I CALLED DARCY GAINES on the way back from the Sea Grille and asked if she had heard about Lisa Morneau. She said she had, but couldn’t talk about it right now, she was swamped with actual police business of her own. She said she didn’t know when she would have her head above water, but would call me when she did.
“I might need another favor,” I said, “but I need to explain what kind in person.”
“Until then,” Darcy said, “I’ll be sustained by even the chance that I might continue to serve and protect Sunny Randall.”
I told her that sarcasm didn’t become her. She said, “Become this.”
When I got home I grabbed another pair of crime scene gloves out of the box of them I kept in the cupboard. Then I carefully removed the glass from my purse and placed it in one of those large Ziploc freezer bags. As I did, I remembered the time I had pretended to act clumsily and knocked a glass of Natalie’s off a table, at a restaurant on Newbury Street. I had kept the glass, had the prints run, and found out that her real name was Verna Lee Lister. It was the beginning of what had become a less-than-beautiful friendship.
So now our lives had intersected again because of a prior relationship with Gabriel Jabari. So it turned out she was friends with a sworn enemy of Tony Marcus’s, an enemy who was the only other suspect I had for Lisa Morneau’s murder. Jabari said he hadn’t done it. Tony said the same thing. One of them was lying. At this point in my life, even knowing more about Tony Marcus than I ever wanted to know, I found myself wanting to know a whole lot more about Gabriel Jabari.
I was boiling water for stress-relief tea that Spike had bought for me when I heard the chimes of the doorbell. When I pulled back the draperies in the front hall enough to look out, I saw Tony Marcus standing at the door. Junior and Ty Bop were behind him at the end of the front walk, standing near what I knew was an armored Cadillac Escalade, just because Tony had once bragged about owning one, as if the armor part would impress me.
I imagined how exciting this was for the neighbors.
“WOULD YOU MIND terribly asking the guys to wait in the car?” I said before showing Tony in.
“Neighborhood could use a little diversifying,” he said, stretching the last word out as if it were made of taffy.
“If it’s all just the same,” I said.
He turned in the open doorway and made a swift motion with his hand that could have meant “get back in the car” or “storm the Charles Street Meeting House, guns blazing.”
Tony was wearing a black topcoat. I told him I’d hang it for him. He said, “Wood hanger, you don’t mind.”
I told him I was having tea, and asked if he’d like to join me. He said, “Cream, two sugars.” I went to the kitchen and came back with mugs for both of us. He took the couch. I took one of the chairs across from it.
High tea. Tony and me.
“You could have called first,” I said.
“Had some business in the neighborhood,” he said.
“This neighborhood?” I said.
He drank some of his tea. “One of these days, missy,” he said, “you gonna come to the realization that you don’t know nearly as much about my business as you think you do.”
He wore a pale gray three-piece suit not much darker than its pinstripes, a blue shirt with a spread collar, and a navy silk tie with one of those knots that looked as big as a fist. His pocket handkerchief matched the tie. He crossed his legs. The shine on his cap-toed shoes nearly gave off a beam of light.
“Why are you really here?” I said.
“As a favor.”
“To whom?”
“Whom,” he said. He smiled. “Favor to you-m.”
Now I smiled.
“What kind of favor?”
“I’m thinking that whoever killed Lisa wanted to know what she knew about me,” he said. “And now they might think you know.”
“I don’t.”
“But the killer don’t know what you do or don’t,” he said.
“And I still don’t know what the killer might have wanted to know about you,” I said. “Which takes us all the way back to the beginning.”
“Only now she dead.”
“She didn’t shoot herself in the head,” I said.
“You really think I had her done?”
“Gun to my head?” I said. “I don’t. But if you did, or had somebody do it, I’m going to find out.”
“Are you sure that time you talked to her on the phone she never told you nothing it got out, it could hurt me?”
He still did not know she had come here. I still could think of no good reason to tell him. Lisa had her secrets. I had mine.
I shook my head and said, “She did not.”
“You sure you telling me everything you know?” he said.
“You ever tell me everything you know?” I said.
“Let me take care of this now,” he said. “Especially if it was Jabari had her done.”
“Tony,” I said, “if you actually think I’m going to drop this you know less about my business than you say I know about yours.”
He leaned forward and put his face in his hands and rubbed the sides of it hard.
“You got to know that sometimes street justice is the only kind works,” he said.
“You think it’s Jabari?” I said.
“Don’t you?” he said.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and came out with a check and a Montblanc pen.
“Check all right to settle up?” he said. “Or I could have Junior come by later with cash.”
“Neither.”
“We need to close the books, you and me,” he said. “Way I see it, we even now.”
“I never actually thought of you as my client,” I said. “I thought of her as my client. And now she’s dead. So I don’t want your money. I never wanted your money.”
“You saying my money ain’t good?” he said.
“Even if I ever did think about taking it, I didn’t earn it,” I said. “Turned out we both found her. Just too late.”
“Have it your way,” he said. “Just make sure what got her killed don’t get you killed.”
“Didn’t know you cared that much, Tony,” I said.
“Comes and goes,” he said.
He stood.
“How come you didn’t tell the cops was me found the body?” he said.
“The fact that I haven’t yet doesn’t mean I won’t,” I said.
“That a threat?”
“More of an observation,” I said.
“Don’t be looking to start up another grudge with me just when we about to clear the last one,” he said.
“That a threat?” I said.
“Observation,” he said.
“If we both want to find out who killed her,” I said, “that puts us on the same side of this.”
I got his coat out of the closet and handed it to him.
“I’m on my side,” he said, “like always.”
“What are you afraid of, Tony?” I said.
“My business,” he said.
“A girl could take that a lot of ways,” I said.
“Couldn’t she, though?” he said.