Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (40 page)

"Just one more call."

I dialed Nancy's number in Southie, leaving a message
on the answering machine that I was back in Boston and would call her
later.

After I got in the passenger's side, Zuppone put the
gearshift into drive, and we pulled slowly away from the curb.

"Where to now, Cuddy?"

"My place."

"To pick up your Honda?"

I looked at him. "Among other things."

Primo said, "Good
idea," then checked all his mirrors.

* * *

Opening the front door of unit 41, Lana Stepanian
angled her head and shoulders to peer around me. "I don't see
your car."

"I wanted to talk with Paulie Fogerty first, so
I parked over by his house. It was such a nice night, I decided to
walk from there."

I brushed past her then, moving into the living room
with its marshmallow furniture. We seemed to be alone.

"Your husband couldn't make it?"

Lana Stepanian joined me, perching on the arm of an
easy chair. Alert. "Steven had a meeting for the School
Committee that he just couldn't reschedule."

"I know how that can be." Going by the
closet and downstairs bath to the sliding glass door, I looked
through it onto the rear deck, then tried the handle. Locked. I
slipped the latch and slid the door open.

Stepanian stayed where she was but twisted her torso
toward me. "What are you doing?"

I made a ceremony of sliding the door shut solidly,
then clicking at the lock. "Just making sure he hadn't come back
unexpectedly?

"Steven?"

I returned to the living room, Stepanian turning
again as I took the chair across from her. It swallowed me, but then
I wasn't banking on being able to get up quickly.

"Steven."

"But, Mr. Cuddy, I told you he's at a meeting."

"So you did. Meaning he's not upstairs or hiding
in the closet, either."

She just watched me.

"Right?" I said.

Stepanian folded her arms irritably across her chest.
"I think you'd better tell me what you came to tell us, and then
leave."

I liked that she wanted to hear what I knew first.

"Mrs.—can I call you Lana, by the way? It'll
make the rest of this flow a lot more easily."

Carefully enunciating each syllable, Stepanian said,
"Whatever will be quickest."

"We have to start some years back, when you were
still a teenager, maybe even early teens. You fell in love, and,
dream of dreams, the love was reciprocated. You were very happy, but
also very worried, because the two of you weren't supposed to be in
love. Not that kind of love, anyway, and so you had to be very
careful as well."

No reaction.

"But I guess you were also a terrific actress,
and your lover an actor, because while perhaps one or both of the
elders suspected, the neighbors didn't, and probably when you were
able to be together at college, you must have thought, 'Now we can
live a little more' . . . what, Lana, 'normally'?"

Still just a stony look.

"But then that darned roommate of yours. Did she
come back to the dorm unexpectedly? I'm guessing it would have been
something like that. And you couldn't explain it away, not what she
saw. So, you two had to kill her, but make it look like an accident,
a fall. Tell me, Lana, was she the first?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Wel1, she's the first I can identify, anyway.
So you're obviously distraught, or putting on a good act of it, and
the next time you and the lover come home, the elders maybe have
started sounding out the word, and they don't like what it seems to
spell. They confront the both of you, and a second 'accident' becomes
necessary. Only you have the good sense to realize that another fall,
especially two other falls, would look awfully peculiar, so this time
it's a fire, one that nearly takes you too, but for the heroism of
your lover."

Stepanian's cheeks flushed, almost as if the flames
from that night were in front of her still. "Steven's parents
died—"

"—in a lite that conveniently wiped out not
just the elders, but also all kinds of family photos and potentially
embarrassing other stuff that would show the idyllic lovers started
life as brother and sister."

Her lower lip trembled. "You're saying crazy
things."

"I don't think so, Lana. You and Steven sell the
devastated house and lot to sympathetic neighbors, nice little bonus
on top of the insurance policies. Combined, a nest egg for the new
couple to start a 'normal' life in the East, about as far as one can
get from Idaho. Big university here, nobody likely to pay much
attention to a 'married' woman studying Spanish—a good choice of
major, too, so she could pass as somebody with Latino roots. Then
settling down afterwards, Steven with the more demanding job that
might require a background investigation, you content with a simpler
career of temping. Shallow maybe, but no risky credentials checks,
either. The normal life of a normal couple, something that seems very
important to both of you. No children, of course, given concerns of
what a union of such close blood might produce. Tell me, Lana, which
of you had the operation?"

A flinch.

"Even without kids, though, a couple could learn
how to—'compensate,' I think, was the word you used when we first
talked. Dedicated School Committee for him, lower-profile condo
trustee for her, plus some charity-begins-at-home stuff like helping
Kira Ehnendorf with her father. Your unit here may have lost a lot of
its resale value, 'trapping' you at the Willows, but everyday life
was so natural, so normal. Until the developer who built this place
began to have financial problems."

“
Yale Quentin committed suicide."

“
Only by trying to save his little empire through
looking into the backgrounds of his original purchasers, to show his
bank what solid citizens they all were. Did Quentin come to you
directly, or did he just nose around Steven at work?"

No response.

"Whichever. You and your husband decide old Yale
has to go too, and the 'scenic overlook' provides a perfect setting.
You probably held your breath for a while after his death, but when
nobody kicked the sleeping dog, it was time to relax and get back to
normal again. At least until Andrew Dees moved in next door."

"Andrew was nothing to us."

"But something of a mystery, nonetheless. A
loner, the man ran his own business, yet didn't try to be part of the
community toward encouraging customers. He acquired a ladyfriend over
the summer, which probably reassured Steven and you somewhat. Even
though you were a little leery of Dees, you didn't see how he was any
threat to you, the way your roommate and your parents and even Yale
Quentin had been. Then I came on the scene."

The lower lip trembled some more.

"I showed up here with my 'questionnaire,'
supposedly interested in how the Hendrix company managed Plymouth
Willows but asking about things that couldn't have much to do with
the complex itself. Personal questions, even probing ones. I have to
tell you, Lana, my little survey wasn't designed to find out about
you and Steven. It was just meant to give me cover for asking the
same questions about Andrew Dees. But you couldn't know my
intentions. All you knew was that something about me felt wrong. So
up went your antennae, testing the wind for what it could tell you."

Stepanian started to speak, then stopped.

"Something to add, Lana?"

A shake of the head.

"Anyway, after my first visit, you and Steven
probably began paying more attention to what was going on around the
'cluster.' Noticing Dees acting more strangely, maybe overhearing him
on the phone or in person in his unit, yelling things. Things you
might have caught only bits and pieces of, maybe while sitting out on
the rear deck, reading in your lounge chair. Things that troubled
you, because you couldn't understand the context in which he was
saying them."

Stepanian just watched me.

I said, "Then last Thursday night, you and your
'husband'—"

"Don't say it like that!"

"What, Lana? The word, 'husband'?"

She didn't reply.

"Last Thursday, you and . . . Steven became
aware of an argument next door. Not just one-sided, either. Dees and
his ladyfriend, from what you could hear. Only you couldn't hear that
well. Tell me, did you try to improve the acoustics? Did you maybe
take a kitchen glass and put it up against your party wall? Did you
hear something that set you and Steven off?"

Stepanian flinched again.

"I'm guessing you did. I'm guessing Dees was
yelling something about his ladyfriend retaining a private
investigator. Maybe, 'You hired somebody to investigate me and my
neighbors?' Outraged, he would have said that loudly enough for you
to hear it. And you both sensed another problem, another threat to
'normal' life as you lived it. The 'we-met-at-BU' cover you weaved
was credible, but a little flimsy. Tug on the string, get on a plane,
and the fabric of your and Steven's life together starts to unravel
fast. Intolerably so, just like it would have when Yale Quentin
started nosing around."

Stepanian gnawed on her lower lip.

"And so you must have decided pretty quickly
what to do. Based on what happened next, I'm thinking that Dees also
yelled something on Thursday night about worrying that he'd have to
take a quick trip, even including ladyfriend coming with him, That
gave you and Steven all the inspiration you needed. The roommate
fell, the parents burned, the developer crashed his car into the sea.
The newest threat would just . . . disappear."

Stepanian's lip lost some more skin.

"The only thing was, you had to deflect
attention from Plymouth Willows. It couldn't look like they
disappeared suspiciously, because then somebody might start poking
around here after them. So you and Steven took lady-friend's Porsche
to the airport, carrying what were probably the suitcases missing
from Dees' unit. Steven is close enough in size and coloring to pass
for Dees at a distance, especially with a stranger, but you gilded
the lily a bit by having Steven wave to the parking attendant. That
was a mistake, Lana, since Dees himself would never have done that.
And his ladyfriend would have insisted on driving her own car. Which
brings us to why you used the Porsche.

Because it was more conspicuous, easier for somebody
to find at the airport and start the trail there instead of here?"

Suddenly one of the marshmallow back cushions on the
sofa fell forward, the upper body of Steven Stepanian facing me,
leveling and cocking a revolver from about ten feet away. He raised
the index finger of his other hand perpendicular to his pursed lips.
I didn't say anything. Lana Stepanian moved behind my chair, pushing
me gently at the shoulders as she felt around my back and sides for a
wire or weapons. I had on the same suit I'd been wearing at Nancy's
the previous Friday morning, and Lana found the Scottish fiddle tape
in my jacket pocket, putting it back once she saw what it was.

After as thorough a search as she could manage
without risking my grabbing her, she said, "Nothing," and
then perched back on the armchair.

Steven Stepanian used his free hand to flip the seat
cushion in front of him off the sofa, stretching his long legs out
from a yoga-style, ankles-crossed position. "Ah, that's better.
I was afraid I'd cramp up before you told us everything we ought to
hear."

I inclined my head toward the loft. "I figured
you to be upstairs."

"You'll appreciate why I'm not in a minute. To
answer your earlier question, though, we needed Andrew's car for the
bodies."

Until those words, I'd hoped I was wrong about that
part.

Stepanian wiggled his right foot, as if he had a kink
in the ankle. "Your version of what happened was really quite
accurate. Very impressive, but also very . . . threatening to us, as
you said before. After Lana told me about your first visit here and
your peculiar questions, we were concerned. And then when we heard
Andrew ranting and raving about being 'investigated,' we knew that he
and his 'ladyfriend,' as you called her, had to take a 'trip.'
Unfortunately, Lana can't drive a stick shift, so that left it to me
to take the Porsche. Quite a machine, actually. I'm sorry I couldn't
have enjoyed the experience a little more.

Lana said, "I followed Steven to Boston, where I
parked our car and rode with him to the airport. Then, after we left
the Porsche in the terminal lot, like you said, we took a cab back to
our car and drove home."

Like a den mother, explaining the logistics for her
troop's last scout trip.

I needed more than wanted the answer to my next
question. "How did you kill them?"

"It was rather easy, actually," said
Steven. "We keep a gun here—Lana, show him our gun, would
you?"

She reached under the cushion on her chair, coming up
with a small semiautomatic in her hand.