Death Dance (44 page)

I unsealed the small card. "Alex—to make up for the
daffodils, and for alarming you with my doorstep delivery. Dan Bolin."

"What could possibly be in that note that makes you turn red?"
Mike asked, reaching for it.

I dropped it on the top of my desk. "That's ridiculous. I'm
not blushing. I don't even know the guy."

"A hundred bucks' worth of petals and you don't know him?
Imagine what'll happen when you start putting out for him. Why is he
sending stuff like this if you don't know him? We gotta put him in the
suspect pool for last night?"

"Joan knows him. I don't mean she knows him, but she's talked
to him. He was on the Vineyard this weekend."

"You're not making sense with this 'know him but we don't
really know him' stuff. Guess I picked the wrong weekend to take a pass
on your invite. You do a three-way or something to deserve this?"

Laura was standing in the doorway; when she started to talk to
me, I stepped toward her and Mike picked up the card. "Mike, Mr. Alden
is downstairs. Shall I have them let him up?"

"Yeah, he didn't want to accept my hospitality for the ride.
Told me his driver would bring him down here. Given the choice, I'd
pick the backseat of his limo, too," Mike said. "So who's this Bolin
guy?"

"Oh, Alex? A gentleman named Bolin called this morning and
asked if it was okay to have flowers sent here. Something about not
wanting to upset you by asking for your home address, but I gave him
this one."

"That's fine, Laura."

I bent over the desk, trying to make order out of the
scattered folders and newly accumulated mail, but Mike knew I was just
avoiding his glare.

"You didn't answer me. Who's this guy you know but you don't
know? Where does he live? What does he do? Where was he last night?"

"Look, it was a harmless flirtation on his part. I sat next to
a guy on a plane for half an hour and he tried to ask me out. Not
interested."

"The florist and I would both have to say you didn't make that
very clear, did you? Don't you think we have to talk to him, put him in
the mix?"

Laura was still in the doorway, probably feeling responsible
for the appearance of the flowers, disliking as she did any tension
between Mike and me. "He sounded like a perfectly nice man, Mike. I
wouldn't have given the green light if I'd known—"

"Can we leave him out of this entire discussion unless it
becomes necessary to go in a new direction?"

"I don't know why you're protecting him, Coop."

"That's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to keep him out of my
personal life—and my business—until this murder
investigation and all its offshoots are resolved."

"Maybe last night had something to do with Dr. Sengor's case,"
Laura said, trying to be helpful.

"Sengor's in Turkey, his accomplice is in jail—"

"What if he had more than one accomplice?" Mike asked.

"Joan Stafford thinks I'm paranoid. Maybe it's from hanging
around this place too much. Both of you see suspects everywhere."

Laura turned away from us when we heard Hubert Alden's voice
from the hallway. "Is this Alexandra Cooper's office?"

Mike lifted the flower arrangement and started out of the
room. "I'm putting this on Laura's desk for the time being. Doesn't
exactly look like a serious prosecutor's lair with half of the
Versailles gardens looming between you and your target."

He walked back in the room followed by Hubert Alden, who
removed his hands from the pants pocket of his well-tailored navy
pinstripe suit and rubbed them together as he surveyed the gritty
surroundings of my small office—cramped, in need of a paint
job, and decorated with court exhibits that were reminders of cases won
and lost over the last decade.

"And you're a bureau chief, Ms. Cooper?" Alden said, watching
a peeling paint chip on the ceiling as though it were about to fall on
his shoulder and mar the surface of his jacket. "I can't imagine how
the Indians live."

"One of the perks of public service. You never have to waste
time thinking about how to redecorate. Whichever shade of gray the city
uses every twenty years is fine with me. I'd like to thank you for
coming down here. We have a few more things we'd like to discuss with
you."

"Has there been a resolution yet about the release of Ms.
Gali-nova's body from the morgue? I'm flying to Europe at the end of
the week and it would truly set my mind at ease if we could get her out
of the morgue and put her to rest with some dignity."

I made a note to call the ME's office. "I should be able to
finalize that."

"If you're leaving town, that is," Mike said, settling into
the chair next to Alden.

"How dramatic of you, detective. Now, what do you know that
you think might put the brakes on my plans?"

"I remember standing in the back of the theater with you the
day that Lucy DeVore had her tragic—well, let's still call it
an accident. And if I'm not mistaken, that's when you told us you were
not in New York on Friday night, when Ms. Galinova was murdered. Did I
get that right?"

"Exactly so. I spent that weekend at my house in Vail."

"Maybe dead dancers don't talk, but cell phones can still tell
tales, Mr. Alden. There's a message on Talya's phone," Mike said. I
knew he was bluffing now because her phone had never been found. We
were only going on Joe Berk's statement that he claimed to have
listened to Hubert Alden's invitation to take the ballerina out for a
late supper the night she went missing. "Your voice, offering to pick
her up that same evening."

Alden raised his head, looking out the window over mine,
face-to-face with a gargoyle who laughed back at him from the building
cornice across the narrow street, its tongue extended from its wide
stone mouth.

"Dinner, Mr. Alden? That ring a bell?"

"I never got an answer from Talya. I made that call from my
office, late in the afternoon, I think. Naturally, I would have stayed
in town if she'd responded that she wanted to see me. I keep the
company plane at Teterboro, in New Jersey, right over the George
Washington Bridge."

"You didn't happen to stop by the opera house on your way to
the airport, did you?"

"Mr. Chapman, I was scheduled to fly out at around seven
o'clock that evening. I didn't stop anywhere, because I was anxious to
get into the Vail airport before they shut it down for the night."

"But it's your own wings, no? You tell the pilot it's ten or
it's midnight, and that's when the flight goes."

"We were wheels up before Natalya went onstage, detective. The
first act started at eight p.m., didn't it?" Alden was steaming now,
unhappy about the implied accusation and perhaps also unhappy that we
may have heard something more intimate in the phone conversation than
he had revealed to us. "The flight records on both ends will confirm my
departure and arrival times."

"Those records will tell me about the movements of the
aircraft, Mr. Alden. Whether they account for where you were that night
is another matter."

Alden leaned forward with his elbows on the arms of the wooden
chair and shook his head while he looked down at the floor. "You
brought me down here for this? You'll be embarrassed when you get the
answers you're looking for."

Mike could shift gears as suddenly as moods. He backed off the
subject of Galinova's murder, and sensed from our first conversation
with Alden that he would be more comfortable talking about his
theatrical ancestors.

"I'll be first in line to apologize if I'm wrong, Mr. Alden. I
mean, there it was in your own voice, the night of the murder. I had to
ask you, since you didn't tell us about your dinner invitation the
first time we talked. And the main reason we asked to see you again is
that we really wanted your help about something else, something that
involves Joe Berk."

Alden seemed to perk up now, pleased to shift the attention
back to Berk.

"I'm figuring you might know some of this because of your
grand—mother, the opera singer, and 'cause your grandfather
was such a patron of the arts. You know anything about the Shriners?"

Alden looked at me to check my expression, and I met his
glance with a smile. "Why do you ask?"

"Obviously, I can't tell you exactly why, but let's just say
Berk hasn't been too candid with us, and maybe you can help me
understand why."

"Candor isn't part of Joe's vocabulary. What is it about the
Shriners?"

"Who are they? What do they have to do with the theatrical
community?" Mike asked the general question to start Alden talking, but
I knew he would work his way up to the red tasseled fez.

"The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine,
detective. A nineteenth-century offshoot of the Masons—you
know about them, don't you?"

I knew that Freemasons were opponents of divine right
kingships, attracted by the freedom of early craftsmen, spiritual heirs
of the men who built the world's great monuments—the
pyramids, Solomon's Temple, the Roman aqueducts, and later the medieval
cathedrals.

"Fraternal organizations," Mike said.

"Yes, but with a firm set of beliefs that are centered in the
freedom of man. You had Voltaire and Ben Franklin, George Washington
and Mozart, all espousing democratic ideals and benevolence. By the
mid-nineteenth century, most towns in America had at least one Masonic
Lodge, not just for fraternal purposes, but for philanthropic goals as
well."

"And the Shriners?"

"They first of all had to be Masons, but their order evolved
from a more exotic heritage—the seventh-century Order of the
Mystic Shrine," Alden said, looking over at Mike. "You'd actually be
amused by their original purpose."

"What was it?"

"To maintain law and order, to help local governments fight
crime. They were a kind of primitive posse when they originated. It
wasn't until the nineteenth century that their mission changed."

"I hate friggin' posses. Last thing I need is a bunch of
amateurs trying to do my job. What did they change to?"

"In my grandparents' time, the Shriners really became the
playground for the Masons, associated with most of the popular
entertainers of the day. And all very taken with the exotic symbols of
the original Middle Eastern or Near Eastern Shrine associations."

"Why so?"

"Because that's where the movement originated, centuries ago.
When it was revived in America, there were two men who cofounded the
order in the 1850s. One was a stage actor and the other a medical
doctor—William Jermyn Florence and Dr. Walter Millary
Fleming. They had this idea to use the organization to entertain
people, while at the same time being charitable, raising money for
medical research."

"But what did you say about the Middle East? What symbols are
you talking about?" Mike asked.

"William Florence played in performances all over Europe and
northern Africa—in many of the same theaters where my
grand—mother, Giulietta Capretta, later sang. He went to
Algeria and Cairo, bringing home with him some of the rituals from the
shrines there, some of the trappings of the early orders that
flourished in the Middle East."

"Like what?"

"Islamic motifs, in everything from the architecture of their
meeting places to the details in the interior design. These American
Shriners didn't construct theaters for their entertainment and lodging,
Ms. Cooper. They actually built mosques. And they gave them Arabic
names, all over the country. Bektash Shrine Temple in Concord, New
Hampshire; Syria Temple in Pittsburgh; the Ararat Temple in Kansas
City; the Aladdin Temple in Columbus, Ohio; the Sphinx Temple in
Hartford; and the Rameses Temple in Toronto. More than half a million
members nationwide."

"A hundred years ago? Mosques all over this country?"

"Indeed. And the leaders were all known as imperial potentates
and grand masters, again in the Arabic traditions."

"You mentioned design elements, too," I said. "What was
distinctive about them?"

"Colors for one thing. The mixtures of red and yellow and
green are very evocative of the culture. Certain symbols are constants,
like the crescent moon crossed with the scimitar, arabesque grillwork
in many of the building features, and always mosaic tile work on the
walls and ceiling—lots of glazed terra-cotta, usually with a
foliate imagery—"

"Hold it, buddy, will you? You make a study of this stuff?"
Mike was trying to take notes as Alden talked.

"I inherited the entire theatrical collection that had been in
our family for decades. It's part of my genealogy,
detective—it's in the blood. Nothing I had to study."

"What do you mean you inherited something? Like what?"

"Scores of photographs—George M. Cohan, Sophie
Tucker, Lillian Russell—they all performed with the Shriners.
I've got a unique assortment of signed Playbills from opening nights
and
events
, and even costumes they wore at major
events."

"What kind of costumes?" Mike asked.

"From opera, from Shakespearean plays, from lodge
meetings—"

"I don't mean that. I mean what did the Shriners wear?"

"Suits just like us. Only the potentates got the fancy robes,"
Alden said.

"And on their heads, what? Hoods?"

"It's not the Klan, detective."

"So what'd they wear?"

"Surely you know the tarboosh, Mr. Chapman? The famous red
fez?"

"Yeah, yeah. I know it."

"From the University of Fez—the symbol of learning
and integrity."

"You inherit some of those, Mr. Alden?"

"I certainly did. I'll be glad to show you anything you like."

"You keep them?"

"At my home, detective. I've got a media room filled with
memorabilia of my grandparents. Quite colorful."

"And the letter
M
, Mr.
Alden—you know, from the alphabet. Does that have any
significance in these Shriner designs?"