Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One)

by Nancy Tesler

  A sigh, then angrily: “Okay, you don’t want to hear my explanation? You want to sulk and lick you wounds? Fine. I’m here whenever you decide to behave like an adult!” The phone clicked off.

  “Go buy some Band-Aids, pal,” I said out loud, grabbing my bag. “You’re going to have a few wounds of your own to lick before I'm through.”

  I’d barely locked the front door when I heard a car pull up. As if conjured from my subconscious, there stood Ted Brodsky.

  “I have an appointment, Detective,” I said, trying my best to appear unruffled.

  “You on the way to your office?”

  “Not till eleven. But--”

  “I need a few minutes.”

  What now? “Why?”

  “We need to talk.”

  He seemed much cooler than he had last night.

  “Last time we talked, jumping off the G.W. bridge seemed a viable option.”

  “I was only the messenger.”

  “Yeah, well, they kill messengers---” I stopped. Why did everything I say seem to have something to do with murder?

  “You don't have to watch every word,” he said, his tone friendly.

  I was confused. About his change of manner and about my reaction to him. I studied his face. So impassive, so controlled. Impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  He hadn’t seemed like an adversary yesterday. The effect of his touch on me aside, the guy hadn't been making a pass. He’d been showing compassion, one human being to another. And the way his clothes hung on him sort of touched me, as if he didn’t care how he looked because he had nobody who cared about him. But he was the law. Anything I said might be used against me. Maybe this sudden friendliness was an act, part of some plan to get me to incriminate myself.

  He glanced at me impatiently. “Shall we go inside?”

  I hesitated, debating whether to tell him about Mirimar. Last night I’d sworn never to trust anyone, and here I was, wanting to share information with this cop.

  Well, I wasn’t a criminal. And what the Mirimar investigator had to say might help to find the killer. Which would clear me. So I told him about the bill, and Sue Tomkins seeing the car, and my deduction that this investigator might have gotten a make on the vehicle. “That’s where I was going now,” I concluded.

  “Why didn't you tell me about this before?”

  “I'm telling you now.”

  “Get in the car. I'll go with you.”

  I got in.

  We were silent for the next couple of blocks. I stared straight ahead, very aware of him, annoyed with myself for being aware. At the light he looked over at me. “You okay?”

  “Aside from the fact that I’m involved in two murders, my best friend’s betrayed me, my husband’s left me and taken off for parts unknown, and my son doubts me, I’m terrific.”

  His smile accentuated the little wrinkles around his eyes. “What’s this about your son?”

  “Somebody in school said I was the only one with a motive. He got in a fight over it.”

  “Sounds to me like a kid who loves his mother.”

  I swallowed, then got the words out. “He asked me if I did it.”

  “So he wanted a little reassurance. Hey, the kid took a black eye defending you.”

  “Bruised cheeks.”

  His fingers brushed the smudges under my eyes, and my disobedient heart skipped a beat.

  “You look like you've been in a fight yourself.”

  “I didn’t sleep very well.”

  Conversation lagged as we turned onto the parkway. The trees were in full bloom, splashes of green and white and pink on either side of the road. Normally I love this time of year. This year my spirit had lost its wings.

  “You know,” I murmured, making an effort to break the silence, “you’ve probably found out everything there is to know about me, but I don’t know a thing about you other than your profession.”

  “Not much to know.”

  “You have children?”

  “Never married.” He held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I know what you mental health people think about that.”

  “I’m a little soured on marriage myself right now. Anyway, I guessed you weren’t married. If you were, you’d have a jacket that fit.”

  “It used to fit,” he said. “It will again in about a month.”

  “You’ve been sick?”

  “Spent a little time in the hospital. Food was lousy.”

  “What was the matter?”

  He paused briefly. “A little run-in with a shooter.”

  I jumped. “You were shot?”

  “Nothing life-threatening.”

  But his words had jolted me.

  There’s a technique we teach in biofeedback. When you find yourself in a situation that activates your “fight or flight” response and the adrenaline is flowing, you stop and ask yourself, “Is this a life-threatening situation?” If it isn’t, and most aren’t, you employ relaxation techniques, assuring yourself that you can cope, thus reserving that adrenaline flow for the rarer moments when you might meet Tyrannosaurus Rex. In that instance you assess the situation, then choose between standing your ground or running like hell.

  I assessed my situation. Ted Brodsky was in a life-threatening business. What was I doing getting ideas about this guy? He was a detective conducting a murder investigation, and I, much as I wanted to deny it, was a suspect. I was most definitely in a life-threatening situation. If he wasn’t Tyrannosaurus, he was about as close to one as I ever want to get.

  We turned off Lemoine Avenue onto Center Street.

  “I think it’s that red brick building on the corner,” I said, keeping my voice businesslike. “This is number 421, so that must be 425.”

  He pulled into the lot, cut the motor, and turned to look at me. He knew exactly what I’d been thinking. There was amusement in his eyes, and something I couldn’t quite read. Disappointment?

  I fumbled around for the door handle, couldn’t find it. His rough jacket brushed my arm as he reached across and opened it.

  “If I’m calling you Carrie,” he said, his mouth too close to my ear, “I guess it’s only fair you start calling me Ted.”

  “Okay,” I replied breathlessly, as every hair on my head began to tingle. “Fair is fair.” And I flew out of the car and ran like hell to the safety of the impersonal lobby.

  MIRIMAR SECURITY WAS located on the first floor in the last office on the left at the rear of the building. I beat Brodsky to the door by at least ten strides. I needed time to deal with my reaction, which, I assured myself, was clearly the result of a crisis-triggered vulnerability. Classic hostage, like Patty Hearst who, having lost control of her life, related romantically to her kidnapper. I would eventually come to my senses.

  The reception area was small, sparsely furnished with a truncated green vinyl couch, a walnut lamp table scratched in more places than my son's dirt bike, and a straight-back wooden armchair. The swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated was the only reading material in sight.

  A dour gray-haired woman wearing almost no makeup, a grouchy expression, and a lavender pantsuit with a polka-dot blouse, sat behind a glass partition filing her nails. She slid back the window without missing a stroke.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for one of your investigators,” I began, ignoring the gentle nudge in my back. “I don't know his name, but his initials are P.R.”

  “What is it in reference to?”

  “I’m Caroline Carlin Burnham. Your firm was hired by my lawyer, Arthur Carboni, to look into my husband’s uh-— business affairs. I’ve seen the investigator’s report, and I’d like to talk with him.”

  Her expression metamorphosed from grouchy to suspicious. She dropped the emery board, swiveled her chair ninety degrees, and mumbled a few inaudible words into the intercom. Then she swiveled back. “I’m sorry. Mr. Rostow is out on a case.”

  “Well then, I’d like to speak with someone else in charge.”


  The pressure between my shoulder blades accelerated to painful, and I felt myself nudged away from the window. A flash of the badge later, and we were ushered into an office approximately the size of my linen closet and seated across from Peter Rostow himself, who miraculously had managed, unobserved by us, to slip his massive body into his office.

  Rostow was a fiftyish guy with the florid complexion of an alcoholic and an off-center flattened nose on his truly ugly face. It turned out there were three partners in Mirimar, Rostow being one of them, all of whom worked in the field. Aside from Madame Polka-dot, there were no other employees.

  Rostow was wary at first, fearful we’d come to challenge his time sheets. When he realized we were here for information not directly related to my divorce case, he relaxed, his smile revealing a missing tooth on the lower right side of his jaw, which I conjectured had been knocked out by an irate client.

  “Always happy to assist the police,” he simpered, ignoring me and turning to Brodsky.

  Brodsky finished flipping through the report Rostow had handed him. “Did you see anything at all suspicious on any of the days you watched Mr. Burnham's home?”

  “Nothing unusual. All in the report.”

  “Did Ms. Vogel ever have visitors to the house when Mr. Burnham wasn’t there?”

  “It’d be in the report.”

  “Specifically male visitors.”

  Rostow picked up the sheaf of papers and flipped a few pages. “March tenth, mailman came at one thirty-five, Saturday the seventeenth, he, Burnham was home, no visitors. She went out at two-fifteen, he left shortly after, I followed him, he went to Englewood for a haircut, place on Dean Drive called---”

  “Maybe you noticed something that didn’t seem important to my case, so you didn’t make a note of it,” I interrupted, ignoring the pressure of Brodsky’s foot on my little toe.

  “Listen, it was more’n a month ago. If I didn't put it in the report, I’m not gonna remember now.”

  “Try. I mean, like maybe a car stopped at another house and nobody got out, or maybe the same one was cruising the street on all the days you---”

  “Mrs. Burnham.” Rostow’s tone was patronizing, the tone of a man who assumes all women are either premenstrual or menopausal, incapable of logic. “We’re a reputable agency. I staked out your husband’s place on three separate occasions. I reported everything relevant to the case.” He leafed through the typewritten report.

  ”One, that Mr. Burnham was livin’ with a Ms. Erica Vogel, not his wife, two that---”

  “That’s what was irrelevant,” I snapped. “I knew he was living with her. He left me to live with her. I don’t give a damn what was in his garbage bin. Why the hell were you wasting my money on stuff like that?”

  The pain in my foot shut my mouth.

  “Let’s stick to the subject,” Brodsky said calmly. “I’m interested in the woman he met at this restaurant in the Village—-Haji’s, you say here. What’d she look like?”

  Rostow threw a malignant look in my direction. “Very attractive. Tall, thin...”

  “How old, approximately?”

  “Hard to say. Couldn’t see her face that well. She had on sunglasses.”

  “What color hair?”

  “Couldn’t tell. She had some kinda beret thing on her head.”

  “Couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her hair, but you could tell she was attractive,” I muttered.

  “So her hair was either short or tucked into the hat,” Ted continued, shooting me a “be quiet or I’ll get the other foot” glance. “What was she wearing?”

  “A raincoat. Long, to her ankles.”

  “How long did they stay?”

  Rostow screwed up his face, trying to recall details. It made him look like Schreck. “Think they only had one drink. She got mad. Threw a bunch of pretzels at him and ran out.”

  Didn’t sound like a business lunch to me. So Rich had probably been cheating on Erica. Herb Golinko was right. One woman, no matter who she was, wasn’t ever going to be enough for Rich. I wondered why Brodsky was pursuing it. Did he think there was a conspiracy? Then Meg's face popped into my mind. Meg is tall and slim.

  “Mr. Rostow,” Brodsky continued. “you say here that you interviewed employees at Mr. Burnham’s company in an effort to determine-—what?”

  “Guys hide money all the time in divorce actions,” he said belligerently. “Wanna keep as much as they can get away with. Lots of times, somebody in the office lets somethin’ slip. I was doin’ my job.”

  “I’m sure you were,” Brodsky replied. “Did you come up with anything?”

  “It’d be in the report.”

  I tucked my feet safely under the chair. “Well, it wasn’t. You padded your bill.”

  Rostow shot to his feet. “I got nothin’ more to say to you, lady!”

  In a flash I was on my feet, confronting him, nose to nose. “Yeah? Well, how’d you like to come down to the precinct?”

  Off to my right, I heard what sounded like a death rattle. I glanced at Brodsky. He looked like a man about to strangle someone. I assumed if I kept this up, that would be me. I sat back down.

  For some reason, maybe it was Brodsky's expression, Rostow's manner suddenly altered. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Maybe I do remember somethin’ else.”

  “Is it in the report?” I inquired sweetly.

  “No, it ain’t in the report ’cause it didn’t have nothin’ to do with your divorce, though I sure can see why your husband wanted out.”

  I was about to come back with a vaporizing retort when Brodsky tromped so hard on my foot, he cut off my breath.

  “Sit down, Mr. Rostow.”

  Brodsky's voice was level, but the authority it carried brooked no contradiction. Rostow sat.

  “Go on.”

  “I had a chat with the secretary.”

  I caught my breath.

  “Dorothy Shea?” Brodsky asked, his face impassive.

  “Yeah, one I read got whacked.”

  Brodsky said nothing. Between the pain in my foot and the knot in my gut, I couldn’t have said anything.

  “She was really down on this Vogel dame. You’d’ve thought she was the wife. Said, and I quote, she knew thing’s would get the slut fired.”

  “What kinds of things?” Brodsky asked.

  “Somethin’ about kickbacks.”

  Perspiration trickled down my neck. I found my voice. “If she knew something like that, why wouldn’t she have told Rich? Maybe she was inventing it.”

  “Don't think so. Took her to a bar, and she’d had a couple. Loosened her tongue. Told me more’n she probably meant to.”

  I was shocked. “Did she know who you were?”

  “Mrs. Burnham, I’m not stupid.”

  Brodsky tapped his pencil impatiently. “Okay, Vogel was taking kickbacks? How? In cash?”

  “Shea said she didn’t have absolute proof, so she couldn’t tell her boss. Said she was bidin’ her time.”

  “Who were the kickbacks coming from?”

  “Well, Vogel was in the marketing department, so---”

  I grabbed Brodsky’s arm. “She was head of marketing. Everything had to go through her office.”

  Rostow nodded. “Yeah, well, I guess she was in a position to throw business in certain directions. Only thing the Shea dame said she knew for a fact was that Vogel was spendin’ a lot of time and money at Elizabeth Arden’s in the city, and she was pretty damned sure it was courtesy of the Wallace-Bowden ad agency.”

  IT WAS PAST TEN when we finished with Rostow and left the building.

  “I'm crippled,” I grumbled. “Couldn't you have---”

  “Christ, Carrie, what bad movie did you get that ‘come down to the precinct’ crap from?”

  “No movie. From you.”

  “What? I never---”

  “Yes, you did. Walking down to the pier on Monday. You were trying to scare me. And it worked, so I thought I'd give it a shot.”

&nbs
p; He started to laugh.

  “Why do you suppose she'd do something like that? Erica, I mean.”

  "Greed." He offered his arm. “Grab hold.”

  I did, enjoying the contact, and hobbled along trying to match his long strides. “But she had a good job. And they were going to be married right after the divorce.”

  “Remember, he was insisting she sign a prenup. It meant your children came first. Maybe she was getting even.”

  That sounded like Erica.

  “You were asking him about men,” I said as we arrived at the car. “Who told you Erica was cheating on Rich?”

  “Dot Shea.”

  “Well, I guess turnabout is fair play. He was cheating on her.”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know who the woman in the restaurant was.”

  Herb Golinko knew about Rich's women, though. And Dot would probably have known. She took all his calls, opened his mail, knew how many times a day he went to the bathroom. But how would she have known about Erica’s activities? “Did she say who Erica was fooling around with?”

  “Client,” he replied, opening the car door for me. “Maybe there's a connection with the ad agency. I’ll check it out.”

  “Blackmail,” I muttered as I scrambled in. “Who might’ve been blackmailing Erica?” Meg came to mind. Maybe that was what the fight in Haji's was about. Except I couldn’t see Meg throwing pretzels. She’d be more likely to have thrown a bottle.

  “Why kill her? Nothing to gain with her dead.”

  “Okay, okay, lemme think.” There had to be a way these unconnected bits of information fit together. “Maybe Dot was blackmailing Erica, they had a fight-—no, that wouldn’t make sense. Because then who killed Dot?”

  “Maybe your husband found out about the affair or the kickbacks or both, and they had a fight. And then maybe he realized Dot Shea could have incriminated him.”

  “She wouldn’t have.” Dot’s instinct to protect and defend Rich was as ingrained as mine had always been. “I just can’t accept that Rich is capable of...”

  “Madame Therapist,” Brodsky said, not unkindly. “When are you going to face up to who Rich Burnham is?”

  “I know who he is.” I replied uncomfortably. “I’ve learned a lot this past year. I know he’s weak and he uses people.”