Second Shot

Five

The private investigator’s dead,” Sean said. Whatever else he added to that was drowned out by the PA system above me, announcing a final boarding call for all passengers for some charter flight to Malaga.

With scant regard for the possibility of brain tumors, I jammed my mobile phone hard up against the side of my head and stuck my finger into the other ear. It was only partially successful at damping down the outside noise.

“What?”

“The private investigator Simone hired to trace her father-guy called O’Halloran,” Sean explained, raising his voice beyond the tolerances of the phone’s tinny speaker, which buzzed painfully in my ear. “He died in a car accident last week.”

“When you say ‘accident,’ I assume that’s what it was?”

“As far as we know, yes,” Sean said. “I’ve spoken to his partner. They’re arranging for someone to collect the guy’s files and brief you. They’ll meet you when you land.”

“Great,” I muttered, unable to shake the uneasy feeling this latest news provoked.

It was just after nine the following morning and Simone, Ella and I were waiting at Heathrow for our flight to Boston. Madeleine was nothing if not efficient.

We’d spent the previous night in one of the big hotels near the airport, having braved the press pack to escape from the house around lunchtime. The hotel was part of a major chain that was used to celebrity guests and took a very dim view of letting journalists and photographers harass them unduly. The hotel also employed a number of rather large door staff who wouldn’t have looked out of place outside a town center nightclub and who had a definite no-nonsense reputation.

I’d made a point of going and chatting to them briefly once I had Si-mone and Ella safely tucked away in their room. I was polite and respectful and gave them as much information as I could about the situation.

In return for this professional courtesy, they’d promised to be extra vigilant, and proved it by firmly repelling the first paparazzi incursion shortly afterwards. The reporters had made a few more experimental forays, then retreated to lurk sulkily in the car park. I was pleased to note the rain had hardened into sleet as the light began to fade.

Madeleine, meanwhile, had been doing some furious coordination behind the scenes, setting up all our travel arrangements.

She had automatically assumed that Simone could afford-and would want-the best of everything. She’d reserved us seats in Virgin Upper Class for the transatlantic and rooms in the best hotel, overlooking Boston Harbor, for the open-ended duration of our stay Simone had flipped when she’d seen the cost.

Privately, I thought she was making a fuss about nothing, but I recognized it would be all too easy to develop a money-doesn’t-matter attitude that lasted right until it was all frittered away Eventually, Madeleine had talked her into sticking with the plans on the grounds that there wasn’t time to change them. Madeleine had also sneakily sent her an e-mail link to the hotel she’d selected. One look at the sumptuous rooms and the in-house health spa had Simone’s objections crumbling.

“One more thing,” Sean said now. “You might be interested to hear that I went and paid a visit to Matt yesterday afternoon.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to preempt any problems. There was a chance he could have kicked up a fuss about Simone taking his daughter out of the country without his agreement, and the law would have been on his side,” Sean said, his voice grim.

“Hell,” I said. “I never even considered that.”

“Mm, well, the guy’s seriously paranoid about Simone getting in contact with her father, let me put it that way.”

“So, is he going to make trouble?”

“No, he saw sense eventually,” Sean said, his tone dry. I had a pretty good idea of the form Sean’s persuasion would have taken. I could almost feel sorry for Matt. Then I remembered Simone’s anger, and Ella’s fright, and my sympathy faded somewhat. “He’s denying he had anything to do with the press invasion, by the way,” Sean went on, “and I think I might even believe him.”

My eyebrows went up. “Really?”

“He’s been borrowing a bed at his cousin’s place since he and Simone split, and the cousin turned up while I was there. I wouldn’t actually be surprised if he was the one, rather than Matt, who went to the papers.”

“Based on … what, exactly?”

“A feeling,” he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. “That and the fact that his cousin is possessor of a lot of nervous twitches, a permanent sniff, and a glass-topped coffee table with an interesting set of scratches on it. I get the impression he’s the type who might well have been tempted by the offer of some easy cash to dish the dirt.”

“He could just have a head cold and be particularly careless with his furniture,” I pointed out.

“True,” Sean allowed. “Or he could have an expensive coke habit and need of some extra income. Either way, he’d just been out and spent a fortune on games and DVDs and-when I arrived with a rake of tabloids — I think even Matt figured it out. To be fair to Matt, he did seem to be pretty upset by what happened to Ella.”

“He’s going to be even more upset when he gets the papers today, then,” I said, thinking of the two photographers jammed up against the kitchen window. Madeleine was already taking the breach of privacy up with the Press Complaints Authority, even though I felt it was too late for an apology “But he’s definitely agreed to let them go?”

“Relax, Charlie. If it means they’re out of harm’s way for a while, yes,” Sean said. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble providing it doesn’t take these private eyes months to find this guy.”

“What happens if it does —?” I began, just as the PA issued another raucous reminder to reduce the number of security alerts by not leaving baggage unattended.

“Bloody hell, Charlie, where are you?” Sean asked. “I thought you were all supposed to be tucked away in the VIP lounge?”

“We are. At least, I’ve left the pair of them up there-security’s pretty tight, so I thought they’d be quite safe,” I said hurriedly, in case he thought I was being unforgivably lax. “I’m just raiding the concourse shops to try and find enough puzzle books to keep Ella occupied across the Atlantic. She may be cute, but she’s also four years old and hyperactive — and it’s a seven-hour flight.”

“Good luck,” Sean said, amused. “You can always get the cabin crew to slip her a Mickey Finn.”

“It might come to that.”

“Look, something’s come up and I’m going to have to go. Call me if you have any problems, but we’re just going to have to play things by ear on the time front,” he said. His voice softened. ‘And you take care of yourself, Charlie, OK?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, with way too much confidence. “We’ll be fine.”

The flight itself was uneventful. One of the things that had most surprised me when I first started working for Sean’s agency was the way the rich travel. The kind of people who need to surround themselves with close protection personnel don’t go anywhere on the cheap. In the six months since I’d got stuck into the job I’d never flown anything less than Business Class when actually accompanying a client, and twice I’d gone by private jet.

Even Simone, after she’d boarded the plane and accepted a glass of champagne from the cabin crew who greeted her like an old friend, had seemed to forget her initial reservations. I’d glanced across from my seat in the center of the aircraft and caught the little smile on her face, like it was suddenly dawning on her that from now on she could afford to always fly this way.

Despite my worries, Ella played with her food, watched some TV, crayoned in a couple of pages of one of the books I’d bought for her, then we folded her seat into a bed and she fell asleep like a seasoned traveler. She looked tiny, snuggled down amid the mussed-up blankets and pillows. The cabin crew stopped by regularly to cluck and coo over her.

Things didn’t go quite so smoothly once we’d landed, though. Nobody from the private investigation firm who’d been tracing Simone’s father met us at Boston’s Logan International, and I didn’t want to hang around long waiting for them.

Madeleine had arranged for a limo service to be available on our arrival. Once we’d cleared U.S. Immigration and reclaimed our luggage, I called to make use of it. Whatever spiel Madeleine had given them, they answered their phone with excessive courtesy that only deepened when I identified myself. They were already aware of the arrival time of our flight and had the driver circling the airport waiting for us as we spoke, they said. They would call the man, who would be with us in minutes. Madeleine was very good at clearing a path, too.

The limo was a new Lincoln Town Car with a mild stretch, in discreet black rather than the gaudy white I’d been fearing. The driver was a big black guy in uniform, whose company badge said his name was Charlie. I resisted the urge to say, “Hey-twin!”

We crossed underneath Boston Harbor using the Ted Williams Tunnel, which seemed to go on forever. As we drove into Boston there were several feet of snow blanketing the city, much to Ella’s obvious pleasure. She pressed herself eagerly against the car’s tinted window, occasionally giving out little squeaks of delight as though someone had laid on this special weather just for her.

“It’s just like Christmas, Mummy,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” Simone said, craning forwards to stare at the outside landscape herself. “But that doesn’t mean you’re getting any presents.”

Ella’s brow wrinkled as she gave this considerable thought. “Well, as it’s so like Christmas,” she said thoughtfully, “perhaps I ought to just have one present. …” She could have charmed gifts out of Scrooge.

“We’ll see,” was all Simone said, but when she sat back she was smiling.

I’d studied the city maps before we’d left and it seemed that the limo took us into the city by a very roundabout route. Charlie the driver blamed what he called the Big Dig, which, he told us over his shoulder, had been going on in Boston for more than ten years. “By the time they’re all done, they’ll be tearing it all up again and starting over, yes, ma’am,” he said as we drove past yet another construction crew attacking the frozen earth.

I watched two bargelike white Ford Crown Victoria cabs jostling for position in traffic alongside us, and craned my neck up at the somber brown stone and brick buildings. The snow flurries that were still falling made it all seem alien and slightly distant.

I tried not to think about the last time I’d been in America, sweating in the Florida heat. I couldn’t even prevent a tiny jerk of alarm when a pair of full-dress police cruisers came flashing across an intersection in front of us, their sirens yelping in and out of sync with each other.

Relax. They’re not after you, I told myself. Not this time.

The Boston Harbor Hotel, when we reached Rowe’s Wharf, was a magnificent building with an impressive arched rotunda next to the discreet entrance.

The hotel lobby was as grand and tactfully opulent as the outside led me to expect, all marble archways and huge paintings of harbor scenes from days gone by Even the wallpaper was padded. Again, Madeleine had made the arrangements so that the bags were whisked up to our rooms with the minimum of fuss. Simone herself grew more quiet and tense with every passing minute, clearly overwhelmed by the sudden elevation in luxury.

I had the room next to the one Simone was sharing with her daughter. By dint of closing the outer doors onto the corridor and leaving the inner doors open the two rooms could be connected together, but still leave both Simone and me some privacy.

Once the staff had finished unsettling Simone still further in their efforts to put us at our ease, I left her flicking through the hundreds of TV channels, searching for cartoons for Ella. I went into my own side and shut the door behind me. The room had a picture window that offered a breathtaking panorama across the snow-speckled harbor below, and a double bed the size of Canada. Suddenly I missed Sean.

For once, I wished Madeleine had given our accommodation a bit more thought. Finding something at the top of the tree is easy. Finding somewhere a bit less majestic, a bit more in keeping with Simone’s current lifestyle, would have been more time-consuming but might have been a better move. She might be a millionairess on paper, but she had a long way to go before she got her head round the idea. It seemed ironic that I was probably more used to staying in places of this caliber than she was.

I dug my briefing pack out of my bag, turning my back on the view, and dialed the number for the private investigators’ office first. Their answering service clicked in. I left a message asking them to call me and gave my UK mobile number, including the full international code. It seemed easier than relaying messages via the hotel switchboard.

I checked in with Sean, too, thankful to be able to reach him right away on his mobile, even though it was late evening at home.

“I don’t like it that they didn’t turn up,” he said. “We’ll chase it at this end, but it’s well past close of play over there, so there’s probably nothing you can do other than sit it out until the morning. How’s Simone doing?”

“Nervous,” I said. “I think perhaps we should have stayed somewhere a bit less plush.”

“Mm. Well, you could always try retail therapy,” Sean suggested. “If she doesn’t fancy the haute couture of Copley Place, take her bargain hunting at Filene’s Basement instead.”

“Since when did you get to know your way around Boston so well?” I asked, aware of a tinge of jealousy at the image of Sean buying gifts for some shadowy previous lover. Someone who came both before and after me. There had been a break that had lasted over four years in the middle of our relationship. In the intervening period I knew full well there’d been other people, for both of us. But that didn’t mean I had to like thinking about it.

He must have read my mind, because he laughed. “Work, Charlie, all work,” he said, gently mocking. “Come on, you’ve looked after enough clients’ wives now to know the first thing they ever want to do in a strange city is shop till one of you drops — and it’s usually me.”

“Really?” I said, allowing my voice to drawl. “I’d never have thought of you as being short on stamina. …”

It was breakfast the following morning before the dead private investigator’s partner turned up. We were in the Intrigue Cafe at the hotel, sitting at one of the tables overlooking the corrugated waters of the harbor itself. A fast cat ferry was moored just over to one side, and farther out were a group of sleek-lined little yachts, built for fast summer cruising and which, at this time of year, now looked like a group of racehorses shivering together in a muddy field.

I noted the woman from the moment she stepped into the room and started heading our way. There was something about the flat professional way she surveyed the room, like she was used to summing people up fast, assessing them. She was medium height and trim in the way people are when it’s their job to be fit, rather than through vanity. Her hair was short and dark and cut in a neat bob, parted in the center, a style chosen to survive being under a hat all day as part of the job. There was cop, or ex-cop, written all over her.

As she approached I put my napkin aside and casually pushed my chair back a little, giving myself some space. Her eyes narrowed as she caught the action and she nodded, as though acknowledging my status, before she spoke to Simone.

“Excuse me. Would you be Miss Kerse?” She rhymed the name with “furze.”

Simone looked startled. Her eyes flew to me as though asking for permission to confirm the question.

“Er, yes, I am,” she said, not correcting the woman’s pronounciation. “And you are?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Frances L. Neagley,” the woman said, and I recognized the name from the file Sean had given me on the private investigators, although Simone still looked a little blank. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the airport to meet you yesterday. I was dealing with the arrangements for the funeral and I guess I must have gotten kind of hung up.”

“Oh yes. Don’t worry about it,” Simone said, shaking her hand. I’d told her all about the private investigator’s accident before we’d left Heathrow, just in case she decided to change her mind about coming. She hadn’t. “I realize this must be a difficult time for you. I really appreciate your making time to see me.”

Neagley’s shoulders came down a fraction, as though she’d been expecting a chewing out. We were sitting at a table for four, with Ella on a booster seat next to her mother. Simone gestured to the spare seat and the private investigator slid into it gratefully. Close up, she looked tired, strained.

I caught the eye of a passing waiter. “Can we offer you something to drink, Ms. Neagley?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “I don’t suppose they serve Tab here, do they?”

The waiter shook his head and Neagley reluctantly accepted Diet Pepsi as second-best. A glass appeared in front of her almost immediately. The service throughout the hotel was slick and unobtrusive.

Frances Neagley smiled vaguely at Ella, who was mutely watching her every move while dunking toast and grape jelly into the yolk of her poached egg. She was occasionally washing this concoction down with great gulps of fresh orange juice, picking up the glass in both hands as she drank. I expected her to throw up at any moment and, from Neagley’s expression, I wasn’t the only one.

“So, do you have any news for me?” Simone asked when the waiter had departed. The question burst out of her, like she’d been doing her best to wait a decent length of time, but she couldn’t contain it any longer.

Neagley had just lifted her glass towards her mouth with the reverence of someone who has been too long deprived of caffeine. When Simone spoke she hesitated a moment, then put the drink down again, untasted, with the barest hint of a sigh.

“Not at the moment. We’re assuming Barry-that’s my partner, Barry O’Halloran-well, that he had his case notes with him when he went into the river,” she said, with a sideways glance at Ella to check how much she was taking in. Neagley didn’t sound Bostonian to my ears, but I wasn’t familiar enough with American accents to place her beyond that. “Lotta the stuff inside his car was washed away. They haven’t found his briefcase.”

“He went into the water?” I asked.

Neagley turned and regarded me fully for a moment without speaking, as though trying to gauge whether I warranted the information or not. Then she saw Simone’s expectant air and said, reluctantly, “Yeah. He was driving back down from Maine. It was late at night and the last fall of snow was just getting started. The cops reckon he most likely hit some ice on a bridge and just went off the road.”

There was doubt in her voice, though, or maybe it was just a little disbelief. Everybody thinks they’re a good driver until an accident happens to them.

“Surely he would have kept copies — duplicates, backups — of his files?” Simone said.

Neagley took a hurried swig of her Pepsi and her face pinched.

“Look, I’m sorry, Ms. Neagley,” I said quickly “I know this must seem heartless to you, but you have to understand how important this is to Miss Kerse.”

Neagley now included me in her distaste, but after a moment she nodded slowly and let her unconscious bristling subside.

“Barry had been away for a few days,” she said, almost grudgingly. “Last time I heard from him he was in Freeport, Maine. Said he’d gotten a promising lead but it had led nowhere. I would have expected him to file a full report when he came back, if he’d come back,” she added quietly.

“So we’re back to square one,” Simone said, trying not to sound too disappointed and not succeeding.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Neagley said stiffly. “I’ll do what I can to find out where Barry went and who he saw, but it could take a little while. How long do you plan to stay?”

Simone met my eye, steely “As long as it takes,” she said.