by Nancy Martin
Crewe summoned the bartender with a mere glance and raised eyebrows.
“I need a mineral water,” Chad snapped. “No ice. Two slices of lime.”
“Certainly. Do you have ID? You have to be twenty-one to sit in the bar.”
Chad sighed heavily and flipped his driver’s license onto the bar with a practiced motion. No doubt with his boyish looks, he was asked to prove his age everywhere.
The bartender picked up the license and gave the face and numbers a long study. At last, he handed the license back politely. “Thank you, sir.”
When the bartender stepped away, I said, “What a miserable day to be in the city, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Chad climbed onto the stool I had vacated and proceeded to play with a coaster. “Gramma made me come to a meeting with her. But I don’t let anybody keep me waiting, especially not the money men. So I walked.”
“Money men?” Crewe said politely, for Chad had clearly wanted to be asked to explain.
He drummed his knuckles impatiently on the bar. “Yeah, Gramma’s bankers. She’s going to be a producer for another of my flicks, and we need to get some money in the pipeline.”
I had heard that his grandmother, Elena Zanzibar, the cosmetics queen, plunked down a small fortune to get Chad a role in the elf movie. What luck for everyone that the movie became a blockbuster and launched Chad’s career.
“What’s the new movie about?” I asked.
“I can’t really talk about it. It’s in early development. But it’s going to be very big.” He craned to see what had become of the bartender. “Turns out, the bankers didn’t even want to talk about the movie, though. They wanted her to rat on somebody who stole a bunch of money. It’s going to be a big stink in the papers tomorrow.”
The bartender returned with Chad’s mineral water with lime. Chad said, “What took you so long?”
“Sorry, sir. Consider the drink on the house.”
Chad shrugged, all forgiven. “Peace out, dude.”
Crewe and I exchanged a glance over Chad’s head. We shared the same thought: His grandmother, an Old Money aristocrat, undoubtedly kept her riches safely stashed with Lexie Paine’s financial firm. All the Main Line grandes dames did.
Suddenly Crewe’s concern that Lexie had problems at work seemed real.
But Chad didn’t pause in his discourse about his favorite subject. He slugged his mineral water and set the glass on the bar. “Meantime, I got a recurring role on Law and Punishment. It’s more than a guest shot. Real meaty. Something for me to sink my teeth into. I’m in town to research the part, in fact.”
“How interesting,” I said. “How does an actor conduct research?”
Another shrug. “Just talk to people. Soak up the vibe.”
Crewe couldn’t hide a smile. “Whose vibe did you soak for the hobbit role?”
“I wasn’t a hobbit, man. I was an elf. Big difference.” He spotted Crewe’s dish of berries and pulled it close. “I met some midgets. Wow, this fruit smells funky.”
Crewe steered Chad back to the subject of bankers. “Who wanted to talk to your grandmother about the stolen money?”
“A bunch of people. They’re pissed off about some old dude. Cavendish.”
“Hoyt Cavendish?” Crewe couldn’t hide his surprise. “Lexie’s partner?”
“Yeah, him. You know him?”
“Lexie’s former partner,” I corrected. “He’s semiretired now.”
And his son, Tierney, had left the restaurant just minutes earlier.
“Yeah, well,” Chad said, “Cavendish is going to get retired to jail from all the yelling at that meeting. That dude is in real hot water.”
Another police car roared past the restaurant, followed by an ambulance with lights flashing. Some people stood up from their tables to peer out the windows.
“What in the world is going on?” Crewe asked, his reporter instincts on alert.
But Chad’s story intrigued me more. Of course, I had known Hoyt Cavendish since my childhood. He’d been a longtime partner in the Paine financial empire, a friend of my father, an active member of my social circle.
And just a few months back, I had been in one of the concert halls at the Kimmel Center the night Hoyt had stepped onto the stage carrying a Stradivarius violin. It was a gift he had purchased at great expense for a deserving musician. Hoyt wore a fine tuxedo for the occasion, and his white hair, cut short but brushed up from his face with pomade, gleamed as he stood in the glowing spotlight as the audience rose to applaud. He had bowed his head in a show of humility. A diminutive man made large by the stage lighting and his own act of philanthropy.
The violinist had come onstage in her concert black gown and stood at his elbow until the applause died away. But Hoyt had withheld the violin for an instant—long enough for the whole audience to inhale a deep breath. The violinist began to weep silently, and then Hoyt had slowly extended the instrument to her. The glowing light gleamed on the violin and on the tears on her cheeks. When her hands closed on the Stradivarius, and Hoyt released it at last, the audience went wild. I had never seen a charitable act so dramatic.
“Crewe,” I said, “were you at the Kimmel Center the night Hoyt Cavendish gave the violin?”
Crewe turned to me, the street noise forgotten. “Why, yes. I sat just a few rows behind you, remember?”
“Yes, that’s right. This is an odd thing to remember, but did you get the feeling—I don’t know—that Hoyt was—oh, never mind. It’s ungenerous of me.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Crewe said. “And I got the same impression. That Cavendish was onstage for his own gratification.”
“I can’t believe he’s in any kind of trouble at the firm,” I said. “But…”
“Judging by all the ticked-off people I saw this afternoon,” Chad said, “he’ll be lucky if he walks out of that office alive.”
After the concert, I had met Hoyt Cavendish in the receiving line at the reception.
“Mr. Cavendish,” I’d said, shaking his thin, almost feminine hand, “your gift will mean so much to the community as well as Miss Ling.”
His fine-boned face was pink with pleasure. His voice had an odd, reedy timbre. “I hope my charitable giving will encourage others to be just as generous.”
I had not introduced myself, but the next person in line said, “Nora Blackbird, how nice to see you!”
And Hoyt’s expression froze. He remained gracious, but turned away from me quickly. We hadn’t spoken since I was a child, so he hadn’t recognized me. But he certainly knew my name.
Crewe was frowning out the window again. “I wonder what’s going on.”
My own instincts finally kicked in. I said, “Crewe, we should go up to see Lexie.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
Crewe’s gaze met mine, and his eyes widened. Without saying good-bye to Chad, we bolted.
The wails of police cruisers echoed against the tall buildings around us. We hurried up Market Street to Lexie’s office. As we drew closer, I felt a weight of dread start to build in my chest. In front of the Paine Building, two cars had pulled up on the sidewalk, blocking pedestrians. Several officers milled around, shouting at one another.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
Beside the hood of the first car, a stern-faced cop unrolled some yellow crime tape.
Crewe asked him, “What’s going on?”
“Oh my God,” I said.
The only thing that kept me from falling to my knees was Crewe’s arm as he wrapped it around me.
A small man lay crumpled on the sidewalk in front of the Paine Building. His gray suit obscured the tortured position of his body, but it was clear he was dead. A pool of blood widened around his head. One black shoe lay at the curb.
Crewe looked up at the Paine Building above us. “Dear heaven,” he said. “I think he jumped!”
With the afternoon sun ablaze overhead, I could barely make out the penthouse balcony
. A gauzy curtain blew outward from the open window.
I heard Crewe’s voice, but the whole world tilted around me.
I knew the figure on the sidewalk. Hoyt Cavendish.
A police officer stood over the body. To the crowd of people gathering, he said, “Move along. This isn’t a freak show.”
If a partner in her firm had just committed suicide, Lexie might need us. Crewe whisked me past the police. We left the awful scene on the sidewalk, ran across the small terrace and into the building.
We made it through the security checkpoint in the lobby only because one of the guards recognized me. Although he was yelling into a phone and trying to communicate by hand signals with a belligerent police officer at the same time, he saw my stricken face and waved me past. Then I heard him say, “This building is locked down! Nobody gets in or out from now on, understand?”
An instant later, the elevator arrived in the lobby. The door opened, and a gaggle of elderly ladies rushed out. Some were weeping. One was irate.
“How dare you chase us out of there? We might have been helpful! I was a triage nurse once!”
A police officer gripped her elbow. “Fifty years ago, maybe,” he snapped. “Move it, ladies. Over to the desk so I can take your names and addresses.”
Crewe flattened me against the wall as the police officer brushed past us. Then he pulled me into the elevator and punched a button.
But on Lexie’s floor, another police officer planted his hand on Crewe’s chest as soon as the door opened. “Sorry, buddy. Come back tomorrow.”
“What’s going on?”
“You hear what I said? Beat it, bub.”
“Sure, sure. Sorry.”
Crewe pressed the button, and the door began to close.
I said, “Crewe—”
“Don’t worry. I’m not giving up.”
He hit the panel of buttons again, and the elevator dropped only one floor before it stopped again. We stepped off and quickly found the emergency staircase.
Crewe turned to me. “You okay, Nora?”
“Yes, let’s hurry. I want to be sure Lexie’s all right.”
We started up the echoing stairwell together, Crewe leading the way.
Coming toward us down the stairs, though, came Tierney Cavendish.
He was in a rush, white-faced and silent. He clattered on the steps, one hand gripping the handrail to keep him from plunging headlong down the stairs. He didn’t say a word. I’m not sure he even saw us.
Crewe and I stood aside to let him pass.
“Oh, Crewe,” I said, thinking of the scene on the sidewalk. “He shouldn’t see his father like that!”
“Even the two of us couldn’t stop him,” Crewe replied, just as hushed. He grabbed my arm, and we raced upward.
On the top floor, the heavy stairwell door was locked from the inside. Crewe pounded on it. When the door opened, we slipped into a rear hallway.
The woman who had let us through the emergency door was Brandi Schmidt, the last person on earth I expected to meet at that moment. A local television personality, she was pretty at thirty-something, although thick makeup and false eyelashes created a kind of mask of vacancy on her face.
For an instant, I thought she’d been sent to cover the story of Hoyt’s death for her news station.
But in the next second, I knew it was impossible for any news to travel so fast.
She backed her wheelchair up the hallway to allow Crewe and me to enter. Normally, her chair was discreetly hidden behind her on-camera desk, so it was a jolt to see it in reality, although the whole city knew she used one. The story was she’d been injured as a child and couldn’t stand or walk, although she had partial feeling in her legs.
But her disability was not Brandi’s most distinguishing trait. She had an unfortunate propensity for malapropisms. If unrehearsed, she often mispronounced the names of rivers and politicians. During a prison riot, she had unfortunately read a story about the state’s “penile” system off the teleprompter, which made for hilarious commentary in the newspapers for weeks afterward. After a series of verbal gaffes, she was rarely seen on programs with high ratings anymore. She appeared on the occasional weekend morning show when her frequent mistakes could be covered up by a smooth-talking cohost.
Today Brandi looked nearly incapable of any speech whatsoever.
I guessed she had maneuvered the chair into the service hallway to grab an illicit cigarette during the emergency. She blew a nervous stream of smoke at us from her chair.
“Oh, my God, Nora,” Brandi said. “Poor Hoyt!”
Crewe murmured he’d be back as soon as possible. He ripped off his mustache and dropped his Colonel Sanders jacket on a chair. Then he disappeared down the hallway, leaving me alone with Brandi.
“Are you all right?” I asked. I knew her from a few months ago when she’d acted as the honorary chairperson for a charity ball, and I’d interviewed her for my column.
Holding her cigarette, Brandi’s right hand trembled, spilling ash onto the carpet. “It’s so awful!”
From the hallway, I could see that the suite of offices was jammed with shaken employees and hysterical clients. Police officers were starting to organize the chaos, but it would be several minutes before order could be established in the confusion of the reception area.
The darkly paneled domain of Lexie’s father and his staid partners had once smelled of stale cigars and musty paper. But when Lexie took over the firm, she refurbished the whole building to an architectural wonder full of light and color. Dazzling sunlight streamed through the skylights and cast a dappled light through the huge Calder mobile that swooped majestically overhead. The gloomy portraits of Lexie’s esteemed relatives had been replaced by an enormous Rauschenberg that graced the wall behind the main desk.
But today, Lexie’s personal art collection went unnoticed by the noisy melee of people.
“Okay, everybody,” shouted a police officer. “Step this way, please.”
Brandi dropped her cigarette on the carpet and rolled her wheelchair over it in a practiced maneuver. Then she used the electronic switch to motor up the hallway. I followed until we reached the main reception area. There, Brandi suddenly swayed in her chair. She put one hand to her face.
I sat down next to her on the edge of a glass-cube coffee table. Still shaken myself, I tried to focus on helping her. “You’re not well. Can I get you a glass of water? Shall I call someone for you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t leave yet. They told me to wait here. I suppose they’ll want to question everyone. Do you think we’ll be segued?”
“Sequestered? I doubt it. But the police will certainly question everyone.”
“Well, that’s the least I can do for—for dear Hoyt.” Her eyes overflowed with tears.
“I’m so sorry, Brandi.” I handed over my handkerchief.
She used it to mop her eyes. “Did you see him? Down there? Was he on the street?”
“I didn’t see much. But he is—he’s definitely gone.”
“Dead?”
“Yes. I’m very sorry.”
She slumped in her wheelchair and burst into tears. “I can’t believe it!”
I tried to suppress my own emotions and patted her hand. “What went wrong?” I asked. “What happened?”
Brandi blotted her face, but succeeded only in smearing her makeup. She blurted out a disjointed explanation. “I don’t know. We—everyone had been arguing in the boardroom, and Miss Paine finally insisted we go to different offices to calm down. Then I heard—we all heard Miss Paine shouting with Hoyt, but I—next thing, someone rushed in and said he jumped from the balcony.”
“He killed himself?”
Brandi dabbed her blotched mascara and blew her nose. “He hasn’t been the same since his wife died. He was so devoted to Muriel!”
Hoyt’s wife had passed away at least three years ago. It hardly made sense that he’d be overcome with grief today of all days. I wondered if Brandi
was trying to gloss over the financial trouble Chad had mentioned.
Brandi babbled. “He’s never been the same since her death. I know—he confided in me often. We were—I tried to give him the companionship he cravened. But everything must have overwhelmed him at last.”
“But—why today? What happened here?”
Brandi had worked herself into hysterics. She drew a breath and tried to calm down. “Miss Paine called the meeting. She made it sound like an emergency. We’re all clients of Hoyt’s. She said there was a—a situation. I can’t believe it was true, though. Everyone began shouting. It—it was a personal attack on poor Hoyt! And then Hoyt—he punched the Vermeer!”
I thought I had heard wrong. “He did what?”
“He put his fist through the painting in Miss Paine’s office!”
The destruction of a work of art hardly seemed as devastating as the loss of life, but I knew Lexie’s reaction to Hoyt Cavendish destroying her best-loved painting would be extreme. In recent years, she had sublimated much of her emotional life into her intellectual pursuit of fine art. And the Vermeer meant more to her than nearly the rest of her whole collection put together.
Brandi said, “After he ruined the painting, Lexie blew up. She sent us to different rooms. But Hoyt stayed in Lexie’s office, and they argued some more. He must have been more upset than we thought.”
Steadying myself, I said, “Where’s Lexie now?”
“With the police, I suppose.” Brandi blinked her doe eyes tearfully at me. “Do you think I should call the station? I suppose this is an important story. I just—I’m not sure I can pull myself together enough to be coherent on the phone. I was very fond of him. He was such a special person.”
Perhaps I should have stayed with Brandi to calm her down. But I cared about Lexie more than whether or not a television station got first dibs on a morbid death on Market Street.
I said, “Take a few deep breaths while you think about how to handle it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Thank you, Nora. You’re so emphatic.”
I left Brandi in the lobby and went looking for my friend.