Murder on the Potomac

by Margaret Truman

  “I see,” Smith said.

  Annabel refilled their glasses. “Well, that’s almost all my report. I gave Tony Buffolino a run for his money today, became a real snoop. Even staked out—that is the expression, isn’t it?—staked out the building.”

  Smith couldn’t help but smile. “How did you do that? Where did you do that?”

  “From the restaurant across the street. I ordered a pot of tea and watched.”

  “Sure nobody saw you?”

  She shook her head. “No, no one saw me.”

  “And what was the result of your stakeout?”

  “Ready for this?”

  “I’m not sure, but try me.”

  “I was tempted to leave but decided to gut it out. After a few hours I stayed for dinner and continued my surveillance. The baby bok choy was excellent. So was the asparagus.”

  “Skip the vegetables, Annabel.”

  “I’d paid the tab and was getting ready to leave—I realized how late it had gotten and felt terrible having you come home and not knowing where I was—and I took one last look out the window. Suzanne Tierney.”

  “She went into the restaurant?”

  “No. Into the office building. The restaurant is in the same building. The doors are next to each other. She was carrying a very large duffel bag. It looked heavy.”

  “What do you think was in it?”

  She shrugged. “Beats me. But isn’t the connection interesting?”

  “Yes, it is. We’ll have to give it some additional thought. You say you’ve eaten. What am I going to do with two live lobsters?”

  “You eat them. I’ll just nosh a little. That Chinese food didn’t … well, you know.”

  Annabel, whose appetite was voracious but who also possessed an internal engine that burned up food as fast as it was ingested, ate one of the lobsters and a hearty portion of potatoes and onions. They cleaned up and returned to the study. “I had a drink this evening with Darcy Eikenberg,” Smith said.

  “You did. Why?”

  “I called to make an appointment with her to discuss the letters and decided not to do it at headquarters. I ended up in Arlington late this afternoon to touch base with Jerry Malone—he thinks I ought to shift some of my Keogh assets into some livelier investments—and met her at the Key Bridge Marriott.”

  Annabel’s smile was knowing. “Riskier investments, you mean. She must have been thrilled.”

  “I’m not sure I’d characterize it that way.”

  “I just mean that she’s obviously infatuated with you.”

  “Oh, maybe once—student-and-professor sort of thing, way back.”

  “Go on. How did she take the news that you had copies of the letters?”

  “Stunned her. Naturally, she wanted to know how I got them. I gave them to her along with the history Pauline had written and suggested she compare them. I told her I was certain Wendell had not written them, and that I was convinced Pauline had.”

  “And what was the ravishing detective’s reaction to that theory?”

  “Skepticism at first, a little more open-minded after that. She commented that she could understand a woman frustrated with unrequited love falling into such fantasies.”

  “Meaning you.”

  “Yes. It was awkward at best.”

  “Do you find her attractive? No, strike that. Of course you do. I find her attractive. Were you tempted to follow through?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “A little. Not to follow through, as you put it. I did have a fleeting visceral reaction.”

  “I love it when you talk euphemisms.”

  “I straightened her out.”

  “Gently, I hope.”

  “Gentle but firm.”

  “Good.”

  “I kissed her.”

  “You did?”

  “It just happened. Actually, she kissed me. No. We kissed each other. That was it. I thought you’d want to know. She wants to be my friend.”

  “A kissin’ cousin?”

  “No more kisses. I have a feeling you understand her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re both beautiful women. You know how it is. I remember talking with you about it not long after we met. How beautiful women—and men who are too handsome—aren’t always taken seriously. Takes a while for people to get past their looks and recognize they have brains. In your case, a big one.”

  “In Darcy’s case?”

  “Also a big brain.”

  “I love you, Mac.”

  “And obviously I love you, Annabel.”

  “You won’t kiss her again? Even as friends?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Mac awoke with a start in the middle of the night.

  “What’s wrong?” Annabel asked.

  “A nightmare. I saw that child go over the edge at Great Falls. Only it was me. Falling, spinning, screaming.”

  She cradled him until his trembling stopped and his breathing was normal. “Sorry to wake you,” he said.

  She started to say, “Go back to sleep. It was only a dream.” But it hadn’t been. He’d seen the child in the water, and she wished there were something she could do to erase that dreadful, haunting vision from his mind. She’d never loved him more than at that moment.

  36

  The Next Morning—Saturday

  The Scarlet Sin Society evidently had a friend in high places. Saturday morning dawned sunny and cool, a perfect day in Lafayette Park for a murder.

  The weather had coaxed people to the park far in advance of the noon production. The few permanent, perpetual protestors who called the park their home were joined by hundreds, soon over a thousand, theatergoers, curiosity-seekers, and tourists of all ages. Many carried folding chairs or blankets and staked out the best plots. Individual pieces of turf assured, they strolled the park’s seven acres, pausing at the five large statues that dominated the square, some to read the plaques, others to have their pictures taken while striking their own heroic poses.

  National Park Service ranger Lloyd Mayes stood proudly next to the statue honoring the Frenchman for whom the park was now named, Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, the adopted American son who’d become a Revolutionary War hero, and whose friends and military colleagues called him Gilbert. At Gilbert’s feet was a nubile, partially naked young woman who, Mayes had learned in his training sessions, symbolized the fledgling nation of America. One of her delicate arms held aloft a sword. Supposedly, Mayes was taught, she was pleading for Marquis de Lafayette’s help. But depending upon the individual tourist group—especially those comprised primarily of young adults whose sensitivities would not be offended—Park Service rangers often remarked on what the young woman was actually saying to Lafayette: “Look, I’ll make a deal. You give me back my clothes, and I’ll give you back your sword.”

  Mayes would have preferred to be at his old post on Roosevelt Island, but he’d been transferred to duty in Lafayette Square following the discovery of Pauline Juris’s body. Although he hadn’t been the one that night to leave open the gate across the pedestrian causeway, a particularly nasty superior had decided that he, too, was culpable. His change in assignment was a form of punishment.

  Mayes knew the transfer to be blatantly unfair, but everything and everyone seemed to be unfair to him these days. Marge had packed up and gone home to her mother in Cincinnati. While her departure created a peace in his life—at least there was no one to fight with—he was lonely. The only thing that made him smile occasionally was that she’d gone to Cincinnati instead of Los Angeles, Detroit, or Miami. Cincinnati was a funny word, he thought, almost a funny city, and he would smile. Other than those infrequent moments, these were dark days and long nights for Lloyd Mayes.

  By the time Mac and Annabel arrived, the crowd had swelled to justify calling it a throng, perhaps even multitude. A Dixieland band had set up in the center of the park at the foot of the statue o
f Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” for whom the park had originally been named until the dashing Marquis de Lafayette upstaged him. Still, his was the most dominant of the statues that defined the center and corners of the park. And his was the only statue of an American hero in the park, the first president ever to be elected by the Democratic Party, which, in gratitude, had raised funds in 1853 to create their winner’s metal-and-marble tribute.

  The Smiths had approached the park from Sixteenth Street, pausing in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church at the corner of H, the “Church of the Presidents,” where Washington’s Social Register was synonymous with its list of parishioners. They managed to make their way to a knot of people gathered at the side of a makeshift stage that had been erected for the performance. Behind it a long rented house trailer served the cast.

  “Mother Nature’s been kind to you,” Mac said to Monty Jamison, who stood with Chip Tierney, director Seymour Fletcher, and some diehard Tri-S members.

  “Yes, I would say so,” Jamison said, shaking Smith’s hand and kissing Annabel on the cheek. “Splendid day for a murder.” They looked up into a cloudless cobalt sky.

  “Excuse me,” Jamison said, walking to the trailer. Smith asked Chip, “How are things going?”

  The young man slowly shook his head. “Terrible. You know about Sun Ben, of course.”

  “Of course,” Smith said. “Me and the rest of Washington. Is your dad here?”

  “No, and you know how upset he must be to miss this. He’s secluded himself in his study.”

  “What about Sun?”

  “The same, I guess. I really haven’t seen him. I tried to talk to him about it the night he was arrested, but he didn’t want to. I guess I can’t blame him. This family has been rocked by one scandal after another. I just wish it would end.”

  Smith remembered that Chip was to play a role in the production and asked if he was ready to go on.

  “God, no,” Chip replied. “I told Sy Fletcher there was no way I could go through with this, considering what’s happened at home. He got the original actor to come back.”

  Sam and Marie Tankloff joined them. “Amazing, the number of people who show up for these productions,” Sam said. “Like the garage sale Marie loves to run. They come out of the woodwork, descend in hordes, and usually hours before it’s supposed to start.” Marie laughed and playfully punched her husband’s arm. She punched his arm often in appreciation of things he said, or did.

  Annabel and Marie had their own chat as Tankloff took Mac aside. “Have you spoken to Wendell?” Sam asked.

  “Not since yesterday morning.”

  “I’m concerned about him, Mac. You know Wendell. Depression isn’t in his vocabulary. But I swung by there this morning. At first, he wouldn’t see me. When he decided he would, I was faced with an utterly dejected and demoralized man. This thing with Sun Ben has really shaken him. I was there yesterday afternoon when they had quite a confrontation. Frankly, if I didn’t know how strong Wendell was, I’d worry about him taking his own life.”

  “Frightening,” Smith said. “Do you think he’s capable of it?”

  Tankloff shrugged. “Who ever knows about those things? Someone on Marie’s side of the family took her life a few years ago. No one thought she knew how to spell suicide, but she did it.”

  “Any suggestions?” Smith asked.

  “No. I wish Wendell had come today. I think it would have done him some good, taken his mind off his troubles. You know how important Tri-S has always been to him.”

  “Do you think he’ll attend the dinner tonight?”

  “I hope so. I asked him this morning, but he was noncommittal. Maybe a call from you would push him in that direction.”

  “I’ll call as soon as I get home.”

  The trailer was a frenzy of activity. Sy Fletcher, Monty Jamison, and the cast and crew were making last-minute preparations before taking the stage. Suzanne Tierney, who would play the role of Congressman Dan Sickles’s indiscreet, adulterous wife, Teresa Bagioli Sickles, had arrived late, which wasn’t unusual for her. It was a chronic bad habit that upset most people but had not seemed to bother Fletcher. Until this day. To the surprise of others in the trailer, he lambasted her, saying, “Your lack of responsibility matches your lack of talent.”

  Equally surprising was Suzanne’s calm acceptance. She smiled and said pleasantly, “Coming from you, Sy, I take that as a compliment.” And she walked away, humming.

  “Is the president here?” someone asked.

  “No, but I heard the secretary of agriculture is in the audience.” Groans.

  “Could I please have your attention,” Fletcher asked. “We go on in a few minutes.” Everyone in the trailer continued to talk. “Damn it!” Fletcher shouted. The chatter trailed off. Before addressing the cast, Fletcher turned to Monty Jamison. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  The roly-poly professor went through his throat-clearing routine. “Yes, Sy. Ready, willing, and able.” Usually, Wendell Tierney was the master of ceremonies at these events, but in his absence, Jamison had been pressed into service. Little pressing was needed. He left the trailer to address the crowd.

  Fletcher stood on his tiptoes and held his hands in the air. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention.”

  The trailer door opened, and Chip Tierney entered, followed by Sam Tankloff. “I wish you were still playing the part,” a young female cast member whispered to Chip as he stood next to her. Her infatuation with him hadn’t been a secret during rehearsals.

  “Wardrobe, wardrobe,” an actor shouted. “This damn button just popped on my cutaway coat.”

  Fletcher clapped his hands. “Listen up now,” he said. “Is everyone’s energy level high? Your energy must be at its peak and transmitted to every individual in the audience if we’re—”

  Tankloff threaded his way through the group and went to a small bedroom at the far end of the trailer that housed costumes and some props. The woman in charge of wardrobe had responded to the actor’s cry for last-minute button surgery, leaving the prop girl alone in the room. “Everything ready?” Tankloff asked pleasantly.

  “I think so,” the girl said. “Excuse me.” She left to deliver the handkerchief to Carl Mayberry he would use to signal Teresa Sickles that they were due to rendezvous. When she returned a few minutes later, the prop room was empty. Tankloff had gone back outside to join his wife, Mac and Annabel, and a dozen others.

  Monty Jamison stepped up onto the outdoor stage, went to the microphone, coughed, and said, “Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to murder most foul from yesteryear.”

  “Sorry to hear about your brother,” the young actress said to Chip.

  “What? Oh, yes, thank you. All a mistake, I think.”

  “I hope so. I tried to talk to him before, but he didn’t seem in the mood for conversation. I suppose I can’t blame him.”

  “Sun? He was here?”

  “Yes. I was one of the first ones to arrive. Ran into him here. But he didn’t want to, like, talk, you know?”

  “He’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

  Jamison explained to the crowd the circumstances that had led to the February 1859 murder. He introduced the major characters, each coming onstage as a thumbnail sketch of their background and role in the drama was presented. The opening scene, Jamison explained, was set in a boardinghouse run by a gentleman named Lorenzo Da Ponte, a ninety-year-old Catholic priest who’d been a librettist for Mozart and close personal friend of the legendary Casanova and, besides running Washington’s most eclectic boardinghouse, managed a grocery store. The occasion was a party to celebrate the engagement of New York Tammany Hall congressman Dan Sickles to fifteen-year-old Teresa Bagioli. At the party was an assortment of friends and well-wishers, including James “Old Buck” Buchanan, future president of the United States, who at the time was ambassador to the Court of St. James. In a few days he would designate his close friend Dan Sickles to be his secretary of lega
tion. Although Philip Barton Key, district attorney of the District of Columbia and son of Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” had not yet become a friend of the couple, scriptwriter Madelon St. Cere had taken the liberty of hastening their friendship in the interest of introducing the character early on and had placed him at the party.

  Jamison ended his introduction by announcing that Tri-S membership information and applications were available at selected locations throughout the park. “Next month’s meeting has been especially planned for newcomers. We shall present an overview of murder in fiction, honoring, of course, the great Edgar Allan Poe and his analytical approach to discovering why that poor young girl was stuffed up a chimney in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ But we’ll also be going back in time much farther than that, to the Apocrypha and its murderous tales solved by none other than the prophet Daniel himself. In one—”

  “Psssst!” Seymour Fletcher hissed from the side of the stage. He pointed to his watch.

  “Yes, yes,” Jamison said. “We must forge ahead. Without further adieu—let the play begin!”

  A dozen scenes leading up to the shooting of Barton Key by Congressman Dan Sickles were acted out. Sickles’s seduction of the young Teresa was tastefully presented, avoiding its more sordid aspects and stressing the role played by Lorenzo Da Ponte, who was actually Teresa’s adoptive grandfather and who, according to the script, had nurtured the premarital affair. And there was a pivotal scene in London between Sickles and Buchanan that preceded Buchanan’s election to the White House.

  Once Buchanan became president, Sickles’s place in Washington political and social circles was assured. While he kept himself busy, including making frequent visits to area brothels, his close friend Barton Key became Teresa’s “official” escort to charity events and other social gatherings. They soon became lovers, frequently having their clandestine grapplings in the Congressional Cemetery on the tranquil, rolling banks of the Anacostia River.

  But, as so often happens with such affairs, things began to unravel for the unfaithful Teresa and the lecherous Key, who once bragged that given thirty-six hours with any woman, he would have her doing his bidding. A young man named Beekman, who worked for Congressman Sickles and who’d become a close family friend, fell in love with Teresa. He got wind of the affair she was having with Key and took it upon himself to follow them to their graveside assignations. He reported his findings to another friend in government, who passed it on to yet another individual, who, predictably, made sure that Sickles knew. Confronted by Sickles, Key vehemently denied everything, which seemed to satisfy his suspicious friend.