“Maybe we should call someone,” Angie said.
I thumped the window unit on the side with my palm, turned it on again. Nothing.
“I bet it’s the belt,” I said.
“That’s what you say when the car breaks down, too.”
“Hmm.” I glared at the air conditioner for about twenty seconds and it remained silent.
“Call it foul names,” Angie said. “Maybe that’ll help.”
I turned my glare on her, got about as much reaction as I got from the air conditioner. Maybe I needed to work on my glare.
The phone rang and I picked it up, hoping the caller knew something about mechanics, but I got Eric Gault instead.
Eric taught criminology at Bryce University. We met when he was still teaching at U/Mass and I took a couple of his classes.
“You know anything about fixing air conditioners?”
“You try turning it on and off and then back on?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And nothing happened?”
“Nope.”
“Hit it a couple of times.”
“I did.”
“Call a repairman then.”
“You’re a lot of help.”
“Is your office still in a belfry, Patrick?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, I have a prospective client for you.”
“And?”
“I’d like her to hire you.”
“Fine. Bring her by.”
“The belfry?”
“Sure.”
“I said I’d like her to hire you.” I looked around the tiny office. “That’s cold, Eric.”
“Can you stop by Lewis Wharf, say about nine in the morning?”
“I think so. What’s your friend’s name?”
“Diandra Warren.”
“What’s her problem?”
“I’d prefer it if she told you face to face.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll meet you there tomorrow.”
“See you then.” I started to hang up. “Patrick.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a little sister named Moira?”
“No. I have an older sister named Erin.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
“Nothing. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“See you then.”
I hung up, looked at the air conditioner, then at Angie, back at the air conditioner, and then I dialed a repairman.
Diandra Warren lived in a fifth-story loft on Lewis Wharf. She had a panoramic view of the harbor, enormous bay windows that bathed the east end of the loft with soft morning sunlight, and she looked like the kind of woman who’d never wanted for a single thing her whole life.
Hair the color of a peach hung in a graceful, sweeping curve over her forehead and tapered into a page boy on the sides. Her dark silk shirt and light blue jeans looked as if they’d never been worn, and the bones in her face seemed chiseled under skin so unblemished and golden it reminded me of water in a chalice.
She opened the door and said, “Mr. Kenzie, Ms. Gennaro,” in a soft, confident whisper, a whisper that knew a listener would lean in to hear it if necessary. “Please, come in.”
The loft was precisely furnished. The couch and arm-chairs in the living area were a cream color that complemented the blond Scandinavian wood of the kitchen furniture and the muted reds and browns of the Persian and Native American rugs placed strategically over the hardwood floor. The sense of color gave the place an air of warmth, but the almost Spartan functionalism suggested an owner who wasn’t given to the unplanned gesture or the sentimentality of clutter.
By the bay windows, the exposed brick wall was taken up by a brass bed, walnut dresser, three birch file cabinets, and a Governor Winthrop desk. In the whole place, I couldn’t see a closet or any hanging clothes. Maybe she just wished a fresh wardrobe out of the air every morning, and it was waiting for her, fully pressed, by the time she came out of the shower.
She led us into the living area, and we sat in the arm-chairs as she moved onto the couch with a slight hesitation. Between us was a smoked-glass coffee table with a manila envelope in the center and a heavy ashtray and antique lighter to its left.
Diandra Warren smiled at us.
We smiled back. Have to be quick to improvise in this business.
Her eyes widened slightly and the smile stayed where it was. Maybe she was waiting for us to list our qualifications, show her our guns and tell her how many dastardly foes we’d vanquished since sunup.
Angie’s smile faded, but I kept mine in place for a few seconds longer. Picture of the happy-go-lucky detective, putting his prospective client at ease. Patrick “Sparky” Kenzie. At your service.
Diandra Warren said, “I’m not sure how to start.”
Angie said, “Eric said you may be in some trouble we could help you with.”
She nodded, and her hazel irises seemed to fragment for a moment, as if something had come loose behind them. She pursed her lips, looked at her slim hands, and as she began to raise her head, the front door opened and Eric entered. His salt-and-pepper hair was tied back in a ponytail and balding on top, but he looked ten years younger than the forty-six or -seven I knew he was. He wore Khakis and a denim shirt under a charcoal sport coat with the lower button clasped. The sport coat looked a bit strange on him, as if the tailor hadn’t counted on a gun sticking to Eric’s hip.
“Hey, Eric.” I held out my hand.
He shook it. “Glad you could make it, Patrick.”
“Hi, Eric.” Angie extended her hand.
As he leaned over to shake it, he realized he’d exposed the gun. He closed his eyes for a moment and blushed.
Angie said, “I would feel a lot better if you placed that gun on the coffee table until we leave, Eric.”
“I feel like a fool,” he said, trying to crack a smile.
“Please,” Diandra said, “just put it on the table, Eric.”
He unsnapped the holster as if it might bite and put a Ruger .38 on top of the manila envelope.
I met his eyes, confused. Eric Gault and a gun went together like caviar and hot dogs.
He sat beside Diandra. “We’ve been a little on edge lately.”
“Why?”
Diandra sighed. “I’m a psychiatrist, Mr. Kenzie, Ms. Gennaro. I teach at Bryce twice a week and provide counseling for staff and students in addition to maintaining my practice off campus. You expect a lot of things in my line of work—dangerous clients, patients who have full psychotic episodes in a tiny office with you alone, paranoid dissociative schizophrenics who find out your address. You live with those fears. I guess you expect them to be realized one day. But this…” She looked at the envelope on the table between us. “This is…”