Man With a Squirrel (20 page)

Wind blew straight through the windows of Fred's car. It was cold and wet and dark. He waited twenty minutes before Clay came out alone and put his head in at Fred's window.

Clay said, “She is an interesting woman, more coherent than you led me to expect. She owns a number of reasonably good pieces, none of which I want. However, she is not familiar with the fragment of a painting you described to me. She never saw or heard of it.”

Fred said, “You were able to look where I told you? In her bedroom?”

“And she was very well behaved,” Clay went on. “You are sure we have the right apartment?”

“Third floor. Blake.”

“It was the third floor, but that was not her name. It is Covet or Covert something—here, she gave me her card. Yes. Here it is. Cover-Hoover.

“Fred, from your expression I gather something is going on.”

23

Fred beckoned Clay to sit in the passenger seat, and he rolled down the street toward the river until he reached a spot where he could pull in to the curb. Using the rearview mirror he kept his eye on the entrance to Sandy Blake's building.

Clay looked around the inside of his car, interested. “I would not have thought to find one of these still on the road,” he said. He sniffed like a dog arriving on an unfamiliar vacant lot.

Fred said, “Something's going on all right. The painting was there yesterday.”

“You allowed them to suspect our interest.”

“I offered to buy the thing,” Fred said. “Of course they know I'm interested. But it was to the framer, Manny, I made the offer. The fragment itself I saw here. Sandy Blake, though she was here yesterday, is not here now. Cover-Hoover also denies knowing the painting. I am going to make Cover-Hoover's acquaintance. Why don't you go back to Mountjoy Street and I'll call when I have something to tell you.”

Clay said, “She seemed so different from the woman you described, in many ways—although you did say long black hair. She seemed, in my judgment, not so likely to be raped as to take the upper hand. She is a different person. Women often are.”

Clay's observation put in mind a question Fred had meant to ask. “The pianist, Oona Imry's nephew, on the night she was killed, apparently was playing at the home of a patron, an older woman named Madeleine. There may be a close attachment. Do you have an idea who that would be?”

Clay, contemplating the river, answered, “Madeleine Ruppel is not wealthy enough to reward his cultivating. My guess is—Fred, the young man's fingers move like water. His interpretations may be somewhat dry, but that is the taste of this faithless age. The soul is affirmed but not exposed or tested. I suggest Madeleine Shoemacher. She would enjoy showing a prize like that on her arm, and I suspect her of possessing a strong goatish streak. I may be able to find out. Would that help our inquiry?”

“It is a loose end I wonder about. I'd like to know if he did not kill his aunt,” Fred said.

“I will look into it. An element of your thinking is that if he did not, someone else did, whom we may encounter?”

“I'm going up to meet the healer,” Fred said.

He let Clay drive away before he walked up the stairs to the front door and buzzed next to the empty space which yesterday had carried the cardboard tag with the name Blake. In forty-seven seconds, Eunice Cover-Hoover appeared in back of the door's glass. Her hair was pinned up. She was in jeans and a thin, pink, long-sleeved top looking like a T-shirt designed for a cool climate. When she opened the door to him she wafted a scent of forbidden luxury. Her face was lean, her skin stark white—whiter than Molly's description of her had prepared him for—and her breasts would win prizes if she cared to offer them in competition.

Eunice Cover-Hoover searched Fred's soul while he stood on the porch. She pursed her lips but reserved judgment. “Yes?” she admitted.

“I want to talk to you,” Fred said.

“Yes?”

“About your work.”

“Yes?”

“Why don't we go upstairs?” Fred said.

Cover-Hoover completed her judgment. “Come up.” She led him up the stairs. “There was another man here not long ago,” she said, between the second floor and the third.

“There was?” Fred asked.

She closed them into the apartment, and sat on the couch where yesterday Fred had deposited the helpless Sandy Blake. Fred went to the kitchen for the chair he favored for himself. He saw no signs of packing, or of a hurried departure, but the bedroom door was closed. The two mugs he'd intended making coffee in were on the table still, and the instant-coffee jar was open as he'd left it, with the spoon tilted in.

“Where is Sandy Blake?” Fred asked, bringing the chair back and sitting.

“Her slave name?” Cover-Hoover asked. “Interesting. My relationship with her is confidential. She is very much disturbed. She is in a fragile transitional phase. However, she is safe, and in good hands.”

“I want to talk to her.”

Cover-Hoover said, “The healing process has been interrupted, but it will continue if she is not disturbed. What is your interest?”

“I was here yesterday and saw a painting,” Fred said.

“There is no painting,” Cover-Hoover said. “The other gentleman also asked about it. With that I am not able to help you. There is no painting.” She smiled and spread her arms, allowing her breasts to emphasize the finality of the denial. Her voice was soft, definite, and reassuring. Its cadences presupposed acquiescence.

Fred said, “I know, I've seen your photo in the paper. Your name is—wait a minute, I'll remember it—Cover-Hoover, the author of
Power of Darkness.
Is this one of the people who was offered up?”

What was this woman dressed for? Moving? Was she here to pack a bag for her patient? Cover-Hoover continued evenly, “I allowed you to come up for one reason. I want to make sure you hear me. I do not know what relationship you claim with my patient; but it is deleterious. Stay away from her.”

Fred said, “Not to be rude, but we seem to have started off on the wrong foot.”

“You are trespassing. I have nothing to add.”

“I don't care where she is or how she is,” Fred said. “I bought part of a painting I managed to trace here, and I saw another part here yesterday. Upset as she happened to be, I could not offer to buy it. If you can tell her…”

“Because I am a physician I can't help noticing that you have suffered,” Cover-Hoover interrupted. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, raising them slightly to observe him better. “You have suffered far more than what shows in the overt scars I see on your face.”

Fred hadn't seen it coming, but he knew the routine: the quick shift, soft music, move to the tender vulnerable part if you can find it. Get them to accept your sympathy and you have them by the balls. Caress until the moment comes to squeeze.

“Scars?” Fred asked.

“On your cheek and chin.”

“Not when I shaved this morning.”

*   *   *

“I got nowhere with her,” Fred told Molly. “I presume she's got my informant locked away somewhere, playing Go Fish with her other personalities. I don't exactly want to start following Cover-Hoover around town. I am not going to land that painting either by guile or by duress. They have it sequestered, like the patient. It's infuriating.” He'd called to see if Molly and the kids were hungry for pizza. “I suppose she has a legal means to spirit a person away like that?” Fred added.

“Loving-caring rises above legal.”

“I'll have another look at that railroad bridge. Then I'll come back to Arlington. I haven't seen much of the kids. Maybe there's a game I can watch with Sam.”

“He's watching one now.”

Fred had driven to Porter Square after his dead-end talk with Cover-Hoover, and was talking from a pay phone in the vestibule of the Star Market. “Just now, when you used that phrase loving-caring,” Fred told Molly, “it brought an image to mind: a piece of fruit, maybe a pear, falls to the ground and starts rotting where it's bruised, making pheromones the caregivers can't miss. They crawl all over the thing: wasps and flies, all taking their little pieces while the structure of their host dissolves.”

Molly said, “When you get in with the pizza—make it pepperoni and onion, will you? Terry can give me her onions. Take a look at the incorporation papers. I made you copies.”

*   *   *

Fred sat with Sam in Molly's living room joining the basketball game in progress. Terry stood around for a while, trying to enjoy it, but she could not become immersed. She was already in her Red Sox pajamas. “Are you getting taller?” Fred asked. “Or are my eyes getting lower?” Fred had the couch. Sam lay on the rug not far away, but far enough to keep his independence.

“They just go back and forth,” Terry complained. “In baseball at least you go somewhere.”

“Shut up,” Sam told her.

“Have a seat,” Fred said.

“How come you're sleeping downstairs now, Fred?” Terry asked, sitting beside him.

“Shut up, Terry,” Sam said, outraged at her directness.

“It's OK,” Fred said. “You know how sometimes you like to go in your room and slam the door?” Terry denied it. “Your mom's the same way. Everyone is.”

“That's how come Fred has another place,” Sam said.

“You have children over there?” Terry asked.

“Shut up, Terry,” Sam said.

“It's what you
said,
” Terry protested.

“I said ‘I bet,'” Sam answered. “I never said he
does.
”

Fred said, “Can you two give me thirty seconds of your attention while the TV is on?”

“Wait for a time-out or a commercial,” Sam advised. “Then you'll have a minute.” They waited until the game was interrupted by commerce. “OK,” Sam said.

Fred told them, “OK. I have no children. That's one. Two is I plan to live here unless your mom asks me not to.”

“That was fifteen seconds,” Sam said. “Not even quite. Let's watch the game.”

*   *   *

Molly had gone to bed before the game finished, and Terry followed her. Sam saw the game through, staying up since it was Friday night. After he'd gone to bed, Fred sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and read the incorporation papers pertaining to Adult-Rescue, Inc.

“Survivors,” Fred grumbled, shaking his head. “Survivors, survivors. If everyone's a survivor how can anyone be singled out? How do we distinguish who's had real trouble? The most robust are always first at the trough of mercy, shoving the weak aside.”

24

Saturday morning Fred should have been free, unless there was auction business pressing, but he was not; and in any case, Molly told him, she would not have lunch with him. “Errands to run and fish to fry,” she said. “A woman's got to keep her mystery.” She smiled and looked distressed.

They dawdled over coffee. At around ten o'clock Terry came down still wearing her pajamas. She sat and confronted a bowl of Choco-Flix.

Fred looked up from the paper. “It's interesting, your business and mine coming together from different angles. Cover-Hoover's foundation has three trustees,” he remarked to Molly. “They all report the same address on Brattle Street.”

“I saw that,” Molly said. “They all used the same address as the office. Must be the corporate address. All three officers perform executive functions. Cover-Hoover directs, Boardman Templeton is treasurer, and the recording secretary is listed as Ann Clarke. Terry, I want you to have milk with those.”

Terry was eating her Choco-Flix dry, one at a time. Fred poured a glass of milk for her. She made a face and drank it like medicine.

“Founded four years ago,” Fred said. “Do they have to place their tax reports and other financial records in a publicly accessible place?”

“How come you don't have anything, Fred?” Terry asked. “It's like you don't live anywhere.”

Molly said, “I'm finding out. The incorporation documents I got anticipate an initial deposit of ex thousand, and they are obliged by law to spend five percent of their capital value every year—which leaves them room to add to their capital out of earnings if they want, depending how much better they earn than five percent. They have to tell the Attorney General and the IRS what they are doing, and supposedly those guys represent us.”

“Whatever you can learn,” Fred said. “Maybe it helps me get a line on where the painting was, even if I can't find where the rest of it is. Terry, to answer your question: there's not really anything I need. No, wait. I'm wrong.”

Terry's face brightened with interest.

“I need a baseball glove,” Fred said. “If I had a glove I know right where I'd keep it. I'd hang it by the door into the garage, where your mom keeps the broom.” Fred pointed and Terry had to turn to see the place. “What's more,” Fred said, “my birthday is next week.”

“It is?” Molly and Terry asked.

“Tuesday,” Fred said. “March twenty-second.”

“How old will you be?” Sam demanded, entering.

“I don't know,” Fred said. “Old enough to vote. My parents were kind of forgetful on the year. But they did know the date, March twenty-second. We always had Chinese food to celebrate.”

“Unusual in Iowa in those days,” Molly noted.

“By then we'd moved to Illinois. Maradocia, Illinois. It was unusual there, too, Chinese food, you are going to say. Right. That's what made it a celebration.”

Terry and Sam looked at each other secretively. Sam snatched the Choco-Flix box.

“I wish I had the heart to start figuring out the subject of that portrait,” Fred said. “It's hard, given I may never see it again. What kind of game are those idiots playing?”

“What idiots?” Terry asked, offended.