Devine's Providence: A Novel Page 11

  She kicked off her sandals, took off her baseball cap, and plopped down next to me.

  “When I left a week ago,” she said, “I was so angry. Angry at you, angry at Zachetti, angry at the whole city of Providence for letting this happen…for making this happen. Marc was my only true ally. I was so determined to solve this case alone. But—and this is something nobody knows about me—I don’t do so well alone.”

  “Nobody does, really,” I said.

  “You’re right that we haven’t gotten off to the best start,” she said. “You seem to always say the wrong thing at the worst time.”

  I started to say a wrong, ill-timed thing, but Chelsea continued.

  “…but I’ve done a lot of research on you. I know you’re a good person. And a great detective. And while I hate that it’s because my entire world is crashing down, I’m glad that you’re here. Especially after you were jumped. Thank you.”

  “For the record,” I said, “I may have gotten the crap beaten out of me, but I wasn’t jumped. I actually got the jump on him. Such as it was.”

  “My mistake,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back on the sofa. “I’ll be sure to remember that for my memoirs.”

  There was a deep sadness radiating from her, a sadness that made me sad, and angry, and frustrated because I wanted to fix it but couldn’t even begin to know how to. There was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her something that would make it all better. I wanted to make it better for her. I wanted to make it better for me. I wanted to say the perfect thing, something smart and comforting and sweet and borderline funny, something that Bogart would say to Bacall, but I didn’t have a room full of Hollywood screenwriters behind me.

  I wanted to tell her that even though we had just met, I felt something, I knew something, something that connected us across time and space and radio waves and blog posts, something that was telling me—screaming at me—that we were destined to at least know each other. That we were cut from the same cloth, that although we were practically strangers, and lived in separate worlds, we needed to be in each other’s lives because it would be such an egregious, unforgivable sin unto the universe for two people with such palpable magnetism to just ignore each other.

  But no words came.

  It took me a bit to think of anything to say at all. I had finally decided to just come up with an excuse to leave, but by the time I did, she was softly purring in her sleep. It had probably been awhile, I imagined, since she was able to sleep soundly.

  There, on the lumpy sofa of a basement conference room, the slightly sweet smell of cannabis wafting through the air, hardly seemed like a good place to rest easy. But her sleeping face was free of the constant furrowed brow and intense stare that she wore during her waking hours. And there was no sadness in her eyes when they were closed. She looked so…content.

  I stayed awhile, sitting in silence. I was afraid to move or she would wake up. Eventually, her body slumped over and her head ended up on my shoulder, which shot a fiery explosion of feelings throughout my body. I instinctively flexed my arm muscles when she made contact, but she was still breathing deeply and unconsciously and peacefully.

  So that was my purpose, that night. It wasn’t to make things right. It wasn’t to say the perfect thing at the perfect time and be the hero detective and save the femme fatale. It was to be a shoulder and to allow Chelsea a brief moment of respite, a chance to just…sleep.

  Now I dared not move.

  Chapter 9

  SUSPICION

  I woke up in the dark. Mostly dark, anyway. A soft glow from the LED growing lights in the basement’s main room splashed through the conference room door. The weight of Chelsea’s head on my shoulder was gone. I tried to look at the time on my watch but couldn’t see my wrist in front of my face. I stood up, which triggered the motion-sensored lights and the room was suddenly awash in an abrasive, fluorescent blaze.

  After my eyes adjusted, I saw it was 4:30am.

  I should sneak out of here before the sun comes up.

  I looked back at the sofa. Chelsea was curled up on the opposite end from where I was sitting, facing the back with a throw blanket over her. If the lights disturbed her at all, she didn’t show it.

  I rubbed my face.

  Stupid Harry. You’re downright delusional if you think she’d ever care to have anything to do with you. She’s only back in Providence because she has to be. She’s grieving, and all you can think about is how hard you’re crushing on her. Pathetic.

  I rubbed my face harder, until the thoughts quieted. Between getting clobbered, the hangover, and the never-ending surprises the previous day, I was still a bit dazed and scattered.

  Bed. Shower. Coffee. In that order. Now.

  The morning played out, thankfully, as I had planned. When I arrived at my house, after making sure I wasn’t being tailed, I found it still locked up tight and undisturbed. I stripped down and fell onto my bed. My old, lumpy mattress felt somehow the softest it’s ever been.

  I slept until noon, something I hadn’t done since college. After a shower, shave, and an emergency intravenous of black coffee, I felt more like myself. Or, more accurately, less like myself and more like the Harry Devine, P.I. that I presented to the world every day.

  There was a group text on my burner phone. It was from someone listed as “J”—Jake Zachetti. He would meet me, Chelsea and Terry—apparently she had coaxed him into giving her a burner, too—that evening in “The War Room,” as he called it. In the meantime, he suggested I touch base with Chelsea so she could finally fill me in on her and Marc’s investigation.

  My curiosity was killing me. I didn’t like knowing there was something I didn’t know, which put me in the right line of work, I supposed. All I had were a couple of tentpoles with no tent to run between them. Philip Grayle, the head of the City Planning Commission, was missing. Marc Winters, Smooth Criminals investigator, was murdered. Just meeting Marc and Chelsea briefly had gotten my office broken into. How on earth were these events connected?

  Both Grayle’s sudden departure and Marc’s murder appeared to be covered up by the Providence Police Department. The PPD was the only common thread between Grayle and Winters, as far as I knew. But then again, I didn’t know much.

  If Chelsea and Marc were looking into Grayle’s disappearance, like Zachetti thought they were, then they must have been getting close to something they shouldn’t have been, and someone was wise to them. But murdering Marc seemed like an awful drastic measure. At least I was given the courtesy of a warning in the form of a beatdown and a ransacked office. Why wasn’t Marc offered that same courtesy? Or was he? And why was just Marc targeted and not Chelsea?

  Hopefully she held at least some of the answers. If we knew who was really behind Grayle going missing, and why, it would go a long way into finding out who killed Marc Winters.

  Although I was eager to return to Chelsea and get the skinny, I took my time in running through my usual routine. Newspaper stand, diner, dry cleaners, corner market, smoke shop, liquor store.

  I made sure to make small talk with every familiar face I came across. I wanted people to remember seeing me. I told people I had been on vacation, but now I was back and looking for work. I handed out business cards, and pinned them to community bulletin boards. I loitered in each place I went in, and made comments about how much free time I had.

  As far as I could tell, I wasn’t being followed, but if anyone came around to my usual haunts asking about me, I wanted it to appear like it was business as usual when I was between cases.

  After completing my errands, once I was certain no one was trailing me, I made my way to a small side street a block east of my office. Set back from the street, right where Terry said it would be, was an old stone garage. The overhead doors were open, and three heavily-tattooed Hispanic men were inside.

  One was changing th
e oil on a cherry 1978 Monte Carlo. The other two stood by, smoking cigarettes. As I approached, one of them eyed me without speaking (or smiling, leaving me looking like a grinning fool). I thought I would to have to explain myself (what would I say? “A pleasant afternoon to you, good sirs! Might I inconvenience you briefly to show me the secret entrance to your drug cave?”), but apparently I was already expected. Before I could get a word out, the man snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground. His partner motioned for me to follow him in to the back wall of the garage.

  I started trying to make a list in my head of exactly all the reasons I trusted Terry, and came up alarmingly short.

  My new guide pushed a heavy rolling toolbox aside, revealing a metal plate in the floor. He pulled the plate up by an attached chain, and uncovered a square shaft and a metal ladder leading down into darkness.

  I looked at the man holding the plate open for me, but he remained expressionless except for a quick darting of his eyes down to the shaft and then back to me.

  Alright. Guess I’m doing this.

  I crouched down, gripped the top rung, and started my descent. As soon as I was fully below surface level, I looked back up to show my appreciation, but my “Thank you!” was drowned out by the simultaneous crash of the metal plate on the floor and the subsequent rolling of the toolbox back over it.

  I was now plunged into absolute darkness and completely trapped.

  Jesus, Terry. What the hell did you get me into?

  I did the only thing I could do, and kept climbing down. The shaft got narrower as I went lower, and though I couldn’t see them, I could feel the walls closing in.

  Finally, abruptly, my feet hit solid dirt on the bottom. Using my cell phone flashlight, I tried to get my bearings. An old tunnel stretched out in front of me. And on the wall to my right—thank Christ, a light switch.

  I flipped the switch, which powered on a string of utility lights running the length of the tunnel. This part of Terry’s hideaway did not feature the updated, high-tech amenities that the rest of the complex seemed to have. It was likely, I thought, that she never even used this tunnel, and it was kept for emergencies only. She really had no need to use it, I supposed. But I was happy that it suited our purposes well enough. If anyone was watching the front of the building, they wouldn’t see us coming or going.

  I followed the tunnel down, ducking underneath wooden beams holding up I-didn’t-care-to-think-about-how-many tons of earth. I thanked the Lord that I wasn’t claustrophobic, because I probably would’ve died from a panic attack.

  At last, I reached a metal door. I opened it, which took quite some effort and a shoulder-slam, and found myself in the newly-christened “War Room.”

  There had been some changes to the room since I had left it early that morning. Chelsea and Terry had apparently been busy fitting it to suit our needs. A folding privacy screen blocked off the pull-out sofa, giving Chelsea a somewhat-personal space of her own. A garment rack stood in the corner with her clothes, unpacked from her single backpack, hanging up in a row.

  A large, white dry-erase board had been wheeled in, and the conference table was covered with books: city directories, records, meeting agendas, and even a stack of old newspapers. I noticed the large map of Rhode Island was devoid of those little red pushpins, and a bulletin board now hung next to it. On the board were pictures of people—mostly pulled from the internet, from the looks of it.

  There were faces I recognized—myself, for one, plus Zachetti, Chelsea, and Marc Winters. I felt a pit in my stomach when I saw the official headshots of the state’s District Attorney and Providence’s own Mayor Crawford. Chills traveled down my spine as the familiar stoic face of Police Chief Gerry Delgado stared back at me from the board with piercing grey eyes. There were a couple of other smiling faces up on the board that I didn’t recognize at all.

  The one thing the room didn’t have, however, was Chelsea. But there were voices coming from the main chamber.

  As I stepped out of the War Room, I was surprised to see a whole team of people—half a dozen, maybe—busy at work. Men and women were buzzing about, trimming and clipping the marijuana, adjusting levels on the irrigation system, and carrying plants of all growth-stages from one place to another. Nobody looked up or paid any attention to me. A woman with an actual white lab coat walked between the rows, inspecting the crops and jotting something-or-other down on a clipboard after each one.

  She looked especially much too important and busy to ask what she was doing there. I took a mental note to get a lab coat and keep it in my trunk in case of particularly hard-to-access areas.

  Paired with a clipboard, I’ll be invincible. I could probably get into Fort Knox.

  I stepped up onto my tip-toes and scanned over the tops of the plants. I could just about make out a bush of dyed blonde hair on the far side of the cavern. It was either Chelsea, or literally any other woman in Providence.

  As I made my way around the perimeter, I passed several other anterooms, just like the War Room. I glanced in each one as I passed, and found drying racks, cleaning stations, and all kinds of gadgets and equipment and machinery whose purposes I couldn’t even guess.

  Kids today have it too easy.

  Back in my college days, we had to do most of the breaking up and de-stemming ourselves. In the snow. Uphill.

  I finally found Chelsea, her cats-eye glassed slid down on her nose as she peered over the shoulder of a man. This clearly-important man was also wearing a white lab coat, and sampling the soil of a young, short plant. He seemed incredibly nervous to have Chelsea standing over him. Chelsea looked lost in concentration.

  “…so slightly acidic is ideal,” the bespectacled man was saying quietly. “And all the water needs to be distilled. You wouldn’t believe all the chemicals in the public drinking supply. It’ll ruin the crop.”

  “Fascinating,” said Chelsea.

  The two looked up as I approached. “Thinking of taking up gardening, Chelsea?”

  “Ah, Mr. Devine, good afternoon.”

  She was back to her professional, no-nonsense attitude. While I missed the more vulnerable, honest Chelsea I had seen the previous night, I didn’t miss the sadness. And it was comforting, in a twisted way, to know that I wasn’t the only one who had to put on an act just to get things done.

  “This kind gentleman was just humoring my endless curiosity,” she said. “I never took the time to see how the sausage is made, as they say.”

  “It’ll give you a whole new appreciation the next time you barbecue,” I said.

  “Indeed,” she said, with the return of the wry smile.

  “I still cannot get over that this has been all right here under my nose.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. Devine,” the man said. “We’re very good at what we do.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “Just surprised at what a major operation this is. How many people work here?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss any—DON’T TOUCH THAT FLOWER!”

  I had absentmindedly reached out to touch the leaf of the plant closest to me, but quickly froze in place. The bustle of the entire room stopped, and the heads of several workers popped up over the rows of plants like meerkats in the African Serengeti.

  “Uh, sorry…” the guy said, “…but it’ll burst the trichomes and leech out the THC.”

  “…And I’m guessing that’s bad?” I asked.

  The man nodded. “Terry’s very particular about quality assurance.”

  “Perhaps we should get back to our own space,” said Chelsea.

  “You know,” I said to the man, “maybe you should put up a ‘No Touching’ sign or something.”

  “We don’t get many visitors down here,” the man said stoically.

  “No wonder,” I huffed.

  “Come along, Mr. Devine,” said Chelsea.r />
  Much to the relief of my new friend, I followed Chelsea back to the War Room.

  “Alright, down to business,” she said as we sat down at the long conference table. “I filled in Lieutenant Zachetti on our ride from the airport, and Terry this morning. Now it’s time to get you up to speed.”

  “Glad you’re able to trust me again,” I said.

  “Please don’t take it personally, Harry,” she said. “Look, Marc’s sudden death really threw me for a loop. I was all alone in a strange place—I didn’t know who I could trust. Lieutenant Zachetti wasn’t listening to me, and I assumed he was in on it. And you seemed a bit too tight with him for my comfort. I couldn’t take the chance.”

  There have been so many times in my life, particularly with Chelsea, that I should have said nothing at all. This was definitely not one of those times, but nothing is exactly what I said. I did manage a shrug, but I’m afraid it came across as callous instead of sheepish like I had intended.

  Chelsea sighed, and then shut the window that had allowed that brief peek into her feelings. She was instantly back as Chelsea Woodstern, professional investigator.

  “Anyway,” she said, “that’s behind us now. Can we get to the task at hand?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “Excellent. So let’s start at the beginning.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Someone—or some group of someones—has been spreading an awfully unusual amount of money around Providence. The police department, the district attorney’s office, and oddly, the City Planning Commission. All illegally.”

  I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. “I’m afraid that’s just par for the course,” I said. “Bribery is practically part of the town charter. The Providence city hall machine has never run clean, and it probably never will. It’s something everyone knows, and something Rhode Islanders are actually proud of, deranged as that is. Corruption doesn’t get you scandalized here, it gets you a radio talk show and a line of pasta sauces.”