by Ann Ripley
“Yeah,” he whispered back, “she sings like she’s twenty. We saw her at the Café Carlyle a few months back.”
Her pale blond hair was arranged like a halo around her head, her large blue eyes defined with subtle makeup. Her mature body was in a flowing blue gown that shimmered in the overhead ceiling spotlights as she moved. She turned to the crowd with a gracious smile, then sidled over to the piano as if she were a lion tamer about to win control of a savage beast.
Her balding accompanist was already seated and awaited her with the same expectant look that was on the face of the spectators. The singer slowly leaned back against the flank of the piano, with one hip cocked forward, the classic diva’s pose.
“My God, is she good,” whispered George Wyant. “The picture alone is worth it, even if she couldn’t sing.”
The singer gestured with her chiffon scarf at the seated man and said, “This is the wonderful Richard Steele. And now we’ll do a few songs by my favorite composer, Harold Arlen.” They opened with the upbeat number, “I’ve Got the World on a String,” followed with “That Old Black Magic,” “The Man That Got Away,” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon.”
When she launched into her final number, her face was tilted up and her countenance was almost beatific: “Last night / When we were young / Love was a star / A song unsung . . .”
Louise didn’t know whether Joan Clayton was experiencing God or the heartbreak of lost love. But she did know that the artist had touched her audience. Louise saw that Steffi and Anne had tears in their eyes. The men held back, but some of them, too, looked as if they might cry.
41
The performance was over. Joan Clayton bowed low and the applause of the small crowd followed her out of the room. Marty Corbin went over to the piano and quickly picked up the gauntlet, lest the crowd slip away. He told them, “We’re honored to have Mr. Steele stay with us for a while. As promised, we expect you to perform in a little amateur competition.” A few murmurs of protest, though in informing people about the dinner this afternoon, Steffi had mentioned the “little amateur competition.”
“Remember,” said Marty, “it doesn’t matter how bad you are. Just think of American Idol, and go for it.” He chuckled, signaling another joke coming their way. “Just because you’ve spent twelve years or more working on your scientific degrees doesn’t mean you can’t get up in front and make fools of yourselves. We want to have some fun, don’t we, in the midst of our captivity?”
This got him a laugh. Ralph Pinsky raised his hand slightly and Marty pointed to him. “We have a volunteer. Ralph, what do you want to sing, or play, or do?”
Without cracking a smile, Dr. Pinsky said, “I’ll sing ‘The Party’s Over.’”
The bald accompanist nodded and smiled and the redheaded scientist walked up to the piano and struck a pose that mimicked Joan Clayton’s. People burst into laughter. Then he broke the pose and he and the accompanist got their heads together to negotiate the key in which he would sing.
“Who would have thought there was humor in that man?” Louise said to George Wyant.
“There’s more to Ralph than meets the eye,” Wyant said in a low voice. “You know all the talk about how Matt ‘stole’ his Turkish tulip? Bruce Bouting passed that tale around. But Matt told me that Pinsky accepted his coup like a gentleman.”
“Maybe that’s just what Matt thought,” said Louise.
“Yeah,” admitted Wyant, “I suppose he could have been putting on that phony polite face he wears most of the time. But the fact is that both Matt and Ralph got the same tip on the plant from the same party.”
“Is that right?” she whispered back.
“It’s happened more than once,” said her companion. His eyes shifted nervously, as if he were saying too much. “Frankly, some scientists will pay tipsters for that information. I think Matt may have done that on a few occasions.”
“Did you ever suspect that Matt got to that tulip first because he paid more than Pinsky did?” she asked her companion.
A loud “shhh” came from Steffi at the head of the table, so George Wyant answered her question with a silent affirmative nod. Louise’s lip curled in a sardonic smile as she reflected on the skulduggery that seemed to lie behind these romantic plant explorations to foreign lands!
Ralph Pinsky was ready to sing and Marty was about to draw him out before he started. “So, Dr. Pinsky, we all know you, yet we don’t know you. You’re the director of a prestigious botanic garden. Tell us something personal about yourself—for instance, your early life and how you got the nerve to get up here and sing a song.”
The pale-faced scientist answered gamely. “I’ve always wanted to work with plants; I’ve had my own garden since the time I was a young child. Everything I grew was successful, so I had virtually no choice but to make botany my life’s work. I believe part of man’s destiny is the preservation of plant species. This is at the very heart of my work.” His pale gaze raked the crowd, as if defying someone to argue the point. Then he broke into a semblance of a smile. “As for the second part of your question, my mother was a frustrated cocktail lounge singer. She’d play and sing at the upright piano for hours. Eventually, in self-defense, for she wasn’t that skilled a songster, we kids—there were three of us, myself and two sisters—would join her. I know every song from 1940 to 1960 by heart.”
Marty stepped aside then and Ralph Pinsky sang. His voice was a plaintive tenor, perfect for the sad love song. “Take off your makeup / The party’s over / It’s all over / My friend.”
Again the room broke into applause. Pinsky’s eyebrows arched upward, as if he were surprised at the favorable reception. Louise leaned forward, to see if others were ready to volunteer. Otherwise, she would have to get up there and perform; she’d promised Marty she’d do it to keep things rolling.
As she scanned the U-shaped table, she couldn’t tell who was enjoying this evening and who wasn’t, for people had the kind of polite, amused expressions on their faces that one saw on the faces of nightclub crowds. A patina of nervousness on some faces, because of the request for folks to make public spectacles of themselves. Surprisingly, Anne Lansing got up from her seat and came forward. Marty put a comradely arm about her shoulder. “Ah, the lovely Anne Lansing.”
Without any prompting, she gave a little autobiography. “I’m the product of my father’s heritage—he’s head of the biology department at Northern and is quite proud that I’m helping develop new plant varieties. My mother is a writer, so I also follow in her footsteps, since a great share of my time is given to writing garden books.”
“And what do you want to do?” said Marty. “Sing? Or perhaps perform magic tricks?”
A few chuckles, which Anne ignored. She turned to Richard Steele and said, “I’ll sing ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand,’ in the key of D.”
The accompanist nodded. She turned back to the crowd and said, “This is dedicated to those who have recently passed on. It was written by Thomas A. Dorsey, the father of gospel music, expressly for Mahalia Jackson.”
Anne sang in a low, mellifluous voice, thick with emotion. The crowd gave her rapt attention. Steffi Corbin began sniffling into her handkerchief once again. Anne appeared to be expressing the grief she felt over the death of Bruce Bouting. With a quick glance at George Wyant sitting beside her, Louise could see that his head was bent in sorrow. He heard the message of the song and applied it to the loss of his deceased mentor, Matthew Flynn.
“Precious Lord, take my hand / Lead me on, let me stand / I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; Through the storm, through the night / Lead me on to the light /Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me home . . .” When Anne finished, the applause was almost as strong as it had been for their celebrity guest.
Louise stared at Anne Lansing as if she’d never seen her before.
Several things happened next. Marty felt the need to lighten the mood and happily someone else felt the same way. A jovial-looking Sam Folsom strode up to the micr
ophone. The historian of the National Tropical Botanical Garden announced he would sing, “Hey, Jude.” As he discussed keys with the accompanist, two people left their seats, Christopher Bailey and Charles Reuter.
Bailey had the look of someone who needed to use the men’s restroom. But Dr. Charles Reuter, who whispered in Nate Bernstein’s ear before he rose, wore the expression of a man bored out of his skull who just wanted to get away from this place.
Louise faced a dilemma. In the past few moments, certain truths had already clicked into place. Details she’d been absorbing but not processing for days suddenly fit together.
Neither of these men had anything to do with the hypothesis taking shape in her mind. Yet she knew she had to find out what they were up to. After all, as Tom Schoonover had said, “You must test your theories.” She was glad she’d worn her defensive outfit.
Putting a look of urgency on her face, she said to George Wyant, “Have to visit the ladies’ room—back in a moment.”
She slipped away barely in time to trace the actions of the two men. Reuter, fortunately, had a patterned shirt with orange in it and she caught a glimpse of him striding down the main hall. But that meant little; she waited until she saw him hurry onto one of the elevators. Now what had happened to Christopher Bailey?
Hurriedly turning into the only other nearby corridor, she was just in time to see Bailey heading for Options. Why would he want to go to the nightclub when he was already at a party? Maybe he wanted to hear Joan Clayton sing again. She slipped into the depths of the club and tried to make out his figure in the dimness. She could see his silhouette against the pale green backlights of the bar. He was ordering a drink. He paid for it and made his way to a table in the corner, then got up almost immediately, leaving the drink behind and moving quickly to the exit at the back of the room.
Louise looked to the left and right when she reached the nightclub exit and saw that to the left was a side door to the hotel. She pulled back for an instant, afraid he’d look back to see if he were being followed. Then she sprinted down the hall, peered carefully out, and pushed the door open.
Beyond a few chirping insects, it was deadly quiet out here. She followed the walkway to the right, but could not see Bailey, but she could see a plainclothes policeman pacing back and forth in front of another hotel entrance. She realized that Bailey must have gone in the other direction, toward the lagoon and the ocean.
Because of her visits to the lagoon, this was a route she knew well. She quickly made up the distance and spied Christopher’s silhouette against the occasional lights on the trail. A wave of apprehension went through her as she watched the man—he was dodging carefully from bush to bush. This was not the behavior of an innocent person.
First, it was just an instinctive reaction, to tail people who’d left the party and see where they were going. Now, she realized, it could be dangerous. But after all, wasn’t that why she’d worn her defensive clothes? She pulled off a few petals from one of the plumeria blossoms and discreetly scattered them as she walked the path. Hansel and Gretel had nothing on her.
No question, Bailey was trying to elude the police. His suspicious demeanor astounded her, for she had just come to a completely different conclusion about the killer.
42
Christopher Bailey was following a wide, sweeping curve through the swimming pools and the lagoon, then past the swimmers’ ocean beach where she had snorkeled. Beyond this beach the land rose gradually until it appeared to be at least twenty feet above the ocean. On the ocean side of the path were picturesque black volcanic rock outcroppings that tumbled down to the water. They were as much a subject of tourist photographs as Shipwreck Rock at the other end of the property. On the other side of this path was a sumptuous lawn and the hotel’s exclusive one-story suites.
Bruce Bouting had bragged about staying in the President’s suite in a corner of the hotel facing the sea. And his loyal assistant, Christopher, was his sometimes roommate. She sighed and her footsteps slowed. She was on a wild goose chase, for most likely all that Christopher Bailey wanted was to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.
But a residual curiosity remained. Why did he deliberately elude the eye of a policeman? She continued to follow him, but at a longer distance. Once he was near the ocean wing of Kauai-by-the-Sea, he did not follow the walk that led to a main entrance, but cut across the perfect lawn and headed for the corner suite. Louise fell even farther behind, for now she was on a strip of open lawn with no shrubs or trees for cover.
A lanai with a railing lined the ocean side of the suite, for what would a president be in Hawaii without a lanai on which to sit and sip drinks? With an agility that amazed her, the weighty young man mounted a few steps and unlocked the door of the suite. When he flicked on a light inside, she dashed across the remaining lawn.
Slowly she circled around the end of the property and found, just as she had suspected, that there were generous-sized windows in the side rooms of these premier suites. What was more, Christopher Bailey was clearly visible in one of them. All Louise had to do was to grapple with Kauai-by-the-Sea’s million-dollar landscaping efforts. The big windows were bounded by lush gardens.
From her experience as a gardener, she knew some tropical varieties were a good deal friendlier than others. She slid through tall ginger plants, rare palms, and tree ferns, delighted that she hadn’t stabbed herself as yet. Now shrouded in greenery and only a couple of feet from the window, she could see the man inside clearly in the brightly lighted room. He didn’t appear to realize that anyone could look in on him from the window; it was amazing the false sense of security these thick tropical gardens gave people. He was standing by a huge bed, zipping open Dr. Bouting’s sleek carrying case and withdrawing the scientist’s black computer, the repository of his horticultural secrets.
She wondered about the computer. According to Anne Lansing, Bruce Bouting’s relatives were flying in to gather his personal effects. Wasn’t the computer a personal effect?
He sat on the bed and fired it up, then began to tap the keys in a businesslike, mundane fashion. He stopped and started more than once, pausing a few moments in between each effort. It reminded Louise of herself, when she sat at her computer jotting down notes. After a few minutes, Bailey calmly shut the computer down, and to her dismay, turned his head and stared out the window.
She froze, wondering if she in any way looked like a tropical plant. Then she remembered those thick glasses and only hoped it was hard for him to see distances. He didn’t appear to see her. He took the computer and tucked it back inside its case and shoved it under the bed. His actions couldn’t have appeared more normal.
Through the closed window glass, Louise could not hear a ring, but Bailey pulled out his cell phone from his pocket, apparently to answer a call. This was a little strange, she thought, but perhaps a friend was calling him from the mainland. Louise suddenly felt too warm in the balmy night and decided she’d had enough.
Slowly, she slid from the arms of the ginger, palms, and tree ferns and hurried back the way she had come. Not too fast, in case a stray policeman spied her. If stopped, she would simply say she’d gone out for a little walk. In a matter of moments, she was across the lawn and back on the path.
Now she had a chance to think about what she’d seen. Christopher may have sneaked out of the hotel, but he’d done nothing suspicious, simply gone to his own room and checked some equipment, so to speak. She recalled Matthew Flynn’s mystifying admonition: Check the equipment. But why or how could Flynn have had anything to do with Bouting’s computer-stored information?
At the very least, she would suggest to Police Chief Randy Hau that he check on, or possibly confiscate, Bruce Bouting’s computer. Before she could do that, she had to go back into the hotel and rejoin the party.
On her left was the expanse of luxurious hotel lawn, while on her right, twenty feet below, was the restless ocean. Its waves lapped noisily against the rough-hewn rock debris from ancie
nt volcanic eruptions. Since the path was only a yard from the precipice, it made her nervous to walk here in the dark. She hurried toward the lights.
Without warning, she felt a hard shove.
Suddenly she was tumbling in the air and didn’t even have time to cry out. She had been pushed forward with such force that she barely escaped hitting any of the rocks, which would have meant landing in the water. But as she scraped along the rocks, one of her knees hit an outcropping and her hands grasped onto a rock projection and held, even as she felt the flesh of her palms scraped raw. Her body swung around and she hung suspended. Then, blessedly, her left foot found a ledge so she could support her weight and she cautiously moved the right foot onto the small outcropping.
For an instant, her mind focused on a detail of her survival. Volcanic rock was an unfriendly rock, totally opposite from smooth granite, which was aeons older than these blackish clumps. With its rough, porous surface, it tore at snorkelers’ legs as they innocently viewed fish. It certainly fell short of Louise’s standards for decorating a garden. But now she loved each small pockmark and rupture in the rubble to which she clung like a barnacle. This imperfect rock had saved her life.
Above her was total silence. Louise realized someone up there had tried to kill her. She shrank her body close against the uneven surface and hardly dared breathe. Then she heard a low chuckle. Apparently, her fate seemed amusing to the person on the path.
She waited, hoping to hear retreating footsteps on the path but not daring to take a chance. Resting her cheek against the rough rock, she tried to relax and remain strong. For several minutes, she did. Then she knew she had to climb her way out of this before she lost her strength. Twisting her body from side to side, she found a small ledge higher up on which to put a foot. She felt secure enough to release one hand and take the flashlight from the button pocket in her pullover. The roiling waves were ten feet below her and the path about the same distance above. Shining her light, she saw a route up, if she only had the nerve to move her feet to a higher ledge.