Shreve had been jotting down notes the whole time I was talking. He looked up and pinned me with a probing gaze.
“And why do you think she told you all this now?”
I heaved a great sigh and pretended to reflect for a long moment. “I honestly have no idea. It’s so bizarre.”
“Take a guess.”
“Well, the only thing I can think of is that Monique seriously believed she was dying. I don’t know. Maybe she felt guilty about everything that had happened. You know, though, looking back, she really was acting quite odd . . . Like she was on something—”
“What do you mean?”
“She seemed, well, stoned.”
“On drugs?”
“On the medication. Who knows? . . . Look, she and I had a long, complicated history, Detective. As I said, we both regretted many of the things we’d done to one another. I certainly regretted some of the things I did to try and get even with her. Apart from everything else, they weren’t polite.”
“So then what happened?”
“I made her swear to go to a doctor. She promised she would but I didn’t believe her. I told her I’d call her the next day to check up on her. Then I didn’t want to be late for work, so I left.”
“Did the maid show you out or did you let yourself out?”
“The maid showed me out. But I was very worried about Monique, I really was . . . Oh,” I said, pretending to remember something. “As I was leaving . . . ? I suddenly realized I’d forgotten my glasses in the room, so I went back in to get them.”
“Where was the maid?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you went back in to get your glasses? Did the maid see you and the Countess together?”
“Uh . . . I really don’t know. She could have, yes, definitely. Why? Is that important?”
He put down his pen and notebook and readjusted his position on the stack of rugs.
“Some people might think that you were so upset with the Countess for what she’d done to you that you pushed her off that little balcony.”
I lowered my eyes and said with the piety of a nun: “I seriously doubt anyone would think that, Detective Shreve. Do I look capable of murder?”
“I’ve been in this job twenty-three years, Mrs. Slater. I still don’t know what a murderer looks like. Ted Bundy looked like a choirboy.”
“Ted Bundy never served homemade foie gras to three presidents of the United States,” I said. Shreve laughed. “And besides, I’m not that strong. Even if I’d wanted to push her, how would I have done it? I hate to say it, but Monique was much younger than I am and in far better shape.”
He paused for a moment, searching my face with his shrewd eyes.
“I’ve spoken to Mr. Nathaniel. He tells me the Countess told him that you were the one who was terminally ill. That’s why you sold her the necklace. You said you needed money for your medical bills.”
I feigned astonishment. “Me? I’m as healthy as a horse . . . Knock wood.” I made a fist and tapped my skull lightly.
“Why would she make something like that up?”
“I have no idea. Maybe it was her way of deflecting her own fears. You know how people do that sometimes? They talk about something that’s on their mind, only pretend it’s about another person.”
Shreve folded his notebook shut and hopped down off the carpets.
“Mrs. Slater,” he said. “Are you aware that you are the sole beneficiary of Countess de Passy’s will?”
This was the moment I had rehearsed ad nauseam, replaying it countless times in front of my mirror so I would get it just right.
“You’re joking,” I said with a little gasp.
I slid down from the pile.
“No. She left you everything.”
“That’s . . . That’s truly . . . I . . . I’m dumbfounded. Are you sure?”
“The Countess didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head over and over. “No . . . Are you sure? I mean, are you positive?”
“Absolutely positive. She named Mr. Nathaniel the executor of her will and you the sole beneficiary.”
“That’s wonderful. I mean . . . Oh, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry she’s dead . . . But what a wonderful, decent, marvelous, kind, generous, magnificent thing of her to do. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
“You realize that this gives you a powerful motive for murder?”
I dismissed him with a wave of my hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. Oh, I just can’t believe it,” I went on. “Oh, this is too amazing. Oh, thank you, Detective. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I ran over and gave dear Detective Shreve a spontaneous hug, from which he quickly extricated himself.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Shreve said.
“Why not? This is wonderful. Amazing.”
“There are a few more little details we need to clear up.”
I held my breath. “Like what?”
“Like the fact that the Countess de Passy didn’t sign the will herself.”
I gasped theatrically. “Does that mean it’s invalid?”
“No, it’s valid all right. In New York State, if you’re incapacitated you can direct another person to sign your will.”
“Really? How interesting. Was she incapacitated?”
“Her hand was injured. But that’s not the problem. Now I understand from Mr. Nathaniel that you two had lunch together the day the will was signed. Her chauffeured car had two mysterious flat tires and you picked her up in a taxi to go to the restaurant where you gave her the necklace.”
“Was that the day she signed her will?” I asked innocently.
“Yes.”
“Really? Well, she was very emotional at lunch, I must say. But I had no idea she was planning anything like that.”
“What about the car? Any ideas about those two flat tires?”
“No.”
“Each one was punctured very neatly with a sharp object. You have no clue how that might have happened?”
“None whatsoever. Caspar and I were both quite mystified. He went back to the showroom to get an envelope I’d forgotten. I waited for him in the car. When he figured out we had the flats he asked me if I’d seen anyone lurking around. Frankly, I wasn’t paying attention. I suppose I should have been since one always hears about how these expensive cars are so often the target of malicious pranks. There was a similar one last week, I believe.”
“Do you own an ice pick, Mrs. Slater?”
“You know, I don’t believe I do.”
I was growing nervous answering all these questions, so I tried to edge him toward the door. But he was planted in front of the stack of carpets like a stump.
“Was her hand injured?” Shreve asked.
I pretended to think back. “No. Not that I knew of.”
“Mr. Nathaniel doesn’t believe that the Countess wrote that will.”
“Then why did she sign it?”
“She didn’t sign it, as I said.”
“I’m sorry, Detective. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.” I gave a little sigh. “I mean you can’t blame Mr. Nathaniel for being hurt. If what you say is true and she really did leave everything to me, then he has every right to be upset. After all, he was her fiancé.”
“Tell me what happened after lunch.”
“Let’s see now. We ran into Betty and June on our way out the door. I think Monique said she had an appointment. I had some shopping to do and then I had to get back to work.”
“Did she say who her appointment was with?”
“No . . . Well, wait a second. Now that you mention it, maybe she did say something about a lawyer. But I couldn’t swear to it. We walked a little bit, then said good-bye, and that was that.”
“Where did you go?”
“I walked over to Bloomingdale’s because I wanted to buy a sweater. But I couldn’t find one I liked. I deposited the check in an ATM. Then I went back to my office downtown.”
&
nbsp; “How did you get there?”
“The bus.”
“And what time did you get back to work?”
“I guess about four.”
He looked at me skeptically. “That’s kind of a long lunch hour, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t planning to go back at all. I told them I was going to take the afternoon off, actually.”
“Why did you change your mind?”
“Frankly, because I had nothing better to do. I’m not a lady of leisure anymore, Detective.”
“So you don’t know where the Countess went after lunch?”
“The only thing I know for sure about that is that she called Nate from the restaurant to say she was going to be late meeting him at Pearce’s. She told me they were shopping for an engagement ring.”
“But she didn’t tell you why she was going to be late?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Mr. Nathaniel says that when she met him at the jewelry store she told him she’d been with you.”
“Well, obviously. We’d just had lunch.”
“After lunch. He claims she told him that you didn’t give her the necklace at the restaurant. He says the two of you went back to your apartment to get it. On the way upstairs, you stabbed her with a key ring. That’s how she hurt her hand.”
“That is the most insane story I’ve ever heard. I know he dislikes me, but this is really too much.”
“Are you saying you did give her the necklace in the restaurant?”
“I certainly did. And she gave me a check, which I deposited.”
“Was the necklace loose, in a bag, what?”
“It was in a red leather case hand tooled with gold.”
“Did anyone see you give it to her?”
“I doubt it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why? You were in a restaurant.”
“You’re a detective. How smart is it to hand a big jewelry case to someone in a public place? We were very discreet—at her insistence, by the way. She put it in her bag.”
Shreve shook his head in mild amusement.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You have an answer for everything, Mrs. Slater.”
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
“You know, if I find anyone who saw the two of you going into your apartment after lunch, you’re gonna have some serious explaining to do. You realize that.”
“Excuse me,” I said, growing testy. “But if Monique was in a lawyer’s office signing or not signing her will, as the case may be, how could she have been with me, pray tell?”
“They say we all have a double roaming the earth. Maybe you found the Countess’s twin.”
“That’s just absurd. You give me far too much credit. Have you talked to the lawyer? What does he say?” I was careful to say ‘he’ not ‘she.’
Shreve fixed me in his sights, his probing brown eyes alert to my slightest move or expression.
“I’ll be getting back to you, Mrs. Slater,” he said, finally moving toward the entrance. I followed him out.
“Monique said she wanted to make things up to me, Detective. I guess this is what she meant. If I were you, I’d look at little more closely at Mr. Nathaniel’s motives here. ‘Hell hath no fury like a lawyer scorned.’ ”
Shreve shook my hand. I believe he was dead serious when he said, on parting, “Mrs. Slater, you’re quite a lady.”
Chapter 36
Nate Nathaniel, the named executor of Monique’s will, was holding everything up pending an investigation. I can’t say exactly where my mind was at this point. Naturally, I felt extremely apprehensive. Uncertainty perched on me like a big black spider I couldn’t shake. All I could do was wait.
Several days after Shreve had paid a call on me, I walked home from work in the twilight of a balmy April evening. I stopped off at the Silver Spoon, a little gourmet shop around the corner from my apartment, where I bought myself a roast chicken and some precooked vegetables for dinner.
Rounding the corner of my block, I noticed a shiny black BMW sedan double-parked in front of my brownstone. I didn’t think anything of it until I reached my front door and heard that hoarse preppy voice I knew so well yelling out, “Jo. Hold it.”
I turned around and saw a face like a fist barreling toward me. It was Nate Nathaniel. He grabbed my right arm tight and jerked me around. I dropped my purse and the bag of gourmet food.
“Listen to me, bitch. I don’t know how the hell you did it. But I swear to you, on my mother’s grave, that I’m going to find out.”
“I didn’t know you had a mother, Nate,” I said, wincing.
“You’re crazy, you know that? And you’re gonna fry. You hear me? Fry. I have friends downtown.”
I managed to wriggle my arm out of the grasp of his tentacle.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You killed her. You pushed her off that balcony as sure as my name is Nathaniel Prescott Nathaniel.”
“Prescott? I always thought that P stood for Prick.”
He grabbed the collar of my coat with both hands and jammed me up against the side of the building so hard the back of my head bounced against the stone. I cried out in pain trying to push him away. No use. He tightened his grip to choke me then planted his big round face right up against mine so we were practically touching noses. The smell of his breath was sickening.
“Look, you psychopath,” he whispered in a voice packed with fury, “I know you wrote that fucking will yourself. And I know you had someone impersonate her at the signing. And if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to find out who that person was . . . You’re guilty as fucking sin, Jo.”
“I’ll scream . . .”
“Understand me?”
He let me go, reluctantly. I gasped for air and rubbed my hurting throat. Nate stood in front of me without budging, still shaking with incendiary rage.
“You think you were so clever using Pat McCluskey and that thing with her hand.”
“What thing with her hand?” I played innocent, just as I had with Detective Shreve.
“So she couldn’t sign the will herself. Monique told me how you stabbed her with the key ring on the way up to your apartment when you two went to get the necklace.”
“Oh, then her hand was injured?” I said with wide, incredulous eyes.
“You know it was, bitch. You injured it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. So she went to Patricia McCluskey, did she?”
“You slammed her hand on purpose. At the same time she was supposedly having that fucking will signed she was right here in your apartment.”
“You’re mistaken . . . And besides, Patricia McCluskey’s a very good lawyer. You said so yourself. I doubt she’d be fooled.”
“Pat McCluskey’s a lesbian bitch who hates men. She hates me, okay? She’d do anything to fuck me over, okay? And I got news for you: She’s not that good a lawyer, if you want to know the truth.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m a hundred times better lawyer than Mister McCluskey, lemme tell you.”
“I see. You recommended her to me because you thought she wasn’t any good. Thank you.”
I could see Nate’s jaw grinding hard as he paused to think.
“I don’t know who you got to go to her office that day, but it sure as hell wasn’t Monique,” he said.
“Does Ms. McCluskey think it was Monique?”
“Obviously, but how the fuck would she know? She never met Monique.”
“I have no idea, Nate. You’ll have to ask her, I guess.”
Nate stepped back, raking his hands through his hair in exasperation.
“Look, Jo, you’ve been very clever. Diabolically clever, I’ll give you that. But it ain’t gonna work. I told the police,” he said, his head bobbing up and down. “Oh, yeah, I told ’em—told ’em everything.”
“Everything?” I interrupted. “About the whole plan you and Moni
que concocted to get Lucius’s money? That must have been interesting.”
He ignored my comment. “The DA’s a friend of mine,” he went on. “All that crap about how Monique was stoned and how she thought she had cancer and you’re the only one she confided in? Ever heard of an autopsy, Jo? When they do that autopsy and find out you’re lying, you’re gonna fry.”
“Nate, what did the will say exactly?”
His cheeks churned in anger. “Look, I don’t know how the hell you found out some of the things you did . . . but you just wait. Most murder cases are tried on circumstantial evidence, Jo. You had the motive. You had the means. And you had the fucking opportunity. And just because some dumb little spic maid thinks she may have heard Monique’s voice when you were leaving isn’t gonna get you the hell off the hook. The autopsy’s gonna show that you are a lying cunt. I’ll get you, Jo. I’ll get you.”
“ ‘You get me, I’ll get you.’ It’s on my family crest,” I said.
Nate started to say something, then stopped. He turned on his heel and headed for his car. I watched him slink down into the black driver’s seat like some batrachian creature disappearing in an inky tarn. He drove off into the night.
The chicken was in the gutter. My appetite was ruined anyway, so I skipped dinner.
Chapter 37
I barely slept a wink for nights wondering if Nate could possibly be right about the autopsy and the circumstantial evidence. My nerves were shot. And if Shreve could find someone who had seen me with Monique going into my apartment that day after lunch, I was done for. I thought of Uncle Laddie and the anguish he had endured while under a dark cloud of suspicion over my aunt’s death. I kept reminding myself that he got off in the end, as did Andre Castor. I wondered if I would have to endure the ordeal of a trial.
I was upset about what I’d done, but the truth is that my guilty conscience paled in comparison to my survival instinct. I was no Raskolnikov. I saw no reason to compound my wretchedness by going to jail. I knew that if I really put my mind to it I could feel as culpable in the lap of luxury as in a prison cell.
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