Death of a Washington Madame (3 page)

For the next couple of weeks, Gail and Fiona tried harder,
if that was possible. They broke open two domestics, but that didn't count.
Domestics were easy. They had prior behavior to go by, men who beat their
spouses or girl friends repeatedly, episodes that escalated into murder. With
the O.J. thing, spouse beating and murder had entered a new era of awareness as
a common event. Solving such cases were invariably gender-neutral requiring no
special detective skills.

Neither of them wanted the partnership to be dissolved.
They had grown accustomed to each other, and were getting especially proficient
at good cop/bad cop interrogation. The two domestics were cracked that way,
confession in record time, although that didn't count either.

But what did truly count came early one morning in late
April. Fiona and Gail had worked all night following a lead on yet another
domestic, where the alleged perpetrator had stabbed his girlfriend to death and
disappeared. He was spotted by the sister of the deceased coming out of a blue
Buick and going into a large apartment complex in Southeast Washington.

Not knowing which apartment the man was visiting and
unwilling to roust people in the complex, the two detectives staked out the car
until the man came out sometime after three in the morning. He was arrested
without incident protesting his innocence, a given, and by the time he was
booked and they were heading home it was nearly dawn.

They drove in Gail's beige Camaro and preceded northward,
then cut to the East toward Spring Valley. The car pulled into the circular
driveway of Fiona's house just as the sun began to poke above the budding
Magnolias Fiona's father had planted to partially screen the house next door.

Bone tired, Fiona gave Gail a good-bye tap on the shoulder
and watched as the car kicked up gravel and sped out of the driveway.

She stood for a while studying the facade of the house in
the incandescence of the early morning light. Her father had bought the house
in the spring of the year he had been elected to his second Senate term. She
must have been five or six. It had seemed less of an extravagance then, a fitting
home for such a political rising star, a neighborhood of equals, a validation
for a shanty Irishman who had burst into the lace curtain firmament. She was
determined never to sell it, a treasured heirloom, to be passed down through
the generations, except that there was no progeny ... not yet ... perhaps
never.

Seeing the house in the glory of the April morning, sun
tinting the brick in a rusty glow, trees and shrubs pregnant with burgeoning
life, she felt again the renewal of the instinctive drive to propagate. At such
moments it, the mating phenomena and its complications rose once again in her
mind as a central concern. It was, she knew, the one temptation she had so far
resisted for a more permanent relationship with Hal Perry, a subject she did
not have the courage to broach, mostly because she feared it would sentence her
to the role of Corporate wife for life.

At this moment, she felt needy. And when she felt this way,
she found herself reflecting on the shipwreck of her various relationships,
assigning blame, mostly to herself, which she knew was over-reacting. At times
she berated herself for being too independent, too heavy-handed, too demanding,
too romantic, too honest, too analytical, too picky, as her mother had alleged,
or the ultimate, too fearful of commitment, always a convenient cop-out.

And yet, men, strong, assertive, potent men were the sugar
candy of her life. She loved the whole process, from initial engagement to the
skirmishes of flirtation and seduction which led to the inevitable and various
acts of sexual congress, all of them, especially the accelerating rhapsody of
physical pleasure, the getting and the giving ... the coming and the coming.

Perhaps, she told herself candidly, what she feared most
was anything less than variety, an accusation that frightened her. Or was it
that old Catholic bugaboo, the echo of her mother's admonitions, which put
making love on a level of sinfulness along with theft, lying, even murder,
which was an irony in itself.

At times she wished she could scream out at her mother's
clinging ghost, which haunted her mind and memory, impossible to exorcise.
Fiona was certain that her genes had absorbed molecules of guilt in her
mother's womb, marveling often at their enduring power.

She let herself into the house and yielding finally to the
strain of exhaustion, unbuttoning and unzipping as she beat a path to her
bedroom and fell naked into bed and quickly, thankfully, into oblivion, leaving
the question of Hal Perry's offer in dark limbo.

The persistent ring of the telephone blasted into the black
tunnel of her dreamless void. Opening her eyes to painful spears of sun, she
grabbed for the phone and noted the green digital number. Ten to twelve.
Christ! It was the Eggplant's gruff voice, not a sign of apology, hoarse and
ominous.

"Here's one we don't need, Sergeant."

"What?"

"Clippings. Data. History. I hate the ones with
history."

"What are you talking about Chief?"

"A rich older lady, mid-seventies, stone cold dead,
stabbed and possibly raped."

"Raped? Mid-seventies? Real sicky."

"Maid came home after a night out. The uniforms are
there waiting, say it's a mess. You take scene FitzGerald. Get Prentiss."

"Where?"

He gave the address. Her heart banged against her chest and
her throat constricted.

"Name of Shipley."

He paused, letting the name sink in. When she didn't
respond, he spoke.

"You there?"

"Yes."

"Strike a chord. Maybe before your time. The hostess
with the mostest."

"I know."

"Get my drift. Mother of the Governor of the old
Dominion, mother-in-law of..."

"I know."

"So here it is in your lap, FitzGerald. The team's big
chance. Let's shove it to them Fi."

She liked that. Him calling her Fi. She rushed to the
bathroom, turned on the shower, then shut it off and moved to the sink. She'd
take a whore's bath instead, smiling inwardly at the reference.

She drove at full speed, sirens blazing, portable lights
flashing, pushing her memory of Deb Shipley, who she had actually met years
ago, the tall lovely beauty who, in her father's day, presided over the best
table in Washington and was the star of the Society Pages in the days when
Washington newspapers devoted pages to report those events. Her dinners were
legendary, right up there with Perle Mesta and Gwenn Cafritz.

She recalled an article in the Washington Post Style
section a few months ago."Socialite Shipley Sails in a Calmer Sea," was the oh so clever headline that floated into her memory bank. She was not
surprised at the fidelity of the memory since her parents had once taken her to
an Easter Reception for Senatorial families at the three-story Shipley mansion
where the lady had made an indelible impression.

Concentration embellished the physical memories of that
visit, and she saw again in recall the massive great room, two stories high.
There was the huge fireplace that could accommodate a standing human, and above
it, commanding the room, a painting of a young handsome man in uniform
emblazoned with decorations, heroically posed with a cape over his shoulder and
in the background, bursts from falling artillery rounds and other imagery of
war's chaos.

Fiona had held her cup of pineapple punch in her
white-gloved hand and looked up at that painting. Odd, how she could still
remember looking up at the young man's face and imagining that the eyes,
nuggets of cerulean blue, seemed to move following her. Suddenly, she had felt
a trill of fearful panic and had darted off to find her father's comforting
hand.

There were other aspects of the room that also impressed
herself on Fiona's memory, the profusion of paintings of dogs of many breeds,
Shepherds, Collies, Poodles, Rottweilers all beautifully rendered by an expert
and glorified in pose and detail. Scattered on surfaces around the room were
various bronzes, mostly of dogs and horses.

She remembered other paintings as well, serene scenes of Washington's stately landmarks, the various memorials, the White House, the Capitol, the
dome in a sunburst as if to emphasize the spiritual aspects of the structure as
well as it's Hellenic lines.

There were photographs, too, scattered over every flat
surface, Mrs. Shipley with the various celebrities of the era, even one with
her father.

The article in the Post had featured a large color picture
of the old lady, posed in that very same room, with the picture of the young
heroic warrior in the background. Although the man's identity had not crossed
her mind at the time of her visit, the article revealed that it was in actually
a portrait of Deb Shipley's husband, reported missing in action in World War
II. She recalled references to a handsome dashing Lieutenant who had crossed
the Channel in Normandy, had fought through the hedgerows of France only to
disappear, which meant disintegrate into dust, in the Battle of the Bulge.

In the newspaper photograph, the aged Mrs. Shipley was wearing
her trademark black lace dress, perhaps a perpetual symbol of mourning and
fealty, despite the white ruffled high collar. Fiona seemed to remember a
sparkling emerald pendant on a gold chain necklace that had completed the
public costume. In the photograph of the aged woman it had been replaced by a
large cross.

In the woman's face, there still remained vestiges of the
old beauty, the high proud cheekbones, the large searching dark eyes, vivid
gray blue, set off with black mascara, the smooth ivory complexion, the hair,
dyed as black as a moonless night, still parted in the center and brushed back
severely, looking vaguely Spanish. And her posture, despite her age, still
appeared ramrod straight, aristocratically arrogant. Seated at her side in the photograph
looking fiercely protective, was her German Shepherd, identified in the caption
as "Marshall".

In the article too, Fiona recalled, were recorded the
woman's tart and deprecating remarks, insults really, although vaguely amusing
and tolerated only because they came from the mouth of an old dowager type like
Deb Shipley. Such aging female institutions, epitomized by the foul mouthed
cynicism of such paragons of historical rudeness as the late Alice Longworth
Roosevelt, seemed exempt from the constraints of the usual social disciplines
of civilized discourse. Their comments had transcended insult and become
entertainment.

Deb Shipley's arrogant aphorisms were also duly recorded
for posterity in the article and Fiona remembered such gems of dubious accuracy
as "Harry Truman picked his nose in public" or "Mamie Eisenhower
was drunk by noon and stupefied by teatime." or "That young Kennedy
had seduced one of her maids in a hall broom closet while she entertained at a
cocktail party given in honor of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor." She
had, she told the reporter, "attributed the odd hissing and clanging
noises to a fault in the plumbing system."

She was also quoted as saying that "she no longer
entertained or went out, living a life of reflection and devotion to God,"
an observation confirmed by her son at Daisy Hodges party. Her only company,
she told the interviewer were her two loyal retainers, a maid and a
"manservant," prompting an obvious comparison to Norma Desmond of
"Sunset Boulevard" fame.

The writer of the article also made much of Deb Shipley's
house, describing its antiques, art works and various eclectic collections,
pointing out that "it was still standing in defiance of its deteriorating
slum neighbors." Once the neighborhood had been the appropriate backdrop
for her moment of stardom.

Despite the spin toward nostalgia, the article delved into
the philosophical aspects of the Washington social scene. The writer, showing
off her alleged insight, pointed out that the powerful were still magnetized by
the rich and visa versa and there was rarely anything more tantalizing than the
example of the classic dinner party of peers in full regalia in the old world
atmosphere of Deb Shipley's mansion. "The bees of power were dependent on
the flowers of society," the article concluded in a purple prose flourish
"and Deb Shipley had once provided both the bees and the floral
display."

Fiona had passed the architectural relic often in her work.
Violent crime had invaded the surrounding neighborhood. It had become a drug
bazaar and a killing field. There was a sad elegance about the structure, a
relic of another more ordered and decorative time, although it seemed oddly
well maintained in the midst of the chaos and ruin of its seedy neighbors.

Nothing in the article or her memory bank could have
predicted such a violent end for this towering icon of Washington society.

Gail was waiting in front of her apartment building as
Fiona pulled up. Without a word she got in and the car careened, sirens
blaring, down Connecticut then east to 16th. As they drove Fiona gave Gail a
shorthand account of what she knew about the victim.

"She was the darling of Washington society,"
Fiona explained. "A genuine Grande Dame."

"Of white society," Gail corrected.

"As represented by the media of the time," Fiona
said, taking note of the comment and redefining its meaning, knowing that Gail
was, at times, fiercely, even snobbishly, defensive on the subject of
"Black Society," its exclusivity and eliteness. Fiona had learned
that for Gail it was not a subject to be trifled with and she quickly changed
the focus of the conversation.

"Eggplant says it's the make or break case for the
team," Fiona said.

"Then let's make it."

Captain Luther Greene, dressed for the occasion in his best
media clothes, dark brown suit with a light yellow striped, beige buttoned down
shirt and subtle yellow patterned tie, shoes spit shined, freshly shaven and
wearing the appropriate concerned expression, stood inside Deb Shipley's
bedroom surveying the crime scene.