Point Of Departure

Behind her back, Sam discreetly waved away the smoke. She took another drag and said, “I forwarded your tenure application to the committee yesterday.”

Moving upwind of the toxic blue cloud, he took a breath of fresh air. Or as fresh as it got on a weekday in downtown Boston. “And?”

She turned and studied him with shrewd blue eyes. Took another puff and said, “I’m worried about Larsen.”

Professor Nyles Larsen was Sam Winslow’s nemesis. He was also the chair of the tenure committee. In theory, if a professor didn’t achieve tenure, there was nothing forcing him to move on. In reality, being denied was a slap in the face, best responded to by making a rapid retreat with tail tucked firmly between legs. There was just one problem with that: Sam didn’t want to retreat. He might have come to teaching by a circuitous route, but now that he was here, he had no intention of going anywhere.

Sam furrowed his brow. “You think he’ll give us trouble?”

“I think Nyles Larsen would take great glee in denying your tenure application. He’s had it in for you since the day you first walked through the door of this place.”

It was true. Larsen had been a member of the search committee that had hired Sam, and when the man had taken an immediate dislike to him, he’d come close to losing out to another candidate. If not for the staunch ally he’d made in Vince Tedeschi, Professor of Mathematics, he’d have ended up standing on a street corner, selling pencils from a cup. Fortunately for Sam, majority vote had ruled the day, but Nyles Larsen continued to wage a one-man campaign against what he claimed were Sam’s mediocre standards and slapdash teaching methods.

“He’s jealous,” Lydia said. “Your students think you walk on water. Nyles puts his students to sleep.”

A pair of twenty-something young women carrying backpacks passed them, talking animatedly, and entered the building through the wide double doors. “So how do we counteract his influence?” Sam said.

“We’ve done as much as we can do,” Lydia said. “I’ve read your materials all the way through. Proofed them twice. Just to be sure. Your tenure packet’s thorough. You’ve provided good documentation. Your student evaluations are top-notch. Your publication record is a little thin, but it’s outweighed by other factors, like your outstanding committee work. Your peer recommendation was stellar.”

Of course it was. If not for him, it would have been his peers sitting on all those mind-numbingly tedious committees. They’d do whatever it took to keep him on board so they could continue nominating him to do the dirty work they were all so desperate to avoid. He figured it was worth the sacrifice. No matter what he was asked to do, he accepted the job with a smile. Damn little ever got accomplished in those committee meetings, but membership always looked good on paper.

“Christ, Lyd,” he said, hating the thread of desperation that ran through his voice, “I have to get tenure. If I can’t make it in this place…” The rest of the sentence went unspoken, but they both knew what he meant. When you started at the bottom, there was nowhere left to fall. “I can’t make a living from painting. And I’m not trained for anything else. If they boot me out of Back Bay, I’ll end up waxing floors at the bus station.”

Lydia took another puff of her cigarette, held in the smoke and exhaled it. Flicking an ash, she said, “You’ve done everything we asked you to do. There’s no reason on God’s green earth why you should be turned down. Not unless Larsen starts flapping his gums, and even then, the rest of the committee should ignore him. The man is irrational, and everybody knows it. They also know he’s determined to hang you out to dry. If anything goes wrong at this point, I’m holding Nyles Larsen personally responsible. If that happens, the little weasel won’t want to cross my path.”

The lowering sun slowly leached the afternoon of its warmth. Just beneath the surface of that golden glow lay October’s surprisingly sharp little teeth, nipping unexpectedly when a sudden arctic gust caught and lifted a strand of Sam’s hair.

“I appreciate the support,” he said. “I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me a thing. I just wanted to give you a heads-up.” She dropped the butt of her cigarette onto the ground and crushed it out with her foot. “And to let you know that I’m watching your back.”

Detective Lorna Abrams had a headache.

She fumbled in her black leather purse for the emergency bottle of Tylenol she always carried, opened the bottle and popped two capsules into her palm. Snapping the cap back on the bottle, she glanced around the interior of the car for something liquid, then said, “To hell with it!” and swallowed them dry.

Policzki, his hands at ten and two on the wheel and his eyes focused on traffic to prevent them from becoming yet another highway statistic, said, “I don’t know how you do that.”

“Easy. I just work up a mouthful of spit and—”

“Thanks,” he said, “but you really don’t have to go into detail.”

“Stop being so spleeny. You’re a cop, for Christ’s sake. Act like one.”

Policzki didn’t respond. It was just as well. When she was in this kind of mood, heads were likely to roll, and Doug Policzki’s head, being the nearest one, was in danger of becoming her first victim.

None of the three telephone numbers listed on Kaye Winslow’s business card had yielded results. The first, her cell phone number, was useless because in the abruptness of her departure, Winslow had left her BlackBerry behind. The second, her private line at Winslow & DeLucca, rang twice and then went directly to voice mail. Lorna had left an urgent message, but the chances of getting a response were probably zip and zilch. That left door number three. But by the time they’d finished up at the scene, it was well past closing time, and the realty office answering machine had directed her to call back after eight o’clock in the morning.

“Three strikes and you’re out,” she muttered.

Policzki glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Having a bad day, are we?”

“They postponed the court date on the Moldonado case. Again.”

Arturo Moldonado, a soft-spoken supermarket meat cutter who’d lived in the same East Boston apartment for two decades, was known for taking in strays—both the human and the animal variety—and handing out penny candy to the neighborhood kids. One day last October, he’d come home early and discovered his wife in bed with a twenty-two-year-old college dropout friend of their son. Upon seeing his inamorata engaged in steamy passion with another, much younger and more virile man, Moldonado had tiptoed to the kitchen and taken out a meat cleaver—which, in consideration of his occupation, he kept razor sharp—then returned to the bedroom and the still unsuspecting couple, and proceeded to hack them into a jillion pieces. Afterward, he’d called 911, then sat calmly on the couch with the bloody cleaver and waited for the authorities to come and take him away.

“You can’t control the court calendar,” Policzki said. “They’ll do what they’re going to do. All we can do is roll with it.”

His logic was flawless. And maddening. “That isn’t even the worst of it,” Lorna said, rubbing at her throbbing temple. “It’s those crazy people I call relatives that have me one step from the edge and peering down into the abyss.”

“Oh,” he said as the light dawned. “Wedding stuff.”

“Yes, wedding stuff! You know what I did today? I spent my lunch hour watching my nineteen-year-old daughter try on wedding dresses. Do you have any frigging idea how much those things cost?”

Policzki made a noncommittal grunt of sympathy. Of course he was noncommittal, she thought irritably. He didn’t have a clue how much wedding dresses cost. He lived at home with his mother and banked all his money. “Too damn much,” she said, answering her own question. “That’s how much. All for a kid who has her head in the clouds and doesn’t have a clue what life is really about.”

And that was the crux of the matter: Krissy was too young to get married. She was nineteen years old, barely out of high school. A baby. She was also headstrong and determined, so the wedding preparations rolled merrily along, gathering momentum and gaining in size, until they threatened to crush anybody who failed to jump out of the way.

“Silk and taffeta,” Lorna grumbled. “Tulle and organza. What the hell is organza, anyway?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

She glanced out the window, down a darkened side street. “Ed and I got married at city hall. I wore a navy-blue suit and carried a bouquet of carnations. We spent our wedding night at a hotel in Revere, then got up and went to work the next day. We did not—I repeat not—spend two weeks on Maui. Who the hell was the idiot that decided the bride’s parents are supposed to pay for the wedding?”

“The tradition dates back to ancient times,” Policzki said, “when the bride’s family was expected to provide a dowry to the family of the groom, presumably in payment for taking her off their hands.”

Lorna snorted. “If I’d known that was all it took, I’d have gladly paid Derek to take her off my hands. He’s welcome to all of her—the nose ring, the messy room, the Real World addiction. The posters of Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom. He’s an easygoing kid. I could’ve paid him off for a tenth of what this wedding will cost me. They could’ve eloped. Think of the money I would have saved.”

“I think this is it.” Policzki pulled up to the curb behind an aging Volvo wagon. Soft light spilled through a bay window of the South End town house onto the shrubbery below, giving the place the cozy, inviting look of a Thomas Kinkade painting. A shadow moved behind a curtained window. Policzki turned off the engine, and by silent agreement, they simultaneously opened their doors and stepped out of the car.

The day’s warmth had given way to a crisp, clear evening. As they moved briskly toward the front door of the house, Lorna said, “So I’ll be good cop and you can be bad cop.”

“How come I never get to be good cop?”

“Are you kidding, Policzki? With that grim expression of yours, you’d scare people half to death. Tell me. Do you take the face off when you go to bed at night, or is this a 24–7 kind of thing?”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I love babies and flowers and puppies.”

“I know. You’re just incredibly earnest. Or incredibly dedicated. Or incredibly something.”

They climbed the steps and Lorna rang the bell. Muffled footsteps approached and the door opened.

Lorna’s first thought was that Sam Winslow—if, indeed, the man standing in the open doorway, outlined by soft lamplight, was Sam Winslow—was a sinfully handsome man, with coal-black hair worn to his shoulders, electric blue eyes and a lean, craggy face topped by cheekbones sharp enough to slice diamonds. Somewhere in the vicinity of forty, if the wisps of gray at his temples were any indication, he could be a model—or a stand-in for George Clooney—if he ever tired of teaching. She could imagine him in a magazine layout, standing in a room full of glamorous and playful people, wearing Armani and sipping from a glass of Chivas Regal.

Christ on a crutch. His female students must be tripping over their own feet just to get close to him. Probably a few of the male ones were, too.

He eyed them warily. “Yes?”

“Sam Winslow?” Policzki said.

“Yes.”

The young detective held up his badge. “Policzki and Abrams, Boston PD. Is your wife home, sir?”

“My wife? I—no, actually, she’s not. What’s this about?”

“May we come in?”

“It’s dinnertime. I really don’t think—”

“Professor Winslow,” Lorna said, “there was an incident this afternoon involving your wife. I think you’d better let us in.”

“An incident?” He hesitated, looked momentarily nonplussed. Then he nodded and moved away from the door.

Winslow closed the door behind them, cleared his throat and ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. “What’s this about?” he repeated.

“Professor Winslow,” Lorna said, “when was the last time you spoke with your wife?”

“This morning,” he said. “We had breakfast together. Then she went her way and I went mine. You still haven’t told me what’s going on. What kind of incident?”

“It’s almost seven o’clock,” Policzki said. “Your wife isn’t home, and you haven’t spoken to her since this morning. Is this your typical daily routine?”

“Kaye works crazy hours. Look, I wish you people would tell me what the hell is going on. Is Kaye in some kind of trouble? Has something happened to her?”

“Your wife had an appointment this afternoon to show a house on Commonwealth Avenue,” Lorna said, watching his eyes carefully for even the merest flicker of recognition. Or guilt. But she saw neither. “When the client arrived, Mrs. Winslow wasn’t there.”

Winslow wrinkled his brow in puzzlement and ran a hand along his jaw. “I don’t understand. You mean she never showed up?”

“Oh, she showed up,” Policzki said. “Her briefcase was there. Her PDA and her wallet were there. But no Kaye. We did find somebody else there, though.”

Winslow crossed his arms. “Who?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Lorna said. “Whoever he was, he’d been shot in the head. Does your wife own a gun, Professor?”

Two

Winslow’s color wasn’t good. He sat on a cream leather sofa, directly across from Lorna, who’d snagged herself a comfy armchair, while Policzki wandered the room, taking a casual inventory of its contents. The professor had loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, but to Policzki he still looked like something that should be hung out to dry on a wash day morning. His pallor might be due to the shock of learning that his wife was missing. On the other hand, it could be traced to a more sinister source. Guilt had a way of taking its toll on a man.

“The very suggestion is ludicrous,” Winslow said.

Lorna leaned back in her chair. “Why is it ludicrous?”

“A, we don’t own a gun. And B, even if we did, there’s not a chance in hell that Kaye would ever shoot it. She’d be too worried about breaking a nail or getting her hands dirty.”

His ears attuned to every nuance of their conversation, Policzki studied the collection of African tribal masks that hung on the wall above the fireplace mantel. They looked like the genuine article. Somebody—presumably the good professor—had done a good deal more traveling in his lifetime than had Douglas Policzki of Somerville, Massachusetts. Six semesters spent at an Arizona university was hardly in the same league as a trip to the Dark Continent.

The Winslows had eclectic tastes. An antique open-fronted china cabinet housed a large collection of Hummel figurines. At least the Winslows kept them all in one place. Policzki’s mother collected Hummels, and she had dozens of them scattered all over the house, an excess of cuteness so saccharine it made his teeth ache.

“My wife did not kill anybody,” Winslow said. “There has to be some other explanation. Have you talked to the owner of the building? Maybe this dead guy is one of the Worthingtons.”

Policzki picked up one of the offending objects, a dimpled boy in knee pants and tight curls who carried a shepherd’s crook. Odd, he thought, absently running his thumb over its cool, smooth surface, that Winslow should seem more interested in the dead man than in his missing wife.

“Technically, the house is owned collectively by the Worthington heirs,” Lorna said. “The executor of the estate, Bruce Worthington, is out of the country right now, traveling in Europe. We’re trying to reach him.”

Policzki set down Little Boy Blue, leaned against the china cabinet and crossed his arms.

“Maybe…” Winslow’s brows drew together in concentration. “Maybe she witnessed something that frightened her. Maybe she saw the killer.” His skin, taut across his cheekbones, seemed almost too small for his face. Too tight. “Maybe,” he said, “she’s hiding from someone.”

Policzki met Lorna’s gaze and held it for an instant. She leaned closer to the professor, elbows braced on her knees. “What makes you say that?”

Winslow loosened his tie a little further, but it did nothing to heighten his color. He still looked like somebody’s washed-out bed linens. “No particular reason. I’m just thinking out loud. Trying to come up with some logical explanation.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual about your wife’s behavior lately? Any personality changes? Has she seemed more irritable than usual? More nervous? More secretive?”

“None of the above,” Winslow said. “Kaye’s just been her usual self.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question, Detective.”

“If you could describe your wife to me in one word, what would it be?”

“Ah. I see. I’d probably say driven.”

“Driven?”

Winslow shifted position, digging his backside deeper into the sofa’s plush cushions. “My wife’s enough of a workaholic to make the rest of us look like slackers. I know it sounds like a cliché, but Kaye eats, drinks and breathes real estate. She’s never off duty. Evenings, weekends, holidays. If she’s not out showing properties, she’s on the phone, drumming up business.”

“I’d think,” Policzki said, “that might cause friction in the household.”

Winslow blinked a couple of times, as though he’d forgotten there was a third person in the room. “Friction?”

“Well,” Policzki said, his gaze focused directly on the professor’s face, “if my wife worked 24–7, after a while I’d start to feel neglected.”

“I’m not neglected. There’s nothing wrong with my marriage, if that’s what you’re implying. Kaye and I are adults. I understand the importance of her job, and she understands the importance of mine. We do our best to accommodate each other’s needs.”

Across the room, Lorna crossed shapely legs and adjusted the hem of her skirt. “Then you don’t fight at all?” she said.

“Of course we fight. All couples fight.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “About what?”

Had Winslow gone even paler, or was it a trick of the light? “I don’t know,” he said. “What does any couple fight about? Maybe I left the toilet seat cover up again, or she left the cap off the toothpaste. Or I forgot to pick up milk on the way home.”

Policzki stepped away from the china cabinet and stood behind Lorna’s chair. “Tolstoy once said that all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Winslow’s mouth thinned and his eyes lost some of their warmth. “We’re not unhappy, Detective.”

Soothingly, Lorna said, “Nobody said you were.”

“He implied it. I’m trying to be cooperative.”

“And we appreciate it,” Lorna said. “Let’s change direction for a minute. What was your wife wearing when she left the house this morning?”

“Ah…let me think.” Winslow ran the fingers of both hands through his hair while he thought about it. “A red suit,” he said finally. “Yeah, that’s it. A red suit and matching heels. White silk chemise top underneath.”

“Any jewelry?”

“Just her wedding ring. A wide gold band with a single marquise-cut diamond. One carat. Oh, and her Rolex. She never leaves the house without it.”

“Just like American Express. Karl Malden would be proud. And she was driving her car this morning? The red 2005 BMW?”

“That’s right.”

“Dr. Winslow,” Policzki said, “where were you this afternoon between, say, two and four?”

He wasn’t imagining the hostility he saw in Winslow’s eyes. It was real. But he had to give the guy points for control. “I was in my office,” Winslow said. “Working. I teach two classes every Tuesday. I spent the time between classes doing online research for a paper I’m presenting at a symposium in Kansas City next month.”

“Is there anybody who can vouch for your presence? Did anybody see you there? Did you talk to anybody, take any phone calls, while you were there?”

A muscle twitched in Winslow’s jaw. He looked at Lorna as if seeking support. When it didn’t come, he said, “No. I kept the door shut to discourage interruptions. If I leave it open, I don’t get any work done.”

“So you have no alibi for the time in question. That could pose a problem, Professor, if we don’t locate your wife.”

“Look…” Winslow’s eyes suddenly went damp. “You have to know how worried I am about Kaye. If something’s happened to her—” He closed his eyes and shook his head. A single tear escaped from the corner of his eye. Policzki watched in fascination as it trickled down his cheek. “No,” he said after a moment of silence, “I won’t even go there. Not yet. I refuse to believe that anything’s happened to her. There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this. I don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll find it.”

Gently, Lorna said, “Does your wife have any enemies, Professor? Anybody you can think of who might wish her harm?”

He looked at her, blinked a couple of times. “Enemies? What possible reason could anyone have for wishing my wife harm?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

Winslow had begun to perspire profusely. The underarms of his shirt were ringed with sweat. “No,” he said, his voice a little shakier than before. “I’m not aware of any enemies who might wish her harm.”

“She hasn’t mentioned anything about problems at work?” Lorna said. “A tiff with a co-worker, a disgruntled client? A deal that went south? A competitor who thinks Winslow & DeLucca is horning in on his territory and wants to even the odds?”

“She hasn’t said anything to me. You should probably talk to Mia. If anything like that was going on, Mia would know.”

“Who’s Mia?”

“Mia DeLucca. My sister. She and Kaye are business partners.”

Lorna and Policzki exchanged glances. “Call her,” Lorna said. “Get her over here.”

Mia DeLucca sat in a line of cars at the tollbooth, inching her way forward, one car length at a time, in mortal danger of being asphyxiated by exhaust fumes. Ahead of her, Boston rose like the Emerald City, a breathtaking vista of twinkling lights and soaring buildings. Behind her lay ninety miles of turnpike, ninety miles of brutal, bumper-to-bumper traffic, ninety miles of crazed Massachusetts drivers, at least half of them fueled by road rage.

The trip from Springfield had been a nightmare. After eight hours of tedious real estate seminars, all she wanted was to go home and soak in a hot bubble bath. But she’d been expected to eat dinner with the rest of the presenters before they went their separate ways, so she’d made the best of it and splurged on a meal of shrimp scampi and a single glass of white wine. Even taking into account the ninety minutes that dinner took from start to finish, she still would’ve made it home by seven-thirty if fate hadn’t intervened in the form of a semi truck that had jackknifed and overturned on the Mass Pike somewhere near Framingham. It had taken over an hour for emergency personnel to right it, while Mia and nine trillion other drivers sat at a standstill.

When she realized how late she would be, she’d called Kevin from her cell phone so he wouldn’t worry. She should have known better. Her son had expressed sympathy in typical unfocused teenage fashion, meaning he was wrapped up in some computer game and hadn’t been thinking about her at all. He’d undoubtedly forget her existence again the instant he hung up the phone. It was a good thing that she planned to amass a fortune in real estate before she retired. If Kevin was responsible for taking care of her in her old age, she’d probably end up living in a refrigerator box on some downtown street corner. Her son would be too busy playing Grand Theft Auto to remember the aged crone who’d given birth to him all those years ago.

The line of cars inched closer to the tolls, and as her engine shuddered in protest, Mia drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel. Somewhere between Springfield and Boston, her odometer had rolled past three hundred thousand miles. It was nearing time to send the ancient Blazer to the boneyard, but she was loath to spend the money on a new car. At least the old girl was paid for. Embarrassing to drive, but paid for. The previous owner, a twenty-year-old kid from Revere, had pimped it out with shiny black paint, chrome wheels and opaque, black-tinted windows. Kev, of course, loved the damn thing. He called it her Mafia staff car.