Last to Know: A Novel(14)

“About her mother, you mean?”

Harry wondered if Wally knew the mother, but the man fell silent, staring across the lake to where firefighters were still attempting to douse the flames.

Harry thanked him for the loan of the phone and went to retrieve his clothing from the lakeside path. Back at the house he gave Squeeze the leftover steak grilled earlier on the Weber. He hadn’t felt like eating much so the dog got lucky. Then he took a hot shower, pulled on his jeans, a gray tee, and the black leather bomber jacket. He and the dog were in his car and en route to Boston while Wally Osborne was walking down the side of his house to the jetty and the boathouse, where he cleaned off the still-wet rowboat.

He checked the oars, still slimed with greenish weed, cleaned them too, and slid them back into place. Then keeping to the trees he walked back to the house. He did not notice his son Roman, who was waiting in back of the boathouse, go in and, when his father had disappeared, relaunch the boat and row across the lake.

Rose turned as he came in. “Wally!” she cried. “I was beginning to worry. Diz said you were still out there, I thought you might have taken the boat and gone across to try to help.”

Wally shrugged as he poured himself a drink. “Nobody’s over there but the firefighters and cops,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “A mere civilian couldn’t get near it, not even a detective.”

“You mean Harry Jordan?”

“I spoke with him. He’s on his way to the hospital to see that girl. He thinks she’s unharmed but in shock. I guess he wants to know what happened.”

Rose clutched a hand to her heart over the heavy wool sweater she had thrown on over her nightshirt. “To her mother, you mean?”

Wally’s eyes challenged his wife’s. “I don’t know who she is. I never met her.”

Diz’s brows raised in surprise. He knew his dad was lying. His gaze swiveled to his mother, but she was nodding sympathetically. One thing you could guarantee about Rose was her sympathy. Sometimes, like now for instance, Diz thought she might sharpen up a bit, catch on to his dad, see what was going on. Suddenly scared, he thought he couldn’t, after all, tell his mother that her husband was lying; that he’d just seen him rowing from the other woman’s house before it exploded in flames. Could he?





12


Rossetti was waiting in Boston, lounging against the wall near the emergency entrance, arms folded over his neatly buttoned chest, dark glasses on. Seeing him, Harry thought he looked more like one of those guys holding the velvet rope, the ones who decided whether you could be allowed into a popular nightclub, than a homicide detective.

Rossetti was thirty-six and hot, yet he still lived at home with his mom, who ironed his shirts, fixed his favorite pasta, and never allowed him to bring home a girl. Harry knew Rossetti kept his own apartment but he simply couldn’t bear to hurt his widowed mother by letting her know about it. He was a good old-fashioned Italian son.

Harry hit the brake, told the dog to get in the back, then put down the window. “Hey, mama’s boy,” he yelled, grinning as Rossetti glanced quickly from side to side to see if anybody had caught the insult.

“Fuck you.” Rossetti circled the Jag and clambered in. “Daddy’s boy.”

Harry grinned. “Never. Not even a shot. In fact I’m surprised ‘Daddy’ ever talked to me since I always did what I wanted and not what he wanted me to do.”

Rossetti shrugged. “I hope you called Mal and informed her you were not gonna make it to Paris tomorrow,” he said, as Harry slid into a No Parking spot and slammed the blue police light on top of the car.

“I’ll text her,” Harry said. Right then, his mind was on other things than flights to Paris.

“Anyway,” Rossetti said, changing the subject to the matter at hand, “Talking real now, the girl’s name is Beatrice Havnel. The woman in the house is—was—I guess we can assume she is dead—her mother. Name of Lacey Havnel.”

“How do you know all this?”

“She spoke.”

Harry looked at him, astonished. The last time he’d seen the girl she was being airlifted after almost being caught in a fire and then drowning.

“She hasn’t said a lot yet, the docs are not letting us near her until they make sure she’s okay and that we won’t stress her out, though how we can stress her out any more than she already is beats me.”

“Doctors always think cops stress their patients out. And maybe we do,” Harry said, thoughtfully. “Besides, they are right, she’s just seen her home go up in flames, probably with her mother in it.”

“Jesus.” Rossetti took an emery board from his inner breast pocket and filed a nail, stone-faced. He’d heard it all before, seen it all before, though maybe not quite like this. “Poor kid,” he said, suddenly sympathetic.

Harry cracked open a window for Squeeze, and climbed out of the car. “Get your ass out of there, Rossetti, we have to talk to her. We have to know if the mother was in there, who in fact she is, what she is, and how that fire started anyhow.”

“But the doctors…” Rossetti hurried after Harry as he strode through the emergency room door.

“Fuck the doctors. We may be looking at murder here, Rossetti, and I’d like to know who my suspect is.”