A Killing Gift (21 page)

I
n the old days when April had lived at home, Skinny Dragon Mother used to show her love by force-feeding her daughter before she went to bed. Didn't matter what time April dragged herself home after work. There was always food waiting for her. One, two, three in the morning. The poodle Dim Sum would be waiting and so was the real dim sum. Pork and shrimp and vegetable dumplings, steamed rolls. Crab in ginger sauce, lamb and scallions. Succulent chicken and vegetables in the clay pot. Skinny was a big nag and threatener, but a great feeder. April sometimes got nostalgic thinking of home.

By the end of the week, the refrigerator in her kitchen was usually empty. She didn't have time to shop or cook. Mike didn't care what he ate during the day, but she was picky. If she didn't take the time to find something she liked, she went to sleep hungry and almost missed her mom. That night she missed her. After they'd settled in for the night, she lay in Mike's arms for hours listening to the steady beat of his heart and thinking about love and food and telemarketers all over the country, armed with the tools for the most insidious kind of home invasion- telephones.

People called from real companies like AT & T and Sprint, and Chase and Citibank, from charities like heart and cancer organizations, from the Special Olympics, from Channel Thirteen. And they called for phony charities, like police and state police funds that didn't help the police. They called from chiropractors and dentists. And they called alums from universities, where they knew how old you were, where you lived, and what you looked like.

Her restless dreams were full of probabilities. Armies of black-belt wannabes practicing one punch, one kill against herself, naked and out of shape. Horses stuffed with thousand-dollar bills. And the approaching thirty-day anniversary of Jack Devereaux's father's death.

At four-thirty a.m. thunder struck in the distance, forecasting another rainy day. April climbed out of her bad dreams and out of her bed. Mike never knew she left. In a T-shirt and a pair of NYPD shorts, she foraged in the kitchen for food. Way at the back of the freezer she found two ancient heavily frosted roast pork buns under a half-filled ice tray. She defrosted them in the microwave and boiled some water for tea. A few minutes later as the buns were steaming, she found the calendar of the woman she still thought of as Birdie Bassett.

Detectives were forbidden to take any kind of evidence from a homicide. April knew that it was a serious breach for her to have any items from a victim's home in her possession. The calendar should be in the file along with everything else relevant to the case- the tape that Woody had made of Birdie's voice messages, the list of the last hundred numbers dialed to her phone that had been on her caller ID, the notes and receipts from her various purses, the recent mail and correspondence on her desk and in her files-the whole panoply of bits and pieces that compiled a paper trail through her life.

April didn't dwell on the infraction as she drank her tea slowly and turned the week-at-a-glance pages of the last year of Birdie Bassett's life. Before her husband died, when the couple had been in New York, she'd spent her days mostly on maintenance. Once a week she'd had her hair and nails done and had visited Bliss Spa for aromatherapy and massage. She had standing appointments. Twice a week she'd played tennis at East Side Tennis in Queens, and three times a week she'd exercised at Pilates on Fifty-sixth Street. From time to time she'd visited doctors and had fittings for her clothes, some of which appeared to be custom-made. Why anyone would need to do that in one of the fashion capitals of the world, April couldn't begin to fathom. But the really rich were different.

In the evening, Birdie had attended benefits and dined out with her husband. During her winter in Palm Beach, the drill had been pretty much the same. The woman didn't appear to have many friends of her own, and her routine seemed set in stone. Some life for a woman not very much older than she was, April thought. She poured herself more tea and thoughtfully chewed on the soft, tasty buns, which were none the worse for the ice crust from the freezer. She reached the recent past in Birdie's life. After her husband died, her routine had changed. She abruptly stopped playing tennis and going to Pilates. New names appeared on her calendar. She'd lunched nearly every day.

On a legal pad, April wrote down all the names and dates, then turned to the list that Dr. Crease had given her. Not counting the as-yet-unknown number of students who had been in the building the day of the calls to Bernardino and Devereaux, twelve university staff members had been at meetings there.

The dean had categorized the list. Beside each name was a title and the location of the person's office in the university and their reason for attending a meeting. She was a thorough person. She'd also included a list of maintenance people who had access to the professor's office and the duties they'd performed the day in question. Diane Crease would have made an excellent detective.

As the sun rose, April began cross-checking names of people who'd attended the president's dinner, people Jack Devereaux knew at the university, names from Bernardino's private files, people who'd been in contact with Birdie Bassett after her husband died, and people who had been at both the meeting and president's dinner last night. Only three people had attended both the dinner and the meeting: Wendy Vivendi, the vice president for development; the dean herself; and Martin Baldwin, the head of alumni affairs. None of them had been in contact with Birdie Bassett. However, one person on the dean's list had been in contact with Jack Devereaux, and had spoken with Birdie Bassett many times and had had lunch with her only a week ago. His name was Al Frayme.

A
pril and Mike were at Devereaux's apartment before nine Friday morning. A warrant check on Al Frayme had come up negative for past arrests. They knew where he lived and where he worked, but a deep background had not yet been done. So far he seemed clean as a whistle. Jack buzzed them up and opened the door before they reached the top of the stairs.

"It must be important if you're here yourselves."

"We wanted to be sure to get you," April said.

He laughed. "Yeah, as if everybody in the world doesn't know where I am."

"That's an issue."

"Tell me about it." He closed the door, locked three locks, two of which looked new, then led the way into the living room where a collection of cuttings from stories about him and his father was piling up on all the surfaces. It looked as if he was going off the deep end with his celebrity.

Mike raised his eyebrows. "How ya doing?" he asked, leafing through the top few clippings on his table.

"Oh, don't get me started. I'm going nuts with this. You have no idea. None of the facts about me and Lisa are true. Lisa wasn't pregnant with my baby. She never had an abortion or a miscarriage as a result of this. I'm not having a nervous breakdown over my crippling joint disease."

"You have a joint disease?" Eager to help, April flashed to ginger broth, good for rheumatoid arthritis.

"No. And although my mother did die of cancer, we weren't homeless my whole young life." Jack leaned over the back of the sofa and peeked his head around the curtain to see what was happening outside. Nothing. The fact that the press had moved uptown to Park Avenue didn't seem to reassure him.

"Well, don't take it to heart. Nobody gets the crime stories right, either." April saw two half-filled suitcases through the open door to the bedroom. He and Lisa were going someplace. That was great news.

"That's exactly the point. Look at those clippings. They say I'm a witness. You think I'm a witness. You got me under surveillance. He's killing other people right under your nose. How do I know I'm not next?"

April nodded. He was right. "Where's Lisa?" April asked suddenly.

"Oh, she's really pissed at me. She wants to get out of town." He waved his hand toward the suitcases in the bedroom. "She went to work. She works for a literary agent; did you know that?" Finally satisfied there was no one lying in wait for him on the street, Jack threw himself on the sofa. His big dog dropped to her hindquarters on the floor next to him, whimpering and nuzzling his knee. It reminded April that the detective working on dogs had not been successful in finding the dog she was looking for. Another tiny detail she was going to have to take care of herself.

"Frankly I'd go, but I don't know where. No mom, no dad to run to. It's inconvenient," Jack went on.

"You sound sorry for yourself," Mike remarked.

"I'm a little down. This second murder has pushed me over the edge," he admitted. "Now I know how women feel when there's a serial rapist out there. I have the same feeling. I can't help it. I think the press is targeting me for him, calling me a witness and everything. It may be silly, but I think that. Maybe the press wants me dead."

Suddenly he focused on the detectives. "Why are you here? Is there someone else you want me to look at?"

The small talk was over. April sat in the club chair beside the sofa and crossed her legs. Mike turned the desk chair around. They both took out their notebooks. When they were all settled, April took the lead.

"You told us the other day that you're an alum of York U."

He nodded. "Well, sure. 'Ninety-four."

"Are you a member of the President's Circle?" she asked.

"Ah, no. Should I be?" The question seemed to surprise him.

"Maybe. It's a club for people who give ten thousand a year or more to the university."

Jack snorted and glanced around his little living room, all the extra space taken by just three people and a dog. "Does it look like I do?"

"You're a rich man now. You might have started."

He shook his head.

"You haven't started giving yet?"

"No. I haven't even met the players," he said almost angrily.

"Who are the players?"

"At the Creighton Foundation? I have no idea… You know, real life is not like the movies."

"Gee, that's amazing to me. What's the difference?"

Jack snorted again. "Hello. In the movies, when the prince who grew up in a humble hovel never knowing he was a prince finds out he's rich, he collects his billion dollars that day, and moves right into the palace with no backward glance at his past.

"And guess what else, the press and his public adore him. He has no problems getting a fabulous beautiful princess whom he marries on TV. Then he rules the land in a benevolent manner and lives happily and wealthily ever after."

April's face didn't change as he spoke. "So what's wrong with that picture?" she asked.

"You don't get over the past so easily, for one thing. No one gets that. Not even Lisa. My father never spoke to me once in my whole life. When I was desperate for work I applied for a job at his company and got rejected. He probably didn't know it, but maybe he did. That's not the way dads are supposed to act. Now I'm not sure I want his money. I want to smash his face in. And he's dead, so I can't do it." He made a face. "And all these clippings say I'm a weird phobic like Howard Hughes."

"So what?" Mike said. "What do you care?"

"There you are. Get over it. That's what I'm supposed to do. Shit, I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

"Because we're here," Mike laughed. "It's okay. Say whatever you want."

Jack cradled his cast with his good arm. "And then there's the little detail that some madman wants to kill me."

"How do you know he wants to kill you?" April this time.

He gave her a weird look. "You told me, remember?"

She shook her head. "I didn't say he wanted to kill you. I just said you got a phone call from the same person who called Bernardino. It could be a prank call, a coincidence."

"But now there's another murder." Jack exhaled, blowing air loudly out of his mouth. "I don't want to be paranoid, but it's freaking me."

Neither detective had a handy reply for that. "We wanted to talk to you about Martha Bassett," April said after a moment.

"I didn't know her," he said quickly.

"But you know Al Frayme pretty well, right?" April asked.

"Well, sure, he's the alumni guy at York. He called me to speak at the reunion." Jack cheered up at the mention of Al. "It was my first request."

"How much do you know about him?"

"I know he's a nice guy. After everything came out about my dad, he called to tell me my old buddies at York were thinking of me. A friendly voice from my old school. I thought it was a very decent thing to do."

"Then what?"

"Well, then we went to lunch a couple of times. York has been my family for years. You know how it is."

"What did you two talk about?"

"We have a lot in common. His dad abandoned his mom, too. Married someone else. The dad's rich, has a new family. He and his mom have nothing. He knows what I'm going through. He asked me to speak about my York experience at the reunion. He said a lot of people would be interested."

Mike nodded. "What about his private life? Do you know anything about that?"

"He mentioned karate a few times," Jack said, uncomfortable for the first time.

Mike and April locked eyes. Now they were cooking. "You didn't tell us that before."

Jack made an impatient gesture. "We were talking about stress and anger. He told me it's great physical training, and good for channeling anger. I didn't think anything of it." But he didn't look easy about it.

April put her notebook down and leaned forward in her chair. "Think hard, Jack; is Al the person who broke your arm?"

"Well, actually, I have been thinking about it. The whole karate thing made me think of him immediately. But that's because he's the only one I know who does karate."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"It seemed too far-fetched. I felt stupid raising the issue. There must be thousands of people who do karate… and I didn't want to implicate a friend." He looked as if he felt really bad about it even now.

Mike and April didn't show their feelings. Maybe if he had told them his suspicions sooner, Birdie would still be alive. But Jack was still equivocating.

"And I know what he smells like. He didn't smell like the killer."

"The killer was in karate mode. He would have been full of adrenaline. His personal odor would have been different, sweaty. You may have smelled fear." April tried to stay calm. Jack had edited his comments. Witnesses were not supposed to do that. The whole case against Bill had rested on his nose. The smell of Tiger. She felt like smacking him now. Instead she remained patient.

"What does he smell like normally?" she asked.

"Lime. He smells like lime. And I wouldn't say he's big enough to take me on."

"Size can be misleading in the martial arts," April murmured. Every judgment Jack had made had been wrong. "Could you say for sure it wasn't Al?"

"No. I just didn't think it was he."

"I'm going to ask you one last time. Don't hold back. Do you have any other thoughts on Al Frayme or anything else?"

"Yeah." Jack scratched his stubbly chin. "Am I next?"

"Let's put it this way. How do you feel about taking a little vacation?" April asked.

"You mean you'd like me to get out of here?"

"We would," April said softly. "Let us do what we have to do."

Mike nodded. "Go someplace only you know about."

Jack scratched his chin. "Okay," he said. "I hear you."

Mike and April were finished and got up together. It was time to rock and roll.