“Is Kristi the one with the fake tan? What a diva,” Lucy said. “I saw her in the powder room. She had way more stuff in her arsenal than I do and that’s saying something. Most of it was still in boxes, too. Who tries new makeup at a party?”
Someone who just lost her makeup bag?
“Was she with anyone?”
“No, but she was yakking on the phone. To a man, I’d guess. I overheard her say the curse was over. She was laughing. I assumed she was talking about her period. My older sister used to call it that as a joke, I think.”
I didn’t know about Kristi’s cycle but I thought she meant the Javits Curse; and the only way she could possibly know it was over was if she had orchestrated it.
Fifty-nine
“At the El Quixote, Kristi mentioned thirty-five locations,” I said. “Maybe they weren’t distribution outlets. What if they were sprinkler zones? She kept telling the cops it was an inside job. She wasn’t lying.”
“Can you turn off separate sprinkler zones?” Lucy asked.
“Why not? I do it all the time in people’s gardens. You can also turn off individual zones on an alarm system.”
“But why would she sabotage her own show?”
In the course of mingling I’d seen most of my show acquaintances—Connie, Nikki, and David. Lauryn and Cindy Gustafson. I looked around for the one person I knew who might have the answer. She was near the valet parking, having a smoke.
Lucy, Rolanda, and I headed for the entrance as casually as we could for people who really wanted to be sprinting. My new friend, Allegra Douglas, was just stubbing out her cigarette in a portable ashtray when we got there.
“Nice party,” I said. Chitchat over. “What happens if the Wagner Center is no longer deemed fit for the Big Apple Flower Show?” I asked.
“It would be unfortunate. Lots of people at Wagner will be put out of work. Maybe the building will finally come down and new construction go up. Someone makes a lot of money on that. On the director’s recommendation, the board probably moves the show to Javits; Kristi Reynolds quadruples her budget and doubles her salary. Shall I go on?”
“Can one lost show do that? Surely there must be other events at the Wagner Center?”
“None that are subsidized by a billionaire’s widow who’s passionate about gardening. If Kristi can convince Mrs. Moffit that BAFS needs to relocate, that building will lose its staunchest supporter.”
“Then why not sabotage her plants instead of other people’s?”
Allegra was shocked by what we were suggesting. “I suppose there’s a limit to even Kristi’s hubris.”
“Thank you, Allegra.”
Since we were back at the entrance, I asked the attendant again if Stancik had checked in. Still not there. Where the hell was he?
We moved out of earshot and I tried to think how we could find the Wrenthams. Then I remembered he had called me from the airport. His number was the last one on my call log. I hit reply. It rang close to ten times. Finally someone answered. The sound I heard was something between a gasp and a moan.
“Professor? Is that you? Where are you?”
He didn’t speak but I held on, waiting for something, background noises, anything. Then I heard it—ribbit, ribbit. “Are you near one of the ponds? Can you tell me which one?” I thought I heard rushing water but couldn’t be sure if the sound came from the phone or a nearby fountain. His voice sounded a little like Nikki’s after she’d been sedated, but Wrentham’s had the trace of desperation in it, and a little gurgle that might have been blood.
“Hang on, we’re going to find you.”
I pulled out the map they’d given me when we’d arrived. “Lucy, can you get us a couple more of these?” She ran off and was back in less than a minute. There were three ponds on the property and three of us.
“We really shouldn’t go off on our own. Rolanda, how about if you get Lauryn Peete and get her to search with you?”
“How about if I get my gun and go by myself? All right, I don’t have a gun with me, but that little thing? I’d sooner get Connie Anzalone. At least she’s got some meat on her bones. And I know she’s not afraid of anything.”
“Just don’t go by yourself,” I said.
“I won’t.”
I told her to head for Mary’s Pond on the right-hand side of the property. “Don’t do anything crazy—we’re just looking for the Wrenthams. If you see Reiger or Shepard, stay away. One of them is dangerous. Do you have Stancik’s number?”
“Yeah, it’s on my phone.”
“Good. Don’t be afraid to use it. Be careful. I want to come to your graduation.” Rolanda took off in search of a partner. She would make a good cop one day, if she got through the night.
I looked at Lucy in her flowered dress and tight white jacket, rumpled and stained with sap from the tree she’d climbed, and she reminded me of a little girl who’d gotten her Sunday dress dirty. “You stay here and wait for Stancik.” I fished around in my bag for one of Stancik’s cards and gave it to Lucy. “Call him every five minutes until you get him. In fact, plug the number in now. Tell him what’s going on and tell him Wrentham may need an ambulance.”
“Where are you going?” she said.
“To find J. C. so we can look for Wrentham and his daughter.”
“You’d rather go into battle with an old lady than me?”
“Who’s going into battle?” Climbing out of his black tanklike Escalade was Guy Anzalone. The happy teddy bear threw a few pretend punches in my direction.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” I said.
“I been waiting all weekend for you to say that.”
I took him by the arm and led him to the left side of the parking area away from the bright lights. I toyed with the idea of telling him I needed his help, that two lives might depend on it. Then I took a different tack. I whipped out the map and pointed to Horse Pond, on the left-hand side of the estate.
“Meet me there in ten minutes, you big hunk of burning love. I’ll be listening to the frogs near the pond.” I appropriated a long-handled flashlight one of the attendants had set down. “Take this. Wait for me. And watch your footing. There may be landscaping I don’t know about. Watch where you step.”
“I like a woman who knows what she wants when she wants it. Ten minutes. And one of your frogs will soon turn into a prince,” he said. He took off to the left, waving the flashlight from side to side as he walked.
Lucy sized him up in less than a minute. “I get it. He’s got a certain Flintstonian charm.”
“It’s not that. He doesn’t know it, but he’s helping us look for the Wrenthams.”
Sixty
The sky was turning blue-black. We were going to need another torch; Wrentham would be harder to find as the night wore on. What I didn’t want to think about was where Emma was. And where “Mr. Rose” was.
I had the lantern that we’d used on the highway in my car, but I could tell from Spade and Archer strapped to the top that the Jeep was buried in back of the lot. Guy’s Escalade was still front and center. I ran to the attendant just as he was getting in to park it.
“My husband forgot something in the trunk—I’ll just be a minute.” The attendant helpfully popped the trunk lid. A plastic orange crate held Guy’s emergency kit—jumper cables, a flashlight, a piece of carpet, and some flares. Next to the cables was Guy’s sample case, with tumbled blocks and, for comparison, a few pieces of the real thing. I dumped all but two of the stones and put the flashlight and flares in the case. You never knew. Nothing else useful was in the trunk, just a lot of old magazines, a map of upstate New York, and a pair of foam stadium seats from the Mets’ new home, Citi Field.
“Mr. Rose—I can’t believe I just got it. It’s not the flower, it’s Pete Rose. Bambi-no’s founder is a baseball freak.”
I slammed the trunk shut. Lucy and I took off with the map and the stuff from Guy’s car. I carried the sample case like a handbag, albeit an ugly, heavy one, and sl
ipped past the crowds that were shrinking closer to the house as it grew dark and the gardens were less visible.
The Great Pond was the biggest, and it would take the longest to get around. As much as I’d snickered about Terry Ward’s sensible shoes I was glad to be wearing mine. So far Lucy’s canvas wedges were holding their own in the soft, moist soil near the pond, but they started to make sucking noises as we got closer to the water.
“I will sacrifice the red scarf and these shoes, but, please lord, do not let anything happen to the jacket Paula is wearing.”
“Sshhh. I think the lord has more pressing business right now.” We crept around slowly until we were close to one of the spotlights. Lucy’s white jacket shone like the moon. That was good if one of the Wrenthams saw us, bad if it was Shepard. I told her to take it off. In deference to her prayer, I took mine off and gave it to her to wear. If it fell in the mud now it would be her doing.
A third of the way around the pond we heard another sound from my phone. Wrentham was trying to say something. Either we were getting closer to him or the killer was. Then we heard footsteps, someone slogging through mud. We’d moved into a muddy area. Was I hearing my own steps echoed on the phone? Were we that close to Wrentham? Or were they someone else’s footsteps? We stopped moving, but the sounds continued. I thought I saw movement in the reeds, so we crouched down and waited until it passed. Two glowing yellow lights emerged from the reeds and I held my hand over Lucy’s mouth to stifle the scream.
“Raccoon.”
There was a storage shed twenty-five yards behind us, a custom-made version of the expensive prefabs sold at the show. I motioned to Lucy to creep back to the shed and stay hidden until we knew what was going on. And we did that until her cell rang.
“Where the hell are you?”
Lucy handed me the phone. “It’s for you,” she whispered.
It was Stancik. He’d tried my cell, but it had been busy. He was returning Lucy’s call.
“I heard from Emma. She’s hiding somewhere on the Moffitt property. She thinks a man named Mr. Rose killed her father,” he said. “She’s terrified.”
“I can identify with that. Except I think Wrentham is still alive. I can hear him breathing. And I think Mr. Rose is Marty Shepard, the Bambi-no guy.”
“You’re right. We found his wife stranded in a ditch off the Hutchinson Parkway. She was babbling about a red dragon flying through the air that caused her accident. I think she must be drinking that crap they’re selling. Where are you?”
“On the right side of the Great Pond. Wrentham’s on the phone—not with us. I’m not sure where he is except there are frogs there.”
“Where the heck is the Great Pond?”
“Didn’t they give you a map when you entered?”
“Only one guy was at the table; the rest were scrambling around the parking lot. A lot of ticked-off people walking around in the dark, trying to find their cars.”
“Okay, forget the map. It’s the large pond in the center directly opposite the terrace where the band is playing.”
“Stay put, you lunatic.”
“Did he just hang up on you?” Lucy said. I didn’t bother to answer. I handed Lucy her phone and pressed my own to my ear. I still heard breathing. That was good. I tried to think of something positive to say.
“Hang on, Lincoln. There’s a beautiful woman here who wants to go to bed with you.” It was the only thing I could think of to keep his spirits up. The last thing I wanted to do was mention his daughter. For all I knew she was lying on the ground beside him. The beautiful woman remark got us a grunt and I took that as a positive sign.
When we got to the shed, Lucy reached for the doorknob, but I grabbed her hand first. I wanted as much notice as possible if I was walking into a space already occupied by a killer. On my hands and knees, I crept to a side window and half stood to peer in. The shed looked unoccupied. Just then something drifted onto my hair and made me look up.
“Jeez!”
Standing over me with a flaking, rotten tree limb in her hands was Emma Franklin, poised to take a crack at my skull.
Sixty-one
Emma dropped the branch and her hands flew to the sides of her head. She mouthed I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you over and over again until I took her by the shoulders to quiet her down.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. Keep quiet. Your dad’s going to be fine.”
The three of us scurried inside the shed, took a deep breath, and crossed our fingers for Stancik to find us before Shepard did.
“Are the police bringing a lot of men?” she whispered. It was a child’s question. Presumably they’d alerted the local authorities, but where the heck were they? Where were they when we spoke? I didn’t know, so I didn’t say.
“Why did you leave?” I asked, once she was breathing normally.
She’d gotten another call from “Mr. Rose” just as we entered the Moffitt property. He’d seen her arrive and said he was ready to make the drop-off if she’d meet him on the far side of the Great Pond.
“My dad said we should meet him so that we could reason with him. Explain that the product hasn’t been completely tested yet, and there could be serious problems.” So much for reasoning.
He’d already dispatched Garland and Shepard was expecting Emma to be alone, not accompanied by a man claiming to be the scientist who’d created Bambi-no. Emma said Shepard/Rose was unmoved by Wrentham’s concern for the planet. He said he’d been selling a diluted version for three years and no one had died yet and that was good enough for him.
“He said he could make a fortune in the two or three years it was available before the government pulled it off the market, and after that who cared? Marty Shepard would be living on an island by that time—preferably somewhere in the Caribbean, where they had really good baseball players. Who’s Marty Shepard?” Emma asked.
At that point Shepard had revealed the Louisville Slugger he’d had hidden under his coat and moved in the girl’s direction. Her father stepped in and took the blow, one crack on the side of his head that took him down fast. The girl ran off and hid until she thought it safe to call Stancik. I handed her my phone.
“Talk into the phone, Emma. Your dad will be able to hear you. Whisper. Tell him you’re okay. It’ll help him to hang on until the police arrive.”
Emma, Lucy, and I sat huddled in the shed, Emma cooing into the phone, her estrangement from her father forgotten. In the distance the party noises were growing fainter as revelers either went indoors or left. Someone once said time is too slow for those who wait. Maybe it was a poet. Maybe it was an old rock and roller. In any event, it was too slow for us.
“Think I should turn the flashlight on?” We ran the risk of Shepard seeing us, but how long could we just sit while the life ran out of Lincoln Wrentham? Three votes for yes. We took an inventory of the shed. A tractor and a classic wooden canoe dominated the space.
“Can there be two slower vehicles than these?” Lucy said. “I thought rich people had Jet Skis and cigarette boats.”
“They’re at her other house. It’s not so bad. That’s a top-of-the-line tractor. It costs more than my car and can probably go twenty or twenty-five miles an hour.”
“Is that fast enough to outrun a crazy man?”
“Depends if it’s a crazy man with a gun or a crazy man swinging a baseball bat,” I said.
The problem was, we’d be exposed. And I wasn’t sure the tractor could go at top speed with three people hanging on. The canoe was even slower but we might be able to crouch down and hide in the hull. It was only a mile or so, but either option was preferable to running back to the house in the dark.
We didn’t have time for another vote. The shadows rippled outside the window and we killed the light. I told Lucy and Emma to stand on either side of the double doors and gave them hunks of Anzalone tumbled stone ready to use as weapons. Where was J. C. with her door bar when I needed her? I got on the tractor to see if the keys were there
and I could figure out how to start it.
Shepard kicked in the double doors and stood silhouetted in the doorway with the faint light behind him illuminating the bugs and mosquitoes circling him. He was holding a baseball bat.
“You in there, little girl? I don’t want to hurt you. I just want that formula. Your boyfriend said it was on a flash drive. Just toss that sucker out and I’ll go away, I promise.” Right.
He stepped into the shed and Emma, nervous, struck first, but she didn’t make contact. He turned and raised the bat to strike her, and from behind Lucy connected with a sharp blow to the back of his head. She screamed while doing it and then dropped the brick, which wasn’t heavy enough to put him out of commission for long. He was on his knees but getting up, so I turned on the tractor, temporarily blinding him with the lights.
I reached for one of the paddles in the canoe, aimed the front edge of the blade at Shepard’s neck, ran toward him, and pushed hard. He clutched his throat and hit the deck again, falling to his knees. The three of us jumped on the tractor and tore ass out of the shed, running over some part of Shepard’s body in the process.
Halfway to the main house the spotlights turned on us and we were guided back to safety.
Sixty-two
“It was a lovely party, Mrs. Moffitt. I hope I’ll get to visit again in the daytime, when I can see a little better.”
“You’re quite welcome, Detective Stancik. Maybe you can come back when Paula returns to advise us on where to place another sculpture. We’ve decided to purchase a second piece.”
Jensen wheeled his employer away to bid good night to the last stragglers. Few had noticed a disturbance earlier in the evening. And when police cars and an ambulance arrived, they were quite ready to believe as they’d been told that one of the older guests had suffered heart palpitations and was being looked after. Not exactly true. Wrentham and his daughter were on the way to hospital.
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