TWENTY-SEVEN

He had to check twice to make sure the dark woman in the silky coral dress was really Sharon Collatos. Then he quickly reevaluated his impulsive invitation to dinner. Pity had been part of the motive; he’d extended the invitation like a lifeline to a sinking exhausted swimmer. This Sharon Collatos, chin high, color in her cheeks, clad in a garment that lost detail in its overall impact, turned heads. This Sharon Collatos was a washout as an object of pity; no sinking swimmer, but the proud pennant on the topmost mast of the Coast Guard rescue cutter.

The mustached Latin waiter looked as if he enjoyed guiding her across the room.

“Hi.” She turned suddenly shy when she saw him, not knowing whether to expect a businesslike dinner or the date she had dressed for.

“You look terrific,” he said immediately. It wasn’t the most tactful opening in the world, but he knew he’d have to say it sooner or later. She blushed. The compliment apparently made her think, as he had feared, not of how well she looked tonight, but of how she’d looked two days earlier. And acted, clinging to him in Pete’s study.

“I’m getting myself together,” she said flatly. The waiter held her chair.

“Obviously.”

“Went back to work today. I teach. High school. It helped. Made me realize I’m not the only one in the world who has to deal with death and disaster and pimples.”

They opened tasseled, red leather menus, scanned choices printed on fake parchment. “The Spanish dishes are good. So’s the steak.”

“Paella,” she said. “And the stuffed avocado if you’re going to have an appetizer. I’ve been here before, years ago …” She turned her head and glanced back toward the door, at the clutch of small tables with pristine white cloths, dotted with tented scarlet napkins, the hallway leading to the other narrow room. “Hasn’t changed.”

“You want wine? A drink?”

“No. I might get maudlin again.”

“We’ll skip it then. I can’t drink before a performance.”

“Have you been acting long?”

“Long enough.”

He hadn’t meant it as a brush-off, but she was sensitive to every nuance. Her hand jumped to her leather bag. “I brought Pete’s letter,” she said, all business.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m sorry. We’ll get to the letter. We have to start by exchanging life stories, don’t we?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“Let’s do it slowly,” Spraggue said. “A little at a time.”

“That bad?” she said, smiling.

“How did you wind up out in Chelmsford when you used to eat dinner at the Iruña in the Square?”

“That alone would take us through to dessert.”

“Fine. Begin.”

He’d expected a protracted tale of indecision, love, rapture, disgust, divorce. Instead he got a cool, lucid, unsentimental account of a marriage that hadn’t made it and a career that had.

“Would you like to see a play tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t have a ticket.”

“House seats could be made available. I won’t be able to sit with you.”

“What show?”

“Caucasian Chalk Circle. I think.”

She laughed. “I’d love to see it.”

“Good.”

The paella and steak appeared and disappeared. None of their talk had the nervous patter of strangers trying desperately to impress. When they tired of old tales, they talked current events; when they tired of that, they talked about Pete. That led back to the letter.

She held it out over the starched white tablecloth. Their hands brushed during the transfer. She did have wonderfully long dark eyelashes.

Pete’s communication wasn’t much to look at. The envelope was standard business size—plain, white, cheap—a Woolworth’s special. The postmark was blurred, but the word Boston was evident and a date could barely be made out.

“How the hell could it take so long to deliver mail from Boston to Chelmsford?” Spraggue muttered.

Sharon shrugged.

The envelope contained only one item, another smaller envelope. Spraggue held it up to the light, carefully, by the edges, even though the paper seemed too smooth for fingerprints. He stared at it for a full thirty seconds before its significance sank in.

“What is it?” Sharon asked anxiously.

“Your brother showed me five envelopes three days before he died. The envelopes Senator Donagher got his hate mail in. Pete expected there to be six envelopes, but there were only five.… He assumed that the police had kept one. That’s what he said.”

“Why mail an envelope to me?”

“Presumably, because it was important.”

“Yes?”

“I’m just thinking out loud. Don’t expect major revelations here. Okay. He sent it to you because he knew it wouldn’t be safe in his apartment, because someone else wanted it.…”

“Maybe.”

“I think the postmark is April twentieth.”

“That’s what it looked like to me,” Sharon said.

“The day after he died.”

“That means somebody else mailed it. Who? Why?”

“Suppose,” Spraggue said slowly, “Pete stuck it in the mail Sunday, Sunday night. The post office doesn’t pick up mail Sunday night.”

Sharon took a pocket calendar out of her purse. “Monday, then, the nineteenth.”

“Patriot’s Day,” Spraggue said. “No mail.”

“So Pete could have mailed it before he …”

Spraggue stared at the smaller envelope, the three lines of typed text: Senator Brian Donagher; 55 Sparhawk Street; Brighton, MA. “He did mail it … he must have mailed it right after he called me.…” Spraggue pushed his dinner plate away, smoothed his scarlet napkin over the tablecloth. He placed the two envelopes on it, side by side, then placed the smaller one above the larger one.

“What is it? What do you see?”

“Look.” He tilted the envelopes in her direction. “Look at the typing. The envelope with Donagher’s name on it. Then the one Pete typed with your name on it. They were typed on the same machine. See that blocked o, that off-center t?”

“What does it mean?”

“Your brother knew who sent the warning letters to Donagher.”

Sharon held her water glass to her lips, sipped, set it down with unsteady fingers. “You think that’s why he was killed?”

He blew out a sigh of exasperation. “No. I don’t think so. Dammit, I don’t know. I’ve been working on the theory that he was killed because of something he learned while he was a cop, when he was working with the Arson Squad. Now this.”

“Confuses everything?” she said and Spraggue wanted to lean over and kiss her for the sympathy in her voice.

“Yeah. Not only do we get our choice of how your brother died, we get our choice of why somebody killed him.”