Thanks to Cadbury's dark chocolate, I almost consumed enough sugar to decay all the teeth in California.
In the dim light of Tino's lobby, Carl Novotny looked even younger than he had that afternoon, and, whereas I'd pegged him at mid-forties, now I wondered if he'd even reached that decade yet. I'd had just enough time to go home, change clothes, and repair my makeup before meeting him, so I didn't think anyone would mistake me for his mother, but I'd have preferred to look twenty-something and holding. Instead, I harbored a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Guilt, I decided. He only wanted to get his briefcase back and have dinner without people thinking he had no life, and I acted as if it were a date. Stupid. Showed what lack of practice in the social arts could do.
"Hi." He looked just a tad uncomfortable too. Probably regretting his rash invitation.
I contributed my part to getting the witty repartee off to a good start. "Hi." Then I remembered I was supposed to return the briefcase, and I'd left it in the trunk of my car. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Novotny. The briefcase is in my car." I pointed toward the parking lot.
"That's okay. Mr. Featherstone's is in my car too. We'll swap them after dinner. And please, call me Carl."
"Call me Olivia." Then a waiter came up and led us to a table.
Tino's Italian decor consisted of a ceiling of crisscrossed lath strips clogged with plastic grape vines and tables holding Chianti bottles with dripping candle wax. I figured the only reason they didn't have aspiring opera singers taking requests for "Come Back to Sorrento" was that so many diners crammed the place that the singers wouldn't have been able to get between the tables without waxing their hips.
Carl didn't open his menu but looked over at me and thanked me for coming. "I don't cook, and eating alone night after night gets mighty boring after a while. Besides, it's my fault about the briefcase. I need it first thing tomorrow. You're really doing me a favor."
"No problem." Even though I knew I'd order the ravioli, I studied my menu, which was the size of a small billboard, and glanced at Carl from time to time. He seemed nervous, not at all the brusque businessman who'd been in Brad's office earlier, full of ideas about who might have murdered Harry.
After we ordered and he drank some of the red wine the waiter poured into our glasses, Carl looked a bit more relaxed. "I'm sorry about somehow picking up Mr. Featherstone's briefcase this afternoon. I'm not usually so stupid."
"An honest mistake. They look a lot alike. Yet, the one you left behind belonged to Harry Hammond. I wondered how you came to have it."
"I picked it up at the hotel."
"Where in the hotel? Not the room where Harry was killed, I hope."
"Oh, no." He took another sip of wine before continuing. "Not when I found him."
"Later?"
"Yes. Look, I know this may sound a little, uh, insensitive, but…" He put his wineglass down and leaned forward across the small table between us, keeping his voice low. "Rose Hammond told me Harry had gone into that room to look over the notes for his speech. So when they started to serve dinner and he still hadn't returned, I went in and found him lying on the floor, the back of his head…" He grimaced. "You don't want to know."
Right. "Did you touch anything?"
"No, of course not. I rushed over to Harry and felt for a pulse, but I could see it was already too late just by looking at him."
Carl took a deep breath and seemed to shudder. I decided he was either a very good actor or he hadn't made that fatal, unmentionable wound himself.
Carl continued. "I flagged down a passing waiter in the hallway, said it was an emergency, and asked for the manager. He told me to wait there while he got him. When the manager came, I told him about Harry, and he pulled out his cell phone and called the police. Then we both went back to the linen room and waited until the cops came."
His long explanation seemed rehearsed, but then I guessed he'd said it to the police officers who questioned him as well as other people.
"And the manager didn't touch anything either?"
"No, we both just stood there, sort of standing guard."
"So when did you pick up the briefcase?"
"After the police came and questioned me."
The waiter appeared with our salads. When he was safely out of earshot, Carl went back to his story.
"When I returned to the reception room, I saw the briefcase standing on the floor next to one of the bars, and I realized it was Harry's. I thought that everything might be impounded or whatever the police do, and I didn't see why the business should be hampered just so they could fuss over a bunch of papers. So I just picked it up and walked out with it. Maybe I shouldn't have, but that's what I did." He shrugged.
I dipped a piece of Italian bread into the olive oil-garlic-herb mixture and Carl did the same. On one hand, I thought he should never have taken the briefcase but handed it over to the police instead. Yet, Brad had talked to Tom Ortega that afternoon, and, at least according to him, the police didn't seem to want the thing.
"So much for Saturday night," I reminded Carl. "If you were so concerned about business, why didn't you return the briefcase to Amanda Dillon or at least bring it to the office on Monday?"
He took a bite of bread and chewed a lot before answering, and I wondered if he could invent a plausible story on the spur of the moment.
"To tell the truth, I forgot it. When I left the hotel that night, I took it home, but on Monday morning, I just got ready to go to work as usual and didn't remember it until after I got there."
My suspicions came back. How could he possibly forget that he'd discovered a dead body and took away Harry's briefcase?
Apparently, he read the skepticism on my face, because he again leaned forward, worry lines creasing his forehead. "I know it sounds improbable, but I can't help it. That's what happened."
After more thinking, he seemed to realize he needed to say more. "It's not like I forgot Harry'd been killed. I spent most of Sunday calling just about everybody in the company, and I thought of what his death meant to my own job, all the things I'd have to take care of."
His excuse sounded plausible, but there was something else. "What did you and Amanda quarrel about when Brad, that is Mr. Featherstone, saw you in the hallway on Monday?"
"I don't remember. I'm sure it can't have been anything important."
"Not the briefcase?"
"No."
"But you didn't go back home to get it."
"No. I knew she had her hands full with a million other things anyway. Hammond's death threw everything into chaos."
"So what about today?" I prompted.
"Yes. This morning I had it with me but discovered my car wouldn't start, and I had to have it towed. You know the rest."
Either the wine worked some kind of magic on me or everything sounded logical, so I accepted Carl's explanations at face value. I relaxed and sat back in my chair, thinking of my next line of interrogation. Should I try to learn more about the stock deal that the vice president seemed to be involved in? Or would it be better to ask why he thought Debra might be having an affair?
Instead, our dinners came, and I spent the next few moments enjoying mine and stealing looks at Carl. In high school, I stopped going steady with a boy when, at dinner one night, I saw him let long strands of spaghetti dangle from his mouth. I used to laugh at my mother, who read etiquette books for fun, but some of her nightly instructions on the basics of table manners apparently stuck. Both she and Miss Manners—who once wrote, "Home is not an etiquette-free zone"—would approve of the neat way Carl ate his fettuccine.
"Tell me about Amanda," I asked him. "Is she really running the company now?"
"Sure. She ran it whenever Harry left town, so that's the same. Of course, the directors have yet to meet. They'll decide."
"And what about you? You indicated this afternoon you could move up, perhaps supplant Ziegler as vice president."
Carl wiped his mouth and took a sip of wine before he answered. "That would hav
e happened even without Harry's death, but it's more likely now. Ziegler never liked Amanda, and everybody knew it."
"Still, you and Amanda get along all right."
"Of course. She's very smart." He smiled at me before returning his attention to the fettuccine.
I felt he tried just a little too hard to convince me, and then another thought intruded. Maybe the office romance involved not Harry and Amanda but Carl and Amanda. If so, then why did he invite me to Tino's? Why buy dinner for a thorn when he could have a rose?
Carl seemed to read my thoughts. "Amanda is so beautiful she's not always taken seriously, but believe me—she's very dedicated to her job. She deserves her success." He looked over at me and grinned. "I'm afraid talking about one woman in the presence of another is not exactly chivalrous behavior. Tell me about yourself. How long have you worked for Mr. Featherstone?"
Relaxed or not, I still preferred to be the questioner, not the question-ee, and I didn't want to go into details or tell him Brad was my brother, so I just continued my own agenda.
"Mr. Featherstone thinks you and Amanda might have had something going."
Blaming other people for my own thoughts was becoming a habit, but heck, I figured all's fair in love and detecting.
Carl looked genuinely shocked at my suggestion and stared at me for a few seconds. "Why on earth would he think that? Even if she were my type—which she's definitely not—she'd be more apt to fool around with Harry. Although frankly, I didn't buy that either. I think she has someone outside the company, which makes a lot more sense."
I tended to believe him, and I reassured him with a smile. "I think you're right, but office gossip always wants to link up single people, doesn't it?"
"I haven't been single very long. In fact, I'm not divorced yet. My wife left two months ago, and we're still seeing lawyers over the distribution of assets. She doesn't want the house, so I'm living in it until we can sell it."
"I'm sorry."
"Thanks." He took another sip of wine. "We were married almost ten years. Then Christmas day—Christmas for God's sake—she moved out."
His face turned red, and he put his fork down. I decided he hadn't confided this information to anyone else and needed to talk about it. I often had that effect on people. Perfect strangers I happen to sit next to in the dentist's waiting room have been known to share with me their spouse's bad habits or their children's ingratitude.
He filled in some details, finished with, "I'm sorry," and looked into his plate as if the strands of pasta made a design like the shroud of Turin.
"Did she say why she wanted the divorce?" I asked.
"She said I hadn't lived up to her expectations. She thought I should have had a much better position and been a lot wealthier by now."
"That's too bad. Do you have children?"
"No. I used to wish we had, but I don't anymore. I can see now she wanted a kind of life she read about in those glitzy magazines. She had no career and wanted to shop at Gump's and Louis Vuitton. Nothing we had was ever good enough."
"Do you still love her?"
"God, no. I'm angry as hell, but I don't want her back." He picked up his fork, looked at me, and grinned again. "I'm not used to this dating business yet, but I'm beginning to see there are a lot more fish in the ocean."
I wondered whether I ought to feel complimented or check my pocket mirror for gills. I decided I'd test his reaction to me and get that out of the way right up front. "Brad Featherstone is my brother."
His eyebrows shot up, but the grin didn't leave his face. "Really?"
"I have a sister too. They're twins, ten years younger than I am."
"I still say you're too attractive to be older than Featherstone."
Then my face got red. I could feel the heat rising all the way to the roots of my hair.
"You're blushing. Don't other men tell you how good-looking you are?"
I didn't answer that, since, "What other men?" didn't convey the image I preferred to project. However, it reminded me that I needed to stop my interior whining over Lamar and survey the field again. "Why did you invite me to dinner? How did you know I wasn't married?"
"Simple. You weren't wearing a wedding ring."
"You noticed."
"I looked. Are you divorced or widowed?"
He shot encouraging signals across the table at me. It must have been that chemistry they talked about. I'd always felt funny when a man was coming on to me, like there were neutrons or something charging the air. I could feel them coming from his eyes. They were blue. I'd always liked blue eyes.
I decided to enjoy the moment. "Both. My first husband died in a car accident seven years ago. Then, two years ago, I married again, and we've been divorced almost a year."
"Yet, you kept his name?"
"My, you are observant. Yes, I got used to writing Olivia Grant and decided to keep the shorter name. My siblings are stuck with our father's name, and Samantha still groans about having to write Samantha Featherstone on everything. She tells me she won't get married until she finds a man whose last name is Oz."
He laughed, a nice hearty laugh, and I smiled some more. He refilled my wineglass and waved away the hovering waiter who wanted to hijack an empty plate. I used to think they did that because nobody ever taught them it's impolite to remove a plate while the other person is still eating, but then I learned they wanted to hustle you out of the restaurant so they could use the table again. Okay, so maybe their prices would have gone up if the turnover decreased, but let's face it, we didn't eat in restaurants to save money.
"Are you a native Californian?" Carl asked.
"I was born in Illinois, but my father came over from England as a young man. I was fourteen when my parents moved to California. How about you?"
"Florida originally. Then my college roommate told me about San Francisco. I did post-grad work at State."
"I went to UC Berkeley. My father wanted to send me to Stanford, but the times being what they were, I thought I'd find more radicals across the bay. I'd worn clothes from second-hand or charity stores and straightened my hair."
"You straightened your hair?"
"Curly hair was out. Long and straight was in."
He laughed again. "I'm glad you don't straighten it anymore. I like it this way."
I rattled on, trying to cover my discomfort at his compliment while making my feeble participation in the rebellious youth era sound more interesting than the reality. In truth, I could never completely eradicate my conservative genes. And he told me about his very Leave It to Beaver upbringing. Dessert and coffee came. He paid the bill, and still we sat and talked.
Finally, the appearance of the waiter, trying to fill our still-full water glasses for the fourth time, registered on me, and I reached for my coat. We talked some more on the sidewalk outside, said good-bye at last, and I got into my car. I'd driven halfway home before I realized we'd never made the briefcase swap at all. Now I'd have to see the man again. Oh, darn.
CHAPTER TEN
Since I hadn't been able to fit my cell phone in my evening purse—not with the more necessary items like read-the-menu glasses, skinny billfold, and car and house keys—I'd left it in the car. Now that I was in the car, I pulled it out and googled Carl's name. He was the only Carl Novotny who lived in San Ricardo, so I noted the address and pointed the car in the right direction. My watch indicated it was close to eleven, but he couldn't be in bed yet, probably hadn't even arrived home.
As I drove, I pondered the wisdom of my actions. Was it smart to go to the man's house this late at night? Would he consider it an invitation to something more intimate than our restaurant dinner? Of course, I had a legitimate reason for the trip. He'd said he needed the briefcase urgently the next morning. What if he invited me in for a nightcap and then made a move on me? I hadn't made up my mind about that when I began to wonder, as perhaps the police did, if he killed Harry. Did I want to start an affair with a possible murderer?
I remembered
something he'd said about his soon-to-be ex-wife, that she found his income unacceptable. Would he have killed Harry so he could be promoted to vice president and keep her in Italian shoes? No. I believed him when he said he didn't want her back.
Yet, could he have killed Harry for some other reason? He admitted taking Hammond's briefcase. Perhaps evidence of some kind hid among the papers. Either Brad and I didn't recognize it, or Carl removed something incriminating between Saturday night and that morning. Again, I rejected the notion. Brad had discussed the contents with Amanda on the phone, and she hadn't said anything was missing. I decided to relax and just go with whatever flow appeared.
Carl lived on a tree-lined street not far from San Ricardo's downtown. Once more, I thanked the transportation gods that I didn't have to drive into San Francisco. Realistically though, it wouldn't make much sense for Carl to work at Hammond Jewelry headquarters in San Ricardo and live in the city. Even in gold-rush days, when the bankers and railroad barons thrived, they built their summer mansions in the suburbs to the south of the city for the warmer weather. I think Mark Twain once said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
I found the right house and wondered if I had in fact beaten Carl home. Darkness, except for some light coming from a first-floor window, lay everywhere on the building, especially the front entryway. A smidgen of fear traced its way up my spine. I was all alone, the hour was late, and I was a woman who knew no karate. I quickly reminded myself I'd gone into a quiet, homey neighborhood, not a garbage-strewn slum, and if Novotny wasn't there yet, he would be soon.
I steered my car into the driveway at the left side of the house, turned off the engine, and pressed the trunk-release button, then unfastened my seat belt. When I looked up, I saw something dart across the front lawn to the right, away from me. My heart thumped, but I waited a moment, staring at the shadows and shrubs where I thought I'd seen it. Still, nothing moved.
After a moment, I decided nervousness had triggered my imagination, nothing more. I got out of the car, rounded my front bumper, and took the sidewalk angling from the driveway toward the front door. Another obstacle blocked my way. Two shallow steps, followed by a wrought-iron gate with a latch on top. I groaned. It wasn't the first time I'd run into suburban houses that made visitors' lives miserable with stairs or gates to deal with. And this house had both.
Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2) Page 7