While every murder-themed investigation of Winchester Molloy inspired Reggie to hope for a murder investigation of their own, she knew upon approaching the police cars and reporters outside the Patriots’ clubhouse, Hamish silent beside her, that there was nothing exciting about this murder. It devastated her. He’d been so talented and young and so full of ambition.
She conjured his face and voice and smile in her mind’s eye as they made the mournful trek, Hamish’s right hand under his suspender, counting his breaths with each step nearer the commotion.
Reporters’ bulbs flashed as they adjusted their fedoras and flipped their notepads to a fresh page.
Reggie and Hamish’s arrival caught their interest and they watched closely.
“Hold up!” A police officer with a thick Irish brogue waylaid them. “What’s your business here?”
“Mr. Parker was our client,” Hamish said, his voice a slight stutter.
“Was?”
“Reid called and said—”
“Then you didn’t hear. Mr. Parker is alive and well.”
Hamish met Reggie’s eyes. “What?” she said. “I got a phone call that said otherwise.”
“Someone’s dead, kids. But it wasn’t Mr. Parker.”
“I’m very confused,” Hamish said unevenly.
“It was his nephew.”
Reggie gasped. “He was just a kid! How . . . Why would . . . What happened?”
The officer turned, leaving Hamish and Reggie to blink stupidly at each other. “Hamish, the man said it was Parker. That it was his jersey that . . . How could he not tell?”
Hamish’s fingers picked up speed in their count. “I guess a passing look and—”
“Hamish!” They both turned at Parker’s voice. Errol’s shoulders sagged and his eyes wildly looked around without settling on anything. “You came.”
“We got word that it was you,” Reggie said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
Errol nodded. “He was with Joe. Or waiting for Joe. I was just replacing my glove. I was in the dugout for five minutes. There was no one around, so Joe said it would be all right if he hung out in the locker room. I had let him wear my spare jersey. He . . .” Errol’s voice broke and Hamish put up a stalling hand.
Hamish took a moment. His hand was no longer occupied over his heart but rather trembling by his side. It accelerated and Reggie started to worry. Especially when coupled with the mounting rise and fall of his breathing.
“Hamish,” she whispered. “Why don’t you go make sure that fiend from the Herald knows how to spell our names?”
He looked at her appreciatively and took the opportunity to disappear from their sight line.
Hamish barely made it past the line of police cars before folding over, hands on knees, gulping every bit of air that his flurried heartbeat and blocked airway would allow. Two invisible walls bordered him and crushed closer and closer. He blinked the spots from his eyes and tried to count. To steady his breathing before the uncontrollable tremor in his right hand signaled complete loss of control. He blinked through his frustration. Why did these attacks happen at the most inopportune times? Sometimes he was fine. Gun to his chest at the Flamingo—fine. Other times, like now—when he realized that Errol was still alive—not fine.
Hamish spat a curse in Italian—a word his mother always chastised his father for using in his presence. It came out ragged and shaky like his breath. He reined himself in for a moment and studied the grass: a million blades curving in a million unmowed directions, blurring as his eyes adjusted from blinking at a rapid pace to finally settling as his chest pains subsided and he slowly stilled. He focused on one of the police cars and counted. Slowly. He straightened his spine and erected his shoulders. In Boston, somehow, he could overcome his panic. Before, the fear of being noticed or of never coming out of the pool of dread would have crippled him. Something about the liberty he found in the North End with his new friends and his new life proved the best medicine. He wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead and collected himself. It was going to be fine. He was going to be fine.
He stuck out his chin a little and nodded as if to assure himself that he had it all under control. Then he sought out Reggie and Errol in the crowd spilling over the lawn near the diamond.
It was in this moment, this phase, that he recalled what Blaney had said about seeking out the corn dog seller. He wondered if the evening’s scheduled game would be postponed.
“Absolutely not,” one of the uniformed officers said when he casually asked, rejoining the throng. “What good would it do? This poor fellow was disposed of in the locker room—no need to stop an entire franchise because of it. Especially because we have no idea what happened.”
Hamish wasn’t sure what to think of that. It bothered him, sure. But business was business. After all, his cousin’s nightclub opened (to unbelievable crowds) the day after a corpse was discovered.
The fellow’s name was Ted Quinn, and he scrubbed at his kiosk. Hamish had seen him several times before. Always protected from the late afternoon sun by an umbrella.
“You see everyone who comes and goes,” Hamish said. “Do you remember seeing a tall, redheaded man?”
Ted didn’t say anything. Rather, he spent a moment studying Hamish intensely. When he looked to Reggie his eyes softened, but just a bit.
“I see a lot of people,” he said evasively. “I’ll save my answers for the police.”
Reggie and Hamish exchanged a look.
“Are you all right?” she asked after they were out of hearing distance.
Hamish nodded. “As all right as I can be knowing a sixteen-year-old kid was killed in a baseball locker room.”
“Hamish!” They both turned at the sound of Rob Reid’s voice. “Thanks for coming. Parker is a client of yours. You have every right to come with me.”
Reggie turned to Hamish, eyes bright, and they followed the officer to the crime scene.
* * *
Reggie wondered what the ladies served from her mother’s silver tea set might think if they knew she was in a men’s locker room. The sun slanted through slight windows, the pungent smell of cleats and unlaundered towels tickling Reggie’s nostrils. Police officers milled about. One kept an eye on the door as a trickle of reporters streamed to the slightly open doorway. News moved fast, and Reggie could hear the thrum of movement before she saw a conglomeration of figures at the slightly open doorway.
She knew she was studying the commotion over her shoulder to keep from what was drawing Hamish and Reid nearer. No matter how Reggie hankered after adventure, she would never grow accustomed to murder. She grabbed Hamish’s elbow and looked up and over his shoulder at the lifeless figure of Toby. He looked so young—as if he were sleeping and she might shake him awake.
“It was someone who led with their left,” Reid was saying. “Judging by the intensity of the blow to his head.”
“Reid!” The trio turned at a voice from a cop Reggie didn’t recall seeing outside.
“Sir!” The way Reid straightened and responded led Reggie to believe the man facing Reid was of a much higher rank.
“Boys outside say this isn’t your jurisdiction. What are you doing across the river?”
“You want the truth, sir?”
“Don’t try my patience.”
“When I heard word I came because I was worried that some of the men would write it off as an accident. Or just an unfortunate result of a fight.”
“And that is what it is.” The officer stepped around them and stared at the body. “An unfortunate, tragic waste of life. There was no one at the scene, was there?”
“The boy’s uncle found him.”
“Parker?” The officer removed his cap. “Temper on that one.”
Reggie gripped Hamish’s arm to keep herself from lunging at the officer. She could feel the shudder from Hamish’s shaking hand even from as far up as his bicep.
“Sir, he was devastated.”
“And you let reporters in?”
“They’re not reporters. The boy’s uncle is their client. They’re private investigators.”
The cop looked them over. “I thought I knew every investigator in the city by sight.”
Reggie removed her grip from Hamish’s arm. “Regina Van Buren.” She extended a hand, which he did not take. “And this is my partner, Hamish DeLuca.”
The officer cocked his head. “That’s a familiar name.” He studied Hamish intensely. So intensely, he didn’t look over when the coroner and a medic arrived and Reid began speaking to them softly. “And a familiar face,” the officer continued. “Involved in that business at the Flamingo with Luca Valari, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Wrong place at the wrong time. I assure you that everything we investigate is aboveboard.” A bit of a ripple in his voice, left over from his earlier episode, stalled Hamish’s sentence.
“Mr. Parker has been the victim of a series of unfortunate pranks,” Reggie said.
“Well, several fistfights on the field. Some with his own teammates. What do you expect?”
The officer moved past them outside and said over his shoulder, “This was an unfortunate accident. Nothing premeditated.” He pushed through the mill of reporters, bulbs ready and flashing through the opening. Reid was leaning over the body and joined them several moments later after removing everything from Toby’s trouser pockets before the coroner’s initial examination.
Reggie swallowed a sour taste in her mouth. The last time she and Hamish were involved in the death of an innocent person, the police treated it as an unfortunate accident. She knew it wasn’t coincidence, but rather that she had stepped into a world where justice had a lot to do with where you came from and what you owned.
“That was Tucker,” Reid said, joining them, indicating the officer who had just left. “Maybe I didn’t just let you in because Parker’s your client.” Reid scrubbed his hairline. “Maybe I let you in because I figured that is what would happen. It’s why I am here in the first place. Lots of accidents around here.” He looked at Hamish pointedly. “You know that from your time at your cousin’s club.”
“Murder is a by-the-way when there are so many bigger things at play,” Hamish said. “What’s that in your hand?”
Reggie followed Hamish’s sightline to a piece of paper loosely clutched in Reid’s fist. He unfolded it and passed it to Hamish, who turned slightly from Reggie as his eyes wandered over the lines. It looked like an inventory of some sort. She made out just a few words before he refolded it.
Something ending in “-uze” and another word that just read “clus.” Writing in the margins, a hand that seemed oddly familiar. In broad strokes. Not completely educated with the skill of a Vaughan Vanderlaan but with the same type of pen Vaughan would use.
“We’re going to treat this as a murder investigation,” Hamish told Reid, speaking for both of them.
She didn’t mind—she was about to say the same thing.
Reid gave a quick nod. “Let’s all get out of here, shall we? None of us are here with any jurisdiction.”
The officer may have put it on record as an accident, but that didn’t stop reporters from asking a dozen hungry questions. They elbowed past them, a small chorus of “No comment” layering the loud and pressing questions.
Reggie stared up at the sun once they left the field and were on the sidewalk, bordered by beautiful, safe houses with the beautiful, safe sounds of almost-evening.
She blinked at its blinding rays and straightened her shoulders. She had found a corpse before at the Flamingo Club. She was an investigator (at least trying to be an investigator). Her bottom lip shouldn’t wobble (it was); her throat shouldn’t scratch with oncoming tears (it did).
A delayed reaction to the lifeless body of a sixteen-year-old boy silenced forever by a brute of a punch.
Reggie shivered. Shivered some more. Reid had left them for his police car. So the world was just her and Hamish and sunlight and houses. They crossed an empty street.
“I’m walking you home,” he told her quietly.