Murder at the Kennedy Center (21 page)

As Smith looked at the two women across from him, he thought of other possibilities: Either of
them
could have killed Andrea. If Paul Ewald had gone to the Buccaneer Motel after the party and before Andrea was killed, he could have dropped her back at the Kennedy Center, left … and someone else could have killed her. Paul had denied having gone to that motel with her after the party. Had he or hadn’t he? If he had, why lie about it? If he hadn’t, and she’d gone there with someone else, that would make the motel owner, Wilton Morse, either a liar or severely mistaken because of poor eyesight. No, according to what Tony said, Morse’s eyesight wasn’t
that
bad. That left lying. Why would Morse lie? Had he been paid to? And, if so, who would have that much to gain by pinning Murder One on Paul Ewald?

“Janet,” Smith said, “do you think your father-in-law had a motive for killing Andrea Feldman? Was Andrea blackmailing Senator Ewald?”

Another look between the two women. Marcia Mims said, “
I
don’t know anything about motives, Mr. Smith, and
I really don’t want to be involved. All I know is that Janet means a lot to me and I want to help
her
, nobody else. That’s why I called you.”

“Yes, of course, and I think Janet is fortunate to have a caring friend like you. But she’s opened this whole line of conversation, to which I have to respond. After all, I am her husband’s attorney, and he’s a prime suspect in the murder. I don’t believe he did it, and if his father is the murderer, the ramifications of that are clear enough.”

Smith turned to Janet. “I was brought here by Marcia to help you, Janet, and I thought perhaps to offer some advice. Well, my advice is for you to come back to Washington with me and face this thing head-on.”

Janet’s nervousness returned, and she shook her head. “I can’t do that. I’m too afraid.”

“That they’ll say
you
killed Andrea Feldman? It won’t happen, believe me.”

“No, Mac—I’m afraid that they might kill me, too.”

Smith’s laugh was involuntary.

Janet’s face hardened.

“I’m not laughing at
what
you’re saying, Janet, but the idea is simply too farfetched for me to give much credence to it. Will you come back with me? If your physical safety is a legitimate concern, I can arrange to have you protected.”

“How?”

“Leave that to me. Will you come?”

She shook her head.

Smith stood. “Well, you put me in a difficult situation. The police are looking for you, because they must talk with you as they have with everyone else. I know where you are now, and if I fail to make that known to them, I’m obstructing justice, something no one, especially an attorney, is supposed to do.”

Janet turned to Marcia and said, “See, I told you this was a mistake.” Marcia put her arm around her and said, “It wasn’t a mistake. I trust Mr. Smith. He won’t tell anyone.”

“Don’t place that burden on me, Marcia,” Smith said sternly.

“Please, Mac, don’t tell them where I am. Oh, go ahead,
I won’t be here anyway.” She jumped up from her chair and paced the room, her thin arms wrapped around herself as though an arctic blast had hit.

“Look, Janet,” Smith said, “let’s leave it this way: Think about it. I won’t tell anyone that I’ve seen you and had this conversation, no one. I promise you that. Think about it for twenty-four hours, and then let’s talk again. I’ll come back here tomorrow night. Promise you’ll be here.”

She turned and said angrily, “I don’t trust anyone connected with that family.”

“Suit yourself, but I’ll keep my part of the bargain. I’ll be here tomorrow night at the same time. I hope you’ll be here, too.” He looked at Marcia. “Are you coming with me?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay with her a while.”

“Fine. You know where to reach me. Good night.”

Smith was angry, and the speed at which he drove back to Washington reflected it. He went to the Watergate suite, where Tony Buffolino sat alone watching television.

“Where’re your wife and kids?” Smith asked.

“Ah, they came up here, but I got into a hassle right away with my wife and they took off. Typical, man—I want to do good, but I shoot off my mouth and we end up in a brawl. I’ll make it up to them. What was your trip all about?”

“Nothing, wasted time. Anything new here aside from a near-homicide fight with your wife?”

“I made my reservation to go to Frisco tomorrow.”

“Good.” Smith picked up the phone and dialed Joe Riga’s number. To his surprise, he reached him immediately. “Joe, Mac Smith, I need to talk to you.”

“Now?” Riga said.

“Now, or in the morning.”

“Let’s make it tomorrow, Mac.”

“As early as possible. Will you be in at eight?”

“Yeah, I’ll be here.”

“Sorry your party didn’t work out, Tony,” Smith said as he prepared to leave for home.

“Story of my life, Mac. Have a good night. I’ll keep in touch from Frisco.”

“You want some tonsil varnish, Mac?” Joe Riga asked. Smith laughed and shook his head. It was apt slang for station-house coffee and, for a coffee snob like Mac Smith, it was even worse than that.

Riga fussed with paperwork on his desk before asking, “What can I do for you?”

“Tell me what’s going on with the Andrea Feldman investigation.”

Riga crumpled a piece of paper into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder. It missed the wastebasket. “Just plodding ahead, Mac. Lots of players, but no scorecard yet. Why do you ask? Your boy Ewald hasn’t been charged with anything.”

“True,” said Smith, “but he’s spending his days waiting for the proverbial second shoe to drop. Is he still your prime suspect?”

Riga smiled, exposing yellowed teeth. “Let’s just say that we haven’t crossed his name off the list.”

“When can we expect the autopsy report?”

Riga took a sip of his coffee, made a face, and said, “
We?
You don’t have any official connection. You don’t even have a client.”

“Not necessarily true, Joe. Yes, Paul Ewald has not been charged with the murder, but I’m on tap with the Ewald family. I just want to be ready in case you decide to send a couple of wee-hours visitors to his house again. Only for questioning, of course.”

Riga threw a couple more spitballs at the wastebasket. “If I didn’t know you better, Mac, I’d think you were ambulance chasing.”

“Careful, Joe.”

Riga’s smile was big enough to assure Smith he was half kidding.

“What about the autopsy?” Smith repeated.

“Nothing’s come down on it yet.”

“Any preliminary findings?”

“Just scuttlebutt.”

“Any determination whether she’d had sex that night?”

“Check Forensics.”

“I will.”

Riga leaned forward and said, “Look, Mac, let me level with you. All of us … me, the DA, a couple of others … wanted to break this case fast. We figured Paul Ewald did it, and we brought him in hoping he’d decide to make it easy for us, ’fess up. We figured with the circumstantial we had, plus the ID by the motel owner in Rosslyn, we could shake Mr. Ewald up enough to get a confession out of him.”

“You could go to jail for that kind of police procedure,” Smith said sternly.

“Why, because you claim I told you this? Come on, Mac, I’m being up front with you because we go back a ways, huh? We got a little pressure on us to solve this thing.”

“I can imagine. You must have been disappointed when Paul Ewald didn’t hand you a written, notarized confession when you knocked at his door in the middle of the night.”

A grin from Riga. “Yeah, that would have been nice. Look, we took a shot and it didn’t work, so we let him go. You came on strong with Kramer, and your client took a walk. Wanna know something, though, Mac?” Riga asked, leaning even more forward and staring at Smith.

“Life is a continuing education, Joe. Go ahead.”

“I still think he did it. We’ve interviewed more than a hundred people so far, and when I line everybody up in my mind, I keep seeing Paul Ewald stepping forward, raising his hand, and saying, ‘I did it!’ ”

“Not a very open-minded way to conduct a murder investigation,” Smith said.

“That’s for juries, Mac, not for cops. I go into an investigation with my mind closed against all the distractions, you know? My gut tells me who the major players are, and I keep the spotlight on them.”

Smith went to the window and leaned against the sill. He’d come to Riga’s office hoping to learn whether MPD’s questioning of Secret Service agent Robert Jeroldson had revealed Ken Ewald’s rendezvous with Roseanna Gateaux the night of the murder. He was reluctant to ask, but decided that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t learn anything. “A hundred people, you say. Everybody had an alibi except Paul Ewald?”

Riga shook his head.

“Any of the others people I might know?”

Riga nodded. “Yeah, Senator Ewald for one.”

Smith raised his eyebrows and looked surprised. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Your senator buddy cut out of his office that night for a couple of hours.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he and the Secret Service agent, Jeroldson, went to the Watergate Hotel.”

“What did they do there?”

“Beats me, but it’s on my list of questions the next time I talk to Ewald. Jeroldson says Ewald insisted they split up, and Ewald went into a room at the hotel.”

“Whom did he see?” Smith asked.

“Damned if I know, but I will.” Riga leaned back in his wooden swivel chair, bringing forth a loud groan from its metal tilting mechanism. “I got a feeling you’re not leveling with me, Mac, and that means we’re playing with two sets of rules here this morning. I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

Smith laughed and came to the desk, perched on the edge of it. “What is this, a game of doctor-nursey? Why do you want to know whom he saw that night? Maybe it was personal.”

“I assume it was. Last I heard, Senator Ewald wasn’t up for any Husband of the Year awards.”

“Looking for gossip, Joe?”

“I got no use for gossip. What I got is a murder to solve.”

“Is Senator Ewald high on your list of suspects?”

“He’s part of the crowd. Anything else you want to discuss, Mac—the baseball season, Star Wars, spring fashions?”

“No, Joe, I just wanted to touch base with you. As I said, I’m on retainer to the Ewald family, and would like to avoid being blindsided. By the way, the motel owner in Rosslyn. He’s a liar. Paul Ewald wasn’t at that motel that night.”

“I know that. Well, maybe he’s not a liar, just a guy who likes to cooperate with the law to keep the law off his back. Besides, he’s not what you’d call a prize witness for the prosecution. I don’t think he could pass a driver’s test eye exam.”

As Smith went to the door, Riga asked, “How’s the senator’s campaign going?”

“All right, I guess. I’m not involved much in his political life.”

“This kind of thing could hurt him, huh?”

“Depends on what you decide to do, Joe.”

“What
I
decide to do?”

“Yes. Think of the awesome responsibility you have. Accuse anyone in the Ewald family of murder, and you potentially blow Ken Ewald’s campaign for president away in smoke. You’re a regular king-maker. Thanks for the time, Joe. I’m still looking forward to having that drink with you.”

A long black limousine carrying Colonel Gilbert Morales, his aides, and bodyguards, passed through the Lincoln Tunnel and moved slowly in clogged Manhattan noontime traffic until it went past the front of the Waldorf, turned right at the corner, and stopped at the smaller entrance to the
Waldorf Towers. The sidewalks had been barricaded by New York City police, and a cadre of uniformed officers lined the length of them. A group of onlookers strained to see who was arriving by limo.

“Who’s that?” a man from Cleveland with a large video camera around his neck asked his wife.

“It’s that Morales from Panama, the one fighting Communism there.”

“Good thing we have Manning in the White House,” the husband said gravely. “If that jerk Ewald becomes president, all Central America will go Commie.”

Morales and his entourage were greeted in the small lobby of the Waldorf by a representative from a public-relations agency that had been retained to promote Morales’s cause in the United States.

They all went up to a large and ornately furnished two-bedroom suite, where, after food and drinks had been delivered, they discussed Morales’s scheduled appearance that night on Ted Koppel’s
Nightline
.

When that discussion was concluded, one of Morales’s aides and a bodyguard were assigned to escort the securely girdled, long-lashed Mrs. Morales for two hours of shopping. Everyone departed, leaving Morales alone to go over answers he’d prepared to questions that Koppel was likely to ask.

A half hour later, the phone rang.

“¿
Sí?
”

“It is Miguel,” the voice on the other end said. “I am downstairs.”

“
Bueno
. Come up.”

A few minutes later, Morales opened the door to admit a rapier-thin young Panamanian wearing an expensive, tightly tailored blue pinstripe suit. His silk tie was the exact color of the suit. His shirt was medium blue; the collar stood high above his jacket neck, and his cuffs were below its sleeves. He wore a plain gold wedding band; a thin gold chain dangled from his left wrist.

“Come in, come in, sit down,” Morales said, continuing in Spanish.

Miguel went to a sideboard, where he poured himself a
glass of tomato juice. He turned and looked at Morales, who had resumed his seat.

“Sit down,” Morales repeated, gesturing to a chair next to him.

Miguel sat. Morales looked into his youthful face and smiled. “So young,” he said.

There was no response from Miguel, who simply took a tiny sip of the juice and placed the glass on a table in front of them.

“So young to be so good at your craft,” Morales said.

“Good
because
I am young,” Miguel said in an evenly modulated voice.

“
Sí sí
,” Morales said. “You are ready?”

Miguel narrowed his eyes and said, “I am always ready.”