“I brewed you some tea,” Wes said, also checking me out. “Darjeeling.”
“I put it in the bedroom,” Holly said, “on a tray with some mandelbrot.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” I asked, leading the way. “Wesley, bring that cardboard box. We have a lot to talk over.”
Holly went to fetch extra teacups and then we all settled on the high bed Wes had made up for me in the guest room, each finding a comfortable perch. I started combing through my long hair, gently detangling it, and began to talk it out.
“Look, you guys. You are being so patient with me. But this evening—last night—is hard for me to deal with. So much has happened…And I have this feeling I’m missing some important connections. Like some of the answers are right here in front of me, but I haven’t put it all together yet.” I rubbed my head where my comb had pulled too hard. “Only I don’t know which parts go together. It’s like sorting through a pile of jigsaw-puzzle pieces and suspecting you may have a few pieces from another puzzle mixed into the wrong box. But you can’t tell which belongs to which. And the whole pile is overwhelming.” I looked up at my friends.
“Just start wherever you want,” Wes said calmly. “We can help you sort.”
“It’s hard to start,” I said, “because every time I think it over, I feel like I’m getting it wrong. Like it really must have started earlier. And then when I go back, it seems like it started even earlier.”
“Then don’t start at what happened at your house,” Holly suggested gently. “Start earlier. Like right after the party tonight?”
I shook my head. “Earlier. Remember the rubbish I found outside my house yesterday? I thought it was just a case of teenage vandalism or littering. Then, when I glanced at the stuff, I began to see the papers made sense—they belonged to a man and it didn’t seem like he would want to lose all that stuff.”
“Right,” Wes agreed.
“But then I discovered that the man, Albert Grasso, was at the party last night. And he and his woman friend were livid. Remember, Holly? They were angry at me because they thought I’d stolen those papers. So what really happened? Maybe there was a crime up on Iris Circle yesterday and maybe those papers were taken from Grasso’s office. Not by me, of course. But maybe they were stolen. As to why they were then dumped on our doorstep, I have no idea.”
“I’m going to take notes,” Holly said, and then left to find her notebook. She returned a few minutes later as Wes and I tried to make sense out of it all, and frankly couldn’t.
“That’s the first crime,” I said to Holly, and she marked it down in her notebook.
“Saturday morning or early afternoon. Private papers taken from Grasso office on Iris Circle. Saturday afternoon. Private papers dumped one block below on Whitley. Saturday night. Albert Grasso learns his papers have been found and goes ballistic,” she read. “That right?”
“Yes. So then there is that tenor saxophone from the Woodburn. You guys may not have heard, but—”
“We know!” said Holly. “We were there when they called 911. One of the auction chairladies nearly fainted.”
“The cops showed up and searched the hall,” Wes added. “Whoever took it left the sax case. They were fingerprinting and such.”
“I hoped maybe it had just been misplaced or something,” I said, remembering Bill Knight’s rage. “You know Zenya Knight’s husband won the sax in the auction and he was convinced that another Woodburn dad took it out of spite. But I thought he was just venting. He didn’t have any proof. What do the cops think really happened?”
They filled me in. The Selmer saxophone case, along with all the other items, had been left in an unsecured storeroom right off the stage, where items were kept both before and after the auction. Lots of people had been milling about near the storeroom, and certainly several fund-raising volunteers had nipped in and out during the closing minutes of the auction, but with all that activity and so many people hustling here and there, no one saw anything out of the ordinary.
“I have to say, this maybe fits in with what Bill Knight was suggesting. I mean, how could this have been a premeditated crime?” I asked. “I realize a lot of people had knowledge that the Selmer had been donated to the Woodburn auction, so I get how it might have been the target of a theft, but who could have anticipated having any privacy in that storage area? Not even somebody with insider knowledge—”
“Like someone who worked on the auction committee!” Holly suggested.
“Right, someone on the committee might know there were no plans for armed guards, or locks or anything, but they still couldn’t predict in a crowd of hundreds of people that they could get to the sax and not be observed.”
“That’s true,” Wes said. “And if it was someone working as a volunteer, it would have been easier to steal the sax sometime before the ball. Fewer witnesses.”
“So you’re saying,” Holly said, picking up Wes’s line of thought, “it must have been done on impulse. Someone must have seen a few seconds of opportunity and pounced.”
We all thought it over. I couldn’t buy that some wealthy dad would risk his reputation in order to get his hands on that sax. It wasn’t as if his son could ever play it in public, after this. What would be the point? Whoever stole the sax didn’t give a damn that the Woodburn would end up losing a hundred-thousand-dollar donation, and Dave Hutson’s wife was the chairwoman of the whole freaking auction committee. It made no sense.
“What sort of person would be likely to do it?” I asked.
“A crime like that. It takes real balls.” Holly Nichols, criminal profiler.
Wes said, “Holly has been into a whole ‘balls’ theme this evening. Don’t ask.”
“But it’s true,” Holly said, defending her point. “They had to unlock the case when no one was looking, grab the horn, and just waltz out—who could have managed that?”
Wes picked up the heavy pot of tea and began to pour. “It’s like one of those old locked-room mysteries where you’d swear it couldn’t have happened. There were dozens of helpers milling about. Even if a disgruntled bidder suddenly went insane and was seized with an overpowering urge to snatch his rival’s prize, how the heck could he get it out? Believe me, no one left the storeroom with a bulky, heavy, shiny, curvy, three-foot-long, fully engraved, sterling-silver tenor saxophone under his dinner jacket. That would have been noticed.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Holly said thoughtfully. “But maybe no one realized what was going on. Just wait. Someone will remember something. Or no! I bet somebody saw something and just isn’t talking.”
We both eyed Holly, considering this.
I nibbled on the crunchy, crispy mandelbrot and tasted the fine tea, which was incredibly mellow and flavorful. Wesley had become a student of the subtle art of tea brewing and was a connoisseur of estate-grown Indian teas. Of course.
Holly took a piece of mandelbrot and considered motivations. “These Woodburn dads can get nuts.”
“It’s like they are secretly insane,” I agreed, taking my second piece of mandelbrot.
“It’s like Darwin,” Wes suggested. “In more primitive times, these two dads would be clubbing each other to get dominance over their tribe. Today, they use their checkbooks to clobber their sons’ musical competition.”
Holly finished scribbling notes and then read: “Saturday night. Ten-thirty, tenor sax sold at auction for one hundred thousand dollars. Midnight, B. Knight goes to pay and finds the case is empty. Lots of witnesses report they saw nothing suspicious near the storeroom. Stolen sax may have been taken by D. Hutson out of primitive urge.”
We shared a what-a-world, what-a-world look as we each sipped our tea. “This is fantastic,” I said, breathing in the steam.
“Darjeeling, of course,” Wes explained, our font of all things arcane. “Grown in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northeastern India between Nepal and Bhutan.”
“I knew that,” Holly said.
We
looked at her.
“Sort of.”
Wes smiled. “You can tell, Hol, by its characteristic dryness and muscat overtones.” He gazed into the rich golden amber liquid in his cup. “The Champagne of Teas, it’s called.”
“First flush?” I inquired nonchalantly.
Wes looked at me.
I took another small sip. I like to keep Wesley on his toes by throwing out the odd esoteric fact.
“Naturally.” He raised an eyebrow in deference to my knowledge.
“What’s first flush mean?” Holly asked, playing right into my hands.
“Tea plants hibernate during the winter months, Hol,” I explained. “As March approaches, the warm sun stimulates the growth of the leaves, but the cool temperatures keep the growth rate slow. This first new growth of leaves is full of flavor and it’s referred to as the first flush. It’s considered the ideal time to pluck the classic ‘two leaves and a bud.’”
“Wow.” Holly looked into her cup.
I smiled. I had read all about it when I was working temporarily as a writer on a culinary game show. Who says TV rots one’s mind?
“Chamling Estate?” I asked Wes. I knew I was pushing my luck, but whenever else would this sort of trivia come up in conversation?
“It’s Thurbo Estate, actually.”
“Go on,” I urged.
“The Thurbo Tea Estate is located in the Mirik Valley of Darjeeling at an altitude ranging from 980 meters to 2,440 meters. It has a planted area of 485.11 hectares and produces 263,600 kilograms of tea per year.”
“You are good,” I said. You had to hand it to Wesley. He knew his stuff. “Too bad I’m not still working on Food Freak. I could have used all that.”
Somehow, the camaraderie of my pals and this tea break had brought me back to myself. After all, with Holly taking notes, and Wes to puzzle it through, we had already gotten somewhere. I was fortified to deliver the rest of my story.
I approached the next part gingerly. I explained to Wes and Holly how I had been practically hijacked in Bill Knight’s Hummer and raced around the streets and abandoned downtown and the hour it took me to finally find civilization. Naturally, I expected a reaction from my best friends. I got it.
“That’s the funniest thing I ever heard,” Holly said, cracking up.
“Well, not at the time it wasn’t,” I said.
“But you’ve got to love the part where it ends up with Maddie thinking she attracted a ‘john,’” Wes said, grinning at Holly.
“Yeah, real funny,” I chimed in with less enthusiasm.
“Well, at least you liked this guy Dexter Wyatt who came to rescue you. Is he cute?”
“Yeah. Too cute. It’s just that I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with cute at the moment,” I said, feeling my energy ebb.
“So do you want me to write it all down in my notes about the Knights hijacking you and the guy picking you up?” Holly asked, with belated sensitivity. She held up her pen, a fuzzy-topped purple glitter Gelly Roll, showing me she was taking my pain seriously. Now.
“Not necessary,” I said. “I can’t blame anyone but myself for getting into trouble downtown. Remind me never again to ride home with one of our party guests.”
“So what happened when you finally got to your house?” Wes asked, staring at me. He had been patient, holding on to this question as long as anyone could. But Wes and Holly had been up all night, too, worrying about me. They needed to be told.
“It was a total disaster,” I said, suddenly sober.
Holly bit her lip. She also seemed to be coming down from her Darjeeling high.
“Was there a break-in at the house like they originally reported?” Wes asked. “And why did they think you were…dead?”
“They found someone else. It was a woman’s body,” I said. And the light mood we had just enjoyed vanished in an instant.
“We didn’t know that…” Holly looked at both of us. “We were hoping it couldn’t be true. That it was a mistake, too.”
“We heard about the break-in, but when they announced that you were really alive…” Wes quickly picked up my nervous reaction. “I guess we didn’t pay close enough attention.”
“But how could there have been a body?” Holly asked, truly perplexed. “Was someone killed in your house?”
I nodded, tears springing up out of nowhere. Apparently the news reports had been sketchy. And Wes and Holly had been frantic. And I suddenly realized they really had no idea what I had just gone through.
“It’s someone we all know. It was Sara Jackson.”
“I’m Beginning to See the Light”
I’ve been thinking,” I said, walking back into the living room of the guest house. All the wooden blinds had been shut and the room, even in midday, was dim. Holly was trying to sleep on an inflatable mattress that Wes had put out for her. Her lean frame was much too long to fit comfortably on the love seat, even curled up. I noticed she was also wearing a pair of Wesley’s white cotton pajamas. Even on her, the sleeves had to be rolled up.
“Aren’t you sleeping?” Holly asked, pushing up on one elbow.
“No. Can’t. Sorry, did I wake you up?”
“Not really. I didn’t want to go home because I would just be alone and I don’t want to be alone after hearing about what happened to Sara.”
“I know.” I sat down next to her and put an arm around her. “You must be missing Donald.”
She nodded. “I wish we really had eloped. If we make it to our wedding day, I’ll be an old lady.”
“When’s he coming home from visiting his sister?”
“Nine more days.”
“At least you can dream about your wedding.”
“I guess I could, if I could get to sleep. What have you been thinking?” she asked.
“I’ve been so overwhelmed, I forgot about Albert Grasso.”
“What a geek! He and his friend Caroline went psycho last night. I hate it when people get so bent out of shape.”
“That’s what I mean. Look, he doesn’t have to love me, but I am a young businesswoman. I have a reputation. Why would he jump to the hysterical conclusion I had stolen his papers?”
Holly sat up and wrapped her long, slender arms around her knees. “Look at how everyone runs around ranting and venting! All these people need a good massage therapist and some meditation.”
She did have a point there. It seems like all the people we know keep themselves going on some secret recipe of adrenaline, deadline pressure, and Starbucks. A little too much of any one of those ingredients and they could explode from all the stress.
“Well…” Holly rubbed her white-blond topknot, a little droopy now after a few hours against a pillow. “How the heck did this guy Grasso’s junk get dumped out on your lawn, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But what if he had some very private things in his office, papers or photos that he thought no one would ever see?”
Holly nodded.
“And then I came waltzing up to him at the party, right there out in public, and started telling him I had a whole pile of his most secret, private papers.”
Holly nodded. “That would screw up his night.”
“He got incredibly defensive, you know? And then went on the attack. Like he assumed I would be blackmailing him. I didn’t get it at first, because I was so blown away by his hostility. But maybe he was scared out of his head.”
“O-kay…”
“This just feels right to me,” I said, warming up to this new idea. “I would bet you a doughnut that there is something among those papers that Albert Grasso would hate to have discovered by anyone.”
“Well, that’s pretty scary,” Holly said. “Do you remember seeing anything really suspicious when you looked through the junk yesterday?”
“Not really. Maybe that photograph of the president with a young babe, but—”
“Like there aren’t a million Clinton pics floating around.” Holly dismissed that idea and went
on. “Perhaps something is buried in among all the bills and invoices? There might be something incriminating there—like showing he overbilled some celebrity or something.”
“Or worse,” I said, thinking it through.
I suddenly noticed Wes standing at the door to the master bedroom, fully awake, wearing the same white cotton pajamas as Holly and I.
“Very interesting,” he said, joining the conversation. “Presuming Grasso had some secret papers, he would naturally be looking for your motivation, Maddie, for telling him you found them. You must have caught him completely off guard. But then you didn’t act smug or menacing. You didn’t appear to know anything worth blackmailing him over. You didn’t act like you wanted his money and he must have been shocked.”
We all nodded. As Wes, Holly, and I picked up this new thread, we carefully avoided the promise we’d made to one another that we would get some sleep and put all thoughts of theft and murder and littering out of our heads.
Wes continued, “What if he realized he and his lady friend had overreacted, and in doing so, they must have gotten you nervous. He would have to be afraid that you would run back home and look through the papers more thoroughly when you had some time.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed. “That is exactly what I intended to do. You think he might have gone over to my house last night to get the papers and photos back?” I was getting creeped out.
“Oh my God,” Holly said, her hands flying to her mouth.
Wes picked up the story. “What if he found Sara there, coming over to return your car? And she saw him and what he was doing. He was afraid she would get him arrested for breaking and entering, not to mention the cops would have to look at the papers and might discover what terrible secret Grasso was trying to hide.”
“So the singing teacher might have shot Sara. Just to cover up what he was doing?” Holly seemed to be getting paler. “That’s horrible.”
I spoke up. “What sort of paper could be worth killing an innocent girl?”
“Maddie, where is the carton with all of Grasso’s trash now?” Holly asked.
“Was it gone? Did Grasso get to it?” Wesley’s voice was alert. “It would look very suspicious if that box of papers is gone now. The police could make something of that.”
Perfect Sax Page 10
