Sweet, Savage Death

by Jane Haddam

  Somebody grabbed my arm and swung me around.

  “Where have you been?” Phoebe hissed at me. “Martinez will be here any minute. Have you seen Nick?” She saw Nick herself and nodded. “I’ve been going crazy, you’ve got no idea, and then I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  “What’s wrong with Janine?” I asked her, pressing forward through the women. They were hard to move. Like the audience at an outdoor concert, they had chosen their positions and meant to keep them.

  “Janine?” I called, a little louder than I had to and right into the ear of a fat girl with a string of fresh acne across her jaw. “Janine, are you all right?”

  She rose off the floor, the papers streaming from her hands. They were sodden with blood.

  I reached her and put my arm around her shoulder, thinking she must be hysterical. She looked down at the papers.

  “It’s seven o’clock,” she said. “I need them for eight. I’ll never get a new set in time, never.” She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. “I couldn’t use these even if they weren’t covered with blood,” she told me. “They’re evidence. Somebody tried to kill that girl and now they’re evidence.” She burst into another spate of tears.

  I held her closer, letting her cheek brush my shoulder.

  “There, there,” I said. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Janine said. “We won’t be able to compete. After all this work, and all the work to decorate the suite, and then this girl’s dying… she must be dying, they won’t let anyone in there, they’re keeping it dark.” She glared at the policemen.

  “It’s all right,” I repeated, drawing her away from the door and into the crowd. She held furiously to her printout, the paper trailing behind us like what commercials like to call “bathroom tissue.” I got her through the crowd to Phoebe.

  “Janine thinks she’s dead,” I said.

  “She’s not even bleeding anymore,” Phoebe said. “People are just being hysterical.”

  “Somebody stabbed her,” Janine sniffled. “Over and over again. She was all cut up.” She gulped loudly. “All over her face. And on her arm. There was so much blood.”

  “There wasn’t so much blood,” Phoebe said. “There was a fair amount.”

  “Somebody called an ambulance,” Janine said. “They never got here. And she isn’t conscious. She’s just lying there.”

  There was a sound of scraping metal and a bump. Somebody yelled “stand back” and we were pushed against the wall, flattened by the backward surge of the crowd. Two men in white uniforms came rushing out of the elevator, pushing what looked like a stretcher in front of them and making way for a small old man in a dirty gray suit with a doctor’s bag in hand.

  “Just a minute,” I said. I had seen a break in the crush and I made for it, taking advantage of the confusion to get near the door. It was easier than I expected. Everyone’s attention was concentrated on the ambulance men and the doctor, and even the two uniformed policemen were more occupied watching the medical procedure than controlling the crowd. I slipped behind one of them and through the door, holding my breath.

  The room was dark, the overhead light a live wire circled by broken glass, the reading lamps overturned and shattered on the floor. Someone drew the curtains, letting in the pale glow of streetlamps, and in that light I could see the overturned chairs, the out-of-place end tables, the pile of books and papers on the floor. Someone had searched the room and done a very poor job of it.

  “Spot,” somebody said. The room lit up like the stage set of a talk show. I started backing toward the door, keeping my hands in my pockets. I didn’t want my fingerprints in that place. That was all Martinez would need. It wouldn’t take him long to find out I’d never been in that room before tonight.

  I got out the door and into the crowd without being seen by the police and started to fight my way to Phoebe and Nick and Janine. The women had inched forward and compressed, each trying to get a look through that door. I stumbled against the fat, pimply girl and heard her say, “She fought for her life. Isn’t that encouraging?”

  I was going to ask the idiot what else she thought someone would do if they were being attacked by a maniac with a knife, but I didn’t bother. I wasn’t convinced she had fought for her life. The room didn’t look like the scene of a struggle. There were no pieces of broken furniture, no torn curtains. The overhead light could not have been accidentally broken in a fight. It was nearly fourteen feet in the air.

  I shoved against the fat girl one more time and made my way to the wall, expecting to find Phoebe waiting for me. Instead, I found a vacant corner, the paint peeling a little at the seam between the walls. Whatever view I might have had was blocked by the crowd moving backward again, pushed away from the door by one of the white-uniformed men.

  “Stand back,” someone bellowed up front. “Stand back. Clear a path. Stand back.”

  “Very polite crowd, aren’t they?” someone said in my ear as a lane was duly cleared. “Always remember their manners.”

  I looked up at Mary Allard’s little fox face, its promise of delicacy destroyed by the thick red slashes of rouge and lipstick.

  I nodded toward the door. “Do you know what happened? Is she dead?”

  “She’s not dead.” She turned her bright little eyes on the doorway, their malice mixed with something less definable. “I know what was supposed to happen,” she said.

  “I’d rather know what really happened,” I said.

  Mary shrugged. “That’s the easy part,” she said. “Miss Ashe walked into the Farret hospitality suite at six-thirty, when no one was there, and someone perfectly terrible came up behind her, and beat her up, and cut her up, and left the knife lying on the floor for anyone to see. Except, of course, Miss Ashe didn’t come up at six-thirty. She came up at six.” Mary bit her bottom lip with tiny, pointed teeth. “I came up with her in the elevator.”

  I looked at her suspiciously, but I didn’t make the accusation she expected me to make.

  “Maybe you just feel like causing a lot of trouble,” I said. “That seems like what you’re interested in lately.”

  “Am I?” she said, whirling around and grabbing my arm. “Am I really? The letter is genuine, you know. I can prove that. I will prove it.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “You’re all going to try railroading me right out, and you probably will, but it won’t be because that letter isn’t genuine. It’s genuine. In Julie Simms’s own handwriting. And I’m not going to put up with this nonsense much longer. I’m not going to go on being avoided in dining rooms and snubbed at lunches and ignored at meetings.”

  “You’re being paranoid.”

  She dropped my arm. “I’m tired to death of sucking up to the lot of you, smiling like a little dog, acting like I give a shit. I don’t give a shit. And I’m definitely not going to let that little bitch get away with it.”

  “Who? Leslie Ashe? What did she do to you?”

  “You know perfectly well I don’t mean Leslie Ashe.”

  She gave me a last long look, then turned on her four-inch spikes and walked away.

  I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. There was still noise in the corridor, Phoebe and Janine and Nick were lost in the crowd, someone might be dying. I didn’t have the energy to cope with any of it.

  Someone stepped on my foot and I wrenched away, my eyes opening automatically. The ambulance men were coming through the corridor with the stretcher, holding it the way firemen might once have held buckets in a water brigade.

  The fat girl with the pimples shoved her elbow in my ribs. I shoved back, making her fall against the woman beside her. The movement put me in front of the crowd. I looked down, expecting to see nothing but a stretcher and a sheet made lumpy by the body beneath.

  I saw the black hair, the pale, over-made-up face, the odd angle of neck on shoulders. I saw the rough dry streaks of clotting blood, the rhythmic rise and fall of the chest.

&nb
sp; I saw Gamble Daere.

  CHAPTER 20

  I WAS SUPPOSED TO go to the Line Committee meeting, but I didn’t. I gave Phoebe a note withdrawing my candidacy, shook off Nick, and went back to the suite. I needed peace and quiet and a warm bath. I needed a chance to think about the fact that the times didn’t match. They didn’t match at all.

  Someone had called Phoebe at six-fifteen, claimed to be me, and asked her to be on the fifth floor at six-thirty. Leslie Ashe had gone to the fifth floor at six. If someone was setting me up for the stabbing of Leslie Ashe, she had to know the woman would be there. Did she? Or was I supposed to be set up for something else? And what was Leslie Ashe doing in the Farret hospitality suite at six-thirty on a Saturday evening? The hospitality suites weren’t to open to the public until Monday afternoon.

  I threw half Phoebe’s box of Wessingham’s Old Lavender Bath Salts into the bottom of the tub and turned the water on full. Camille sat on the edge of the tub and contemplated the bubbles. She was both terrified and dauntless, and I liked the combination. I liked even more what she reminded me of: my parents’ house at Christmas, snow on the front lawn and animals in the kitchen, my brother’s children hiding in the secret passage at the side of the living room fireplace. News of Julie’s murder had been on the six o’clock news. They must have seen it. I wondered what they thought of it.

  Camille started to totter toward the water. I picked her up and sat down with my back against the wall, holding her in my arms. The bath carpet was stiffly, pleasantly irritating against my legs. My arms and shoulders ached.

  I should call my brother George, I thought, letting my head fall back and my eyes close. My mother frightened me and my father, who had devoted himself for many years to the playing of bad tennis, wouldn’t be much help. George and I understood each other. He was three years younger than I was, and he had always wanted to specialize in eleventh-hour rescues.

  If I hadn’t wanted to attend Myrra’s funeral, I would have been in Connecticut when Julie died. I had intended being in Connecticut. I wanted to be there now. My mother might frighten me and my father be more charming than practical, but that big white house locked away by hedges made Eden a second-rate paradise.

  Camille stretched out along my legs, curled up, prepared to sleep. I wondered why Myrra’s earring had been in Julie’s handbag and why she had had the blackmail envelope and why she was dead. I told myself I should turn off the water before it overflowed. I asked myself if Nick was single or going with someone of whom Phoebe did not approve. My back ached.

  The phone woke me up. I opened my eyes to see the first thin lip of water edging over the rim of the tub. I dumped the cat on the floor and got up to turn off the tap. The phone was still ringing. I was going to have to answer it.

  I took my robe from the back of the bathroom door and put Camille in the pocket of it. She stretched and settled and swung against me as I crossed the living room. I wanted the phone to stop, but it went on and on, hurting my ears.

  I said hello, expecting Phoebe, or Nick, or even Mary Allard. I got Marian Pinckney instead.

  Marian Pinckney was the definitive end to peace and quiet. Her voice ran through the night like a caterpillar in jogging shoes.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Early. Frantic. Couldn’t wait.”

  I settled on the floor with my back against the couch. I had been so primed to resent this call, it was hard to find any pleasure in it. I reminded myself of how important it was. Marian Pinckney might have information I needed. I should be happy she had had the courtesy to call early.

  “I shouldn’t even be calling you about this,” Marian said. “It’s illegal for me to be calling you about this. I thought of calling you from a phone booth, but it would take too long.”

  “I’m sure nobody’s tapping your phone,” I soothed.

  There was a rustling of papers. “Okay. Now. About the Samson account. It was opened the second of April, theoretically by Miss Samson herself, with one hundred dollars in cash. Since then there have been deposits of one thousand dollars a month on the first business day of every month and withdrawals—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean theoretically opened by Amelia herself? Don’t you guys ask for identification?”

  Marian sighed. “Of course we ask for identification. Do you know how easy it is to get identification? Go read any paperback spy thriller. Millions of ways. Perfectly simple. The government will even help you with it. Besides, this is our regular checking account. It doesn’t pay interest. No big problem. What I found in the file was an American Express number, which means no picture. We can’t demand a driver’s license or a passport, because a lot of people don’t have them. And I don’t think anybody bothered to check out the Amex.”

  “Most people don’t hand out their American Express cards to blackmailers,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Marian said. “The reason I got so excited was that we have another account, one we’ve had a little trouble with, and the record on that was one thousand dollars cash deposited the first business day of each month at a teller window. The same one thousand dollars was withdrawn in three installments of three hundred fifty, three hundred fifty, and three hundred dollars each at the twenty-four-hour instant teller at the branch on West Eighty-second Street on each of three succeeding Mondays following the deposit, except for this month. Got that?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Somebody goes to a teller and deposits a thousand in cash. Then someone goes to one of those computer terminals and uses it to withdraw the money in three installments. Why three installments?”

  “Three fifty is the maximum you can get from the terminal in one day.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. Now. Here’s what’s wrong. First, there should have been a withdrawal from this account Monday, and there wasn’t. Thursday morning, someone tried to use the card but punched the wrong code number, did it twice, and the computer ate it. This showed up on my desk Friday morning as part of a security report. I never read security reports. It’s just that this was right on top of my desk, and it was the beginning of the alphabet, and—”

  “Myrra Agenworth,” I said. My stomach was beginning to claw at me.

  “How did you know it was Myrra Agenworth?” Marian sounded suspicious. She should have been.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. It was all I could think of.

  “Jesus Christ nothing,” Marian said. “You want to swear? Listen to this. The address for the Agenworth account is a post office box in FDR station. The address for the Samson account is the same post office box in FDR station. I ran the address through the computer. Global search. Do you know what I found?”

  “No.”

  “I found seven—count them, seven—active accounts with that mailing address. All opened with a hundred dollars cash. All using the same credit card for identification. All with the same pattern as the Agenworth account, one thousand in, three fifty, three fifty, three hundred out. All with deposits made on the first of this month and no withdrawals made since. All set up the first business day of April.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Are you telling me someone made each of these people walk into a branch of the New York Guaranty Trust, open a checking account, keep it supplied with money, and then give out copies of their terminal cards and secret numbers?”

  “No, no,” Marian said. “I think your blackmailer did it all himself. Everything is withdrawn from West Eighty-second, but the accounts were opened all over the city, a different branch each time, and the deposits were made all over the place, too. The blackmailer goes to a branch, opens a checking account in his victim’s name, then gets the paraphernalia mailed to the post office box. Then—”

  “Then all she has to do is send copies of the incriminating information and a set of predated, preencoded slips to the victim, and the victim doesn’t know who she’s being blackmailed by.”

  “Can’t get caught, either,” Marian said. “If he uses a phony credi
t card, or a stolen one, there’s nothing to connect the blackmailer to the accounts.”

  “I think I’m going to have a headache.”

  “Get a pen,” Marian said. “I’ll give you the names on the accounts. If you find out anything—”

  “I’ll tell you,” I promised.

  “Okay,” Marian said. “First—Agenworth, Myrra. Second—Wentward, Lydia. Third—Simms, Julie. Fourth—Williams, Janine. Fifth—Samson, Amelia. Sixth—Caine, Martin. Seventh—Damereaux, Phoebe Weiss.” There was a pause. “You know any of these people?”

  “All of them,” I said. “I know all of them.” Phoebe’s name was floating in the air like Casper, the Friendly Ghost. Phoebe was my best friend. Why wouldn’t she tell me if she was being blackmailed?

  “Pay?” Marian Pinckney said. “This Phoebe parenthesis Weiss un-parenthesis, is she Phoebe Weiss from Greyson?”

  “Yes,” I said. What had Phoebe done? What could she possibly do?

  “Little Phoebe Weiss with all the bags of food in her room? All the kosher stuff? She’s that crazy writer with the diamonds?”

  “Yes,” I said, not really listening. “Yes, she is.”

  “Well, hot damn,” Marian said. “I’ll have to go out and get some of her books. God knows they’re all over the place. Tell her if she needs a personal banker, tax help, investment advice, that kind of thing, tell her to call me.”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Fine. Tremendous. Now I have to get back and straighten this thing out. Or at least figure out how to tell the president about it without getting canned.”

  She hung up in my ear. I hardly noticed. All I could think of was: what in the name of God had Phoebe done?

  CHAPTER 21

  WHEN PHOEBE GOT BACK to the suite, I was still in the unreconstructed Victorian bathroom, rescuing Camille from her flying leap into the claw-footed bathtub. She had been trying to catch bubble bath. I got her before she sank for the last time, dunked her once more to get off the soap, and dried her on a thick gold bath towel with CP inscribed in blue embroidery beneath a red embroidered crown. Then I put on a terry cloth robe and put her in the pocket.