Margaret Truman's Internship in Murder

by Margaret Truman

  “The Capitol Lounge on Capitol Hill.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” Brixton said. “What night was it taken?”

  “What night? How the hell would I know? Like I said, we went there a few times.”

  “Take another look,” Brixton said. “Maybe this was a special night, a party or something, some kind of celebration.”

  Caruso didn’t bother taking another look. “No,” he said, “there was nothing special. We were just having fun.”

  “Did Ms. Bennett drink a lot?” Brixton asked.

  Caruso laughed. “She drank some. Look, I told you I’m busy. You know what bar it was now. See ya.”

  Brixton put his hand on Caruso’s arm. “Take another look at the picture, Mr. Caruso. See the man sitting at the bar behind you and Laura, the guy with the ponytail?”

  Caruso looked. “The old guy?” he said.

  “He’s not so old.”

  “He’s old to me.”

  “Yeah, I suppose he would be. Who is he?”

  Caruso shrugged. “Beats me.”

  “You didn’t talk to him?”

  “No. Why would I talk to him? I didn’t know him.”

  “Did he talk to Laura?”

  “I don’t think so, but from the picture, I’d say I was pretty wasted.”

  “You didn’t see him pay any attention to her?”

  “What are you getting at? Who is this guy?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  “Well, you wasted your time—and mine. But I will tell you something. Laura was a tease, and I’m not surprised that some guy got mad at her.”

  Brixton fixed him in a hard stare. “What are you suggesting, Caruso, that she brought her murder on herself?”

  “Maybe not in so many words, but she played a game with guys.”

  “Guys like you?”

  “Yeah, and plenty of others, I’m sure.”

  “You know what, Caruso, Laura deserved better than you. I’m going to give you ten seconds to be out of here. One second more and I’ll go outside with you and trounce your sorry ass.”

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “Ten, nine, eight—”

  Caruso got up and headed for the door.

  “Seven, six, five—”

  Brixton stopped counting and smiled. Would he have gone outside and taken on Caruso physically? He would have, although he was glad that he hadn’t needed to follow through on his threat. Beating up a law-abiding citizen, especially one who worked for a U.S. senator, no matter how obnoxious, didn’t sit well with those in government who renew private investigators’ licenses. Besides, Caruso looked like he could take a punch and throw a few.

  He was glad that it had ended as it had. He’d gotten what he wanted, the name of the bar in which Caruso and Laura had frolicked one night. With any luck someone at that bar would know who the man in the ponytail was. It was a long shot, but you had to start someplace.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Brixton swung by the Capitol Lounge on his way back to the office and showed the photograph to the day bartender.

  “That’s Mark,” he told Brixton, recognizing the bartender on duty that night from the photo. “He won’t be in until this evening.”

  “I’ll come back,” Brixton said. “You happen to recognize the guy with the ponytail at the bar?

  The bartender shook his head. “Never saw him before, and I remember my customers.”

  Assuming that he would be faced with the same response from whoever was on duty that afternoon at the bar at the Hotel Lombardy, Brixton decided to make the rounds once the sun had set and the nighttime crews were plying their trade.

  “You had a call from a Dick Sheridan,” Flo said, when Brixton got back to the office. “He says he’s an old friend from New York, a musician. He’s playing tonight at Blues Alley and wants you to come.”

  “Dick Sheridan,” Brixton said, smiling. “Good guy and a hell of a drummer, played with every big name. He leave a number?”

  She gave it to him.

  “How did it go with Caruso?” she asked.

  “Arrogant bastard,” was Brixton’s reply, “but he told me what I needed to know. It was the Capitol Lounge in the picture. I have to go back when the night guy is on. Same with the Lombardy hotel.”

  “Let’s make a night of it,” Flo suggested. “We haven’t been out in ages. I’ll go with you while you check out the bars, and you can catch up with your old friend and we can hear some good music.”

  “I like the way you think,” Brixton said. “You’re on.”

  Flo ran back to the apartment to dress for the evening while Brixton stayed at the office to catch up on e-mails and other tedium. But first he returned the call to his old friend Dick Sheridan, and they spent almost a half hour catching up on each other’s lives. Brixton fondly remembered when he would catch the last set at Manhattan’s tony Café Carlyle where Sheridan played with the popular pianist and singer Bobby Short for twelve years. The drummer raved about the pianist and bass player he was bringing with him into Blues Alley, and when they’d finished their conversation, Brixton’s mood had improved considerably.

  He’d been in an angry funk for the past few weeks, a situation with which he was only too familiar, and was glad to feel his spirits rise. Lately he’d been short with Flo, even brusque at times, and he didn’t want to suffer a repeat of when his glum, cynical mood had caused their breakup after returning to New York from Savannah. He knew that she deserved better, if only in return for putting up with his sometimes dumb antics. It was good that she’d suggested a night on the town. It was much needed.

  Their first stop was the Capitol Lounge, where the night bartender had arrived. No, he didn’t know who the man with the ponytail was, had never seen him before that one night. He did remember serving him, however. “He asked for what he called a stabilizer, half port wine and half brandy, served in a snifter.”

  “You ever make that drink before?” Brixton asked.

  “No. It was a first for me.”

  “How did he pay?”

  “Cash. I’m sure of that. He paid cash and tipped big, as I recall.”

  They left the Capitol Lounge and headed for the Hotel Lombardy, where Brixton recognized the bartender as having been on duty the night he’d met there with Cody Watson.

  “That guy I was with,” Brixton explained, “was the press aide to Congressman Harold Gannon.”

  “The one who was murdered?”

  “Right. The night we were here, a man came in right after Watson, middle-aged, salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a small ponytail.” He laid the photograph on the bar.

  “Sure, I remember him.”

  “Got a name for him?”

  “No. It was the only time I’d ever seen him in here. He ordered a drink I’m seldom asked for.”

  “Half port, half brandy?”

  The bartender laughed. “You know more about him than you let on,” he said.

  “Another bartender at another place just told us about the drink.”

  “I remember thinking that he must have had an upset stomach. The drink’s called the stabilizer because it stabilizes a bad gut. The cruise lines all offer it on their bar menus for passengers who get seasick. I’ve never tried it, but people say it’s like a miracle medicine when you have a bellyache.”

  “He pay cash?” Brixton asked.

  The bartender nodded.

  “I was hoping he used a credit card,” Brixton said.

  “Sorry. Can I make you two a drink?”

  “Thanks, but no,” Flo said. “We’re on our way to Blues Alley to hear some jazz. We’ll eat there.”

  It had been overcast when they entered the bar at the Hotel Lombardy. Now, as they left, it had started to drizzle and they picked up their pace as they walked to the car.

  “We struck out in both places,” Brixton said as they headed for Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetow
n where the jazz club was located. “I still don’t know who that guy is.”

  “And you really don’t know whether he had anything to do with Laura Bennett’s death.”

  “True, but there’s an easy way to find out. Find him and ask.”

  They parked at Canal Square and walked quickly to the club, where Sheridan had reserved two spots for the eight o’clock show. They were seated at a prime table affording them a perfect sightline to the small stage. After drinks were served, Brixton looked at Flo, smiled, and took her hand in his. “I feel like the world has disappeared,” he said, looking around the crowded room with its brick walls that had all the trappings of a speakeasy. “This is the oldest continuous jazz club in the country,” he said.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Strange that it’s in Washington.”

  “Why?”

  “Washington doesn’t deserve a great club like this.”

  “That’s silly,” she said, squeezing his hand. But she knew that he meant it.

  Brixton’s disdain for the nation’s capital was deeply etched. He enjoyed concerts at the Kennedy Center and liked visiting the Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian, but these were nonpolitical venues. Every run-in he’d had with Washington’s political establishment—which meant everyone, it seemed—had proved disappointing at best, more often disastrous. He was fond of something that Mark Twain once said: “If we got one-tenth of what was promised in those State of the Union addresses, there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven.”

  Of course Brixton wasn’t the only person with a jaded view of the nation’s capital. Mac and Annabel Smith, who might be considered a part of the Washington establishment, held their own cynical views, which went a long way to cementing the bond Brixton had developed with the erudite attorney and his gorgeous redheaded wife. Having been accepted into their lives was one of the best things that had ever happened to him.

  They ordered from the Creole menu—Sarah Vaughan’s Filet Mignon for him, Dizzy Gillespie’s Jambalaya for her. Sheridan joined them at the table while they were on dessert, and they chatted until it was eight o’clock and time for the first set of the evening. Robert and Flo basked in the music, the trio a tight-knit unit that played standards—“On Green Dolphin Street,” “Lover, Come Back to Me,” the ballad “But Beautiful,” and an original by Sheridan, “Bonnie’s Blues.” The house was full, every spot at the bar was occupied, and Brixton and Flo joined the crowd in applauding each musician’s improvisations on the themes.

  “I’m really glad that we did this,” Brixton told Flo after they’d paid their tab and had arranged to get together with Sheridan the following day. “Good for the soul.”

  “Your face is more relaxed than I’ve seen it in a long time,” Flo said.

  “It’s that evident, huh?”

  “It certainly is.”

  They joined the throng on the way out of the club to make room for those attending the ten o’clock set, who were lined up at the door. The drizzle had turned to a steady rain now, and they cursed not having brought umbrellas.

  “Want me to go get the car?” Brixton asked.

  “No. I don’t melt in the rain,” she said. “Come on, we can make a run for it.”

  Wisconsin Avenue was bustling with people coming out of shops, some with newspapers over their heads, others having been forward looking enough to tote umbrellas. Vehicular traffic was fairly light, and Brixton and Flo decided to take advantage of a break in it and run across the avenue. He grabbed her hand. They looked right and left, then stepped off the sidewalk and headed for the opposite side. A nondescript gray sedan that had been parked at the curb with its engine running suddenly jerked forward and headed directly at them, its lights off. Flo didn’t see it, but Brixton did out of the corner of his eye. He forged forward to the safety of the sidewalk, dragging Flo with him, but he wasn’t fast enough. The car missed him, but its right fender clipped Flo, sending her sprawling on to the wet roadway.

  Bystanders who’d witnessed the accident screamed. A few hurled curses at the fleeing car. Brixton turned and fell to his knees, his hands all over Flo. “Hey, you okay?” he managed.

  She moaned.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said as he looked at the people lining the sidewalk. “Get an ambulance,” he barked. “Get a cop.”

  As Flo was loaded into an ambulance, Brixton asked two men who’d witnessed the hit-and-run whether they saw the driver or got a plate number.

  “Negative on the second,” one replied. “But I got a quick look at the driver in the light from a streetlamp, just a second or two. It was a kid.”

  “A kid? A teenager?” Brixton said.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s what he was. He had a ponytail. That’s all I noticed.”

  An hour later, Brixton sat with Flo in the emergency room at Georgetown University Hospital. She’d been sedated to alleviate the pain from her battered right leg. It was swollen and raw where the pavement had roughed up the flesh, ripping it open in spots. But it was her knee that was of primary concern. The emergency room physician on duty said that it might be broken and had scheduled an X-ray.

  When Flo was returned to the ER, the doctor said that the X-ray didn’t show any broken bones; the knee was badly bruised, and she would be placed in a brace to allow it to heal.

  “You’re lucky you’re alive,” Brixton said, using his fingertips to push away hair from her forehead.

  “Thanks to you.”

  “I should have pulled harder.”

  “You pulled hard enough.”

  Because Flo has also hit her head on the pavement, the doctors insisted that she remain in the hospital overnight to check for any signs of concussion. They were discussing that decision—Flo wanted to go home but Brixton was adamant that she stay—when Mac and Annabel walked in. Brixton had called Mac once the ambulance had delivered Flo to the ER.

  “How are you doing?” Annabel asked Flo as she came to her bedside and placed her hand on her arm.

  “I’ll be okay,” Flo said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “It was a hit-and-run?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah,” Brixton confirmed.

  “No one got a plate number?”

  “No, but someone caught a brief glimpse of the driver.”

  “Oh?”

  “He has a ponytail.”

  Mac and Annabel looked at each other.

  “That’s right,” Brixton said. “This aging hippie was close to Laura Bennett and Cody Watson before they were killed. Looks like he’s got me on his list, too.”

  CHAPTER

  35

  Brixton, Mac, and Annabel met with the emergency room doctor in the hall after having accompanied Flo to the room in which she would spend the night.

  “You think she’ll be okay?” Brixton said.

  “We’ll evaluate her overnight to make sure there aren’t concussion symptoms.”

  “She hit her head pretty hard on the pavement,” Brixton said. “It was a real thud.” He forced a laugh. “But she’s got a pretty hard head.”

  The doctor, who Brixton judged to be in his thirties, didn’t smile.

  “Take good care of her,” Brixton said.

  “She’ll be fine, Mr. Brixton. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Me? I’m fine.”

  “Sometimes a trauma like this catches up with you later,” Annabel offered.

  “No, no, no, I’m okay.”

  The doctor walked away.

  “How about coming back to our place?” Annabel suggested. “Spend the night. You can get out of those soggy, wrinkled clothes and relax.”

  “Thanks, but I want to get back to my own place. Why don’t you two come with me. I’ll make some coffee, and we have dynamite lemon wafers that Flo likes and keeps in the house.”

  A half hour later they were settled in Brixton’s kitchen, where coffee brewed.

  “You and Flo are lucky you’re alive,” Annabel said, as she arranged the wafers on a serving pla
te.

  “I guess we are,” Brixton said. He’d taken a fast hot shower and was now dressed in gray sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt.

  “So the driver had a ponytail,” Smith said bluntly.

  “According to one eyewitness.”

  “Which means it could have been the man in the photograph with Laura Bennett and in the picture that Flo took at the Lombardy.”

  “Could have been?” Brixton repeated. “It had to have been him.”

  “I’m not arguing with you, Robert,” Smith said. “Chances are it was the same man. What did the cop who took your statement at the hospital have to say?”

  Brixton snickered. “I told him that I thought I knew who drove the car, but he didn’t buy it. He made a big deal out of us crossing Wisconsin in the middle of the street, said that we were jaywalking. He pointed out that it was nighttime and raining, hard for the driver to see. He also debated whether it was a hit-and-run, said the driver probably didn’t even know that he’d hit anybody.”

  “The problem,” Mac said, “is that we don’t know who the man with the ponytail is.”

  “Why not run it past Zeke Borgeldt?” Annabel suggested. “You have two photos in which he appears. Can’t they can do a search of their databases based on the description?”

  “Good idea,” Mac said. “I’ll give Zeke a call in the morning and we’ll arrange to meet with him.”

  “I hope Flo is okay,” Brixton said. “It happened so fast. No doubt about it, that creep with the ponytail was aiming for us.”

  Mac had fallen silent.

  “You okay?” Annabel asked.

  “What? Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking that if this guy is responsible for Laura Bennett and Cody Watson’s murders, and has now targeted Robert, we have a psychopathic killer on our hands.”

  “That’s for sure,” Brixton said. “Let’s say he did kill Watson and Laura. Why? What was his connection with them? None as far as I can see. Now he tries to run me down. It has to go back to Gannon and the affair he had with Laura. She was a threat to him. His own press aide knew about the affair and talked to me about it. And let’s face it, I’ve been in the papers as someone working on behalf of the Bennett family, and I haven’t exactly been what you’d call discreet about my belief that Gannon’s behind it.”