A Crazy Little Thing Called Death (30 page)

Instead of the genius florist, I found the banquet captain, Joe Carmello, who managed all the big benefit dinners at the hotel and often provided insider information to use in the newspaper. He was a barrel of a man, hardworking and always calm even during the maelstrom of an extravagant event.

But Joe’s expression slackened when he caught sight of me. “Miss Blackbird! I was hoping to catch you before the dinner service starts.”

He had been calling me Nora for six months, but now we were back to formal names.

He drew a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket—the notes he made for himself before every event. He lifted his bifocals from the chain around his neck and consulted the paper with a frown. “We’ve had the usual last-minute rush of cancellations and additions to the guest list. The committee was forced to change the seating arrangements. You don’t mind, do you? I’ve found a spot for you at Table Twenty.”

The dreaded Table Twenty. Hidden in an alcove, it was better known as Social Siberia—the place to hide guests known for getting drunk, who embarrassed their friends with lewd talk or who just plain didn’t belong.

“Thank you, Joe,” I said with all my composure. “But I’m afraid I’m going to upset your applecart again. I can’t stay. I’m just here to get a few quotes, and then I must dash.”

Joe’s honest face could not hide his relief. “I’m sorry to hear that. We’re serving a delicious veal with pesto-stuffed mushrooms this evening. But I’m sure you’re busy.”

“Yes,” I said. “I—Joe, wait a minute. This is an odd question, but can you tell me where the hotel buys its veal?”

Accustomed to all kinds of bizarre inquires about the hotel, the service, the food, the wine, Joe didn’t bat an eye. He said, “Of course. We acquire our meats from high-end sources, usually organic farms. Our lamb, for instance, is flown in from Virginia. The veal comes from a gentleman in upstate New York—very high quality. I’ll e-mail you the information.”

“Thank you. Have you always used the upstate New York farmer? I mean, have you ever considered a local source? Kell Huckabee, for instance?”

Joe frowned. A man who prided himself on keeping all important details in his head, he nodded. “I remember that name. Did he approach me once? Yes, I believe so, last summer. He wanted the hotel to try his product, but he could not provide the quantity we require. We serve a great deal of veal at our special events. He was just getting started and didn’t have enough supply.”

I did not ask more. Instead, I thanked Joe, excused myself and headed back to the cocktail party. There, an
Intelligencer
photographer—a petite woman named Jeanie, who often met me at society parties—was already taking pictures of the well dressed. As I consulted with her, I noticed the crowd edging away from us. Unusual, because normally partygoers wanted to have their photos taken for the newspaper.

It was me they were avoiding, however, not Jeanie.

She said, “I’ve already taken a dozen shots of dresses. What else do you want?”

“Some members of the committee. See that woman in silver?” I pointed out Carol, who had studiously avoided catching my eye.

“Sure.” Jeanie glanced up at me, curious that I didn’t lead the way. “Want me to approach her?”

“That would be nice,” I said.

I stood back, making murmured suggestions to Jeanie, who followed my directions to organize some important donors to pose for pictures. I knew charities relied on such advertising to encourage more people to give to their cause, so I forced myself to choose wisely among the many guests who mingled nearby.

When we’d snapped several more photographs, Jeanie said she had another stop to make before the evening was over. I decided I’d seen enough, too, and we went out to the street together. We waved good night and I paused to root in my bag for my cell phone.

Three taxis pulled up in front of the hotel in quick succession, and Lexie Paine got out of the second one, alone.

She wore a slim midnight blue dress with a diamond choker. A white wrap trimmed in rabbit fur slipped down one bare shoulder. She was clearly on her way to the charity dinner. But she saw me and headed straight over. Her face was stricken with sympathy.

“Sweetie!” She grabbed me hard in a hug. “I just saw the news. Are you okay?”

“No,” I said, teetering on the edge of control.

“Oh, honey, I feel so terrible for you! Is Michael—? Has he been arrested? The news report said he’s the prime suspect in that ghastly shooting this morning. You must be devastated.”

“This morning Michael was discharged from the hospital. He couldn’t possibly have killed anyone.”

I gave her the short version of what I knew about the murder of Torchy Pescara there on the sidewalk under the hotel marquee. Lexie listened closely, making sympathetic noises as I outlined what had happened with Michael since I’d seen her.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said miserably. “I’m exhausted and upset and—and—the thing is, Lex, I don’t want to go home.” It was wrong, I knew, but I didn’t want to hear Michael’s explanation of the killing.

Lexie understood. “Oh, sweetie. Let’s go to my place.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “Let me whisk you away. I wanted to skip this stupid dinner anyway.”

I tried to rub the tension from my forehead. “I know Michael’s innocent. I do. But—oh, Lex! Sometimes I think we’re so different—and I—I can’t understand why his life has to be the way he’s made it.”

My friend pulled me to the curb. “Let’s get a cab. We can be at my house in a few minutes. Then you can have a good cry.”

“We don’t need a cab. Reed is right around the corner. I’ll call him.”

I opened my cell phone and found the small screen blinking. I had turned off the ring tone while I was at the party, and someone had tried to reach me. “Oh, damn, I’ve got messages. Six.”

“Who from?”

I clicked through the screens to check. “Four from home. Two from Libby.”

“Do you think there’s some kind of emergency?”

No. Michael had tried to call me from the house, I guessed. To explain, perhaps, or to ask me to come home so we could talk rationally about the murder of Torchy Pescara. And heaven only knew what Libby wanted to talk about. Maybe she’d found a deal on marijuana nosegays for the wedding.

My thumb froze on the keypad of the phone.

“Don’t return the calls,” Lexie said, seeing my hesitation. “Not if you don’t want to hear what they have to say.”

I stowed the cell phone in my handbag again, and we walked around the corner. A whole line of limousines and chauffeur-driven cars stretched for the next three blocks—illegally parked, but nobody seemed to care. Most of the drivers were standing on the corner talking together beneath a streetlamp. We walked a block before we found Reed sitting behind the wheel of the town car, diligently reading a book by the light of a small flashlight.

He jumped, startled, and dropped his book when I tapped on the window. He scrambled out of the car.

“Reed, this is my friend Lexie Paine.”

“Hello, Reed.” Lexie surprised Reed by shaking his hand.

“We’d like to go to Lexie’s house. On—”

“I know where it is,” he said, regaining his usual testiness. He helped us into the backseat.

When we pulled into the street and made a right turn into the flow of traffic, Lexie said, “Do you want to talk? Or should I divert you? Take your mind off your troubles?”

I leaned my head back against the seat to avoid the glare of oncoming headlights. I felt enormously tired, but I was glad for a diversion. “Divert away, please.”

On the dark seat between us, she dropped a beaded evening bag in the shape of a dolphin. “I did some checking. This is all off the record, of course. I’m in violation of a terrifying number of regulations by telling you any of this, but I know you’ll use it only for your own reasons. And you’ll have to find a secondary way of confirming the information.” Lexie glanced at the back of Reed’s head, the universal sign that he should close his ears. “My firm manages some investments for a certain pharmaceutical baron.”

Potty Devine, I thought, and I straightened.

She nodded at my unspoken comprehension. “I discovered he’d been withdrawing large sums of money from his accounts over the last two years.”

“How large?”

“More than his living expenses should be. But not enough to purchase any significant stock or real estate. Usually, there’s something to show for cashing in investments like that. In this case, however, the money simply disappeared. I’ve seen the same pattern before, remember? Last year when another of my clients was being blackmailed.”

I nodded. “I remember. Exactly how much money are we talking?”

“Escalating amounts. Starting with five thousand, then ten, finally twenty-five thousand dollars. As time goes on, I’ve noticed the average blackmailer gets greedier. Last autumn, he withdrew nearly fifty grand.”

I wondered whether the amounts were similar to the payments Crewe Dearborne had made to Kell Huckabee.

“But get this,” Lexie went on. “There must have been a glitch. My pharmaceutical gentleman redeposited that fifty thousand just a couple of days later.”

“In October or November?”

“Yes, November. How did you know?”

Potty claimed he’d fired Kell Huckabee in November, I thought. Which meant Kell could have blackmailed Potty earlier in the fall.

Had Kell blackmailed Potty as well as Crewe? Had Potty redeposited the money because he knew Kell wasn’t around to accept his blackmail payment? Because he knew Kell was already dead?

“This is significant,” Lexie said, watching me connect the dots. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s possible that the blackmailer died between the time your client withdrew the money and put it back again.”

“Good Lord.” Lexie drew her wrap closer around her shoulders. “You don’t think the silly old man could have actually murdered somebody?”

“If he was being pressured by a blackmailer, yes.”

“Tell me, why would anyone blackmail my pharmaceutical gentleman? I thought it must have been one of his girlfriends. But his love life isn’t a secret he wants to keep, is it? In fact, the old fool is damn proud of his sex life.”

“A man by the name of Kell Huckabee was an employee at the estate for many years. In addition to the work he did for the family, it seems he made a few extra bucks selling MaxiMan in gay nightclubs.”

Lexie raised one brow. “Where did he get his supply?”

“He had to get it from an insider. A very inside insider. If I had to guess, I’d say his source was your pharmaceutical gentleman. Who is still very free with his samples, I must say.”

“He’d get into trouble with six different kinds of regulators for allowing MaxiMan to get out of the lab like that.”

“Hence the blackmail.”

Frowning, Lexie said, “Would Huckabee demand a supply of the drug, then turn around and blackmail his source for giving it to him?”

“I don’t know. I think we need to talk to your pharmaceutical gentleman.”

Reed glanced into the rearview mirror. “Don’t you even think about that.”

“You’re not supposed to eavesdrop, Reed,” Lexie chided.

“I’m not deaf,” he said. “You’re talking about that old man, Devine.”

I said, “We need to find a way to learn if Kell was really blackmailing Potty.”

“Without getting ourselves killed,” Lexie added.

Reed said, “You’re not getting killed, ’cause you’re not talking to nobody.”

Lexie pretended she didn’t hear him. To me, she said, “If Potty bumped off Huckabee, how did he do it?”

I reminded Lexie about the tigers and told her about the gunshot wound to the hand.

“He might have been shot. The police have no way of knowing for sure. But chances are, the rest of his body is—well—”

“Oh, God, Nora! You don’t mean he was eaten? By Vivian’s tigers?”

My cell phone suddenly buzzed in my handbag, and I sighed. “I think I liked life better before I was so available.”

“Take a look,” Lexie urged. “Maybe it’s Michael again. Maybe you should talk with him, Nora.”

I read the incoming number on the phone’s screen. “It’s Libby.”

“Go ahead,” Lexie said. “See what she wants.”

Libby was barely coherent.

“The police,” she babbled. “They came and took them both! I was never so humiliated in all my life, Nora! Why, they even wanted to search my diaper bag! And when the police found all those jars the twins left in your refrigerator, they went crazy! It was awful! Horrible!”

“Libby,” I said sharply. “Calm down. The twins were arrested?”

“No, of course not the twins!” she said. “They came for That Man!”

“The police arrested Michael?”

“Yes!” Libby shrieked. “And Crewe, too!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you listening?” my sister demanded. “The police arrested Crewe Dearborne! For the murder of Kell Huckabee! Nora, the police say Crewe killed a man!”

W
hat’s ridiculous,” Lexie said, highly offended by the suggestion. “Of course Crewe didn’t kill anyone.”

“The police have been under pressure to make an arrest,” I said. “I didn’t think that meant they’d grab the first possible suspect.”

My cell phone buzzed again in my hand, and I answered without thinking.

In my ear, Emma’s voice said, “Have you heard the latest bulletin?”

“Which one? There are so many.”

“Mick’s in custody.”

“Old news.”

“You sound pretty heartless. Aren’t you worried?”

I sighed. “Of course I am. Is he—does he have his lawyers with him?”

“Yeah, Cannoli and Sons met him at the state-police barracks. The cops put him in the squad car with his hands cuffed behind his back. With that broken leg of his, it sure looked like police brutality to me.”

My heart lurched. “Oh, Em.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In the city.”

“Me, too. Where can I find you?”

“We’re heading over to Lexie’s house.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Emma said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

We arrived at Lexie’s home within a few minutes. Reed was helping us out of the backseat when Emma’s pickup bumped into the driveway and rocked to a stop.

Instead of wearing her usual grubby riding clothes, my sister surprised us all by walking around the hood of the truck in a black, very short sheath dress made of some stretchy fabric that clung to her like dew on a ripe peach. Around her shoulders she had thrown a man’s dinner jacket. The silk lapels gleamed in the moonlight. Even Reed couldn’t stop himself from staring. She looked like a movie star.

“What?” Emma demanded when the three of us failed to greet her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, the first to regain myself. “You look very nice, Em. Where have you been?”

“I was supposed to have dinner with someone, but I changed my mind.”

“Dinner with whom?” Lexie asked. “Calvin Klein? Emma, you clean up beautifully.”

She snorted. “I ditched my date when I found somebody more interesting to spend the evening with.”

“What’s going on, Em?”

She jerked her head back at the truck. “Take a look at my passenger.”

Lexie and I followed Emma to the truck door, which my sister opened to reveal a slumped male figure sprawled on the seat. As the dome light came on, I gasped.

“Raphael! Em, what have you done?”

“He’s fine,” Emma said. “He was in the bar of the restaurant, and we got to talking. The slick son of a bitch tried to slip me a Mickey.”

I leaned into the truck and instinctively reached for his throat to check Raphael’s pulse. His head lolled away from me, but I could see he was breathing. Someone had painted a matador’s mustache on his upper lip with a ballpoint pen. Dressed in a white tuxedo shirt with the collar open, elegantly cut trousers and a pair of Italian shoes that had been polished to a high sheen, he could have been a male model on his way to an important fashion shoot. If he’d been conscious. His pulse felt steady under my fingertips.

His eyes—only slits of awareness—did not register any recognition as I leaned close. He slurred something in Portuguese.

“What’s wrong with him?” Lexie’s voice was tense behind me. “Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?”

“He’ll be fine in the morning,” Emma said. “I swapped drinks on him. He drank his own magic potion.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You let him swallow a roofie?”

Emma laughed, sounding pleased. “Serves him right, don’t you think? When he wakes up, I hope he has a hangover as bad as yours.”

“What are we going to do with him?” Lexie asked.

“Oh, I’ve already had my wicked way with Mr. Braga. I’m thinking I’ll just toss him out on the street.”

“Em, what did you do to him?”

My little sister grinned without apology. “I took him up to a parking garage and we fooled around a little. Not long, because he lost his head pretty fast. So we talked. And he told me all kinds of secrets. It was better than truth serum.”

“Em, you shouldn’t have drugged him.”

With another laugh, Emma leaned against the filthy truck, smudging dirt on Raphael’s expensive dinner jacket. “Among other things, I got the lowdown about his relationship with Penny Devine.”

I forgot about the moral implications of drugging a man. “What did he tell you?”

“That he slept with Penny. Many times. Command performances. Turns out, the Braga family isn’t as wealthy as it used to be. Raphael’s been depending on Penny for income for a long time. He takes MaxiMan to help him get through the weekends with Penny.”

“Where did he get the MaxiMan?”

“From Kell Huckabee.”

“What a snake.” Lexie glared at Raphael’s inert body. “Why don’t you take off all his clothes and dump him at Independence Hall?”

“He also told me why he drugged you, Sis. And it kinda surprised me.”

I met my sister’s steady gaze.

She said, “He’s scared to death of you. After he saw you at the polo match, he got the impression you wanted to stake a claim. He thinks you’re going to steal his kid.”

Lexie covered her mouth. “Oh, dear.”

“He drugged you for information, Nora. He borrowed the roofies from one of his slimeball teammates. And he tried the same trick on me tonight. He wanted to know what you planned to do about—what’s her name? Mariel?” Emma gave me a long, measuring stare. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Nora. Does Mick know you have a little girl in Brazil?”

“It’s not Nora’s little girl,” Lexie said.

“No? Is that how you see the situation, Sis?”

“You should take Raphael to a hospital,” I said, fastening the seat belt around his inert body.

Now that I understood Raphael’s point of view, I felt terrible. How had I miscalculated so badly? And did that mean I had made other errors in judgment?

Emma promised to take care of Raphael. I kissed Lexie good night and went home with Reed. On the way, I tried to sort out everything I knew. And I found myself thinking about Mariel. For the first time, I let my imagination conjure up her face. Would she look like Lucy? Did she have Lucy’s Blackbird temperament? Or did she look more like her father? My head spun with details.

When we reached Blackbird Farm, Michael’s crew was once again guarding my driveway. Reed slowed, and I rolled down my window to speak to Aldo.

“Is he home yet?” I asked.

“Not yet. But don’t you worry,” Aldo said. “He’s got his lawyer with him. He’ll be home in no time.”

“Tonight?”

Aldo made the waffling motion with his hand. “Maybe tomorrow. This one could take some time.”

I didn’t want to hear any more. I punched the button, and the window rolled up again.

Reed escorted me to the back door, stepping gingerly over the charred floorboards of the porch. He paused, shifting uncomfortably on his feet as I fished in my handbag for my keys. “You going to be okay?” he asked finally.

“I’ll be fine.” I was touched by his concern. Although I’d known him for nearly a year, it had taken this most recent crisis to force Reed to show his true, caring nature.

“Don’t worry so much,” he said, lingering on the porch. “I know a lot of bad dudes. But Mick—he’s been good to me and to my old lady. He’s just got a lot of—you know—pressures.”

This was more of a speech than I’d ever heard from Reed.

“Don’t tell him I said this,” Reed added, “but he’s the closest thing I have to a dad, you know? He made me go to school and go to London—stuff I wouldn’t have done if not for Mick. So the other stuff he does—it’s okay with me.”

“Thank you, Reed.”

He shrugged, already heading for the car. Over his shoulder, he said, “No problem.”

I watched him leave, wondering if Reed was a better judge of character than I.

Michael did not come home that night. As I filed my story via e-mail, I tried not to think about him or where he was. Or what he might have done.

In the morning, I showered and dressed and went downstairs around nine.

The living room was still a shambles, with Penny Devine’s dresses hanging from all the doorjambs and the empty wardrobe boxes yawning open untidily. A carton of evening bags had been upended on the coffee table, like the booty of a shopaholic after a spree on Rodeo Drive.

In the middle of the mess, Michael slept on the sofa. Usually a light sleeper, he’d normally have heard me before I reached the bottom of the stairs, but this morning he slept soundly, his nose buried in an embroidered throw pillow. Someone had wrapped a frilly evening cloak fetchingly around his tall frame. His leg and cast were propped on the coffee table. The dark smudges under his eyes gave my heart a jolt.

I should have felt sorry for Michael. He was in pain. He’d been through a terrible night.

But a part of me was furious with him.

I studied his crutches. They didn’t match. One was decidedly newer than the other. And the bruises on his right hand did not come from any small incident while he’d checked out of the hospital.

I slipped quietly into the kitchen. Someone had already made coffee and it was steaming on the counter. An empty cup sat in the sink. Aldo, I thought.

I made oatmeal for my breakfast and sliced a banana on top. I ate half the bowl standing at the scullery, but the sight of Michael’s crew hanging around my mailbox at the end of the driveway dulled my appetite. I put the unfinished bowl into the sink beside the coffee mug, and I thought about how my life had changed.

The phone rang, and I grabbed it on the first ring. I carried it out onto the back porch so Michael’s sleep wouldn’t be disturbed.

Libby cried, “I sold Tom Cruise on eBay!”

“What?”

“For nine hundred dollars! Can you believe it?”

I had forgotten about Libby’s latest crackpot scheme. “No, as a matter of fact, I can’t.”

“I think I could get at least as much for Julia Roberts, so I need to do more baking right away.” She barely paused for a breath before asking, “Have you seen the morning papers yet?”

“I watched the local news while I got dressed.”

“So you saw all the pictures of those poor tigers.”

All the TV stations had helicopters circling Vivian Devine’s ranch house, where Animal Control was busily shooting tigers full of tranquilizers in preparation for hauling them out of their enclosure and trucking them to other sanctuaries where they would presumably get better care.

“And you know,” Libby continued, “the police are absolutely convinced That Man of Yours killed a person yesterday morning between the time he left the hospital and when he arrived at your house. Nora, I know it’s hard to call off a wedding once plans are in motion, but I have to ask. Is your heart set on going ahead with this marriage?”

“I’m not making any plans at all, Libby. You are.”

“Listen,” said my sister. “I’ll be the first to admit I don’t trust him. Except when it comes to you. Nora, I don’t see him doing anything to hurt you. I think he’d protect you with his last dying breath.”

“I know,” I said. That’s what I was afraid of.

“So the wedding’s on?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I phoned Emma next, and asked her to pick me up as soon as possible.

When I put the phone on the cradle in the kitchen, I heard a distinct groan from the sofa.

I poured a cup of coffee and carried it into the living room.

Michael had propped himself up on one elbow and was rubbing his forehead as if it throbbed. He needed a shave, and his hair was a tangle.

I brushed aside the heap of evening bags and sat on the coffee table in front of him, cradling the cup of coffee in my hands.

In a raspy growl, he said, “I dreamed I threw up.”

“Very nice,” I said. “Good morning to you, too.”

“It’s morning?” He winced at his watch. “Jesus.”

“When did you get back from the police station?”

“About five.”

“You couldn’t manage to get upstairs?”

“I didn’t try.” He heaved his leg onto the sofa, tried to get comfortable, and gave up.

I handed him the cup of coffee. “Is it time to take some pain pills?”

“I took some before I went to sleep. I’m good for another couple of hours.”

“Do the pills help?”

“Not much.” He sniffed the coffee warily, still without meeting my eye. “Are the twins in the basement? And what about Emma?”

“We’re alone in the house. The twins are conducting their experiments elsewhere. And Emma made other sleeping arrangements.”

He seemed to relax a bit. “She with that Ignacio guy?”

“Emma doesn’t keep a man around very long—especially one with so few faults as Ignacio. Last I saw, she was with Raphael Braga.”

Michael looked at me finally, interest sharpening. “Oh, yeah?”