House Secrets (32 page)

It was Mary Pat, Mahoney’s wife.

Mary Pat had short white hair, the shade almost a perfect match to her husband’s. She was five foot five, slim and lovely. And although she was Mahoney’s age, she looked ten years younger because she had none of her spouse’s filthy, life-shortening habits. She didn’t smoke, she rarely drank, she did her yoga and went for walks, and in recent years she’d become a vegetarian. She was going to outlive Mahoney by thirty years. The other thing that would contribute to her longevity was that she was one of the sweetest people DeMarco knew. He firmly believed that nice people lived longer than the not so nice.

“Why, Joey!” Mary Pat said. She always seemed delighted to see him, but she was probably just as delighted to see her mailman. “What are you doing here at this time of night?” Before DeMarco could answer, she turned to Mahoney and said, “It’s no wonder he doesn’t have a girlfriend, John, the hours you have him working.”

Mahoney mumbled something inarticulate, his words muffled by the ice in his glass banging against his big square teeth.

What in the hell was Mahoney doing in a hotel room with his wife? DeMarco wondered. He soon found out.

“Did John tell you, Joe? They’re resurfacing the hardwood floors in the condo, and the smell was just
killing
us. Really! Whatever they use on those floors, it just smelled toxic. So we decided to stay here in this lovely suite tonight.” She laughed and said, “I feel like we’re having an affair.”

God, DeMarco loved Mary Pat.

She got a glass of water and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two to whatever you’re doing. And John, don’t be too long. You need to get some sleep.”

Mary Pat returned to the bedroom and closed the door and DeMarco turned back to face his boss. Mahoney was still scowling. He may not have been cheating on his wife tonight as DeMarco had thought, but he had brooded himself into a black state over Morelli.

DeMarco resumed his conversation with Mahoney where it had left off. “Look, I know you’re frustrated,” he said, “but at this point, what do you think I can do? I mean, do you expect me to—”

“I expect you to get
results
!” the Speaker shouted.

DeMarco didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. He was trying to think of something to say when the Speaker nodded his large head a couple of times as if he had just come to a conclusion about his employee.

“What did you do about Hanson’s kid?” he asked.

Mahoney had changed direction so fast, it took DeMarco a few seconds to figure out who he was talking about. Hanson was the father of the preppie doper he’d followed the other day. Glad to change the subject, DeMarco told him he’d discovered the kid was using drugs and that he had reported back to the boy’s father.

“I gave him the name of a good counselor,” he concluded.

Mahoney’s lips twitched in a brief, scornful smile. “Most of your cases are like that, aren’t they?” he said. “A couple hours of easy work with no risk involved.”

DeMarco didn’t say anything. Apparently Mahoney had chosen to forget how DeMarco had almost been killed twice while in Mahoney’s service.

“Yeah,” Mahoney continued, “half the time you don’t even go to your office. You got it made, don’t you?” Mahoney paused then added, “Son, it’s time to earn your keep.”

DeMarco sat there speechless, trying to think of something to say to this hypocrite, something to dissuade him, but he knew it was hopeless.

With some effort, Mahoney pushed his bulk up from the love seat and padded on splayed feet over to where DeMarco sat. He took the glass of bourbon out of DeMarco’s hand; he’d only taken a single sip. The son of a bitch was going to finish what was left in the glass.

Placing his hand on DeMarco’s shoulder, Mahoney said, “You need to go someplace where you can think, son. You gotta lotta thinkin’ to do.”

The post was about three feet high. Emma placed her left foot on it, then bent from the waist, keeping her leg straight, and touched her head against her knee. She did this ten times.

The jogging trail was on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, and she was on the section near the Memorial Bridge. The Lincoln Memorial gleamed white across the river. The trail went from Washington all the way to Mount Vernon, about twenty miles. Emma ran this route sometimes when she prepared for marathons. She didn’t know how far she was going to run today, but she thought she might go the whole way then call Christine to come pick her up at Mount Vernon. All she knew for sure was that she was about to explode, and running was the best cure she could think of.

She finished with her left leg, and had just placed her right leg up on the post, when a voice behind her said, “Good morning.” She turned her head. It was Charlie Eklund. His bodyguard was leaning against the front fender of Eklund’s car.

“What do you want?” she said, but she continued with her stretching exercises.

“I’ve decided that we can stop threatening each other,” Eklund said. “I have no need to follow you or your friend anymore, nor will I do anything to harm anyone you know. And you, in turn, will have no need to send photographs to my director.”

Emma took her right leg off the post and turned to face Eklund. “Maybe I’ll send them anyway,” she said.

“No you won’t. You know if you do then I’ll do something to reciprocate.”

Emma didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stared at Eklund, so still, neat, and confident. The small breeze that was blowing didn’t even ruffle his white hair.

“You think you’ve won, don’t you? With Abe Burrows and Marcus Perry both dead no one can touch Paul Morelli for his wife’s murder. You’re thinking that even if I get you fired now, when Morelli becomes president, you’ll go see him and be reinstated. You think you’re going to be the next DCI, don’t you, Charlie?”

Eklund smiled slightly, almost humbly, but his eyes were bright blue buttons. “I do love this view,” he said, looking across the river at the Lincoln Memorial. “You know what made Lincoln a great president? He was a very practical man. I’d suggest, my dear, that you become more practical.”

Emma turned away from Eklund and began to jog. Yes, she’d run all the way to Mount Vernon. She’d run until she overcame the urge to break Charlie Eklund’s tiny neck.

DeMarco couldn’t start his lawn mower. He’d been pulling on the cord for about fifteen minutes, long enough that his shoulder was beginning to ache. The damn thing just wouldn’t start.

Since he didn’t know what to do about Morelli he figured he might as well get caught up on things around the house: wash some clothes, pay a few bills, and mow the damn lawn. He hated doing yard work, but unlike Emma, he couldn’t afford to hire someone to do it for him. It’d been a month since he’d mowed the grass and he imagined his neighbors were beginning to turn up their little neatnik noses in disapproval. But now he couldn’t start the mower. He was going to have to take the damn thing to Sears and get somebody to look at it, but he didn’t want to take the time to do that today.

He walked across the street and knocked on George Carson’s front door. George worked at the IRS, a fact DeMarco took shameless advantage of every April. He asked George if he could borrow his mower, then they spent the next fifteen minutes talking about how the Nationals were going to do better next summer. Hope springs eternal.

He had just begun to use George’s gleaming, state-of-the-art mower—the thing was the Lexus of lawn mowers—when Christine and Emma drove up to his house in Christine’s car. Emma got out of the car wearing a sweat-soaked T-shirt, shorts, and jogging shoes. He heard her tell Christine to come back and get her in fifteen minutes.

Emma took the time to admire George’s mower, and for a moment DeMarco wondered if he should try to convince her how much fun it was to use, to see if he could Tom Sawyer her into mowing his grass, but he knew she’d never fall for it.

“You want some water or something?” he asked her.

He got a glass of ice water for her and a beer for himself and they sat down on the top step of his front porch.

“My boss,” DeMarco said, “wants me to do something the entire Republican Party can’t manage: he wants me to keep Paul Morelli from being elected president. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” Emma said.

It was so strange to hear Emma say that.

“The only thing I can think to do,” DeMarco said, “is follow up on what Lydia told me: try to prove that Morelli assaulted those women or molested his stepdaughter or find whoever this powerful guy is who’s been helping Morelli. But I think it’s futile.”

Emma snorted. “So now you’re going to do what Lydia wanted you to do in the first place—now that’s she’s dead,” she said.

That stung.

“I guess,” DeMarco said.

Emma just shook her head. DeMarco could tell that she was just as upset and depressed as he was—and felt just as helpless.

“And this guy Eklund, what about him?” DeMarco said, and Emma proceeded to tell DeMarco about her most recent meeting with Charlie Eklund.

“It occurred to me while I was running this morning that Charlie is the least of our problems. Yes, he knows something that he can use to blackmail Morelli, and when Morelli becomes president, he’ll use it to become DCI. But after that, my guess is that he won’t be around for very long.”

“Because of his age?” DeMarco said.

“No. Because Paul Morelli has a friend who helps him kill people, people like Terry Finley. I think the first time Charlie threatens Morelli he’s liable to end up in a coffin.”

“Huh,” DeMarco said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

Christine drove up at that moment, tapped the car’s horn in a friendly beep, and Emma rose from the step.

“Hey! Where are you going?” DeMarco said. “We gotta figure this out.”

“
You
gotta figure this out,” she said. “I’m going home to take a shower, and then Christine and I are going Christmas shopping.”

Christmas shopping? Who the hell went Christmas shopping in September? Christmas shopping was something you did on December twenty-fourth.

Emma stopped and examined George’s lawn mower one more time before driving away.

“Emma’s mad at you,” Neil said.

“Yeah, I know,” DeMarco said. “Did you find anything on anybody in New Jersey?”

DeMarco, though he thought it was hopeless—and because he couldn’t think of anything else to do—was once again backtracking Terry Finley’s investigation to see if he could find anything that could be used to destroy Morelli. One of the things that Lydia had told him was that the last time she’d spoken to Terry, he had discovered something in New Jersey but he didn’t tell her what it was. DeMarco, having no better idea, had sicced Neil onto that thin lead to see if he could come up with something.

“Yeah, I did,” Neil said. “And it wasn’t easy.”

DeMarco didn’t say anything; he was in no mood to stroke Neil’s ego.

“You remember David Reams, the guy who claimed he was drugged when they found him in bed with that boy?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the man who signed off on the test that said Mr. Reams was drug-free was a man named Robert Bolt. Mr. Bolt is actually
Doctor
Bolt, a medical examiner and forensic specialist used by the NYPD. Three years after Reams was imprisoned, Bolt purchased a summer home at Egg Harbor, New Jersey. He selected Egg Harbor
because it’s a stone’s throw from Atlantic City and the good doctor is a gambler—a bad one, judging by his last credit report. Anyway, he purchased the home for an amazingly low price.”

“So you think Morelli—or whoever’s helping Morelli—paid Bolt off with a summer place in New Jersey.”

Neil shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it’s the only connection I could find between Terry Finley’s list and the lovely Garden State, and the only reason I found it was because I looked into Benjamin Dahl’s death.”

“What are you talking about?” DeMarco said.

Benjamin Dahl was the New Yorker who had refused to give up a piece of real estate that then-mayor Paul Morelli had needed for some civic project. Lydia had told DeMarco that Dahl had died by falling down a flight of stairs, but DeMarco didn’t understand what the connection was between Dahl and this Dr. Bolt.

“Well,” Neil said, “in Mr. Dahl’s autopsy report, an assistant to Dr. Bolt noted a couple of details regarding Mr. Dahl’s death that seemed inconsistent with a dive down the stairs. The good doctor, however, penned a note explaining why his assistant was incorrect and officially ruled Dahl’s death an accident.”

“What were the inconsistencies?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Neil said. “The point is that on two occasions it appears that Bolt, in his official capacity, may have aided Paul Morelli.”

“So why didn’t somebody spot this earlier?” DeMarco said. “I mean with all these investigations into Morelli’s past conducted by Republicans and journalists, why didn’t someone—other than you and Terry Finley—notice the connection to Bolt? And don’t tell me they didn’t because they weren’t as smart as you, Neil.”

“
A
,” Neil said, “it was three years after the Reams incident that Bolt purchased the home in New Jersey. That’s a long time between the event and the payoff, making the payoff less obvious and thus much harder for someone to spot.
B
, if the word ‘egg’ hadn’t been on that napkin of Finley’s and if Lydia hadn’t told you that Finley was interested
in someone in New Jersey,
I
never would have seen the connection. And
C
, in the case of Benjamin Dahl, nobody but Lydia Morelli—who told both you and Terry Finley—knew that Paul Morelli was tied to Dahl’s death.”