Murder on the Potomac

by Margaret Truman

“Black or …?”

  “No, they were white. Upper crust.”

  “I meant what kind of tea did she serve, black, green, or oolong?”

  This time Jamison’s laugh was defensive. “Kind of tea? How would I know that?”

  Smith shrugged and smiled. “If you were a modern French historian, you’d know that everyday details are important. Or a detective. Go on, Monty. Just kidding.”

  “I should say,” Jamison said. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, it seems Mrs. Wharton eventually befriended a famous Civil War general, W. S. Ketchum of Georgetown, and borrowed twenty-six hundred dollars from him. She never repaid it, not even the interest. When he learned she was planning an extended European stay, he and a lady friend paid her a visit, a kind of reminder about the I.O.U. Became weekend guests, as a matter of fact, and were elegantly entertained. But after breakfast and a cup of Mrs. Wharton’s tea, the general fell ill. A few days later, after he’d been served a large glass of lemonade in the same house, he took to what would be his deathbed.”

  “Lemonade?” Smith said.

  “Yes, lovingly prepared by Mrs. Wharton herself.” Jamison stopped talking to finish his scrambled eggs.

  Smith said, “And Mrs. Wharton was accused of murder. The case is coming back to me.”

  “She certainly was. One of the most celebrated trials of Washington. Of course, it would be more than a vague memory for you if you were with us at Tri-S. We’ve devoted a considerable number of evenings to discussing Mrs. Wharton and her lemonade.”

  “I see what I’ve missed.”

  Jamison leaned on the table. “You do?”

  “Yes. Go on, Monty.”

  “She was judged innocent by a jury of her peers. It was one of the first cases in which forensic medicine was used in a trial.”

  Smith nodded. “You’re absolutely correct. There was confusion over whether the general died of a dose of tartar emetic or some natural disease like meningitis.”

  “Exactly. Both produce the same symptoms. The autopsy on General Ketchum revealed a large amount of tartar emetic in his stomach, certainly enough to kill him. And it was proved that Mrs. Wharton had purchased a supply of it just days prior to the general’s visit.”

  “Open and shut, you might say.”

  “Not in that era, Mac. There were only two types of woman back then, weren’t there? A virtuous lady or a whore. Everyone knew that virtuous ladies did not go around serving poisoned lemonade to distinguished generals.”

  Smith dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin and pushed back his chair. “I really have to run, Monty. This was fascinating.”

  “I’ve only skimmed the surface, of course. There are myriad provocative details. Perhaps one night when you attend a meeting of Tri-S, I’ll reopen a discussion of this case. Say, how come you know so much about this, when you said you didn’t?”

  “A good lawyer searches for precedents, Monty. And conveniently forgets cases, as well.”

  As Smith was about to walk away, Jamison said, “Oh, Mac, I understand you were summoned to Wendell’s house the day Pauline’s body was discovered.”

  Smith frowned. “ ‘Summoned’ isn’t the word I would use. I did meet with him that afternoon.”

  Jamison’s arched eyebrows asked, And?

  “Wendell is naturally concerned about the ramifications of this. He asked my advice.”

  “Cherchez la femme,” Jamison said.

  “Why look for the woman? What woman?”

  “Mackensie, you sly devil. You aren’t fooling me one bit. You are going to become directly involved in this case, most likely as Wendell Tierney’s legal counsel. And I have a feeling that when all is said and done, it will be a woman who takes front-and-center in this tragic melodrama. Will make for a tremendously interesting case for a future Scarlet Sin session—say, in the year 2500.”

  “My class is waiting,” Smith said.

  “So are we, Mac.”

  13

  That Afternoon

  Sun Ben Cheong left Gary’s Restaurant on M Street NW, where he had lunched with a large pension fund’s investment manager. It had been pleasant enough. Although the manager, whose name was Barrenstein, seemed enthusiastic about the investments Cheong had outlined for him, Cheong instinctively knew nothing would come of it. He judged Barrenstein to be a man who enjoyed being wooed but who would act upon only the most conservative opportunities. What Cheong had suggested—using money from the fund to buy and rehabilitate a block of downtown buildings that had fallen into decay—did not fit into that category.

  Outside and away from his lunch guest, Cheong enjoyed the sun on his face. The day had started gray. When he’d arrived at the restaurant, cool, moist air was one step removed from outright rain. But a front had arrived during lunch, dragging behind it a broom of cool, sunny weather.

  He looked at his watch: ten minutes past two. Lunch had lasted too long, but the Norwegian salmon had prospered at the hands of the anonymous chef.

  He adjusted the lapels of his black Armani double-breasted suit and watched a tall, statuesque blond woman walk past. Well, saunter by, to be precise. As his eyes lingered on the seductive sway of her body, a smile of appreciation formed on his lips. Cheong’s face seldom displayed thoughts and feelings. When describing him, friends and colleagues often said, “Not very expressive.” One said to him, “You ought to enter the World Poker Championship. You’d win hands-down with that face of yours.”

  He checked his watch again. Almost an hour before the call would come. He walked at a leisurely pace, stopped to admire offerings in the windows of men’s shops, bought a vanilla frozen-yogurt cone from a sidewalk vendor, and eventually reached Judiciary Square, yet another Washington monument, this to the nation’s law-enforcement officers who’d fallen in the line of duty. The square sat between D and F streets, a Metro entrance in its center. Lining the D Street side were courthouses: the United States Court of Military Appeals, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and other granite halls of justice and otherwise.

  At the opposite end, on F Street, stood the redbrick National Building Museum, its three-feet-high, twelve-hundred-feet-long facade of buff terra-cotta frieze depicting Civil War forces. Pension records were once kept secure there. The facade was a perpetual stone parade of Union infantry, navy, medical units, artillery, cavalry, and quartermaster personnel returning from battle.

  Behind the museum was the General Accounting Office. And beyond that was the beginning of Washington’s “Chinatown,” small by San Francisco or New York standards but home to five thousand of the some thirty thousand Chinese-Americans living in the area.

  He paused in front of the Friendship Arch that marked its official entrance at Seventh and H streets. Three hundred garishly painted dragons mauled each other across its top. Cheong knew the arch had important meaning for Chinatown’s citizens, but it had no significance for him. He’d decided long ago that symbolism, like religion, only mattered to the poor, who needed something mysterious to ease dreary lives. “Dreary” was not a word Cheong would use to describe his life since coming to America.

  He walked another block, pausing occasionally to inhale the pungent odors wafting from small produce shops. Some things you never outgrew. Two elderly Chinese men argued on the sidewalk over a transaction gone sour. Something to do with a wristwatch. Cheong didn’t listen long enough to learn more details.

  He stopped again, this time to read a plaque affixed to a historical landmark—THE SURRATT BOARDING HOUSE. According to the Chinese-American Lions Club, which had placed the plaque, it was here conspirators had plotted the abduction of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

  Obviously before it fell into the hands of the Chinese, Cheong thought.

  A few doors down from the plaque was a restaurant. Cheong peered through the front window. Someone inside waved. He looked left and right, then entered, returned a greeting without breaking stride, went to the rear of the dining room, swung open doors into the steaming kitchen,
slid past sweating cooks, and disappeared through another door, behind which was a narrow flight of wooden stairs.

  He exited two floors up into a carpeted corridor lighted by recessed ceiling fixtures with low-wattage bulbs. A series of doors lined the hallway. Cheong stood in front of one on which black Chinese symbols announced the business and its purpose: import-export. He inserted a key, entered, and locked the door behind him.

  Three men and one woman were in the room. She greeted Cheong in Chinese. The others glanced up, said nothing, returned to their desktop tasks. The room’s windows overlooking the street were covered by heavy draperies. The only light in the room came from powerful halogen lamps illuminating the desks of the four people. Two of the men wore jewelers’ loupes. Familiar fragments of Chinese music played from a small tape recorder.

  Cheong stopped at each of the four desks. The powerful, focused light from the halogens caught the dazzling multiple facets—dozens of diamonds spread out on soft green cloths, the effect kaleidoscopic.

  He left the room and entered another, a small office as tastefully decorated and furnished as the outside room was sparse. The windows in this room, too, were draped against outside light—and eyes. It was a study in blacks.

  A large black lacquer desk with a white marble top. A high-backed black leather chair separating the desk from a long black lacquer credenza, its surface bare except for an elaborate telephone system that included a black tape recorder, answering machine, speakerphone, and earphones. A second, plain phone sat next to it—but red. A large circular black-and-brass clock displaying time zones around the world dominated the wall above.

  On the opposite wall was a white plastic chart. Written on it with erasable pen were the names of a dozen American cities. A series of columns following each name were filled with Chinese notations.

  Cheong picked up the red phone and dialed a private number. “Is Ricky there? This is Sun Ben.”

  A minute later Ricky, a host for special customers, came on the line and said with extreme pleasantness, “Sun Ben. Great to hear your voice. How are you, my friend?”

  Cheong’s voice was humdrum. “I’m fine, thank you. I have to be in Philadelphia tomorrow. I would like to stay with you tonight.”

  “Terrific,” said Ricky. “All the usual?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “Eight-thirty.”

  “Dinner in your suite?”

  “Yes. Broiled skinless chicken, no sauce, a salad, one roll.”

  “You got it, my friend. We’ll welcome you again to Atlantic City. See you tonight.”

  Cheong carefully hung his suit jacket on a hanger behind the door and returned to his chair. He sat back, propped his feet on the edge of the desk, and closed his eyes.

  Until the larger, more elaborate phone rang.

  He slowly swiveled, picked up the receiver, and spoke in Chinese, as did the caller.

  CHEONG: How are you?

  CALLER: Fine. Just fine. You have an order to place?

  CHEONG: Two-hundred fifty.

  CALLER: At the prevailing rate?

  CHEONG: Yes. Has it changed since last week?

  CALLER: NO.

  CHEONG: Good. The money will be wired in the morning. All is well with your family?

  CALLER: My family is fine. Your … family?

  CHEONG: We are all in good health.

  CALLER: We must see each other again one day.

  Cheong dangled the receiver over the cradle and lowered it until it clicked. The clock on the wall said it was 3:15 in Washington, 9:15 the following morning in Hong Kong.

  He sat motionless in the room’s dim light until 3:30, when a buzzer indicated someone had entered the outer office. Cheong got up from behind his desk, put on his jacket and buttoned it, returned to the chair, and sat ramrod straight. Someone knocked. “Come in,” Cheong said in Chinese.

  One of the men wearing a jeweler’s loupe stepped aside to allow another man to enter. He was fat; his straining suit had been purchased many pounds ago. He carried a canvas Hecht’s shopping bag, bulging like his suit.

  After exchanging the briefest greetings, the visitor came to the desk, lowered the bag to the floor, nodded, and left. Cheong waited until he heard the buzzer again. He came around the desk, picked up the bag, placed it on the desk, and examined its contents. It was filled with thick envelopes, each secured with a rubber band. He plucked one from the bag and ran his fingers over it, as though his fingertips could determine its contents and worth like a bar-code reader at a supermarket checkout counter. He dropped the envelope into the bag and went to the paneled wall next to the clock where he gently pressed the lower corner of one section. A portion of the wall swung open. Behind it was a safe. Cheong dialed the combination, opened the door, and dumped the contents of the canvas bag on top of dozens of other envelopes.

  Process reversed, he went to the larger outer room, dropped the empty shopping bag on a table in the corner, and left.

  He walked to his office at the Tankloff Investment Advisory Group, picked up a briefcase and overnight bag he’d left there that morning, and told his secretary he would be in Philadelphia the following day for a meeting and would not be reachable that night. He checked his messages—nothing that couldn’t wait until he returned, including a call from Suzanne Tierney.

  He retrieved his red XJS Jaguar convertible from the parking garage beneath the building and turned on the radio. At 107.7 was an FM station that played middle-of-the-road oldies. And not Chinese oldies. He smiled his slight smile, positioned Porsche sunglasses on his nose, and checked himself in the rearview mirror. With James Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” playing a little too loud, he headed out of the city. It was good to get away.

  14

  Saturday Morning

  If recent events in Wendell Tierney’s world could have affected the weather appropriately, there would have been a torrential downpour accompanied by tornadoes. It was the Saturday of his cruise up the Potomac. But such a link didn’t exist except in the minds of mythologists. The day dawned sunny and breezy, perfect for mildly nautical meanderings on a peaceful river. Turbulence was all in the mind.

  Guests for the cruise were played on board by a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia, a tip of Tierney’s hat to his heritage, as well as to a departed friend, publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes, whose cruises on his yacht, The Highlander, had been as passionately coveted by business movers and shakers as dinner invitations to the White House were to those seeking political favors.

  Mac Smith took his wife’s arm as they climbed the gangplank to the Marilyn. Tierney’s yacht wasn’t as large as the famed Forbes ship, but it was no dinghy. The Marilyn was a 105-foot beauty with a twenty-three-foot beam, whose draft of only four feet made it possible to navigate relatively shallow portions of the Potomac. Built in 1989 by Derecktor Shipyards of New York and christened Lady Frances, it was bought by Tierney the following year through the Bertram Yacht Company of Miami and renamed. “She’ll do over thirty knots,” he’d told Mac and Annabel during their last cruise together. “Double most yachts her size. Cruise at twenty-four. Susan Puleo did the interiors.” The name meant nothing to the Smiths. Keeping up with the world of international designers was not one of their many interests.

  They declined a uniformed waiter’s tray of mimosas and Bloody Marys and made their way to the large, open aft deck where other early arrivals had congregated. Sarah Walters spotted them immediately. She was chairwoman of the National Cathedral’s chapter, the equivalent of a board of directors at secular institutions. “Mac, how delightful to see you,” she said, extending her hand. “And Annabel. Wendell certainly has good taste when choosing shipmates.”

  Walters’s husband, Fred, a tall, overweight, jowly man with the veined cheeks and watery eyes of a heavy drinker, was an undersecretary in the Defense Department. He lifted his drink in salute.

  The Walterses had been standing with two other couples. The black man, Joe Dorsey, heade
d the D.C. Urban League. His wife, Tammy, extraordinarily attractive, seemed to receive a great deal of press attention and was one of the city’s most vocal pro-choice advocates on the abortion issue.

  The white couple, both small and wiry, looked remarkably alike considering they were simply married. They were introduced as Victor and Buffy Morrissey. “Victor,” Sarah Walters told Mac and Annabel after introducing them, “owns half of Virginia.”

  “Impressive,” Smith said. “Who owns the other half?”

  Buffy Morrissey giggled, exposing a set of yellowing teeth that were interchangeable with her husband’s. “Who else? The government,” she replied.

  Fred Walters motioned for a waiter to bring him another drink. Annabel decided to have a mimosa. Others joined them, prompting Mac to touch Annabel’s arm as a signal to leave the burgeoning group. They went mid-ship and looked down at the waters of the Potomac. “Peaceful,” Annabel said, drawing a deep, contented breath.

  “When we’re alone,” Mac said.

  The sound of an outboard motor caused them to look to their right. Inching along the length of the yacht was Tierney’s twenty-two-foot Aquasport. Mac narrowed his eyes and leaned farther over the rail as he thought he recognized the man at the smaller vessel’s center console. “Tony?” he said loudly.

  Anthony Buffolino grinned broadly and tossed Smith a sharp salute. He wore a double-breasted blue blazer with oversized brass buttons, teal turtleneck, gray trousers, and a small-billed black yachting cap with too much gold braid for its size. The cap sat at a jaunty angle. He guided the Aquasport closer to the Marilyn until it was directly below Mac and Annabel. “What are you doing here?” Smith asked over the rumble of the idling outboard.

  “On the case,” Buffolino replied. “Mr. Tierney hired me to provide beefed-up security. I’ll be riding shotgun today.”

  “Shotgun?” Annabel asked.

  Buffolino laughed. “Just tagging along and keeping my eyes open. Like they do with political bigwigs when they’re out on the water.”