by Lisa Fernow
“Hey.” He opened the door wider to let her pass. “You look terrible.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone? The police were just at my house asking about you,” she said, brushing past him into the loft’s main living area. The place was a mess even by Christian’s standards. The vast oak floor was strewn with dirty clothes and newspapers. Nathalie’s face smiled in black and white from the front page of the Atlanta Constitution; some ghoul of a reporter had already capitalized on her tragedy.
“The police want to know where you were when Bobby and Shawna collided with Nathalie last night. Remember? We stopped dancing right before that and I went to the kitchen. Where did you go after I left you?”
Christian threw himself down on the couch and sighed like he did whenever she used to ask him where he was going, who with, how far, how late, back in the days when he’d lived under her roof. She knew he hated it but right now she didn’t have time to tiptoe around his feelings.
“I already said. I was either in the dining room or the library.”
“What?” Her car keys slipped from her fingers and clattered against the hardwood floor. She picked them up and stuffed them back into her satchel. “You told Detective Morrow that?”
He kicked at the floor with the toe of his sneaker. “So what?”
“So what? I told him we were dancing together the whole time. I lied to him.”
“What for? The police always want to know crap like that. It’s their routine.”
“Detective Morrow thinks Nathalie might have been stabbed in the dining room. If you were there and you weren’t dancing with me you have no alibi.”
Christian scooped up a rumpled bedroom pillow from the floor and crushed it to his chest. “So?”
“We need to prove you weren’t anywhere near Nathalie. What did you do after we stopped dancing?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did you go to the library? Detective Morrow says there were prints all over the door to Shawna’s bedroom.”
Christian scuttled from the couch, taking refuge behind the metal shelving that separated the living area from the office. The coils of computer wiring that always reminded her of the top of barbed wire fences had grown since her last visit. The clicking of his fingers on the keyboard told her he was back online—and off-line as far as their conversation was concerned.
She addressed her argument to the air, hoping he was still listening, even if he pretended not to be. “I know the police, they’re no good, they arrest the wrong people and let the right people go, but that Detective Morrow is different – he’s an anal-retentive, smart, relentless—” She couldn’t find the right word to finish the sentence. “If there’s a gap in your story he’ll find it. Think. Did you use the bathroom?”
Click-click-click.
“Christian, you’re a suspect.”
His disembodied voice rang out, “I haven’t done anything wrong. I told him the truth.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?”
The clicking stopped.
She came around to find Christian slumped at the computer holding his head. Stacks of paper surrounded him like sandbags around a bunker; on top of one pile lay extra, unsent invitations to Shawna’s Halloween party. How innocent it had all seemed then. “Christian, I’m trying to help. Last night you talked about cutting Nathalie’s face. What was there between you two?”
He shook his head. “I told you, nothing.”
“You kept a file on her.”
“Did Barbara tell you that?”
“You were obsessed with Nathalie, weren’t you?”
“Shut up!”
She reached down and turned the computer off. “Did she lead you on then reject you?
“No!”
“Did you want to hurt her like she hurt you?” The accusations felt crazy but they’d taken on a momentum of their own. “You attacked Barbara. Did you learn that from your father?”
“Don’t talk to me about him.”
“Did you do it?”
Christian shoved his chair back, stood up, and swept his arm across the surface of the desk sending manuals, papers, and party invitations flying. “Get out of my face!” He ripped the keyboard from its port and threw it on the floor where it skipped once, hit the wall, and lay still. He looked around for something else to wreck.
“You don’t know shit about what happened,” he said. “And you don’t understand shit—” he yanked the monitor away from its station, popping the plug from the wall outlet, “—about me. Telling me what to do. Treating me like a kid.” He slammed the monitor into the floor. “I’ll tell you the truth. I hated Nathalie. I hated her.” He started to cry. “Are you satisfied? Now get out! Get the hell out of here!”
She left the building with Christian’s words ringing in her ears and her chest pounding furiously. At first she thought she was going to be sick in the parking lot but she bent over and breathed through her mouth for a while and felt well enough to get into the car. She put her forehead against the steering wheel and stared through it at the near-empty gas gauge.
She had totally blown it. In her rush to protect Christian she had alienated him and learned nothing except that he was capable of rage, which made it even more important that she find out what he had been up to before the police did.
She sat for a few minutes until her heart rate returned to something recognizable.
She had to find out where Christian had gone and what he’d done after she left him before Morrow did. Who would have seen him and remembered? Barbara had been too drunk. Shawna danced with her eyes closed. That left Eduardo, Roland, and Bobby as potential witnesses.
She tried Eduardo’s cell. No answer. She phoned directory assistance for the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead and was put through. “May I please speak to Eduardo Sanchez?”
“Ah’m sorry,” the receptionist drawled, “I kain’t find anybody here with that last name. Chaise.”
“Sanchez.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“It’s an Argentine name. S-a-n-c-h-e-z.”
“Can you spell that again?”
It was all Antonia could do to prevent herself from shrieking into the phone. She spelled his name, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, and the receptionist rang his room while she waited. And waited. And waited. She realized she had to pee.
“Would you like to leave a message?”
She wanted to say, call me before you talk to the police. “Just tell him to phone Antonia urgently as soon as he gets this.”
She dialed Roland at his Bennett Street store but his snotty Eurotrash assistant didn’t know where he might possibly be reached. She forced herself to calm down. At least if she couldn’t find her friends neither could Morrow.
CHAPTER 31
Digging
11/1. 1155. Robert (Bobby) Glass.
MORROW HAD CORRALLED GLASS just as the professor’s afternoon office hours were slated to begin, hoping to clear up, once and for all, who had been on the dance floor with Nathalie LeFebre. He was inclined to believe Muir’s account, as far as it went. Blakeley’s was another matter. Professor Glass seemed to be one of the only witnesses without an agenda.
The professor paced the cluttered office as he spoke, or rather lectured, one hand in the pocket of his chinos jingling his keys, the other holding up a blackened object the size of a charcoal briquette. “Sharks have had the same teeth for four hundred million years. They’ve survived in earth’s oceans for over four hundred fifty million years in more or less the same evolutionary form. Mankind has only been with us for three million years or so if you count the hominids.”
Morrow wondered how Glass had gotten involved in tango: the professor seemed much more comfortable interacting with things than people. His shelves held no pictures and appeared to be repositories for whatever he’d picked up on his field trips or needed for his lectures. Fossils. Minerals. Textbooks. Geologic references. Topographic maps. One hammer. One chisel. An old-fashioned camera and tripod. Ro
w upon row of ancient, dusty slide-carousel boxes. A laptop. And oddly out of place in that academic setting, an elaborate bronze menorah. He pointed to it. “That’s a beautiful piece.”
“Miles Rothenberg gave it to me. You investigated his death, didn’t you? Tragic accident. He was a good man.” Glass gently placed the tooth back in the pile, picked up another smaller coal-gray lump and offered it to him. “Now this beauty is a trilobite from the Harriman outcrop in upstate New York. Outstanding definition.”
“I didn’t realize you knew Miles Rothenberg.”
“Only professionally. I authenticated pieces for him. The occasional gemstone. Not what it was as much as where it originated, geologically speaking. Miles never sold a piece without being absolutely sure of its provenance.”
“Why did he give you the menorah? Some special occasion?”
Glass gave him an apologetic look. “It’s a thank-you gift. Sort of a hobby of mine. So many antiques left Europe illegally during World War II.”
“You track down looted artifacts?”
“If you follow the treasure sometimes you find the people. Perón helped hundreds of fugitive Nazis come to Argentina in the late forties and early fifties. Almost all dead by now, of course. But still. Now it’s more about returning stolen property.”
“Did Rothenberg ever help you?”
“Not directly, but he was a big giver.” Glass pulled a book down from the top shelf. The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina. “I recommend this if you’re interested.”
“Ever do work for Roland Guest?”
Glass blinked. “Occasionally, when he needed to classify a stone.”
“Do you know if Miles Rothenberg or Roland Guest ever worked with Barbara Wolfe? I understand she’s an archaeologist.”
“Absolutely not. Her field is the Inca Empire.”
Morrow caught the sharp undertone in the professor’s voice. Maybe Blakeley was right about Glass’ interest in Wolfe.
Glass paused at his World War II-era desk, sorted through the various fossils piled on its metal surface. He held up another shark’s tooth between his thumb and forefinger so Morrow could see it clearly. “These are from Calvert Cliffs. Miocene Epoch, about seventeen million years ago. Now in comparison, Homo Sapiens, meaning Wise Man, appeared five hundred thousand years ago, give or take. Current-day man is called Homo Sapiens Sapiens.”
“Wise wise man,” said Morrow.
“A poorly named species. We’ll undoubtedly annihilate each other.” Glass handed him another fossil. “Look at this trilobite. Use the magnifying glass.”
Morrow turned the trilobite over. It looked just like a miniature armadillo. His fingers traced fine ridges in the stone. He looked at it through the lens and the ridges turned into crevasses and peaks. “It seems our jobs are similar. We both look at evidence and try to make sense of what happened.”
“Exactly.” The professor beamed. “The fossil record never lies.”
And neither did forensic evidence. There was method to the professor’s meandering.
“I made that plan I promised.” Glass reached across the desk to grab a sheet of rolled-up vellum. “Here.”
Morrow unrolled Bobby Glass’ map of Shawna Muir’s dining room. He’d seen Jackson’s schematic, of course, but the professor was a keen observer, even without his goggles, and his version might point to something new.
The professor had noted everyone’s position in the dining room at the moment of the collision. With scientific zeal he’d initialed and color-coded the people. His choices were revealing. Barbara Wolfe, red. Sanchez, Purple. Shawna Muir, Blue. Nathalie LeFebre, black. Guest, a big, Black X. Glass had represented himself, modestly, as G in grey.
He’d placed himself, Muir, Guest, and Nathalie LeFebre smack in the center of the room and Wolfe and Sanchez in the corner farthest from the dance floor. Glass had also noted the stereo equipment, folding chairs, and potted plant, which made sense. He would have seen them as potential obstacles.
“You didn’t include Antonia Blakeley and Christian Cookerly.”
Glass answered promptly, “Because they weren’t there.”
So that’s why Blakeley had her knickers in such a knot. “How can you be so sure?”
“It’s extremely rude to interrupt a dance during a song. And when someone leaves the floor it gives me more space.”
It wasn’t natural for women to jump to the conclusion that their loved ones were potential murderers. It was usually the other way around: doting, fact-denying mothers—You’re making a mistake. My boy would never hurt a soul. But Blakeley was prepared to sacrifice her alibi to give one to her nephew. Why? “Did you see where they went?”
“Antonia went to the kitchen. Christian stood around and watched for a while but I think he left right before the collision.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“He’s a new dancer. He probably wanted to observe Roland and Nathalie. Not my style of dance, all that open salon stuff. Footwork’s too complicated and it doesn’t feel like anything. But they looked good together.” It was both an apology and an epitaph.
The phone rang. The professor’s answering machine immediately clicked on.
“Bobby? Bobby? Where are you?” The woman’s voice was familiar, the tone conspiratorial. “Are you there? Pick up. I need to see you before you talk to the police.”
Morrow raised his eyebrows in inquiry, asking for permission to take the call. The professor nodded his assent.
Morrow lifted the receiver. “Hello.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. Then Blakeley continued in a breezy, offhand tone, “Is this the office of Professor Robert Glass?”
Morrow nearly laughed. The little minx, thinking she could bamboozle him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his next words were deliberately facetious. “You’re too late. Professor Glass has entered the witness protection program and is no longer available to tamper with.”
Her tone flattened. “Detective Morrow.”
“I need to see you.” He couldn’t resist adding, “If you’re not too busy.” Sometimes it was necessary to call on a member of the public to take a more active role. Ms. Blakeley had just volunteered.
CHAPTER 32
Et Tu, Brute?
11/1. 1348 hours. Roland Guest’s house, Druid Hills.
EVEN IF BLAKELEY WERE FOOLISH ENOUGH to tamper with the remaining witnesses it wouldn’t matter—he was on to her shenanigans. And it might even stir up something useful. As a Marine he’d been taught to always have a plan but to be prepared to deviate from it once he saw the conditions on the ground.
Guest was next on the docket and Morrow opted to keep the appointment.
Guest’s Tudor home had probably been built in the 1920s, but the rolling front lawn and the rows of mature trees lining the drive reminded Morrow of the seventeenth century tobacco plantations he’d grown up around in rural Maryland. Old money.
Jackson locked the car and joined him at the foot of the winding drive, clutching his notebook. “Peaceful.”
“Just as many criminals here as in Grant Park. The rich just have better lawyers.”
The approach was steep. Jackson didn’t make it ten paces before he started panting for breath. “You think he thinks … we think he murdered his business partner?”
“I’ve had less than four hours of shuteye, son. Keep it simple.”
“You know that’s right. What I was saying is we know Miles Rothenberg wasn’t murdered, but Guest might still think we think …” Jackson halted and looked into his palm with the pained expression of an outfielder who’d dropped a fly ball.
“He twitched like a cat when I brought up Rothenberg’s death but the IRS says he’s clean.”
“Maybe he just wants to avoid unpleasantness.”
“Spoken like a true son of the South.”
“You still think Roland Guest was up to something in Argentina?”
“Yep. Now that we have an o
pen homicide we can poke around a little more into Guest’s other activities. I don’t want him to know we’re interested, though. Not yet.”
“How you want to handle this interview, sir?”
They tramped up the gravel path from the drive to the front entrance while Morrow considered his options. “Verify his movements. Hold him upside down. Shake. See if something falls out.” Not exactly the Geneva Convention but close enough.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Be ready in case Guest tries to bolt mostly. Otherwise take notes. Keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll do the talking on this one.”
“Right.”
Morrow knocked at the heavy paneled door.
Guest appeared almost immediately, holding a smart phone to his ear. Morrow noticed he’d nicked his chin shaving which was noteworthy: most grief-stricken fiancés didn’t bother to clean up. “Watch the floor, it’s still wet.” Guest said. “Carmen’s kicked me outside. Women.” A vacuum cleaner roared upstairs so Morrow figured Carmen was probably the housekeeper, not another conquest. How enthusiastically had Guest entered into his engagement with Nathalie LeFebre? Was Blakeley’s earlier pregnancy suggestion just a shot in the dark? Her instincts seemed pretty spot on.
Guest waved them into a spacious entryway while he continued with his call which had to do with shipping a drum table, whatever the hell that was. Guest led them through the house. They passed through a kitchen the size of a three-car garage. Morrow noted the carefully arranged bottles of unopened balsamic vinegar on the counter, the tasteful horticultural prints on the wall, and the uninformative workout schedule on the front of the refrigerator and wondered what Guest hid behind such a carefully crafted façade.
They ended up on the patio where the November sun shone half-heartedly down on a white wrought iron table and four chairs. On the table sat an ice bucket containing an open bottle of white wine.
Guest finished his call and set down the phone. “Sorry about that. No rest for the wicked, unfortunately. Please have a seat. Something to drink?”
