Murder Under the Palms (9 page)

Introductions were made all around.

“Nice to see you again, sir,” said Eddie when Lydia introduced him to the admiral. He went on to reintroduce himself: “Edward A. Norwood, Lieutenant J. G., U.S.S.
Lafayette
, Third Naval District. Assistant to Commander Jack McLean.”

The admiral broke into a smile and extended his hand. “I remember you, Norwood. But I never realized that my junior officer and the famous bandleader were one and the same. Well, here we are on the
Normandie
again.”

“Yes,” said Eddie as they started eating their fruit cocktails. “After fifty years. Did you realize that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the fire?”

“No,” said the admiral. “I didn’t. But you’re absolutely right, Norwood.”

“Really?” said Lydia. “I hadn’t realized that either. If I’d known, I would have changed the date. We’re supposed to be celebrating the life of the
Normandie
, not her death.”

“February ninth, 1942,” said Eddie.

But Lydia’s attention was occupied by the two empty seats at the table, whose place cards indicated that they were intended for Marianne and Paul. “I wonder where Ms. Montgomery and Mr. Feder are?” she said, clearly perturbed by their tardiness.

“The last I saw them, they were out at the beach,” offered Dede, with more than a hint of petulance in her voice.

“We’ll be having the speeches soon. They’d better get back here,” Lydia said. She thought for a moment, and then summoned one of the stewards and asked him to go out to the beach to fetch Marianne and Paul.

Then she gave a discreet signal to René, who was still stationed at the door, and the phalanx of waiters sprang into action. Within minutes, their empty fruit cocktail coupes had been cleared and they were served the next course, a classic
soupe à l’oignon
.

“Are the place settings all original?” asked Charlotte as she picked up her heavy Christofle soup spoon.

Her hostess nodded. “I bought most of them at an auction in Monte Carlo in 1979, and I’ve added to them over the years. Unfortunately this is the only table that’s set with originals. I only have a complete service for fifteen.”

“That strikes me as a substantial number,” Charlotte commented. She had once been tempted to buy a Lalique goblet from the
Normandie
as a memento until she saw the price: $400. “How did you come by your interest in collecting
Normandie
art?” she asked. “Were you a passenger?”

“Regretfully I was never a passenger,” Lydia replied with a saccharine little smile. “I wasn’t even born when the
Normandie
burned.”

Charlotte doubted that, but she wasn’t about to challenge her.

“It started with an egg cup, actually. A silver-plated Christofle egg cup. Harley and I bought it at an antique shop for three dollars. Now it’s probably worth three hundred. I fell in love with that egg cup. We had been collectors of art deco furniture and
objets d’art
for some time, because of the house.”

“This is quite a place,” Eddie commented.

“Thank you. It was built in 1935, the same year that the
Normandie
made her maiden voyage. It was designed in the streamline moderne style and is meant to resemble a ship. We found that we needed to narrow the focus of our collecting, and it seemed fitting to collect art from the
Normandie
because of the nautical theme of the house. From the egg cup, we went on to other silver, and then to glasses, porcelain, furniture, and finally to the art itself.”

“It’s an obsession,” explained the admiral. “Lydia doesn’t know when to stop. She lives and breathes her
Normandie
collection.”

As they continued to chat about Lydia’s collection, Charlotte noticed that the steward whom Lydia had sent to find Paul and Marianne had appeared at the door and was talking agitatedly with René. Then she saw René leave his post and wind his way through the tables in their direction.

Arriving at their table a moment later, he leaned over to speak in Lydia’s ear. “May I speak with you for a moment in private, madam?”

Excusing herself, Lydia left the table to talk privately with René in the nearby corner. When she returned to the table a moment later, her skin was the same platinum color as her hair. “Mr. Feder has been murdered,” she announced in a hushed tone.

Paul Feder murdered! Charlotte couldn’t believe it.

“He’s lying out on the beach right now—dead,” Lydia continued. “He was stabbed in the chest.” Her blue eyes widened as if she were looking at the gruesome sight. Then she started to cry.

Charlotte wasn’t sure if she was crying out of grief for Paul or because his death meant that her party would be ruined.

Lydia turned to the admiral. “Oh Jack, what are we going to do?”

Across the table, Dede looked crushed. Her yellow-blue eyes welled with tears, which flowed silently down her lovely cheeks.

“Nothing, at the moment,” Jack replied. “Get a grip on yourself, Lydia,” he told her sternly. “We don’t want a panic situation here.” He looked at everyone around the table, commanding them with his glance to keep calm. “We want to keep this a secret among ourselves for the moment.”

Lydia sniffled a couple of times and regained her mask of social composure, while Dede blew her nose in a handkerchief provided by the gallant admiral, who seemed quite taken with the beautiful young woman seated at his side.

“Has Mr. Dubord called the police?” the admiral asked.

Lydia nodded. “He told them not to use their sirens, and he’s going to try to keep them downstairs for the time being. But he said he thought that at least some of the guests would have to be interviewed. He said he would try to get the police to wait until Mr. Norwood is playing.”

Thank God for René, Charlotte thought. A lifetime of experience in damage control. She remembered an incident on board the
Normandie
in which an elderly woman at an adjoining table had fallen over face-first into her dinner plate, the apparent victim of a heart attack.

With a nod from René, two members of the dining room staff had quietly come over, picked the woman up, chair and all, and discreetly whisked her out of the dining room. René hadn’t missed a beat: the incident had simply been erased.

But a murder wasn’t as easy to erase.

A group of waiters had fanned out over the dining room to remove the soup bowls. They were immediately followed by a second group, who served the fish course: Loire pike with clarified butter. It was a pity that Charlotte had suddenly lost her appetite.

“Did you know him?” Eddie asked.

Charlotte shook her head. “Not really. I just met him at a dinner party last night. He collaborated with my goddaughter, Marianne Montgomery, on the
Normandie
jewelry collection. Marianne is the daughter of my friend Connie,”—she nodded at Connie—“who used to be Connie Montgomery.”

“The actress?” Eddie asked, looking over at Connie, who was talking with the president of the preservation association.

“Yes,” Charlotte replied. She shifted her glance to Dede. “Dede is Marianne’s daughter and Connie’s granddaughter.”

“I can see the resemblance,” Eddie said, looking from the lovely granddaughter to her lovely grandmother.

Dede looked up briefly and then back down at her plate. She was picking at her fish and biting her lip to keep from crying.

“Do you have any idea why he might have been killed?” Eddie asked.

Charlotte shook her head, though her glance shifted involuntarily to the empty place at the table marked with a card on which the name Ms. Marianne Montgomery was written in hand-lettered calligraphy.

5

The fact that a murder had occurred just a few hundred feet away did not stop the party, though a damper had been put on the festivities at the captain’s table by the absence of their hostess, who had been summoned by the police. The waiters cleared away the fish course and served the entrée,
le caneton à l’orange
. Led by the president of the historic association, the guests at their table, who had been instructed by Lydia to behave as if nothing had happened, carried on a stiff and uncomfortable conversation about the quality of the food aboard the
Normandie
and how this evening’s meal compared. As the only guests present who had been passengers aboard the ship, Charlotte and Eddie answered questions about the wines, the cheeses, and the pastries.
As if they had been paying close attention to the food
, Charlotte thought. Though Eddie was obliging enough with his answers, Charlotte’s mind was elsewhere. She was eager to question Dede, who sat silently across the table in her white satin sheath and diamond choker, picking at her food and occasionally sniffling into the admiral’s handkerchief. What had happened at the beach that caused her to return with such red and swollen eyes? Had Marianne confronted Paul and her daughter with her suspicions?

Fifteen minutes later, Lydia returned on René’s arm. She looked quite composed for a hostess at whose party a murder had just taken place, but Charlotte had already pegged her for a cool customer. After resuming her seat, she flashed a wooden smile and then asked how they were enjoying the food.

René had moved around the table and now leaned over to whisper in Charlotte’s ear. “The police would like to see you next, Miss Graham.” Then he graciously pulled out Charlotte’s chair and offered her his arm.

Charlotte was not surprised at the ease with which René was handling the situation. “Remember the storm on the westbound crossing in August, 1939?” she asked as they threaded their way among the tables. She was thinking of how he had raced around making sure everything was secure.

“Very well. I remember everything about that crossing. Including making my first acquaintance with a beautiful young American movie star. Are you implying that a murder at a dinner party is nothing by comparison?”

“I guess that’s what I
was
thinking,” she admitted.

“I think you’re right. At least I don’t have to cater to seasick passengers,” he said.

“The man who can handle anything,” Charlotte said as they began their descent of the stairs.

René smiled.

“I wonder why the police want to talk with me before the other guests?” she asked as he led her past the room where they had talked earlier in the evening.

“I think you’ll find that your reputation has preceded you,” René replied.

René delivered her to the door of the library and then returned upstairs to resume the job of damage control. Opening the door, Charlotte found herself in a book-lined room in which a young woman with thick, dark blond hair done up in a French braid sat behind a desk crafted of blond wood in the same moderne style as much of the other furniture in the house. She was broad in the shoulder and big in the bust: not overweight, but definitely stocky. She was also very pretty, with a wide face, large hazel eyes, and a glowing complexion. She wore a short-sleeved blue denim blouse and gold hoop earrings. Beside her, an older policeman wearing the brown shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts that comprised the uniform of the Palm Beach police sat on a loveseat holding a notebook. The young woman didn’t look like the typical detective, but then, the Palm Beach police department wasn’t typical. With a year-round population of only 10,000 (a figure that doubled during the season), Palm Beach was in reality a small town in which the police knew almost everybody. Charlotte remembered Connie once telling her about a friend who had drunk too much at a party. He had been escorted home by the police and tenderly tucked into bed. Nor was there much crime on the island. Though the occasional sensational crime made the headlines, basically it was a place in which stealing bicycles and going shirtless within one hundred feet of the beach (a violation of a local ordinance) were the most common infractions.

At Charlotte’s entrance, the young woman stood up and extended her hand across the desk. She was taller than Charlotte’s own five foot eight: about five foot ten, she guessed. All in all, a sturdy-looking young woman. “I’m Detective Maureen White,” she said as she shook Charlotte’s hand.

Though she may have looked as if she belonged here, Detective White’s accent told a different story. She was from New Yawk, probably the Bronx. There was no
r
in Maureen. Charlotte guessed that her father was a cop. Also her brother, her uncle, her brother-in-law. That’s the way it was with women cops in New Yawk.

She nodded at the chair facing the art deco desk. “Please have a seat, Miss Graham,” she said, then seated herself. “I think we have a friend in common,” she began.

“Oh?” said Charlotte. “Who’s that?”

“Jerry D’Angelo,” the detective replied with a wide smile.

“You know Jerry!” Charlotte exclaimed with pleasure.

Jerry D’Angelo was a former cop whom Charlotte had met when he was working as a trainer at a spa in upstate New York. Charlotte had been invited there by her friend, the beauty queen Paulina Langenberg, to look into an attempt to sabotage her spa business. The investigation had turned into a murder case. In the course of solving the murder, she and Jerry had become friends.

“We worked together in New York,” Maureen explained. “He was the head of my team in Manhattan South Narcotics. I was the undercover,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Your basic buy-and-bust. Which is why I’m down here now. It gets to you after a while: acting like a junkie, looking like a junkie. And you have to, because otherwise you’re dead meat.”

Charlotte couldn’t imagine Maureen ever looking like a junkie, though she, more than most, was aware of how different people could be made to look.

“He told me all about you. I also read
Murder at the Morosco.
”

Murder at the Morosco
was the best-selling book about the murder of Charlotte’s co-star on stage at the Morosco Theatre. It was Charlotte who had shot him: a real bullet had been put in a stage prop. In an effort to clear her name, Charlotte had not only solved the murder, but established a reputation as an amateur sleuth that later led Paulina to call on her in the spa case.

“That’s why I wanted to talk with you first,” Maureen went on. “I thought you might have some insights into what’s going on here.” She lifted her chin to the ceiling, where the party was going on overhead. “I understand that you’re an old friend of the Spalding Smiths, who are the parents of Marianne Montgomery. I also understand that Marianne and the victim were lovers.”