Murder Under the Palms (25 page)

“How about the weapon?” Charlotte asked.

“It still hasn’t turned up. But we know more about it from the autopsy. A dagger, which is unusual. We don’t often run across double-edge blades here. It’s not like in Spanish Harlem or Little Italy, where the stiletto is a favorite weapon. With a six-inch blade. Apart from that, nothing.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“First, I’m going to find out more about Jack McLean. I have some contacts at the CIA,” Maureen said. “I feel as if I need more definitive proof before I can accuse a decorated rear admiral of treason.”

“And if you find it?”

“We’ll conduct a search. Look for the dagger and the cigarette case. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to anybody.”

“Of course,” Charlotte agreed. “Call me if you hear anything.”

It was just after seven the next morning when Charlotte heard from Maureen. Her message was brief. “Meet me at Villa Normandie as soon as possible,” she said. “Go right past the house to to the back—by the lake. I’ll tell them to let you through.” In ten minutes, Charlotte was on her way downtown in her rental car. As she drove, she pondered the significance of Maureen’s statement: “Tell
them
to let you through.”
Them
must be Maureen’s underlings.
To let her through
implied some sort of barrier, which in turn implied that a crime had taken place. Maybe even another murder. Why else would Maureen have summoned her to a crime scene at seven on a Monday morning? The fact that the event—whatever it was—had taken place at Villa Normandie implied that Lydia was involved. Which also implied that their sabotage theory as a motive for Paul’s murder was shot to hell. Whoa! she warned herself. Slow down! She was jumping from one conclusion to the next like an Olympic gymnast, without a shred of evidence to support any of them.

She arrived at Villa Normandie ten minutes later. The tricolor was still flying from the deck on the second story, but there was a Barclay’s International Realty “For Sale” sign on the front lawn. She was stopped just inside the entrance gates by a policeman.

“Charlotte Graham,” she said. “Detective Maureen White said I should go right on through to the back.”

The policeman nodded in recognition of her name and gave her a once-over—curious, Charlotte supposed, to see how the old warhorse was holding up. Then he directed her to drive past the swimming pool to the parking area in front of the garage.

At the parking area, she was directed by another policeman to a path through a dense stand of low, leafy palms that led to a lawn overlooking the Lake Trail, which was a footpath that ran along the shore of Lake Worth.

Emerging into the open a few minutes later, she could see a cluster of policemen gathered around a huge tropical tree at the edge of the Lake Trail. She walked down to the foot of the Bermuda grass lawn, where she joined Maureen at the edge of the trail. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Good morning,” Maureen said. “I thought I owed you. We’ve got another body.” She nodded in the direction of the tree.

Charlotte raised an arched eyebrow in her signature expression.

“He’s over here,” said the detective, leading Charlotte toward the tree, whose enormous gray roots formed buttresses that were four or five feet high. A moment later, they were standing in front of a wedge-shaped enclosure created by the buttresslike roots.

Lying on its side between the walls of the roots was the body of Admiral John W. McLean III. He was casually dressed in tan chinos, a white knit shirt, and a navy blue cardigan golf sweater. In the center of his upper chest was a neat, round stab wound ringed by a circle of fresh blood.

“The wound appears to be identical to the one in Feder’s chest,” Maureen said.

Charlotte was stunned. McLean was the last person she expected to be the victim. “I don’t know what to say,” she told Maureen, nonplused.

“That makes two of us,” the detective said.

Charlotte looked down again at the body. What impressed her about it was its sheer size and stateliness. In death, Big Jack McLean was as tragic as a mighty felled oak. “I guess this means our theory that McLean killed Feder to protect his reputation is out the window.”

“Not necessarily,” Maureen replied. “If it’s true that McLean was involved in the sabotage plot, then both murders might be tied to that. We’re waiting for the medical examiner now, but it certainly looks like the same weapon.”

“Yes, it does,” Charlotte agreed.

“It also looks like a professional hit to me. That was my biggest problem with Marianne Montgomery as a suspect in Feder’s murder. It was too neat: it’s rare that a knife is thrust directly into a body at the right angle, and then pulled directly out again.”

“In other words, the murderer was a person who knew what he was doing.”

Maureen nodded. “Had to have done it before. Probably more than just once. Also, there aren’t any defense wounds, which means that the victim was taken by surprise. As was the case with Feder.”

Charlotte looked up from the spot where the body lay to the asphalt-paved trail. At this point, the trail curved to accommodate the spreading roots of the giant tree, which must have been thirty feet in circumference. “Was he walking on the trail?” she asked.

“We think so,” Maureen said. Turning away from the body, she led Charlotte out to the trail.

Here the trail overlooked a narrow stretch of the Intracoastal Waterway which was dotted with uninhabited islands that were used as bird sanctuaries. The morning sun had tinted the still waters a pale pink. The vegetation was damp with dew, and the mourning doves cooed plaintively.

It was hard to believe that a murder had taken place in such a tranquil setting, Charlotte thought as they stood there.

The trail had been cordoned off to the north and to the south, and she could see policemen turning away early-morning joggers, dog walkers, cyclists, and roller bladers. A few of the more curious were hanging around on the other side of the yellow tape to see what was going on.

“We think the perpetrator hid behind the roots of the tree,” Maureen said. “I just walked about a hundred feet in either direction; it’s the only place along this stretch of the trail where he could have concealed himself.”

“It’s quite a tree,” Charlotte said. She’d noticed plaque on the trunk that said “Mysore Fig,
Ficus Mysorensis
, 1932.”

“Yes. It’s one of our historic specimen trees. The garden club puts up those plaques. It also makes a very good hiding place.”

“For the killer and for the body,” Charlotte commented.

Maureen nodded. “There’s a lot of traffic on the trail, as you can see,” she said, nodding toward a couple on a bicycle built for two who were being turned away by the police. “If he hadn’t hidden the body, it would’ve been discovered right away, which might not have given him enough time to get away.”

“Who did discover it?”

“A dog walker,” Maureen said. “The dog led him over there. You’d be amazed at how many bodies are discovered by dogs.”

“Any clues?”

“There are footprints. We’re going to have casts made. But that’s it. We’re looking for the weapon now.” She nodded at the policemen who were scouring the edges of the trail. “But I doubt we’ll find anything.”

“What was McLean doing here?” Charlotte asked.

“I don’t know,” Maureen said. “His car’s parked in front of Lydia Collins’s garage. I’m going to talk with her now. Do you want to sit in?”

Charlotte said she would.

Leaving the crime-scene unit to their work, they made their way back up the lawn. The house loomed ahead of them with its three increasingly narrow stories. Charlotte half expected to see stacks rising from the flat roof, so much did it resemble an ocean liner. At the head of the lawn was the swimming pool, which occupied a terrace at the rear of the house. It was surrounded by a tall hedge that shielded it from passersby on the Lake Trail. Passing the pool, they continued around to the patio at the side of the house and mounted the gangway that led to the front door. “She’s expecting you,” said the policeman who was posted at the door. “She’s upstairs,” he added as he opened the door for them. Crossing the hallway, they climbed the spiral staircase to the Grand Salon on the third floor.

The exquisite Dupas mural was still there: it had not yet been handed over to the preservation association as restitution for the stolen money. Looking at it now, Charlotte remembered Lydia recounting her delight at having located the twelve missing panels. How it must have irked her that her magnificent reproduction of the Grand Salon was complete save for those panels. Without them, the mural must have looked like a row of teeth with three or four missing, and the room unfinished. Their absence had annoyed Lydia enough that she had been prompted to steal to buy them. If she was willing to steal, would she also have been willing to kill? Maybe it
was
she who had killed Paul, slipping away for a few minutes without detection. Then she’d gone on to kill McLean because he’d found out that she’d murdered Paul. A few years in jail for embezzlement was one thing, but going to the electric chair for murder was quite another. Or maybe she’d gotten the admiral to kill Paul for her, and then killed him in turn to keep him quiet.

But upon reconsideration, Charlotte dismissed her speculations as ridiculous. Grasping at straws, in fact. Lydia hardly came up to Jack McLean’s chest. He could easily have overpowered her. Nor did she fit the picture of a professional killer that Maureen had drawn.

They didn’t see Lydia at first. She was slouched at the far side of the room on a settee surrounding one of the crystal light fountains. She was smoking a cigarette and staring out at the ocean through sunglasses with round, white frames the size of cocktail coasters. The tiny silky terrier sat in her lap. Maureen announced their arrival, and they crossed the room and sat down in two of the sleek needlepoint-covered
Normandie
armchairs.

Seeing Lydia in the morning light that streamed through the porthole-shaped windows, Charlotte was reminded of the film
Lost Horizon
, in which one of the characters ages a hundred years when she leaves the paradise of Shangri-La. Lydia Collins had gone from a well-preserved society matron to an old lady overnight. Her umkempt hair was growing out gray. Her face, devoid of makeup, looked old and haggard. Her pink silk dressing gown was stained, and her talonlike nails were cracked and chipped. Even the dog lacked the usual ribbon in its topknot.

“I assume the police officer told you that Admiral MeLean has been murdered and that his body was found on your property,” Maureen said.

Lydia nodded, and flicked the ash of her cigarette into a bisque-colored ashtray that said SS
Normandie
.

“Had he been here first?” Maureen asked.

Lydia shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since Friday.”

Friday was the day that the news of Lydia’s transgressions had hit the local papers, along with the fact that she was being questioned in connection with Paul Feder’s murder. It looked as if Jack had been shunning her.

“Then what was he doing here?” asked Maureen.

“He liked to walk on the Lake Trail early in the morning,” Lydia replied. Her voice was low and flat, stripped of emotion. “But as you know, there’s a parking problem.”

Parking on South Ocean Boulevard was strictly controlled. It was a way of keeping the undesirable element—namely anyone who didn’t live in Palm Beach—off the town’s beaches. In fact, the town had very cleverly arranged it so that the only place one
could
park was in front of a store.

“I had told him he could park by my garage and walk down to the Lake Trail from there,” she said. “He’s been coming here to walk in the mornings three or four times a week for months now.”

“Did he always come on the same days of the week?” Maureen asked.

“Not always, but usually. He usually came on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He took his boat, the
Sea Witch
, out on the other days. Or sometimes he’d play golf. He was a man of habit,” she added.

Which meant, Charlotte reasoned, that anyone who wanted to kill him would only have had to tail him for a few days to find out his routine.

“What time did he arrive and leave?”

“He walked for an hour. He usually arrived at six-thirty and left at seven-thirty. Or so he told me. I’m not usually up at that hour.”

“Were you up this morning?” Maureen asked.

Lydia slid her sunglasses down her nose and looked at Maureen over the tops as if to say, Are you kidding? At that ungodly hour?

Like Charlotte, Maureen must not have considered Lydia to be a serious suspect because when Lydia went on to say that she was asleep, Maureen didn’t pursue it. She certanly didn’t look like someone who had gotten up at the crack of dawn to commit a murder.

“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?”

Lydia shook her head.

They left after Maureen had asked a few more routine questions.

“I was shocked at how she looked,” Charlotte said as they walked back down the spiral staircase. “What’s happening with her case now?”

“The preservation association has hired a law firm that specializes in fraud to conduct an investigation. They’ll also be taking title to the Dupas panels,” Maureen said. “Since the panels have a value of half a million or more, they should more than make up for her debt.”

“Is the U.S. Attorney’s office going to prosecute?” Charlotte asked, referring to the speculations that had been in the newspapers.

“I don’t know,” Maureen replied. “There’s an element on the board of the association that’s applying pressure to keep it in the family, so to speak, but I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“How could it work?” said Charlotte. “She’s committed a crime.”

Maureen gave her one of those How-can-you-be-so-naive? looks. “For one thing, the board has a lot of powerful members who are quite capable of pulling strings. For another, they could make the argument that she embezzled the money because she was mentally unbalanced.”

“On what grounds?” Charlotte asked.

“She claims that she was driven to take the money because of a psychological breakdown brought on by discrimination on the part of Palm Beach’s old guard society that resulted in her being excluded because of her social background, or lack thereof.”