Lie Down with the Devil (21 page)

“Hey, c’mon, you must know a couple big words.”

“Asshole.”

“That’s one. Oh, and keep this in mind: Technically,” Thurlow said judiciously, “far as Amy knows, I’m still married.”

“You been seeing this lady long?” Mooney asked.

A driver yielded right-of-way to the patrol car at a four-way stop, waving a friendly greeting. That sort of thing didn’t happen in Boston. Mooney decided he felt more at home cruising the Combat Zone, eyes darting sideways to catch movement in the dark alleys.

“Couple months,” Thurlow replied. “We’ll pick her up at Hastings, Muir.”

Mooney was uneasy about the writer cover story, too; he would have felt more convincing and comfortable posing as a low-life drug dealer. He had already checked his cell phone twice, called his home phone, screened messages there and at the office. Carlotta hadn’t returned his call. If she’d left the country, he was wasting his time, spinning his wheels.

“Hey,” he said, “did she own a car? Danielle Wilder?”

Thurlow nodded and Mooney wished he had a key that would unlock Thurlow’s mouth, make the man talkative, free with information.

“You’ll like this one,” the Nausett officer said. “Her car’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Nice car, too. Volvo or Saab, one of those. Can’t
remember which. Kind of showy. She parked it on the street, so somebody might have stolen it, I guess.”

“Is that what the feds guess?”

The police chief shrugged his shoulders and made a left turn down another quiet street.

The law office didn’t look any more like Mooney’s idea of a law office than the Nausett police station resembled his idea of a cop house. It could have been a big old family house except for the signboard over the wide front porch. The maroon Lexus was parked out front.

“Here she comes,” Thurlow said. “Is she a looker or what?”

Dark hair framed a thin eager face. Not strictly pretty, but fresh and bright-eyed. She floated to the passenger door, stopped, hand on handle, surprised to find the front seat occupied. Mooney, looking up at her, thought she was way too young for Thurlow.

“Amy, meet Moon, my old buddy. He just might make you famous.”

“Oh, famous, huh? I could do famous.”

Not with that screechy voice, Mooney thought, as she declined his offer to move and climbed into the backseat.

“Who do you figure should play her in the movie, Moon?” Thurlow was laying it on thick; the chief had evidently decided to have some fun. “Me, I’d go straight for Angelina Jolie. Can’t do better than Angelina Jolie.”

“You talk such shit, Rob,” the girl said. “Where are we going? I got a meeting in an hour. And papers to get ready before then.”

“Moon here is writing a book about your girlfriend, Danielle.”

“Shit. You can just let me out at the light.”

“Come on, Amy. He doesn’t have to use your real name. He can call you Deep Throat, huh?”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t want to be seen with him. I don’t know about this.”

“I was going to take the both of you out for coffee, but how about I go in and grab takeout? Then you two can stay in the car and talk?”

“Are you going to use a tape recorder or a video-cam? Will I have to sign a release?”

Thurlow was grinning.

Mooney felt woefully unprepared. “Um, this is preliminary work. I’m not sure there’s a book in it.”

“Are you kidding? Of course there’s a book.”

“You gonna write it, Amy?”

“Maybe I should, Rob.”

“Go get us some coffee,” Mooney said.

When Thurlow left the car, Amy hopped out, too, and they embraced in the parking lot. Mooney cracked the window and eavesdropped shamelessly.

“Looking good,” Thurlow said. “What are you wearing under that coat?”

“Old clothes, moron. They’re repainting the place. Again. I don’t want to spoil my good stuff. You take me someplace nice, I’ll wear something nice.”

The girl strolled partway to the coffee shop, then hurried back and slid into the driver’s seat. Hard to tell about her figure under all the coats and scarves, but her legs were fine in tights and heels. Her scent held a hint of lemon.

“Let’s start with the office.” Mooney, who had grabbed a pad of paper and a stubby pencil off Thurlow’s kitchen desk, made a meaningless squiggle. “How long have you worked there?”

“Wow, since forever, since high school. I was an intern there. My mom was a law office secretary. She
liked it a lot, so I thought I’d give it a try. I’m a demon keyboarder. I like being in the front room, meeting people.”

“Is it a big firm?”

“For this town, I guess. It’s the biggest.”

“And what do you handle?”

“Realty, wills, all that stuff. We represent the local tribe, too, the Nausett nation.”

“How many lawyers, besides Hastings?”

“No Muirs anymore, but there’s two other guys, Joe Kepple and Blake Ganley. Blake only comes in part-time. He’s about ninety.”

“Support staff?”

Amy shifted her legs. “Look, I don’t have much time. You want to know about Danielle, ask.”

“Okay. How long did she work there?”

“She got hired after me. But she got to travel. Washington and New York, and tons of other places.”

“You handle real estate in other cities?”

“I think it was all to do with the tribe.”

“So Danielle was involved with the tribe?”

“Not so much. She just liked to seem more important than she was. The whole thing with her getting killed, I keep thinking how much she’d enjoy all the fuss. She’d be the one angling for a big movie star to play her onscreen. She always had to be the center of attention. You don’t take many notes.”

“I have a good memory.”

“You have stuff published?”

“In the pipeline.” Damn Thurlow. Mooney had no idea how familiar she was with authors or publishing houses. He thought he ought to have written something, for credibility’s sake. “Where were you when you heard about Ms. Wilder’s death?”

“At the office. Nobody got any work done.”

“People were shocked?”

“Hey, we all warned her. A woman dates a mobster, what does that say about her?”

“That depends,” Mooney found himself saying. He forced himself back into character. “You knew about that? Knew his name?”

“Oh, yeah. Her Sam, her sweetie. She liked the money he spent on her, that’s one thing. Danielle was an expensive girl. She really got off on glamour. She always wanted you to think she knew stuff you didn’t know. I mean I’m a secretary; I’m not a paralegal, and she made all this big deal about how she understood shit I didn’t understand and she was gonna be a lawyer and I was gonna be nothing.”

“I heard the thing with the mobster was over.”

“Who says a guy like that is gonna take no for an answer? But yeah, it was over, as far as she was concerned.”

“Was she dating somebody else?”

“She wasn’t the knitting-a-scarf-on-Saturday-night type.” The claws were out. Amy was the first person Mooney had met who was obviously glad Danielle Wilder was out of the way.

“Did Danielle hang out anyplace? A bar, a club?”

“That December, she was totally devoted to work. I mean putting in extra hours was nothing to her. Shining up to the lawyers, and boy, did it work, them paying to put her through law school.”

“They have a program for that?”

“They’re not sending me to any law school if I bust my ass for a thousand years.”

“But she wasn’t dating anybody in particular?”

“Oh, there was a guy. At least one. She was extremely available, you know what I mean?

“And this guy?”

“I don’t know that I’d call him ‘anybody.’”

“Another lowlife?”

“I don’t really know who he was.” The admission cost her. “I saw Danielle at some store, at Radio Shack, yeah, and she didn’t see me, or if she did, she didn’t bother saying hello. She was with this guy, very cute. She called him Kyle, I think. Yeah, Kyle, and she was like ordering him around, hold this, hold that, and he’s following her around like he’s in heat, you know? She had him holding cords and gizmos, like maybe she was going to have him set up a new stereo.”

“Could he have worked there, at Radio Shack?”

“This was definitely not a clerk. Nice overcoat, good haircut. A girl can tell.”

“You ever see this Kyle around town?”

“Nah.”

“But you figure him for a boyfriend?”

“A fallback guy, maybe, the way she bossed him. So she didn’t get cold at night, like a blanket or something. Probably wasn’t worth the effort, finding a man who could stand on his feet when she knew she was leaving town.”

“Kyle have a last name?”

She shrugged.

“You have any idea what she was working on? Before she died?”

“She was just showing off, putting in extra time like that.”

“Did she seem worried about anything, different in any way?”

“She was always stuck up as hell. Oh, you’re going to hear nothing but flowers and lace now she’s dead, and how good she was to her old granny, but I think somebody oughta tell it like it is. What do you suppose happened to Rob? I better honk the horn or
something. I get in big trouble I take too long a break. Danielle never did. No, she was a ‘professional.’ Me, I’m dirt.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Amy.”

“Just don’t use my name in the book.”

“She’s something, huh?” Thurlow watched his girlfriend trot back up the walkway to Hastings, Muir, balancing her takeout coffee in one hand and waggling the fingers of the other over her shoulder in farewell.

“She gave me a name: Kyle.”

“A player?”

“Possible boyfriend, post-Gianelli.”

“Must be young,” Thurlow said. “My momma’s generation didn’t name their babies Kyle.”

“No last name.”

“First name doesn’t chime, but I don’t have a lock-box memory. Let’s see if he comes up in any of the friends-and-family chats.”

“I didn’t see any family interviews.”

“Wilder girl didn’t have much: only child, Dad dead, Mom traipsing around Europe, some stoned leftover hippie, didn’t even come to the funeral. Grandma’s in a nursing home in Falmouth. Told her Danielle was dead, but she’s got that Alzheimer’s so she’s probably still waiting for her little girl to visit. Kyle, huh? Least it’s not John or Pete.”

“Jason or Alexander.”

“Yeah, I’m sure behind the times.”

When they pulled into the police station lot, Mooney said, “You go ahead in. I want to see if I left something in my car.”

The thing he’d left was his portable phone charger. He thought about phoning the commissioner or calling in sick with some phony complaint that would explain his absence, excuse his reckless behavior, but he didn’t feel like lying. Pretending to be a writer had taken it out of him. He’d had enough lies for the day.

He tried Carlotta’s number, waited out the message and the beep, left a terse “Call me.” He figured Gloria would have phoned him if Carlotta had been picked up by the Macs and tossed in jail, so he tried another number instead.

Even though he was on the list of approved callers, it was a struggle to get through to Paolina. Miss Fuentes could call
him
, a cool-voiced receptionist informed him, when
she
felt like it and had time to do so. He could not expect to get through whenever he felt like it. Mooney bit his lip and listened to the long hours and frustration behind the receptionist’s tone. He didn’t want to use his rank, doubted it would work. Instead he sympathized with her difficult job, emphasized how deeply he’d appreciate her taking personal responsibility to put the call through, promised he’d never break protocol again, and breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally switched to her room.

“Paolina?”

She sounded groggy. He hoped they weren’t keeping her on some medication that made her voice so flat and dull it was barely recognizable.

“Who is that?”

He identified himself.

“How are you, honey?”

“Okay, I guess. Are you coming to see me?”

“I need your help, babe.”

“My help? I can’t even go outside without permission. They watch me all the time.”

“Carlotta calls you, right? Calls the desk, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Paolina, do you trust me?”

Her voice got so quiet, he had to strain to hear her. “You came and got us in Miami.”

“You know I’ll always come and get you, the same way Carlotta will always come?”

“I didn’t ask her to. I didn’t—”

“You didn’t want what happened to happen. I know that and Carlotta knows that. Nobody has that power, Paolina, to make things happen the way they want them to happen. But you do have one power right now that I need.”

“What?

“When Carlotta phones, take the call. Put her on the list of acceptable visitors. Tell her you need to see her now. As soon as she can get there.”

“I … Mooney, I can’t … I don’t …”

“You won’t have to see her if you don’t want to, but I need to talk to her. I have to see her, and you’re the only one who can bring her to me. You know I’d never hurt her, right? I’d never hurt you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Set it up. And when she calls, tell her to come.”

“Can I tell her about you?”

“Paolina, I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do. But if you mention me, she might not come. And that would be bad.”

“I’ll think about it, Mooney.”

“I’ll come see you anyway. Soon.”

“Where are you?”

He glanced at the low buildings and windswept trees. “I’m near the ocean, honey. On the Cape.”

“It’s too cold for the beach.”

“How about I bring you some seashells?”

“Bring them soon.”

Mooney hung up. If Roz wasn’t so maddening, he might have tried her again, but she wouldn’t tell him where Carlotta was even if she knew.

The civilian receptionist was talking on the telephone so Mooney pointed to his chest, then pointed down the hall to let her know he was expected in the chief’s office. At the bulletin board, he paused reflexively to take note of the wanted posters. The yellow sheet he’d picked up last night at Mitch Farmer’s house was affixed nearby, its
VOTE YES!
headline partially obscured by a salmon-colored
VOTE NO!
The Citizens for Good Cape Government handout had a more professional look than the Indian flyer. Mooney untacked the negative broadside, folded it, and stuck it in a pocket to study later.