Christietown

by Susan Kandel

  I leaned out my window. “Do you have seventy cents I can borrow?”

  “Jesus,” said the attendant, who motioned for the guy to go around me.

  Lou pointed to the clock. It was 5:23 now.

  “Is there a bank machine around here?” I asked, at the end of my rope now.

  The attendant pointed to a big, black building sandwiched between two other big, black buildings. “B of A.”

  “Wait here,” I said to Lou, unbuckling my seat belt.

  I sprinted over to the bank. There were two machines, one of which had an Out of Order sign taped to it, the other a line consisting of at least a dozen Japanese tourists wearing Disneyland shirts. I was getting ready to take my chances and abandon my car exactly where it was when a tour bus pulled up and honked its horn. The tourists started to cheer, then did a group about-face and left. Now there was only one person between me and my seventy cents. Unfortunately, he was unfamiliar with ATMs. He apologized, explaining that the ones in Norway were different. I looked back toward the parking lot. Lou was getting out of the car. What was that about? I helped the Norwegian get $200, $20 of which he offered me as a tip. I shot another glance Lou’s way. Lou was now waving a fist in the attendant’s face.

  I took the twenty and ran.

  After paying the attendant his blood money, we flew up the wheelchair ramp only to be confronted with a security line snaking from outside the building to the metal detector. It was bad. They were frisking people.

  “It’s after five thirty now,” said Lou.

  “I’m sure they’re running late.” I removed my belt and shoes. I hoped my underwire bra was not going to be a problem.

  “You’re probably right.” It was the first halfway positive thing Lou had uttered in days. “Gum?” he asked, shoving a piece in his mouth. He couldn’t smoke inside. I took a piece to be polite.

  “Arraignments and prelims?” I asked when we got to the front of the line.

  “Check at information,” the security guard said.

  “Judge Velasquez,” said the information officer. “Hoo, boy.”

  We took the elevator up to the third floor. I scanned the corridor for Gambino, but he was nowhere in sight. My heart sank, then I remembered why we were there. Determined, I threw open the door to Department 35 and shoved Lou in front of me. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t hightail it out of there otherwise.

  Judge Dina Velasquez looked up, her face framed by a pair of black cantilevered glasses and a spiky crew cut. At the sight of us, she frowned disapprovingly.

  “Where’s Wren?” asked Lou, slipping into the last row of seats. “I don’t see her. When are they bringing her out?”

  “I’ll find out.” I made my way up the aisle. Mariposa and McAllister were seated in the front row, which was reserved for police officers. There were signs everywhere, for those who didn’t know how to behave in polite company: TURN OFF BEEPERS, NO SMOKING, NO CELL PHONES, NO GUM CHEWING. I swallowed my Juicy Fruit. Mariposa didn’t seem to care about the rules. He was on the phone. Maybe cops were exempt. I tapped McAllister’s shoulder.

  “Ms. Caruso,” he whispered. “What are you doing here? And Mr. Berman,” he said, spying Lou in the back.

  “Is Ms. Lee here for the defense?” intoned Judge Dina. She’d have made an excellent baritone.

  “On her way,” said the clerk.

  “Ms. Lee is getting exactly ten minutes,” the judge said, removing her glasses with a sigh.

  The bailiff got up and started jangling keys.

  The stenographer adjusted his chair.

  The clerk pulled out a thick file and tapped his fingers on it.

  “Where’s Wren?” I whispered.

  Mariposa hung up the phone and turned around. “Zipping up her party dress.”

  I suppressed the urge to slap him and asked, “Is that the prosecutor up there? What’s her name?”

  She was in her late twenties, a mousy blonde, skinny. She looked like she was playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes.

  “A D.A., Clara Webber,” said McAllister. “Don’t be fooled.”

  “Ms. Webber,” I hissed. “Ms. Webber, I need to talk to you.”

  “Well, shit,” said Mariposa. “You’re not kidding. Stop bothering the woman and come with me.” He took my arm and marched me down the aisle, McAllister following.

  “Join us,” I said to Lou, grabbing him on the way out.

  We sat down on a wooden bench outside the courtroom.

  “This had better be good,” said Mariposa.

  What a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder, I thought, paraphrasing Christie. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Contempt charges sound good?” asked Mariposa. “’Cause that’s where you’re heading.”

  “Liz wasn’t the glamorous type,” I began.

  “Unlike you,” said Mariposa. “Can you do the beauty-queen wave?”

  Extend your arm out to the side, bend your elbow to ninety degrees. Slightly cup your hand. Without moving your fingers or wrist, rotate your hand from the forearm. The point is no underarm jiggle. But why was I letting Mariposa distract me? We didn’t have all day.

  “On the day Liz was murdered,” I said, “her nails were done, her makeup was perfect, her hair was styled, she had on a great suit.”

  “The jacket had a peplum,” said McAllister.

  “They don’t call you Pretty Boy for nothing,” said Mariposa.

  “Will you shut the hell up?” said McAllister. “You never know when to stop!”

  Mariposa looked surprised. Usually he was the one doing the slapping down.

  “She wanted to look beautiful for her husband,” I said.

  “She was dolled up for the play,” Mariposa was muttering. “Opening night, so to speak.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t spend all that time on gorgeous hair when you’re about to put on a wig.”

  A lightbulb went off over Mariposa’s head. “No shit?” I nodded.

  “She staged the whole thing?” asked McAllister. “She killed herself ?”

  “She didn’t mean to,” interjected Lou. “It was an accident. She didn’t want to die.”

  “Lou was supposed to find her before it was too late,” I explained. “He had her inhaler. She knew he’d come looking for her. He’d find her, and fall in love with her all over again. Only he didn’t make it in time.” I glanced at Lou. He was holding up well.

  “What about Wren?” McAllister asked.

  I told them how Liz had framed her, hoping Lou would lose interest in someone capable of murder. Liz dressed up as Wren to buy the foxglove, then called Javier, pretending to be Wren, to find out about how much to use, dumping the used plants into Wren’s trash.

  “It’s quite a story you got there, but how are we supposed to prove it?” asked Mariposa.

  I turned to Lou, who held out the red wig. “I found it in Liz’s things. It’s what she wore that day.”

  “It’s a start,” I said.

  “There’s more, Cece.” Lou stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small brown paper bag.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  Inside were some broken capsules and what looked like potpourri. “I found a mess in the bathroom that afternoon when I came home from Christietown. Even then, I guess I knew what she’d done. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

  Another missing piece.

  Just then, a tall, angry-looking Asian woman came barreling down the hall. “Excuse me,” she shouted. “I’m running late. Out of the way!”

  I got up and blocked the door. “Ms. Lee, I presume?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Lee,” I said, “today is your lucky day.”

  Lou said, “Believe it. She feels this kind of thing in her bones.”

  A few minutes later, a now-jubilant Ms. Lee threw open the door to Department 35. I caught a glimpse of Wren sitting in the front of the courtroom in her state-issued orange jumpsuit. I hadn’t realized the oth
er day how close it was to the color of her hair. As the door flew open, she turned around. She didn’t react to me, but when she saw Lou she broke into a smile that

  rippled across her entire body.

  Lou returned the smile, if not the depth of emotion.

  Still, I hoped they could take care of each other, at least for a while.

  After Lou went inside and the door slammed shut, my new best friend sidled up to me.

  “So you gonna solve the Holtzman case for us, too?” Detective Mariposa asked.

  I looked up at the clock in the corridor.

  “That depends,” I said. “Can you give me an hour or two?”

  CHAPTER 48

  he onlookers huddled around the rosy-cheeked man in the guayabera, laughing and joking. He exhaled, steadying his hand. They grew quiet, serious. Taking a step backward, he rotated his shoulder deeper into its socket, then pulled it back sharply, sending his first silver-tipped dart on its lightning-quick path toward the board.

  “Bull’s-eye!” roared the crowd. “A pint for our man Ian!”

  Sunday night. The darts championship at Ye Olde King’s Head. The game was 501 up. Each player starts with a score of 501 and takes turns throwing three darts. The score is calculated and deducted from the player’s total. Bull’s-eye scores fifty, the outer ring scores twenty-five, a dart in the double or treble ring counts double or treble the segment score. The object is to be the first player to reduce the score to exactly zero, the only caveat being that the last dart thrown must land in a double or the bull’s-eye.

  A woman in a tan gabardine business suit erased the number on the chalkboard and changed it to the number 2. She swiveled around, a look of glee transforming her plain face. “Double

  one, people. This is it!”

  “Piece of cake,” said someone.

  “For Ian, maybe,” said a portly man in blue coveralls, and everyone laughed.

  I sat in a corner booth, nursing a pint of bitters. It was warm and flat but I didn’t much care. I had my eye on Ian.

  His aim was unerring, which hardly surprised me.

  Ian, poised for the second dart, spun around to address a beautiful young woman sitting on a bar stool. “You watch out,” he said with a wink. “If I make it to Purfleet’s Circus Tavern in Essex, you’re coming with me.” She blew him a kiss.

  That was when he saw me.

  I hadn’t been avoiding him, but still, he’d been unaware, wrapped up in the game. He flinched ever so slightly, then, turning to face the board, let the dart fly. It landed on the black next to the number 1.

  A hush fell over the room. The bartender stopped pulling drafts. Patrons stopped chewing on pretzels.

  “Too bad,” the scorekeeper said, taking off her jacket and hanging it by the side of the bar. “A single.” She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse.

  “You playing, Sheila?” someone asked.

  “No. I’m just warm,” she replied.

  Ian approached the portly man the way a courtier approaches a king. “What do you say, friend?” he asked. “I find myself in the awkward position of being at one.”

  The man finished off his beer and perched his empty glass on the bar rail. Studying Ian, he asked, “You really think you can split the eleven?”

  “I do,” said Ian.

  He waved his hand, a benevolent ruler granting a subject’s request. “Then have at it, man.”

  Now the room was silent, the air thick with expectation.

  Ian wiped the sweat from his brow, squinted, blew on the dart, rubbed it between his hands. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent it on its way.

  It landed directly in the middle of the eleven.

  The pub broke out in cheers. Ian took a lap around the room, like a prize-winning horse, accepting congratulations, slaps on the back, free drinks.

  I looked at the dart trapped between the vertical lines of the eleven.

  I saw Ian, behind bars.

  He slowed to a stop in front of my booth. “May I?”

  “Please,” I said, scooting over.

  “Death in the Clouds,” he said. “Do you remember that one, Cece?”

  I shook my head. “Not in any detail.”

  He took a hankie out of his pocket and wiped his face, still slick with perspiration. “The murder weapon is a poisoned dart, with orange and black silk thread knotted around it.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding.

  “The story is set on an aircraft, which is, of course, a clever variant on the isolated country house. All the players are trapped inside. Hercule Poirot, the occupant of seat number nine, is one of the suspects, but we know from the beginning that he’s innocent.”

  “He’s the detective,” I said. “Despite rumors to the contrary, Agatha always played fair.”

  But then I remembered that two of the passengers, the Messrs. Dupont, were archaeologists, like Agatha’s second husband, Max. At some point in the story, they recount in horrified tones the tale of an Englishman who left his sick wife alone in a small hotel in Syria. Max had once done the same thing to Agatha. Was she getting back at him? Was that fair play?

  “What are you doing here, Cece?” asked Ian.

  “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “No need.” He studied my face. “Was it you who brought me the comforter?”

  I nodded.

  “That was very kind of you,” he said, sidestepping the question of why he had needed one in the first place.

  “Don’t thank me,” I said abruptly, pulling something out of my purse. It’d come in the mail yesterday from England.

  They Fly Through the Air.

  A history of the circus.

  I flipped through the book until I came to the page I wanted. A photograph of Deadeye Ian, with a trick rifle in his hand.

  “‘At one time, he was famed around the country,’” I read out loud. “‘Shooting five balloons off an assistant in under a second, hitting two targets so fast it sounded like one shot, blasting a target behind him using the sole of his boot to cock and fire the gun, a dime tossed in the air, an apple once off a tree and again before it hit the ground, and his pìece de résistance, the famous bullet catch.’”

  Ian’s eyes darted furtively around the room. His breath was coming quickly. I thought for a minute he was going to vault over me to escape into the night, but then, all at once, he settled back into his seat. Most criminals are relieved when they’re caught. First there’s panic, then resignation, and finally, relief. Agatha Christie had taught me that.

  “Everybody’s got a secret,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “It’s all in the stance,” he said. “You mount the rifle to your shoulder, balancing the front end on either the palm or the web of the off hand. Then you stand, so your bones support the weight of the rifle. Bones don’t get tired. Muscles do.”

  Ian looked so very tired—muscles, bones, heart, mind.

  “The trick of the bullet catch,” he said, “is wax. You shape the wax just so, then give it a candy coating the color of lead. Nobody ever knows it’s not real. They watch you load the rifle and they’re never the wiser. The explosion of the charge and the propulsive motion vaporizes the wax. Ta-dah!” He smiled wistfully. “Even then, I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”

  I took a deep breath. “What went wrong with Silvana?”

  He closed his eyes. “Damn mirrors.”

  The mirrored tiles on her fireplace. The pink bulbs. Silvana wanted to see herself bathed in the soft light.

  “She broke the house rules!” he exclaimed. “She knew them inside out and still she broke them. You know how thorough I am, Cece, how attentive to details. I go to great lengths to ensure that each and every Christietown resident understands the importance of the bylaws. We sit down together and go over them point by point. But Silvana disregarded me. She and Dov were old friends. She thought that entitled her to special privileges.” He lowered his head, dropped his voice. “I just wanted to keep the commotion going,
keep the sales figures up. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt, I swear it. I am truly sorry.”

  When he looked through Silvana’s window, the rifle poised on his shoulder, Ian didn’t see what he expected to see. The room looked like a patchwork quilt. Everything in it was fragmented, reflected, doubled, redoubled. He didn’t shoot straight because he couldn’t see straight.

  They Do It with Mirrors.

  That book I remembered.

  You always believe the worst, Ruth Van Rydock says to Miss Marple, whose china blue eyes don’t so much as blink.

  Miss Marple replies: That’s because the worst is so often true.

  Miss Marple was a pessimist. Agatha was an optimist. Still, the point is not what you think—about the world, about yourself. The point is how you act on it.

  “Ian, my boy!” The portly man in the blue coveralls stood before us. “Will we be seeing you next Sunday? My nephew will be here. He once played a game with the great Phil Taylor, or so he says.”

  Ian looked at me, then said, “I don’t think so. I’m going away for a while.”

  I used his phone to call Mariposa and McAllister. I told them where we were, and that the gun was on the eleventh floor of the Clock Tower Building, among Ian’s things. They said to not so much as move, that they were on their way.

  “Will they arrest me here, Cece, in front of everyone?” Ian smoothed down his guayabera.

  I didn’t know.

  What I did know was that he was going to jail for an accident.

  And Dov Pick and Avi Semel were getting off scot-free, despite poisoning the water supply and looting the aquifer and god knows what else.

  Business as usual.

  That’s Chinatown, Jake.

  As it turns out, no place else is any different—not Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, not Christietown either.

  “Ian?”

  He looked up.

  “You aren’t related to Agatha Christie, are you?”

  Before he could answer, Mariposa and McAllister had materialized in front of us.

  Ian was terrified.

  I squeezed his hand and promised him we’d see each other again.

  CHAPTER 49

  etrayal by Chambermaid. In other circumstances, thought Agatha, it might have made for a fine title. Ah, well. So Rosie with the overbite was more astute than she appeared. Agatha couldn’t help but berate herself. For a novelist, she’d turned out to be a poor judge of character indeed.