Shallow Graves

showed it to the cops, too.“
    “Beyond that.“
    Puriefoy stood up. “Like I been telling you, Sinead, she wasn’t in great shape, and Larry and me, we was working on Mau, but with her face blue and all....“
    I swung my head slowly around the apartment. I didn’t like what I’d already learned, but I didn’t think the place had anything more to tell me.

- 20 -

    As I was leaving Mau Tim’s building, a calico cat scuttled under a bush near the iron front gate. Fortunately, it reminded me to call the vet’s from a payphone and check on Renfield. A female voice at the other end of the line impatiendy confirmed that he’d be ready for pickup any time after three-thirty and before six. She made a point of telling me they accepted either MasterCard or a personal check as payment. I thought that was a bad sign. I asked her how much the bill was for. She said they hadn’t totaled it yet. I thought that was a worse sign.

    The receptionist at Winant, Terwiliger, and Stevens looked and sounded like Diana Rigg in her Avengers days. She asked me if I would “care” to hang my coat in the closet. I said I would and was led regally to an expanse of polished cherry wood. Trusting me to use the hanger properly, she glided back to her desk, which would have put the cockpit of a 747 to shame. Moving toward the woman, I heard her ask the telephone if Mr. Dani could see “a” Mr. John Cuddy. She waited, fiddling with some pink message slips, then said, “I’ll advise him.“
    The receptionist turned to me. “Mr. Dani’s secretary will be right with you. Would you care to take a seat?“
    I was sitting on an unyielding silk-covered settee over an acquamarine carpet under a print of a fox hunt when a young woman came around the corner. She did not remind me of Diana Rigg. She reminded me of Whoopi Goldberg. Until she talked, at which point she reminded me of Diana Rigg, too.
    “Mr. Cuddy?“
    “Yes.“
    “I’m Rita Knox. Mr. Dani can see you in a few minutes. Would you please come with me?“
    I followed the dreadlocks back through a rabbit warren of common corridors. Kangaroo-pouch enclosures of secretaries sat outside windowed offices of lawyers and windowless offices of paralegals.
    At the midpoint of one corridor, Rita Knox slowed beside a closed door and looked back over her shoulder at me, swishing the braids. “Mr. Dani is on long distance. Please have a seat and let me know if I can help you with anything.“
    There was another silk settee, the cushions on this one also stiff as a board. Several people coming down the corridor slowed hesitatingly near the adjoining office, then walked by quickly, eyes averted from a man in his early fifties who was putting his wall plaques into a brown and green packing box. My day to catch people on the move.
    When the corridor was empty, I spoke to Knox. “I don’t want to impose on Vincent at a bad time. How is he holding up under the strain of his niece’s death?“
    The secretary shook her head. “He’s doing so well, the poor man. They were quite close, but he hasn’t missed a beat here.“ .
    “Did you know her?“
    “No. Well, yes, but only over the telephone. I must say, every time I think of talking with her that day, it is as though a ghost crossed my grave.“
    I tried to keep my voice light. “You talked with her the day she died?“
    “Yes.“ Knox took a breath, her eyes tipping me that this was a story she’d told before, a story she relished in that guilty way we all have. “She called here that afternoon, just before I left. Mr. Dani was in a meeting, so I left her message for him on the spike.“
    “Sorry?“
    Knox held up a six-inch message spike with a brass base. “This. We still don’t have a voice-mail system, so I impale his messages on it.“ A devious little smile, then she seemed to remember the story she was telling. “Poor girl.“
    I needed to be careful here. “That happened to me once in the Army. I spoke to somebody at noon, and then at dinner I heard he’d died. I kept asking myself, was there something in his voice that day that said he knew his time was coming?“
    “The very same with me! I’ve been saying to myself, ‘Was there something in her voice?’ But she sounded fine. Even buoyant, like a girl her age should. So full of life and—“
    At which point the office door opened and Vincent Dani stood there, the balding head lifted an inch higher than eye level, as though he were trying to sense the words