How to Succeed in Murder

by Margaret Dumas

  Not with a ten-foot pole. “Never mind,” I said. “If you say they’re in good shape, they’re in good shape.”

  She shrugged. “As far as I can tell.”

  Brenda spoke up. “I couldn’t find anything suspicious about any of the people involved there either.” Disappointment was clear in the little vertical line between her eyes. She pushed her glasses up. “Morgan seems like a great guy. He gives a lot to charity—I mean, not on the scale you do, Charley, but—”

  I waved my hand for her to go on.

  “He went to Brown, and he’s endowed a scholarship there in the Computer Science department. He bought a beautiful house for his mom outside of Philadelphia, and he’s sending a nephew to college. He seems genuinely nice, and of course we know he’s brilliant. Clara probably would have been happy with him.” She looked up at us. “It’s so sad.”

  Eileen reached for Brenda’s printout. “What about anyone else at Zakdan? Could she have made any enemies?”

  “I don’t know. We’d need access to their personnel files to know if she’d fired anyone or anything like that. Oh!” Her eyes brightened. “I did get one whiff of scandal. That guy you told me to look up—Jim Stoddard?”

  I nodded. “The other executive vice president.”

  “Right. He’s had a couple of DUIs in the past few years. That might be something.”

  “I’d be happier if he had a meth lab in his attic,” Eileen said. “Or a prostitution ring running out of his garage. Something good and juicy.”

  We looked at each other. We had nothing juicy. We had nothing.

  ***

  When Brenda dropped me in front of the house—too depressed at our lack of progress to even come in and talk about my lack of furniture—I saw someone had left a package on the front steps. On closer inspection, it wasn’t a package. It was a stack. A stack of plays. At least fifteen of them.

  I struggled to unlock the door and slide them across the threshold while dialing Simon on my cell phone.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Hello to you too, darling,” he answered. “What the hell is what?”

  The stack toppled over and the manuscripts slid into an untidy pile on my walnut inlaid floor. Or was it maple? I’m sure the realtor had told me, but who could keep track? “This stack of plays that were waiting on my doorstep. Didn’t you leave them?”

  “Ah. No, that would have been Chip.”

  Oh. Chip. That made sense. Ever since I’d let him start directing plays at the Rep, the workaholic Chip had become even more obsessive than he’d been as our stage manager. He was a great guy, but he really needed to get a life outside the theater.

  “That boy needs to get laid,” Simon said.

  “I was just thinking something similar myself.”

  “Do you know he’s going through our entire slush pile? Been at it ever since closing night. It’s unnatural.”

  “What do you mean, our entire slush pile?”

  “Just what I said, darling. Everything.”

  Ever since our first season, aspiring playwrights had been sending their unsolicited masterpieces for our consideration. Since we only mounted an average of four productions per season—and most of them classics—the odds were not in their favor. We’d rejected hundreds, usually not even giving them a brief glance before tossing them into overflowing boxes in a corner of an office. The slush pile.

  Simon was still talking. “…says you said something about wanting to work with new a playwright next season. Throw over the classics for something a bit more—are you listening to me?”

  “Of course, sweetie.” As much as I needed to. “So he’s narrowed the slush pile down to this?”

  Simon produced a particularly elegant snort. “He’s barely scratched the surface. But he wants us to read these, and meet on Friday and tell him what we think. Mind you, I could tell him—”

  “Never mind, Simon,” I cut him off. “We might as well. It doesn’t look like either of us is going to make it out of town for a real vacation, so we might as well get a jump on next season.”

  He paused. “I hate it when you’re right.”

  “In this case, Chip’s right. Talk to you later.”

  I’d re-stacked the manuscripts while talking to Simon, and now I picked them up and looked around the empty entrance hall, thinking that a table of some sort might be a very handy thing near the door.

  I decided to take the stack upstairs to the room I planned to use as my office. There were no handy tables there, either, so I dropped the manuscripts in a corner and looked around, hoping a brilliant idea for the perfectly designed home office would magically appear. No such luck.

  Leaving, I glanced across the hall to the room Jack had chosen for his own office and froze. When had he had time to buy furniture?

  I went in. He’d set up a desk, where a computer was humming away happily. He’d also gotten a very high-tech looking chair. These were angled in front of the window to let the light fall on the desk without getting any glare on the computer screen. A variety of moving boxes were scattered around, mixed in with piles of books and other work-related odds and ends.

  Jack’s partner, Mike, had started their company in a rented space down in Palo Alto, but it looked like Jack already had a fully functional satellite branch of MJC on the second floor of our house.

  I went to his desk in disbelief. Not only was he set up, it looked like he was working on something. There were papers and files on the desk, pens scattered around, and little notes on little notepapers.

  It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at, probably because I was so stunned to be looking at anything at all. But when I did recognize it, there was no way I wasn’t going to read it.

  Jack had Clara Chen’s autopsy report.

  Chapter Six

  My self-restraint was incredible. Not that I’d shown any hesitation in tearing through the folder to find the results of Clara Chen’s autopsy. That had been a given. No, where I showed restraint was in not bringing up the subject with my husband.

  At least, not right away.

  He came home to find me lounging innocently on our bed, reading a bad play set largely in the back room of a stripper bar. Jack called out something or other and vanished into the closet, only to emerge thirty seconds later looking crisp and put together in a clean white shirt and black jeans.

  “Charley, are you about ready?” He rolled up his sleeves and turned his head to see the title of the script. “Pole Dancer Diaries? I hope you’re doing research for next season and not looking for a new hobby. Although—”

  “Chip sent a stack of plays over,” I informed him, ignoring the speculative look in his eye. “Am I about ready for what?”

  “It’s Monday, remember? Dinner at Harry’s?”

  Damn. I’d totally forgotten we’d agreed to go visit my uncle.

  Jack must have seen a look on my face, because he sat on the bed and plucked the pages from my hands. “It won’t be that bad. Besides, we haven’t seen him in a while and I think we’ve both learned it’s best to know what he’s up to.”

  True. My uncle, a semi-reformed madman who’d misspent his youth quite vigorously, had settled into his middle years reluctantly, trading in doobies for Cubans, and tequila shots drunk from the navels of beach bunnies for…well, I hoped he’d traded them in.

  When my parents died just after my fourteenth birthday, Harry had become my guardian. Back in those days, Harry ran his house as something of a cross between the Playboy mansion and a militia encampment. Perhaps not the best atmosphere for an adolescent getting over the worst trauma of her life, but neither Harry nor I had had a choice.

  Harry had taken the term “guardian” to appalling extremes. I was sent to high-security private schools and camps, and I was never without a bodyguard or—when I rebelled against that—private detectives tasked with keeping tabs on me and reporting everything I did back to Harry.

  There had been years filled with suspicion an
d mistrust. And although Harry had mellowed considerably in recent times, particularly since Jack had come along, I didn’t wholly believe my uncle’s fundamental nature had changed.

  He was usually up to something, and since that something was fueled by a dangerous combination of energy and paranoia, it was best to keep tabs.

  “Oh, all right.” I realized thoughts of Harry had momentarily distracted me from my mission for the evening—finding out how Jack had gotten that autopsy report. “Just let me jump in the shower first.”

  “Fine.” Jack leaned back against the headboard and crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’d say I’d wait for you downstairs, but since there’s nothing to sit on—”

  “Then my plan is working,” I said, throwing him my best sultry over-the-shoulder look. “If there’s no other furniture, I can keep you in bed all the time.”

  “You are an evil genius,” he admitted.

  When I got out of the shower, I wrapped myself in a towel to make my way across the room to the closet. Jack’s eyes were closed. He looked completely innocent. Not in the least like a man who’d tell his wife he wasn’t interested in a murder and then promptly go out and lay his hands on a coroner’s report.

  I scanned my wardrobe for an outfit that would put Jack in a talkative mood. Something that would reduce him to putty in my hands.

  And I learned something: A thirtysomething woman whose highlights are in need of a touch-up and who hasn’t been to the gym in quite some time should not stand in front of a full-length mirror in her undies when she’s plotting a seduction. Even if the undies are La Perla.

  To hell with it. I’d get the information out of him the old fashioned way—by tricking him. I threw on a pair of jeans and a cashmere hoodie before fleeing the closet.

  Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face.

  “Long day, sweetie?” I sat beside him to pull on a pair of Jimmy Choo boots that I hoped would give my thrown-together outfit the illusion of style.

  “Very long.” He turned to me. “You look great.”

  I wasn’t even wearing makeup. How could I not be crazy about this man? Still… “Did Yahata have much to say?”

  “Not really—”

  “Ah ha!” I leapt to my feet, which was a tactical error given that I only had one boot on, but I persevered. “You did see Inspector Yahata today!”

  I’d trapped him into an admission, and I was flush with victory.

  He held out his arm to steady my balance. “Of course I did. Who do you think gave me Clara Chen’s autopsy report?”

  Oh.

  ***

  “Jack, don’t you even try to tell me that you were going to tell me about having that report!” We were in the car, heading for Harry’s, and I was on a roll.

  “Of course I was going to tell you. Although I should have known you’d read it before I got back—”

  “And that’s another thing—how did you know I’d already read it?”

  “Because I went to the office before I came upstairs to the bedroom, and I could tell someone had been there.” He glanced over at me. “Since I didn’t think a burglar would have been interested in an empty house, I assumed it had been you.”

  “You’re not going to distract me with house decorating talk.”

  “I’m not trying to. I’m just saying I could give you some pointers on rifling someone’s desk without leaving tracks.”

  Which could come in handy someday, but I wasn’t going to be distracted by that, either.

  “Never mind. Just tell me when you and Inspector Yahata got so cozy. It wasn’t so long ago he was warning me that you might be a murderer.”

  Our first encounter with the unnervingly observant representative of San Francisco’s finest had been shortly after finding a body in our hotel room, so I really didn’t hold it against him that he’d been suspicious about Jack’s mysterious past. What I couldn’t forgive is that whatever Yahata had learned about my husband—which had been enough to make him suddenly bend police procedure to include Jack in an ongoing investigation—still remained a mystery to me.

  “I hardly think ‘cozy’ is the word to describe anything about Inspector Yahata,” Jack said dryly.

  True. The detective had the ability to send an electric shock through a room merely by glancing around it. Cozy he was not.

  “Well, whatever. Why did he give you Clara Chen’s autopsy report?”

  “Because I asked for it.” Jack took the Broadway exit off Highway 101, turning toward the rarified zip code of Hillsborough, where Harry lived in high style and near-seclusion.

  “Seriously? He isn’t asking you to look into it?”

  “Pumpkin, why would a homicide detective ask a private citizen to look into anything? And beyond that, didn’t you read the report? There’s nothing to look into.”

  “That’s what they say,” I sniffed.

  “‘They’ meaning the medical examiner’s office and the police force? The skilled professionals who concluded that Clara Chen’s death was accidental?”

  “Well.” I shifted in my seat. “Yes. But did you tell Yahata about everything Morgan Stokes told us? About how she was an athlete and wouldn’t have fallen like that? About how she was in line to get a major chunk of power at Zakdan?”

  “Charley.” Jack came to a stop at a red light on El Camino. He turned to face me. “Morgan Stokes is a grieving man. Of course he doesn’t want to believe these kinds of things can just happen. But they do. You know they do.”

  He was right. I knew all about accidents. Like the one that had taken my parents and left me in the care of my lunatic uncle.

  I blinked. “Jack, seriously. Do you believe it was an accident?”

  He looked at the stoplight. “I believe there’s no proof it was anything else.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  ***

  Harry’s rambling pile of stucco and tile looked even bigger than usual in the cold January night. I’d been coming there for twenty years, but I could still swear I heard the guitar solo to “Hotel California” whenever I saw the place by moonlight.

  Only a few of the windows were lit in the front of the house, and Harry hadn’t put a light on over the massive oak doors.

  I shivered. “It’s spooky out tonight.” The surrounding eucalyptus trees were whipping in a suddenly strong wind.

  “Don’t worry, this neighborhood is way too expensive for anything really scary.”

  Jack rang the bell and I considered telling him about the time I’d accidentally walked in on Harry, three cheerleaders for the 49ers, and chimpanzee named Sam. Now that had been scary.

  When there was no answer, I dug around in my bag for my keys. I unlocked the door calling my uncle’s name.

  We entered the great room, which, without Harry in it, seemed even larger than usual. It stretched the length of the house, with comfortable clusters of Mission style furniture arranged in groups across the wide expanse of plank floor.

  “Harry!” Jack called. He moved forward to turn on a light. The room was dim, amber-shaded lamps providing only occasional pools of glowing light. It reminded me of a deserted museum you’d see in a horror movie, all quiet right before the monster leaps out.

  “Do you think he’s all right?” I suddenly felt guilty for not calling Harry more often. He was alone now in his giant house. His only daughter, pushing thirty and still acting out her teenage rebellion, had run off again months ago and hadn’t been heard from since. This time Harry—uncharacteristically—hadn’t hired private detectives to track her down.

  I’d been so busy with the Rep during the season that I hardly ever spared him a thought. He’d been such a source of annoyance for most of my life that it was jarring to think of him all by himself and getting older. And even more jarring to find myself feeling a little sorry for him.

  Poor Harry. He must be so lonely. He must be so—

  “Well Goddamn! I didn’t hear you two come in!”

  He
crashed through the door from the dining room with a fat cigar in his mouth, wearing khaki cargo shorts and a loud tropical shirt. He held up two large bags of what looked like take-out Chinese food. “Great! Perfect timing! The dumplings are hot and I hope you’re hungry!”

  “Hi, Harry,” I managed to say before he’d deposited the food on a coffee table and crushed me in lung-squeezing hug.

  “Charley, you’ve lost weight!” Which is what he always says. “And Jack! Good to see you, boy!” He stopped short of hugging my husband. Instead they engaged in a vigorously male handshake.

  “Harry, you’re looking—”

  “The same,” he cut off whatever Jack had been planning to say. “I never change. Don’t tell me anything different or I’ll start to feel old. And what’s the percentage in that, right?” He winked broadly and moved to the bar, an enormous carved structure that had once been the altar of an earthquake-damaged church.

  “What are we drinking? I’ve got duck with plum sauce, crab stir-fried in garlic and white wine, that shrimp with black bean sauce that I know you like—” Another wink was aimed in my general direction. “ —Two kinds of noodles and every appetizer on the menu.” He held up a bottle of rum. “What do you say we make a batch of mai tai’s?”

  Okay, so much for feeling sorry for him.

  Harry was right. He never changed.

  Chapter Seven

  Jack lit a fire in the oversized stone hearth while Harry mixed drinks and kept up a non-stop monologue. I went off in search of plates during his description of the very tasty shredded snake meat soup he’d had on his last trip to Shanghai, pausing at the door to tell him no, I didn’t think we should lobby to get it included on the menu at King Yuan.

  I returned to find my husband and my uncle sitting in front of the fire, drinks in hand, chatting amiably. It was a tableau that never failed to amaze. I’d been completely prepared for these men to hate each other on sight when I’d brought Jack home after our wedding. The fact that they got along—even seemed to understand each other on some level—was a little unsettling. It implied I didn’t know one of them as well as I thought I did.