Outwitting Trolls (9 page)

“You've tried calling him?”

“A dozen times,” she said. “He doesn't answer.”

“His phone's turned on?”

“It rings five or six times, and then this recorded voice answers and invites me to leave a message. Which I have done.”

“Is it Wayne's voice?”

“The recording, you mean? No. It's the phone company. A woman's voice. She just says, ‘The person you are trying to reach is not available at this time. At the tone, please leave a message.' Or something like that.”

“Is this unusual?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not being able to get hold of Wayne?”

“Truthfully,” she said, “I don't try to get in touch with him very often anymore. He never answers his phone, never returns a call when you leave a message. Wayne's kind of off on his own. He has been for a while. We've been shaky ever since the divorce. Lately, the past few years, we've just drifted apart.” She hesitated. “I haven't talked to him for a long time.”

“Ellen gave me his number,” I said. “I'll try.”

“That would be great,” Sharon said, “though I don't know what you can do that I can't do. He'll either answer or he won't.”

“Maybe he's screening his calls.”

“Because he doesn't want to talk to his mother?” she asked. “I suppose that's possible. Well, I hope you can catch up with him. He needs to know what happened.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Brady. For everything. You put my mind at ease.”

“Shall I make an appointment with Tally Whyte for you?” I asked.

“Let me think about it,” she said.

After I hung up with Sharon, I tried Wayne's cell phone number. Just as Sharon had reported, a recorded voice answered after about six rings, informing me that the person I was calling was not available and inviting me to leave a message. I declined that invitation.

I would persist.

 

I finished my paperwork a little after eleven. Henry and I went out back so he could pee and I could look at the stars. Alex loved the night sky. When she and her brother, Gus, were kids, they'd
identified their own private set of constellations up there—Elvis and Snoopy and Marilyn Monroe. There were several others. When I was with Alex right after Gus was killed, she tried to teach them to me, and when she pointed them out, I could see them—Elvis's guitar, Snoopy's ears, Marilyn's bosom.

I could see nothing but a sky full of random, disconnected stars. She liked to say that it was one of the big differences between us—she saw order where I saw chaos. She said that I needed her to bring some coherence into my life, and I thought maybe she was right, although I doubted she'd ever convince me that life was orderly.

Standing out on my back deck looking at the starry sky made me feel closer to Alex. I knew that she always stepped out back behind her house up there in Garrison, Maine, before bedtime to check out her constellations. She said it was almost like being kids with Gus again. I knew that she missed him all the time. She said that it helped, knowing I was looking at the same sky she was, even if I was in Boston and she was in Maine, and even if I could see only randomness.

An hour later I was lying in my bed. Henry was curled up on the rug beside me. I picked up the telephone from my bedside table, rested it on my chest, and dialed Alex's number in Maine.

It rang four or five times before she picked up. “Hello?” she said. She sounded a little breathless.

“You're wide-awake, aren't you,” I said.

“I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth. I dashed for the phone. Wanted to grab it before you hung up on me. Wait a minute.”

I heard what I guessed was the rustle of sheets and blankets, and then Alex said, “There. I'm all tucked in. Are you?”

“Yes. All tucked in.”

“I miss you.”

“Me, too. I wouldn't have hung up.”

“Umm,” she said. “I know. Why don't I come down to you this weekend.”

“You know how much I like to get away from the city,” I said, “and Henry loves your woods. But, yes, I think it would be better if you came here.”

“Something's going on, isn't it?”

“I've got a new case that might require some attention,” I said. “Plus, Billy's in town with his friend Gwen.”

“His girlfriend?”

“He insists on calling her his friend. Says she's not his girlfriend. Anyway, you and Billy haven't seen each other in years.”

“Not since our, um, first relationship,” Alex said. “He was a kid back then. He must be a man now.”

“He is.”

“I like this one,” she said softly.

“This what?”

“This relationship. Our second one. Maybe we'll get it right this time.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I bet we will.”

“Do you really hope so?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Even if you still miss Evie.”

“I am still aware of Evie's absence,” I said. “Which isn't quite the same thing.”

“You shared a house with her for all those years.”

“Those years after you,” I said. “After you dumped me.”

Alex chuckled quietly. “I'm not going to rise to that bait again.”

“I shared a life with Evie,” I said. “Not just a house. But I'm not doing that anymore. Sometimes, like when I see the daffodils blooming out back, the bulbs she planted, I'm reminded of
her, and sometimes that makes me a little sad. Then I look up at the night sky and try to find Snoopy and Elvis, and even when I can't see them, I'm reminded of you. I know you can show them to me, and that makes me happy.”

“That's nice,” she said.

“Shall I expect you at suppertime on Friday?”

“I'll bring supper,” she said. “Your job is to be sure there's plenty of beer in the fridge.”

“Beer. You got it.”

She was quiet for a minute. Then I heard her yawn. “I'm pretty sleepy. Gonna shut my eyes now. G'night, honey. Sleep tight, 'kay?”

“You, too, babe.”

“I didn't dump you.”

“It was my fault,” I said.

“Mmm-hmmm,” she mumbled. “My own sweetie.” Then she disconnected.

I hung up the phone and put it back on the table beside my bed. Henry was snuffling in his sleep. I lay there for a few minutes, looking up into the darkness, and I felt happy. Then I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I tried calling Wayne Nichols about half a dozen times on Tuesday. I called from my landline at home while I was eating breakfast. I called from my cell phone as I walked to the office. The first time I tried him from my office phone, I accepted the recorded message's invitation. “Wayne,” I said, “my name is Brady Coyne. I'm an old friend of both of your parents. They used to take care of my pets when I lived in Wellesley. Maybe you remember my boys, Billy and Joey. They're about your age. Anyway, I have some news for you about your mother and father. It's very important. Please give me a call, the sooner the better.” I left him my home, cell, and office numbers.

When he didn't call me back after an hour or so, I tried him again, and as the day passed I called his number several more times from my office, and then again from my cell phone as I walked home. Each time, the same recorded greeting answered after five or six rings and invited me to leave a message, which I didn't. If he wasn't going to answer my first message, I saw no point in repeating myself.

I didn't know how to interpret the fact that Wayne did not
respond to his mother's or his sister's messages and did not answer mine. His phone was charged up and turned on, which seemed to mean that he was using it. I assumed that he heard it when it rang and had been collecting his messages.

I decided that on Wednesday I'd drive up to Websterville, New Hampshire, and try to track down Wayne Nichols. He needed to know that his father had been murdered.

 

On my way home from the office that afternoon, I stopped at the spirits store on Newbury Street, where I bought two six-packs of Long Trail Double Bag Ale, a tasty microbrew from Vermont, and a bottle of a Napa Valley Shiraz recommended by the clerk. Then at DeLuca's on Charles Street I picked up a wedge of brie, a hunk of extra-sharp cheddar, and two boxes of crackers.

By six o'clock, when Billy and Gwen, each bearing a big paper grocery bag, banged on my front door, I had the ale on ice and the wine decanted and the cheese and crackers on plates on my kitchen table.

Billy was wearing his usual outfit—jeans, flannel shirt, and sandals. His long dark-blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a length of rawhide. Gwen wore snug-fitting jeans and a scoop-neck peasant blouse. Her hair was short and straight and black. She wore it combed back, with long dangly silver earrings. With her big dark eyes and olive skin, she looked like a gypsy.

They both gave me a one-armed hug, set their bags on the floor, and scootched down to rub Henry's belly. He'd rolled onto his back to make it easy for them. Then I led them through the house to the kitchen, where they stowed their provisions in the refrigerator.

Billy and I grabbed a bottle of ale, and Gwen poured herself a glass of wine, and we took the crackers and cheese and our drinks out back and sat in the Adirondack chairs.

I held up my bottle. “Cheers,” I said. “Welcome to Beacon Hill.”

Billy clicked his bottle on mine. Gwen held up her wineglass.

“This is nice,” I said. “I like having you guys around.”

“Won't be for long,” Billy said. “We've got to head out in a few days. We've got jobs to get back to.”

“When're you leaving?”

“Sunday,” he said. “I've got to help get the boats and stuff ready to go for the fishing season, and I've got a float trip scheduled for next Friday.”

“Alex will be down from Maine this weekend,” I said. “She's my, um, my new girlfriend. You met her several years ago when she was my old girlfriend. She was hoping she'd get to see you.”

“Sure,” said Billy. “I remember Alex. We'll make it happen.”

I turned to Gwen. “What about you? What are you going back to?”

“My publishing house in Berkeley,” she said. “I'm second in command in the sub-rights department. This week has been my vacation. It's my first time ever in New England.”

“So what do you think?”

She smiled. “It's beautiful. So much variety. So different from what I'm used to. I mean, weather, climate, topography, flora, fauna, history. Everything. And it's all so…old. Everywhere you go, there's all this history. I'd never been east of the Mississippi in my life before now. Billy took me to Plum Island yesterday, and the other day we climbed Mount Monadnock. He showed me around Boston and Lexington and Concord, and he's gonna take me down to Cape Cod tomorrow.” She turned to him and punched his arm. “Am I right, big fella?”

“Right, kiddo,” Billy said. He gave her arm a gentle punch back, and it struck me again, as it had the other night at the North End restaurant, that these two treated each other more like buddies than lovers.

We were on our second bottles when Billy said, “The other night at the restaurant? When you had to leave? Was that Dr. Nichols, the vet?”

“It was his wife who called me,” I said.

“You said he was murdered?”

I nodded.

“Murdered,” said Gwen.

“Yes,” I said. “That's right.”

“Wow,” she whispered.

“Dr. Nichols was the one who put down Bucky,” Billy said. “I'll always remember that.”

“You don't forget something like that,” I said.

He looked up at the sky. “They had a kid about my age.” He frowned. “Can't think of his name.”

“Wayne,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “Wayne. He was a strange dude.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, kids used to say that he tortured animals…and his old man a vet?”

“That's beyond strange,” Gwen said. “That's totally sick.”

Billy looked at her and nodded. “If it was true.” He shrugged. “I wouldn't doubt it. I used to play with him sometimes. I guess we were ten or eleven, not much older than that. I remember this one time we were fooling around near some pond and Wayne caught a frog. He set it on top of a rock and stuck a firecracker in its mouth, and the dumb frog just sat there with this firecracker hanging out of the corner of its mouth like a cigar or something,
and Wayne lit it, and…” Billy shook his head. “It was pretty horrible.”

“Oh, gross,” Gwen said. “That's evil.”

“I always felt guilty,” he said, “that I didn't take that firecracker out of the frog's mouth, or tell Wayne not to do it. Or something. I didn't do anything. I knew what he was gonna do, and I just watched.”

Gwen reached over and held Billy's hand. “You were just a kid,” she said.

“I was old enough to know better.” He shrugged. “I wonder whatever became of Wayne Nichols. They moved out of town when we were still kids.”

I didn't say anything more about Wayne. His mother was my client, and that, by extension, gave me a certain responsibility to him, too.

So we drank wine and ale and nibbled cheese and crackers, and our conversation slid over to fishing and baseball and books, and after a while Billy and Gwen went inside to put our dinner together.

Henry and I, following their orders, stayed out back. A bright day of April sunshine had warmed the brick patio, and my little walled-in garden area had captured and retained the late-spring warmth. Now, even as the sun descended below the city horizon, it remained comfortable outdoors.

Billy grilled inch-thick rib eyes and roasted foil-wrapped potatoes and onions on the gas grill on my back deck. Gwen tossed a big green salad and sliced a loaf of fresh-baked rosemary bread.

By the time our dinner was ready to be eaten, darkness had seeped into my backyard, and the chill of the evening had begun to displace the warmth of the day, so we decided to eat in the kitchen.

Henry stationed himself under the table, a smart strategic move, as each of us accidentally dropped a few fatty scraps of medium-rare rib eye and crusts of rosemary bread onto the floor.

It wasn't until we'd moved into the living room with our mugs of after-dinner coffee that Billy looked at me and said, “Well, we told you we had something we wanted to share with you.” He glanced at Gwen, who gave him a quick smile. “I don't know if you've figured it out. Mom did, sort of.”

I shrugged. “I've thought about it, got a hypothesis or two, but I don't want to play guessing games. Unless you want me to.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Nope. Here it is. You're gonna be a grandfather.”

This was more or less what I'd expected. “Well,” I said, “congratulations. Both of you. Or all three of us, I guess. When…?”

“October,” said Gwen. “October fourth, says the doctor.”

“I'm not old enough to be a grandfather,” I said.

“Meaning,” said Billy, “that I'm not old enough to be a father, huh?” He looked hard at me. No sign of a smile.

“You'll always be my little boy,” I said, “but I didn't say that. Really, I was just kidding. I'm happy for you. For me, too. A lot of my friends are grandfathers. They tell me having grandkids is great fun.” I looked from Billy to Gwen, then back at Billy. “So when are you two…?”

He shook his head. “We're not getting married.”

“We don't love each other,” said Gwen. “Not husband-and-wife love, I mean.” She glanced at Billy. “We kinda slipped last winter when I was out skiing with him. But that's not what we're about.”

“We're good friends,” said Billy. “Best buddies. We don't want to wreck a nice friendship. That's what marriage does.”

I shrugged. “Not necessarily.”

He shook his head. “Look at you and Mom. Hell, look at all the divorces you handle. You make a living off of marriages that don't work. Anyway, we've made up our minds, so don't try talking us out of it.”

“Don't worry about that,” I said. “It's your problem. Yours and Gwen's.” I turned and gave her a smile.

“Actually,” said Billy, “we don't have a problem.”

“Problem was a bad choice of words,” I said.

“We've both got lives,” Gwen said. “Billy's is in Idaho. Mine's in California. My parents are nearby. They'll help with the baby.”

I arched my eyebrows at Billy. He grinned and nodded. “We got it all worked out.”

“I'm going to raise the baby,” Gwen said. “Billy is the father. He can visit anytime he wants. He can teach him how to fly-fish and ski and shoot shotguns. You, too, Mr. Coyne. I want our baby to know his grandparents. You and Gloria can visit him. Maybe when he's older, he can come east and spend time with you.”

“Him?” I asked.

She smiled. “It's a boy.”

“You should call me Brady,” I said.

“Okay. Sure.”

“So that's it,” said Billy. “We wanted you and Mom to know what was going on.”

“So you're going to keep living in Idaho,” I said, “teaching skiing and guiding fly-fishermen?”

“It's what I do,” he said. “It's who I am.”

“Even though you're going to be a father.”

He nodded. “Gwen's with me on that.”

“You're going to, um, support the child?”

He shrugged. “I don't make a shitload of money, you know—but, sure, as much as I can.”

“My job pays well,” Gwen said. “Plus, my parents have tons of money. That's not an issue.”

“Not now it's not,” I said.

Billy looked at me. “What're you saying?”

I shrugged. “Just that things change. Gwen could lose her job, or she could get sick. You might decide you wanted to see more of your son. Or Gwen might get married, and her husband might want to adopt the child. Or—”

“Wait a minute,” Billy said. “We got this all figured out, you know? I mean, we've talked a lot about it, and we know what we want to do.”

“You want me to mind my own business, you're saying.”

“Well, yeah.”

I shrugged. “I'm just thinking of the future. You never know what's going to happen. You should plan for the unexpected.”

“Why do you feel like you always have to complicate everything?” Billy asked.

I spread out my hands. “I'm sorry. I'm not trying to complicate anything. It's just how I think, I guess.”

“Like a lawyer,” he said.

I smiled. “You say ‘
lawyer
' as if it's a dirty word.”

He shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “in fact, it wouldn't do you any harm to talk to a lawyer. Both of you. A lawyer could help you think it through, anticipate issues that might come up in the future. A simple written agreement now could save you both a lot of problems and heartaches later.”

“Christ,” said Billy. “Gwen and I trust each other. We both want the same thing. We've got it all worked out. We don't need some fucking lawyer to come along and screw it up.”

“Fucking lawyer,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “That's what I said.”

I looked at Gwen. “What will you do if five years from now Billy decides he wants fifty-fifty custody of your child?”

She shrugged. “He won't. He says he won't, and I believe him.”

“What if you get married?”

“Whoever I marry will know about our child,” she said. “If he doesn't accept the situation, I won't marry him.”

“What if you run out of money, or the baby gets sick, or you do?”

“Look, Mr. Coyne,” she said. “Brady, I mean. Billy and I have thought a lot about this, and we're cool with it. It's going to be okay. Really. You shouldn't worry about it.”

“I was only—”

“Fuck this.” Billy stood up. “Come on, babe.” He held down both hands to Gwen. “Let's get the hell out of here. I thought he'd be happy to know about our baby. I didn't think he was going to play lawyer with us.”

Gwen allowed Billy to pull her to her feet. She looked at me. “Everything's going to be all right, Mr. Coyne,” she said. “Please don't worry.”

“He wasn't worrying,” Billy said to her. “He was just trying to ruin everything. He's always picking at things, making problems where there aren't any. You were wondering why a nice couple like him and my mom got divorced? That's why, right there. Come on. Let's go.”