Penance (27 page)

“Why?”

“You were married to him.”

“Is that a question?” Meghan asked.

“No. You were married to him.”

“And divorced. A long time ago.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“Many times.”

“When was the last time?”

“The night he was killed. I went to his place after work, we had sex and I left. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Flabbergast” is an interesting word. It’s eighteenth-century slang meaning “to make speechless with amazement; astonish.” And boy, was I flabbergasted. I stopped dead in the middle of the tunnel and gawked at her like she was the Eighth Wonder of the World.

“I have nothing to hide,” she told me.

“Apparently not.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Can you prove that?”

“No,” she admitted. “Fortunately, I don’t have to.”

She had me there.

“Anything else you want to know?” she asked. The smile told me she was more than willing to cooperate. Why shouldn’t she?

“Tell me about you and Thoreau,” I said.

“Dennis and I were married right after high school graduation,” Meghan volunteered. “It was a foolish thing to do, to get married so young. We went on a glorious honeymoon, rented a cozy bungalow in Minneapolis, bought a lot of stuff we couldn’t afford, began fighting and divorced. Dennis took off—I think he went to Oklahoma that time. I went back to school. He returned and I discovered that I still cared for him. Men like Dennis, you can’t stay angry at them. It’s like carrying on a vendetta with the rain. Besides, he was so much fun. The most fun I’ve ever had in my life. So, he would come and he would go and that’s the way we lived.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t seem very distraught over his death.”

“I do mind, Mr. Taylor. I mind very much.”

We were standing at the capitol end of the tunnel, where the State Capitol Security Force was headquartered. Through the window I could see a bank of TV monitors and a uniformed officer scanning them. Conan stood next to the officer. But he was watching Meghan and me. I nodded at him and led Meghan past the window.

“Dennis was living in your apartment while you were managing C. C. Monroe’s first run for the House,” I reminded her.

“For a time.”

“You threw him out.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was cheating on me,” Meghan said.

“With whom?”

“Carol Catherine.”

Lord, she was just full of surprises.

“Yet you’re still her friend.”

Meghan sighed. “Carol Catherine and I always will be friends no matter what happens, no matter what one does to the other. Don’t you have a friend like that?”

I thought of Anne Scalasi. “One or two,” I said.

“Well, then …”

We walked some more.

“We were roommates at the University of Minnesota,” Meghan said. “We shared everything, even boyfriends. It didn’t surprise me that Carol Catherine thought the arrangement also included husbands. I don’t blame her. I blame Dennis. Besides, Dennis and I weren’t married at the time. What is it they say in basketball? No foul…”

“No harm, no foul.”

“‘No harm, no foul,’” she repeated. “Anyway, quitting Carol Catherine would not have been in my best interest.” (There was that phrase again.) “I agreed to manage her campaign for the House of Representatives for the same reason she agreed to run: to make contacts. As luck would have it, we were both very successful. She won the election and I was appointed to this position.”

We were standing in the rotunda beneath the State Capitol’s massive dome, near the center where a huge, eight-pointed star was imbedded in the marble floor. A troop of Cub Scouts leaned against the second-floor railing and looked down, half listening to a tour guide with a red, white and blue tie. Above, huge murals depicting various saints earning their sainthood graced the dome walls. Below, battle flags from the Civil War and miscellaneous Indian campaigns unfurled behind glass. Included among them was the bullet-torn flag of the First Minnesota Infantry Regiment, the regiment that saved the Union’s bacon on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, losing two hundred fifteen out of two hundred sixty-two soldiers in the process. It was displayed next to Frank B. Kellogg’s Nobel Peace Prize, earned for his work as coauthor of a pact renouncing the use of war as an “instrument of national policy.” The pact was signed August 27, 1928, by sixty-two nations. All sixty-two participated in the World War just eleven years later. Well, at least Frank had tried.

“I’ll miss this place when I leave,” Meghan said.

“Are you leaving?”

“Eventually, I suppose. I guess I’m more like Dennis than I care to admit. I like to move around.”

“You could stay and get an appointment from Carol Catherine if she’s elected governor,” I suggested.

“You mean when, don’t you?” Meghan asked, and then shook her head. “Marion is Carol Catherine’s chief of staff and she doesn’t like me much; she thinks I’m a bad influence on Carol Catherine. When we were in school, we used to party pretty hard.”

All right, I decided, now’s a good time to let her have it, to kick down the wall of indifference she was hiding behind. “Did you know that Dennis and Carol Catherine made a pornographic movie together?”

“Sure.”

You really know how to shake up a client, don’t you, Taylor
?

“Carol Catherine told me about it six years ago.”

“You weren’t upset?”

“Of course I was upset. That’s why I showed Dennis the door. But like I said, it was six years ago. It requires too much energy, too much concentration, to stay angry over something that happened six years ago.”

“Have Dennis and Carol Catherine been together since they made the tape?” I asked.

“Absolutely not!” Meghan’s answer was vehement to the point of startling me.

I had to wait a few beats before asking my next question, “Are you aware that Dennis …”

“Attempted to blackmail Carol Catherine? Of course. Carol Catherine told me everything. And in anticipation of your next question, Mr. Taylor, no, I do not believe she had anything to do with his death.”

“What do you believe?”

“I believe the newspaper’s explanation that Dennis was killed over drugs. I could see him getting involved in that; he was foolish enough.”

Meghan Chakolis was starting to annoy me the way Barry Bonds annoyed National League pitchers: She was getting good wood on everything I served up. I decided to throw her an inside curve, see if I could move her off the plate. “Dennis was endangering Carol Catherine’s campaign for the governor’s office. Perhaps Marion Senske had him killed.”

“Oh, Mr. Taylor. I’d hardly think so,” she said, smiling at my suggestion. Then she glanced at her watch and told me it was time she returned to her office. Her heels made a pleasant echo on the marble floor as she walked away; I listened to them long after she was out of sight.

TWENTY-SIX

I
STOPPED AT A
hardware store for a can of putty and a pane of glass cut to fit my front window, the one the bullet had gone crashing through. Across the street from the store was a park with four softball diamonds, all of them idle. My friends and I used to play softball. We were pretty good, too; won a few tournaments, won a few league championships. Most of us had known each other since we were five years old and playing T-ball at Linwood Park. The game kept us together for nearly thirty years and while we played there was always time for dinners and parties and just hanging out; always time to have a few beers and talk it over. But families and jobs and the responsibilities of age eventually took their toll and one day there simply weren’t enough of us left to field a team. Soon after that there wasn’t enough time for anything. Now we get together once a year, at Christmas. I drove home depressed.

I stood on the aluminum ladder outside my front window, fumbling helplessly with the glass, trying mightily—and unsuccessfully—to seal it securely in the frame without smudging it with putty. As I worked I reflected on the identity of the person responsible for the shattered window and realized that if anyone wanted to shoot me in the back, now would be a good time.

“Hi, Taylor,” a voice called.

I dropped the glass and putty knife and dived into the hedge that ran under the front windows.

“Did you fall?” the voice asked, concerned. It belonged to twelve-year-old Tammy Mandt.

“Don’t ever, ever do that again,” I yelled at her.

“Do what?” she yelled back. Tammy was tough; she didn’t like to be pushed around. Yet she also was insecure; she looked down, away and over my head, but never directly at me.

I gave her a hug. “I’m sorry. You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said and hugged back.

“No, I’m sorry,” I insisted.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

By the seventh “sorry” she was laughing.

“May I take Ogilvy for a walk?” she asked.

“Help yourself. His harness is on …” She didn’t wait for my directions but scampered into my house. I went back to the window. The job took twenty minutes more—constantly looking over my shoulder slowed me down—and when I was finished I wondered why I had even bothered; the glass was so badly smudged you could barely see through it. Still, it kept out the rain and cold. I stood under it, admiring my handiwork, as Cynthia Grey drove up. She was wearing a high-neck blouse with a lace-trimmed collar under my sweatshirt; a pretty woman dressed in lace can sell me anything she wants. I walked toward her and she walked toward me, but before we met, Tammy came out of the house calling my name.

“Taylor, I’m going to take … Oh, hi,” she said to Cynthia.

“Hi,” Cynthia replied.

“I’m taking Ogilvy for a walk in the park now,” Tammy informed us.

“Really? You can take rabbits for walks?” Cynthia asked with incredulity.

“Well, yeah,” Tammy answered, apparently wondering why adults were so dense. She set Ogilvy on the grass and attached a fifteen-foot-long red leash to his harness. Cynthia knelt next to the rabbit and scratched his nose. Tammy regarded her suspiciously for a moment and then asked, “Are you Taylor’s new girlfriend?” Kids say the darnedest things.

Cynthia blushed. She glanced at me and then back to the young girl. “Yes,” she said.

“Okay,” Tammy said. “C’mon, Ogilvy,” she told the rabbit and gave his leash a tug. Ogilvy bounded off toward the street, Tammy hanging onto the red ribbon. They didn’t get far. Kids have a radar for this sort of thing and before Tammy and Ogilvy had made it to the boulevard, a half-dozen urchins appeared out of thin air and crowded around, petting the rabbit, asking questions, allowing as to how they always wanted a rabbit, too, and conspiring to get one from their parents.

Cynthia watched with intense interest. She was smiling broadly when she came to me and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tight.

We played miniature golf and Cynthia beat me three games straight, but the sun was in my eyes and my head still hurt and besides, I let her win. We roamed the shops on Grand Avenue and she bought me a bookmark that said: B
E
A
LERT; THE
W
ORLD
N
EEDS
A
LL THE
L
ERTS
I
T
C
AN
G
ET.
I bought her a double-scoop French-vanilla ice cream cone. She bought me a sixteen-ounce T-bone at a pretty good steakhouse on West Seventh Street. I paid for the drinks at a jazz joint near Como Park where they know me; the woman fronting the house quartet dedicated a song to us from the stage, Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well.”

It was past one when we pulled into my driveway. I invited Cynthia inside. She declined, saying she had to get up early. So, we necked in the front seat for about fifteen minutes. I invited her inside again, she wavered, but finally pushed me out of the car and drove off. Damn. Maybe I should have hired someone to shoot at us.

The digital display of my AM/FM clock radio with snooze alarm read 5:11 when the sound of my ringing telephone woke me from a Technicolor dream in which Cynthia and I were … Well, never mind that. The phone rang. It was Detective Martin McGaney.

“Meet me,” he said.

TWENTY-SEVEN