Spiced to Death (33 page)

A tall skinny man with thinning white hair spoke up in a loud voice. “You should be a lot more concerned on health grounds,” he proclaimed. “Beef is a killer—worse than AIDS, Oprah says so.”

“What does she know from beef?” another equally strong voice demanded.

“She’s writing a book on it,” said a tiny woman supportively. “Must know a lot about it.”

I tore myself away before that party got rough. I listened to one group debating the conditions under which snails were raised, another where a tariff on rice was being proposed, the argument being that the United States could easily produce all the rice the country could eat and much cheaper and better quality than the imported product. Irradiation of food was rearing its ugly head again but I was determined not to get involved in that.

I scanned the room. I couldn’t see either Hal Gaines or Gabriella. It was just as well. I would probably hear some earthy New York epithets if I said, “Oh, by the way, I’ve just enlisted the help of a Chinese hypnotist.”

A figure materialized by my elbow. I turned to see Alexander Marvell.

He looked as if he needed a truckload of good cheer more than my conventional greeting. His face was grim and uncompromising and I prepared myself for some harsh words but he was remarkably civil. He even asked my opinion.

“Are we going to have some resolution of this dreadful business at last?”

“I really think so,” I told him sincerely. “In fact, I could almost say I’m betting my life on it.”

He grunted. It was hard to distinguish whether it was skepticism or sympathy for my vulnerable position.

“Something I’ve always wanted to ask you,” I said. “Why did you send Cartwright to JFK that day? I would have thought you couldn’t resist being there yourself when flight 227 touched down.”

He glanced at me briefly then looked away. “I had urgent personal business,” he said.

“Oh,” I said as if I understood. “But then you had every reason to trust Cartwright, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “Misplaced trust as it turned out.”

I wondered if Gabriella had checked out the alibis of the key people at the time of the theft. It was unlikely she hadn’t… but Marvell was looking at me with what amounted to suspicion in his eye.

“I want to ask
you
a question,” he said in a voice that hardened suddenly.

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you phone the Mecklenburg Botanical Institute?”

“In San Francisco?” It was a silly response. I knew quite well where they were but I was puzzled.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t.”

“They say you did.”

I was still puzzled. “You’ve talked to them? They told you this?”

“I had to call them on another matter and they mentioned it.”

I shook my head firmly. “I haven’t called them.”

He was unconvinced. “They told me you did.”

“It wasn’t me—they’re mistaken.”

He gave me a glare of incredulity and stalked away.

When I caught sight of Gloria Branson, I had the distinct impression that she saw me and turned her back, but I approached her anyway. Her back view was almost as good as the front. She wore a white dress with a sort of crimson sash and looked spectacular, but her handshake was cold.

“I heard you had gone back to London.”

“An exaggerated report, premature,” I said, wondering why the frosty reception. “I have some unfinished business here that hopefully will be taken care of today.”

“Do you?” Her tone was uninterested and her face like alabaster—and just as immobile. Then it struck me why she was behaving like this.

I was at a loss to know what to say but it didn’t matter because she turned back to the people around her, ignoring me completely. One of them, a woman with gold-rimmed glasses that must have consumed a couple of nuggets, gave me a look of sympathy just as I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Still investigating and authenticating?” It was Tom Eck. I shook his hand; in the other he held a floweret of broccoli. “Have you tried these? They are really superb.” He nodded to a nearby table and I took one. I didn’t notice any taste.

“I’m still on the case, yes.”

“Any luck?”

“Some,” I admitted. I looked around. “I need another glass of wine—ah, over there.” He strolled with me and I took a glass from the table. Eck looked over the foods adjacent and took a slice of avocado with Parma ham and curried mayonnaise on it.

“I was talking to Kay Grenville just now,” I said. He nodded with casual interest.

“Going to pay out, is she?”

“I doubt it. It’s still very early anyway.” I took a slice of the avocado too. “What’s your experience of insurance companies paying on claims like this?”

“They pay out millions every year.”

“Do you think their own investigations turn up anything that the police haven’t?”

“Some things, I suppose, but nothing major.”

A face behind me caught Eck’s attention and he introduced me.

“Bengt Johannson, BJ Vitamins.” He was a blond, blue-eyed sturdy Viking type and promptly launched into a discussion on the vitamin content of the foodstuffs on display, although I was trying to get away.

“You could eat here all day and not get enough vitamins,” he stated solemnly. “Vitamin additives are essential—and don’t be misled by people who tell you to avoid synthetic vitamins, they’re just as good as …”

I finally managed to break away and went in search of Hal Gaines or Gabriella. They had said they were undercover and at the moment they certainly were. I couldn’t see them but seemed to have no trouble finding others. I saw Ayesha but got only a wave. At least that made up for the withering stare from Lennie Rifkin, who was close by her side. Mr. Koo was eating artichoke mousse on toasted Syrian bread and declaring his intention of giving it a Chinese twist. I thought I saw Salman Rushdie with Cher but it seemed unlikely. The vegan lady intercepted me and initiated a discussion on Buddha and whether or not he was a vegetarian.

I would have enjoyed that at any other time but I was desperately anxious to find Hal Gaines or Gabriella and tell them that I knew the identity of the killer of Renshaw and Cartwright and the thief of the Ko Feng.

T
HE TWO OF THEM
were hard to find. I was still searching when a waiter stopped me. “The lieutenant’s looking for you,” he said and pointed to the balcony. “The Atlantic Room up there.”

I hurried up the stairs. The Atlantic Room was a large conference and lecture room, one of a dozen or so. I went in. The room was in near darkness and I stopped abruptly as the door was pulled out of my hand and closed behind me.

There was just enough light to make out Tom Eck.

“Was it something I said?” he asked softly.

It was a perfect time to come out with a Nick Charles quip but I missed my cue. Instead I found out what it means to have a sinking heart.

“You know, don’t you?” he asked, in a voice that was still soft.

I hoped he couldn’t hear my brain working—inside my head, it sounded like a demented chain-saw. Suddenly, I saw a glimmer of what might be a way out …

“The buyer had to be you or Keyhoe or Gloria Branson,” I said, though my voice wasn’t as steady as I would have liked. “I had a second string of suspects but of them, Professor Willenbroek seemed too true-blue and it didn’t seem like Dr. Li’s style. But one of you five had to be the buyer—” I paused, not just for dramatic effect but because I was still ad-libbing.

“—and I know now that it’s you.”

My eyes were adjusting to the gloom. The lights were on at the far end only. At this end was a platform with a speaker’s dais and microphone, and behind it a large screen. We stood inside the door, near the edge of the platform.

“When you’re a food broker, people come to you,” Eck was saying in a chatty tone. “Some want to sell, some want to buy. There’s an awful lot of people who would love to get their hands on some Ko Feng. It’s natural they should come to me.”

I nodded, trying to look understanding and compassionate.

“So someone came and wanted to sell the Ko Feng to you?”

“Right.”

“Why not directly to one of the research outfits?”

“I’m sure that was the initial idea. It was made more complicated and difficult due to your interference. None of the likely buyers wanted to risk being identified and the problem of authenticating the spice made it even trickier.”

“So you were approached as a middle man?”

“Right again.”

“And that one person was a murderer.”

“Catching murderers is a job for the police,” Eck said with a shrug. “I’m just a food broker.”

“You’re a buyer of stolen goods too,” I said in a firm accusatory tone.

There were voices outside. They had to be loud as this room was surely sound-insulated. But we were near the door and though the words were unintelligible, it sounded like the staff disagreeing over some problem. The voices faded away.

“All right, let’s get it over with,” I said resignedly.

Eck regarded me with a noticeable lack of interest. “Get what over with?”

“You want me to authenticate the Ko Feng for you. Well, where is it?”

He shook his head with an amused tolerance. “I don’t want you to do anything of the kind.”

“But—” I stammered, “you’re surely not going to buy the Ko Feng without establishing that it’s genuine.”

“That’s all been done,” Eck said dismissively.

I had the nasty feeling that the situation was slipping away from me.

“So your role in all this is finished,” he added.

His words had a ring of finality that I didn’t like at all but I put as much joviality as I could into it as I said, “Then I’d better see when the next flight to London leaves.”

Eck didn’t move. “Not just yet,” he said, “let’s settle a few details first.”

“What details?”

He kept looking at me. There was something he wasn’t certain about—something he had to know. Finally he said it. Again.

“You know, don’t you?”

I
T WAS QUIET. NO
voices could be heard from the balcony. The gloom in the partly lit conference room made the silence all the more foreboding. Eck had put one hand into his pocket. At least there couldn’t be a Tokharev automatic there, I thought. But where were Lieutenant Gaines and Gabriella? Why weren’t they keeping an eye on me? Didn’t they know yet about the fake message that had brought me up here?

“Tell me,” urged Eck and his hand moved in his pocket.

“All right,” I said quickly. “It’s Marvell, isn’t it?” I said. “He got Cartwright to help him steal the Ko Feng. Renshaw saw the similarity with the earlier theft of the birds’ nests and one or the other killed him. Then Cartwright tried to double-cross Marvell—who killed him. Marvell’s background had led him to believe that he could easily sell Ko Feng to someone in the restaurant business but he miscalculated. It was Cartwright who had gotten him to switch to the research lab people as a much more lucrative market. Even that was tricky because, as you said, they couldn’t get the Ko Feng authenticated and sell it while still concealing their identity.”

I paused on a how’m-I-doing note. Eck said nothing so I went on.

“The point I’m not clear on is to what extent that insurance woman is mixed up in this. Maybe she knows, maybe she doesn’t, maybe she only suspects. Regardless, Marvell having disposed of Cartwright decided to sell the Ko Feng and collect on the insurance as well. You were an ideal choice to sell it to—you know everybody in the business, you could find the highest bidder.”

We were standing near the edge of the speaker’s platform. It was about a foot high and now that my vision was adjusted to the gloom, I had seen the cord from the microphone. It ran from the bottom of the speaker’s dais and passed within about three feet of where I was standing.

While I was talking, I was edging closer to it. I did some hand gesturing and waving to emphasize my words—not nearly as much as an average New Yorker but more than I usually do. I hoped it would distract Eck enough. I thought he was frowning but I couldn’t tell if it was because he was thinking about what I was saying or if he was puzzled at my untypical ebullience.

“I thought for a while the Ko Feng might be shipped out of the country but I’m sure that meant too many risks.”

“The thief had to be someone right here,” agreed Eck.

“You say ‘the thief’ but if you bought the Ko Feng from him, you must know it’s Marvell.”

He looked at me strangely.

“Neither the thief nor the buyer wanted to be seen,” he said. “Bringing another authenticator into it too made it even more complicated.”

A bell rang in my head. “Another authenticator! You brought in someone from the Mecklenburg Institute …”

“Actually you did.”

“Me? How could I—ah, I see. You used my name, pretended to be me.”

I edged another couple of inches nearer to the cord.

“Yes.” He took his hand out of his pocket. It held a gray automatic pistol that looked as if it was made of plastic.

He waved it menacingly. “It’s real—don’t be fooled by its appearance. It’s high-impact ABS plastic with a titanium tube barrel. Up to ten feet, it’s as dangerous as any other weapon but it doesn’t set off metal detecting devices.”

He must have spotted a change in my expression. “Yes,” he said, “I was just about to walk in here today when I saw the woman at the desk looking down at something so I waited a while. She did it every time a guest came in. I figured she had a metal detector there so I went back to the car where I keep this.” He waved it again. “You can’t be too careful on the highway.”

He jabbed the gun in my direction. I hate guns and refuse to carry one even when an investigation in the food business seems to be turning dangerous. This one of Eck’s might be plastic but it was just as terrifying. I noticed something else—it had what looked like a small cork on the end of the barrel, probably a silencer.

I slid one foot under the microphone cord.

“You can cut out the play-acting” he said, and his voice had hardened. “We had enough of that with that cute trick you pulled at Martha’s. Now, I’m only going to say it one last time. You know, don’t you? But how do you know?”