I'd Kill For That

by Marcia Talley

  Anka clearly had a partner—maybe more than one—or how could she have gained access to all those houses filled with jewelry? But Jerry couldn’t be involved. Renée knew her husband too well—like that real estate scam when he was just a kid, which even Parker Upshaw seemed to have heard of, given his dancing act in church.

  No, Jerry was too greedy, too sex-crazed, too into instant gratification ever to be involved in a long-term plot involving petty theft—much less murder! Renée shuddered again.

  On the other hand, how could Anka have escaped without help? When Renée had responded to Lydia’s urgent message to meet her at the club, Anka was already trussed in the entrance hall like a holiday turkey, Capt. Diane Robards was en route from the station, and Jerry was ensconced in his study, where he could keep an eye out from the upper window for the vice squad’s arrival.

  When they’d arrived, however, neither Anka nor the loot was to be found. It was only three hours later when they were discovered, dead weight, in Toni’s pond. Since the jewels were there with the body, maybe the larceny had just been a front, thought Renée; maybe the killer had already gotten what he wanted from dear little Anka: information.

  Jerry swore he’d heard nothing, that he’d seen no one enter or leave the house until the police.

  But Renée knew it was only a matter of time before the autopsy results were in. Then everyone would learn that, even if Jerry Lynch had not been the last one to see Anka alive, he was certainly the last who had sex with her.

  * * *

  Only when Lydia Upshaw was absolutely positive that her husband Parker had left for his office in Georgetown did she put the twins into their padded playpen, check all the outside doors to be sure they were locked, and head downstairs to the cellar.

  This time she’d make no mistakes, as with Charles Jefferson’s unexpected arrival. Poor Charles—despicable though it was, what he had done to all the women—Lydia still felt guilty. If they hadn’t tied him up near the pool, he might not be dead. And they might be one step closer to knowing who the murderer was.

  Lydia felt guilty as well for sneaking behind her husband’s back to check up on him like this. The whole spirit of their marriage had been one of openness, faithfulness.

  But Lydia had been really worried, ever since Mignon Gervase told her about the fight she’d overheard on the golf course between Lance McClintock and Sen. Carbury—only hours before Lt. Col. McClintock was murdered.

  Mignon and Silas MacGruder were held up for twenty minutes or more on the seventh hole. They couldn’t play through: the two men were really going at it up on the next green. Silas, whose hearing wasn’t great, kept asking Mignon what they were saying, but she didn’t tell him.

  She told Lydia instead.

  Mignon thought Lydia had a right to know. After all, Ned Carbury was Parker Upshaw’s best friend, so Lydia’s husband might be tarred with the same brush Lance was using on Ned. The colonel accused the senator of “corrupt dealings” in the creation of the founding documents for Gryphon Gate.

  “You’ve dragged us all into this quagmire,” Mignon had heard McClintock say. “As of now, I’ve got the proof that will put you away. We’re talking major class action lawsuit, buddy-o. Billions of dollars in fraud. How do you plan to wriggle out of this one?” And more of the same.

  To make matters worse, Lydia herself had been on the greens with Sen. Ned Carbury, one day earlier, on Wednesday, the same evening that Sigmond Vormeister died. What was that cryptic remark Ned made to her?

  “Just tell Parker that all his hard work is about to pay off, and big.”

  Everyone, including Mignon, knew that Parker Upshaw’s firm had been key advisors on everything from the acquisition of property to the formation of Gryphon Gate as a legal entity—though Ned Carbury himself had done the legal work.

  But there was something else, something no one knew. No one, that is, but the late Lt. Col. Lance McClintock. And Lydia herself.

  Lydia thought back to that first night—the meeting at the clubhouse, where she and the McClintocks had each invited their own experts from the U.S. Department of Natural Resources and an assortment of other government agencies. It had likely taken Lance more than a swift glance through the boxes of contradictory reports supplied in anticipation of that meeting before the truth first leapt out at him.

  But back then everybody, even Lydia, thought the deep issues had to do with mute swans, lyme-diseased deer, cute little endangered frogs. God, how she wished right now that it were really so.

  Lydia swallowed her bitterness, switched on the dim cellar light, and went to the files she had carefully stored after the last meeting. Beyond the cellar door, she could see the rain slashing down along the gravel path that led to the woods. The twins always slept through storms. This one wouldn’t let up for hours.

  Lydia pulled six boxes of papers from the shelves and set them on the laundry table. She flipped carefully through the first five boxes, pulling out the reports, one by one, that she thought pertinent. She laid the reports side by side on the table; then she put those boxes back.

  From the sixth box she extracted the massive incorporation documents for Gryphon Gate, along with the preliminary reports that were always required for a project of this magnitude: analyses of field, marshland, forest, watershed, and proposed golf course—the many environmental impact, historic preservation, title abstracts, and right-of-way studies. She laid them in a row beneath the first set of papers. Then she drew a stool up to the laundry table and started her painstaking legal review.

  Lydia blocked out the sound of the wind howling beyond the cellar door. She focused on one thing only: when she left this cellar, she would either know that her husband, Parker, was indeed a criminal—or that she, Lydia Upshaw, could be the only person still alive who had the evidence to prove who the murderer was.

  * * *

  Tiffany Turner slogged through the puddles, her magenta poncho streaming with water, her Peruvian oiled wool socks soaking into her shoes. She squished with every step. To make matters worse, she really had to take a leak—of the powder room variety. But there was no public facility in sight. Indeed, there was nothing in sight, what with the rain socking in everything like the inside of a giant black compost bag.

  What on earth was the story with Mrs. Clancy? On the phone she’d seemed to Tiffany like an upscale, uptown chick who was only concerned with her family’s reputation. But to pay off her final bill, she wanted Tiffany to meet her on the gravel path behind the Upshaws’ cellar door?—the remotest spot in all of Gryphon Gate.

  Blaagh! A huge gust of rain-bearing wind grabbed Tiffany’s poncho and nearly lifted her off the ground like a catamaran tacking on the bay.

  Clients! Tiffany vowed that before she accepted any more assignments, she would get character references and a complete background composite sketch. As long as they didn’t get the same thing on her!

  Just then, through the pounding sheets of rain, Tiffany spied the gravel drive behind the Upshaw home. And there was her client, Mrs. Clancy, waiting in the rain—wrapped to the teeth in her long, black, hooded cape.

  * * *

  The windshield wipers of the periwinkle blue security car were slapping time futilely against the wall of rain, as Capt. Diane Robards struggled to see anything at all beyond the black-and-white hood decoration on the BMW. She found herself humming “Bobby McGee” to the slapping rhythm of the wipers, but she throttled the song before she got to the hand-holding part.

  Leland Ford sat beside her, his computer resting on his lap.

  “You sure you want to hear all this stuff I downloaded?” he asked. “Maybe we should drop back by the station so you can dry off; you got pretty wet on that last little foray across Camille McClintock’s lawn.”

  “I can’t believe it’s almost June; I’ve never seen weather like this,” Diane agreed, yanking back the hood from her soggy black rain slicker. Her hair underneath was just as wet. “But as for the station,” she added, slipping the
car into neutral and turning on the flashing side light, “I don’t think we’re going anywhere at all for the moment. I can’t see to drive. So give me the goods on our little skateboarding perp and his sister.”

  “Okay,” said Leland. He scrolled down the computer screen. “In l97l Cunegonde Schelling married her professor, Hiram Kaplan, who was Andrew Mellon Professor of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, or S.A.I.S., as they call it. You know what they do there, right?” Leland added.

  “Think tank,” Diane said. “Training for diplomatic corps and possibly CIA?”

  “That’s the buzz,” said Leland. “Anyway, Kaplan was twenty years Schelling’s senior; they had their first kid—the present widow Rachel Vormeister—when Schelling was thirty-three and her husband fifty-three. Then twelve years later Kaplan died, leaving his wife pregnant with little Aaron.”

  “Rachel told us during her interview with us that her mother didn’t raise Aaron,” Diane mentioned. “He was raised by his grandfather. When Grandpa died, Aaron went to live with Rachel.”

  She dumps her kid while she’s studying with spies and schmoozing terrorists, Robards thought privately. And I’m the one who’s supposed to be compassionless and career-obsessed?

  “Grandfather: Spinoza ’Spin’ Kaplan,” Leland read on. “Basketball and swimming coach—but he was a mathematician before he fled Europe in the 1930s. He must be the one who taught Aaron about encryption. The kid won awards at school when he was only eight years old. Which explains how he learned enough to try blackmailing half the occupants here at Gryphon Gate. Five bucks says he deciphered Vormeister’s notes.”

  “If those notebooks are really the reason people are getting killed—which I highly doubt,” said Robards, “then the kid might actually be in danger. Anyway, since the phones aren’t working, I thought we should head to the Vormeister place, as Cundy Kaplan recommended, just to check things out.”

  “Why do you doubt that Sigmond Vormeister’s notebooks were the motive for his murder?” asked Leland.

  “Because nobody has ever tried to steal them or destroy them,” said Robards with a shrug. “But somebody did swipe-and-wipe Sigmond’s Palm Pilot—and dump it on Toni Sinclair’s lawn for her little daughter to find.”

  “So, the Palm Pilot had the real information the killer wanted?” Leland surmised.

  “Nope,” said Robards, “that was just a plant to incriminate Toni. So, now we ask ourselves: Who would want to focus suspicion on Ms. Sinclair? Who would send you and me to the Satterfields’ empty boat just when Senator Carbury was arriving next door at Toni’s? Who would sprinkle deer chow at the site of several murders?”

  Leland Ford was mystified. “Who?” he finally said.

  “The same person who wants us to believe that Toni murdered her husband, Lincoln Sinclair,” said Robards.

  Glancing at the brief break in the rain, she started the car up again.

  “After my little chat a moment ago with Camille McClintock, I think I’ve figured out who,” she informed him. “Now, let’s go talk with the person who sent those faxes and see if they can tell us what, why, and how.”

  * * *

  “Oh, hello, Captain Robards, Officer Ford,” said Rachel with a smile as she opened the door of her Tudor manse and ushered them in. “We’ve been expecting you. But my mother isn’t back yet. She told me to make you comfortable till she gets here, and to brew you up a nice pot of herbal tea. Can you believe this weather?”

  “We wanted to speak with your brother, too; where are they?” asked Robards as she tried to peel her soaking-wet raincoat free of the soaking-wet clothes beneath. Damned government-issue rainwear. She should have joined the fire department—they knew how to keep their powder dry.

  “Aaron’s upstairs finishing some computer work that Mother asked him to do, and Mother had a meeting over at Lydia Upshaw’s,” said Rachel. “She’ll be here soon. But there’s someone waiting here now that my mother wanted you to meet. We’re out in the kitchen—the only place that’s warm—I hope you don’t mind.”

  Ford and Robards followed Rachel to the kitchen, where a woman was sitting wrapped in a thick-knit pink sweater, her hands cupping a mug of steaming coffee. She looked familiar. When she started to get up, Robards motioned her to stay. Beyond them the rain assaulted the wall of glass panes with a ferocity that looked deliberate.

  “This is Lt. Cmdr. Cindy Silberblatt, U.S. Navy, retired—our dockmaster at the Gryphon Gate harbor. We always get the best,” Rachel said, pulling out chairs around the oak table. “I believe you’ve all met before.”

  On several occasions the police had interviewed the dock staff who managed the array of costly yachts in the harbor. But they’d dropped it once they realized—even if the killer wasn’t already in residence—it was as easy for an outsider to slip undetected into this “gated community” as it was to cross the United States border on foot.

  “I can only stay a short time, Captain Robards,” the dockmaster apologized. “I should be at the docks—we’re having an awful time down there. The Coast Guard says this storm is shaping up worse than a nor’easter. We already have seventy mile winds, and building. Though we’ve finished hurricane season, the meteorologists are thinking of giving this one a name. I can already tell you what I’d like to call it!”

  “Of course you must get back to work at once,” Robards agreed, wondering how many hundreds of millions of dollars in designer vessels this poor woman was responsible for safeguarding on behalf of their spendthrift owners. She was beginning to sympathize with Leland Ford’s security job. “But can you explain what it was that Mrs. Kaplan asked you to come here for?” Robards added.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Cindy Silberblatt began.

  This was Robards’s favorite opening line, because it invariably meant that there was something. She gave the dockmaster an encouraging look to continue, as Rachel set cups of hot tea before them.

  “I didn’t think much of it at the time,” Silberblatt explained. “Although my crew is responsible for oversight at the docks, owners who plan to be away for a long time will often ask other residents to keep an eye on things. I knew the Satterfields were staying in Europe for the month and that they’d given Doctor Vormeister the keys to their house and boat. He spent every afternoon on the waterfront working on his notes, so he’d have noticed anything out of the ordinary. And to reach the harbor he had to go right past the Satterfields’ house at the sixth green.”

  The sixth hole sand trap was where Sigmond Vormeister’s body had been found. Robards kicked herself for not searching that empty house the moment they suspected the body had been relocated from the murder scene to the sand trap.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier?” she asked the dockmaster.

  “The detectives never questioned who might have had access to the boats—they were only interested in how an outsider might’ve entered the grounds from the port,” said Cindy. “I didn’t think anything of it until this storm started brewing yesterday. Then I realized that our key to the Satterfields’ boat was missing.”

  Robards glanced at Leland.

  “The dockmaster keeps a spare set of keys in a safe at the yacht club office,” Leland explained, “so they can move the boats to leeward in the event of a storm.”

  As if to punctuate his remark, the wind ripped a branch from a tree across the terrace and flung it against the windows, smashing three panes.

  All four people leapt to their feet and scurried away from the wall of glass, as gusts of rain swept into the kitchen. The storm seemed to be inside and out all at once.

  “I begged Sigmond not to plant so many trees close to the house, with all these windows!” Rachel cried. She ran to the far wall, pushed the intercom button, and yelled, “Aaron! Come downstairs! Fast!—To the cellar!”

  “I have to get to the docks!” Cindy Silberblatt hollered over the scream of the wind, as she yanked on her foul weather jacket and
barreled into the hallway, followed by the others. Rachel shut the kitchen door behind them. They were all racing down the hall toward the front of the house when the lights flickered and went out, throwing the inner passage into momentary darkness. Just then all hell broke loose.

  The front door opened and gusts of rain swept in—along with a very wet Tiffany in her colorful poncho, followed by Mrs. Kaplan in her long black cape. They collided with Aaron, who’d just flossed a backslide nollie off the railing from the second floor landing. The three sudden arrivals were tangled in a heap in the entrance hall, as Cindy Silberblatt tried to push her way past the shrieking Rachel and escape the premises to the relative sanity of her storm-tossed harbor.

  “Halt!” commanded Diane Robards over the howl of the storm.

  Leland pulled out his police whistle and blew a deafening blast. Everything stopped. Leland stepped over the pile of bodies and shoved the front door shut against the driving rain. With his back to the door he faced the motley crew.

  “Captain Robards is trying to conduct a murder investigation here, and you all are behaving like a mob at a soccer game,” he informed them with a firmness Robards had never seen before. She was impressed. “Now, up off the floor,” he was saying. “I want everybody to take a seat on these hall steps—that’s it.”

  Leland helped them extricate themselves in the gloomy light leaking through the entry glass. He got everybody seated in silence on the carpeted stairway.

  Then he turned to Robards.

  You’re doing just fine, she thought. She smiled supportively, and nodded for him to continue.

  “Mrs. Kaplan.” Leland addressed the older woman, who sat dripping in her black cape on an upper step. “Captain Robards says you seem to think you’ve got this case solved. Our dockmaster, Lieutenant Commander Silberblatt here, has informed us that your son-in-law, Sigmond Vormeister, possessed keys to the Satterfields’ vacant house and boat. She says the dock key for their yacht is missing, too. But we found no keys on his body. Can you explain that for us?”