I said, “No wonder you were hoping that’s what my present was.”
Branco said, “When I heard you were in London, I thought you might get lucky and find it there.”
“I came close.”
Branco smirked. “It’s probably been destroyed by now.”
“I’ll find it,” I said.
“How are you going to do that?”
“With this food.”
“Are you keeping something from me?” asked the cop.
Did I dare tell him that my attempted showdown was probably going to look more like a Tupperware party than a carefully staged interrogation? “Just be ready, Lieutenant,” I said. “I plan to have Max Harkey’s killer for you within twenty-four hours.”
Branco chuckled and waved me off. “Go to your party.”
18
The Next to the Last Tango
IT WAS JUST AFTER FIVE-THIRTY when I let myself into Max Harkey’s flat at the Appleton. Fortunately the locks had not been changed yet. The darkness inside the flat and the still air and the lack of any sound were mildly disturbing, the way a museum can be after hours.
I found some platters in the kitchen and set out the food. It was then that I got the final inspiration of how best to spend the short time I’d be with these people. I went searching through the sprawling flat for a particular item, something I was certain Max Harkey had owned because of my familiarity with Rafik’s work as a choreographer. I found it in what appeared to be Max Harkey’s study. It was an artist’s easel with a large sketch pad on it. Rafik often used one just like it for roughing out costume designs and preliminary stage blocking. Since Max Harkey had been his mentor, I assumed that Rafik had adopted the technique from him. I set the easel up in the living room and awaited my guests.
Alissa, Toni, and Scott arrived together shortly after six o’clock. They’d obviously walked tous les trois from the studios, and they brought a noisy festive energy in with them. I cautioned them to remain quiet, since we were all technically trespassing. They were blithely unaffected by my warning, and instead the group of three headed straight for the food.
“You invited us,” said Toni di Natale, chomping on a slice of roulade. “Now don’t go making all kinds of rules. Let’s have some fun before rehearsal tonight.”
Theater people. Perhaps they knew better how to shrug off the petty concerns of life.
“There’s one more guest,” I said. “But I have a feeling she won’t be here.”
“Let’s get started,” said Scott, who’d piled his plate full of food.
Alissa added, “We only have an hour.” She’d put less food on the plate she was holding, but then I saw that she’d divided her meal between two plates. So much for the idea of leftovers.
“Yes,” said Toni. “Only an hour. Rehearsal starts at seven. It was so nice of you to have this reception for us.”
“But—” I began.
“And so clever to have it here,” she went on. “No one can bother us because no one knows where we are. Perhaps we can finally toast Max with the kind of impromptu party he could never enjoy or even imagine. Here’s to you, Max!” she said. She raised a bottle of Italian mineral water in the air.
“Read us his diary while we’re eating,” said Alissa.
“Spill it all for us,” said Scott, who was clearly enjoying his food and his limp double entendre.
Meanwhile I was flabbergasted by their energy. Here I’d been planning to get to the root of things, to delve seriously into the events of the night Max Harkey was killed, to find the missing pieces, to identify his killer. And instead I’d created a boisterous party. I stood up to make a formal announcement.
“I owe you all an apology. I don’t have the diary.”
But my statement caused peals of laughter among them. These folks were making a debacle of my investigation. Perhaps the pressures of rehearsal and the imminent opening-night performance had made them punchy. Their defenses had been tried to the point where they could no longer control their behavior. The question was, How far did that lack of control extend?
“Lighten up,” said Toni. “Max was too serious and look where it got him. He didn’t even get to see the new season open.”
I said, “Max Harkey’s serious nature was hardly the cause of his death.”
“We all know it was a knife,” said Alissa.
“But who was holding the knife?” I said. “Was it one of you?”
The room went instantly quiet.
“Please,” said Scott. “If you don’t have the diary, then let’s just eat and go back to work.”
“Sure,” I said. “And let Max’s killer go free.”
Alissa said, “He’s dead. It’s done. The estate is settled. What good is finding the killer? It’s not going to bring Max back.”
I moved toward the easel. It was time for the game.
“I happen to know that all three of you sought Max’s affections at one time. And now it’s obvious that you’ve all lost the contest to Mireille Rubinskaya. Ergo, I assume that you resented Max for withdrawing from the sexual arena so abruptly, and for settling down so easily. After only one sexual encounter with Mireille, Max Harkey was forever unavailable to any of you.”
“This sounds like a soap opera,” said Alissa.
“If the shoe fits,” muttered Scott. Alissa glared at him.
I continued, “I’m assuming that nobody in this room killed Max Harkey.”
Toni said, “Thanks for that, at least.”
“I’m also assuming that you—I should include myself—we have all lied about some of the things we’ve said so far to protect our egos or our reputations.”
“Like now?” said Scott.
“Shut up,” said Alissa.
“Continue, Professor,” said Toni.
I did. “And despite those lies some little bits of truth always manage to slip out. And sometimes those fragments stick to other bits of truth to create a bigger piece of truth. That’s when we enter the realm of danger. The payoff comes when enough of the stuff sticks together to convict the killer.”
Scott remarked, “So what are you saying? Is this going to be some kind of encounter group?”
“No,” I said. “I was thinking of something lighter, like a parlor game. We could call it ‘My Last Time with Max.’ ”
Toni laughed heartily. At least someone appreciated my kind of levity.
I went on, “The only rule of the game is you don’t have to tell the truth, as long as you know the truth.”
“What good is that?” asked Alissa.
“You’ll see,” I said.
On the easel I drew a large grid. Across the top I filled in times in half-hour increments, and down the side I listed the names of the three people present.
“On this grid I’m going to map everybody’s actions the night of the party for every hour. Each square on the grid will contain part of someone’s version of what happened that night.”
Scott demanded, “Where’s your name?”
“I hardly knew Max.”
“But Rafik did,” said Toni.
“Yeah,” added Scott. “Maybe you killed Max because you were jealous of his professional relationship with Rafik.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I countered.
“Fair is fair,” said Alissa.
“But I brought the food,” I protested weakly.
Scott snapped his fingers and pointed to the easel.
“Names,” he said, just like a man. “Yours and Rafik’s.”
So I added my name to the grid and then Rafik’s under it. As I did so I felt a calmness spreading within me. Had I passed some milestone of emotional growth? Was I about to testify before them all, to share my version of the stormy saga of Stan and Rafik? Recovery be damned. No way!
“What about Madame?” said Alissa.
I added Madame Rubinskaya’s name to the grid.
“And Marshall Zander?” said Scott.
Good, I thought. We’ve finally go
t the two real suspects.
“Anyone else?” I said in my best impersonation of a facilitator. No one answered. I said, “What about Jason Sears?”
Toni quickly interjected, “He barely knew Max, and besides, he didn’t stay for the party.”
“Put his name down anyway,” said Scott. “Nobody gets away this time.”
As I scrunched Jason’s name onto the bottom of the chart, I thought, They’re hungry to implicate anyone else to divert suspicion from themselves.
I turned to face them, and Scott said, “Now that we’re ready to play police station, you go first.”
“Sure,” I said, figuring I’d gain their confidence if I was agreeable.
I started filling in the grid with my own version of the night Max Harkey was murdered. I annotated my entries with a running commentary to liven up the drama of the otherwise dreary night I’d spent alone.
10:30—Stumble out of Max’s place. See Big Red parked on the sidewalk.
11:00—Arrive home and cry myself to sleep.
12:00—Awake. Sob melodramatically.
1:00—Ditto throughout night.
6:30—Phone call from Rafik.
7:00—Arrive back at Max’s.
“As you can see,” I said, “until I got the telephone call from Rafik, I spent the night rather uneventfully.”
“Pitifully, I’d say,” muttered Scott.
Unfazed, I went on. “So, since my night was so dull, I’d like to speculate on what some of the other people were doing.”
I proceeded to fill in some of the empty boxes on the grid, specifically:
11:30—Max home alone.
12:00—Madame walks dog.
3:00—Scott cruises Esplanade.
“Hey!” said Scott. “What are you doing? Those aren’t your boxes.”
“But it’s my game.”
Scott said, “I’ll tell you what I did myself.”
“Be my guest,” I said.
So his story began.
“I left Max’s place with Alissa around eleven. I walked her home. Then I…” He looked at Alissa. Her eyes held a tiny warning, which Scott chose not to heed. He continued, “I asked her if I could come up.”
“Nice alibi,” I said.
“Except she told me I was being silly.”
Through clenched teeth Alissa muttered, “You bastard.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“And then,” he said. “And then …”
“Well?” said Toni.
“Tell them,” said Alissa. “Now that you’ve ruined both our alibis. You might as well finally say it.”
Scott said, “I went back to Max’s flat.”
Almost predictable, I thought.
“When was that?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I walked around for a long time. After Alissa humiliated me, I had to build up the courage to do it, to go to Max. It was a big step for me, like my last chance for his love. I’d been trying and trying with women, but it didn’t work. It was Max I really wanted.”
“So you went back to his place?”
“Yes.”
“And told him how you felt?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No!”
“Then what did happen?”
“I rang his apartment but he didn’t answer. Then I saw the front door was broken, so I went up to his place. The door was open.” Scott’s chin began quivering uncontrollably. “Max was at the piano. The blood was all over him. I knew he was …”
He stopped and I pressed him to go on.
“What time was it?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Was the sun coming up?”
“I don’t know!” he yelled.
Then he broke down into violent sobs. I made a move to comfort him, but he pushed me away. Likewise he resisted Toni’s attempt to hold and quiet him. Meanwhile, Alissa sat and watched with a cool satisfied stare. She seemed to be enjoying Scott’s pain and defeat, as though she had a vested interest in keeping him that way, and subservient to her.
Toni grimaced at me. “Well done,” she said.
I sighed. “My parties always turn out like this.”
Then Alissa spoke up sharply. “Well, I went back too, and I can assure you that Max was not dead when I got there.”
“What time?” I said quickly, leaping toward the easel.
“It was …” Alissa fumbled. “I don’t know, damn you! Do you think people look at their watches all the time?”
“Just go on,” encouraged Toni, after glaring at me.
The young ballerina said, “I wanted Max to reconsider his decision to cancel The Phoenix. ”
“Cancel?” I said. “But he’d just cast you in the part that night.”
Toni added quickly, “After you left the party, Max told us that he had changed his mind and was going to cancel The Phoenix for the entire season.”
“Really?” I said. Both women nodded.
“So,” continued Alissa, “In the same night I had won and lost the major coup of my dancing career. When Max had cast me in the role against Madame’s wishes I felt a great victory. It put me above her in importance, which is as it should be with dancers. But then Max changed his mind and said no. So I went back later and tried to reason with him. That’s when he told me he had reconsidered his decision to cast me against Madame’s wishes, and that’s why he decided to cancel The Phoenix altogether. When I told him I couldn’t accept that, he laughed and said that I had nothing to say about it. In fact, he told me that he and I were finished as well. That’s what we really fought about. He said we’d had our fling with each other and got what we wanted and that it was over. But I wasn’t going to let him off that easy. I started hitting him, hard. He grabbed me and tried to overpower me. I felt he was going to transform our fight into a sexual contest. He always did that, and I was fed up with it. So when he began thrusting his hips against mine, I pulled back just far enough to knee him in the groin. Then I kicked him hard—a full-force battement to his jaw—and sent him sprawling back into that big bronze statue. He hit his head and was dazed. When I went to help him, he screamed at me, called me a—never mind. Then he passed out. He was breathing regularly, so I assumed he’d be all right. I left quickly. That’s the last time I saw him alive. I didn’t believe that I’d killed him then. Later when I learned that he’d been murdered, I assumed I was the killer. I didn’t plan to kill him, although he’d made me so angry that I never regretted hurting him.”
Like the village idiot, I stood at the easel with the marking pen in my hand. Toni’s jaw was in her lap. And Scott was crying quietly.
Alissa’s story was absurd. “Did you tell the police all this?” I asked her.
“Of course not. I wasn’t going to admit that I was the last person to see Max alive.”
“If your story has any truth in it, you weren’t,” I said. “Someone dragged him to the piano and stabbed him there. The blood was localized around the piano.”
Scott had recovered enough from his crying to say, “It wasn’t me. Max was already dead when I got there.”
“But between Alissa’s visit and yours, someone went into Max’s apartment, dragged him unconscious to the piano, and cut the arteries in his thighs.”
Toni caught my gaze on her and said, “Don’t look at me like that. I was with Rafik all night. We took a long walk after leaving Max’s place, talking about work and love. When we got to my hotel, Jason wouldn’t let me in the room.”
“It’s all right, Toni,” I said. “You don’t have to explain.”
“But I want to. I want to set the story straight with you once and for all. Jason’s jealousy that night alarmed Rafik, even though I tried to assure him it happened all the time. It was one more thing that Rafik and I had in common, our jealous lovers.”
“But—”
“I was prepared to take another room in the hotel that night, but they were full up. Rafik offered me his place, saying that
he would stay with you that night. But I didn’t want him to disturb you. From what I could see, you needed time away from each other to cool down. So I stayed with him in his place. And he insisted I take the bed while he took the floor. So, for your information, Rafik is still all yours.” She finished her spiel with a righteous grin.
“I know,” I said. “I know.” I was utterly beyond jealousy now. “But what I don’t know is which one of the two remaining people delivered the coup de grace to Max Harkey.”
“Wouldn’t it be wise to leave it to the police?” Toni said. Then she checked her watch. “It’s almost time for rehearsal.”
The three of them got up to leave, and I followed them to the door. Scott and Alissa were glum and left without a word. Toni said to me, “This ought to be some show tonight, thanks to you.”
They left me and I closed up Max Harkey’s apartment. Before going down one floor to confront Madame Rubinskaya, I considered calling Lieutenant Branco. But then I figured I’d be safe enough facing the old woman alone. If she had managed to kill Max Harkey, it was only because he’d been unconscious at the time, while from all indications I seemed to be awake.
When I pressed the buzzer, Madame’s dog Verushka began squealing behind the door and scratching at it. Moments later I heard the old woman murmur to the animal and try to pacify it. Then she spoke sharply through the door.
“Who is there?”
“Stan Kraychik.”
“Who?”
“The friend of Rafik.”
Through the big door came the various metallic sounds of locks and bars being disengaged on the other side. Then it slipped open a few inches, and Verushka’s black muzzle appeared and sniffed the air nervously. Higher up I caught the quick glint of Madame Rubinskaya’s eyes before she released the final chain and opened the door for me.
A heavy, sickly-sweet odor emanated from her foyer, and I unfairly assumed it was Verushka.
“Tank God you come,” said Madame. “I have so much now to tell you.”
A confession already? I entered the foyer. Madame closed the big door and methodically refastened all the locks and chains.
I said, “Why didn’t you come up to Max Harkey’s place?”
“I could not go back there.”
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