The Other Widow (30 page)

“I heard someone walking. It sounded like a woman. It sounded like heels clicking against the floor of the garage.”

“Well that's—Huh. But I guess it could have been somebody coming back in. Or leaving. The garage is for the whole building, right?”

Dorrie nods.

“Actually, I've been meaning to ask you about Joe.” Brennan dumps sugar in her coffee, swirls it around. “Did he lock his car?”

“What? At work you mean?”

“Yeah.” She takes a swig of sugary coffee.

“No. Now that you mention it. Every once in a while, we'd pull in at the same time and, actually, I remember noticing he just kind of walked away and didn't bother locking his car door. I even said something to him once—‘Don't you lock your door?' or something—but he just shook his head, said nobody'd want his car. It was too old. Why?”

Brennan shrugs. “Just wondering.”

“The puddle.”

“Yeah,” she says. “The puddle. Anything else?”

Dorrie wants to say hell yeah! She wants to say I don't trust anyone at all. My best friend, my co-workers, my boss, not even my own husband. She wants to say the only people in my life I feel like I truly know right now are my daughter, my rotund cat, and, oddly,
you
. She shrugs. “I guess not.”

Brennan frowns. “Like I told you before, I don't care about the personal stuff. People do what people do. The heart wants what the heart wants. All of that. Not my business. Got my own problems. Believe me.”

“Well,” Dorrie says. “There are a couple of things.”

Brennan sets the coffee down on the table, taps her fingernails against the side of the cup. “Besides the car?”

“Yeah.” Dorrie looks around the little coffee shop as if she half expects someone from work to stroll in. “Joe was showing me how to do the payroll, collections, spreadsheets, everything. I'm good with numbers. Acting and numbers. My two talents.”

Brennan smiles. “Handy ones to have.”

“Right. So I was working with Joe to take over when Francine retires at the end of the month. She's been wanting to leave since the beginning of last year. ‘The second I turn sixty-five,' she always said, ‘I am out of here and off to the Left Bank,' although I'm not sure she's ever going to actually—”

“Dorrie.” Brennan taps her fingernails a little harder against the heavy cup, a little faster.

“Sorry. Like I said, I have this thing for numbers. So, the ones Joe had on his spreadsheets don't match up with the ones at the office.”

“Interesting,” Brennan says. She sticks her napkin in her empty cup. “So, you said there were a couple of things.” She looks like she's just itching to get to her cell phone, which is humming madly in her purse. She doesn't, though—she just puts her hand on her bag, like that way she can touch whoever's calling her.

“Sorry. I tend to—I'm a little ADD,” Dorrie says and Brennan forces a smile.

“Well, let's reel it back in, shall we? It's been kind of a long—”

“Right,” Dorrie says. “Joe e-mailed me a name on the day he died. A phone number and a name and a link.”

“A link to what?”

Dorrie shrugs. “A news story. That house that burned down a while back. Jamaica Plain? Our company did a huge renovation on it a year or two before.”

“I remember that fire. It was in the news. Wealthy couple. The woman was pregnant. The name Joe e-mailed you. Theirs?”

“No,” Dorrie says as they stand up to go. “No. The name was Paulo Androtti. No explanation or anything, just his name. He used to work for us. Apparently, he was a really good contractor, but he quit suddenly a couple of months ago. Walked off the job and never came back. I called his house—his mother's house, I'm guessing, but she was no help at all. Also . . .” Dorrie rummages through her purse and zips open the side compartment. She pulls out a folded sheet of paper. “There's this,” she says. “All these electrical items returned to Home Depot right after they were purchased. I don't know if it means anything, but it struck me as odd, especially since it just started suddenly, in the past year or so. And then it stopped just as suddenly.”

“When?” Brennan glances up from the Home Depot invoices.

“January.”

“Oh. Right. I can see— Damn, Dorrie.” Brennan lets out a little whistle. “You ever think of being a detective?”

“I played one once.” Dorrie smiles. She pulls off her hat, tosses her hair dramatically across her shoulder. “Detective Monique Develier,” she says in a thick French accent. “At your service.” She folds the paper and zips it back into her purse, glances at her watch. “I'd better get back,” she says. “My daughter needs to interview me about global warming.”

“Which sounds good on a night like this one,” Brennan says, and together they walk outside, their breath making steamy little clouds in front of them. “Listen.” Brennan pulls out her keys, unlocks the Land Rover. She slides in and opens the passenger-side door. “Could you forward me that e-mail in the morning? First thing?” Dorrie nods.

“I feel so much better now that I've dumped everything in your lap, Maggie. Appreciate you listening.”

Brennan throws up her hands. “Hey,” she says. “Once a cop . . . But seriously,” she says, as they pull up in front of Dorrie's house. “Be careful. Watch your back, lock your doors, and hold on to your purse. In other words, act like a woman in danger. 'Cause I'm pretty sure you are.”

XXXVI

MAGGIE

T
he next morning Maggie uses the phone number Dorrie included in her e-mail to find Paulo Androtti's former address in Dedham—his mother's address, actually. The mother is unpleasant and unhelpful, a total dead end, but a neighbor walking her dog on their street is far more forthcoming. Paulo and his wife have moved out of the area a month, maybe six weeks ago, the neighbor says. She isn't sure where, but she's heard that Paulo's working again. “A new construction site on State Street,” she says, as her huge black Lab tugs at his leash, drags her down the sidewalk. “Good luck.”

Maggie takes her time going back to Boston. It's freezing still. The workers might not all show up in weather like this, or they might get down to the site late, and Maggie knows she could scare this guy off if he knows she's looking for him. She'll have to catch him unawares. Likely she'll only have the one shot.

She slides her car in against the curb and follows the fencing to the entrance of the site, where a security guard jogs out to stop her. “Can't go in there, miss.” Sunlight catches on his badge and bounces off.

“Sorry,” Maggie says. “I need to see the job supervisor about one of his crew members. Got a message for him.”

The guard nods and walks back to a trailer near the entrance.
WADE & SONS
is painted in straight up-and-down letters on its side. Maggie blows on her hands, sticks them in her coat pocket. Her nose is numb.

“Help ya?” The superintendent nudges his hard hat with the back of his hammy hand and it slides away from his forehead, exposing a thick mop of black hair.

“Yes.” Maggie smiles. Her lips stick to her teeth. The supervisor puffs on his cigar, and smoke drifts out with his breath, circles his head like a noose. “I'm looking for Paulo,” she says. “Paulo Androtti. I heard he's working down here.”

“Yeah. He's here. Drywaller. I'll get him. Didn't catch your name?”

Maggie shrugs. “I'd rather surprise him.” She smiles, a demure, secretive little smile. The supervisor winks, takes another puff on the cigar before he drops it, squashes it beneath a large booted foot. “Gotcha,” he says and walks toward a tall building, a steel framework, rising in the gray air. A construction lift click clacks up the side of the building like a huge bionic roach, and a JLG unfolds, extending up two stories, where a figure stands, welding on a beam; sparks shoot like fireflies into the sky and disappear.

A young man hurries toward the gate, a smallish man. He flips his hard hat back and squints at Maggie, holds his hand up like a visor in the sun. At the gate he stops, his feet wide apart. With his too-large gloves, he looks like a pitcher. “Who are you?” His voice is cautious, his eyes narrow.

“Maggie Brennan.” Maggie extends her hand, but the man simply nods, gestures at his covered fingers.

“Believe me,” he says, “you don't want to shake hands with me. Not when I'm on a job as dirty as this one. What can I do you for?”

“I need your help,” Maggie says. “It's about the work you did for Home Runs Renovations.”

Paulo puts his gloved hands up. “You can stop right there.” He moves away a step or two. “
Right there,
lady. I am so outta that place.” He turns to look back at the building where soon he will be screwing drywall into metal studs, where Maggie will not be allowed to go. “Sorry I can't help you.” He doesn't look at her; he's poised for flight.

“Everything's about to come out,” Maggie says. It's a gamble. “Be smart, Paulo. Save yourself. Go to the cops before they come for you.”

“Look,” he says. “I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I just know I left that place. Couldn't stand one of the owners—Wells—so I quit. That's all there is to it. No big mystery. I quit working there and now I'm working here.” He gestures behind him.

“Fine.” He looks nervous. She can smell fear and this guy's swimming in it. His face has gone white. His eyes dart here and there. “Tell you what, though, Paulo. I'll give you a card on the off chance you change your mind. This guy Hank—he's great. A really stand-up guy. Used to be my partner. You just tell him I told you to get in touch. Maggie, tell him.” She extends the card and Paulo stares at it for a minute before he removes the bulky glove and takes it from her, sticks it in his wallet. And then he turns and walks back to the half-constructed building. Sparks fly from the welder's hands and shine down like falling stars.

Four hours later, after meeting for her sister's birthday lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, Maggie pulls up to a red light and looks at her cell. A message from Lucas. She's met him several times since their first date at Yoblansky's, and she no longer hesitates about getting together. “Yes,” she tells him every time he calls now, looking at her watch, glancing at her hair in her rearview mirror. “What time?”

She loves his messages, the brief, nearly abrupt words, the gritty voice. She presses her thumb down on the message he most likely left while her mother prattled on about the broken tiles, the roof she's suddenly decided might collapse with all this snow.

Hi. Just checking in,
Lucas says. His voice is slightly blurred as if he's had a few too many beers.
Miss you.
There's a drumroll sound behind him, like a train or a machine or maybe a car starting up.
Call me,
he says. And then there's nothing but the machine sound, as if Lucas forgot about the phone. After several seconds it goes blank.

Maggie looks around when she's parked in front of her apartment. She stops again at the snowy entrance to the hallway as she goes inside, and once more at the top of the stairs. After that time with Lucas at the bar, she won't take any chances. It's made her more careful, that guy in back, staring at her in the dark bar and then disappearing, like something out of an old Gothic novel.

She peels off her new sweater, throws it on a nearby chair. Sometimes Maggie wishes she'd never left the force—if she'd stayed she might have made detective by now. She was up for it, the test anyway. She only had to walk inside that room, pick up a pencil, and take it. “Just show up,” the chief had told her. “I'll get you on the list to take it.”

She pours herself a glass of Merlot and takes a few sips before she calls Lucas back. He doesn't answer, so she leaves him a voice mail, soft, after the wine, after the waiting, the hunger for his voice, that feeling she's almost forgotten crawling up her spine, that connection she thought she might not ever feel again. In the end she doesn't send the message. She deletes it. She finishes the wine and walks to the tiny niche she calls a bedroom, stripping off the rest of her clothes on the way. She'll phone Hank in the morning. She looks at her watch. No. She'll call him now. This thing at Home Runs is a job for the police, detectives—for people who can do what she gave up to sit behind a desk in a beige office.

“Hank,” she says into his voice mail when he doesn't answer. “It's Maggie. I need to talk to you. There's something more I've stumbled into. The accident claim. I need to talk to you,” she says again. It sounds lame.
She
sounds lame. She sends the message and turns off her phone.

She lies awake, listening to the sounds of the building, the settling, groaning sounds of old wood beams and struggling water pipes, half-closed with rust and age. Somewhere a toilet flushes. Across the wall, someone sneezes, runs water for a bath. It's fairly early. People are still up. It doesn't bother her, this noise, these sounds of life; they make her feel as if she's not alone. Even though she barely knows her neighbors and if she sees them on the street she almost never speaks, even so, they're here, all around her, surrounding her with life.

Maggie gets out of bed and finds her phone. She turns it back on, hoping for another message from Lucas. When there isn't one, she presses the replay button to listen to the one he left earlier that night.
Call me.
She glances at the clock. Ten thirty. Before she has a chance to think, she calls him back. At first he doesn't answer. His phone rings several times and she decides to hang up. She doesn't want to leave a message. It's late; suddenly she's not sure what to say. She's just about to end the call when he picks up.

“Maggie?”