He was painfully conscious of their age difference. His body, over fifty, could not hide its true identity. He discovered how difficult it is to hold in a paunch while lying down. They touched, and kissed, and explored.
When she was ready, they made love. She was ferocious, almost violent. Her body arched and relaxed, over and over. There was some primal need he was fulfilling, though he wouldn’t think about it like that for days.
It had been so long. Not since his divorce almost eight years before. Feelings swelled in him, dangerous feelings. Twice they made love. And twice tears filled his eyes.
Finally spent, they fell asleep in each other’s arms and awoke six hours later the same way.
Chapter Twenty-two
The next day Lowell was already at work when Sarah entered with Mort trailing behind.
Sarah opened the door and stuck her head out. “Breakfast is here.”
“Bring it in here. And Sarah, the next time you get flowers for your desk bring a bunch in for mine as well.”
“Boss?”
“Just want to spruce up the place a little.”
Mort and Sarah exchanged a quick glance.
They ate together, Lowell filling Mort in on the case so far. He told him about the wives, the band members, the managers, the Bowie bonds, and the rather bizarre wager between Marty Winebeck and the nine other musicians.
“This isn’t going to be our easiest case.” Lowell tugged on his ponytail. “I need accurate information about all of these people, and you must find me Tracy’s birth year.”
“How is it, running around with Pete Sampson, Barron Dickens, and Bobby James?” Mort was obviously star struck.
“They’re interesting people.”
“And how about Vivian Younger? You haven’t mentioned her at all.”
“Oh, she’s a very nice woman.” He looked down at his pancakes.
Sarah and Mort exchanged another look.
Breakfast was over and Lowell and Mort got to work. There was much to coordinate between them, so Mort was stationed at the second computer in Lowell’s office. The number of suspects was ridiculous. Freddie had pissed off so many people it was going to take a lot of time to sift through it all. And Lowell needed the birth information of all of the players.
At noon Sarah brought in a bouquet of mixed flowers in a vase and placed it on the edge of Lowell’s desk.
About an hour later Sarah buzzed. “Mr. James is here to see you.”
“Send him in.”
“Bobby James?” asked Mort.
Lowell nodded.
The door opened and Bobby entered.
“Linguini with white clam sauce,” said the psychic.
Bobby turned and looked at him. “I was just thinking about having that for lunch, although it was with a red sauce.”
Mort looked at Lowell and shrugged. “Monochromatic.” He pointed to his eyes.
“Huh?” said Bobby
“Color blind,” replied Lowell.
“Bobby James, my god.” Mort extended his hand. “I’m a big fan.”
“Bobby, this is my friend and assistant, Mort.”
Bobby shook Mort’s hand.
“So what brings you to our neighborhood?” asked Lowell.
“I was on my way downtown so I figured I’d stop off and see if you had gotten anywhere. I’ve only got a minute, but as you can imagine, it’s kind of important to me, to all of us. I told the others I’d report back.”
Lowell filled him in with what he knew so far, which wasn’t really much, while Mort sat agog like the over-aged fan he was.
“So you finally found Marty Winebeck, huh?”
“Actually, it was Mort who found him for me. This is the best computer guy I’ve ever known.”
“Is that right?”
“Well, you know,” said Mort, sheepishly, “it wasn’t really that hard.”
“Marty Winebeck. What’s he up to?”
Lowell didn’t quite know how to answer that. “Well, he’s still in the music business, sort of.”
“What’s he do?”
“He performs and writes.”
“Huh, he ever get anywhere?”
“Not by your standards, no.”
“He never did make it?”
“Freddie pretty much put him out of business for a long time.” He didn’t mention the bizarre wager Marty and his friends had made.
“Well, rock ‘n roll’s a damn hard place. Do you think he had anything to do with the murders?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Bobby rose. “I’ve got to go. Keep me in the loop, okay?” He extended his hand to Mort. “It was nice meeting you.”
“Likewise.”
“Say, how about the wives? Could they have done it?”
“Well,” said Lowell, “they’re both still in the active file, but the second Mrs. Finger has sued the third Mrs. Finger three times. The third Mrs. Finger in turn sued back once. I don’t think they could get out of each other’s way long enough to commit murder, except maybe of each other.”
“Call if there’s anything I can do.”
He shook hands with Lowell.
“The many wives of Freddie Finger,” said Bobby, as he headed toward the door. “It could be an HBO series.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Lowell and Roland were sitting at a coffee shop on Second Avenue near the precinct.
“You’ve got to get me something,” said Roland. “You talked me out of arresting Marty Winebeck, so now where do we go?”
“Marty didn’t do it, at least not alone. There is no way his chart could be that off.”
“You never make mistakes?”
“I do,” admitted Lowell, “but astrology doesn’t.”
“Maybe this is one of those times you did. And what if he didn’t do it alone? There were ten of them involved in this bet. One’s dead. Got shot about ten years ago. The others are very much alive. And that’s a lot of money for a few of them to split. I’m still going to keep an eye on him. At the very least he’s now got a file as a K.P.S.”
Lowell looked at him.
“A Known Pot Smoker.”
“Isn’t it a bit of overkill?”
“The law is the law.”
“But smoking pot? Rockefeller isn’t governor anymore, you know. You sure you’re not just pissed off about Freddie?’
“In 1990 the number of arrests for marijuana use in New York City was five thousand. In 2010 that number had gone up to over fifty thousand, even though the number of smokers has remained virtually the same. It’s not just me. Your liberal ideas just don’t have much clout anymore.”
“Oh, Brave New World,” said Lowell.
“That has such people in it.”
“Shakespeare, Lieutenant?”
“I’m a conservative, not an illiterate. What about the wives?”
“I’m checking on everybody.”
“Did you know that Rose had a criminal record?”
“What for?”
“She was an actress.”
“I knew that. But I didn’t know it was against the law.”
“And did you also know that while she was flying around the world doing her movies she was also doing a little smuggling on the side, mostly jewelry?”
“That I didn’t know.”
“She was either very lucky or very well connected, because she apparently did it for years and they never caught her.”
“So how did you find out?”
“Right before she met Freddie she took a trip to Milan. She returned on the same plane as a suspected drug dealer the feds planned on busting at JFK. As luck would have it, her bag was identical to his and they pulled it along with the dealer’s. When they opened it they found several pieces of expensive jewelry she could not account for and booked her.”
“What happened?”
“They were more interested in getting the dealer and his supplier, and concerned that her involvement might confuse the case, so they
quickly cut her loose with probation and no jail time. There was some talk about her and the assistant DA having a fling, but it never came to light. Six months later she was married to Freddie and didn’t need to work anymore. I guess it’s better to be pretty than smart.”
“Well, she may have been a bad girl, but that doesn’t make her a murderer.”
“Somebody did it!” The cop was obviously annoyed.
Lowell took a bite of his jelly donut. “Time will tell.”
“Time is the one thing I don’t have.”
“I already told you when I thought this would be solved. It will take until Mercury goes direct and I don’t believe there’s a thing we can do except muddle through.”
“Ahh!” said a frustrated Roland, as he got up and walked out, leaving Lowell with the check.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Mercury retrogrades three times a year for about three weeks each time,” said Lowell.
“A lot of my friends are into this stuff and they’ve all mentioned it. And it’s all over the Internet. Explain that to me.” Sarah flipped her red hair. “What does retrograde mean?”
“This is an oversimplification but imagine you’re on a train moving forward and you pass another forward moving train. If you look out the window as you go by it appears that the other train is moving backwards. It’s an optical illusion. When our orbit passes that of another planet, when that planet is on the opposite side of the Sun, it appears as if that planet is going backwards against the constellations. We call that retrograde motion. All the planets retrograde, except the Sun and the Moon.”
“What does that mean for people?”
“Depending upon which planet it is, the energy of that celestial body is internalized and often difficult to express outwardly. When Mercury is in retrograde we experience a greater than usual number of electronic failures, difficulties with communications and transportation. You should leave extra time for travel, and expect delays. Subways, cars, planes are all susceptible to difficulties. You should not purchase any product involved in those areas, including cell phones, computers, cars, or clock-radios. One year during the same three week retrograde period, the main computer in the New York City post office department crashed, the mainframe for over thirty six thousand metro card machines went down and they had to each be reset by hand, the e-z-pass in New Jersey stopped working, and the Swiss, known world over for their precise timepieces, set all of their official state clocks ahead two hours instead of one at the start of daylight savings time. Mistakes abound and you should not sign important documents. Secrets are also often revealed while the change in direction is occurring. If you remember, it played a significant role in solving the Winston case.”
“It affects everyone?”
“It affects the world, and thus it will affect you in some ways, although I find that many Geminis seem to do just fine during these periods.”
“Whatever.” She shrugged and went back to her desk.
A few minutes later she tried to call her sister on her cell phone but couldn’t get a signal. Even on the landline she couldn’t get through. “Mercury?” she asked aloud.
Lowell hated when Mercury retrograded. It made his thoughts move slower and information very difficult to uncover. Although he did find that if he just let things fall where they might during these times, somehow or other it always worked out. Still, it was frustrating and it wasn’t his nature to just sit back and wait. These retrograde periods favored free-form creativity and spiritual matters. He favored clear thoughts and hard work.
He opened the folder containing the facts of this case. Besides the police papers and computer work Mort had done, there were several dozen astrology charts, which he separated into two piles: possible and improbable. Of course nothing was impossible, so he had no third pile.
There were the two ex-wives.
Tracy: dumb but conniving and probably capable of evil. But could she mastermind three murders? He doubted it. She didn’t seem capable of thinking more than a step or two down the line. But he had often met people who were able to put on a front for years, fooling even their most intimate acquaintances. The natal chart would show the true personality, but Tracy had successfully confused the year of her birth, and without an accurate chart he was lacking the tools necessary to eliminate all doubt, so she stayed in the possible file.
Rose: the quiet type, passion bubbling under the surface. She was smart enough to do it, but what was her motivation? There was little she would gain, except for some more money, which didn’t seem to interest her particularly. And if she was lying about suing the estate, how would she explain her change of heart now without bringing suspicion upon her? And what about Gene and Wally? How and why would she kill them?
And there was wife number one, Lilly, Vivian’s mother. Mort had tracked down a verifiable birth date and Lowell had put her chart in the files. He would never mention this to Vivian, but he had to cover all bases. Lilly’s astrology chart showed a sweet, good-natured soul. If anything she was more of a victim than either of the other two wives. He punched up the composite chart between Freddie and Lilly. It showed a Sun Venus conjunct in the 8th house of sexual partners. Theirs might actually have been a marriage of love, at least at the start. That’s why they were able to produce someone as lovely as Vivian. Lilly didn’t have it in her to do this.
There must have been hundreds of people who wanted Freddie dead. He couldn’t pick through each, it would take forever.
He picked up his notebook and began reading through it. When he didn’t know what else to do he went through everything systematically. Bobby wasn’t wrong. Rock n’ roll sure is a nasty business. About all he could do now was probe the various options opened to him.
He picked up the phone and punched in some numbers.
“Morgan Stanley,” said a female voice.
“Roger Bowman.”
“One moment, I’ll try that extension.”
“This is Roger.
“It’s Lowell.”
“Starman, how are you? How are the planets?”
“They’re still up in the sky. Tell me what you know about the Bowie bonds.”
“The Bowie bonds, huh? I guess you’re working on the rock n’ roll killings?”
“Good guess. Tell me what they’re all about and how secure they are, who put it together, you know.”
“How soon do you need it?”
“Yesterday.”
“Alright, I’ll call you back. It may take a day or so, we’ve been having problems with our computers.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised. Let me know when you’ve got something.”
He hung up and called Vivian. When he suggested dinner she balked.
“I’m tired of just eating out. Let’s do something New Yorkish.”
“New Yorkers go to restaurants.”
“Not all the time.”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Well, I want to do something else tonight.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, go to a show or something.”
“People from New Jersey do those things.”
“Then let’s pretend I’m from New Jersey.”
Lowell made some calls and they went to a new musical. A friend of his was one of the producers and they sat in the third row. The seats were excellent. The show wasn’t.
Afterwards they had a drink at Sardi’s, just like tourists. It was a little uncomfortable, as it often is when a love affair begins. But neither let it interfere.
“I have a message for you from your father’s wife.”
She was drinking a martini with several large stuffed green olives. She pierced one with a toothpick and nibbled at it.
“Which one? Number two or number three?”
“Tracy.”
“Oh, good old number two.” She picked up her glass. “What did she have to say?”
“She told me to tell you that ‘Mom’ says hello.”
She lau
ghed so hard that she spilled about half the drink. “Mom? Did she actually say that? Oh that’s a good one.”
The bartender hurried over and cleaned up the mess.
“She’s only a few years older than me. When she was married to my father I was in my teens and had to keep my boyfriends away from her or she would flash them. Mom, that’s funny.”
“You weren’t close to your father’s wives?”
“Rose is okay. I think she’s about my age. I always thought of her as a younger sister. By the time she came into the picture I was already in my late twenties and not much of a threat for my father’s affections. In fact, Rose and I were friends, sort of, for a while. But Tracy was really into a power struggle regarding my father.”
“With you?”
“With everybody. She would create a scene if he flirted with another woman and at the same time I wouldn’t give you a nickel for her fidelity.”
“Would she have any reason to want your father dead?”
“My father? No, not that I can think of. But if Rose were to die suddenly you might not have to look too far.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Tracy showed up unannounced a little after noon on Tuesday. She walked into the office with the air of aristocracy, a jacket thrown nonchalantly over her shoulder and a cigarette holder in her hand. All that’s missing, thought Sarah, is a white poodle. She wore a flimsy white blouse opened two buttons below decency and a pair of green pants so tight that Sarah thought she must be numb from the waist down.
Sarah showed the ex Mrs. Finger into Lowell’s office.
“How nice of you to drop in on me.”
Sarah snickered audibly as she left.
“Do sit down.”
She hung her jacket over the back of the chair and sat, dropping her purse on the floor. She took the cigarette holder out of her mouth and put it in her purse.
“I thought I would stop by and see how things were progressing. Have you had a chance to delve into the heart-broken widow yet?”
“I interviewed Rose, just as I did you.”
“Oh, you don’t know her. She puts on that sincere straight-laced image, but she’s dangerous. And she’s more than able to kill for profit.”
Death in the 12th House Page 13
