“As far as I know, she was moderately religious—or at least she was around me. And I don’t believe she smoked or drank. At least she had the good grace never to do so in my presence. And unlike her half-brother, I’m sure she never used drugs.”
Gino Facini’s drug use led to a series of questions about him. Bautista wrote down, with a question mark, that he might be in New York.
“What about male friends?”
“As I was telling Reuben last night, she had a boyfriend a couple of years back but got rid of him.”
“Why?”
“Because she found out he was a fraud.”
A colloquy ensued about Marina’s trust fund and financial independence. The one-third/two-thirds division between Marina and Gino was explained.
“In other words, there wasn’t an even split between the two?” Bautista pressed.
“That’s right.”
“Interesting.” The detective paused, tapping his pen on his notebook. “Getting back to the boyfriend, do you remember his name?” he continued.
“I believe it was Joshua Rice, though I only met him once. And I have no idea whether he’s still here in Manhattan or what he does. As near as I could tell, he was unemployed when he was going with my daughter.”
“Anything else occur to you that might be helpful?”
“Nothing that I can think of. Sorry.”
Within the hour the three men had walked to the Ladbroke where three plainclothes officers, carrying a variety of forensic equipment, awaited them in the garish lobby. A nervous-looking building superintendent, Dristan Kovafu, was with them. (Kovafu was a full-fledged American citizen, but his youthful experience under the Hoxha dictatorship in Albania had made him instinctively nervous around policemen.)
The newcomers shook hands all around and mumbled greetings. Together, they took the elevator to the eighteenth floor and Marina Courtland’s apartment, which the superintendent opened and then tried to leave. Luis stopped him and, after warning Reuben and Daniel not to touch anything, quizzed the super about any information he had about Marina and her habits and friends. His lack of knowledge turned out to be total.
The apartment was in pristine order—dishes done, clothes hung up, the two bathrooms clean. It could have been the digs of any moderately successful New York career woman, except, perhaps, for the signed prints on the wall—a Jasper Johns, a Howard Hodgkin, and a James Siena among them.
A silver tray of liquor bottles, in varying degrees of emptiness, was on a breakfront in the dining room. So was the only unclean object visible—an ashtray with three cigarette butts, each with a lipstick smudge on the filter tip. Reuben noticed it and reached the easy conclusion that Marina was not averse to either drink or tobacco.
Daniel noticed the bottles and ashtray, too, and looked surprised. “Never saw them here before.”
Reuben stayed quiet, guessing that Marina had hidden any offending bottles and any evidence of smoking when her father had come to visit.
“Marina was always the neat one in the family,” Daniel mumbled to Reuben as they wandered around, trying to keep out of the policemen’s way.
In what Daniel called the library, they spotted a laptop up and running on a table next to a desk. Daniel leaned over and was about to use it when Reuben restrained him. “No touching, remember.”
A detective came in at that point, surveyed the computer, turned it off, unplugged the DSL connection, and prepared to remove the machine. They watched as he opened the adjoining desk and tagged and bagged an address book and an engagement calendar. They also saw him pick up—wearing rubber gloves—a paperbound volume marked UNCORRECTED GALLEYS. They could see the title, Carry Me Back, and the name of the author, Michael Oakley. As the officer flipped through the pages, they also caught sight of several pages underlined with a bright yellow marker.
“You’ve been here many times?” Luis asked Daniel as they met in the living room.
“Not many. Half a dozen, maybe.”
“Do you see anything different, strange, or out of order?”
“No. But I can’t say I’m thinking very clearly just at the moment.” He did not mention the liquor bottles or the ashtray.
“I understand. Maybe you should leave. We’ve got some more routine stuff to do, like dusting for fingerprints, but there’s no reason for you to stay around for that.”
“I think I’ll follow your advice.”
“I also want to talk to the doormen, both day and night, to see what they have to say,” Luis added.
Reuben and Daniel left.
“I’m going back to the hotel,” Daniel said as they went down in the elevator.
“Do you want some company, Dan?”
“No. I’ll be all right. I’m going to stay here until Marina’s killer is found.”
“That may not be today or tomorrow.”
“I don’t care. I can afford the hotel bill. I’ll call you when I’ve absorbed today’s news a little better. Just one question before I go: I know you have no idea who murdered my daughter, but why on earth was she using an assumed name?”
“If I knew the answer to that, I might know who killed her.”
Five
Eskill Lander
Frost headed directly to his office after leaving the Ladbroke. Given the connection to the wealthy and controversial Dan Courtland, he was sure word of Marina’s murder would be spread on the Internet and splashed across the remaining local newspapers; he must warn Eskill Lander, Courtland’s personal attorney, of the threatening storm.
Lander, head of the Chase & Ward trust and estates department, tall and straight-backed, looked as if he had rowed with the Yale crew perhaps five years ago rather than the twenty-five it had actually been. He simply did not appear to be forty-seven with his angelic Nordic, not-quite-handsome face.
Reuben had interviewed Lander as a second-year Columbia Law School student when he came to Chase & Ward seeking a job. His record was impeccable—at the top of his class and an editor of the Law Review. Before that he had been an honor student at Yale, having gone there on scholarship after leaving a small town in South Dakota.
The one reservation Reuben had at the time was that Eskill was not a very broad-gauged person, despite his excellent education. He seemed totally absorbed in the law, without any evident outside interests. Reuben had been sure that would change once he had left school and began earning a salary that enabled him to explore and enjoy the good life in New York City.
He was wrong. Lander certainly paid attention to his career, becoming a partner in a record six years, but Reuben, who saw him frequently at the partners’ common lunch table at the Hexagon Club, had never heard him discuss or even mention a book he’d read, a play he’d seen, or a concert he’d attended. The man was totally preoccupied with his legal practice and his status as a much-admired expert on trust and estate matters.
Lander had a quietly assured manner with clients, but Reuben had always wondered if perhaps his partner was inwardly less self-confident and certain of himself than might appear. Unlike his colleagues, in his office Lander displayed framed diplomas from Yale and Columbia and certificates attesting to his admission to the New York and Federal bars. Plus—and Reuben found this truly odd—another one stating that Lander’s biography was included in Who’s Who in America. Didn’t these wall hangings evidence insecurity? A need for tangible confirmation of his status as an important partner of an important law firm?
The widows adored Eskill Lander, and he was also a hit with the old men who often, in an impotent, homoerotic—if completely unacknowledged—way felt attracted to youthful-looking and athletic types like Eskill. To those who knew him less well than Reuben, he projected strength and solidity—and wasn’t that what the oldsters wanted in their attorney? In addition to brains, of course, which Lander had in abundance.
Reuben knew al
so that his partner was somewhat a victim of his own success. By tradition, Chase & Ward only made nominal charges for writing wills and giving advice while a personal client was alive. But after the client’s death, the firm received substantial fees for winding up the estate. The only problem with this arrangement was the ever-lengthening life-span of the firm’s affluent, well-cared-for T & E clients, the trend helped along by the wonders of modern medicine. The lucrative posthumous fees seemed to be delayed longer and longer. Several times, the partners had debated going to a pay-as-you-go basis for trust and estates work, but each time they had decided to stick with the traditional method of charging.
Reuben was well aware that Daniel Courtland’s estate was the largest one under Eskill’s care—with the highest expectancy for the firm when he died. After Daniel had decided to bring his personal business to Chase & Ward, he, the billionaire from Indiana, and the bright young lawyer from South Dakota had hit it off instantly, and Courtland’s loyalty had never wavered.
While he was discreet about discussing it, Reuben had developed a modest dislike for Eskill’s wife, Irene. She had a career as a highly successful investment adviser at the bicoastal firm of Upshaw & Company. Customers were attracted to her—not for her looks but for her tough and wise advice. Making a terrible pun, Reuben had once told Cynthia that the woman gave “shrew investment advice.” She had also helped many charities grow modest funds into substantial endowments, and for this she was referred to in some circles as the “Queen of the 501(c)(3)’s,” the reference being to the Internal Revenue Code section dealing with not-for-profit organizations.
Irene Lander did not suffer fools gladly in the investment world, nor in her social dealings. Reuben found her cold and humorless; there was also, he was sure, an angry resentment just below the surface over the extent to which men dominated the business environment in which she operated.
It was known that Irene was older than her husband, though the other wives at Chase & Ward who cared about such things could not gauge exactly how much older. Never a beauty, her sharp features were nonetheless interesting, at least until a disastrous facelift several months earlier, which it was speculated had been undertaken so that the contrast between her aging looks and the youthful appearance of her husband would be less apparent. Reuben had not seen the result, but his sources told him that her face now lacked any character or distinctiveness and was a bland expanse of tightened, wrinkleless skin.
“Her skin is so tight I don’t understand why she doesn’t squeak,” Cynthia, who usually refrained from such catty remarks, had said to him after a charity lunch where she had encountered Irene. “She should have had her work done in Brazil.”
Reuben went to Eskill’s office rather than inviting the young lawyer to his own spare quarters. He seated himself in a chair under the Who’s Who certificate, facing Eskill, who was sitting at his desk in shirtsleeves. Frost got down to business immediately.
“Eskill, I have some terrible news to report. News you need to be aware of. Dan Courtland’s daughter, Marina, has been murdered.”
“Jesus, Reuben! When and where?”
“I’m not certain about the where—she was found over by the East River but could have been killed any place. When? The police think last Friday.”
Frost went over the details and then asked Lander if he could offer any explanation for the Hallie/Marina confusion.
“Absolutely none, Reuben. You know, I’ve never met her, though I did meet her half-brother once. What’s his name? Facini.”
“Gino Facini, I believe,” Reuben said.
“That’s it. Anyway, as I’ve told you before, Dan insisted on setting up a substantial trust for Marina and this Facini. Both of them are now over twenty-five, so they’ve received what were the first two installments. The only things left are the residual payments—big ones—after they both reach thirty.”
“And there’s a two-thirds/one-third split between them, correct?”
“Yes. … And that’s what brought about my only contact with Facini. He came to see me a year or so ago and said he thought that the two-thirds/one-third split was unfair and asked if there was anything that could legally be done about it. The answer, of course, was no. I also told him that he was lucky to be cut in for a third, since many stepparents make no provision at all for their stepchildren. He was furious at me and went away angry.
“As for Marina, as I say, I’ve never met her. Corresponded with her—we’ve even been on a ‘Dear Eskill/Dear Marina’ basis—but that’s the extent of it. No personal contact. Just family business.”
“Dan got along with her, didn’t he?”
“I’ve never heard anything to make me think otherwise. Do you know something I don’t?”
“No, no, I was just asking out of curiosity.”
“What can I do?” Lander asked.
“Well, Dan is at the St. Regis, and I’m sure would welcome a call, or a visit. Or maybe you could bring him some veal and spinach.”
“Oh no, Reuben, please.”
Frost had one more question. “Any theories as to who might have done this?”
Lander replied that he did not. Then after hesitating, he added: “I do have one thought. I don’t want to implicate anybody, but it could have been her half-brother. I’d always understood from Dan that he had a rather chancy record—dope—and he seemed a bit menacing, shall we say, when he came that time to see me. That property split certainly rankled. In addition, you know that he will get the whole corpus of the trust now that Marina’s dead. Unless, of course, he’s the murderer, in which case he’d be barred from taking her share.”
“I don’t want to think about that. But I’m not going to forget it, either.” Reuben also made a mental note to convey the substance of his conversation with Lander to Bautista.
Six
The Dutch
In accordance with their let’s-get-out-more program, Reuben and Cynthia had dinner that evening at a brand-new downtown restaurant called The Dutch. It was like old-home week for them as the chef, Andrew Carmellini, was a defector—after a couple of detours—from another favorite of theirs, Café Boulud, farther uptown.
The new restaurant catered to a younger crowd though, as Reuben pointed out to his wife, “At our age, my dear, almost any restaurant we go to will be catering to a younger crowd.” Nonetheless, they were greeted warmly and seated at a table in the backroom, which was more intimate and less noisy than the busy area up front.
The place was crowded, the eaters plunging enthusiastically into Carmellini’s offerings, both traditional and not so traditional. After inquiring from the waiter what hiramasa was and finding out that it was yellowtail, Reuben ordered it, while Cynthia settled for barrio tripe, made with beer and avocado.
When it arrived, the tripe was attractive, but not to Reuben.
“You hate this stuff, don’t you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never had tripe in my life and never want to.”
“Open-minded as usual. Don’t they serve tripe at that club of yours?”
“Yes, they do, but not of the sort you are talking about—or eating. Tripe used to pretty much describe the Gotham’s food, but it’s gotten better lately.”
When Carmellini came by, they warmly congratulated him and praised the appetizers they were eating. On his recommendation, Cynthia ordered the rabbit pot pie.
“I’ve never heard of such a ridiculous dish,” she told him, but nonetheless took his advice.
Reuben hesitated but finally asked for lamb-neck mole, convinced by the chef’s enthusiasm for the dish.
“Lamb with chocolate sauce will certainly be a new one for me,” he declared. He then toasted the good health of both his wife and Carmellini, raising the glass that sommelier Josh Picard had poured from the bottle of Saint-Estèphe he had recommended, Château Le Peyre 2005.
After Carm
ellini had moved on to another table, Reuben proposed a second toast. “Wish me and Luis Bautista luck. We’ll need it if we’re ever going to find Marina Courtland’s murderer.”
“Short of suspects?” Cynthia asked.
“Not completely. You heard Dan Courtland talk about John Sommers, Marina’s boss at Gramercy House. He’s a possibility. Then there’s her half-brother, Gino.”
“From what his stepfather said, he sounds like a bad apple.”
“Eskill Lander seems to feel that way, too.”
“Can you locate him?”
“We’ll have to see. I think Eskill only has a bank account address.”
“Didn’t Daniel say he was a would-be actor, supposedly here in New York? Probably working way, way off Broadway.”
“That’s really supposition. Nobody knows.”
“You know, Reuben, my young colleagues at the Foundation are unbelievable networkers. And most of them live downtown. If you get any kind of lead on Facini, I might be able to pursue it with them.”
“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.” Reuben was silent for a few moments and then resumed the conversation. “There’s one other thing that I would never tell anyone else.”
“I’m listening.”
“Isn’t it just possible that Dan Courtland was the murderer?”
“Darling, that’s ridiculous. He’s been your friend for years. How can you say such a thing?”
“I know, I know,” Reuben answered defensively. “But I keep recalling the shadow that fell over him when his wife died. I know he was finally cleared, but there were still doubts, as you must remember.”
“Yes, of course I remember. But what on earth would his motive have been?”
“Marina may have been jealous of his new tie-up with Darcy Watson. He hinted as much when we had dinner.”
“I think that’s pretty far out.”
Murder.com Page 3
