Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy (21 page)

“He’s not ready to make any public announcement tonight, but he’s going to issue a press release right after the Christmas holidays, and I’ll probably be named to the presidency of the company by February. I’m going to plan a wonderful trip for us over New Year’s, to celebrate it may be my last vacation for a year.“

I was thrilled for Jed, knowing how much he had wanted all this to fall into place and how hard he had been working for Warmack’s approval. I squeezed his thigh under the table as he tried to run his hand under my tight sheath and pinch me, winking at me with an enormous grin on his face.

“You’re not going to make me wait till New Year’s to celebrate, are you?” I teased.

“Can’t we start sooner?”

“Of course, darling. We can get a room here tonight and go right upstairs after the speeches and…”

“Whoops, maybe tomorrow. That’s a wonderful offer, but I’ve got to leave after the testimonials, Jed. Chapman’s meeting me with some evidence that just came in from Massachusetts so I can look at it tonight.”

“Evidence? What kind of evidence? I thought there was no other evidence.”

I laughed at Jed’s concern.

“I’m not making that mistake again. My lips are sealed. It’s just a long shot, some things I want to look at, in case they contain any leads.”

“Will you come back and meet me later for a nightcap?

Larry, Stan, and I are taking Anderson over to the Tap Room at the University Club for a more intimate toast when this is over.“

“Are you crazy? I’ve got a sentence first thing tomorrow morning. You take care of what you’ve got to do you should be very happy with the news you got today. And don’t make any plans for the weekend the celebration will be my surprise, okay?”

The speeches went on interminably, and I was relieved that Warmack had finished his remarks before I checked leon ti as jger the est ier my watch, rose, and said my good nights, and kissed Jed good-bye. It was a little after ten-thirty when I went out of the hotel through the revolving doors and let the doorman help me into a yellow cab for the short ride home.

Mike’s car was parked at the end of the circular driveway when my cab pulled in and dropped me at the apartment. He was standing in the lobby with the two doormen, critiquing whatever sports event had been on the tube that evening.

“Whoa, blondie, bet you ten on the Final Jeopardy question tonight you didn’t catch it, didya?”

“Hardly.”

“Category was African history. Wanna bet?”

Damn. Not one of my strengths.

“Did you get it right?”

“Yeah. You chicken?”

“All right, ten dollars.”

We were in the elevator on the way up to my floor.

“The Final Jeopardy answer is: Napoleon defeated them at the Battle of the Pyramids in 1798.”

I shook my head.

“Just deduct the ten from whatever you owe me.” I didn’t have the faintest idea.

Mike gloated: “Who are the Mamelukes? I knew you wouldn’t know that. I should have doubled my bet.” He proceeded to give me a thumbnail version of the battle, which was apparently fought nowhere near the great pyramids, and explain who the Mamelukes were and where they came from. He was a whiz at both world history and military battles, and delighted in showing it off.

“I hope I do better with Wally’s photos,” I said, as I turned my keys in the locks.

“Not much to see.”

“Do me a favor and put up the coffee. I’m just going to get out of this dress, okay?”

It only took me a minute to change from the silk dress into my long shirt and leggings. I hurried back to the kitchen to get out mugs for the coffee that Mike had already scooped into the coffeemaker, then we both went into the living room to look at the blowups he had picked up from the lab when he came on duty half an hour earlier.

“Who took the photos?” I asked as Mike untied the brown Homicide folder in which he carried his case file.

“Wally says tourists are calling in from all over. But most of these first shots are from islanders. You’ll see in a minute when you start to look at them almost all of the ones I have with me tonight were taken on the ferry on different trips throughout the week. The story and appeal for the film was on the radio as well as in Friday’s Vineyard Gazette, and locals started showing up at Wally’s office on Saturday morning with rolls of film, claiming they thought they saw Isabella on the boat ride.

He thinks some high school kid with a serious case of acne and a hard-on for Isabella actually made her on the ferry and was trying to get pictures of her along the way. Wally figures that’s why most of the time she’s got her back to the camera and she’s looking out at the water.“

Mike stacked the pile of photographs on the table, and I sat next to him on the sofa as we scrutinized them one by one.

There were a few false starts photos of the vista with a blonde on the edge of the pack, but if you looked closely at the eleven-by-fourteen enlargements, you could tell that the bad legs or the wide beams were not those of Isabella Lascar.

When we got to the fifth picture, Mike looked down to remind himself,
“I think this starts the roll taken by the high school kid. Doesn’t that look like Isabella in the corner?”

No doubt about it. It was like looking at a roundup of hundreds of horses going to the glue factory and spotting a thoroughbred in the mix. Her long lines and elegant bearing made her a standout in the crowd, even though the camera range was too distant to catch the distinctive features that took your breath away when she was illuminated on a giant movie screen.

“That’s Iz in the far left corner. Makes you guess that the photographer hadn’t spotted her yet she’s just part of the background at the moment.”

The next three photos were also panoramic views of the sail back to the island, like the kid’s soccer coach had told the whole team on their way home from the game in Hyannis that they each had to shoot a roll of film before the boat docked. Mike walked to the kitchen to bring us both a cup of hot coffee.

“Should be coming up on some one-on-ones.”

Sure enough, the next few photos looked like the high school inquiring photographer had figured out who the great-looking woman was, and perhaps had even approached her with the camera. Isabella seemed to be turning away from his lens, shielding her face already half-hidden behind oversized tortoise-shell sunglasses with one raised arm and grabbing the railing to her far on side with the other. jlic The cameraman kept a respectable distance, but the as next frames were all focused on Isabella, even though she had turned her back to her earnest admirer. I could recognize the outfit she was wearing a turquoise-and white-striped Escada sweater with white walking shorts, and those unmistakable racehorse legs extending forever above platform espadrilles that tied at the ankles. ‘ “You get to the guy yet?” Mike stood across from me, sipping his brew while I let mine cool to a drinkable temperature.

“I figure I can do an APB‘ all-points bulletin - ’for a reward and information leading to the identification of the man attached to the five fingers you can see in the photo. Right?”

I laughed when I came to the shot he was referring to.

The movie star was still showing her back to the camera mind you, her good side in semi-profile to her pursuer, as though she was saying.

“If you insist on doing this, you might as well have the angle I prefer.” But now, for the first time, a man’s arm was stretched out across Isabella’s back and appeared to be waving at the photographer to stop shooting. I “See what I mean?” Mike joked.

“Do a sketch of a giant I hand and hang it in post offices all over the country. You’ll have nuts calling in from Alaska to Mississippi before the ink is dry: ”Detective Chapman, I’d know that hand anywhere.“

“Chief Flanders, my dog once bit a hand that looked a lot like that hand.”

“Agent Waldron, I’ve shaken a hand that reminds me very much of that hand.” We’ll break this wide open in no time.“

Mike babbled on but I was fixated on the photo that stared up at me from the coffee table. My focus was not Isabella, nor was it the man’s hand that showed itself for the first time. My thoughts were tripping over each other as they competed for my full attention.

“Oh my God.”

Mike ignored me the first time, or perhaps my mutterings started under my breath and were inaudible to anyone except me. In my brain they were pounding louder than thunder.

“Oh my God. It’s not possible.”

“What?”

“Paul Stuart,” I managed to say out loud.

“Who’s that? Are you telling me you know-‘ ”It’s not a who,“ I interrupted him, ’it’s a what.” My stomach rolled with nausea as my thought processes reached my gut before I could even articulate what I was thinking.

“Paul Stuart is one of the best men’s stores in New York, Mike. Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street,” I rambled on. The pale blue-and-green plaid of the shirt that covered the man’s arm in the photograph Isabella’s protector screamed at me from the detail of the photograph which sat before me.

“I bought that fucking shirt at Paul Stuart the week before Labor Day.
Sea Island cotton, a hundred and forty-seven fucking dollars. Call off your APB, Detective Chapman, that rotten, lowlife piece of human excrement standing next to the screen goddess on her way to my home is Jed Segal.”
I picked up the photograph and winged it at full force across the room like a Frisbee, so that it ricocheted off my huge armoire and came to rest under the sideboard that held my favorite assortment of silver-framed snapshots of family and friends. Then I sank back into the deep pillows ie of my oversized sofa to wallow in the revelation that Jed on and Isabella had betrayed me in the most profound way two humans could torment a third. I as “Jesus, Alex, calm down a minute.
You can’t tell from one of these pictures who this guy is,” Mike said as he went to jjthe retrieve the telltale photograph and study it again.

“That store must have sold dozens of shirts like that one, and her stores all over the country sold hundreds more. There’s no way you can say who that arm belongs to on the basis of an inch of plaid material in a blown-up photograph. Don’t start with the self-pitying martyr bullshit you can’t jump to any con-‘ ”Maybe you’re too fucking stupid to make conclusions at this point, Mikey, but don’t bet the farm against me on pieces of fabric and clothing. That’s like you and the Mamelukes. I have been stabbed in the back no, in the heart by that miserable bastard. It’s not just the shirt, it’s everything else that’s falling into place.“

“Please don’t start crying on me again tonight, Cooper.

Let’s look at this very care-‘ I interrupted him again, amazed he couldn’t see that there should have been smoke coming out of my ears by this point.

“Cry? Cry?” I was practically shrieking at him I now.

“Do you actually think I’m going to waste any more of my very short supply of emotion on that man? You must really have a very low opinion of me after all this time. Don’t worry, no more tears.” I stood up and reached across the tab let’s grab the picture out of Mike’s hand.

The section of the photo containing the man’s hand and sleeved-arm represented about three inches of surface in the enlargement. I looked at it again, hoping that the distinctive fabric I had found so attractive the day I had gone shopping had changed to stripes or polka dots or pink elephants.

Instead, the second glance confirmed all my fears. I lowered myself back onto the sofa as I inspected Jed’s fingers on the film fingers that had caressed my breasts, stroked my thighs, and knew exactly how to make me respond excitedly to their pressure and touch.

“It’s not just the shirt, Mike.” I didn’t have to tell him out loud about Jed’s fingers. He would know what I meant just as well as I did.

“Take this away from me before I tear it in shreds,” I said, handing the painful image back to Mike.

“I could kick myself for missing all the little clues. You should have seen the way his mouth dropped open when he got off the elevator on Saturday and saw me standing here wearing those silk pajamas Iz had given me you know, like the pair we saw in my bedroom when we packed up her stuff He must have thought he was seeing a ghost.” Of course, the one thing Isabella wanted that I had provided for her: a respectable man.

“I could kill him with my bare hands.”

I was out of control and Mike didn’t know how to bring me back.

“Calm down, Alex. You’ll wake the neighbors.” A light seemed to go off in his head when he said the word ‘neighbors.“

”Hey, you think maybe your shrink friend is still awake at this hour?
Maybe he could come in and help-’

“Help what? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just angry and pissed off and mad and miserable and-‘ ”And maybe he should like tranquilize you or something.

I don’t know. I don’t want you to hurt yourself over this.

I can’t leave here with you in this condition.“

“Leave David out of this. There’s nothing wrong with me. No wonder I couldn’t reach Jed at the Ritz the first time I called there on Thursday. He probably hadn’t even gotten to Paris yet of course he couldn’t get back here till Saturday. That whole trip must have been just a sham to cover his rendezvous with Isabella.” I stood up and started pacing around the living room to calm myself down. Mike and most of my other colleagues had seen the Cooper temper in a flare-up, and most tried to avoid it. It finally occurred to me to move toward the bar and fix myself a drink.

“Not a prayer, blondie. No drinking. C’mon, let’s deal with this rationally. I should have known, too. Anybody who drank bottled water with fried clams had to be a yuppie and an asshole. What a fucking phony.”

“Oh, jeez, Mike. Worse thought. Do you think I should phone Battaglia and wake him up at this hour? He hates to be the last to know. Oh, I think I’m going to be sick no kidding.” I sat in one of the armchairs and doubled over with my head pounding against my hands.

“That’s your call, Alex. You have to answer to him, I don’t. I suppose if you get to the office at the crack of dawn and tell him then nobody’s gonna find out before that. I mean, I think the chief has to know tonight, but-‘ I snapped my head up to protest that idea.