I had answered Lawrence’s special cell phone. No word, then.
Only one phone left. I grabbed it by the fourth or fifth ring, dread in my heart, wondering if it was Curt Chesak.
“Hey,” a male voice said.
But it was someone else.
“Hey yourself.”
It was Felix Tinios.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Such an open-ended message. “Lots, but it can wait.”
“Up for a meal?”
I sat up. “Sure.”
“You know that place you took me for my birthday last year? I mean, not that place. The other place.”
“Sure, I remember. What time?”
“That time, minus seven.”
“See you.”
“Great.”
I got up, stripped off my clothes and opened a window. I draped my clothes over the window, hoping the air would remove the worst of the smoky stench. Then I took a long shower and thought through a number of things.
Once I was dressed, the phone rang yet again, and this time it was the room’s phone. I picked it up, and the sympathetic desk clerk from earlier said, “Lewis? There’s someone down here who wants to see you.”
“Who is it?”
“She says she’s a reporter from the Tyler Chronicle.”
Paula Quinn. A lover from some time ago, a sweet friend, and someone who had nearly gotten killed the day Bronson Toles was shot. She had been standing next to him when the shot blew off his head, and later, the same shooter — Victor Toles — had tried a second time to kill her.
A rough couple of weeks, ending up with her pledging her undying love for me, and then going on a trip with her boyfriend out West.
This rotten day was going places I hadn’t even imagined.
“Tell her I’ll be right down.”
Paula was waiting for me in the lobby area of the Lafayette House. Her blond hair had been layered short in an attempt to hide her ears, which didn’t quite work, and it also managed to highlight her pug nose. She had on a knee-length black coat and she looked troubled, reporter’s notebook in her slim hands as I came over to her, a digital camera hanging from her shoulder.
“Oh, Lewis,” she said, and she came into my arms for a very long and warm hug. When we stepped apart, she said, “Your poor, poor house… ”
I could only nod. She touched my cheek. “How are you doing? I see you haven’t shaved in a while.”
“Not that great. At some point I’m going to have to go across the street and survey what’s left… if anything. Guess I should have packed a razor before I left.”
“Do you know what happened? How it started?”
“Not a thing. I was in Exonia, visiting Diane Woods, when I heard about the fire.”
“I just saw a guy arrive from the State Fire Marshal’s office before I came in here,” she said. “You want to go over and see him?”
“Not right now.”
Her eyebrows raised at that. “Not right now? Why not?”
“I’ve got something else going on. Look, what’s across the street isn’t going to leave any time soon.”
“But don’t you want to know if they think it was arson or accidental?”
I didn’t say anything. She eyed me. “You already know, don’t you?”
“Paula, you look great. How was your trip with the town counsel, Mister Sullivan?”
A flickering smile. “Did me lots of good. And please, his name’s Mark. You’re allowed to say his name.”
“Gee, thanks, I’ll remember that.”
“I tell you, we had a great, great time. Both of us. Him away from the town hall, me away from the newspaper. It was good to just be out there in Colorado, the two of us, with all those mountains. Did some skiing, visited some ghost towns, just relaxed. Now, good job on changing the subject, Lewis, but your house. You already know what happened, don’t you. Was it arson? Who could it be? I mean… oh.”
I glanced around the lobby to see if we were being watched. The lobby was covered with a colorful rug with comfortable chairs and settees, and a fireplace on the other side had a cheery little flame. Yeah, nice little trapped cheery flame, right where it belonged.
Paula said: “Before I left on my trip, you said you had something to do. Something about finding the guy who beat up Diane Woods. That’s what’s going on, isn’t it?”
“Is this Paula Quinn my friend asking me, or Paula Quinn assistant editor of the Chronicle?”
“By asking that,” she said, voice sharp, “you’re making an assumption that I’m not here as your friend.”
“I’m asking that,” I replied, “because I need to do something, and I don’t need the publicity, and Paula, I cherish you and what we have and all that, but my house is burning down at this moment, and I’m not in the best of moods.”
She slowly nodded. “Sorry.”
“No apologies needed. So you’re doing better?”
She smiled, lifted up her left hand, wiggled the fingers. I spotted the ring.
Something both sweet and sour went through me. “Congratulations, Paula. When’s the blessed event?”
“Next June.”
“Am I invited?”
“Stupid question. Of course.”
“Well, I’m thinking about the town counsel, I mean, Mark. I don’t think he cares that much for me.”
She leaned over, kissed me on the cheek. “I do, and that’s what counts.” There was a pause, and she said: “I need to tell you something. The day the sniper tried to shoot me at my condo, and when I hid out at your house, I said some things.”
Paula certainly had, I recalled, telling me that she had always loved me, and that she was my true love, and she was saying those things right up to when her boyfriend — now fiancé—had come to my house to pick her up.
“You were scared. You were in shock. I understand.”
She seemed relieved. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “About that, yes. About my house and everything else, no.”
That earned me another kiss on the cheek, and I went back up to my room, and she went back outside to the story.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When I finally left the Lafayette House, I drove out of the parking lot and did my best to avoid the scene across the street. People were still gathered around the rock knoll, looking down, and there was still some smoke drifting up, but I tried to keep my eyes on the road. I next made my way to Manchester, and the usually fifty-minute trip took nearly an hour and a half, because I went along some back roads and state roads, avoiding the major east-west highway that runs from Tyler to Manchester. The good thing was that I was driving Kara’s rattling Subaru, which meant it probably wasn’t carrying a tracking device. The bad thing was that with all the political bumper stickers attached to the rear, I was about as visible as an NRA member at a vegan convention.
In Manchester, the state’s largest city, I pulled into a neighborhood along the banks of the Amoskeag River, where huge brick mill buildings more than a century old had been converted into artists’ lofts, condos, office space, and restaurants. I checked my watch. Exactly noon. I parked at the far end of one long mill building, where the end unit hosted Fratello’s Restaurant, a grand Italian place that attracted a lot of the professionals who worked in the nearby renovated office spaces.
Last year, Felix and I had ended up here for a promised birthday dinner that had taken an odd turn. We were supposed to go to a small Italian eatery down the road in Bedford that had gotten rave reviews in the local newspapers, and when we got to the place, it was closed with a sign outside saying the owner/chef had unexpectedly become ill. Later, the owner/chef of that tiny Italian eatery was found at Logan Airport. In his car. In the trunk.