vampire teeth gleamed at me. “And whether there are any men in it?”

“Whatever.”

“No. No, if anything, I like Darbra better, for all her faults, than Will-yum. At least with her there’s some … action, some living. Will-yum, he’s like one of the Body Snatchers, you know?”

“The movies?”

“Yeah. One was in the fifties, and the remake was the seventies, so I don’t have anything on them here. But he goes around the way the people did after they went through the pods, kind of … dead inside. Robots who did what they did, imitating life.”

I looked at her.

She said, “That’s why I was surprised to hear you say Will-yum hired you. He’s always been pretty tight with a buck. A buck, hell, Will-yum wouldn’t pay ten cents to see Christ ride a bike.”

I kept looking at her.

Nugent said, “What’s the matter?”

“I was thinking, if either your niece or nephew did kill your sister, you must have thought about which one it was.”

The vampire smile again. “I’ve thought about that a lot, you know? One of them a murderer, and here I’m paying for insurance policies on each of them because the one that
got
murdered made me promise to. But I finally gave up and decided I’d just wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for one of them to collect on the other. Then I figured I’d know for sure.”

As I opened the door to leave, the cowbell reminded me of another movie.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
the scene where Eric Idle walks along behind the plague cart, ringing a bell and calling, “Bring out your dead.”

Only this time it didn’t strike me funny.

C
RAWLING SOUTH IN THE
traffic on Route 1 back toward Boston, I pieced together what I’d learned so far. Five years ago, Barbra Proft dies in a fall that her sister, Darlene, believes was murder. William and Darbra split a hundred thousand dollars of insurance proceeds. A year ago, Darbra moves to the Commonwealth Avenue building with Traci Wickmire and starts an affair with Roger Houle. Then three and a half months ago, in mid-March, Darbra calls her aunt to check if the remaining policies on her and her brother are still in force. A month or six weeks ago, Wickmire overhears Darbra’s half of the “sugar daddy” telephone conversation. Some time later, Darbra breaks up with Houle in a melodramatic scene at Grgo’s restaurant and about the same time starts an affair with Rush Teagle. A week or so after that, Abraham Rivkind is killed at the furniture store. Another week later, Darbra leaves for vacation in New Jersey, mode of transportation unknown, calling Wickmire in the middle of the week from Sunrise or Sunrise Beach. Then Darbra supposedly returns on Saturday, Teagle saying she left him a conveniently lost note, nobody else hearing boo from her. Darbra’s suitcase and accumulated mail are on her bed, but none of the other things you’d expect a returning vacationer to do seem to have gotten done.

There might be a pattern in there somewhere, but I couldn’t see it.

After leaving the Central Artery at South Station, I found a parking space in the Leather District. Until the 1830s, the area was known as South Cove, and with good reason, since it was under water and provided wharf space for merchant goods. Then the cove, like Back Bay, was filled in to create more livable land. After a fire in the 1870s, the area was rebuilt as the center of the shoe industry, which gave the district its name. Now most of the shoe manufacturers and their warehouses are gone, replaced by artists’ lofts, galleries, and restaurants.

I treated myself to a heavy lunch at the Loading Zone, a converted warehouse on Kneeland Street with hustling waitrons, great barbecue, and a wide selection of ales on tap. Then I walked over to Value Furniture.

From the curb, the store also looked like it was converted from a warehouse, but what a warehouse. Four stories tall, the windows were bays on the first three floors and Palladians on the top, with ornate, flagged spikes like medieval lances guarding the roof. The facade was marble, curlicues and other detail work around the sills and corners. The entrance was two massive brass doors, and I tugged open the one on the right.

I was barely across the threshold when a pert young woman with a smile like a toothpaste commercial and a hairstyle like the national boundaries of Iraq met me. “Good afternoon, sir, and welcome to Value Furniture. My name is Karen. Can I help you in any way?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Bernstein.”

“Fine. Mr. Bernstein is on the fourth floor.” The smile never wavered. “If you’ll just follow me, I’ll show you to his office. We can take the elevator, or”—she gestured with her hand to a central staircase, the kind you’d expect Vivien Leigh to descend in a flowing gown—“we can see some of the store.”

“The stairs, I think.”

“Please watch your step, then.”

Karen’s smile had wavered, and I got the impression most office visitors opted for the elevator over three flights of Tara. Actually, though, as we climbed from the first-floor living room sets toward the second-floor dining rooms, the grand staircase trimmed down significantly, becoming pretty utilitarian as we left the dining rooms behind and moved into the bedroom suites on the third floor. At the fourth floor was a set of padded-leather café doors with brass tacks to the left and more furniture to the right.

“This way, please.”

She led me through the swinging doors and into a tiled corridor with a men’s room, a ladies’ room, and a water fountain the size of a wastebasket mounted on the wall between them. At the end of the corridor was a less inviting steel door with a small porthole window at eye level. This door didn’t seem to require any key as Karen pushed it open into a broad hallway, this one carpeted. What looked like offices lined both sides, another steel fire door, this one with a panic bar, at the far end. We walked to an open doorway, my guide frowning as she looked into it.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see Mr. Bernstein.”

From the hall, the office was impressive, afternoon sun streaming in through the Palladian. The sunshine bathed a huge partners’ desk, where I guessed Rivkind and Bernstein had worked like Siamese twins. Old, bustle-back chairs for each partner that you just knew would crackle when you sat on them and creak when you swiveled in them, captain’s chairs for visitors. Currier and Ives prints graced the walls around a marble fireplace with a screen and tool holder. Dangling from the holder were a brush and tongs but no poker, and the lush red carpet was bleached in an oval spot near one of the chairs.

“Can I help you?”

A precise, female voice from down the hall. I turned to see a light-skinned black woman standing outside one of the other doorways. Fortyish, she would have been about five-six without the two-inch heels, in a yellow blouse and maroon skirt. Her hair was between brown and blond, brushed stylishly into a wave that rode toward the back of her head.

Karen said, “Mrs. Swindell, this gentlemen’s here to see Mr. Bernstein, but—”

“Mr. Bernstein had to go out. Is it something I can help you with?”

I said, “My name’s John Cuddy, Mrs. Swindell. Maybe Mrs. Rivkind talked with you about me?”

Swindell’s head bobbed once. “Karen, I think you can go back downstairs now.”

“Sure. I mean, yes. Thanks. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cuddy.”

“Same. Thanks for the tour.”

“You’re welcome.”

As Karen walked away, Swindell came toward me. “Beverly Swindell, Mr. Cuddy.”

Up close, Swindell’s eyes matched the color of her hair, something in them making me push her age a few years higher. The nose was proud, the nostrils prominent, giving her face a little more character than beauty. Her handshake was firm, but reserved.

“Sorry to have to be here about this.”

She bobbed her head again. “We all are. Joel won’t be back for a while. Can I … I don’t know what, get you started?”

“Maybe in your office?”

“Of course. Please.”

Her room had the same Palladian window effect, but you stepped from the late nineteenth century harshly into the twenty-first. A computer system sprawled over two similar hutches of beige plastic. In front of each hutch was one of those ergonomic chairs that looks like a Catholic kneeler with an attitude. There were a couple of calculators awash in a sea of green and gray printouts with single metal rings through one of the three holes punched in their sides. Dozens of loose-leaf notebooks stood upright on shelves in some kind of color-coded order that escaped me. The small amount of empty wall space was barren, no prints, no photos, nothing personalizing the place.

“Have a seat, please.”

I looked at her, but she was pointing at the corner of the room to the left of the door. There were three conventional chairs around a circular conference table. I took one of them, Swindell another.