Sis Boom Bah

by Jane Heller

  “I’m relieved to hear that. I’ve got another question though. Do you think it’s important that Jeffrey was shot in his den?”

  “Run that by me again?”

  “Do you think it’s some sort of clue that he was killed in his den, as opposed to, say, his bedroom or bathroom or boat? From the brief look I got at the room, it seemed as if it doubled as his home office. It just occurred to me that if the murder were a crime of passion, an office would be an odd backdrop for it.”

  “Backdrop.“ Gillby chuckled. “I realize that you’re coming to us straight from the glamorous world of show business, Ms. Peltz, but we’re not dealing with a stage set here. We’re dealing with a real-life homicide.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said, trying to sound chastened. “I’ll speak to you soon.”

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  On Monday night, I placed calls to Didi Hornsby, Suzie Kendall, Lucinda Orwell, and Roberta Ross. I did not pretend to be a market researcher, nor did I say I was with AT&T or MCI. I told them exactly who I was and why I wanted to talk to them, and used the fact that my mother was a long-time resident of Sewall’s Point (as well as a contributor to the charitable organizations in which they were involved) to prove I wasn’t some social gate crasher.

  To my surprise, all of them—even Roberta, the real estate agent and former Mrs. Elkin—said they’d make time for me. I was beginning to realize that people around town had few inhibitions when it came to sharing intimate details of their lives, even with a total stranger. I assumed this was either because of the glut of confessional talk shows on television today or because of the friendly, open manner that small towns foster. Of course, it could also have been because everyone likes to offer his or her two cents’ worth about a murder.

  The next morning, my mother drove me to the sheriff’s office so I could reclaim the Pontiac. The car looked just as sorry as ever and smelled worse, thanks to whatever chemicals the cops sprayed it with in order to ferret out beard hairs and other traces of Jeffrey.

  “You sure you don’t want me to go with you, dear?” my mother asked as I set off for my appointments with the “Sirens of Stuart,” as I came to call them.

  “Positive,” I said. “I’m saving you for another mission, Mom.”

  “Oh?” Her blue eyes twinkled.

  “Now that Jeffrey’s gone, you’re going to need a new doctor,” I said. “Somebody like Peter Elkin, for instance.”

  “I get it.” She smiled. “You want me to have a checkup.”

  “Right. And while you’re there, you’ll slip in a few questions, which I’ll write down for you in advance.”

  “That’s very clever, Deborah, but Dr. Elkin’s an internist, not a cardiologist. He takes care of people with all sorts of medical problems.”

  “Well? Didn’t you say your stomach was acting up? Or was it your arthritis?”

  She laughed. “Tell me the symptoms I’m supposed to have and I’ll have them, dear.”

  My first stop at ten o’clock was Didi Hornsby, who lived in a scenic section of Stuart known as Snug Harbor. Set along the St. Lucie River, across the bridge from Sewall’s Point, Snug Harbor boasted lovely homes, plus a marina and tennis court for members of its neighborhood association. Didi’s house, a brick residence of a style more typically found up north, screamed kids. There were beach balls and frisbees and bicycles in the driveway and toys of various colors and shapes scattered about the front lawn. I stepped gingerly out of my car, so as not to slip and impale myself on a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger.

  When I rang the doorbell, I was greeted by the sound of many large barking dogs. I considered getting back in the car.

  “Deborah?” said a blond woman after opening the door a crack.

  “Didi?”

  “That’s me. Come on in,” she said, at which point four Great Danes the size of horses attempted to trample me. “Inga! Pipi! Sonja! Eva! Down!”

  It took several of Didi’s down!s, but eventually the dogs left me alone.

  “They get, like, creeped out by new people,” Didi said apologetically, her accent a mixture of southern belle and valley girl. “Let’s go and sit in the family room.”

  As I followed Didi into the room, I studied her from behind. She was wearing a purple-and-black tank top and matching spandex shorts, the sort of costume you see at gyms and health clubs. (She explained that she’d just returned from hers.) She was in fabulous shape, there was no question about that. With her blond hair, lightly tanned complexion, and glistening muscles, she looked very much the outdoorsy type—sort of like Meryl Streep in that movie where she white-water rafted for two straight hours. Yes, Didi Hornsby was a woman who would have enjoyed working out with Jeffrey, I surmised, and vice versa.

  “Evian?” she offered me, stopping at the wet bar.

  “No, thanks.”

  She poured herself a glass, dipped her fingertips into it, and spritzed her face with the water.

  “It’s important to keep the skin moist,” she said, as she continued to flick droplets of water on herself. “People forget to, because Florida is so, like, humid.”

  She peered at the skin on my face, then flicked Evian on me.

  “There,” she said. “How does that feel?”

  “Wet,” I said, blinking the water out of my eyes.

  We sat on her sofa after she cleared away some of her childrens’ toys.

  “I appreciate your making time for me this morning,” I began.

  “That’s okay. The kids are with the au pair. I have a lunch date at twelve-thirty, but the rest of the morning is, like, totally free. Oh, except for my massage at eleven.”

  “Great. As I said on the phone, I want to talk to you about Jeffrey Hirshon. My sister and I met him when our mother had a heart attack, and, in the course of her hospitalization and follow-up treatment, we struck up a friendship with him. Shortly after that, he was murdered and we were the ones who found his body, which was an incredibly traumatic experience, as you can imagine. Ever since then, I’ve become obsessed with learning more about him, about who could have hated him enough to kill him. I mean, the man saved my beloved mother’s life! The least I can do is try to find out who took his!” I should add that I performed this speech while clutching my hands to my bosom, and, I’m afraid, I pretended to cry.

  Didi seemed concerned. “Can I get you some herbal tea, Deborah?”

  I shook my head, fearing she might spritz my face with the hot liquid. “I’ll be all right if you’ll tell me about Jeffrey, how you felt about him, whether you were aware of anyone who was angry at him.”

  “Who could be angry at Jeffrey? He was a super guy, a real sweetheart. That’s the crazy part of this,” she said. “We dated for six months and it was a blast.”

  “If it was such a blast, why did you two break up?”

  “Because it stopped being a blast.”

  “Yes, but why, Didi?” I asked, realizing she wasn’t particularly introspective.

  She shrugged. “It just did. We had fun and then we didn’t. So we moved on to other people.”

  “You’re saying that the spark died, is that it?”

  “Yeah, kind of. You know how you go through periods where you, like, can’t eat too many softshell crabs? And then the season’s over and you think, I’ll never eat one of those critters again? That’s what happened between Jeffrey and me. We OD’ed on each other or something.”

  “So it was a mutual decision to end the relationship.”

  “Totally. We stayed friendly after we broke up. I was the one who suggested he take Suzie Kendall to the Chrysanthemum Ball last year.”

  “Really. Who did you go with?”

  “Suzie’s ex-husband Chip.”

  I sighed, trying to conceive of this sort of overlap going on in New York. “Wasn’t that a little awkward for everybody?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” said Didi. “Chip was Suzie’s first ex-husband. Now, if I’d shown u
p at the party with Hartley, her second ex-husband, it would have been a different story. She’s still hurting from that breakup.”

  I tried to keep my eyes from crossing. “So you remained on good terms with Jeffrey after you stopped seeing each other.”

  “Oh, yeah. I told you, he was a super guy.”

  “But staying with him would have been like eating too many softshell crabs.”

  “Exactly.”

  I asked a few more questions, but it was a waste of time. Didi Hornsby didn’t know anything—and I do mean anything. Besides, her house smelled of Great Danes, and I needed some fresh air. I thanked her for talking to me and left.

  Next, it was back to Sewall’s Point for a visit with Suzie Kendall, who lived in an enormous, gated, pistachio-colored house in a relatively new subdivision aptly named Castle Hill. So much for Suzie’s “quiet” railroad money.

  Before being admitted inside the house, I had to press the intercom outside the gate.

  “Yes?” came a female voice.

  “It’s Deborah Peltz.”

  The gate swung open and the Pontiac and I were in.

  Waiting for me at the front door was Suzie herself, a vision in a lime-green sundress. She wasn’t as bouncy as Didi, nor was she a cover girl for a fitness magazine, but she was pretty (or would have been without all the eyeshadow) and the pouffy black hair from the Chrysanthemum Ball photo had given way to a more casual (and flattering) ponytail.

  We shook hands and she invited me inside the house. We sat in her living room, which had been decorated in an African safari motif, complete with dead animals peering at us from over the fireplace. I wondered immediately if Suzie was a hunter and owned a gun. So I asked. She said that it was her ex-husband (Hartley, not Chip) who hunted and that she, on the other hand, was frightened of guns.

  The subject of guns and the shooting of living things led us straight into a discussion of Jeffrey. I gave her the same sob story I’d thrown at Didi, but Suzie wasn’t nearly as cavalier about the way her romance with him had ended.

  “He didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me he was seeing another woman,” she said bitterly. “He just stopped calling. I felt so abandoned, which is how I felt after Hartley left me. I’m at the stage now where I have no self-esteem whatsoever.” I tried to squeeze in a question, but she kept going. “I know I shouldn’t look to men for validation, for my identity; that I should love myself and nurture myself and figure out what I want in life and then pursue it. The question is: What does Suzie Kendall want out of life? Who is Suzie Kendall?” Before I could ask why she was speaking of herself in the third person, she was at it again. “Suzie Kendall doesn’t have a career. Suzie Kendall doesn’t have children. All Suzie Kendall has is a very large trust fund.”

  Let me whip out the Stradivarius, I thought, as she whined about the gobs of money she’d been saddled with by her forebears.

  At some point, there was a break in the action and I said, “Getting back to Jeffrey Hirshon, how long did you two go out?”

  “Three months,” she said. “Three months of kissy-kissy and then nothing, as if I didn’t exist. I’d call his house and his answering machine would pick up. I’d call his office and that witch of a nurse—”

  “Joan.”

  “—Joan would tell me he was with patients. I couldn’t reach him. He froze me out, and I had no idea why. And then one Sunday I opened the Stuart News to Celeste Tolliver’s column and who did I see but Jeffrey, arm in arm with Lucinda Orwell, at the River Dayz Festival.”

  “You must have been hopping mad,” I said, wondering whether I had ever used that expression before and, if not, why I had used it then.

  “I was hurt and humiliated and didn’t go out of the house for two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? Boy, you either have a lot of fruit trees on your property or you had a lot of pizzas delivered.”

  “I have a wonderful cook. She shops too.”

  “That is fortunate. Did you ever see Jeffrey again or talk to him about what happened between you?”

  “I saw him at the Heart Ball recently, but I didn’t confront him,” said Suzie. “He was much too busy.”

  “With Roberta Ross, you mean.”

  “Yes.” Suzie looked at me. “You know, for a newcomer in town you’re very up-to-date on the social scene, Deborah.”

  “My mother clips all of Celeste Tolliver’s columns,” I explained. “Sort of the way other people clip coupons. I read them the other day. In one sitting.”

  “Because you were so fond of Jeffrey.”

  “Yes, and because my mother doesn’t subscribe to People.”

  “Well, I may have had my ups and downs with him, but I was devastated when I heard he’d been murdered.”

  “Can you think of anyone who was upset with him? Beside you, that is.”

  “You’re asking if I can think of anyone who might have killed him.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Lucinda Orwell?” said Suzie. “Jeffrey dumped her for Roberta. Maybe she didn’t take it as well as I did.”

  “Do you know Lucinda, Suzie? I mean, are you two social acquaintances?”

  “Of course I know her,” said Suzie. “She’s my first husband’s second ex-wife.”

  I felt lightheaded after my chat with Suzie, so between appointments I bought a sandwich and a Diet Coke at the Harbour Bay Gourmet and wolfed them both down in my car.

  Fortified, I proceeded down South Sewall’s Point Road to another exclusive subdivision, this one called the Archipelago. Developed more than twenty years ago to resemble a chain of islands in the South Pacific, it consists of three narrow streets, its houses fronting either the wide Intracoastal Waterway or a picturesque lagoon. Separated from the rest of Sewall’s Point by two little bridges, the Archipelago has a mystique to it, and its residents, some of whom are a bit eccentric or like to think they are, contribute to that mystique.

  Lucinda Orwell’s house was on Simara Street. Modest, certainly by Boca standards, it was reminiscent of the Polynesian, thatched-roof huts found in Tahiti, Bora Bora, or, at the very least, that old TV series Adventures in Paradise.

  There were stepping stones leading up to the house and a cowbell hanging from a rope instead of a doorbell. I yanked it.

  Lucinda answered. She was an exquisite creature, I noticed right away, with shoulder-length flaxen hair, emerald green eyes, and a tall, shapely figure. She was casually dressed in bare feet, cut-off blue jeans, and a white T-shirt (no bra), and she wore no makeup, not even lip gloss.

  “Welcome,” she said as she let me inside. “I’d shake hands but mine are wet.” She displayed her palms, which were dotted with several shades of oil paint.

  “Are you an artist?” I asked as she dashed into a mud room so she could wash her hands.

  “Yes,” she called out. “I’ll show you, if you like.”

  She took me upstairs to her studio, a large sky-lit loft area that made up the entire second floor of the house. “A lot of my stuff is at the Profile Gallery in Harbour Bay Plaza, but there are a few pieces here. Bahamian scenes, mostly.”

  I was no art critic, but Lucinda’s work was beautiful—colorful and atmospheric.

  “I take it you go to the Bahamas frequently,” I said. “For inspiration.”

  She nodded. “Jeffrey and I went together a few times. You did come here to ask me about him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, and gave her the same spiel I’d given the others.

  “We saw each other for three or four months, I don’t remember exactly,” she said. “He liked going to the Bahamas on his boat on long weekends, if he wasn’t on call, and I was happy to hitch a ride.”

  “Why’d you break up?” I asked. “Suzie Kendall suggested that Roberta Ross might have been the reason.”

  Lucinda laughed. “Suzie Kendall is about as out of touch as it gets. Jeffrey and I broke up because of Gwen Ladd.”

  “Who?” Celeste never mentioned anyone by that name, I th
ought. She gave me and my mother the distinct impression that Jeffrey had transferred his affection directly from Lucinda to Roberta.

  “You don’t know Gwen?” said Lucinda, seeming surprised.

  “No. Should I?” I said.

  “Yes, if you have any interest in the art scene here. She’s got a show going on at the Norton in Palm Beach. She does glass sculptures.” Lucinda walked over to a table and carefully held up a large piece of brown-tinted glass. It seemed to me to be in the shape of a portobello mushroom.

  “That’s one of Gwen Ladd’s?” I asked.

  Lucinda nodded. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?”

  “I’ll never look at a mushroom the same way again,” I agreed. “But I must say, Lucinda. You’re an incredibly good sport. Never mind that you own one of your rival’s pieces; you place it right where you can see it day after day.”

  “Gwen and I aren’t rivals. She does her art. I do mine.”

  “No. I meant, your rival for Jeffrey. You told me that you and he broke up because he left you for Gwen.”

  Lucinda laughed again. “Jeffrey and I broke up because I left him for Gwen.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Gwen and I are a couple.”

  “Oh.” I took a second to regroup. “Was Jeffrey muffed—sorry—miffed that you dumped him for another woman?”

  “Not that I could tell. He started dating Roberta Ross about a week after Gwen and I moved in together. I ran into them at a reception at the Cultural Courthouse one night, and they seemed very compatible.”

  Interesting, I mused. Celeste Tolliver prided herself on knowing who went out with whom, but maybe her reach only extended to heterosexual twosomes.

  “Well,” I said. “I’ll ask my last question and let you get back to work, Lucinda. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill Jeffrey?”

  She shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone. He wasn’t a particularly nice guy.”

  “Then why on earth did you go out with him?”

  “Hey. Haven’t you ever misjudged a man?”