Murder Melts in Your Mouth (11 page)

Daddy smiled broadly, even as a squishy hunk of banana hit him square in the ascot. “See? Already he's expanding.”

Henry shielded my computer screen from flying banana. “I have to agree, M-Miss Blackbird. I've read studies. M-many innovative thinkers have sprung from children raised in primitive circumstances where the necessity to survive triggered very creative thinking.”

“Okay, I surrender.” I could see Max's temper tantrum losing momentum as he discovered the pleasures of his first food fight. The gleam in his eye grew demonic. “Daddy, would you mind stepping into the garden with me? We can pick some berries for your breakfast.”

“Muffin, you know I'm allergic to strawberries.”

“A little father-daughter bonding time, then?”

“Do we need to bond?”

Henry said, “Sir, I think she'd like to discuss something with you in private.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Henry, you don't mind keeping an eye on the baby for a few minutes, do you?”

“Uh—well—”

I grabbed my father by his ascot and dragged him outdoors.

W
e went down the porch steps and across the lawn with Toby in hot pursuit, barking. Around us, the garden looked more glorious than it ever had since I had taken possession of Blackbird Farm. Peonies bowed their thick heads of fragrant flowers, and a blue jay swooped around the bird feeder that Michael had helped me put into place in the spring. My bachelor's buttons were blooming, and the bank of white loosestrife looked ready to burst into flower any minute.

But I wanted to knock my exasperating father down into the flower bed and pack his ears with potting soil.

Dragging Daddy, I shoved through the newly repaired garden gate to the strawberry patch, which I had lovingly spread with straw a few weeks back. A flock of blackbirds flapped up from between the strawberry plants as we approached. But even after their thievery, there were still plenty of berries to pick.

Daddy recoiled from the plants. “You don't expect me to work, do you?”

I spun around and cocked my fists on my hips. “I expect you to tell me the truth, that's all.”

“Truth?”

“Yes, about why you're here and what happened yesterday at Lexie's office.”

“Muffin, I already told you, didn't I? The government has promised to release your mother and me from our tax problems if we cooperate in the investigation of Hoyt Cavendish.”

“What investigation?”

As if I hadn't been paying attention all along, he said patiently, “Into his misconduct with client investments, of course.”

“You mean Hoyt mismanaged
your
money?”

“Muffin, why do you imagine your mother and I went broke so fast? We certainly wouldn't have run through all the Blackbird money without a little help, could we?”

“You mean—?” An absurd bubble of hope rose in my chest. “Hoyt stole from us?”

“Yes, Muffin, he did.” Daddy took my hand and patted it. “I'm sorry if that shocks you, but it's the God's honest truth. And I'm doing my level best to restore some of our lost fortune.”

“You—? You think you might be able to get your money back?”

“I'm doing my level best, Muffin, yes.”

“How? If he's dead—”

“We're exploring all the possibilities.”

Far from being shocked, I found myself suddenly, enormously, gloriously elated. After two years of struggling to make ends meet, could there be the merest flicker of light at the end of my very dark tunnel? All I needed was a measly two million dollars to pay off the back taxes and maybe a few extra hundred thousand to prevent the house from falling into a heap of rubble.

But immediately, I tried to squelch the relief dawning inside me.

I said, “Can you prove it? That Hoyt embezzled your money?”

Daddy's face glowed. “Are you kidding? I have documents out the wazoo! Statements that show all the detail anyone needs to put Cavendish behind bars. If he were alive, that is.”

I withdrew my hand from my father's earnest grip. “Now that he's dead, though?”

“Well, yes, there's that complication,” Daddy admitted. “Not to mention I might have misspoken when I was in the presence of some law enforcement officials.”

“What do you mean? What did you say? To whom?”

“It was an emotional moment.” He turned to admire the flower garden. “I might have been feeling a tad melodramatic at the Treasury Department. Surely nobody took me seriously. What lovely perennials! What variety is that flower?”

“It's called bleeding heart. See? The flowers are shaped like hearts and they—wait a minute. Don't try to distract me. What exactly did you say to the Treasury Department?”

He tugged uneasily at the knot on his sarong. “I might have mentioned that I—well, that your mother and I were upset that Hoyt mishandled our investments.”

“How upset?”

My father looked pained. “I might have been annoyed enough to—well, to wish him harm.”

“You threatened Hoyt? In front of federal officials?”

He blew a deep, regretful breath. “Oh, all right, I might have said I'd like to kill him for putting your dear mother through so much unnecessary misery.”

“You threatened to kill him. And now he's dead. And you've run away from the police during his murder investigation.”

“It seemed prudent. You don't think they'll come looking for us here, do you? I hate spoiling your mother's pleasure at being in the loving arms of her adoring family again.”

For an instant, I wondered if my head might explode. “I don't know, Daddy. They might.”

As a child, I had adored my father and his ability to generate excitement wherever he went. He had a gift for conjuring fun out of nothing. At home, we played endless pretend games, trying on new identities and playacting for hours. He was our director, our incorrigible playmate, the captain of our pirate ship. His flights of fancy sparked our imaginations. At the beach, he presided over midnight treasure hunts that culminated in bonfires. We roasted marshmallows and gobbled them while he regaled us with stories of adventure and romance.

One warm afternoon at Blackbird Farm, we lay on our backs in the grass and named passing clouds after Greek gods and Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. For years, I watched the skies for the return of Poseidon and Fred Flintstone, clouds my father declared were my very own possessions. I still scanned the skies for familiar shapes—perhaps to remind myself of those carefree afternoons with my imaginative and loving father.

But there was no denying he'd also drained our trust funds and run out on the family, leaving my sisters and me to live, not only broke, but also with the universal disapproval of all the friends he'd bilked, too.

Daddy must have guessed where my thoughts went. He put his arm around me. “Don't look so forlorn, Muffin. This isn't the end of the world. Your mother and I have a plan!”

With a twinge of new worry, I asked, “What kind of plan?”

He chucked me under the chin. “No worries. Once all this Cavendish stuff blows over, everything will fall into place. Your mother has learned so much on our travels that she wants to open a kind of spiritual retreat. With spa facilities and workshops that celebrate the soul, and plenty of private spaces for reflection, personal growth and, of course, wedding receptions! We hear wedding receptions can be a gold mine, and you know how much your mother enjoys a party. Just think—she could have one every weekend—on somebody else's dime!”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And where does she have in mind these wedding receptions might take place?”

Glowing with pleasure, Daddy said, “Why, right here at Blackbird Farm, Muffin! It will be a family venture. Think of it! I could be leading the morning tai chi class in this glorious sunlight! Your mother will be counseling young lovers in the joyous festival of life and—”

“And me?” I asked. “What would I be doing?”

“Well, we'll need somebody to look after the guests and their most basic needs, of course. Clean rooms. Healthy foods. Flower arrangements in all the rooms, naturally. You're incredibly talented with flowers. It only takes a glance at this delightful garden to see that you're gifted in that department.”

“I have a job,” I said. “I'm working for the
Intelligencer
.”

“And we're so proud of you! Of course, your mother and I always knew you were headed for big things. You're so clever and dependable and gracious. You must be the best employee that awful newspaper has ever hired.”

“I do my best, but—”

“Your best is light-years better than the average person's effort.” Daddy beamed. “You'll be running the paper in no time.”

“Hardly.”

“Well, maybe something better will come along.” He squeezed my shoulders, “In the meantime, don't bring down your spirit with a bad attitude, Nora. Think positively! Envision your own success! If you choose to turn your back on your newspaper career, your mother and I want you to be a part of our venture. How exciting would that be? A family—working together!”

I had a very clear vision of how our family venture would turn out—me doing all the manual labor while Mama tossed rose petals and Daddy smoked weed and conned people into handing over their wallets.

Daddy caught my expression at the thought of spending my days cooking and doing laundry. He pinched my cheek playfully. “An open mind, Muffin. That's all we're asking of you right now.”

The most open mind in the world would not accept a lifetime of working for my parents.

Time to go into the city, I decided. I needed to get away before I found myself in indentured servitude.

U
pstairs, I found one of my grandmother's Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses—lemon and white with cap sleeves. The flirty skirt was cool, and the low, crossed neckline flattered my figure. I grabbed my Chinese umbrella and a straw handbag, and then I dragged Rawlins out of bed to drive me to the Yardley train station.

“Sorry to spoil your beauty sleep, Rawlins.”

He yawned behind the wheel of his mother's red minivan. “No problem. I have to work later this afternoon anyway.”

“All the hot weather makes people hungry for ice cream.”

“Yeah, today I'm making blueberry cheesecake swirl.”

First thing in the morning, blueberry cheesecake sounded pretty great to me.

His cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket without taking his eyes from the road. “Yo?”

I could hear only the squawk of a high-pitched female voice talking very fast. Rawlins winced as he listened to her. At last he cut across her yammering. “Don't get so bent out of shape, Regan. I just woke up. Yeah, I'm driving my aunt to the train, that's all. Listen, I'll call you back.”

He shut the phone and sighed.

“Regan?” I asked. “Your new girlfriend?”

“Jeez, she wants to know where I am every minute!”

“She obviously cares about you.”

“I think she wants to make sure I'm not hooking up with any other girls.”

“She's the jealous type?”

“Insanely jealous. I'm not even allowed to talk to the customers or she goes ballistic. Hey, it's my
job
to talk to the customers!”

“Do you like her?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“More than Shawna?”

“Shawna's a pain in the ass,” he said sharply. “She wants to argue all the time about stuff.”

I heard frustration in his voice, but also longing. “What stuff?”

“Stuff in books. You know, like philosophy and poems.” He said the words in a derisive tone. “A conversation shouldn't be so hard, you know? With Regan, I can just be myself. The most complicated thing she reads is
People
magazine.”

“I see.”

His phone started to ring again, and Rawlins took his eyes off the road long enough to stare at the small screen. “I just wish she'd leave me alone for five—Hello? Yeah, Regan, believe it or not, I'm still in the car with my aunt.”

I sent him a don't-be-rude glance, and he said, “Sorry, Regan. Whassup?”

Thinking I should call my editor and warn him of my arrival, I rummaged in my purse for my own phone and discovered the silver compact I'd picked up in Lexie's office bathroom. I turned it over in my hand and saw the Tiffany stamp on the bottom. I'd have to remember to return it to Lexie as soon as possible.

I phoned the office, but my editor must have been out because his voice mail picked up. Hearing Stan's harried recorded voice, I decided against leaving a message. Better to talk to him in person without giving him time to formulate all his complaints about my work.

Rawlins dropped me at the train station in the nick of time, so I kissed him good-bye and jumped on the train just as it was departing. I found myself in an empty car. Traveling after rush hour had its advantages.

I used the time to sort through my party invitations and start making my RSVP phone calls for the day. I received dozens of invitations each time the mail was delivered, so it was easy to get behind. Once the invitations started piling up, it was very hard to clean out the backlog.

I got lucky and was able to interview a chairwoman of one of the events. I asked her about the upcoming dance-athon for a teen center she cared passionately about. She seemed glad I had chosen her event to highlight in my column and chatted eagerly about the dance. I scribbled notes on my pad, then drafted a few punchy paragraphs.

On impulse, I said, “The newspaper's Web site posted photos of various school proms in May. It was a big hit with our readers. Would you mind if I brought a photographer with me?”

“I'd be delighted, Nora!”

I arrived in the city in less than an hour. A thermometer on a bank said the temperature had already hit ninety degrees and was rapidly climbing.

I hiked to the Pendergast Building and nearly wept with relief when the office air-conditioning cooled my face.

“You here for the meeting, Nora?” Skip Malone asked me. The seasoned sports reporter pinned his notebook under one arm and juggled a cup of coffee, a bagel and a plastic pen as he passed my desk.

“Meeting?”

“Yeah, the managing editor's here. Rumor has it, there's a big shake-up coming now that Stan's out of commission.”

I gasped. “Stan's out of commission?”

“Yeah, the colonoscopy didn't go well. He's had some surgery and needs a few weeks to recover.”

Stan Rosenstatz had ongoing gastric issues, no doubt caused by a long career in journalism. Budget cuts further threatened all newspapers these days, which didn't make Stan's life any easer. Plus supervising untrained writers like myself didn't do his nervous stomach any favors, either. I liked my editor, and often felt sorry to cause him exasperation. But his leave of absence was very bad news.

I was already on my feet, following Skip to the conference room. “Is Stan going to be okay?”

“I think so. Unless the Pendergast family decides to fire him.”

“But Stan holds this place together!”

Skip held open the conference room door for me. “Yeah, but with circulation down, they can't afford to keep all of us employed, can they?”

“They can't fire Stan!”

Skip shrugged.

With Stan on my side, I'd always felt relatively confident I wasn't going to lose my job. Filled with dread, I slid into a chair at the back of the room and listened to the managing editor give a speech that started out with a lot of platitudes and quickly got to the bad news.

He said, “We're going to cut back in all departments. For the next couple of weeks, we'll study everyone's contribution to the financial well-being of the paper. And we'll make our decisions accordingly.”

The roomful of journalists was eerily silent.

He spread his hands as if asking for our indulgence. “I wish we could promise to release people according to seniority, but that's just not economically viable. We'll be as fair as we know how. But we're shifting our focus to the online edition. A video-based traffic report starts next week. Any other ideas you can contribute will be appreciated. And rewarded.”

The mood was gloomy after that, with a few of my colleagues taking long lunches to commiserate. I grabbed a salad in the company cafeteria and ate it at my desk—half in an effort to stay out of the heat, but also to avoid listening to all the speculation about who would keep their jobs and who would be out on the street.

The thought of losing my meager salary frightened me even more than my parents moving back home. I wasn't trained to do anything, really. Attending parties for a living was the one thing I could do well. My long career as a Junior Leaguer had given me organizational skills that made me useful in social situations, but hardly prepared me for any kind of real corporate employment. Except maybe changing beds in the horrible bed-and-breakfast my parents were proposing. Laundry and cooking—two of my least favorite activities. What kind of life could be worse?

Midafternoon, I packed my handbag and took the elevator to the street.

Nearly melting into the sidewalk, I staggered over to Rittenhouse Square. I tried to put the summer heat out of my mind. But the leaves on the trees hung limp in the searing rays of the afternoon sun, and my own energy level hovered near zero. The asphalt felt soft under my shoes as I crossed to the park.

The Music Academy had scheduled a midafternoon performance under a canopy. White folding chairs stood ready for an audience, but the thin crowd—mostly parents of the summer-program students—waited listlessly in the shade of the trees. One pale and sweaty Academy employee stood behind a table pouring lukewarm lemonade into pink paper cups as fast as she could. I saw a big drop of perspiration slide off the end of her nose and splash into someone's lemonade.

Reaching for a cup was Brandi Schmidt. A white skirt floated around her shapely, tanned legs, and she wore a vivid red blouse suitable for the TV camera. She accepted the cup without noticing what had landed in the lemonade.

“Oh, Nora.” She tried to turn her wheel and balance her lemonade at the same time, so I reached to help by taking her cup. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. After yesterday's horrible tragedy, I was afraid nobody would attend today's concertina.”

I didn't point out that a small concert wasn't really a concertina. “Are you on the committee, Brandi?”

“I'm on the board of the Music Academy, so I'm here to lend my supportiveness.”

“Good for you.”

Board members of prestigious organizations were usually called upon to attend events and contribute generously to the coffers. I wondered if Brandi's television station donated her share to the Music Academy—not uncommon—or if she had given her own money.

“I'm new on the board. Hoyt asked me to serve. How could I refuse? He was so kind to me.” Tears started in her dark eyes. Overcome, she propelled her chair to the far end of the table.

I asked the volunteer for another cup of lemonade and carried the fresh cup to the spot Brandi had clearly chosen for a private conversation. She held out her hand, and I gave her the drink.

I said, “Hoyt's death must affect nearly every music organization in the city.”

Brandi's lower lip trembled, but she smiled bravely. “Yes. No matter how he died, we can't deny he was a wonderful man.”

“You must feel a great personal loss, too, Brandi.”

She nodded. “Hoyt was the one who brought me to Philadelphia, did you know?”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, I was working in cable TV in California at the time. He told me he had a friend who owned a television station here. He even suggested ways to make a video to show the full speculum of my work. His friend saw the tape, interviewed me, and the rest is historical. I owe Hoyt my career. A person with my kind of disability needs a helping hand to succeed in broadcasting.”

If Hoyt had asked a friend to hire her as a personal favor to him, that explained why she hadn't been fired for incompetence yet. She had a certain dewy innocence on camera, but trying to hold a serious conversation without bursting out laughing at her contorted English was a challenge.

She went on, “We became confidences, Hoyt and me. Eventually I realized I could help him, too. We both got something meaningful out of it.” She sighed, then lifted her chin. “Nobody will ever know how important we were to each other.”

“I'm so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Nora. You've always been very kind. Other people will—oh, I don't expect much sympathy. I'm not very well liked, you know. In my job as a newscaster, I have to be tough sometimes. I can't be everyone's best friend. People are always on guard and jealous, too. Surely you feel the same enviousness, being a reporter.”

“Well—”

“If I speak up about my relationship with Hoyt, I'll simply look more foolish, so I guess I should just keep it to myself. But it's hard to grieve alone.”

Uncertainly, I said, “Nobody thinks you're foolish, Brandi.”

“But they don't like me,” she said. “Do they?”

“I think you're very much liked.”

At least, she wasn't disliked. Despite her good looks, Brandi Schmidt wasn't a very warm person, though. People weren't drawn to her, I supposed. I was surprised—and somewhat abashed—to realize her feelings were so easily hurt.

She shook her head. “Journalism is work that's very alienationing, don't you think? I assume people are only pretending to be my friends so I'll put them on camera. Then, of course, there's my disability. People notice my wheelchair and try to avoid me. I see it all the time.”

I suddenly thought to myself that it wasn't her wheelchair that alienated people as much as her passive-aggressive, pity-party behavior. In just a few minutes, she had me squirming with guilt. I knew other people with disabilities—my friend Tom Nelson, for one—whose personalities were so forceful that I quickly forgot the wheelchair when we were together.

But I said, “People are starting to look past each other's handicaps, I think. The world is becoming more open-minded.”

“I hope so,” she said, although clearly she doubted it was true.

The wounded-deer look in her eyes made me uncomfortable. I itched to get away.

I said, “I'm sorry I won't be able to stay for the whole concert this afternoon. But I have other events to cover today.”

She grimaced. “That's what everybody says. I wish we could have moved the musicians indoors, but—well, sometimes we really suffer for art, don't we?”