Home Body, page 54
“No?”
“Oh, she had an envelope all ready. All the rest of my pay in cash, as well.”
“And a ticket home?”
“No, that came the next day. So she gives me the money and she’s nice enough about it, you know? I mean, she didn’t say I was a child beater. She said we just had different ideas about what is ‘appropriate discipline.’ I told her this was nothing compared to what I got when I was a kid.”
“So it was amicable, your parting?”
“I thought so. Then I hear she’s reported me to the government. That’s lovely. That you’re looking for me in Ireland like I’m a bleedin’ murderer.”
“Who told you that?”
“My aunt.”
“I thought she hadn’t seen you in years.”
Devlin smiled slyly. “Yeah, well she isn’t going to turn in her own family now, is she?”
Roxanne gave her a long look, then said, “That’s not exactly how it went. Somebody else saw the bruises and called my agency and I came to check it out. That’s when Maddie told me. But I needed your side of it.”
“Well, that’s what I’m giving you. But you know what? It’s not like they’re so lily white.”
“Oh,” Roxanne said.
We listened.
“Yeah, you think they’re a bunch of effing angels? I don’t think so. Her, I don’t think she’s all right in the head. I mean, I was there, what, two months? I hear ’em fighting like a coupla cats.”
“About what?” Roxanne said.
“I couldn’t tell you. Over money, I think. Him saying, ‘Just pay it.’ Her saying, ‘No, it’s not right.’ That’s all I know about that one. Maybe the money supply isn’t as endless as people think. You know how much that boat cost?”
“I do,” I said. “So what do you mean about Mrs. Connelly not being right?”
“I don’t know. She reminded me of one of my cousins at home. She gets depressed, goes down in this black hole of a mood. Maddie was kind of like that. Sometimes she was okay, but sometimes, when she was alone, you’d come in and you’d know something was not right about her.”
“Like she was sad?”
“Very. But that’s not the worst of it. They report me to the government for being an unfit nanny or whatever, and he’s taking some girl for a roll while the wife is away.”
Roxanne looked up from her pad. I felt like I’d been punched.
“What makes you say that, Devlin?” Roxanne said, still calm.
Devlin paused, lighted another cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled a blue cloud.
“Because I heard them,” she said, delivering her coup de grace.
“You heard them what?”
“I heard them . . . you know . . . doing it.”
She smiled slyly.
“You see, Maddie and Maeve, they’d gone home to Boston because Maeve had a doctor’s appointment. David was supposed to be going on some boat trip for a couple of days, so I had the weekend off and I was staying here with this guy I met. Gary. I mean, I need to be with some real people once in a while, don’t I? This was, what? Six weeks ago? But I forgot something. Something important. So I take Gary’s truck and I go back. There’s this car out by the garages there, but I didn’t think much of it. But then I go in and I’m going to my room and I hear them. I mean, you could hear them all over the house. Him moaning and groaning. Girl was practically screaming. ‘Oh God, oh God.’ I say to myself, ‘Well, that’s lovely. Wife’s away, the cat’s having a good old time. Anyway, she sounded fake to me, if you want to know.”
“It wasn’t Maddie?”
“No, you could tell she was much younger than Maddie.”
“So then what happened?” Roxanne said.
“I left. I was disgusted, really. Mr. Family Man. Mr. Daddy. And he’s got some bimbo he probably met at some la-di-da party and he’s sneaking her up for a ride when the wife’s away, you know? Tucking it right to her, and in his wife’s bed as well. Isn’t that grand?”
I was sickened, disillusioned. This was the David Connelly of the stereotype, not the one I knew. Or maybe I didn’t know him at all.
“And then they run me out of the place for touching their kid too hard? Have you calling my aunt like I was beating their kid with a club?”
“So what did you do?” Roxanne said.
“When?”
“In the house that day.”
“Nothing. I said to myself, ‘Aren’t these people the biggest phonies. Rich, famous phonies.’ And I snuck out, very quiet like. They never even knew I was there.”
“Which came first?” I said.
“Which what?” she said.
“The argument or walking in on somebody in the house?”
She had to think for a moment.
“Them in the house,” Devlin said. “They had fights before, but the one I was telling you about was right before I left.”
“And what kind of car was it that day when you went there?” I said.
“Gary’s?” she said. “It’s a truck. A Chevy. He carries lobster traps with it. He’ll be home in a little while, if you don’t believe me. I told him when I got back, I said, ‘You won’t believe—”
“No,” I said. “By the garages that day. What kind of car was that?”
“Oh, that,” Devlin said. “It was an Audi. Fancy thing. It was from Massachusetts and there was a feather hanging from the mirror. It was white.”
“The car?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “The feather. The car was silver.”
39
k
We drove out the main road, past the Castleton Quik-Stop, Clair at the wheel, me in front, Roxanne working in back. The clouds had overtaken us from the west and the air was still.
“One case closed,” Roxanne said.
“And another blown wide open,” I said.
“There are a lot of silver Audis in Massachusetts,” Clair said.
“Not with feathers,” Roxanne said.
“We may never know for sure,” I said.
“Maybe we should just go and ask him,” Clair said.
“Maybe we should,” I said. “But not today.”
I was thinking of the phone message at the house in Back Bay, and what Devlin had said about David and Maddie and their argument. David saying, “Just pay it.” Maddie saying, “No, it’s not right.” The computer voice saying, “You’re not off the hook yet.”
As it started to rain, the drops spattering the road like something sprayed from a plane, I reached for the phone. I called Myra in Boston. She answered and I asked if she knew the librarian at the Globe. She said she did, quite well actually. I said that was good because I needed a favor. I needed everything they had in their file on Maddie Connelly, and I needed it faxed right away. A LexisNexis search, too. Myra said she’d do a search. She asked if Tuesday’s story still held.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I think it’s the tip of the iceberg.”
And I hung up.
“Why Maddie?” Clair said.
“They weren’t talking about a light bill,” I said.
“And someone knows their secret, has the book,” Roxanne said.
“So if they’re being squeezed, which one would have a secret?” Clair said.
“Think of David Connelly’s life,” I said. “Most of it has been spent in and around the spotlight. When he was at Harvard partying, you heard about it. Afterwards he couldn’t date somebody without it ending up in the paper somewhere. Kathleen Kind said she was linked to him because they had a breakfast meeting. So how many secrets can he have?”
“At least one,” Roxanne said.
“So maybe it was this Devlin with the computer message,” Clair said. “Disgruntled former nanny decides to take some Connelly money with her.”
“Then why tell Roxanne about it?” I said. “A secret isn’t worth anything once it’s out. No, I’m thinking that unless he killed somebody, David Connelly isn’t going to scare too easily. An affair? It’s all been said before.”
“And Maddie?” Roxanne said.
“She’s more the enigma,” I said. “She’s the one whose life isn’t an open book.”
It was a scattering of papers, spat from the fax machine and spilled onto the desk and the floor. I gathered them up and checked e-mail, but the results of the LexisNexis search hadn’t been sent. While Roxanne talked to someone at DHS on the phone in the kitchen, Clair made lunch, and the rain drummed on the deck out back. I sorted through the clippings.
Most were from the Globe, and most were Maddie with David. They made the party page a couple of times a year; David in a tux, the big amiable grin fixed on some hapless lesser mortal. Maddie in dresses and gowns and a-soft smile as she greeted someone, an earnest, pensive look in conversation.
She was alone in some stories, mostly announcements of grants, program kickoffs. Finally there was a story from the Times, a profile that said Maddie Boswell Connelly was more than an appendage to another handsome Connelly. It talked about her interest in children and foster care, in providing psychological services for troubled youth. There was a reference to her brother Clinton’s suicide in Amherst, Mass., her parents’ subsequent divorce. Maddie was quoted as saying the ordeal was very difficult, that she did not believe her brother really intended to take his life.
“Clint was a wonderful brother and I worshipped him,” she’d said.
Clair brought in tuna sandwiches and pasta salad. Roxanne was off the phone and she came over and we ate, and I handed the clips around as I finished them. Maeve’s birth was a short story in the Globe, a blurb in Time magazine. David and Maddie’s wedding was a chunk of the Life and Leisure section front in the Globe. They looked young and beautiful, but when I looked more closely at the photo, Maddie’s eyes seemed to have an undertone of sadness, even with her smile.
I looked from photo to photo. It seemed that no matter what the story was about, I saw the same hint of melancholy.
“She was a beautiful bride,” Roxanne said. “Oh, and look at Maeve. What a cute baby.”
I reached over and put my arm around her waist.
“But look at her eyes,” I said.
Roxanne looked up from a clipping.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s almost like she knows this is all too good to be true.”
“That it’s somehow built on sand.”
“But have you seen that in her, in person?” Roxanne said.
“A little,” I said. “It’s like she’s wistful sometimes.”
“Some people,” Clair said, “are just philosophically sad.”
And Maddie had good reason. Her father, who taught mathematics at Amherst, died in a car accident on Route 2 when Maddie was a sophomore at Harvard. Her mother, who taught anthropology at Amherst, died of liver failure five years later. She was fifty-two. I wondered if she took to alcohol to combat loneliness, whether she ever recovered from the loss of her son.
I handed the clips off and they read them. The rain was heavier and I went to the sliding glass door and closed it to keep the spray from driving in. I stood and looked out at the sky, which was darker now, with billowing clouds like something from a painting. The trees at the edge of the woods were a deep shining green, a dense leafy barrier that hid everything behind it. For a moment I felt an odd twinge of fear, that so much around me was unknown. I shook it off.
“It really is very sad,” Roxanne said. “It’s like somebody up there decided to give Maddie the whole family’s share of good luck.”
“I wonder if that bothers her,” Clair said. “The brother shoots himself with her in the room. The father drives into a tree. The mother, maybe she just died, maybe she drank herself to death.”
“And then she scores one of the most eligible bachelors in New England,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Roxanne said. “It’s not like she made those bad things happen.”
“No,” I said.
“Misplaced guilt,” Clair said. “One of the most common symptoms of post-traumatic stress. The soldier who made it when his buddies didn’t.”
“Maddie Connelly with PTSD?” I said.
Roxanne was leaning over the table, reading the wedding story. I went to the computer and checked e-mail again. This time the LexisNexis search results were in, forwarded from Myra. Her note said, “Happy hunting.” I scrolled down.
A lot of it we had. But they’d run Sky Blue Foundation, too, so there was stuff about grants and other Connellys who were only marginally connected to the foundation. And then there were older stories, retrieved from some data bank. Maddie’s making the dean’s list at Harvard, as reported in the Amherst Daily Collegian. Maddie’s engagement in the Berkshire Eagle. And one last story, in the chronological listing.
It was from the Collegian, March 4, 1977. It was short, five paragraphs saying Clinton Archer Boswell’s death was ruled a suicide. The last paragraph said the Hampshire County Coroner’s Office did not call Madeline “Maddie” Boswell, seven, to testify at the inquest for her brother’s death, despite the fact that she was the only eyewitness. A spokesman for the Coroner’s Office cited Miss Boswell’s age and that the trauma inflicted upon her had left her a “less than credible” witness. “Her recollection of her brother’s death isn’t supported by physical evidence,” the spokesman said, “and may have been induced by hysteria and medication given her after the incident.”
I read that paragraph to Roxanne.
“That’s horrible,” she said. “The poor little girl.”
“I wonder what she imagined,” I said.
“Probably that some mysterious assailant came in and killed the brother and ran away,” Clair said. “Anything to keep her from believing her beloved brother would want to leave her.”
“But I don’t see this as a secret,” Roxanne said. “It’s in the paper.”
“True,” I said.
“My vote is the husband screwing around,” Clair said. “He’s older now. Has a daughter who could hear about it if it comes out somehow. So it would be damaging.”
“And I can’t believe Devlin has kept this to herself,” Roxanne said.
“Maybe Devlin’s lobsterman boyfriend decided to shake the Connelly tree, see what falls,” Clair said. “Could be a dangerous business.”
“I hope not,” I said.
“Why?” Roxanne said.
“Because it’s our turn to shake next,” I said.
40
k
I called the Connellys in Blue Harbor and told them we were going to be nearby, thought we might stop in. David sounded genuinely pleased, said it was a wild day on the water, that they’d gotten in just before the storm really broke. He said Clair was welcome, too; he needed some tips about the new chain saw. We’d do that, then have a couple of beers, some dinner, and watch the lightning over the bay.
How was that for a plan?
Fine, I said.
Roxanne said we had to call the police soon and I said, that night, as soon as we left. I felt guilty, but then I thought of Angel, dead and barely buried, and the pangs subsided.
We drove all the way east to Blue Harbor, where the rain still was pelting and the shop lights were on and people were scurrying from store to store in green and yellow slickers. The wine shop was busy but we stopped and bought two bottles: one white, one red, both over our usual limit of ten dollars. Clair went into the hardware store and bought bar oil, files, and a sharpening guide. Roxanne bought a bouquet of fresh flowers.
When we got back in the car, I turned to both of them and said, “We haven’t given up on them, have we?”
“Last of the cockeyed optimists,” Clair said.
Roxanne attempted a smile, and said nothing.
The lights were on at the gate and the carriage house. The wind was whipping off the water so the rain was salty and the woods smelled of the sea. From the drive I could see whitecaps from an onshore wind, the storm swirling and sweeping in from the northeast. We bent as we ran to the door and jangled the bell, which was already tolling from the gusts. After a minute Maddie opened the door, told us to get in before we were drenched. We handed her the ‘wine and the flowers and Clair said his gifts were chain-saw-related, and she said David would like that, then held out her hand and I introduced them.
Maddie said she was very pleased to meet Clair and glad to see us. She asked me what I’d done to my finger and I said it was a long story. A few minutes later we were standing in the front room with drinks in our hands, watching Escape and the Whaler buck on their moorings. David bounded down the stairs with Maeve a step behind him.
“I won,” he said.
“You cheated,” Maeve said, tackling him around the legs.
He dragged her giggling across the floor.
“Hi there,” he said to Clair. “I’m David. This is Maeve, my daughter and appendage.”
“Clair Varney,” Clair said.
“Clair’s a girl’s name,” Maeve said from the floor.
“It’s an either-or name,” Clair said.
“Like Maeve,” David said.
“Maeve’s just a girl’s name,” the little girl said.
“You’re a girl?” David said. “If I’d known that, I would have called you Lucy.”
He asked about my finger, too, and I said I had a bit of a mishap. At that moment Maddie came in with a tray of shrimp and mussels and raw clams. Maeve got up and grabbed a shrimp and David was loose so he gave Roxanne something between a hug and a pat on the back. I thought I saw her stiffen but it may have been my imagination.
“Well, we have a good one going out there, don’t we?” David said. “Radio says gusts up to forty knots in the next hour or so. I wanted to take the boat out in the bay but Maddie says she doesn’t want to feed the Coast Guard, too. Sandy’s off, or we’d have had her outvoted.”
