The limo was a new Lincoln Town Car with a mild stretch, in discreet black rather than the gaudy white I’d been fearing. The driver was a big black guy in uniform, whose company badge said his name was Charlie. I resisted the urge to say, “Hey-twin!”
We crossed underneath Boston Harbor using the Ted Williams Tunnel, which seemed to go on forever. As we drove into Boston there were several feet of snow blanketing the city, much to Ella’s obvious pleasure. She pressed herself eagerly against the car’s tinted window, occasionally giving out little squeaks of delight as though someone had laid on this special weather just for her.
“It’s just like Christmas, Mummy,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Simone said, craning forwards to stare at the outside landscape herself. “But that doesn’t mean you’re getting any presents.”
Ella’s brow wrinkled as she gave this considerable thought. “Well, as it’s so like Christmas,” she said thoughtfully, “perhaps I ought to just have one present. …” She could have charmed gifts out of Scrooge.
“We’ll see,” was all Simone said, but when she sat back she was smiling.
I’d studied the city maps before we’d left and it seemed that the limo took us into the city by a very roundabout route. Charlie the driver blamed what he called the Big Dig, which, he told us over his shoulder, had been going on in Boston for more than ten years. “By the time they’re all done, they’ll be tearing it all up again and starting over, yes, ma’am,” he said as we drove past yet another construction crew attacking the frozen earth.
I watched two bargelike white Ford Crown Victoria cabs jostling for position in traffic alongside us, and craned my neck up at the somber brown stone and brick buildings. The snow flurries that were still falling made it all seem alien and slightly distant.
I tried not to think about the last time I’d been in America, sweating in the Florida heat. I couldn’t even prevent a tiny jerk of alarm when a pair of full-dress police cruisers came flashing across an intersection in front of us, their sirens yelping in and out of sync with each other.
Relax. They’re not after you, I told myself. Not this time.
The Boston Harbor Hotel, when we reached Rowe’s Wharf, was a magnificent building with an impressive arched rotunda next to the discreet entrance.
The hotel lobby was as grand and tactfully opulent as the outside led me to expect, all marble archways and huge paintings of harbor scenes from days gone by Even the wallpaper was padded. Again, Madeleine had made the arrangements so that the bags were whisked up to our rooms with the minimum of fuss. Simone herself grew more quiet and tense with every passing minute, clearly overwhelmed by the sudden elevation in luxury.
I had the room next to the one Simone was sharing with her daughter. By dint of closing the outer doors onto the corridor and leaving the inner doors open the two rooms could be connected together, but still leave both Simone and me some privacy.
Once the staff had finished unsettling Simone still further in their efforts to put us at our ease, I left her flicking through the hundreds of TV channels, searching for cartoons for Ella. I went into my own side and shut the door behind me. The room had a picture window that offered a breathtaking panorama across the snow-speckled harbor below, and a double bed the size of Canada. Suddenly I missed Sean.
For once, I wished Madeleine had given our accommodation a bit more thought. Finding something at the top of the tree is easy. Finding somewhere a bit less majestic, a bit more in keeping with Simone’s current lifestyle, would have been more time-consuming but might have been a better move. She might be a millionairess on paper, but she had a long way to go before she got her head round the idea. It seemed ironic that I was probably more used to staying in places of this caliber than she was.
I dug my briefing pack out of my bag, turning my back on the view, and dialed the number for the private investigators’ office first. Their answering service clicked in. I left a message asking them to call me and gave my UK mobile number, including the full international code. It seemed easier than relaying messages via the hotel switchboard.
I checked in with Sean, too, thankful to be able to reach him right away on his mobile, even though it was late evening at home.
“I don’t like it that they didn’t turn up,” he said. “We’ll chase it at this end, but it’s well past close of play over there, so there’s probably nothing you can do other than sit it out until the morning. How’s Simone doing?”
“Nervous,” I said. “I think perhaps we should have stayed somewhere a bit less plush.”
“Mm. Well, you could always try retail therapy,” Sean suggested. “If she doesn’t fancy the haute couture of Copley Place, take her bargain hunting at Filene’s Basement instead.”
“Since when did you get to know your way around Boston so well?” I asked, aware of a tinge of jealousy at the image of Sean buying gifts for some shadowy previous lover. Someone who came both before and after me. There had been a break that had lasted over four years in the middle of our relationship. In the intervening period I knew full well there’d been other people, for both of us. But that didn’t mean I had to like thinking about it.
He must have read my mind, because he laughed. “Work, Charlie, all work,” he said, gently mocking. “Come on, you’ve looked after enough clients’ wives now to know the first thing they ever want to do in a strange city is shop till one of you drops — and it’s usually me.”
“Really?” I said, allowing my voice to drawl. “I’d never have thought of you as being short on stamina. …”
It was breakfast the following morning before the dead private investigator’s partner turned up. We were in the Intrigue Cafe at the hotel, sitting at one of the tables overlooking the corrugated waters of the harbor itself. A fast cat ferry was moored just over to one side, and farther out were a group of sleek-lined little yachts, built for fast summer cruising and which, at this time of year, now looked like a group of racehorses shivering together in a muddy field.
I noted the woman from the moment she stepped into the room and started heading our way. There was something about the flat professional way she surveyed the room, like she was used to summing people up fast, assessing them. She was medium height and trim in the way people are when it’s their job to be fit, rather than through vanity. Her hair was short and dark and cut in a neat bob, parted in the center, a style chosen to survive being under a hat all day as part of the job. There was cop, or ex-cop, written all over her.
As she approached I put my napkin aside and casually pushed my chair back a little, giving myself some space. Her eyes narrowed as she caught the action and she nodded, as though acknowledging my status, before she spoke to Simone.
“Excuse me. Would you be Miss Kerse?” She rhymed the name with “furze.”
Simone looked startled. Her eyes flew to me as though asking for permission to confirm the question.
“Er, yes, I am,” she said, not correcting the woman’s pronounciation. “And you are?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Frances L. Neagley,” the woman said, and I recognized the name from the file Sean had given me on the private investigators, although Simone still looked a little blank. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the airport to meet you yesterday. I was dealing with the arrangements for the funeral and I guess I must have gotten kind of hung up.”
“Oh yes. Don’t worry about it,” Simone said, shaking her hand. I’d told her all about the private investigator’s accident before we’d left Heathrow, just in case she decided to change her mind about coming. She hadn’t. “I realize this must be a difficult time for you. I really appreciate your making time to see me.”