Rich, Radiant Slaughter

by Jane Haddam

“Time,” he said. “Time. None of you popular writers ever thinks enough about time.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The first thing I intended to do after I got back to the hotel was call Barbara Defborn. Nick and Tempesta and I had all given her elaborate accounts of the notes, but I supposed she deserved to hear Christopher Brand’s accusations, if accusations they were. The more I thought about it, the less sure I was. He’d certainly sounded as if he were saying that The Housing Project was a scam, and that made a kind of sense I liked. Charity scams are good ones—although they’re best when they can be set up as a “religion.” Religions not only don’t have to pay taxes, they don’t have to file. In fact, they don’t have to account for their income anywhere, to anybody. Straightforward charity scams at least have to apply for tax-exempt status, which means somebody has to fill out a lot of forms for the government and keep a lot of records and hand all the numbers over once a year. On the other hand, numbers can be kited, books can be cooked and tax forms can be delayed with extensions. If the con didn’t get too outrageous, or the conners too stupid, something like that could go on for a long time. While it lasted, it would bring in a lot of tax-free money.

  I liked this scenario for other reasons, too. For one thing, it provided such a straightforward motive for murder. I didn’t know how long The Housing Project had been in operation, but I was sure it hadn’t been around long enough to attract the wrong kind of attention. If it was faked, there was still a lot of money to be made before whoever was doing the cheating needed to get nervous. The tour must have been bringing in a mint. I didn’t know what we were making from the sale of books. I was usually signing in the back while that sort of thing was being handled at the front. I had, however, heard a lot about the take at the cocktail parties and the dinners—forty thousand from a “literary banquet” in New Orleans, twenty thousand for six hours of cocktails and book gossip in Boston, fifteen thousand for lunch in Philadelphia. Most charity functions had to worry about cost-price ratios, but the tour didn’t. Jon Lowry was underwriting it. And Evelyn was good. She made the parties “selective” and “exclusive” and expensive as hell, drawing in the people who cared more about being important than they did about anything else. There are incredible numbers of people like that in the world. In a publishing-business town like New York, they know books and authors, even best-selling authors of Pulitzer Prize-winning books, can be had for no more trouble than it takes to make a phone call. In places like Jackson and Tampa, anything connected to anyone who appears regularly on Donahue and Carson has cachet. Evelyn knew what to do with that. Party followed party, each smaller and costlier than the last. A lists, B lists, C lists, Inner Circles: if Evelyn was coordinating society fund-raising for the Metropolitan Opera, they’d never have to worry about donations again.

  Added to that, I had what I knew about Evelyn’s character. Evelyn had never been able to transfer the insightfulness about human nature she brought to promotions to the charities she loved. If you could convince Evelyn you were working for some “victim” somewhere, she would follow you anywhere, I’d been serious when I told Christopher Brand that I’d be surprised if the Ad Hoc Committee was not only a scam but the first Evelyn had been taken in by. In a way, I thought she’d probably been taken in a hundred times before, although the people she’d been taken in by had probably been just as taken in themselves. People for Peace. Women for Social Equality. The Institute for Parental Control of the Schools. As far as I knew, all those organizations had been legitimate, they just hadn’t done anything. Evelyn had a positive genius for finding ineffective groups with altruistic rationalizations for off-the-wall politics. She simply had no judgment when it came to social action.

  What she did have was nearly limitless energy. Once Evelyn involved herself in a charitable enterprise, she gave everything she had to it, no matter how her work suffered. We’d complained about that for years. Tour schedules with holes in them big enough to drive a Sherman tank through. Interviewers who showed up frantic because the biographical material had never arrived. Dates and times transposed, so that at least once every tour you missed a connection or showed up at the wrong bookstore in the wrong city on the wrong night. A passion for charity was the single reason Evelyn hadn’t gotten any further than she had at Austin, Stoddard and Trapp. She couldn’t keep her mind off it long enough to get her mind on her work.

  Even scam charities want willing workhorses, but I had a feeling no scam would welcome someone like Evelyn. Evelyn went in for total immersion. She got involved in everything, and she pushed. From what I could remember—I could have kicked myself for not having paid more attention to this at the time—she’d ended up heading at least one or two of the groups she’d gone to work for. The gay and lesbian groups had been beyond her grasp, but she’d been chairwoman of both People for Peace and the Institute for Parental Control of the Schools. I could just see her, oozing her way into every warp in the Ad Hoc Committee’s fabric and coming up with—fraud.

  Murder Evelyn because she discovered the fraud? Murder Margaret Johnson Keeley because—why? She saw you murder Evelyn? I didn’t like that. I knew that sort of thing was done, in real life as well as in books, but this thing had been so well planned. Of course, that might be an illusion. The murder weapon might have been bought right here in Baltimore, at some perfectly ordinary pharmacy, and the evidence left lying around where Barbara Defborn could stumble across it in a day or two. I couldn’t make myself believe it had happened that way. Even for a stupid murderer, or a frantic one, it would have been a hell of a risk. We’d had our pictures in the papers in every city we visited. In Baltimore, Evelyn had outdone herself. We’d been the subject of a media blitz. If the murderer bought that needle in Baltimore, all Barbara Defborn had to do was go on local television and ask about it. Everything from the phony prescription to an eyewitness would be sitting in her lap in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of one damn reason for anybody to kill Margaret Keeley—except for Gail Larson. If I’d been Gail Larson, I’d have murdered the woman years ago.

  The cab pulled up at the hotel and I got out, throwing a ten-dollar bill into the front seat. The weather had definitely improved. It was cold and getting colder, but the rain had stopped and no new nasty form of precipitation seemed about to arrive in its place. The unaccustomed meteorological calm did wonders for the Inner Harbor’s Christmas decorations. It was five o’clock, already full dark, and the little display of twinkling lights on the tree in the lobby seemed perky and warm and cheerful. December 16. If Barbara Defborn did her job right, I’d be back in New York in a couple of days—and out in Connecticut a week after that. Once Adrienne and I had landed on my mother, I’d have the wedding preparations to deal with, but even my mother couldn’t drive a person nuts twenty-four hours a day. (Was I sure?) I’d have hours and hours to spend at my two favorite activities: talking to Adrienne and reading really gory ghost stories under a quilt with a glass of Baileys Original Irish at my side. Fortunately, I had all my Christmas shopping done. The boxes were stashed in the hall closet of the apartment on Central Park West, beautifully wrapped, I’d had the department stores wrap them. When I wrap packages, they always end up with little horns of paper sticking out in unpredictable places. They look like Madonna’s onstage hair.

  I made my way into the lobby and toward the desk. If I’d gotten back earlier, I could have counted on Nick or Phoebe or Adrienne to be around to let me into some room someplace, but at this time of the afternoon, anything could be going on. Like most children, Adrienne got hungry early. The girls at Brearley had taught her it wasn’t chic to eat before seven o’clock, or maybe eight, but she was always starving by five and ravenous by six. The girls at Brearley probably were, too. I’d go up and see if they were all waiting for me, but I wouldn’t have my feelings hurt if they weren’t.

  I zipped up to the desk, rang the bell and waited. In the middle of the long, empty counter was something that looked like a piece of trash that
had been trampled underfoot during the storm. It was thick with mud where it wasn’t smudged with black, and it looked so completely out of place, it shocked me. That hotel was clean. In the not quite forty eight hours I’d been staying there, I’d never once seen as much as a piece of wastepaper in a hallway or three whole cigarette butts in an ashtray. The maids must have gone through once every five minutes. Whatever it was lying on the counter seemed to me like vandalism.

  A door opened at the back and a desk clerk came through, efficient and cheerful. I wondered vaguely where the Inner Harbor got these people, I’d been in hundreds of hotels in my life, and all the others had had at least one sour apple. The Inner Harbor came up with one pleasant clerk after another—and they all knew what they were doing.

  This one said, “Good evening, Miss McKenna. I love your sweater.” Then she turned around to fish my key out of the slot.

  I stared at her back. The sweater was Nick’s, but it would have been bad manners to go into all that, and a waste of time. The clerk turned to me with my key in her left hand.

  “Nasty day for sightseeing, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s really too bad you had to come to Baltimore in this weather. It’s usually quite pleasant here.”

  “I remember,” I said. “You’re the—you checked me in.”

  “That’s right.” She practically beamed. “We were so excited when we heard you’d be staying here. We were fighting over that check-in. And we didn’t know what you’d be like. But it’s been wonderful, really.” She faltered. “I don’t mean about the, well, the trouble—”

  “That’s all right,” I said.

  “I got Miss Damereaux to sign all my books. And Sherry got Tempesta Stewart to. And you’ve had such an interesting life.”

  “I could do with a little less interesting sometimes.”

  “You’ll straighten it all out. We have faith in you.”

  I had a response to that one, but I swallowed it. I have a nasty habit of being sarcastic when what I really want to be is funny, and I knew this woman wasn’t someone who would appreciate that sort of thing. People who had all Phoebe’s books never did. I tucked the key she was handing me into my jeans.

  “Did Barbara Defborn talk to you? The police detective? We’ve been wondering about some messages that showed up—”

  She leaned eagerly over the counter. “Are you investigating something? I’ve never been part of a real murder investigation.”

  “Barbara Defborn didn’t talk to you?”

  “If you mean the police, of course they talked to me. And everybody else. But the police don’t count, do they?”

  For what? I wondered. I said, “I suppose not.”

  “You’ll want to know how it was I wrote your name on that note,” she said. “Well, it was strange. It really was.” She was delighted that it had been strange. Absolutely delighted. “Normally, when we get a note for a guest, we deliver just as we receive it. That’s policy. The privacy of our guests is very important to us. We’ve delivered all kinds of things. Tom notes. Wet notes. Even smelly notes.”

  “Smelly notes?”

  “With perfume on them.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “But these,” she said, “these were impossible. Filthy. And not just filthy. Covered with mud, covered with grime, I couldn’t even pick them up. They oozed.”

  I looked down the counter at the piece of “trash.”

  “I really couldn’t see delivering something like that. I really couldn’t. You always have to assume that the way the note gets here is the way the person who sent it wanted it to be—that seems absurd, but it’s true. But these. Well, obviously they’d been dropped in the rain and stepped on. I don’t think anybody would do that deliberately. And even if they had, I was worried about the reputation of the hotel. Someone might think we’d done it ourselves, and hadn’t had the good manners to fix it. So—”

  “So you took the note out of the envelope and put it in a hotel envelope.”

  “I put it in a plain envelope,” she corrected. “Not one with a letterhead on it. We keep a few of those around for people who don’t want to use printed stationery.”

  “You threw the envelopes away?”

  She flushed. “Yes, I did. If I’d realized—”

  “No, no,” I said, “I’m not blaming you. I just wanted to be sure. Did you tell Barbara Defborn about all this?”

  “The police woman? Yes, I did. If I’d realized—well, I would have told you first. The hotel might not have liked that, but I would have told you first. Of course, we’re very conscientious about cooperating with the police, but if I’d known you were interested—”

  “You don’t understand,” I said desperately, “I’m happy you cooperated with the police. I think you ought to cooperate with them again. Right away.”

  “Pardon me?”

  I pointed down the counter. “Over there,” I said. “I think we’ve got another one.”

  The piece of trash was indeed another note, and it was the worst we’d seen. It was addressed to Christopher Brand. All it said was: YOU DIE YOU DIE YOU DIE YOU DIE. Unlike the notes Tempesta and I received, it did not consist of a few crayon marks on a mostly white sheet of paper. The writing started in the upper left-hand corner and went down the page. YOU DIE YOU DIE YOU DIE YOU DIE YOU DIE. I don’t know how many times it was written.

  I watched it being folded into a Baggie and packed away in Barbara Defborn’s purse. Then I got my cigarettes out and lit up in spite of her disapproval. This was not, after all, a murder scene. The note could have been lying on the counter for all of half an hour. That was how long Donna Grant, the clerk, had been in the back, attending to administrative work while the desk was clear. In the meantime, twenty people had probably come through the lobby, smokers and non-smokers alike. Cigarette butts, footprints, fingerprints, stray pieces of paper: anything the police found now would be useless as evidence. Things could have been brought in and taken out wholesale, and nobody would ever be able to pin down where or when.

  I was sitting in the middle of a circular couch, near the ashtray. On the other side of the coffee table sat Nick and Phoebe and Adrienne and Tempesta Stewart, bright-eyed and patient. It’s amazing what a first-rate murder mystery can do for the human condition. Adrienne didn’t look hungry. Phoebe didn’t look sick. Tempesta didn’t look bitchy. Even Nick was in a better mood than he should have been. Nick hates seeing me involved in murders. Usually, by this point in an investigation, he’s ready to wring my neck. Now, he just looked like he had a headache.

  I’d run into them while I’d been pacing around the lobby waiting for Barbara Defborn to arrive. They’d been on their way out to dinner, and I dearly wished to know how Tempesta had managed to get herself invited in on that. I’d never had the chance to ask. First I’d had to tell them what I was doing there. Then I’d had to tell them why it was important. Then Barbara walked in.

  Barbara put her purse on the table and sat down beside me.

  “It’s just another note,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s happened yet. You have a right to be tense, but—”

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t think it is just another note.”

  “Then what is it? It can’t be a copycat. Unless you think …” She lowered her voice and cast a covert glance at Tempesta. “Miss Stewart could be lying,” she admitted. “She said she didn’t tell anyone but you and Mr. Carras about that note, but she could have told anyone.”

  “Actually, I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been having my mind changed about Tempesta lately. I don’t think she would lie.”

  “Religious people lie,” Barbara Defborn said. “It happens.”

  “I’m sure it happens. But when we came on this tour, I just assumed Tempesta was a hypocritical fake. I don’t believe that anymore, I’m not worried about the note being copycat. That’s not it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s not the same as the other notes.
Don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  I waved to Nick. He was the only one I wanted, but I’m not stupid. I was going to get all of them and I knew it. They trooped over en masse, Adrienne hanging a little behind as if to stay out of sight and out of danger of being told to go somewhere else. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close to me. At the back of my mind, I was forming the half-baked idea that this was therapeutic. If it wasn’t, I wanted her as close to me as possible, in case she started to come apart.

  “I wish you’d take that thing out of the bag and let us look at it,” I told Barbara.

  “Procedure,” she said firmly. “Sorry.”

  “I know about procedure.” I sighed. “But the thing is—Look. I got a note. What did it say?”

  “I know what it said,” Adrienne said. “‘You ruin it for everybody. You ought to die.’ Or something like that.” She took a deep breath. “But it’s all right, isn’t it? It’s not somebody who wants to kill you. It’s somebody who wants to kill somebody else and make people think they did it because of you.”

  “How do you know all that?” I asked her.

  “Phoebe told me.”

  Phoebe shrugged. “In the first place,” she said, “I don’t believe in lying to children. In the second place, I’m going to be sick.”

  “Again?” Adrienne said.

  “Never mind,” I said. “The point is, that was one line and all it said was that I ‘ought’ to be dead. Well, personally I think Ted Bundy ought to be dead, but I’m not going to run out and kill him. We’ve all got people we think ought to be dead. So what?”

  Nick said, “Rapists and murderers and child uh—”

  “Child molesters,” Adrienne finished for him.

  “You ought to think about a good Christian school for that child,” Tempesta said.

  “Forget the good Christian school. She’d be expelled in a week. Think about your note.”

  “Mine?” Tempesta frowned. “I don’t even remember. It was nonsense.”