Murder at the Kennedy Center (39 page)

Janet sat folded into herself, a blank expression on her face.

“Well, didn’t you tell me that, Janet?”

“Yes, I did.”

Smith waited for more. When it didn’t come, he asked, “Were you lying to me?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice.

“Why?” Annabel asked.

“Because I’ve always hated him. I talked about it with Dr. Collins, and he said I loved Paul so much that I actually wanted to shift the blame to his father, to make it seem that the only Ewald who’d been with Andrea was him, not my husband. I know better, of course, always did, but I suppose I was playing some kind of game with myself.” She sighed and stood, a person purged, rid of a poison. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve caused a great deal of trouble. I never meant to, but I suppose people like me always do.”

Smith said, “I think you ought to stop considering yourself unworthy, Janet. You’re a good person, and I’m glad we’re all here.”

He asked Marcia why she’d gone along with Janet’s story about Ken Ewald having slept with Andrea Feldman. Her answer was, “I suspected he did, but never knew for sure. When Janet said he had slept with her, I believed her. I’m … sorry.”

“You said you were afraid to come back,” Smith said, “that something terrible would happen to you. Who are you afraid will do something to you?”

“Mr. Farmer.”

“Afraid Ed Farmer will physically hurt you?”

“I don’t know what he would do. I don’t like him, don’t trust him, never did. I think Paul’s father made a big mistake in trusting him. And when Marcia told me about the tape and what happened the night Andrea was murdered, I knew I had to get away.”

“Wait a minute,” Annabel said, “are you suggesting that … Ed Farmer murdered Andrea?”

“Yes.”

“What tape?” Smith asked. “What happened the night of the murder?”

“Here.” Marcia pulled a reel of tape from her purse and handed it to Smith. “There’s a tape recorder in the second-floor office that goes on automatically every time the phone is picked up. Mr. Farmer had it installed. This is the tape that was on the machine the night Ms. Feldman was killed.”

Smith weighed the tape in his hands, asked, “What’s on it?”

Marcia said, “The telephone conversation I had with Ms. Feldman. She’d called looking for Senator Ewald. I told her he wasn’t there. She said to me that she would wait outside the Kennedy Center for exactly an hour, and that I was to tell him when he came home to meet her there. She said it was urgent. She sounded very angry, very upset.”

“Did you give Senator Ewald the message?” Buffolino asked. It was the first thing he’d said since Smith and Annabel arrived.

“No, he didn’t come home. He’d called from his office to say he had an appointment. I told Mrs. Ewald that, but I never had a chance to give him the message from Ms. Feldman.”

“That was all?” Annabel said. “I don’t understand why her conversation with you is so important.”

“Because after I hung up on Ms. Feldman, I saw Mr. Farmer go into the upstairs office, and heard him listening to the conversation on tape.”

“What did you do then?” Smith asked.

“
I
didn’t do anything, but Mr. Farmer left the house immediately.”

“To meet Andrea Feldman,” Annabel said.

Janet Ewald just looked straight ahead.

“Marcia, why didn’t you come forward with this, especially when Paul was taken in as a suspect?” Smith asked.

“I wasn’t sure what to do. When Janet disappeared, I decided to wait to discuss it with her before doing anything
else. I told her about it, and she told me about the fight she’d heard between Mr. Farmer and Ms. Feldman.”

“And neither of you did anything,” said Buffolino.

Both Janet and Marcia shook their heads. “We were afraid,” Janet said.

“I didn’t even write it in my diary,” Marcia added.

Smith looked at his watch. “I want the two of you to stay here. Will you do that?”

“Yes, we will,” Janet said.

“Forgive me for being skeptical, Janet,” Smith said, “but you’ve promised me things before. I want you to trust me, to know that the advice I’m giving you is good, that you won’t be hurt, and that you have nothing to fear. Annabel and I are going to be leaving shortly, but Tony will stay with you.” He said to Buffolino, “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

They went into the bedroom, where Smith told Buffolino not to let either woman out of his sight, and to do anything short of shooting them to keep them in the suite.

They returned to the living room. “Janet, Marcia, just relax,” Smith said. “Order up room service if you’d like. Just let Tony know what you want. He knows the menu by heart. We’ll be back.”

“Is Mr. Farmer downstairs?” Janet asked.

“I assume so, but don’t worry. Whether you’re correct or not about him, I assure you he won’t have the opportunity to do you any harm.”

Smith and Annabel went to the cocktail party, spotted and cornered Leslie. “Leslie, we need additional seating tonight.”

“Mac, I can’t do that at this late date.”

“It’s important. I have special guests with me. Can you arrange for a separate table for us at the rear of the room?”

Leslie sighed. “I’ll try. Who are these ‘special’ guests?”

“I wish to bring my investigator, Tony Buffolino, to the dinner. He’ll be joined by your daughter-in-law, Janet, and your housekeeper, Marcia Mims.”

The shock value of his words registered on her face. She composed herself quickly. “You can’t do this to me, Mac.
I mean, I’m delighted Janet is back, but having her at dinner under these circumstances will … well, I mean, everyone knows she’s been missing. It will take away from Ken, from the focus of the dinner.”

Smith smiled, although without complete sincerity. “Leslie, let me invoke the saying of Hollywood agents. Trust me. It’s important that they be at the dinner.”

She was angry, no doubt about that, but she backed off. She nodded. But her parting words were, “Please, don’t allow anything to spoil this evening. We’ve worked so hard. How
is
Janet?”

“Fine. She wants very much to be part of this evening, part of this family again.”

“I wish Paul were here.”

“Why isn’t he?”

“He’s in Taiwan. An unnecessary trip. He’s distancing himself from us. People! Families! Life would be so simple without them.”

Smith half grinned. “And dreadfully empty. Thanks, Leslie.”

When Mac and Annabel returned to the suite, it was clear that Tony Buffolino hadn’t wasted time in entertaining his guests. He’d ordered up shrimp cocktails, chicken liver pâté, an obscene mound of beluga caviar, spareribs, and an assortment of sandwiches. Janet seemed considerably more relaxed than when she’d arrived.

“Looks like you’re taking good care of everyone,” Smith said to Buffolino. “Expecting the Cabinet, too?”

“Just trying to be a good host,” he said. “Help yourself. I think I overdid it.”

“How are you feeling, Janet?” Annabel asked.

Janet managed a small, wan smile. “Better, thank you. He’s funny.” She looked at Buffolino.

“Yes, he can be amusing,” said Smith.

“I was just tellin’ ’em some of the old war stories from when I was on the force. That’s one good thing about being a cop, huh, you always got a good story.”

Unlike Janet, Marcia Mims was visibly on edge as she
stood at a window and vacantly looked through it. “Marcia, could we talk for a minute?” Smith asked.

She followed him to the bedroom, where, the moment the door was closed, he asked, “Why did you give me your diary?”

“To protect myself,” she answered.

“From what?”

“From the same things Janet is afraid of, the same people. Mr. Smith, because I’ve been with Senator Ewald and his family for many years, I know a great deal. I’m always there. I see, I hear. I never thought much about what that meant until Ms. Feldman was murdered. Then I knew it had to be because she knew something, too. I thought that if I gave the diary to someone else, people wouldn’t have any reason to kill me. I could tell them you had it, knew everything. Does that make sense?”

Smith sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his eyes. “From what you and Janet have told me, Marcia, it’s very possible that Ed Farmer murdered Andrea Feldman. But there are others who had reason to kill her, powerful people, powerful organizations whose goals could be damaged by some of the things Senator Ewald has learned over the years and that he kept in his files. People like that stop at nothing, allow no one to get in their way. They justify what they do by claiming a ‘greater good.’ ”

“Are you speaking of the DAF?”

“How do you know about that organization?” Smith asked.

Marcia took a deep breath. She walked across the room, leaned against a desk, and said, “I’ve made a mess of my life, Mr. Smith, and almost made a mess of everyone else’s life around me. It’s time to explain.” She paused, then continued with what was obviously a difficult tale. “I tell you this for the same reason I gave you my diary. I think you’re the only person I can really trust, aside from Janet and my cousin.”

“Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“Before I came to work for the Ewalds in California, I had lived a shabby life. I was many things, including a whore. I was a whore because it helped me survive. I used
drugs when they weren’t even common, except in the jazz musicians’ world. I was married twice—no children, thank God—and I assaulted one of my husbands with a knife. He almost died, and I didn’t care. The drugs saw to that.” She drew in more oxygen to keep the fire going. “I reached the end, I suppose. I saw it that way, the end of my life. But I was lucky. A few good things happened to me, and I began to realize my life didn’t have to end, that it could begin with something new, and decent, and clean.”

“From the years I’ve known you, Marcia, I’d say that’s exactly what did happen with your life. You know how respected you are by the Ewalds. They obviously place tremendous faith in you.”

“Not deserved, I’m afraid.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When I was so low, I naturally spent my time with others like me. Then I began meeting people in California who seemed to offer me the kind of support I needed. These were people who understood what it was like to be lonely and black and strung out in a strange place. One of the people who was so good to me was a man from Panama named Garcia.”

“Garcia?”

“Yes, Hilton Garcia. Like the hotels.”

The first name of the Garcia who’d set up Tony for his fall was Hilton. How many Hilton Garcias could there be?

“He was very kind to me. People said he was involved in drugs, but he never displayed that side to me, never offered any to me. He loaned me money, even found me an apartment. Then, one day, he disappeared, and I heard nothing from him again.”

“Marcia, are you aware that the man in the next room, Tony Buffolino, was forced to resign from the police department because of a drug dealer named Hilton Garcia?”

She lowered, then opened her eyes. “Yes, I knew when I heard about that case that it must have been the same man. I was so uncomfortable in the other room with Mr. Buffolino. He doesn’t know that I was friends with the man who hurt him.”

Smith said, “I don’t see how what you’ve told me so far would cause you to feel you’ve betrayed Senator Ewald.”

“There is more, Mr. Smith. When I was hired by Mrs. Ewald in California, you can’t imagine how happy I was, how joyous. It didn’t mean that my past did not exist, but I
felt
different. All of a sudden, I was part of a regular and important
American
household, and I liked it. It made
me
feel important.”

Smith felt considerable compassion for her. Marcia Mims was obviously an intelligent and decent woman who’d made some serious mistakes but had managed to rise above them. Certainly, nothing she’d said caused him to think less of her.

“One day—it was maybe a year, a year and a half ago—I got a call from a man who said that Hilton Garcia had suggested he contact me. His name was Miguel. He was Panamanian, too.” She looked to Smith for a reaction; he gave her none. The name meant nothing to him.

“He seemed very nice, said he was alone in the United States and wondered if I would meet him for lunch. I remembered back to how I felt in California, and so we met on my next day off. He said he worked for a Colonel Gilbert Morales.”

“That means he worked for a very controversial figure.”

“Yes, I know that now, but I didn’t know it then. I have read about Colonel Morales and the debate that surrounds him. Even though I work for a United States senator, I’ve never followed politics very closely. I don’t know whether Colonel Morales’s cause is the right one or not.”

“I don’t suppose it really matters, in a sense. What did this Miguel do for Colonel Morales?”

“He said he was an administrative assistant to him, that he was helping him return to power. He was very convincing, and during that lunch I did form an opinion of the colonel’s goals. I started believing in them.”

Smith looked at his watch. “Marcia, I’m going to have to get ready for Senator Ewald’s dinner. Did you continue to see Miguel, become friends?”

“Yes. We met a number of times, maybe four, for lunch, dinner, or just a cup of coffee. Then …”

“Then what?”

“Then he said he wanted me to tell him things about Senator Ewald.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things about conversations I might hear the senator having about Colonel Morales, telephone calls, people who met with Senator Ewald about Colonel Morales.”

“He wanted you to
spy
on Senator Ewald.”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. He asked me if I would look through any files Senator Ewald might keep in the house about Colonel Morales. He wanted me to make copies and give them to him.”

“Did you?” Smith asked.

“No, I never gave him files, but I told him things about what went on in the house.”

“Why did you do that to Senator Ewald? He’s always been generous and good to you.”

If Marcia were going to cry during this confession, it was now. Her lower lip trembled. She said, “I did it because Miguel knew everything about me from Hilton, about my whoring, what I did to my husband, the drugs. He threatened to destroy me with the Ewalds. I took that seriously. Can you understand that?”