Sweet, Savage Death

by Jane Haddam

  In the living room, Phoebe was sitting on the couch, unwinding strand after strand of rope diamonds and looking tired. For once it wasn’t badly applied eyeliner or myopically decorative rouge. It was quarter after eleven, and she looked as wasted as she would after an all-night martini binge.

  “How was the meeting?” I asked her, coming to sit beside her on the couch.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t stay for the end of it. They’re going to take Mary, though why you did what you did, I don’t know. Janine’s about ready to kill you.”

  “I forgot she was so dead set against Mary.” That was true. The last thing I’d been thinking of when I wrote my note was what Janine thought about the makeup of the Line Committee. It was the last thing I was thinking of now.

  “Oh, well,” Phoebe was saying. “You know Janine. As far as she’s concerned, once someone’s done something wrong, you can never trust them again. It’s a good thing she never had children.”

  “She still could,” I said. “She’s only forty-two or-three. And besides.” I took a deep breath. “She must have done something once, something someone could blackmail her for.”

  Phoebe looked at me curiously. “Marian called,” she said. “I was so busy down there, I forgot all about it. What did she say?”

  I explained the blackmail scheme as it had been explained to me. She was brighter about it than I had been. She nodded all the way through my recital, and then said, “So the only time anyone ever saw the blackmailer was when she opened the account, and then only the bank officer. Nobody who could recognize her. So nobody knows who she is.”

  “Right,” I said. It was hard not to stare at her. How could she sit there and not tell me anything? How could she go on pretending it had never happened?

  She was shaking her head. “I’ve got the same objections you had this morning,” she said. “Myrra would never let herself be blackmailed. And Amelia said she’d never pay it.”

  “Except that Amelia must have paid it,” I said. “Deposits were being made to her account as late as the beginning of this month, right before Julie’s murder. And into Julie’s.”

  Phoebe sank into the couch, the action as much a response to surprise as to tiredness.

  “Julie? What could Julie have done that someone could blackmail her for?”

  “A week ago, I wouldn’t have said any of them could have done anything somebody could blackmail them for. Then we find out Myrra and Amelia were lovers. Lydia used to be a hooker. That’s three out of the seven. God only knows what the rest of them have done.”

  “Well, the idea of Janine is ridiculous,” Phoebe said. “She’s the original old maid. She doesn’t even drink.”

  “She’s been paying blackmail for nine months,” I said, “and a lot of it. A thousand dollars a month is a lot of money.”

  “It’s impossible,” Phoebe insisted. “Do you know what a romance editor makes? Twenty to twenty-five, tops. Where’s Janine getting it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But she’s paying it. One thousand dollars a month cash every month since April.”

  “No way,” Phoebe said, shaking her head back and forth and muttering into the velvet of her caftan. “No physical way. She’d have to sell cocaine on the side just to make the payments, and it’s not like she’s starving to death. She’s got nice clothes. She goes out to dinner. She’s got a beautiful apartment. She has a subscription to the Metropolitan Opera.”

  I got off the couch and began pacing the carpet, letting Camille ride on my shoulder where she could feel superior. I was so tired, colors and shapes had begun to blend into each other.

  “What you’re saying is that Marian has to be wrong about Janine,” I said. “Janine is not being blackmailed.”

  “Maybe it’s a different Janine Williams,” Phoebe said.

  “Maybe it’s a different Phoebe Damereaux.”

  She shot me a look, suddenly alert, suddenly wary.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded. “Nobody’s ever tried to blackmail me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Tell me there are two Phoebe (Weiss) Damereaux’s.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Phoebe exploded. She jumped off the couch and began pacing beside me, throwing her hands in the air and shouting. “I haven’t done anything anyone could blackmail me for. And you should know. Goddammit, you know my whole life story. We’ve been living in each other’s laps for the past nine years. What have I ever done? Just name one thing I’ve ever done I could be blackmailed for.”

  “How am I supposed to know what you’ve done?” I shouted. “How am I supposed to know what you did five years ago you’re not so happy about now? Maybe you took a black lover and don’t want your parents to know. Maybe you took a Jewish lover but he didn’t want to marry you and you had an abortion, which you also wouldn’t want your parents to know. Maybe you took an Arab lover—”

  “I can’t be blackmailed about any lovers,” Phoebe shouted. “I haven’t had any lovers. I’m a virgin, you asshole!”

  The word “virgin” stopped the conversation dead. We stared at each other, Phoebe in a state of blushing embarrassment and me in shock. Then I threw myself into the nearest chair and said, “Jesus, Phoebe. You can’t be a virgin.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just can’t, that’s all.”

  “Give me one good reason why not.”

  “All right,” I said, coming near shouting again. “The Catewall Inheritance, pages 277 to 301.”

  “Oh,” Phoebe said. “That.” She walked with almost unreal dignity to the couch, sat down, and crossed her feet at the ankles and her hands in her lap. “I made it up.”

  “You made it up? Phoebe, there were things in those love scenes I’d never even heard of.”

  “I have a very good imagination.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “And I did research,” Phoebe said. “I went to bookstores and read through those manuals they have. There isn’t one thing in that book you couldn’t find out by going to Barnes and Noble.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me,” I said. “And how did you end up thirty years old and a virgin? In New York?”

  She started pacing again.

  “I was too fat in college,” she said. “And I’m too fat now, really, except it probably wouldn’t matter except I have so much work to do. I mean, five years ago I made exactly four thousand dollars from my writing and I hardly met the rent, for God’s sake.”

  “Also, you were chicken.”

  “Also, I was chicken,” she agreed. “I’m still chicken.”

  “That’s okay.” I hauled myself out of my chair. “You couldn’t be blackmailed for that? Because you’re a virgin? You know, America’s sexiest romance novelist—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. If anybody said I was a virgin, I’d deny it. Nobody would believe it, anyway.”

  “True,” I said. “They’d find it hard to swallow even if they knew you. But Phoebe, somebody’s been putting a thousand a month into an account in your name for the past nine months.”

  “And in an account in Myrra’s name,” Phoebe said.

  “Also Lydia, Janine, Julie, Amelia, and Marty Caine.”

  “Amelia’s probably asleep,” Phoebe said.

  “Lydia’s in no condition,” I said.

  “Janine and Marty were going to have a drink in the Castle Walk after the Line Committee meeting,” Phoebe said innocently. “The meeting’s probably not even over yet.”

  “Could go on to midnight,” I said.

  “Marty will be drinking all alone,” Phoebe said.

  I headed for the bedroom to find my socks.

  CHAPTER 22

  I HAD MY PANTS half on when Barbara called. It was one of those conversations, misdirected and circuitous, that make me want to buy an answering machine.

  “He just left,” Barbara said. “I mean, I just got him out of here. I had to call the police.”

  “What
was he doing?” Camille latched on to one of the buttons on my shirt and pulled mightily. I detached her, rescued a sock from under the night table, and sat down on the bed. Phoebe stood in the door, jumping up and down and pointing at the watch she didn’t wear.

  “This time he was leaving a note,” Barbara said. “The note’s sitting there, right on your door.”

  “You didn’t look at it?”

  “I wasn’t going out there while he was lurking in the hall.”

  “Is he still lurking in the hall?”

  “No.”

  “Then why don’t you get it for me now? You can read it to me on the phone.”

  There was a pause.

  “Just a minute,” Barbara said finally.

  I put the phone on the bed. With all those locks to open and secure, I was counting on a good five minutes before hearing about the note.

  “Why,” I asked Phoebe, “do I feel Nick is going to swoop in here and kill us?”

  “Nick went back to his apartment,” Phoebe said.

  “He’s going to be furious when he hears about this,” I said. “He hates us doing anything on our own. I don’t understand—”

  I heard sounds on the other end of the line and lifted the receiver to my ear.

  “Hello?” Barbara said. “Pay? Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “It’s not a note, exactly.” There was a sound of rustling paper. “It’s a telephone number.” She read it off.

  I said, “just a minute” and got up to rummage in my tote bag for pen and paper. I came up with a Saks bill and a Bic that had obviously been leaking over everything for months.

  “Give it to me again,” I told Barbara. She repeated it.

  “Do you know what exchange that is?” I asked her. “I don’t think it’s the West Side.”

  “I thought you’d recognize it,” she said. “He left it on your door. Without a note.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t think it’s fair to have him wandering around the halls like that. Lurching. He’s always lurching.”

  “I thought you said he was lurking.”

  “Both. And he has to be someone you know, Pay. Someone you didn’t know wouldn’t come sneaking around the apartment, dead drunk, two days in a row, and then leave a phone number.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t Daniel?”

  “Of course I’m sure it wasn’t Daniel. I’ve never seen this man before.”

  “Well, he probably isn’t anyone I know,” I said. “Just a nut. He read about the murder in the papers and wants to annoy me. I’d give the note to Martinez if I were you.”

  “I will. Can I watch Mary, Queen of Scots at your place tomorrow night?”

  “Are the police seals off?”

  “They will be.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  She hung up without saying good-bye. I hung up, too, looking down at the number in my hand. Just a nut, I told myself. Just some drunk off the street with a nasty mind and no sense of other people’s privacy. I didn’t have to dial the number if I didn’t want to.

  I didn’t have to go back to West Eighty-second Street, either. I thought of Barbara sitting on my couch, watching in the dark while Mary Stuart stretched her neck over a stone and waited for the axe. Was there still blood on my carpet? Still a chalk mark on the floor? When this was over, I was going to find a new apartment and move in clean. My old landlord could have my typewriter and my wicker chair and my two Calvin Klein skirts—and the smell of blood and urine that went with them.

  I found my shoes and pulled them on. Marty and Janine, I reminded myself. We were supposed to be concentrating on Marty and Janine.

  We found Marty alone at a window table in the Castle Walk, his shoes off, his legs stretched across a vacant chair, his fifth straight scotch a thin amber puddle at the bottom of his glass. Phoebe looked at the scotch and made second-thoughts noises, but I pushed her on. I had to push her on. Things were making less sense by the minute. For the moment, Marty was our only chance to find the key.

  He saw the waitress and us at the same time. He said something to the waitress, then waved us over.

  “That meeting finally over?” he said. “The bitch goddess is supposed to be joining me for a drink, but no show.” He grinned lewdly at Phoebe. “You want to marry me?” he asked her.

  Phoebe cleared her throat. I scraped my chair against the carpet. I had no idea how to start this conversation. Was I supposed to just ask him if he’d been paying blackmail for nine months? What kind of niceties led up to a question like that? I had never seen Marty drunk before, never heard him call Janine “bitch goddess.” For all I knew, he secretly hated us all, and would be as little inclined to help as Martinez.

  For all I knew, he was too drunk to remember his date of birth. The waitress brought three glasses of straight scotch. Marty paid for them.

  “You two look looey,” he said. “You should be celebrating. The frame didn’t work this time. Leslie Ashe lives. Leslie Ashe lives and tells the world she was not attacked by Patience Campbell McKenna.”

  “Where did you hear that?” I sat up very straight in my chair. “Did you talk to the police?”

  “I talked to the bitch goddess,” Marty said. “She got a call from the woman. Keep her place at the dinner tomorrow night, quote unquote. She’s coming to the cocktail party. It was just a scratch. Something like that.”

  “It wasn’t just a scratch,” Phoebe said. “There was a lot of blood.”

  Marty shrugged. “I didn’t see it,” he said. “The bitch goddess saw it, but all she can talk about is her printouts. God, that woman is amazing. Marty do this. Marty do that. Marty, go back and run it again. Do you realize I actually did that? I even came here with the rerun in time for her idiotic presentation. Amazing.”

  He took a large swallow and finished half his drink, leering at Phoebe again. I took a sip of mine, had a few muscle spasms as it went down my throat, then felt my arms and shoulders go slack. I should have thought of it before, I decided. I should have locked myself in Phoebe’s suite and stayed drunk for the weekend.

  Phoebe poured half an inch of scotch into her very large glass of water and took a tentative sip. She made a face.

  “This won’t do,” she said. Then she looked at Marty. “Are you too drunk to answer questions?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Answer questions about what?”

  “About blackmail,” Phoebe said. I nearly grabbed her under the table. She sat in her little-Miss-Prim-at-dancing-class pose, hands folded in her lap, ankles probably crossed and feet not quite touching the floor, and said, “We want to know if you’ve been paying a thousand dollars a month in blackmail to an account in the New York Guaranty Trust.”

  Marty’s surprise lasted less than a minute. After that, he let out a whoop like a war yell. He couldn’t contain himself.

  “A thousand dollars a month,” he said. “My God, I don’t bring home a thousand a month. I don’t have a thousand dollars in one place. I couldn’t get it. I don’t have that much credit on my VISA card.”

  “I didn’t ask you that,” Phoebe said. “I asked you if you were paying it in blackmail.”

  Marty blinked. “You’re serious,” he said. He sounded surprised that Phoebe could be serious about anything. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have not been paying one thousand dollars a month into an account in the New York Guaranty Trust for blackmail. I haven’t been paying blackmail, period.”

  He looked from one of us to the other, soberer now, speculative. “You two want to tell me what this is all about?”

  I got ready to clap my hand over Phoebe’s mouth, but I didn’t need to. She had decided she’d given out enough information. She stirred her water and scotch and frowned at the table.

  “I thought all you people made a lot of money,” she said. “Marketing. Sales.”

  “Yeah,” Marty said. “The sales guys make out all right with the commissions. With mar
keting it depends on who you are. I’m the trash flack.” He laughed. “I also haven’t been doing too well until recently. First Romantic Life. Then old F of L didn’t pick up till the February returns, didn’t really take off till March. I thought we were all going to get fired. Sometimes I still feel that way.”

  “With a hundred million in the first year?” I was skeptical.

  Marty shrugged. “A hundred million and a lot of problems,” he said. “I’ve got to give the bitch goddess one thing. She knows the problems. She even knows the solutions.” He knocked reverently on the table. “May we win a little gold statuette,” he said.

  I decided not to tell him about Amelia’s conviction that Fires of Love would never win a Brontë. I also decided it was time to leave. I was tired and the conversation was going nowhere. We could talk to Janine tomorrow.

  Phoebe was so preoccupied, I had to pull her to her feet. She smiled and nodded at Marty with all the genuineness of a windup tin soldier. I pushed her out of the Castle Walk and into the lobby.

  “Wake up,” I hissed in her ear. “You can sleep when we get back to the suite.”

  The elevator doors opened. I pushed her inside and punched the button for our floor.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “You’re acting like you’re on dope.”

  “It’s Fires of Love,” Phoebe said. “It has to be.” Suddenly she didn’t look dreamy at all, but small, and sick, and very upset. “There’s something wrong at Fires of Love,” she repeated.

  “How do you know?”

  “That list. Of the blackmail accounts.” She giggled like a drunk with the hiccoughs. “It’s the Fires of Love Advisory Board and the Fires of Love Marketing Director and the Fires of Love Editor in Chief.”

  The elevator doors slid shut.

  “It was my idea, you know,” Phoebe said. “The Advisory Board was. I suggested it to Janine.”

  In the dark, the Primrose Suite of the Cathay-Pierce could have been our old dorm room at Greyson. Ordinarily, only freshman share rooms at Greyson. Upperclassmen live in splendid privacy on the top floors of the college houses. Phoebe and I stayed together three years, until custom dictated our move, as seniors, to Main Building. There the luck of the draw defeated us. I was given a room in North Tower, which was supposed to be “prestigious.” Phoebe was banished to the fourth floor.