Kiss of Death

by Linda Palmer

  “Where’s she’s concerned, I’ll be the Invisible Man,” Bobby said facetiously.

  “When I get what I can out of the Garwood woman, I’ll join your team, Bobby,” Walter said.

  “What can I do?” Nancy asked.

  “Go over all the bank and investment records we dig up,” Wayne said. “With your corporate law and finance expertise, you might spot something significant—a clue, an anomaly—that the rest of us would miss.”

  We all agreed that we’d share everything we found out with each other, but with no one who wasn’t at this table.

  I held up an index finger. “Except we’ll give what we learn to the police, when we’ve discovered who the real killer is.”

  “When you find out who it is. I like your optimism,” Nancy said. She tried to smile, but the attempt wasn’t successful. At that moment, our eyes met, and I saw how terrified she was about what would happen to her if we failed.

  Chapter 28

  BOBBY, NANCY, AND Wayne hadn’t been gone for more than a few minutes when the telephone rang.

  “Your guests got into a cab,” Matt said.

  “Did you just drive up, or are you watching my house?”

  “I’m not spying on you. I was on my way home, but then I suddenly found my car turning onto Seventy-second Street.”

  “All by itself?”

  “My subconscious is smarter than I am,” Matt said.

  In man-speak, this was an apology for how he’d acted Wednesday night. “Would you like to come up for coffee?” I asked.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had a long day and want to hit the sack, but will you come down for a few minutes?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Across the street. I’ll meet you at your entrance.”

  On my way out, I stopped at the door to Walter’s room. I used to think of it as the den; how quickly it had become Walter’s room.

  “I’m going downstairs to talk to Matt for a little while,” I said.

  “Glad he came to his senses,” Walter said. “I reckon you’ll be safe, so I won’t wait up.”

  Matt was standing at the arched entrance to the courtyard.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Without a word, he took my hand and led me a few yards west on Seventy-second. It was a dark night, but in the spill from a streetlight farther down the block, I saw the outline of his Crown Victoria, and recognized the communications aerial rising from the trunk.

  To my surprise, it was the rear passenger door he opened instead of the front.

  “Get in,” he said.

  I did, and he followed me inside. No sooner had he closed the door than he took me into his arms and kissed me. My own arms went around his neck, welcoming the feel of his chest pressed against mine. We kissed until we were breathless, then gently pulled a few inches apart.

  “I missed you,” he whispered. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since …” He paused.

  I finished the sentence for him. “Since Boston.”

  “Boston …” His voice was soft. “I never thought just hearing the name of a city would make me hot.”

  I pulled a few inches farther away. “So it’s only sex?”

  “What we had in that room wasn’t just sex, and you know it.”

  I did, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Instead, I asked, “Have you changed your mind about that money I inherited?”

  Matt inclined his head an inch or two. It wasn’t an acquiescing nod, but it was something nearby. “I still wish there wasn’t such a financial disparity between us,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking that maybe the thing to do is to keep it completely separate from us. Never talk about it.”

  “You mean you want to pretend the money doesn’t exist? I can do that. It’s not as though I’ve ever brought it up.”

  “No, you haven’t. I’m the one who made it a problem.”

  “We could start over—forget about old issues.” I smiled at him mischievously. “I’m sure we can find new subjects to fight about.”

  “You’d make a joke if somebody was tying you to a post in front of a firing squad.”

  “I hope I never find out if that’s true.”

  Matt leaned over to kiss me lightly on the tip of my nose, then sat up straight again. “Right now, with your best friend accused of murder, we can’t see each other, but when this situation is resolved—”

  “When Nancy is cleared!”

  “For your sake, I hope that’s what’s going to happen. What I’m trying to say is that when this situation is over, I want us to see each other.”

  Man-speak again. “See each other? What kind of see each other?”

  “Jeez, you’re difficult,” he said, but there was warmth in his voice. “I want us to see each other … seriously. How do you feel about that?”

  “I like the idea.”

  Matt took me in his arms again. Our lips met in the darkness.

  After a few minutes, he said, “That’s about as much as I can stand without carrying you off to my cave.” He opened the door and helped me out of the car.

  We held hands as he walked with me back to the Dakota’s entrance. “If G. G. and I find out anything that could help Nancy, I’ll let you know,” Matt said.

  “Thank you.”

  He squeezed my fingers lightly. “Stay out of trouble.”

  We whispered our good nights, and I passed beneath the archway into the center courtyard. As I crossed the few yards to my section of the building, I ran the tip of my index finger lightly over my lips, recalling how sweet was the feeling of Matt’s mouth on mine.

  I wondered if Matt would still want to see me “seriously” if he knew that at some point in the near future I was planning to slip away from New York for a couple of days, with a convincing cover story that would explain my absence.

  How would he react if he knew what I intended to do when I reached Belle Valley, Ohio?

  Chapter 29

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCK Saturday morning I put on a pair of jeans, an old pair of desert boots, and a cotton shirt. By stashing keys and cash in the pockets of my jeans and clipping the cell phone to my belt, I wouldn’t have to carry a handbag. I was dressed for riding, in case it was necessary for me to get on a horse while I was sleuthing.

  I didn’t have riding boots, but my anklebone-high desert boots had a heel that was three-quarters of an inch high—just enough for the stirrups. Although I’d ridden horses a couple of dozen times during my almost six years in Kenya, the only talent I can claim is an ability to stay in the saddle. Ian, who was a superb rider, said he admired my grit, but he never praised my horseback-riding form.

  Walter and Magic were already active in the kitchen. Walter was heating the grill and mixing pancake batter, and Magic was crunching on a bowl of Natural Balance crunchies.

  “Don’t make pancakes for me this morning,” I said. “I’m off to the riding stable to see if I can catch Didi alone.”

  “Did you find out she’ll be there?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a guess. There’s no way I can ask when she’s scheduled to ride. Arnold’s probably told the woman who owns the place to let him know if anybody inquires about Didi, so I’ll plant myself in the coffee shop across the street and watch for her. If she does come, I’ll wait a few minutes, then go across to the stable to ask about taking riding lessons.”

  “And you’ll be so surprised to see Didi,” said Walter with a sly grin.

  “You got it.”

  “Suppose she doesn’t come?”

  “If I’m not home by six, don’t include me in what you make for dinner. To hang on to a table by the window, by the end of the day I’ll have ordered practically the whole menu, one thing at a time.”

  Walter gestured to a tan cloth hat on the table, folded flat. It had a brim and was the kind of hat that fishermen wore. In the green camouflage version, game wardens in East Africa wore them to keep the scorching sun out of their eyes while they scanned the horizon for signs of poachers.

>   “What about the hat?” I asked.

  “Tuck your hair up under it an’ you got a handy little disguise. Obscures your face without calling attention.”

  I smiled with appreciation and tucked the hat into my belt. “Thanks.”

  “Good hunting,” Walter said. “After breakfast, I’m going to start looking for that Garwood fella’s ex-wife. The neighborhood library has current telephone books for all the boroughs, and the phone company office has a collection of old books. You said he had a child, so the mom probably kept her married name.”

  “Unless she married again.”

  “No plan is perfect,” Walter said. “If we can’t find her on one road, we’ll try another.” He gave the pancake batter a final turn in the mixing bowl. Dropping spoonfuls carefully onto the sizzling griddle, he added, “I have a couple more ideas.”

  I said I’d see him later, gave Magic a gentle head rub, and set off for Didi’s favorite New York City stable.

  THE WOODBURN ACADEMY, on Amsterdam Avenue near West Eighty-sixth Street, opened its wide pale yellow barn doors to customers at eight A.M. Fifteen minutes earlier, I’d claimed a seat by the front window of the Amsterdam Diner and ordered coffee and scrambled eggs. A dozen people were already having breakfast. Five of them sat at the counter that ran along the back wall separating the open kitchen from the eating area. The other patrons, singly and in pairs, occupied the dark orange fake leather booths.

  A few minutes before eight, two giggling preteen blonde girls accompanied by a young Hispanic woman arrived. Apparently unhappy that they had to wait, they stamped around, marching in circles. I could hear the sound of their whining across the street. The girls resembled each other, but there was at least a year’s difference in their ages; they were probably sisters. They wore riding pants and boots, topped by Tshirts with writing across their undeveloped chests. I was too far away to read the messages.

  The woman with them was present in body, but her attitude was detached; her attention was not focused on the girls. Her body, beneath a dress that belonged on a much older woman, was firm. A sour expression marred her otherwise pretty face.

  While eating slowly, I watched this trio, idly wondering about their lives. At the same time, I kept an eye on the vehicles in the street.

  Just as the big doors opened, a taxi pulled up to the entrance and a harried-looking man got out, followed by a dark-haired girl of about ten. This girl’s riding clothes were so new I doubted they’d yet been worn near a horse. I wondered if the man was a divorced father with weekend visitations, indulging his child with expensive things. The man tried to hold the girl’s hand as they headed toward the stable, but she yanked away from him and screwed her face up into an unattractive pout. I’d tried one of those pouts, when I was about that girl’s age, but Sister Ellen Elizabeth at the orphanage-like boarding school had asked me, “What will you do if your face freezes in that expression, and you have to go around looking like that for the rest of your life?” I never did it again.

  By 9:30 I’d had two more cups of coffee, a glass of orange juice, and half an English muffin. I’d given up watching the foot traffic on Amsterdam and concentrated on the passing cars. In particular, I was interested in a silver Lincoln Park Avenue. Nancy had told me that Arnold’s car was a silver Lincoln Park Avenue, but she didn’t know the license number.

  This particular Lincoln had circled the block three times, slowly. When I saw it making its second pass, I jotted down the plate number. It was DD 617, and that made me sit up straight. Having been in that city so recently, I knew that the telephone area code for Boston was 617, and “DD” could stand for Didi. The thrill of discovery made my pulse quicken.

  A man in a chauffeur’s cap was at the wheel. Wearing black-rimmed glasses, in his fifties, big shoulders. That was pretty much how Nancy had described Arnold’s chauffeur, Max. Because the rear windows were tinted, I couldn’t see if Max had a passenger in the back, but I doubted that he was driving around and around the block for his own amusement.

  The fourth time the silver Lincoln rounded the corner onto Amsterdam, it stopped in front of the riding academy. The chauffeur got out, opened the rear door, and extended his hand to his unseen passenger.

  Yes! I congratulated myself on a good guess as Didi emerged from the car, but I was startled at what I saw. This was a changed Didi. She was dressed for riding and carried her safety helmet, but her hair—which used to cascade down her back in thick, coffee-colored waves—had been cut to just below her ears. And it didn’t seem to have been the work of a stylist. It looked like Didi herself had hacked off her long hair. She said something briefly to Max, and headed toward the stable. The driver stood on the sidewalk, watching until she disappeared inside.

  I signaled the waitress for my check, and after leaving a large tip, I paid the bill at the cash register. The cashier gave me change for the twenty I handed her, and I stuffed it into a pocket without looking at it because I was still watching through the diner’s front window. Max-the-driver climbed back into the vehicle, eased it forward, and parked in front of a fire hydrant a few yards past the barn door entrance. I waited to see whether he was going to stay in the car or follow Didi into the riding academy.

  He stayed in the car.

  In the diner’s restroom, I took the cloth hat from under my belt, pushed my hair up beneath it, and pulled the brim down to the middle of my forehead, securing it on my head. A glance at my reflection in the restroom mirror proved that Walter had been right. This was a pretty good disguise because it made me look dull. Dull doesn’t call attention to itself.

  Ten minutes after Didi disappeared through the barn doors, I saw that Max had settled behind the steering wheel and was reading a book that he’d propped up against it.

  I left the diner and strolled down the block, away from the barn doors and the Lincoln. At the corner of Eighty-fifth and Amsterdam I crossed over to the Woodburn side of the block and ambled back up toward the stable’s entrance.

  Every parking place on Amsterdam was filled, but vehicle traffic was light, and there were only a few people walking along the street this morning. Lucky for me, the fire hydrant Max had illegally pulled up beside was a few yards beyond my destination, keeping me behind the Lincoln, with Max’s back to me.

  Because I had asked more than once to see Didi, Arnold might have described me to Max, and told him to look out for me. But if he had, he’d probably only alerted Max about my coming to their apartment building. If Arnold let Didi go riding, he must think Woodburn was a safe place for her to be alone.

  It was only a remote possibility that Max knew what I looked like, but in case he glimpsed me in his rearview mirror, I kept my head angled slightly away from the curb, letting the brim of the hat shade the top half of my face. It was so important that I talk to Didi, in case she knew something or had seen something that could help Nancy, I didn’t want to take even the slimmest chance of being thwarted.

  Max’s attention was still on his book when I reached the academy’s yellow barn doors. Standing outside and leaning against the exterior wall was the father I’d seen earlier. He was speaking heatedly into a cell phone and ignored my approach.

  As soon as I entered, I was hit with the powerful aroma of horses, but I’ve never found that smell unpleasant. Horses, like cows and elephants and antelopes, are herbivorous; their natural deposits don’t have the stench of a carnivore’s leavings.

  My eyes adjusted quickly to the difference between the electric lights inside and the brighter June sunshine on the street. In my peripheral vision, I saw Didi mounting a horse, but deliberately kept my gaze aimed away from her.

  I took off my hat, letting my hair fall free, and raised one hand to attract the attention of a lean and leathery gray-haired woman who wore a sweatshirt with a picture of a big brown horse on the front. From my visit a few months ago, I recognized her as the owner, Mrs. Woodburn. She was in the farther of the two riding rings that took up most of the space on the building’s sa
wdust-covered ground floor, working with the young girl whose father was outside on his cell. The two blonde sisters and a red-haired child were riding awkwardly, supervised by a pair of young women wearing shirts that said “Woodburn Academy.”

  As the older woman came toward me, I said, “I don’t have an appointment for a riding lesson, but I just took a chance and came in.” With my back to Didi, I couldn’t tell if she’d spotted me yet.

  Mrs. Woodburn said, “My instructors are busy right now, but one of them will be available in a few minutes. How much riding experience have you had?”

  “Not much. Consider me a beginner.”

  Behind me, I heard the slap of hooves on the sawdust floor, and the sound a horse makes when it blows air out the sides of its mouth.

  “Morgan? Is that you?” Didi steered her horse around so that I could see her. I played “surprised.”

  “Didi—hi! I came to see if I could get some lessons.” I added with a warm smile, “Actually, you inspired me. When I saw you ride, I got the urge to learn, but this is the first chance I’ve had.”

  “Sunny’s a good teacher,” Didi said, “but she’s out sick today.” She looked down at Mrs. Woodburn. “Woody, if it’s okay with you, I could show Morgan things like getting on and how to sit, and lead her in a walk.”

  The stable’s owner pursed her lips and looked dubious.

  “I’ll pay for a lesson anyway,” I said quickly, “and a riding fee. Whatever.”

  Mrs. Woodburn glanced at her watch. “I’ll have an instructor for you in fifteen more minutes, but since Didi’s practically a member of the staff, she can start you off.”

  In baseball terms, I’d made it to first.

  Chapter 30

  “THIS IS MOON Glow,” Didi said. She leaned forward to give the big brown horse an affectionate stroke on its neck, then she dismounted gracefully. “Hold his reins while I go get you a horse.”

  I took the long leather straps attached to the bridle and held them the way she had.

  “Are you sure you want to go to this trouble, Didi? I don’t want to take up your time if you’re practicing for a show.”