Pretty Dead, page 1
Other books by Gerry Boyle
Jack McMorrow Mystery Series Deadline
Bloodline
Lifeline
Potshot
Borderline
Cover Story
Home Body
Once Burned
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PRETTY DEAD
First Islandport edition / December 2016
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2003 by Gerry Boyle
ISBN: 978-1- 944762-04-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016931852
Islandport Press
P.O. Box 10
Yarmouth, Maine 04096
www.islandportpress.com
books@islandportpress.com
Publisher: Dean Lunt
Cover Design: Teresa Lagrange, Islandport Press
Cover image courtesy of iStock / Sigarru
Printed in the USA
For Vic, as always
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several people generously assisted at various stages of the creation of Pretty Dead. They include Walter “Mitty” Robinson, who knows where the real skeletons are buried in Boston; Chip Gavin and Andrea Krasker Gavin, who showed me the town; Jim Scott, who provided culinary guidance; and Mary Grow, who reads closely in China Village, Maine.
INTRODUCTION
His home is just fifteen miles inland, but Jack McMorrow doesn’t spend much time on the Maine coast. Tourists, summer folk, Mainers hustling to make a living off them—it just isn’t McMorrow’s scene. He’d rather go west from his hideaway in Prosperity to explore the small towns and hollowed-out mill cities where his stories spring up and life is laid bare.
Pretty Dead is the exception.
Actually, it’s Roxanne who brings Jack to the coast. David and Maddie Connelly, summer residents of Blue Harbor and members of a dynastic Boston political family, have been accused of abusing their daughter. Roxanne is pulled in to investigate for the State. Jack tags along, and soon it’s both of their backs that need watching.
The idea for Pretty Dead came one summer as I sat in a rented house hard on east Penobscot Bay. We tromped the rocky coastline, collected mussels for dinner, cooked them in white wine. Every day a procession of stately boats motored and sailed past, and I began to wonder. What if McMorrow were tossed into this world? What would he think of the yachting world? What would the whale-belted, pastel-shirted, Topsider-wearing crowd in Blue Harbor think of him?
That’s how these books begin. What would happen if McMorrow were dropped into this town, the scene of this crime? How would he relate to this place, situation, cast of characters? Who would he protect and defend? Who would he target for his own brand of justice? Who would be hurt in the process, caught in the crossfire or taken down as people scramble to save themselves?
Often the characters who become victims in my novels are the ones I’m most fond of. That’s the case here, though I can’t tell you much more without ruining the story. As I reread Pretty Dead to prepare for writing this introduction, I came upon scenes that made me smile:
McMorrow doing interviews in Boston’s North End, one with a young woman named Monica, “wide-eyed and wary, drawn into a big sweatshirt like a turtle.” McMorrow being threatened by a couple of Boston thugs, Mick and Vincent. Mick wants Jack to write about his life in prison. He’s got the first paragraph all written. He recites: “Mick hasn’t slept in a year. Not like you sleep, in your soft bed in your nice, safe house. Mick dozes like a fucking watchdog. A sound that ain’t right and, bam, he’s wide awake before you can stick a shiv in his back. And remember. In prison, that ain’t no figure of speech.”
There’s a lot of Boston in Pretty Dead, including Maddie Connelly, who married into her husband’s wealthy and accomplished family for better or worse. Her life is a fairy tale that quickly and secretly becomes very grim. The facade, the perfect life portrayed in the society columns, is very thin indeed.
Reviewers of many of my books compared my writing to that of Robert B. Parker. While I admire Parker’s work and his seminal detective, our territories are very different. I couldn’t see the similarity of writing styles—until I reread Pretty Dead this time and heard echoes of Spenser and Susan Silverman.
I pictured handsome David Connelly chatting up some cute kid, convincing her that she was special, that the attraction they felt for each other was something extraordinary.
“He’s got to be a hell of a liar,” I said.
“A prerequisite for philanderers,” Roxanne said.
I turned to her.
“Keep your knickers on.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
Pretty Dead is more urban than some of the McMorrow novels (only Cover Story has more big city), but it’s also exceptional for the power of the players. Money can’t always buy you happiness, but it sure can bring some serious weapons to bear. That’s the case with the Connelly family and the hangers-on who surround them. After all, a hired gun is still a gun. A villain can become more deadly if they are able to keep their hands clean. Who would McMorrow rather tangle with: a wrench-swinging small-town thug or a ruthless millionaire from Boston? I don’t know, but maybe the answer is in the pages of this book.
So what’s Pretty Dead about? I’m going to take a cue from the late Robert B. and keep it short. It’s about ambition and the ways it can turn deadly.
I hope you enjoy.
—Gerry Boyle
December 2016
PROLOGUE
They drove in silence, away from the glittering Maine coast, on a day when the summer air was cool and the sky was like a bright blue tarp torn with clouds. There was no particular route, no plan, just to drive generally west until the right place presented itself. So they left Route 1 and drove on a narrower road that climbed ridges, skirted rock faces fringed with spruce. The foliage was many shades of green, and as they turned onto narrower and narrower roads, left and right, right and left, golden light flooded the openings between the trees like sunlight streaming through stained glass.
It was a beautiful dappled glow and the car slipped through it. And then the road became a path, then twin furrows through the grass. The furrows faded and the brush—burdocks and goldenrod and sumac— scraped the side of the car as the path turned and climbed, then started to pitch downward. It seemed the car might not make it back up.
The car stopped. The motor was shut off and for a moment there was only the sound of the wind and birds, chickadees flitting through the woods.
But this wasn’t the place, still too open, so the trek continued on foot, along the remnant of the path and then into an opening that led through a grove of blackened pin cherry and then into denser stands of poplar and birch. Thirty yards into the birch there was a small sunny clearing filled with asters, a place to consider. But still it felt too open and it seemed worth going farther, into the trees to a cool dark space where the ground was soft and littered with last year’s leaves. This seemed right.
So it was back to the car, where she waited, stretched across the back-seat, her hair gleaming in the sun.
The shovel was in the trunk.
1
It was a Tuesday morning in August, very early. The birds were chattering in the fading dawn and Roxanne was folded into me, my arm under her breasts, my chest pressed against the warm smoothness of her back.
“Oh, God,” she said as the pager chirped on the bedside table.
“Shoot that thing,” I mumbled.
Roxanne peeled away from me and reached for the pager, disarming it like a hand grenade. She peered at the numbers and sighed wearily and slipped from the bed. I watched her as she walked naked and beautiful to the wardrobe and I remembered the previous night, the reckless, rollicking abandon.
“Come back,” I said.
“I will,” she said, pulling on one of my chamois shirts and wrapping it around her. She crossed the loft and slipped down the stairs. I heard her cell phone beep and then her voice.
“Yes … Well, I wasn’t planning on it. I was supposed to be off. Oh, yeah…. What? … Who? … You’re kidding … Today? … Oh, God … It’s going to be … Yeah, very bad…. Okay … Give it to me now.”
I heard paper rustling. She was writing.
“No, I’ll go. I’ll call you. Yeah, I’ll need it.”
Roxanne hung up. I heard her feet on the stairs and I held the quilt open for her. She slipped under and I covered her up and wrapped myself around her again.
“So much for your day,” I said.
“Yeah, well.”
I sighed.
“Bad one?” I said.
“Mmmm.”
“Where?”
“The coast.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, a little girl’s been talking to a church worker. Five-year-old said she gets locked in the closet in the pitch dark as some kind of punishment. And she’s got squeeze marks. Bruises like the marks of fingers.”
“Where?”
“Arms, shoulder blades.”
“For that they call you at five in the morning?”
“That’s not the bad part.”
“No?”
“They’re rich,” Roxanne said.
“And rich people get up early?”
“This is Blue Harbor rich.”
“So?”
“And t
“What is?”
“I can’t tell you,” Roxanne said.
“Okay.”
I nuzzled into her, ready to go back to sleep. Or not. She had a beautiful back, hips, thighs. I ran my hand across them.
“But it’s bad,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Why you?”
“They want somebody senior. Assessment worker who’s been talking to this church person is totally green. And these people are going to flip out.”
“Unleash the lawyers?”
“Oh, Jack, if only you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’ve really got to promise this time,” Roxanne said.
“Okay.”
“You can’t say a word.”
“Okay.”
“To anybody. Not Myra. This ends up in the Times or anywhere else and I’m done.”
“Okay.”
“They’d have my job.”
“Who?”
“The Connellys.”
“As in—”
“As in the Connellys. The Boston Connellys. This is David and Maddie. They’re at their place in Blue Harbor.”
The implications flashed through my mind. Big bucks. White-shoe Boston law firms. Serious, serious political clout.
“They’re gonna try to bury this,” I said.
“Yup,” Roxanne said.
“Will His Excellency the commissioner back you?”
“I hope so.”
“I predict they’ll twist his arm right out of the socket.”
“Yup.”
“So what do you do?”
“Meet the worker at eleven.”
“Want some company?”
“No. You know you can’t come.”
“Just for the ride. Drop me in town. I could nose around.”
“I don’t know.”
“For other stories, I mean.”
Roxanne didn’t answer, just intertwined her legs with mine. And then there was that moment I’d seen before, when she would begin to gather herself up for the work she did, steeling herself for what was to come. I could feel it, the hardening of her resolve, and I held her closer, gently kissed the back of her neck.
“I’m not going to be intimidated,” Roxanne said.
“No.”
“Because what if it’s true? The poor little kid, locked in a closet in the pitch dark.”
“Lots of company. All the other Connelly skeletons,” I said.
“But this is worse than some rich cokehead chasing the maid around.”
“Yeah, it is.”
And then she was quiet for a minute, and as I held her she said, “All right.”
“All right, what?”
“All right, I’d like some company.”
“You got it,” I said.
“You know they’ll fight back,” Roxanne said, worry seeping into her voice.
“Like cornered animals, I’m sure.”
“Cornered animals with millions of dollars and tons of clout.”
“The worst kind,” I said.
2
We left at nine, Roxanne wearing her game face and slacks and a blazer.
Driving east on the back roads from Prosperity toward Belfast, we passed small, lonely houses set into the edge of the woods like shelters along a trail. They were tired and unlikely places, rooted along the two-lane road like straggly weeds. Rusting cars and trucks sat in the brush-ringed yards, disused but not discarded, and nothing was thrown away. Good times were regarded suspiciously here and, for that reason, everything was saved in case the mill closed, the shop laid off, the bad leg got worse. In this part of Maine, good fortune was watched closely, like a dog that could turn.
Roxanne was pensive, staring out the window at nothing. As we approached the coast, the houses got newer and bigger, the lawns more carefully etched. Money seeped up from the ocean like the tide, tourist money, money spent by retirees from places to the south. They flocked along the shore like ducks, some staying year-round, others sweeping in with summer, winging their way south in the fall.
I turned onto Route 1, where roadside signs waved frantically to tourists like beggar kids greeting cruise ships, Victorian bed-and-breakfasts named for sea captains beckoned like hookers. Crossing the Penobscot River at Verona, we skirted the paper mill town of Bucksport and continued up the coast, into rock-scrub blueberry country and then down a peninsula, past ranch houses and old farms. A few miles later we glided down into elm-shaded Blue Harbor, where the village houses were historic, the oceanfront estates were priceless, and all the money was made elsewhere.
“It really is pretty, isn’t it?” Roxanne said.
“Like a country club, except it’s a whole town.”
“With a long waiting list,” she said.
“Old money,” I said.
“Connelly money isn’t that old.”
“But Connellys had money and power. If you have enough of both, even Wasps make exceptions.”
“I don’t,” Roxanne said as the Explorer ground to a stop.
The plan was to meet the other DHS worker, Tara, in the parking lot of the Blue Harbor Grocery, a quaint store and cafe ringed with Mercedes and geraniums. Tara had said she drove an older white Subaru with a UMaine sticker, which in Blue Harbor would tag her as a gawker or a waitress. We parked and refreshed our recollections of Connelly lore.
There was David’s great-grandfather, Patrick Connelly, fresh from famine-weary Ireland, gobbling up Boston like it was a fat, ripe plum. Smart, savvy, and tough, he amassed money and power through what might have been called racketeering—lotteries, bootlegging, construction-labor kickbacks—if he hadn’t been so good at it. Steal a little and they throw you in jail, Bob Dylan said. Steal a lot and they make you king. Patrick Connelly was crowned; his son, Joe, added a layer of respectability, moving into real estate development and hardball politics, which went hand in hand in the growing city. By the time he was done, Joe Connelly had enough money and political savvy to send one son to the State House and another to the US Senate. And the next generation of Connellys, the generation Roxanne was about to meet, didn’t have to do anything at all.
“At least that’s my take on it,” I said.
“So they just play,” Roxanne said.
“It’s hard work,” I said. “Climbing in the Himalayas one day, going to a black-tie thing in Boston the next. Giving away money through, what is it?”
“The Sky Blue Foundation.”
“His money. I don’t think she had any.”
“No, but she has the looks,” Roxanne said. “And style.”
“They have a cute kid. You see them in the paper, the perfect family. I wonder how long it was?”
“What?”
“Before he started screwing around.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said.
“Remember the stuff about the college intern?”
“She was Harvard, right?”
“Well, of course,” I said.
We were quiet for a minute. I pictured handsome David Connelly chatting up some cute kid, convincing her that she was special, that the attraction they felt for each other was something extraordinary.
“He’s got to be a hell of a liar,” I said.
“A prerequisite for philanderers,” Roxanne said. I turned to her.
“Keep your knickers on.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
3
At two minutes past eleven, the Subaru rolled up with a clatter. Tara, a small solid woman with big hair and bangs, looked around for the Explorer and then got out and walked over. She was younger up close, in black jeans and sneakers, and she looked nervous, like a freshman at the senior prom, unsure she’d worn the right dress. She hadn’t. In another incarnation she carried wood on her back.
“They’ll send her around back with the rest of the deliveries,” I said.
“Let ’em try it,” Roxanne said.
She gave a discreet wave and Tara approached. Roxanne got out of the car and Tara shook her hand, then looked at me.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were from Central Office.”
“No, just the chauffeur.”
