“It is indeterminate whether Tim loved Sylvia for herself or for her money. But Sylvia was deeply in love with him. Yet she also loved and took care of Pauly. Now, it’s one thing to fall passionately in love with another man and divorce your husband, another thing to subject that longtime partner to exposure and possible life imprisonment. Sylvia told Pauly about her affair with Tim—and about Barbara’s ultimatum.
“They decided to kill Barbara. Their method was ingenious. Sylvia planted pennyroyal in the peppermint bed and substituted it for peppermint in the tea that was brewed the night of the party.”
Rothwax held one hand up as if he were a stoplight. “Wait a minute Slow down. This is worse than a soap. It’s a Chinese puzzle. What the hell is ‘pennyroyal’?”
“A plant. It smells almost exactly like peppermint. But it’s used traditionaly as an antidote for seasickness.”
“You’re losing me here, Alice,” Rothwax said. He picked up an empty espresso glass to demonstrate to the waitress what he wanted.
“Pennyroyal, Detective Rothwax, like many herbs, sometimes has a paradoxical effect on the user. Similar in a way to the drug Valium. Some people who take Valium to calm down end up getting violent—particularly if they’ve mixed it with alcohol. Pennyroyal helps to balance most people, but for those with certain allergies the effect is just the opposite—it makes them dizzy. The allergies bring on the anomalous effects of pennyroyal, just as alcohol sometimes precipitates the anomalous effects of Valium.”
“And Barbara had these allergies?”
“Yes. I found that out quite accidentally from the vet Barbara used for her cat Swampy. It was he who found a new home for the cat after Tim was murdered.”
“This is starting to get interesting,” he said, stirring the espresso the waitress had placed in front of him.
“You see, everyone at the party was given pennyroyal. But only Barbara had that bad reaction to it. Dizzy and nauseated, she wandered unsteadily out onto the terrace. Along comes drunken, bumbling Pauly. A little push. She hurtles to her death.”
“Then that’s why Graff—or Linneus—showed up at the garden tonight. Right? To get rid of the pennyroyal that was still growing?”
“Exactly. I told everyone that someone from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was coming to inspect the garden tomorrow.” I looked across at his wristwatch. The wee hours of the morning were upon us. “I mean today. Obviously the visitor would have spotted the pennyroyal. Neither Sylvia nor Pauly wanted anyone to know about it, to know that it had been planted among the peppermint. Looking back now, I can see why Sylvia always wanted to take care of the peppermint bed herself. She didn’t like to have anyone else butting in.”
“Beautiful, Alice, beautiful,” he exhaled.
“Like it? Are you impressed?”
“I’m knocked out.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to get a compliment from a colleague. And you are my colleague—sort of.”
“Now tell me: Why kill Tim Roman?”
“Because he was clearly unraveling after Barbara’s death. Neither Sylvia nor Pauly knew whether Barbara had told Tim about Pauly’s past. If he did know, he could not be trusted to remain silent, because he was essentially out of control. So Pauly drew on his old expertise to kill him.”
Rothwax leaned back, seemingly lost in thought. He sipped his coffee absentmindedly.
“I don’t want to depress you, Alice,” he said, “but while the bomb people will easily be able to make a case against Pauly, I can see no way for Homicide to prove he pushed Barbara off the terrace. No witnesses. No body to autopsy, to see if she indeed swigged pennyroyal. And even if there was a body, and an autopsy showed pennyroyal, it’s not a poison. It’s just a plant, an herb. Everyone at the party drank it.”
“I don’t think anyone will have to prove anything, Detective.”
“Is that right?” he queried, the old sarcasm back.
“Yes. I think Pauly will confess once you tell him that Sylvia is a suspect in both murders. He’ll try to save her.”
“What? And she walks?!”
“Maybe. She did brew the tea. She did start the chain of betrayal and death. She knew what was going to happen every step of the way. But only Pauly murdered.”
“Sometimes, Cat Lady,” Rothwax said with obvious respect and affection, “you have what they used to call in the Academy ‘the criminal mind.’”
I turned halfway around in my chair and spoke to the waitress, who had reappeared. “One more piece of chocolate cake, please. Hold the whipped cream. And a large glass of water.”
She nodded, looked furtively about, then whispered into my ear: “I saw you in a play at the Seventy-Fourth Street Theater about five years ago. You were just wonderful.”
“What the hell was all that about?” Rothwax asked after the young woman had departed.
“She warned me not to order the peppermint tea.”
Chapter 26
Renee Lupo was the first one to call me the following day. She phoned at noon—and woke me. What in God’s name was happening? she wanted to know. Pauly had been arrested! And the police were questioning Sylvia. I told her that I didn’t know any more than she did. When Ava called twenty minutes later, my responses were just as noncommittal.
But they kept calling. What about the garden? they asked. Yes, what about it? Finish it off with a flourish by harvesting and selling the herbs? Or let them rot in the ground, because too many people associated with the place had already been destroyed? What price catnip?
The calls intensified. I had to get away.
At three in the afternoon I put the cats into their traveling cases and did something I hadn’t done in years: rented a car.
A little later I was driving north and east on an ugly old highway, headed for Stratford.
I reached the playhouse around seven. There was no performance that evening, but the doors were open. I walked inside, past the ticket office, and into the theater.
In the typical summer stock arrangement, the stage was a thrust-out, one-set, no-curtain affair. Basillio’s work was in full view.
My! What a stunning job he had done for this provincial production of Julius Casear.
There were only two elements to the set. The first was a massive white canvas stretched all around the stage—making the entire set, and indeed the entire theater, an emblem of the tents of the Roman Imperial Legions.
The second element, downstage left, was a truly massive pile of yellow ribbon stretched up to the high ceiling, emblematic of the latest patriotic manifestation of imperial America—Operation Desert Storm, in the Gulf.
I felt good looking at it—very good—and very proud of Tony. Basillio had regained his verve, his independence. For him, the stage set was even more important than the script. The set told its own story; it captured the audience in its own way; it could succeed even if all else failed. Bravo, Tony!
Two workmen were cleaning an air-conditioning duct high up on the wall. I yelled up to them: “Do you know where I can find Tony Basillio?”
They told me to try the restaurant called Burke’s, he might be there. The whole company hung out there after performances or on their days off.
There was a pay phone outside the theater. I called the home number Basillio had given me. No answer. I decided to try Burke’s.
It was, in fact, just a pizza place, but it was cavernous and had a good feel about it. The moment I walked in I heard Tony’s voice. That was nice. The only problem was, the voice was very angry. And there were other raised voices breaking into his tirade, equally angry.
I realized that I’d walked into an intense theatrical dispute. Or an intense dispute on theater. Maybe both.
Tony was shouting at a young man with a Prince Valiant haircut, who must have been the director. Tony was saying that he
didn’t care how many raves the production had gotten, it was boring and intellectually bankrupt—totally without redeeming theatrical value or any other kind of value. He stuck his finger in front of Prince Valiant’s face and said that the play itself was garbage and ought to be banned from all theaters until the twenty-fifth century.
The young man then asked Tony why he didn’t go back to New York, if he disliked the show so intensely.
Basillio replied that he was going to give that option some serious consideration.
And then he noticed me.
He didn’t move for a minute, not quite believing what he was seeing. Finally he walked over to me. “Swede! How did you get here?”
“In a spiffy little Nissan Sentra. My cats and I were out for a spin, and now we’re in need of safe haven for the night.”
“You came to the right place,” he said, grabbing my elbow and escorting me out.
I drove him to his apartment, retrieved the cat carriers, and we all went inside. The place was small and rustic, to use the kindest phrase, and full of shaky, scuffed furniture. The kitchen was of 1930s vintage.
Tony was talking a blue streak about how much he hated his present situation: the damn production, the company, the town, the food, the dialect, the audiences, the water, the air (Why the air? I asked him. Was it too clean? But he didn’t even hear me.), and a great deal more.
I opened the carriers and let my beasts out. Bushy first, because he hated being inside. Crazy Pancho, on the other hand, looked upon it all as a great vacation, a refuge from his furtive, fugitive existence.
I studied Bushy’s reaction to the new surroundings. He sashayed in one direction and then another—stately, slowly, his nose in the air. It was obvious he found these new quarters decidedly beneath him.
Pancho was different. The moment he stepped into the room he went into a crouch, waiting for the bad news.
Basillio was still ranting. He hadn’t asked a single question about me or the Roman case. Or what I was really doing up here.
Ordinarily that would have infuriated me. But I soon realized that his lack of interest was exactly what I was looking for right then. I was in no mood to crow about having solved the murders. Nor did I want to brag about the ingenious trap I’d set. And I especially didn’t want to discuss Tim Roman—neither the brief affair I’d had with him nor the fact that I still didn’t know for sure how many of us he had slept with. Besides, it was almost as though I had expected Tim to vanish sooner or later. He had been one of Barbara’s “things,” and he would have faded, disappeared, like all her other things—her friends, her cat, her garden. But I had to stop this train of thought. I was getting morbid.
I just wanted it all to vanish, and leave nothing but good memories of Barbara.
“. . . and do me a favor, will you?” he was shouting. “Put those cats of yours back in the car!”
“If those cats go back to the car, Tony, so do I!”
That ended his crazed monologue.
I took advantage of his temporary silence. “There’s one other condition for my staying here tonight, Basillio.”
“What’s that?”
“Do not call me ‘Swede’.”
His handsome face collapsed in confusion. “What do you mean? What should I call you, Swede?”
“Just for tonight, Tony, call me Alice.”
He cocked his head, as if this were only another option to be seriously considered. But that was enough for me. I went to turn down the sheets.
Don’t miss Alice Nestleton’s next mystery adventure by Lydia Adamson
A CAT IN THE WINGS
Available from InterMix December 2012
Think of the music and costumes and exuberance of The Nutcracker! As performed on Christmas Eve by the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. Is there any other event that so captures the desperate holiday gaiety of Manhattan?
I doubt it.
But what was I doling there in a first-tier box with five kiddies?
Yes, five. Count them. Between the ages of six and ten. There was Kathy, Laura, Stephen, Edward, and one whose name may have been Ada or Lara or Sadie
I was there because in a moment of hubris, I bragged to one of my cat-sitting clients that I could get good tickets to The Nutcracker any time I wanted.
Mrs. Timmerman was wide-eyed when I announced that. She asked, “But how?”
“A friend in high places,” I replied mysteriously.
Indeed, I did have a friend in high places. Lucia Maury worked in the executive offices of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Her responsibilities included making travel arrangements for the New York City Ballet when they went on tour. I had known Lucia for more than twenty years. We had been roommates when we had both arrived in Manhattan—she to dance and I to act. We had kept in touch—one reason being that we shared a passion for Maine coon cats. Lucia had a wonderful Maine coon named Splat who passed away about three years ago. Lucia was so distraught that she never obtained another cat. She had been a very fine ballet dancer until she hurt her knee. After joining Lincoln Center in an administrative capacity, she had often offered me tickets, most of which I had refused.
The only flaw in our relationship was that I was profoundly jealous of her while she was dancing. Like many actresses, I have this inferiority complex in relation to ballet dancers. They are so bloody wonderful! They do what we yearn to do and never can.
Anyone who has been backstage just before a ballet starts knows what I mean. The dancers are chatting about everything from boyfriends to shopping trips to the weather. Some stretch. Some put on makeup.
Suddenly the orchestra begins, and a few seconds later the curtain goes up.
One of the dancers, who moments earlier was chewing on a fingernail because she was bored, bursts out onto the stage and executes a series of magnificent leaps and turns.
She stops suddenly downstage, bows luxuriously, and then proceeds to glissade contemptuously about the stage.
In a short span of time the dancer has gone from quiescence to ecstasy, with many stops in between—a disciplined orgy of physical elegance and control.
How could an actress not be jealous of a ballet dancer!
Well, to make a long story short, Mrs. Timmerman was annoying me that day. She kept going on and on about her country house in Dutchess County and how they had decided to stay in Manhattan this Christmas and let the children experience an “urban Christmas.” And besides, the cat, Belle, hated the country.
On and on she went, and I had to listen politely. The more she talked, the more she irritated me. So I just casually mentioned that I could get any kind of ballet tickets, including The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. It was my way of showing her that, while I might be a cat sitter, I had another life—a life that was far superior to hers culturally, despite her wealth.
It was kind of pathetic. I usually don’t do those kinds of petty things. But Christmas in New York is difficult, even if one is a Minnesota girl who has lived in Manhattan for more than two decades. And the conversation with Mrs. Timmerman took place only nineteen days before Christmas.
Compounding my stupidity, I offered to take the children as well as obtain the tickets. Everyone was ecstatic except for Belle and me.
So that was why, on Christmas Eve, I was shepherding the kiddies to The Nutcracker. That was how I ended up sitting in an opulent box seat at the State Theatre, among all that Noel splendor of light and color and music and fantasy.
Actually, Tchaikovsky was always too much for me. So after the first dazzling scene, I let my mind wander back in time, trying to imagine what the first production of The Nutcracker in America must have looked like. That took place at the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1940, before I was born. The company was the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The Sugar Plum Fairy was Alicia Markova. The Pr
ince was Andre Eglevsky. When my efforts failed, I just let myself doze off, since my charges were mesmerized by the balletic spectacle.
My doze turned into a gentle fantasy of my two cats, Bushy and Pancho, trying out for roles in an all-feline production of The Nutcracker.
I opened my eyes just as, onstage, the Mouse King was about to be extirpated by the heroine.
The door to our box had been pushed open a few inches.
It was Lucia Maury. I hadn’t even known she would be at the performance. She hadn’t mentioned it. I gestured for her to come in.
She didn’t move. She held a finger up to her lips as if signifying that the children shouldn’t know she was there. It was very odd.
Then she waved one hand, indicating that I should leave the box.
I did so. The children were too caught up in the ballet to even notice.
The moment I stepped outside the box and closed the door gently behind me, I knew Lucia was in some kind of trouble.
Her thin, angular body was stooped over. She was very pale. The long sleeves of her lovely black dress were pulled up to her elbows, as if she were about to do manual labor.
“Lucia! What’s the matter?”
She started to answer and burst into tears. Then, fighting back the tears, she grabbed my arm and started to pull me along.
I allowed myself to be led. Lounging ushers stared at us. The music from within could be heard only dimly.
She guided me through the mezzanine lobby, past the bar already set up for the coming intermission, and through the glass doors onto the open-air balcony.
It was cold. A strong wind was blowing. The city was a blaze of holiday lights. The fountain in the plaza below was spouting magnificently. I could hear the bells from the Salvation Army Santa Clauses on Broadway.
At first I thought we were the only people on that windswept balcony. But then I saw a small knot of people on the western edge, against the building. At least two of them were police officers.
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