A Fine Line (16 page)

I woke up a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, feeling fuzzy-headed and disoriented and vaguely depressed. A pot of coffee, sipped slowly, one mug at a time out on my balcony, helped.

After Henry and I returned from another tour of the park, I fried some bacon, scrambled four eggs, made some toast, and he and I had brunch.

Around six I told Henry I was going out for a while and he shouldn’t bother waiting up for me.

He went over and sat by the door.

“No,” I said. “I’m going. Just me. You’re staying here.”

He cocked his head and looked at me for a minute, then went to the sofa, hopped up on it, twirled around a couple of times, lay down, sighed, and closed his eyes.

“You’re not supposed to get up on the furniture.”

He ignored me.

“Well, don’t chew anything,” I told him.

He opened his eyes, glared at me, then shut them again.

“I’ll only be a couple of hours, for Christ’s sake,” I told him. “You can’t come everywhere with me.”

I left Henry sulking on the sofa.

By the time I got to Central Square and found a parking space, it was after seven o’clock. A “Closed” sign hung in the window of Vintage Vinyl, but there were lights on inside.

I tried the knob, and the door opened. When I stepped inside, I recognized Benny Goodman’s clarinet playing over the speakers.

There appeared to be no one in the store, but I saw an open door in the rear. I went back there and peeked in. Conrad Henshall was sprawled in a reclining desk chair with a keyboard on his lap. He was staring through his tinted glasses at the large computer monitor on his desk, and his fingers were flicking at the keys. He was wearing chino pants with sharp creases, a starchy white shirt, and a bow tie.

I knocked on the door frame. He glanced up at me, said, “Sorry, sir. We’re closed,” and returned his attention to the computer screen.

I stood there for a minute, and when it became apparent that he intended to ignore me, I said, “I’m Brady Coyne. We met the other day. I was looking for Ethan Duffy. I still am.”

He didn’t shift his eyes from his computer screen. “I am occupied and my shop is closed. That sign is hanging in the window to deter people from entering.”

“The door was unlocked.”

“My mistake.” He looked up at me and jerked his head toward the front of the store. “Lock it on the way out for me, if you’d be so kind.” He turned back to his computer and hit a couple of keys.

“I need to talk to you,” I said. “About Ethan.”

“This is not a good time, I’m afraid.” He kept his eyes on his computer monitor. “Another day, perhaps.”

I stood there for a minute. Henshall made a good show of
pretending I wasn’t there. So I stepped into the room, reached around behind his computer, and yanked out a handful of cords.

Henshall yelled, “Hey!” and an instant later, without warning, someone slipped up behind me and clamped his forearm around my throat.

He wedged his arm up under my chin and yanked me back against him. His breath smelled of peppermint. He had the bony part of his wrist pressed against my windpipe. I tried to drag in a breath, and found I couldn’t. Tears sprang into my eyes.

I stomped down on his instep with my heel and at the same time drove my elbow back into his ribs. I’d seen James Bond do that a dozen times, and it always worked.

It did this time, too. He grunted, and his grip on my throat loosened, and I twisted away from him.

When I turned to face him, I saw that it was the balding guy with the ponytail who’d been in the store on my previous visit. Phil was his name.

“Where the hell did you come from?” I said.

He was bent over rubbing his foot. “Fuck,” he muttered. “That hurt.”

Henshall was shaking his head. “Awfully inept, Philip,” he said. “I appreciate the effort, however.” He dismissed Philip with a backward wave of his hand.

Phil shrugged, frowned at me, and went limping back into the store whence, apparently, he’d come, although I hadn’t seen him on my way in.

“If he’s supposed to be your bodyguard,” I said to Henshall, “you’re in trouble.”

He leaned back in his chair, and blinked at me. “If you don’t leave right now,” he said, “I’m going to call the police.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll give you Detective Saundra Mendoza’s number. She’s with homicide. If you don’t want to talk to me, you can talk to her.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody,” he said. “I just want you out of my store.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not going to do that. Not until we talk.”

He scowled at me. I scowled right back at him.

After a minute he shrugged. “I can’t persuade you to leave, then?”

I shook my head.

“Even if I sic Phil on you?”

I smiled.

“You better not have broken any of those cords.”

“I don’t think I did,” I said. “I just pulled out some plugs.”

“That was unnecessary.”

“I considered punching you in the stomach,” I said.

He shrugged. “People have tried to intimidate me all my life. It doesn’t work anymore.”

“I just wanted to get your attention.”

“Is that why you used the word homicide?”

“The word homicide should get your attention.”

“I confess it did,” he said. “So what about Ethan Duffy?”

“He works here.”

“Worked. Past tense. I fired him, as I believe I told you the other evening. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because he hasn’t showed up when he’s supposed to for a week, and he hasn’t called me, and he doesn’t answer his phone, so I haven’t had a chance to tell him.”

“I understand you’re not just Ethan’s employer,” I said, “but also a friend of his.”

Henshall took off his glasses and looked at me. “What do you want with Ethan Duffy, sir?”

“He seems to have gone missing. His mother’s worried about him.”

“You work for the mother?”

“Who I work for is none of your business,” I said. “Do you know where Ethan is?”

“No.”

“Talked to him, seen him, gotten any message from him since last Wednesday?”

He shook his head. “I told you—”

“Any idea where he might go if he didn’t want to be found?”

“Listen—”

“No,” I said. “You listen. Ethan’s in trouble, and I need to talk to him.”

Henshall was shaking his head. “I’m telling you. I don’t know anything.”

I glared at him. He avoided my eyes. I felt sure he was lying. But short of beating him up, I didn’t think I was going to convince him to tell me the truth.

I blew out a long breath. “Okay, Mr. Henshall,” I said. “Here’s what I want you to do. If you should happen to run into Ethan, talk to him on the phone, get an e-mail, anything, you tell him he should call Brady Coyne right away. Understand?”

He shrugged.

“It’s important. Life and death. Do I make myself clear?”

“Life and death,” he said. “Couldn’t be clearer, sir.”

“Tell him he can call me any time. He can call me at four in the morning and disguise his voice if he wants.”

Henshall frowned at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind,” I said. “If you think of something, you call me yourself, okay?”

He nodded. “All right.”

I turned and headed for the front of the shop. Henshall followed me.

Phil was fooling around with a stack of record albums. He looked up at me.

“You better take some lessons,” I said to him. “Before you hurt yourself.”

He smiled quickly, then resumed poking among the records.

When we got to the door, I turned to Henshall. “What do you know about Phil?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s his background?”

He shrugged. “He’s one of those Ph.D.’s who can’t get a teaching job. He likes music. Comes to work on time. That’s about all I know.”

“What’s his Ph.D. in?”

“History,” he said. “American history. History professors are a dime a dozen.”

“American history,” I repeated. “Has he ever mentioned any interest in old documents, or the Lewis and Clark expedition?”

“Philip and I don’t have those kinds of conversations.”

“What kind of conversations do you have?”

He smiled. “To tell you the truth, I rarely have conversations of any sort with the help. They take care of the customers so I don’t have to.”

“How does Phil get along with Ethan Duffy?”

Henshall cocked his head and looked at me. “What are you getting at, sir?”

“Would you answer my question?”

He frowned for a minute, as if he were thinking deeply. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t have a good answer for you, sir. Ethan and Philip work here at different times. I never have more than one person out front at the same time. They know each other, of course. But I have no awareness of their relationship, or if they even have one.”

I nodded and held out my hand to Henshall. He hesitated, then took it.

“I’m sorry if I came on strong,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Real experts have tried to bully me.” He smiled. “For a lawyer, you’re not that good at it.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “Still, I kind of thought yanking those cords out of your computer . . .”

He shook his head. “Amateur hour.”

“When I used the phrase life and death,” I said, “I meant it literally and most sincerely.”

“I believe you, sir.”

I stepped outside. Henshall pulled the door shut from the inside, and I heard the lock turn and the deadbolt snap into place.

I was lying in bed waiting for Melville’s heavy prose to put me to sleep when the phone rang. I glanced at the clock. It was a little after midnight.

I picked up the phone. “Yes?” I expected to hear that muffled voice again.

“It’s me. Ethan.”

“Ethan?” I said. “Jesus, son. Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“So Henshall delivered my message, huh?”

“Is Henry all right?”

“I’m taking care of Henry,” I said. I noticed that he didn’t answer my question. “Your mother’s worried sick about you.”

“Tell her I’m okay, will you?”

“You tell her yourself. Give her a call, for God’s sake. What the hell is going on?”

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Your father—”

“I know about that.”

“Did you see anything?”

“I’m just calling to tell you I’m okay. You don’t need to go looking for me or anything.”

“It’s the police who are looking for you. They want to talk to you.”

“I know.”

“Ethan, I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I was your father’s family lawyer, which, technically, makes me your lawyer. I’ll help you, okay?”

“If you’re my lawyer, you can’t tell the police you talked to me if I tell you not to, right?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “But as your lawyer, I advise you to—”

“Please keep the police out of it.”

I blew out a breath. “I can’t do that. They’re looking for you. So am I. Dammit anyway, Ethan. I’ve worn out two pairs of shoes looking for you. There’s good reason to think people less friendly than I are also looking for you. Your
father has been murdered. Ben Frye, too. Have I got your attention yet?”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Yes.”

“Good,” I said. “Now listen to me. You’ve got to talk to the police, and I want to be with you when you do. Let’s do it right now. Okay?”

“It’s midnight, Brady.”

“The cops are open for business all night.”

“Who else is looking for me?”

“You don’t know?”

“You’re trying to scare me.”

“You got that right,” I said. “Where are you? Tell me where you are. I’ll come get you.”

“No,” he said. “Not now.”

“Dammit, Ethan—”

“I need more time, Brady. I’ll call you again.”

“Not good enough. You’ve got to—”

“It’s the best I can do,” he said, and then he hung up.

I put the phone back on the cradle, blew out a breath, and lit a cigarette.

Well, at least he was alive. That was a relief.

He said he was okay, whatever that meant. He hadn’t sounded particularly okay, but it was hard to read somebody over the telephone.

On the other hand, his father had been murdered, and it was possible that he’d witnessed it.

It was possible he did it.

I snubbed out my cigarette, picked up the phone, dialed information, and asked the synthetic voice for the number for Jonathan or Ellen Bramhall in Sudbury.

It was close to twelve-thirty. Most people are asleep at twelve-thirty on a Wednesday morning.

Hell, if I were a worried mother, I wouldn’t care what time I got a good-news phone call about my son.

Her husband answered. “Yeah,” he grumbled. It sounded as if I’d awakened him.

I know I should have apologized for waking him up, told him who I was, reminded him that I was a lawyer, and indicated why I’d called in the middle of the night. But I’d found him to be an unfriendly sonofabitch, and Ellen didn’t seem to like him much, either, so all I said was: “May I speak to Ellen, please?” He could think what he wanted.

“Who is this? What do you want?”

“It’s Brady Coyne,” I said, “and I want to talk to Ellen.”

“Why?”