The Renewable Virgin (14 page)

But then he hadn't been there in Ohio when she first learned about
Lord Look-on
. I knew she could do it, and I understood why. But Ivan Malecki agreed with the Captain; both men were uneasy about the arrest. And with reason.

There was only one positive eyewitness in that small studio audience, a loud-voiced man who kept insisting that he'd seen Fiona Benedict firing a gun at the stage area. Unfortunately, there were half a dozen other people who sort of thought it was a small man or maybe a teenaged boy, they weren't sure. The man who'd fingered Dr. Benedict was the one positive one, but there was only one of him and six of the other kind.

Fiona Benedict was a lousy shot. She'd emptied the gun, executing a lighting instrument and wounding a camera but missing all the people. I wondered if she'd ever fired a pistol before. The gun itself was no help. It was not registered in New York; it was either purchased elsewhere or acquired illegally here. There were no fingerprints, but then there almost never are. Guns don't take fingerprints at all well, despite what the movies and TV say.

The arresting officer had made a really dumb mistake of the sort that occurs more frequently than we like to admit. Whether a suspect has fired a gun or not is determined by performing a test for powder and/or primer residue on the hand
within two hours
of the shooting. After a couple of hours, the residue is absorbed naturally into the skin. And before that, it can be washed off with plain old soap and water. The most reliable method of testing is atomic absorption spectrophotometry or by using scanning electron micrographs linked to an x-ray analyzer. But ordinary precinct stations don't have that kind of fancy equipment; and what with the delay caused by checking everybody in the TV audience, they were getting awfully close to the two-hour limit for testing.

So rather than risk passing that time limit by moving Fiona Benedict to a crime lab, the police decided to perform the nitric acid test for primer residue only, right there in the precinct station. And that's where the dumb mistake came in—not in procedure, which was routine. The nitric acid test reveals the presence of barium nitrate and antimony sulfide and a few other chemicals present in the primer, a residue of which is left on the thumb web and the back of the hand when a gun is fired. But the arresting officer neglected to tell the people performing the test that the weapon in question was a .22 caliber pistol—an evidence-destroying oversight, as it turned out.
Because the nitric acid test doesn't work on .22 caliber residue
. The .22 primer doesn't contain any barium or antimony.

So the nitric acid test was performed and proved negative, Fiona Benedict washed her hands with soap and water, and everyone started wondering if they'd arrested the wrong person. By the time they figured out what had happened, the one piece of hard evidence they might have got had already gone floating down the drain of a washbasin in the precinct station house. If they'd taken her to the lab straight off, there'd have been at least a chance of getting something.

But Fiona Benedict was the only one in the studio audience with a grudge against Richard Ormsby, and the police believed the one insistent witness who claimed Dr. Benedict was the lady with the gun. It was a none-too-sturdy case, but it
was
a case. The DA's office decided to prosecute.

Since the intended victim was a celebrity, the story of the attempted shooting was picked up by the wire services and also broadcast by all three networks. Two of the networks also included the news that Richard Ormsby's attacker was the mother of a victim of an unsolved murder. And one of them aired a hastily scheduled symposium called
What's Happening to America?
—in which the participants all argued about the changes taking place in this country that could lead even civilized people such as college professors to try solving their problems with violence.

All that coverage meant Washburn, Ohio, now knew its quiet and erudite Crimean War specialist was in fact a dangerous woman capable of pointing a loaded gun at someone and pulling the trigger. They also knew that Rudy Benedict had not died by accident, as his mother had led them to believe. Fiona Benedict's carefully constructed safe world had collapsed around her, just as earlier Rudy's had collapsed around him. Even as Rudy's father's had, too, I suppose. You could almost think the Benedicts were cursed—that family certainly seemed marked for tragedy. The father a suicide, the son a murder victim, the mother a murderer—a failed murderer, true, but there was murder in her heart. Fiona Benedict had stood at the back of that studio and fired her pistol over the heads of the seated audience, endangering all those people, in an attempt to destroy another person's life. She was guilty as hell.

She was also sick—she hadn't been eating or sleeping and what with the nervous strain and all she was on the verge of collapse. When she was arrested she'd made no statement to the police, had said nothing whatsoever, she hadn't even told anyone her name. She'd offered identification when asked for it, but she just hadn't talked at all—much to the delight of her high-powered lawyer who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. But the woman was declining visibly. All the fight had gone out of her.

So, once again, I called her friends the Morrisseys.

Drew Morrissey's shock and disbelief were audible all the way from Ohio. ‘I couldn't believe it when I heard it on the news,' he said. ‘I still don't believe it. There must be some mistake.'

‘There's no mistake. She was there and she tried to kill Richard Ormsby. We have evidence.'

‘“We”?'

‘Dr. Morrissey, I'm afraid I deceived you. I'm a police detective, and I was in Washburn on police business. Dr. Benedict didn't want you to know.' There was a silence. ‘Dr. Morrissey?'

‘Yes, I'm here. Just one new revelation after another, I'm not too … well, I'm stunned.'

‘Yes, of course you are. Look, the reason I called is that Dr. Benedict isn't in very good shape, frankly. She's deteriorating physically, and her morale is shot to hell. She's all alone here. The presence of a couple of friends would help, I'm sure of it.'

‘Well, ah, that might prove difficult. Ah, I have meetings scheduled all next week, you see, and—'

‘I'll be there tomorrow morning,' Roberta Morrissey said on the extension.

I went to the detention cells on Sixty-seventh Street where Fiona Benedict was being held, to let her know Roberta was coming. I had to wait a few minutes as she was talking to her lawyer. When he came bustling out, I heard her call him Howard; Howard looked cheerful. He probably had a good chance of winning this one.

I sat down opposite her at the table in the interview room. ‘Hello, Marian,' she said sadly. ‘Howard says I'm not to talk to you. He's my lawyer.'

I nodded. ‘I saw him leave. What's his last name?'

She dropped her forehead into one hand and laughed shortly. ‘I don't know.'

It turned out that Howard the Nameless was a gift from Kelly Ingram—who herself had not been in to see Dr. Benedict. ‘She's involved with something right now,' I said, thinking of Ted Cameron.

‘Good,' she said with something of her old asperity. ‘I hope she stays that way.' Here she was in jail for having tried to kill a man and she still disapproved of Kelly Ingram. But she would have said the two things didn't have anything to do with each other, and perhaps they didn't. I told her Roberta Morrissey was coming to New York and watched her look of astonishment turn into one of gratitude.

‘I'm surprised she's still willing to acknowledge me as a friend,' she said. ‘But then friends are the ones who come when you need them, aren't they?'

I didn't mention Drew Morrissey's suddenly remembered busy schedule or his continued presence in Ohio. That would occur to her soon enough.

An answer came to a request for information I'd put in with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I'd asked for a disclosure of all listed owners of Nathan Pinking's production company and Leonard Zoff's theatrical agency. Those two men had told me directly conflicting stories and I wanted to know which (if either) was telling the truth.

Leonard Zoff was. Both he and Pinking owned forty-nine percent of the other's business, just as Zoff had said. So Nathan Pinking had lied, and he must have done so knowing full well he'd be found out. The itinerary Mimsy had sent me said Pinking would be out of town until the end of the week, so I'd have to wait to confront him with it.

But at last Captain Michaels was interested. ‘A power struggle, a potential take-over?' he mused. ‘What's Benedict's connection? Did he learn something he wasn't supposed to know? You may be on to something there, Larch. Keep on it.'

I intended to.

CHAPTER 9

KELLY INGRAM

Ted Cameron was being blackmailed, I was sure of it.

I was staying with him at his estate in Tuxedo Park until it was time for me to go to California to start work on a TV movie I was scheduled to do. Ted played hooky as often as he could, bless him, but he did have to drive into Manhattan now and then to take care of business. I always went along—hah, I guess I did at that. I just wanted him with me all the time but if that couldn't be, then I wanted me with him, if you see the difference. Truth was, I couldn't get enough of him. I was a Ted Cameron junkie.

We eventually passed our hiding-from-the-world phase and started going places—a show and late supper, usually. Ted was just bored by dancing, a shock I was still recovering from. We went to see Abigail James's new play—talk, talk, talk; I'm afraid I drifted off.

But you see, that's all we had—in time, I mean. We'd gotten just that far when this other business took over. Three things made me think Ted was being blackmailed.

Once I'd gone to my apartment to take care of some things while Ted went to a meeting. He came in about the middle of the afternoon, and he was seething with anger. But he didn't want me to know! I felt a sinking feeling when he tried to pretend he wasn't angry, tried to make me think everything was fine. Now I'm not one of those who believe the truth shall
always
make you free, I think everybody ought to have a secret or two. But it's still a blow when a man you're
that
close to deliberately lies to you for the first time—no matter what his motives are. And it didn't make much sense anyway, because what he told me sounded like good news at first.

‘You're going to Barbados in October,' he said. ‘Nathan Pinking got a commitment from the network for an additional three original episodes of
LeFever
.'

‘Additional?' I said. ‘You mean plus, also, too? In addition to the regular twenty already in the can?'

‘That's right. Plus, also, too.'

‘And did you say
Barbados?'

He smiled naturally for the first time since he'd come in. ‘Thought you'd like that. The scheduling is a bit close, but the three episodes will be inserted towards the end of the season.'

‘And the network went for it?'

‘Sure, why not? A producer goes in with a sponsor already in his pocket, the network isn't going to say no.' He must have heard the bitter tone of his own voice, because he made a conscious attempt to speak more lightly. ‘I decided it would be a good opportunity to show our new line of swimwear—as modeled on the show by none other than Kelly Ingram and Nick Quinlan.'

I didn't believe it; he sounded to me like a man backed into a corner. ‘Ted? Why are you really doing this?'

His eyes slid away from me and turned invisible. ‘I told you, to show our new line of swimwear.'

So he wasn't ready to talk to me about it. He considered himself in Nathan Pinking's pocket, did he—how had that come about? And he didn't want to talk about it. All right, I could live with that, for a while. I put my arms around his waist and hugged hard enough to make him grunt. ‘You're coming to Barbados too, aren't you?'

‘I have to,' he said with mock resignation. ‘Somebody has to make sure Nick Quinlan doesn't put his trunks on backwards.'

That was the first thing. The second thing was a snatch of conversation I overheard in Tuxedo Park.

I'd just opened a door to go out on the patio when I heard a man out there saying, ‘We can't do it, Ted! Why do you keep insisting? That damned show would take our entire advertising budget. What are we supposed to do, forget about newspapers, magazines—'

‘Maybe I can get Lorelei Cosmetics to share the cost in exchange for a few spots,' Ted said worriedly. ‘If I can't, then you'll just have to use your whole budget.'

‘For a hick sitcom that's never once made the Nielsen top twenty? That's crazy!
Why
, Ted?'

Then they both became aware of me and one of those
horrible
silences developed that go on and on and on and you think are never going to end. For the very first time, I felt like an intruder in Ted's world and I didn't like the feeling at all. The other man turned out to be Roger Cameron, Ted's cousin and the president of Watercraft, Inc., one of Cameron Enterprises' ancillary companies, that's the term Ted used. I was beginning to feel a bit ancillary myself.

The third thing was more roundabout. Ted was thinking out loud, making plans. ‘I should be able to take a few weeks off before long—we can go to Scotland. Would you like to go to Scotland?' He laughed, happy at the thought of getting away for a while. ‘They say July and August are the best months for spotting the Loch Ness Monster. We can go to Inverness and join the monster-hunt.'

‘If we can schedule around my television movie,' I reminded him.

He looked surprised. ‘Time for that already? I thought it was later. How long will it take?'

I smiled. ‘A Big Production like this one? Nathan has scheduled three whole weeks.' Three weeks to make a movie. And it was important to me because it wasn't
just
a movie—it was also a pilot. ‘It can mean my own series, remember.'