A Toast Before Dying (21 page)

I heard the doorbell ring, then Gladys called me from the living room, and I closed the jars. A locksmith had arrived. As he worked, I went from room to room for one last look around. When I left this time, I knew I wouldn’t be back.

O
n Saturday morning, three days after the party, Rita Bayne swallowed a fistful of diet pills and sleeping pills and washed them down with a half a fifth of vodka.

The news spread like a wave as people worked the connection between Michael’s wife and his assistant—both hospitalized and both in critical condition.

Dad hung up the phone after speaking with Dr. Thomas. “We should’ve gone to the police. Blaine thinks it’s a suicide attempt, but I think somebody’s trying to shut her up.”

I put down the coffee cup and squeezed my eyes shut. I had known something was going to happen. But not this way. An overdose. I wondered if Michaels was behind this, trying to clean up. And I wondered if Rita had given up the letter.

“She’s in Harlem Hospital,” Dad continued.
“Poor thing. Got into this mess way over her head, and then ends up like this. Michaels is gonna pay for it.”

Indeed he will, I thought, but how? When?

Despite Wednesday night’s promise—to mind my business, to lay off and let Bertha handle whatever was going to happen—I found myself dressing quickly, and fifteen minutes later I walked into the crowded lobby of the hospital.

The information clerk tapped the computer and read from the screen: “Critical condition, not receiving visitors.”

“What room is she in? I’d like to send flowers.”

“Room 401.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. I walked across the lobby to mingle with a small group heading toward the elevator.

“Miss?” The guard signaled and I smiled, pointing toward the group. I knew there were several conference rooms on the second floor, and I said, “I’m here for a meeting.”

He waved me on and I managed to catch the elevator just as the door was closing.

I stepped off on the fourth floor. Marian Prince was walking toward me, and I watched her walk past the nurse’s station in the center and glance up, distracted by the sound of activity. A second later, she moved on, gliding in the slow silence of a sleepwalker. I waited near the elevator until she pressed the button, and when it arrived I stepped inside with her.

“Miss Prince?”

She looked up as if I’d startled her out of a dream.

“Yes? Oh! You … were at that party. Your eyes … I recognize …”

The door opened on the third floor and a crowd pushed their way in, separating us. Marian leaned against the far wall and was silent until we stepped into the lobby.

“You were at that party,” she said again, “and weren’t feeling well when I saw you.”

“Yes. I’m Mali Anderson. I’m sorry about Rita. I was just coming to visit her.”

Marian nodded as if trying to shake herself out of a daze. “Yes. I arrived at that party very late. Did anything happen before I …” Her voice trailed off and I waited a second before I answered.

“I was talking to Rita near the buffet table and she seemed to have gotten a little upset about something. She disappeared, and the next thing I hear, she’s in the hospital. How’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get in to see her. She’s my sister and—”

“Your sister?”

“Yes. And there’s a guard outside her room. He wouldn’t let me near her. I mean it’s not as if she has AIDS or that new TB or something. Why have they isolated her? I’m going to see the administrator about this. I—my sister is in critical condition and someone needs to tell me what’s going on.”

People moved around us toward the lobby doors, the elevators, the information booth. The neon above the entrance to a McDonald’s flashed like a rainbow,
but Marian seemed rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed in the distance.

“Come on,” I whispered, “we’ll have a cup of coffee.”

“No. I can’t leave here. Not until someone tells me what’s going on.”

“Maybe,” I said, “the administration decided to bar all visitors considering the circumstances … you know—Anne Michaels’s situation and now this. The media’ll try to get to your sister. They’re like vultures. They’ll fly through the window to get to her no matter what shape she’s in. And you have a different last name. You—”

“I married and divorced,” she snapped. “I kept my married name, but I can certainly prove I’m a Bayne. And who are you? A cop or—”

“No. No ma’am. I’m just a friend who’s concerned about what happened.”

Her expression softened and she regarded me for a minute before she spoke again. “I’m sorry. You can see how upset I am about this. How well do you know Rita?”

The voice had not softened entirely and I decided to be only half-truthful. “I met her a few days ago in the Pink Fingernail. A friend of mine owns the place.”

Marian nodded. “Oh yes, Vivian. She did a makeover.”

“And I spoke to Rita quite awhile at the party. She seemed nervous but I thought it was because of the crowd, the event itself. You know: Some folks just don’t like that sort of excitement.

“She had two martinis while we talked, but when Edwin Michaels walked in, she left me to go find the bathroom. I went looking for her, thinking she’d gotten sick. It was a while before I found her.”

“Where was she?”

“Out in the garden.”

“With Edwin?”

“Yes.”

“Shit! I knew it!”

Marian looked away and I knew she wanted to ask me what I’d heard or seen.

“Come on,” she said, heading for the door.

“Where?”

“Across the street. Singleton’s restaurant. We can’t talk in here.”

The lunchtime crowd had not arrived yet so we had a choice of tables. We took one in the back, ordered the lunch special, and as soon as the waiter disappeared Marian held her head in both hands. “I … don’t know where all this will end. Or how. From the start, that bastard took advantage of my sister. She’s young, was only out of college a few years when she went to work for him. I saw it coming, but she was in a love fog and couldn’t see two feet in front of her. Couldn’t see the man’s wife, or that bitch Thea.

“Sometimes I think Rita has cried more about Thea than about the fact that Edwin is married. And she sees how badly he treats his wife. Why does she think he would treat her any differently? She’s in a real fog.”

“Love will do that,” I said, trying to keep my voice
even. I had no intention of telling what I’d overheard. Rita had killed a man and now she was hospitalized, probably hanging on by a thread. If she went, her secret would go with her, or at least I wouldn’t be the one to tell it.

The waiter returned with two oversize plates of fried chicken wings, collard greens, and potato salad.

Grief usually suppressed the appetite, but Marian dug into her plate as if this were her first meal in a week.

“Were you at the Half-Moon that night?” I asked.

“When Thea was killed? Oh yes.”

Between bites, she continued. “You see, I try to get to as many places where I know Rita’ll be. I sort of drop in. Especially where there’s bound to be alcohol, because when she’s stressed she can’t, as the old folks say, hold her liquor. That’s why I was at Dr. Thomas’s house. I’m not one of those political high rollers on someone’s A-list. I showed up there because of my sister.”

“Why does Edwin keep her on his staff?” I asked.

“Well, at first I wanted to believe it was because she was a good worker, but when I found out the real deal, I figured it was ego, mainly. He knew from the start that he affected her in certain ways, and I think he enjoyed watching her fall apart from time to time. Then he’d step in and build her up again, promise by promise.”

“But meanwhile,” I said, “he was falling apart over Thea.”

“I suppose so. Perhaps that’s why he needed my sister. As a counterbalance.”

We ate in silence and I thought of the two women, one dead and one hospitalized, who couldn’t have been more different, both entangled with the same man.

“Like I said,” Marian continued, “I was in the bar that night. Place struck me as sleazy the minute I walked in, but Rita was there so I stayed.”

“You saw Thea?”

“Oh yes. Very pretty. Stunning, you might say, but seemed as if she’d been carved from ice. I mean she sat there as if she was not really connected with anything that was going on in that place. When Edwin gave her an envelope, Rita saw it also, and I thought my poor sister was going to say something. But she was cool. She amazed me.

“When all hell broke loose following the shooting, Edwin disappeared. Probably jumped into the first thing rolling. We blinked and he was in the wind.

“In the confusion, we saw Henderson help himself to the envelope that was in Thea’s purse. The police had come in by then and everybody had to leave. There was only Rita and me and maybe another woman inside. Everyone else was out in the alley. So much screaming and yelling … I didn’t want to go out there.”

“And you came to Bertha’s the next day.”

She stopped eating and stared at me, suspicion dawning again. “How did you know that?”

“I was there when you walked in with that other woman.”

“What do you do? Hang out in hairdressers’ as a hobby?” She stared at my hair as she said it and I had to smile. “Vivian and Bertha are friends of mine. I’ve
known Bertha eighteen years. How’d you find her place?”

“How’d I find it? She was screaming and advertising loud enough to even wake up Thea. Yelling that she was a beautician who paid her taxes and the police had better not lay a hand on her brother. As soon as she said the name, I knew where her shop was. Bertha’s Beauty Shop, right there on Eighth Avenue.”

“Do you think her brother did it? Killed Thea?” I asked.

She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know. He was crying and I heard him, as clear as if he’d been standing next to me, saying he didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean it. Now what was that all about? And where’s the weapon? Maybe he did it and someone else picked up the gun. There’re too many unanswered questions, so I really don’t know.”

We were silent as people entered and stood at the take-out window at the front of the restaurant. Marian continued to eat.

“Kendrick’s like a brother to me,” I said, breaking the silence. “He helped me when I was going through a bad time after my sister died. He was there for my nephew, and now I’m trying to help him. My nephew’ll be back from vacation soon and I promised myself that Kendrick’d be out of jail before then. Now, I don’t know how I could’ve made such a promise …”

She dipped her fork in the greens and I marveled that she was able to eat at all. A minute later, she put down her fork and passed her hand over her face.

“Anything wrong?” I asked.

“Aren’t you a police officer?” she whispered, staring at me intently.

“I was, very briefly, a few years ago.”

“I thought I recognized you. You undercover or you really quit?”

“I was fired for hitting another cop,” I said. “He couldn’t keep his dirty mouth shut so I shut it for him. I’m suing for wrongful dismissal.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” She whistled softly and looked at me with dawning admiration. “Who’s your attorney? I’m going to need one if they decide to play games with me.” She gestured across the street. “If I can’t get to see …”

“Elizabeth Jackson,” I said, writing her name and phone number on a napkin. “She’s also handling Kendrick’s case. High-powered sister.”

She put the folded napkin into her shoulder bag and brought out an envelope. She slid it across the table, where it rested against the saltshaker. “I can see you didn’t particularly like Thea, or Edwin either, for that matter. Take this. Read it when you get home.”

The lunchtime crowd had moved in now and conversation in the low octaves was impossible. I passed up the sweet-potato pie, paid the check, and we left.

Outside, Marian gazed across the avenue at the entrance to the hospital. I waited, watching the whirl of activity on the avenue: folks rushing from the subway, swirling around a cadaverous crackhead holding a dingy paper cup; lines of vendors moving fast, pushing shopping carts filled with flowers, fruits, cakes and pies, and coconut-flavored ices.

In front of the hospital, women with baby strollers sunned themselves on the stone ledges. A block away, near the parking lot, an old man tipped his chair back against the fender of his watermelon truck, sound asleep despite the noise of traffic and nearby construction.

Finally, Marian said, “I’m going to see my sister. I’ll call your attorney if they keep me out.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“No. No, I can handle this myself.”

“All right.” I rummaged in my bag for my card. “Call me and let me know if you need anything else. Or if you just feel like talking.”

“If I feel like—listen …” She put her hand to the side of her face, holding it as if it hurt.

“Mali, do you know what Edwin’s like? I mean behind those thousand-dollar suits and that million-dollar smile? You have no idea, have you?”

“I know I don’t like him. Never have. Never will.”

“Well, I’m telling you this: If Rita doesn’t pull through …”

She stopped and looked away. “Last year, Edwin arranged to take her to St. Thomas. She was ecstatic, poor thing. Couldn’t stop talking about it. When they arrived at the hotel, who do you think she found there?”

“Thea?”

Marian nodded, her eyes bright with anger. “Edwin had booked them in separate rooms and took turns. When Rita found out, she came home. I met her at the airport and her eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying.
You have no idea how I despise that man. If anything happens, the media will hear from me and a whole lot of other people …”

Without another word, she walked off and crossed against the traffic, and I watched her disappear through the entrance of the hospital. I walked away, and turned at 136th Street, walking past the Countee Cullen Library, where a group of day-campers were filing in for story hour. At Seventh Avenue and 137th Street, I couldn’t wait to get home so I reached into my bag and tore open the envelope.