Published in The Boston Globe Magazine, August 19, 2001.

a short story
by William G. Tapply

Quinn:
It was one of those airless Wednesday afternoons in August, and on my office radio, the Sox were hanging onto a two-run lead with the Orioles across the river at Fenway.

Mrs. Thayer showed up for her appointment in the middle of the eighth inning. She was a good-looking, fortyish woman -- streaks of gray in her brown hair, pale blue eyes with smile crinkles at the corners, a well-tended body. She stood in the doorway, smiling uncertainly. "Mr. Quinn?" she said. "I'm Diana Thayer. I'm sorry. I'm a little early."

I waved her in. "Have a seat, Mrs. Thayer."

She sat across from me in my wooden client chair and said, "Would you mind turning that radio off?"

I reached behind me and turned down the volume a couple of notches.

"You're from New York," I said.

"Yes. Originally. How did you know?"

"I'm a professional investigator," I said. "Yankee fan?"

"To tell you the truth," she said, "I hate baseball. I did ask you to turn off that radio."

"I've got to sit right here and listen to it, Mrs. Thayer. Sorry. My Red Sox are winning. I don't want to do anything to change our luck."

She smiled. "Why, you're superstitious, Mr. Quinn."

"I guess so," I said. "You mentioned your husband on the phone."

"I believe he's having an affair."

"And?"

"And I want to know."

"Are you sure?"

"What? That he's having an affair?"

"No. That you want to know."

She nodded. "I've given it a lot of thought. I must know."

"What if he is?"

"I shall divorce him."

"You have a pre-nup, Mrs. Thayer. Why would you want a divorce?"

"Because I -- how do you know that?"

I shrugged elaborately.

"You can find out if somebody's got a prenuptial agreement?"

I smiled. "I can find out anything."

"How?"

"If I told you, then you too could become an expensive private investigator." I held up my hand when she started to speak. It was the top of the ninth, and the Orioles had a couple of runners on base with only one out.

"Mr. Quinn --"

"Please," I said.

She rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

The next two Oriole batters flied out harmlessly. Game over. Victory was ours. A perfect way to end the home stand. Now the Sox -- our beloved first-place Boston Red Sox, no less -- were headed for the West Coast. Anaheim, Oakland, then Seattle. A crucial August road trip in a tense pennant race. What could be finer?

I reached behind me, snapped off the radio, then turned to Mrs. Thayer. "Your husband is a partner at Thayer, Metcalf and Morrow in Harvard Square. He earned a little over three-hundred thousand in salary last year, which doesn't include his bonus or his stock options or the dividends on his portfolio. If you two get divorced, regardless of the reason, you get a one-time settlement of one-hundred-thousand dollars plus the summer cottage on Squam Lake. No alimony. He gets everything else. Why in the world did you agree to that?"

"Carl's a lawyer," she said. "He convinced me he'd love me forever. I assumed that meant even after I got old and dumpy."

"You're a very attractive woman," I said. "Not at all dumpy."

"Thank you. But the mirror doesn't lie." She smiled. "Anyway, at the time it sounded fair."

"It's not fair, Mrs. Thayer. It's a bad deal."

"I guess it is. Nothing I can do about it now."

"Can I give you some advice?"

She shrugged.

"Forget it," I said. "Just go home and forget the whole thing."

"I can't forget it, Mr. Quinn. I've got to know."

I nodded. "Okay, then. Who's the woman?"

"I don't know, but . . ." She dug into her big shoulder bag and came up with a slip of paper. "I suspect this is her phone number." She handed the paper to me.

It was a Cambridge exchange. "Where'd you get this?" I said.

"Last Saturday around noontime the phone rang. When I answered, she hung up. I hit star-69. This was the number."

"What makes you think it was your husband's, um, friend?"

"I'm usually out of the house at noontime on Saturday. That's when I have my tennis lesson. But I had a sore wrist, so I canceled. Carl seemed unnaturally anxious about the call."

"Anxious? As if he'd been expecting her to call, assuming you wouldn't be there?"

She nodded. "Exactly."

"Did you try this number?"

"No. I was . . . afraid she'd answer."

I picked up the phone. "Let's try it now." I dialed the number. It rang five times, then a woman's rather breathy recorded voice came on and told me I'd succeeded in reaching the number I'd dialed and invited me to leave a message, which I declined. "No name," I told Mrs. Thayer. "A woman. She sounds young."

She nodded. "It's her."

"We'll see."

"What will you do?"

"I'll follow your husband. I'll record him on video tape. I'll give you a copy of the tape and write you a detailed report."

"Friday nights," she said. "That's when he sees her. He claims he has a meeting. He doesn't get home til close to midnight."

"What makes you think he doesn't have a meeting?"

"His hair's always wet. He takes a shower. To wash off her -- the smell of sex."

"Does he see her any other time?"

"As far as I know, just Fridays," she said. "Every Friday for the past two months."

"This is your last chance, Mrs. Thayer," I said. "Go home. Forget the whole thing."

"No," she said. "Please, Mr. Quinn. Find out for me."

Diana:
On Friday at six-thirty I was sitting in my car outside Carl's parking garage in Harvard Square half a block down the street from where Mr. Quinn was sitting in his car.

He was a pleasant enough man for a private detective, even if he insisted on listening to that stupid baseball game. Ruth at the club swore by him. Said he had all the latest high-tech equipment and was a wizard with his computer.

Ruth liked to brag about how she'd refused to agree to a pre-nup. Sometimes I wanted to strangle her.

A little before seven, Carl drove out of the garage in his maroon Range Rover. Mr. Quinn waited for a couple of cars to pass, then pulled out behind Carl. I let a car get ahead of me, then I pulled out behind Mr. Quinn.

Our little caravan headed out toward Central Square on Mass. Ave. in the heavy early-evening traffic. After a mile or so, Carl took a left onto a one-way residential street. So did Mr. Quinn. So did I. A block or so later Carl turned into a parking lot beside a dreary old brick apartment building. Mr. Quinn pulled into an empty slot on the street just past the building. I kept going, tugging the brim of my hat low over my face as I drove past him. It was an unnecessary precaution. He was turned around in his front seat aiming a video camera back at the building.

It took me about fifteen minutes to loop back onto Mass. Ave. and drive home to our lovely old house on Garden Street -- the house that Carl would keep if we got divorced.

Quinn:
I stopped on the street and got the camera turned on in time to catch Carl Thayer entering the apartment building. Then I waited for a half hour, and when I was sure they weren't going anywhere, I backed up, pulled into the lot beside the building, and parked in the shadows in the corner. It was a perfect setup. From my front windshield I had a clear view of Mr. Thayer's Range Rover and both the front and the side entrances to the building, which were brightly lit.

Her name was Gwen -- not Gwendolyn, just Gwen -- Farrington. Twenty-three years old last March, never married, hometown Acton, associate's degree in business management from Middlesex Community College. She was an aerobics instructor at the Mt. Auburn Tennis Club and a part-time hostess at Bertucci's. She declared $26,741 on her taxes last year, paid $950 a month for her one-bedroom apartment, owned a five-year-old Toyota Corolla, and owed nearly six grand on her Visa card.
All of this information -- and plenty more -- was available to anyone who had a phone number they wanted to check on. The Internet has made private investigating almost too easy.

Carl Thayer would be an excellent catch for Gwen Farrington. Mrs. Thayer had plenty to worry about.

I had a cooler full of Cokes, a bag of ginger snaps, a milk jug to pee in, a pack of cigarettes, a pile of magazines, and a late game from the West Coast coming up on the radio. It promised to be a pleasant evening of work.

I switched on the radio for the pre-game analysis at nine-thirty. The game from Anaheim started at ten.

I settled back. How many people could earn seventy-five dollars an hour listening to a ball game?

Pedro was mowing them down, and so was the Angels pitcher, and when Carl Thayer came out, it was a little after eleven-thirty in Cambridge and scoreless in the sixth inning in Anaheim.

I turned off the radio and switched on the video camera.

Gwen came out with him, thank you very much. She was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt. She kissed him right there in front of me under the light over the side door. It was a long kiss. No mistaking the nature of that kiss. She had both of her arms wrapped around his neck. He had both of his hands on her butt.

I got it all on camera. The display on the tape recorded the date and the time.

After Carl Thayer drove away and Gwen waved to him and went inside, I shut down the video camera and switched the radio back on. While I wasn't listening, the Sox had scored a run.

Diana:
I was lying on the sofa pretending to be asleep, as I'd been doing for the past several Friday nights, when Carl got home. He tiptoed upstairs, and five minutes later he was snoring. He'd be dead to the world until morning.

I grabbed my shoulder bag, slipped out the front door, backed the Range Rover out of the driveway, and pulled into the lot beside the girl's apartment building about ten minutes later.

It was, as I'd suspected, Gwen, that busty little aerobics instructor at the club. I didn't need Mr. Quinn to figure out that much.
I reached into my bag and ran my hand over the smooth metal of Carl's revolver. He kept it hidden in a toolbox in the garage. He didn't think I knew about it.

I went to the door and buzzed her apartment. A minute later her sweet little voice came over the intercom. "Carl? Is that you, baby?"

"It's Diana Thayer," I said.

""I -- who?"

"Carl's wife."

"What -- what do you want?" she said.

"We need to talk, you and I. Woman to woman."

"Talk about what?"

"You know. Come on, now."

"Well . . . okay."

She buzzed me up and was standing at the door to her second-floor apartment when I got there. She looked about sixteen in her shorts and T-shirt and smooth pink skin.

She invited me to sit on the sofa in her drab little living room and offered me something to drink. When she went to the kitchen, I took Carl's gun from my bag, cocked the hammer, and held it on my lap behind a throw pillow.

She came back with two glasses of iced tea and a worried frown on her too-cute face, and when she bent over to hand one of the glasses to me, I shot her through the pillow. Twice in the chest. The pillow muffled the noise, but even so, it sounded quite loud in that tiny room.

There was less blood than I'd expected. Just two round red holes in her chest.

When I got back home, Carl was still snoring away upstairs. I wiped off the gun and put it back in his toolbox. Then I lay down on the sofa and went to sleep.

I slept quite well.

The police showed up at nine the next morning when Carl and I were drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. There were two of them, both dressed in suits. The younger dark-skinned one was a Cambridge detective named Franklin. The older, rather disheveled man was Lt. Horowitz, a state police detective.

Horowitz seemed to be in charge. He spoke to Carl. "Sorry to bother you on a nice Saturday morning, sir, but I believe you own a handgun?"
"There are no guns in this house," I said quickly.

Carl glanced at me, then looked at Horowitz. "Um, well, actually, I do own a handgun."

"What?" I said, feigning indignation. "You promised me you'd gotten rid of that thing."

"Sorry, darling."

"We need your gun, sir," said Horowitz.

"How come?" said Carl. "What's up?"

Horowitz waved his hand in the air. "Just routine, sir. Please show officer Franklin where you keep the gun."

After Carl and Franklin headed to the garage, I said to Horowitz, "Has my husband done something?"

He shook his head and smiled.

"He's in some kind of trouble, isn't he?" I persisted.

"Please try to take it easy, ma'am."

Carl and the detective were back a couple of minutes later. Franklin was carrying the revolver in a plastic bag.

"Well?" said Horowitz.

"It's been fired recently," said Franklin. "Two empty cartridges in the cylinder."

"What's this all about?" I said to Horowitz. "I have a right to know."

He ignored me and turned to Carl. "Where were you last night around midnight, sir?"

"Midnight? I was upstairs sleeping."

"Where were you before that?"

"I was . . . I was with a friend."

"This friend can vouch for you?"

Carl glanced at me. "If necessary, yes."

"Carl, honey?" I said. "What's going on?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"What about you, ma'am?" said Horowitz.

"Me?" I said. "What about me?"

"Where were you between midnight and one o'clock last night?"

"Why, I was right here. I slept on the sofa all night." I looked at Carl. "Right, sweetheart?"

Carl nodded. "Yes. Of course."

Horowitz cleared his throat. "Diana Thayer," he said, "I am arresting you for the murder of Gwen Farrington. I want to be sure you understand your rights. You --"

"Wait," I said. "You've got it wrong. It was Carl. Just talk to a private detective named Quinn. He'll tell you. He got it all on video tape."

"Yes, ma'am," said Horowitz. "He certainly did. Quinn got it all." He cleared his throat. "You have the right to remain silent, Mrs. Thayer. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right . . ."

Quinn:
After Carl Thayer left, I sat right there in my car, of course. Pedro was protecting a one-run lead, and I wasn't going to do anything to change our luck.

So I was still there in the parking lot when the maroon Range Rover came back. I got Mrs. Thayer talking on the intercom and going into the building on tape, and I heard the gunshots, and I taped her when she came out. Then I picked the locks, went up, found Gwen Farrington's body, and called the cops, and by the time I finished telling them my story and giving them my videotapes and answering their questions, it was close to two in the morning and I'd missed the end of the game.

I caught the score as I drove home. Pedro had hung on, and we won, one to nothing.

If the Sox had been playing at Fenway instead of on the West Coast three time zones away, the game would've been over before Mrs. Thayer showed up to kill Gwen Farrington, and I would've been long gone, and she'd have gotten away with it.

I felt pretty stupid about the whole thing. I'd kind of liked Mrs. Thayer. Normally I don't trust people who hate baseball.

-- THE END --

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