A Body to Dye For Page 7

  “Sorry, Nikki. It’s equal-Steven. They follow the law. I follow my intuition. The more calcified they act, the more I want to prove my way is right.”

  “The temerity of youth.”

  “I’m not that young.”

  “Parts of you are.”

  I was certain that Nikki’s new law-abiding morals were the results of Lieutenant Branco’s recent visit, and her fickle allegiance only aggravated my bad mood. But then, some of my best ideas come when I’m in a morbid state of mind. (Must be another aspect of my innate Slavic perversity.) I needed to get out of the shop, and with an open afternoon ahead of me, I got a whim to go across the Charles River to Cambridge. I’d pay a visit to the offices of the Choate Group, Architectural Consultants, where Calvin Redding worked when he wasn’t in jail.

  5

  DUST THE PLACE FOR BLUEPRINTS

  WITH SO MUCH TIME AND THE WEATHER so cooperative, I risked taking the T to Harvard Square. (T is short for MTA, which is short for MBTA, which stands for Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, which is Boston s ancient and chronically ailing public transportation system.) The Red Line subway has a station on Charles Street, and the best way there from the salon is through the Boston Public Garden. Even in the clear sunlight, everything in the garden showed signs of winter’s impending gloom. Last night’s rain had become a frost that killed what was left of the autumn flowers, leaving gray wilted blossoms on crunchy brown twigs. (Typical friendly fall weather for Boston.) Though the pond had not yet been drained, the Swan Boats were already drydocked for the oncoming winter, so the charm of the big white birds gliding their passengers serenely over the water was gone. Only the trees brandished a last flourish of life, with foliage streaked in blood-dense hues of orange, yellow, red, and green.

  The walk along Charles Street was more pleasant, reminding me that Boston is at once quaint and modern. Real estate firms garnering commissions since the arrival of the Mayflower adjoined chic Italian gelato parlors; specialty brokers purveying Chippendale and Hepplewhite originals abutted trendy French charcuteries.

  In the T station, the train arrived surprisingly soon, and the ride was fast and direct, unlike the usual interrupted journey with shuttle buses between stations along the route. Harvard Square was lively and full of students. The warm autumn sun encouraged many of them to don shorts and tank tops and even go bare-chested. I appreciated the tangle of legs and shoulders and faces of the more stalwart young Harvard men. After a brief loiter along Brattle Street, I got a cab. When I told the driver my destination, he said, “You goin’ to the Choe-Ate Company?”

  “It’s pronounced Choate,” I said. “Rhymes with throat.”

  “That so?” The cabbie snorted the viscous contents of his sinuses and swallowed hard. Then he swerved the car into the approaching traffic and we zoomed off. He continued, “That’s where that faggot killer works, y’know?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You seen the papers today?”

  “Not yet.” Actually I had seen the Globe‘s tiny story, but I figured he’d speak more freely if I acted stupid.

  “Oh, sure,” the cabbie said. “It was in the Herald on the front page, the whole story about this fag killin’. Jeez, no one around here seen it. Don’t anyone read the Herald?”

  “Probably not in Harvard Square.” I made a mental note to find a copy.

  Suddenly we turned off Brattle Street and headed toward the Charles River, which I knew was the wrong direction. Then we made a series of sharp turns, as though we were in a maze. “Where are you going?” I asked. “It should be directly off Brattle Street.”

  The cabbie retorted, “Whaddya want? It’s all one way streets and dead ends around here. I’m not tryna cheat ya.” A dubious song, I thought. After twenty minutes of aimless swerving, we stopped in front of a high wooden fence of solid eight-foot planks painted a tasteful gray. The cabbie pointed to the fence and said, “It’s in there. No cars allowed, so I gotta leave ya here.” I paid him the exact amount and got out of the cab. He said, “Hey!”

  I answered back, “I don’t tip drivers who jack up the meter with extra mileage.” He squalled off before I could even slam the cab door.

  I followed the fence and found the entrance to the property. Inside was an immense three-story mansion from the late 1800s. The cabbie had lied. There was a parking lot, and it was filled with German and Swedish luxury sedans. (Personally, I prefer the zest of an Italian roadster over those staid mobile lounges, but that could simply be my fascination with anything Mediterranean.)

  I walked up a flagstone path bordered with neatly trimmed hedges. The pungent smell of recent landscaping reminded me of the persistent cedar and balsam aroma that lingered around Lieutenant Branco. There was also the smell of new paint, and once I got closer to the building, I was astonished to discover the whole structure was brand-new, not even a few years old. Talk about a trompe l’oeil!

  The front entranceway was a big paneled double door painted bright red. I’d barely pushed against the right-hand door when it silently and automatically opened itself for me, and I entered a world completely contradicting the outside of the building. The interior was a cavernous skylit atrium surrounded by three levels of glass-enclosed offices. Two long, shallow ramps interconnected the three floors along each side of the building, and a glass elevator provided lift at the far end. Small trees and flowering shrubs were everywhere in sight, and the burbling sound of water cascading down a layered rocky fountain completed the effect of an enclosed tropical rain forest.

  The receptionist was seated squarely in front of me as I walked into the open area. His simple desk—three slabs of oiled walnut, two vertical, one horizontal—allowed me a good look at his whole body. He was young, clean-shaven, and dressed a la preppy: khaki chinos, blue oxford-cloth shirt, silk rep tie, and soft brown Italian slip-ons with tassles on a low-cut vamp. Lavender argyle socks completed the look.

  “Can I help you?” he asked with contrived politeness.

  “I’m here to see Calvin Redding. The name is Harrington,” I lied. “Carlisle Harrington.”

  The young man squeezed his thin lips even tighter and said, “I’m afraid Mr. Redding is unavailable today.”

  “But I have an appointment. He has some very important papers concerning my property in Dover.”

  The receptionist didn’t answer me but pressed at a lighted panel built flush into the desktop in front of him. Then he spoke wearily into the air, and for a moment I thought he was talking to me. “A Mr. Harrington is here to see Calvin. Do you think you can help him?” I studied him closely and saw that he was wearing a nearly invisible headset and microphone. Then he said directly to me, “Ms. Doughton will see you. She’s Mr. Redding’s colleague.”

  Within seconds I heard a heavy door slam somewhere on one of the upper levels. I looked upward and saw what seemed to be an enormous eggplant wearing a tailored jacket and skirt emerge from an office on the second level. Rather than walk down the shallow ramp near her office, she waddled to the hydraulic lift at the far end of the building and descended that way. Then she hauled her bulky body the length of the skylit atrium toward me. She seemed bound and constrained by her tight purple business suit.

  “Mr. Harrington?” She spoke with a low, rough voice, already out of breath from the slight exertion of walking.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “I’m Jennifer Doughton. I work with Calvin Redding.” Her voice sounded permanently hoarse from years of unfiltered cigarettes and bourbon. “You wanted to see him?”

  I explained. “I’m remodeling a house in Dover, on Frog Pond Lane.” (A wealthy client had once explained that the truly rich never refer to their domicile as a home. Its always a house, whether an English Tudor manor or a one-room-country-little-shack.) I went on, “The contractors are ready to work but they can’t begin without the plans. Since Calvin is not available, perhaps you can open his office so I can get the papers.”

  She frowned and said, “That won’
t be necessary. We share the same office. I can find what you’re looking for.” She turned and I followed her. She stopped immediately and remarked, “There’s no need for you to accompany me.” Her voice was like the rasp of a dull file on hardwood.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” I answered.

  She paused and stared at me with suspecting eyes. When she finally moved her mass again, I walked alongside her toward the elevator. Annoyance appeared in her voice. “It’s unusual that I haven’t met you before. Calvin and I often serve the same clients as a team.”

  I chuckled casually. “Well, you see, Calvin is doing me a favor. We’ve been working on the plans for remodeling my house for quite a while, but most of the work has been done outside the office.” Jennifer Doughton smirked, and I wondered if she believed me. I can usually tell by the eyes, but all I could see in hers was anger and hardness. She wasn’t pleased with her life in this world.

  We glided silently up one flight in the hydraulically controlled elevator. Once inside the office she and Calvin shared, she began a haphazard search through a big cabinet full of color-coded manila folders. Within minutes she was out of breath. She gasped heavily and said, “There’s only one other place it could be,” and she lumbered out of the office.

  I saw my chance and I grabbed it. So what if one entire wall of the office was open plate glass and I was exposed? The question was, where to begin? I needed names and dates, so Calvin’s calendar and phone directory seemed the logical places. But his desk was locked. Maybe he had everything computerized? I looked at the computer terminal near his desk. It was turned on, so I pressed a key marked enter. It beeped at me and displayed:

  ENTER USER ID:

  I typed Calvin’s name, but that only caused:

  USER AUTHORIZATION FAILURE. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

  I tried using his initials, then various combinations of his name and initials. Every try failed. I became frantic and typed anything, no matter how illogical. But all I got was beep-beep-beep. I was so engrossed that I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone anymore. What they say about big people being light on their feet is true.

  “You need a password,” she muttered hoarsely, directly behind me. Her voice startled me, but I covered my surprise.

  “These computers are remarkable. I just couldn’t resist trying it out.” I turned in the chair to face her. “Maybe someday I’ll learn how to use one.”

  Jennie said, “Maybe someday you’ll come up with a better story. There is no record of your contact with Calvin Redding. And furthermore, the property you described in Dover doesn’t even exist. Now, would you like to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here? Or shall I just call the police?”

  I wet my lips and tried to speak evenly, though my heart was pounding. “I don’t think we need the police.”

  ‘Then talk, mister, whoever you are.”

  After a horribly long silence, during which my cool pink skin had turned hot scarlet, I said, “Okay. I heard Calvin was in trouble. I’m a friend.” My voice sounded dry and hollow, a sure sign that my nerves had taken over. It was mantra time. “I’m trying to get to his records and pull out any incriminating stuff before the police see it.”

  Jennie accepted this with a kindly smile. “How chivalrous!”

  “So if I could just see—”

  She snapped, “You’re lying! I’ve worked with Calvin Redding for almost two years, and I know the kind of friends he has. None of them would be here trying to help him out.”

  “I’m not like the others.”

  She picked up the phone on her desk. “Patrick? Call the—”

  “Okay, okay!” I pressed my finger into the phone cradle to stop the call. “The jig is up. I’m Calvin’s hairdresser.”

  Jennie cackled. “You expect me to believe that!”

  “It’s the truth!” I snapped out a business card, but she ignored it.

  “Look, mister, whatever you’re trying to prove, you’re too late anyway. The police have already come and gone. They’ve taken all of Calvin’s papers with them.”

  Damn! That meant Branco had everything. “But I’ve got to find out what happened between Calvin and that guy who was killed yesterday.”

  Jennie brayed a raucous hee-haw. “I don’t give a hoot about that. In fact, I hope Calvin’s guilty!”

  With those words everything between us changed. Suddenly big Jennie and I had more in common than I thought. “You mean,” I said quietly and distinctly, “you’d like to see Calvin convicted?” She lowered her eyes, and I noticed sadly that even her eyelids seemed flabby. My concern over “love handles” seemed a pathetic vanity compared to this woman’s problem. Jennie said, “With Calvin out of the way my career might start moving forward again.” She sounded almost sorry to have to say it.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, benign as a father confessor.

  She lit a cigarette. I was right—no filter. She filled her lungs a few times and left a soggy lip print on the cigarette end. (Nicole would have disapproved.) Then Jennie spoke. “Calvin breezed into town after touring Europe for a couple of years. He was supposed to be doing an apprenticeship over there, but it wasn’t that at all. It was a vacation, the kind only people like Calvin can take.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A lot of money, drugs, and sex.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I have ways of finding out things. Then he landed a job here as a staff architect. No drafting board for him, just directly to a staff title. And from there, he skips up to an associate’s position. The title that took me ten years to earn, Calvin Redding got handed to him in less than two.”

  “Maybe he’s just talented.” I played devil’s advocate just to keep her talking.

  “Calvin Redding’s talent hangs between his legs.” Jennie’s eyes were dark and mean now. “I’ll tell you something, mister. There’s a junior partnership coming up here, and Calvin and I are both in line for it. I’ve got the seniority and the proven past. I was working here when five people had to put in sixteen-hour days just to survive. I deserve that position!”

  I gave her my compassionate therapist look, the look that meant, I understand. But I said nothing.

  She went on. “The way Calvin sucks up to the boss, it’s disgusting. And it’s obviously just because Brickley has a name and connections.”

  “Who’s Brickley?”

  “Roy Brickley’s the boss. But I’m talking too much.”

  “No you’re not. Jennie, I wonder if we might be able to help each other.”

  She didn’t answer but buried herself in a cloud of smoke. After a moment she said, “How can you help me?”

  “I think we have similar hopes for Calvin’s future.”

  “I thought you were trying to help him.”

  I shook my head so hard my hair fell out of place. “No way. I said that so you’d let me see his papers. I’m looking for incriminating evidence all right, but I don’t want to protect him. I want to use it against him. I have a feeling he killed that ranger and I need proof.”

  “You change your story minute by minute.”

  “Jennie, the police suspect me in that killing, too, but I didn’t do it. I’ve got to clear myself, and if it means convicting Calvin, well, that’s fine with me.”

  An evil smile crept over Jennie’s mouth. She wheezed heavily, then took a long drag from her cigarette.

  “You don’t like him much, either, do you?” she said.

  “No, I don’t. He exploits people. He thinks he’s royalty. He doesn’t do a thing for himself, much less for anyone else. He lies. He’s cheap. He—”

  “Okay, mister, you’re convincing me. Maybe we can help each other.”

  A small victory.

  “What do you need to know?” she asked.

  “Anything about Roger Fayerbrock, the guy from Yosemite who was killed.”

  “How’d you know he was from Yosemite?” she asked.

  “That’s what he told me.”

 
; Jennie’s eyes flashed on me. “So, you’d met him already?”

  “Yes, in the hair salon yesterday.”

  She mulled this while she squinted at me through the acrid smoke. “All I can tell you is that Calvin brought him in here yesterday morning and bragged about the night they spent together. That was it.”

  “That’s all? Nothing more?”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot more, mister, but one of the people who knows it is dead, and the other one is in jail.”

  I wondered who and where the rest were. “So this place does know Calvin’s in jail?”

  “Of course we do, but we don’t go announcing it to our clients. It’s not exactly a merit badge to have an associate in jail.”

  “Jennie, do you think Calvin could have killed Roger?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “What would make him do it?”

  Jennie banged her cigarette against an ashtray already mounded high with charred butts and dusty ash. “He probably said something honest to Calvin’s face.”

  “But even Calvin wouldn’t kill someone just for doing that. There has to be more.”

  Jennie closed her eyes, probably to keep the stagnant oily smoke out of them. “People have been killed for a lot less than telling the truth.”

  I nodded as though I understood, though I didn’t. I offered her my business card again. “Will you call me if you think of anything else that might help?”

  She took it in her plump, dimpled fingers and said, “I thought your name was Stan.”

  “I go by Vannos in the shop.”

  She wrote “Stan” on the card and slid it into the snug breast pocket of her jacket. “At least you got balls, which is more than I can say for Calvin’s other tricks.”

  “Hey, don’t get that idea! I never had sex with him. I never wanted to and never intend to.”

  “Another point in your favor.”

  “And thanks for not calling the police, Jennie. As I said, I’m already under suspicion, so I’m trying to keep out of their sight.”