The Big Killing (21 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Crime Fiction
Wetzon ruffled her hair through her fingers. It was almost dry. She combed away the wildness and stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. A very serious face stared back at her. “Smile, kid,” she said, “you’re on
Candid Camera
,” and her reflection smiled back at her, dutifully. That was better. She needed a trim. She needed a new hairdo and a fresh image. That’s what she needed. She took a hairband and pulled her hair into a pony tail.
Estranged. Estranged meant separated, didn’t it? Everyone had thought Mildred and Jake were divorced. Maybe estranged could also mean divorced.
She put the
Swan Lake
cassette in the player and stood at the barre. Breathe. Positions. One and two and three and four. And stretch and lift and pain. And extend, extend, extend, slowly stretching. Pain. Demi-plié, grand plié, relevé. Terrible shape.
If Mildred and Jake were still legally married, and Mildred was dead, Jake inherited Mildred’s firm. Which was a hell of a lot more solvent than Jake’s. What a kicker.
Still, it would have been stupid and obvious of Jake to murder Mildred after that scene in her office. And while Jake also had the best motive to murder Barry, he had to have had the opportunity. Had he been at the Four Seasons that night? She changed positions, watching herself in the mirror. And what about Roberta? Wetzon did not remember seeing her when Jake had burst into Mildred’s office.
The police must have some idea, she reasoned.
Plié, one, two, three, four, and relevé, one, two, three, four. Her neck and upper back were very tight. She felt tormented. By Barry and his goddam key, by Smith and her greed, by the revelation of the twenty-five thousand dollars. By Smith’s larcenous soul. Why hadn’t she realized that about Smith? She had been lazy in letting Smith copy the key, and now she was as guilty as if
she
had made the deal with Leon. She would have it out with Smith, and they would return the money to Leon, get the key back, and destroy it. But what would stop Leon from copying the key, too?
Silvestri would have to be told. There was no other way. She would insist. What a mess. Life had been much less complicated when she was a dancer.
Because there was no money, stupid.
The focus was on the work and the art. They had all thrived on their creativity and poverty.
As soon as money arrives on the scene, it becomes the
focus. It becomes about money
. She would tell Silvestri everything everybody had told her. Divest herself of all of it. Cleanse herself.
She was sweating now, but loosening up. She’d have to take another shower before she went to meet Rick. She opened the mat on the floor and, lying down, rolled back into the plough, then raised her legs slowly into a shoulder stand.
Smith had been raised as a foster child in poverty on the south side of Philadelphia. She thought of money as the answer to everything. Wetzon had never realized that before.
Rick. She liked Rick. He was cute and boyish, in spite of his prematurely gray hair. Boyish. The operative word about Rick was boyish.
Thank you, Laura Lee Day
. Even his name was boyish. Boyish as opposed to manish. An interlude in the interim. Okay. But was she, perhaps, that desperate for a lover, a relationship? Was the loneliness of being self-supporting in New York City finally getting to her?
Her doorbell rang. Doorbell? Who the hell was that, and how had he gotten past the doorman without being announced? She felt a stab of fear. She carefully changed her hand position and came out of the shoulder stand slowly into the bridge, then lowered herself vertebra by vertebra to the mat.
The doorbell rang again. She tiptoed to the door, opened the peephole as quietly as she could, which wasn’t quiet enough, and found herself looking at Silvestri, who was looking at her.
“Blast,” she said, aware of her damp state and workout clothes. She unlocked both locks and opened the door.
“You might have called,” she said testily.
“I thought you called
me
,” Silvestri said, looking at her appraisingly. He seemed a bit unsettled, taken aback. She knew her face was flushed from the exercise, and perspiration marks showed through her sweatclothes. Her wet hair curled around her forehead and the sides of her face.
Wetzon brushed the damp swirls out of her eyes self-consciously. “Oh hell, Silvestri, come on in. You caught me in the middle of my workout. Where was my doorman?”
He smelled of coffee and cigarettes. And her father’s aftershave. Woodsy. A working man’s smell. Rick smelled of antiseptic.
“I didn’t see anyone,” he said.
“Nice.”
She led him into the living room, still strewn with newspapers where she and Smith had left them. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said.
The strains of
Swan Lake
billowed and flowed around them. They stood for a moment watching each other. Then Silvestri sat on the sofa and made no bones about surveying the room.
Wetzon dropped to the floor, arms forward, hands around her ankles, elbows on the floor, stretching her legs, flexing. “I’m sorry,” she said, not meaning it, but wanting to break the silence. “I don’t want to tighten up.” Now he was openly studying her, not saying anything. “I used to be a dancer,” she said, uncomfortable, knowing she had told him this before.
“I know,” he said, settling back on the sofa, waiting.
“I called you—” she began.
“You called me,” he said at almost the same moment.
“Did Jake Donahue kill Mildred and Barry?”
“What were you doing at Mildred Gleason’s office yesterday afternoon?”
She stared at him. “She called me and begged me to see her,” she said warily.
“So you were with Stark and Travers
and
Gleason shortly before each died.”
She didn’t like the tone of his voice. “Wait a minute, Silvestri,” she said, frightened. “Should I get a lawyer? Am I a suspect?”
They stared at each other, locking eyes.
“Naa,” he said finally. “You could be, but you’re not. No motive. Too many witnesses clear where you were.”
“Jesus, Silvestri, what are you doing to me?” She sat up, hugging her knees, chilled. “I called you because Smith thinks someone is trying to kill me—”
“Talk to me.” Silvestri took a pad and a pen out of his inner pocket, giving her a glimpse of his gun and shoulder holster. He was no longer compensating for the gunshot wound.
“The derelict that was killed last night—down the block from here—”
“Yeah?”
“You know about it?”
“I read the report. What does it have to do with you?”
“Nothing, I think. But I knew him. His name was Sugar Joe. At least that’s what we called him. I’ve been leaving him coffee for a long time, almost a year now. He slept in the bus stop.” She paused, watching him. He didn’t react, so she went on. “I was pushed or thrown out of the way only a second or so before it happened. Smith thinks the mugger was after me.”
“What makes you think it has anything to do with you?”
“I don’t. I think I just got caught in the crossfire. Coincidence. Why would anyone want to kill a derelict?”
Swan Lake
came to a concluding crescendo around them.
“This is the eighties, and it’s New York City. Why indeed,” Silvestri said, impassive. “Why would Ms. Smith think the murderer wanted you?” He rose and looked at the books she had stacked on the side table, picking them up, one at a time.
“Because of my jacket,” she said. “Wait, I’ll show you.” She jumped up and went to her bedroom, took the jacket from the closet, and brought it to him.
He took the jacket by the collar, letting it hang down while he studied it. It looked even worse than she’d remembered. The second suit she’d ruined in two days, she thought regretfully. She’d have to get a whole new wardrobe if things kept up like this.
“I’d like to take this with me,” he said.
“Why not? I can’t wear it, can’t even have it repaired.”
He tucked the remnants of her dark gray suit jacket under his arm, and she felt a lovely little thrill.
Masochist
, she thought.
Stop it
.
“Why did Mildred Gleason want to see you?” Silvestri asked.
“She wanted to know what Barry said to me. She said Barry had been working for her, that he’d called her just before he was murdered.
While
he was being murdered.” She hesitated. This was her opportunity to tell him everything. “Silvestri, I’d like—”
A beeper went off. Silvestri’s.
He reached into his breast pocket and turned off the beeper. “Did she say anything else?”
“Yes, that Barry had said something about tapes.”
“Can I use your phone?” She hadn’t realized how tall he was. Or possibly, how small she was.
“Yes, in the other room, where I work out.”
He didn’t move. “That’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all. Then Jake came in, and they started screaming at each other, and I left.” She led him into the dining room and waited while he placed the call.
“Silvestri,” he said into the phone. He listened. “I’m on my way back.” He put down the phone.
“What about the key?” she asked. “Did you find out what it unlocks?”
He shrugged. “It’s a standard key used for medical cabinets in hospitals and, more than likely, elsewhere. Does it make any sense to you?”
“No,” she said. “But Barry must have told me something that I can’t remember, something I haven’t been able to put together. What would Barry be doing with a hospital cabinet key, and why would he give it to me?” She stopped, thinking. “Was he murdered for the key?” Both hands to her head, she frowned. “It’s not logical. None of this is logical.”
“What makes you think murder is logical?” Silvestri said.
She went down in the elevator with Silvestri to get her mail.
“I almost forgot—” she began, and wondered why she kept doing that. She had something to tell him and then she’d go off somewhere and lose track of where she was. “I almost forgot,” she said again, feeling cotton-brained and stupid.
Silvestri looked guilty, as if she’d caught him out. He’d been leaning against the back of the elevator, eyes on the trellis effect of the dropped ceiling, whistling under his breath. He turned to her. His eyes were deep, deep turquoise again.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, heart pounding, distracted, shaking her head, ponytail swingin0. “I don’t know where my mind is.” She was taking shallow, quick breaths.
Neither seemed to notice at first that the elevator door had opened and they were in the lobby.
“You were going to tell me something,” he said, taking her arm. She felt a small shock where he touched her, which became a strange tingle spreading up and down through her body, and looking at him, she saw that he’d felt it, too. He dropped her arm, and they left the elevator and stood in the lobby. The moment was gone. There had been a pull, an attraction, between them, for a brief instant, and they’d both felt it. And while Silvestri appeared to have been taken by surprise, Wetzon’s attraction to him dated to their first meeting. It was his response that she hadn’t expected.
She cleared her throat and her voice cracked when she spoke. “I saw Buffie—Ann Buffolino—when I was going into Mildred Gleason’s building. She was leaving the building and tried to avoid me.”
Silvestri waited. The poker face revealed nothing. The eyes were slate again. “Was Gleason’s assistant there when you saw Gleason?”
“Yes. She left a few minutes before I did.”
“Left the room or the building?”
“The room, for sure. The building? I don’t know. Is it important?”
“Possibly.” He was noncommittal, but Wetzon sensed a heightened energy.
She thought hard. She remembered the sound of a toilet flushing. “Does the other door in Mildred’s office lead to a bathroom, and if so, does it open to another room?”
“Yes and yes. It leads to Ms. Bancroft’s office.”
Wetzon nodded. “Well, if she owns a black leather trench coat, she probably left the building.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because there was one hanging in the closet when I got there, and it wasn’t there when I left. Does that help?”
“Possibly,” he said again.
“Okay, I get it.”
She watched him leave. He looked like a college professor, slightly rumpled but tweedy, with brown suede elbow patches on his jacket sleeves. But he was a rumpled, tweedy police sergeant, with a tattered gray jacket under his arm, and he was moving fast. She wished she knew what his question about Roberta Bancroft meant.
Curiouser and curiouser.
She unlocked her mailbox and sifted through her mail, throwing away the Lancôme and Estée Lauder special offers from Saks and Bonwit’s, and the L.L. Bean catalog. She wrapped the letters and the Williams-Sonoma catalog in
Business Week
and got back on the elevator with the twins from the fourth floor and their galumping golden retriever. Portia, the retriever, was dancing and panting and carrying on like a puppy after her walk. The twins were having a tough time holding her down. When they came to the fourth floor, Portia jumped up and gave Wetzon a messy, wet kiss and bounded out.
“Thanks a heap, Portia,” she said to the empty elevator, wiping her face, but smiling. It was hard not to smile.
Something was really nagging at her about the key. A hospital cabinet. It was all so confusing. She dropped the mail on the counter in the kitchen, took a Granny Smith apple out of the refrigerator, and cut it into slices. Her lovely afternoon was gone. She went through the letters and pulled out what looked like an invitation in a square white envelope. The apple was tart and good.
It was an invitation to a Wall Street Night at the Caravanserie on Monday evening at six o’clock. Barry Stark again. Barry had told her about these evenings; he must have put her on the mailing list. She slipped the invitation back into the envelope. It was funny about Barry. He just didn’t stay dead. He kept coming back in one form or another. Over and over again.
She took a quick shower and put on a quilted denim skirt with a red silk work shirt. A modern irony, that—an expensive silk work shirt. She smudged her eyelids with gray shadow, used a bit of black mascara on her lashes, then shook her hair out of the ponytail and let it fall around her face. Rick had said to wear her hair down, and it had been years since she’d done that. Her hair, fine and slightly curly, hung down well below her shoulder blades. Too long. Her face looked unexpectedly soft and vulnerable in the mirror. She turned away. No good. She couldn’t walk out looking that unprotected, no matter what Rick liked. She would compromise. She brushed her hair, parted in the middle, and pulled it over on one side, banding it under her left earlobe. Okay, so now she looked a little like Emily Dickinson. What the hell. It was quarter to five and she’d better move a little faster. Some Ombre Rose behind the lobes and on the wrists, and finito.
She straightened up the bedroom, putting things away, closing the Venetian blinds to the departing light. On the chest of drawers she saw the small white plastic packet with YORK HOSPITAL written across it in blue that the emergency-room doctor had given her. She emptied the contents into her palm. Four aspirin look-alikes, with codeine.
She dropped the pills in the toilet bowl, flushed, and looked again at the little packet in her hand. Then she froze. The plastic bags of pills and drugs she and Smith had found in Barry’s attaché case were much larger than this one, but they were identical. Those, too, had said YORK HOSPITAL. She felt a pinch of fear, as if someone had just walked over her grave. Was the medical cabinet the key opened at York Hospital?
Okay, that’s it
, she told herself sternly.
Time out. No more deducing
. She started to throw away the packet, then changed her mind and put it in her medicine cabinet with the various colored, aging bottles of nail polish which she bought and never used, preferring to stick with conservative translucents.
In the dining room she rolled up the exercise mat and took the towel from the barre where she’d left it and put it in the washing machine in the kitchen. She opened the rest of the mail quickly, discarding everything but a bill from Con Ed, which was insanely high for someone who lived alone and didn’t cook much, and the networking invitation to the Caravanserie. She’d think about it for Monday. Maybe there would be brokers.... She took the invitation out of the envelope again.
Six dollars and a business card and this invitation
... She put it back in the envelope, and for the first time noticed the emblem on the back flap: a silhouetted palm tree. She’d seen that before, somewhere. Anyway, it looked familiar. She was having recurrent déjà vu. She shook her head thoughtfully, as she put
Business Week
and the Sonoma catalog in the basket in her foyer, and dropped the invitation on her desk in the living room. She gathered up the newspapers and piled them neatly on the floor of the foyer.
She looked for her Burberry in the hall closet, couldn’t find it, and made a quick tour of the apartment. That was funny. Then she flashed back and saw herself rolling it up and putting it under Sugar Joe’s head last night, only she hadn’t known it was Sugar Joe. All that long white hair. She was glad she had done it. She put on her denim jacket and opened the outside door, hesitated, went back and turned on her answering machine.
God, it was taking her a long time to get out of the apartment. Almost as if she didn’t really want to go. But why the hell wouldn’t she want to go? She liked Rick. He was nice. He liked her. She loved
Notorious
. It was her favorite Hitchcock movie. She closed the door firmly this time and turned the key in the lock.
No doubt about it, something was troubling her. A lot of things were troubling her. Inconceivably, she was involved with three, possibly four murders. Her partner, Xenia Smith, was behaving strangely. Her lawyer, Leon Ostrow, had done something unethical— She pressed the elevator button. And Leon and Xenia had suddenly gotten very close. Or had they always been close? She didn’t think so. And on top of everything else, she was having those peculiar dreams.
And what about Silvestri, the first man she’d been strongly attracted to in a long time. Smith seemed to have ensnared him. And Smith didn’t even want him.
And she, Wetzon, was on her way to meet another man—a handsome doctor, who obviously liked her, who was a good lover, so why was she not zipping right down to the Regency, thrilled to be spending time with him again?
