student of mine. “I have to talk to you, Joanne,” she said. “There’s something terribly wrong at Falconer Shreve.”
CHAPTER
4
When she’d been a seminar leader for the Political Science 100 class I taught, Anne Millar had been a plump, quietly pretty girl who wore no-name jeans and baggy sweaters and eschewed makeup as a political statement. Since then, she’d graduated from law school and landed a job with our city’s oldest and most prestigious law firm. Apparently, success had caused her to revisit both her philosophy and her wardrobe. With her shoulder-length blond hair, black miniskirted power suit, and strappy stilettos, she was now the epitome of courtroom chic – a woman to be reckoned with. From the set of her jaw and the tension in her body that afternoon, it was also clear that she had an agenda.
“If there’s something wrong at Falconer Shreve, you should talk to one of the partners,” I said.
Anne’s gaze was withering. “Those are the last people I’d talk to about this,” she said.
An old woman smelling of mothballs and piety joined us and gazed with rheumy, loving eyes at the stained- glass portrait of Our Lady. When Anne spotted the old woman, she clamped my elbow and steered me to the next window: Mary, Comforter of the Afflicted. Anne apparently was not in need of comfort. Without giving Mary even the most cursory of glances, Anne began her story. “Chris Altieri left a message on my machine the night he died. He said he had to talk to me.” She raised an eyebrow. “He said he had to atone.”
My mind jumped to the first and most obvious possibility: Anne had been the woman with whom Chris had been involved, the lover he had forced to seek an abortion. “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” I said.
“There is no beginning,” she said. “I was away for the long weekend and I didn’t get back till after midnight, so I didn’t pick up the message till Tuesday morning. By then, of course, it was too late.”
Anne’s eyes darted around the cathedral. A few people had lingered to pray. Others were staying behind to take in the famous windows of Holy Rosary.
“This isn’t a good place to talk,” she said.
“No,” I agreed, “it isn’t.”
“Then let’s get out of here. I live at the Balfour. It’s five minutes away and air-conditioned.”
Hot and sick at heart, I was an easy sell. “Let’s go,” I said.
I didn’t manage a clean getaway. As I walked down 13th Avenue to my car, I heard Zack Shreve behind me.
“Hey,” he said. “You can’t blow off the reception. I promised to pour.”
“You’ll have to show me your technique another time,” I said. “I’ve decided just to drive straight back to the lake.”
He looked at me hard. “That’s a lie,” he said pleasantly.
I flushed. “Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Why would you?” He shrugged and smiled. “You’re a woman of mystery,” he said, and he wheeled away.
On a day when the world seemed an increasingly uncertain place, the solid bulk of the apartments that had become the Balfour Condominiums was reassuring. Sturdily built and handsome, the Balfour had anchored the corner of Victoria Avenue and Lorne Street for generations. Once the preserve of lifelong bachelors with ascots and ladies with mauve-tinted hair, the Balfour had been discovered by the young and affluent, people willing to pay a good chunk of change for a central location, classic lines, and the chance to do a serious reno.
Anne Millar had apparently decided against knocking down walls and installing stainless-steel appliances. Her apartment had the antique charm of a carefully preserved dowager: floors covered with the boundless richness of Persian carpets; walls hung with lush landscapes by long-dead Victorians; massive ornate furniture that glowed with the patina of age.
Anne was a distracted but efficient hostess. She filled a silver bucket and placed it on a tray with gin, tonic, two heavy monogrammed glasses, and two ecru linen napkins, also monogrammed. We sat at a round breakfast table that looked out on Victoria Park. Anne poured the drinks, handed me mine, and took a large sip from hers.
“This could get to be a habit very easily,” she said.
“Luckily, we don’t bury a good man every day,” I said.
Anne eyed the condensation on her glass. “I’m not sure Chris Altieri was such a good man,” she said.
She walked over to a side table and touched the button on her answering machine. Chris Altieri’s voice, nervous and tentative, filled the room. “I need to atone,” he said. “There are a lot of people I have to talk to, but I thought I’d start with you. Name the time and place and I’ll be there.” His laugh was nervous. “And make it soon, please. I’m losing my courage.”
I felt a pang. The last time I’d seen Chris Altieri, I told him nothing was unforgiveable. Apparently, he’d been listening.
Anne held out her hands, palms up, in a gesture of frustration. “What do you make of that?”
I was still operating from the script in which she and Chris had been lovers. “It must at least give you some kind of comfort,” I said.
She looked genuinely surprised. “Why would it give me comfort?”
“Obviously you two had differences,” I said. “It must be a relief to know that he wanted to reconcile them.”
Anne leaned across the table and locked eyes with mine. “Joanne, I barely knew Christopher Altieri. I went to him because I was apprehensive about what had happened to a friend who’d worked for Falconer Shreve and left abruptly. I’d met Chris a couple of times at parties, and he’d always seemed like a pretty decent guy.”
“But he wasn’t decent to you.”
“No,” Anne said. “When I asked him for reassurance that all was well with my friend, he was evasive. He promised to look into things and get back to me, but he never did. And he never returned my calls. I think the night he died, he’d decided to tell the truth.”
“And you think there’s some connection between Chris’s death and what happened to your friend.”
Anne picked up her napkin and folded it carefully into the smallest possible square. “I don’t even know if anything did happen to her. She may have simply decided to move on and not look back. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
“But you don’t believe them.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would leave without saying goodbye, but people surprise us all the time, don’t they?”
I looked out the window. Across the street in the park, lovers were strolling hand in hand and children were fighting over swings. Their sunny world was seductive. If I were to agree with Anne Millar that people were unpredictable, finish my drink, and thank her for her hospitality, I could be part of that sunny world in five minutes.
The temptation was real, but so was the evidence that the universe was not unfolding as it should. A man I was certain cared for me had been unfaithful with the wife of a Falconer Shreve partner, a Falconer Shreve partner who seemed to be finding his way back from despair had committed suicide, and now a young lawyer at Falconer Shreve had left under unsettling circumstances. I turned to Anne Millar. “Tell me about your friend,” I said.
The day’s events had clearly rattled Anne, but she didn’t allow emotion to distort her narrative. She told her story well, without digression or unnecessary detail.
“Her name was Clare Mackey,” Anne began. Neither of us responded to the fact that she referred to Clare in the past tense. “We ran together,” Anne continued. “It started out casually enough – we both had the same route in the mornings, down Lorne, into the park, and around the lake.”
“That’s my route, too,” I said. “At least the lake part.”
“Six-thirty in the summer, seven in the winter,” Anne said. “Are you earlier or later?”
