The insurance company had sent a clean-up team to my loft and while I was short some paintings, and there was no extra-virgin olive oil in the cupboards, and the good china hadn’t been replaced, yet my home was livable again. Rosie and I were there, waiting for Brian Kelly. It was a business meeting, but he offered to bring Chinese food. I took a shower. I was thoughtful about my underclothes. And I put clean sheets on the new bed.
Brian brought enough Chinese food to sustain the Ming dynasty for a year, and we ate it sitting at my counter. Rosie joined us. She could track Chinese food through a forest fire. I supplied some Gewürztraminer to go with the Chinese food, and we drank some while we ate and looked at a list of all homicides that had occurred in Massachusetts since the day Millicent heard her mother order someone killed. There were sixteen of them. Three appeared to be related. A man named Fitzgerald, a man named O’Neill, and a man named Ciccarelli.
“Somebody’s trying to push into Boston, from the outside,” Brian said. “So far it’s Dagos 2, Micks 1.”
“It doesn’t sound like my case,” I said.
Three deaths were women, so we eliminated them. We eliminated two because they were street gang killings, one because it was a murder-suicide. We eliminated two armored-car guards in Agawam who had been killed during a stickup. They’d taken one of the robbers with them. That left four that might be the one that Betty Patton had discussed.
“Of course the killing might not have happened in Massachusetts,” Brian said.
“Do you have a national list?”
“No.”
“Can you get one?”
“What do you think?” Brian said.
“I think it’s one of those things that sounds simple and isn’t.”
Brian smiled.
“So let’s go with the list we’ve got,” I said.
“Better than nothing,” Brian said. “You eat, I’ll read them to you. Number one is Charles V. Powell, age forty-six, marketing director for the phone company, works in Boston, lives in Duxbury. Married, three kids, shot to death in the hall outside his girlfriend’s apartment in Charles River Park. Murder weapon was a .38. Our guys think the wife did it. But nobody saw it and we can’t find the gun. No residue on the wife’s hands.”
“She could have worn gloves,” I said.
“I know. Everybody watches television. Number two is Kevin Humphries, a plumber, thirty-five years old, no kids, separated from his wife. Runs his own business in Framingham. Shot while he was sitting in his car outside a restaurant on Route 9. Two bullets in the back of the head. Close range. Nine mm. Ex-wife’s got an alibi. No suspects. Framingham cops think it was a hit.”
“A plumber from Framingham might do work in South Natick,” I said.
“If they could get him to show up,” Brian said.
“I know,” I said, “if he was my plumber I’d know why he was shot.”
“Doesn’t sound much like someone who’d be involved with Betty Patton though,” Brian said.
“Maybe she liked guys with pipe dope on their hands.”
“Number three is a political consultant. Mason Blumenthal, forty-one, single, lived in the South End, shot in the chest three times with a .357. I was on that one. No leads, but I don’t think he’d tickle Mrs. Patton’s gonads.”
“Gay?”
“Probably.”
“Lover’s quarrel?”
“Probably.”
“Is there one more?”
Brian ate a mouthful of chicken with cashews and swallowed and drank some wine and then picked up the printout.
“Casper Willig,” Brian read. “Forty-two years old, divorced, two kids, ran a photo supply store in Worcester. Lived alone in Shrewsbury. Found him in the trunk of his car parked in the garage at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Worcester. Two slugs in the forehead and three in the chest. Behind in his alimony. Behind in his child support. Maxed out on all his credit cards — he had seventeen.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Seventeen. Looking at his credit situation, Worcester cops think he probably was behind to a loan shark.”
“They kill you, they don’t get their money,” I said.
“So they don’t like to kill you,” Brian said. “I know. Maybe he was supposed to be an example for others.”
With his chopsticks Brian handed a piece of beef in oyster sauce down to Rosie. She ate it carefully.
“If he weren’t a plumber, I’d like the guy from Framingham,” I said.
“You figure she was having an affair with someone?”
“There’s the reference to what tingles her gonads,” I said. “What would be your guess?”
“Affair,” Brian said. “You think she’s too snooty to have an affair with a plumber?”
“Snooty?” I said.
“Yeah. What’s wrong with snooty?”
“I haven’t heard anyone use that word since my grandmother died.”
“So I’m an old-fashioned guy,” Brian said.
“Well,” I said. “She’s very snooty. But, you know how some women are. If he’s a hunk, the more working class the better.”
“Like me,” Brian said.
It was starting. I knew it would and now it had. I always loved the feeling in my stomach when it started. Even if he wasn’t Richie.
“No need to be so self-effacing,” I said.
“You too snooty to be interested in a cop?”
“You have anyone in mind?” I said.
“I was thinking about me,” Brian said.
“Yes,” I said. “So was I.”
Brian leaned forward and kissed me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them he was off the barstool and standing beside me. Holding the kiss, I slid off my stool and we embraced. The kiss stopped. We leaned back against each other’s arms and looked at each other. Rosie insinuated herself among our ankles and panted up at us.
“I know how she feels,” Brian said.
“Does my breath smell of beef in oyster sauce?” I said.
“And you taste of Gewürztraminer,” Brian said.
“A treat for all the senses,” I said. “Perhaps I should ask Rosie to stay in the bathroom for a little while.”
“Will she yowl?” Brian said.
“No, but I might,” I said.