Death Dines Out (16 page)

"What do you think?"
" Actually, I like it better than the brandy. Besides, it's less expensive."
"You do? Like it better than the brandy?"
"I really doubt, with all this upset about the kidnapping and with the Institute closed for electrical repairs, that Tiffany's going ahead with the banquet. I don't know why you're fiddling with the marinade, anyhow. You can't get to the rabbits until tomorrow morning and even then, they're already marinating-oh, forget it."
"You're right, of course. I'm giving up the whole idea. The third star would look better on a gravestone, under these circumstances." Meg tossed the remainder of the marinade over the terrace railing. It landed on a pair of peach double hibiscus and turned them an unpleasant brown.
"Now look what you've done," Quill scolded, mildly. She gave Meg's hand an affectionate squeeze. She knew how much the possibility of being rated had meant to her.
Meg perched on the edge of the tiled table. Tiffany - or, as Quill suspected, Tiffany's decorator - had done a wonderful job on the terrace. The furniture was wrought iron. The tables had tiled tops in deep jewel tones. The one Meg sat on was a cross between sky blue and cobalt. Quill had seen the color on a pair of Fu dogs at an exhibit at the Guggenheim, but nowhere else. She rubbed her hand absently on the tabletop and sighed.
"What's the matter, Quill? Did Myles holler at you last night?"
"Don't be an idiot," Quill said crossly. "Myles never hollers, as you so gracefully put it. He did make a suggestion that we keep our noses out of Jerry Fairchild's investigation, but that was it."
"It's a terrible thing," Meg said soberly. "Kidnapping. Who do you suppose is behind it? Terrorists? Why would terrorists want to kidnap a real estate mogul? A hundred thousand dollars isn't much these days - it's enough to maybe make a little bomb and bomb, say, a place like Scranton, Pennsylvania, or Topeka. But not much more than that. Why not real money?"
Quill pulled at her lower lip. "That's it. That's part of it. It's been bothering me. That ransom is a pittance these days."
"I think it's proof of these home invaders' amateur status."
Quill shook her head decisively. "I don't believe it. I don't believe it was a home invasion. I think this was murder, and I think it was someone we know who kidnapped Verger Taylor. This whole home invasion thing is too stagy, Meg. Too coincidental."
"You could be right. But you know what? Myles is righter. It's none of our business. I think we should call Tiffany, thank her for a perfectly awful experience, and go home."
Quill raised her head. "Is that the doorbell? Who do you suppose could have gotten past that media crowd posted at the gates? Luis was pretty good about keeping them out." Quill walked down the hall to the front door. Before she could get to it, the door pushed open and Tiffany appeared. "Hi," Quill said, surprised. "Meg and I were just going to give you a call."
"Sorry;" she said.'Had to use my key. I was simply pursued."
Quill looked over her shoulder. She could see the front gates from where she was standing. There were two vans from the local television stations, a crowd of cars with camerapeople sitting on the hoods and roofs, and a gaggle of reporters just standing around. One or two of them looked Tiffany's way, but the others kept their attention in the direction of the second stack of buildings where Evan and Corrigan had their apartment. Pursued, my foot.
Tiffany shook her hair out dramatically - today's color was a bright gold - and put her hand to her head. "Jackals," she said. "The press. Could I have a cup of coffee?"
"Sure. Come in. Meg and I were just sitting on the terrace. Go on out and I'll bring you the coffee there. Black?"
"Yes." She patted her slim midriff. She was wearing a scarlet pant suit, bare feet with fashionable slides, and huge acid-green earrings. Her eyes seemed very blue. As she walked across the living room to the porch, the slides squeaked against her instep.
Quill set three cups on a tray and sliced coffee cake. When Meg was nervous, she tended to bake rather than cook, and she'd been up early that morning. She'd made the sour-cream coffee cake, a strudel, and brioche dough was rising in the corner of the kitchen by the television set. Quill put the kettle on the boiler, poured it through the carafe of coffee, and carried the whole arrangement out on the porch.
"The coffee takes a while to drip through," she said, setting the tray on the largest table. "Tiffany, these tiles are absolutely marvelous. Where did you find these colors?"
"How can you think of tiles at a time like this?"
"Oh." Quill took a moment to regroup. She ignored Meg's sarcastic grin. She'd been wondering what to say to Verger's ex-wife about the kidnapping. I'm so sorry didn't seem quite appropriate when the day before she would have been glad to see Verger cut up into little bits and fed to the fish. It was clear now that the sympathy accorded to widows would be welcomed. "I'm so sorry," she said inadequately. "This must be terrible for you."
"It is. It is. Poor Verger," she said intensely, "poor, poor Verger." She took a slice of cake from the tray, nibbled a comer off it, and put it back. "Cressida said I shouldn't talk to the press at all," she said with a pout. Then, "I think that's wise, of course."
"Very," Quill agreed. It was becoming clearer that Tiffany, with attention switched to her missing ex-husband, the Institute closed, and no one much interested in her vitriol now that genuine tragedy was in the making, had nowhere else to go but here.
"We're sorry about the banquet," Meg said, courteously. "A lot of planning went into it."
"The banquet? No. Oh, no. I don't think that would be wise at all, to cancel the banquet. Do you? I mean... I would think poor Verger would have wanted it to go on."
"I shouldn't think poor Verger would want anything of the sort," Meg said tartly.
"It's still on," Tiffany said defiantly. "And Ernst assures me that the building will be open tomorrow, just as soon as the whatchamacallit boxes are all replaced. So I expect to see both of you there bright and early tomorrow morning. We've had to cancel Quill's lecture on innkeeping, which is okay because the only person who signed up is Linda Longstreet and she's history. And of course, the Le Nozze kitchens will be tied up with the banquet, so we've had to cancel your cooking courses, Meg. But I promised the students we'll have it next week."
"We're going home," Meg said, ''as soon as the Syracuse airport opens."
"Nonsense. In the middle of all this excitement? And of course, Dr. Bob's therapy sessions are on, too." She sighed happily. "It's going to be a nice, full couple of weeks. And I think that the media people will be very interested in the therapy group. Very interested."
"So everything's the way it was before the murder?"
Tiffany's eyes got wide. "So he's dead? How do you know?"
"The security guard's dead," Quill said. "And that makes it murder. Whether Verger is alive or not."
Meg jiggled her foot impatiently. "It's going to be a circus, Tiffany. Please reconsider."
"Everything's set," Tiffany said firmly. "The press releases are out. My secretary in New York faxed them this morning. The banquet's on, the Excelsior therapy sessions are on, and I've rescheduled your cooking classes for next week. Besides, I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. You'll drop all this talk of going home when I show you what I've brought you."
"What if Verger comes back?" Meg asked.
"He'll be far too interested in letting everyone know about his experience to worry about my little old Excelsior. Trust me on this one. Now, how would you two like to help me solve the murder of that little person? The security guard? Might be good for a laugh, wouldn't you think?"
"How would we like to help you solve the murder?" Meg echoed. "Not a lot, I have to say."
"The early news had some clips of the crimes you and Quill helped solve up in Hemlock Falls. Bernie Waters from Hot Tip thinks you already may be working on the crime. Are you?"
Quill carefully avoided looking at Meg. "I did have a couple of questions. About who would want to harm Verger."
Tiffany snorted. "Everyone who met the son of a bitch," she said in quite the old way. Then, sorrowfully, "I mean, Verger's a successful businessman. And there are many people jealous of him. Many. But the police are saying that it's one of those gangs that does home invasions." For a moment, real fear shone in her eyes. "I think it's terrible. Just terrible that you can't even be safe in your own home."
"It's either one or the other, isn't it?" Quill said firmly.
"Either... what?"
"Either a home invasion or a kidnapping, but not both. It doesn't make sense that a gang breaking into a house, ready to shoot anyone who gets in their way, carefully ties up the maid and puts in her in the closet, and on impulse kidnaps Verger Taylor and sets up an elaborate method of getting a pitifully small ransom for him."
"Elaborate?" Meg said with raised eyebrows. "Leaving the mon - " She stopped. Before they had left the Taylor mansion last night, Jerry had warned them not to leak any information about the money drop. They were the only outsiders, other than the family lawyers, who knew of the purposed method of delivery. "Well, just leaving the money, wherever the kidnappers ask them to leave it."
"You know what the demands are?" Tiffany dropped her discontented, diffident manner and leaned forward in excitement. "I knew it! I just knew you were working on the case. Tell. Oh, do tell!"
Meg offered Tiffany a cup of coffee. She took it and leaned back. "When you see what I brought for you, you'll help me solve the kidnapping, won't you? If I just had something to tell those press pe - well, never mind. So you both think Verger's kidnapping was planned beforehand, is that it?"
Somewhat taken aback at this evidence of intelligence, Quill said, "Yes."
Tiffany set the coffee carefully on the table. She' brushed idly at her trousers. "In these sorts of things, how do you go about solving the crime? I mean, you guys don't have a crime lab with you, do you? You can't do scientific evidence and things like that. So how do you do it?"
Quill sighed. "You're talking as if we go looking for crimes to solve, Tiffany. And we don't. So far, all the cases we've investigated have been right in front of our noses."
"Like this one," Tiffany said. "So how would you I go about solving this one?"
"Well, we talk to people. Sooner or later with every crime, a pattern emerges. And you get the outline of the pattern by retracing the victim's steps, talking to everyone who knew the victim, fitting the pieces together."
"Look." Tiffany wiped one finger delicately along her lower lip. Then she pulled carefully at a piece of mascara on her eyelash. "If I told you girls something - strictly in confidence, you know - well, you know this Detective Fairchild pretty well, don't you?"
"Close as houses," Meg lied. "But, Tiffany, there's a bare possibility that Verger is alive, that this is a kidnapping, and if you know something important, you'd; better tell the police right now."
"It's not what I know. It's what I've got."
"What you've got?" Quill asked. "You don't have a ransom note, do you?"
"Nope. I've got this." She was carrying a crocodile envelope purse. She opened the snap, careful of her long red nails, and withdrew a little black leather book. "Verger's appointment book. It has all his meetings in it. And some other stuff, too."
"His appointment book?" Quill reached for it. Tiffany held it out of reach, like a little kid refusing to let another little kid play with a desirable toy. "How did you get it?"
"I saw him yesterday, you know. He arranged to sign the house in Cannes over to me..."
"In return for dropping the Excelsior charity," Meg said.
"Oh, he would have come around to my way of thinking. Poor Verger. Always so thoughtful. Anyway. He got a phone call while we were yell - I mean talking, and he turned his back to me, because he didn't want me to know who he was on the phone with, like I didn't know it was that little teenaged tramp Mariel, so I reached over and took the book. Just to look. And then when he turned around, he started screaming at me, and in all the confusion, I just forgot to put it back." She waggled the book in the air. "So. Would this help?"
"It might help get you arrested," Meg said dryly. "You said Verger keeps all his appointments in there?"
"Every single one. And what do you mean, arrest me?"
"My guess is," Quill said, "that Jerry's looking at everyone who knew where Verger was going to be that day. The most important tool a kidnapper would have is knowledge beforehand of a victim's schedule."
Tiffany, Quill noted, wore a lot of blusher. She went pale, and orangey-tan swathes of color stood out starkly from her temples to her cheekbones. "So the police would think that I, I might have done this?"
"If I were a policeman, I would," Meg said sunnily. "As a matter of fact, I'm wondering right now. Where were you all day yesterday, Tiffany?"
"Jail is horrible," Tiffany said. "Have you seen movies about what happens to women in jail?"
"Do you have any kind of alibi at all?" Meg asked.
"I was at the Golden Door Spa all afternoon. It was my day for a facial, my manicure, my seaweed bath, and my hair. I was there from three until way after ten o'clock. And there are dozens of witnesses. Dozens."
"Then you may be okay," Meg said. "Unless there was an opportunity for you to slip out for an hour or so."
"Stark naked and wrapped with seaweed mud? You've got to be kidding!"
"Of course," Meg said. "This book really should be turned over to the police, Tiffany. Why don't I call Jerry right..."
"No! No. No. No." She was breathing quickly, and her eyes were bright with panic. "Couldn't you two do it? Couldn't you tell Jerry that Verger left the appointment book at the board meeting yesterday and you picked it up to give back to him?"
"No. Jerry'd start to suspect us." Meg looked sorry, but not truly sorry.
"You could explain to him, then, that I just took it. I just took it because Verger puts everything in there. And I was... I wanted to find out what he was doing with that twit, Mariel. That's all."
Quill suspected that it wasn't that at all. And she also thought she knew why Verger, who must have missed his appointment book immediately and known who'd taken it, hadn't protested. Verger and Tiffany were very careful to keep each other aware of where each of them would be. Just as one or the other was always careful to let the press know where they would be. How could they stage the famous confrontations if they didn't? "Good," said Quill. "If you give it to us, we can see Jerry gets it with a full and complete explanation."