Because he was a cop in Springfield, Connecticut, not Macedonia, Ohio. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t ask. And I would, but first we had an appointment with Nina Mazzo.
“You could be a private investigator,” Lucy said. “Seriously.”
“I think not.”
“Look at how good you are at this stuff.”
“That’s what Babe said. Maybe if the gardening thing doesn’t work out.”
When I had researched Nina the first time, I learned a little about the profession. Most PIs came from a background of law enforcement. Who knew? It was the image of them standing in the shrubbery snapping pictures that made the job seem faintly cartoonish and not quite legitimate, but it was. Fewer than 40 percent of their cases were related to infidelity and divorce (I would have guessed more), but that’s all most people ever thought of when they heard the words private investigator. That or Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Hopefully, Nina would tell us if tracking down missing persons and delivering unmarked packages like the one Caroline Sturgis had received made up the other 60 percent of the business.
We drove downtown and saw the property values drop sharply from one block to the next until we passed under the railroad tracks.
“This isn’t much of an area,” Lucy said.
“Depends what you’re looking for. If you’re a contractor, this is as good as Decorator’s Row in New York.” We passed antiques alley, the flagstone and paving center, and the kitchen and bathroom remodeling district and I made a right onto the stretch of road where Nina’s building was located. As we pulled into Nina’s parking lot, I told Lucy about Mazzo’s recently reduced circumstances and her fervent wish that the economy would bounce back so there would be more philandering husbands.
“That’s the most twisted logic I’ve heard in a long time. It would make a very salable feature film.”
“You two are gonna get along just fine.”
We had to wait for three men balancing a massive slice of soapstone on a dolly to pass before we settled into a spot around the corner from the Mazzo Agency.
“What was that?” Lucy said, watching the hunk of rock go by.
“I hear the apartment dweller in you coming out. That’s a slab of stone which will be cut into a countertop.”
Lucy had been wrong about Ellis Damon, but she wasn’t wrong about something else-when people lie, they frequently use or say something familiar because they think it will make the lie more plausible. McGinley may not have been in Springfield to help his friend The Countertop King get his business off the ground, but perhaps he got the idea after a visit to Nina Mazzo. I remembered how hot Nina kept her office, so I peeled off my jacket.
“Are you expecting to come to blows?” Lucy asked as I locked the car.
If Nina was surprised to see me, she hid it well.
“How about that-you know I have another prospective client who looks just like you, I think she said her name was Thelma Turner. And who might you be, Etta James?”
“I’m Paula Holliday and this is Lucy Cavanaugh.”
She motioned for us to sit down.
“We’re helping a friend and would like to ask you a few questions.”
“That’s very admirable. Tell me why I should care.”
“We think you or someone from this office delivered an unmarked blue bubble pack mailer to 197 Chelsea Road yesterday morning. Is that true?”
“I have a very busy practice. I really can’t say.” The famous discretion from her place mat ad was kicking in again. “Unlike you, I’m not in the friend-helping business. I do this for a living.”
“Do you know a man named Chase McGinley? He may have used an alias-scruffy guy, plaid shirt, down vest, bad teeth? He would have come in about a week ago.”
Nina’s face was so stony, she had to be holding something back. “Ms. Holliday, you don’t really expect me to answer these questions, do you? Why would I?”
“Because you used to be a cop and presumably cared about the law. Chase McGinley is dead. And the envelope delivered to that address contained blackmail. I think the two incidents are related.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “When can I go back to the halcyon days of CEOs cheating on their wives?”
McGinley had visited Nina Mazzo-he’d probably gotten her name from the same place mat that I had. He said he was looking for an old girlfriend who dumped him when she was carrying his child. She was blond, about forty to forty-five, and would have a son about fourteen.
“I gave him some basic information on how we’d try to find her. Of course I didn’t tell him everything. I wanted him to come back, but he never did. I may need to redo the free consultation wording on that place mat ad. This is getting ridiculous.”
“And the package?”
“Totally different case.”
Without revealing details, Nina told us was the item to be delivered was a pendant, a gift from a married lover. The client wanted to end the affair and make a clean break of it, but she knew it had sentimental value and didn’t want to just throw it away or trust it to the mails.
“How thoughtful,” Lucy said.
“She?” I asked.
Forty
Nina Mazzo’s physical description of the woman who’d hired her to deliver the package to Caroline’s home was next to useless. It wasn’t that she was not perceptive, she was-but the woman did her best to appear as bland and nondescript as possible.
“She was a big girl,” Nina said, “slim but tall, that is.”
With thick, dyed blond hair blunt-cut in a chin-length bob. She wore a plain navy suit with a striped silk blouse. Dark sunglasses. Not much jewelry, a ring with a tiny jewel-toned stone and a heart-shaped pendant. She didn’t speak much; she just stated the reason that she had come and produced the small white jewelry box in a mesh pouch. She showed Nina what was in the box, but Nina gave it just a cursory look before the woman enclosed a note and sealed the box.
“Her voice was raspy and she coughed into her hankie a few times,” Nina said. “I’m a little germophobic, so I hurried her out and kept my distance when we parted.” She said her name was Brigid O’Shaughnessy, “but I’m an old movie buff so I knew she was lying. I didn’t believe her about the name, but I believed her three hundred dollars, as the saying goes.”
Didn’t anyone tell this poor woman their real name? Not-Brigid left the item and paid in cash. Mazzo never saw her again.
“Did you know the item was going to Caroline Sturgis’s home?” This was the first time I’d mentioned her name, and from the ashen look on Nina’s face I don’t think she did know.
“I checked the zip code. When I saw the address was in the high-rent district, I took the gig.”
“Did your man return later for any reason?” I asked.
“Woman. But, no, she didn’t.”
Lucy and I arrived back to my place with more new questions than answers.
“Can I open this wine?” she asked. “I think we deserve a drink.”
“Go ahead. I have to think.”
She poured herself a glass of red and flopped onto the sofa opposite me, kicking off her shoes and stretching out her legs on the leather ottoman. She flexed and pointed her toes as if she were in an exercise class. “I’m really sorry I have to leave tomorrow morning. This is getting good.”
The way Lucy saw it, Kate Gustafson had to be alive. What other woman could it be? Eddie Donnelley’s mother? A girlfriend? A homicidal former cheerleader?
“All those bitter girls who didn’t make the squad,” I said. “Now that’s an avenue we haven’t explored.”
Suddenly I wished that Caroline and Grant hadn’t escaped to Wellfleet. Until she called me, I couldn’t get
