Niobe’s apartment door was ajar. On the door itself was a gaily-painted image of the Laughing Buddha. Niobe had taped tiny paper American flags into his upturned palms. Clarisse edged the door open with the side of her foot and kicked it closed once she was inside. Clarisse walked the length of the narrow hallway connecting all the rooms of the apartment without finding anyone. Just before she reached the kitchen, however, she heard Valentine’s laughter from above. The skylight was open, and the collapsible ladder had been attached. Clarisse shoved her bowl of lobster salad onto a refrigerator shelf already crowded with containers of prepared food. She took a bottle of Grolsch from a door rack, a glass from a shelf, and carefully mounted the flimsy ladder to the cedar roof deck.
Newt took the bottle and glass from Clarisse, and she was able to negotiate the sharp metal lip of the skylight without doing much more than snagging a thread in her brand-new pair of pleated linen trousers. Standing near a hibachi and wearing a white chef’s apron and a too-large chef’s hat, Newt wielded a greasy metal spatula. Valentine and Niobe stood at the low ledge at the back of the building’s roof, looking out over the Esplanade and the Charles River.
A radio on the corner of the ledge was tuned to one of the stations that would broadcast the Pops concert live. A soft-voiced female announcer, stationed on the roof of a building two or three numbers down, was describing the scene from very nearly the same perspective. The riverbank for a mile in either direction was a sea of people lounging on blankets or cross-legged on towels. The crowd was most dense just in front of the Hatch Shell, where the white-jacketed musicians were setting up. The river itself was filled with boats—yachts, rowboats, rubber rafts, sunfish, and nearly anything that stood a pretty good chance of staying afloat for a few hours. Traffic had been closed on Storrow Drive, and the six lanes were nearly rush-hour busy with strollers, skaters, skateboarders, bicyclists, and joggers.
Valentine and Niobe were staring out over the crowd with matching binoculars.
“Don’t everybody jump up and down, cheer, wave, and generally risk falling over the edge in euphoria over my arrival,” Clarisse announced as Newt poured her Grolsch out into a glass.
“Here’s to the twilight’s last gleaming,” he said as he handed her the beer and reached for a swallow of his own drink.
“Glad you could make it,” said Valentine over his shoulder. He immediately turned back toward the crowd with his binoculars.
“Make yourself comfortable,” said Niobe—but she didn’t even turn around.
“Thanks,” said Clarisse, giving up. She stood beside Newt at the grill and watched him fan the glowing coals with a folded section of newspaper. Next to the hibachi a round table was covered with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth and laden with plates, the Newton-Feng wedding silverware, embroidered napkins, a silver ice bucket, and several bottles of liquor, mixers, and glasses. On an enormous tray close at hand was a bountiful display of cubed beef and lamb and a variety of vegetables for shish kebab. Skewers with brass finials in the shape of pineapples were laid out in a fan shape next to the tray.
“How were things at the bar when you left?” Newt asked. “Pretty empty, I bet. Probably everybody’s on the river tonight.”
“It was pretty quiet,” replied Clarisse. “Sean said he didn’t mind being left alone. When the concert’s over, I’ll run back and help him with the post-fireworks mob.”
“Be careful,” said Newt. “Not only is it Fourth of July, but it’s the full moon.”
“Here’s one!” Valentine exclaimed suddenly.
“Oh, God, where? Where?” demanded Niobe, scanning the crowd with her binoculars.
“Just leaving Back Street,” Valentine reported, “crossing Storrow Drive at Exeter.”
Clarisse shot Newt a questioning glance. He answered with an elaborate roll of his eyes.
“Oh, God!” cried Niobe. “There she is. I see her! I see her! She’s the best one yet!”
“I’m almost afraid to ask what they’re up to,” Clarisse said to Newt as she took a swallow of the dark beer.
“They’re looking for the fattest person wearing the tightest outfit in Boston tonight.”
“Oh, God,” cried Niobe ecstatically, “three hundred twenty-five pounds if she’s an ounce, and horizontal stripes.”
“And wearing a Walkman. I love her,” said Valentine with low-voiced reverence. “Oh! Did you see? She just knocked over a kid on a racing bike.”
“Total style,” said Niobe.
“They’ve been doing that for the last hour,” Newt confided to Clarisse.
“You mean I took two hours off work, leaving Sean to take care of the bar on the Fourth of July, and schlepped a bowl of lobster salad all the way across town to be subjected to this? What happened to sensible pastimes, like Trivial Pursuit and getting drunk and viciously gossiping about all your friends?”
“Valentine’s got the eyes of an eagle,” Niobe said admiringly, putting her binoculars down with a sigh. “It’s getting dark. I’m going to get the candles.” She slipped easily over the raised lip of the skylight and started down the ladder.
“Niobe?” Newt called down the opening. “Start handing the food up to me. The concert’s going to start in a little while, and I don’t want to cook during the whole thing. While you’re at it, bring up more beer and a bottle of soda water.”
“You are not my lord and master, Newt!” Niobe shouted from below.
“I am until the divorce is legally finalized,” he sing-songed back.
“I’ll go help her,” Clarisse offered and got up. She climbed down the ladder, leaving the two men alone.
Valentine put his binoculars aside. From below he could hear the mingling of conversation with the clinking of ice against glass. He moved aside one of several potted geraniums lined up along the parapet and looked over the edge. The fire escape zigzagging down the apartment building was filling up as people climbed out of the windows of the lower floors. A blonde woman directly below caught sight of Valentine and smiled up alluringly. Valentine returned the gesture and then withdrew from sight. He joined Newt at the hibachi.
Newt was skewering the meat. The blood of the raw beef and pork stained his hand and sizzled in the hot coals. Valentine dropped several ice cubes into his glass and looked all around. In the direction away from the river, light from the street lamps made a lacelike illumination through the trees. Many of the rooftops of the buildings to their right and left and across the street were crowded with people, and Newt’s wasn’t the only barbecue going. Roman candles erupted from rooftops deeper in Back Bay. The warm-up sounds of the Pops were emitted tinnily from dozens of radios throughout the area.
“What’s the matter?” Newt asked suddenly. “Thinking patriotic thoughts?”
Valentine glanced back over his shoulder at the jagged rooftops silhouetted against the clear night sky. “Actually, I was thinking about the last necktie murders—those two leather numbers who were friends of B.J.”
“What about them?”
“Which building were they killed in? Can you see it from up here?”
Newt aimed a skewer of beef and onion to his left. “Next block down, other side of the street, fourth house in from the corner. You can see it when the trees are bare.”
Valentine looked in the direction Newt had pointed. “Are they still working on renovating that building?”
“Oh, sure. As soon as the cops gave the go-ahead, the carpenters and electricians were back in there. A friend of mine’s on the work crew.”
“Really? Did he say anything to you about it?”
“He wasn’t the one who found the bodies, if that’s what you mean.”
“No,” said Valentine, “but was there blood or anything?”
“He said that the one found in the front room had urinated when he was killed, but that was all. Urine doesn’t make much of a stain, by the way. He said they were lucky it wasn’t a stabbing, because they’d have had to rip up part of the floor. He said
that the place smelled to high heaven, though.”
“Smelled. From what? Their bodies hadn’t been in there long enough to decompose, and urine can’t make that much of an odor.”
“He said it was some sort of chemical smell. It was some liquid that had been spilled on the floor and in some of the insulation near one of the bodies.”
“Chemical,” Valentine repeated thoughtfully. “Amyl nitrate?”
Newt shrugged. “That’s what I figured, because my friend is straight. He wouldn’t know poppers if you spilled them in his shirt pocket.”
“You know a straight man?” Valentine asked.
“Somebody has to befriend them.”
“Did your friend have anything else interesting to say?”
Newt looked up and thrust out his right arm, displaying a chrome-studded black leather wristband. Valentine looked from it up to Newt.
“Newt, you’re not going to tell me your friend found that and gave it to you instead of to the police.”
“Yep. The cops missed it. It was caught in that insulation where the chemical smell was.” Newt held his arm up and looked at the bracelet. “I never owned anything that belonged to a murdered person before. I used to have a suicide jacket but never a murder victim’s jewelry.”
“That could be evidence,” Valentine said seriously.
“Daniel, those two weren’t strangled with leather wristbands, for God’s sake. Nobody’ll ever miss it. Every time I put this on, I’ll think of poor old Ruder.”
Valentine knitted his brow. “How do you know it belonged to Ruder and not Cruder?”
“I don’t, but I always thought Ruder was the better looking. If I’m going to wear something that belonged to a murder victim, I like to think it was worn by a reasonably good looking murder victim.”
Valentine took a swallow of his drink. “You know, Newt,” he said quietly, “there’s no way of knowing for sure who that wristband belonged to.”
Newt lowered his arm. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe it didn’t belong to the victim. Maybe it belonged to the murderer. It could have come off in a struggle.”
Newt gazed at the wristband with disturbed, renewed interest. “I didn’t think of that…”
“It could have had the killer’s fingerprints on it.”
Newt turned the bracelet about his wrist. “It’s got my fingerprints all over it now.”
“And if the murderer realizes it’s missing and he sees it on your wrist…”
Clarisse thrust herself unexpectedly up through the skylight. Valentine gave her an arm up and over the lip of the opening.
“Okay, you two, form a line to the right.”
Clarisse repeatedly leaned back down and up again as she took and passed on an enormous ceramic bowl of potato salad, lobster salad, Boston baked beans, a mop bucket full of ice and beer, two hot spinach quiches, and a covered bowl of rice and tomatoes.
The first strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” came from the radio. An enormous cheer welled up from the half million people gathered within a mile radius of the Hatch Shell.
The moment was oddly solemn. The four friends stood on the deck, looking out over the river and the standing crowd, and Valentine just managed to resist his Eagle Scout impulse to put his hand over his heart, for at that moment he caught sight—and scent—of Newt’s new leather wristband, charring among the coals of the hibachi.
Chapter Fourteen
AT NINE-THIRTY THE Boston Pops began the “1812 Overture,” the traditional prelude leading to the fabled fireworks display that would light up the entire Charles River Basin. Valentine, Clarisse, Newt, and Niobe sat in director’s chairs lined up along the back ledge of the deck facing the river. Now they were all on coffee and liqueurs. They sipped their drinks contentedly and listened to Tchaikovsky’s music pouring from the radio on the floor behind them—and from every rooftop and through every open window all around.
Niobe had brought up the small cage containing her canary, Rodan, and fed it shreds of charred pork through the narrow bars. The cage now rested on her lap, though every now and then it jiggled with a sudden violent movement of the bird inside. Niobe looked to her left at the profiled faces.
“I’ll bet the police arrest B.J. before the week’s out,” she said.
The three profiles turned full face toward her.
“What brought that on?” Clarisse asked curiously.
Niobe shrugged. “I was just thinking about Ruder and Cruder getting killed in that house up the street. Every time I walk down Beacon past that place on my way to work or to the market or the library, I think about them.”
“Just what is it you do think?” Valentine asked.
Niobe shifted in her chair to face the three of them. “ I’m not one to waste tears on the gladly departed, but B.J. slept with ’em, ate with ’em, partied till she dropped with ’em.”
“What are you getting at, Niobe?” Clarisse asked.
“After what’s happened to those two, don’t you think B.J. would show some sign of remorse? Maybe a few hot tears and convulsions? Oh, no, not that one.”
“I didn’t know you’d honed your talons today, Niobe,” Newt said.
Niobe swiped casually at her husband with the back of her hand but otherwise ignored his interruption. “You know what B.J. did after the cops got done questioning her? She went straight from the cops over to Innovations in Leather. She had herself fitted out head to toe in a brand-new black leather outfit. Made ’em do the alterations while she stood there. They won’t usually do that, but B.J.’s such a good customer of theirs.”
“She calls that outfit her widow’s hides,” Newt put in, and again jerked back from Niobe’s swatting hand.
“Leather or crepe, Niobe,” Clarisse said, “a mourning ensemble is a mourning ensemble.”
“So B.J. got this outfit,” Niobe pressed on, “then called up her dealer and ordered about nine pounds of blow.”
“A gram,” Newt corrected.
“Shut up, Newt!” Niobe cried.
“I would like to hear the point of this story before we get the cannons and the bells,” Valentine announced.
“B.J. coked herself beyond recognition. She climbed into a cab and went off to Metro, where she danced herself into a sweaty mess and drank her face off. Then,” Niobe sputtered with indignation, “then she came back across town, picked up five men, and dragged them back to her apartment for the night. That is how she demonstrated her supposed grief at losing her supposed two best friends in the whole world. Is that woman a petrified cookie or what?”
“Well”—Clarisse blinked—“maybe that really was B.J.’s way of working out her grief.”
Niobe gave Clarisse a look of totally disgusted disbelief. “Are you taking EST training behind our backs?”
“You still haven’t explained why you think B.J. might be arrested. The police questioned her and let her go.”
Niobe sat back hard. “Because on every other night those two men were like flies and B.J. the flypaper. But not that night. Why?”
“She had a date that night,” Newt said offhandedly.
“Newt, you know as well as I do that Ms. B.J. never goes on a date; she goes on dates.”
“Just because you don’t approve of B.J.’s manner of mourning her dead is no reason to suspect her of murder,” Clarisse pointed out.
“B.J. lets people see what she wants them to see,” Newt said. “You don’t know how upset she was when Ruder and Cruder died. You don’t have any idea, Niobe.”
Niobe looked at him coldly. “I think she killed them. I think the three of them were in on the necktie murders. I’ll bet Ruder and Cruder were getting cold feet and B.J. was afraid they’d squeal so she had to kill them.”
“Really?” Valentine said calmly. “What brilliant motive have you thought up for their committing the murders in the first place? Drug-induced blood lust? Kinks and kicks?”
“Something like that.”
“Niobe,” Va
lentine went on, “don’t you think the cops would have figured that out right away? It’s very hard for a killer who’s stone-cold sober to murder somebody and get away without leaving any clues. But three killers who are always on drugs? And they haven’t left a single usable clue?”
Niobe pushed out her lower lip in a pout as she turned away from Valentine.
Radios all over the neighborhood were turned up suddenly when the orchestra came in with the return of the “Marseillaise” theme marking the beginning of the climax of the “1812.”
“How do you know B.J. had a date on that night her two friends were murdered?” Niobe demanded suddenly of Newt.
“It’s common gossip,” Newt answered evenly.
“No, it isn’t,” Niobe challenged quickly. “I’d know. So would Valentine and Clarisse. You didn’t know it, did you?”
Valentine and Clarisse shook their heads.
“I was B.J.’s date that night,” Newt said flatly.
Valentine and Clarisse exchanged an uncomfortable glance at hearing this revelation. Niobe’s features realigned into a flickering expression of hurt that swiftly changed to anger.
“Are you telling me…” Niobe began slowly.
Newt took a swallow of his liqueur. “If you launch into your naïve-wife routine, I’m going to barf.”
“You slept with B.J.?” Niobe went on. “You…you did it with her? A woman?”
“Stop calling it it. We made love.”
“He’s throwing it in my face!” Niobe screeched, gripping the arms of her chair. “He betrayed me with—a woman!”
“You brought the subject up, Niobe, not me.”
Niobe jumped up, and Rodan’s cage spilled onto the deck, with a small riot of squawking and yellow feathers. Niobe ran back to the table and feverishly mixed herself a very large gin and tonic.
“What in the world were you doing with B.J. that night?” Valentine asked Newt quietly and, he hoped, out of Niobe’s earshot.
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