The answer came after they followed her out of the room. They passed through the living room, festooned with sunlight flowing from window walls that faced out to lush greenery, enriched by the recent rains.
But in the tiled vestibule, Fiona hesitated, waiting for Nell Langford to turn. She did not wish the interview to end. Something was awry here. The woman did not fear the detonation of her husband's career.
Perhaps she hated him with such intensity that she was hoping for it to happen. On the other hand, she might be guilty of the killing of
Helga, and valued her own skin above all else. A cool number either way, Fiona decided. Once again the social scene was a poor arena for psychological evaluation. People wore masks in that setting. For this visit, Nell Langford had simply changed masks.
"One might say that it was you who are pulling the trigger." Fiona had chosen the metaphor carefully.
Nell's face, instead of the expected anger, registered a confusing serenity.
"You know," she said, "I admire your tenacity, but you're coming from the wrong place. I'd be quite happy if my husband abandoned his career. Public life is a treacherous jungle. And if his aspirations are scuttled by this affair, I'd be the first to stand up and applaud. I love my husband dearly, and, if you must know, I hate being a political wife. Politics destroys marriages. Yes, he is ambitious. Yes, he is also enormously attractive to women. The important thing for me is that I'm the mother of his children. I'm the woman he takes home at night and I'm the woman he sleeps with. He is also not a person who hurts other people, certainly not intentionally. As for being a killer, that is preposterous. The fact is that, if my family were in danger, I am a more likely candidate for murderer than my husband." By then, her expression had become sweet, benign. A clever act or the soul of sincerity. The latter judgement was terribly convincing. "Do whatever you have to do," she said after a brief pause. "But I'd suggest you look elsewhere for your culprit."
"That" — Fiona said, holding onto a brief shred of purpose — "is why we are here."
"I can't help you," Nell said, opening the door to let them out.
"Won't," Fiona said as she went through the door, carrying with her the uneasy feeling that Nell, despite her apparent indifference, had more than an idea of who the killer might be.
———— *21* "GHOULS," MR. Haber said. "We had two contracts on the house by noon."
His pink cheeks creased into a broad smile, showing a row of perfect white, but obviously false, teeth. With the exception of thick rimless glasses, he was pink from hishin to the back of his bald head where grey hair formed a natural ridge line.
"It has cachet now. A landmark of sorts. Here's where the body of the Austrian Ambassador's wife was buried. They'll probably frame the clippings and put it in the den."
They were getting this lesson in real estate sales from the President of Haber and Weston, a man of obvious self-importance. His office was filled with plaques, framed certificates and photographs that attested to his energetic pursuit of ego-fulfilling honors and sales-motivational ploys.
Real estate sales was Washington's second-oldest profession and the number-one topic of conversation wherever Washingtonians gathered from Georgetown to Capitol Hill. Fiona was not immune to the subject. She was, after all, a property owner herself and the astounding rise in Washington real estate values did not leave her unaffected.
Fiona had inherited the house in the Forest Hills section, which her father had bought in 1953 for $32,000. When last she checked, it was worth $750,000 and rising, and not a week went by without some real estate person soliciting her interest in a sale. Although she was inherently practical, her sentimental attachment to the house remained stronger than the potential monetary gain.
Cates, who rented his apartment, listened with a student's interest.
"You'd think the house would be less attractive," he said with some surprise.
"Houses are a reflection of our need for identity. They represent our deepest yearnings. The people who expressed their desire to buy were bringing a yearning for celebrity into their lives." Haber unraveled his
spiel, honed down by obvious repetition, to appear as if it were coming
from Mount Sinai.
"You said ghouls," Fiona reminded him.
He leaned over his desk and lowered his voice.
"Ghouls buy houses, too, Officer FitzGerald. We have only one interest in life here." He raised his arm in a gesture to encompass the universe. "Move 'em out. Stroke 'em. Feed the fantasy. Bring 'em to settlement and take our commission. Name of the game."
It struck Fiona that he was "relating," playing the cynic. Somewhere out there in TV land he had been shown cynical cops.
"How many people," Cates asked, "would have some knowledge that this house was empty?"
"For one thing, everyone in our offices." He moved his hand across his chin, exhibiting a huge star sapphire on his right pinky.
"How many people?"
"Counting part-timers, nearly eight hundred."
Cates cut a glance at Fiona. He had not expected the answer. Seeing this, Haber pressed forward with obvious enjoyment.
"We have twenty offices, all hooked in by computers. Then, of course, there are the people that drive by and see our sign. Be surprised how many people buy that way. We also do a big trade promotion. Hold an open house for agents from different companies. We give them a walk-through. Then, of course, there's Multiple Listing, a computer network plugged into most of the real estate people in the area."
"Brings the access to how many people?" Fiona asked, mostly for Cates' benefit.
"Thousands. Multiple Listing is a data base showing the bulk of the inventory in this area. Every sales agent worth his or her salt knows what's on it. They match a prospect with a house, then make a connection with the listing broker to see the property. It's a salami business." He chuckled at his comparison.
"Salami?" Cates asked.
"Everybody gets their cut. The person that gets the listing splits with the broker and they in turn split with the agent that makes the deal, whether it's from our company or not. Everybody's happy."
"Any other way people learn about the house?"
"Advertising," Haber said. "After a while it's no secret."
"Was the house in Cleveland Park advertised?"
He opened a file on his desk and studied it.
"Not for a while."
"How long ago?" Fiona asked.
"Three months ago. Price was t high. We brought it down some. Then pow. The Kessel murder. Front-page advertising in the _Washington Post_. None of the customers brought to contract quibbled over price. Actually we could have gotten more. That's the way it goes in this business."
"And the people who lived in the house?"
"They moved out two weeks ago. An elderly couple. Lived there for twenty-five years."
"Do you make a list of everyone who visited the property?" Fiona asked. An idea, still in embryo, was trying to bubble to the surface of her consciousness.
"It's a cockamamie system. We try to save the salesman's cards, but more often than not, we blow it. The point is, if they do make a deal, they have to come through us anyhow."
A presumption was growing in her mind. The perpetrator had to be somewhat familiar with the property. He would need to pick a site that might remain untouched for years. The chances were it would not be a compulsive decision. Something well planned, requiring a passing knowledge of the property. A friend of the family, perhaps? A relative? A neighbor? A friend of a neighbor? A relative of a neighbor? All possibilities. More than likely, Fiona decided, someone who had already
made a decision to kill, someone who wanted a sure-fire body-disposal system, someone who could research the site without fear of discovery and someone who knew the site would be empty when it was needed.
"Would Multiple Listing indicate that the house was empty?" Fiona asked.
"Not necessarily. But there would be lots of ways to find out. In the first place, t
here aren't many houses in Cleveland Park that come up for sale. In the second place, this is a network business. People find out. A house is harder to sell when it's empty."
With all their psychological meanderings into the motives of the Senator, Bunkie, Kessel and Nell, they had missed an essential ingredient. They had not connected the four in any way with the house in Cleveland Park or its occupants. As for the case of Betty Taylor, two of the suspects were not even in the picture at that time. Thinking about Betty Taylor suggested an idea.
"I know there are records of property transfers," Fiona said. "But is it possible for your records to tell me when a house was actually being offered for sale?"
"I think I just explained that," Haber said, somewhat confused.
"I mean fourteen years ago," Fiona explained.
Haber thought for a moment, then nodded his head.
"Take some doing, but I think we might find it."
She found the Woodland Avenue address in her notebook, then transferred it along with the probable dates to another piece of paper and gave it to Haber.
"Anything to help the defenders of the civic peace," he said, showing the full set of his perfect white false teeth.
"Now tell us about the elderly couple that lived in the Cleveland Park house," Cates said. He looked toward Fiona. It was certainly a reasonable tack to take.
Haber consulted his file.
"A recent retiree from the Justice Department," he said, looking at them over half-reading glasses.
"What did he do there?" Cates asked.
"He was with the Congressional Liaison Office," Haber said, consulting the file again.
"A lobbyist!" Fiona exclaimed.
"More than that," Cates shot back, turning to Fiona. "What committee would concern him?" She saw Haber searching their faces, obviously confused, trying to pick up their shorthand.
"Judiciary," Fiona said.
"Bingo!" Cates exclaimed.
"No prizes until all the numbers are confirmed," Fiona said.
They thanked Haber, who offered his hand in a "sincere" salesman's shake, and left the office.
———— *22* "MORE HOLES in this case than Swiss cheese," the eggplant said, biting into a sticky jelly doughnut. A drop of jelly squirted on his tie. "Shit." He fussed with a napkin and made it worse.
Fiona had come to the same conclusion after a sleepless night. They were sitting ihe eggplant's office. Apparently the windows had been cleaned. With the removal of layers of dust the spring sun bathed them in light. Despite the light, no one made a move to lower the blinds. It felt good to have clean, warm sunlight in the otherwise drab office. It filled the room with an air of optimism that had long been absent. Even the eggplant seemed infected by the mood created by the changed light.
"At least we're off the front page," the eggplant said, stabbing an ebony finger into the _Washington Post_ spread out on his desk. A bland one-column headline in an inside page read: PURSUE KESSEL UPDATE. The story was a rehash. Thankfully, the reporter was not an eager beaver and he was still flacking the robbery theory. He had not written that "an arrest is imminent."
Both Cates and Fiona had been meticulous in their reporting to the eggplant, who sensed that he was getting the full picture, which, indeed, he was. For his part, the eggplant had reported that nothing had turned up about the jewelry.
"Coincidence or connection," the eggplant had mused when they reported what they had learned about the occupation of the owner of the Cleveland Park house.
The former occupants were on safari in Kenya, Cates had discovered, and currently out of touch. But the euphoria of the revelation had dissipated. At best, the circumstantial thread had little currency without witnesses, and, so far, a canvass of the neighborhood had yielded little and no one had stepped forward to offer any further information. Nor could Cates' informant at the Committee provide any connecting links.
In an effort to accelerate action on the case, they had gone the psychological route with Bunkie and Nell. Spin a web of circumstances that threatened suspects into believing either they were trapped or triggering deep guilt responses, forcing them into confession. So far it hadn't worked.
What was even more troubling to Fiona was that neither Bunkie nor Nell had given her any intuitive sense of their guilt. Not that such feelings were a foolproof barometer. She had often overreacted to these inner signals, only to find that they had guided her in the wrong direction.
"We've got to talk to the man," the eggplant sighed. "I was hoping for more, before we got to him." He shrugged and licked the jelly and sugar off his fingers. "Something really concrete to open him up."
"And then?" Fiona asked. It was the kind of innocent question that often riled others. It had been inadvertent and she moved to quickly correct the situation. She had no desire to change the mood in the room. "What I mean is … suppose he does open up. Maybe after all this he knows no more than we do."
The eggplant pondered the idea, stood up and moved toward the window, transforming himself into a silhouette.
"Still," the eggplant mused, "we have the power to blow him to hell and back."
"Or save him," Fiona argued, forcing the issue back into the area of self-aggrandizement. To catch a killer, she could be single-minded and ruthless. But something about the Senator left her with a soft center. No politician is ever truly innocent, she knew. And a womanizer like Sam Langford was not deserving of compassion. And yet …
"We're missing something," Cates interjected. He was, after all, the only really neutral force in the group. "I wish I knew what it was."
For some reason, Fiona's mind had jumped to focus on Helga Kessel. Had she really, as Bunkie and Kessel had alleged, "gone quietly"? And if not, how strong was her capacity to disrupt the Senator's career? In effect, she would be destroying two careers. Her husband's as well as the Senator's. Would that be the rational act of a sophisticated woman of the world? Fiona thought not.
Her mind fastened on the Betty Taylor connection. Nell was absolutely correct. That was before her time. Also Ambassador Kessel's, which considerably diluted the possibility of their committing what on the surface seemed like a serial crime.
B the young Betty Taylor, in the throes of a passionate love affair with an older man, offered a troubling prospect, especially for Bunkie and/or the Senator. She might have been quite capable of making waves, tempting fate. Ambition, especially in Washington, had a force beyond measure. To stand in its way was like deliberately planting oneself in the middle of a track in the face of an oncoming train.
And the power of love, since time immemorial, was capable of making people, both men and women, commit all sorts of acts contrary to their own self-interest. History and literature were filled with examples of
such destructive behavior.
"I keep thinking cover-up," Fiona said.
"Has all the earmarks," the eggplant said.
"They could all be in it together," Cates said. "Including the Senator and his wife."
"Which still leaves how Betty Taylor fits," Fiona said.
"Or doesn't," Cates said.
"She fits," Fiona insisted. "I know she does." Intuition again, she cautioned herself. In the game of random selection she played with herself she allowed one intuitive thought to outweigh another.
"Have to go with that," the eggplant said.
At that point the phone rang. The eggplant picked it up.
"For you," he said, handing the phone to Fiona. It was Haber.
"Found what you wanted, Officer FitzGerald," Haber said as if he were pitching a prospect.
"Great," Fiona acknowledged. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "The real estate man," she said. The eggplant nodded.
"House was empty for six months fourteen years ago. Couldn't move the damned thing for $300,000. Goes for one million one now. Imagine that. Only fourteen years."
"Who was the listing broker?"
"Another company. Heller and Smith."
"Was it on
Multiple Listing?"
"Sure was."
"Thanks, Mr. Haber."
"Ever ready to oblige," he said. But he did not hang up. "Say, Officer. I understand you have a prime piece of property in Forest Hills. I think I can get you close to eight if you want to move."
"How the hell did you know that?" Fiona snapped.
"Ve haf our methods." He chuckled. "You look for killers. I look for real estate. You got a real hot and easy one, Officer. At least eight. Maybe more."
"Thanks and no thanks," Fiona said, hanging up. She shook her head and looked at the phone. "Says he can get me $800,000 for my house."
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