Murder Melts in Your Mouth

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Murder Melts in Your Mouth Page 4

by Nancy Martin


  Chapter Three

  I managed to slip past Lexie’s support staff who stood around the cappuccino machine answering the questions of a middle-aged policewoman. She jotted rapid notes. Everyone looked very serious.

  In a doorway, Lexie’s administrative assistant, Carla, wept uncontrollably. One of the secretaries put her arm around Carla to calm her.

  It was still only minutes since Hoyt had fallen. The police were just starting to take control of the scene. I knew it would be a short time before the offices would be in total lockdown.

  A burly uniformed officer at the door shook his head at me. “Sorry, miss. You can’t come in here.”

  Beyond him in the office, I saw another officer standing in the French doors that led to Lexie’s balcony. He held aside the diaphanous curtains and peered over the wrought iron railing at the street below. A wave of vertigo caught me, but I fought it down.

  On the primary wall of Lexie’s office, the Vermeer hung crookedly. Even from the doorway, I could see a gaping hole in the canvas. The serene woman depicted in the picture had presided over Lexie’s day-to-day business for so long I had almost become unaware of her presence. But at seeing the horrible puncture in such an exquisite painting, I reeled back from the doorway, sick all over again.

  Where was Lexie?

  Behind the public spaces of the firm lay a labyrinth of smaller offices where less-important employees toiled. I went down the hallway to the door of Lexie’s private bathroom. It adjoined her office but also had this door that opened into the hall. The door was locked, but I tapped on it and said softly, “It’s Nora.”

  Crewe opened the door to me, and I slipped in. It was a spacious retreat with plenty of marble, a heavily framed gold mirror and a brass tray on the counter containing a collection of soaps, lotions and sprays.

  Lexie stood leaning against the wall, head bowed, arms folded on her chest. I crossed the marble tiles and hugged her hard. She felt thin, but not fragile. She rowed on the river every morning, and her body showed it. But she shivered as if she’d just spent a day in the Arctic.

  “Oh, Lex,” I said. “This is terrible.”

  She might have been crying minutes earlier, but she had pulled herself together now and simply looked white-faced and tense. Her black hair was still neat in its ponytail. Her suit—an impeccably tailored silver Armani jacket paired with a black skirt that further emphasized her slim figure—showed no evidence of the catastrophe. Her mouth quivered, though. She was barely in control.

  Standing as far away as possible while still in the same room, Crewe said, “The police want to talk to Lexie in a minute. I told her she needs an attorney.”

  “I do not,” she snapped. “I can make perfect sense on my own.”

  “This situation is complicated,” Crewe said. “I’m not saying you’re guilty of anything—”

  “Of course she’s not,” I said.

  “But this thing is going to get ugly.”

  “How much uglier can it get?” she demanded. “A man is dead. Not to mention my wonderful Vermeer violated.”

  “Oh, Lex.”

  She shook off my touch as I reached for her. “The Vermeer will never be the same. Can you believe the bastard did it? He punched my painting!”

  My heart went out to her. Lexie wasn’t herself. I could see she was redirecting her emotions, and I ached to hug her.

  “Lexie,” Crewe said, “you’ve got to calm down. If Hoyt jumped, there will be questions, probably lawsuits—”

  “Lawsuits!” I said. “What does that matter now?”

  “He didn’t jump,” Lexie said, her voice flat. Crewe and I both stared at her.

  “He didn’t.” She used both her hands to smooth her hair back from her face, but she ended up pressing the sides of her head as if it might explode. “He wasn’t suicidal. He was angry and defensive, but wasn’t going to harm himself.”

  “Don’t say that to the police,” Crewe said. “Don’t try to explain. Just say what happened.”

  I said, “Brandi Schmidt said it was suicide.”

  “Brandi Schmidt,” Lexie snapped. “What does Miss Malaprop know?”

  “Did Hoyt fall? Was it an accident?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Nora. He didn’t fall through a closed door and over the railing.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, undaunted by her cold sarcasm. “That somebody pushed him?”

  “What else?” Crewe said. “Someone must have barged in there and wrestled him out onto the balcony.”

  “Who?” I said, astonished.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Lexie clamped her hands on her ears. “The son of a bitch is dead. Just shut up and let me think!”

  In the short silence, Crewe said, “Hoyt Cavendish has been called a lot of things, Lexie, but never a son of a bitch. Have you gone crazy?”

  “Take it easy,” I said, trying to soothe both of them. “Lex, we’re just trying to figure out what happened here.”

  Harshly, Lexie said, “We argued, and he punched my painting. I left Hoyt in my office and told my assistant to call the police.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted him arrested for vandalism! When I went back into my office—look, just let me explain it all to the police. I can have the whole thing settled in a few minutes.”

  Although she was struggling to hang on to her composure, I had never seen Lexie so agitated. I could see her pulse beating in a vein on her temple.

  “Crewe is right,” I said quietly. “Why not call an attorney before you start making statements?”

  She swung on me, furious. “Do you think I killed him?”

  “Stop it,” Crewe said. “You know she doesn’t. You’re in shock, Lexie. You’re not thinking straight. We’re trying to help you see the seriousness of the situation.”

  “This is none of your business. It’s a firm situation, nothing you need to know about. There are privacy issues at stake. I’ve got clients to protect!”

  “Will the police see it that way?” I asked.

  Lexie’s eyes blazed. “This is not the time for you two to gang up on me!”

  “We want to help,” Crewe said. “You’re in no shape to defend yourself.”

  I tried to remember exactly what Hoyt Cavendish’s relationship to Lexie’s financial firm was. He’d been one of her father’s early partners in the venture. Chances were, he still handled a few loyal clients who didn’t trust anyone else to manage their investments—probably that swarm of elderly women we’d seen in the lobby. In recent years, Hoyt had primarily appeared in public in his role as a prominent philanthropist. It was hard to imagine how he might have caused trouble for the firm. But Crewe had said Lexie was dealing with some kind of financial problem.

  “Lex,” I said, “if you and Hoyt were at odds, and you were the last person to be with him—you definitely need a lawyer.”

  “This is ridiculous!” She cut around me and seized the brass handle of the door.

  “Lexie, wait—”

  She stalked out of the bathroom. I felt like crying, but I held Crewe back as he started after her.

  Crewe’s face was tense and worried. He said, “She needs to calm down, but she’s right—we shouldn’t gang up on her. Why don’t you stay here, Nora? There’s a murderer around here somewhere. Lock the door behind me. You’ll be safe until I get back.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Try to make her see reason!”

  I watched him hustle after Lexie. I wanted to go, too. But tag-teaming her had only made matters worse.

  I hesitated in the doorway, daunted by the thought that a real killer might be hiding in the maze of offices. But I remembered my promise to return to Brandi Schmidt. By now, she might be even more upset than when I’d left her. It would take only a few seconds to return to the lobby, and I knew the route.

  As I stepped out of the bathroom, the toe of my sandal struck a small object caught on the threshold of the door. I bent down and picked up a silver compact. Lexie mu
st have dropped it in her turmoil. Without thinking, I slid it into my handbag to return to her later.

  Then I left the private bathroom and headed back down the hallway in the direction of the lobby. I could hear voices ahead of me. My sandals made little noise on the thick carpet underfoot. The heavy oak paneling muffled all sound from inside the offices I passed, making me realize that in any one of them, a killer could be lurking. I quickened my pace.

  When I’d nearly reached the open door to Lexie’s office, I heard the voice of the newly arrived plainclothes officer as she barked orders.

  “I want a list of everyone who’s on this floor. And who the hell are all those old biddies in the lobby? Check with the security desk downstairs first, and double-check with the receptionist by the elevators up here. We’ve got at least forty people to interview—and half of them are still wandering around unsupervised! I want this scene secured right now.”

  I turned toward the lobby, but suddenly spotted a puff of cigarette smoke. The small trail of blue vapor seeped out between the closed doors of the coat closet located halfway down the hall.

  Brandi, I thought. She must have gone into the closet to have one more calming cigarette.

  I put my hand on the doorknob. In that brief instant, I recognized that the smell of the smoke was distinctly not tobacco but marijuana.

  Without thinking I might be surprising a murderer as he smoked his last joint, I opened the closet door.

  And I froze. In shock.

  From inside the closet, a startled man stared back at me. He held a smoldering, hand-rolled cigarette between two fingers and looked anything but furtive.

  I stifled a scream before uttering the first word that came into my head.

  “Daddy?”

  Chapter Four

  My father grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside the closet. “Thank heaven it’s you!”

  He pulled the door behind me with a slam, then groped for the light switch. When the bulb popped on overhead, I got the first good look at my father in two years. Through a cloud of marijuana smoke.

  “Daddy! What are you doing here?”

  “Shhhhh! They’ll find me!”

  For a man of sixty, he still cut a dashing figure—tallish and thinnish with perfect posture and a tennis player’s tan. He wore his hair longer now—white and flowing over the faded collar of his Bermuda pink shirt. To hide a few wrinkles, he had knotted a jaunty silk ascot at his throat, and the insignia of a long-defunct yacht club glowed on the breast pocket of his threadbare blue blazer. Holding the joint elegantly between two long fingers, he looked like a slightly seedy gentleman who’d just walked away from the captain’s table on a cruise ship.

  I grabbed the joint from his grasp and threw it onto the floor. I crushed it with my sandal and frantically waved my hand to dissipate the pungent smoke. “What do you mean, they’ll find you? The police? Oh, my God! Daddy—”

  “Shh!” He put one forefinger to his lips and bugged out his eyes to command my silence. “Do you want me to get in trouble?”

  “You’re already in trouble,” I hissed. “I thought you could never set foot in the United States or the IRS would slap you into jail! And now you’re smoking dope with the police just ten feet away?”

  His eyebrows were already suspiciously high—perhaps the work of a South American cosmetic surgeon—but they lifted even farther. “Good heavens, Muffin, you haven’t seen me in ages, and all you want to do is throw insults?”

  “It’s not an insult if it’s true!”

  “Is that all you can say to your father? I’ve missed you, Muffin!”

  “Don’t call me that. When you call us Muffin, it makes us think you can’t remember our names.”

  “Of course I remember your name. You’re Eleanor, and you’ve always been my favorite. And don’t you look beautiful!”

  Still the handsome con man. Still the silver-tongued devil.

  “Daddy,” I groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t do something foolish here today.”

  “Foolish? The police getting upset about a gentleman enjoying a little harmless smoke—that’s what I call foolish!”

  “Hoyt Cavendish is dead. He just fell off a balcony.”

  “Yes, I know. Poor old Hoyt. He never did know which way was up.”

  “Daddy!”

  My father had inherited the Blackbird family fortune and managed to spend every penny—and more—in less time than a starlet could blow her millions on a shopping spree in Dubai. He had done it generously, of course. As a child, I often woke up to elaborate gifts on my bedspread. Toys from FAO Schwarz, rare books from shops in Paris, prayer flags from Kathmandu and beaded jewelry from Africa—I never knew what treasures he might bring home before he flitted off again. But by the time I finished college, all the money was gone.

  He’d had every right to spend it, of course. But when the cash ran out, he’d committed the ultimate social faux pas of gouging his friends for more. On the brink of social exile, he threw one last party before fleeing the country with my mother. Since then, they had run up debt in luxury resorts all over the world, skipping out in the nick of time just as local gendarmes came knocking on their doors.

  I said, “Don’t make jokes about Hoyt. It’s possible he was murdered.”

  “Of course he was murdered. Why do you think I’m hiding in a broom closet? There’s a stone-cold killer on the loose!”

  I stared at my father. “Did you see something?”

  “I saw plenty. And heard even more.”

  “Then you’ve got to talk to the police! You could help figure out what happened. You could—”

  Again, he motioned for me to keep my voice down. Then he whispered, “I’m not exactly in a position to assist the police, Nora.”

  “What do you mean? If you—”

  “I’d rather keep my presence a secret.”

  “From whom?”

  “Everyone. But especially from the police. I’m here on a mission, you see. An important government assignment. And Hoyt taking a swan dive from the balcony has thrown me a curveball, if I might mix my sports.”

  “What are you talking about?” If my father had been recruited to be some kind of secret agent, the whole world was doomed.

  “It’s very complicated. But if all goes well, I’ll buy freedom for your mother and me. There might even be a presidential pardon for both of us!”

  I felt a thunk in my stomach. “Mama’s here, too?”

  “Not here here, but nearby. I’d tell you more, Muffin, but it’s all very hush-hush.”

  “How long have you been smoking that stuff, Daddy?”

  He drew himself up tall and straight. “I use a medicinal amount of cannabis, young lady, not enough to cloud my judgment. I’m telling you the absolute truth. I’m here in Philadelphia at the behest of the Treasury Department. And maybe a few more federal agencies.”

  I had no clue what he meant. But experience told me I should assume he wasn’t entirely telling the truth.

  “What’s going on, Daddy? Does Lexie know you’re here?”

  “Not yet. I was waiting to be called to the inner sanctum to give my testimony when everything went haywire.”

  “When Hoyt died, you mean?”

  “Exactly. I’m here to shed light on a situation he caused.”

  “Hoyt caused a situation? Was he in some kind of trouble?”

  “Not anymore,” my father said. “Now that he’s dead. But things may just have gotten more complicated for everyone else. Your friend Lexie most of all.”

  “Daddy, you really need to come outside and talk to the police.”

  “No, Muffin, not until I’m sure I won’t end up in one of those country-club prisons where the inmates play shuffleboard all day. You know I have a low tolerance for shuffleboard. And prisons don’t serve wine with dinner, if you can imagine such savagery.”

  “But—”

  He spun me around. “Run along, dear. Before the police cordon off the whole block, I need to
make my escape.”

  “Where will you go? How will you get out of here?”

  “I know all the secret exits.” His eyes twinkled. “Don’t forget, I used to borrow money from this establishment. Many’s the time I needed to make a quick departure.”

  Another flood of dread nearly overcame me. “Daddy—”

  “Shh. I’ll find a way to keep in touch.”

  “You’re leaving the country again?”

  “Not if I can help it.” He winked. “Your mother wants to see her hairdresser. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to have good hair in Argentina?”

  He pushed me out into the hallway before I could ask more questions. And I had plenty of questions. What the hell was he doing back in Philadelphia? And with the help of the Treasury Department? The whole story was beyond belief. And if I knew my father at all, he was plotting something that would likely end in disaster.

  I spun around to yank open the closet door and confront him one more time, but the plainclothes police detective hailed me from the lobby.

  “Hey,” she said. “You. Come here and give me your name.”

  I leaned on the closet door. “Me?”

  She gave me a hard look. “Yes, you.” She made a hook of her forefinger and beckoned me closer.

  I obeyed. She wore a gun on her hip and didn’t look as if she’d hesitate to use it.

  Her name tag was nothing but consonants. I squinted and tried to imagine how to pronounce her name. “Wylcnck.” She wore a tan polyester business suit, unbuttoned to show a flesh-colored T-shirt. On her belt hung a city police detective’s shield. Tendrils of her hair had escaped the plastic clip at the back of her head. Her makeup consisted of a brownish lipstick she had partially chewed off.

  She gave me a disapproving up-and-down look and said, “Are you some kind of candy striper in that getup?”

  “No, I—”

  “Never mind. Stay here with this lady for a minute, will you? I’m no damn nanny.”

  Sprawled out on the couch beside her lay an elderly woman in a suit and pearls, holding a wet paper towel against her forehead. I recognized Elena Zanzibar by the electric pink powder generously spread on her cheeks. She moaned softly from beneath the paper towel.

 

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