McGuire and Susan were making chili the next afternoon when Burnell called from Berkeley Street. “Thought you should know,” the young detective told McGuire, “that we just heard from Annapolis police. Myers had been staying at Christine Diamond’s house, and he was there the day Flanigan arrived. Mrs. Diamond had taken the children to Baltimore that day, with a school excursion.”
“Myers must have said something to get Flanigan over there when the lawyer phoned.”
“Maybe said she couldn’t come to the telephone. If Myers didn’t use his real name, Flanigan wouldn’t have known who he was going to meet. Anyway, it sounds as though Myers gave Flanigan directions to the house. Flanigan shows up, maybe Myers gives him the same story he gave you, finds out why he’s there, realizes the game is up, and gets Flanigan down to the dock or the boathouse.”
“Hits Flanigan on the back of the head and holds him under the water.”
“You can drive right down to the dock there, apparently,” Burnell said. “To launch boats. He could have driven Flanigan’s rented car down there, put the body in the trunk, and headed north. The Diamond woman, she remembers that Myers wasn’t there when she got back from Baltimore late in the day. The waitress at that bar you visited? She says Myers called, asked her to drive his car north and pick him up.”
The next day, McGuire went shopping. From a downtown used-car dealer he chose a ten-year-old sedan with good tires, a better stereo system, and an interior that smelled like pine trees.
On the way back to Revere Beach, he thought about taking Susan away for a few days. To Cape Cod, perhaps. Or in the opposite direction. A night in Cape Ann, then on to Maine. They could find a bed-and-breakfast in one of those coastal towns where the September air is so crisp in the morning you can see your breath, and warm afternoons that send you in search of an ice-cream parlour and maybe a beach to walk on.
“What do you think?” he asked Susan. They were sitting on the back porch of Ollie’s house, drinking coffee.
“It sounds terrific,” Susan said. Then: “I don’t know though . . .”
“If it sounds so good, why do you say you don’t know?”
She set her coffee cup down and looked away. “I think I’d like to go back to the halfway house for a while,” she said. “They’re holding my room until the end of the month.”
“You don’t like sleeping with me?”
She reached a hand to him. “I love sleeping with you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She stroked her forehead, as though she felt pain there. “Thomas called while you were out.”
“Thomas?” Then McGuire remembered. “Your ex-husband.”
She nodded. “The children, Jamie and Belinda, they . . . well, they keep asking about me. When I’m coming back. Belinda hasn’t stopped crying since we left. Thomas said he and Sylvia had a talk. She’s a good woman, you can see that. She agreed that the children should see more of me.”
“We can go back for visits.”
“I’m thinking of more than that.” She breathed deeply, as though inhaling courage. “I checked with the supervisor at the halfway house. She said if I can obtain clearance from the court, I can move out of state.”
McGuire understood. “To Arizona.”
“Yes. I loved it there. We could go together.”
“Arizona?” McGuire tried to imagine himself moving there, and couldn’t. “Isn’t it easier to stay here, and visit?”
“I need a job. I need a means of support.” She bit her lip. “I need to see my children more than two or three times a year.”
McGuire shook his head. “I couldn’t move to Arizona. I couldn’t imagine living there. No ocean, no snow. No police buddies.”
“I’m going, Joe. I loved it there.”
“I know. I can tell.”
“I would prefer that you came with me.”
McGuire shook his head. “How about I visit now and then?”
“I wish you would. I hope you will.”
McGuire drove Susan back to the halfway house that evening. She had called Thomas that afternoon.
“It will take a couple of weeks for me to get the papers in order,” she said. “Thomas says the children are so excited they can hardly sit still. He says there are lots of jobs there. I can get an apartment in Tucson. Can we still go to the Cape together before I leave? Will you promise to come and see me in Arizona when I’m settled? You know how terrible it gets here in November, it’s so cold and damp. Wouldn’t you like to get away for a few days then? You might even get to like it there.” When he smiled and shook his head, she pulled him towards her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He arrived back at Revere Beach after ten o’clock to find Ronnie’s car in the driveway. Inside, she was seated at the kitchen table, looking through a box of old photographs. From the upstairs bedroom, McGuire heard the repetitive thumping of Liz Worthington’s portable stereo.
“Look at this picture of Ollie,” Ronnie said. She held a photograph for him to see. It was as though she had never left, as though McGuire had just returned from a walk around the block. “You took this, didn’t you? It was Ollie’s birthday, and you and Dave Sadowsky and Bernie what’s-his-name . . .”
“Lipson.”
“Bernie Lipson. A nice man. You took Ollie to that bar on Newbury for his birthday . . .”
“What are you doing here?” McGuire pulled up a chair and sat down.
“I came back to check up on my husband.”
“You moved out.”
“I know.” She gathered the photographs together, like a deck of cards. “You don’t have to tell me that.” She looked up at the ceiling. “God, can’t somebody tell that woman to turn that music off? She’s terrible, Joe. She’s not feeding Ollie right, she’s not taking care of him . . .”
“Not the way you did. Ollie’s all right. How are you doing?”
“Fine.” She looked at him and smiled. “Terrible. I’m fine and I’m terrible, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I thought you had a live-in girlfriend. Ollie told me about her. Where is she?”
“On her way to Arizona.” McGuire told her about Susan’s plan to move closer to her children.
“You can visit her,” Ronnie said. “You two can work something out. A lot of people do.”
“So I hear,” McGuire said.
Don Higgins fast-tracked Susan’s request for a waiver of her travel restrictions. Within a week she was free to leave Massachusetts. She would register with the parole office in Arizona and keep the office in Massachusetts informed of her address there.
“I can leave any time,” she said. “Maybe after we go away for a week, up north somewhere.”
“Go now,” McGuire said. “Go as soon as you can.”
“I thought you would say that,” she said. “I knew you would say that.”
The day after McGuire drove Susan to the airport and stood watching her walk through the gate to the aircraft, and stood long enough to see the jet take off and turn west before driving to Zoot’s, where he sat alone for an hour and drank only soda water, Ronnie arrived home again. She was there when McGuire arrived.
“I can’t make it work,” she said when he walked through the door. She was at the kitchen table.
“With Carl?” McGuire said.
“Without Ollie. So we’ve been talking, Ollie and me.” She had been back for visits each day for a week, spending her time in Ollie’s room, banishing the nurse while she was there. “We have an arrangement.” She smiled with more irony than pleasure. “I’m moving back. We’ll have a nurse to spell me a couple of days a week.”
“And you’ll keep seeing Carl.”
She nodded. “Now and then. Believe it or not, I think it will be harder on Carl than on me.”
“I believe it. What will you tell Ollie when you’re not here?”
“Nothing. We have a deal. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”
“I’ve heard about deals like that.”
“That nurse, Liz, she’s leaving today.”
“Darn. Just when I’m starting to like Eminem.”
“So we’re back where we were a month ago, you and me and Ollie.”
“Almost,” McGuire said.
She rose from her chair. “I bought some of those pastries you like,” she said. “Those little pecan tarts full of butter and sugar. And there’s fresh coffee made. Ollie was asking when you’d get home. The baseball playoffs are on television.” She looked at her watch. “They just started. Why don’t you go in and watch them with him? Take some tarts and coffee with you.”
He walked to her and hugged her. “You know what Ollie used to call you, down on Berkeley Street?” He stood back and looked at her, his hands on her shoulders. “You know what he’d say after bragging about something you did for him, or something you’d said to him?”
“What?”
“He’d say you were a good broad.”
“Wonderful. I’m a good broad.”
“It’s his highest compliment to a woman.”
“I know. Isn’t it disgusting?” She held his face in her hands. “Isn’t that a terrible thing for a lady like me to put up with?” Then she walked to the cupboard and took down a coffee mug and a small plate.
A minute later, McGuire was walking down the hall to Ollie’s room, a coffee in one hand, a plate of fattening pastries in the other. “That you Joseph?” Ollie called through the partially opened door.
“Nobody else,” McGuire said.
“Get your butt in here. Sox are up by two. Who do you like?”
“Anybody at all,” McGuire said. He nudged the door open with his foot and looked back down the hall at Ronnie. “Anybody at all.”