Linda was already motioning him to be quiet. “I know all that, Phil. I was just blowing off steam at the one person who doesn’t need to hear it. You think one of them hired the private eye?”
He nodded. “Oh, hell. I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. I might’ve done the same in their place. Forearm yourself with any dirt you can find, so when the Titanic does sink, you’ve already got the anchor ready to weigh down the captain in case he tries to swim for it.”
“I was thinking embezzlement, myself,” I suggested.
“Normally, I’d agree with you,” he conceded. “And I’ll run it by Gorenstein, but since I didn’t know about this, I have to assume I’m the target, not some embezzler. Makes more sense, given the current climate around here.”
“Well,” I said. “If it’s any comfort, he told me he hadn’t found anything yet.”
McNally shrugged that off. “Doesn’t matter. If they feel they need it and it’s not there, they’ll cook it up.”
“I know this guy,” I disagreed. “He’s a straight shooter.”
He looked at me with a pitying expression and explained, “Then they’ll hire one who isn’t.”
That didn’t leave me with much to say.
Linda had a question for me, though. “Does the Tramway Board finding mean you’re going to be wandering around here asking everybody what they were doing on the night of the crime?”
“Something like that.”
She looked disgusted. “Great. So, on top of the Phantom of the Opera trying to put us out of business, we’ve got the sheriff itching to roust the TPL, you guys bugging the condo owners and the employees for both theft and sabotage, and a private dick doing Christ knows what.”
“And falling revenues,” McNally added. “I got this morning’s figures from Conan-ticket sales are nosediving.”
“You think an employee might be behind the sabotage?” I asked her.
“Despite the fact I still work here,” she said, “I’m not a total fool. Who else is going to know how to mess with that equipment? A snow bunny?”
“Could be an ex-employee,” I suggested, “or someone with eyes in his head, a basic mechanical ability, and the opportunity to get around when no one’s watching.”
McNally had other priorities. “I suppose asking you to be discreet is a waste of time?” It wasn’t really a question.
“It’s not my primary concern,” I admitted, “but what with the protesters and the deputies going at it these last few days, people have at least gotten used to seeing cops around.”
“Sheriff’s deputies aren’t investigators hassling everyone they meet,” Linda said.
I stood up and walked to the door. “We’ll try to target who we talk to. You could both help us by giving this some thought-especially you, Linda. You know everyone on this mountain. You’ve shared their employment records with a couple of my men, which is much appreciated, but it’s more about how they interact with each other and with you folks that’ll reveal what they’re capable of. Like your reaction to Richie Lane-you obviously knew he was warped. If you can think of others like him that we should focus on, it’d be a big help and would get us off the mountain faster.”
She wasn’t happy with the idea, but I’d used the right bait. “For that, I’ll do what I can.”
I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. “That’s all I ask.”
Sammie Martens lived in an enormous studio apartment just down the street from the Municipal Building in Brattleboro. There are quite a number of these places in town-old ballrooms, concert halls, and meeting rooms-high-ceilinged, wood-floored, with huge windows overlooking the Connecticut River and the railroad tracks on one side and the steady activity of Main Street on the other. None of them are used for their original purpose, and some of those purposes have been lost over the years, leaving rooms as tantalizing and inexplicable as catacombs found deep underground.
But they aren’t all such wonderful places to live. Often on the top floors of the ancient, red-brick behemoths that make the heart of Brattleboro look like some gritty industrial mill town fringing Boston, many of these apartments are drafty walk-ups. They’re poorly wired, hard to heat, and equipped with minimal plumbing. They also suffer from splintery floors, sagging ceilings, and single-pane windows that rattle like rocks in a can on windy wintry days and whenever the trains pass by.
Sammie’s occupied a middle range, mostly because she’d put a lot of effort and money into fixing it up, much to her landlord’s heightening suspicions. She’d clustered her life in modules throughout its vast space: gym equipment in one spot, sofas and chairs in another, a TV and stereo entertainment area. Her salary precluded anything very fancy-I knew for a fact that she’d furnished it largely from yard sales-and the final result was less Manhattan shabby-chic, and more duct-tape-and-wire livable. But it was her own, had been for years, and as far as I knew, was the only place she could retreat to when things got tough.
As I guessed they might be now. I’d seen her expression when Willy had made that Blondie crack and figured it might be a good time to continue the conversation we’d begun in the alleyway outside the Butte.
I knew she’d be here-and be alone. Lester had told me she’d gone straight home after our meeting at the hospital, and I’d double-checked on Willy’s whereabouts on my own before coming over. I was surprised, however, to find her wearing only a bathrobe when she answered the door, her head swathed in a towel turban. It was barely six p.m.
I also noticed she looked terribly sad, which unfortunately didn’t surprise me. “I’m sorry, Sammie. This a bad time?”
She smiled, barely. “Just got out of the shower.” She patted her engulfed head. “Had to touch up the Swedish look before I head back to the mountain-didn’t want to blow my cover. Come on in.”
I followed her into the apartment, once more awed by how it made me feel like a mouse at the bottom of a bucket. My place was the exact opposite of this: a small, low-ceilinged, multi-roomed dwelling with its succession of hideaways, all linked by doorways and short, narrow corridors. I felt impermanent here, as if someone might come by, pack me up, and mail me to some unknown address.
“Coffee?” she asked, not bothering to look back, heading across the symphonically creaking floor toward the kitchen lining one wall.
“Sure. Thanks.” I followed her and sat on a stool to one side. “How’re you doin’?”
She kept busy, collecting mugs from a cabinet, milk from the fridge, not making eye contact. “Fine.”
“I’m sorry about Willy.”
She paused in midmotion, just for a second, before turning the heat on under the kettle. “What about him?”
I pointedly didn’t answer.
The silence stretched until I could almost hear it vibrate. Then she turned to me, her eyes pleading, and said, “Why’s he such a bastard?”
I thought about that for a moment, wanting to get it right. “Because he’s scared.”
“I don’t push,” she burst out, smacking her hand on the counter. “I don’t ask him questions he doesn’t want to hear, I don’t ask him to do things he doesn’t want to do. I bend over backwards not to box him in. What’s he got to be scared of?”
I shook my head slightly. “What attracts you to him?” I asked.
She looked at me, startled.
I rephrased the question. “Why do you hang out with him?”