May the Best Man Die

by Deborah Donnelly

  Every year, the Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition seems to attract more participation by downtown businesses, more spectators willing to donate to a good cause, and more hilariously elaborate song-and-dance numbers. This year there were rapping tax accountants, tap-dancing mortgage bankers in reindeer hats, and silver-haired lawyers waving cardboard palm trees in a conga line. There were kids dressed as elves, men dressed as women, and one bunch of women dressed as giant cloves of garlic.

  And all of them caroling, lifting their voices in joyous song, which ranged from an exquisitely harmonized “God Rest Ye Merry” by a choir in full Victorian getup, to a baseball-themed “Twelve Days of Christmas” raucously rendered by some beer-fueled guys in Mariner Moose costumes, who counted down from “Twelve bases stolen” to “And a home ru-un in the cheap seats.” I'd never seen so many smiling faces per square block of Seattle.

  Kevin and I drifted with the currents of people from one corner to the next, joining the little audience at each performance, dropping our dollar bills in the donation pails, singing along on the carols we knew. Kevin had a thin but true baritone, and he seemed to be having a wonderful time. I certainly was.

  “All we need now is the dogs barking out ‘Jingle Bells,' ” I said, raising my voice a bit above the hubbub. Then, at his blank look, “You know, that you always hear on the radio this time of year, along with the Cheech-and-Chong routine about Santa's old lady?”

  My date smiled politely. “I just listen to the classical station.”

  “Never mind.” I laughed, and we drifted on for another half hour. All too soon, the carolers were packing up their props and making for the main stage, thronged now with spectators many dozens deep.

  “This has been great,” said Kevin, stamping his booted feet for warmth. “I think I've got a new holiday tradition. But do you mind if we skip the final show? I've got a long drive back—”

  “Of course! Anyway, I'm starving. Where shall we eat?”

  We ended up settling into a booth at Etta's, a lively bistro down near the Market. There we warmed ourselves with a glorious seafood chowder, and exchanged the obligatory first-date life stories. He sketched out the founding of Habitat Coffee, and I related the history of Made in Heaven Wedding Design. Just as with Ivy Tyler, Kevin and I were operating on very different levels, but there's a kinship among entrepreneurs that you don't quite feel with folks on a regular salary. Doubts, triumphs, and obstinate bankers make for good stories, whatever the size of your enterprise.

  We talked about our other interests, too, theater and day-hiking on my part, classical music and bicycling on his. My childhood in Boise, his in Tacoma. My plans to visit Sun Valley, his trip to Portland the previous weekend, where he'd immersed himself in the legendary Powell's bookstore and had to drive home in the wee hours of Monday morning.

  I did most of the talking, spurred on by the appreciative questions and smiles of my companion. No needling, like I got from Aaron, no thrust and parry of smart-alecky remarks. If anything, Kevin Bauer was a bit on the quiet side. A quiet man, I decided, was a nice change. The fact that he was burly and handsome, with his russet beard and his nubbly gray fisherman's knit sweater, didn't hurt a bit.

  “Are you sure your hand is OK?” Kevin asked at one point. “It bled so much—”

  “It's fine,” I assured him. “I changed the bandage this morning, just like they told me. I think Lou Schulman was more upset than I was.”

  He agreed, then after a moment's hesitation he said, “You mentioned a friend of Lou's, who died. Was that the body in the canal, the man from Meet for Coffee?”

  “How'd you know Jason worked at MFC?”

  I asked it casually, but Kevin frowned. “It must have been in the newspaper. Does it matter?”

  “Not at all. I thought maybe you'd met during the merger talks—”

  “Shhh! That's still confidential.” He glanced around, but it was obvious the clamor of the other diners more than masked our conversation. He smiled an apology, and reached over to top up my wineglass. “Ivy's got me so paranoid . . . She's a remarkable person, though. What's her daughter like?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, Sally's my client, so that makes her a lovely girl with exquisite taste, doesn't it? Let's just say she can be very explicit about what she wants, and how she wants it. Brides always have some kind of vision about the perfect wedding, of course, but Sally—”

  But Sally, apparently, was not the member of the Tyler clan that Kevin really cared about. He leaned forward, interrupting me. “And Charles Tyler, what's he like in person? His compositions are so powerful and so . . . He's a genius, that's all there is to it. Has he talked about his music at all?”

  “I hate to break it to you, but I've never even met the man.” Aw, don't tell me, I was thinking. Don't tell me I'm having this enchanted evening because Kevin is a Charles Tyler groupie. “I take it Ivy hasn't introduced you?”

  He shook his head in regret. “I was hoping, but no. They live near Habitat, too, by a lake just outside Snohomish. Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Please.”

  “Charles Tyler is the reason I first agreed to talk with MFC.” Kevin said it quite sheepishly. He really was starstruck. “They'd been putting out feelers, but I ignored them till I found out who Ivy's husband was. I was there that night, at the Kennedy Center.” It was my turn to look blank, so he added, “His last appearance. It was heartbreaking.”

  “What happened, exactly?”

  “No one really knows, except Ivy, I guess.” My quiet man grew voluble. “Tyler was conducting one of his own works, and he started to lose the tempo. The orchestra tried to follow him, but the concertmaster, that's the first violinist, had to finish conducting from her chair. It was horrible, all the musicians craning around to watch her, and Tyler up there in his tuxedo, waving his arms. At the end of the piece he just stood perfectly still, until someone led him away.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Twelve or fifteen years, maybe more.”

  “And Ivy has taken care of him ever since?” I remembered her expression when he called the apartment, that intense concern, and her daughter's air of respect. “She must be devoted to him.”

  “Almost too much so, according to some people. When he's doing poorly, she sometimes neglects the business.” Kevin took a deep breath. “Well, that's enough about my hero worship. Tell me, what's it like to live on a boat?”

  “On a houseboat, you mean. My place isn't going to sail away anywhere. But I love it, being right down on the water. It's, well, it's hard to describe. You have to visit sometime, once I've moved back in.”

  “I'd love to. And you have to come back to Habitat, so I can make up for the way your first visit ended. The company Christmas party is Saturday night. It's just cookies and punch and a boom box, but . . . Be my guest?”

  I wondered if Ivy would object. I must have wondered that for two, maybe even three seconds. Then I said yes. “I do need to check on something, though. Ivy's putting on a dinner party for Frank's parents and she had to reschedule. I'm invited, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be Friday night, not Saturday.”

  “I hope so.” Kevin touched my hand—there was that warm glow again—and the conversation flowed smoothly onward, helped along by the cool topaz wine, the hot rich coffee, and Etta's famous coconut cream pie, two forks please.

  Suddenly it was late, and Kevin was walking me back through the Market. A brief hug, affectionate but not intimate—all the winter clothing saw to that—and I was alone in the elevator of Ivy's building, smiling a big moony smile and humming: One coffee roaster, Two dates in one week, Three . . . three . . .

  I gave up on “three” and dug out my key. I didn't notice anything at first, as I stepped into the hallway, but once the elevator closed behind me I was blind; the hallway light was out. I groped along the wall toward the apartment door, making a mental note to tell Ivy so she could call maintenance.

  I didn't reach the apartment. In th
e unfamiliar darkness I bumped painfully into the corner of a table, recoiled, and stepped sideways—right into someone who swore in a low rough voice and shoved me violently to the floor.

  I gave a shout as my head glanced off the wall, and then my flailing arms brought a lamp crashing down on top of me. I shoved it aside, knocking off the shade as I did so. The bulb shattered somewhere near my shoulder and I turned my face away, instinctively horrified by the thought of glass near my eyes.

  Meanwhile, a door at the end of the hall swung open, offering a split-second impression of a man in dark clothes, disappearing down the fire stairs.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE POLICE DIDN'T CARE? YOU WERE assaulted!” Aaron angrily rattled the laminated menu he'd been perusing as he waited for our table, and for me.

  “It's not that they didn't care, exactly,” I said, pulling off my gloves and flexing chilly fingers. Not that I minded Aaron springing to my defense, but I wanted to be accurate. “It's just that when I suggested that there might be a connection to the murder, they looked at me like I was crazy. They wouldn't call Mike Graham, either.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “They said it was only attempted burglary. He didn't even get the dead bolt open on Ivy's door. Nothing taken, no description of the guy, there's lots of street people around the Market, blah, blah, blah. I spent half the morning waiting for them and the other half arguing with them, and all I got was, ‘Don't call us, we'll call you.' ”

  As I spoke, I tried to focus on Aaron's indignant face, but I was distracted by another face looming over his shoulder: a beady-eyed, fat-lipped fish who resembled Alfred Hitchcock to an alarming degree. Of the two of them, the fish had a better reason to be indignant; it was waiting to become someone's lunch.

  Aaron and I were wedged into a corner of the Noble Pearl's tiny foyer, surrounded by cloudy tanks of live fish, crabs, lobsters, and something eelish that I tried not to look at. Also by hungry office workers in heavy coats, all perusing their own menus and debating the merits of General Tso's Chicken versus Jumbo Shrimp Hunan Flower Basket.

  Someone in hiking boots trod on my foot and I edged away, trying to keep my distance from Aaron and the electrical effect he sometimes had on me. Well, most times. But I was blocked by someone else who wore not only boots, but an enormous down parka.

  “I won't bite, Stretch,” said Aaron mildly. I took a reluctant step closer and he chuckled. “Not in public, anyway. So, what did Ivy say about all this?”

  “I couldn't reach her directly. She's meeting with her board all day. But I'll call her tonight.”

  “Gold, party of three!” called a brisk male voice.

  Our third person was Madison Jaffee, who was running late. The plan, formulated by phone this morning, was to get some lunch, case the joint, and interview the owner of the Noble Pearl about Jason Kraye, gambling man.

  “That's the owner's son,” murmured Aaron as we extricated ourselves from the crush and approached the front counter. “Dad's supposed to arrive soon and talk to us.”

  The son, a handsome young fellow chewing on a wad of gum, checked us off his list and turned us over to a waitress. She was a small, pretty girl, surely still a teenager, with rounded Chinese features and a port-wine birthmark on one cheek. Shyly averting her eyes, she showed us to a table and brought a pot of tea and three thick white cups.

  Noble Pearl hardly looked like an ill-omened gambling den. The high square dining room was painted Pepto-Bismol pink, an unfortunate association for a restaurant, and hung with gaudy red and gold decorations, to mark the Chinese New Year coming up in January. Above the clamor of the lunch crowd, pop music played inexorably from the speakers bolted up in each corner.

  “I shouldn't do it,” said Aaron, tapping his menu indecisively on the edge of the formica table, “but the Dungeness crab in ginger and scallions sounds really good.”

  “Why shouldn't you do it?”

  “Crabs don't have cloven hoofs.”

  “Huh?”

  He smiled. “Jewish joke. Shellfish isn't kosher.”

  “I didn't know you kept kosher.”

  “Stretch, the things you don't know about me would astound you. Take my checkered past, for example—”

  I held up a hand. “Hey, we had a deal.”

  “Right, right. I just thought, since you were so interested—”

  “I'm not! I'm just interested in, um, in people's food preferences generally. For my work. Tell me, is that the right phrase, ‘keeping kosher'?”

  “Exactly right. Although personally, I don't. I observe certain holidays and certain customs, and, as far as I'm concerned, bacon is not food. But I've got a jones for crab meat and—hey, there's Madison. Over here!”

  The marketing mastermind was dressed in black once again, this time topped by a long double-breasted wool coat in a deep wine color. She looked smashing, but her green eyes were guarded and her lovely mouth was set in a flat, fixed line. I wondered what it was costing Madison Jaffee to maintain that poise in the wake of her lover's death.

  Aaron rose from the table to embrace her. I kept forgetting that he'd been working with Ivy for a while now, and would naturally know her senior people better than I did. She had certainly never smiled at me the way she was smiling at him.

  “How you doing?” he murmured, helping her off with her coat, as he hadn't helped me.

  “I'm fine, thanks. I'll be fine.” Her hand lingered on his shoulder, then she slipped into her seat. “But she told you it's not public knowledge? That's important to me.”

  “Absolutely. But if you ever want to talk about him—”

  “No,” she said flatly. “No, I can't, not yet. I just want to find out who did it.”

  “OK, Maddie.” Aaron patted her hand, and then took on a brisker tone. “Well, for starters, Carnegie had a weird thing happen last night . . .”

  As we ordered lunch, I described my encounter with the would-be burglar again, and we puzzled over its significance. Or lack thereof. Madison irked me by brushing off the whole incident.

  “I don't see that it necessarily means anything,” she said. “Apartments do get burgled, after all, and the Market isn't the safest neighborhood at night.”

  “But why Ivy's place, and why now?” I protested. “Don't you think it's quite a coincidence that someone broke in there so soon after Jason Kraye's murder?”

  Whatever Madison thought, she didn't get to say it, because at that point a wave of Lucky Three Jade Vegetables came cascading across the tabletop and into my lap. Our timid young waitress stood horrified, the serving dish still in her shaking hands.

  “Excuse me!” She spoke in a strangled whisper. “It slipped . . .”

  I had jumped to my feet, and suddenly a white-haired gentleman with fierce black eyebrows was beside me, giving the girl a furious dressing-down in low, rapid Chinese. Her eyes, huge in the childish face, began to brim with tears.

  “It's all right, really,” I told him, and gave her a reassuring smile. “You should have dropped the Egg Drop Soup! That's a joke—”

  But her gaze was on the floor now, and stayed there.

  “I am Peter Yan,” said the white-haired man. He glanced at the business card he was holding. “Mr. Gold, you wished to speak to me? You will not be charged for your meal, of course. This clumsiness by my niece is inexcusable. Li Ping has not been here long—”

  “Honestly, it's not a problem,” I said. “Where's the ladies' room?”

  He snapped something at the girl and she trudged away. I followed, and soon I was mopping at my skirt with a paper towel. I expected the girl to vanish, but instead she lingered, casting furtive glances at me in the mirror. The bathroom walls were queasy pink as well, and we both looked pale and off-color against them.

  “There, no harm done,” I said brightly. “I'm sure your uncle will—”

  “You knew Jase?” she blurted. Rushed together like that, the three syllables sounded almost Chinese, and it took m
e a moment to interpret.

  “You mean, Jason Kraye?” She nodded. “I knew him slightly. He's been . . . I mean, did you know that he was . . .”

  “Dead!” she whispered, and now the tears came in earnest. “It said in the newspaper. Someone killed him.”

  “Yes. Yes, I'm afraid so. How did you know him?”

  Her face lifted and contorted, as a baby's does when it's about to wail in distress. “He loved me!”

  “Oh, honey.”

  I reached out to hug her—what else could I do?—but she shook me off, her eyes wide and frightened. There were voices approaching, and the door to the room began to swing open. She whispered something, so low I could barely make it out.

  “Uwajimaya, one hour.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  UWAJIMAYA WAS THE VAST ASIAN FOOD MARKET A FEW BLOCKS away. As a group of women entered the rest room and Li Ping locked herself into a stall, I had a sudden urge to go shopping there. Say, in about an hour.

  Back in the dining room Peter Yan was seated at our table, speaking seriously, but with no suggestion of restraint or hostility. Aaron was taking notes, and Madison was frowning into her teacup.

  Lord, I thought, I've got to keep her and Li Ping apart. What on earth did these women see in Jason Kraye? I wouldn't have touched him on a bet.

  “I explained all this to the police.” Peter Yan rose courteously at my approach, then sat again. The place was still packed, but he seemed unconcerned about being overheard. “Some of my customers play cards after dinner, in a private room upstairs. It is not a cardroom, there are no fees. A social game only. Mr. Kraye would sometimes participate. There is nothing illegal here.”