Dead Winter
Authors: William G. Tapply
A Brady Coyne Mystery
William G. Tapply
DEDICATION
For my dearest ones—Sarah, Melissa, and Michael
T
HE JANGLE OF THE
phone dragged me up from a dead dreamless sleep. I felt the predictable panic. The question was simple: was it Billy’s MG or Joey’s Jeep they had found wrapped around a tree?
I groped for the phone beside my bed and got the receiver off the hook without opening my eyes.
“Coyne,” I mumbled.
“Brady, it’s Desmond Winter.”
“Jesus, Des. What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Two something. Brady, listen. I’m…” His voice trailed away.
I bunched my pillow under my head. “Des? Are you there?”
There was a pause. “I’m here. I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
“Is it Connie? Have you heard from Connie?”
“I wish it was that.” I heard him sigh. I hitched myself into a semisitting position in my bed and switched ears with the telephone.
“Come on, Des. What’s up?”
“It’s Maggie.”
“Maggie? What about her?”
“Oh, dear. Brady, this is awful.” He sighed again. I waited. He cleared his throat. “She’s—she’s dead, you see.”
Phone calls in the middle of the night. They never bear good news. “What happened?” I said gently.
“She’s been murdered, Brady. Marc called me. I figured I should call you. I’m sorry about the hour.”
“Marc—?”
“They’re holding him at the police station.”
“Marc killed her?”
“I—no. I don’t think so.”
“Has he been arrested?”
I heard my old friend sigh. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time. As well you know. I really don’t know what’s going on. Marc called me. Said Maggie was dead. Murdered, that is. He said he didn’t do it.”
“They all do,” I said before I could stop myself. “Look, I didn’t mean—”
Des, to his credit, managed a short nasal laugh. “That’s okay.”
“I’m sure Marc…” I let the thought dissipate. I wasn’t sure about Marc at all. I tried again. “Keep the faith, Des,” I said lamely.
“Theology,” he said dolefully, “seems to fail me when I need it the most.”
Desmond Winter was the only retired Unitarian minister in my stable of wealthy old clients. Maggie was his daughter-in-law, the wife of his son, Marc. The couple lived with Des in his big square Federal-period house on High Street in Newburyport. They had run off to get married the previous summer after a short courtship. I met her once and remembered her as an elfin, vague woman, what the kids would call a spaceshot. But very, very attractive.
I sat all the way up, switched on the light over my bed, and swiveled my legs around so that I could reach my shirt where I had dropped it before hitting the sack. I found the nearly empty cigarette pack in the pocket. My pants were under the bed. I fished out my faithful Zippo, got a Winston lit up, and inhaled deeply. It tasted awful.
“Tell me what happened, Des.”
“I told you. I don’t know.” He coughed—an effort, it seemed, to regain control. “I was sleeping and the phone rang. Marc said he was at the police station. He said he found Maggie murdered and called the police and now he’s there.”
“Where?”
“Huh?”
“Where did he find her?”
“In the boat. He found her—her body—in the boat.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Tonight sometime.”
I stubbed out the cigarette half-smoked. “You want me there?”
“Can you? Will you? Will you come, Brady?” he said.
I smothered a yawn. “Of course,” I said. “It’ll take about an hour. Where will you be?”
“Here, I guess. At the house.”
“I’m on my way. Sit tight.”
Newburyport is tucked inside the good natural harbor formed by the mouth of the Merrimack River on the Massachusetts North Shore close to the New Hampshire border, where it’s been for about three hundred years. It’s a straight shot north from the parking garage under my bachelor’s apartment on the Boston waterfront. At two on a July Monday morning, aside from a few random drunks and big ten-wheelers and weekend stragglers dragging trailered powerboats home from Maine lakes, I had the highway to myself.
I smoked Winstons as I drove and sucked on the can of Pepsi I had snagged from my refrigerator on the way out the door. It wasn’t coffee, but I hoped the caffeine would get the gears churning. I passed the motels, night spots, auto dealers, and Chinese restaurants that lined Route 1, all still brightly illuminated even at that hour. When I merged onto Interstate 95 and left the city lights behind, I was able to see the heat lightning that played across the eastern horizon as I drove. A thunderstorm would have been a relief.
I shoved a Beach Boys tape into the deck, turned up the volume, and sang along with their Greatest Hits. It reminded me of those days in my youth when I would have fun, fun, fun until my daddy took my T-bird away.
Of course, in my family it had been a Chevy sedan. But Boston wasn’t California, either, and anyway, the Beach Boys could sing better than I, although I did sound pretty good to myself inside my car in the middle of a steamy July night on my way to a murder.
D
ESMOND WINTER HAD FIRST
called me on a rainy November day back in 1977. I was slouched at my desk in my office in Copley Square feeling sorry for myself. It wasn’t just the hard rain that ticked against the window behind me, threatening to turn to snow, or the premature gray dusk of the late afternoon. Nor was it entirely the prospect of a long winter with no trout fishing or golf or any of the other worthwhile things in life. And I couldn’t truthfully blame Gloria for the mood I was in that day, even though we had begun to discuss the divorce that would within a couple years become a fact, and I was finding my home no more hospitable than my office.
It was all those things coming together at once, as they sometimes seem to.
What I needed was a man with troubles worse than mine to cheer me up.
“Florence Gresham suggested I call you,” Desmond Winter told me on the phone.
“Yes?”
“She said you were reliable and discreet.”
“I am. Yes.”
“She said you worked alone. She said that if you became my attorney, I could depend on your personal attention to my affairs.”
“That’s how I work.”
“So I checked around.”
“You sound like a discreet person yourself, Mr. Winter.”
“I am. I am very careful. I have to be. I am a minister. And I am not without assets. Not that we ministers make a great deal of money, understand. My father was a banker. Very successful. I am his only heir.” He cleared his throat. It conveyed an apology. “I have kept a Boston firm on retainer for many years. I have not been happy with the attention they have given me. You never know which one of those interchangeable gray people you’re going to deal with. All this specialization. An expert for everything. Makes one feel as if nobody is paying any attention to the whole picture. You want something, they have to have a meeting of the partners. That style does not suit me. Anyway, I have informed them that I no longer need their services.”
“And you want mine.”
“Yes. Perhaps.”
“Is there something specific?”
“As a matter of fact, there is. I wouldn’t care to discuss it on the telephone. Can we meet?”
“We can meet,” I said, “as long as you understand that I haven’t agreed to take you on.”
“I understand perfectly.”
So I agreed to let Desmond Winter buy me lunch the following Tuesday at Locke Ober’s—his choice—so we could size each other up. He turned out to be a lanky, doleful man with a shock of white hair that spilled carelessly over his forehead. He was, I guessed, close to sixty back then, a good twenty-five years older than I. He had a long neck and a protruding Adam’s apple which bobbed nervously when he talked.
He drained one quick martini and made a good start on a second before I finished the single bourbon old-fashioned I usually rationed to myself at lunchtime. We shared Florence Gresham anecdotes by way of warming up for what he really wanted to discuss. When the waiter sidled deferentially up to our table, Winter waved him away. Then he leaned forward on his forearms.
“Mr. Coyne,” he began, “this is a very delicate matter.”
He hesitated. I nodded.
“You see, Constance, my wife, disappeared a little over six years ago.”
“Disappeared?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what other word to use. She was—she is, I mean—my true love. One day—it was back in ’71—I came home from the church at lunchtime, as I always did. Connie and I usually had lunch together. It was a kind of ritual for us, a quiet time when Marc and Kat—they’re our children—were in school. Connie would have sandwiches or maybe chowder all prepared. We might have a touch of sherry. I’d talk about my work. She’d update me on all of her volunteer activities. She was a great volunteerer, Mr. Coyne, not just in the church—she worked with the children’s choir and the altar guild—but also for many of the commissions that were working to preserve the historical landmarks in Newburyport, and the environmental groups, and school things for the kids. She’s a quiet person. Ladylike. But with a lot of backbone. You’d like her.” He hesitated and appealed to me with his eyes. “Everybody liked her.”
I cleared my throat and nodded, noting his use of the past tense in his last statement.
Winter smiled. “I could go on and on about Connie. I guess I tend to. You see, on this one day—it was May, a beautiful golden day, I remember distinctly, because I was going to suggest we take our sherry out onto the patio where we could look at the garden and smell the sea air—the lilacs were just coming into bloom—on this one day, Connie wasn’t there. She left me a note. When I saw it lying there in the middle of the kitchen table, I didn’t think too much about it. Sometimes she’d get called away, just as I would. She always left something for me to eat and a note when she wasn’t going to be there.”
He paused to drain his second martini. He snaked out the olive with his forefinger and popped it into his mouth. Then he looked around and caught the attention of our waiter, who hustled to our table. “Another, please,” he said, holding up his glass.
“Sir?” said the waiter to me.
“What the hell,” I said. It looked like it was going to be a long lunch hour. I glanced at the man sitting across from me. He was, I suddenly remembered, a minister. “Excuse my language,” I said.
He smiled and waved his hand. “Please. No offense.”
When the waiter left, Winter said, “The note. I will always remember what it said. ‘Dearest Dizzy,’ it began. It’s what Connie called me, an ironic little joke between us. I am really the least dizzy person imaginable. I suppose it’s a shortcoming. Connie always teased me for being so straitlaced and practical. ‘Dearest Dizzy. Kat and I are leaving for a while. I know this will confuse and upset you. You must trust me that we will be back. I cannot say any more about this now except to implore you not to worry. We will be fine. Please do not try to find us or contact us. We will not contact you, either. I apologize for the mystery. When we return I will explain all. Until then remember I love you and never lose faith in me. Your Connie.’”