19. Dane
Chapter nineteen
Dane
Eamon had three names down the left side of a whiteboard and the marker still in his hand when I came up the back stairs at six a.m. He’d turned a spare bedroom into a briefing room.
LINNEA SORENSEN. DANIEL COSTA. ANNELIESE VOSS.
Michael had patched in from Seattle. He sipped coffee.
“Sorensen first,” Eamon said.
I sat with Cabot’s notes spread out in front of me. He’d written through the night in the same small, even slant I’d watched him produce at Beacon Hill, three columns now instead of two.
“Linnea Sorensen, thirty-eight,” I read. “Has worked for the Harcourts for twelve years. Husband’s a high school music teacher. Two kids.”
“Here’s Cabot’s read on her,” I said. “Maria trusts her with the catering rotation but never with the family. She’s in the service rooms only.”
“That’s the design,” Eamon said. “Maria built her people into the layer that touches the food and never crosses into Eleanor’s circle. She’s not Harcourt staff. She’s Maria’s.”
“Costa,” Eamon said.
“Fifty-four. He’s the houseman. Has worked for the Harcourts for twenty-six years.”
Michael leaned back.
“Came in under Maria when Pierce was still alive. Cabot says she trusts him with the keys. Says if any of these three is operationally compromised at her level, it’s him.”
“Family?”
“Lives alone. He has a sister in Revere that he sees on Sundays.”
“He’s not someone she recruited,” Michael said. “He’s someone she raised.”
Eamon wrote, raised. not recruited and circled it.
“The cookies,” Michael said.
I looked up.
“Cabot mentioned Friday night that two summers ago Maria sent up cookies on a tray when he had a head cold. Costa would have brought them.”
I went back to Cabot’s page. He had it. Cookies, Vineyard, Aug 2023. Costa brought them.
“Voss,” Eamon said.
“She’s forty-two and is a catering coordinator out of Concord and Park. Nine years since the first job with the family. Cabot’s seen her at four gatherings. He says she runs the floor like a sergeant, and Maria leaves her alone.”
“Maria doesn’t leave anyone alone,” Eamon said.
Michael was already typing. “I’ll have her tax history and addresses by ten your time.
Concord and Park’s books too. Their accountant is a guy named Bren Dolan in Quincy, and he also does the books for a foundation Wiley flagged on tier three in October.
I couldn’t connect it to anything that mattered. Maybe I can now.”
“Push,” I said.
Eamon capped his marker.
“Federal,” he said.
I waited.
“I called,” Michael said. “It’s an old connection. He’ll receive what we have, and he won’t pre-empt on three names with thin connective tissue. He needs a device, a delivery vehicle, or a plan a magistrate will sign on without thinking twice.”
“Which means?”
“Wednesday morning at oh-five-hundred if I put a device in his hand by Tuesday night. After Tuesday, the play changes—interception on the road or, worst case, the wedding itself.”
I looked at the whiteboard. We had three names and a consultant’s casualty estimate. Cabot was inside the house at noon yesterday. Henry was in a body bag at the medical examiner’s office on Albany Street.
We knew what was going to happen, but we didn’t have enough for a judge to sign off.
Eamon excused himself and left. I went down the back stairs to the kitchen, needing another mug of coffee.
Wiley was at the counter beside Samuel with a bag of carrots and a paring knife. Samuel had a pan on the burner and was reaching past Wiley for the salt. Cabot was at the table with a bowl of soup in front of him and a piece of bread on a plate beside it.
“Tell him about the maple,” Samuel said.
Wiley shook his head. “He doesn’t want to hear about the maple.”
“He absolutely wants to hear about the maple. Stanley, do you want to hear about the maple?”
Cabot looked up from his soup. “What maple?”
“There is a sugar maple on the corner of our block,” Wiley said, “that the city has been threatening to take down for two years. Samuel has been writing letters.”
“I have been writing reports,” Samuel said. “Wiley calls them letters.”
“He sends them on Northeastern letterhead and signs them Samuel Conklin, MLA, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture. They are letters.”
“They are reports with a signature block.”
Wiley turned to Cabot. “He had me drive him to the city archive in October to look up the original planting record. They planted the tree in nineteen thirty-one. There is a piece of paper in a basement on Washington Street with a man’s signature on it from before the Second World War.
Samuel sent a photocopy to the city arborist with a note. ”
“What did the note say?” Cabot asked.
“It said Please find attached the date of planting,” Samuel said. “That was the entire note.”
“He sent it from the archive,” Wiley said. “He stood in the basement on Washington Street and emailed it to a city employee at nine-forty on a Tuesday morning. I saw an expression of triumph on his face.”
“I was triumphant. They postponed the removal hearing until January. It is a magnificent tree,” Samuel said.
“I agree. It is an excellent tree.”
“It will outlive both of us if they let it be.”
Wiley resumed cutting the carrots.
I had been standing in the doorway long enough to be noticed.
“Dane,” Wiley said, “come in or leave. The doorway is for traffic, not loitering.”
“Unfortunately, I’ll have to leave as soon as I grab some coffee.”
“Take the bread with you. Samuel made too much.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Take it anyway.”
Samuel was already wrapping a slice in a square of parchment from the drawer beside the stove. He set it in my hand without ceremony.
“Eat it on the stairs,” Wiley said.
I was on my way to the front parlor when Michael called.
”— Concord and Park’s accountant. I pulled his client list from a state filing.
Wiley’s tier-three foundation is on it. A vendor in Lowell I have never seen before is on it.
They took an order seven weeks ago for six thousand dollars, routed through the Harcourt family’s general operations fund.
The signatory was Henry Harcourt Benton. ”
“What does the vendor do?”
“Custom circuit board assembly. The kind a hobbyist gunsmith would order. Or a man building a cellular trigger.”
“Where did it ship to?”
“Residential address in Watertown. I’ll send the deed to Eamon.”
I’d just sat at the desk in the upstairs office twenty minutes later when Eamon called.
“The current owner of record of the house in Watertown is Maria Aguirre. It’s Eleanor’s Maria. She’s owned a house in Watertown under her birth name for twenty-six years.”
“And Eleanor doesn’t know?”
“Unlikely. Eleanor’s household paperwork has her as Maria Reyes. That’s her mother’s maiden name.”
“She kept her real name for the part of her life Eleanor could never see.”
“That’s my read. Dane, we’ve got enough to keep the house under surveillance. Still not enough yet for a magistrate, but we’re getting closer.”
“What kind of surveillance?”
“Hiring a contractor. They’ll have cameras, an unmarked vehicle, and a thermal pass every six hours. No one approaches. That would surface the operation.”
“What would trigger movement?”
“If a person carries that device out of that house in the next ninety-six hours, we take it inside three blocks. We don’t need to enter the house. We only need the house to send something out.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Wednesday morning, oh-five-hundred. The plan we discussed.”
Eamon hung up. Farrow buzzed.
“Kohler wants you. Now. Won’t say what. Asked for you by name.”
Kohler was in the small upstairs parlor with the door closed. He was in a wing chair by the fireplace.
“Mr. Kohler.”
“Mr. Fletcher.”
I sat across from him.
“You wanted to speak with me?”
“I had something to share. Six weeks ago on a Sunday in the Berkshires, Henry brought work to the house. He rarely did that.. He had authorization to sign for six thousand dollars. It was a vendor he didn’t recognize. Maria had told him it was electrical work for the conservatory hall.”
“Did he say the name of the vendor?”
“The first word was Wycliffe.”
It was a match to the vendor in Lowell.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Nothing, but I thought it might be important. You said to share anything I could remember.”
“Mr. Kohler, this is a key corroboration we needed. Henry signed it knowing Maria had asked him to.”
“Most of the time, he didn’t know what he was signing.”
“He knew Maria had asked him.”
He looked at the fireplace. “Yes, that’s why I thought it was important.”
I nodded.
“You’ve given us what we needed.”
“I should have given you all of this four months ago.”
“You didn’t know what you had.”
“I should have.”
I let it sit. I couldn’t argue him out of the fault he’d assigned to himself.
By eight p.m., the house had turned quiet. Reed was at the door. Vega sat with Wiley, Kohler, and Samuel in the downstairs parlor. Farrow and I were in the back office talking with Michael on a laptop screen.
“Father-and-son shop in Lowell,” he said. “Annual revenue under four hundred thousand. The son has a clean record. The components on the order have legitimate uses.”
“Michael, you do amazing work,” I said.
“It’s a pleasure.”
He was gone.
Farrow stood and placed his hand on the back of my neck. I exhaled and turned to face him.
“Back bedroom?” I asked.
Farrow smiled. “Back bedroom.”
“Door locked?”
“Door locked.”
***
As soon as I turned from locking the door, Farrow backed me up against it.
“Blaise,” I said as I looked into his eyes. I liked the sound in my mouth.
“Dane.”
“Hi.” I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart.
“I changed the sheets,” he said. “I don’t know when someone last slept in here, but it’s ready now.”
“You planned ahead.”
“While you were on the phone with Eamon.”
I laughed. “The professional in me is alarmed by how much logistical planning you put into this.”
“The professional in me wants to be alarmed by you for the next hour without interruption.”
I kissed him. He kept his hands at his sides until I reached up to the back of his head. Then he slipped his hands under the hem of my hoodie, flat against my ribs.
I lifted my arms, and he pulled my hoodie off over my head. Then he kissed me hard, with an open mouth and zero patience. He stripped off his henley. The chain at his throat caught the light of a lamp on the nightstand.
He walked me backward. The backs of my knees hit the bed, and he pushed me down with one hand in the middle of my chest. He stood between my knees.
“I want you,” he said.
He went down on his knees on the rug between my thighs. He worked my belt open and then unzipped my jeans. He looked up at me once, made sure I was looking back, and did not look away while he took me into his mouth.
I had to bite down on my lower lip to stay quiet. He didn’t look away as my cockhead slid into his warm, wet mouth.
He kept the rhythm steady. His hair fell over his forehead as he moved his lips forward and back. His hand wrapped around the base of my cock and stroked faster.
He shifted his angle. The change pulled a sound out of me I didn’t recognize. I bit it back to keep the sound from drifting to the rest of the house. Farrow didn’t stop. He picked up the pace.
I didn’t last as long as I wanted to. He felt it coming and didn’t pull off. I came in his mouth with one hand fisted in his hair and the other gripping the edge of the mattress. My entire body jerked.
He stayed where he was for a count, then sat back on his heels, swallowing. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and looked up at me.
“There you are,” he said.
I pulled him up off the floor, onto the bed, and over me. I got him out of the rest of his clothes and reached down between us. I stroked him until he came against my stomach with his forehead pressed hard into the pillow beside my ear.
I held him as his breathing slowed.
“Blaise,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Nothing.”
He chuckled and turned his face into my neck.
I pulled the comforter up over both of us. He was shaking slightly. I put my hand on the back of his neck and held it there.
“Why are you shaking?”
“Because you said my name.”