Steel Guitar (10 page)

He disappeared into Lockwood's office and I could hear him riffling through files. He carried a manila folder with him when he returned, but his face was closed and suspicious. Oh, well, a lot of towns around Boston begin with
W
. It could have worked.

“It's neither,” he said. “What is this? You a server?”

He was sharper than I'd given him credit for. Maybe Lockwood did a lot of business with the avoid-a-subpoena crowd.

“You like music?” I asked, indicating the magazine. “Or just sports?”

I got the address in exchange for two comps to Dee's concert. Some things money can't buy.

“You sure about that?” I asked while I was writing it down.

“825 Winter Street. Boston,” he said. “Suite 505D.”

“It doesn't sound residential.”

“It's all he's got. No phone, even.”

I already knew that.

“Could you tell me if there's anything else in the file?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said.

“There's nothing else, or you don't want to tell me. Which?”

“Got any more tickets?”

“I could manage one more,” I said. “That's tops.”

“An envelope,” he said. “Sealed.”

“Big? Little?”

“Eight by ten.”

“Postmark?”

“Man, this is too weird,” he said, closing the file and sliding it under the magazine. “I'm not telling you anything else.”

“You don't have to,” I said.

Fourteen

What with having to ditch the car—no one with more brains than a goose drives downtown—I didn't get to 825 Winter Street until a little past two in the afternoon.

Number 825 was an office building just like the ones on either side. A second-floor window advertised a realtor, a fourth-floor window a podiatrist. The remainder were unadorned. I noted the fifth floor particularly, figuring Suite 505D had to be on five, but it kept its secrets behind filmy curtains.

The lobby was cool and dark, marble-floored. There was no nameplate, no mail slot, for Suite 505D. There was, however, a Suite 500 with a doorbell. I pressed it, got an answering buzz, and entered. I ignored the old cage-elevator and righteously used the steps.

I'm no physical fitness nut, but I do play volleyball, the real kind, three days a week. Afterward, I swim. Today's match had taken longer than expected and I'd done only ten laps instead of my usual twenty. I took the steps to make up for it. Guilt is the major motivating force in my life.

High-pitched chatter leaked out under the door marked 500. I checked all the doors on five, but there was no 505D. On the pebbled glass window of 500 I read the words “Hemstead Secretarial Services.” I turned the knob and went inside.

The room couldn't have been more than eight by twelve, but there must have been eight women in it, one at each of the narrow, putty-colored desks, one to each twenty or so phone lines by the look of the complex switchboards. One wall was partitioned off into cubicles containing pieces of mail, brown-wrapped parcels as well as letters and brochures.

Each cubicle was numbered. 501A, B, C, 502A, B, C, and so on. No names.

A few of the women glanced up at me, but nobody seemed to be in charge. There was no receptionist's counter, no adjoining room. Hemstead, like Lockwood the lawyer, didn't put up much of a front. A phone rang.

I was still wearing my navy suit. Definitely overdressed for a visit to a mail drop.

“Mail drop” sounds so sinister, far worse than secretarial service. And a lot of people use them for perfectly legit purposes. Say your ex-husband regularly threatens to come by and check up on your morals; you might not want him to have your current address, especially if he outweighs your current beau by a hundred pounds and has a rep for using his fists. While you might choose not to announce your true address in the phone book, you might still wish to communicate with the outside world. So you have your mail sent to 825 Winter Street, Suite five-oh-whatever. Your “suite” is the little cubicle on the wall. When ex-hubby comes by to see who you're sleeping with, he won't get far.

Of course, a lot of the shady mail-order crowd use them too. I mean, would you rather send your money order to a post office box or to a street address in a good part of town, a suite number even? Suite conjures up such soothing imagery. Hotel suite. Doctor's office suite.

Post office box says beware. Red flag. Keep your money.

A woman in her fifties with frizzy brown hair, who'd been glaring around the office with a who's-going-to-take-care-of-this air, finally walked over to me.

“Can I help you?” she inquired with a martyr's sigh.

“Uh, I'm looking for Delores Fox,” I said in my best airhead manner. “She still work here?”

“Delores?” The woman knitted her brow in concentration. “I don't think we've ever had a Delores. Not in the past three years anyway.”

“Geez, I was sure she said the fifth floor,” I mumbled. “I dunno. Maybe I got the address wrong.”

“This is 825,” the woman said helpfully.

I pawed through my substitute purse, an old navy leather bag I've never liked. “I know I got it in here somewhere. I just can't find it, and I thought I remembered …”

“Well, I have to get back to—”

“Sure. Sorry I interrupted. Thanks. I'll find her.” I muttered my way out, grinning while I closed the door behind me.

I could have asked a lot of questions, but people who work for answering services and mail drops are trained not to answer inquiries about the clientele. Instead, I walked myself down Winter Street toward the Common, resisting the impulse to enter Filene's Basement to shop for shoes.

They rarely carry size 11's, but when they do, I stock up.

By the time I hit the Public Garden I was taking note of the picnickers lounging near the “Don't sit on the grass” signs, the popcorn vendors, and balloon hawkers. I stopped and bought a late-lunch hot dog slathered with mustard, and wolfed it down sitting on a park bench.

I tossed a leftover chunk of hot-dog bun to a squirrel with a ragged tail, got up, and dusted crumbs off my suit. The brazen squirrel made a beeline for them.

Why the hell would Dunrobie be using a mail drop? Was he homeless? If so, how the hell could he afford one? Had Lockwood, the lawyer, rented it for him so they could keep in touch?

I strolled back downtown.

On Washington Street, in front of Filene's, the city allows pushcart merchants to set up shop, hawking homemade jewelry, T-shirts, wind chimes, stained-glass dew-drops. One cart held a cargo of kites. A huge yellow one made me think of my little sister, Paolina. Yellow's her favorite color, so I bought it immediately. It made a long, skinny package, and the woman running the stand asked if I wanted a mailing tube. She had a stock of them in rainbow colors. I inspected them with growing enthusiasm, and finally chose a large matching yellow one. I let her put the kite inside. Then I selected another mailing tube, an even larger red one.

At the Arch Street post office, I addressed the yellow tube to Paolina, hoping her mother would let her keep the gift. Then I addressed the red mailing tube to Mr. David Dunrobie, 825 Winter Street, Suite 505D, etc., using Lockwood's Somerville office for the return address. I stood in line to mail them.

The man behind the counter disagreed with my decision to mail the red tube first-class. “This close,” he urged, “you just send it regular parcel post and it'll get delivered day after tomorrow at the latest.”

“If I send it first-class, will it go with tomorrow's delivery?”

“Sure,” he said, “but it'll cost you two-forty instead of eighty-five cents.”

I forked over the money for next-day delivery, feeling pretty damn good about my chances of tracking Davey. The glow lasted me through a Filene's Basement shoe spree—two pairs, a real haul—and a long walk to the Copley Square T station with frequent stops to stare at homeless men along the way. In Harvard Square, still feeling confident that Dunrobie was in the bag, I checked out the bill at the old Brattle Theater and decided impulsively to treat myself to a replay of
To Have and Have Not
.

Reality didn't catch up with me till I got home, hastily unlatched my three front-door locks, and raced into the living room in time to catch the ringing phone.

The voice was a whisper.

“Dee?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God,” the whisper said.

“Dee, where are you?”

“Oh, Carlotta.”

“Where are you, Dee? Is anybody with you?”

“Come to the room, Carlotta. Oh, please come. I should have called the doctor. I should have stayed. I should have stayed.”

I'd been looking forward to a very late dinner. I was glad I'd taken time to eat the hot dog in the park.

Fifteen

Dee's drunk, I told myself as I punched the button to summon the elevator. Stoned. Coked to a stupor. Or maybe just her usual melodramatic self.

No cops were camped in the hotel lobby; the disaster couldn't be that bad.

That's what I said to myself, but I practically stood on my toes to speed the elevator, and I hurried down the silent eighth-floor corridor. Then I paused for a moment, unsure which of the suite's doors to bang. I picked 812—the living room, I thought—knocking softly, restraining my volume with effort. No need to cause a disturbance unless one was already under way.

“Oh, for chrissakes, uh, uh, who is it?” stammered a startled voice.

I said, “Carlyle. Dee called me.”

I could hear the buzz of arguing voices. I hit the door again, harder. “Come on,” I said. “Open up.”

“Shhh.” The door eased open a cautious three inches. Mimi, the blonde groupie, frowned and reluctantly let me pass.

Dee was seated in the center of a white sofa, her face pale and blank, her arms crossed like she was warding off a chill. Her hands moved restlessly, squeezing her bare arms. She wore black. It looked like a silk jumpsuit, but it could have been pants and a matching sleeveless shirt. Beads spilled down her chest, gold like the ones scattered in the park. “Oh, my God,” she murmured without looking up. “My God. What time is it?”

“Shhh,” a man said, “hush, now.” But Dee spoke over his voice as if he hadn't said a thing.

“Where were you all?” she said, still without looking up. “I should have called a doctor. Oh, God, I should have called a doctor. Maybe she isn't dead.”

“Dead?” I echoed.

Jimmy Ranger had been pointed out to me at the party. I recognized him as the man who was trying to shush Dee. Before he got to be one of the hottest record producers around, he'd sung a little blues himself. I'd seen him on a double bill with Taj Mahal at the Sanders Theater in Cambridge. He had hair then. Now he had shoulder-length fringe surrounding a bald spot. He ignored me and said, “You've got to stop this, Dee. Pull yourself together.”

Hal Grady smiled weakly from a kneeling position near Dee's feet. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned across the back with
Change Up, THE TOUR
. He said, “We've got to consider the public relations angle here.”

“Carlotta,” Dee said, breathing quickly and shallowly, “he's just trying to scare me. I know he's trying to scare me.”

“Is somebody going to give me a clue?” I asked slowly, biting off each separate word.

The road manager exchanged a long glance with the record producer. Then he nodded toward the connecting door that led to the bedroom with the canopied gold bed. “You got a sensitive stomach?” he asked.

I was already moving.

Brenda, the dark-haired bass player with the strong handshake and the short fuse, lay across the bed, her skin so pale, it seemed a shade of blue. The sheet almost covered her bare shoulders. Her face looked like it had been carved in ice.

Both times I'd seen her, at the party in Dee's room and on the Berklee stage, she'd been commanding, assured. Now she seemed delicate, almost frail.

Just shorter lying down, I said to myself. Snap out of it. You've seen corpses before. I rested my knuckles lightly against her throat. No pulse. I hadn't expected one.

I never get used to it, the unknowable mystery of a person so suddenly, totally closed, snapped shut like a half-read novel.

I tucked my hands into the pockets of my suit jacket. Reflex. Mooney used to make the uniforms grab a pencil and a notebook. If you weren't toting a notebook, you stuck your hands in your pockets.

I'm no compulsive housecleaner, but I always feel a tug to touch something at a crime scene, to tidy away a cigarette butt, to smooth a tangled curl. Maybe it's just a way of pinching myself to make sure I'm awake.

On the marble-topped bedside table sat a squat bottle of tequila, a drinking glass, two prescription pill bottles. One glass. No lipstick on the rim. Brenda's wire-rimmed glasses. A copy of
Guitar
magazine. The cover had wet circles on it, as if it had been used as a coaster.

The white sheet had frilly lace edging.

“You cover her?” I found that Jimmy Ranger had followed me into the room, so I addressed the question to him.

“We didn't touch anything,” he said defensively.

“You use that phone?”

“Uh, I guess Dee did. Yes. To call you.”

“You were here when she called?”

“Yeah. Sure. We all got back to the room together.” He stared me right in the eye.

“Who's all?”

“Me. Hal. Mimi and Freddie. I think Ron was with us. Yeah. We didn't see why everybody should wait. Ron and Freddie were whacked-out. They went to bed.”

“And since then you've been sitting on the sofas, probably using the bathroom.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You find somebody dead,” I said harshly, because I hate being lied to, “you get out of the room. If you're alone, you call for help. If there are two of you, one stands guard, the other calls for help.”