by Nancy Martin
Bloom interrupted. “Maybe she can help, Scotty.”
“You’ve broken enough rules already,” said Wilson. “You want your promotion this bad?”
“For godsake,” Bloom said, “the old guy won’t mind now.”
The two of them sounded like bickering teenagers. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter,” I said, suddenly snappish, too. “I helped you. Surely you can share this small bit of information? Maybe I can give Peach some comfort if I know what happened.”
Wilson turned away.
Bloom took a deep breath. “They were Viagra tablets, Miss Blackbird.”
I heard a cop laugh in the bedroom.
“I see.”
“It’s obvious what he planned to do,” said Wilson. “Only he had a fight with the Treese lady instead, so she turned around and—”
Bloom cut him off. “I think we’d better let Miss Blackbird go home now.”
“You don’t really think Peach could have hurt Rory?” I asked. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Convince yourselves she did it, so you can all go home?”
“Miss Blackbird—”
“It’s impossible. And you’re wasting valuable time.”
“We’re following procedure,” Bloom began.
“She’s a kind and caring person. You don’t know her. She loves Rory.” I felt tears start. “We’re very good friends.”
The short silence that greeted my last declaration made me realize I had just discounted all my defense of Peach. Naturally I would protect her if we were friends.
I wasn’t helping at all. I tried to rub the headache out of my temples. The impact of the night suddenly hit me like a baseball bat to the skull. “I’d like to go home now. Could we find my driver, please, Detective Bloom?”
“Sure thing,” he said.
He took me downstairs past the thinning crowd of guests. Even Peach had disappeared. I walked unsteadily beside the detective to the portico entrance, silent and distressed. I tried to formulate another speech to defend Peach’s honor, but the police weren’t going to listen. They were looking for proof of guilt. Guilt, not innocence.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Bloom suggested when we reached the side foyer. “You’ve had a long night. I’ll go look for your driver.”
I felt like a senior citizen, but I accepted his offer. “Thank you.”
Bloom turned to leave me and stopped short.
Michael Abruzzo took a step out of the shadowy doorway and into the lighted foyer. He wore a brown leather jacket, a black T-shirt and jeans. Over my head, his gaze clashed with Bloom’s, and the two of them positively bristled like a couple of dogs defending their territory.
“Abruzzo,” said Bloom in a tone quite different from the one he’d used with me all evening. “How long have you been here?
“If it isn’t Detective Gloom,” said Abruzzo. “I’ve been around for a couple of hours. I’m here to take Miss Blackbird home.”
“Oh,” I said, turning pink for no reason I could imagine. “But Reed’s waiting for me.”
“I sent him home. It’s late.”
“What time is ... ? Good heavens. I had no idea. I forgot all about Reed until just a minute ago.”
The two men faced each other and didn’t notice me. Abruzzo was bigger and more watchful. Bloom was younger and leaner, but angrier. Somehow they looked evenly matched.
“You know this man, Miss Blackbird?”
“Why, yes. This is—”
“I know who he is,” said Bloom. “I’m surprised you do.”
Abruzzo laughed.
Bloom said, “Maybe we’d better find an officer to drive you home.”
“Don’t be silly. Mr. Abruzzo’s services have been bought and paid for.” I swallowed hard as I absorbed the situation. “By Rory, as a matter of fact.”
Bloom raised an eyebrow at Abruzzo. “No kidding? You had a business arrangement with Pendergast?”
“Occasionally I do business with upstanding citizens, yes,” said Abruzzo.
“He’s dead,” said Bloom.
“I heard,” Abruzzo replied calmly.
“We’ll want to talk to you.”
Abruzzo shrugged. “You know how to reach me.”
“Is the car ready?” I asked. Any minute the situation was going to become a full-blown pissing contest, and I didn’t intend to get caught in the middle. “Can we go now?”
Abruzzo made a sweep with one hand. “Right this way, Cinderella.”
I turned to Bloom. “You’ve been kind tonight, Detective.” I put out my hand to shake his. “I only wish I could convince you that you’re completely wrong about Peach.”
“I’ll call you,” he said, accepting my handshake.
Abruzzo moved aside to let me pass. As the detective watched, Abruzzo slipped one hand under my elbow as I started down the stone stairs in my heels. We descended in silence.
Chapter 5
When we were out of the detective’s earshot at the bottom of the steps, I pulled out of his grasp and said under my breath, “You can put away your six-shooter now.”
“What?”
“You and Detective Bloom doing your Wild West routine.”
“Yeah, I’m his favorite gunslinger.”
“Are you?” I asked, perhaps too sharply. There was plenty of room under the leather jacket to conceal a weapon.
“Tonight I’m just your chauffeur, Miss Blackbird.” He looked down at me. “You okay?”
We were the only people under the portico. He pulled car keys from his hip pocket and waited for my response. I wasn’t okay. But I nodded.
“Rough night,” Abruzzo said. “I’m sorry about Rory.”
I looked away, nodded again and felt my throat close tight.
With one hand under my elbow again, he helped me into the front passenger seat of a perfectly sedate Volvo sedan and closed the car door. I used the next few seconds to pull myself together. By the time he slid behind the wheel beside me, I had given myself a strong mental lecture and regained my self-control.
I said the first thing that came into my head. “Why aren’t you driving one of those parade floats you sell at Mick’s Muscle Cars?”
“I like this one. Just don’t tell anyone I drive a foreign make, okay?”
I needn’t have worried that Abruzzo was going to force conversation after that. He started the car, fastened his seat belt and drove slowly down Rory’s curving driveway and through the gates. The car was comfortable, almost cozy. He paid attention to driving and allowed me to think.
I pushed the image of Rory’s small, crumpled body out of my mind for fear I might start crying again. The idea of blubbering in front of Michael Abruzzo mortified me into calm. Instead, I leaned back against the headrest and closed my eyes, simply letting impressions float up in my mind.
The Pendergast sisters anxious to keep as many family secrets as possible. Peach weeping quietly for her longtime lover. Kitty Keough making a scene under the portico. Rory’s ties hanging neatly in his closet. Stan Rosenstatz mopping his face with a graying handkerchief. Jill Mascione bristling as Detective Bloom examined my legs as if they were important evidence in a murder case.
Abruzzo drove the Volvo over a bridge, and I opened my eyes. “Rory had fishing rods in his room. Hanging on the wall.”
Abruzzo didn’t seem surprised that this particular remark came out of nowhere. “Trout.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Rory liked to fish for trout.”
I turned in the seat and looked at Abruzzo. “Did you know Rory well?”
“Sure.”
“Sure? What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “I took him fishing.”
“When?” I demanded, surprised.
“Lots of times.”
“Lots?”
“I’m not the usual Pendergast crony, huh?”
“I just—I’m surprised you associated with him.”
“I didn’t think he’d be safe going fishing by himself
these last few years. I was afraid he’d fall in and drown. So I went with him. He showed me all his favorite places on the Delaware.”
“Have you known him long?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. In the light of the dashboard, I looked at Abruzzo’s profile. His blunt nose, heavy-lidded eyes—kept that way, perhaps, to reveal nothing. I wondered fleetingly if he had cared for Rory. What was he feeling now?
At last, he said, “I’ve known Rory a lot of years. He gave me a start when I needed it, and we were—he was a good guy. I’m sorry he’s gone.”
“He was murdered,” I said.
The news did not startle Abruzzo. “With the homicide cops there, I figured. Who did it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
He shot a look at me. “We?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure why I’d lumped myself in the same category as the police. I looked at the road again. I knew Peach Treese hadn’t murdered Rory, that was all. Bloom’s automatic assumption that she had made me angry. Peach didn’t need to be prosecuted. She needed to be protected.
Abruzzo said, “Looks like I’ve given your buddy Bloom a new suspect.”
“You mean you? Don’t be silly.” Gathering my courage, I said, “I gather you’re acquainted with the detective, too?”
“We spent some time together.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged again. “In the juvenile system.”
“The juvenile system,” I repeated, uncomprehending. “Oh.”
“I wasn’t an especially well-behaved teenager.”
“Neither was Detective Bloom, I gather.”
“He wasn’t bad. I think his family sent him into the program to—what do they call it now? To get scared straight.”
“Is that why you were there, too?”
He smiled, watching the road. “I was a couple of years older, a little more experienced. A judge seemed to think some additional time away from my—from negative influences might be rehabilitating.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t steal motorcycles anymore,” he answered. “I met Rory around that time, as a matter of fact.”
“Really? How?”
“When I was ushered out of the state’s accommodations, he had just started a mentoring program. I ended up getting paired with him.”
“You met Rory when you were a teenager?”
“Yeah. He made me go back to school, get my GED, take some college classes. And he helped me start my first business.”
I sat back in the seat, floored. If Abruzzo had told me Rory raised Siamese cats and gave them to Eskimos I couldn’t have been more surprised. I had spent the whole evening showing the police how well I knew Rory Pendergast, and here was information I’d had no clue about. “For heaven’s sake. I knew he had strong feelings about teens from troubled—I’m sorry, I mean—”
“It’s okay.”
“He helped you start in business?”
“He loaned me money from time to time. I didn’t want to borrow from my own family, and with my track record I needed a source other than a bank to get started. For a while, I owed him a hell of a lot of cash. I still do, actually.”
How many others had Rory helped in the same way? How many young men of questionable background?
Breaking across my thoughts, Abruzzo said, “Why did you say don’t be silly?”
“What?”
“When I said Bloom could add my name to his list of suspects. Why is that silly?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just is.”
Bloom had become a police detective after his sojourn in jail. And what had Michael Abruzzo become? No, not a murderer. If he took an old man to visit his favorite fishing spots, surely he couldn’t be capable of killing him.
But I wondered how Abruzzo’s perspective on crime might help figure out who had killed Rory Pendergast. Did he look at murder with a different point of view than Detective Bloom?
“Listen,” he said after the moment stretched, “I still haven’t had any dinner, and I’m starving. What about you?”
I hadn’t eaten anything in a long time myself, and I was genuinely hungry. Spending a little more time with Abruzzo didn’t seem like a bad idea just then either.
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“A burger?”
A burger sounded heavenly. “Sure.”
“No, wait,” he said. “I’ve got a better plan.”
He turned off the highway a few miles later just over the Bucks County line and ended up in a neighborhood of dilapidated warehouses surrounded by acres of broken asphalt and scrubby bushes. The Volvo veered around potholes and nosed through a labyrinth of parked trucks. A tractor-trailer rumbled past. Eventually Abruzzo found a nondescript bar, the Blue Note, standing on the edge of the warehouse district. He seemed to know the parking lot well and slid the Volvo into a space between a Dumpster and a big Lincoln Navigator.
Inside, the place was dim, lit by neon beer signs behind the bar and a television turned to hockey highlights. Three patrons in flannel shirts and baseball caps hunched at the bar and stared up at the television. The bartender leaned on his elbow beside them. At a table, a white-haired gentleman with a much younger woman sipped espresso.
The bartender looked up when we came in and reached for the television remote to turn down the roar of hockey fans. “Hey, Mick, you dog. How’s it hanging, buddy?”
“Not bad, Del.” They shook hands. “Connie still in the kitchen?”
“Yep. With Scallopine.” He kissed his fingertips.
The bar smelled of cigar smoke, and Perry Como crooned on the jukebox. With homey camaraderie, the men at the bar razzed Abruzzo as he threaded me towards the last table along the wall. He took it genially. At the table, he shrugged out of his leather jacket, and in his black T-shirt suddenly fit perfectly into the workingman’s hangout.
The bartender tossed drink coasters down on the table and lit the candle on the table with a Zippo. “What’re you? On your way home from a wedding?” His smile was a little loose around the edges, as if he’d been sampling behind the bar. “This young lady looks like a bridesmaid or something. Real pretty.”
I doubted the Blue Note had ever seen a Givenchy before.
“She’s always dressed for a party,” said Abruzzo. “Del, this is Nora Blackbird. Del DeMartino.”
“Hi,” he said, shaking my hand and grinning. “What can I get you two? A bottle of champagne?”
Abruzzo said, “If I thought you had any, I’d order it. How about the Vigneto Asinione, if there’s any left.” He turned to me, brows raised. “That okay?”
Lifting both palms, I surrendered to his knowledge of the available wines.
“Do you like veal?” Del asked me.
“Yes, of course.”
“You ain’t had veal like my Connie makes. Has she, Mick?”
“I doubt it, Del.”
With a wink I wasn’t supposed to see, Del promised to come right back.
We were alone for half a minute before I spoke. “I’ve traveled past this area all my life and never imagined a restaurant might be here.”
Abruzzo nodded, glancing around the hangout. “Well, the ambience is nothing to write home about. But for good food at any hour, it’s the best.”
“I gather you’re a regular?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
Of course I wanted to know more. I wanted to ask all kinds of questions, but I refrained. Abruzzo had already found just the right weak moment to offer me a substantial amount of money for land I shouldn’t have sold, so I knew I should be on the alert around him. But I was tired and hungry and emotionally spent.
The bottle of wine arrived along with an antipasto overflowing with olives, artichoke hearts and perfectly sliced vegetables. Abruzzo removed the bottle’s cork himself with an attachment on a well-used pocket-knife. He poured, and the liquid flashed like rubies in the candlelight. I took a sip and found the wine dry, but intense. A hint of fruit, a su
ggestion of Tuscan violets and maybe cinnamon, too. It was not the wine selection of an amateur. My companion drank thoughtfully and reached for a black olive. I felt my nerves relax.
A long dinner of silence stretched ahead, so I took the initiative and said, “You went fishing with Rory Pendergast.”
“Fly-fishing mostly.” He sketched the one-handed motion of casting a rod over a stream. “And some shad. We had a good time together. He could get along with anyone.”
I said, “Do you suppose everyone would agree with you?”
“I guess nobody gets where he did without making some enemies.”
“Enemies who disliked him enough to commit murder?”
“Somebody obviously did.”
I sighed. “I can’t imagine why anyone would kill a man like Rory.”
“He was rich,” Abruzzo observed. “Really rich.”
“Someone killed him for money?”
“The simple answer is often the right answer.”
“That’s what Bloom said.” I eyed him. “For what other reasons would someone kill?”
He met my gaze. “Why ask me?”
“It’s a rhetorical question. I’m just making conversation.”
A skeptical smile may have crossed his mouth. “Okay. If money’s not the motive, it could be a family thing. Or blackmail. A business deal gone bad, maybe.” He gained momentum. “A power struggle. Angry employee. Former partner, a creditor, a borrower, a—”
“Whoa.” His list overwhelmed me. Tentatively I said, “Or some—well, a sex thing, maybe?”
“At his age?” Abruzzo grinned. “Well, then, he died happy.”
I thought of the Viagra pills, but shook my head to dispel the mental picture of Rory dying during an ardent interlude. Except for his torn shirt collar, his clothing had been only slightly disturbed.
“Whoever it was, it was certainly somebody who attended tonight’s party.” I touched the stem of my glass and remembered the wine I’d been carrying to him. If I’d gone sooner, I might have prevented his death. I felt the rush of emotion again. “It’s so shocking. I can’t grasp it. Maybe for you it’s business as usual, but for—Oh, good heavens, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He laughed at me across the candlelight, his eyes as blue as struck matches. At that moment I realized why he was called “The Mick.” His eyes were an Irish-man’s blue, startling in his otherwise very Roman face. He said, “Welcome to my world, Miss Blackbird?”