This isn’t happening, Dizey thought.
The night sky was somersaulting over her.
This can’t be happening, the voice inside her cried. I have a column to write!
THE SCREAM BROUGHT A JOLT of alertness into all Leigh’s senses. Time dilated and the action in the space before her seemed to take place in slow motion, as though it had been prerecorded long, long ago.
Dizey’s face of open-mouthed amazement hurtled away, screaming. In the garden, five stories below, a shadow kissed the ground.
The scream stopped. Time reassembled itself and found its tempo.
Leigh picked up the chair from where it had fallen on the terrace floor. A damp breeze ruffled the bushes spaced along the low wall. She looked over them.
My God, she realized. That’s exactly how Nita died. Somewhere behind her, she heard glass break. Her gaze swung toward the house. Through the French window, she could see Waldo in the living room with one arm around Honey Ogilvie’s waist.
Funny, she thought, I didn’t realize Honey Ogilvie had known Oona.
She crossed the terrace and stepped back into the air-conditioning. Music and voices rose up around her. It was eerie, walking through rooms that once upon a time she had fallen asleep drunk in, and feeling that once upon a time was happening all over again.
She smiled and, naturally, when a waiter offered her champagne, she said, “Thank you, but I don’t drink.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Friday, May 31
ANNIE MACADAM WAS STILL on the telephone when her daughter Gabrielle led Vince Cardozo into the library.
She saw that the lieutenant was wearing a rumpled seersucker suit and a striped blue tie. Stripes and stripes, the part of her mind that wasn’t on the phone thought. A lawyer would never wear that. She gestured to him to sit.
“You naughty boy,” she was saying to the phone, “of course you can trust me.” She saw that Lieutenant Cardozo was still standing. “I have a visitor. We’ll talk later.” It was a fast hang up, and then she took a seat on the sofa.
Cardozo took the matching chair that faced her.
“That was Zack Morrow on the phone,” Annie said. “A friend of Dizey’s and her boss to boot. You know what gets me? What really and truly gets me? He didn’t even mention her.”
“Maybe he didn’t know,” Gabrielle said.
Annie turned and saw that Gabrielle was still standing by the door. She clamped down on a surge of irritation. Since age six Gabrielle had always hung around doors, wanting to hear what the grown-ups were discussing. “Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant? Say yes, I need some.”
“Sure.”
“Gabrielle honey, could you bring us two cups of coffee?” Annie waited till Gabrielle was out of the room, then leaned forward and took a menthol filter-tip from the carved glass cigarette box on the coffee table. She lifted the table lighter and sat there puffing.
Dizey had given Annie the lighter. It was Steuben, a polar bear rearing up in milky glass that would have sold, list price, at a thousand-something. Annie didn’t fool herself that Dizey had paid for the lighter, or even chosen it. Still, it had passed from Dizey’s hands to hers, and Annie was thinking how strange it was that Dizey was gone, but this coolness, this hardness, remained.
“Zack Morrow knew Dizey’s dead,” Annie said. “It just wasn’t a big deal for him.”
“Sometimes people prefer to hide what they feel.”
The remark, coming from a cop, surprised her and she looked over at him. “You know, that’s very sweet of you. To be making someone else’s excuses.”
It occurred to her that his dark eyes seemed to share her sadness, and then she realized they were neutral eyes and she was reading her own feelings into his face. He had the sort of face that invited you to do that.
“How well did you know Dizey?” he said.
“How well? I’ll tell you how well. Dizey and I were on that phone to each other every day, first thing, twenty minutes a day, three-hundred-sixty-five days a year, for eighteen years. And for eighteen years Dizey came to every one of my dinner parties. If she wasn’t in town, I didn’t give them.”
“You must have been very fond of her.”
Annie shrugged. “We had our ups and downs—what friendship doesn’t? There are years when you love each other, years when you hate each other. There are even days when you swear to yourself you’d love to see her dead.” She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. “And then one day it happens. You have your blackest wish. She’s dead. And that day isn’t at all what you imagined it would be. There’s no triumph, no winning. Only loss.”
She glanced over at him. His eyes, deeply set in shadowed pockets, seemed to grieve with her. She couldn’t escape the feeling that he was using those eyes to lure her into confiding. So what. She had to tell someone.
“Because you’d always imagined that somehow she’d be there to see you win. Everything in your life, you imagined that somehow she’d be there witnessing it—loving you for it or wishing you dead because of it—but she’d be there.” Annie got up from the sofa. She gestured him to stay seated. “Don’t get up—I just need to move around.”
She walked to the window. Beyond the terrace splotchy sunlight was dribbling through a shadowy sky. The gray jagged horizon of the co-ops lining Madison and Fifth seemed inert and cut off, like a mountain range on a planet uninhabited by human beings.
“When you’re young, you honestly believe you’re going to go through your whole life making close friends—and it never works out that way. One by one they go and when they’re gone, there’s no one to take their place.” She realized she was moaning for herself, and she felt embarrassed. She turned and saw that Lieutenant Cardozo was standing again. “But you’re a cop. You’ve been through worse.”
“There’s no worse. I’m sorry you lost a friend.”
Annie shrugged. “I lost a friend. I lost an enemy. I lost a part of my life. Oh, well. Look at the bright side. It saves me the trouble of killing her. Because, believe me, sometimes I wanted to. Like a million other people who knew her.”
Annie returned to the sofa. She sat. She couldn’t keep herself from shaking, and then to her surprise, she couldn’t keep herself from crying.
Cardozo held out a handkerchief. “I need your honest opinion—as Dizey’s friend.”
Annie accepted the hankie. She daubed at her nose. She picked at a sleeve, adjusted her hem, neatened herself in preparation for honesty.
“Did Dizey have a drinking problem?”
“Drinking problem?” Annie smiled almost fondly. “Dizey had a drinking fact. The lady was a practicing, ambulatory alcoholic.”
“Did she have depressions?”
“How would anyone have known? Depression didn’t have a chance with all the speed her doctor prescribed.”
“Is there any possibility that Dizey took her own life?”
“Dizey? Suicide?” Annie’s hand slapped her bosom so hard she practically knocked herself off the sofa. “No way. Not while there was gossip left to gossip, or a scoop left to scoop.”
Gabrielle returned with a coffee tray that should have jingled but that made a sound in her hands more like clanking. What the hell has she got on that tray? Annie wondered.
Annie moved the polar-bear lighter to one side, and Gabrielle set the tray on the coffee table.
“Want me to pour?” Gabrielle said.
Annie saw that Gabrielle had brought three cups. “That’s okay, hon. I’ll handle it. Lieutenant Cardozo and I would appreciate being alone—you don’t mind.”
“Oh,” Gabrielle said. “Okay.” She closed the door behind her.
“How do you like yours?” Annie asked.
“Milk and a little fake sugar. If you have any.”
“We have fake everything in this house.” Annie poured and stirred.
“Could I trouble you for another look at your guest list?” Cardozo said. “May sixth, the Princess Margaret dinner? I’d like to see the seating plan for th
e tables.”
Annie went to the bookcase. She searched a moment through her loose-leaf binders. She brought the binder back to the coffee table. She opened it to May sixth. “Here we are. The page is practically dog-eared.” Her forefinger ran halfway down the right-hand page of the binder and stopped. “This is weird.”
In the silence that seemed suddenly to settle on the room, Annie could distinctly hear the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
“What’s weird?” Cardozo said.
“Dizey sat at the same table as Oona and Avalon.”
Cardozo came and sat beside her on the sofa. “Who else sat at that table?”
Annie sat trying to blink back moisture that was suddenly pooling in her eyes. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m going to miss that vicious bitch.” She pushed the binder toward Cardozo. “Lieutenant, can you read it? Something’s wrong with my eyes, I can’t see.”
Cardozo angled his head. “There were eight guests.”
“All my tables seat eight, it’s my lucky number.”
“Aldrich … Gardner … Duke …”
“May they rest in peace.” Annie sighed.
“Spahn … Braidy …” Cardozo looked up. “Who’s Chappell, S.?”
“Sorry Chappell. Sorry’s short for Sorella. She’s an interior designer.”
“And Gurdon, F.?”
“Fenny. Short for Fennimore. Fenny and Sorry are partners.”
“And van Slyke, L.?”
“Lucius.” Annie sighed. “You don’t have to worry about him. He died in a sailboat accident last summer in Dark Harbor.” She had a hollow feeling inside. She lit herself another cigarette. “Lieutenant, do you know what I’m sitting here thinking? By the time this Society Sam bastard gets through, I won’t have any friends left. And I’m too old and too tired to make any new ones.” She exhaled and watched the smoke drift away. “Of course, with any luck, he’ll kill me next.”
“You may not be on his list,” Cardozo said.
“That’s encouraging,” Annie said. “Care to tell me why not?”
“You testified for Nita’s character, but you didn’t sit at that table.”
“I see. He’s choosy. Then what are my chances, Lieutenant—fifty-fifty?”
“You’ll be safe, Mrs. MacAdam. But I need to talk to these other people. Could you lend me your living room?”
“THE THREE PEOPLE who’ve died so far,” Cardozo said, “are linked. All three sat at the same table at Annie MacAdam’s dinner party six years ago. All three went on from that party to the Emergency Room at Lexington Hospital. Two years later, at the trial of Jim Delancey, all three testified for Nita Kohler’s character.”
Cardozo stood in front of the fireplace in Annie MacAdam’s living room. Seven men and women had taken seats in a semicircle facing him.
“We could be dealing with coincidence,” he said. “But we can’t make that assumption. There’s a possibility that Society Sam is killing for a reason, and one of these links could be that reason. If so, he’s going to target the surviving members of one of the three groups: the dinner table, or the guests who went to the hospital, or the witnesses at the trial.”
It was only eleven in the morning, but Gabrielle MacAdam, wearing an I’m-not-here face, circulated quietly with a tray of drinks.
“The dinner table gives us the largest pool: Oona Aldrich and Avalon Gardner—already killed by Society Sam. Dizey Duke, dead in what may or may not have been an accidental fall. Plus Lucius van Slyke—who died in a boating accident over a year ago.”
“Lucky Lucius,” Dick Braidy whispered. “At least he’s out of this.”
“Plus Gloria Spahn, plus Benedict Braidy, plus Sorella Chappell, plus Fennimore Gurdon—all still living, and all present.”
“God be praised.” Sorella Chappell, looking agitated in pink, reached out and squeezed Gloria Spahn’s hand.
“The hospital gives us a smaller pool: Society Sam’s three victims, plus Gloria Spahn, plus Benedict Braidy. The trial gives us the three victims, plus Benedict Braidy, Sorella Chappell, Fennimore Gurdon—and three new names: Annie MacAdam, Leigh Baker, and Tori Sandberg.”
Annie MacAdam held up her highball and sent a silent longdistance clink to Tori Sandberg and another to Leigh Baker.
“Since we don’t know which of these groups is the target, we have to assume they’re all targeted. And that means, starting today, the police will provide round-the-clock security for each one of you.”
“A cop guard?” Sorella Chappell cried.
“We’re going to try to accomplish this with the least possible inconvenience or hassle to any of you. Your guards will not be in uniform.”
“Do we get to pick our guard’s sex?” Fennimore Gurdon said.
“No.”
“Are we allowed to refuse the security?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Are we expected to change our life-styles?” Annie MacAdam said.
“Realize two things and act accordingly: Your lives may be in danger, but the danger is minimal so long as you cooperate with your guard.”
“What does act accordingly mean?” Tori Sandberg said.
“For one thing, try not to be alone on the street or in places open to the public—restaurants, movies, theaters.”
“You mean when I go to the john in a restaurant,” Gloria Spahn said, “take a friend?”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea. Or if you have a same-sex guard, take your guard.”
“Does that mean we have to get our guards invited when we go anywhere?” Fennimore Gurdon said.
“No. Your guard isn’t expecting to share your social life. But he or she has to know where you are at all times.”
“But that means I have to know,” Sorella Chappell said.
“Does that pose a problem?”
“Sometimes I like to make my day up as I go along.”
“You may have to plan a little more tightly than that for a while.”
“Wouldn’t it be more efficient if I just took my guard with me when I go anywhere?”
“Cops can’t accept services or gratuities from civilians. Your guard expects to drive himself—but he also expects to know your itinerary.”
“Then wouldn’t it be simpler,” Dick Braidy said, “if our guards drove us too?”
“Cops are barred by statute from providing transportation to civilians. That would be embezzlement of city services.”
“Wouldn’t it be a lot less expensive,” Leigh Baker said, “just to lock Jim Delancey up?”
“If Delancey is responsible for these killings, yes, it would, but the law doesn’t allow us to make that assumption.”
“Have you at least got someone watching him?” Leigh Baker said.
“We’re aware of his movements. He spends most of his time at work or at home.”
“And where’s his home?” Leigh Baker said.
“I don’t believe that information is germane,” Cardozo said.
“Beekman Place,” Sorella Chappell said. “Jim Delancey and his mother share an apartment in the co-op next to mine.”
“Miss Chappell,” Cardozo said, “that was not helpful.”
Benedict Braidy whistled softly. “Beekman Place is an awfully snazzy address for a shop clerk and glorified busboy.”
THIRTY-SIX
“WHAT KILLED HER?” CARDOZO said.
Dan Hippolito steepled his fingers under his nose and jittered the fingertips together. “By suffering exactly the injuries you’d expect in any seventy-eight-year-old woman who fell five stories onto hard earth.”
They were sitting in Dan Hippolito’s subterranean office. The preliminary bloodwork on Dizey Duke was a stack of computer pages on the desk.
“Seventy-eight?” Cardozo didn’t quite manage to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“How old did she claim to be?”
“I don’t know what she claimed, but I always thought late fifties.”
“Di
zey Duke was doubtless very young in spirit, an example to us all, but her bones had reached a very brittle old age.”
Cardozo had a nagging sense that something here was wildly out of whack. “You said hard earth. She fell onto a lawn.”
Dan Hippolito raised a weary hand. “This woman was in the eighth decade of life. The garden had flagstones. Vince, I know you want to tie her in with the other two, but all this woman’s body is going to show is, she fell.”
“No defensive wounds?”
“There’s one fresh bruise.” Dan Hippolito laid a glossy on the desktop. It showed the palm of Dizey Duke’s left hand. A bruise ran like a faint purple stamp along the crease.
“What caused it?”
“Impact. Something struck her hard enough to rupture a vessel.”
“A blade?”
“Possibly the flat of a blade.”
Cardozo rotated the glossy, studying the palm from different orientations. “Could she have been fending off a blow?”
“It’s possible for a right-handed person to fend off a blow with her left hand. A little unusual. Where you used to see a lot of these bruises is on young parochial-school students. Back in the days when the Sisters were allowed to use corporal punishment. The child would lay his or her left hand on the desk palm up, and Sister would thwack with a ruler. The meaner Sisters used steel rulers.”
“We know Dizey wasn’t in parochial school. At least not at the time of her death.”
“Lucky for the school. She would have been a pretty unruly student. The alcohol level in the blood is the equivalent of eight very strong martinis.”
“Eight?” Cardozo laid the glossy back on the desk. “No one mentioned she was stinking drunk.”
“Maybe she could hold it. She was built like a workhorse. Maybe everyone else was drunk. Maybe the word drunk has a special meaning in Dizey Duke’s set.”
“Any other drugs?”
“She used a hell of a lot of cortisone—probably to control the arthritis. And a lot of codeine—I assume for arthritis pain. She was a daily amphetamine and barbiturate abuser. Probably her doctor was maintaining her. Amphetamine to get her through the day, barbiturate to get her through the night.”
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