“Can you think of anyone who actually has the guts to kill him?”
“In this town? Not really.”
I stood up. “Thank you so much for your time, Madeline. I appreciate your talking to me.” I turned the recorder off and approached her. “I hope you’ll take my hand.”
She stood and accepted it, smiling. “Yours? Anytime, Aaron. You’re a delightful change of pace from the usual Washington reporter.”
“That’s because I’m from New Jersey.”
Crosby grinned wider. “A much misunderstood state. Really quite a lovely place to live, in spots.”
“I knew I liked you for a reason, Madeline.” I turned to leave.
“Aaron,” she said, and I stopped on my way to the door. “I’m curious. You didn’t ask me. . .”
“I didn’t ask you what?”
“If the allegations Gibson made were true.”
“That’s right,” I said, “I didn’t ask.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I considered that for a moment. “Because it didn’t make any difference to the story I’m writing, so it’s none of my business.”
“I knew I liked you for a reason, Aaron,” she said. Crosby’s smile was ear-to-ear now.
Chapter
Six
I met Abby and the kids at the Air and Space Museum, where we saw the “Spirit of St. Louis,” Orville and Wilbur Wright’s plane (“The Kitty Hawk”), and my personal favorite, the original “Star-ship Enterprise.” History is different things to different people.
After lunch, my family and I went our separate ways. They headed for the Capitol Building, and I headed for a police station near the zoo.
On arriving, I went through the required ritual. I asked for Lt. McCloskey, was told he was held up in meetings, and was passed on to Sgt. Abrams. Which was where I’d intended to end up, anyway.
Mason Abrams turned out to be a compact man, maybe five foot eight (which still puts him a good couple of inches taller than me), built something like a strong chimp, all chest and arms. I’m built more like a walrus, all flippers and tusks.
He stuck out his hand when I introduced myself, and I took it. I’d felt badly about the way our relationship had begun, but Abrams seemed not to hold a grudge. I said I had more specific questions about Gibson’s murder, and Abrams immediately gave me the company line.
“All I can tell you is that the investigation is ongoing. Any details are being held back to aid in the investigation of this crime.”
I stopped a moment, raised my eyebrows, and exhaled. “You let me drive for six hours with two children in the back seat to tell me that?”
“That’s right,” he said. “And I’ll tell you the same exact thing in the coffee shop at the corner in ten minutes.” I nodded, shook Abrams’ hand, and left.
It took only five minutes for him to get to the coffee shop, where he didn’t tell me the same exact thing. “You wouldn’t believe the level of security they’re throwing over this thing,” he said. “I’ll bet the Kennedy assassination didn’t get this kind of a shut-down.”
“True, but that took place in Dallas.”
“That’s what they’d like you to believe.”
Abrams ordered a coffee, this being a coffee shop. I opted for Diet Coke, since I sincerely thought of it as a Diet Coke shop. As soon as the waitress left the table, he started to talk in a hushed tone. I eschewed the recorder and took notes.
“There was just the one stab wound, in the chest, through the heart. A lovely job, well planned and executed, you should pardon the expression,” he said. “The knife was a standard kitchen knife, manufactured by Gerber as part of a set. No fingerprints. A box with the rest of the set, also no fingerprints, was found in a trash can about a block from the apartment. It had, in all likelihood, been purchased in a Hoffritz store about five blocks from the apartment, though the only similar set the shop sold within 24 hours of the murder was a cash transaction, and the clerk doesn’t remember the purchaser. They sell seven or eight sets a week, usually.”
“No prints at all in the apartment?”
“Oh, no, there were tons of prints. Gibson’s, our own Ms. Braxton’s, of course. A couple of other boyfriends of Ms. Braxton’s—don’t bother, they both have perfect alibis, mostly being in bed with other girlfriends at the time.”
“This is an awfully friendly town,” I observed.
“We’re not the Deep South, but we are the South,” he drawled, saying “South” as if it were “Say-owth.”
“What did the autopsy reveal?” I asked.
“What do you think it revealed?” Abrams countered. “He was stabbed in the chest with a six-inch kitchen knife. He died. The end.”
“What time did the M.E. say Crazy Legs died?”
“Crazy Legs?”
Oops. “What time did Gibson die?” Abrams cocked his head to one side and considered me. “The M.E. didn’t have to determine time of death. Little Miss Flashdance was only in the shower for twenty minutes. So we know Gibson died between 5:15 and 5:35 p.m. Now, tell me about this Crazy Legs.”
So I did.
“You have an interesting history, Tucker,” Abrams said. “Nice of you to mention it before.”
“What good would my going to school a town over from Legs Gibson do to help the police investigation?” I asked.
“Any information is good information in my business,” Abrams said with a smack of self-satisfaction.
“Mine, too. Has Lt. McCloskey looked into the family’s finances yet?”
The waitress appeared with the beverages and slapped the check down at the same time. She slapped it down next to me, since she probably recognized Abrams and didn’t want to upset him with something so trivial as the bill.
Abrams watched her walk away, and it wasn’t in appreciation of her form. He began whispering to me after he was sure she was out of earshot.
“The finances are the reason I had you come down here,” he said. “I know you’re not one of the pack here, and so far, you’ve been relatively trustworthy.” “Next time I go to high school with one of your suspects, I’ll be sure to tell you, okay?” I said.
“Forget that,” he said. “Listen to what I’m telling you. The family finances are, so far, clean as a whistle. But we don’t expect that to last.”
I could feel my eyebrows meet in the middle. “Why not?”
“Because the books at People For American Values were so cooked we’re starting to suspect Wolfgang Puck was involved. So far as the financial guys can tell, the foundation bank account had been skimmed for over thirteen million dollars.”
Chapter
Seven
Luckily, I wasn’t sucking on a straw when Abrams said that, or an ice cube might have gotten pulled up and lodged in my eye socket. “What?” I managed to choke out.
He did a very good Cheshire Cat impression. “I thought you’d like that one,” Abrams said.
“So, thirteen million dollars is missing from the foundation Legs Gibson started, Legs has a knife sticking out of his chest, and you’re going to arrest his wife because. . . why?”
Abrams lost most of the grin. “Well, that whole arresting the wife thing seems to be going by the wayside at the moment,” he said. “We have EZ Pass records showing her entering the New Jersey Turnpike a good four and a half hours before Gibson was stabbed. We don’t have any evidence yet that she has the money. She certainly didn’t deposit thirteen mil into her checking account.”
“And there are no other suspects?”
“There are legions of other suspects,” Abrams said. “There are enough people who had access to that funding to keep us interrogating until my retirement. The question is, if someone else was skimming the money, why would they kill Gibson?”
“Because he found out?”
“He didn’t seem terribly concerned about it,” Abrams said. “There he is, on a Saturday afternoon, losing himself in an administrative assistant in the human resources office of the Dep
artment of Housing and Urban Development.”
“True,” I pondered. “Money. And here I thought you guys had found some DNA evidence you were going to hang Steph out to dry on.”
Abrams stopped smiling entirely, and tried to catch the waitress’ attention so he could get a refill. He was unsuccessful, both at getting more coffee and at throwing me off the scent.
“You did find DNA, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Keep your voice down,” he breathed. “Okay. I’m going to tell you this, but if you ever, ever try to attribute or connect it to me, I’ll deny not only that I ever met you, but that I’ve ever even heard of the state of New Jersey. Are we straight?”
“I’ve always been. I never even experimented in college.”
His eyes were not amused, and they were practically boring holes into my forehead. “Okay,” I said. “We’re straight.”
Abrams looked positively intense, which was a 180-degree turn from his usual expression. He was talking in a tone so low I couldn’t be sure I was picking up every word.
“We found a hair,” he said. “Just one hair, and it didn’t match Gibson, Ms. Braxton, or Mrs. Gibson. We ran it through the DNA files of known offenders who’ve given samples, through the FBI, and we hit a match. A guy from Texas, Branford T. Purell.”
“What did Mr. Purell get convicted of?” I asked, in a tone almost as low as Abrams’. Some things are catching.
“Murder. He killed three women in Texas in the late eighties.”
I started breathing a little faster. “Did he use a knife?”
“No, a shotgun. Mr. Purell wasn’t exactly subtle.” Abrams was-n’t making eye contact—there was something he wasn’t telling me.
“Okay, so let’s find this Purell guy. Where is he?”
Abrams set his jaw, and turned his head to make direct eye contact with me. His eyes weren’t amused.
“He’s dead,” Abrams said. “Branford T. Purell was executed seven years ago.”
Chapter
Eight
Abrams and I exchanged incredibly unlikely suggestions on how a dead man’s hair could make it into a live secretary’s apartment seven years after he met his end in Texas, but neither of us was terribly enthusiastic about our theories. Mine, that he had been put to death unbelievably slowly by watching an attractive woman have sex with all sorts of other men, was not entirely serious. Abrams suggested it would lead to a new form of cruel and unusual punishment: death by pornography.
I thanked him for the information, however weird, and went back to the hotel. Abby and the kids were at the pool again, but now I had time to put on a bathing suit and join them, thus delighting my children and disappointing all the other men at the pool, who had been watching my wife and hoping she was a divorcée or a widow. No, I’m not paranoid—they all are truly against me.
We spent the evening quietly, going out to a restaurant and avoiding all mention of Legs or Stephanie. After dinner, the kids retired to their lair to see if Fred Flintstone had come up with anything new to say since 1966 (it was new to them), while Abby and I headed to our bedroom to collapse into two separate exhausted heaps on the bed.
Since my wife is incapable of collapsing into an exhausted heap without doing at least 30 minutes of prep work in the bathroom, I had plenty of time to set the stage. I shut off all the lights in the room except the one over her pillow, then turned down Abby’s half of the bed. The hotel had been kind enough to supply a chocolate for her pillow, and I moved it to a spot just below there.
I stripped down to the boxers with the New York Yankees emblem she had gotten me as a gag gift for my latest birthday, and climbed under the blanket. So when Abby (finally) emerged from the bathroom, she saw a dimly lit, quiet hotel bed, lavishly made up, with a chocolate and a husband.
And, of course, on her pillow, a screenplay.
She laughed, then walked over and sat down, careful to pick up the chocolate first. She looked at me and determined that I was not, in fact, asleep. Then she looked at the script, and chuckled again.
“The Minivan Rolls for Thee?” she asked, looking at the title.
“Hemingway,” I said.
“I understood the reference,” she admonished. “I’m just wondering if it’s about. . .”
“It kind of is,” I said. “And it’s kind of not. You decide.”
Abby lay down, her short pajamas showcasing her magnificent legs. She picked up the script and opened it.
“You realize I’m not going to read it all tonight,” she said.
“Of course,” I told her. “I’ll be glad if you get past page one.”
She bent her magnificent legs to make a reading stand for the script, and got to work. I did my best not to watch, but then she chuckled, and I tried to catch a glimpse of which page she was on, to see what was funny, and whether it had been intentional.
“Stop watching me,” she said. “You know it makes me nervous.”
“I wasn’t watching you,” I told her. “I was ogling your legs.”
“That’s different.”
She went back to reading, and I lay there, eyes ostensibly closed, appreciating her. Okay, so I was watching to see if she’d find anything else amusing.
“You’re making this difficult,” she warned.
“Me? I’m as quiet as a mouse.”
“A mouse with a pair of binoculars.”
“They’re still quiet,” I pointed out.
Abby tried valiantly, and I even turned away at one point, relying on the inevitable closet mirror to watch her. She caught me looking at her in the mirror, and closed the script.
“Don’t stop,” I said.
She leaned over and put the script on her nightstand, then turned off the light and reached over to me. Abby pulled me close to her and kissed me with an impressive amount of passion for a woman who’d spent all day shepherding two children around our nation’s capital.
“C’mere,” she said.
“Two nights in a row? You’ll do anything to avoid reading that script with me in the room, won’t you?”
“Pretty much,” she said.
The next morning (ahem!), I got up early to meet Stephanie and her sons at Steph’s house, and left a note for Abby saying I’d meet her and the kids at the hotel before checkout time.
By the time I navigated the minivan into a parking space near Stephanie’s house, I was a wreck. If you have a car, Washington makes even less sense than most cities. They even have streets that are one-way at certain times of the day, and two-way the rest of the time. Now, that’s entertainment.
So I was a wee bit late when Steph opened the door. She had been kind enough to put out a basket of muffins and bagels on the table, along with a pot of coffee and, in my honor, a smaller pot of real hot chocolate. The woman had class, I’ll give her that.
Stephanie introduced me to her sons. The taller one, Lou Jr., looked me straight in the eye. He has dark, straight hair and no doubt is his grandmother’s favorite. You couldn’t find Semitic blood in this kid if you went in with a sewer snake.
He shook my hand like he was damn glad to know me, and even smiled—the same smile Legs had in all the newspaper clip photos. I tried not to dislike the kid too quickly on the basis of his accidental similarity to a noted asshole.
“How can we help you, Mr. Tucker?” My god, the private schools really had done a bang-up job on this one. He’d be President of the United States by the end of the week.
“Well, if your mother will be so kind as to leave us to our business. . .” Stephanie nodded unhappily, took a worried glance at Jason, which I noticed, and closed the door behind her. I looked back at Junior.
“You two have been away at school, is that right?” Always best to start off with something easy, unless you have only one question to ask.
“Well, I’ve been at college, but it’s just Georgetown,” Junior began. (“Just Georgetown.” That’s like saying, “I have a car, but it’s just a Porsche.”) “So I’m around here pre
tty frequently. I have an apartment near school, but that’s not far from here, either.”
I turned to Jason, who had been standing near the window, but unlike his grandmother, facing into the room. He was lighter in complexion and hair, and his eyes looked wary. Clearly, the better interview, because he wasn’t as sure of himself, and might say something he wasn’t supposed to.
“How about you, Jason?”
“Pringley. It’s in Annapolis.” It wasn’t a mumble, but it might just as well have been. Jason wanted out of this room, and now.
“Is it too far for you to visit often?” Now I sounded like my own mother.
“No, I come down once a month or so.”
“When did you see your father last?”
There was a bit of eye contact between the two before Junior decided to answer for both of them. “I saw him the night before it. . . happened. . . and Jason was here the week before that,” he said.
“Anything unusual? Did he seem tense, or distracted?”
There was no hesitation this time. “No.”
“Anything going on between him and your mother?”
“No.” Jason still hadn’t moved a muscle, nor was he attempting to answer for himself.
“What kind of relationship did you have with your father?”
Junior looked surprised. “He was my father,” he said, with a degree of “how-stupid-are-you” in it.
“Marvin Gaye’s father shot and killed him. What was your relationship like?”
“I respected him,” Junior said, his eyes burning death rays into my skull. “He had accomplished an enormous amount, and he was still a relatively young man.”
“How about you, Jason?”
I have no doubt that Jason was about to acquiesce to my brilliant line of questioning, but he never had the chance. The dining room door opened, and Lester Gibson walked in. Both boys seemed uneasy, almost alarmed, at his entrance, and now they both fell silent.
A Farewell to Legs Page 14