Mansions Of The Dead (35 page)

“Yeah,” Camille said. “And Drew has this plan to fix them up and connect them and make them into apartments for yuppies or something.”

“But I don’t understand,” Sweeney said. “If anything, that would suggest that John Putnam—or his family—was hurt by the tunnel project.”

“Except there was some kind of insurance policy on the houses,” Camille said. “I got some in my trust. We all did.”

“Yeah, so I found out about the insurance settlement and started wondering. The insurance company’s trying to get it back from the government, but that could drag on for years and in the meantime, the family did very well. I started looking into it and I started wondering if the drilling mistake wasn’t a mistake.”

“But John Putnam couldn’t have organized . . . ”

“He wouldn’t have had to organize anything. He was the chair of the transportation committee. He saw the engineering plans and he’d studied up on this stuff. He would have realized that it was too close to the surface, especially in the Back Bay, which was basically swamp anyway, and that it would do damage to the buildings.”

“So he let the plans go forward to get the insurance money?” Camille was looking dismayed.

“I don’t know. I stopped looking into it.”

“Why didn’t you write the story, Bill? We agreed when we started this thing that you weren’t going to pull any punches. It would have been a two-week story, three weeks tops. I could have very convincingly said that I was like ten years old when this was all going on.”

“I just . . . I don’t know. It wouldn’t be good for the campaign. You know that. And what does it really matter? Who cares about all this old stuff anyway?” He reached forward and rubbed her shoulder.

Suddenly, Sweeney thought of Brad’s face as he’d sat on the floor of her office and asked whether he should reveal something he’d learned, something that could hurt someone. And then, the night he’d died, he’d been berating himself for not having enough courage. Courage for what?

“Did Brad know about this?” she asked McCann.

“Brad? I don’t think so. I mean, how could he?”

“I don’t know. He was very interested in his great-great-great-grandparents, who bought the Back Bay land. Maybe he looked into it further.”

“Brad wasn’t interested in stuff like this,” Camille said. “He liked gravestones and old books and paintings.”

“Still,” McCann said. “You never know.”

QUINN AND MARINO WERE
having their lunch at the Star-bucks across from the station when Sweeney called Quinn’s cell phone.

“What do you want?” he asked, trying to sound busy.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me,” she said. “But I found out about it from his friends so now we can talk about it. I hadn’t thought about this before, but what if it was about the drugs?”

“What?” Quinn looked over at Marino, who was reading
The Man from Comanche Falls
. On the cover, a blond, buxom cowgirl was being ravished over the back of a horse. “What are you talking about?”

He sensed her exasperation over the phone. “You know, the drugs he’d taken that night. No, that’s stupid. It’s not like there’s a rip-roaring psychedelic mushroom trade at the university. It’s not the kind of drug that drug dealers kill people over is it? I mean it’s the kind of thing that philosophy Ph.D.s do on the weekend, mushrooms.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Marino looked up, curious now about who he was talking to.

Sweeney said, “Brad ate psychedelic mushrooms the night he died. Didn’t you know?”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked after a moment.

“Not completely, but my students told me that they’d all been doing them. I just assumed that Brad . . . ”

“No.” He said it as though he was trying to convince himself. “They would have tested for it. College student? They have to do a special psilocybin test, but I’m sure they did it.”

“Well, maybe all his friends ate them, but he didn’t. But if he didn’t, why was he so out of control? The way his friends were describing his behavior, it was like he was completely tripped out. If it wasn’t the drugs, then what was it?”

“I don’t know.” Marino was looking up from his book now and was listening to Quinn’s side of the conversation. “Listen, let me look into it. Thanks for calling.” He disconnected before she could ask him if she could help.

“What was that all about?” Marino asked.

Quinn looked around the café, just to make sure there wasn’t anybody they knew. “What if I told you that the Putnam kid was taking magic mushrooms the night he died?”

“I’d say it didn’t show up at the lab. And they would have tested for psilocybin. They always do with something like this.”

“Well, maybe they missed it. Or maybe he didn’t take them that night, but he took them some other night. Besides, if all the kids he was with that night were taking them, maybe that’s what the murder was about. What do you think?”

Marino put the book facedown on the table. “I think that’s not a bad idea. Maybe we should look into it a little.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Why don’t you say good-bye to . . . ” He picked up Marino’s paperback and read the back cover. “Savannah West. And we’ll hit the trail.”

They started with Jack Putnam.

“I’d say he’d be the most likely to know about his brother’s drug habits,” Marino said as they drove into the Back Bay. “He’s the closest in
age, an artist and whatnot. If he doesn’t know anything, maybe the other brother. I’m reluctant to get into it with the sister. We say the word drugs and she’s going to have her people down on us like nobody’s business.”

“The lab said they did test for psilocybin. Negative. So whatever he might have been doing, he wasn’t doing it that night.”

Quinn turned onto Comm. Ave. and parked a couple houses down from Jack Putnam’s in front of a fire hydrant.

As he got out of the car, Marino said, “I called the university police again. They weren’t aware of any kind of psilocybin ring or anything, though they said it’s fairly common around campus. Every couple of months they’ll get a kid who’s had a bad mushroom trip coming into the health center. But they didn’t seem overly concerned.”

They knocked on the street level front door, and when there was no answer, Quinn pressed the buzzer. Still no answer.

“Not here,” Marino said. “We can call and make an appointment to see him, but I want to ask someone in the family about this before they get warned. You know what I mean? See what happens when we say, ‘Did your brother take drugs, Mr. Putnam?’ “

“Yeah, maybe we should head out to Weston. It’s what—?” Quinn checked his watch. “Four. They might be home. Worth a shot.”

With rush hour traffic out of the city, it took them nearly an hour to get out to Weston.

“Pretty nice out here, huh?” Marino was looking out the window as they passed a couple of construction sites, the big new houses sprouting up where the old ones had been.

“Yeah. Think of it. I’d kill for one of those houses, and they’re knocking ‘em down to put up something even bigger and better.”

They turned into the Putnams’ long driveway and as they approached the big house, Marino gave a low whistle.

“Yeah, I know,” Quinn said, getting out of his car. In the dusky light, the house was dark and lonely-looking. They walked up to the front door and rang the bell, but were met with the same silence they’d been met with at Jack Putnam’s.

“What’s the deal? They all go away somewhere?” Marino went and
looked in the window next to the front door, but it was obscured by a lace curtain.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to try again.”

They were driving back down the long driveway when a teenage girl pushing a baby carriage came out of some hedges along the driveway, causing Quinn to slow down and wait for her to cross the road. She seemed to be heading for another one of the large, new houses.

He rolled down the window and called out, “Hey, do you know where the Putnams are? We’re trying to get in touch with them.”

She turned around and he saw that she was older than she’d appeared from behind. Her pretty, fair face, framed with stringy blond hair, was afraid.

“We’re police,” he said, to try to allay her fears, but she only looked more nervous than before and leaned forward to take a chubby newborn out of the stroller, cuddling it to her as though she thought she had to protect it from them.

“I don’t know,” she said finally in lightly accented but otherwise perfect English. Swedish, Quinn thought, that or German. “They might have gone down to Newport. His brother died and they’ve been gone a lot. You probably read about it in the newspaper.”

“That’s kind of what we’re here about. You know them very well?”

“Not really. I work for the Sorensens.” She pointed to the big house behind her. “They just moved in and Mrs. Sorensen had the baby right when they got here, so they don’t really know any of the neighbors.”

“Do you live with them?”

“Ya,” she said. “I’m the au pair.”

“Oh. So you don’t have any idea where the Putnams are?”

“No. Maybe he’s working. He works a lot of nights.”

“Nights? Isn’t he a lawyer?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. But he goes out at night a lot. I always assumed it was work.”

“What do you mean?” Quinn watched her eyes flick past him to Marino, who was leaning across so he could hear what she had to say.

“He goes out at night. Late.”

“What do you mean when you say late?” The girl had Marino’s attention now.

“Uh . . . You know, ten, eleven. Sometimes later. The only reason I know is that we’re up so much these days, with the baby. I always assumed it was work. But . . . I hope I haven’t gotten him in trouble.”

“Not at all. Thanks a lot.” Quinn gave Marino a look. “He does this every night?”

“No, not every night.”

“What would you say, four out of five nights?”

She thought for a minute as the baby grabbed at her blond hair. Expertly, she loosened the baby’s grip and replaced the hair with a finger. “Maybe three out of five.”

“What about the weekends?”

“Yeah, sometimes the weekends too.”

“How about last Saturday or the Saturday before that?”

“I think so. I’m not positive, though. The days all seem to kind of run together now, you know. With the baby. Mr. and Mrs. Sorensen have to be at work early so I get up with him in the night. But I think I do remember seeing him the last couple Saturdays.” She looked worried again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have . . . I don’t want you to think I was spying on him or anything. It’s just that the nursery looks out on their driveway and when I’m trying to get the baby to sleep, I like to walk around the room with him. He likes looking out the window. I don’t know if he can see anything, but it kind of seems like it.”

“No,” Quinn said, trying to look reassuring. “You’ve done the right thing.”

“We shoulda talked to her before,” Marino said once Quinn had rolled the window up.

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I think we talked to the parents, but we didn’t think about the nanny. So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. We can call them, figure out where they are, but it gives them a chance to come up with a story. Like I said, I just want to see his face when we ask him.”

‘Yeah.” Quinn was thinking about it when a set of headlights turned onto the driveway. A black SUV slowed and Drew Putnam’s face appeared as the tinted window came down.

“Can I . . . ? Oh, hi, Detective Quinn.”

“Hi, Mr. Putnam. Sorry about this, but we just wanted to talk to you and your wife for a second. Could we come in? It won’t take long.”

Drew Putnam turned to look at his wife, who was sitting next to him, and in the instant before he turned back and said, “Yes, of course. We’re happy to help you any way we can,” Quinn saw raw fear pass across Melissa Putnam’s face as she glanced at her husband.

Quinn pulled up next to the SUV and raised his eyebrows at Marino, who grinned.

“Lucky break,” Marino said, getting out of the car.

“We had to take Melissa’s car to the shop,” Drew said apologetically as they all walked toward the front door. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.

“No, no. We just got here.”

Drew let them in and as he flicked on the lights in the hallway, Quinn was shocked to see that the entryway and the rooms beyond it were completely emptied out, that the walls had been stripped of all their wallpaper, leaving behind desolate-looking expanses of gray.

“We completely forgot that we’d arranged to have all the rooms done,” Melissa said when she saw the look on his face. “It was awful. They just showed up and there wasn’t anything we could do.”

She led the way into the kitchen and told Quinn and Marino to sit on stools pulled up to a marble island in the middle of the room. She didn’t offer them anything to drink. It struck Quinn that she had been sick. Her blue eyes seemed sunk deep into their sockets and her lips were so pale they almost disappeared against her skin. As they sat, she took a lipstick out of the leather purse she’d carried in from the car and, leaning close to the refrigerator to see her reflection in the stainless steel surface, she rolled the pinkish color onto her lips.