LINDA  BARNES (b. 1949)

Before Detroit native and longtime Boston resident Linda Barnes created her semi-tough female private eye Carlotta Carlyle, she worked as a theatre instructor and director in Massachusetts high schools and wrote two one-act plays and four whodunits featuring the actor-sleuth Michael Spraggue. While her first four mysteries were successful, it was the 6-foot-1, red-haired, taxi-driving Carlyle who really put Barnes on the map.
The Spraggue books were written in the British tradition of the dilettante sleuth who has the money, and thus the free time, to help a group of friends who are being threatened or done in at a statistically improbable rate. Spraggue, while identified with Boston, also travels to the California wine country in Bitter Finish and to New Orleans in Cities of the Dead, thereby indulging his creator’s passions for wine and Cajun cooking, respectively. Perhaps his most memorable Boston appearance entails running down a killer during the Boston Marathon. Like the other Spraggue books, the action and solutions to the crimes depend more on the situation than on character.
Carlyle’s first appearance, in the short story Lucky Penny, shows Barnes utilising her theatre background in order to portray character through internal monologues and wisecracking dialogue. It also sets the stage, complete with Boston backdrop, for the six novels to date in which Carlyle plays the lead among a cast of characters that includes her erstwhile colleague and would-be lover, Lieutenant Mooney, and Gloria, the wheelchair-bound late-night taxi dispatcher.
Like her colleagues in crime Kinsey Millhone and V. I. Warshawski, Carlyle pursues personal relationships along with her cases, and even when she doesn’t know her clients and villains at the start of an adventure, she often becomes intimately acquainted with them-sometimes physically-before the solution is reached. Says Barnes, “I am not Carlotta even if we do share some characteristics. We both play blues guitar when we need to think. She plays better than I do. But then I have much better taste in men!”

Lucky Penny

Lieutenant Mooney made me dish it all out for the record. He’s a good cop, if such an animal exists. We used to work the same shift before I decided-wrongly-that there was room for a lady P.I. in this town. Who knows? With this case under my belt, maybe business’ll take a 180-degree spin, and I can quit driving a hack.
See, I’ve already written the official report for Mooney and the cops, but the kind of stuff they wanted: date, place, and time, cold as ice and submitted in triplicate, doesn’t even start to tell the tale. So I’m doing it over again, my way.
Don’t worry, Mooney. I’m not gonna file this one.

The Thayler case was still splattered across the front page of the Boston Globe. I’d soaked it up with my midnight coffee and was puzzling it out-my cab on automatic pilot, my mind on crime-when the mad tea party began.
“Take your next right, sister. Then pull over, and douse the lights. Quick!”
I heard the bastard all right, but it must have taken me thirty seconds or so to react. Something hard rapped on the cab’s dividing shield. I didn’t bother turning around. I hate staring down gun barrels.
I said, “Jimmy Cagney, right? No, your voice is too high. Let me guess, don’t tell me-“
“Shut up!”
“Kill the lights, turn off the lights, okay. But douse the lights? You’ve been tuning in too many old gangster flicks.”
“I hate a mouthy broad,” the guy snarled. I kid you not.
“Broad,” I said. “Christ! Broad? You trying to grow hair on your balls?”
“Look, I mean it, lady!”
“Lady’s better. Now you wanna vacate my cab and go rob a phone booth?” My heart was beating like a tin drum, but I didn’t let my voice shake, and all the time I was gabbing at him, I kept trying to catch his face in the mirror. He must have been crouching way back on the passenger side. I couldn’t see a damn thing.
“I want all your dough,” he said.
Who can you trust? This guy was a spiffy dresser: charcoal-gray three-piece suit and rep tie, no less. And picked up in front of the swank Copley Plaza. I looked like I needed the bucks more than he did, and I’m no charity case. A woman can make good tips driving a hack in Boston. Oh, she’s gotta take precautions, all right. When you can’t smell a disaster fare from thirty feet, it’s time to quit. I pride myself on my judgment. I’m careful. I always know where the police checkpoints are, so I can roll my cab past and flash the old lights if a guy starts acting up. This dude fooled me cold.
I was ripped. Not only had I been conned, I had a considerable wad to give away. It was near the end of my shift, and like I said, I do all right. I’ve got a lot of regulars. Once you see me, you don’t forget me-or my cab.
It’s gorgeous. Part of my inheritance. A ‘59 Chevy, shiny as new, kept on blocks in a heated garage by the proverbial dotty old lady. It’s the pits of the design world. Glossy blue with those giant chromium fins. Restrained decor; just the phone number and a few gilt curlicues on the door. I was afraid all my old pals at the police department would pull me over for minor traffic violations if I went whole hog and painted “Carlotta’s Cab” in ornate script on the hood. Some do it anyway.
So where the hell were all the cops now? Where are they when you need ‘em?
He told me to shove the cash through that little hole they leave for the passenger to pass the fare forward. I told him he had it backwards. He didn’t laugh. I shoved bills.
“Now the change,” the guy said. Can you imagine the nerve?
I must have cast my eyes up to heaven. I do that a lot these days.
“I mean it.” He rapped the plastic shield with the shiny barrel of his gun. I checked it out this time. Funny how big a little .22 looks when it’s pointed just right.
I fished in my pockets for change, emptied them.
“Is that all?”
“You want the gold cap on my left front molar?” I said.
“Turn around,” the guy barked. “Keep both hands on the steering wheel. High.”
I heard jingling, then a quick intake of breath.
“Okay,” the crook said, sounding happy as a clam, “I’m gonna take my leave-“
“Good. Don’t call this cab again.”
“Listen!” The gun tapped. “You cool it here for ten minutes. And I mean frozen. Don’t twitch. Don’t blow your nose. Then take off.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Thank you,” he said politely. The door slammed.
At times like that, you just feel ridiculous. You know the guy isn’t going to hang around, waiting to see whether you’re big on insubordination. But, he might. And who wants to tangle with a .22 slug? I rate pretty high in insubordination. That’s why I messed up as a cop. I figured I’d give him two minutes to get lost. Meantime I listened.
Not much traffic goes by those little streets on Beacon Hill at one o’clock on a Wednesday morn. Too residential. So I could hear the guy’s footsteps tap along the pavement. About ten steps back, he stopped.
Was he the one in a million who’d wait to see if I turned around? I heard a funny kind of whooshing noise. Not loud enough to make me jump, and anything much louder than the ticking of my watch would have put me through the roof. Then the footsteps patted on, straight back and out of hearing.
One minute more. The only saving grace of the situation was the location: District One. That’s Mooney’s district. Nice guy to talk to.
I took a deep breath, hoping it would have an encore, and pivoted quickly, keeping my head low. Makes you feel stupid when you do that and there’s no one around.
I got out and strolled to the corner, stuck my head around a building kind of cautiously. Nothing, of course.
I backtracked. Ten steps, then whoosh. Along the sidewalk stood one of those new “Keep Beacon Hill Beautiful” trash cans, the kind with the swinging lid. I gave it a shove as I passed. I could just as easily have kicked it; I was in that kind of funk.
Whoosh, it said, just as pretty as could be.
Breaking into one of those trash cans is probably tougher than busting into your local bank vault. Since I didn’t even have a dime left to fiddle the screws on the lid, I was forced to deface city property. I got the damn thing open and dumped the contents on somebody’s front lawn, smack in the middle of a circle of light from one of those snooty Beacon Hill gas streetlamps.
Halfway through the whiskey bottles, wadded napkins, and beer cans, I made my discovery. I was doing a thorough search. If you’re going to stink like garbage anyway, why leave anything untouched, right? So I was opening all the brown bags-you know, the good old brown lunch-and-bottle bags-looking for a clue. My most valuable find so far had been the mouldy rind of a bologna sandwich. Then I hit it big: one neatly creased bag stuffed full of cash.
To say I was stunned is to entirely underestimate how I felt as I crouched there, knee-deep in garbage, my jaw hanging wide. I don’t know what I’d expected to find. Maybe the guy’s gloves. Or his hat, if he’d wanted to get rid of it fast in order to melt back into anonymity. I pawed through the rest of the debris. My change was gone.
I was so befuddled I left the trash right on the front lawn. There’s probably still a warrant out for my arrest.
District One Headquarters is off the beaten path, over on New Sudbury Street. I would have called first, if I’d had a dime.
One of the few things I’d enjoyed about being a cop was gabbing with Mooney. I like driving a cab better, but, face it, most of my fares aren’t scintillating conversationalists. The Red Sox and the weather usually covers it. Talking to Mooney was so much fun, I wouldn’t even consider dating him. Lots of guys are good at sex, but conversation-now there’s an art form.
Mooney, all six-foot-four, 240 linebacker pounds of him, gave me the glad eye when I waltzed in. He hasn’t given up trying. Keeps telling me he talks even better in bed.
“Nice hat,” was all he said, his big fingers pecking at the typewriter keys.
I took it off and shook out my hair. I wear an old slouch cap when I drive to keep people from saying the inevitable. One jerk even misquoted Yeats at me: “Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your long red hair.” Since I’m seated when I drive, he missed the chance to ask me how the weather is up here. I’m six-one in my stocking feet and skinny enough to make every inch count twice. I’ve got a wide forehead, green eyes, and a pointy chin. If you want to be nice about my nose, you say it’s got character.
Thirty’s still hovering in my future. It’s part of Mooney’s past.
I told him I had a robbery to report and his dark eyes steered me to a chair. He leaned back and took a puff of one of his low-tar cigarettes. He can’t quite give ‘em up, but he feels guilty as hell about ‘em.
When I got to the part about the bag in the trash, Mooney lost his sense of humour. He crushed a half-smoked butt in a crowded ashtray.
“Know why you never made it as a cop?” he said.
“Didn’t brown-nose enough.”
“You got no sense of proportion! Always going after crackpot stuff!”
“Christ, Mooney, aren’t you interested? Some guy heists a cab, at gunpoint, then tosses the money. Aren’t you the least bit intrigued?”
“I’m a cop, Ms. Carlyle. I’ve got to be more than intrigued. I’ve got murders, bank robberies, assaults-“
“Well, excuse me. I’m just a poor citizen reporting a crime. Trying to help-“
“Want to help, Carlotta? Go away.” He stared at the sheet of paper in the typewriter and lit another cigarette. “Or dig me up something on the Thayler case.”
“You working that sucker?”
“Wish to hell I wasn’t.”
I could see his point. It’s tough enough trying to solve any murder, but when your victim is the Jennifer (Mrs. Justin) Thayler, wife of the famed Harvard Law prof, and the society reporters are breathing down your neck along with the usual crime-beat scribblers, you got a special kind of problem.
“So who did it?” I asked.
Mooney put his size twelves up on the desk. “Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick! How the hell do I know? Some scumbag housebreaker. The lady of the house interrupted his haul. Probably didn’t mean to hit her that hard. He must have freaked when he saw all the blood, ‘cause he left some of the ritziest stereo equipment this side of heaven, plus enough silverware to blind your average hophead. He snatched most of old man Thayler’s goddam idiot artworks, collections, collectibles-whatever the hell you call ‘em-which ought to set him up for the next few hundred years, if he’s smart enough to get rid of them.”
“Alarm system?”
“Yeah, they had one. Looks like Mrs. Thayler forgot to turn it on. According to the maid, she had a habit of forgetting just about anything after a martini or three.”
“Think the maid’s in on it?”
“Christ, Carlotta. There you go again. No witnesses. No fingerprints. Servants asleep. Husband asleep. We’ve got word out to all the fences here and in New York that we want this guy. The pawnbrokers know the stuff’s hot. We’re checking out known art thieves and shady museums-“
“Well, don’t let me keep you from your serious business,” I said, getting up to go. “I’ll give you the collar when I find out who robbed my cab.”
“Sure,” he said. His fingers started playing with the typewriter again.
“Wanna bet on it?” Betting’s an old custom with Mooney and me.
“I’m not gonna take the few piddling bucks you earn with that ridiculous car.”
“Right you are, boy. I’m gonna take the money the city pays you to be unimaginative! Fifty bucks I nail him within the week.”
Mooney hates to be called ‘boy.’ He hates to be called ‘unimaginative.’ I hate to hear my car called ‘ridiculous.’ We shook hands on the deal. Hard.
Chinatown’s about the only chunk of Boston that’s alive after midnight. I headed over to Yee Hong’s for a bowl of wonton soup.
The service was the usual low-key, slow-motion routine. I used a newspaper as a shield; if you’re really involved in the Wall Street Journal, the casual male may think twice before deciding he’s the answer to your prayers. But I didn’t read a single stock quote. I tugged at strands of my hair, a bad habit of mine. Why would somebody rob me and then toss the money away?
Solution Number One: He didn’t. The trash bin was some mob drop, and the money I’d found in the trash had absolutely nothing to do with the money filched from my cab. Except that it was the same amount-and that was too big a coincidence for me to swallow.
Two: The cash I’d found was counterfeit and this was a clever way of getting it into circulation. Nah. Too baroque entirely. How the hell would the guy know I was the pawing-through-the-trash type?
Three: It was a training session. Some fool had used me to perfect his robbery technique. Couldn’t he learn from TV like the rest of the crooks?
Four: It was a frat hazing. Robbing a hack at gunpoint isn’t exactly in the same league as swallowing goldfish.
I closed my eyes.
My face came to a fortunate halt about an inch above a bowl of steaming broth. That’s when I decided to pack it in and head for home. Wonton soup is lousy for the complexion.
I checked out the log I keep in the Chevy, totalled my fares: $4.82 missing, all in change. A very reasonable robbery.
By the time I got home, the sleepiness had passed. You know how it is: one moment you’re yawning, the next your eyes won’t close. Usually happens when my head hits the pillow; this time I didn’t even make it that far. What woke me up was the idea that my robber hadn’t meant to steal a thing. Maybe he’d left me something instead. You know, something hot, cleverly concealed. Something he could pick up in a few weeks, after things cooled off.
I went over that backseat with a vengeance, but I didn’t find anything besides old Kleenex and bent paperclips. My brainstorm wasn’t too clever after all. I mean, if the guy wanted to use my cab as a hiding place, why advertise by pulling a five-and-dime robbery?
I sat in the driver’s seat, tugged my hair, and stewed. What did I have to go on? The memory of a nervous thief who talked like a B movie and stole only change. Maybe a mad toll-booth collector.
I live in a Cambridge dump. In any other city, I couldn’t sell the damned thing if I wanted to. Here, I turn real estate agents away daily. The key to my home’s value is the fact that I can hoof it to Harvard Square in five minutes. It’s a seller’s market for tarpaper shacks within walking distance of the Square. Under a hundred thou only if the plumbing’s outside.
It took me a while to get in the door. I’ve got about five locks on it. Neighbourhood’s popular with thieves as well as gentry. I’m neither. I inherited the house from my weird Aunt Bea, all paid for. I consider the property taxes my rent, and the rent’s getting steeper all the time.
I slammed my log down on the dining room table. I’ve got rooms galore in that old house, rent a couple of them to Harvard students. I’ve got my own office on the second floor, but I do most of my work at the dining room table. I like the view of the refrigerator.
I started over from square one. I called Gloria. She’s the late-night dispatcher for the Independent Taxi Owners Association. I’ve never seen her, but her voice is as smooth as mink oil and I’ll bet we get a lot of calls from guys who just want to hear her say she’ll pick ‘em up in five minutes.
“Gloria, it’s Carlotta.”
“Hi, babe. You been pretty popular today.”
“Was I popular at one-thirty-five this morning?”
“Huh?”
“I picked up a fare in front of the Copley Plaza at one-thirty-five. Did you hand that one out to all comers or did you give it to me solo?”
“Just a sec.” I could hear her charming the pants off some caller in the background. Then she got back to me.
“I just gave him to you, babe. He asked for the lady in the ‘59 Chevy. Not a lot of those on the road.”
“Thanks, Gloria.”
“Trouble?” she asked.
“Is mah middle name,” I twanged. We both laughed and I hung up before she got a chance to cross-examine me.
So. The robber wanted my cab. I wished I’d concentrated on his face instead of his snazzy clothes. Maybe it was somebody I knew, some jokester in mid-prank. I killed that idea; I don’t know anybody who’d pull a stunt like that, at gunpoint and all. I don’t want to know anybody like that.
Why rob my cab, then toss the dough?
I pondered sudden religious conversion. Discarded it. Maybe my robber was some perpetual screwup who’d ditched the cash by mistake.
Or... maybe he got exactly what he wanted. Maybe he desperately desired my change.
Why?
Because my change was special, valuable beyond its $4.82 replacement cost.
So how would somebody know my change was valuable?
Because he’d given it to me himself, earlier in the day.
“Not bad,” I said out loud. “Not bad.” It was the kind of reasoning they’d bounced me off the police force for, what my so-called superiors termed the “fevered product of an over-imaginative mind.” I leapt at it because it was the only explanation I could think of. I do like life to make some sort of sense.
I pored over my log. I keep pretty good notes: where I pick up a fare, where I drop him, whether he’s a nailer or a radio call.
First, I ruled out all the women. That made the task slightly less impossible: sixteen suspects down from thirty-five. Then I yanked my hair and stared at the blank white porcelain of the refrigerator door. Got up and made myself a sandwich: ham, Swiss cheese, salami, lettuce and tomato, on rye. Ate it. Stared at the porcelain some more until the suspects started coming into focus.
Five of the guys were just plain fat and one was decidedly on the hefty side; I’d felt like telling them all to walk. Might do them some good, might bring on a heart attack. I crossed them all out. Making a thin person look plump is hard enough; it’s damn near impossible to make a fatty look thin.
Then I considered my regulars: Jonah Ashley, a tiny blond southern gent; muscle-bound “just-call-me-Harold” at Longfellow Place; Dr. Homewood getting his daily ferry from Beth Israel to MGH; Marvin of the gay bars; and Professor Dickerman, Harvard’s answer to Berkeley’s sixties radicals.
I crossed them all off. I could see Dickerman holding up the First Filthy Capitalist Bank, or disobeying civilly at Seabrook, even blowing up an oil company or two. But my mind boggled at the thought of the great liberal Dickerman robbing some poor cabbie. It would be like Robin Hood joining the sheriff of Nottingham on some particularly rotten peasant swindle. Then they’d both rape Maid Marian and go off pals together.
Dickerman was a lousy tipper. That ought to be a crime.
So what did I have? Eleven out of sixteen guys cleared without leaving my chair. Me and Sherlock Holmes, the famous armchair detectives.
I’m stubborn; that was one of my good cop traits. I stared at that log till my eyes bugged out. I remembered two of the five pretty easily; they were handsome and I’m far from blind. The first had one of those elegant bony faces and far-apart eyes. He was taller than my bandit. I’d ceased eyeballing him when I noticed the ring on his left hand; I never fuss with the married kind. The other one was built, a weight lifter. Not an Arnold Schwarzenegger extremist, but built. I think I’d have noticed that bod on my bandit. Like I said, I’m not blind.
That left three.
Okay. I closed my eyes. Who had I picked up at the Hyatt on Memorial Drive? Yeah, that was the salesman guy, the one who looked so uncomfortable that I’d figured he’d been hoping to ask his cabbie for a few pointers concerning the best skirt-chasing areas in our fair city. Too low a voice. Too broad in the beam.
The log said I’d picked up a hailer at Kenmore Square when I’d let out the salesman. Ah, yes, a talker. The weather, mostly. Don’t you think it’s dangerous for you to be driving a cab? Yeah, I remembered him, all right: a fatherly type, clasping a briefcase, heading to the financial district. Too old.
Down to one. I was exhausted but not the least bit sleepy. All I had to do was remember who I’d picked up on Beacon near Charles. A hailer. Before five o’clock, which was fine by me because I wanted to be long gone before rush hour gridlocked the city, I’d gotten onto Storrow and taken him along the river into Newton Center. Dropped him off at the Bay Bank Middlesex, right before closing time. It was coming back. Little nervous guy. Pegged him as an accountant when I’d let him out at the bank. Measly, undernourished soul. Skinny as a rail, stooped, with pits left from teenage acne.
Shit. I let my head sink down onto the dining room table when I realised what I’d done. I’d ruled them all out, every one. So much for my brilliant deductive powers.
I retired to my bedroom, disgusted. Not only had I lost $4.82 in assorted alloy metals, I was going to lose fifty dollars to Mooney. I stared at myself in the mirror, but what I was really seeing was the round hole at the end of a .22, held in a neat, gloved hand.
Somehow, the gloves made me feel better. I’d remembered another detail about my piggy-bank robber. I consulted the mirror and kept the recall going. A hat. The guy wore a hat. Not like my cap, but like a hat out of a forties gangster flick. I had one of those: I’m a sucker for hats. I plunked it on my head, jamming my hair up underneath-and I drew in my breath sharply.
A shoulder-padded jacket, a slim build, a low slouched hat. Gloves. Boots with enough heel to click as he walked away. Voice? High. Breathy, almost whispered. Not unpleasant. Accentless. No Boston r.
I had a man’s jacket and a couple of ties in my closet. Don’t ask. They may have dated from as far back as my ex-husband, but not necessarily so. I slipped into the jacket, knotted the tie, tilted the hat down over one eye.
I’d have trouble pulling it off. I’m skinny, but my build is decidedly female. Still, I wondered-enough to traipse back downstairs, pull a chicken leg out of the fridge, go back to the log, and review the feminine possibilities. Good thing I did.
Everything clicked. One lady fit the bill exactly: mannish walk and clothes, tall for a woman. And I was in luck. While I’d picked her up in Harvard Square, I’d dropped her at a real address, a house in Brookline: 782 Mason Terrace, at the tope of Corey Hill.
Jojo’s garage opens at seven. That gave me a big two hours to sleep.
I took my beloved car in for some repair work it really didn’t need yet and sweet-talked Jojo into giving me a leaner. I needed a hack, but not mine. Only trouble with that Chevy is it’s too damn conspicuous.
I figured I’d lose way more than fifty bucks staking out Mason Terrace. I also figured it would be worth it to see old Mooney’s face.
She was regular as clockwork, a dream to tail. Eight-thirty-seven every morning, she got a ride to the Square with a next-door neighbour. Took a cab home at five-fifteen. A working woman. Well, she couldn’t make much of a living from robbing hacks and dumping the loot in the garbage.
I was damn curious by now. I knew as soon as I looked her over that she was the one, but she seemed so blah, so normal. She must have been five-seven or -eight, but the way she stooped, she didn’t look tall. Her hair was long and brown with a lot of blond in it, the kind of hair that would have been terrific loose and wild, like a horse’s mane. She tied it back with a scarf. A brown scarf. She wore suits. Brown suits. She had a tiny nose, brown eyes under pale eyebrows, a sharp chin. I never saw her smile. Maybe what she needed was a shrink, not a session with Mooney. Maybe she’d done it for the excitement. God knows, if I had her routine, her job, I’d probably be dressing up like King Kong and assaulting skyscrapers.
See, I followed her to work. It wasn’t even tricky. She trudged the same path, went in the same entrance to Harvard Yard, probably walked the same number of steps every morning. Her name was Marcia Heidegger and she was a secretary in the admissions office of the college of fine arts.
I got friendly with one of her co-workers.
There was this guy typing away like mad at a desk in her office. I could just see him from the side window. He had grad student written all over his face. Longish wispy hair. Gold-rimmed glasses. Serious. Given to deep sighs and bright velour V necks. Probably writing his thesis on ‘Courtly Love and the Theories of Chretien de Troyes.’
I latched onto him at Bailey’s the day after I’d tracked Lady Heidegger to her Harvard lair.
Too bad Roger was so short. Most short guys find it hard to believe that I’m really trying to pick them up. They look for ulterior motives. Not the Napoleon type of short guy; he assumes I’ve been waiting years for a chance to dance with a guy who doesn’t have to bend to stare down my cleavage. But Roger was no Napoleon. So I had to engineer things a little.
I got into line ahead of him and ordered, after long deliberation, a BLT on toast. While the guy made it up and shoved it on a plate with three measly potato chips and a sliver of pickle you could barely see, I searched through my wallet, opened my change purse, counted out silver, got to $1.60 on the last five pennies. The counterman sang out, “That’ll be a buck eighty-five.” I pawed through my pockets, found a nickel, two pennies. The line was growing restive. I concentrated on looking like a damsel in need of a knight, a tough task for a woman over six feet.
Roger (I didn’t know he was Roger then) smiled ruefully and passed over a quarter. I was effusive in my thanks. I sat at a table for two, and when he’d gotten his tray (ham-and-cheese and a strawberry ice cream soda), I motioned him into my extra chair.
He was a sweetie. Sitting down, he forgot the difference in our height, and decided I might be someone he could talk to. I encouraged him. I hung shamelessly on his every word. A Harvard man, imagine that. We got around slowly, ever so slowly, to his work at the admissions office. He wanted to duck it and talk about more important issues, but I persisted. I’d been thinking about getting a job at Harvard, possibly in admissions. What kind of people did he work with? Were they congenial? What was the atmosphere like? Was it a big office? How many people? Men? Women? Any soulmates? Readers? Or just, you know, office people?
According to him, every soul he worked with was brain dead. I interrupted a stream of complaint with “Gee, I know somebody who works for Harvard. I wonder if you know her.”
“It’s a big place,” he said, hoping to avoid the whole endless business.
“I met her at a party. Always meant to look her up.” I searched through my bag, found a scrap of paper and pretended to read Marcia Heidegger’s name off it.
“Marcia? Geez, I work with Marcia. Same office.”
“Do you think she likes her work? I mean I got some strange vibes from her,” I said. I actually said ‘strange vibes’ and he didn’t laugh his head off. People in the Square say things like that and other people take them seriously.
His face got conspiratorial, of all things, and he leaned closer to me.
“You want it, I bet you could get Marcia’s job.”
“You mean it?” What a compliment-a place for me among the brain dead.
“She’s gonna get fired if she doesn’t snap out of it.”
“Snap out of what?”
“It was bad enough working with her when she first came over. She’s one of those crazy neat people, can’t stand to see papers lying on a desktop, you know? She almost threw out the first chapter of my thesis!”
I made a suitably horrified noise and he went on.
“Well, you know, about Marcia, it’s kind of tragic. She doesn’t talk about it.”
But he was dying to.
“Yes?” I said, as if he needed egging on.
He lowered his voice. “She used to work for Justin Thayler over at the law school, that guy in the news, whose wife got killed. You know, her work hasn’t been worth shit since it happened. She’s always on the phone, talking real soft, hanging up if anybody comes in the room. I mean, you’d think she was in love with the guy or something, the way she...”
I don’t remember what I said. For all I know, I may have volunteered to type his thesis. But I got rid of him somehow and then I scooted around the corner of Church Street and found a pay phone and dialled Mooney.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Somebody mugged you, but they only took your trading stamps.”
“I have just one question for you, Moon.”
“I accept. A June wedding, but I’ll have to break it to Mother gently.”
“Tell me what kind of junk Justin Thayler collected.”
I could hear him breathing into the phone.
“Just tell me,” I said, “for curiosity’s sake.”
“You onto something, Carlotta?”
“I’m curious, Mooney. And you’re not the only source of information in the world.”
“Thayler collected Roman stuff. Antiques. And I mean old. Artifacts, statues-“
“Coins?”
“Whole mess of them,”
“Thanks.”
“Carlotta-“
I never did find out what he was about to say because I hung up. Rude, I know. But I had things to do. And it was better Mooney shouldn’t know what they were, because they came under the heading of illegal activities.
When I knocked at the front door of the Mason Terrace house at 10:00 A.M. the next day, I was dressed in dark slacks, a white blouse, and my old police department hat. I looked very much like the guy who reads your gas meter. I’ve never heard of anyone being arrested for impersonating the gasman. I’ve never heard of anyone really giving the gasman a second look. He fades into the background and that’s exactly what I wanted to do.
I knew Marcia Heidegger wouldn’t be home for hours. Old reliable had left for the Square at her usual time, precise to the minute. But I wasn’t 100 percent sure Marcia lived alone. Hence the gasman. I could knock on the door and check it out.
Those Brookline neighbourhoods kill me. Act sneaky and the neighbours call the cops in twenty seconds, but walk right up to the front door, knock, talk to yourself while you’re sticking a shim in the crack of the door, let yourself in, and nobody does a thing. Boldness is all.
The place wasn’t bad. Three rooms, kitchen and bath, light and airy. Marcia was incredibly organised, obsessively neat, which meant I had to keep track of where everything was and put it back just so. There was no clutter in the woman’s life. The smell of coffee and toast lingered, but if she’d eaten breakfast, she’d already washed, dried, and put away the dishes. The morning paper had been read and tossed in the trash. The mail was sorted in one of those plastic accordion files. I mean, she folded her underwear like origami.
Now coins are hard to look for. They’re small; you can hide ‘em anywhere. So this search took me one hell of a long time. Nine out of ten women hide things that are dear to them in the bedroom. They keep their finest jewellery closest to the bed, sometimes in the nightstand, sometimes right under the mattress. That’s where I started.
Marcia had a jewellery box on top of her dresser. I felt like hiding it for her. She had some nice stuff and a burglar could have made quite a haul with no effort.
The next favourite place for women to stash valuables is the kitchen. I sifted through her flour. I removed every Kellogg’s Rice Krispy from the giant economy-sized box-and returned it. I went through her place like no burglar ever will. When I say thorough, I mean thorough.
I found four odd things. A neatly squared pile of clippings from the Globe and the Herald, all the articles about the Thayler killing. A manila envelope containing five different safe-deposit-box keys. A Tupperware container full of superstitious junk, good luck charms mostly, the kind of stuff I’d never have associated with a straight-arrow like Marcia: rabbits’ feet galore, a little leather bag on a string that looked like some kind of voodoo charm, a pendant in the shape of a cross surmounted by a hook, and, I swear to God, a pack of worn tarot cards. Oh, yes, and a .22 automatic, looking a lot less threatening stuck in an ice cube tray. I took the bullets; the unloaded gun threatened a defenceless box of Breyers’ mint chocolate-chip ice cream.
I left everything else just the way I’d found it and went home. And tugged my hair. And stewed. And brooded. And ate half the stuff in the refrigerator, I kid you not.
At about one in the morning, it all made blinding, crystal-clear sense.
The next afternoon, at five-fifteen, I made sure I was the cabbie who picked up Marcia Heidegger in Harvard Square. Now cabstands have the most rigid protocol since Queen Victoria; you do not grab a fare out of turn or your fellow cabbies are definitely not amused. There was nothing for it but bribing the ranks. This bet with Mooney was costing me plenty.
I got her. She swung open the door and gave the Mason Terrace number. I grunted, kept my face turned front, and took off.
Some people really watch where you’re going in a cab, scared to death you’ll take them a block out of their way and squeeze them for an extra nickel. Others just lean back and dream. She was a dreamer, thank God. I was almost at District One Headquarters before she woke up.
“Excuse me,” she said, polite as ever, “that’s Mason Terrace in Brookline.”
“Take the next right, pull over, and douse your lights,” I said in a low Bogart voice. My imitation was not that good, but it got the point across. Her eyes widened and she made an instinctive grab for the door handle.
“Don’t try it, lady,” I Bogied on. “You think I’m dumb enough to take you in alone? There’s a cop car behind us, just waiting for you to make a move.”
Her hand froze. She was a sap for movie dialogue.
“Where’s the cop?” was all she said on the way up to Mooney’s office.
“What cop?”
“The one following us.”
“You have touching faith in our law-enforcement system,” I said.
She tried a bolt, I kid you not. I’ve had experience with runners a lot trickier than Marcia. I grabbed her in approved cop hold number three and marched her into Mooney’s office.
He actually stopped typing and raised an eyebrow, an expression of great shock for Mooney.
“Citizen’s arrest,” I said.
“Charges?”
“Petty theft. Commission of a felony using a firearm.” I rattled off a few more charges, using the numbers I remembered from cop school.
“This woman is crazy,” Marcia Heidegger said with all the dignity she could muster.
“Search her,” I said. “Get a matron in here. I want my four dollars and eighty-two cents back.”
Mooney looked like he agreed with Marcia’s opinion of my mental state. He said, “Wait up, Carlotta. You’d have to be able to identify that four dollars and eighty-two cents as yours. Can you do that? Quarters are quarters. Dimes are dimes.”
“One of the coins she took was quite unusual,” I said. “I’m sure I’d be able to identify it.”
“Do you have any objection to displaying the change in your purse?” Mooney said to Marcia. He got me mad the way he said it, like he was humouring an idiot.
“Of course not,” old Marcia said, cool as a frozen daiquiri.
“That’s because she’s stashed it somewhere else, Mooney,” I said patiently. “She used to keep it in her purse, see. But then she goofed. She handed it over to a cabbie in her change. She should have just let it go, but she panicked because it was worth a pile and she was just babysitting it for someone else. So when she got it back, she hid it somewhere. Like in her shoe. Didn’t you ever carry your lucky penny in your shoe?”
“No,” Mooney said. “Now, Miss-“
“Heidegger,” I said clearly. “Marcia Heidegger. She used to work at Harvard Law School.” I wanted to see if Mooney picked up on it, but he didn’t. He went on: “This can be taken care of with a minimum of fuss. If you’ll agree to be searched by-“
“I want to see my lawyer,” she said.
“For four dollars and eighty-two cents?” he said. “It’ll cost you more than that to get your lawyer up here.”
“Do I get my phone call or not?”
Mooney shrugged wearily and wrote up the charge sheet. Called a cop to take her to the phone.
He got Jo Ann, which was good. Under cover of our old-friend-longtime-no-see greetings, I whispered in her ear.
“You’ll find it fifty well spent,” I said to Mooney when we were alone.
Jo Ann came back, shoving Marcia slightly ahead of her. She plunked her prisoner down in one of Mooney’s hard wooden chairs and turned to me, grinning from ear to ear.
“Got it?” I said, “Good for you.”
“What’s going on?” Mooney said.
“She got real clumsy on the way to the pay phone,” Jo Ann said. “Practically fell on the floor. Got up with her right hand clenched tight. When we got to the phone, I offered to drop her dime for her. She wanted to do it herself. I insisted and she got clumsy again. Somehow this coin got kicked clear across the floor.”
She held it up. The coin could have been a dime, except the colour was off: warm, rosy gold instead of dead silver. How I missed it the first time around I’ll never know.
“What the hell is that?” Mooney said.
“What kind of coins were in Justin Thayler’s collection?” I asked. “Roman?”
Marcia jumped out of the chair, snapped her bag open, and drew out her little .22. I kid you not. She was closest to Mooney and she just stepped up to him and rested it above his left ear. He swallowed, didn’t say a word. I never realised how prominent his Adam’s apple was. Jo Ann froze, hand on her holster.
Good old reliable, methodical Marcia. Why, I said to myself, why pick today of all days to trot your gun out of the freezer? Did you read bad luck in your tarot cards? Then I had a truly rotten thought. What if she had two guns? What if the disarmed .22 was still staring down the mint chocolate-chip ice cream?
“Give it back,” Marcia said. She held out one hand, made an impatient waving motion.
“Hey, you don’t need it, Marcia,” I said. “You’ve got plenty more. In all those safe deposit boxes.”
“I’m going to count to five-“ she began.
“Were you in on the murder from day one? You know, from the planning stages?” I asked. I kept my voice low, but it echoed off the walls of Mooney’s tiny office. The hum of everyday activity kept going in the main room. Nobody noticed the little gun in the well-dressed lady’s hand. “Or did you just do your beau a favour and hide the loot after he iced his wife? In order to back up his burglary tale? I mean, if Justin Thayler really wanted to marry you, there is such a thing as divorce. Or was old Jennifer the one with the bucks?”
“I want that coin,” she said softly. “Then I want the two of you”-she motioned to Jo Ann and me-“to sit down facing that wall. If you yell, or do anything before I’m out of the building, I’ll shoot this gentleman. He’s coming with me.”
“Come on, Marcia,” I said, “put it down. I mean, look at you. A week ago you just wanted Thayler’s coin back. You didn’t want to rob my cab, right? You just didn’t know how else to get your good luck charm back with no questions asked. You didn’t do it for money, right? You did it for love. You were so straight you threw away the cash. Now here you are with a gun pointed at a cop-“
“Shut up!”
I took a deep breath and said, “You haven’t got the style, Marcia. Your gun’s not even loaded.”
Mooney didn’t relax a hair. Sometimes I think the guy hasn’t ever believed a word I’ve said to him. But Marcia got shook. She pulled the barrel away from Mooney’s skull and peered at it with a puzzled frown. Jo Ann and I both tackled her before she got a chance to pull the trigger. I twisted the gun out ‘of her hand. I was almost afraid to look inside. Mooney stared at me and I felt my mouth go dry and a trickle of sweat worm its way down my back.
I looked.
No bullets. My heart stopped fibrillating, and Mooney actually cracked a smile in my direction.
So that’s all. I sure hope Mooney will spread the word around that I helped him nail Thayler. And I think he will; he’s a fair kind of guy. Maybe it’ll get me a case or two. Driving a cab is hard on the backside, you know?

Lucky Penny by Linda Barnes first appeared in The New Black Mask, no. 3, 1985. Copyright © 1985 by Linda Barnes. Reprinted by permission of Gina Maccoby Literary Agency.