Shadow Image (2 page)

Empty houses still scared him. An irrational fear, he knew, but it had lingered now for five years. After Molly's accident, as she faded into the black hole her doctors called a “persistent vegetative state,” he found he couldn't easily stay by himself in their old Highland Park house. It was Molly's house, infused with her spirit, a three-story monument to a life cut short. His memories of life there after Molly weren't good. Melissa had hated him then, hated that he'd made the decision to quietly disconnect her mother's respirator without letting her daughters be part of the decision. What he'd intended as a simple gesture of love and mercy had exploded like a grenade, and not just inside their house on Bryant Street. After J. D. Dagnolo, the county's overbearing district attorney, floated the possibility of prosecuting him for the mercy killing, it was all over the local TV news. The issue was a guaranteed ratings boost for Dagnolo among the city's mostly Catholic electorate, and the D.A. would have milked it for years if Brenna and Grady Downing, the homicide detective assigned to the case, hadn't shut Dagnolo down. But if Melissa had resented him for ending Molly's life, she'd resented him even more once Brenna's role as his defense attorney evolved into something more personal.

When the girls were there, at least the Bryant Street house had been a burble of homework, phone calls, and dinners cobbled together from raw carrots and cottage cheese and whatever was in the cupboard; at least he wasn't alone with his thoughts about the drunken little prick who'd weaved across the center line and met Molly's car head-on; at least the report of her heart monitor didn't echo in his memory like a crow's call. But when the house was empty…

The front hallway of the Shadyside house was a riot of moving cartons, Brenna's stacked dining-room chairs, and the scattered pieces of a forsaken Candy Land game that had ended badly two hours earlier with Annie accusing Taylor of planting the Queen Frostine card to his advantage. The conflict was annoying at the time, but as he swept the cards into a pile and tracked the far-flung game pieces, it made him smile. Kids weren't nearly as entertaining in the moment as they could be with a few hours' distance.

The phone rang again. Christensen checked his watch. Still thirty minutes until Simone's birthday party ended.

“Hey Jim, me again.” With his basso profundo voice and trace of Dublin lilt, there was never a need for Terry Flaherty to be more specific.

“Ford Underhill?”

“Wh-what?” Flaherty said.

“Brenna filled me in.” Christensen waited through a long pause.

“Loose lips sink ships.”

“You ethical titan. Relax. She told me who, but that's it. What's the deal?”

“We still don't know what the hell is going on, but it's so bizarre. She still around? I found some background she may need.”

“Just left. You have the cell phone number.” Christensen folded the Candy Land board in half and put it on the kitchen counter. “Brenna didn't tell me anything about what happened. Really.”

Flaherty laughed. “I'll leave that up to her, then. Ford Fucking Underhill. You think he pays his bills?”

It was hard not to notice the Underhill name in Pittsburgh. The family's generosity over the past century had left it on dozens of Downtown buildings, a sprawling public park in Oakland, and an urban plaza near the old Grant Hotel. In the past decade alone, thanks apparently to the generosity of former governor Vincent Underhill, the family's controlling heir, the Underhills had helped underwrite the neo-natal wing at Mount Mercy Hospital, the Harmony Brain Research Center, an overly splendid Downtown ballet theater, and one of the most convenient concourses at the city's massive new airport. Florence, Italy, had the Medicis, Pittsburgh, the Renaissance City, had the Underhills.

“The old man's kind of disappeared the last couple of years, hasn't he?” Christensen asked. “I mean, compared to Ford.”

“Ford's the family's front guy now, yeah. Vincent's playing Joe Kennedy to Ford's John. But Vincent's still a player.”

“Meaning?”

“That's his rep, anyway. He's out of the spotlight for decades, since he left Harrisburg, but he didn't exactly retire. Took what was left of the family fortune and diversified into retail and office development, public-works construction, all that. The family's companies built a lot of what got built in Pennsylvania during the last twenty years. Christ, they get a chunk of practically every major public contract that's awarded, so he still had a lot of friends in politics when he left office.”

Christensen absently opened the refrigerator. They'd moved a few staples from Brenna's house before unplugging her fridge the day before, but nothing snackable. And even if he felt like warming Thai takeout leftovers from last night, where was the microwave? “What does any of that have to do with them needing a criminal-defense attorney?”

Christensen let the remark hang, hoping its weight would pull Flaherty into an explanation of what had happened to Floss Underhill.

“The Underhills are just big power brokers, is all.”

“There's a news flash. Come on, Terry. I've dealt with the wife, Floss, out at Harmony. She's a second-stage Alzheimer's patient. I'm just curious.”

The phone rustled in Christensen's ear. He imagined Flaherty shifting his bulk in his plush leather execu-chair, trying to squirm out of the conversation. “She wandered away from her keepers and jumped into a ravine. There. Happy?”

Christensen waited until he couldn't wait anymore. “On purpose?”

“People don't jump into ravines by accident. That's all I'll say.”

“Don't be a stiff. What else?”

“That's it. Really. There's one witness who heard something and saw something strange—enough for the cops to take him seriously. It's probably nothing, but Underhill wanted Brenna on board to help clear up the confusion. They don't want rumors floating around ten days before the primary. You know how things get crazy in politics. And at this point, the Rosemond people are desperate for anything they can use against Ford Underhill…” Flaherty mumbled something and said he'd try Brenna's cell phone, then hung up.

“Later,” Christensen said to the dial tone.

He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes until Annie and Taylor would be home. He wanted them home now. The house felt as big as a hangar. If he picked them up early, though, there'd be a battle about being the first to leave. Just stay busy, he thought. Find something to do. It's only fifteen minutes or so.

He and Brenna had decided the downstairs bedroom would be the office, so he moved quickly down the hall to do some unpacking. His oak desk—the one Molly had found at an auction, the one the seller claimed came from the Frick family warehouse—was shoved against one wall, its matching chair trapped in the corner by a stack of cartons containing his PC and Brenna's Power Mac. Brenna's chrome-and-glass workstation was against another, a black leather office chair overturned on top, wheels to the sky. It looked like a jet fighter's cockpit seat after an ejection. The rest of the room was strewn with boxes—files, books, some boxes inscribed MISC OFFICE in black marker. He chose one of those, peeled the packing tape from its lid, and folded back the top flaps.

One of Molly's favorite photographs stared up at him from inside, a black-and-white shot she'd taken of a tuxedoed opera fan after a Heinz Hall performance. The man was reacting to a homeless woman on Liberty Avenue. He leaned away from her outstretched hand as if she were handing him a piece of dog shit. The picture had hung for years on the wall opposite his desk in the Bryant Street house, and he'd memorized its every detail. When he had packed up the house the week before, he'd taken it down and put it into the carton with the few others that Molly had deemed worthy of display. Annie had found him sitting on the floor that day, pondering the sad squares of discolored paint where each had hung.

He flipped through the images. Molly'd worshipped Cartier-Bresson, and her own photographs showed it.

Their common thread was a sense of humor, cutting at times but always driven by compassion. Molly had loved life's everyday ironies, the little dramas played out at bus stops and on fire escapes where the subjects were unguarded and their emotions were open to anyone who cared to see. He'd watched her work once, from a distance. She moved like a hummingbird, pausing only briefly to raise her tiny Leica, capturing moments before moving again. He was certain that the opera fan and the homeless woman never knew.

Empty walls surrounded him, as did the promise of a new life with Brenna. He'd reached a crossroads, and he thought a few long moments about his choice. Then he closed the carton's flaps. A black marker and packing tape were where he'd left them in his desk's bottom left drawer. He sealed the box of photographs and uncapped the marker, writing MELISSA/ANNIE MISC on the side before taking it to the attic.

She steered into the cool embrace of two-lane Fox Chapel Road, which bisected the community like an oaken green tunnel. The pavement was still dry despite the drizzling rain. From the main road, small side lanes led past some of the world's most carefully barbered real estate. Her mother had deserved this. Maybe it was just a surviving daughter's guilt; maybe it was the inevitable result of their bond at the end after three cruel years of finally getting to know each other. But if there was a God who kept track of dignified, stoic suffering—and God knows Claire Kennedy suffered as the cancer devoured her—surely her mother would have in the afterlife one of the original Fox Chapel estates that had eluded her in life. Brenna scanned the newer Tudor fantasies flashing past the Legend's side windows until the ringing cell phone punctured the moment.

“Me again,” her partner boomed. Road noise was never a problem with Terry Flaherty. “I did an online search and made a call to get more background. You want it now?”

Brenna glanced at her watch. “I'm probably three minutes away, so give me the short version. I also just got off the phone with Ernie Cohnfelder at the
Press.
He owes me some favors, so he read me headlines from the clip file and said he'd photocopy everything they had in the paper's library. The library finally went electronic three years ago, so everything later is on a database. But it's a start.”

“Anything useful?”

“At this stage everything's useful, Terry. The more recent stuff was from the society pages, mostly fundraising stuff for various charities. Through the late eighties it was the airport and Mount Mercy Hospital projects. In the early eighties it was Downtown redevelopment stuff. Everything before that is thirty-year-old coverage out of Harrisburg, and there's a ton of that, most of it positive, Ernie said. He said Vincent is tight with the whole Koberlein family, especially the cranky one who first bought the paper. Leo, I think.”

Almost too late, Brenna spotted the sign for Silver Spur Road. She braked hard and turned the wheel, barely missing the abutment of an old stone bridge. As if she needed more adrenaline.

“Anything on Ford in what you've got, Ter?”

“Everything on Ford. The guy's got a publicity machine like you wouldn't believe, and I wasn't about to wade into that. Mostly just election-year crap. Some personal stuff.”

“I'd almost forgot he lost a son, a three-year-old. Ernie said there was a horseback-riding accident about three years ago. The story's in the database, not the clips, but he remembered it.”

“Jesus, Brenna, how could you forget? It's the whole subtext of that goofy Underhill campaign slogan: ‘Tolerant, true, tested and ready.' ”

She imagined Flaherty, a wickedly cynical Irishman, rolling his eyes. “That's how you tell the real pros in politics,” she said. “They can package any personal tragedy for public consumption. Anything else?”

“Talked to my mole down at the sheriff's department, too. Wouldn't say much, but she let slip something you should know. The crime lab's apparently involved. They showed up at the hospital to do fingernail scrapings on the old lady.”

“And?”

“No idea what they found, but they must be taking this witness or the physical evidence pretty seriously.”

Brenna slowed the car outside a wrought-iron gate, behind which a driveway curved up into the woods and disappeared. The entire front of the property was surrounded by an ancient, ivy-covered red-brick wall. She searched the pillars on each side of the gate for an address. No mailbox, either. “I think I'm here,” she said. “Don't these people believe in house numbers?”

“Want me to call them back and make sure you're in the right place?”

“No, there's a buzzer and intercom thingy. If this isn't it, I'll call you. But I should get on in there. We don't want to lose this one.”

“Speak for yourself, Kennedy. We're swamped as it is. Besides, I've got no aspirations, politics-wise.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I can hear the wheels turning in that ambitious head of yours.”

“Right now they're just another client, Ter.”

Flaherty laughed. “And Microsoft is just another software company.”

“Gimme a break.”

“No sucking up now.”

The man waved her into a parking area to the right of the house's main entrance. With his tailored silk sports coat and white linen shirt open at the collar, he was too well dressed for hired help. Brenna took a closer look as she wheeled past him into a spot between a Range Rover and a black Thunderbird. It was the state's probable next governor, a telegenic creature with broad shoulders and a too-large head topped by TV-anchorman hair. Ford Underhill waited a respectful distance from the car as she gathered her briefcase.

“Ms. Kennedy, thank you for coming,” he said as she stepped out. The somber concern in his eyes didn't stop them from straying to her legs. “May I call you Brenna?”

“Please.” She extended a hand, felt a chill as he took it. He held it a beat longer than necessary.

“Very sorry about the short notice,” he said. “Phil Raskin brought your name up right after all this happened late yesterday—he's a big fan, apparently—and I'm afraid it couldn't wait until Monday.”

She got a lot of referrals from civil attorneys, but never from one as high-profile as Raskin. They'd met only once, and she knew little about him beyond his top rank at Raskin, Hartman, & Bailey, the city's leading civil-law firm, and his longtime role as the Underhill family's political consultant. By reputation, Raskin still approached politics as an art, not tracking-poll science, and didn't hesitate to use artistic license when needed. If that involved poll money in certain districts or an occasional hooker for a reluctant ward chairman, in more than thirty years no one had ever ratted him out. He was
that
good.

“I'll make sure to thank Mr. Raskin the next time I see him,” she said.

Underhill gestured to the front door. “He's inside.”

For the first time, Brenna focused on the house, a great gabled meringue of stone and timber, hardly the granite mausoleum she'd pictured as home to the bluest of western Pennsylvania's bluebloods. She imagined the
AD
headline: “Rustic elegance from the time of tycoons.” But of course, these weren't the kind of people who opened their homes to shelter magazines, no matter how prestigious. Their name alone conferred position; at this level, there was no one to impress.

Brenna followed Underhill across the circular drive, stepping as he directed around an enormous pile of fresh horse shit. “My wife's bay left us a little gift,” he said, smiling. “Johnnie just walked it down to the stables.”

The flagstone steps were flanked by barrel-sized cast-iron pots bursting with red geraniums. The front doors were open—walnut, Brenna guessed—and they stepped onto what seemed like an acre of earth-colored paving stones that made the massive front hall seem almost intimate. When Underhill closed the doors behind them, Brenna noticed a pair of soiled paddock boots, an English saddle, and a saddle pad in a neat pile on a delicate antique chair to her right. These were true horse people, she thought, the inspiration for Ralph Lauren's mass-marketed images of the rugged rich.

“Excuse the mess,” Underhill said, nodding toward the chair. “It's been a little chaotic around here since Mother's fall.”

He led her across the entry toward a wall of French doors that opened onto a covered patio, where Brenna counted four people seated stiffly around a sturdy plank table. They were framed by a brilliant green lawn. It was bordered by the kind of gardens reserved only for those with a staff of full-time gardeners. The smell of spring rain was overpowering. As they stepped through the patio doors, everyone stood. The only ones Brenna recognized were Raskin and Ford Underhill's wife.

The wife was the first to reach for Brenna's hand. Her grip was strong, and from her clothes Brenna assumed she was the one who'd been out riding. She was about forty, Brenna figured, but looked years younger with her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. When she smiled a perfect Candidate's Wife smile and cocked her head to one side, Brenna thought of Nancy Reagan. “I'm Leigh Underhill,” she said, wrinkling her nose ever so slightly. She gently deflected Brenna's attention to the man to her left. “This is my father-in-law, Vincent.”

The family patriarch seemed to force a smile as he extended a hand. His intense blue eyes were filled with sadness, maybe fatigue, but even at seventy-two Vincent Underhill was a striking presence. Well over six feet tall, he radiated an aura of entitlement and privilege. He was lean and in shape, with hair the color of fresh snow. It swept back off his forehead in gentle waves, and gold-framed reading glasses were perched on the end of his long, thin nose—how Jim might look in thirty years if fate was kind. His face was deeply tanned, and its lines did nothing to diminish the overall effect. They enhanced it, suggesting the wisdom of age.

“My pleasure,” she said.

“No, mine.” His hand was soft and warm.

“Brenna, I think you know Phil,” Ford said. Raskin set down his drink. Brenna caught a whiff of good bourbon as she shook his cold, damp hand.

“We met at the Pitt law symposium last year,” she said.

“Of course I remember. Thanks for coming on such short notice. Something like this, we needed someone with your background.”

“Appreciate you thinking of me,” she said.

“Raskin, Hartman prides itself on its breadth of civil-law experience, but something like this—”

“We wanted everybody to sit in on the meeting this afternoon, Brenna,” Ford broke in. “We want you to have all the necessary background and context to what happened with Mother. I hope you don't mind us taking that liberty.”

Ford suddenly gestured to the man to Brenna's immediate right, whose hands remained clasped behind his back. “I'm sorry, I've forgotten Mr. Staggers. He handles security at my parents' house here and can fill you in on the sheriff's department activity last night and earlier today.”

The man extended his hand. He wore a pinkie ring the size of a pecan, but everything else about him—from his tailored suit coat to the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket to the perfect Windsor knot of his rep tie—suggested elegance and good taste. He smiled. “Call me Alton.”

As if on cue, everyone except Ford Underhill and Brenna sat down again. Ford offered Brenna one of the empty wrought-iron chairs, then took the only remaining one for himself. Before anyone could speak, an ancient black maid appeared with a crystal pitcher of iced tea and six empty glasses.

“Thank you, Lottie,” Ford said. No one spoke again until she'd set the tray on the table and retreated silently through the French doors into the house. Ford poured a glass of tea and set it in front of Brenna, then poured one for his wife. Leigh ignored the china sugar bowl and opened a wallet-sized Hermés leather pouch, where she apparently carried sugar cubes for her horse. She dropped a cube into her glass and crushed it on the bottom with a long-handled spoon.

“Help yourselves,” Ford said to the others, offering the pitcher. “Why don't I just start with an update on Mother?”