Love Nest (7 page)

The barbell swayed in his quivering grip, and fleetingly his face dimmed out, except for his lips, which looked like fiery bursts of blood.

“If the body mirrors the soul, some people are in trouble, but not you.”

“Don’t, Mom. Don’t watch.”

“You’re beautiful,” she said.

• • •

They drove through a woody area of West Andover to the technetronic landscape of an industrial park crowded with similar buildings of brick and glass, imposing in size, sterile and serene in design. Slightly beyond all this, near a dip in the road, was a smaller building of office suites, with a shingled signpost. The shingles bore gold lettering, and one read
Bauer Associates
.

“Keep the motor running,” Attorney Rollins said after Sergeant Dawson backed the Mercedes into a parking space. “I’ll wait here.”

“What’s the matter, Counselor?”

“I’ve had a few. He sees that, I’m in trouble.”

“I may tell him.”

“No, Sergeant, I’m pretty sure you never would.”

The lobby of the building was slightly overheated, with vapid music piped in above the unchallengeable large letters of a No Smoking sign. Bauer Associates was gainable through glass doors. The receptionist, a rigid red-haired woman working a word processor, raised eyebrows shaped in circumflexes. Her mouth was an unopen flower bud.

“I’m expected.”

“Name?”

“Dawson.”

“Sonny?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter. Go straight ahead.”

He took a couple of steps and looked back. “Eve James.”

“Nice of you to remember. It’s been a long time.”

The furnishings and walls of Alfred Bauer’s office were shaded in cool and harmonious pastels. Arty vases sprouted twigs of dry berries. On a map of Andover coded pushpins designated past and present projects, flags on future ones. Braced on a steel stand was an aerial photograph of a site slated for development in the spring. Dawson, poised in a great blot of silence, could almost hear the chainsaws shrieking through maple and oak.

“Sit down, Sergeant.”

He pivoted. “I’m fine. Where’s your son?”

Bauer was toweling his hands in the doorway of his private washroom, his domical head slightly lowered. “The business with my boy can wait.” He sighed. “You and I, Sergeant, share a common loss.”

“We share nothing.”

Bauer disposed of the towel, his smile no more than a suggestion. His blue eyes, pale against the pink of his face, flickered once. “Still jealous of me. Kind of pointless now, isn’t it?”

Dawson stood rock still, conscious of his stance, of the hang of his topcoat.

“There was something special about her, wasn’t there, Sergeant? I mean, more than beauty. More than youth. My wife and I tried to define it and couldn’t.”

“Don’t bait me.”

Bauer presented more of himself, a vigorous shape in fitted gray, his trace of a smile deadeningly polite. “We can’t believe she’s gone.”

“I can. I saw the body.”

The older man moved with quiet purpose and propped himself on the edge of his desk, a few feet of carpeting separating them. “We’ll miss her.”

“Your son,” Dawson insisted.

“You never had a child, Sergeant. It’s a tough business.” Light cast from a wall sealed the face with a ghostly tint. “Let it wait. Till after the funeral.”

“I can’t do that.”

“If I thought he did it, I’d break his head.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Then you don’t know what she meant to me.”

The voice, deep-chested and somber, tampered with Dawson’s equilibrium, and against scrutiny of pale eyes he shifted his feet. He was raw-nerved, dry-mouthed, with feelings too near combustion.

“You need to unbend, Sergeant. I can suggest exercises. I can even give you the use of my pool.”

“She died of nakedness.”

“What?”

“No defenses.” Dawson’s voice heaved. “She was a
kid
.“

“Yes, a kid. Pure lunacy, what we felt for her. You and I, Sonny, got in too deep.”

“Don’t call me Sonny.”

Bauer’s smile, gaining substance the longer he held it, twisted subtly. A hand fluttered. “You like the colors here? She picked them. Those vases? Her choices. She cut the twigs in Harold Parker Forest. You might know the spot, near the pond. Private place to swim. Nothing like feeling the forest air on your skin. I picked the pine needles off her ass.”

The silence that followed was sharp, each second calculated. Dawson undid an inner button to let in air.

“She wanted me to take her in. Be her daddy forever. Can you believe that, Sergeant?”

“Yes,” he replied, freeing another button. Despite the heat in his head, he spoke calmly and deliberately. “It’s why your wife hated her. And it’s why she threw your son at her.”

Muscles shifted inside Bauer’s careful tailoring. “I could easily beat you to a pulp.”

“And I could shoot you between the eyes,” Dawson said, threading a finger through the trigger guard of his buried revolver.

“I’ve hurt you, haven’t I?” The muscles relaxed. “Now I’ll tell you something you don’t want to know. It’ll hurt you more.”

Dawson waited, and Bauer spoke from the depths.

“She wanted to die.”

Several minutes later, after he had heard enough, he turned toward the door, and something small seemed to explode inside him, the flame all in his head. He reached the door almost without seeing it, though the paneling was shiny enough to reflect the breadth of his face.

“One last word, Sergeant. If you bother my son, I’ll grind you up.”

The door closed by itself behind him. He moved with a silent tread and paused behind the receptionist. She was staring at the screen of the word processor and stabbing the keyboard with stiletto fingers, the nails scarlet. Her hair was a red bush that ended low on her neck.

“How long have you worked here, Eve?”

She turned slightly, not enough to look at him. “Why does that interest you?”

“Sometime soon I’d like to talk with you.”

“I’m in the book. I always have been.”

The sky was dark when he stepped outside, and a wind pummeled him. He hurried to the Mercedes, the exhaust from which floated high and ragged. He climbed in stiffly and fitted himself behind the wheel. William Rollins, sitting exactly as he had left him, said, “Was it interesting?”

He shrugged. “Where do you turn on the lights?”

Rollins showed him.

Traffic protracted the drive back. He tried a shortcut through a development of identical houses, oversize garrisons behind split-rail fences, but he got caught behind a loaded dump truck, which had a couple of rear lights out. Neither man spoke until they reached Barcelos Supermarket and came to a stop in the rear of the lot. Rollins quietly stifled a cough, then cleared his throat.

“He told you?”

“He said she didn’t care about living. I don’t believe it.”

“I wish
I
didn’t.”

“I have things to ask you. Later.”

“Yes, later.”

Dawson pushed himself out of the car, grasping the door as the wind hit him. A male clerk in a dark duckbill cap was rounding up stray pushcarts, briskly clanking one into another, the noise grating.

“Sergeant.”

“What?”

“Don’t forget your supper.” Rollins’s hand appeared with the frozen meat pie, which was slipping half out of the plastic sack. Rollins released it carefully. “Something else.”

“What is it, Counselor? It’s cold.”

Again the hand stretched forth, this time bearing a plain envelope that was somewhat wrinkled. “Your money. She wanted me to return it to you. I think you’ll find it’s all there.”

Dawson held it in a frail grip and stared. “When did she tell you this?”

“Back in September. She said there was no rush. I’d know when.”

The wind whipped it out of his fingers. Rollins scrambled out of the Mercedes and, aided by the clerk, retrieved it for him.

S
ergeant Dawson met Melody on a July day hot enough to kill, the heat rooting beneath his rumpled lightweight suit, as if Andover were some sweltering southern backwater and he the sheriff. It was not yet two o’clock. He wheeled his airless unmarked car to the Silver Bell, parked near a rear unit, number forty-six, and waited with a damp elbow out the window. The can of Coke he had brought with him went warm. Twenty minutes passed before the door to number forty-six opened.

The well-dressed man paused for a split second as if to make sure he had forgotten nothing. An unseen hand shut the door behind him. He approached Dawson’s car to reach his own, his full, neat mustache failing to distinguish an ordinary face, and in a flash Dawson realized he knew him, a senior executive at Lee-Rudd, a computerware plant in one of the industrial parks. A year ago Dawson had investigated a break at his house on Gooseberry Knoll, juveniles from Lawrence suspected, no arrests.

“Hello, sir.”

The man stopped short, and in the silence that followed he recognized Dawson’s humid face and even seemed to remember the car. He worked himself into an attitude of pleasant surprise. “Sergeant Dotson, isn’t it?”

“Dawson.”

“Yes, of course.” He squinted in the sun’s glare and lifted a restless shoulder. “Anything wrong?”

“You tell me.”

The man, watching with pinched eyes as Dawson took a tepid sip of Coke, came to a rapid decision. “Is this necessary?” he asked in his lowest voice.

Dawson ignored the question and dredged up knowledge of the wife, a haughty member of the garden club, a fearless soprano in Christ Church choir, a bouyant homemaker with maid service, her hair cast high into a peach blond hyperbole. He remembered the hysterics over the white rug in the living room, shat upon during the burglary.

“Do you come here often, sir?”

The husband scowled. “It’s too hot for this.”

“Cool in there?”

“I have a right to privacy. You’re invading it.”

“How old is she?”

“Christ, I don’t know.” The words leaped from him. “But old enough, I’m sure.”

“How sure? That’s why I’m here.”

His face wilted behind his mustache. “Don’t do this to me.”

“How much did you pay her?”

He began to tremble. “Why me?”

“Anonymous tip,” Dawson replied readily. “Male voice, not quite a man’s. I almost didn’t bother with it.”

“Sergeant … it’s not all that you think.” He passed a hand over his jaw, a need for composure, a struggle for dignity, which failed to arrive. “I’m under doctor’s care. Stress. Tension. You understand.”

“I’m not paid to, Mr. McCleaf. You see, I haven’t forgotten
your
name, nor am I likely to. So it would be to your benefit if I never see you here again.”

Dawson dismissed him with his eyes, but the man was slow to react, and then his step was tentative and shaky. He forced himself into his black executive car, started it up, and, after sitting perfectly still for a few moments, lowered the tinted window.

“Sergeant.”

“Yes?”

“She’s a good kid.”

“Get out of here, Mr. McCleaf.”

Afterwards, the dust settling, Dawson watched a bee wobble in the air as if stunned by the heat. The sky was an unbroken blue, too brilliant for him to appreciate. With a shove he slid out of his car and stood tight-jointed in the sogginess of his suit, his hidden revolver punching out its shape. Slowly he used a handkerchief on the back of his neck. Then his ears picked up. She was coming out.

She had on a striped jersey, jeans with much of the color bleached out, and tennis shoes with bright laces. A delicate fist gripped the strap of the leather bag suspended from her shoulder. She wore minimal makeup and had the air of a careless and confident student of a prestigious university. She headed directly toward him, brown-eyed, full-lipped, low-waisted, with subtlety in her beauty and drama in the long deep swirl of her hair. Her voice was magnetic.

“Do you have the time?”

He gave it to her without consulting his watch and systematically observed the flawless features of her face. “I’m a police officer.”

“I think I would have guessed that.”

“I’m Sergeant Dawson.”

“Without a doubt. Sonny, isn’t it?”

• • •

The ice cream stand was just outside Andover, with picnic tables shaded by silver maples and the air enriched by mowed fern. A breeze began to billow in, and thunder was heard in the distance, but the sky stayed bright. They faced each other over iced fruit drinks, the table gouged with lovers’ initials. “I could have arrested you,” he said. “I still can.”

She shook her head, politely. “I don’t think so.”

He had her driver’s license. He returned it and watched it disappear into her bag. “You’re much too sure of yourself.”

“No,” she said. “Only of the situation.”

They watched a mother at another table clean a child’s face with her moistened thumb. Closer by, two boys in bathing suits were examining the shed skin of a grass snake. He said, “Do you like what you’re doing?”

“Please, don’t lecture me. Anything but that.” Her tone was light, but there was tension in the deliberate way she pushed the straw through the froth of her drink. A lock of dark auburn hair lay across her high forehead, which was smooth and vivid. She said, “You look terribly uncomfortable in that suit. Can’t you take off the jacket?”

He glanced around and then swiftly removed the jacket. With the same dispatch he freed the holstered revolver from his hip and tucked it out of sight. “Where’s your family?” he asked and got a smile.

“Which one? I was in six foster homes.”

“No parents?”

“No father, that’s for certain. My mother was a free spirit. I was taken from her when I was four, for my own good. She had a lot of friends. I wasn’t one of them. I can remember things that happened when I was two. Can you?”

“Is she dead?”

“I was taken to the funeral, age eight. Everybody has a story, wouldn’t you say? Does mine interest you?”

“It’s for the record.”

“For the record, I was not a pretty child. Wish I had pictures to show you.”

“Where were the foster homes?” he asked, and she ticked off communities south of Boston, one as far as the Cape. Her articulation was precise, no slurs, each word clear and rich. “You sound educated.”

“That depends on what you mean by educated.”

One of the boys in bathing suits approached the table, with eyes bloodshot from swimming. He was at once skinny and round, his rib cage starkly revealed, his belly big. Melody smiled at him, and Dawson said, “Run along.”

“Don’t you like children?”

“Usually,” he said. Her drink was nearly gone. She drew at the ice with her straw and then smiled cynically at his hand.

“No wedding ring. Good. I wouldn’t want to be sitting here with a married cop.”

“How did you know my name? Someone in the motel tip you off?”

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I’m asking.”

“Everybody knows you, Sonny.”

Three youths in scrubby softball uniforms cast long looks at her over dripping ice creams as they shuffled by, their shoes cleating the ground. She gazed up at the sky, which lost its glare in the same instant that the texture of the air changed. A thrilling breeze blew over them.

“It’s going to rain,” she announced.

“Who steered you to Andover?”

“Do you enjoy quizzing me?”

“Melody,” he said, using her name for the first time, “I don’t like anything about this. It’s not what I’m used to dealing with.”

“I gathered that.”

He folded back his shirt cuffs, which had picked up sweat and grime, and looked toward the road where a gravel truck rumbled by with an overload, the yellow dust nearly reaching them. “You can do better with yourself.”

She had both hands on the table. One twitched. “Tell me about it.” A man sitting just out of earshot in an open shirt, absently scratching into belly hair, could not take his eyes off her. They gulped her up, swallowed her whole. “I’m waiting, Sonny.”

“You’re young. You’re more than pretty, you know that. You’ve got a brain.”

“I’m listening, enjoying every word.”

A drop of rain fell on his wrist as a grayness shot through the sky. People were leaving, including the boys in bathing suits, the man in the open shirt. The softball players were already gone. “You have the best.”

“The best what?” The motion of her lips did not seem to match her words. “Best tits? Best snatch? Ass? I’ve gotten high marks on all.”

He gathered up his jacket and his weapon. She had been sitting with a leg doubled under her. Now she rose to her feet and stood marvelously thin in her low-slung jeans, her hair luxuriant in its fall.

“Shocked?”

“Come on,” he said, and they hurried toward the car, though not fast enough. The downpour came between a streak of lightning and a shattering clap of thunder.

They each got drenched, he a little longer, for he had to struggle with the door on her side, hold it open for her, and then give it the proper slam to make it shut, which took two tries. He dodged a puddle and splashed through another in his dash to the other side. Inside, as soon as they cranked up the windows, it turned clammy and close. She dabbed her face with a tissue, the dark of her nipples bleeding through her sodden jersey. He listened to the clamor of the rain against the car and watched the fierce flashes of lightning. Trees eddied in the wind. He glanced at her.

“You all right?”

“Drowned is all. If you want, I’ll blow a bubble.”

He started up the motor, which protested at first with a sputter, and worked the wipers to dislodge leaves pinned to the windshield. The heat accumulated, and he picked at the front of his shirt to get it away from his skin.

“Sonny. Look at me a sec.”

He did.

“Great eyes.”

He ran the defroster, switched on the headlights, and tilted the rearview mirror. With an elbow almost hitting her, he shifted into gear.

“Shouldn’t we wait?”

On the road gusts of wind rocked the car, and the rain, too heavy for the wipers, smothered the glass. They crept along, the wipers flailing, the thick tires crunching over fallen branches. Other drivers had pulled to the wayside to wait it out. One had overshot the embankment.

“In case we don’t make it,” she said, “thanks for the drink.”

By the time they crossed back into Andover the rain was falling with less purpose, and when they reached the Silver Bell the sun fired itself through the drizzle and mist. Fording puddles, he made the long turn into the rear lot and braked near the door to her room. She smiled and extended a delicate hand.

“Friends?”

He said, “Don’t let me see you in Andover again.”

• • •

Paige Gately was not in her office nor, it seemed, anywhere else in the motel. The desk clerk’s face, full of loose, deep lines, seemed on the point of unraveling. “Swear to God, Sonny, I don’t know where she is. Didn’t see her when I came in.”

“I thought you worked nights.”

“Sometimes I do double duty.” An idea came to him. “She might’ve gone home. That’s what I bet.”

Dawson lifted his eyes from the register, a finger between two pages, and nodded at the telephone. “See if it’s so, Chick.”

Later he drove to Chestnut Street and gazed up at the high, aloof face of Paige Gately’s house, built by a forebear of her husband’s, venerable in its clean colonial lines and glassed-in porches. He had been inside once, some years ago, investigating an attempted break. He remembered big airy rooms hard to heat, wide windowsills low enough to sit on, only rich carpets well worth the attention of a thief, paint flaking from one of the ceilings. He rang the front bell and waited in vain.

He found her at the left side of the house inspecting storm damage to flowers. She was poised on youthful-looking legs, with her back to the sun, in a sleeveless linen dress that elongated the trimness of her figure and emphasized the length of her arms. She had been to the hairdresser’s for a cut, and her silvery hair, a close-fitting cap, glinted like ice. Her feet were bare.

“I hope this is important,” she said.

He glided past the shimmering yellow of day lilies floating over panicles of baby’s breath the rain had battered to the ground, and he stopped within a yard of her, his eyes falling to her feet. The nails, which surprised him, were painted. The toes had picked up blades of wet grass. Her voice swelled.

“Why are you so messy?”

He glanced down at himself. “Caught in the rain.”

“Not very clever.”

“I’d like to know what’s going on,” he said, and received a blank look. He suspected no explanation was needed, but gave one anyway, quietly and tonelessly, in what had become his professional voice. She listened with civility but with no apparent concern. She shrugged when he finished.

“It’s a hazard of the business. What else can I tell you?”

“I’ve been through the register. It may have been more than an isolated case.”

“Then I’ll have to tell the desk clerks to be more careful, won’t I?” She inspected white clusters of carnations and then moved on. He followed, stepping too close to a rose bush with flesh-tearing thorns. He jerked an arm back.

“Tell me about the girl.”

“I seldom meet the guests, unless someone has a complaint, which is seldom. She almost sounds like somebody you made up.”

“Are there others?”

She turned smartly on the balls of her feet. “I’m an innkeeper, Sergeant, not a madam.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you were.”

“I’m relieved,” she said in a tone of patronage. “Any other questions?”

“How much of the Silver Bell is yours?”

She viewed him coldly, silently.

“I don’t mean to pry.”

“The devil you don’t. What makes you think I have money in it?”

“I can’t picture you working there for just a salary, unless it’s substantial. Which it may well be.”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m concerned over how much control you have. I know who the principal owner is and who’s probably behind him. That’s always worried me.” He shaded his eyes from the sun. “I wouldn’t want anything to get out of hand. No problems, Mrs. Gately.”