A Plague of Secrets (7 page)

Maya led the little party of three off to a front working den-flat-screen TV, bookshelves, fireplace. Closing the door, they remained standing because Joel gave no one any time to sit down before he more or less exploded, although he kept his voice in check. “Maya, you want to tell me what this is about?”

She threw a glance at Hardy-and again, clearly, this didn’t get her any points with her husband-nodded, took in a breath. “Mr. Hardy knows that I went by BBW on Saturday morning and saw the body, and then got scared and drove away without calling the police.”

Joel’s mouth went tight. “You went to BBW Saturday morning? Why?”

“Because Dylan called me Friday night and said he needed to see me first thing, that it was an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“He didn’t say that.”

“But you went?”

“Yes. I went. But the real problem, ask Mr. Hardy here, is that the first time I talked to those people, I didn’t say anything about that. I told them I went to Mass. ”

“The first time you talked to who? Those inspectors out there? This isn’t the first time?”

Hardy finally felt that he could join the conversation. “They talked to your wife yesterday morning.”

Joel couldn’t take his eyes off his wife. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d talked to them? And not told them the truth?”

“I don’t know, Joel. I don’t know. I panicked. I was afraid, or embarrassed, or something. I thought you’d be mad at me being in this on any level, for getting you involved.” She had her arms crossed over her chest, displaying more defiance than her words indicated. “The point is I’m telling you now, all right? I don’t know what I should do
right now
. And by the way, you should know, Joel, that the gun they think is probably the murder weapon is the one I left down there back when I first opened the place, like ten years ago, and it’s registered to me.” She looked from one man to the other. “And in case either of you are thinking it, if I were going to have shot Dylan, which I never would have done under any conditions, period, I never would have been so stupid as to throw it away where the police could find it.”

For a minute no one spoke. Eyes flashed between husband and wife. Hardy kept his own counsel in silence until he felt again that he would be heard. “The thing to do right now, in my opinion, Maya, is to go out there and tell the inspectors the truth. As your husband has said. If you don’t do that, and somebody did witness you in the alley on Saturday morning, it will look much worse and be a lot harder to explain. As for the gun, you owned it. So what? If you kept it at the shop, Dylan undoubtedly knew about it and probably had it with him illegally for protection while he was carrying the weed.”

“What weed?” Joel asked.

Maya shook her head in anger and frustration. She spoke under her breath. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Dylan was selling marijuana out of your wife’s store,” Hardy said in his most neutral voice. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been in the papers. The cops have known this all along.”

“How special for them,” Joel said. Clearly seething now, he spoke in a near whisper. “How long were you going to keep all this from me, Maya? What is that about? I thought we talked to each other.”

“We do.”

“Not so much, though, as it turns out.” Finally, Joel brought his attention to Hardy. “So you’re suggesting we go outside and tell these people that my wife lied to them, is that it?”

“Omitted,” Hardy said. “Not lied. At least then we start over with a clean slate.”

“But Maya’s at the murder scene within, apparently, minutes of the crime.”

“That’s true. And in point of fact, she was.”

Now Joel came back to her. “And you don’t know what the emergency was?”

“No.”

“No idea?”

“No, Joel, really.”

This wasn’t enough for her increasingly furious husband. He kept at her. “So the situation here, correct me if I’m wrong, is that Dylan called you on Friday night saying he needed to see you first thing next morning, and you dropped everything and got up at five-thirty, lied to me and the kids about going to Mass-”

“But I did go to Mass, after-”

Joel waved that off. “After you went to see Dylan first, for some reason that he wouldn’t even tell you. Is that what you expect me to believe?”

Tears glistened in Maya’s eyes. “That’s what happened, Joel. That’s exactly what happened.”

“That twerp calls you, doesn’t even give you a reason, and you come running, and now we’ve got the cops sitting in our living room and your lawyer here says we need to tell them the truth, except that the truth leaves you going down to visit the murdered man just about the time he was killed, and with essentially no reason.” He turned to Hardy. “How can we tell them she went down there if we can’t tell them why? Can you answer that for me?”

“Keep it simple. He asked her to, that’s all. Some problem with the business, some decision she had to make in person.” Hardy slowed himself down. “I’m sure Maya thought it was going to be a quick little meeting and then she’d have time to make it back to Mass. Isn’t that right, Maya?”

Hardy had given her the answer and was glad to see her embrace it. “That’s exactly it, Joel. I didn’t think it was anything really important. I wasn’t hiding anything from you. It was just a small business hassle that I thought I’d take care of like I have a million others.”

Another silence, finally broken when Joel asked Hardy, “You really think this will fly?”

“It’s the truth,” Hardy said. “All things considered, honesty’s still the best policy.”

Husband and wife stared at each other for a long beat. Maya reached out and took Joel’s hand in hers. “That ought to be the end of it,” she said.

“Not exactly,” Joel said, extricating his hand from his wife’s. “You and I are going to have to have a discussion.”

“We can do that.” She looked up at Hardy. “Meanwhile, let’s go tell ’em,” she said.

He nodded, no-nonsense. “All right,” he said. “But let me do the talking.”

At ten-thirty that night Hardy threw the next-to-last dart of his round at the Little Shamrock bar and it landed in his “out” spot of double eleven. He plocked the next shot directly in the center of the bull’s-eye, ending the game. He was playing “ 301” and he’d gone out ahead of his opponent, Wyatt Hunt, by hitting his last eight throws in a row, a fairly nice run.

And all too underappreciated by Hunt, his firm’s private investigator, who now owed him not only the tab for the three beers they’d each consumed in the three-game minitournament, but the extra hundred bucks they’d put up as the pot. No sooner had Hardy’s winning shot landed than Hunt handed him the Franklin and offered to go double or nothing.

“That’s a sucker bet, Wyatt, as you well know.” Hardy took the bill and put it into his wallet. “But I’ll buy you a consolation drink to help assuage the agony of defeat.”

“
Assuage
is a good lawyer word,” Hunt said. “You don’t hear people say
assuag
e every day.”

“No indeed, you don’t,” Hardy replied. “And yet, sometimes it is the perfect choice,
le mot juste
, as Hemingway would have said.”

“Or me if I spoke French.”

The private eye went about six three, two ten, an athletic hunk comprised of about equal parts gristle and testosterone. If you could be handsome in an ugly way, that’s what Hardy would have said he was. He’d grown up in foster homes, done a stint in Iraq I, then worked a dozen or so years in Child Protective Services, taking kids from abusive environments away from their parent or parents, pretty much the apogee of thankless jobs. Now, and for the past seven or eight years, he ran a private investigations business called The Hunt Club, and Hardy’s firm used it almost exclusively.

Wyatt was leading the way as the two men moved from the dart area and into the narrow recesses of the bar proper, which was having a relatively slow night. Two stools stood open in front of the taps, and they got themselves seated. “That was an obscene run of darts, you know.”

“Admittedly. I’m sure I couldn’t do it again. Although you’ve got to figure that a guy who’s got a board on the wall of his office and his own customized darts probably spends a few minutes playing the game. He’s going to get a lucky run from time to time.”

Hunt was grinning. “I’ll try to keep it in mind.”

Moses McGuire appeared in front of them and they ordered-a club soda for each of them. McGuire, on a club soda regimen himself for the past couple of years, still couldn’t help himself. “Whoa,” he said. “Katie, bar the door. Want those babies full-strength up or on the rocks?”

“The great thing about drinking here”-Hardy ignored his brother-in-law and spoke directly to Hunt-“is the commentary.”

“I knew there was something,” Hunt replied.

“Rocks,” Hardy said, coming back to Moses, “and hold the pithy observations, thank you.”

McGuire pulled the drinks, and Hardy held up his glass to clink Hunt’s. “I feel a little guilty inviting you down here and then taking your money, but thanks for coming.”

Hunt sipped his soda. “Long day?”

“Actually, fairly brutal.” Hardy filled him in on the dramas surrounding both Glitsky and Wes Farrell, which had continued into the night as Hardy, after dinner at home, went to the hospital to check on Abe and Zachary-Abe still a zombie, Zachary unchanged.

Hardy had stayed on with Abe for a long half hour, then patted his friend’s knee and told him to hang in there, call if he needed anything, and left. Unable to make himself go back home to Frannie, Treya, and Rachel, he’d stopped by the Shamrock and called Farrell, who’d apparently turned off his telephones. Getting an idea, then he had called Hunt. “Anyway, between Abe and Wes, it’s like I’m knocked off my horse. I can’t seem to get my arms wrapped around this Dylan Vogler situation. Not just what it’s done to Wes, or potentially could do.”

“You’re really worried about that?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Well, let me lighten your load, Diz. You can get over that. Nobody outside of Singapore cares about who smokes weed. Certainly nobody in law enforcement in this town. ’Course, the bad news in Singapore is they hang you for it. But the good news is we’re not there. Not even Wes. But I’d warn him if he’s thinking about making the trip.”

“I’ll do that,” Hardy said with a strained tolerance. “But in actual fact Wes is an officer of the court. He’s a rainmaker for the firm, he’s-”

Hunt held up a hand. “It’s only going to increase his street cred among his potential clients, Diz, all of whom probably light up a doob with some regularity. The guy’s one of them.”

“Judges won’t think that’s a plus if it gets out. I promise.”

“How are they going to prove it? So his name’s on a list. So what?” Hunt drank. “He’s not really thinking of quitting, is he?”

“He offered.” A shrug. “I told him to think about it some more.”

“Well, before he does anything dumb, at least he ought to talk to Craig.” This was Craig Chiurco, one of Hunt’s operatives, working on his own private investigator’s license. At Hardy’s look Hunt went on. “This guy Vogler had a good book, I’ll give him that.”

Hardy’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Craig was on this list too?”

Hunt bobbed his head. “Yeah, and he’s actually a pretty big number. He came and told me about it yesterday. I mean that the cops had called him about it. He was worried it might affect his license chances.”

“Same story. If they could prove it, it might, but without a confession, forget it.”

“Right,” Wyatt said. “And I don’t really see anybody going to go out of their way to bust these guys, even if they could prove anything. At the most it’s casual use, and then only if they in fact catch ’em in flagrante. Hundred bucks if anybody actually cares enough to write you up, which they won’t. Not in this town.”

“So what’d you tell Craig?”

“I told him to dump his stash and give it up. But really, Diz, it’s a nonissue. Vogler, maybe not. But Wes and Craig and whoever else, nothing.”

Hardy glanced over at his companion and lifted his glass. “Okay, since you’ve got all the answers tonight, let me ask you another one. There’s a piece missing somewhere and I can’t put my finger on it.” He ran down what he’d learned about Maya up to this point-the mysterious call from Vogler on Friday night, the early morning trip to BBW, Maya driving away from the body, her concern about her supposedly profligate fling in college, and then bringing the story around to Dylan’s exorbitant salary, the gun, and so on.

When he finished, Wyatt nodded. “Can you say ‘blackmail’?”

“Okay. For what?”

“I don’t know. Something she’s ashamed of or worried about. Probably when she was having her wild time back in college.”

“That’s pretty much what I’d come to. But I didn’t want to let myself believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Because blackmail comes with implications.”

“She’s done something bad?”

“In the past, yeah. But nearer the present is the real concern.”

“You’re thinking she did it?”

Hardy hesitated for a few seconds. “If he was blackmailing her and she went down there on Saturday morning? The blackmail was the missing piece. If it’s in there, the picture gets a lot more clear and maybe real ugly in a hurry.”

“You think Bracco and Schiff have put it together?”

“If they haven’t already, they will soon.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I thought I’d ask you to see what you could find out.”

“About her college years?”

At Hardy’s nod Hunt went on. “Not that I couldn’t use the work, but why don’t you just ask her? Tell her you figured out she was being blackmailed, see what she does.”

“Well, I could. But a couple of things. First, her husband kind of made it clear that he didn’t want her seeing me without him being there too. So if he’s the one she doesn’t want to know whatever it is-and that’s a decent bet-she doesn’t tell me no matter what. Next, I might be wrong and the accusation might piss her off. Maybe even enough to where she wants to fire me, which would be letting a potential big one get away. Finally, if whatever she did was bad enough that she killed Vogler to stop it coming out, no way she’s just giving it up, even privileged, to a lawyer she barely knows. I’d be wasting my breath even asking. Better if I find out what it is on my own, then hold on to it and use it as things develop.”