Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  Frances listened to Beverly’s words with a mixture of disbelief and sorrow. What kind of society was this where alienation, or even the perception of alienation, could cause such misery, where the viciousness of rumors could destroy someone? The sick feeling that briefly washed over Frances when, in her sister’s kitchen, she saw invitations to clambakes, baby showers, brunches, lunches, and dinners, all activities in which she wasn’t included, returned to her now. Magnify a thousandfold that sense of isolation from the festivities, and she knew what Beverly had experienced. Frances had been able to rationalize her own exclusion: She lived in Orient Point. She chose to be separate. Beverly had not.

  Lying prostrate on the couch, her stockinged feet askew, Beverly looked battered. Her wrinkled fingers with their polished nails clutched the glass of gin.

  Frances glanced around the room. There were no pictures of Dudley and only one formal portrait of a girl who must be Deidre, a tall, elegant girl in a debutante’s dress. Above the mantel hung an oil painting of a younger Beverly seated on a blue chintz couch, one of the six that still filled this room. The painting revealed none of the agony that had transpired behind these pink drapes.

  Frances realized from Beverly’s labored breathing that she had fallen asleep, her tumbler perched precariously on her chest. Frances got up, pried the glass loose, and set it on the coffee table. Beverly hardly stirred. Frances thought for a moment to leave a note, then decided against it. She could let herself out.

  She pulled into the driveway of her house and shut off the engine of her truck. Too tired to move, she debated putting her head against the vinyl seat and sleeping right where she was but realized that would only be worse in the morning. She opened her side door, heaved her legs onto the grass, and, with every ounce of energy she could muster, got herself up the porch.

  The enormous bouquet of pale pink sweet pea, white lisianthus, and peach roses made her gasp. It was a loose, whimsical arrangement, as if someone had swept up an English garden in their arms and left it to fill her house with its delicate fragrance. Sam. She had completely forgotten their dinner together, his promise of grilled salmon and homemade strawberry rhubarb pie, an invitation made, and accepted, over orange juice in her front yard. She was more obsessed with following stray threads of her stepmother’s life than in beginning to weave a fabric of her own. She didn’t deserve Sam’s kindness. He didn’t deserve indifference.

  Fully dressed, Frances lay on top of her covers, exhausted but unable to sleep. Despite the distances she had covered and the information she had gathered, the day had left her more confused and despairing than any since Clio’s death. All she appeared to be learning was that the wealth, glamour, and etiquette of her father’s Southampton society only thinly disguised a tormented, troubled reality. How it all was connected to Clio’s murder remained a mystery.

  Frances’s weary mind wandered, and she remembered Sam’s touch. Involuntarily she shivered at the thought. His disfigured hand had been anything but repulsive. His caress had simultaneously soothed and excited her. But after her conduct this evening, he would be wise to keep his distance.

  Frances started to cry. She tried so hard to build up defenses, to protect herself from her own emotions, yet she felt more vulnerable than ever. She thought of her sister’s proposal that she move in with her father. Blair’s suggestion seemed practical, a solution to their predicaments. He needed a caretaker, and she, the unemployed, soon-to-be-destitute daughter, would need a roof over her head; but the idea of resurrecting intimacy from the vestiges of their formality seemed impossible. Their relationship had evolved over thirty-eight years and was unlikely to undergo a fundamental alteration. Because you refuse to try, a voice inside her admonished. And look where that’s gotten you.

  Saturday, July 11

  Frances stepped out of the shower and reached for the terry towel draped over the corner of the door. The bathroom had filled with steam and the scent of gardenia soap. Her eyes were puffy from too little sleep, and her back ached, but she felt relieved to be clean. She dried her smooth skin and let herself imagine the breakfast of French toast and sautéed bananas that she was about to fix. Perhaps Sam would accept an invitation to join her, a peace offering.

  She heard a loud knock on the front door, then the turn of the lock. The dogs barked.

  She grabbed her robe, hurried to the top of the stairs, and leaned over the banister.

  “It’s me.” Meaty stood in the entrance, looking up at her. He smiled, although Frances thought it looked forced. She cinched the belt tight around her waist and descended. Felonious and Miss Demeanor surrounded Meaty, their tails wagging. “Good guard dogs you’ve got for yourself,” he remarked, reaching to pat Felonious’s head.

  “They can tell you’re harmless,” Frances said. “Do you want coffee? I need some for myself.”

  “That’d be great.” Meaty followed her into the kitchen. The percolator had finished brewing. The aroma of strong coffee wafted out of the pot.

  “What do you want?” Frances asked as she poured them each a mug. She hadn’t forgotten her last conversation with Meaty and was in no mood to be overly friendly.

  Meaty sat at the table. He rubbed his eyes. “Allergies. They’re killing me,” he remarked more to himself than Frances. Then he took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “That’s gasoline. Do you have any milk?”

  Frances got up and opened the refrigerator. She removed the milk and, remembering Sam’s message, checked the expiration date. It still had several days.

  “I’ll cut to the chase,” Meaty said, pouring a generous amount of milk into his mug. “I know Malcolm offered you an official position on the investigation and that you turned him down. I also know you’ve been keeping yourself busy trying to solve this murder on your own.”

  Frances smiled. Apparently someone had been reporting on her whereabouts.

  “As I’m sure you know, we’ve been working round the clock and, quite frankly, getting nowhere. Now that’s between you and me. Malcolm’s pretty anxious to string the press along, make them think we’re about to make an arrest.”

  “You don’t have any leads?”

  “Nothing to speak of. That’s why I’m here. I thought we might help each other out.”

  Meaty’s code for “Tell me what you know,” Frances thought. “Does Malcolm know you’re here?” She needed to know whether this visit was sanctioned.

  “Yes. He asked me to talk to you.”

  “And what if I don’t want to talk?”

  “Then you can just listen for a minute.” Meaty sounded slightly exasperated.

  Frances settled back in her chair. “Sounds fair.”

  “Detective Kelly, the one you met the day of the murder, he and I’ve interviewed everyone on staff at the Fair Lawn Country Club. The black dishwasher, the guy I told you about, he’s got a firm alibi. He had the holiday off. He and his girlfriend had gone to Shea Stadium for a baseball game. Left around eight A.M. and didn’t return until past midnight. Did a little partying, barhopping, on the way back.” He opened a spiral notepad and flipped through several pages. “We don’t have anything linking any of the other staff. Can’t establish anyone who even had a connection to Clio. Nobody saw anything suspicious.”

  “You still think there’s something to those hair samples?”

  “I know your feeling. You’ve made that perfectly clear, as has Cogswell. Only time I’ve known you two to think alike.”

  “Did the lab run any DNA tests?”

  “They tried. The techs ran a polymerase chain reaction test. The answer I got was that the testing was inconclusive, possibly because melanin in hair inhibits the PCR process, possibly because the samples were old, or possibly because of external contamination. How’s that for covering your ass? The long and the short of it is we got nothing.” He flipped through several more pages.

  “So, here’s what we know. On July Fourth, Clio played tennis with three other women. We interviewed all three, separately. Qui
te a group, I might add.” His attempt at humor fell on an unreceptive audience. He glanced back at his pad and continued. “Clio seemed fine during the match. The group dispersed immediately afterward. Clio went up to the porch and had a drink sitting with a couple named Marshall and Beth Bancroft, old friends, I understand. They were with their two granddaughters, mulatto girls. They were dropped off by their father, Dr. Henry Lewis, around ten. A lot of people remember seeing him. Given his race, he stands out in the crowd, but no one remembers him with Clio at any time. By his own account, he left by ten-fifteen, a little before Clio joined the Bancrofts at their table.”

  He studied his notes. “Louise Lewis, the mother of the girls, went to the bar to buy drinks for her family and Clio. Apparently Clio insisted on picking up the tab, so Louise charged them to her.”

  Frances remembered her own conversation with the bartender the morning after Clio’s death. Two Southsides, a Diet Coke, a Perrier water, and two Shirley Temples. He hadn’t been able to confirm that Clio ordered them, but he knew they had been charged to the Pratt account.

  “According to the Bancrofts and Louise, a waitress delivered the drinks to their table. Louise said the bar was packed, and she hadn’t wanted to wait. We think the waitress was a girl named Melanie Fox, but nobody can say for sure. There are three waitresses who work the porch. One of them, a kid called Daisy, had recently started and didn’t even know who Clio Pratt was. We talked to all the girls several times. None of them kept track of who they served because there’s no tipping. They noticed nothing unusual. No surprise, nobody asked them to put anything in a drink.” Meaty looked up from his notes. “We know Clio ordered the Perrier. We think there might have been as much as ten minutes between the time Louise’s order was filled and the waitress, whoever it was, served them. The waitresses all say things were crazy and they were going as fast as they could, but there was a definite backlog on orders. It’s possible that someone in the bar could have slipped the Dexedrine into the water. Forensics says ten minutes would be more than enough time for the drug to dissolve.”

  He returned to his notepad. “That much we know for sure. After that, things get a little hazy. The Bancrofts remember lots of people coming and going, stopping by the table to say hello, but they can’t say for certain who they saw before Clio died, and who they saw after, when virtually everyone was hovered together on the porch awaiting the police. Around ten fifty-five, based on the time the call went into 911, Clio must have excused herself to go to the powder room, although, again, the Bancrofts don’t actually remember that. We haven’t found anyone who saw her in the bathroom until Blair found her body.”

  “I’ve read the witness statements you gave me, Jack Von Furst, George Welch, people the police interviewed that day. I know there isn’t much.”

  Meaty nodded. Details of discovering the body, calling an ambulance, canceling the tennis tournament, and attempting to calm the crowd had brought the police no closer to finding a killer.

  “What else have you done?” Frances asked.

  “We’ve tested every glass we could find, plastic, paper, Styrofoam, you name it. We couldn’t find anything with either Clio’s fingerprints or traces of Dexedrine. We still can’t confirm how she ingested the drugs. We’ve assumed it was her drink, given the solubility factor, but we could be wrong.”

  “The Bancrofts’ table had been cleared?”

  “Yeah.” Meaty looked disgusted. “I hope before anyone knew anything, or the police had arrived, although at this point it doesn’t help us anyway. By the time we got around to isolating material for the lab, what we wanted was probably either in an industrial dishwasher or the trash.” He paused and cupped his hands around his mug. “We did find one thing, though.”

  Frances raised her eyebrows.

  “In a trash container on the porch, one of those metal baskets. We found nine empty red-and-yellow capsules wrapped in a paper napkin. No prints. They were crushed, but contained traces of Dexedrine. Capsules have been identified as a diet pill called Thinline.”

  Frances had been tempted in years past to use over-the-counter appetite suppressants herself, until her common sense got the better of her. It was a high price to pay for vanity.

  “Which trash container were they in?”

  “The one closest to the front stairs. If I had to guess, our murderer dropped them there on his way out. They were wrapped in a Fair Lawn Country Club paper cocktail napkin.”

  “Were the capsules cut or torn?”

  “I believe the two ends could be pulled apart.” Meaty checked his notes. “Yeah, as far as we know, the capsules could be opened.”

  “Which would take a lot less time,” Frances added.

  “Right.”

  “Could the killer have known in advance what Clio would be drinking and made preparations?”

  “Well, you know, I thought of that. Except why, if you’re doing this ahead of time, would you dump the empty pills at the club? Why wouldn’t you leave them at home, or in your car, or wherever?”

  Frances had no answer.

  “We were able to track down Clio’s prescription for Nardil through a credit card receipt from the Columbia Presbyterian Pharmacy on 168th and Broadway. She had been seeing a psychiatrist at the hospital, a guy named Prescott, but he’s not saying a word. Psychiatrist-patient privilege or some other crap. That’s what he told me last night, anyway.”

  Before or after our meeting? Frances wondered.

  Meaty continued, “Malcolm’s not at all sure he wants to take on a legal battle with the shrink. Some people can be pretty sensitive about what they perceive as invasions of privacy, and he can’t predict which way his constituency would go. That’s about it.” He paused for a moment and scratched his ear. “We’ve gone through all the financial records of Pratt Capital. Nothing unusual. There were several deals in the works, and we’ve interviewed the participants. If they had complaints, they didn’t share them. Mostly we heard a lot of compliments of Miles Adler, sympathy for your father, and respect for Clio, although most thought she was in over her head. One guy whose deal fell apart at the last minute was pretty pissed at Pratt Capital, but his alibi is rock solid. He was in Hong Kong at the time of the murder, putting together new venture capital. Besides, his beef was with Miles. He never even met Clio. The only other recently terminated deal was with a company called ProChem based in Mexico City. We assume that’s where Miles has been. From the paperwork, it looks like Miles was pretty psyched about this company. It makes health care products, performance enhancers, the kind of stuff bodybuilders are into. The files contain a letter from the principal of the company expressing regret at the deal falling through, but when I spoke to the guy on the phone, he told me that there were renewed negotiations and he had ‘nothing but the utmost respect for Pratt Capital.’ Those were his words.”

  “Has anyone spoken to Miles?”

  “I know he returned from Mexico City last night. I left several messages at his office with that secretary—”

  “Belle,” Frances interrupted.

  “Right. Belle. But Miles has not returned my calls.”

  “He’s probably digging himself out from under a week away,” Frances said sarcastically.

  “Whatever.”

  “So you think Miles went down to renegotiate the Pro-Chem deal after Clio died?”

  “That’d be my guess. But the corpse wasn’t even cold when he got on that plane.”

  Frances remembered her conversation with Penny Adler. Miles had abruptly decided to leave Southampton, to run out on Richard, his mentor, at probably the worst moment in Richard’s life, all to salvage a deal. So much for partnership.

  And so much for family, too, Frances thought, recalling her own suspicions of her brother-in-law. Despite the dismissive remarks she had made to her sister, she had tracked down Pearl and Bartlett Brenner to confirm that Jake had gone to their home for a morning appointment on the Fourth of July. According to Pearl, even after she and her husband
had decided not to purchase the lithographs, they couldn’t get Jake to leave. Pleading with them, he had offered to reduce the price, to have them pay over time, practically given them the images rather than take no for an answer. He hadn’t left Scarsdale until long after the Brenners’ family and friends had arrived for a holiday luncheon. “Did you find anything else in the office?” Frances asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Anything unusual?”

  “Do I hear the protective daughter coming through?” Meaty said with a smile.

  “I was just wondering,” Frances said. Miles had been looking for something, according to Belle, something important enough that he lied to Belle to get access to Richard’s office. “Have you come across any reference to ‘RC’?”

  Meaty flipped pages in his notepad. “Here. Yeah. Renaissance Commons.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A quasi assisted living facility, quasi private hospital in Quogue.”

  Frances was startled. Had Clio planned to move Richard out of their home? That made no sense. Clio’s diary showed visits to “RC” at ten every Friday morning. She wouldn’t have gone with such regularity if it were only to decide whether the facility was an appropriate resting place for her husband. “What’s Clio’s connection to Renaissance Commons?” Frances asked.

  “She wrote checks to the place every month.”

  “Do you know what was she paying for?”

  “Apparently the room, board, and care of Katherine Henshaw.”

  Frances was confused. Her face must have shown that because Meaty added, “Henshaw’s her mother. I just assumed you knew.”