by Jane Heller
“Ray. We haven’t had dinner,” I pointed out when it was eight o’clock.
“What’re you offering?” he asked.
“Tuna on whole wheat with lettuce, tomato, and mayo.”
“Sold, minus the lettuce and tomato.”
“You don’t eat vegetables?” I said, remembering how he’d wrinkled his nose at the zucchini he’d been served at the Black Marlin.
“No,” he said. “Unless you count ketchup as a vegetable. I eat that.”
We gobbled up the sandwiches and sipped more Chianti while we waited for the rain to stop.
“Tell me about your wife,” I said when he had finished a story about his family. “If the memory isn’t too painful.”
“The memory of Beth’s death is painful. The memory of her life is one of my real pleasures.”
I nodded. “Did she work?”
“She was a high school English teacher. She loved kids and loved books, so she and the job were a perfect fit.”
“How did you two meet?”
He smiled. “Through my brother, indirectly. I was trying on a pair of pants at Doug’s Palm Beach Gardens store and Beth was there, buying a tie for her father. I thought she was great-looking and wanted to strike up a conversation with her, but you know me. I’m not the smoothest guy on the planet when I first meet someone.”
I laughed, recalling our first meeting. “You’re what they call an acquired taste,” I said dryly. “Did you give Beth the kind of lecture you gave me?”
“Not exactly. The lecture I gave her had to do with ties—basically, how men hate wearing them and why she shouldn’t buy one for her father. She asked me what, in my opinion, she should buy for her father, and I said, ‘Tell me about your father.’ And she told me. Over dinner at Captain Charlie’s Reef Grill in Juno Beach. We were married six months later.”
“How romantic.”
“It was romantic. And it stayed romantic. I’m not saying we didn’t have our rocky periods, but they never lasted. We had too much fun with each other. We didn’t want to waste our energy fighting, almost as if we had a hunch that our time together was going to be short.”
“I’m so sorry, Ray. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have the kind of relationship you and Beth had and then lose it. But you’ve survived, which goes to show how resilient people are.”
“I don’t know how resilient I am. I just get on with it. What’s the alternative?”
Ray stayed until about ten-thirty, when the rain finally let up. I was walking him out to his car when we heard voices coming from the observation tower between the House of Refuge and the gift shop.
“I think you’ve got trespassers,” said Ray.
“Melinda Carr warned me about them,” I said. “She also indicated that it was part of my job to get them off the property.”
“Then away we go.”
We headed toward the tower.
“Hey, you!” Ray shouted. “Come down off there or we’re calling the police.”
“Don’t have an aneurysm, Pop,” a young male voice shouted back. “We’re done.”
Within a few minutes, two teenagers, a boy and a girl, scampered down the steps of the tower, flung themselves over the gate, and fled into a car.
“I think I’d better have a look, to make sure they didn’t do any damage,” said Ray, who went to his own car, fetched a flashlight, and mounted the tower. When he came back down, he was carrying something. “She forgot her panties,” he said, dumping them in the trash bin in the parking lot. “Ah, to be young again.”
I laughed. “Goodnight, you old geezer. Thanks for stopping by.” I kissed him on the cheek—without agonizing over it this time.
“See ya,” he said. “Stay out of trouble, huh?”
I said I’d try.
Chapter Sixteen
At two-thirty on Monday afternoon, my mother picked me up in the Delta 88 and drove us to the Stuart News.
“We have an appointment with Celeste Tolliver,” she told the receptionist who sat behind a desk in the lobby of the snazzy white office building.
“May I have both your names, please?” asked the receptionist.
“Mrs. Lenore Peltz and her daughter Deborah.”
We were instructed to take a seat until “Miss Tolliver” came for us, which she did after a ten-minute wait.
“Lenore,” said the society editor after descending a staircase and making her way over to us. “It’s been too long.”
As she and my mother air-kissed each other, my initial impression of the sixtyish Celeste Tolliver was that she was the pinkest person I’d ever seen—pink dress, pink cheeks, pink lipstick, even a pink tint to her tightly curled gray hair. My second impression of her was that, despite all the pink and the candy-sweet innocence the color suggested, she was in no way candy-sweet or innocent. After my mother introduced us, Celeste, who was heavily perfumed, looked me over as if I were crawling with lice, and said, “I understand that you’re the one who found the body. You and your sister, the wedding planner from Boca.”
“Yes, Miss Tolliver,” I acknowledged. That was the third thing about her—she was definitely a Miss Tolliver. “But there’s a lot more to the story, and my mother suggested that, because of your position in the community and your familiarity with its most socially prominent residents, you might be able to help us fill in the blanks.”
“Indeed,” she said, her eyebrows arching. I sensed that she was flattered by the importance we were bestowing upon her. She was someone people sucked up to on a regular basis, and she obviously relished the part. “You realize, of course, that I’m not a crime reporter for this newspaper.”
“No, but by letting us ask you a few questions, you could have a hand in bringing a killer to justice,” I said. “That would boost your readership, wouldn’t it?”
“If you weren’t new to Stuart, Deborah, you would know that my readership is rather devoted as it is,” she said. “However, I must admit that in all the years I’ve been covering the social scene in Martin County, no one has ever thought to plumb the depths of my experience in order to solve a murder. I’m quite taken with the idea, to be perfectly frank.”
I winked at my mother as Celeste turned and led us up the staircase, to a conference room on the second floor, her perfume trailing behind her.
When we were all seated, I explained why we—and not the police—were poking around in Jeffrey’s personal life and assured her more than once that Sharon and I had nothing to do with his murder. “What we’d like you to tell us,” I said, “is which social functions Dr. Hirshon attended within the past year and which ladies he escorted to each of them.”
“Which ladies.” Celeste rolled her eyes. “There were so many. Jeffrey Hirshon played the field, as they say.”
“Yes, but can you possibly give us the names of these women?” I asked.
“I suppose so, but not off the top of my head,” said Celeste. “I would have to search through my files to be absolutely accurate, but if you wait here, I’ll bring the ones that may be pertinent.”
She was gone for twenty minutes. I wished I had brought along a deck of cards or, at the very least, a magazine.
“Now then,” she said, returning with several boxes, as well as folders, in her arms and setting them down on the table. “Our social season gets underway in October with Junkanoo.”
“Jew Canoe?” I said, wondering if this was a soiree sponsored by the local Cadillac dealership.
Celeste practically passed out at my ignorance. “Junkanoo—the word means ‘Bahamian Festival’—raises money for Hibiscus.”
“The Hibiscus Center is a shelter for abused children, dear,” my mother said, tipping me off before I committed another, even more embarrassing social gaffe.
“A very worthy cause, obviously,” said Celeste. “The party itself is held at Mariner Sands Country Club every year, has a lively tropical theme, and is widely supported within the community. My guess is that Jeffrey Hirshon was in atte
ndance.”
She flipped through a folder, rereading the newspaper column she’d written about the party. “Yes, here’s his name,” she said excitedly. “Now, let’s see if I’ve got a photograph of him. He may not have made it into the column, but I keep all the photos I take, even the rejects.” She rummaged through one of the boxes. “Ah. I thought so.” She pulled out a snapshot and displayed it proudly.
“That’s Jeffrey,” I said, peering at the photo. He was dressed in a festive Hawaiian shirt, as opposed to a white lab coat, but he was wearing that same warm, open smile that had reeled Sharon and me in. And there was a good reason he was smiling—two good reasons, actually. In one hand, he was holding a tall, umbrella-ed cocktail. In the other, he was holding a tall, curvaceous blonde. “Who’s the babe?”
“Why that’s Didi Hornsby,” Celeste remarked, tapping her finger on the table. “I had forgotten that she dated the doctor.”
“Is she Ted and Audra Hornsby’s daughter?” my mother asked, referring, I guessed, to the babe’s parents.
“She’s their eldest,” said Celeste. “Divorced. Two children. Lives in Snug Harbor.”
“And she dated Jeffrey for a while?” I confirmed.
“Yes, it’s coming back to me now,” said Celeste, “although there was talk that it was just a summer fling.”
“A summer fling that carried over into the fall, apparently,” I mused. “It didn’t, by any chance, carry over into the winter too, did it? Right up until the murder?”
Celeste shook her head. “I doubt it. They weren’t together at the Chrysanthemum Ball in early November. That I do remember.”
My mother leaned over to interpret. “The Chrysanthemum Ball is a black-tie party to benefit the hospital, dear. It’s held at a private home each year.”
“Indeed. Last year it was held at Jeffrey Hirshon’s Sewall’s Point home, as a matter of fact,” said Celeste. “If I’m not mistaken, his date that evening was Suzie Kendall.” She fished into another folder. “Yes. Here they are. An attractive couple, don’t you agree?”
She placed the newspaper column on the table for our viewing. Sure enough, there was a photo of Jeffrey in a tuxedo, his arm wrapped around the waist of a woman wearing a sequined blue dress, serious eyeshadow, and big black hair piled on top of her head, Ivana style. “What’s the story with Suzie Kendall?” I asked. “Other than her desperate need for a fashion makeover.”
“Old family. Lots of quiet money. Railroad money,” Celeste confided.
“Divorced?” I said.
“Twice,” said Celeste. “She and the doctor were awfully chummy at the party, but, if memory serves, the romance fizzled even more quickly than the liaison with Didi.”
“Do you have any idea why?” I said.
“No. Perhaps the answer is in another of my folders,” she said. I could tell she was beginning to enjoy this little game. “Yes, here’s Jeffrey Hirshon’s name, linked with Lucinda Orwell, in my column on the River Dayz Festival.”
“We’re trying to save the St. Lucie River from pollution,” my mother translated yet again. “There’s an annual street fair in downtown Stuart in late November to build awareness of the problem.”
“That’s very noble, Mom,” I said. “But what gets me is how Jeffrey pops up everywhere, like Forrest Gump. You start to wonder when he had time to practice medicine.”
“Look!” Celeste interrupted. “I’ve got a nice photograph of the doctor at River Dayz. He’s standing next to Lucinda, who, as you can see, is one of Stuart’s fairest flowers.”
I stifled a laugh and zeroed in on the picture. Lucinda Orwell was a knockout, I had to admit. Long blond hair, green eyes, gigantic tits.
“I suppose she’s why the romance with Suzie Kendall broke up,” said Celeste slyly. “Although what these women saw in Jeffrey Hirshon, I cannot fathom. He seemed so new money.”
“As opposed to quiet money, you mean,” I said.
“That’s it exactly,” said Celeste, nodding.
“What I can’t fathom is how many young, single women there are around here,” I said. “And I thought it was competitive in New York.”
Celeste didn’t respond. Her head was back in her folders. “What about this!” she said triumphantly, pulling out two newspaper clippings. “Dr. Hirshon took Lucinda to the Red Cross Ball at Willoughby in December, but he brought Roberta Ross to the Heart Ball at Sailfish just the other week.”
“Just the other week?” I said, astounded. At the same time he was shtupping Vicky and coming on to Sharon and me?
“Yes, indeed. I have the evidence.” She shoved both columns at me. “And to think that the ink was barely dry on Roberta’s divorce papers.”
Didi. Suzie. Lucinda. Roberta. I was dizzy with Jeffrey’s women, couldn’t figure out how he juggled them all in such a small town, couldn’t imagine how a cardiologist, a man people trusted with their lives, could afford to have the reputation of a lothario.
“It’s rather ironic that the doctor’s final event was the Heart Ball,” said Celeste. “Given his profession.”
“It is,” I said. “But getting back to Roberta, you mentioned that she’d just been divorced when she went to the party with Jeffrey. Who was she divorced from? Someone with new money? Quiet money? Any money?”
“How interesting that you should ask,” said Celeste. “Roberta’s ex-husband was in the same medical practice as Dr. Hirshon. He’s an internist named Peter Elkin. You must know him, Lenore. He lives in Sewall’s Point, too.”
That little tidbit stopped me cold. Dr. Elkin was the man Nurse Vicky claimed to have been with the night of the murder.
“Oh. You’re wondering about Roberta’s last name,” said Celeste, mistaking the reason for my stunned expression. “She’s a successful real estate agent in town. She’s always used her maiden name, Ross, even during her marriage to Dr. Elkin.”
God, Ray was right, I thought. Sewall’s Point is a Peyton Place. Talk about six degrees of separation.
“Well, Miss Tolliver, you’ve given us more than enough to chew on,” I said. “I assume the four women you mentioned are in the phone book, in case I want to ask them a few questions?” Roberta Ross, in particular.
“I’ll give you their numbers,” she said, “but I’ll deny that you got them from me if I’m ever asked.”
“Understood,” I said.
“I doubt they’ll speak to you though,” she added. “You are a suspect in the murder of a man they cared about.”
“If they truly cared about Jeffrey, they’ll want to see his killer caught,” I said. “I have a feeling that they’ll squeeze me in between charity balls.”
My mother and I thanked Celeste for her help and left the building.
An hour after I was back at the cottage, I received a call from Detective Gillby.
“We’re ready to return your car,” he said. “It’s clean.”
“Oh, that’s very thoughtful, Detective, but you didn’t have to wash it for me.”
“No, it’s clean, as in evidence-free. No blood, no gun, no nothing. Although we did find a couple of hairs that match the hair of the deceased—his beard hair. They were down on the floor, under the steering wheel. Do you have any idea how they landed there, Ms. Peltz?”
“Sure. The day before he was killed, Dr. Hirshon helped me jump-start the Pontiac in the parking lot of Stuart Fine Foods. After he opened the hood and hooked me up to his jumper cables, he got into the car on the driver’s side and started her up. I guess he shed a few beards hairs while he was at it.”
“That was the one and only time he was in your car?”
“He owned a Porsche, Detective. Under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have been caught dead in my Pontiac.” I regretted the dead naturally, but it was too late to take it back. “How about the other lab results?” I asked. “Do we know any more about the crime scene?”
Gillby laughed. “Even if we did, we wouldn’t share it.”
“Why not? I share all my informa
tion with you.”
“So you do.” I sensed that, while Detective Gillby was very professional and, therefore, couldn’t rule me out altogether as a suspect, he was developing a tolerance, if not an actual fondness, for me. “All right. Here’s a nugget for you, since you’re so interested,” he said begrudgingly. “The autopsy report came back with no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the doctor’s bloodstream. And the analysis of his stomach contents—and his kitchen—showed that he had eaten dinner at home shortly before he was killed: pasta in some kind of tomato sauce, plus a green salad and—”
“You can skip that part,” I said, my own stomach turning over. “How about the skin under his fingernails? Don’t you guys usually check for that? To determine if there was a struggle?”
“We didn’t find any,” said Gillby. “But then we’ve pretty well determined that there wasn’t a struggle. For one thing, the crime scene suggests that the killer is someone Hirshon knew, because his front door was open when you and your sister found the body.”
“Then you think the killer did have a key to the house.”
“Either that, or the doctor invited him in. Also, our photos of the scene tell us that nothing in the house was disturbed or out of place, not even in the den where the doctor was shot. Whoever pulled the trigger was probably sitting in that room, having a nice little chat with Hirshon, when he surprised him with the gun, fired off a twenty-two-caliber bullet, and then left the house the same way he entered—out the front door.”
“What about fingerprints, Detective? Did you find some?”
“Yeah. Yours and your sister’s.”
“Swell. Anybody else’s?”
“Look, you and I both know I shouldn’t be discussing the specifics of the case with you, Ms. Peltz. Let’s just say that we’re moving ahead with the investigation and that you and your sister are not our primary focus at the moment.”