Murder Under the Palms

by Stefanie Matteson

  Charlotte said she would.

  Leaving the crime-scene unit to their work, they made their way back up the lawn. The house loomed ahead of them with its three increasingly narrow stories. Charlotte half expected to see stacks rising from the flat roof, so much did it resemble an ocean liner. At the head of the lawn was the swimming pool, which occupied a terrace at the rear of the house. It was surrounded by a tall hedge that shielded it from passersby on the Lake Trail. Passing the pool, they continued around to the patio at the side of the house and mounted the gangway that led to the front door. “She’s expecting you,” said the policeman who was posted at the door. “She’s upstairs,” he added as he opened the door for them. Crossing the hallway, they climbed the spiral staircase to the Grand Salon on the third floor.

  The exquisite Dupas mural was still there: it had not yet been handed over to the preservation association as restitution for the stolen money. Looking at it now, Charlotte remembered Lydia recounting her delight at having located the twelve missing panels. How it must have irked her that her magnificent reproduction of the Grand Salon was complete save for those panels. Without them, the mural must have looked like a row of teeth with three or four missing, and the room unfinished. Their absence had annoyed Lydia enough that she had been prompted to steal to buy them. If she was willing to steal, would she also have been willing to kill? Maybe it was she who had killed Paul, slipping away for a few minutes without detection. Then she’d gone on to kill McLean because he’d found out that she’d murdered Paul. A few years in jail for embezzlement was one thing, but going to the electric chair for murder was quite another. Or maybe she’d gotten the admiral to kill Paul for her, and then killed him in turn to keep him quiet.

  But upon reconsideration, Charlotte dismissed her speculations as ridiculous. Grasping at straws, in fact. Lydia hardly came up to Jack McLean’s chest. He could easily have overpowered her. Nor did she fit the picture of a professional killer that Maureen had drawn.

  They didn’t see Lydia at first. She was slouched at the far side of the room on a settee surrounding one of the crystal light fountains. She was smoking a cigarette and staring out at the ocean through sunglasses with round, white frames the size of cocktail coasters. The tiny silky terrier sat in her lap. Maureen announced their arrival, and they crossed the room and sat down in two of the sleek needlepoint-covered Normandie armchairs.

  Seeing Lydia in the morning light that streamed through the porthole-shaped windows, Charlotte was reminded of the film Lost Horizon, in which one of the characters ages a hundred years when she leaves the paradise of Shangri-La. Lydia Collins had gone from a well-preserved society matron to an old lady overnight. Her umkempt hair was growing out gray. Her face, devoid of makeup, looked old and haggard. Her pink silk dressing gown was stained, and her talonlike nails were cracked and chipped. Even the dog lacked the usual ribbon in its topknot.

  “I assume the police officer told you that Admiral MeLean has been murdered and that his body was found on your property,” Maureen said.

  Lydia nodded, and flicked the ash of her cigarette into a bisque-colored ashtray that said SS Normandie.

  “Had he been here first?” Maureen asked.

  Lydia shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since Friday.”

  Friday was the day that the news of Lydia’s transgressions had hit the local papers, along with the fact that she was being questioned in connection with Paul Feder’s murder. It looked as if Jack had been shunning her.

  “Then what was he doing here?” asked Maureen.

  “He liked to walk on the Lake Trail early in the morning,” Lydia replied. Her voice was low and flat, stripped of emotion. “But as you know, there’s a parking problem.”

  Parking on South Ocean Boulevard was strictly controlled. It was a way of keeping the undesirable element—namely anyone who didn’t live in Palm Beach—off the town’s beaches. In fact, the town had very cleverly arranged it so that the only place one could park was in front of a store.

  “I had told him he could park by my garage and walk down to the Lake Trail from there,” she said. “He’s been coming here to walk in the mornings three or four times a week for months now.”

  “Did he always come on the same days of the week?” Maureen asked.

  “Not always, but usually. He usually came on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He took his boat, the Sea Witch, out on the other days. Or sometimes he’d play golf. He was a man of habit,” she added.

  Which meant, Charlotte reasoned, that anyone who wanted to kill him would only have had to tail him for a few days to find out his routine.

  “What time did he arrive and leave?”

  “He walked for an hour. He usually arrived at six-thirty and left at seven-thirty. Or so he told me. I’m not usually up at that hour.”

  “Were you up this morning?” Maureen asked.

  Lydia slid her sunglasses down her nose and looked at Maureen over the tops as if to say, Are you kidding? At that ungodly hour?

  Like Charlotte, Maureen must not have considered Lydia to be a serious suspect because when Lydia went on to say that she was asleep, Maureen didn’t pursue it. She certanly didn’t look like someone who had gotten up at the crack of dawn to commit a murder.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?”

  Lydia shook her head.

  They left after Maureen had asked a few more routine questions.

  “I was shocked at how she looked,” Charlotte said as they walked back down the spiral staircase. “What’s happening with her case now?”

  “The preservation association has hired a law firm that specializes in fraud to conduct an investigation. They’ll also be taking title to the Dupas panels,” Maureen said. “Since the panels have a value of half a million or more, they should more than make up for her debt.”

  “Is the U.S. Attorney’s office going to prosecute?” Charlotte asked, referring to the speculations that had been in the newspapers.

  “I don’t know,” Maureen replied. “There’s an element on the board of the association that’s applying pressure to keep it in the family, so to speak, but I don’t think it’s going to work.”

  “How could it work?” said Charlotte. “She’s committed a crime.”

  Maureen gave her one of those How-can-you-be-so-naive? looks. “For one thing, the board has a lot of powerful members who are quite capable of pulling strings. For another, they could make the argument that she embezzled the money because she was mentally unbalanced.”

  “On what grounds?” Charlotte asked.

  “She claims that she was driven to take the money because of a psychological breakdown brought on by discrimination on the part of Palm Beach’s old guard society that resulted in her being excluded because of her social background, or lack thereof.”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “If you don’t try to get in, they aren’t going to exclude you,” she pointed out.

  Maureen shrugged, as if to say that the behavior of social climbers was beyond her. “Actually, I don’t think public pressure will allow them to let her off. It would be an open invitation to embezzlers, which would be the wrong message to send in a town where so much money is raised for charities.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Also, the more they dig, the more they turn up. Vacations, phone calls, limos, dinners—all charged to the association’s accounts. She claims that she charged her personal expenses only for the sake of convenience, that she intended to pay the money back, but …”

  “In other words, not just a few events that might have resulted from a mental breakdown, but a systematic pattern of abuse.”

  Maureen nodded. “Actually, you’re right about her not being able to avoid prosecution, though. Because its’s not only the preservation association that has something to say about it. The IRS is conducting its own investigation, as is the insurance company through which she was bonded.”

  “What you’re saying is that they will pro
secute, even if the preservation association won’t.”

  “Right. I think this is one former society woman who’s going to spend a lot of time behind bars. Who knows? Maybe they need somebody to organize fundraisers for the prisoners.”

  The policeman at the door was just signing off his walkie-talkie when they reached him. “It’s Roberts down at the lake,” he told Maureen. “He wants you to go right on down there.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He thinks he’s found the weapon.”

  Roberts met them at the far side of the pool and led them down to the Lake Trail. He was very young—why was it, Charlotte wondered, that lately it seemed as if the world was being run by kids?—and very excited at what was probably his first contribution to a major investigation. He was tanned, fit, and good-looking, and wore the uniform of the Palm Beach police—a brown shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts. To Charlotte, it looked like an outfit that Ernest Hemingway would have worn on safari in Africa, but who would expect the Palm Beach police to dress like policemen? This was never-never land, after all. At the Lake Trail, they headed north to a spot that Charlotte recognized as being at the end of the cross street on which the Smiths’ house was situated. Here Roberts turned off the trail and led them down to the shore of the lake, which at this point was lined with coconut palms. He stopped at the edge of the water, at a place where the coral that formed the bedrock of the island was exposed.

  Resting in a niche in the coral was a cylindrical structure made of brick with an opening in the front. Except for the fact that it had a cast-iron lid, it might have been a colonialera beehive oven.

  “What have we got here?” asked Maureen.

  “It’s an old manhole. It used to provide access to a storm drain that drained that road.” Roberts gestured toward the Smiths’ street. “The soil surrounding it has eroded away, and part of the brick has fallen off,” he said, indicating the hole at the front of the structure.

  Roberts handed his flashlight to Maureen. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take a look.”

  Maureen shone the flashlight into the opening at the front of the manhole and then stuck her head down into it. “I’ll be damned,” she said, her voice echoing in the hollow space. Withdrawing her head, she passed the flashlight back to the young policeman. “Good job, Roberts.”

  “Is it the knife?” Charlotte asked Maureen.

  “It’s a knife. I don’t know if it’s the knife. But I’d say it’s a pretty good bet that it is.”

  “Why would he have thrown it away?” Charlotte wondered.

  “Maybe he thought he didn’t need it anymore, and he didn’t want the incriminating evidence lying around. He probably figured that no one would ever find it here.” Maureen looked over at the young cop. “He wasn’t counting on Roberts.”

  Roberts smiled proudly.

  Reaching into the pocket of her blue demim jacket, Maureen produced a pair of rubber gloves and a plastic evidence bag, which she handed to Roberts. “Be my guest,” she said.

  “Gladly,” he said with the eagerness of the yet-to-become-jaded, and proceeded to don the rubber gloves. Then he got down on his stomach, and gradually shimmied his upper body down into the manhole while Maureen crouched at the side of the opening with the flashlight.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked after a few minutes.

  “Okay,” he replied. “But somebody’s going to have to hold my ankles, or I might end up standing on my head in here.”

  Maureen nodded to Charlotte, who took up a position at the young man’s feet. Kneeling with her hands on his ankles, she leaned forward with all her weight. She could feel his body twist as he lunged for the knife, which must have been at the limit of his reach.

  After several lunges, he finally announced that he had it. Turning off the flashlight and setting it aside, Maureen joined Charlotte at Roberts’ feet, and they proceeded to hoist him back up.

  His upper body emerged a few seconds later. As he sat up, he raised the plastic bag triumphantly, a big grin plastered across his face. Then he handed it over to Maureen.

  Inside was a silver-hilted dagger with a six-inch blade. The wide end of the hilt was inscribed with a swastika in a circle, and the narrow end, next to the blade, with a lightning bolt, the symbol of Hitler’s shock troops. In between were three words in German.

  Peering over Maureen’s shoulder, Roberts read the inscription: “Blut und Ehre. What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Blood and honor,” Charlotte replied.

  12

  From Villa Normandie, Charlotte drove straight uptown, heading for the Breakers to tell Eddie the news. The Breakers, where Eddie was staying, was Palm Beach’s grandest hotel. Built in the 1920s and modeled after the Villa Medici in Florence, it had over 500 rooms, the oldest golf course in Florida, and was situated on half a mile of private beach. It comprised its own little city within the town of Palm Beach: Palm Beach to the nth degree. Ten minutes later, she pulled into the palm-lined driveway, which terminated at an imposing fountain supported on the hefty shoulders of three naked caryatids. Leaving her car with one of the valets, she entered a lobby lined with gargantuan marble columns and hung with Flemish tapestries. Oversized bronze and crystal chandeliers hung from a barrel-vaulted ceiling decorated with Renaissance-style paintings of putti darting in and out among the clouds. When she asked for Eddie, she was told that she would find him in the Venetian Ballroom. From the lobby, she headed down what seemed like miles of wide, thickly carpeted corridors lined with potted palms and amply proportioned sofas and armchairs, and arrived at last at the carved wooden doors of the Venetian Ballroom.

  The far end of the room was occupied by a stage, on which the music stands for Eddie’s sixteen-man “All-American” orchestra had been set up. Eddie was on the stage, consulting with a hotel employee about the lights, which blinked on and off.

  “Charlotte!” he exclaimed when he saw her. Stepping down off the stage, he crossed the ballroom to greet her. “What a surprise!” he said, kissing her. Pulling out a chair from one of the tables, he invited her to take a seat and told her he would be finished in a moment.

  Though it was less than twenty-four hours since Charlotte had last been with Eddie, she felt a rush of pleasure at seeing him again. Once again, she found herself wondering what it would be like to feel this way all the time.

  He joined her a few minutes later. “Is this where the ball’s going to be?” she asked, looking around at the huge empty room, with its enormous crystal chandeliers, its peach and beige marble architectural detail, and its classical frescoes of flower-filled urns.

  “Yes,” he said. “They have a theme each year based on a big band locale. Last year it was the Make-Believe Ballroom. The year before, it was Roseland. This year it’s going to be the Rainbow Room. ‘Sixty-five stories nearer the stars,’ as I used to say on my radio broadcasts from there.”

  “I remember,” said Charlotte with a smile. “I used to listen to those broadcasts, wondering what it would have been like if …”

  “You did?”

  She nodded. “Little did I know that I’d find out years later.”

  “Little did we both know,” he said, taking a seat beside her. “What’s going on?” he asked. “It must be very important to have brought you all the way up to the United Nations.”

  Charlotte smiled. She had told him of her analogies between Palm Beach and Manhattan. In Manhattan, the Breakers would have been located in the East Forties, corresponding to the location of the U.N. “It is,” she said, and proceeded to fill him in on the morning’s events.

  Eddie was as shocked to hear of McLean’s murder as Charlotte had been. But after some discussion they both concluded that: one, Lydia couldn’t have done it, and two, the murders must be connected with the Normandie; there was no other link between the two men. They also decided that the only person with a motive to kill both Feder and McLean would have to be someone else who was involved in Operation Golden Bird. In other words, a fourth ma
n who feared exposure. That is, if McLean had been involved in the Normandie plot at all. They knew that Roehrer and Federov had been recruited through the count’s fascist summer camp, and they knew that McLean had been associated with Walter Welland, and that he would have been acquainted with the camp, but that’s all they really knew. They had no proof that he was the Fox. Maybe there was someone else associated with the Normandie’s command who had fascist leanings and who knew Count Koprosky. The only way to find out for sure if McLean was suspected of being a spy was to make inquires through official channels, as Maureen was now doing. Unless …

  Charlotte was watching Eddie drum his fingers on the edge of the table when the thought occurred to her. If McLean had been an enemy agent, who would he have confided in? Not his wife, who, in any case, was dead. Certainly not his children. Probably no one, at least at the time he was actively spying. But if he had confided in anybody, it would have been a buddy.

  “Eddie,” she asked, “was there anyone on board the Normandie with whom McLean was especially close? A good friend?”

  Eddie immediately grasped what she was getting at. He thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “There was! They spent a lot of time together.” He stared at the stage at the other end of the opulent room. “What was that guy’s name?” he asked himself in frustration.

  “What was his position?” asked Charlotte in an attempt to jog his memory.

  “He was one of the prospective Navy crew members who came aboard toward the end of January, a couple of weeks before the fire. An engineering officer. They came on first, to learn how to run the ship.”

  “Maybe we could track him down through the Navy.”

  “We could track him down through a computer information network if I could remember his name. My daughter, Sharon, sells them to law firms. They’re very expensive to use, but I can use hers for free.”

  “How do they work?”

  “You type in the name and ten seconds later the computer gives you the address of everyone in the country with that name.”