by Joan Hess
If she'd shot Jerome in the kitchen, she might have gotten hold of some cocaine to sell to Lisbon. Then again, if Lisbon was the sort to buy it, he was also the sort to be unhappy with cocaine that rightfully belonged to someone as powerful as Gabardi. The only thing she could have sold, I thought slowly, was information. The most interesting (although erroneous) information she had centered on her errant husband's whereabouts.
I made sure Henbit was occupied in conversation with his minion, then gave Brenda a penetrating look as I said, "You told Lisbon that Jerome and his girlfriend were on the plane to Rio, didn't you? Did you also mention he'd stolen cocaine from the cartons in the kitchen? Is that what made your story so expensive?"
"Do you know…?"
"I know about the cocaine, and I know he was working for the mob," I said softly but sternly.
"He'd squirreled away more than a million dollars in pre-laundered money," she admitted. "He was juggling the books for the remodeling so Rick could pay cash. Most of it comes in air conditioners from a Florida firm that coincidentally is owned by Mr. Gabardi and his associates." She took a deep breath. "Mr. Lisbon was willing to pay for me to get out of town before they caught up with Jerome and his hussy. Otherwise, I warned him, I might be so overcome with grief at Jerome's death that I'd blurt out everything to the police."
"You were blackmailing the mob?" I said, awed by this housewife in a nice blue dress, with a pleasant face that concealed the raw courage of an Apache warrior. "Weren't you afraid this Lisbon man wouldn't just…?"
"Oh, no, they're not at all like that anymore. Craig and Charlotte Lisbon have been out to dinner several times, and he's my younger daughter's godfather. The religious kind, not that other kind. Only last summer Jerome and I had a wonderful time at Mr. Gabardi's condo in the Grand Cayman Islands. He even sent over his yacht so Jerome could go deep-sea fishing all week, and every December we get a lovely fruitcake and bottle of champagne from him. I had lunch with his wife on another occasion when we were down for a business meeting. She's a marvelous girl, so pretty and clever. You've been watching too many of those movies. They're really a nice group of people."
"Right," I said as I battled with myself not to allow one teensy giggle to escape. Silly ol' me was all wrong about Cambria, Rick, the manager of the Xanadu, and even the faceless Mr. Gabardi, who shared his condo and his yacht and was a reformed Scrooge. They were businessmen, and if their business was not yet socially acceptable, who was I to go around accusing them of dumping bodies in New Jersey like so much toxic waste?
"May I have your attention?" Geri said, tapping her fork on a glass. "We've arrived at our decision."
Chapter Sixteen
"The grand winner of the Krazy KoKo-nut Kontest is…" Geri patted down her hair and smiled at us, her shoulders squared with power and padding, "Before I make the announcement, I want to thank all of you for coming, and I'm sure Kyle Simmons, as the company's representative, will want to apologize at length for all this dreadful business with shootings and bodies and policemen disrupting my schedule. I think it's obvious to all of us that the contest should have been held as originally planned, in which case I could have arranged adequate publicity before and after. As it is, I'll have to write up the press releases and fax them from the Cape, and I doubt we'll get half the coverage I could have provided."
Ruby Bee rumbled like a truck changing gears. "I'm sure it'll be just fine. The winner?"
"It should have been Catherine!" Frannie said, slamming her fist on the table hard enough to send the crumbs bouncing into the air like frightened fleas. "I need the money to finance the pageants and take trips to broaden her experiences. The best colleges require that these days. If that awful Jerome hadn't encouraged her to start drinking again, none of this would have happened! He deserved to die for what he did to my daughter."
"He ain't the only one," Estelle added, pointedly staring at Rick. "And it's a darn shame, her being sixteen and from a little town. I think the police ought to arrest that fellow sitting right there, instead of letting him be a judge."
Rick shot a paralytic look at Cambria. "Hey, I don't know what she's talking about. I didn't do anything to that girl."
"We shall discuss it later," Cambria said, his lips barely moving.
Gaylene stood up unsteadily. "I think we'd better discuss it right now, if you don't mind. What's this about Rick and this girl? Are you saying that before the contest he got her drunk and screwed her?"
"In what I would guess is 319, on account of it being above mine," Estelle said.
"It could have been 317, on account of-" Ruby Bee stopped when she realized we were not intrigued by details.
Gaylene marched across the room to tower over Rick. "Is this true, you son of a bitch? How could you do such a thing? Here we've been seeing each other for two years, and you go and screw the first girl that walks by? Do you realize I could have gone on a Caribbean cruise last summer and ended up with a really good tan? But no, I tell Mr. Gabardi that I have a steady boyfriend and I'm not the sort of girl to party behind his back with other men. And I had to miss three nights of work to be a contestant-as a special favor to you! When I get back from delivering that suitcase to Vegas, I won't even have a job because the club's closed! Unless my dancing career takes off, I'll have to go back on the street again."
Rick and Cambria sat like lawn statuary, neither reacting to Gaylene's sputtery outburst. One had a white face, and the other's was growing darker by the minute.
Lieutenant Henbit, in contrast, was blinking at her as if she'd accused Rick of murder and put the weapon on the table. "So you know Gabardi, do you?"
"Of course I do, and he's a swell guy. I wish I'd taken him up on his offer. One of the girls at the club went, and she came back with a diamond bracelet that almost blinded me." She curled her fingers as if to rip into Rick, then lost her resolve and returned to her table, saying to Frannie as she went, "I'm real sorry about what he did to your daughter, honey. It's sickening, and if you want to have his face rearranged or something like that, you let me know and I'll pass it along to some friends of mine."
"I think you ought to do just that," said Ruby Bee, possibly unaware of the implications of her remark-but I wasn't sure.
"She asked for it," Rick muttered, jabbing his thumb at the sleeping girl. "She came up to my room, her blouse unbuttoned to her waist, and grabbed my crotch before I knew what the hell was happening. She had my zipper open and was on her knees before I could get out a word. I've met her kind before, and lemme tell you, she's not a little virgin with ribbons in her hair. I tried to get rid of her, Gaylene honey, but she was all over me like hot tar."
"Hot tar," Cambria echoed with an approving nod. "I can't remember when we last used it." From Rick's expression, it seemed likely that he did.
During this, Geri had picked up her clipboard and was frantically scanning the top page, all the while mewing like a stray kitten. "I don't think we need to discuss this further," she said in a high voice. "Catherine's propensities do not concern the results of the contest. It's unfortunate that we had to listen to what should have been a private conversation, but it's really none of our business…" She looked at Gaylene. "Please don't mention the product if you do go back to your former profession, and forget you were ever in this totally ridiculous contest. Forget the name of my firm, and forget me completely. Pretend I never existed."
Gaylene put a piece of gum in her mouth. "Suit yourself."
"We're down to three," Ruby Bee whispered to Estelle.
"Be quiet!" Geri snapped at her. "We're going to put this unpleasantness behind us and be done with this mess. I am going to announce the winner and head straight out the door. My car is parked in the lot across the street, and my luggage is in the trunk. I'm going to say one name, and then I am history. History! Do you people understand?" No one had the nerve to so much as nod. "All right, then," she continued grimly, "the winner is…No, wait a minute, she's been arrested for murder. Wouldn't the media ha
ve a goddamn field day with that? Interviews from a jail cell! A press conference with handcuffs! I'll have to redo the figures. Give me a minute and I'll have the result." She sat down and began to scribble on her clipboard, talking to herself in a shrill and distracted voice.
"I can't believe it!" Ruby Bee said in a voice remarkably similar. "Are you saying that those bars are better-tastin' than my chocolate chip bundt cake? That's flat-out impossible, missy."
"Someone has to win," Geri snarled without lifting her head.
Ruby Bee stalked over to the table where the entries were placed and, with the solemn sincerity of a funeral home director, said, "I have been making this exact recipe for twenty-five years, and you can just ask Arly if it's not the best dadburned cake she's ever had."
I smiled benignly. "I guess it doesn't come out as well with the fake coconut. What a shame."
"But it ain't got that nasty stuff in it," Ruby Bee blurted out, then realized what she'd done and clutched her chest as if experiencing the onset of a heart attack.
"Actually, I gave it low marks for its rubbery texture," Kyle contributed helpfully. "Rubbery texture?" Ruby Bee snatched up a fork, took a bite and chewed it vigorously. After she'd swallowed, she gave him a bewildered look. "It is on the rubbery side, I have to admit. But how can that be? I made it the same way, and even though some of the ingredients are from these parts, I sure know how to fix this particular cake and it always comes out the exact same."
I decided to butt in, now that the stage was set. "You bought a bag of real coconut and one of the Krazy flakes the evening you arrived. Yesterday afternoon in your room you switched the contents. Last night you went down to the kitchen, discovered the door was unlocked, and went in to make the exchange. Despite the necessity of having to step over a corpse, you completed your mission and stole away like a common thief-which you are, by the way-with what you thought was a bag of Krazy KoKo-Nut. Am I right?"
"I still don't understand how come there wasn't real coconut in my box tonight," she said, not willing to acknowledge any guilt.
"Because whoever cleaned up the blood in the kitchen took all the bags out of the boxes and replaced them with real Krazy KoKo-Nut," I explained. "We're going to have one unhappy drug dealer somewhere down the road."
Lieutenant Henbit came across the room. "Mrs. Hanks, what did you do with the bag you took from your box? You didn't flush its contents down the toilet, did you?"
"I was afraid it would stop it up, and I'd hate to rely on that stupid plumber to fix it. I just tossed it in the trash can with what I bought the other night."
Henbit ordered McRowan to take Ruby Bee's key and examine the contents of the trash can in 219. He then approached Rick and Cambria, saying, "If we find cocaine in her room, I'm going to find a way to link it to at least one of you."
"What if their fingerprints are on the bags that were used tonight?" I said. "Neither of them had any business fooling with the ingredients for the contest. Kyle's the one who placed the bags in each contestant's box."
Cambria opened his mouth, then closed it and sighed. Rick gasped for air as if he were drowning in the aura of disapproval radiating from his companion…who happened to be second-in-command of the Gabardi family.
"Okay," Geri said abruptly, having ignored this idle chatter while she realigned her notes. "The winner is Durmond Pilverman. It's been fun working with you, but I need to run along now."
"No, I cannot accept," Durmond said, who'd been oddly quiet during the fireworks. "I'm a federal agent, here under false pretenses. I arranged to be included among the contestants in order to monitor the drug deal we knew was about to take place. The recipe was provided by another agent, and I've only prepared it once before to make sure I could."
"Then you!" Geri pointed at Ruby Bee. "You're the damn winner! You get the grand prize, okay? Your entry had the product in it, and that's all that matters. No one could make anything remotely edible with it, anyway." She burst into tears halfway through the door, but Kyle hurried over to offer his handkerchief and murmur soothingly. At Henbit's bidding, the officer at the door allowed them to sit on the sofa in the lobby.
"I won!" Ruby Bee shrieked, hanging on to Estelle's shoulder. "I won ten thousand dollars! I can't believe it."
"Well, sit down before you make a fool of yourself," Estelle replied tartly. She was going to continue, but suddenly screamed like a banshee that'd been goosed. "There he is! Oh my gawd, do something!"
From behind the window, the whiskery psycho watched us, his tongue darting across his lips and saliva bubbling in the corners of his mouth. He gave us a jaunty little wave, then sauntered out of our sight, a suitcase rather than an axe in his hand.
"He takes his roles too seriously," Durmond said apologetically. "I hardly ever let him go undercover anymore."
McRowan came back into the dining room. "Yeah, there's cocaine in the trash can, mixed up with some flakes. I did a quick search of the room to make sure I'd found it all, and came across a dozen of these."
Henbit took a small pink plastic object from him, studied it for a moment, and said, "This is interesting, although we may not need to confiscate it for evidence." He twisted a button, then set it down on the table and smiled as it began to hop around with a clicky sound. "It's the infamous Popper Penis," he added for those of us ignorant of Manhattan porn shop novelties. We all watched it with mindless fascination as it hopped its way to the edge of the table. At the last second, Estelle grabbed it and buried it in her lap, her face almost as red as her hair.
"Goodness gracious, Estelle," murmured the grand winner of the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff.
Henbit told McRowan to place Cambria and Rick under arrest for possession and homicide.
"One minute," Cambria said. "You may have evidence of drugs in this hotel, and it is possible that this young man and I came across a body in the kitchen and felt it would be more appropriate to place it elsewhere. You may discover fingerprints on the bags used tonight, and I may need to discuss this with my lawyer before I explain why I may have handled them at some point. What you do not have is any evidence that this young man and I shot the deceased. He was, in fact, a valued employee. Only today did we learn he planned to leave the country with certain items that did not belong to him."
"That's right!" Rick said. "He was the only one who could deal with the bookkeeping. I myself cannot make heads or tails of-" Cambria's glower was as effective as a garrote.
Neither spoke as McRowan escorted them out the door. Henbit ordered the rest of us back to our rooms, but like Manhattan in the middle of the night, the lobby remained lively. Geri was sobbing while Kyle tried to calm her down, Ruby Bee was raving about money, Estelle was doing her best to explain to anyone who would listen (no one would) that her purchase was nothing but a gag gift, and Frannie and Gaylene were unsuccessfully trying to rouse a comatose ex-contestant.
Therefore, only Durmond and I rode the elevator to the second floor, although it felt more like a decompression chamber than the wheezy product of Mr. Otis's imagination. He (Durmond, not Mr. Otis) invited me into his room, but I wasn't yet ready to see the steamy sheets and insisted we go in mine.
I went to the window and watched the cars crawling below. "I didn't think it made any sense for the two mobsters to have killed Jerome Appleton in the first place. I was surprised when you suggested it to the lieutenant."
"It's a good solution," he said, "and it's possible the weapons used on both Jerome Appleton and Craig Lisbon will turn up in Rick's room on the third floor. When the registration is checked, the police will discover it belongs to Rick, or Ricco, as his Floridian friends call him. He'll refuse to talk, of course, and deny it all the way to the pen. In the meantime, Cambria will be occupied with the drug problem. If I were in the mood for wild guesses, I'd say another bag of Krazy KoKo-Nut cocaine might show up in his penthouse on the very top of the hotel. I'd like to think the police will search the back shelf of the closet."
"How very wild, indeed." I t
urned away from the window and sat down. Durmond gave me a wry smile while I muddled over the remaining bugaboos that had been haunting me for several days. He looked as if he were encouraging me to come up with answers, which perhaps he was. "How did you know I saw Brenda at the Xanadu?" I asked him levelly.
"I was at the table when you told Lieutenant Henbit."
"You already knew it, blue dress and all, and if you didn't hear it from me, you must have heard it from someone else-or saw her there yourself."
"Through the same window you did, maybe," he said. I considered it, then shook my head. "Ruby Bee followed Gaylene, and you and your pal followed them, although they had a healthy headstart-and they didn't go all the way to the Xanadu. They staked out a spot in a stationery store around the corner. If you did go there, you did it of your own accord, not because you were following meddlesome broads."
"The problem with Craig Lisbon was that it always took him time to decide how to deal with situations that might disrupt his business dealings. He was the sort who might think for a day or two, then realize that Brenda Appleton posed a threat of enormous dimensions. She knew names and faces, dates and addresses, and she might decide to file for a divorce and name everyone, including Gabardi, as a co-respondent. Scorned women have been known to do such things."
"Wait a minute!" I said, aware I sounded as shrill as Geri. "Are you telling me that you went to the Xanadu and killed Lisbon? I really don't want to hear this." Especially, I added to myself, from a man with whom I'd had sex not six hours ago and no more than ten feet away (did I mention the size of the rooms?). "I'm not telling you anything," he said with a sigh that we both knew meant he was telling me everything-and reading my mind along the way.
"I heard the elevator last night," I said, "and I thought it was Ruby Bee returning from the kitchen. But she had come up an hour before she and Estelle cooked up an alibi and came to my room. How high's the penthouse?"
"Very high, and I'm still feeling the effects of the bullet wound. Don't ever get shot, Arly. It hurts like hell, and the scar never goes away."