Chloe lowered her voice further still. “Plus she’s seven or eight years older than Swing. He liked them younger.”
Okay, by my calculation I was seven or eight years older than Victor. I wondered whether he shared his brother’s preference for younger women. Then I hated myself for wondering.
Lee swept up in a cloud of high-end perfume. The distinctive floral scent had some fancy French name I can’t recall. What I do recall is standing in Nordstrom’s fragrance department a couple of weeks earlier staring longingly at the obscenely expensive bottle after letting the saleslady spritz my wrist. Judging from the overpowering miasma that announced her arrival, Lee must have spritzed it on from head to toe.
“Victor.” She embraced him, managing not to spill a drop of the white wine in her full glass. “Isn’t it just awful? Poor Pierre. Awful business, just awful.” She looked into his eyes. “How are you holding up, dear?”
“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m glad you decided to come, Lee.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” She gave an airy wave. “How could I stay away? I choose to remember the good times. The rest of it, it’s all water under the bridge.”
Victor and Chloe responded with polite little nods that, to my eye, lacked conviction.
Victor made introductions. “Jane, this is Leonora Romano, Pierre’s former business partner.” To her he said, “My new friend Jane Delaney. Jane is a wonder. All of this is her doing.”
We shook hands, said our nice-to-meet-yous, and agreed to call each other Lee and Jane. Chloe had said Lee was trying for the Scarlett Johansson look, and I guess I could see it in the fat lips and sultry eyes. A stranger to cosmetic procedures, I could only guess at how many separate procedures and how much cold hard cash had been involved in her transformation.
I suspected Victor was wondering the same thing when he said, “You look amazing, Lee. I didn’t recognize you. Ask Chloe.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?” She struck a pose. “The new me. I consider it an investment, and so far it’s paying off in spades.”
“In what way?” he asked.
Chloe appeared uncomfortable. “Perhaps now isn’t the best time to get into this.”
“Why pussyfoot around?” Lee said. “It’ll be public knowledge soon enough.”
“Maybe,” Chloe cautioned her. “It’s not a done deal yet.”
Lee waved away the other woman’s caution. “Did you see who I was chatting up over there? Dennis Rothbart! We’re close to signing on the dotted line.”
Working a high-powered business deal at a funeral. Oh, and? Bragging about it in front of the deceased’s brother. Classy.
“It’s not done until it’s done,” Chloe said. “I don’t want you to be crushed if it falls through.”
Victor wore a frown. “How are you involved in this, Chloe?”
She tried to look him in the eye, and almost succeeded. “I’m representing Lee now.”
His features hardened fractionally, though his overall expression remained neutral. “That was fast.”
Lee did not appear to share Chloe’s embarrassment at how swiftly she’d snatched up her estranged former partner’s agent. She sipped her wine. “This is a cutthroat business, Victor. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”
“Which business are you referring to?” he asked. “Not the restaurant business.”
“Oh, please don’t be willfully naïve, dear. It’s unbecoming in a man as handsome as you. We all know to what cutthroat business I refer. Well, perhaps Jane doesn’t.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I do,” I said.
Victor pitched his voice dangerously low. “We just buried my brother today and already you’ve moved in to snap up the television show they offered him. You don’t procrastinate, I’ll say that for you.”
Her chin rose. “We both know that if I hadn’t ‘moved in’ with alacrity, someone else would have beaten me to it. Someone younger, fresher, sexier.” Hot color suffused her face under the skillfully applied makeup. “It’s no longer about who has more talent, who works harder. Do you think Julia Child could have become a TV sensation in the twenty-first century? Why do you think I went through all this?” She indicated herself, her whole self, from her sleek, highlighted hair to the pointed toes of her designer four-inch pumps. Now wine did slosh out of her glass, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Your miraculous—” he groped for the word “—metamorphosis might work for a while, but if that’s what you’re pinning your hopes on, your efforts are doomed to fail. How long do you think it will take before someone ‘younger, fresher, sexier’ comes along and displaces you?”
“Let them try.” She got in his face, quivering with vehemence. “By then the world will have seen who I am and what I can do.” She stabbed a manicured finger at her own chest. “They’ll see that I’m the best and they’ll have to pay attention! I just needed to get a foot in the door, and that was never going to happen for a fat, ugly fifty-year-old, no matter how exceptional a chef I was.”
“Guys, please…” Chloe spread her hands. “Let’s not—”
“How long has this been in the works?” Victor gestured to indicate Lee’s new look. “You must have been planning this for some time.”
“Since Hummingbird closed three years ago if you must know,” she said. “I spent the time writing a cookbook—it’s just been published—and getting the surgeries. My eyelids just finished healing. The timing for this show was—” She clamped her mouth shut. Apparently even this bigmouth had her limits.
“Fortunate?” Victor took a deep, calming breath. He stepped back and shifted his gaze to Chloe, who looked like she wanted to teleport off the planet.
She pushed a strand of chin-length, coppery hair behind her ear. “It’s business, Victor. It doesn’t… it doesn’t mean I don’t miss Swing terribly—”
“Excuse me, I need to breathe some fresh air.” He strode swiftly to the exit.
Chloe tried to soothe her new client. “Don’t worry, Lee, he’ll come around. This was just the wrong day to—”
“The hell with him.” Lee drained her glass in one swallow. Her bee-stung mouth—by all appearances stung by the whole damn swarm—stretched wide to show off blindingly white, implausibly straight and even teeth. “One of the best things about losing half your body weight is you get drunk faster. Can I bring either of you something from the bar?”
At that moment Tina’s voice erupted in my earpiece. “All hands out front!” she barked. “We have a fight.”
I didn’t hesitate. I ran as fast as my pencil skirt and modest heels would allow through the ballroom and foyer and out the front doors of the redbrick English Tudor-style clubhouse, startling Victor where he paced and smoked—he smoked?—on the brick walkway fronting the building.
I heard the ruckus before I saw it. I pressed the button on my lapel mic as I ran under the long green awning and across the enormous front lawn toward the street. “What’s going on?” I breathlessly demanded. “Where are the cops?”
I received no response, which meant all three members of my security crew were up to their eyeballs in whatever was going on down at the entrance to the country club.
Victor sprinted past me toward the hubbub and I muttered a winded oath. This was not exactly what I’d had in mind when I’d promised him a memorable, dignified send-off for his brother. Sure, I’d aced the memorable part. Dignified, not so much.
By the time I reached the street, the brawl was already breaking up. Traffic, however, was still snarled in all directions, with drivers slowing to rubberneck and shout opinions regarding the moral character of those who chose to picket funerals, along with helpful suggestions of the anatomically impossible variety.
Officer Geri Marvin, a young female cop with more attitude than sense, stood guard over a gaggle of demonstrators sitting on the curb, almost all of them young women in their twenties. Their picket signs lay on the grass behind them, sporting such messages as Mur
derers Deserve Murder and Swing Had It Coming and Score: Swing, Zero – Animals, One. That last one was decorated with a picture of a panda swinging a bloody knife at a man in a chef’s toque. I was tempted to challenge that measly zero. I mean, if Swing had indeed butchered all those critters as they claimed, shouldn’t the sign give him credit for, I don’t know, a few hundred kills?
Sergeant Howie Werker, a tall, dark-skinned cop in his early forties, actively encouraged the rest of the picketers to shut the heck up and sit their bottoms down on the curb. Only, he didn’t say “heck.” Or “bottoms.”
I liked Howie. He was smart, sensible, and even-tempered—positive attributes in any law-enforcement officer. Recently he’d informed me, over pints at Murray’s Pub, a popular local watering hole, that he’d taken the detective’s exam and aced it. The thing is, he wanted to remain in the Crystal Harbor PD, which has only two detective positions, both currently filled. I couldn’t see either Bonnie Hernandez or Paul Cullen resigning anytime soon. Nevertheless, I wished him luck and toasted his success on the exam.
Howie’s crowd-control efforts were being aided by Martin, who wore the same impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit I’d seen him in at his daughter Lexi’s wedding the previous spring. With his impenetrable aviator sunglasses and the surveillance headset, he could have been mistaken for a member of the Secret Service. When he said, “Sit!” the SEAR chicks plopped their cute little fannies on the curb without a peep and stared at him wide-eyed as if awaiting the next order.
When I’d initially seen the picketers earlier that day at the cemetery, the first thing that had popped into my head was Charles Manson and the adoring young followers who would have done anything for him—and did. Here was Romulus Tooley, an older man with presence, a strong leader who was blindly committed to his cause. The SEAR members trailing him with picket signs, yelling chants, were for the most part young, female, and probably quite impressionable. I suspected they were seeking direction, a higher purpose. I wouldn’t go so far as to speculate about daddy issues, but who knew? That could be part of the mix for some of them.
Considering the gooey-eyed way most of them looked at Tooley, I couldn’t help but wonder whether he took advantage of their devotion, in the sexual sense. And if so, was that the only similarity between Manson and Tooley? The young people who’d killed on Manson’s orders had written on the walls in blood. Swing’s killer had chosen balsamic syrup.
The girls sitting on the curb looked sweet and innocent, but chances were that some of them had been involved in the notorious activities SEAR was known for, including vandalism, harassment, burglary, and arson. Their criminal acts had yet to be connected with a death, but it was only a matter of time. Their targets included fur farms, research labs, whaling ships—and okay, I can’t help but sympathize with some of their goals. They aren’t wrong about wanting to protect endangered species and require humane treatment of animals. I want that too. Heck, so did Swing. But please. Arson?
Platinum-haired Miranda Daniels from Ramrod News was busy shoving her microphone in people’s faces while her cameraman captured the action for that evening’s show. The local Long Island news station had its people there as well. As I watched, a white NBC News van pulled up. The other networks couldn’t be far behind.
Romulus Tooley wasn’t about to cool his heels with the others, not while the cameras were rolling. Beefy Tina Cullen restrained him with apparent ease as he and a tall teenage boy engaged in a screaming match. Tooley accused the teen of playing into the hands of the animal-slaughtering establishment. For his part, the boy called Tooley a shameless, publicity-hogging terrorist while Ben Ralston, the third member of Martin’s security team, held him back. Ben, a middle-aged black man, was four or five inches shorter than the youth but sturdily built.
This, then, was what had started the melee: this irate young man deciding to mix it up with the SEAR spokesman.
“Tucker!” It was Kari, dashing into the throng before I could stop her. Some of the funeral-goers had wandered down from the clubhouse, drinks in hand, as if this were a spectator sport. Most of them also held up cell phones, taking photos and video. Victor was not one of them. He stood to the side, scowling at the spectacle.
Kari got between Tooley and her boyfriend. So this young hothead was Tucker Nearing. I’d heard about him but had never seen him in the flesh until then. Tucker was a good-looking six-footer with short black hair and light brown eyes. He had powerful shoulders and arms above a slim waist, and I recalled Kari mentioning he was the star of the swim team.
“Tucker, what are you doing?” Kari demanded. “Why are you here?”
“Somebody has to stand up to these people, Kari. They’re vultures, picketing a funeral. Vultures!” he hollered at Tooley, prompting an angry outburst from the seated SEAR members, which Martin immediately quelled simply by crossing his arms and frowning at them from behind the dark shades.
“What they’re doing is legal, Tucker,” she said. “Disgusting but legal. You’re not making it any better by stirring things up.”
Her disapproval took some of the starch out of him. He looked like a chastised puppy. “I did this for you,” he said softly. The TV cameras honed in on the couple, and without a word exchanged between them, Martin and his team forcibly redirected them away from the teenagers.
Miranda Daniels was clearly unaccustomed to being thwarted. “We have a right to be here!” she told Martin. “You can’t order us around, you’re just rent-a-cops. If you’re real police, then show me your badges.”
He whipped off his shades and shoved his grinning mug right in front of the Ramrod News camera lens. With a jaunty wink and an over-the-top Mexican accent, he said, “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”
I rolled my eyes at the beaten-to-death movie line, popularized by Blazing Saddles but having originated with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Miranda, apparently not a film buff, looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Victor and I took advantage of the diversion to herd Kari and Tucker through the gates of the country club, well away from the action.
“That’s the brother!” Miranda yelled to her cameraman, signaling him to follow her. This prompted Tooley and his minions to scream lovely things at Victor, such as “Your brother was a murderer!” and “Swing got what he deserved!” The cops and my security team did their best to control them. Where the heck was Detective Cullen?
Miranda and her cameraman attempted to follow us, only to have Tina block their way like a human bulldozer with pink-streaked hair. “This is private property.” She placed her big hand over the camera lens. “You can’t enter.”
“You don’t have the authority to keep us out,” Miranda said. “Where’s the owner?”
“The club’s owned by all the members,” Tina said. “If you can get every last one of them to provide written permission, I’ll step aside. Until then…” She advanced, forcing the newswoman and cameraman to back up to the sidewalk. “You go no further.”
I hadn’t a clue who owned the club, and I doubted Tina knew either. Judging by Miranda’s uncertain scowl, she was unwilling to risk being charged with trespassing, especially with this belligerent broad and the crazy guy with the shades guarding the gates. But that didn’t keep her from trying to get some juicy footage of Swing’s brother. That he was easy on the eyes no doubt intensified her determination to get him on camera.
“Victor!” Miranda hollered. “Victor, come here and talk to us! Talk to the American public!” He ignored her. “Victor, this is your chance to send a message to your brother’s killer!”
He responded with the kind of disdainful glance only the French can pull off, before steering our little group behind one of the broad stone gateposts, concealing us from the cameras.
Tucker scrubbed a hand through his short black hair. “I wasn’t trying to make things worse, Kari, I swear. It’s just…” Had any teenager in the history of teenagers ever looked this hopelessly lovesick?
I thought of how Kari had compared her boyfriend with Swing, that night at my place while we made pancakes. She’d said Tucker was like a little boy. He was not, in fact, like a little boy, he was like precisely what he was: a besotted adolescent trying hard to hold on to his girlfriend and making boneheaded mistakes in the process—like trying to impress her by picking a fight with the guy he figured she must hate more than anyone in the world at that moment.
He looked searchingly into her eyes. “I know you and Swing had a thing going. I forgive you.”
I intercepted Victor’s questioning glance as we turned our backs on the young couple and took a few steps away to give them privacy—or the illusion of it, considering we could still hear every word exchanged between them. I’d assured Victor that his brother hadn’t seduced a sixteen-year-old. Had I been lying?
“No, Tucker,” Kari said, “it wasn’t like—”
“I doesn’t matter what you did with him,” he said. “That’s over. All I care about is that you and I are together now.”
“Tucker, for God’s sake, we didn’t do anything!” she insisted.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” he said. “I told you, I forgive you. I love you, Kari. I’d do anything for you. Anything!”
“Okay, play time’s over!” It was Detective Cullen, ambling across the lawn at last, picking at his teeth and brushing crumbs off his jacket once he spied the TV cameras. “Who’s ready for a statement?”
6
Il Est un Bouffon
VICTOR AND I were about to exit my parked car and brave the torrential downpour the next evening when his cell rang. He glanced at the number on the screen and shrugged. He didn’t recognize it. After he and the caller exchanged greetings, he said, “I’m not at Jane’s right now. We just got to the pub. Murray’s Pub? You know it?” He listened for a moment, then said, “You’re welcome to join us. We’ll save you a seat.”
Perforating Pierre (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 3) Page 7
