FIFTEEN

I opened my desk drawer, took out the notes I’d made from the obituaries I’d found in Albert’s camp, and read them again.

I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes after nine. In Kinkaid, Missouri, where Oliver S. Burlingame lived and died, I figured it was too early to call.

But it was a few minutes after nine in Bangor, Maine. Not an unreasonable time to receive a sympathy call.

I called information, which informed me that Mark Lyman’s wife, Gail, wasn’t listed. The phone was still in her late husband’s name.

I didn’t like the idea of what I was going to do, but I did it anyway.

When she answered, I said, “Is this Mrs. Lyman?”

“Yes, it is,” she said.

“Gail, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. Do I know you?”

“I’m an old friend of Mark’s,” I said. “My name is Brady Coyne. I just heard what happened. I wanted to express my condolences.”

She hesitated. “I don’t recall Mark ever mentioning you.”

“We’ve been out of touch for quite a while,” I said. “Albert told me what happened.”

“Albert?”

“Albert Stoddard?” I made it a question.

“Mark never mentioned any Albert Stoddard, either. How did you say you knew him?”

“Oh, back from our New Hampshire days. Albert and Mark and Ollie Burlingame and I. When we were kids. We all hung out together.”

“I never heard of anybody named Ollie, neither,” she said. “All that was a very long time ago. Mark’s family moved away from New Hampshire when he was a teenager. He never talked much about his childhood.”

“Well,” I said, “like I told you, Mark and I, we pretty much lost touch after he moved away.” I was making it up as I went along. So far, so good, I thought. “Still,” I continued, “there are a lot of happy old memories, you know? So had Mark been sick or something?”

“Well …” She hesitated. “Your friend Albert didn’t tell you?”

“All he told me was that Mark, um, passed away.”

“Passed away. Ayuh. That’s what he did, all right.” She chuckled sourly. “Well, okay, Mr. Coyne. To answer your question, I guess you might say my husband was sick. One morning last April after I left for work, he loaded up his .30/06 and drove to some woods outside of town, and he stuck the muzzle in his mouth and killed himself with it. I’d say that’s pretty damn sick, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, jeez,” I said. “I didn’t know that. I’m really sorry. How are you? Are you doing okay? That must’ve been a terrible shock.”

“Oh, hell,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t that surprised. I mean, you don’t expect something like that to happen, but afterward, you look back, and you say, yes sir, the signs were all there, how could I’ve been so stupid?”

“He’d been depressed or something, huh?” I said. “That’s pretty hard to imagine. I mean, back when we were kids …” I let the implications hang there like a question.

“I know,” she said. “When I met Mark, fresh out of the army, he was this carefree happy fella, this handsome soldier, full of jokes and stories, always laughing.” I heard her blow out a breath. “It all started falling apart last winter. I never saw it coming. One day he’s fine, working hard, all involved in the church, the next day he’s like this zombie, moping around, won’t even talk to you. You think, well, he’ll get over it. Winter’s a bitch up here. Except he didn’t get over it. He kept getting worse, and then he killed himself. I only wish he would’ve talked to me about it. I might’ve been able to help.”

“Get him to a therapist, maybe,” I said, just because it was my turn to say something.

“The money,” she said after a minute. “I think it was all about money.”

“Did he lose his job or something?”

“No, no. He was doing fine at work. I didn’t even know about it until after he was dead and buried, when the lawyer was settling his estate. That’s when we found out what he did. I can’t forgive him for it. Depressed or not, I don’t care. I’ll be mad at that man for the rest of my days.”

“What did he do?”

“He emptied out Mark Junior’s college account is what he did. We’ve been saving and sacrificing for over sixteen years so Markie wouldn’t have to go to the state school if he didn’t want to. Now it’s gone. All of it. Cleaned right out.” She paused, then laughed softly. “Listen to me, will you? I don’t suppose you called up because you wanted to listen to my old sob story. What’s done is done. I miss Mark and I love him. I truly do. But God help me, I’ll be mad at that man ’til the day I die. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess under the circumstances anybody would feel about the same way.” I hesitated for a polite beat, then said, “What did Mark do with that money, do you know?”

“Up in smoke. Gone. Who knows?”

“Did he gamble or something?”

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “That’s almost funny. Mark and I, we played cribbage for a penny a hole sometimes, and if I beat him for like fifteen cents, you’d think it was his life savings, and it’d take me a week to pry it out of him. Other than that, I don’t think he ever even bet a beer on a golf match. Look—Brady, was it?”

“Yes. Brady Coyne.”

“Well, Brady, I’ve really got to go fix my hair and drive off to my job now. It was nice of you to call, and I’m sorry I had to tell you what I told you. Best thing is if you can remember your old friend the way you knew him when you were boys.” She laughed quickly. “Sure wish I could do that.”

After we disconnected, I sat there looking out the window and feeling sleazy. I didn’t much like dissembling, particularly to bereaved widows, and I especially didn’t like the fact that it seemed to come naturally to me.

Gail Lyman, I tried to convince myself, hadn’t needed much prodding. She probably spilled out her sad story to every political pollster and vinyl-siding salesman who cold-called her while she was eating dinner.

Except, of course, pollsters and salesmen didn’t pretend to be childhood buddies of her recently self-deceased husband.

Well, I wasn’t done. I still had Oliver Burlingame’s “accidental” death on my mind. I decided to exhaust all other possibilities before I got involved in lying to one of his survivors.

I called Julie and told her I’d be in around noon, and all she said was, “Okay. Whatever. See you then.”

Julie seemed to have resigned herself to my haphazard office hours, which scared me a little. Over the years I’d gotten used to being nagged about spending time in the office and accruing billable hours and scouting around for new clients. Julie had always taken her job seriously, and I knew it frustrated her that I sometimes didn’t.

If I didn’t pay her so well, I’d worry that she might go looking for a better boss.

I promised myself I’d put in a solid afternoon at the office and make Julie happy.

I went out to the kitchen and refilled my coffee mug. It was ten in the morning, which I figured would make it nine in Missouri.

Rand McNally helped me locate Kinkaid, Missouri, which appeared to be a suburb of St. Louis, and Verizon gave me the number for the Kinkaid branch of the St. Louis Savings Bank. I dialed it.

I waited through the recorded menu that listed all of my conveniently automated options, and I was rewarded, at the end, with an invitation to remain on the line and speak with an actual person, which I accepted.

“Good morning,” she said after less than a minute. “My name is Marla. How may I help you today?”

“Good morning, Marla,” I said, attempting to match her cheerfulness. “My name is Brady and I’m trying to get ahold of Ollie Burlingame.”

She hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Burlingame is no longer with us.”

“Hm,” I said. “See, I’m an old friend of his, and we’ve been out of touch for a while. Last I heard, he worked there. Do you know how I can reach him?”

“Mr. Burlingame, um, well, the thing is, he died.”

“Oh, jeez. What happened?”

“I’m not sure I should—”

“This is terrible,” I said. “Did he have a heart attack or something?”

“Actually, I heard it was a fishing accident,” she said.

“No kidding.” I paused for a beat. “Marla,” I said, “the truth is, Ollie owed me money. Now what’m I going to do?”

“Get in line, I guess.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, sir. I really can’t talk about it. If there’s nothing else … ?”

“No, that’s fine, Marla,” I said. “You’ve been very nice.” And I hung up before I found myself telling her more lies.

A quick trip down the Information Highway revealed that Kinkaid, Missouri, had a weekly newspaper called the Kinkaid Current.

The paper’s on-line archives went back only a month, and I found no mention of Oliver Burlingame in them. But I did get the name of the editor—Tamara Quinlan—and a phone number.

I paused to ponder my strategy. What sort of lie should I tell this time?

I made up my mind, dialed the number for the Kinkaid Current, and Tamara Quinlan herself answered the phone.

I took a deep breath. “Ms. Quinlan,” I said, “I’m calling from Boston and I’m looking into the death of one of your local people. Oliver Burlingame?”

“Why?” she said.

“Huh?” I said. “Why what?”

“Why are you looking into the death of this person?”

“Oh,” I said, “well, this Burlingame was originally from New England, so there’s the local angle. I heard some things, and I’m thinking there might be a story in it.”

“Are you a reporter?”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Yes. Brady Coyne’s the name.”

“What paper are you with?”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m a freelancer. Features, investigative stuff, you know? I do magazine work, too. So can you help me out with the Burlingame story? I checked your archives, but I didn’t find anything.”

“What did you hear about Oliver Burlingame, Mr. Coyne?”

“Call me Brady,” I said. “What I heard was, he died in some kind of fishing accident and there might’ve been some money issues.”

She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Well, I don’t see any reason why I can’t tell you what I know. First off, Burlingame drowned in the Calcasieu River down in Louisiana. This was back in March. He was one of those passionate bass fishermen, had the fancy boat, all the gear, traveled to tournaments and stuff. Bass fishing’s pretty big in this part of the country, you know. March is a little early for the bass around here, I guess, so Burlingame went off to Louisiana for the weekend because the fishing was supposed to be good down there. That’s the way I heard it.”

“Drowned,” I said. “How’d it happen?”

“Nobody really knows. They found his boat, and a couple days later they found him.”

“No evidence of … ?”

“Foul play, you mean?” She chuckled. “I guess not. It’s unclear how thorough the police down there in Louisiana were, but they called it an accidental death.”

“Did you follow up on that angle?”

“Me? Follow up? Ha. Look, we’re just a small-town weekly. I’m my only full-time employee. Folks here in Kinkaid, they want to know what the mayor intends to do about property taxes and whether the sewer’s going to come up their street and what the school board plans to do about the music program. I don’t have the time or energy or resources to go muckraking. It’d be fun, but that’s not what we’re about here. So if you want to go raking up some muck, God bless you. You get a story, I can pay you ten dollars a column inch.”

“Does that mean you think there’s some muck in this story?”

“Well, you might want to check the money angle. There were lots of rumors flying around town. I actually thought about trying to write a follow-up story after we ran his obit, but I couldn’t persuade anybody to talk on the record.”

“How about off the record?”

“Off the record,” she said, “Oliver Burlingame was apparently embezzling from the bank where he worked. They were going to fire him. If you can get confirmation of that, I’ll buy your story.”

“He died before they had the chance to fire him?”

“That’s right.”

“Convenient,” I said.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Tamara Quinlan. “People who knew him say Burlingame was about at the end of his rope. Off the record, they’ll tell you he owed a lot of money, had a lot of pressure on him, and wasn’t handling it very well. The people at the bank won’t tell you anything, of course, on or off the record. Last thing they want made public is that one of their employees—hell, their assistant branch manager—was dipping into the till.”

“Who’d he owe money to?”

“He borrowed from friends, took loans from several banks, borrowed against his 401K and life insurance policies. He was tapped out.”

“So what did he need that money for?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anybody who knows. Even off the record, I couldn’t find anybody who had a clue.”

“What about the police? Were they involved?”

“Nope. The bank was handling the embezzling thing, if that’s what it was, in-house. He died in Louisiana. No police case here.” She hesitated. “My other phone’s ringing.”

“Can I call you again?”

“Sure. Sorry. Gotta go.”

And she disconnected.

During my conversation with Tamara Quinlan, Henry had plopped his chin on my knee and commenced staring into my eyes. This meant he wanted to go outside.

So I picked up a legal pad and a felt-tipped pen, and Henry and I went out to the patio.

Our arrival panicked half a dozen mourning doves who’d been pecking fallen seeds from under the hanging feeders. Henry, who’d been bred for bird hunting, stared intently after the fleeing doves. Then he went looking for bushes to pee on.

I sat at the table and drew a line down the middle of the yellow sheet of paper. I labeled one column “Lyman” and the other “Burlingame.” Then I wrote down what I knew about each man:

They were about the same age.

They’d both been born near Southwick, New Hampshire.

They’d both moved away sometime during their childhood.

Both of them had been depressed shortly before their death.

Both of them had money problems.

Both of them had taken desperate actions to address those problems.

They died within two weeks of each other.

Both of them had died unattended deaths.

So what did all that have to do with Albert Stoddard? Why did he have copies of their obituaries? Who’d sent them to him?

The parallels between Albert and the two dead men were striking:

All three were in their mid-forties.

All had been born near Southwick, New Hampshire.

All of them had moved away from the Southwick area when they were teenagers.

Lyman and Burlingame were reportedly depressed. “Depressed” wasn’t the word that Ellen or Jimmy D’Ambrosio had used to describe Albert. But depression manifests itself in any number of behaviors, including, maybe, Ellen’s word “weird.”

Okay. The questions I was left with were obvious:

Did Albert have money problems?

Had he taken desperate actions? Was one of his desperate actions murdering Gordon Cahill? Was another one kicking and slugging me and pressing a double-barreled shotgun against my forehead?

Or: Were we waiting to learn that Albert, like Lyman and Burlingame—and Gordon Cahill—had died an “accidental” or “sudden” death?

I went back inside, poured myself another mug of coffee on the way through the kitchen, and took it into my office.

I found the manila folder that held the printouts of all the stuff Gordon Cahill had e-mailed to me the day before he died and took out the sheets that showed the last four months of Albert’s bank statements. I’d already studied them. But that time I’d been looking for some New Hampshire connection.

Now I was looking for a clue that Albert had money problems, that he’d borrowed excessively, that he’d been paying off some large debt.

He’d withdrawn no large hunks of money. He’d written no particularly large checks, nor had he deposited any unusually large ones.

I felt that I was missing something, but I couldn’t see it.

I tried to clear my mind of expectations and hypotheses.

And then I saw it.

May 15. May 30. June 15. June 30. July 15. On each of those dates, like clockwork, Albert had deposited $2,177.54 into his checking account. Biweekly paychecks, almost certainly. I did the crude math. After taxes and health and retirement deductions, it would amount to a little more than $3000 twice a month. It just about added up to a tenured college professor’s pay.

On July 30, August 15, August 30, and September 15 he’d deposited nothing.

And the question was: If he suddenly stopped depositing his paychecks, what did he do with them?

Burlingame and Lyman had money problems. Now it appeared that Albert made three.

The word “blackmail” came to mind.

I called Ellen’s cell phone and got her voice mail. “It’s Brady,” I said. “I’ve got a couple questions for you. Call when you get a chance, please. I’m home now and I’ll be at my office this afternoon.”

I had one more phone call to make before I changed into my lawyer pinstripe and went to the office.

“Evie Banyon,” she answered. She sounded harried.

“It’s your wayward roommate,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Brady. What’s up?”

Oh, oh. When she called me “Brady” instead of “honey” or “sweetie” or “Big Guy,” it meant either that she had people in her office or that she was angry with me.

“Are you busy?” I said.

“Always.”

“Got people in your office?”

“No, Brady.” I heard the exasperation in her voice.

“I was hoping we could have dinner together tonight.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

“I was thinking of Italian,” I said, ignoring her sarcasm. “Let’s go to the North End.”

“You know I love the North End,” she said. I thought I detected a softening in her tone. “You sure you can make it?”

“Me?” I laughed. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Ho, ho,” she said.

“I’ll make reservations for seven-thirty,” I said. “Okay?”

“Sure. I’ll be home by seven. Where?”

“You have a preference?”

“You know the North End better than I do,” she said. “I trust you.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“I mean,” she said, “I trust you when it comes to picking Italian restaurants in the North End.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s something, anyway.”

She called me “honey” when she said good-bye. That was something, too.