by Mark McNease
Kyle and Linda walked into the store and Kyle noticed the man near the counter staring at them as he quickly pasted on his best may-I-help-you smile. It was not Diedrich Keller and Kyle guessed it was his assistant, the one they’d been lead to believe was rarely there. The man looked to be in his 50s, slim and stylishly dressed in dark pants and matching sport coat. He wore a thin gray tie with a small diamond tie-pin at its midpoint. His hair was artificially black, but not the sort of shoe-polish look that some young hipster types wore or that made some older men look ridiculous. Just clearly dyed.
“May I help you?” Jarrod asked.
“We were looking for Diedrich Keller,” Kyle said. “We spoke to him earlier and were under the impression he would still be here.”
“He didn’t mention having help today,” Linda added.
Help? Jarrod thought. Is that how they thought of him? Surely Mr. Keller had not referred to him that way. He was an assistant. An Assistant Store Manager, if one wanted to rely on titles. But not help.
“I’m here every day,” Jarrod said. “Perhaps if he referred to the help he meant the cleaning crew that comes in on Sundays. But of course it’s not Sunday.”
“Of course not,” Kyle said. He could tell Linda’s comment rubbed the man the wrong way. This could work to his advantage if he made this man annoyed with his boss. “Surely that’s what he meant, not you.”
“Definitely not.”
Kyle extended his hand. “I’m Kyle, by the way. Kyle Callahan, and this is my associate Linda Sikorsky.”
Linda nodded, declining to extend her hand. She was remaining silent, waiting to see how Kyle played this.
“Jarrod Sperling. I’ve been Mr. Keller’s assistant here—Assistant Manager, that is—for nearly seven years. I basically run the store when he needs to be out, which is fairly often. Are you looking for a suit? A nice ensemble of some kind?”
“No. We’re actually asking around about a friend of mine.” Kyle took out the photo of Victor Campagna and showed it to Jarrod.
“Oh, my,” Jarrod said, and Kyle knew he recognized Victor. “I’ve definitely seen him before … on the news. It’s terrible what happened to him. But are they sure he didn’t fall into the river? It happens sometimes. People have too much to drink, they get too close to the water’s edge.”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“Are you with the police?”
“Yes and no,” Linda interjected. “I’m a private detective, hired by Victor’s family.”
Something was peculiar with these two, Jarrod thought. First they were “associates.” Then they were friends of the poor young dead man. Now one of them is a private detective. His guard went up. What should he tell them? And should he tell Mr. K first? Had they been the police it would be different, but they were not. He did not want to do or say something that could get him in trouble. He liked his life, he liked his job, he liked his status as Assistant Manager in one of the city’s finest men’s clothing boutiques. This was not a boat he wanted to rock.
“Well,” he said, “other than on the news reports and the flyers, I can’t say I’ve seen him before.” It was a lie and Jarrod could feel his face flush, hoping it was only something he felt and not something they saw.
“We’d like to ask Diedrich a few more questions,” Linda said. “Might you have his home address?”
Something was definitely fishy now. What private detective worth her pay could not find someone’s home address? And that information was private. Jarrod had never, not once, given our Mr. K’s address or his phone number.
“He’s at a meeting,” Jarrod said.
Kyle: “A meeting?”
“With one of our suppliers.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?” asked Linda.
“Um … no, I don’t. Sometimes he doesn’t come back until the next day. He doesn’t need to come back. He has me here.”
“Yes, of course,” said Kyle, “his Assistant Manager.” This had gotten them nowhere, and he believed Jarrod was hiding something.
Linda took out her business card and handed it to Jarrod. It was the card for her vintage store in New Hope that listed her cell phone number.
Jarrod read it and looked at her curiously. “For Pete’s Sake?” he said, reading the store name.
“It’s my cover.”
“An undercover private detective. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“Just please call me if Mr. Keller returns. It’s very important. The family is distraught and I’ve promised to do all I can to find out what happened to their son.”
“Do you think Mr. K … Mr. Keller, might know something?”
“That’s what we’d like to find out,” Kyle said. “Not that he had anything to do with the disappearance, just if he might remember something, anything, about seeing Victor walk by or perhaps stop and look in the window here. Please give us a ring if Mr. Keller returns, it’s a simple request.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
Kyle and Linda prepared to leave. They both felt they’d been stonewalled and that the first thing Jarrod Sperling would do when they left was call Diedrich Keller. Maybe this was a good thing: having been to his store twice in one day, they might have him on edge, thinking too quickly and ripe for making a costly error.
“By the way,” Kyle said as they were about to turn and leave. “You said you ran the store for Diedrich Keller when he wasn’t here.”
“Yes,” Jarrod said, stiffening proudly.
“Did you ever run it for him for an extended period?”
“Why yes, I did. I ran it for him for nearly three years.”
Kyle stared at him. He felt as if a shadow had just come over them. “Three years? Really?”
“Mr. Keller spent time in Germany. Berlin, to be exact, taking care of his mother. He’s only been back a few months. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” said Kyle. “Thank you for your time. And if you do hear from him, please call that cell phone number on the card.”
They left the store and Jarrod stood by the window, watching them walk away. It had been a most unusual exchange. He’d lied because … because … he wasn’t sure who they really were or what he should tell them. He prided himself on making decisions, being proactive. But this was a very different set of circumstances. A young man was dead—a man who had been in the store just three days ago. Mr. K was acting oddly and taking off more than usual. And now two strangers had come in asking questions he felt he could not answer, not without talking to Mr. K first.
He hurried to the phone behind the counter and dialed Diedrich Keller’s home number. After four rings it went to an answering machine and Jarrod hung up. This was too important to leave a message and wait. He dialed again, this time Keller’s cell phone. After two rings Diedrich answered. He would know it was Jarrod from the called ID.
“Yes, Jarrod?” he said.
Jarrod could not tell where his boss was, but he thought he heard traffic sounds in the background. Interesting; he had not gone home, or, if he had, he’d left again.
“Two people were just in the store,” Jarrod said. “They claimed to have spoken to you earlier.”
There was a moment of silence, then Diedrich Keller said, “Go on, Jarrod. What did they want to know?”
“They were asking about that young man who was murdered this week. I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Of course not, there’s nothing to tell. Is there?”
Jarrod hesitated. He was questioning his own memory. Maybe he hadn’t seen Mr. K talking to the young man, maybe it was a different young man entirely. “No, nothing to tell, Mr. K.”
“What else did they want to know?”
“If you’d ever been away from the store for an extended period—you know, like your time in Berlin.”
“And what did you tell them?”
Jarrod proceeded to inform Diedrich Keller of everything that had transpired with the couple—that the wom
an claimed to be a private detective, that they wanted his home address (which Jarrod did not give them), and that odd question about any extended absence.
D remained calm through it all. A sense of peaceful finality had come over him. He was glad Jarrod had not given them his home address. It was a home he would be leaving very soon, but he had one more task at hand, one more mission to accomplish. He told Jarrod he’d done well and that he would see him in the morning. It was a lie. He intended never to see Jarrod Sperling again.
CHAPTER Thirty-Two
A peace had come over Danny since he’d arrived at Margaret’s Passion that morning. He knew it was part of an inevitable acceptance—accepting that Margaret Bowman was leaving, accepting that a large part of the world he had known and loved was changing. Margaret had lived a long and fruitful life. She’d achieved her dreams and touched so many people’s lives. She had loved her husband, Gerard, with the same passion that gave her restaurant its name. Danny had never met Gerard Bowman, who died in a freak traffic accident just outside the restaurant two years before Danny was hired. He’d been a smoker, something Margaret disdained but indulged provided he went outside. So several times a day Gerard Bowman could be seen on the side street smoking a cigarette. One day he stepped off the curb to stamp out his cigarette butt in the gutter, and a taxi came flying through the light to make it across before it turned red. The driver saw Gerard in the street, was startled by the sight and swerved, losing control of the taxi. Ten seconds later Gerard Bowman was dead.
Margaret had carried on. She met Danny, hired him, and eleven years later she was leaving him. That was the part—the feeling—he had finally managed to make peace with. She was eighty-one years old. She was more than entitled to spend her last few years with her sister who was almost ninety. The restaurant was Danny’s, and now Margaret had completed the transfer of the only thing that had kept her here by deeding the building to him. She was passing it all on, saying, Here, it’s yours now. I’m entrusting it to you. I know you’ll make me proud.
Danny was thinking of that—making Margaret proud by surviving in the business, being a landlord soon, and giving the old woman the most amazing going away party New York City had ever seen—when a man walked into the restaurant. It was almost two o’clock. The kitchen stopped serving lunch at two, but Danny had never told a customer it was too late, not until the kitchen was actually closed. The man had fifteen more minutes, which meant he would be seated, he would be given a menu, and he would be served.
“Good afternoon,” Danny said. Chloe was in the back room stocking shelves and Trebor was behind the bar. There were two women on stools finishing an early afternoon glass of wine. No one else was there.
“Good afternoon,” D said. “I hope I’m not too late for a small bite. I’ve just come back from Berlin and I’m famished.”
“No, no, not at all, please come in. Any table you’d like.”
D chose a table well away from the window—unusual during the day, Danny thought, but some people didn’t like the light. Danny walked with the man to a two-top near the bar and handed him a menu once he sat down.
“Your waiter will be with you in a moment. In the meantime, is there something you’d like from the bar?”
“Just water,” D said. “Thank you.”
D watched the man disappear around the corner of the bar. He didn’t know if he’d bring the water himself or if a waiter would do that. He looked around the restaurant and was quite pleased with what he saw. He’d heard of Margaret’s Passion, of course. One does not own a high-end clothing store with upper crust clients without hearing of the places they patronize. The Plaza. Elaine’s, when there was an Elaine. The 21 Club. And Margaret’s Passion. It was comfortable in a way newer eateries catering to the nouveau riche and the hangers-on were not. The trend these days, dismaying to people like Diedrich Keller, was for deafeningly loud restaurants where shouting was the only way to be heard by the person sitting across a small table from you. No, this was much more … classy. More stylish, for those who knew what true style was.
He watched the man go into the kitchen, then return looking perplexed. He spoke briefly to the bartender, retrieved a glass of ice water and returned with it to the table.
“I’ll be taking your order today,” Danny said. He’d gone back to find Clarence, the waiter he expected to still be on duty, but was told by the cook that Clarence had taken off early, expecting no one else to come in. Chloe was still working on the dinner set up and Danny didn’t want to bother her, so he decided to take the man’s order himself. Danny set the water glass down. “Have you had a chance to decide?”
“Not quite yet,” D said. “By the way, my name’s Diedrich Keller. And you are?”
Danny was embarrassed. Introducing yourself was the first lesson of table service, but he had not taken anyone’s order in a very long time.
“Danny Durban,” he said. “My apology for neglecting to introduce myself.”
“No apology needed. Are you the maître d?”
“No, no. I’m the owner.”
“Ah,” said D. “I feel special now.” He glanced around. “I’d foolishly assumed someone named Margaret would be the owner of Margaret’s Passion.”
“She was, until very recently. Margaret Bowman.”
“Is she deceased?”
“No. I … my partner and I bought the restaurant from her. But she’ll be moving away soon. The restaurant won’t be the same without her. We’ll survive, but there’s only one Margaret Bowman.”
D pretended that a thought had suddenly come to him. “You and your partner, you say?”
“Yes, his name’s Kyle.”
“What a small world! I met him just this morning. He said you were looking for a new suit.”
Danny sighed. He remembered Kyle saying they were going to a men’s store and assumed Kyle had taken it upon himself to suit shop for him. Kyle knew he was looking for something special for Margaret’s party. “I am, yes,” Danny said.
“Well then,” said D, taking out a business card from his wallet. “I’m just the person for you. I’m a business owner myself. Keller and Whitman, clothing for the gentleman’s gentleman.”
The name rang a bell this time. Some of the customers at Margaret’s got their clothes there—impeccably tailored suits, and shirts that cost enough as a dinner for four. It wasn’t a place Danny would ever shop given the prices, and why he hadn’t remembered it when Kyle said they were going there that morning.
“Here,” D said, taking a pen from his jacket pocket and writing his cell number on the card. “I’ll tell you what, call me anytime and we’ll do a private fitting. I know this event is important to you—how could it not be?—and I’d like you to look your absolute best. I’ll measure you myself and get you something done by the time of your party.”
“It’s a month from now,” Danny said.
“Then we have plenty of time.” D handed him the card. “Promise you’ll call.” Then, as if he’d just remembered something urgent, he said, “Oh, my …”
“What?”
“I have to leave for London Friday. I won’t be back until August. I’m looking at store locations there. But I don’t do the stitching myself, of course!”
“Of course not,” Danny said.
“I could size you and get an order in before I go. How about this afternoon?”
Danny hesitated. He’d never met this man before, but he knew the store’s reputation. And it would be amazing to show up at Margaret’s party in a suit from one of the city’s best men’s stores. “I’m not sure, I was planning …”
“I’ll give you a discount,” D said, smiling. “A very deep discount.”
How could Danny say no? It might even lift his spirits and put him in the frame of mind he wanted to be in: to view and experience Margaret’s going away as a celebration, not a funeral procession or a wake.
Danny took the card. “It’s a deal,” he said. “Just let me get things wrapped up here
and I’ll call. Shall I meet you at the store?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Durban. This will be a private fitting. Just give me a call and I’ll provide directions.”
Danny put the card in his shirt pocket. “And now,” he said, “order anything you’d like. Lunch is on the house.”
“Very, very kind,” D said, turning his attention to the menu. He was hungry now, and planned to eat a hearty meal before heading back to his townhouse to wait for a phone call. It was going to be an excellent evening, an intimate affair—his own going away party for two.
CHAPTER Thirty-Three
Few things unnerved Kyle more than speeding through Manhattan in a taxi. The drivers obeyed few rules, except the ones that could get them ticketed, and even those they skirted as often as they could. Lanes meant nothing to them, and they would veer wildly from side to side, maneuvering at high speeds through a sea of cars, trucks and buses. Double parking was common, especially during the week, and the flow of vehicles often made him think of clotted arteries, with cars as blood cells making their way around stops and knots.
This afternoon it was the opposite problem that had him fretting in the back seat with Linda: the President of the United States was in town, and traffic had come to a stop. They were idling at the corner of 49th Street and Lexington Avenue as traffic cops held everyone at a standstill, their arms out stiff and their whistles blowing.
“What the hell is that?” Linda asked, as they watched the longest motorcade either of them had ever seen turn onto Lexington Avenue and head south. The avenue had been closed to traffic, with police cars and motorcycle cops stationed at every street crossing.
“That,” Kyle said, “is the Presidential motorcade.” He knew this because his boss Imogene was scheduled to do a segment for Tokyo Pulse from a gala at the New York Public Library that night, with the President as the featured guest. Had he been working he might have been able to go as her assistant, but even the President of the United States couldn’t keep him from taking time off to spend with Detective Linda. After all, there would always be another president.