Now he drank some of his beer.
“What do you think happened to Jack?” Molly said.
Nellie was giving her room.
“I was under the impression that it’s the police’s job to find out,” Fortin said. “Now, for the last time, will the two of you please leave me alone? My dinner guest is here.”
Molly’s back was to the front door. She turned now in the booth to see that Hillary More had just walked into the Gull.
But she wasn’t there for long.
As soon as she saw who was sitting with Hal Fortin she turned and left.
Forty-Six
In Jesse’s office the next morning Molly told Jesse about Hillary More being Hal Fortin’s dinner date. Just then, the woman herself showed up, unannounced.
“What are the odds?” Molly said, then promptly excused herself, grabbing a donut out of the mixed Dunkin’ box Jesse had brought for everybody before she left.
Hillary More was clearly dressed for work. Black pantsuit, white shirt underneath. Black leather sneakers with white soles. More and more, Jesse noticed that both men and women were wearing sneakers to work, not that he really gave a shit.
“We need to talk,” Hillary said in what passed for a greeting, taking one of the visitor chairs.
“I agree,” Jesse said. “You first.”
“You were out of line yesterday,” she said.
“Par for the course with me, some would say.”
“You know I like you, Jesse. You do know that, right?”
Jesse resisted the impulse to tell her that if there were life on Mars, they knew that Hillary More liked him.
“I thought that went without saying” is what he did say.
“But what I do not like, not even a little bit, is you showing up at my house and trying to intimidate my son.”
“Not my intent,” he said. “Also not what I did.”
He opened the box of donuts. “Help yourself, by the way.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not when the subject is Dunkin’ Donuts,” he said.
“No, thank you.”
“Your loss. I got extra Boston Kremes.”
Hillary gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Kevin felt as if you treated him like some sort of suspect.”
Jesse sipped some of the large coffee he’d brought with him, first of the day until he made some of his own.
“Hillary,” he said, “we’re going to have this conversation, the two of us, just this one time and never have it again. I’m going to give you a pass, just this one time, on your showing up in my office and trying to tell me how to do my job. Because I also like you, and I’ve clearly annoyed you. But I had legitimate questions to ask your son about Jack Carlisle. I asked them. I left. No harm, no foul.”
“Says you.”
“He paid a visit to Jack’s room after Jack’s death. Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn’t, not my concern, or my problem. I wanted to know what he was doing there. I asked. He told me. End of story, at least for now.”
“It’s Kevin’s feeling that you didn’t believe him.”
“Also not my problem. But I am sorry if he felt that way.”
“Are you?”
This wasn’t flirtatious Hillary now. This was the boss lady, in high gear. If not on fire, getting there.
“You could have given me the courtesy of a heads-up,” she said.
“And granted you the consideration we haven’t granted to other parents in the course of this investigation?”
He pointed at the donut box again. “Are you sure you don’t want one before the rest of my staff attacks what’s left in that box like a pack of hungry dogs? Donuts always take the edge right off for me.”
“Perhaps another time,” she said. “Will you at least assure me that you’re done upsetting my son?”
“No, I won’t make that assurance,” Jesse said. “And by the way? He’s a man now, Hillary, not a boy. I am genuinely sorry if I did upset him. And you. And if you have to apologize to his father for me, apologize to him.”
“His father died a long time ago.”
That stopped him.
“I’m sorry for that, too.”
She pulled up the sleeve of her jacket, checked her Apple Watch.
“I need to get to work,” she said.
“Work can wait for a few more minutes.”
“I have a meeting.”
“Meeting can wait,” Jesse said. “We’re not done talking.”
“I am.”
“I will be,” he said, “when you explain to me why you neglected to mention that Steve Marin, wherever he is, happens to be a Mobbed-up ex-con.”
“Because he’s not.”
“Bet you the whole box of donuts that he is,” Jesse said.
Forty-Seven
Jesse told Hillary More what Healy had learned from his friends at Organized Crime Control in Boston. And about his own visit to see Liam Roarke the previous evening, and the pleasantries they’d exchanged at the Capital Grille.
“You have to believe me when I tell you I had no idea,” Hillary More said.
“When he filled out his job application and interviewed with HR, or however you do it, it never came up?”
“He was forthcoming about having been in juvenile detention,” Hillary said. “But he was a kid. You’re making it sound as if he’s Al Capone. Now I have to apologize for not knowing all the players in the Boston Mob.”
“I tend to look at aggravated assault as a grown-up-type thing,” Jesse said.
“I talked to him about that part of his past myself,” she said. “I just looked at him as having been disabled in a different way. Sam Waterfield actually recommended him. It turns out they’d met each other when they were both in foster care.”
“Now one of them is dead and the other one has disappeared.”
Jesse told her about what Molly and Suit had found at the apartment in Marshport.
“I’m told that no one has yet been able to reach him by phone,” she said.
“Have you tried to locate the phone?”
She sighed forcefully enough to rattle Jesse’s window shades.
“Jesse,” she said, stepping on his name pretty hard. “I’m genuinely concerned about where Steve might be, or what might have happened to him. But as I’ve pointed out before, and despite everything that is happening in our town, I am in the business of selling chocolate. I market our brand. As we speak, I have smart young people figuring out the best way, and best timing, to perhaps take More Chocolate public. Early stages, but we’re having those conversations. That’s what my meeting is about this morning, one for which I am now late. This is my area of expertise, or so I’ve been told, not finding missing persons.”
She checked her watch again, either looking at the time or for messages.
“Any thoughts about where he might run to, if he still has the ability to do that?”
“Are you saying you think something might have happened to him, too? If he’s dead, why would he have cleared out his part of the apartment?”
“He could have tried to run,” Jesse said, “and then been caught by whomever killed Sam Waterfield.”
She slumped back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.
“This is a nightmare. All I’ve been trying to do is give people a chance who might not otherwise get one.”
“Has there been any kind of trouble with Marin since you hired him?”
She shook her head. “Model employee, same as Sam.”
“So no indication that the trouble in his life might have followed him to Paradise.”
“None. Far as I can tell, he kept to himself, the same as Sam did. I told you already that the only reason I found out that they even shared that apartment was by accident.”
Jesse sipped his coffee. Almost cold by now. Still better than none.