Murder Melts in Your Mouth (16 page)

Michael preceded Crewe into the office, both of them juggling plates. He said, “Not alone, I wouldn't, no.”

Lexie smiled without taking her steely gaze from her computer. “How romantic. Does that mean you'd do it with Nora? An idyllic life in a cottage by the sea for the rest of eternity together?”

“She gets sunburned,” he said.

Lexie laughed, then got a whiff of the aroma rising from the take-out containers. “Good heavens, Crewe, what are we eating?”

“Cuban sandwiches.”

As far from Lexie's desk as he could manage, Crewe cut the pressed sandwiches in half and put them on plates. He handed one to Michael, and he picked up a sandwich for himself. “They're a delicacy, Lexie. Some pork that's been marinated in garlic and citrus, then roasted for hours, add some cheese, pickles and a dash of mustard. Then you press it in a double-sided grill. It's called a ‘midnight sandwich' because Cubans ate them after working all day in the sugar refineries. It doesn't look like much, but—” He kissed his fingers.

She took a careful peek between the halves of the bread on her plate. “It looks messy.”

“Life is messy,” Crewe said. “Think of this meal as a metaphor.”

She got up from her desk chair and carried her meal to the sofa. Sitting down at one end, she crossed one long leg over the other and said, “I do like the literary side of you, Crewe, darling. Better than the protective, alpha-male side, perhaps. It's more authentic somehow.”

Crewe smiled at last and sat down cautiously at the other end of the sofa.

I took Lexie's desk chair. Michael slid a plate across to me and leaned on the far edge of the desk. Unconsciously, he glanced up at the abstract Chinese painting behind me. I thought I saw him flinch at Lexie's choice in art. He popped another plantain chip into his mouth. “What have you found?”

“That Hoyt Cavendish was either seeing an obstetrician or a law firm with the same name.” I smiled wryly. “Other than that, it's going to take Lexie more time to make sense of Hoyt's appointments.”

“What about his phone records? That's usually golden.”

“His calls aren't listed here.”

“Next screen,” Lexie said. “Go up to the top and click on the little telephone icon. It's blue.”

I obeyed, and immediately a long list of phone numbers popped up with names and notes in an adjacent column. Every column flashed with a different color to help make the information more readable. To me, it just seemed more confusing. So I concentrated hard on the screen and barely heard what the others were saying as they ate.

I interrupted them once. “You'll have to read through this, Lex. It makes no sense to me. Wait—here's the Murusha and Donaldson name again. And the number.”

“Don't worry about that, Nora. Have some dinner. You must be starved.”

Michael nudged my plate closer to the computer keyboard, but I sat staring at the screen and trying to think.

“Delicious,” Lexie said after a bite of sandwich. “You say you know the chef?”

“Only by phone,” Crewe said. “I'm still incognito.”

“I don't suppose he'd give you this recipe?”

“It's not hard to make a Cuban sandwich.”

“No?”

“No,” Crewe said. “It only takes time. We could try it sometime.”

“I don't really care for your fancy cuisine,” Lexie said. “It's getting ridiculous these days. Piling all the food in the middle of a plate like an edible Eiffel Tower? All those Asian, Latin, French flavors fused into something unrecognizable? It's as if some chefs are trying too damn hard to impress, and we have to swallow the swill they force on us. It's an assault on the palate. An assault…”

Her voice wavered on the word, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

I stood up to go to her, my heart aching. But Michael sent me a look that stopped me.

Crewe slid across the sofa and gently disengaged the sandwich from Lexie's hands. He put it on the desk and gathered her up into his arms.

Lexie wept then. She put her face into his shoulder and cried. Hoarse sobs wracked her throat and shuddered through her body.

Crewe held her, rocked her, said nothing.

It took all my strength to sit down again. I was relieved to see Lexie finally show some emotion. She would need time to recover from her ordeal with the police and from her partner's terrible death. Maybe Crewe was a better friend for her than I could be right now.

But it was hard to see her suffer.

Michael watched her, too, looking thoughtful.

Fighting down my own tears, I found a fat yellow phone book in the desk drawer. I flipped through the pages until I found the lists of physicians. I compared the number in the book with the number on the screen. The same.

“Huh,” I said.

Michael turned to me. “Something interesting?”

“Why would Hoyt see a gynecologist?”

“Maybe one of the doctors was his client.”

“That's probably it. Would I be violating twelve different laws if I printed out the information on these screens?”

“Yes. You don't want to become an accessory.”

“You think I should use more finesse, right?” I hesitated. “How do I do that?”

“Depends,” he said around a mouthful. “Who do you want to learn about?”

I considered the possibilities. “Brandi Schmidt, for one. She lied to me about her relationship with Hoyt. But I can't just ask her why she lied.”

“What else do you know about her?”

“She works in television. She's disabled, in a wheelchair. She's on the board of the Music Academy.”

Michael shook his head. “I mean a weakness.”

I looked up at him uneasily and found his blue eyes looking anything but choirboy.

He said, “Find something. Find it and use it.”

“You mean, use information against her? Blackmail.”

“Pressure,” Michael corrected. “Find a weak spot and poke it. Or if she's got a secret, make her think somebody knows it. Let her worry until she makes a mistake.”

“That's…”

“Finesse.”

“Immoral, I was going to say.”

“Murder isn't?”

His gaze was steady and challenging. But Michael's phone buzzed in his pocket then. He glanced at the screen before going outside onto the deck to take the call.

Her storm of tears over, Lexie sat back and dried her eyes with Crewe's proffered handkerchief.

“Don't you wonder,” she said, trying to sound normal once the door slid closed behind Michael, “who he talks to? Bookies, do you suppose? Underworld kingpins? Contract killers?”

Crewe said, “Maybe it's just his dry cleaner calling to schedule a pickup.”

I doubted Michael did much business with dry cleaners.

“I don't think so,” Lexie said. “When I asked him to bring my car to the police station, he broke into it and hot-wired the engine, slick as can be. And you should have seen the way he walked in. Like he owned the place. The police looked at him like he was Tony Soprano. Or maybe the mayor. I couldn't tell which. They dislike him. But there's some strange kind of respect, too.”

“Weird,” Crewe said.

“I'm afraid I didn't do him any favors,” Lexie said. “When he showed up to get me out of there, the cops probably decided he has a connection to me—and to Hoyt's murder.”

“Old news.” I was surprised to hear my voice sound so hard. “The police assume he's connected to all crime.”

“Do you ever ask him about jail, Nora?” Crewe said. “About his prison experience?”

“Oh, God.” Lexie shivered.

I stowed the phone book back in the desk drawer and closed it. “No, I don't ask. He doesn't talk about it. I know he doesn't want me to hear about it. But it was awful for him.”

Michael came back inside, thoughtfully snapping his phone shut. He looked at me, all business, his dinner forgotten. “You staying here tonight? Or you want to go home?”

“Go.” Lexie shooed me away with one hand. “I'm finished bawling. I don't need you here.”

I was unwilling to leave, but with the hope that Crewe might be allowed to remain with Lexie, I said, “Okay. But only if you're sure.”

“I'm very sure, sweetie.”

“I can take you home,” Michael said. “Delmar's bringing me a car. But then there's a thing I need to take care of.”

“Well, the good news is that at this time of night,” Lexie said cheerfully, “it can't be anything too serious. Or can it?”

The expression on Michael's face said it was serious indeed.

“What's going on, Mick?”

Without answering Crewe, Michael slid his cell phone back into the pocket of his trousers. Almost to himself, he said, “It's going to be common knowledge soon.”

“What is?”

The three of us sat still and waited.

Michael sighed and came clean. “My brother stole a truck. It was full of microwave ovens. At least, that's what everybody thought. The cops just found the real cargo hidden inside the boxes. Knockoff goods from China. Sneakers, mostly. And some purses.”

“You mean designer handbags? Imitations?”

He shrugged. “Whatever they are, they're worth, like, five thousand bucks apiece. A bunch of celebrities are on a waiting list to get them. Some comedian's wife had a meltdown in Barneys when she heard the purses got impounded. Let me tell you, I don't understand at all. These purses are ugly as hell.”

“You've seen them?” I asked.

“Yeah, with buckles and straps and junk hanging off them.” He used his hands to vaguely identify the size and shape of a handbag. “Anyway, the worst of it is there's some endangered snake that donated its skin for these purse things. Suddenly, it's an international incident. A bunch of federal agencies got wind of that, so it's…more complicated than I first thought.”

“Yikes,” Lexie said.

“Anyway, I gotta go see some people. And then I need to pick up Emma.”

“Emma?” Crewe said. “What for?”

“She's staying with me,” Michael replied, not meeting anyone's eyes.

“Really? Isn't that kinda dangerous?”

Lexie poked Crewe, who stopped smiling abruptly.

I said, “Has she given up drinking?”

“She's trying,” Michael replied steadily.

“With your help.”

“Yes.”

So there it was. They'd been driven together by the perfect storm of conditions. He had wanted a family of his own, and now he was going to get it. Emma had been longing for another bad boy to replace her dead husband, Jake, and who could be badder than Michael?

And now he was helping my sister stay sober, too—perhaps the ideal way to solidify a relationship.

My head got light, and a swampy gush of the river started to ooze around my feet.

Michael came over and eased my head between my knees. “Breathe,” he said.

I breathed. The ooze eventually receded. His hand felt very warm on the back of my neck.

“You could have told me,” I said, not exactly talking to Michael. I wanted Emma to hear me, too.

“Come on,” he said quietly, steadying me as I sat up. “I'll take you home.”

Lexie stood abruptly and went to Michael. She gave him a fierce hug. “Thank you, sweetie. I'm so sorry I asked you to rescue me tonight. That's the last thing you need, right? To be associated with this Cavendish mess? And me?”

Michael held her at a distance by her arms. “That doesn't matter. The important thing is you're out of there. Take some time to think now. You've got options.”

“I will.”

Crewe stood up, too. “Mick, thanks.”

They shook hands. “No problem.”

“We'll ask more questions, see what we can find out about the people around Cavendish.”

“Be smart about it,” Michael advised. “Make sure you're a few steps ahead before you go cross-examining anybody. And when in doubt, call the cops. Don't try to be a hero.”

Crewe nodded. “Yeah. I could end up looking stupid.”

“Or worse.”

I pushed Michael's coat off my shoulders and got unsteadily to my feet. “I don't need a ride home. I'll just take the train. Rawlins can pick me up at the station. If I could just call a cab—”

“Sweetie,” Lexie began.

“It's okay,” Michael said to her.

I didn't want to go with him. In fact, I dreaded being alone with Michael. I needed time to think.

He wasn't taking no for an answer, though.

We said good night to Crewe and Lexie, who both hugged me and tried to behave cheerfully. Michael and I went outside into the muggy heat.