Kiss of Death

by Linda Palmer

  Chapter 2

  THE GLOBAL BROADCASTING Network building, where Tommy and I have our office and where Love of My Life is taped Monday through Friday, is located on Central Park West between Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth streets in New York City, not far from one of our competitors, the American Broadcasting Company. As always during weekdays, there was a moderate amount of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk, but vehicle traffic was heavy. When I have time, and Manhattan is not being pounded with rain or snow, I like to walk, but even though it was a fine day in mid-May, I didn’t have time to hike the five miles to my destination. I hailed an empty cab headed south, climbed in, and gave the driver an address on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village.

  During the ride downtown, I thought about the question Tommy had asked, whether I was going to meet Homicide Detective Matt Phoenix or writer Chet Thompson who was also a psychologist whose specialty was criminal behavior. I’d met both of them seven months ago as a result of the murder of Damon Radford, who was then the network’s head of Daytime. Many people detested Damon the Demon, and there were very few genuine mourners at his funeral, but I shot to the top of the long suspect list when I discovered—to my shock—that he had left me eight million dollars in his will. There was no way I could explain satisfactorily why a man I had continually rebuffed and insulted would leave me so much as a bus token, let alone what my friend Nancy Cummings called “F-you money.”

  The first thing I did was repay Nancy what she had loaned me for the down payment on my third-floor co-op in the Dakota. Next, I paid off the mortgage so I would actually own the first real home I’d ever had. Now, this afternoon, I intended to put to use some more of my unexpected inheritance.

  Familiar sights of Manhattan flashed by the taxi’s windows, but they barely registered. What I was about to do filled my stomach with the fluttering of nervous anticipation. And dread. By no means was I sure I was doing the right thing. A voice inside my head urged me to tell the cab driver to turn around and take me back to the office. But that was what I called “the voice of good sense,” and I had never listened to it.

  ROBERT NOVELLO PRIVATE Investigations is located on the ground floor of a nineteenth-century, four-story apartment building on MacDougal Street. It’s half a block from the house in which Louisa May Alcott created Little Women, and a short walk to the club where Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Raven.” I knew those sites, and others in what I called “Literary Old New York,” because I’d explored them eagerly when I first came to the city as an eighteen-year-old freshman at Columbia.

  I pressed the bell labeled “Novello, 1B.” After identifying myself, and being buzzed in, I hurried down the hallway.

  Bobby stood in his doorway, and greeted me with an exaggerated Groucho Marx leer. “Heh, heh, heh—come into my lair, young woman.”

  I gave his extended hand a friendly squeeze. Although his grip was gentle, his arms and shoulders were corded with muscles. His hands were strong—toughened through years of martial arts. I’d seen Bobby in an exhibition a few weeks ago, when he split a cement block in half with a single blow from one of those hands.

  With his lively hazel eyes and the rose-gold hair that cascaded over a high forehead to curl just above his eyebrows, Bobby was one of the best-looking men I knew. But his handsome face was not what most people noticed first. Bobby is a Little Person, a dwarf standing four feet tall. His torso is as broad as that of a man of so-called normal height, but his legs are abnormally short.

  I liked coming downtown to Bobby’s home office. No matter what problem was worrying me, I always smiled with pleasure at the sight of Bobby’s beloved exotic birds in their huge, antique cages. The musical trills and cheeps of what poet James Thomson called these “merry minstrels of the morn” seemed to rise in greeting to me.

  Stepping aside to let me enter, he said in his melodic tenor, “When are you going to ditch those other guys and fall for me?”

  “There’s an insurmountable obstacle, Bobby.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I have a … c-a-t.”

  Bobby performed the comic flinch he does at any mention of what he refers to as “the c word.”

  I saluted Bobby’s feathered friends. “Hi, guys.” A flash of brilliant red caught my attention. It was mostly crimson, but with touches of yellow and blue: a magnificent macaw, uncaged, and shifting from one foot to the other on a T-bar stand behind Bobby’s desk.

  “Well, there’s a new face,” I said. As though in response, the macaw squawked at me.

  “I named him Archie, in honor of Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin.”

  Gesturing for me to sit in his red leather client’s chair, Bobby stepped on an antique footstool and from there settled into the wing chair behind his desk. With the lemon yellow couch to my left, and the red leather chair positioned next to a table that was perfect for writing a check, Bobby had replicated the home office of Nero Wolfe in those Rex Stout mystery novels. And, like Wolfe for his clients, Bobby had done excellent work for me when I’d hired him previously.

  Watching me with studied casualness, Bobby asked, “What can I do for you this time, pretty lady?”

  “I want you to find a missing child,” I said. “A girl. I don’t care how much you have to spend.”

  Bobby grinned. “Music to my ears, but I’m on a case that’s going to take another two or three weeks to wrap up. Will that time frame be a problem for you?”

  I was almost relieved. “No. Finish what you’re doing.”

  “Good.” Bobby took a fresh notebook from the top drawer, opened it to the first page, and selected a pen from the collection standing in the red and white Love of My Life coffee mug I had given him a few months earlier, when I discovered he was a fan of our show. Pen in hand, Bobby asked, “What’s the child’s date of birth?”

  “I don’t know precisely.”

  Bobby shrugged. “No big deal. Where was she born?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s her name?

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  Bobby laid the pen across the blank page in his notebook, planted his elbows on the desk, leaned forward, and asked, “Did you have a baby and give it up for adoption and now you want to find her?”

  “No, that’s not it.” Until this moment, I hadn’t been entirely sure I’d be able to tell Bobby the truth. Making the appointment to see him was a big first step. Now I was about to take a bigger one. “The child is me. I want you to find out who I am.”

  Chapter 3

  A SUDDEN WAVE of nausea hit me. My throat closed up. I felt the bitter taste of bile rise into my throat and fought it back down.

  Bobby whistled softly. “Wow. Even you people who look like you’ve got perfect lives can be carrying around some heavy baggage.” I saw sympathy in his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

  I took a calming breath and plunged. “I don’t know where I was born, who or what my parents were, or exactly how old I am. Twenty-four years ago I was found on a road outside a place called Downsville, West Virginia. A doctor there said I was approximately six years old.”

  “Were you alone when you were found?”

  “I was in the back of a van …”

  The image of a face I’d spent years trying to forget suddenly flashed into my mind, and a new wave of nausea struck.

  Something must have shown in my face because Bobby leaned forward, frowning in concern. “Morgan, are you okay?”

  The queasiness passed, replaced by the cold steel of resolve. Just for a moment I had been that helpless child. Never again.

  “I’m not helpless anymore,” I said aloud. My voice sounded hard, but I needed to be hard if I was going to go through with my plan.

  Bobby looked startled by my non sequitur, but he let me continue at my own pace, in my own way. With effort, I softened my voice to what I hoped was its normal tone. “Before we go into … that … I want to tell you about the person who found me.”

  Recalling one of my few happy childhood memories, I was ab
le to smile. “He smelled like coffee,” I said. “Maybe that’s why I like coffee so much. His hair was gray, he wore glasses, and his face was round and red. His body was round, too, like a Santa Claus. He had a big gray mustache—really big, out to the sides and down over his top lip. His uniform shirt was so tight I thought the middle button was going to pop off. I kept staring at that button, but somehow it held.”

  “You said ‘uniform.’ Was he a cop?”

  “A sheriff. Sheriff Maysfield.”

  “First name?”

  “I don’t remember. There’s a lot I don’t remember about … back then.”

  “Take it slow. Tell me what you can.”

  I made myself dredge up everything I could remember about my time as a prisoner, and about the monster in the van …

  WHEN I FINISHED, I felt limp, exhausted.

  Bobby’s hands were balled into fists; his knuckles were white. “If I’d been your husband, I’d have wanted to find the creep and kill him.”

  I shook my head. “He never knew. I met Ian Tyler near the end of my sophomore year. He was a famous wildlife photographer who came to lecture. Instant love for both of us. We were married a week after we met, and I flew off to Africa with him. He taught me to use his cameras, so I could work with him. It was wonderful. During almost six years together, he told me practically his whole life story. The few questions he asked about me, I managed to deflect. I guess he thought an inexperienced girl of nineteen wouldn’t have anything interesting to tell.”

  “He was wrong,” Bobby said wryly.

  “Don’t think badly of him, please. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, so I was careful not to volunteer anything that would have invited questions.”

  “I have a question about going to Africa: How did you get a passport? You’d have needed a birth certificate.”

  “When they couldn’t find anyone who was looking for me, the sheriff went to a judge who created a birth certificate. He said it was something they did for ‘foundlings.’ I used it to get a passport as soon as I came to New York. One of my dreams was to travel, and I wanted to be ready.”

  Bobby nodded thoughtfully. “When you hired me the first time, I did a little research on you. I know you’re a widow—your husband died in Kenya. A car accident.”

  “Our Land Rover blew a tire, and we went crashing down into a dry riverbed full of rocks. Ian was killed. I escaped with just a broken wrist, and managed to make my way to a game warden’s station …” Determined not to let that old cloak of sadness settle over me, I shook it off. “While I was out of the country with Ian, I’d kept in touch by e-mail with my best friend, Nancy Cummings. You’ve met Nancy, haven’t you?”

  Bobby nodded. “The lawyer who looks like a swimsuit model.”

  More than one man had described Nancy in similar terms. If she heard that, I knew it would make her cringe. I ignored it and went on. “I told Nancy I didn’t want to stay in Africa without Ian. We’d been living his life, but all of a sudden I had to make a life of my own. She persuaded me to come back to New York and stay with her until I figured out what to do. With less than two years of college, and only the usual student part-time jobs, I didn’t even know where to begin.”

  Amused, Bobby said, “You certainly found yourself a challenging new career.”

  “Pure luck. Nancy saw an article in TV Guide that said Global Broadcasting was looking for people to train as Daytime drama writers. They wanted what they called ‘fresh voices.’ Novelists or journalists or playwrights were invited to send in writing samples. Nancy talked me into submitting a play I’d written when I was a theater major. She’d kept a copy of it.”

  Afraid this story was getting to be as long as Gone With the Wind, I fast-forwarded to the end. “They liked the dialogue. The head writer of Love of My Life hired me to work with him.”

  Bobby was about to ask a question when my cell phone rang. The I.D. on the face told me the call was from my assistant, Betty Kraft.

  “I’m sorry. I have to answer this, but I’ll make it quick.”

  “Take your time.” He settled back to gaze at his birds.

  “Hi, Betty. Is there a problem?”

  “Not at the moment,” she said in her brisk, competent voice. “Jay Garwood is the actor who played Evan Duran. I Googled him. Not much information. No website. No acting credits since he was on our show.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “AFTRA gave me the name of his old agent. Garwood was dropped from the client list, but the agent said he ran into him a couple of months ago, working as a bartender at Sauce for the Goose down on West Fourth, just above Seventh Avenue South. I checked—he’s on days this week.”

  “Great work, Betty. Thanks. Now, would you call Archives and get us copies of his last few episodes?”

  “They’re already on your desk.”

  Once more, Betty had anticipated me. Tommy, who adored her—and needed the mothering she gave him—liked to say that beneath her steel-gray hair she had a steel-trap mind. “You’re awesome,” I told her. “What would we ever do without you?”

  I heard Betty’s dry chuckle. “Pray you never have to find out. Anything else?”

  “You’ll probably think of it before I do,” I said with an appreciative laugh.

  When I disconnected, Bobby asked, “Who else have you told about … your situation?”

  “No one. Not even Nancy. All she knows is that I don’t have any family, and that I lived in a Catholic boarding school until I won the scholarship that took me to Columbia. Columbia’s where Nancy and I met.”

  “You remember the name of the town, and the sheriff,” Bobby said. “Did you ever make any inquiries yourself?”

  “No, for the same reason lawyers shouldn’t represent themselves, because they’re emotionally involved. I’ve tried to forget about that time, but I can’t. I need answers.”

  “Last year I found a client’s birth mother for him, but he didn’t like what he learned. She wasn’t anything like his fantasy,” Bobby said. “Sometimes it’s better to leave things alone. You’ve got a great job, and friends—a good life now.”

  Vehement, I shook my head. “I have to find out where I came from, and how I ended up in that van … I don’t know any more about myself than anybody knows about a collarless animal they find and take home. Some nights I’ve looked at Magic and wondered what happened to his mother. Did he have any brothers or sisters? If he did, what happened to them? Where was he before Matt found him on the street, hungry and homeless? Not knowing … I think that may be why I fell in love with a man twice my age and abandoned my own dreams, why I went halfway around the globe with Ian, to follow his. Maybe it’s why both Matt and Chet accuse me of not letting them really get to know me. When enough people say the same thing, it’s time to listen.”

  Bobby was watching me carefully. “I get it. Okay, I admit you’ve got a good reason for this. Now tell me: What’s the rest of the job?”

  Caught. “You’re right. There is a little more.” I fought to keep my voice even, my manner cool. “The person who kept me in the van—I want to know whatever you can find out about him.”

  Bobby picked up his pen again. “Name?”

  “All I know is … he made me call him ‘Daddy.’” I almost gagged, but I controlled the reflex, and managed to force terrible visions back into the dark place where they lived.

  I gripped the arms of Bobby’s red leather client’s chair. “Look, in addition to your own fee and expenses, I’m authorizing you to spend whatever you need to get information. I don’t care what it costs.”

  “Money’s a useful investigative tool,” Bobby said. “It tends to loosen tongues. Suppose I find out what you want to know. Then what?”

  “Your job’s over.”

  “But what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But that was only partially true.

  Bobby must be a good poker player; I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  Fi
nally, he said, “Okay. Let’s start with part one of the job and see where it takes us.” He indicated the shoulder bag beside my chair. “Do you have a hairbrush in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see it.”

  I took my emergency hair-taming tool out and handed it across the desk.

  “You’ve got a good, healthy mane,” he said. Carefully, he removed several strands from the bristles. “This is what I need—some hair that includes the roots.”

  “You’re going to have it tested to get my DNA profile.”

  “If I turn up a potential blood relative for you, we’ll be ready to compare so we can know for sure.”

  Bobby wrapped the strands around one index finger and placed them in a manila envelope he took from his desk. It was the same kind of envelope I’d seen Matt Phoenix and his partner, G. G. Flynn, use when they gathered evidence at a crime scene. An apt analogy, I supposed; my childhood was a crime scene.

  Bobby wrote something on the flap and sealed the envelope. He put his notebook away and climbed down from his chair. “You need nourishment. I’ll make us some lunch.”

  I managed a smile. “You can cook? Or am I being foolishly optimistic?”

  “I make omelets,” he said with pride. He started toward his kitchen. As I got up to follow, he added casually, “This lady I’m seeing taught me how.”

  Lady? I realized Bobby had been keeping a secret of his own!

  Chapter 4

  I FOLLOWED BOBBY into his compact yellow and white kitchen. Lined up against the back wall were a refrigerator, gas stove, stainless steel double sink, and a ceramic tile counter on which rested a microwave oven, toaster, juice-maker, TV set, and metal canisters labeled, with whimsical artistic flourishes, “For the Birds.” Everything was immaculate.

  A sudden breeze and the sound of flapping startled me, until I realized Archie had followed us into the kitchen. He flew directly to a T-bar perch in the corner of the window that faced onto Bobby’s small back garden.