In a Heartbeat (18 page)

“Like father like son,” she added, eyes shining with interest.

He nodded. “Then I met Claudia. . . .”

“A Puerto Rican beauty.”

He nodded again, smiling. “I agree with that description. And you know the rest.”

“No I don’t.” He looked at her, surprised. “I still don’t know what your dreams are,” she added softly.

He took the bottle from the ice bucket, refilled their glasses. “I’m not sure what my dreams are. But I suspect that, like most folks, somewhere along the way they got buried in the reality of life.”

“Like mine.” He looked questioningly at her.

“I always wanted to be a ballerina,” she explained. “I was the clumsy little kid at the ballet-class concert, the lanky fairy in the pink net tutu and droopy tights and a wand with a star on top. Always pointing the wrong toe and towering over the other kids.” She sighed. “I felt like the giant at the top of the beanstalk. And I just kept on growing until there wasn’t a male ballet dancer who could lift me.” She gave him that wide smile and took a sip. “Love this champagne,” she said dreamily. “You think we should get a bottle for Mamzelle Dorothea, as a treat?”

“Think she’d prefer it to Southern Comfort?”

“Maybe not, but it would be a sort of thank you. Perhaps we could take her some little French pastries, have a tea party.”

“Without the tea.”

She laughed. “Somehow, I don’t see Mamzelle Dorothea as a tea drinker.” She polished off the final bit of pear chutney on his plate and added with a satisfied sigh, “Is this heaven, or what?”

He was just about to agree with her, when his cell phone rang.

She made a little face. “Reality calls,” she complained, watching, apprehensive, as he answered. He said yes and no, and see you at eleven-thirty. Then he disconnected. She gazed expectantly at him.

“The sheriff. The autopsy is tonight. He asked if I wanted to be there.”

She took a large swallow of champagne, trying not to think about the contents of the blue cooler dredged from the ocean. “I’m not sure I can manage dessert.” Her voice sounded suddenly small.

“I’m sorry. It’s not good dinner-table talk. And hardly the way to end a perfect evening.”

“Was it perfect, Marco?” She reached for his hand again and this time he gripped hers tightly.

Was it the champagne talking, he wondered, as he said, “For me, it was. The most perfect evening I can remember.”

Mel took a deep breath. She knew she was on dangerous ground. “Then your memory must be extremely short, Detective,” she said, summoning up a smile. “Perhaps you should take Claudia out more often, buy her champagne.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. Regretfully, Mel thought. “Except Claudia prefers a good red wine to champagne. A hearty Chianti Riserva from Antinori is what I always get her for birthdays and such.”

“I’m glad.” She squeezed his hand and slid hers away. “I needed to know you appreciate her.”

Their gazes locked. “I do. Believe me, Melba Merrydew, I do.”

She was glad he hadn’t slipped up and called her Zelda again. Marco Camelia was a nice man. A good man. A very attractive man. But his heart should belong to another, and so should hers.

“Friends,” she said again as he waved to the waiter for the check.

“Always,” he said simply.

And somehow, she knew he meant it. Loyalty was yet another facet of his character, hidden, along with the tenderness, beneath that tough Sicilian-cop facade.

40

An autopsy was not exactly the event Camelia would have chosen to attend after a memorable meal with his more than memorable companion, but he was here to do a job.

He dropped her off at the hotel. She kissed him good night in the lobby under the envious gaze of the other male guests and staff, then loped to the elevator with a tiny wave of one hand, smiling, friendly-style, at everyone she passed.

Staring after her, Camelia shook his head. He would treasure the memory of the way she looked forever.

The Pathology Department was all white tile and steel, with the smell of formaldehyde overlaying the odor of decay. A bank of refrigerated steel drawers held the remains of those waiting to be autopsied or to be claimed by next of kin. As he waited, a sheeted, toe-tagged body was wheeled past him en route to its final mortal humiliation of having its innards inspected to ascertain the cause of death.

He knew from experience that pathologists were not the gentle craftsmen and artists that surgeons were. Here, bodies were sawn roughly open, their organs removed and weighed, and dropped into steel dishes; even the contents of their stomachs were inspected and accounted for. Gaping wounds were prodded and poked, and when the job was finished, the bodies were sewn up again, with big darning stitches, not those neat little O.R. jobs. Back in one piece, after an autopsy the body resembled nothing more than Frankenstein’s monster, ready to rise up and claim fame on the silver screen.

Except in this case there was no body to saw open and dissect. All they had was a sickening heap of stinking rotted flesh and a pile of bones.

Somewhere in all that, the pathologist found teeth that could be matched to dental records for identification. And hair to be tested for DNA. And the fact that this was a male of the human species. Plus five slugs from what looked to be a .40mm semiautomatic.

Camelia regretted the crab-stuffed oysters. His stomach churned, but he forced himself to stand his ground. As a member of the Yankee NYPD, he couldn’t let his team down in front of the Confederates. “I don’t know how the hell y’do it,” he marveled when the job was done and the nauseating remains were carefully sealed in a steel container.

“To be truthful, sometimes I don’t either,” the gray-haired doctor answered. “Years of experience, I guess. But I don’t mind admitting how many times I lost my cookies, when I was a rookie.” He grinned as he removed his scrubs, then washed his hands. “Come on, let’s have a cup of good strong coffee and I’ll tell you what we’ve got.”

It was two-thirty in the morning and the hot coffee felt good in Camelia’s ice-bound stomach. The pathologist told him that this was undoubtedly a male and that he had been dead when he was placed in the cooler. That five shots at close range had been what killed him and, he would guess, had blown the top of his head off. Probably a .40mm.

The same as the bullets in Ed Vincent, Camelia noted.

From the hair and skin texture, the pathologist guessed the man was Latino. And he knew he had been shot from behind.

“How the hell can y’tell all that from . . .” Camelia couldn’t even begin to describe the slimy, rotting mess in the cooler.

“That’s my job,” he said coolly. “And now I have another one to tackle before I can get some rest. So if you’ll excuse me.”

As he shook the pathologist’s cold hand, Camelia smelled the faint odor of formaldehyde and disinfectant that still hung around him. He didn’t bother to finish his coffee. He was out of there and back at the hotel and on the phone to the department in a flash. Autopsies always disturbed him and he felt thankful just to be alive.

He passed on the information to his colleagues, told them that the body in the cooler and how it got there was a double mystery; that they would get the DNA results in about six weeks; heard the usual grumble, and added that he guessed they could assume it was the Hispanic-looking guy Melba Merrydew had seen, dead, in Ed Vincent’s beach house.

Then he sat down and wrote up a complete report on the day’s events, except for the conversation with Mamzelle Dorothea, which, as yet, he chose to keep to himself. There was more to come in that story and he wasn’t about to divulge any secrets until he knew where it was heading.

The hotel bed was firm, the blankets warm, and he was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Which, since it was already five in the morning, didn’t mean much, because he had to be up again at seven-thirty, ready for whatever the next day might bring. And for another day in the company of Miss Melba.

41

The next morning, at eleven, they found Mamzelle Dorothea propped up against the big leopard cushion, pale eyes alive with interest, waiting for them.

Bending to kiss her, Mel caught the sweet scent of face powder and was touched that the old lady had primped for them, like the southern belle she might once have been. But Mamzelle flinched away from her embrace.

“Bah, kissing is so commonplace these days.” She dismissed her with a wave of her scrawny blue-veined hand. “A meaningless gesture between people who scarcely know one another, let alone care.”

“Oh, but I do care, Mamzelle.” Unfazed, Mel took her seat on the footstool, smiling at her. From the faint hint of a blush on Dorothea’s thin cheeks, Mel suspected she was touched by the kiss but didn’t care to admit it.

“I assume, since you say you are in love with Ed, that you know his condition this morning?”

“Of course I do. I speak with the doctors several times a day. And night,” she added, remembering those three-in-the-morning blues, alone in the hotel room, when she had felt for sure something was terribly wrong and had called, sweating and half mad, terrified of what she might hear. Ed was restless, they had told her, but his condition remained the same.

Mel thought it was as though his body had slipped into a neutral gear, engine idling. Waiting. But for what?

“I wish I could tell you better news,” she said quietly, “but Ed is still in a coma, still on the ventilator. There is brain activity, though, and that makes the doctors hopeful.”

“He always had a good brain,” Dorothea agreed. “I could tell even then, when he was just a boy, and uneducated, that there was a spark in him. I suppose a psychiatrist might say I transferred my own ambitions and longings onto him, but they would be wrong. I was the one taking from him. I took pleasure in showing him another world, in teaching him about life and how to live it.” She laughed, that witch’s cackle that made Mel jump. “And that boy absorbed everything like a sea sponge,” Dorothea added, remembering.

“But the truth was,” she said, “he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. He had been living hand-to-mouth that summer, starving in the winter. Odds were, he would not have made it through, he might have been dead by spring.

“That night, he returned to the conservatory. I had rummaged through the closets, found him some clothing, warm blankets for his rough bed. I had opened a can of beef stew and heated it through, along with some rice and bread.” Her eyes had a faraway look and she smiled, remembering the look on his face when he tasted it, as though he had already died and gone to heaven.

“Over those bleak winter days, we got to know each other a little better. I remember laughing when he asked about my hopes for the future. ‘There is no future for me, Theo,’ I told him. ‘There is only today.’ He looked at me and he knew I was right. I was what I was. A woman in her late sixties who was way too fond of the bottle.

“One day I asked if he would care to see the house, but I saw he was afraid. ‘It’s all right,’ I told him, ‘they know me here. I promise they won’t think you’re going to steal the family silver.’

“Ahh, my home.” Dorothea’s sigh was as fluttery as a spring breeze. “The Jefferson House was famous, y’know, once upon a time. Of course my daddy wanted to rename it Duval House, but Mama told him the Duvals were only nouveaux riches, and of course the Jeffersons had been there forever, so the house remained as it was.

“But by now it was like the garden: a wreck. There was no money left, y’see, to keep up the place, and what bit there was I spent on drink. I was a true southern rebel,” Dorothea added, with an impish smirk. “Always did things my own way, even when I knew it wasn’t right. Hot damn, there wouldn’t have been enough money to set the place to rights anyways. Not nearly enough. And besides, there was only me left to care.”

She fished behind her under the cushion, tugged out the bottle of Southern Comfort, and reached for the glass.

“Mamzelle, please.” Camelia was on his feet. “Allow me.” He took the bottle and poured her a stiff shot. “A Yankee with nice manners,” she said. “I didn’t know such a thing existed.” She gave him an amused glance.

“A Sicilian Yankee, ma’am,” Camelia corrected her, “and my grandfather believed in the old way of doing things. Honesty, courtesy, and respect for your elders.”

“Did he now.” She thought about that as she took a good slug of the liquor. “I only wish my southern parents had done the same for me,” she added with that wicked little grin.

“Well, anyhow, the house was like the garden, and myself. A wreck. Theo and I walked together through those once-elegant rooms, stuffed with all that dark old furniture, full of woodworm by now, and the fraying Oriental rugs and the foggy mirrors, and the silk curtains so brittle with age, they crumbled at a touch. We stood in the library and he stared at all those books. Thousands of them there were, and all covered, like the rest of the house, with a few decades’ worth of dust. ‘All that knowledge,’ he said in an awed voice.”

Mamzelle sighed and took another sip of the bourbon. “I saw such a look of yearning on his face, and knew he was as thirsty for learning as I was for the booze.

“And he was a gentleman, too. Never even mentioned the empty bourbon bottles stashed everyplace. ‘Drink,’ I told him. ‘That’s what ladies do, when they get old and are alone.’

“I took him into the kitchen. I can see him now, heading toward that fire in the grate like a homing pigeon, holding out his hands to the warmth, and sniffing the fresh coffee brewing on the stove. Then it dawned on him. ‘This is your place, ain’t it?’ he said.

“I told him the home had been in the Jefferson family for more than a couple of hundred years. Not the Duvals. They were just upstart Creoles. From Louisiana, y’know,” she added, as though it made a great difference, which Mel, the southerner, knew it did to Dorothea.

“Trading with France had made the Duvals rich, but it never gave them any class.” Mamzelle gave a disparaging sniff. “Still, Mama fell for those dark good looks and that Frenchified New Orleans accent. She insisted on marrying Monsieur Paul Duval, even though her father was set against it and threatened to cut her out of his will. But of course the Duvals had more money than the Jeffersons by then, so the threat was an empty one. She married him anyway, and I was the result.

“There were no siblings to hamper my being spoiled rotten. A little princess, I was. And my parents thought I was too good to marry. They wanted me all to themselves, and I was happy to oblige.

“Until they died and left me, the spinster Mademoiselle Jefferson Duval, all alone in her mansion. With only bourbon to warm her heart and her bed, instead of a man.”

Camelia watched as Mel bent to kiss Dorothea’s hand. He caught the glitter of tears on her cheek and knew she was touched by the old woman’s loneliness.

“You must be tired.” Mel wiped away the tear with her hand and managed a sniffly little smile. “Look, Mamzelle Dorothea, we’ve brought you some pastries, from the French bakery in town. And a bottle of champagne. To celebrate our meeting.”

“Champagne?” Dorothea looked mystified.

Suddenly apprehensive, Mel thought maybe Camelia had been right, and she should have bought the Southern Comfort instead. But she needn’t have worried. Dorothea’s face lifted and then she laughed, the tinkling southerngentlewoman-style laugh this time.

“Champagne and French pastries. How
delightful,
” she said, once again the belle of Jefferson House. “Well, we certainly can’t drink this out of coffee mugs, I shall ring for the proper glasses. And plates, too.” She inspected the box of tiny jewellike pastries. “I remember this patisserie. My mother used to shop there,” she said, pleased. And Mel flashed Camelia a smile, glad they had hit the right spot for Mamzelle.

“We drank champagne at my coming-out ball,” Dorothea reminisced. “So delicious. And I remember, it went straight to my head. Of course, I did not partake of alcohol in those days,” she added primly. “Save for a glass of wine with dinner, Father being French and all. My, how Theo would enjoy this,” she added, nibbling on a creamy little fruit tart. “He always did have a sweet tooth.”

That was news to Mel, but she guessed time and a lot of growing up had taken care of that little vice.

“I gave him a room in the house, of course,” Mamzelle went on. “And I began to get rid of that mountain-man accent, taught him to speak properly. And Theo helped out. He cleaned up the place, threw away all those bottles, got rid of the dust, washed the floors, cleaned the windows, polished the furniture. He was like my valet, my butler, only there was no mistress-servant relationship between us.

“We were both outcasts from society, y’see,” she added with a wistful little smile. “I was drinking myself to death, with nothing to live for. And he was starving to death, with no one to live for. You could say we saved each other. And we looked out for each other. And we enjoyed each other’s company.

“We went for walks to the Battery. I took him shopping for food; we even dined, occasionally, in a café. I was not ashamed of my shabby young hick from the mountains, and he was not ashamed of his eccentric, alcoholic mentor. Ours was a relationship of equals. It was based on mutual need, a shared loneliness, and rejection.

“So you can see,” Dorothea added softly, “that it was inevitable that we came to care for one another. And when I found out his true age, I insisted he enroll in high school. And that, my dears,” she added with a tired, fluttery little sigh, “is when life began to change for Theo Rogan.

“It was not easy for him, being laughed at at school. Laughed at for his accent as well as laughed at for me, his weird ‘grandmother.’ That’s what Theo told everyone I was. His grandmother. What else could he say? That he was a vagrant and I an alcoholic who had given him shelter? He felt he owed it to me to make sure I had respect.”

She sighed again, remembering how tough it had been for him. “He fought his way through that school, but he left with a diploma and a scholarship to Duke. It was,” she added, smiling, “the first success of his life. The first time he had ever felt proud of himself.

“Theo Rogan is no name for a winner, I told him. It’s the name of a loser, a part of your past. It’s time you left all that behind.

“I decided on Edward, because it was a good, solid, princely name. And Jefferson, of course. I told him, a man could do no better than to have the name of a great president, and besides, it was my name and my gift to him. And then we needed a fine last name, one with no white-trashiness about it. One befitting a winner. ‘I think “Vincent” should do it,’ I said.

“So I took care of things legally, and Theo Rogan became Edward Jefferson Vincent. Ed Vincent, a Duke University freshman.”