DIVA (25 page)

“The big deal is this. Ms. Scully gave them to her manager and he got sick. So sick he had to go to the hospital. And then he died.”

The kid gaped at him, eyes wide, mouth working.

“Jacob Ziegler. You know him?”

Marcus shook his head, and his knee started bobbing up and down.

“We’ve got a problem, Marcus. You gave Ms. Scully some brownies. She gave them to Ziegler. Ziegler ate them and died. Maybe I better ask your mother what ingredients she used.”

“No!” Marcus waved his hands. “Please, don’t talk to my mom!”

“Why not? You said she made them.”

“That’s what the guy tol’ me to say.”

He leaned forward and got in the kid’s face. “What guy?”

“This guy I met. Barry. I don’t know his last name.”

He wanted to shout:
Barry Silverman.
Restrained himself. “Tell me the story from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out and
don’t lie to me
.”

“Wednesday morning he asked me to give her the brownies.”

“Some stranger asked you to give your teacher some brownies? Come on, Marcus.”

“Not some stranger. I met him a while ago. He drives for Ms. Scully.”

Barry Silverman
. “Okay, so you knew him. How did that happen?”

“We got talking one day after school. He said he might be able to get me a scholarship to New England Conservatory. He knows some lady that works there.” Marcus looked at him, eyes pleading. “I didn’t mean to do nothing wrong, honest! Wednesday morning he said he talked to this lady and she might give me a scholarship. My folks don’t have a lot of money, and New England Conservatory’s a great school. I looked it up on the Internet.”

“And then Barry asked you to give the brownies to Belinda?”

“Yes, sir. He said he meant to give them to her before but he forgot, and he wasn’t driving her that day, so he asked me to do it.”

Wasn’t driving her, because Ziegler fired him.
He almost felt sorry for the kid. Silverman had manipulated him. But Marcus might not be as innocent as he seemed. “What kind of car do you drive, Marcus?”

“An old Chevy. My folks got it for me so’s I could drive to school.”

“What color is it?”

“Dark blue. Can I go now?” Marcus half-rose from his chair.

“Sit down. We’re not done. Did Barry tell you to say the brownies were from your mother?”

A vigorous nod. “Yes, sir, he did.”

“And you didn’t think that was odd?”

The kid’s eyes shifted away. “Sort of. But he did me a favor, you know, recommending me to that lady at New England Conservatory, so I felt like, you know, I owed him one back.”

“Okay, here’s the deal. Talk to your parents tonight and tell them what happened with the brownies. I’ll call your father tomorrow and have him bring you to the station so you can sign a statement about what you told me.”

Not what he wanted, but Marcus was a juvenile. This time he would play by the rules. He’d interviewed Chantelle without calling her parents, and now she was dead. When Marcus came to the station with his father, he’d get him to sign the statement about the brownies first. Then he’d question him about the dope deals. At that point the father might lawyer-up. But maybe not.

Marcus didn’t look too thrilled about the deal, frowning and fidgeting in his chair. “What do you think happened to Ms. Scully’s manager?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Go on back to class, Marcus. I’ll see you and your father tomorrow at the station.”

______

When Belinda opened the door, he stepped into the foyer. He’d tried to open the door with his key, but she must have changed the locks after the burglary. Not that this could stop him. If he wanted to get into her house, he could do it easily enough.

He held up her dry cleaning order, the hangers bunched together at the top, her clothes encased in clear filmy plastic. “Shall I take these upstairs?”

“No, thank you, I can do that. Wait here while I get my wallet.”

He draped the clothes over the settee and watched her walk down the hall. She had on shorts today, displaying her long sexy legs, and the sinuous motion of her hips aroused him. He wanted to take her upstairs, rip off her clothes and fuck her brains out.

She returned from the kitchen and held out a twenty. “Is this enough?”

“It was only eighteen dollars. Let me give you the change—”

“No, no, you’ve done enough already.” She favored him with a full-fledged smile. “It was very thoughtful of you and I appreciate it.”

Heat flamed his groin. At last she was starting to appreciate how hard he worked to please her. Soon he would be indispensable.

“I’m happy to do it, but I’m concerned about you being here alone after that burglary. I’d feel better if I were here to protect you.”

Vertical frown lines appeared between her eyes, little roadblocks that said
NO
. “I can’t think about that today, Mr. Silverman.”

He gritted his teeth. Why wouldn’t she call him Barry?

“I could help with your schedule. You’re no ordinary musician, Belinda. You’re a famous flute soloist. Now is not the time to let your career falter.”

Her blue eyes turned icy. Now she was angry. He couldn’t have that. “You know how it is these days. If you’re not constantly in the public eye, people forget how talented you are. I could help with your publicity.”

“Not now. Thank you for collecting my dry cleaning.”

A clear dismissal. Unwilling to leave, he said, “Did you like the muffins?”

“Muffins?” A perplexed frown.

“The blueberry muffins I brought yesterday. Were they good?”

“Oh. Yes. Thank you for being so thoughtful.” She smiled.

His heart sang with joy. Two smiles in five minutes. But now she was yawning. His beloved wasn’t sleeping very well. If she were sleeping with him, she would. After their sexual orgies, she would fall into a contented slumber. She wasn’t quite ready for that. Not yet, but soon.

“Have the police told you what caused Jake’s death?”

“No. Frank said they’re waiting for the results of the toxicology tests.”

That sounded ominous. “What sort of toxicology tests?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk right now. I need to call the funeral director.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Mr. Silverman,” she said, raising her voice. “I can’t talk now.

Wounded by her shrill tone, he left the house in an icy rage and got in his van. After all he’d done for her—bringing her muffins, playing one of her favorite pieces, tending to her dry cleaning, offering sympathy and support—she couldn’t even be courteous. Had she told him when the funeral was? No.

But she’d told him about the toxicology tests. Tests that might reveal what Ziegler had eaten. He slammed his palms against the wheel. He hated it when things didn’t go his way. By this time Belinda must have told Renzi his name. Not his real name, the name he was using now. What if she told Renzi who gave her the brownies? Then Renzi would talk to Marcus. And Marcus, the wretched little wuss, would tell Renzi where the brownies had come from. Acid burned his gut like a blowtorch.

He pulled away from the curb and headed for NOCCA.

CHAPTER 25

Saturday, 11 November

At nine-thirty Frank drifted through a Mid-City neighborhood, hunting for the address on Barry Silverman’s DL. The early morning rain had tapered to a misty drizzle, swished away by his windshield wipers. This part of town had been hard-hit by Katrina. Many of the houses were boarded-up hulks with piles of rubbish and moldy furniture piled outside.

He slowed to a crawl, passed a small cottage with the number 846 over the front door and came to an intersection. Silverman’s house—848— should have been on the corner. It wasn’t. No house, no cement slab, no FEMA trailer, just a weedy lot full of trash bags, rusty car parts and two discarded refrigerators wrapped with duct tape.

He continued through the intersection. The number on the first house was 850. The address on Silverman’s license was bogus. He pulled to the curb and sat there thinking. Silverman had asked Marcus to give some brownies to Belinda. Ziegler ate them and wound up dead. Silverman had been in Atlanta the night Belinda’s house had been burglarized. Or so he’d told Belinda.

When he talked to her yesterday, she’d been far more composed than she’d been at the hospital. On the verge of a nervous breakdown one night, an iceberg two days later. Needling him.
You and your partner
. She assumed he and Kelly were lovers, just as Kelly had said. Belinda was jealous. She was also a VIP, and he didn’t want her causing trouble, for him or for Kelly. One phone call was all it would take. When he asked her if Marcus might want her dead, she had flinched. A tell of fear, quickly suppressed. For a moment, she stood there, frozen, as if she was trying to solve a complicated math problem.

Then, eyes distant, she had said:
Absolutely not.

Belinda was hiding something. And she seemed oddly protective of Silverman, a man she’d met in London who supposedly hailed from New Orleans. He wouldn’t bet the farm on it. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if Silverman was the one who had forced her off the road the night of the accident. A calculated ploy to make Belinda hire him.

He studied the photocopy of Silverman’s license. Age, 36. Height, 6 feet. Weight, 185. Eyes: blue. Hair: brown. Eyeglasses: no.

The man in the photo had small, close-set eyes and a high forehead accentuated by a receding hairline. No smile.

He punched a number into his cell phone. One ring and a message came on:
Silverman Associates. We’re out working a case right now. Leave a message
.

A male voice: no regional accent, no inflection, flat and unemotional. Not the sort of message likely to drum up business.

He decided to wait until Monday to check Silverman’s phone records. Bad enough he was working on his birthday. And Chantelle’s. A wave of sadness welled up inside him. If she’d lived to celebrate it, Chantelle would have turned sixteen today. And now he was forty-four.

No birthday celebrations for him, either. Kelly had killed that Thursday night. After leaving the Bulldog, he’d driven home and poured himself a big belt of scotch, something he rarely did. His Glenfiddich was reserved for celebrations and holidays. And consolation when his love life tanked.

After an auspicious beginning, their relationship had fizzled. Maybe Kelly was right. Until Chantelle’s murder was solved, he had no time for a relationship. And the danger that someone would figure out they were dating was real. Cops were notorious gossips.

Still, he found her enormously attractive. He loved her eyes, loved the way she bantered with him. She seemed comfortable with men, probably because she had three brothers and a father who doted on her. Her assessment of Belinda had been uncannily accurate: Belinda was into image management, on and off stage. Belinda was infatuated with him.

Feeling weary and vaguely depressed, he put the car in gear and drove off. Now he had to call Marcus Goines’ parents and persuade them to bring him to the station. Another unpleasant chore. The father was pastor of the African Baptist Gospel Choir Church. He couldn’t understand why a Baptist minister’s son was dealing dope. Most of the dope dealers in town were kids from the projects with single mothers who couldn’t control them. Marcus was a talented music student, the only child of an upstanding two-parent family.

His cell phone rang, jolting him out of his ruminations. He checked the caller-ID. Shocked, he pulled to the curb and answered.

“What’s up, Frank? Taking it easy on a Saturday?”

A curveball from Kelly O’Neil, acting as though their discussion at the Bulldog hadn’t happened. Playing along, he said, “No, busting my butt and getting nowhere fast.”

“What are you working on?” Sticking to a safe topic. Work.

“Hunting for Belinda Scully’s security man, the one Jake Ziegler fired. I got a copy of his DL, decided to pay him a visit. The address is bogus, no house, just a vacant lot.”

“The plot thickens,” Kelly said in her familiar droll tone.

He loved the sound of her voice, low-pitched and throaty. “What are you doing? Did you sleep in this morning?”

“No. I had a lot of things to do. The yard’s a mess and uh, while I was raking up leaves I started thinking about you, and I was wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tonight.”

Another curveball. Sometimes women mystified him.

“I’m not much of a cook,” she said. “Grilled salmon and vegetables is the best—”

“Sounds great. Don’t try to be Betty Crocker.”

She burst out laughing. “Betty Crocker. Jeez, Frank, where do you get these images?”

My vivid imagination, picturing us in bed together celebrating my birthday.

“Can I bring the wine?”

“A bottle of red would be great. How does six-thirty sound?”

“Great. See you then.” He clicked off and smiled.

Maybe his birthday wouldn’t be such a downer after all.

_____

After forcing down a lunch of chicken soup and oyster crackers, Belinda went upstairs to her bedroom closet. All of her black outfits were designed for performances, not funerals. She pulled out a beige pantsuit. The outfit was plain and drab. Not terribly flattering.

Tears stung her eyes. What was she thinking? This wasn’t about her. This was for Jake, the man who’d consoled her after her family was killed. The man who’d stuck by her through the lean years, the dreary small town recitals and the solo concerts with amateur orchestras, all those years when she’d worked her ass off to distinguish herself from the millions of other talented flute soloists. Talented, but without her tenacity and will to succeed.

And now, just as she was on the verge of stardom, her world had come crashing down.

Resolutely, she packed the beige pantsuit in her suitcase. She was dreading the funeral, but she had to comfort Jake’s parents in their hour of grief, just as Jake had comforted her. It was the least she could do. The last thing she would ever do for Jake.