How I Spent My Summer Vacation (11 page)

“But it’d give me a handle on the man.”

Frankie shrugged. “Like I said, the man was doing fine. Only trouble he was likely to get into would be with his wife, because half the time he’s up in that suite with somebody else. As a matter of fact, his wife used to be one of those somebody else’s, and she can’t forget how she got her current position, so she’s always looking over her shoulder to see who’s gaining on her, especially since the accident.”

I must have looked puzzled, because he offered further explanation. “Car crash a year or so after they married. Something doesn’t work in one of her hips anymore. Uses a cane and has to drive a special car. Damn shame. She was a gymnast when she ran for Miss America.” He wiped at the counter. “But the thing is, this one time, he was here on business, he said. No hanky-pank. Not even gambling.”

The good news was that there was a perpetually jealous wife as suspect. The bad news was that she was lame.

“And she didn’t seem angry last night, anyway. She smiled at some dumb joke I made about Sasha sleeping in Jesse’s room.”

“She was here?”

Frankie nodded.

“What’s she look like?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You know,” he said. This, then, was the definition of a not-trained observer. “Nice-looking.”

Which one had been Mrs. Jesse Reese? Not the sari, not the pregnant ponytail, so if I remembered correctly, that didn’t leave a wide field, and as she’d once been a pageant contestant, she wasn’t the drab one, I’d bet. “Does she wear a lot of metal on her clothing?”

His eyebrows rose. “So you’ve seen her. Sure. Mrs. R. designs the stuff. Once, she’s sitting in here and I comment on the brass trim, and she says, ‘Frankie, this is not trim. This is a fashion statement.’”

Good. The wife, the often deceived wife, had been here last night and had known who was occupying the suite. And she had big, teased dark hair, Sasha had said. “She’s tall, isn’t she?” I asked, allowing myself a flare of hope.

Frankie shook his head. “You’re thinking of somebody else, then, maybe. Mrs. R.’s an itty-bitty one.”

A small, lame woman. We were back to zero. “Who else was here?” I asked. “Who else heard the joke about the suite?”

“Anybody who was around, I guess.” Frankie worked at an imaginary stain on the bar top and I drummed my fingers. Finally, he looked up with an expression that suggested that he was tired of the conversation and of me. “There were people all over the place. I don’t pay much notice. They’re faces and orders.”

People were haircuts and bad music to the secretary in Wisconsin, faces and orders to Frankie. I couldn’t decide whether I’d stumbled on a great unifying truth or a trivial sadness.

“Was anybody else here, aside from his wife, who knew Jesse Reese?”

“How’d I know something like that?” Frankie asked, with some justification. “He had his briefcase. I guess he was doing business down here, so whoever that was with might have been around.”

“Do you have any idea with whom?” Why did I ask?

He shook his head.

“Do you remember anybody else? How about a woman in a sari?”

“Probably. There often is, even though they’re not drinkers, you know.”

“Somebody pregnant with a ponytail?”

Frankie shrugged. “Why would I remember? And what are you trying to say? That somebody who heard my joke about the room framed Sasha?” He sounded nervous, overly incredulous, like a bad actor. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He wasn’t doing a convincing job of making the idea preposterous.

Neither of us mentioned that there was one person who didn’t have to overhear a thing in order to know about the room because he’d arranged for the switch.

“Who’d have done such a thing?” Frankie asked.

“Somebody who wanted to get away with murder, that’s who.” I left him a generous tip, to stay on his good side.

I CHECKED THE DESK. Half an hour ago Mackenzie had called in a message that he’d be back “soon.” Exactly how long from now constituted soon? An advanced degree in semantics would come in handy around that man.

Explication would also be helpful with Frankie the bartender. I mentally poked through everything he’d said, and came up with precious little. The papers had already made clear Reese’s solid financial status and prestige, but they hadn’t mentioned the angry wife. Or the pending TV show—could it be relevant? Or the business he had in Atlantic City. What had it been?

The paper had said that Jesse Reese’s office was in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, about an hour away, just across the bridge from Philly. What better place than a man’s home away from home to dig for information about appointments, angry wives, and pending TV shows? I knew I was throwing out a net over nothingness, but maybe something would come up. Something that would get Sasha out of prison before sundown.

* * *

I wished I were wearing more businesslike garb than Mackenzie’s oversized maroon sweater over linen slacks which were even more intensely wrinkled after the hour-long drive to Cherry Hill. And my convertible-whipped hair was the most rumpled of all. I smoothed myself down, futilely, and hoped my creased aura made me look authentically a member of the working press. Whether I could behave like one was another question. I had only old movies and the six o’clock news upon which to base my performance, but I felt in need of an alias here. I didn’t want anybody associated with Jesse Reese to know that I was associated with his accused murderer.

I was surprised by the modesty of the investment counselor’s offices. I always thought the handling of money required vaulting spaces and the hush of expensive carpeting, but Jesse Reese’s reception area looked a lot like a dentist’s waiting room. Three chairs covered in a blurred orange and brown stripe sat on colorless flat carpeting across from a desk occupied by a middle-aged woman in taupe hair and suit. A small name plaque said NORMA EVANS.

“Yes?” She stood up. She was about my size, but managed to make me feel unequal, intimidated. “Can I help you?”

“Hildy Johnson here,” I said, hand outstretched. Would she recognize the reporter in
His Girl Friday
? It was the only journalistic name my mind summoned. “Hilda,” I added. “Glad to meet you, Ms. Evans.”

She looked at my hand as if it were a puzzling offering. “What is it you want, Ms. Johnson?” She sat back down, but did not invite me to do the same.

“Well, a good interview, of course. Or did you mean that metaphysically?”

She blinked, her mouth set in a tight, straight line. “I’m afraid I don’t do interviews.”

“I meant Mr. Reese. I’m his three-thirty appointment.” I looked down at her desk, pointing my index finger, pretending to be aiming for a date book, pretending to believe that Hildy Johnson would be written on it.

Miss Evans, who, after all, had just lost an employer and probably a job, looked at my pointed finger as if it were a gun, and seemed ready to call the cops. “If this is a joke,” she said, her bottom lip just this side of a tremble, “it’s in poor taste.”

It was in poor taste, and I knew it, but Sasha’s being in jail was in worse taste. “A
joke
?” I said. “I sent him tear sheets and my résumé, and drove all the way from McKeesport. I specialize in geriatric issues, for
Modern Maturity
and
Senior
and oh, geez, you wouldn’t believe how many publications there are for our older citizens. I’m calling my story ‘More Gold for Your Golden Years,’ and I have an editor really excited about it.”

She looked so unhappy and uncomfortable, I felt like the predatory press, the people who jam microphones into the faces of the newly bereaved and demand to know whether they are really, really upset or not.

Norma Evans seemed unable to compose herself. She aligned the edges of papers, tapping them this way and that, her full attention on the job. As soon as they were uncovered, I tried to read the top one, a list of names or words and numbers, but it was upside down and she kept the papers in motion. Finally, she lifted the stack and slid it somewhere out of sight, and only then did she look up at me. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Miss—Jackson, was it? I’m not quite myself today.”

“Um…” Was it Jackson? What was it? “Johnson!” I finally said, rather too urgently.

“Johnson, yes. I’ve been with Mr. Reese for seventeen years.” She paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “He always praised my command of details. I never forgot things. I took care of every aspect of his personal and professional life and work, and certainly of his calendar, and I don’t remember any… But in any case, there’s been a tragedy, you see. Mr. Reese…” This time she groped for a handkerchief, but her suit skirt had no pockets. I pushed the box of tissues that was on the side of her desk in front of her, and she nodded, took one, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “Mr. Reese died last night,” she whispered.

“Died?”
I sat down in the chair next to her desk. “Ohmigod! That’s
horrible
. I didn’t even know he was sick. It must have been so
sudden
.”

“It was.”

“Heart attacks are scary,” I whispered. “I did an article on ten warning signs that your heart might—”

She sniffed loudly and put the tissue to her nose, shaking her head all the while. “It’s worse than that. He was murdered. Killed by a young woman, a, um, brand-new acquaintance. Such a good man.” She glanced at me. “But human. That little…weakness for women. Still, it’s terrible. Terrible. I’m sorry about your story,” Norma Evans said, “but of course, as you can see…”

“I’m sorry for you. You seem to have been quite fond of Mr. Reese.”

“Seventeen years,” she murmured. “Longer than either of his marriages, he always said. You know they call a man’s secretary his office wife, don’t you? Not, of course, to imply that we had anything except a professional relationship, but when you take care of every detail of a man’s life for all those years…”

“Then who—what should I—what’s to become of all this—are you running the office now?”

“The office is closing. Is already closed.”

“You mean for the day?”

“I mean forever. Without Mr. Reese…” She shook her head. “If he still had a partner, maybe, but on his own, who’s to replace him? But I’m sure you can find another counselor to interview.”

“But Mr. Reese’s focus on senior citizens was the whole point, and how many financial advisors specialize in that? Especially to the kind of small investors he cared about. Could you recommend somebody else?” It was hard to whine, seem sympathetic, and simultaneously snoop. “That former partner you just mentioned, maybe?”

“Ray Palford?” She looked doubtful, troubled. “I wouldn’t bother. I don’t even know if he still handles the elderly. As you said, not many people are interested in the ordinary retiree, the modest portfolio. Mr. Reese was a rarity. Besides, Ray Palford moved his office all the way down to Margate. I don’t think it would be worth your while.” She waved off the suggestion, but I definitely did not. Margate was a hop, a jitney ride, or a brisk boardwalk trot away from my hotel. What a happy geographic relocation.

Margate was also a close enough home base from which to zip down and murder someone in Atlantic City. “Was the partnership dissolved recently?” I asked. “Because maybe Mr. Palford would remember—”

“Three years ago.”

Not exactly the kind of new and painful rupture that could lead to murder. I was disappointed. The image of a tall ex-partner in a wig had a lot of appeal.

“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“Looks like I’m back at Go,” I said. “Could I bother you for my tear sheets?”

She was going to have neck problems if she didn’t stop punctuating her sentences with head shakes. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what sheets you’re talking about. I’m sure I would have noticed if something of yours came in, and we wouldn’t have torn it, anyway. Now if you’ll excuse me, as you can see, I’m packing things up and there’s so much to do….”

I wanted to see the inner office, to get to know Jesse Reese by his artifacts, if through no other way. “Tear sheets are pages from magazines with my stories on them,” I said. “I know it’s crass to ask for them when you have so many more important things on your mind, but I don’t really have all that many—I sent him originals, not copies, and if I have to start all over again…”

“There are no magazine pages in the office. I would have noticed.”

“There must be! He
thanked
me for them.
Complimented
me on them—and said he’d return them.”

She had a sturdy middle-aged body, but the suit enclosing it behaved as if there was nothing inside it at all. There wasn’t a wrinkle anywhere, not even at the lap or inner arms. Some other time I’d love to ask her the secret of her imperviousness. “Please,” I said, really into my role as professional pest, “maybe you’re not recognizing them.
Senior’s
on newsprint. It doesn’t look like a magazine.” My parents always picked it up at the deli. It was a free paper.

Miss Evans raked her fingers through her gray-brown hair. “If I let you peek in his office, do you promise not to touch anything? We have to get things ready for the estate and the clients.”

“We? Are there other employees here?”

“A figure of speech. I’m so used to referring to us as…” This produced another round of head-shaking and nose-blowing.

“Normally, I wouldn’t intrude,” I said, “but free-lancing’s so hard, and a good set of tear sheets is pretty valuable.”

The phone rang just as she touched the doorknob to his office. “The machine will pick up,” she said. “The message says everything anybody needs to know. I wouldn’t get a single thing done if I answered every call. Besides, I can hear the caller, in case of an emergency.”

I was glad I hadn’t phoned ahead. I would have been told that the office was closed, which was the message I now heard beginning, in Norma Evans’s patient but tired-sounding voice. She didn’t say what had happened, but you could tell by her melancholy timbre that something dire had occurred.

Jesse Reese’s office was a larger, slightly more opulent space. Still, there was something slick and surface about it, a sense that the woods were veneers, the velvet sofa a rental item, the liquors in the cabinet inferior brands poured into expensive bottles.