In the early days of Boston’s history, the area called The Fens was nothing more than ill-smelling marshes extending along the banks of the Muddy River on the settlement’s western border. But in the mid-nineteenth century, as the city’s social leaders began fleeing the squalor of the waterfront neighbourhoods and moving west, they found the mosquito-breeding Fens intolerable and converted them from putrid marshlands to formal gardens, draining the wide swamp to create picturesque waterways.
Arbours and bridges were constructed at vast expense, and by the end of the century flowers bloomed in the glades below the level of the avenues. Warm Sunday afternoons would find all of social Boston promenading along the Commonwealth Mall and down the sandy paths which wound through the Fens.
Over the years, the inner city continued to spread; after World War Two it grew to engulf the Back Bay area, and Boston’s wealthy families resumed their westward flight. Their abandoned brownstone mansions were transformed into apartments and rooming houses, and soon the nearby Fens became a weedy haven for addicts and muggers.
In recent years, the pattern began to come full circle. Many Back Bay mansions were restored to their original elegance as condominiums for young well-to-do urban couples. But the Fens were unchanged. The gardens remained overgrown and the formal plantings were as wild as a Maine meadow.
On a warm day in June, a visitor to the Fens would still find rustic charm in the greenery bordering the river, and in the small flocks of ducks and geese feeding in the sluggish water. But on a chilly November afternoon, when the overnight rain had turned first to sleet and later to the season’s first snow, the Fens were uninviting, cold and sad.
McGuire stood on the stone bridge crossing the Fens at Agassiz Street and stared down at the water’s edge, where Jennifer Cornell had been murdered five months earlier. A dirt pathway led from an old tangled rose garden through dead grass, tracing the shoreline of the river.
He felt the flurries settle on his neck and the dampness seep through the soles of his shoes, and decided there was nothing to be gained by walking that pathway in November. He looked up and beyond the bridge to the apartment building at 2281 Park Drive.
“He’s dead,” the old woman told him, looking through the crack of her apartment door, open only as far as the chain-lock would allow. “Died last July. I told him, I said ‘You start drinking again, you’ll kill yourself,’ but he never listened. Never listened to me in forty-three years.”
Her face was a road map of creases. She wore a shapeless print dress and her long wispy hair was tied loosely behind her head, hanging down her back like the hide stripped from some long-dead animal.
McGuire showed his badge. “Mrs. Reich, I wonder if I can speak with you about Jennifer Cornell,” he began.
“Who?” The woman’s voice erupted, loud and piercing.
“Jennifer Cornell. She lived here. She was murdered over in the Fens last summer.”
“Oh, that bitch!” The woman looked away in disgust but made no gesture to remove the restraining chain from her door. “She was another one.”
“May I come in and talk to you about her?” McGuire asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “We have reopened the investigation.”
“He already told you people everything.”
“Who did?”
“That dummy. My husband. He did all the talking. Even identified the body.”
“Yes, I know. But there may be a few other facts—”
“He ran the damn building, I didn’t. Do now. Didn’t then.”
“But you knew her? Jennifer Cornell?”
“Yeah, I knew her. The bitch.”
McGuire’s mouth broadened in a smile that failed to warm his face. “Then why don’t we talk about her, Mrs. Reich,” he said, the words snapping like dry twigs, “before I charge you with obstructing justice? Or maybe just call some friends at the fire department and ask them to do a thorough evaluation of your fire prevention procedures, room by room?”
She stared at McGuire, then muttered something under her breath before sliding the chain aside.
McGuire entered to see her walking away to a worn armchair set beside a window. The room smelled of staleness but was surprisingly clean.
Mrs. Reich—the police records listed her first name as Amanda—collapsed in the armchair and sat staring out the window at the dull sky. McGuire remained standing. Amanda. Such a romantic name, he thought.
“Do you remember any details about the morning Jennifer Cornell was found dead?” McGuire asked.
“Hell, yes,” the woman growled. “Cops all over the place, coming and going. Came here asking if we knew anybody looked like her. I knew it was her but I wasn’t going over there. So I had to find him. He was off getting the garbage ready for pickup the next day. He never liked cops. Hardly told them anything. Then the cops had to get a key to her apartment. The cops, they must have talked to everybody twice. Tramping in and out of here. Screwed up everything that day.”
“Did you hear anything unusual the night she was murdered?”
“No. Just heard her brother going upstairs, maybe two in the morning.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“He had a limp. Stairs go right over our bedroom. Can hear everybody. I think I heard her go out later but I’m not sure.”
McGuire scanned the room, cluttered with cheap souvenirs and old photographs. Amanda Reich continued to stare blankly out the window at the sky. He walked around the room, touching the worn furniture, glancing at the sad stains on the wallpaper. “Tell me about Jennifer Cornell,” he said finally. “What kind of person was she?”
“I told you. A bitch.”
“What else? Was she punctual? Tidy? Did she have lots of friends?”
The woman’s body shook in a small spasm of laughter. “She took a man upstairs every now and then. Nobody could stand her for more than one night, way I see it. One time we nearly had to call the cops. Three in the morning and she’s throwing stuff—glasses, books, I don’t know what all—at this guy going down the stairs. And screaming at him. Woman had a mouth like a backed-up toilet.”
“Do you know who this man was?”
“Some guy. Drove one of them expensive German cars.”
“Mercedes?”
“The other one.”
“BMW?”
“I guess.”
“Do you remember the colour?”
“White. I remember it was white. Had one of them funny things on the back. Whattaya call it?”
“A spoiler?”
“Something like that. Looked like a race car. Parked it right in front of here. Didn’t give a damn if he got a ticket. Some people have money to throw away.”
McGuire settled himself on an arm of the sofa and smiled. She knows everything, he realized. She listens and she watches and she knows everything that goes on around here. “How many days before the murder did this happen?” he asked.
She kept her eyes on the window but her aggressive mood had mellowed to something more passive. Acceptance, perhaps. Or sadness. “Two, maybe three weeks,” she replied.
“And what was this man saying to her when she was screaming at him. Do you remember?”
“Something about her being lousy. And that she was through. ‘You’re through! You’re through!’ he kept yelling at her.”
“Any idea what that meant?”
She shook her head. “That dummy, he went—”
“Who?” McGuire interrupted.
“My husband,” she snapped. “He went out in the hall and told them to shut up or he’d call the cops. She went back in her room and slammed the door. Guy with the car, he just went out and drove away. Last I seen of him.”
“How about her brother?” McGuire asked. “Wasn’t he staying here for the last two weeks before she died?”
For the first time since McGuire entered the room, she turned to face him. “Him, he was a weird one,” she said. “Scared me. Passed him on the stairs once and damn near jumped out of my skin.”
“Why?”
She studied her hands. “Don’t know. Something about him wasn’t right.”
“Can you describe him for me?”
She looked out the window again. “About your height. Maybe thirty-seven, thirty-eight years old. Good build. Had a moustache.”
“You said something about him wasn’t right. What did you mean by that?”
At first, McGuire thought she hadn’t heard him, or was ignoring him. Then she said, “He looked familiar. Like I’d seen him somewhere before in the newspapers or on the TV or something. Reminded me of somebody famous. And he always avoided me. Once I was on the stairs and he came out of her room and saw me and went right back in again, and I heard them arguing through the door.” Her chest heaved and she lowered her head. “Besides. Maybe it’s because of what happened after.”
“After what?”
“After the bitch died. That’s when he started his drinking again.”
McGuire was confused. “Who?”
“That dummy. My husband. Hadn’t touched a drop in ten years. Dried himself out. Then, after the bitch was killed, he started drinking again. He’d come home, he could hardly stand up, and I’d say ‘You’ll kill yourself, you keep this up.’ He’d laugh and tell me I didn’t know nothing. He said ‘I got everything figured out about that Cornell woman and her brother.’ I asked him what, and he just laughed at me. Then I found out he wasn’t drinking alone. He was running around with somebody.”
“Who?”
She paused, swallowed once, and blinked at the sky. “I don’t know. He said it was Andy.”
“Jennifer’s brother?”
She nodded.
“He disappeared when Jennifer Cornell died.”
“I guess so,” she said. “I never saw him again anyway.”
“And your husband would go drinking with him.”
“Bullshit.” She blinked again, several times, and McGuire realized she was crying. “He was drinking with some woman. I figured it out. I could smell her on him. What the hell do you do with a man, after forty-three years, he sneaks away and goes drinking with some woman? I tell you what you do. You say ‘Piss on him!’ So one night I’m in bed alone and he’s late, he’s out with her I know, and I hear a crash, hell of a noise. I get up and get dressed and there he is at the bottom of the cellar steps. Broke his fool neck trying to carry a case of whisky down the stairs.”
McGuire stood up. “A whole case?”
“Twelve bottles of rye. All of them broken and him lying there with his neck . . .” She lowered her head and hid her face in her hands.
McGuire waited, listening to traffic noises from the street and muffled footsteps from the apartment above them. “Do you remember what happened the morning Miss Cornell was found dead?” he asked gently. “I mean, before the police arrived?”
Lifting her head, she frowned at her fingernails. “Nothing.”
“Where was your husband that night?”
“He was here. In bed with me. Then he got up, maybe about four o’clock. I asked him what the hell’s wrong and he said he heard somebody on the fire escape. Thought maybe there were kids back there or them drug addicts from the Fens, they like to sit out there on the fire escape steps. They’re crazies. Should lock them all up. So he got up and looked and came back in about ten minutes. I asked him what it was and he said nothing. Told me to go back to sleep. So I did, and then I got up in the morning and told him to move his ass out of bed, he had chores to do.”
“What time would that be?”
“I get up six-thirty every morning. Always have. Him, he’d have his fat ass in bed until seven. Sleep all day if I’d let him.”
“Did he ever explain who was on the fire escape?”
“Not to me he didn’t. Told the cops he thought it was her brother, sneaking out the back way.”
“Where did your husband get the money for the whisky?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Never had enough money to buy me anything. I never saw none of it. Whatever he had, he spent on the woman.”
“Who was the woman?”
She exploded in fury, turning on him. “How the hell should I know? I never cared. He could do whatever the hell he wanted, far as I was concerned. He could have ten women, the dummy, I wouldn’t care.”
McGuire waited until she had calmed down. “And you never saw Andrew Cornell or the man in the BMW again?”
She had returned her gaze to the window, her chin on her hand, fingertips in her mouth. She shook her head.
McGuire pulled a card from his wallet and left it on a side table. “Please call me at one of the numbers on my card if you think of anything else,” he said. Then he added, “I’m sorry about your husband.”
“Why the hell should you feel sorry about a dummy like him?” she mumbled from the window. “Good riddance to the son of a bitch. That’s what I say. Same thing to you. Good riddance. Just get the hell out and mind your own business.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving her by the window, blinking up at the sky.
The snow had turned to sleet again as McGuire walked to the rear of the building.
Each apartment opened to a wooden landing and fire escape leading to an alleyway running parallel with the street. He stared up at the second-floor rear apartment for several minutes. It told him nothing, so he walked back to the Agassiz Street bridge with his shoulders hunched against the wind, glancing briefly down at the site of Jennifer Cornell’s murder as he crossed the Fens. The light had faded, turning the world to a still deeper shade of grey. At the end of Westland Street he walked north to Massachusetts, losing himself in the crowds of office workers rushing to the subway.
Another block and he was across the street from the rustic barn-board façade of Pour Richards. He dodged a bus, cursed at a cab that sprayed him with slush, and ducked into the warmth of the bar.
Inside, McGuire stood in the doorway while his eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light. To his left were tables with mismatched chairs. The bar itself ran along the right wall, extending into blackness at the rear of the room where a rock singer screamed from a hidden jukebox.
He chose a corner table and ordered chili and a Kronenbourg from a middle-aged waitress, then sat and watched the crowd of after-hours office workers who were enjoying a quick relaxer before heading for home. Men and women stood three-deep at the bar, laughing, shouting, ignoring the snowy image on the wall-mounted television set.
When the chili arrived it was fiery hot and thick, with chunks of stringy beef. By the time McGuire finished, most of the after-work crowd had departed. The waitress brought his check.
“Anything else?” she asked in a lazy drawl. Her hair, bleached and dyed to the colour of pineapple, was swept up on her head; a few strands had escaped and dangled over her eyes.
“Who owns this place?” McGuire asked.
“You a cop?” the waitress replied.
McGuire said as a matter of fact he was.
“We breaking any laws here?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” McGuire said, smiling. “Just curious to know who the owner might be.”
“Marlene,” she replied. “Over there,” and she jerked her head in the direction of the bar where a woman leaned against the cash register, her arms folded across her ample chest. McGuire dropped some money on the table and crossed the room to the bar, sliding onto an empty stool in front of the owner. “You Marlene Richards?” he asked.
The woman turned and studied him carefully. She apparently liked what she saw because a broad smile began to spread across her face and continued to grow wider while she spoke, in a voice whose edges were frayed by smoke and whisky. “That’s me, sweetie. Somebody send you looking for me?”
“Kind of.” McGuire returned the smile.
“Hope they gave me a good recommendation.” She stepped forward, rested her elbows on the bar and looked coyly into McGuire’s eyes. “’Course, all my recommendations are good.” He could smell her perfume, heavy and sweet. “Who did the favour, sent you looking for me?”
“Guy called Andrew Cornell,” McGuire replied.
The smile froze and she straightened up, tilted her head at him and asked “Who the fuck are you?”
“He’s a cop.” The waitress had followed McGuire to the bar after clearing his table. Now she looked at him with distaste, stuck out her bottom lip and blew a few tendrils of hair away from her face.
“Nothing wrong with entertaining a cop,” Marlene Richards said. “Sometimes get a few of them in here for a beer after work.”
“Any of them ask about Andrew Cornell?” McGuire asked.
“Who?” The waitress frowned.
“Finish clearing your tables, Shirl.” When she left, Marlene Richards pulled a stool out from under her side of the bar and sat across from McGuire. “Look, I went through all this crap with you guys last summer when Jennifer was murdered.” She looked away, then quickly back at him. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
She was perhaps forty-five, her face too fleshy to be pretty and her make-up too heavy to be flattering. Her thick, dark hair fell in curls to her shoulders. Her eyes were large and lively, her lips full and almost pouring, and her hands were small and pudgy; she wore cheap silver rings on each finger.
“Did you know him well?” McGuire asked, ignoring her question.
“Not as well as some people.” Reaching under the bar she retrieved a container of fruit juice and poured some in a small glass. “You drinking anything or are you going to tell me you’re hard at work?”
McGuire said he was both and he wouldn’t mind another Kronenbourg.
Her smile returned. “A man of taste.” She turned and shouted down the bar: “Shirl! Bring a frog beer with you!”
“Should I insist on some ID?” she asked after the waitress slid a bottle of the French beer and an empty glass in front of McGuire. “You look better than your picture,” she said when he showed his badge and identification. “Me, I look better in my pictures. Hides the sags and bags.”
McGuire smiled back at her. “Tell me about Andrew Cornell,” he said.
“Thought I told everybody already. First I told a couple of cops, then a team of detectives, and about a month later some fat-assed slob started coming in here and asking the same questions over again. Sat right there and drank whisky sours. What the hell happened to tough cops who drink nothing but boilermakers? Anyway, he stiffed me for two drinks, as I recall.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Naw. Had a moustache like a toothbrush and talked like he was standing in a well.” McGuire nodded. Fat Eddie Vance rides again.
“Did Andrew Cornell come in here often?”
“Look, I only saw the guy over a couple of weeks. He was in here four, maybe five times before Jennifer was killed. Never saw him again.”
“Do you think he killed her?” McGuire took a long sip of beer and watched Marlene Richards arch her eyebrows and shrug her shoulders in reply. “Tell me what he was like,” he asked.
She stared off towards the dark end of the bar where the jukebox had grown mercifully silent. “Andy, he was everything Jennifer wasn’t. She was loud, he was quiet. She was rough, he was smooth. She dressed like a ten-dollar hooker, he dressed like a window at Brooks Brothers. I remember he came in once wearing one of those French watches, the really expensive ones.”
“Cartier?”
“Yeah, one of those. Jennifer wanted everybody to know about it. Andy, he wouldn’t flash it, he’d just sit quietly sipping his beer. But Jennifer told me once, ‘Next time you see him, check out his watch.’ She was that kind of broad.”
“Sounds like they were opposites.”
“Yeah. Except in one way. You looked in their eyes and you could see they were both hornier than three-headed goats.” She tilted her head back and laughed, her voice shattering the near silence of the almost-empty bar.
“You learned quite a bit about him in just two weeks,” McGuire said when she calmed down.
“What are you saying, I took him in the back for a quick boink one night?”
McGuire smiled silently in return.
“Well, I might have. Got to know him a little better, I just might have. Guy had a good build. Looked solid in the shoulders, nice flat stomach. And there was something about him.” She searched for a word in her mind. “I don’t know, he was kind of . . . mysterious, I guess.”
“You haven’t said much about Jennifer,” McGuire commented.
Marlene reached under the bar and poured herself another glass of juice. “Jennifer, she was okay. She was a little . . . intense, I guess. I heard she’d spent some time in one of those rubber-room hotels up the coast, but we all go a little nuts now and then, don’t we? Some of us in public, some of us in private. Anyway, one thing I’ll say for Jennifer, she stood up for her rights. Other than that, I had no quarrel with her.”
“But other people did.”
Taking a long swallow of juice, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
“You want to tell me who?” McGuire asked.
“Hey, I told you. I gave all this stuff to the other bozos last summer. What are you trying to do, catch me in a lie?”
McGuire explained he had reopened Jennifer’s file and wanted a fresh perspective on things.
She drained the glass and set it under the counter, then leaned towards him with her elbow on the bar. “Well, there was that guy from the insurance company, Milburn his name was. Used to come in here. Jennifer took him back to her place for a quickie one night and he thought he was in love. Spent the last couple of weeks before she died hanging around here, him playing Bogart and her playing Bergman. All I needed was a record of ‘As Time Goes By’ on the jukebox. . . . Anyway, one night he tried to pick a fight with Andy Cornell. Said there’s no way Andy could be her brother.”
“Why not?”
“Because Jennifer spread the word that Andy moved in with her. See, this guy—Gerry was his first name, I haven’t seen him in here since—he knew she had a bachelor apartment. One of those sofas that convert into a bed, a kitchenette, bathroom, and that was it. I mean, this is a pretty liberal town, but brothers and sisters sleeping together, that’s where you draw the line. Milburn, he was in here drunk one night. Told me Jennifer wouldn’t see him because she was spending so much time with her brother. So he tried to pick a fight with Andy. Who bolted out the door like a shot.”
“Was Jennifer here that night?”
“No, but she came roaring in about ten minutes later. Looked terrible, too. Wearing a jogging suit, no make-up. Jennifer, she was a woman who needed make-up. I mean, she wasn’t a bad-looking broad, but she had to work at it some, you know?”
McGuire said he knew.
“Anyway, she came in loaded for bear, grabbed a bar stool and tore after Gerry before a couple of regulars could grab her. Said he had no right meddling in her life, trying to beat up on her brother, all that stuff.”
“How did she find out?”
“Hell, Andy was out the door as soon as the other guy came at him. Guess he met Jennifer jogging and told her about it, she came running right in. She was all out of breath but ready to kick some ass. Thing is, this Gerry guy was a bit of a pussy himself. I mean, he’s in insurance, for Christ’s sake, and Andy, he doesn’t want any part of him. Want another beer?”
McGuire turned down the offer and withdrew his notebook from a jacket pocket. “I’ve got two names here,” he began, opening the book in front of her.
Marlene leaned closer and tilted the notebook to catch the light, almost brushing her cheek against his. “What are you wearing?” she asked, smiling at him. “Smells good.”
He told her his brand of aftershave.
“That’s a new one on me. I just bought a used Jag and now I’m looking for a man who sweats English Leather and pisses gasoline. Let’s see who you’ve got here. Fleckstone. Oh yeah, big shot Fleckstone, the TV producer. Jennifer had the hots for him. Thought he was going to make her a star. Brought him in here a couple of times to show him off. I thought he was a jerk, personally. She did some TV commercials for him, pushing pizzas on channel three. Big deal. She had to put out for him to get those. Talk to Fleckstone, he’ll tell you all about Jennifer, star of stage, screen and motel beds. Who else you got?”
Her face fell at the sight of the next name on McGuire’s list.
“Frannie. Yeah, poor Frannie.”
“Frances O’Neil. Does she work here?”
Marlene turned to take a check from a waitress. “Used to,” she said over her shoulder as she rang it through the cash register, “until Jennifer was killed and Andy took off.” She handed change to the waitress, returned greetings to a crowd of regulars entering the bar, and leaned towards McGuire again. “Poor thing. She left here one night with Andy. Stars in her eyes. When he disappeared after Jennifer’s murder, she was crushed. Never got over it. Walked around here crying until I sent her home. I kept her on for a few weeks, but she just got worse. Turned into a bag of nerves and finally called me to say she quit. Which did me a favour, because I was all set to fire her anyway.”
“Where is she now?”
“Last I heard, she was living with her sister out in Cottage Hill.”
“Do you have an address?”
“Somewhere.” She leaned to retrieve a stack of notepaper from under the counter. “She asked me to mail some money I owed her and I did. Here it is.”
McGuire copied the address in his notebook, then paid for his beer and slid off the bar stool. “Nice to meet you,” he said, nodding to her. “I might be back.”
“Hope so.” Marlene scooped the money and watched him head for the door. “Just remember, McGuire.”
“Remember what?” he asked, shrugging into his winter topcoat.
“Love is nice, but tender lust ain’t bad.” She threw her head back and laughed, her voice following him through the door and out into the dark and empty street.