TEN

 

Mama bounded off the sofa, toppling Catherine the Great onto the floor, as she hurried to where Harley, Fogarty, Zack, and I stood in the foyer. Zack turned the phone screen toward us.

At seven-thirty-five this evening someone dressed entirely in black and wearing a ski mask had walked up to our front door and let himself into the house. Except for the ski mask, nothing about the intruder stood out, but considering the moonless and overcast night, anyone who happened to be on the street at the time would only have seen the back of a head wearing a ski cap, not a masked man.

He was of average height with no distinguishing gait, his posture erect. He didn’t slouch nor hunch his back. He had walked purposefully up to the front door, neither hurrying nor acting in a suspicious manner. A three-quarter length puffer coat hid a build somewhere between slight and extremely muscular. We had no way to tell.

The ski mask prevented us from seeing any facial features once he stood close enough to the camera except for two dark eyes peering out from the holes in the mask. It was impossible to ascertain whether he was bald, had a full head of hair, sported a beard, or was clean-shaven.

“How in the world did he get a key to the house?” asked Mama. “And what if he comes back? He could kill us all in our sleep!”

Not that any of us would sleep tonight with the crime scene unit on the way and an assailant on the loose. As if that weren’t enough, I needed to deal with Lucille, which meant a trip to the hospital. A battle royale would ensue if she had regained consciousness and the hospital wanted to admit her for observation and tests. If she insisted on leaving, we were powerless to force her to remain.

“We’ll post a detail outside the house,” said Harley.

“For how long?” demanded Mama. “And if your answer isn’t until you catch the creep, think again.”

Harley huffed out a sigh. “Until the locks are changed, ma’am.” He pulled out his phone, turned his back on Mama, and spoke directly to Zack and me. “There’s a twenty-four-hour service we use. I’m texting them to get someone out here tonight.”

“Much appreciated,” said Zack.

“But how did he get a key in the first place?” asked Mama.

I could think of only one way. Lucille’s mugger hadn’t ditched her purse immediately after stealing her money. He’d first made a copy of the key.

“Must have been the guy who stole her purse,” said Fogarty.

Mama’s eyes widened as she zeroed in on Fogarty. “When was this?”

“Yesterday,” said Fogarty. “When she was mugged.”

Mama splayed her fingers on her hips and turned to direct her ire at me. “Why am I first hearing about this now?”

“You didn’t notice her black eye and the bruises on her face?” I asked.

She waved a dismissive hand. “I figured she’d walked into a door or a wall. If this happened yesterday, why didn’t you change the locks immediately?”

“Because we found her pocketbook,” said Harley, “shortly after the incident. The keys were still inside.”

“I suppose, in hindsight,” said Fogarty, “we should have realized the mugger had time to make a duplicate key.”

“Seriously?” Mama waved her arms widely as she raised her voice several decibels. “What if he had killed us all!”

She had a point. Tonight could have ended with all of us in body bags. I shuddered at the thought.

“Since we were assured she never carried any ID,” said Harley, “we all decided he wouldn’t have known where she lived.”

“All of you decided this?” Mama focused in on Zack and me. “You both went along with this decision? With your recent track record, Anastasia? Where are your brains? And you,” she said turning on Zack. “Mr. Observant Photojournalist or possible spy? Where did you park your common sense?”

Another point in her favor. “You’re right, Mama. We jumped to a wrong conclusion. Maybe we should have changed the locks immediately.”

Mama offered us a Lucille-like harrumph. “I don’t think there’s any maybe about it, dear.”

I hung my head like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. At this point, I could only draw one conclusion. Someone had targeted Lucille, either following her once she left the house yesterday or when she took the cab home. That someone then made a copy of her key before disposing of her purse. But who? And why? Had he only wanted to harm Lucille, or was she collateral damage? What was his endgame?

With Mama so upset and still fearful about being murdered in her sleep, Zack offered to book a room for her for the night. She gladly accepted. “As long as you make a reservation at a hotel that allows pets,” she said. “I’m not leaving Catherine the Great here tonight.”

“No problem, Flora.” Zack performed a quick search on his phone. A few taps of his screen later, he told Mama, “You’re all set. You’ve got a room at the Holiday Inn. An Uber will pick you up in ten minutes.”

Mama’s eyes grew wide. “Ten minutes? That’s impossible!”

“How so?” asked Zack.

“That’s too soon. I need time to pack.”

“The bedroom is a crime scene, ma’am,” said Harley. “I can’t allow you in there until the Crime Scene Unit has processed the room.”

“But I need my things!” said Mama, getting up in Officer Harley’s face. “You can’t possibly expect me to sleep in my brand-new dress. Do you have any idea how much I paid for this?”

Probably nothing. For some time now, I’d suspected Ira of footing all of Mama’s bills, not just her condo. I placed a hand around her shoulders and gently nudged her to step back from Harley’s personal space. “You can borrow some of my clothes, Mama.”

“I suppose that will have to do,” she said. “At least all my toiletries are in the bathroom.” She glared at Harley. “Unless that’s off-limits, too.”

“No, ma’am. You can get your things from the bathroom.”

Mama turned back to me. “I’ll also need Catherine the Great’s food bowl and her food.”

“I’ll get those,” said Zack.

Ten minutes later, we loaded Mama into the Uber. As soon as the car pulled away from the curb, the Crime Scene Unit arrived, followed by Detective Spader.

A short time later, the hospital called to say they were keeping Lucille overnight.

“Is she still unconscious?” I asked.

“She’s semi-conscious,” said the doctor who had admitted her, “but showing steady improvement. I expect she’ll gain full consciousness within a few hours. We’ll continue to observe her overnight and run some tests in the morning.”

Good luck with that, I thought, but didn’t say anything other than thanking her for the update.

Zack and I finally tumbled into bed at half-past two. I had heard no word from the office regarding the computer system. Since I had some comp time coming to me, I shot off an email to Naomi, copying Human Resources, that I’d be using one of those days tomorrow. “Don’t wake me in the morning,” I told Zack. “I’m sleeping in.”

He laughed. “Sure you are.”

~*~

I lay awake for hours, forcing myself not to toss and turn. I didn’t want to disturb Zack who had fallen asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. No sense both of us enduring a sleepless night.

Along with the worry of last night’s incident, I still couldn’t get Cormac Murphy out of my head. The man he’d been looking for had turned up dead in my driveway. No one could convince me Murphy wasn’t behind his murder. Was Murphy also responsible for the attack on Lucille?

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Lucille’s assault wasn’t a random mugging but orchestrated specifically to get her housekey. But why? Nothing in the house was missing. Nothing even disturbed. The intruder hadn’t been startled and fled before he got what he came for. We didn’t arrive home for hours after he had entered the house.

Maybe he hadn’t been after anything. Maybe he’d come to kill Lucille. He may have thought he had killed her. Or had inflicted severe enough wounds that she’d ultimately die from them. Was this all about revenge? And if so, for what?

Every time I thought about revenge, my brain circled back to Cormac Murphy. But he’d already taken his revenge on Johnnie D.

Was it possible that Lucille and Murphy had crossed paths sometime in the past? Had he seen her leave the house one day while hiding nearby and decided to eliminate her as well? That sounded too preposterous to consider, and yet I couldn’t shake the thought.

I finally drifted off to sleep around five-fifteen. At least, that was the last time I remembered glancing at the alarm clock.

Minutes later—or so it seemed—the sounds of construction startled me awake. Prying open one eye, I tried to focus on the blurry alarm clock numbers. A jumble of eights and zeros bounced around in front of my eyes. I moaned and buried my head under the quilt. Unfortunately, my bladder had other ideas. I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom, did the necessary, then hopped in the shower.

By the time I emerged from the steamy bathroom, Zack had arrived with a cup of coffee. “You forgot the toothpicks,” I mumbled after nearly draining the mug in one long gulp.

“Toothpicks?”

“To keep my eyelids pried open today.”

“We’re all out,” he said, “but I did fix you breakfast.”

“I’d prefer the toothpicks.”

“I’ll see if I can get Jesse to whittle a few for you from the leftover scraps of two-by-four studs.”

I mustered enough strength to kiss him. “My hero.”

“After breakfast, you should go back to sleep in the apartment,” he said.

I yawned. “Good idea. Except I should probably go to the hospital to check on Lucille.”

“Lucille can wait. If anything changes, the hospital will call you.”

“True.” I yawned again. “A morning nap sounds lovely.”

However, once I had finished eating breakfast and entered the apartment, I found myself wide awake, my mind once again racing and fixated on Cormac Murphy.

I was convinced either the universe or my subconscious was sending me a signal. Instead of crawling into bed and burrowing under the quilt, I made myself another cup of coffee and settled onto the sofa, my feet propped on the coffee table, my laptop perched on my thighs. I was determined to learn as much as I could about Boston mob boss Cormac Murphy.

A search of the man brought up thousands of hits. I narrowed my search to add Robert Doyle and found dozens of articles about the Gardner heist. As Detective Spader had mentioned, Doyle had been a member of Murphy’s gang and was suspected of orchestrating the museum burglary as leverage for bargaining down Murphy’s prison sentence.

However, even though Doyle had bragged about his involvement, most of the people interviewed by the FBI insisted Doyle didn’t have the smarts to pull off such an audacious theft. This included Connor Myles, Boston’s most famous art thief. Myles claimed Doyle was his accomplice in the theft of five Andrew and N.C. Wyeth paintings from an estate in Maine years before the Gardner heist.

According to Myles, Doyle had accompanied him to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on several occasions. Once there, they’d stand in front of various masterpieces, whispering as if discussing the merits of each painting. In reality, they were musing over various strategies for robbing the museum.

But Myles claimed Doyle was the classic all-brawn, no-brains low-level gangster. He insisted Doyle was incapable of planning, executing, and getting away with a theft of such magnitude.

In one of the articles regarding the connection between Connor Myles and Robert Doyle, Myles mentioned Garrett Quinn, one of Doyle’s close friends. He suggested if Doyle was involved in the Gardner heist, Quinn may have been the brains behind the theft.

Three men had executed the heist at the Gardner Museum. Two had entered the museum. A third had remained outside as both a lookout and getaway driver.

Robert Doyle had been Cormac Murphy’s driver. Did he also drive the getaway car the night of the burglary? The FBI must have suspected as much. They’d had Doyle under surveillance days before his murder.

Of course, none of this gave me any further insight into why Cormac Murphy had shown up at my home or whether he was somehow connected to Lucille’s assault. Besides, except for Murphy, most of the suspected players in the Gardner heist were now dead.

I was hooked, though. The more I read, the more there was to read, each article linking to dozens of others. I kept clicking away, once again tumbling deeper and deeper down the Internet rabbit hole.

Except this time my research had nothing to do with coming up with a craft for a future issue. I rationalized my obsession by remembering I had taken a comp day. I didn’t have to work at being a crafts editor today. My time was my own.

And on my own time I finally stumbled upon something that sucked the air from my lungs and sent my heart racing and my entire body trembling.

I don’t know how long I stared at the words on my computer screen, reading and rereading them. I didn’t hear Zack climb the steps up to the apartment or enter. I didn’t even notice him standing in front of me until he finally cleared his throat and I looked up to find concern written across his face.

“What?” I asked, afraid I’d hear additional bad news.

“You tell me. I expected to find you luxuriating in bed. Thought I might even join you.”

I ignored his invitation and instead said, “I found something.”

The corners of Zack’s mouth curved down, and the worry lines on his forehead deepened. “From the looks of it, I don’t think you’re pleased with whatever it is you found.”

“We need to look through that box of old jewelry Jesse found in the attic.”

Without questioning me further, Zack nodded and entered the darkroom. He emerged a minute later with the carved wooden box and handed it to me. “Anything special we’re looking for?”

I rooted through the box until I found the locket. “This.” Then I opened the rectangular case and gasped.