Conspiracy Theory

by Jane Haddam

  She got in behind the steering wheel and popped open the glove compartment. She took her latest bumper sticker out of there and propped it up on the windshield. Religion Stops a Thinking Mind, it said. She never left it when the car was parked, because when she did people vandalized the car. She got out the street map of Philadelphia and laid it out across the wheel. Then she gave up. She couldn’t read maps without a magnifying glass anymore. Maybe she ought to spend her money on that new eye surgery that was supposed to restore your sight to what it had been before you’d reached middle age. She hated the thought of anybody or anything coming near her eyes.

  The magnifying glass was in the pocket of her jacket. She never carried a pocketbook. In the neighborhoods she frequented, pocketbooks were an invitation to purse snatchers. Still, she thought, she’d trust herself with the pimps and the drug dealers and the teenaged whores with fewer reservations than she would trust herself with the kind of people she’d grown up with. Tony was the last of the good ones of them, and he was gone. She ran the magnifying glass over the map. She found the street. She checked it again. She took the tip of her finger-nail—not much; mostly bitten off—and tapped down along the broken lines until she thought she’d found the right block. Then, just to make sure, she got the copy of The Harridan Report she’d brought with her and looked at the bottom on the back, where the address was. Her back ached. Her head ached. She wanted to lie down right here on the seat and close her eyes and sleep for a week.

  Instead, she got the key into the ignition and the car started. She looked carefully into her rearview mirror and saw that there was no traffic coming in her direction. There was no traffic coming in either direction. She knew where the map said she was, but she didn’t actually know where she was. She had never been in this part of the city before. It looked pleasant enough. There were a lot of narrow, tallish brick houses. There were trees. She put on her turn signal for the sake of the people who were not there to worry about what she would do next, and eased out onto the road.

  Four blocks south, six blocks east, two blocks north—she had to be careful about the dead ends and the one-way streets. Why were there always so many dead-end streets in Philadelphia? She turned on the radio and caught NPR doing classical music. It was what she always listened to, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Why did the announcers on classical radio programs always sound as if they were announcers at a funeral? Was it really necessary to whisper the news that you were about to play Beethoven’s Emperor’s Concerto? Beethoven would have known better. His music was triumphal, the rock and roll of its day. She punched buttons but didn’t come up with much she recognized. There was a lot of rap—hip-hop, they called it now. She’d never been able to get that straight. She punched more buttons and came to music she did recognize, but it didn’t make her feel any better. The Beach Boys were playing “Surfer Girl.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought most of the Beach Boys were dead. Two of the Beatles were.

  She made the next turn and began to slow up. The neighborhood was a little shabbier here than it had been where she started. She was getting close to the fringes of the city, where the landscape was neither city nor suburb. The houses here were not brick, but frame. Most of them were double- or tripledeckers. All of them had porches. None of them had been painted recently enough. Every once in a while, there was a storefront: convenience groceries; newspapers and magazines; hardware. In another few blocks, the pawnshops would start. The tattoo parlors would come quickly afterward.

  She checked the address again. She had to drive nearly blind to do it, with the magnifying class in one hand and The Harridan Report plastered against the steering wheel. She threw the magnifying glass and the newsletter down on the seat next to her and kept driving. She didn’t have to check the address again. She knew the address. She knew the voice that was on the other end of that phone number too. She’d called more than twice in the last twenty-four hours. She’d called and hung up as soon as the woman began speaking, which was not polite, and had probably made the poor woman paranoid as hell, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She didn’t know where to start. She didn’t even know what she wanted to say.

  She found an open space at the curb and pulled into it. It was almost certainly not a legal parking space, and she would get another ticket while her back was turned or she was safely out of sight in the house with this woman who might or might not have the answers she was looking for. She got out of the car and locked it, carefully. There was nothing in it to steal, and it was older than most cars that would interest car thieves, but you could never know. She put her keys in her pocket and walked back a little to the walk of the house at number 244. She went up the walk and stared at the front door with its black paint and shiny brass knocker. David was in New York. She knew that without question. She had called him at his office and on his office number and talked to him. It was a good thing that this was not a triple-decker house. She didn’t know what she’d do if she had to put up with nosy neighbors.

  She pressed the buzzer button and waited. She heard someone opening locks on the other side of the door, three or four of them, their bolts and tumbrils thudding open one after the other. All she needed was the answer to a single question, and she was sure, when she had it, that she would feel like a fool. This was not the sort of thing sensible people did. This was not the sort of thing they thought.

  The door swung open, and Annie blinked. She didn’t think she had ever seen anyone quite like this woman before in her life. She was a middle-aged woman, with all the sag and bag that entailed for someone who did not spend hours a day taking care of herself—but Annie was a middle-aged woman too. That wouldn’t have bothered her. What bothered her was the hair, bright blond, almost lemon, and piled high on her head and falling down to her shoulders in giggling cascades of curls, teased up and splayed out, beyond Big Hair, almost something with a life of its own. What bothered her was the makeup too, which was much too vivid and much too thick. The red of the lipstick was the red of the nose on Bozo the Clown. The blue of the eye shadow was the blue of a computer screen right after a systems crash. It was like looking at a bad painting. Annie felt she had to be staring.

  “I’m looking for Miss Mittendorf,” she said, hesitating. “Or Mrs. Mitten-dorf, possibly. I’m sorry. I got your address—”

  “I’m Kathi Mittendorf,” Kathi Mittendorf said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Then, just as Annie was about to say that there had to be some mistake, she hadn’t said she was coming, nobody could be waiting for her, Kathi Mittendorf raised the gun. It was a gun-gun, not a rifle, and it was huge. Annie didn’t think she’d ever seen a hand weapon that large, not even in the hands of the men who sometimes came to Adelphos House to get their hookers back.

  “Come inside,” Kathi Mittendorf said.

  She’s going to kill me, Annie thought.

  And then, stepping through the front door as Kathi Mittendorf pulled it shut behind her, she saw that Kathi had apparently killed somebody else.

  At least, there was the dead body of a woman on the sofa.

  FIVE

  1

  All the way across town from Henry Barden’s place, John Jackman kept reminding Gregor Demarkian that this was no longer his job.

  “The whole point of ending up behind a desk,” he would say, paused at a stoplight that was green, but of no interest to the driver immediately ahead of him, “was not to be shot at anymore, and I have a distinct feeling that by the end of this mess, I’m going to end up getting shot at. And where? Are we going out to Bryn Mawr?”

  “No,” Gregor said. “Do I sound like I’m giving you directions to Bryn Mawr?”

  “How would you know if you weren’t? You’ve got the sense of direction of belly-button lint. Let me try to rephrase this. Do you know who killed Steve Bridge?”

  “Yes. So do you.”

  “Not that I can tell,” Jackman said. “But Steve Bridge happens to be the only dead body we’ve got—or the
only one connected to you—within the city limits at the moment. If we’re going off to confront the murderer of Tony and Charlotte Ross, then I shouldn’t be here, because it’s none of my business. I remember when I was working as a detective, Gregor. I did not appreciate having outsiders come in and muck up my case, and your Detective Margiotti won’t appreciate it either.”

  “He understands the problem. I called him. He’ll be there.”

  “Where?”

  “At Kathi Mittendorf’s house.”

  “Why should he come to Kathi Mittendorf’s house?”

  “Because I asked him to,” Gregor said, “and because it gets him where he wants to go.”

  “Even though Kathi Mittendorf didn’t kill Tony or Charlotte Ross? Or Steve Bridge, either, I take it.”

  “She didn’t kill anybody,” Gregor said. “But I disagree with Henry on one very specific point. I think she saw who did.”

  “She was a witness to the killings,” Jackman said.

  “No,” Gregor said. “She’s seen Michael Harridan. Face to face. I know what Henry’s getting at, but I don’t think Harridan could have done what he’s done if he hadn’t let at least one person see him in the flesh. My guess is, she’s seen him more than once too, although of course not any more than he could help it.”

  “Of course. You think you’re making sense.”

  “I am making sense,” Gregor said. “Look, let’s say you wanted to steal a lot of money. I mean really a lot of money, not just a lot of money the way most people think of it. Let’s say you wanted to steal thirty million dollars.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Of course I’m not joking,” Gregor said. “What have we been hearing in the newspapers every day? What have we been hearing on the television news? When they aren’t talking about the murders, what are they talking about?”

  “I don’t know. The Middle East? George Bush?”

  Gregor wanted to hit something. “Price Heaven. We’ve been hearing about Price Heaven. Yet another icon company meltdown. First Enron. Then Kmart. Now Price Heaven. And what do we hear about Price Heaven? We hear that there’s thirty million dollars missing from their operation—except we don’t hear that it’s missing. We hear that it was hidden. Do you notice that?”

  “Maybe it was hidden,” Jackman said. “I don’t trust those guys and you shouldn’t either. I mean, look at Enron. They were hiding everything known to humans and siphoning money out of the business like it was lemonade.”

  “Yes, they were, but if you’d paid much attention to that story, you’d have realized that it took them several years to do it. Look, I don’t know this for certain, because I’m not a forensic accountant and I don’t know how to do that kind of paperwork, but with any luck the Lower Merion police will have access to one, or the city of Philadelphia will loan them one, because what I think happened was this. Price Heaven came to Tony Ross’s bank almost two years ago. David Alden did the legwork on the loan they wanted, and made the recommendation to the board to take that loan—”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me,” Gregor said. “For goodness sake, you could find out the same thing by paying attention to CNN. David Alden did the legwork, and eventually he took over the management of the account. That’s been on CNN too. My guess is, Price Heaven had a problem going in, bad accounting practices, leaking money, that kind of thing, but not a bad problem. And that, you see, gave David Alden his shot.”

  “So that’s it? David Alden is our murderer? Are you nuts? When would he find the time? He’s one of those idiots who commutes from here to Manhattan. Of all the self-satisfied, stupid pieces of snobbery—”

  “Listen,” Gregor said. “He’s the only one who could have done it. Who could have killed Tony Ross, I mean. Because he’s the only one of all the people who were there that night, besides the family, who had the run of the house. He could go upstairs to the second floor on his own and without permission and nobody would think anything of it. And that’s the trick. The problem isn’t who could have fired off a gun at Tony Ross in the middle of all that security. The security wasn’t that good. People kept telling us that, but we all—you and me and Margiotti and Tackner as well—we all kept seeing a neon sign in our heads that said ‘first lady.’ The first lady was coming, so security had to be tight. But it wasn’t tight. It would have gotten tighter once the first lady arrived, but it was still early. The only people who were actually there yet were the people who were setting up and a few of the kind who have to get there first and stay until it’s over, like Ryall Wyndham. But David Alden was there. He was there right after the shots were fired. He’s on the list of the first set of interviews. And nobody thought anything of it.”

  “Why should they?” Jackman asked. They were now in one of those parts of the city that were all overpasses and four-lane roadways and chain-link fences. “It would make sense to me that Alden would be there. Why wouldn’t it make sense to you? He was Tony Ross’s assistant, wasn’t he? Some kind of second in command?”

  “A protégé, mostly,” Gregor said. “Yes, I know. And that was the opportunity and the problem at once. Alden had complete control of the Price Heaven account, and that meant of Price Heaven’s ready cash. He and Tony Ross were the only two people in a position to make use of that for personal gain. It’s always possible that we’ll find that Tony Ross was in on it, but I doubt it. He had too much money of his own. Thirty million doesn’t mean as much to a billionaire three times over as it means to the ordinary guy on the street. I should have listened to Bennis. She said something the first or second day about how there were always people around the rich who weren’t rich themselves but managed to live as if they were, and nobody knew how they did it. But you know, that’s not quite true, either.”

  “I can’t believe you think Bennis told you something that isn’t true,” Jack-man said.

  “I don’t mean she lied,” Gregor said. “I mean it’s not quite true that they live as if they were rich. What they do is appear in public as if they live as if they were rich. That’s Ryall Wyndham’s whole thing. He has great clothes—”

  “Too bad he looks so awful in them. He looks like Porky Pig, Gregor, have you noticed that?”

  Gregor ignored this. “The thing is, I never went out to Wyndham’s apartment to see him, but I do have the address written down. It’s not a good address. I know that neighborhood and I know the apartments you can get there. If his place is like everybody else’s, it’s a dump. He really can’t afford to live as if he were rich, so he doesn’t.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Gregor said, “David Alden does. Do you want to see the addresses I have down for him? The apartment in New York probably belongs to the bank. That’s not a problem. But he’s got a place in Rittenhouse Square, and that isn’t cheap. It doesn’t come close to cheap. So what’s he paying for it with?”

  “Family money?”

  “According to Bennis, no,” Gregor said. “That’s how we got onto that discussion about living as if you were rich. His family used to have money. He has an old Philadelphia name. He’s gone to the right prep school and the right college and all the rest of it. He’s got the right job, and he gets paid well. But if he’s keeping up that place on straight salary, I’ll almost guarantee you that he’s living paycheck to paycheck and that he’s probably in debt. That’s something you can check out, or Lower Merion can.”

  “Do you ever do the conventional thing and arrive at theories after you’ve collected the evidence?” Jackman said. “You’re going to get yourself and whoever you’re working for in a lot of trouble one of these days.”

  “Only if I try to make them act on what I don’t know yet, which I won’t. He’s an interesting man, David Alden. You should talk to him sometime.”

  “If you’re right about all this, I’ll get my chance.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll talk to him through his lawyer, and you won’t get the measure of the man at all. But he is an inter
esting man. In a way, it’s a shame he’s a completely venal one.”

  “That’s always a shame, Gregor.”

  “Sometimes it’s more of a shame than it is at other times. Even if, as is usually the case, he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. He could have gotten away with it, you know. Don’t think it’s impossible to get away with financial fraud on a major scale. It happens all the time. If he’d been careful not to tip Price Heaven into bankruptcy, the chances are pretty damned good that nobody would ever have caught up to him. On one level, they’re all alike though, these guys. The need for money is infinite. Anyway, once the bankruptcy was inevitable, Tony Ross would have been required to step in and oversee the proceedings. He was David Alden’s superior. He would also, most probably, have realized without too much trouble that something was fishy about that account.”

  “So David Alden killed him. Fine. Why didn’t he wait for a more opportune moment? Why not catch Ross at the golf club or somewhere? They had to be alone sometime, didn’t they?” Jackman asked.