How I Spent My Summer Vacation (23 page)

“Riley taught me a lot about the less than legal.” Sasha sighed and apparently lost her train of thought. She looked dreamy-eyed.

“Reality check. Riley took your grandmother’s cameo,” I reminded her.

She snapped back. “And didn’t even hock or sell it, there’s the real pain. He gave it to another woman. So where were we?”

“The less than legal.”

“It sounds to me like the late Mr. Reese was working what Riley called a Ponzi scheme. It’s a pyramid scheme. Basically, you give me money to invest, but instead of really investing it, I keep it. I pay you what seems like your interest, or dividends, or profits out of what the next person gives me, and so on and so forth. So you think everything’s fine—but the real capital, the money you invested, is nowhere—except in my pockets.”

“And Reese didn’t expect a problem about paying back that money, ever, because most of his clients were old and would die. Their heirs would get the big surprise.” The blatant cynicism of it made me furious.

“Listen, Mandy, that suite we were given, that one he usually was comped? They don’t give that to little old ladies who play the nickel machines. Those perks are based on a percentage of how much they expect you to
lose
. A suite like the one we had? That’s for a five-hundred to thousand-dollar-a-hand kind of player. Reese was a big, big loser, and that’s probably where the money went.”

The old folk would have been as well off putting their savings directly on the craps table. They wound up in the casino’s vaults, anyway.

And how had the gambler’s wife felt about the drain of her capital? Was she the greedy demon Ray Palford had painted? Was Jesse’s murder her personal savings plan? And if that little lame creature had, indeed, murdered or arranged for it—who had been her accomplice?

I needed to talk to the former Miss Whatever, find out how much her Glitz store—or stores—needed an infusion of funds, and where they’d gotten their earlier supplies, find out whatever I could.

Immediately after leaving Sasha, I used the public phone in the courthouse, dialing information for her sister’s number. Holly Booker. It was an easy last name to remember. Like the English literary award, like “book her.”

The voice that answered belonged to neither of the sisters. “Mrs. Booker, she is at the work,” I was told. “And her sister with her, too. Exercise, dinner. They not be back until many late.”

What kind of a grieving widow was she, anyway? First she bleaches her hair, and now mourning becomes a facial?

“Many late” meant I didn’t have to hurry. Besides, business didn’t always have to come before pleasure, not if the business was busy in a casino spa. I’d go see Mackenzie first, give him an update. This time it’d be pleasure before business.

I thought I could be creative and reverse the cliché, but there’s a reason it’s so ingrained in our speech. So in order to teach me that, life provided the off-duty teacher with another damned learning experience.

A HOSPITALIZED MAN NEEDED company. That was a given and reason enough for the visit. But I needed help as well. I had felt like a sea creature with aimlessly waving stalk eyes this morning.

I was sure that Mackenzie would have found USDA Prime clues in Ray Palford’s office, surely something more than the fact that the man had shaved off his mustache. I wanted a cram course in Detecting 101. I needed to know how to notice the right things.

Besides, it wasn’t ever the worst thing on earth to see Mackenzie. Particularly now. He was definitely on the mend.

His coloring had returned. Although it embarrasses him—he thinks it’s something little boys are supposed to outgrow—the man’s cheeks—except when the rest of him’s been recently shot at—are always burnished, as if he’s just breezed in from a wintry wonderland. With his rosy cheeks, blue-blue eyes, and partly silver curls, he’s very much like a human version of our own red, white, and blue. Very patriotic man.

I settled next to the bed on a molded plastic chair so uncomfortable, I could no longer ignore my backache. I suspected the chairs had been purchased by an entrepreneurial orthopedic surgeon elsewhere in the building. “I think there are two definite possibilities,” I began.

“As suspects? You’re sayin’ two, so it can’t be an idea I had of a team of angry oldsters, workin’ together like the seven dwarves did when they dragged Snow White to safety. So tell me about the two you suspect, startin’ with his ex-partner.”

“Damn, Mackenzie. Can’t you let me have my moment?”

“I made some calls. Nothin’ else to do except watch godforsaken talk shows. The topic on one was children who murder their siblings: Could your kids do it, too? Good lord—it makes the soap operas—yeah, thought I’d find out what they are, too—makes them look
pristine
.”

“There’s the wife, too,” I said.

“There was always the wife. There is always the wife, in any case. So tell me about the ex-partner. I love story hour.” He leaned back and smiled.

I realized how little I actually had to say. Ray Palford hadn’t added much more than his own rancor and clean-shaved face. “What if,” I said, “Ray Palford wore an enormous brown wig…?”

Mackenzie looked dubious, so when I heard the knock, having no more to add, I welcomed an interruption. But only at first, and only for a very brief increment, because the nurse who bounced in looked as if her various parts were spring activated even though she was carrying a bouquet roughly the size of Vermont.

“Hello, hello, Mr. Mackenzie!” she said. “Look what just this minute arrived! I said I’d bring it in since I was heading this way, anyway! So—how are we doing today?” She beamed at the fallen hero with much more intensity than his wounds warranted, and carefully placed the bouquet on the windowsill, after handing Mackenzie the card.

“The Weinstein family,” he whispered. “Again.”

“Yes, yes,” Miss Pert said. “We’re all so darn proud of you!” She clucked further admiration and sympathy and patted sheets and plumped pillows with unnecessary zeal. If you ask me.

“Need anything?” she asked him. “Anything at all?”

There is nothing more disgusting than enduring an adorable woman-child paying homage to a man with whom you are affiliated—particularly when you are not only older, nastier, and much less adorable and/or pneumatic than the aforesaid, but have failed in the only competition in which you had a chance—that of snagging significant information for the detective.

Nursie never once acknowledged my existence. I believe she mistook me for one of those life-sized replicas of people, something an earlier well-wisher had left behind as a prop for photo ops.

And despite our current crisis in health care, the city’s finest did not object to his unfair share of hospital staff time, did not tell her to peddle the Florence Nightingale schtick to more needy patients who did not already have semisignificant others at their bedsides.

I ignored her as best as I could. I thought about the many questions still surrounding Jesse Reese’s death. I pondered again why he was in Atlantic City with no intention of gambling. I wondered how much it had to do—if at all—with the old people at the condominiums. I wondered if anyone had found his car.

And meantime, although I was, of course, barely noticing Mackenzie’s personal angel of mercy, it somehow came to my attention that she checked the room temperature, the condition of the water pitcher, the position of the window blinds, the chart at the foot of the bed, and the tilt of the quiet television set. Just when I thought she was going to offer to redecorate the room in any style he preferred and I was going to strangle her, she left.

“Where were we?” Mackenzie sounded dazed.

“You were lost in the swamp of hormones.” It just ruins a man, treating him that way. “I, on the other hand, was figuring things out.”

“Oh, yeah?” With Nursie no longer hobbling nearby, Mackenzie appeared to be regaining the ability to think. I didn’t know whether to take that as good news or a personal insult.

“I don’t think Reese was here for the salt air,” I said. “He was a gambler. A man who didn’t worry about contingencies or the future, according to his ex-partner.”

“Not about other people’s futures, maybe.”

“Did they find his car?”

“No car, no car keys. Not here, not home, not anywhere near his office in Cherry Hill.” Mackenzie sighed. “What if he was checkin’ out?” he said mildly.

“Killing himself?”

“Not the type. I meant literally. Leavin’.”

“Leaving what?”

“The whole shebang. The U.S. If we could subpoena his financial dealin’s those last few days, I wonder how much cash left the country, or was converted into bearer bonds or—”

“Why? How are you managing this enormous leap?”

He blinked and looked slightly surprised, then spoke in a soft slur that should have to be declared a concealed weapon. “I’m basin’ it on two things—one you noticed and one you heard.”

“I hate when you do this.”

“Yesterday, when you went to Reese’s office? The photograph that wasn’t on his desk. Why would it be missin’? The way you told me, Norma Evans didn’t just shrug it off. She must have thought it was significant, too. If it’d have been of him, then I’d think she took it herself and was too embarrassed to say. But it was of Poppy. I think it was kind of a souvenir of his wife. She meant somethin’ to him, or did when she was in the pageant.”

“It could have been removed some other time.”

“I think Norma Evans would have said so.”

“And the other thing?” I asked. “The one I heard?”

“That he always paid his gamblin’ debts. His one point of honor. I think he came to Atlantic City to clear up what he owed—using, of course, other people’s money.”

“The Condominium Club.”

“Other groups’ funds, too, I’ll bet. It’s one thing to have powerless old people enraged with you. Very different thing to have a casino on your tail. And that’s not maybe the kind of thing you’d tell your secretary unless you wanted her to be able to guess what was really goin’ on, which you do not want to have happen. You do not want her knowin’ you’re about to skip an’ put her out of a job to which she’s dedicated her life. Ditto for the wife you aren’t takin’ along. An’ you know what? I’ll bet his wife—maybe in cahoots with the ex-partner—knew he was skippin’. Could you really keep a wife from spottin’ clues here and there?”

“They say they’re the last to know.”

“That concerns a different kind of cheat.”

“Anyway, Palford and Poppy as partners? He had nothing good to say about her.”

“Maybe the gentleman doth protest too much this time.” Mackenzie twisted his torso and awkwardly attempted to pour himself water, although with one leg trussed and plastered and hanging in a sling, body torque was not easy.

“Mind if I pour us both a drink?” I didn’t want to suggest that he needed assistance. If the truth were told, dealing with the fragile male ego—unless you’re wearing a nurse’s uniform—is certainly the equivalent of coping with PMS, except that the male ego is needy every day of every month, forever. He shrugged. I poured.

And the detecto gods rewarded me for this small act of mercy with a gift of sudden insight. “Airport,” I said.

“Huh?”

“He chartered a plane. That’s why there’s no car anywhere. It’s near an airfield somewhere, or he gave it away. He flew in—and he was going to fly out. Fly away, isn’t that what you said?”

“Checking out is what I said.” Then he looked at me with all the approval he’d beamed onto Florence Nightingale earlier. Some of us just have to do it with our brains, I guess.

I beamed back. Felt pretty good, too. “Was there money in his briefcase?”

“No money. But a passport.”

“His killer took it. The money, I mean.” I pulled out my little map of Atlantic City and there it was, the private airport, Bader Field, not more than ten minutes away.

“Nice goin’,” he said. No small print.

One small nonpneumatic step for womankind.

I LIKE HAVING AN AGENDA, a plan of action, a purpose, even if I’m not at all sure how to implement it. But in this case, snooping around an airfield, even a private and presumably small one, was intimidatingly official. Even in my imagination, the web of regulations choked me. I felt silly saying words as innocent as
flight logs
, let alone attempting plane-person jargon.

The entrance to Bader Field was peculiar—tall redbrick pillars that belonged more at the approach to Tara than an airfield, but there they were. Once through them, the oddness continued with an actual field—the kind used for football—to the left of the gateway. The first airport with bleachers I’d ever heard of. I was sure there was a story there, but I certainly couldn’t figure it out.

Beyond a nondescript building and an equally nondescript firehouse was a turkey-wire fence, and beyond it, finally, rows of small private planes parked on grass, near a runway that looked like a nice suburban street. I watched an elegantly attired middle-aged couple emerge from a red and white plane and stroll to a waiting limousine positioned in front of the firehouse.

Life was certainly sweet and easy for some.

I walked into the square, one-story office building, into a deserted front room dominated by a snack machine and an empty glass display counter. Luckily, the vending machine was full, its peanut-butter crackers looking good. I bought a package of them along with a soda. On the wall, a clock told military time. It was now 1326.

I munched and sipped and cleared my throat, but that didn’t catch the attention of the male voices I heard in a back room.

I read a framed clipping on the wall and learned that this idiosyncratic little strip was the first place in the world to be called an AIR PORT, right around 1920. I’ve been saving factoids like that for years, in the event I’m someday invited to an actual cocktail party where people exchange bon mots and amusing bits of information.

Somebody went by the window in a hot-looking long orange coat. I quickly swallowed my peanut-butter cracker, but the man didn’t come in. The plane people debated and laughed in deep male voices in the back room. I read the only remaining print material, which was laminated onto the display case. It was a newspaper photograph of blurry-faced early fliers hanging out here at the World’s First Air Port. They looked to be having a good time. The figures were identified as Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart. “Wow,” I muttered. “Wow,” hoping this wasn’t some archaic forerunner of the Elvis sightings in today’s tabloids.