Shadow Image (20 page)

“If you're one hundred percent right—and you're not—I would withdraw from the case,” she said.

“You'd withdraw?” he tested. “That's it?”

“This is bullshit.”

“But if it's true—”

“It's not.”

“You're too sure.”

“I think the Underhills deserve a competent defense.”

“And I think—” Christensen weighed his words carefully. “Bren, are you telling me everything? You started to say something today about Harrisburg—”

Brenna pushed the full plate of calamari away and stood up. Even in the dim light, he could tell she was pale. She wouldn't look him in the eye. “I'll meet you at home,” she said, and then she was gone.

Even before he turned on their bedroom light, he saw a flashing pinpoint of red light on the reading table beside the bed. He walked to the answering machine and poked the Play button. “You have three new messages,” it announced.

“Jenny doesn't answer the phone?” he said.

Brenna shrugged. She was working open the buttons of her blouse and didn't look up.

“Hey, Dad. Hey, Bren.” Melissa's voice suddenly filled the room. “Greetings from Grenoble.”

Christensen sat down on the edge of the bed to slip off his shoes. He'd grown close to his older daughter in the past three years, and hearing her voice from so far away triggered a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss. He missed her, his sadness underscored by the background commotion of her French host family and the knowledge that she'd grown up and away.

“Just thought I'd check in before I throw myself off the clock tower in town.”

The hair on Christensen's arms stood up. He froze.

“Kidding, Dad. Lighten up. I haven't talked to you in a couple weeks, that's all. Thanks for the check. Thought you might be working at home today. How's the new house? Can't wait to see it this summer. I've got an eight o'clock French Lit. exam tomorrow, so don't call back. I'll check in this weekend. Give Annie and Taylor a hug, okay? Bye.”

The machine's electronic voice announced 3:53 p.m. as the time of the call. Between feeding the kids and his troubling phone call to Simon Bostwick, he must have forgotten to check the machine.

“She sounds fine,” Christensen said.

Brenna slid out of her skirt. “That was uncalled-for back there.”

“Maybe. It's, I don't know … clients or not, I just think we need to know what we're dealing with, Bren.”

“And you're jumping to some pretty outrageous conclusions.”

He stood up and unbuckled his belt, letting his pants drop to the floor while he waited for the second message.

“Mr. Christensen, this is Carrie Haygood with the district attorney's office.” He reached without thinking for the volume control, turned it up high. “We spoke earlier today.”

Brenna was suddenly beside him, staring at the machine as if it had begun a conversation and she was expected to answer.

“I'd like to meet privately to further discuss the case we spoke about this morning. I'll be at my office until seven p.m. today.”

Christensen lunged for a pen as Haygood recited her office telephone number, then scribbled the number on the back of a phone-bill envelope sitting on his dresser. Haygood had called at 5:37. The alarm clock read 9:24. Why hadn't he checked the damned machine?

Brenna crossed the room again. She stopped by the bedroom window and twirled the miniblind control rod, closing the thin louvers, then slipped out of her blouse. “You gave her our home number?” she asked.

Christensen shook his head. He put the envelope down when he realized his hand was trembling. “I should try her tonight, before the weekend, just in case she's still there.”

The third message began with an indistinguishable rustle and the sound of passing traffic. Christensen waited for a voice, and waited. From the corner of his eye, he saw Brenna's movements slow and then stop. She was waiting, too.

Finally, above the sound of a closing car door: “This is for Jim Christen…” A pause. “…sen.”

Simon Bostwick delivered his words with a thick tongue, deliberate but impaired, different but somehow still the voice of Christensen's father.

“We're talking about life insur … nance, is what we're talking about,” he slurred. “I got it, yes I do.” An exaggerated laugh. “Got what you need.”

“Your deputy coroner?” Brenna asked.

“Shhh.”

“If they knew—” Another laugh, this one with an edge. “—I'm thinking I'd probably look like the one up there in the springhouse. Worse, probably. But I got it covered. Something I learned a long time ago, something your friend Grady Downing taught me: You gotta leave yourself an out. Always. Always, always, always.”

“Sounds perfectly credible to me,” Brenna said.

Christensen put a finger to his lips.

“ 'Cause that's the thing. Once you're in bed with these people, they know how to make sure you stay there. They know the pressure points. But I could hurt them, too, hurt them like they never been hurt before. Some things you just can't deny.”

They were motionless now, both staring at the answering machine, waiting through a long pause. He knew from the burp and roar of a starting motorcycle that Bostwick was still on the line.

“So don't call me at my house again,” Bostwick said finally. “And I can't call you from there. We need to talk, though. Insurance policy's no good if there's nobody to file the claim. Something happens, you know, to me, I'd like to make it right. Might get me out of hell a little sooner. Wait a sec. Here's a number.”

Christensen wrote the number on the back of the phone bill, just below Carrie Haygood's.

“Area code's the same as mine,” Bostwick said. “Two o'clock tomorrow. I don't hear from you then, then two the next day. Grady trusted you, I know that much. So I'll take a chance.”

Neither of them moved until the machine announced the time of the call: 5:49. Fifteen minutes before he and the kids got home.

“Drunks make lousy witnesses,” Brenna said.

“Come on, Bren. The guy's got no ax to grind, and it sounds like he knows something.”

She looked exasperated. “Or he's trying to blackmail the Underhills. The coroner's office is political, too, you know. They swap favors with Dagnolo all the time.”

Christensen picked up the cordless phone and turned it on. “Something was wrong when we first talked, though. I called him cold, you know, but his answers were just too sure. He said he didn't remember the case, but he slipped when he said he handled a lot of cases involving kids. Why would he say that if he didn't know who Chip Underhill was? He was trying to tell me something even then.”

Christensen dialed Haygood's office number, hoping she was working late. He hung up when the line clicked into her voice mail. “I'll try first thing tomorrow.”

Brenna picked up her skirt and hung it in the closet. She sat on the edge of the bed to peel off her panty hose. “What did he sound like to you?”

“Bostwick? Drunk, like you said.”

“Play it again.”

Christensen skipped the first two messages, then sat down beside her as Bostwick's tape-recorded voice filled the bedroom. Despite the stretched vowels and slurred S's, Christensen heard a deliberateness that he'd missed the first time.

“He's talking in code,” he said. “Think about it. He let me know he was lying about not recognizing the name, didn't he? He did that without saying so, didn't he?”

Christensen looked at the machine as if it might dissect Bostwick's words for deeper meaning. Brenna took his hand in hers, rested her head on his shoulder. He could feel her warm skin through the open front of her blouse, and her hair cascaded down his chest. They sat for a minute or more in silence before he crossed the room to his briefcase. He took out a blank tape and knelt beside the reading table.

“I'll listen again tomorrow,” he said, popping open the machine. He pried the tape free and inserted the blank one, then bent down to put Melissa, Haygood, and Bostwick in his briefcase. When he stood up, Brenna pressed against him from behind, her arms gathered tight around his waist. He turned, struck at once by the intensity in Brenna's eyes. She held on as if she were afraid to let go.

“What?” he said. “Bren?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me, too. This shouldn't be about us, but it's working out that way, isn't it?”

She didn't answer, didn't blink. All she said was, “Make love to me.”

“Not if you give him a choice,” she said, leaning over the kitchen table, scanning the election coverage on the front page of the morning
Press.
“If that's all we've got, just make it.”

Four slices of whole-wheat bread awaited, two already slathered with Jif Extra Crunchy. “I've got a banana. Peanut butter, banana, and honey it is. We'll hear about it later, I'm sure.”

The banana was beyond ripe, so he peeled it gingerly and sliced wheels onto the sandwiches with his sharpest knife. “How come you're still here? You're usually out the door by seven.”

Brenna didn't look up. “Appointment. Out this way. No sense going into town first.”

Her answer was too clipped. “The Underhills. Bren, you had all weekend and yesterday to tell me that.”

“You didn't ask. Ford called yesterday from Scranton or somewhere, from his final campaign sweep, saying he'd be in Pittsburgh today and wanted to meet. I told Liisa not to expect me before two.”

Christensen squeezed the plastic honey bear a bit too tight, sending a thick stream, rather than a thin drizzle, onto the open face of one sandwich. He finished the other, cut them into quarters, and packed them into the two lunchboxes before he'd wrung all hints of anxiety from his voice. “Meet about what?”

Brenna pointed to a story at the bottom of the paper's front page. “The
Press
is off on this Enrique Chembergo thing now, too.”

Christensen filled her coffee mug and set it on the table. The story's headline read: “Underhill Denies ‘Willingly' Hiring Illegals.”

“Everybody wants to talk to Chembergo about the INS stuff,” she said.

“Not about Floss?”

Brenna shook her head. “One of the political writers wrote this, not anybody on the investigative staff.”

“But Ford suddenly wants to see you?”

“He got some uncomfortable questions about hiring illegals during a news conference late Sunday. Ford's convinced Dagnolo is feeding them information. He liked the way I handled the Floss questions, and he wants my thoughts on how to shut it down. Thing is, I'm sure it's not coming from Dagnolo.”

He stirred half a spoonful of sugar into her cup. “From where, then?”

“All they've got is Chembergo's name, and that was in the original investigation report. It's public record. But Rosemond and the Republicans started making a big deal of the INS documentation issue, and now we've got reporters with scandal woodies all over town. But I don't think anybody but Myron has made the connection between the INS Chembergos and the Floss Chembergos. That's too complicated. It'd only become a story if Rosemond made it an issue, and he won't. Even he's not dumb enough to step in that one.”

Christensen sat in a chair directly opposite her, hoping she'd sit, too. But Brenna casually, too casually, flipped open the paper. “Bren, is it just me and Myron Levin thinking along these lines?”

“What lines?”

“That maybe there's a link to Chip's death? That maybe this all somehow ties together?”

She was focused on the newspaper, but her eyes weren't moving. “Hard to tell.” She finally looked up. “Let's not panic here, okay? We still don't know what happened three years ago. We still don't know what happened to the Chembergos. And the more I think about it, the less likely it all seems to wash. Would somebody really try to kill Floss just to keep her quiet? Who in that family would be cold-blooded enough?”

Her face betrayed nothing. No fear, not even concern. As anxious as he felt, as certain as he was about his theory, Christensen found her confidence reassuring. “What time are you meeting him?”

“Noon. At the Fox Chapel house.” Brenna noticed her coffee for the first time. “Thanks, but I should get going. I've got a couple of other stops first. I'll put it in a go-cup.”

“Let me try to get the kids up before you go. They didn't get to see you at all last night. Taylor wanted to tell you about the rat in their classroom having babies. They all watched.” He shuddered. “Like the world needs more rats.”

Annie was curled into a corner of her bed, the tattered remains of Molly's old silk nightgown clutched to her chest. She'd slept with it religiously since her mother died. He bent over and kissed her ear. “Breakfast train's leaving, honey,” he whispered. “Aaaall aboooard.”

She buried her head in the narrow canyon between her pillow and the wall. According to tradition, she wouldn't stir again for another ten minutes, and only then when he offered her a piggyback ride to the table and a heaping bowlful of whatever noxious breakfast confection was in the cupboard. This morning, though, he wanted to hold her, to kiss her damp forehead and feel every one of her sixty-three pounds in his arms. The urge was as irresistible as the moon's pull on the ocean. He snaked a hand up the back of her oversized T-shirt and scratched her back. “Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs,” he said.

Annie sat up. “We're out.”

“You sure? You checked way in the back?”

“I want Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

Christensen opened his arms wide and she crawled to him, clutching his neck and resting her head in the hollow just above his collarbone. As he stood up, she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Think Taylor's awake?” he asked.

“Who cares?”

“Annie. Are you two not getting along?”

She shrugged. “He just hangs around with me and my friends at school.”

“And how does that make you feel?” He rounded the hall corner and waited for an answer outside Taylor's bedroom door.

“Sometimes I want to pound him,” she said.

“But you don't, do you? You know you're supposed to—”

“I know, I know. Use my words. And I did. I told him I was gonna pound him if he didn't stop.”

He pushed open Taylor's bedroom door with his foot. “That's not exactly what I meant. But we'll talk about it later.”

Taylor was already awake, moving Matchbox cars across a rugged terrain of rumpled bedsheets. His face fell when he looked up. “Where's my mom?”

“Downstairs, dying to see you. Want a ride?”

Taylor scrambled to his feet as Christensen presented his back. With both kids clinging to him, he felt like a mother baboon crossing the savanna. He started down the stairs, sliding his hand along the banister in case he stumbled, then turned toward the kitchen when he reached the creaky hardwood of the ground floor.

“Found two monkeys upstairs,” he announced.

Brenna looked up from the newspaper, apparently startled, her face pale and blank. She smiled at Taylor, but it seemed forced and unnatural, a recovery. She closed the paper and wrapped her arms around all three of them.

“What do monkeys eat?” she said.

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” Annie said.

“Doughnuts,” Taylor said. “Chocolate.”

Brenna made a face. “Breakfast of champions,” she said.

“Only if you eat some fruit first, guys,” Christensen said, waiting for the backlash to his menu modification. “Cantaloupe or honeydew?” He stooped enough to let both kids climb down. His back ached when he stood up again.

“We hate those,” Annie said.

Brenna kissed them both, brushing a wave of red hair off Taylor's forehead. “Tell you what. You guys can watch TV until we get everything ready. Okay?”

Christensen watched the pair hurry off for a rare morning treat. Brenna had railed against commercial television for as long as he'd known her, even threatened to cancel their cable subscription once after Taylor sang her the
Gilligan's Island
theme song without missing a word. He knew something was wrong.

“What?”

Brenna opened the paper again and pointed to a short story inside the Metro section. “Maura,” was all she said.

She was dead. It said so in the first paragraph, and everything Christensen read after that was a blur. He looked up. “I was with her at the horse ranch,” he said, as if her being now dead simply wasn't possible. “Jesus.”

He read it again, focusing this time, trying to absorb the details. On his third pass, he understood the basics: A neighbor coming home the evening before saw Pearson slumped over the wheel of her idling car, which was parked in front of the house she had shared with her mother. Police were blaming a carbon monoxide leak from her car's faulty exhaust system.

Christensen sat down. “I just saw her at Harmony yesterday morning.”

He didn't know when, or how, but suddenly Brenna's arms were around him, holding him tight. What was replaying in his mind, though, was the morning he'd spent in the mighty and immaculate Special, Pearson's eccentricity on wheels. He first thought about how fortunate it was that they rode the entire way with the windows down. Then he remembered the long minutes they spent with the windows up, sweltering in the dusty Muddyross Ranch parking lot to keep dust off the ancient vinyl upholstery, while Pearson warmed up the engine. The car said a lot about her, but more than anything else it spoke of her eye for detail and her fussiness about maintenance. A faulty exhaust system? He couldn't imagine it.

“Something's not right.” He peeled Brenna's arms from around his waist and held her away from him. “There was nothing wrong with her car.”

“It sounds pretty old,” she said.

His mind reeled. “No, no. It was, but it wasn't like that. Long story, but Maura lived her whole life with her mom. This was her mom's car until her mom died a couple years ago. The way Maura keeps it up, it's like, you know, a part of her mother that's still living and healthy, a rolling memorial.”

“But a car that old—”

“Bren, forty-eight hours ago I sat in the front seat of that car with the windows rolled up while she warmed up the engine, revving it the whole time. The ranch parking lot is just dirt, and the thing was kicking up this big cloud of dust. She didn't want it all over the car, so she made me keep the windows closed. See what I'm saying?”

“You think she committed suicide?”

The thought hadn't occurred to him. “That doesn't fit at all. Bren, I think … what if somebody did this?” To have been more explicit, to use the word “kill” or “murder,” would have seemed melodramatic, even though it seemed to him a possibility. An idea pinballed through his head, ricocheting off the faces and unfolding truths since this all began. “The Underhills know her from Harmony. What if they thought Floss was telling Maura what she knew? Or that Maura was snooping around trying to figure out the images in her paintings? It was her art show, remember. What if they thought she knew too much, like about the Chembergos?”

Brenna might have dismissed the idea, might have defended her client from his reckless implication. But she didn't. What she said was, “If that's the case, why not you? You're the one asking all the questions, down at the morgue, at the D.A.'s office, out at the horse ranch. Why Maura? She was just along for the ride.”

An image flashed in Christensen's mind: a lean, denim-clad figure standing at the edge of a parking lot, a pencil and paper in his hand.

“Doti,” he said.

Brenna repeated the name, but nothing else registered on her face.

“If Warren Doti is as close to the Underhill family as I think he is—” He stopped, checking the seams of his theory. “Bren, that day at the ranch, I was the one along for the ride. I think Doti took down Maura's license number. That's why not me. They probably don't know who I am.”

Brenna pushed away, turned her back, an abrupt gesture he couldn't interpret. She said something he didn't understand, then turned around when he asked her to repeat it.

“They know,” she said. “I don't know how, but they know who you are. Vincent Underhill asked me some questions the other night that made it pretty clear.”

“Questions about me?”

“Not specifically. Nothing explicit. But he seemed to know things—that we're involved, that we live in the Seventh Ward, that we have kids.” She swallowed hard. “It made me wonder, but I honestly didn't think much of it at the time. It's not like it's a big secret or anything. I just don't think I ever told him. He just knew.”

“And he made it pretty clear that he knew, probably for a reason.”

She looked away.

Indiscretions began bubbling up in his mind: his conversation with Floss at Mount Mercy, the one Vincent Underhill short-circuited; their conversation at Harmony with Floss's new aide looking on. On the records-request form at the morgue, hadn't he included his name, home address, and phone number without a second thought? Could he trust Carrie Haygood? The Underhills were not an ordinary family. They were a power vortex, an omniscient force with all the right connections in local and state government. What if they maintained a casual network of spies, say, in the coroner's office, the D.A.'s office, or anywhere else they felt vulnerable? Hell, what if they'd tapped the phones, or if someone was siphoning off the signal from Brenna's cellular phone calls? How hard, really, would it have been to find out who he was?

“Gilligan's a dork and the palm trees are fake,” Annie said, pushing past them into the kitchen. “You guys actually
watched
that show when you were kids?”

Christensen wheeled around as Brenna pulled away and went to the sink. His daughter was dressed like a hooker in short cut-offs and a bikini top, ready for school on a warm spring day.

Annie surveyed the empty table. “Hey, where's breakfast?”

“Coming right up,” he said. “You said Cinnamon Toast Crunch, right? What's Taylor want?”

“Kix,” Taylor said. “Kid tested, mother approved.”

The two kids were crunching away, ignoring their cantaloupe slices, when Brenna kissed their foreheads and said good-bye. Christensen, still reeling, caught her in the hall. “Don't go,” he said.

“He's my client, Jim.”