Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Seventy-Two

They were in the conference room in the middle of the afternoon, still no callback from Hillary More. Her son wasn’t answering his phone.

Jesse sat at the table with Molly, Suit, Healy.

And Crow.

“Does he really need to be here?” Healy said, jerking his head at Crow.

Crow was at the far end of the table.

“I come in peace,” he said.

“Maybe today you do,” Healy said.

“We’re having this meeting because of Crow,” Jesse said. “He’s the one who put Hillary More with Roarke.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Healy said.

“If it helps you at all,” Molly said, “he does grow on you after a while.”

“I do?” Crow said to her.

“I was talking about you growing on Jesse,” she said.

Healy had spent the last several hours talking to his old friends at the State Police, the Boston PD, and any Fed who still owed him a favor, whether he was retired or not.

They were establishing one timeline for Hillary More and another for Liam Roarke, looking for periods when their lives, or business careers, or both, may have intersected.

Molly had already checked with Town Hall, and discovered that the only owner listed for More Chocolate was Hillary McConnell More.

“Now, that doesn’t mean other people’s money wasn’t propping her up,” Molly said.

“But if it’s Roarke’s money we’re talking about,” Jesse said, “I suspect we’d need an army of forensic accountants to trace it back to him.”

“Good luck with that,” Crow said.

“But we still don’t know for sure if they are business associates,” Suit said.

“What is verifiable for now,” Healy said from his end of the table, next to the easel he’d set up, “is that she went running for Roarke the minute she thought Jesse might be squeezing her.”

Molly said, “Just not the kind of squeezing she wanted from the chief, of course.”

Healy had drawn a line down the middle of the oversized whiteboard. Hillary More’s name at the top on one side, Roarke’s on the other. Old school.

“Let’s focus on her for a moment,” Healy said. “She’s forty-four years old. Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Graduated from Northwestern. The Medill School. Journalism.”

“Speaking of which,” Molly said to Jesse. “Why isn’t Nellie here for our team meeting?”

“Not invited.”

“She even know there’s a team meeting?” Molly asked.

“Only if she found out with her own independent reporting,” Jesse said.

“She’s going to be pissed,” Molly said.

“I expect,” Jesse said. “Pissed off and better off.” He made a gesture that took in all of them. “Everybody in this room can take care of themselves.”

“Nellie can’t?” Suit said.

“Not like we can,” Crow said.

“Not saying it wasn’t the case before,” Jesse said. “But this shit is about to get real.”

Healy cleared his throat.

“May I continue?” he said.

“Least he asked,” Crow said to Jesse.

“Please stop talking,” Healy said to Crow.

Most of what Healy told them about Hillary More matched up with what Jesse had read in pieces written about her when she arrived in Paradise. Brief career on the air with the CBS affiliate in Chicago after she graduated. Still Hillary McConnell at that point. Both parents deceased by then. Ended up going into marketing at the same station. Moved from there to a VP position with Hershey. Next thing she was in Boston, working PR for a small chocolate company based in Cambridge. Married a lawyer. Justin More. They had a son.

“She told me she had a husband who died,” Jesse said.

“She mention how?” Healy asked.

“No.”

“Single-car accident, as it turns out,” Healy said. “Falmouth. You ever been down there?”

“To the Cape,” Jesse said. “Not there.”

“We used to rent there,” Healy said. “Justin More was driving too fast on Central Ave., blew through a stop sign, crossed over Menauhant Beach and down into the ocean.”

“Was he drunk?” Molly said.

“Nope,” Healy said. “No alcohol in his system. No sign of foul play. Cops convinced themselves he fell asleep at the wheel and closed it.”

“How long ago?” Jesse said.

“Fifteen years?”

“What did the Widow More do after that?” Jesse said.

“Went off the grid,” Healy said, “at least as a professional-type woman. Far as we can tell, she stayed in the house that she and the dead husband and the kid lived in, in Needham. Finally, a lot of time passes and she ends up here.”

“How’d she support herself?” Crow asked.

Healy gave him a long cop stare. “Still talking.”

“I love you,” Jesse said to Healy. “So I say this with love: Cut the shit with Crow.”

Then he said: “The period when she was off the grid, where was Liam Roarke?”

“He’d made his way to Boston,” Healy said. “Building a brand-new empire off what was left of Jackie DeMarco’s operation the old-fashioned way.”

Healy paused. “Mostly by taking out anybody who got in his way. Sometimes for the sheer enjoyment of it, from what I hear.”

It was much later, middle of the night, Jesse asleep next to Nellie, the two of them finally having made up, when he got the call about the fire.