Spur of the Moment

by David Linzee

  She stopped and looked up. In her preoccupation she had given no thought to which way she was walking, and she found herself not at the Ritz-Carlton, but the County Justice Center. The name was etched over the locked front doors. There was a window display touting the attractions of St. Louis County’s parks. She ran her eye up the ten-story building. Behind these tan-orange bricks and opaque green windows was her brother. She could hear men shouting. A riot? No, there was also the regular, hollow beat of a basketball being dribbled. So that was one way the prisoners passed time. It wouldn’t do Don any good; basketball was one American enthusiasm he’d never managed to embrace.

  Tomorrow afternoon she would be able to visit him, Samuelson had said. He seemed to have little hope that Don would qualify for release on bail, so she would have to come back here and enter this building tomorrow. She had never visited anyone in jail, and her memory could produce only movie scenes: actors sitting on either side of a thick pane of glass, talking to each other on telephones. She shuddered. In real life it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

  Even if there were no pane of glass or phones it would be hard. Her brother’s life had been smashed to bits. He wasn’t just in jail but in disgrace, and he was the sort of person to feel disgrace keenly. How was she to console him? If only they loved each other. Even liked each other a bit. If only he hadn’t been so beastly to her the last time they had talked. She knew why, of course: she had been questioning him about his affair with Helen, and Don often got angry when forced to lie. Still she couldn’t forget that last shaft of his, “aging journeyman mezzo-soprano.” It hit too close to home. No, it hit home squarely.

  She touched the $50 bill Congreve had given her for cab fare. It was tucked into her bra, because the blue silk dress had no pockets. Tomorrow would come soon enough. Now it was time to head for the Ritz-Carlton and home.

  Home? No doubt the police had turned the whole house over by now. They might still be there. Even if they weren’t, the phone would be ringing. Reporters. A few might even come to the door. Congreve had made it crystal-clear she wasn’t to talk to them.

  Renata started walking. But not toward the Ritz. Samuelson had mentioned that Helen Stromberg-Brand had been killed in her house on Linden Avenue. That was only a few streets away, an easy walk even in her pinching party shoes. She wanted to take a look at the scene of the crime.

  Chapter 12

  Roger Merck, Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor for Public Relations, went directly from his meeting with the men from SLO to the near empty parking lot where his Volvo was parked. He got in and drove east on the Forest Park Expressway, into the eponymous park. Above the trees rose the apartment towers of the Central West End, St. Louis’s most fashionable neighborhood, and in amongst them, the tall, blocky silhouette of Granger Hospital, Adams University Medical School’s teaching hospital, and other buildings housing the school’s classrooms and laboratories. Adams University’s sense of being underappreciated was not shared by its medical school. Many believed that it was the best medical school in America. What wasn’t a matter of opinion was that it regularly ranked first among institutions receiving federal research grants.

  Roger continued eastward on Forest Park Avenue, to a stretch where medical school buildings alternated with old row houses, factories converted into loft condominiums, a microbrewery, and the headquarters of the Salvation Army. He parked in front of a new building, lustrous in white and pale green, that took up an entire block. Amygdala, said the stainless steel letters on the facade.

  It was familiar territory for Roger. He and his minions devoted much of their time to singing the praises of Amygdala, the university’s “incubator,” where the discoveries of faculty members and the investments of venture capitalists were combined to hatch a company that would preserve health or banish sickness, and produce a lot of money for scientists, investors, and Adams University.

  Roger swiped his key card at the door, showed his ID at the security desk, and headed down a quiet corridor to a door marked Ezylon. His brow was furrowed and his lips turned down at the corners, as if he was not anticipating this meeting with pleasure. He paused with his hand on the doorknob and took a deep breath. His face blandly genial again, he went in.

  There was no one in the outer office but a young man sitting at a desk, talking on the phone. Roger, always tactful, did not hover over him, but stood between the rows of chairs in the waiting area. Ezylon’s busy partners were rarely on hand to greet visitors, and to make up for that, their pictures were here to be gazed upon. They were good pictures, produced by Roger’s department. Helen Stromberg-Brand in her white lab coat stood beside the celebrated venture capitalist Keith Bryson, who wore the sort of clothes he was almost always photographed in—blue jeans and checked sport shirt. His famous features, framed by longish silver-blond hair and Elizabethan beard, wore the usual calm and intelligent half-smile. She was showing him a chart in her lab. People, including Roger himself, were standing around in the background grinning.

  The man at the desk hung up the phone and looked at Roger, who approached with hand extended. “Hello, Jayson. How are you?”

  “Hey, Rog, what’s so important that you’re here on a Sunday?” said Jayson Mentis, who shook hands briefly without rising.

  “It’s this terrible business with Dr. Stromberg-Brand, of course. Have you spoken to Keith yet?”

  “He’s aware of the situation.”

  “How quickly can you put me in touch with him?”

  “Just as soon as you convince me that it’s necessary.”

  “Well, let me endeavor to do so,” said Roger with a smile that looked only a little forced. Deciding that Jayson was not going to invite him to sit down, he took the chair in front of the desk. Then he explained that the news media were trying to turn Helen’s murder into a scandal, and receiving help from her husband.

  “Isn’t this the opera company’s problem? They’re the ones who have a murderer working for them.”

  “Dr. Stromberg-Brand is one of the most high-profile faculty members Adams University has.”

  “So? Put out a press release saying the private lives of faculty members are no concern of the university and you’re done.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Oh. You mean, ’cause your medical school’s senior faculty is eighty percent men and you catch a lot of heat for that, you’ve given Helen big play as a role model Woman in Medicine, and now she turns out to be a slut. Is that the complication?”

  Jayson’s face was beaming, and Roger evidently decided that the sight of it was not helping him keep his temper. He gazed at the floor for a while, and when he spoke it was in an even tone.

  “I think that if Mr. Bryson talks to Bert,” Roger said, “he can convince him to stop behaving in this destructive way.”

  “Keith doesn’t even know this Bert guy.”

  “No, they’ve met several times. At the cocktail party the med school hosted to launch Ezylon, at the tour of the lab for the media—”

  “Keith has forgotten all those people,” Jayson said. “I have to brief him every time he comes back to St. Louis. Anyway, the main point is, this is a mess. It’s ugly. It’s smelly. It’s the kind of thing Keith can’t afford to get within a mile of. Just because he drops by for some grip-and-grin every few months, don’t get the idea Ezylon is important to him.”

  “But at the media picnic he said—”

  “No, don’t quote him back to me. I probably wrote the speech.”

  The furrows on Roger’s brow had returned. “He’s spoken to me privately about his warm personal regard for Helen. I thought he meant it.”

  Jayson shrugged and tapped keys on his laptop. “Okay. Let’s bring up the sked and see if it’s feasible. At the moment, Keith is in San Diego, where his contender yacht in the America’s Cup trials is being fitted out. Then he’s off to Death Valley, where he’s founder and grand marshal of the triathlon. They’re expecting him to compete, too, but they may be disapp
ointed. Then he’s off to Tokyo, where he’s hosting the Third Wave Conference on Sustainable Hi-Tech. On the way back he stops off in Los Angeles, where he has no public appearances scheduled, but rumor has it he’s getting together with his great and good friend Angelina Jolie to discuss her UN ambassadorial duties. So, help me out here. Which of these events shall we ask him to cancel so he can come to St. Louis and try to persuade an angry husband not to talk trash about his dead wife?”

  “I’m only asking for a phone call.”

  Jayson leaned sideways and dug his cellphone out of his pants pocket. “I’m sending a text to his personal cell. That’s the best I can do for you.” He tapped keys, then put the phone away and looked at Roger. “It’ll be a few hours. No use hanging around.”

  As Roger got to his feet, Jayson’s phone played its incoming-call tune. He pulled it out and looked at the screen in surprise. Pressing the talk button he said, “Hello, Keith.” He listened for half a minute, said, “Will do, ’bye,” and hung up.

  A good deal of the bounce seemed to have gone out of Jayson. He spoke to Roger without meeting his eye. “Uh, turns out he’s here. He told me to ask you to go straight to his condo. Four-nine-oh-nine Laclede.”

  “Thanks, Jayson,” Roger said, and there was no trace of sarcasm detectable in his tone, no gleam of triumph in his eye. At times, the Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor’s politeness rose to the level of heroic.

  Chapter 13

  In Clayton, Maryland Avenue was the boundary between the commercial and residential districts. Renata crossed it and stepped gratefully under the shade of the tall oak trees that lined Linden Avenue. The houses were a mix of agreeable old Victorian, Queen Anne, and Craftsman buildings of wood and brick with wide porches, set far back from the street, and pretentious new mansions of stone and marble that practically bulged from their lots.

  It was one of these new mansions whose door was barred by yellow crime-scene tape. Parallel tracks flattened the grass where something wheeled and heavy had run over it, probably the gurney bearing the body. Otherwise the lawn was smooth and green as a pool table, and not much bigger. Boxwood hedges lined the drive and there were flowerbeds on either side of the steps leading to the front door. The rest of the lot was taken up by the house. That must simplify the job of the Stromberg-Brand gardener. What had Samuelson said his name was? Luis … something.

  In fact he must have been here recently, for the grass was glinting in the slanting sunlight and the earth in the flowerbeds was dark with moisture. There was not a withered bloom among the flowers and the hedge tops were even to a fraction of an inch. A constant gardener, she thought, not neglecting his duties even on Sunday.

  Didn’t the police find it a bit suspicious that Bert’s alibi was being provided by his employee? Renata certainly did. It would be interesting to have a chat with this man. It would be wonderful to find out he was lying. She looked up and down the street. There was no man at work in any of the yards; in fact, there was no one in sight at all. She could hear children’s laughter and splashing from a pool behind one of the houses, and the wind in the leaves, and the thrum of central air conditioning units, but otherwise Linden Avenue was quiet.

  Abruptly Renata was deafened by a howl. The racket would make you expect to see a fighter jet taxi down a driveway—if you weren’t as familiar with American suburbs as Renata, who knew it was a leaf-blower. Possibly a gardener at work. Maybe even Luis, who had other customers in the neighborhood. Most likely not, but she walked toward the noise anyway.

  She descended the street to the corner and turned left, where she found a pickup truck parked in a driveway. “Reyes Gardening” was painted on the door. That was the name Samuelson had said, Luis Reyes. The noise ceased. A man came around the corner of the house—a short, broad-shouldered man with thick black hair escaping in all directions from under a baseball cap. He swung the leaf blower into the bed of the truck.

  Here was luck, throwing open a door to her. Or possibly it was the tug of a really bad idea. Either way, Renata could not resist. She walked up the drive.

  “Mister Reyes?”

  He regarded her warily as she drew near. “Are you from the newspaper? Because I already talked to somebody from the paper.” His accent was faint. Lighter than hers, in fact.

  “No.” She realized belatedly that she should have dreamed up a pretext. “I, uh, my name is Renata Radleigh.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “It’s my brother they’ve arrested.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. That must be tough.” He waited for her to say something, but nothing came to her. “Uh, what can I do for you, miss?”

  Retract your story so Bert becomes prime suspect. She decided to say something equally true, but a bit less pointed. “I’m sorry. I’ve just gotten out of the police station after spending the whole day there. I don’t know what I’m doing, really. Just wandering around. I suppose the cops kept you waiting around a long time, too?”

  Reyes shrugged. “A person like me, he always has to be ready when the cops call.” Reaching into his breast pocket he lifted out a blue U.S. passport. “But they didn’t give me a hard time. Just asked a lot of questions about last night.” Without prompting, he told her the story. Grudgingly Renata found that it all sounded plausible. She asked, “Does Bert do this sort of thing to you often?”

  “Oh, he’s all right. I see him a lot because he’s home most of the day. His wife, she was practically never home. He just has one or two courses to teach at the university. That’s not enough teaching for Bert. He comes out to help me build my vocabulary.”

  Renata smiled. “I expect you’d much rather get the job done and move on to the next yard.”

  Reyes smiled back.

  Well, this is a disaster, she thought. She ought to be subjecting the gardener to a withering cross-examination that would make him break down and admit he’d lied. And here they were having a friendly conversation. This wasn’t doing Don any good at all.

  She heard herself blurt out, “My brother didn’t do it. He could never kill anyone.”

  “Of course you think that, miss. He’s your brother and you love him.”

  She did not reply.

  “Look, I … maybe it’ll help ….” He shook his head. “No, never mind. Sorry.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, Doctor Stromberg-Brand—she was a brilliant scientist they say, doing a lot of good in the world, but she could really make a person angry.”

  “Did she make you angry?”

  “Well … yes. She had this bed near the front door? Last spring, she says, I want azaleas there. I told her, they won’t get enough sun. Let me plant hostas. But she wanted azaleas, so I planted them, and they died.

  “Early one morning the phone rings and it’s her. She’s in an airport in Tokyo. Or Oslo, or someplace. She’s just opened my bill, and she says, I’m not paying for those azaleas.”

  “Did you remind her they were her idea?”

  He nodded grimly. “Big mistake. Did that ever make her mad. I’ll never forget that phone call. Somebody on the other side of the world shouting at you. People in Oslo or wherever would interrupt her—she was real busy, always—and she’d tell me to wait, and I’d think, when she comes back, she’ll be calmer. But no, she took up yelling at me right where she left off. I ended up eating the loss.”

  “She pretended to forget and you had to go along.”

  “She wasn’t pretending. The azaleas hadn’t worked out. So they couldn’t have been her idea. It was impossible for her to be wrong. Sorry, I’m not explaining this real well.”

  “I understand,” said Renata. She had encountered many singers, directors, and conductors like that. Encountered wasn’t the word. They had run over her and never felt the bump. Just bringing the incidents to mind caused her fists to clench and her heartbeat to quicken. Then her feelings took an abrupt, sickening swerve. “You’re trying to convince me Don’s guilty, aren’t you?”

  “I just mean
, you could be a really good person, and Dr. Stromberg-Brand could make you mad enough to—” He broke off. “Forget what I said. The police told me practically nothing about the case. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t see him, did you?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, you didn’t tell the police my brother’s car was driving away when you arrived or anything like that?”

  “Didn’t see any cars, I told them. Or anybody. Oh … I forgot to tell them about the guy walking his dog.”

  Turning, he looked toward the Stromberg-Brand house. “Now that I think about it, I didn’t see a dog.”

  “What?”

  “The only reason people walk around this neighborhood at night is they’re walking a dog. But I didn’t actually see a dog with this guy.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Reyes thought for a long while before he could come up with anything. “I didn’t see his face. He was wearing a long coat. Like a raincoat. White or tan. I remember ’cause it was a clear night. Otherwise he was just average.”

  Renata was relieved: Don hadn’t been wearing a raincoat when he left his house. In fact, he didn’t even own a coat that matched this description. “He was coming toward you? How come you couldn’t see his face?”

  “He turned away.” Reyes mimed the movement, burying his chin in the hollow of his shoulder.

  “He was hiding his face.”

  “Or he didn’t like the headlights shining in his eyes.”

  “Did you tell the police about this?”

  “Didn’t think to.”

  “Would you call them?”

  Reyes hesitated. “You know how stupid they make you feel. Did you see him coming out of the Stromberg-Brand house? No. Did you see him get in a car? No. Oh, so I suppose you can’t tell us the license plate number either.”

  “Please call them. It could be very important.”