Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (12 page)

“So I’m going to ask you to give me their names,” I finished quickly.

“No. Oh no. I can’t give you the names of clients, even to you. My God, especially not these two. No. Christ. No. I just can’t do it.”

I thought about Jeannette’s homily on ethics. You couldn’t say Elena didn’t live by the code. I respected her for it and said so. But I added this: “Listen, if push comes to shove with my client, I’ll have to tell the police. And then they’ll ask you.”

“I understand,” she said, nodding. “But look, Rebecca, aren’t you kidding yourself? If Kandi was killed by someone she knew, she must have let him in. Why would she open the door to someone she’d been blackmailing? It must have been someone she knew well and trusted. And I can’t think of a more likely candidate than her own brother.”

The words sounded as if they were meant to hurt. But maybe they weren’t. Maybe Elena just meant to wake me up.

I left wondering where all that got me. I now had detailed and unwelcome insight into the sex life of a senator, and I had the senator himself for a suspect. But no motive for him. And no names for the two men who might have
had
motives. But wait a minute! If Kandi was blackmailing other clients, might she be blackmailing the senator? I decided against it. He might like torture games, but amorous flights of the imagination with a blackmailer were out of that realm. If she was shaking him down, he'd have dropped her like the other two did.

So far as I could see, I had only one solid piece of information: confirmation of the time Kandi left Elena’s. Elena had said ten minutes of one, which more or less agreed with my estimate. That meant Parker must have arrived at my place much later than Kandi did.

I headed my gray Volvo toward Eighth and Bryant streets, and the Hall of Justice, but I noticed with surprise that I did it reluctantly. I wasn’t eager to see Parker. My feelings for him were very confused. Trying to pin them down did no good; I felt like a sea anemone, reaching for something I couldn’t grasp. I knew that I disliked the mother role I’d been forced into. Yet I felt guilty about that. Here was a human being in genuine trouble who needed me; I should have been glad to help. And I
was
glad, on one level; it was by all odds the most interesting case I’d ever had. But I didn’t like being a support system; I distrusted it. I didn’t know if Parker and I would be able to resume our previous relationship when this was all over, and I didn’t know if I wanted to.

My next shrink appointment was Wednesday. I’d have to sort it all out then.

* * *

Parker had shaved, but he was still looking pale, and his forehead seemed permanently creased. He held me for a long time. I can’t explain it, but I felt rather used. We didn’t really know each other well enough to be going through this together.

“I talked to your mom,” I said when we broke the clinch. “We didn’t exactly hit it off.”

“I should have warned you. She has a tendency to behave like a dowager duchess.”

“Yes, well. She cast doubt on my professional expertise. Seemed to think you’d be better off with the famous Isaac Schwartz for a lawyer.”

“Your father?” Parker actually laughed. Perhaps the shock was wearing off and he was beginning to feel more himself. “I hope you gave her the well-known piece of your mind.”

“I wasn’t the soul of politeness.”

“Good for you.”

I told Parker things were looking better, without going into much detail. I let him know about the times, of course, but I thought it better to spare him the nuances that cast Kandi in an unflattering light. He had had enough hurt on that score, and he was bound to be in for more eventually. He had good news for me, too; he’d decided to take the polygraph the next morning.

I left feeling better, feeling more as if I could depend on him to call on his inner resources and not expect to draw his strength from me.

In fact, I felt damn good. It was a beautiful day, and I was going to a party that night. Not just any party, either—a celebration of thirty years of marriage. An astounding accomplishment.

I had nothing to do but think of frivolity for the rest of the day. Murder just wasn’t on the program. It was a good afternoon for Scarlatti.

For once that weekend, my parking space was empty. A good omen. I parked, went in, performed the now-familiar rug-squeezing, feather-picking ritual, and settled down at the piano. As my fingers tripped lightly over the Scarlatti, I looked out my window at the financial district. The sun glinted playfully on its windowpanes, seeming almost to keep time with me, performing its own glad, baroque Sunday afternoon dance.

The dance slowed, though, as evening fell, and finally stopped. I felt some sober Bach would be appropriate, though better on an organ. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” was just the thing. Sober, yes, but always accompanied by tingles and goose bumps—the result, no doubt, of too many viewings of
The Phantom of the Opera
. Perhaps, even as I played, someone else was playing the same piece, a few blocks southwest at Grace Cathedral.

I have no idea what time Episcopalians hold evening services, but for some reason that thought made me look at my watch. It was 5:30, and Mickey was picking me up in an hour. I just had time to read a bit and get ready.

The reading I did in the bathtub. That accomplished, I was able to apply myself, clean of body and enlightened of soul, to the fascinating details of my toilet.

This I did with much pleasure, though vanity is not something to which we intellectual, ambitious types are supposed to aspire. Perhaps this quality of indulging myself in the forbidden is one of the reasons for my ambivalent attitude toward prostitution. In fact, I know it is. But be that as it may, I am much better able to accept vanity in myself lately. Now that I have done well in college and law school and am starting to make it in the professional world, I don’t worry so much that people will think me frivolous. I know that I can cope, and I don’t need to prove it by neglecting my appearance.

For this occasion, though, false eyelashes and carmine lipstick were best forgotten. Just a little make-up, the sort that’s supposed to make you look “natural,” and a good fluffing-up of the workaday hairdo. That would do it.

No worry about selecting an outfit, either. That had been done weeks ago: a red embroidered Chinese-style dress that had to be worn with pants, owing to the authentic side-slits. I’d discarded the tight black ones that came with it, found some soft jersey in the right color, and talked Mickey into making me some red ones. The effect was unorthodox, but very gay in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

At 6:30, I looked out my window, saw no sign of Mickey’s Volkswagen, and cursed myself. Mickey was invariably twenty minutes late. If I’d remembered that, I wouldn’t have been sitting around crumpling up my new outfit. I was too impatient to read, and I was burned out on playing the piano. It wouldn’t take twenty minutes, but I could water my plants.

After slipping on an apron to protect my dress, I filled my two-gallon watering can and emptied most of it on the potted palm. Moving on to the asparagus fern nearest the piano, I picked up the foliage to get the nozzle near the dirt and gave it the tag end of the two gallons. But it wasn’t nearly enough, so I refilled the can and splashed it liberally. Absentmindedly, I picked up the foliage of the other fern, stuck the nozzle in, and looked down to make sure I had it aimed correctly. A good thing, too, because if I hadn’t, I’d have defaced a bundle of United States currency, which is a crime. The nozzle was resting right on the bundle, which was snuggled down in the ceramic pot, nicely hidden when the foliage was in place.

I was so excited my hand jerked and I nearly drenched the bundle after all, but I deflected the flow in time, and it splashed harmlessly on the floor—harmlessly because I wiped it up right away, even before I took the money out and counted it. I did another thing before I handled the money: I put on gloves. Here, clearly, was the key to Parker’s release and possibly to the identity of the murderer. I didn’t want to risk smearing any fingerprints.

There was $25,000 in that bundle. People had killed for a lot less. I was sitting there with the money in my lap, trying to put things together in my head, when I became aware of a petty annoyance somewhere outside—the persistent honking of a horn. I didn’t know how long it had gone on, but I knew what it meant. Mickey.

Brought abruptly back to the real world, I practically panicked. For a few minutes I’d completely forgotten I was all dressed up and expected somewhere special. But when I thought about it, there was only one thing to do. There are few matters so pressing they could divert me from calling the cops immediately when I’ve just found a suspicious small fortune hidden in a flowerpot, but my parents’ thirtieth anniversary was one of them.

In retrospect, I realize I could have just taken the money to the cops and driven my own serviceable Volvo to the party, arriving not more than an hour late. But at the time it seemed an either-or decision—the cops or the party. It had to be the party. I am nothing if not a good and dutiful daughter.

I waved at Mickey to stop her infernal leaning on her horn. Then I realized I still had a problem. To take the money or leave it? The solution presented itself almost at once. No one with any sense walks around with $25,000 in her purse. For three days now, the bundle had eluded the murderer, the police, and me just by hunkering down in a flowerpot. There was no reason why it shouldn’t spend a few hours more there.

My coat and purse were already lying across the back of one of the sofas, so I had only to replace the money and gather them up. I was in Mickey’s car not thirty seconds after making the decision.

“About time,” she said. “There’s a creepy guy in that car.” She pointed to an undistinguished car parked on the curb in front of her ’66 Valiant. All I could see was the back of someone’s head.

“How do you know?” I asked, fumbling with the seatbelt. “You can’t see him.”

“Well, he’s just sitting there for no reason at all. And I did see him when I drove up. He looked around.”

She started the car, and as we drove around the vehicle, I looked over. The man had put his hand to the side of his face, ever so casually, blocking it from view. But I did see something interesting: a hook on the visor above the passenger seat.

I burst out laughing. “My dear girl, I’m under surveillance. That’s a police undercover car. Look at the hook.” But Mickey was concentrating on her driving. “What hook? I didn’t see anything.”

“The hook on the visor; it’s to hang a red light on, in case there’s an emergency and the cop has to blow his cover to get through traffic. Now what the hell do the cops think I’m up to?”

But I was feeling too giddy to care. I vaguely noticed the other car swing into motion behind us, and then I forgot about it. Let them follow me to Timbuktu, I thought, if that’s in their jurisdiction. It couldn’t do any harm.

I gave Mickey an approving once-over. She had on a midnight blue dress with long sleeves, a sharp-pointed collar, and tailoring that made it cling like a natural integument. Her hair was gathered into a decorous coil on top of her head, an effect that conspired with prim pearl earrings to make a lady out of her.

“Last Living Hippie Burns Jeans, Joins Military-Industrial Complex,” I said. “Tell me, Miss Schwartz, where have all the flowers gone?”

She giggled. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“After you, Alphonse. Listen, I’ve got $25,000.”

“Mazel tov
. Been to the track?”

“You’re as bad as your boyfriend. I just found it. In my asparagus fern.”

“Which one? And what have you been smoking?”

“The one near the…
Mickey!
Are you paying attention?” The light, as they say, dawned. Her paranoia about the undercover cop, her seeming inability to be serious… She was the one who’d been smoking.

“You’re stoned, aren’t you?” I said.

“Ummm.” She smiled. “Half a joint left, if you want it.”

I considered briefly, then decided against it. Very poor idea with that police car on our tail. “No,” I said. “But listen, get straight, will you?” Mickey can do this when she wants to.

“Okay,” she said. “Please tell me in plain English how it is that you’ve struck it rich. If you continue to insist that money grows in flowerpots, I shall consider it my privilege to be as whimsical as I please.”

I spelled it out for her.

“Jesus Christ!” she said. “That’s what the murderer was looking for!”

“Apparently.”

“So what’s your theory?”

I sighed. “I wish I had one. The only thing that makes sense is that Kandi stole it from someone at the party who followed her to my house and killed her for it.”

“As theories go, it sounds okay to me.” We rolled onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I wish you were thinking straight,” I said. “There’s one gigantic flaw in it: who in God’s name would bring $25,000 to a whorehouse?”

Mickey giggled some more. She seemed to enjoy the idea enormously, but I was plain cross. “What’s so funny about that?” I demanded.

“Oh, but you poor fool,” she gasped. “You sure you don’t want some dope to clear your head? Nothing could be more obvious.” More inane giggles. I waited.

“Don’t you see?” she said at last. “No one brought it there. It was already there.”

“You mean she took it from Elena?”

“Of course.”

“Mickey, you really are exasperating. What is that stuff anyway?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Colombian something. Why not Elena?”

“It’s the same problem. Who would have $25,000 lying around with 120 strangers in the house?”

“Oh.” That stopped her. “I see what you mean. Elena isn’t exactly scatterbrained, is she?”

I shook my head.

“I know,” she said. “How about the fancyass client tied to the bed?”

“So far as I know, he isn’t rich. Just influential. I don’t even know where he’d
get
$25,000. And, again, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to take it to a cathouse.