Void in Hearts Read online

  I heard her clip-clop down the inside stairs. The door handle rattled and then opened. Becca smiled at me. She looked me up and down. Then she said, “Boy, that’s a relief.”

  “What is?”

  “That you wore your jeans. I had this panicky feeling you’d show up in a jacket and tie or something, and here I am…”

  She twirled around. She was wearing blue jeans herself, with an orange turtleneck jersey. Both fit snugly. “You look terrific,” I said sincerely.

  “Well, I put on these heels, which makes me feel like a lady of the night. Isn’t that what the Combat Zone hookers wear—tight pants and spike heels?”

  “You don’t look like a lady of the night, Becca.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s disappointing.”

  She took my hand and led me upstairs. The little dining table was spread with a blue cloth. A single candle burned in a simple pewter holder.

  I gave her the wine. “I was promised this would complement, but never overpower, rare lamb chops.”

  She put her hand on my cheek and tiptoed up to kiss me on the chin. I gave her an awkward one-armed hug. She stepped back and smiled. “This is uncomfortable for you, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged and grinned.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “No demands. Why don’t you make yourself a drink and I’ll slide those chops under the broiler and toss the salad. I left Les’s papers in that big attaché case in the living room, if you want to look at them.”

  I found the bottle of Early Times in the cabinet, diminished not a millimeter since I had last poured from it. Becca was working over a big wooden salad bowl, whistling and nipping at a glass of white wine.

  As I left the room, she looked at me over her shoulder and smiled. She was acting very much like a woman who expected to be loved. The idea was becoming less and less unacceptable to me.

  She had stuffed the square leather attaché case with an eclectic assortment of papers—insurance policies, automobile titles, records of bank accounts, old tax forms. Personal stuff as well as business stuff. I shuffled through them distractedly. There appeared to be no will, a complication that I could deal with.

  When Becca called me to the table, I shoved all the documents back into the attaché case. I’d bring them to the office and turn them over to Julie, who would organize them, make some preliminary phone calls, and arrange a session with the good folks at probate.

  The lamb chops were pink and moist and accented perfectly with a hint of garlic. The baby boiled potatoes were buttered and sprinkled with flakes of parsley. The green beans were fresh, cooked al dente. There were chunks of artichoke hearts and avocado in the salad. The claret wasn’t bad.

  Becca told me she had been job-hunting. “The market for middle-aged English teachers who have been out of the classroom for ten years is pretty bearish,” she said. “I’ve put my name in for substitute work.”

  “I can imagine nothing more depressing.”

  She shook her head and frowned. “I’ve got to get out of this place,” she said. “Les never said I couldn’t work, but he didn’t encourage me, either. I kept planning to do something. It just never happened. Another one of those things that didn’t help my self-esteem.”

  “I’ll bet you were a good teacher.”

  “I enjoyed the kids and hated the bureaucracy. I was younger then. Now, I don’t know.”

  “It’s not exactly like you’re over the hill, Becca.”

  “In some ways, I have barely started to climb the hill, sir.”

  I decided she intended something suggestive by that.

  “So,” she said after a few moments of comfortable silence, “are you going to tell me about Les’s killer, or what?”

  “Last night at this time, I knew who it was. I matched a picture with a name, found out where he worked. Now—I don’t know again.” I proceeded to fill her in on my detective work with Derek Hayden—the visit to his office, my journey to his farmhouse in Harvard, my encounter with Brenda Hayden, my discovery of Hayden’s Audi in the Alewife parking garage. Becca studied my face intently as I talked. When I finished, I shrugged and spread my hands. “So I feel as if I’m back at square one,” I said.

  “The pictures, that reminds me,” she said. “I found Les’s camera. The one with the big lens that he used for his snooping.”

  “Where was it?”

  “In his car. It’s been parked right out front all this time, but when it snowed the other night I had to move it. The camera was on the floor on the passenger side. Amazing it didn’t get ripped off in this neighborhood.”

  “As if Les had been taking pictures the night—”

  “The night he got killed,” she finished for me. “I never thought of that. But it makes sense. He was out in his car. Working, unless he was shacked up with somebody. If he was working, that would explain the camera being in the car.”

  “Why don’t you get it for me.”

  She said, “Okay,” and got up from the table. She was back a minute later, carrying in both hands a Canon SLR thirty-five-millimeter camera with a lens about a foot long. The meter showed that twenty-four frames had been exposed. I rewound the film, opened up the camera, removed the little cylinder of film, and deposited it in my pants pocket. Then I handed the camera back to her.

  “I can get this developed,” I said, thinking of Gloria with another confusion of emotions.

  “You think he might’ve been taking pictures at night?”

  I took out the cassette of Fuji film and looked at it. “It’s possible. This is a very fast film he was using. Twelve-hundred speed. It would certainly work indoors. Maybe even in city lights. We’ll see.”

  Becca began to carry the dishes into the kitchen. I got up and helped her. When the table was cleared, she said, “Let’s just leave them in the sink. I’ll load up the dishwasher later. It’s time for a little brandy.”

  I got the bottle and she found two round snifters. We toted them into the living room and placed them on the glass-topped coffee table in front of the sofa. She sat on the sofa. I sat beside her and poured a finger of brandy into each snifter. We lifted them, cupping them in the palms of our hands in the approved fashion. We sipped without the preliminary of a toast. Becca placed her glass on the table and turned to face me. “Ready?” she said.

  Later I lay on my back staring up into the darkness of Becca’s bedroom. Her cheek rested on my shoulder. I could feel her warm breath on my chest and the gentle rise and fall of her breast as she breathed.

  We lay in silence for a long time. I assumed she was sleeping. Then she whispered, “Brady?”

  I twisted my head and kissed her hair. “I’m here.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “Dangerous, thinking. I order you to stop it instantly.”

  She hitched herself up in the bed. I adjusted myself so that she could lean back against me. “No, really,” she said. “I was thinking about Les.”

  “Terrific.”

  She laughed softly. “Not like that, dummy. I was thinking about how he decided to become a detective, and what if things had been different. You know, how your mind sort of goes off in weird directions when you’re totally relaxed and half asleep?”

  “Mmm,” I said.

  “Did he ever tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “How he became a detective?”

  “No. He never did.”

  “It was at a bridge tournament. I’m surprised he never told you. He loved to tell the story.”

  “We mostly just talked business, Becca.” I stroked her flank. I wanted her to stop talking. Instead she sat upright.

  “He suspected this pair of cheating. I guess they were making some unusual leads or something, and Les figured there was no way they would do what they did unless they had found some illegal way to communicate. What I really think was that they beat Les and his partner, and he didn’t think they were that good. You know Les. He never lacked self-esteem.”

&nb
sp; “For sure,” I said, declining to tell her that I really didn’t know Les that well.

  “Anyway,” she continued, her hand resting idly on my leg, “he knew this pair was going to compete in another tournament the next week, so he spoke to the director and told him what he suspected. The director arranged it so Les could keep an eye on them. Everyone at those tournaments knew Les, so his hanging around didn’t arouse any suspicions. About halfway through the first day of the tournament, Les went to the director and said, ‘If East leads a heart, I can tell you how they’re doing it.’ I can still hear Les telling it. He could tell it better than me. Anyway, East did lead a heart. His partner had a void in hearts, so he trumped it, which set the contract. There was nothing in the bidding to suggest a heart lead. Do you understand bridge, Brady?”

  “I play now and then. I have trouble keeping partners.”

  “Because you’re not very good?”

  “No. Because I’m too critical. It’s a character flaw. Bridge brings it out. Nothing else does. So I don’t play too often, and I don’t play with friends.”

  Becca laughed quickly. “It’s a common malady,” she said. “There are lots of ways to cheat at bridge. Lots of people do it. In tournaments it’s harder. People’ve tried voice cues in their bidding, hesitations, subtle inflections. There are ways of holding the cards. Finger cues. Body language. Some of it really clever. But most opponents are very alert to stuff like this. Which is why there’s very little cheating. This pair had a new way. It turns out that West was wearing this diamond ring on his right pinkie. Whenever they were defending a hand, if he wanted a heart lead he’d turn the ring around so that the stone wasn’t showing. And, of course, not turning the ring around told his partner not to lead a heart. Information like that makes winners out of average players in tournament bridge. And Les was the only one to pick it up. He liked to say that nailing those two cheats was ten times the kick of playing bridge. After that, he gradually quit playing professionally and started hiring out as a sort of troubleshooter at the tournaments. He exposed a few more cheats, and one time he caught a woman who was stealing from the rooms of the hotel where the tournament was being held.”

  She fell silent. After a moment she turned and hugged me. There was a panicky, violent quality to her embrace. I could feel her nails dig into my shoulders. “Hey, Becca,” I whispered.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Just let me hold on to you.”

  It was a minute before I realized she was crying. I caressed her ineffectually, rubbing my hand in circles on her back.

  “I was thinking,” she said, sniffing. “If it hadn’t been for that void in hearts, everything would be different. I mean, if Les had been wrong, he’d probably still be a bridge pro. Writing columns. Winning master points for LOL’s. He’d probably still be alive. And I never would have met him. And I wouldn’t have met you. And—but that’s dumb, huh?”

  I stroked her hair. “Kinda dumb.”

  She snuffled and then laughed softly. “Anyway, there wasn’t that much work for a detective who specialized in bridge cheats. But Les really liked snooping around, I guess. Oh, he was a sweet man, in his way. But he had this funny part of him. He used to say about those card cheats, he’d say, ‘Nothing I hate worse than cheats.’ I mean, that’s ironic as hell, since he used to cheat on me regularly. He cheated on me sexually, and he cheated on me emotionally. But he was very up front about it, which to him meant he wasn’t cheating at all. Anyway, he thought cheating at cards was the worst.”

  Her hand began to rub my chest. She squirmed around and kissed my throat. “I’m sorry to talk about Les,” she mumbled.

  “It’s okay.” I touched her chin and she tilted her face up. Her eyes glittered in the darkness, and although I knew it was only tears, there was a feral, predator look on her face that made me hesitate before I kissed her. Then she moved against me and groaned, and I pulled her on top of me so she could follow me down the dark tunnel into brief but blessed oblivion.

  Becca slept fetally, with her knees drawn up toward her chest and her hands squeezed between them. Her velvet-smooth rump was thrust back against the curve of my body. My face was in her hair. It smelled like the breeze after a spring rainstorm. Her head lay across my upper arm, which had gone tingly while I dozed.

  I gently drew my body back from hers. She stirred and wiggled against me. I slid my arm free, stroked her shoulder, and eased myself out of her bed. I dressed in the darkness and felt my way into the living room, where I had left my shoes.

  When I was ready to leave, I went back into the bedroom. I bent to kiss her. Her eyes were wide open. “You have to go?”

  I kissed her forehead. “Yes.”

  The light that entered from the bedroom windows allowed me to see her smile. “What time is it?” she said.

  “A little after four.”

  Her bare arm snaked out from under the covers, touched my jaw, then hooked around my neck, drawing my face down to hers. Her mouth opened under mine. It was she who broke away from the kiss. I straightened up. “I know,” she said. “You’re not available.”

  “Becca—”

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s just right. Keep in touch, Brady.”

  I touched her hair. “I will. I promise.”

  A pale line had begun to show on the ocean’s horizon as I stood by the sliding glass doors of my apartment. I watched the line expand as the earth resolutely rotated to face the sun. Pale swatches of yellow brushed themselves onto the underside of the bank of cumulus clouds over the horizon, transforming them as I watched into gold, then to orange. The promise of a fair winter’s day.

  The appearance of the arc of the sun was sudden, heralded by a startling flash of light. Daybreak happened literally—an instantaneous break from dark to light, from night to day.

  I had dozed only fitfully for a few hours with Becca Katz. Our lovemaking had agitated my system, so that while she slumped easily into deep, peaceful sleep, I fidgeted and squirmed, my mind darting and twisting through mazes of half-real images and concepts that seemed at once brilliant and outrageous. Now I stood at the instant of a new Sunday, too exhausted to pursue any ambition but too wakeful to go to bed.

  So I did the logical things: I fed Mr. Coffee and switched him on, and then I took a shower.

  By the time I emerged, the coffee was ready. I sat with a big mug at the table by the windows. The lower curve of the sun had cleared the Atlantic. The sky was brilliant blue, the ocean a cold, angry gray-green. I checked my watch. Quarter of seven. Still too early to call Gloria. So I made some toast, plastered it with peanut butter, and consumed it between sips of coffee.

  Another culinary triumph from the kitchen of Brady L. Coyne.

  Finally, at seven-thirty, I dialed Gloria’s number. She answered on the third ring with a mumbled, “Hmmm?”

  “I thought you’d be awake. It’s a gorgeous day. Crisp, bright, gorgeous. The sunrise was spectacular.”

  “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

  “Brady, for Christ’s sake, what time is it?”

  “Seven-thirty, Gloria. Already you’ve missed the best part of the day.”

  “So what the hell are you so cheerful about?”

  Becca Katz, I thought. She knows how to cook lamb chops. She loves me a little. But not too much. She hums in her sleep. There’s a gentle, vulnerable roundness of stomach, a soft, inviting slope of hip. “Don’t accuse me of being cheerful,” I said sternly.

  She sighed. “So much for sleeping in. Joey’s off on a ski weekend, hellbent on getting drunk and knocking up Ruthie McAllister, probably. So I thought I’d just do a lazy Sunday morning for myself.” She hesitated, then said quietly, “Like we used to.”

  “When we were much younger,” I said. “The Sunday Times, croissants, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Gallons of coffee.”

  “And a little hanky-panky under the sheets.”

  “That was all before we had kids.”
/>   “That,” said Gloria, “was all before we got married.”

  I felt my joie de vivre draining away, as if someone had yanked out a plug in the bottom of my stomach. “The reason I called—”

  “The weather report, I assumed. To annoy me.”

  “No, I’ve got another roll of film that needs developing. Any chance…?”

  “Today, you mean?”

  “The sooner the better. It’s kind of urgent.”

  “You still playing detective?”

  “Sort of. What do you say?”

  She sighed. “There’s no one here to bring me croissants anyway. It’s not the same if you have to go downstairs and get them yourself. I might as well get up. Come on over. I’ll put the coffee on.”

  “Thanks, hon.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Say what?”

  “Hon. It’s not fair.”

  I was halfway to Wellesley when I remembered Les Katz’s suitcase-size attaché crammed with the documents I would need to settle his estate. It was still in Becca’s living room, on the floor beside the soft chair where I left it when I slipped away in the dark.

  Forgetting it, I supposed, was one of those purposeful accidents Freud loved to analyze. I’d just have to go back and retrieve it someday soon.

  11

  “ARE YOU GOING TO church?” I said to Gloria when she came to the door. She was wearing a calf-length wool skirt, a white blouse with a good deal of lace and frill at the throat, a maroon jacket, and high leather boots.

  She looked smashing.

  “I don’t go to church anymore,” she said with a smile. “You cured me of that a long time ago.”

  “A business meeting, then,” I said as I followed her into the house. “I’m interfering.”

  “You’re not interfering.” She took my parka and tossed it on a chair. We went downstairs.

  I fished the roll of film out of my pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it. “Twelve-hundred. There won’t be much quality to this,” she observed.