The Other Widow (18 page)

Good thing. Dorrie would be totally lost. Francine's spreadsheets aren't at all like the ones Joe used when he was showing her the basics, pushing her to take Francine's place when she leaves. “It's a more secure position,” he'd said at the time. “You'll be indispensable and so”—he'd smiled—“
indispensed
!” “He wasn't using actual numbers,” Francine said when Dorrie pointed out the huge discrepancies between the sets of spreadsheets. “Why
would
he? In
training
?” But that's all moot now anyway. She and Francine are simply putting the quarterly numbers together so Francine can leave with a clear conscience. Edward's taken over completely where the finances are concerned. “Until he gets things straightened out,' ” Francine reported a few days ago. And then she'd tsk-tsked. “Poor man,” she'd said. “Such a mess to sort through,” and she'd gone back to filing her nails.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Brennan! Maggie, I mean! No of course not. Please.” Dorrie reminds herself that she is an actress. She smiles. A warm, welcoming phony smile. Three toes on her left foot are going numb inside her boot. She swallows the bite of muffin and lifts her mug of cocoa in a little toast as Brennan pulls out a chair and sits down across the table.

For a minute, Brennan fiddles with the napkin dispenser, fumbles out a couple of thin papery wipes. “We match today,” she says, and Dorrie notices the bright yellow sweater poking out from Brennan's understated leather coat. “Your boots, and my sweater.”

“Yes. Nice—umm—nice sweater.” It isn't, really. It's awful. She smiles. She'd pegged Brennan for a fashionista.

“My nephew picked it out,” Brennan says, and Dorrie notices she looks a little embarrassed. “It's like staring at the sun. Horrible. He's turning three today. I'm stopping by his party on my lunch break, sooo—” She points to the sweater.

“Careful there,” Dorrie says. “You'll start a fad.” She looks around behind her. All they need now is for Jeananne to come in and remember something else about Joe's possible affair.

“That what
you're
trying to do?” Brennan stares down at Dorrie's feet.

“Well. No. I just—when I bought them I was in kind of a strange mood. Silly, I guess. A silly mood, and I saw these and I just—”

“No. I meant wearing them on the wrong feet.”

“Oh.” Shit. “They're a little loose,” Dorrie tells her. “I wear them both ways,” which makes no sense, but it sounds better than the truth, that she was in such a mad rush to get away from Brennan, she'd stuck her feet in them wrong. “You should get yourself a muffin,” she says. “They're really good here. They make them. In the back. In the kitchen. I guess they've got a whole—you know—a whole bakery thing set up in back.”

Brennan shakes her head. “Birthday party. Like I said. Cake. Ice cream. The works. Everything I don't need. What's that you're drinking?”

“Hot chocolate.” Again Dorrie has a quick stab. Dread and something else. This business about the hot chocolate. Brennan is acting, too, fishing for information.

“It's excellent here,” Dorrie says. “It's not my usual choice, hot chocolate. I'd walk through blizzards for a good ginger tea, but it's—well, like I said—they make outstanding cocoa here. You should get yourself a cup.”

“Next time,” Brennan says.

Dorrie smiles; she slows down, concentrates on breathing, the way she does before she goes onstage. She wraps her muffin in tissue paper, sticks it back in the bag with Jeananne's. She'll have it for lunch while Brennan's gobbling down birthday cake at her nephew's party. “Well.” She makes a tiny move to stand. “I'd love to stay and chat . . .”

“Dorrie.” Brennan glances at her empty mug. “Your boss's death is looking a little more complicated than I first thought.”

Dorrie thinks of the other vehicle, the near collision just before the accident, the lurking car—wonders if a witness has come forward. “Suicide?” She slumps back in her chair.

“No.”

“Wait. You're telling me he was—?”

“No,” “Brennan says. “I'm not telling you anything. I'm not a cop. I'm an insurance investigator. What I
am
saying is that Joe. Lindsay's death does not
appear
to
me
to have been accidental.” She glances down at Dorrie's mug again. “And that there was someone in the car with him the night he died.”

Of course, Dorrie thinks. The hot chocolate strewn from one end of the front seat to the other. Brennan must know about it. “His wife, maybe? Karen?”

“I'm telling you this because whoever was in the car with Mr. Lindsay could be in danger. I don't know about the details—
who
it was,
why
it was—and I don't care. I'm just saying whoever was in the car could be in trouble.”

Before Dorrie can reply, there's a racket outside on the street. Mug Me comes alive with customers running to windows and grabbing coats, with the baker taking off his apron, hurrying out from behind the counter. Someone overturns a chair, running for the door. Brennan's face goes white. The dread that Dorrie's felt all day intensifies.

“What happened?” She stands up. “What?” she says again, but no one answers. She rushes to the window but there are too many people crowded up against it, blocking it with their bodies. She can't see out. Behind her, Brennan shakes her head, but more as a gesture of confusion than an answer. Dorrie grabs her bag and puts on her coat, leaves Brennan alone at their table, alone in the coffee shop, as she pushes through the door and outside to the street.

There's a huge crowd. Where have they come from, all these people? Dorrie can't see anything at all. A minute or two later, an ambulance rounds the corner with its sirens blaring. Two police cars are parked at an angle across the road. They'll have to move, Dorrie thinks. Fast. They're blocking the ambulance. She feels a hand on her back and whirls around. Brennan stands beside her.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Dorrie takes a few steps forward. “Of course. Can you see what—?” But Brennan is already gone, nearly out of sight inside the crowd, talking with the cops. Dorrie pushes forward through the jumble of bodies. And then she sees it.

Her coat.

Oh God no!

The Goodwill coat lies on the street, its sleeves together, as if someone's folded it carefully and set it in a pool of slushy crumbly snow. Red. Red snow. Dorrie's eyes shift slightly to the left, take in the jumbled hair, the small gloved hand. Jeananne.

She pushes past the onlookers and tries to reach her friend, to whisper in her ear, to let her know she's not alone, that everything will be okay.
Jeananne!
She's on her knees.
Jeananne!
But they nudge her away. Someone pulls her, tugs her backward. Brennan. “They need the space,” she says, but Dorrie pulls against her, slaps at her. She's screaming; she can barely hear Brennan. Her words are tiny disconnected chunks of sound. Like ice. Like snow
. “I'm here. Jeananne. I'm right here!”

There's so much noise around her. Dorrie only catches bits and pieces of accounts, of witnesses' reports.
A car,
she hears,
a dark sedan. So fast!
a voice says
. Out of nowhere. Braked at the last second. Too late. Didn't stop. Didn't even slow down.

Dorrie watches as the paramedics slide the stretcher inside the ambulance and close the door. The police cars are already gone and the ambulance takes off. Its sirens blare. Brennan stands beside her with her hands balled up in fists. Her yellow sweater is a sad and blatant contradiction to the blood that runs along the street beneath her feet; her skin is deathly pale. “Jeananne!” Dorrie screams again, her voice muffled by the sounds of the ambulance, the murmurs of the crowd, “I have to go to the hospital,” she says. “I have to let her know I'm there.”

Brennan nods. She gestures toward a car pulled against the curb, closer to Home Runs. “I'll drop you.” But Dorrie shakes her head, declines the offer.

When they part ways on the sidewalk, when Brennan opens her car door with a trembling hand, Dorrie stops. She turns around. “Brennan,” she says. “It was mine. The coat. She was wearing my coat.”

XXI

MAGGIE

M
aggie does not at first pull away from the curb. Instead she sits with her hands on the steering wheel, the key stuck in the ignition. She doesn't turn it. The inside of the car is silent. Cold. People walk along the sidewalk as if nothing has happened, as if a young woman wasn't run down minutes earlier on this same street. Maggie stares through the windshield where flakes drift down like afterthoughts. She doesn't really see them. She doesn't see the sky, gray and cloudy after such a bright white start, the blue sky, the blazing sun covered now by clouds. She doesn't see any of this. What she sees is Jeananne's body hurled into the air. She sees it even with her eyes closed, the small body being tossed into the sky, landing like a rag doll on the pavement.

She shakes her head. That isn't right. She didn't see it happen. She didn't see the car. She didn't even see Jeananne until she stooped down next to Dorrie to get her out of the way, to give the EMTs a chance to do their jobs.

Her brain is filled with bodies exploding outward toward the sky, with screams and blood and broken people, broken lives, broken minds. She reaches for the key and starts the ignition. She looks at her hands shaking on the steering wheel, takes a deep breath and then another and another. She turns on her iPod, lets the music fill her head, lets Modest Mouse drive out the memory of Iraq, the Humvee—the image of Jeananne lying on the pavement, her eyes closed, her face drained of color, dull in the faded brightness of the day, as if she was already gone.

She glances at her watch. Twelve. The birthday party will be starting. Timmy will be tearing through his presents, his plastic soldiers, horses, blocks, the Fisher-Price piano Maggie's sister bought for him, the paints and drawing table, clothes from Maggie's mom. She looks over her shoulder at her own gift sitting on the backseat, the caterpillar light that projects the galaxy, so Timmy can look up at night and see the universe change colors on the ceiling over his bed. Maggie runs her hand through her hair and sticks on her dark glasses, even though the light outside is dim. She puts the car in gear and slowly pulls away from the curb.

She leaves the party after only an hour. Early but her nephew barely notices. He's busy with a dump truck with a noisy horn. “Who gave him that?” Maggie asked her sister, as the horn beeped endlessly across the living room. “You piss somebody off?” It was uncomfortable being there. She doesn't really get along with Dave, her sister's husband. Even so, the neighbors were nice enough, the kids were cute. It was good to see the family, even though her mother kept an eye on Maggie the whole time. “You okay?” her mother asked her every five minutes or so. “You look a little pale.”

She was glad to go. She's glad to be heading back to the flimsy office, the numbers that wait for her in black and white across the page. Today she's grateful for her boring job.

She thumbs through a stack of claims she needs to look into and then she phones Home Runs. “This is Maggie Brennan,” she says. “The woman who was hit. Jeananne. Is there any word on her condition?” No, the woman on the other end says. Not that she's heard, anyway. Not so far. She's a temp, she says, so she's not really in the loop, and Dorrie hasn't come back to the office yet. “Shall I have her call you?” she says, but Maggie tells her no. She'll check back later.

She makes a few more phone calls, walks down to talk with a couple of the guys at the end of the hall, and then stares at the two claims on Joseph Lindsay in the file on her desk.

On impulse, Maggie rifles through her purse and finds the number for the bakery near Newbury. “Hey,” she says, when a young man answers the phone. “This is Maggie Brennan. I spoke to you about the security tapes from the night of the accident over on—yeah. Right. Your uncle back yet?”

It takes only a minute for the uncle to find footage from the Friday night Joe Lindsay died. “Craig Zant,” he says, extending his hand to Maggie and then again to Hank when he ducks in. Hank's on duty; he comes in only long enough to get the ball rolling before he heads back to the squad car, where his impatient partner waits.

Craig is cordial, but he's anxious to get this over with. He's hung a little
CLOSED
sign on the front door and a few people have already had their hands on the knob before they noticed the sign. “Nine o'clock on,” Maggie says. “That's all I need to see.”

There isn't much. Lots of darkness, lots of snow. They stand together at the counter, staring at Craig's iPad, watching snow and night as customers repel off the bakery door. The owner huffs and puffs and fidgets. “What exactly is this all about?” he wants to know, and Maggie tells him there was a fatality that night—“a death over on Newbury.”

“We aren't actually
on
Newbury, in case that escaped you, young lady,” the owner says, antsy. Grumpy. The nephew was much nicer, but he isn't here, only the uncle. Craig. You get what you get.

“Wait!” Maggie says. “Freeze it!” And just that quickly she is there. Under the awning, right in the light. Damn. Maggie couldn't have posed her any better. She stares straight ahead, and then she reaches up, pulls her hat down low across her forehead, and it's stained with something dark. Blood. No doubt about it. Dorrie stands there staring at herself in Craig Zant's shop-front window in that one square of dusty light. Right onstage, like the actress she is. “Thanks,” Maggie says. “Possible to send me a copy?” She writes her e-mail address down on a paper bag, buys a couple of pastries, leaves an extra ten dollars on the counter.