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FENWAY HAD TO HOLD up the wardrobe and makeup people as she left a message with Dez and texted McVie that Catherine Klein was Mrs. Potemkin. She hoped it was enough to get the first domino tipped to get Charlotte out of jail.
It took nearly two hours, but they finally got Fenway’s wardrobe, makeup, and hair finished at midnight, and they all walked into the studio, where a tired-looking cameraman was waiting, the green plastic curtain and the lights in place. Officer Young was looking bright-eyed still, as he sat in on the session, stoically, not speaking or making any noise. Fenway sat, getting the lighting adjusted on her face, while Millicent discussed the different intonations Fenway should make, the different words she should emphasize.
They started the session. At first, Fenway was having trouble concentrating; she thought more about Catherine Klein and wondered if Dez and McVie had gotten the messages. After Millicent clapped at her to wake up so they could finish and go home, Fenway snapped to the present and read the script through in a few takes. Millicent had a couple of corrections.
At one point, right around twelve-thirty, one of the other people on the campaign had come into the room and handed her another sheet. Millicent broke into a wide smile. “Here,” she said, “read this instead.”
It was a different script altogether, with a reference to the spitting incident.
“Throughout this election cycle, I’ve done my job, I’ve faced down some tough opponents, and I’ve done it in the face of adversity,” Fenway read.
“And that,” Millicent said, “is when we’ll superimpose the image of you being spit on by Imelda Ivanovich.”
Fenway shook her head. “Listen, Millicent, I trust you on a lot of things, but believe me when I tell you for as much outrage as you think the community’s going to feel, there’s going to be a growing group of people who see that and think it’s about time somebody put the ‘uppity black bitch’ in her place.”
Millicent winced. So did all of the white people in the room. The black woman who was holding the overhead boom mic remained stoic, although Fenway thought there was a trace of her rolling her eyes.
“Do you have to—” Millicent began.
“I’m not going to sugar-coat this for you,” Fenway interrupted. “Your original message was great. It elicited outrage. I don’t think it undermined anything. But the voters in this county are more white than black or Latino or Asian, they’re a lot more rural than city slickers, and it’s a midterm year—you’re not going to get young people to the polls nearly as much as you’d like.”
Millicent looked sideways at Fenway. “You don’t think I know all that?”
“Good, I’m glad you do. So you understand I’m not going to say the words in this script. I don’t want the spitting video used. It’s a dog whistle, and not one in my favor.”
Millicent pressed her lips together. “We can talk about it later.”
By the time they had finished with the session, it was one-thirty in the morning. The crew started turning off the lights and Fenway pulled Millicent to the side. “Millicent, listen, I found out that Jeremy Kapp, the murder victim Charlotte’s in jail on suspicion of killing, wasn’t having an affair with Charlotte. He was having an affair with Barry Klein’s wife. She was the one with him at the Belvedere Terrace Resort the night he was killed.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because,” Fenway said, “I think it will help McVie win his race, and I thought you could coordinate the release of that information with Gene Dennett.”
“Fenway,” Millicent Tate said, her tone admonishing, “I wish you would concentrate on your own race. The polls we did last week don’t mean anything now, and we don’t have time to gear up for anything meaningful before Tuesday. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a toss-up between you and Dr. Ivanovich. I don’t get paid for mishandling these things, and the only times I ever lose is when the candidate doesn’t take the campaign seriously enough.” She held out a finger, pointing at Fenway’s chest. “And you, my dear, aren’t taking your campaign seriously enough.”
“I also thought if it came out that Catherine Klein was the one having the affair with Jeremy Kapp, Charlotte would be let go. I’ve already told Sergeant Roubideaux and McVie.”
Millicent bobbed her head from side to side in thought. “I don’t know. The media’s been pretty loud about Charlotte’s arrest. I doubt they’ll be nearly as loud if she’s let go.”
“Better than her still being in jail on Election Day, though, right?”
Millicent thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. All right, I’ll get on it.”
Officer Young drove Fenway back to Rachel’s, followed by the second cruiser. It was late, and when they walked into Rachel’s townhouse, an exhausted Rachel was still on the couch, watching a movie.
“Rachel, what are you still doing up?” Fenway said. “It’s almost two in the morning.”
“I’m worried about you,” Rachel said simply. “I’m glad you’re back safe.”
Fenway clicked her tongue. “You don’t need to do that. You know the police are starting to think I wasn’t the target of the car bomb.”
Rachel nodded. “Yeah. I heard from Dez. But I don’t want to take any chances.”
Fenway and Rachel left Officer Young in the living room and Fenway got ready for bed. The exhaustion hit her like a truck as she was brushing her teeth, and she stumbled out of the bathroom.
Rachel was standing in the hallway outside her bedroom. “I think you should sleep in my room again,” she said simply.
“What?”
Rachel lowered her voice. “I don’t trust Officer Young. I got a weird feeling yesterday when he was here, and then when you woke up screaming—I don’t know. It was strange when I came out of my room and he was already in front of your bed.”
“He was awake downstairs. You were asleep. It probably took you a lot more time to wake up and get out of bed than it did for him to run upstairs.”
Rachel looked through a suspicious gaze at Fenway. “Yeah, I know,” she said, “but I’m telling you, something’s not right.”
“You going to put a chair up against the door like you did last night?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
Fenway stared at her.
“Come in here,” Rachel hissed, and Fenway followed her into her bedroom and Rachel closed the door behind her.
“Listen,” Rachel said, solemnly, “I know McVie thinks there’s a mole in the department. A mole who let my father into Dylan’s cell to kill him. I know they haven’t found that mole yet. I know the mole, whoever he might be, is tied to your dad’s company. I don’t think he’s tied to your dad himself, but someone at Ferris Energy has someone at the sheriff’s office who is giving him access.”
Fenway nodded. “Yeah. McVie thinks so too.”
“So—Officer Young might be handsome and intelligent and might be giving you all those good vibes, but I don’t trust him,” Rachel said. “And honestly, I don’t care if I sound paranoid. I don’t care if he starts suspecting I’m onto him, or if he thinks we’re lesbians, or what. I care about keeping you safe, and if he’s after you, I’m not safe either.” She set her jaw. “You’ll be a lot safer in this room with me, when he has to take on two people, not just one, especially if one of us has a gun.”
Fenway paused, thinking, then she nodded.
“Good,” Rachel said. “I’m exhausted. And I hope you don’t snore like you did last night.”
• • •
FENWAY WOKE UP TO THE smell of coffee. She turned over; Rachel was already out of bed.
Fenway sat up and stretched. The clock on Rachel’s bedside table said 7:17—she felt fairly rested for only five hours of sleep, and knew she’d have a full day, between the investigation and all the campaign events Millicent Tate had scheduled for her. She reached for her phone; Dez had texted her. Let’s talk about the Kapp case. Call me after 8.
She stretched her arms above her head, went to the bathroom, and, not quite awake, started to go downstairs to get some coffee. Then she heard Callahan’s voice, Rachel laughing along with him, and went into the bedroom to dig a bra out of her suitcase and put it on before going down.
Rachel and Callahan were seated at the kitchen table. After everything Callahan had said yesterday about Fenway not being in danger, she was surprised the sheriff’s department was still placing a resource to protect her. She remembered the look of concern on McVie’s face, first after the car bomb, then after the therapist’s killing. Maybe McVie was being overprotective.
Rachel and Callahan didn’t look up from their conversation; Rachel had her back to Fenway, but Callahan paid a lot of attention to what Rachel was saying. She was talking with her hands, something about a concert she had attended, and Callahan’s face looked—well, smitten. Perhaps Rachel was the reason he had chosen, or maybe volunteered for, this particular duty.
Fenway was walking by the front door when Callahan’s radio crackled to life.
“Callahan, there’s a visitor approaching the door. We frisked him. No weapons. Wants to talk to Eagle.”
“Roger that,” said Callahan.
“Eagle?” Fenway said.
Callahan looked up suddenly. “Oh—Fenway, you’re up. Good.”
Fenway looked down at her flannel pajamas. “Not sure I’m in any state to receive company.”
Callahan’s radio crackled again. “Male, early to mid-twenties. Said his name was Zoso.”
“Zoso?”
“Oh,” Fenway said, “I know him.”
Callahan narrowed his eyes. “I know him too. He’s a dealer.”
Fenway shrugged. “He broke the mayor’s murder case wide open a couple of months ago. I’ll see him.”
Fenway turned to open the front door, but Callahan yelled to stop her, and rushed over to open the door himself.
Zoso had a five-day growth of beard. His eyes were heavily lidded, but darted from Callahan to Fenway.
“Nice jammies,” he said.
“Hi, Zoso,” Fenway said.
“What is this?” he said. “How come I’m getting the third degree?”
“It’s possible someone’s trying to kill me,” Fenway said. “Police protection.”
“Thought it was ’cause you were running for office. Some sort of Secret Service detail or something.”
Fenway shrugged. “You want to come in?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Zoso stepped inside, saw Rachel at the kitchen table. “Hey, Rach.”
“Hey, Zoso. You doing okay?”
Zoso shrugged. “Can’t complain.”
“So,” Fenway said, shooting a look at Callahan and motioning Zoso to the sofa in the living room, “what brings you here? I would have thought the cops outside would scare you away.”
Zoso laughed, a little uneasily. “Yeah, well, they would have if I had noticed them. Once they started talking to me, I figured I’d better go through with talking to you. Otherwise it’d be more suspicious.”
Fenway nodded and took a seat on the sofa.
“Anyway,” Zoso said, sitting down on the sofa a couple of feet away from Fenway, “did you sic that sheriff chick on me? She’s been up my ass the last couple days. I never saw her around before. She new?”
“Sheriff chick?” Fenway asked, confused, then remembered Gretchen Donnelly. Dez must have her doing some work on this too. Fenway paused. “Did you come here to tell me something?”
“Oh, right.” Zoso cleared his throat. “Uh—so, anyway, this sheriff chick starts talking to me about Thursday night. Like, where I was, who I was with. And I don’t want to say anything, because I don’t know what they have on me, or what they think they have on me. I said they could see me with a lawyer next time they wanted to talk to me. I’ve got a rep to protect.”
“Sure.” Fenway paused. “But your customers aren’t here. Your connections aren’t here. Your friends aren’t here. It’s just us. So where were you?”
Zoso screwed up his mouth. “I went to a customer’s house. And, uh, well, it was the wife of the dead guy. The one they found in the pedestrian underpass.”
“You went to see Cricket Kapp.”
“Yeah.”
“How long did you stay?”
“Not long. She was already on something when I got there. Oxy, probably, since that’s what I—uh...”
Fenway shook her head. “I’m interested in the murder, not your Oxy business, Zoso.”
Zoso glanced up at Callahan, who was still sitting at the table with Rachel.
“Hey, Rachel,” Fenway said, “can you and Callahan go over to The Coffee Bean for me?”
Rachel cottoned on. “Sure. Come on, Brian.”
“I’m not supposed to—”
Fenway interrupted. “I can’t have you listening into a conversation with an informant, Callahan.”
“If you’re worried, I can go get the coffee.” Rachel said. “You can stand outside the door.”
“I’ll even open the blinds,” Fenway offered. “You can look right in. I just can’t have you hearing our conversation.”
Callahan looked torn.
“They already frisked him,” Fenway said, “and look at him. I can take him.”
Zoso frowned.
Callahan sighed. “Fine,” he said. He leaned over the sofa to the front window and opened the blinds. Then he followed Rachel out the front door. Zoso watched the door close firmly behind them, and Callahan’s head appeared outside the front window.
“We good now?” Fenway asked.
“Yeah.” Zoso cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
“Okay, so you went to see Cricket Kapp. Now when you say you weren’t there for long, what do you mean? A couple of hours?”
“What? No way. I was there maybe ten minutes. Probably not even that.”
“What time did you leave? Before midnight?”
“Uh...”
“Come on, Zoso.”
“What time did she say I left?”
Fenway narrowed her eyes at Zoso. “You and Miz Cricket have a thing going?”
Zoso’s eyes went wide. “A thing? Like, a sex thing?”
“Well, yeah. Why not?”
Zoso had a look of horror on his face. “For real? She’s like, forty.”
“Sure, but she looks great. Big boobs, nice firm butt—”
He shook his head adamantly. “No, no, unh-uh. I don’t go for the cougars.”
“I don’t know, Zoso. Her kids seemed to think you had it bad for her.”
“No way.”
“All right,” Fenway said. “So after you were there for ten minutes, what did you do?”
“I left. I got in and started up my car after, uh, seeing Mrs. Kapp, and I remember the clock said eleven thirty-six.”
“Eleven thirty-six? That’s pretty specific.”
“Yeah, well, I remember it.”
“You didn’t stay there for two hours.”
“No way.”
“You didn’t sell Mrs. Kapp some Oxy and then have her give you a little physical payment? Maybe a five-finger discount of another kind?”
“Ugh, Fenway, gross. She’s almost twice my age.”
“Okay.” Fenway paused, briefly thinking about the wedding of her nearly-fifty-year-old father and his twenty-five-year-old bride. “Did you see anyone else there? Was Blair home?”
“Yeah,” Zoso said. “Blair was home. So was Donovan. At least, I think so. Their doors were closed to their rooms. But Mrs. Kapp wanted me to keep it down so we wouldn’t bug them.”
“Keep it down?”
Zoso rolled his eyes. “Our voices. Jeez, give it a rest. She didn’t want her kids to know she bought Oxy.”
“The kids were there?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
Zoso shook his head. “I just told you, she said they were home.”
“Yeah, Zoso, but she could have been lying. Or just plain wrong. Did you see either of them? Or maybe the kids’ cars were in the driveway?”
Zoso shrugged. “They’re rich. They’ve got garages for all their kids’ cars. Mrs. Kapp said not to wake up the kids, so I kept my voice down. I didn’t have some sort of magic kid tracker.”
Fenway nodded. “When did you get back home?”
“It was before midnight.”
“Prime dealing hours, right?”
“Sometimes. I’ll go to clubs and dive bars. But not Thursday.”
“Thursdays are a busy night, though, right? Still at that one club?”
Zoso shook his head. “Some nights, yeah, but Thursday is two-dollar shot night there. Their Thursday clientele is always too cheap to buy kickers. They figure, why spend money on some Oxy when they can get drunk for ten bucks?”
“Fair point.”
He scoffed. “You obviously haven’t tried Oxy, if you think it ain’t any better than a buzz off cheap liquor.”
Fenway smiled. “It’s a real shame I’m not a candidate for your wares, Zoso.”
He smiled. “Oh, the hoity-toity talk. I always recognize my cue to leave.” He stood up. “All right, hope I gave you what you need. Keep you guys off my ass for another few months, all right?”
“You got it, Zoso.”
He opened the door and left.
Callahan watched Zoso walk all the way down to the sidewalk, then came back in the apartment and closed the door. “So did he help anything?”
Fenway shrugged. “It means Cricket Kapp no longer has an alibi for her husband’s murder.”
• • •
FENWAY HAD TO HURRY through a single cup of coffee and a shower. When she got back downstairs, Callahan told her he had been pulled off protective duty—the threat on Fenway’s life was no longer deemed serious. Fenway hadn’t gotten her Accord back—it was still in evidence from the car bomb blast—but Callahan drove her to the St. Bonaventure Pancake Breakfast.
The St. Bonaventure Church, the largest in the diocese, had hosted a candidates’ pancake breakfast for years at nine in the morning the day before Election Day. Sheriff McVie was there, along with Barry Klein and his wife. Fenway’s opponent was a no-show.
“This couldn’t have worked out better,” Millicent Tate whispered to Fenway, who had eaten most of the plate of buttermilk pancakes. “I thought for sure Ivanovich would be pushing for the Catholic votes. But after Imelda spit on you at the dinner last night? I bet that did a number on them. Maybe Ivanovich doesn’t want to show his face where he’ll have to answer questions about trying to punch a cop.”
“Oh man, I had forgotten about that,” Fenway said. “Didn’t they let his wife go last night?”
“They were talking about it,” Millicent said, “but as far as I know, she’s still in jail. I think they’re trying to keep it out of the media.”
“Are you going to change that?” Fenway asked with a gleam in her eye.
“We don’t need to. Things are looking good for us: our commercial is running on Channel 12 all day, and our opponent didn’t show up at the biggest campaign event the day before the election.”
“And his wife is in jail,” Fenway said.
As soon as the words left her mouth, Fenway saw Dez out of the corner of her eye. With a start, she realized she hadn’t called her before she left for the church.
Dez entered the hall. She snaked her way through the tables and stopped in front of Barry and Catherine Klein.
Fenway strained to see what was happening—a few people kept walking through her field of vision, and Dez faced the other way. But she heard, clearly, Barry Klein’s voice say, “Whatever she has to say to you, she can say it in front of me.”
She didn’t hear what Dez said next, but Klein’s response rang through the hall. “We don’t need to go anywhere more private, Sergeant. I don’t have anything to hide.”
Again, Dez’s voice was too muted for Fenway to hear, but again, Klein’s agitated response: “Is this out of revenge for the things I’ve said about Nathaniel Ferris?”
“No,” Dez said, “I—”
Klein stood up. “Maybe it’s because you’re taking bribes from Ferris?”
Dez pulled herself up to her full height, still a few inches shorter than Klein, but more imposing. “Maybe you want to take that back before I sue you for slander.”
“It’s not slander if it’s true,” Barry Klein said.
Fenway looked at McVie’s face. He was horrified.
Dez bristled. “Just because your wife was with the murder victim in a hotel room the night of his death does not give you the right—”
Fenway then couldn’t make anything out. Barry Klein was yelling; Catherine Klein was yelling, an angry look on her face; McVie stepped up and tried to separate them, and Dez finally pulled Catherine Klein out of the scrum and tried to lead her off.
“You’re not taking her anywhere!” yelled Klein. “This is a stunt by the sheriff’s department because you don’t want me to be mayor!”
Dez walked quickly, Catherine Klein ahead of her, and went through the double doors at the front of the hall.
Barry Klein kept yelling, and McVie kept blocking his path. “You’ve been getting kickbacks from Ferris for years—and you’ve got the whole department gunning for me!” he said.
“That’s not true, and you know it, Barry,” McVie said, loudly but calmly.
“Get out of my way, McVie, or I’m going to punch you in the face.”
“Don’t add assault on a police officer to your troubles today, Barry,” McVie said. “I won’t have any qualms about locking you up.”
The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then Barry Klein took a step back, straightened his tie, and strode off through one of the side doors.
McVie had an angry look on his face. He walked slowly back to his table, then stood with his hand on the back of his chair, staring at his plate of half-eaten pancakes.
Fenway walked over to McVie.
“You okay?”
“No,” McVie said, quietly. “I hate this stupid election.” For a moment, he looked stricken. Fenway longed to take his hand, but didn’t dare in front of all the people at the breakfast. Finally, he sighed and looked Fenway in the eyes. “I have a confession to make, Fenway.”
Oh no, Fenway thought. He’s going to tell me he’s taken bribes from my father.
McVie took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be mayor.”
Fenway blinked. “What?”
McVie shook his head. “I don’t want to be mayor. I only want Barry Klein not to be mayor. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m a good sheriff. I like being sheriff.”
“You had to run for sheriff before.”
“It was nothing like this,” he said, “and the last couple of times, I’ve run unopposed.”
“I hate this election too.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but at least you want to be coroner.”
Fenway nodded, a little sadly. “Did you hear—are they arresting Mrs. Klein?”
McVie shook his head. “Material witness warrant. They’re compelling her to give a statement. Dr. Klein didn’t want her to cooperate, so they had to take her down to the station.”
“Donnelly keeping you in the loop?”
McVie nodded. “And Dez.” McVie looked squarely at Fenway. “I wish this election hadn’t screwed up my dating life,” he said. “I think you and I would really be something.”
Fenway felt her heart swell. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
He smiled, a little sadly. “We still on for dinner Wednesday night?”
Fenway nodded. “Yes. I’d like that.”
She felt like putting her arms around McVie and pulling him close, but she knew she couldn’t. She turned and started walking away from him and almost smacked into Millicent.
“What the hell are you doing?” Millicent hissed through a smile.
“Seeing if my friend is okay,” Fenway replied.
“I thought you two were going to start making out.”
“Oh, stop it.” Fenway walked back toward her table. Millicent followed her.
“Yeah, well, let’s hope no photographers caught the two of you making goo-goo eyes at each other. You’ll have a lot to answer for if they did.”
Fenway rolled her eyes and shook her head as she came to her seat. “Honestly, Millicent, you might be good at managing campaigns, but you don’t know what’s going on when it comes to interpersonal relationships.” She took her seat.
Millicent took the seat next to her. “I know you’re not Catholic,” she said, smirking, “but I don’t think it would be a good idea to lie during the church breakfast.”
