Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery (18 page)

I handed one of my coffees to Panda and took a sip of mine. “Neal, level with me. Is Rachel missing or is she a suspect? I’ve had enough of this person-of-interest bullshit.”

Panda removed the lid of his coffee and blew on it. “Rachel’s not a suspect.”

That left me with two theories. One, Rachel was dead, murdered alongside Olivia and disposed of somewhere other than the crime scene. Or two, she’d witnessed the murder, freaked out, and taken off. Maybe she was hiding from the killer, maybe the cops. Either way, what Panda had just told me confirmed that the PD didn’t have enough crime-scene evidence to book her, let alone name her as a suspect. “What about the tissue you found under Olivia’s nails?”

“It wasn’t tissue, Clyde.”

“What?”

He waited, watching my face for signs of comprehension. “Vaginal fluid,” he said at last, giving up.

“Oh Jesus.” There were things I’d rather not know about Olivia. And yet I had to ask myself, how was this any different from hearing that the ME had found semen in Olivia’s vaginal cavity? It wasn’t. Maybe this was why Olivia rarely spoke to me about her relationships. It wasn’t punishment for the things I’d said to her in Guatemala, but that she’d known I wasn’t comfortable discussing her sex life. I grabbed Dax’s muddy tennis ball and hurled it across the park, but it did nothing to dissipate the frustration I felt building in my chest. “Why didn’t you just tell me what it was?”

He set his coffee on a bench and gave me a fatherly pat on the back. “Remember what I said about the Kravises putting pressure on the PD? Well, this was something they had considerable concerns about leaking to the press. I gave you what I could, but that was completely off the table.”

“What else have they taken off the table?”

“Beats me. The topic came up after we established the nature of the relationship, and once we did, the Kravises intervened to make sure certain information stayed under wraps.”

I handed over a white paper bag. In it were two cream-filled beignets from a little café up a block on First Avenue. We sat on the bench, eating and watching Dax chase the Jack Russell around the dog run. I got up to toss the bag and my empty coffee cup. “What does Ehlers think? Is Rachel hiding or missing?”

“We don’t know, but his money’s on missing.”

If she was missing—as in abducted or dead— the woman with the yappy dog’s story about seeing someone who looked like Rachel on the street the night of Olivia’s murder was a bunch of bullshit. It also meant that Rachel couldn’t have called Michael the next morning. “Does Ehlers think the killer used Rachel’s phone to call Michael Saturday morning?”

He nodded.

“Were there any other calls made from that phone?”

“No.”

“Does that make Michael seem more or less guilty to you? We’ve already established that he had threatened Rachel. What if he went over to Olivia’s apartment to exact some revenge? He kills Olivia, abducts or kills Rachel, and then the next morning uses Rachel’s phone to call himself, thinking that the call would be enough to convince the police that she’d killed Olivia and had gone into hiding?”

“It’s not a bad theory, Clyde. But it’s just a theory.” Panda called to Dax and the little Dachshund came running, his short legs carrying his body as fast as they could.

I patted the dog’s smooth head as Panda clipped on his leash. “It’s more than that. There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” I said.

While we climbed the steep stairs back in the direction of the apartment building where Panda’s mother lived, I told him about my run-in with Michael Rockwell in the woods behind his Connecticut house. Panda’s concern was no longer about the case, but about me. “Why don’t you come to the station with me and make a statement? We could get some security on you.”

I had a gut feeling Rockwell had only meant to scare me. This sort of thing had happened to me a few times before, once in a Detroit parking lot by a suspect in a sex-abuse case, another time on a beach in Florida by the parent of a murder victim. It was always frightening, but I’d come to accept it as part of the job. A job I couldn’t do if I was tied up filling out paperwork at the one-nine. “I don’t have time to make a statement,” I said.

“If that’s how you feel, I can at least make sure Ehlers is up to speed,” he said. “We’ll keep a closer watch on Rockwell. And you, I want you to be careful. Watch your back, Clyde. I mean it.”

We finished climbing the stairs from the dog run. Panda bent over to rub his left leg and catch his breath. It had been more than a week since my last workout, but I was barely winded, thanks to my regular sessions.

I hadn’t always liked exercising. The gym reminded me of the worst parts of high school and singles’ bars combined, and my breasts made it nearly impossible to run, no matter how many sports bras I layered on over my double Ds. But a couple of years ago, I started swimming laps at a municipal pool near my apartment to help manage my stress levels and found that it also helped me stay in pretty decent shape. I wasn’t about to quit my job to become a swimsuit model, but I could clock a respectable time for a 400-meter freestyle.

“How’s the knee?” I asked Panda.

“Knee’s old.” He hauled out a handful of Bit O’ Honeys from his pocket and handed me one. Ever since he’d quit smoking he’d developed a massive sweet tooth. He’d also packed on about twenty extra pounds.

I popped a candy in my mouth and chewed. “Rockwell got an alibi for Friday night?”

Panda lifted his arm and hailed me a taxi. “You know, it’s not your job to actually solve the crime.”

“So make sure your guys do it.” I slid into the taxi’s backseat. “The alibi?”

“I’ll look into it.” Panda closed the door, and I noticed his tie for the first time. This one featured rows of piano keys against a bright green background.

“Too easy.” I rolled down the taxi window, nodding at his neck-wear. “Key lime.”

“You nailed it, kid,” he said, waving me away.

At work, word had spread about my sunset encounter with Michael Rockwell in the lot behind Rachel’s house, and everyone wanted to hear a firsthand account. I indulged one retelling, and was at my desk, studying the overnights, preparing a new to-do list, when Georgia called. She wanted to see me in her office, pronto. Another pep talk to keep me on my toes, I assumed, waltzing into her corner digs. Georgia was seated behind her desk, reading a book, her hair in hot rollers.

“Knock, knock.” I picked up a throw pillow embroidered with an old Groucho Marx quote—
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot
—and took my seat.

Georgia held up the book she was reading for me to see. “It’s a galley of Charles Kravis’s memoir.”

“Sure to be a bestseller,” I said, slipping the pillow behind my back. “Are they holding the release?”

“To the contrary. They just pushed up the pub date.”

“How can they?”

Georgia laughed. “You obviously know nothing about publishing.”

“I know bookstores are closing, book sales are down, and everything’s going digital.”

“The business is in the shitter. And some asshole is into this book for $1.5 million. That was Kravis’s advance. So now, you’re the publisher, you’ve got an author whose about to croak, can’t do publicity, but his daughter’s murder is the biggest story of the day. What you going to do? The right, moral thing, or the thing that’s gonna save your ass when heads start to roll?” She slammed the book shut and passed it to me across the desk. “I want Alex to do a segment on it for tonight’s show.”

I picked the book up and tucked it under my arm. “Is that all?”

“I heard about what happened in the field.”

I felt a lecture coming on, one I didn’t feel the need to hear twice in one morning. “I already told the PD about it,” I said, hoping to head her off.

“Did you make a statement?” Georgia removed one of her rollers, re-wrapping her hair and securing it again to her scalp.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the police are already keeping an eye on the guy.”

Georgia studied my face. “OK, one more thing. I want you to come with me to a party Prentice Maldone is throwing tonight after the broadcast. It’s in honor of the merger.”

“Why do I have to go? Can’t you take your husband?”

Georgia’s bangles clinked as her torso shook with laughter. “Do I have to spell everything out to you?”

“Not everything.”

Georgia sighed. “There will be men there, Clyde. You do realize you have left about two, maybe three years—tops—to have a baby.”

“Why are we talking about this? Last time I checked, you didn’t have a kid either.”

“I have stepkids.”

“Ex-stepkids. And they never called you Mom.”

She threw me one of her quit-sassing-me looks.

I crossed my arms across my chest. “Actually, Georgia, I just met someone. A lawyer, and he’s coming as my plus one to the Kravis benefit next week.”

“One date does not a dance card fill,” Georgia snapped. “And anyway, I want to keep my eye on you.”

“So that’s the real reason.”

“You’re coming with me and that’s final. So get Sasha to do something with your goddamn hair. Looks like a fucking rat’s nest up there.”

The party was held at a duplex gallery space in SoHo. Georgia gave her name in the lobby, and we were escorted upstairs in an elevator that opened directly into the party. At the center of the event space were two low-backed Italian sectionals and a Lucite coffee table with a huge orchid plant in an oval chrome planter at its center. Behind a glass staircase stood a large bar and a cluster of food stations serving pink rectangles of beef tenderloin and toro.

Threading through the crowd, I recognized a few faces from the FirstNews legal and corporate departments. By the floor-to-ceiling windows, Mitchell Diskin towered over one of our morning anchors, a smiley blonde. I also recognized our noon and four o’clock anchors, a couple of members of Congress that contributed to FirstNews’s Sunday morning current-events talk show, and Naomi Zell, FirstNews’s CEO and the Kravis family’s recently appointed spokesperson.

Georgia left me to go mingle. Actually what she said was, “You look pretty. Now smile, be nice, and pretend like you don’t crush testicles for a living. It should also go without saying but I’m going to say it anyway: Steer clear of the hooch.” Then she thrust me into a group of men dressed in expensive blue suits and Italian loafers.

I introduced myself to them and then promptly excused myself as soon as Georgia had her back turned. I was about to walk out of the party when, huddled beneath the staircase, next to an Egyptian limestone bust, I spotted Delphine. She was dressed modestly in a dark short-sleeved dress and mid-height heels, and was standing with a man I took to be her husband. I tapped her lightly on the shoulder.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” she said, looking startled to see me.

“I could say the same.” The last time we spoke she seemed ready to go into hiding. What was she doing at a party celebrating Maldone’s purchase of FirstNews?

“I’m only here because it’s what’s expected of me as a board member. We’ll be making an early exit.” She then introduced me to Hamish, who she quickly dispatched to the bar to retrieve us drinks. I’d ordered a tonic water, Delphine a vodka and cranberry.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” I asked once we were on our own.

“It’s the merger,” she said, lowering her voice. “No media interviews. Everything is supposed to go through Naomi. I’m sure you understand why it has to be this way.”

“I do. But I’d still like to have a chat. I told you everything could be off the record.”

Her brows knitted together. “But your message. You said I had to go on camera if we wanted to move the focus from Olivia’s personal life.” She was using my words against me. I hated when people did that. “I wish I didn’t have to say this,” Delphine continued, “because I know Olivia thought the world of you, but with the merger, things are very delicate. Now just isn’t the right time.”

I touched the pearls at my neck. “I’m not just interested in talking to you for professional reasons. Personally, I feel… involved.”

She gave me a tight smile. “Of course you do. You were her friend.”

“It’s more than that. There’s something I haven’t told you,” I said. “The night Olivia was murdered, we were supposed to get together but I got stuck at work. She sent me a text I didn’t see until Monday morning. I’m not sure how I missed it on Friday night.”

“What did the text say?” She cocked her head.

I realized, from her reaction, that I finally had a card to play, one I wasn’t going to hand over without getting something in return. “It’s so loud here, I can barely hear you. How about we meet for coffee tomorrow?”

I could tell she wanted to press me further but her husband had returned, and with him, Prentice Maldone. Hamish handed me my tonic water and Delphine her vodka cranberry. “About Olivia’s memorial service,” Delphine said, changing the subject. It had been scheduled for the following Thursday at 10 a.m. “I hope you can make it.”

“I’ll be there,” I assured her, remembering the promise I’d made to Sutton to make a speech at the service. “I’ve been preparing something.”

Delphine shifted her weight. “I’m afraid we need to keep the ceremony brief. My stepfather’s health is declining. We don’t want to tax him any more than necessary.”

Only part of me felt relieved. Mostly I felt snubbed. Surely the Kravises could have found a few minutes for me if they’d wanted.

“And please, Clyde, attend as a friend, not as a member of the press. We’d like to keep the details of the service private.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but something about it stuck in my craw. “Of course,” I replied, mustering a closed-mouth smile. What choice did I have?

Delphine put a hand on her husband’s back, and the two of them said their goodbyes. After they left I thought Prentice would excuse himself, but instead he asked if he and I could speak privately. I assented, following him up the staircase to the doorway of a heated terrace devoid of either furniture or other guests.

“Can I get you another?” He gestured to my drink, misunderstanding the reason for my reluctance to join him at the terrace’s plexiglass ledge.