Home body, p.41
Home Body, page 41
“Are they cops?” I heard the photographer say as the reporter approached.
She stopped, and I recognized her. She was from the Bangor Daily. She stared at me, and said, “Hey, that’s McMorrow from the New York Times. How’d he get in?”
Clair pulled over on the crest of Knox Ridge, hoping for better reception for the phone. I dialed and waited and this time Myra answered. She sounded harried, and when I told her about them finding a body in the woods, she said, “Three inches.”
I told her they’d ID’d the body as a woman from Boston, and she said, “Okay, give me six.”
And then I told her the name: Angel Moretti. I said she’d worked for the Connellys at their foundation. I told Myra I’d met Angel at the Connellys’ house in Blue Harbor earlier in the week. Myra said, “Oh, baby.”
And then came the questions.
Myra was good—twenty-seven years old, mind like a stiletto, headed for the top of some news organization, and it was in these situations that it showed. She wanted to know whether the Connellys were suspects. How closely they’d pinpointed the time of death. What Angel actually did at Sky Blue Foundation. Where in Boston she’d lived. How she’d landed in the proximity of people like the Connellys. Had they taken her on as some sort of protégée?
“For that matter, Jack, what in the world were you doing there?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you can tell me later. I’ll call New York. Keep the phone with you.”
I rang off and looked at Clair. He was considering the view, the patchwork of pale green fields showing high on the wooded hillsides like blankets put down in a grassy field for a picnic.
“You know how much work went into clearing those woods, a hundred and fifty years ago?” he said.
“She likes the story,” I said.
“A lifetime of work,” Clair said. “And look at that puckerbrush where they found the girl. Doesn’t take long for nature to take it all back.”
“I’ve got to find out everything I can about Angel.”
“Is it the fact that a beautiful young woman is dead in the woods up here?” Clair said. “Or is it the celebrity angle?”
“All of the above,” I said.
So we tumbled back down toward the valley and home, slower than we’d come. When we pulled into the dooryard, Roxanne’s Explorer was parked by the shed. She was home.
“I’ll let you work,” Clair said.
“Come in for a few minutes,” I said. “You and Roxanne can help me think.”
She was in the kitchen, still in her work skirt and blouse, eating baby carrots dipped in Grey Poupon mustard. She chewed and gave me a mustardy kiss on the cheek and said hi to Clair.
“I’ve got some news,” Roxanne said. “There was a mother cardinal and four babies at the feeder a minute ago. The little ones were so cute. But that’s not the news.”
“I have some news, too,” I said. “It’s not good.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Angel’s dead. Angel from the Connellys.”
Roxanne froze in mid-bite.
“What? A car accident?”
“No. She was murdered.”
Roe went pale, put her hand on the counter.
“That beautiful girl,” she said.
“A blessing and a curse, being beautiful,” Clair said.
“In Boston?” Roxanne said.
I told her where Angel had been found. I told her I didn’t think they knew where she’d been killed.
“Monroe,” Roxanne said. “Who knows about some woods in Monroe?”
“Not hard to find places like that,” Clair said. “You just keep driving until you run out of road.”
“My God. But who—”
I shrugged.
“How?”
I told her.
“Oh, her poor parents.”
“Every parent’s worst nightmare,” Clair said. “When the girls first moved to the city, I used to wake up at night in a sweat. Scared me more than everything I’d done, the prospect of something happening to them.”
I glanced at him, thought that this had peeled away a layer of him, revealed a part of him I’d never known.
“Who . . . ?” Roxanne said.
“Could have been somebody from here,” I said. “She’d attract attention anyplace. Broken down by the side of the road. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong person.”
“Was she—” Roxanne said.
“I don’t think they know. They just found her. We were just there.”
“I wonder if anyone has told David and Maddie,” she said. “I was just talking to Maddie this afternoon.”
Where was she?”
“Back in Boston.”
“David, too?”
“Yeah. He was there. He said hello, in the background.”
I thought for a moment, and Roxanne said, “Jack, will he be a suspect or something?”
“Anyone who knows her would be, I guess. They’ll try to track her movements in the past couple of days, look for motives, alibis, start ruling people out, one by one.”
“Where were you on the night of such and such?”
“Yeah. Sounds corny, but that’s sort of how it works.”
None of us spoke, and then Roxanne said, “Maddie asked me to come to Boston to speak to some sort of group of foundation people.”
“When?” I said.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Can you do that?”
“I have comp time. But I’d need permission anyway.”
“Because—”
“Because it’s sort of a conflict of interest.”
“Where would you stay?”
“She invited me to stay at their house, in Back Bay. Do you think I still should go at all?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so. I have to go down there, too, if that makes any difference.”
“To do the story?”
“The follow. Today will be the bare bones.”
“Well, that will be a little strange. Will you have to interview Maddie and David?”
“Yeah, if they’ll agree.”
“I can’t imagine they wouldn’t.”
“It’s a murder investigation,” I said. “It changes things.”
“Throws everything up in the air,” Clair said. “The cards come back down and you have to put them back in order. Who’s good, who’s evil. Who do you really know, and who do you only think you know.”
Roxanne turned to the counter, put the lid back on the jar of mustard, and folded up the bag of carrots. She put them in the refrigerator and then walked to the big glass window and stood with her arms folded, as though the room had suddenly grown cold. She looked out at the field and the woods, the birds flitting in the brush. Finches. Suddenly she turned to us.
“I like her,” Roxanne said. “Maddie’s a good person. We had a good talk this afternoon, and she really wants to see if she can help kids in Maine.”
“She had no idea that anything was wrong?” I said.
Roxanne shook her head.
“No, she was fine. You know, they’re nothing like people think. She seems completely sincere. And David—I like him, too. They’re both good-hearted. But with Maddie, there’s something very vulnerable about her. I don’t know; this whole Connelly mystique in a lot of ways is just nonsense.”
“I like them, too,” I said. “But when this comes out, connected to them, the Connelly angle is going to be played for everything it’s worth.”
“Must be hard. Being them, I mean,” Roxanne said. “You know who the police should be looking at? That Dalton creep. You know he held a door for me while we were at the house there, and when I walked by him, I swear he deliberately brushed his hand across my hip. I swear he was grabbing a little feel. I almost smacked him.”
“You should have,” I said.
“If this meeting is still on, I think I will ask if I can go,” Roxanne said.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“So you don’t think they’ll be—”
“I think Angel was presumptuous with Maddie and David,” I said, “and I don’t think Maddie liked it.”
“You don’t kill people for having bad manners,” Roxanne said.
“Not usually,” Clair said.
“But sometimes?” Roxanne said.
Clair didn’t answer.
14
k
The foundation meeting was at one o’clock at the Marlborough Club, on Marlborough Street in the heart of Back Bay. At eleven-forty we were inching along Congress Street amid throngs of tourists flocking like pilgrims to Faneuil Hall. It was raining softly, a warm drizzle that the kids ignored as they stood around the statue of Sam Adams. Most of them probably thought he made beer.
Roxanne leaned forward in her seat and gathered up her reports and file folders and stuffed them in her bag. I continued on into the financial district, swung left on Milk Street, and backtracked into the streets behind South Market, in a quixotic search for a parking space. I circled twice, then double-parked on Chatham Street and ran up to the bureau in South Market; Roxanne stayed with the car.
The second-floor offices were modern and new, everything a newsroom shouldn’t be, but Myra had done her best to litter her office with coffee cups and takeout cartons. She would have smoked if they’d let her.
She was in, on the phone. I took a seat in front of her desk while she talked to somebody in New York about my story about Angel.
“No, he can’t have it ready tonight, not the story we want to do. So let ’em swarm. This isn’t the Post. . . . I know you know that. . . . So we’re a day ahead of everybody else. We had the breaking story first, the Connelly part of it, anyway, and now we’ll do the follow, the profile. . . . Yeah, McMorrow’s got lots of sources. . . . Yes, he really met the victim. . : . I don’t know how he manages it, either. . . . When? Tuesday . . . Yes, this past Tuesday. . . . Yeah, we talked about that, but I hesitate to overstate the relationship. I mean, he met the woman but they didn’t talk into the wee hours or anything. They had one private conversation, otherwise they were part of a group. . . . No, I think we should let people speak about her who really knew her. . . . Right, a cultural thing. Not exactly rags to riches, but tradesmen’s class to the world of wealth and celebrity. . . . Right. It’ll be available for Monday’s paper. Yes, I’ll be here. Jack will be, too.”
She hung up.
“So you heard where we’re going with this?”
“Yeah. Who was that?”
“Simon.”
“They’re looking for some sort of first-person thing?”
“Well, not first-person, but firsthand impression. The scene, how Moretti spent one of the last days of her life. And a peek into the private world of David and Maddie Connelly. The oceanfront estate. The beautiful yacht.”
I winced.
“You know,” I said, “I’m not really comfortable with that part of it.”
“I know,” Myra said. “How come?”
“I wasn’t there as a reporter.”
“That hasn’t stopped you in other situations. How exactly did you end up there? Are these the circles you’ve started traveling in?”
“No. Listen, this has got to be off the record.”
“Jack, it’s me.”
People were coming and going in the foyer, so I got up and closed the door. Then I told her about Roxanne, and the complaint about Maeve, about the Irish au pair.
“So the State of Maine is investigating a child abuse complaint involving David and Maddie Connelly’s kid?”
“Not anymore. Roxanne talked to the child and she talked to the parents, and once she finds this Irish girl, that’ll most likely be the end of it.”
“And all this is confidential.”
“Very.”
“I mean, we can’t get it from some other source?”
“Not if you want me to ever write another word for you again.”
I said it with conviction.
“Jesus. What if the au pair says she never touched the kid? The mother’s a closet abuser? You know, the Connellys have a closet full of skeletons. Remember the cousin who stalked that girl? Those two kids who died in that accident in the Berkshires or someplace? And Maddie, she hasn’t had it easy. Did you know her older brother killed himself when she was a little kid?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. I remember hearing that someplace. She was, like, eight. He was in his teens.”
“That doesn’t mean she beats her child.”
“No.”
“Roxanne doesn’t believe it, and she’s done hundreds of these cases.”
Myra looked away. Took off the tortoiseshell headband that held back her white-blonde hair. Put the headband back on and looked at me again.
“Okay. If nothing came of it, I guess. Jeez, this goes against my instincts, but it’s a weird circumstance. Listen, just go after the Moretti woman with everything you’ve got. And we need the Connellys in there in every other respect. And we need that Maine place described, their life portrayed. And that’s not just prurient. It puts this North End girl’s life in perspective, her climb to—”
The phone rang. Myra reached for it. I got up and left before she could change her mind and started up State Street. After I told her what Myra had said, and my response, Roxanne was quiet.
“You trust her?” she said, after a minute.
“Yeah,” I said. “But she’s still a newspaper editor. And a good one.”
“What if Devlin does deny it?”
“I don’t know, honey,” I said. “Let’s just take this one bridge at a time.”
The Marlborough Club was a four-story brownstone with a discreet brass plaque and a bay window in which someone had placed a vase full of flowers the color of bricks. Understatement was the word for the day.
I double-parked and told the doorman I’d only be a minute, then followed Roxanne up the stairs where another guy heaved the door open. We stepped inside. It was still and the carpet was thick, like moss in the Maine woods. The paneling was dark and so was the rest of the place. We waited for our eyes to adjust and then walked to the front desk.
A young woman looked up at us. She was pretty in a vapid, self-conscious sort of way, and her hair was done in a stiff Jackie Kennedy flip. Behind her was a computer and the screensaver was a photograph of the front of the club, in case she fell asleep and woke up not knowing where she was. Roxanne said she was there to meet Maddie and David Connelly, and the woman said the Connellys were in the Hotchkiss Lounge on the fourth floor.
We padded up in the funereal silence and eventually heard muffled voices. At the fourth-floor landing we looked around. David Connelly turned from the window and gave us a weary smile.
He looked older out of his shorts and T-shirt and into old-money casual. His blazer was standard prep-school issue and his shirt was denim. His tie was red with sailboats on it. His tan slacks were some sort of twill and his loafers were ancient.
“Hi, guys,” he said, and he hurried over, gave Roxanne a brief hug, and gripped my hand, patting me on the shoulder. I felt like we’d shown up at a wake.
At that moment, a door opened at the end of the foyer and we heard china rattling, and then Maddie came out and saw us and said, “Oh, you made it. Roxanne, you’re a dear.”
She was dressed in a navy suit with a knee-length skirt and pale hose. Navy pumps, a cream-colored blouse, and pearl earrings. It was as if the couple we’d met in Blue Harbor were playing dress-up. I thought Roxanne’s slacks, silk blouse, and jacket were more appropriate.
“So good of you to come all this way,” Maddie said.
“I’m glad to,” Roxanne said.
“We’re very sorry about Angel,” I said.
“Oh, God,” David said. “She leaves and she’s happy and bubbly, and two days later—”
“I still can’t believe it,” Maddie said. “I feel like I’m going to wake up any moment and say to David, ‘Oh, I just had the most horrible dream.’ ”
“A nightmare,” David said. “I saw your story, Jack. Do the police have any idea?”
“They didn’t yesterday, but they were just getting started. That she was found so quickly is a big help.”
“Not much of a silver lining,” Roxanne said.
“No,” David said. “Not much of one at all.”
“Oh, it’s a tragedy,” Maddie said. “She was just coming into her own. A beautiful girl, and she had so much potential. She was seeing a lot of things for the first time. She wanted to travel. She’d never been to Europe, and she and Monica had talked about going to London and Paris. Some sort of package, six nights, seven days, or some such, but at least they were going. And she was so happy. And then—
She looked away and seemed to drift off for a moment. I thought of what Myra had said about her brother’s suicide. I wondered if this sort of thing could cause a post-traumatic flashback.
“Parents are kind of Old World,” David said. “Italian, North End, big family. According to Tim Dalton, she was the only girl with a bunch of brothers. Led kind of a cloistered existence.”
“The baby,” Maddie said. “Oh, God, can you imagine what they’re feeling?”
“How’s Monica?” I said.
“Tim and Kathleen Kind tried to call her at home. Mother said she was in bed, in shock. Known each other since they were in grade school. Best friends.”
“What happened?” I said. “I mean, after they left Blue Harbor?”
“Everybody came back Wednesday night,” David said, folding his arms on his chest, protectively, I thought. “Went to Bar Harbor, like Angel wanted to; they seemed to have fun. She and Monica drove back together in Angel’s car, that silver Audi. Her first car. Tim found some deal for her.”
