"That doesn't mean she took them."
"Come on, Dan-"
"Or if she took them, and I'm not saying she did, she took them to build the case against Lenny. That's what we've been saying all along. She took them to keep them safe."
"Then where are they? Where is the evidence?"
"We'll find it."
"Think about this. If she was on the inside working the scam with Lenny, then her signature would be on those invoices. Destroying them would be one way to cover up her own involvement."
"Give me one good reason why she would be involved in something like this."
"She was sleeping with Lenny."
He swung his entire upper body around to face me. If we'd been going any faster than four miles an hour, we might have swerved off the road into a ditch. "Bullshit, Shanahan, bullshit. I told you before that's crap."
"Molly pulled up Lenny's travel schedule from the past eighteen months. When we checked it against Ellen's list, ten of the fifteen cities matched. Ten. And one of the five that didn't was the last trip to Denver. She was in the same city with him ten different times. In secret."
His head canted to one side, slowly, almost like a door opening. The traffic was picking up and spreading out, and he had to pay more attention to the road. Maybe that explained why he didn't say another word for almost three miles-a long, slow three miles.
He finally broke his silence. "Was Lenny in Boston the night she died?"
"There's no record that he flew into Boston," I said, "but I think he was here. He could have driven."
"Why do you think that?"
I reached into my back pocket, pulled out an envelope, and opened it up. "I found this letter in her mail. It just came this week."
"What is it?"
I pulled it from the envelope. It was too dark to read, but I didn't have to. "This is a letter from a place called Maitre d' Express. It's a dinner-delivery service."
"Like Domino's Pizza?"
"No. They only do the delivery part. You can order from lots of different restaurants around town, and they bring it to your house. Inside is a credit card receipt and a letter saying that Ellen still has to pay for her last order even though she never took delivery."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"It was for the night she died."
He looked over at me but didn't say a word.
"The receipt was for one hundred fifteen dollars. Twenty-five was for the delivery from Boston to Marble-head. That leaves ninety dollars, which even by Boston standards is a lot for one meal. So I called Maitre d' Express and they had a record of the order in their computer. One appetizer, two salads, and two entrees from Hamersley's. At eight o'clock she called and cancelled, but it was too late. The order had already been made up, so she was charged anyway."
Shadows moved in and out of the car with the steady flow of headlights streaming toward us. I watched his face. He was working his jaw, but I saw no other sign that he was listening.
"Here's what I think happened that day. Ellen spoke to Lenny on the phone sometime during the morning. I don't know what was going on between them, but he must have talked her into seeing him that night at her house. Before she left work, she cancelled her trainer's appointment for that night at the gym, but according to her running log, she went running that afternoon along the Charles, so she wanted to get a workout in, but didn't want to keep the appointment that night. She got home around four and called this place to order dinner for the evening."
"And when Lenny showed up he killed her."
"One thing's for sure. Whoever killed her knew her. He had access to the house, probably a key, and the code for the security system. Or she let him in. No forced entry. He knew about her mother, knew enough about her and her life to make the murder look like a plausible suicide."
"Why would he kill her?"
"Could be that Dickie's package triggered something. Maybe there was some kind of blow-up between the two of them and they stopped trusting each other. Maybe she was accumulating the evidence to use against him. It's clear that Ellen had the evidence, not Lenny, and he's still looking for it, he and his pals the Dwyers."
At the end of our exit ramp, he took a right turn that put us on a poorly lit spur. I looked out the window at an industrial area of aluminum-sided warehouses and vast parking lots filled with eighteen-wheelers backed up to raised concrete loading docks. It was lonely and cold and desolate.
"The thing I don't get," I said, "is why she cancelled the dinner. What happened to her between four in the afternoon when she ordered and eight o'clock when she cancelled?"
He had nothing to say to that. Neither one of us said another word for the rest of the drive out.
Angelo DiBiasi's white stubble crept down the soft roll of flab at his throat. His worn cotton T-shirt covered a narrow chest, which ballooned into a big, hanging gut that kept him from pushing in close to the table. With one eye almost shut, he cocked the other at me as he spoke to Dan. "Why'd you go and bring her for?"
"Don't start with me, Angie. I told you I might bring her."
"And I told you not to-"
"Which just goes to show you're not in charge here. You're the one who's sitting at home on your butt with no job, and she's the one who can bring you back, so be nice."
Dan's tone had an urgent edge, as though he was running out of time and patience, even though we'd just arrived. We were at a fluorescent island of a truck stop by the side of the highway. It had stools at a long counter and ashtrays on every wobbly table.
When Angelo looked at me again, it was with eyes that were puffy and red-ringed, the kind you get from lying awake at night. Or crying. Or both. I offered him my hand across our sticky Formica table and introduced myself. "I'm sorry about your wife, and I hope we can work something out."
He switched his cigarette to his other hand and returned the gesture. His fingers were long and thin in my hand, the only part of him that seemed delicate.
"Let's get this over with." He let go and turned back to Dan. "I don't want to be seen with the two of youse." He took a quick tobacco hit, then moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. "You bring something in writing describes this deal?"
"We don't have a deal yet," Dan said, "which is why we're talking."
"That's not what you told my wife. Why'd you have to go and call her anyway? You got no right calling and bothering her with my business." His chest puffed out and his back stiffened, and he looked like an old rooster as he shook his head full of white hair. "What you did, a man should never do to another man."
Dan stirred his coffee. "I'm sorry I had to bother Theresa, but since she's the one who's sick, I thought she had the right to know there was a way for you to get your job back. You didn't tell her." He lifted the cup to his lips, had another thought, and put it back down without drinking. "And besides, you've got a strange- idea of what's right. She starts chemo in two weeks and you're out boosting TV sets, getting yourself fired and losing your medical benefits."
"I was taking that TV home for her," he sputtered, "so she'd have it to watch when-" He stopped abruptly and turned toward the window. It was a big picture window that looked out over the parking lot, where snowflakes were beginning to drift down into the rain puddles. His cigarette was wedged tightly between his thumb and index finger. We sat in silence and watched as he smoked it all the way down to the filter. As soon as he stubbed out the butt, he started a new one. "Tell me again," he said wearily, "what you want and what you got."
Dan put both elbows on the table. "I don't know what it is you know, Angie, but my boss went to a lot of trouble to try to talk to you before she died, so I've got to think it's big. You give me what she was looking for, and we'll bring you back to work. No termination, no hearings or arbitration, none of that shit. You just come back tomorrow like you never left."