Elena was dead, and now Teo was just gone?
As Gary greeted someone else, I turned toward the front of the room by the casket. Morley had arrived, and Peter was standing with him. They were speaking quietly but intensely.
“Mrs. Fournier?” someone said.
I turned around. For a moment, I panicked. Standing very close beside me was a handsome man with long, dirty blond hair and a Jesus beard. It was the Björn Borg look-alike who’d scared me outside the Hemingway Home when I was catering. That now seemed like a thousand years ago.
“Do I know you?” I said, taking a quick step back.
“No,” the man said in a voice deeper than I expected. “But I know you. Sort of.”
What the hell was this? I thought. “Are you a cop?” I said doubtfully.
“I’m actually an FBI agent,” he said, discreetly tucking a business card into my hand.
After a shocked moment, I looked at it. It had a raised FBI logo. “Special Agent Theodore Murphy,” it said, with a phone number.
“Why are you giving this to me?” I asked.
Continuing to scan the room, he shrugged his shoulders. “Nice to have help when you’re in a tight spot,” he said. He nodded at the card with his blond chin. “Hide it now before someone sees.”
“What?” I said. “Before who sees?”
Murphy looked up at the front of the room where Peter and Morley were talking. Then he shrugged again. “You need to be very careful, Jeanine,” he said, and then he turned and walked away.
Chapter 30
IT WAS SEVEN in the morning, a week after Elena’s funeral, when I heard the engine on Peter’s Stingray growl to life. Coming out of the shower, I dropped my towel and ran to the window.
Through the blinds, I saw a man rolling a large cooler across our backyard toward Peter’s fishing boat. A tall man with cropped gray hair. It was Chief Morley.
As he boarded the boat, I remembered Peter’s strange phone call: Fuck your plans, Morley. You just be there. I won’t tell you twice.
There was a soft knock on the bedroom door.
“Jeanine! Whoa!” Peter said, poking his head in and seeing that I was naked. “You made me forget what I was going to say. Oh, right. I totally forgot to tell you that Chief Morley and I are going on a fishing trip.”
A what?
“I know, I know. I should have said something. Bad Peter,” he said, slapping the back of his hand. “It was the chief’s suggestion. He thought this would give us a chance to clear our heads after the shooting and maybe get to know each other a little better. Sounds good, right? Hanging with the boss man. Who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to a promotion. Don’t worry about my shoulder. I’ll let the old buzzard do most of the heavy lifting.” Peter kissed me on the forehead softly and let me go.
“Thank you for being so supportive this week, Jeanine. You’re the best. I can’t wait to go to the Breakers with you. Steak au poivre, a nice red. Love you,” Peter said, closing the door behind him.
“Wait,” I said.
Peter smiled as he came back in.
“What is it? A quickie?” he said, hugging me. “Sure, but we need to hit it double time. Can’t keep the boss waiting.”
“No, idiot,” I said, giving him a faux pound on his chest. “This is so sudden. What time will you be back?”
“I don’t know. The usual. Sundown?” Peter said. “We’ll grill. We badass about-to-be-promoted cops like to eat what we kill, you know.”
I nodded. “See you at sundown,” I said.
“Not if I see you first,” Peter said, pinching my butt before he left.
Chapter 31
TWO HOURS LATER, sweating not just from the rising heat, I waited on the coral pink steps of Key West’s public library on Fleming Street. At nine thirty on the dot, I finally heard the lock turning behind me, and I jumped up, lifting the couple of large Dunkin’ Donuts coffees I’d brought.
The tiny librarian, Alice Dowd, smiled in surprise as I approached the reference desk and handed her one of the coffees.
“Jeanine, bearing gifts,” my elderly friend said with a smile. “What can I do for you, my dear, on this lovely morning?”
“Actually, Alice, I needed to do some research on my late father,” I lied.
“Research, I see,” Alice said, placing the coffee I gave her onto a tissue she produced from her desk. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Where do you want to start?”
“Do you have access to the Boston papers?” I said.
“You’re in luck,” Alice said, standing. She gestured for me to follow her through a book-lined corridor behind her desk and into a little room. “We just got these new computers with new software called Netscape. It helps you surf the World Wide Web, thousands of newspapers and magazines and databases and archives. Here, let me show you how to use it.”
After setting me up at one of the computers, I waited until Alice was back at her desk before I took a sip of my bitter black coffee and contemplated my next move.
Then I made it.
I took out the card that Björn, or Agent Theodore Murphy, or whoever he was had given me at Elena’s wake.
Then I turned it over and read what was handwritten on the back.
Boston Globe, September 22, 1988
Boston Globe, October 29, 1988
You’re not safe. I can help. Call me.
I’d felt disoriented and tense ever since he’d given me the card. What did the Boston Globe have to do with me? And why had I been approached by an FBI agent? Was he watching Peter? Had he been doing surveillance when I spotted him the first time at the Hemingway Home wedding? Of who? Elena? Me? Was he trying to recruit me or something?
I didn’t have answers, but I had kept the card hidden.
I took a breath and typed “Peter Fournier” along with “Boston Globe” into the search engine and hit Enter.
The screen blinked. I began to cough as two links popped up.
Both were from the Boston Globe. The dates matched those on the card.
I quickly clicked on the first one before I could think of a reason not to. The screen blacked out for a second, and a little hourglass icon appeared. I was about to get up to ask Alice what was wrong when an image appeared.
Boston Globe
September 22, 1988
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
Chapter 32
September 22, 1988
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
Amanda Fournier, wife of Boston Police Department rookie Peter Fournier, was killed in a holdup of a Boston delicatessen on Thursday. Around noon, witnesses say, a masked man entered the establishment, brandishing a shotgun and demanding money. The assailant grabbed for Mrs. Fournier’s purse, and during the struggle the gun discharged, killing the twenty-year-old instantly. The suspect fled in a blue Chevy pickup truck. The Fourniers, police sources said, were planning to start a family.
I swallowed involuntarily, my hand shaking. I felt like throwing up, like I’d been kicked in the stomach.
Coffee shot out of the lid of my cup, scalding my jittery hand, but I couldn’t feel it.
The date seemed to make sense. It was Peter. I could feel it in the marrow of my pregnant bones.
He’d had a wife? A wife who’d been killed?! Why didn’t he tell me that he was a widower? I wondered. He did tell me I was the first girl that he’d ever dated for more than a month. He’d also told me he was from New York, not Boston. Which I’d accepted at face value despite the suspicious fact that he was a die-hard Red Sox fan.
“No!” I actually said out loud to the screen.
I wiped sweat from my face with my wrist. When I turned, Alice was looking at me funny from her desk.
“Everything OK in there?” she said.
“Fine,” I lied again as I looked back at the screen.
So what? I thought angrily. What did this prove? It was just a coincidence. Someone named Peter Fournier was a cop in Boston. There were lots of
Peter Fourniers in the world. It was just a coincidence.
What was I doing here anyway? I wondered. Wasting my time was what. Driving myself crazy was what.
I stood and grabbed my barely touched coffee. I needed to get out of this cramped concrete box and go for a jog on the beach or a long swim. Maybe in the afternoon, I’d head down to one of the wharves in Old Town and buy some freshly caught wahoo in case Peter and Morley came back empty.
Maybe he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing, but we could deal with that. Checking up on him like I was Nancy Drew was too out there. Screw Björn and his cryptic bullshit. My trip to Crazyland was over. I needed to go where I belonged. Home. Now.
As I stood, I couldn’t help but remember the second link on the screen.
I clicked on the back arrow and stared at the Enter button as if it meant “Self-destruct.” Then I put my coffee back down and clicked.
“Come on already,” I said, nervously flicking the coffee’s plastic lid with my thumb as I waited for the screen to change.
There was a hum, and then my stomach dropped as the black screen turned to white. The first thing that appeared as I began to scroll down to the article was a smudgy photograph.
I stopped scrolling, my whole hand trembling on the mouse.
It was Peter.
He was a few years younger, and he was wearing a Boston PD uniform.
As I looked into Peter’s eyes, it felt like my throat was slowly closing, garden hose to coin wrapper to bar straw.
I finally closed my eyes to make the picture and the rest of my rapidly disintegrating world disappear.
Unbelievable, I thought, keeping my eyes closed.
I assumed I’d calm down after a while, but it wasn’t happening. The office chair beneath me suddenly felt wobbly, as if all the screws had been removed.
I’d thought that I’d grown up on the day my father died, but I’d been wrong. Sitting there in front of the picture of my husband that proved he was a liar, I felt my heart concede and my head take over.
I shook my head at my wedding and engagement rings. I had to get it out of the sand. I needed to wake the hell up.
There was no more denying it. Pictures didn’t lie.
Fact: Peter was from Boston, not New York.
Fact: Peter had been married before to a woman who was killed.
Fact: Peter had been lying to me from day one.
Fact: I was in some deep shit.
It felt like time stopped as I glanced down and spotted the new headline beside Peter’s picture. My eyes ran over the five words, and it felt like the rapidly spinning world had stopped dead right there under the public library fluorescents.
I didn’t think that it could get worse.
God, was I so very wrong.
“Cop Questioned in Wife’s Death,” the headline said.
Chapter 33
Boston, MA
COP QUESTIONED IN WIFE’S DEATH
Authorities in the Boston Police Department have questioned the husband of the woman killed in a delicatessen holdup last month. Peter Fournier, who is a rookie patrolman on the Boston Police force, refused to answer reporters’ questions as he left headquarters with his lawyer late last night.
Twenty-year-old Amanda Fournier was killed by multiple shotgun blasts during the midday holdup on September 21. A receptionist in a pediatrician’s office on Crescent Street, she entered Jake’s Deli next door a little before noon. Witnesses say a masked assailant entered behind her and that she was shot several times when she hesitated to give up her bag. No one else was injured.
The autopsy report released from the Suffolk County coroner’s office confirmed that Mrs. Fournier was pregnant.
Detectives would not reveal if the questioning was routine or not. But a source close to the investigation described the events surrounding the murder as “suspicious.”
Neighbors of the couple described the Fourniers as close and were shocked to learn of the questioning of Mr. Fournier. As were Mr. Fournier’s fellow Boston PD officers, one of whom described the twenty-six-year-old rookie and former U.S. Army Ranger as extremely competent and “a cop’s cop.”
I stopped reading. The world turned gray, as if a dimmer switch had been hit. I blinked, unable to breathe, waiting for my heart to start beating again.
I noticed that there was another photograph at the bottom of the article. I shuddered as I looked at the picture of the young woman above the “Amanda Fournier” caption.
The young woman had a lot of high hair and some dark eye shadow. I realized two things about this photograph simultaneously. It looked like the girl’s high school picture, and she looked a hell of a lot like me!
I thought about what Peter had said when I confronted him about his double shift.
Then I… looked into your eyes, and I haven’t been inside a church since my Communion, Jeanine, but it felt holy… Like God sent an angel down from heaven.
I’ll bet! I thought as I sat there, unable to pry my eyes away from the photo of the deceased young woman on the screen.
I didn’t actually remember printing the article or leaving the library. Or starting my Vespa, for that matter. The first place I found myself after my shock subsided enough for me to form a thought was the main post office on Whitehead Street.
A Coppertone-colored bum making a straw hat on the curb glanced up as I swerved to a dust-raising stop. There was a pay phone inside the post office, I remembered. It was inside a dark, old-fashioned phone booth with a door that closed, like a confessional. I had actually called my college from this secluded booth to tell them I wasn’t coming back.
That was exactly what I needed now, I realized. Privacy, darkness, confession.
I thought of another headline as I entered the post office, like a movie zombie.
“Cop’s Wife Goes Nuts.”
Chapter 34
AS IF IN A TRANCE, I pushed into the post office and fished out a bunch of quarters. I collapsed in the circa 1930s phone booth in the corner and closed its folding door behind me. Quarters rang off the dusty marble between my feet as I dropped several while dialing 411.
I needed to know what happened after Peter had spoken to the detectives. I needed to go to the primary source, get to the bottom of this.
If it had a bottom.
I got the Boston PD number from information, dialed, and began feeding the phone quarters.
One fact actually made me dry-heave as it kept repeating in my mind like a news crawl across the bottom of a TV screen.
Amanda Fournier was pregnant.
Just like me.
My sweat almost made me drop the receiver as the last quarter bonged home and the phone rang.
“Boston.”
“Hello. May I speak to Detective… Yorgenson?” I said, reading from the printed article in my hand.
“Hold on,” said the gruff Boston cop.
“Yorgenson,” said an even gruffer voice a moment later.
“My name’s Jeanine Baker,” I said with a convincing Southern twang. My current state of insanity apparently was a wonder for my acting chops. “I work for Tony’s Bail Bonds down here in Miami. We’re doing an employment check on a Peter Fournier. Rumor has it he was involved in some kind of homicide. I got your name from a Boston Globe article. Can you give me some clarity on Mr. Fournier?”
Even at that point, I was hoping for some good news. Even after the lies and strange behavior, I was hoping that there was some reasonable explanation. That it was all one big mistake.
“Miami?” Yorgenson said. “So that’s where that virus Fournier turned up. I’d be delighted to give you some clarity on Petey. The son of a bitch killed his wife and got away with it. He should be in a jail cell.”
Chapter 35
I OPENED THE BOOTH DOOR at the dusty post office, unable to breathe. The air had a strange new pressure, a new weight, as if the room had been suddenly filled with water when I wasn’t paying attention, and now I was drowning.
&
nbsp; “A shock, isn’t it?” the cop said. “I know. Pete doesn’t look like a psychopath, does he? He’s a real charmer, especially with the ladies.”
“How can you be so sure he did it?” I said.
“After his wife turned up dead, we went by the book, looked at Pete straight off the bat more to clear him than anything else,” Yorgenson said. “But we found out some very interesting things about Mr. Rookie of the Year.
“Like how he had dozens of brutality complaints. Like how he was rumored to love to party with nose candy. Like how he and Amanda had been separated. One of Amanda’s friends told us it was because of the baby. He wanted her to abort it. She filed for divorce instead. He’d been harassing her for months before the shooting. Stalking her at work. Following some of her male coworkers home. ‘If I can’t have you, nobody will,’ he told her on several occasions.”
Yorgenson paused, letting it all sink in.
“I don’t remember if it was in the papers, but Amanda was shot several times. The first time in the abdomen. The first officer to arrive on scene retired soon after on a psychiatric disability pension. I hear he lives in the subway station down at the Government Center now.”
Yorgenson chuckled bitterly.
“Think Petey Boy was nervous when we came to question him? Think again. He sat there with those big cold baby blues of his and a shit-eating grin, like we were best buddies watching a Sox game at the corner watering hole. Had his alibi information ready and waiting for me. He didn’t even bother asking if we had any other leads. The whole thing seemed to amuse him.”
“But why didn’t he—?” I started.
“Go to jail?” Yorgenson finished. “I ask myself that every day. Classic stalker-husband-kills-wife open-and-shut case, right? Wrong. The DA wouldn’t prosecute, wouldn’t even help us get a search warrant to look for the murder weapon.