home, on a Saturday, and Eileen got to meet the brother, Stephen, who was light on his feet, and her father, Alexander.
Martha had shown her around the house and property, which had taken a little time, as there were twenty-eight rooms in the turn-of-the-century mansion set on fourteen acres behind stone walls on Glengarry Lane in Chestnut Hill, plus a guest house, a hothouse, and stables for Alexander Peebles’s polo ponies.
“I never saw anything like this,” Eileen had confessed, as they left the stables. “Not even in the movies.”
Martha had looked at her.
“I really don’t want this to change things between us,” Martha said. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”
Eileen had never forgotten the frightened look in Martha’s eyes.
“Don’t be silly.”
“And don’t tell anybody else, please.”
“Why should I?”
Eileen had never had a best friend in high school, and neither, Martha said, had she. They became and remained best friends and stayed best friends. Martha was the first person Eileen had told about Ben, right after he rear-ended her. And Martha had been her only bridesmaid when she married Ben.
And Eileen really worried about Martha, particularly after her father died, cutting the queer brother out of his will, and leaving everything to Martha. Everything included the Tamaqua Mining Corporation, which owned, among other things, somewhere between ten and twelve percent of the known anthracite coal reserves in the United States.
There had been no man; there never had been one in Martha’s life seriously. There were several reasons for this, Eileen thought, the primary reason being that Martha, aware that she was no great beauty, suspected that what few suitors she had had were primarily interested in her money, followed closely by Martha’s comparison of her young men with her father, and finding that none of them came close to matching up.
Eileen really thought that maybe her best friend was losing it when she began to complain that her house was being burgled on a more or less regular basis, and that the police weren’t paying attention.
Eileen called Denny Coughlin and told him she would appreciate it if he would lean on the commanding officer of the Fourteenth District and get him to send enough uniforms around to 606 Glengarry Lane often enough to convince the inhabitant that her property and person were being adequately protected.
Denny Coughlin had called her back within the hour to tell her she could put her mind at rest about Miss Peebles. He’d called the Fourteenth District commander, as she’d asked him to do, and Captain Jessup had told him he was a little late. It seems Miss Peebles’s lawyer, Brewster Payne, had talked with his partner, Colonel Mawson, who’d telephoned Police Commissioner Czernich about Miss Peebles’s problem.
The commissioner had called Jessup and told him not to worry about Miss Peebles anymore. He had given the problem to Special Operations, and Highway Patrol would now be rolling by 606 Glengarry on a regular-at least hourly-basis. Special Operations had been told the commissioner didn’t want to hear of any more problems at 606 Glengarry Lane.
The next morning, just after Judge Solomon had walked into her chambers at nine, Martha Peebles had called.
“Eileen, it happened.”
“What happened?”
“My knight in shining armor. He finally came.”
“Martha, are you all right?”
“His name is David Pekach, and he’s the captain commanding Highway Patrol. And we did it, Eileen!”
Martha reported that Captain Pekach had called to inform her that her property would now be patrolled by Highway Patrol on a regular, frequent basis, and that she could put her mind at rest.
“My God, Eileen. He’s so much like Daddy. All man. You just feel safe when you’re with him.”
“What do you mean you did it, Martha?”
“You know what I mean,” Martha said, not even very shyly.
“You’re not telling me this cop just walked in the door, and you took him to bed?”
“No, of course not. Not then. What happened was that he said he would swing by at midnight himself, and I said I never went to bed that early, and if he had the time-didn’t have to get home to his wife-why didn’t he stop in and I’d give him a cup of coffee. And he said he wasn’t married, and thank you, he’d like a cup of coffee. And he came back at midnight, and that’s when we did it.”
“I think you’re out of your mind.”
“I know. I’m out of my mind with love. His first name is David. And I thought it was going to hurt the first time, and it didn’t. God, Eileen, it was wonderful!”