Adler, Warren - FitzGerald 03 - Senator Love

by Senator Love [lit]

  Her conversation with Dr. Benton, aside from opening up a random serial-killer theory, had also sparked another idea, triggered by her memory of Helga's obvious fondness for expensive jewelry. She had to talk with Ambassador ssel, but when she picked up the phone, she hung up quickly. No telephones.

  Odd, she thought, how quickly she was falling into the mind-set of Washington's movers and shakers in the age of high-tech. Telephone paranoia was now an endemic political disease. She understood the logic, of course, but it had never loomed so menacing in her mind. Was it a given that all embassies, friend or foe, were under surveillance by our intelligence services? She thought of the opportunities for blackmail if, for example, a foreign power or even a domestic intelligence service had the goods on a powerful American politician or even a sitting President. The idea was chilling. She decided to see Ambassador Kessel in person.

  SHE FOUND him in the study of the official residence. His mood was somber. She had had difficulty getting through the barrier of an officious young aide apparently assigned by the Ambassador to screen all calls and prevent all visitations.

  "I'm sorry," he said when she came in. "I'm afraid it's shaken me up very badly." He appeared to be genuinely grieving and upset. "She mattered a great deal to me." His superior air of containment seemed to have disintegrated. Everything about him seemed to have changed. His usually impeccable grooming had given way to sloppiness. His clothes were badly creased and he sat slumped in a chair, as if his bones had turned to jelly. His face was red and puffy and he had undoubtedly been crying.

  "Why would anyone have killed my beauty?" he said, his voice breaking. Beside him was a brandy bottle and a half-filled glass of amber liquid. He reached for it, lifted it to his lips and sipped. "Devastating. Absolutely devastating."

  His reaction struck her as incongruous. His stated value system in connection with his marriage could not foreshadow his present condition. Not to Fiona, who, despite her occupation and experiences, still cherished the idea of the old verities.

  "Everything hinges on motivation," she said, taking a seat on the couch opposite. "I need to know something."

  He lifted his head and studied her, waiting for her to continue.

  "Did she wear a marriage ring?" she asked.

  He looked at her strangely, his head cocked in a pose of curiosity. Apparently an open marriage did not mean that the traditional symbols and rituals of the institution had been totally abandoned.

  "Of course," he said. His gaze roamed the room. There were numerous pictures displayed of him and his wife with prominent celebrities. She noted that where Helga's left hand showed, the engagement and wedding rings were quite visible. Also other pieces of jewelry, depending on whether the pictures were taken during the day or evening.

  Reaching out, he picked up one from a forest of pictures on the table beside him and held it close to Fiona. It showed him and Helga with the Vice-President, a more-or-less candid shot taken at a luncheon. Helga looked particularly lovely, but then her high cheekbones and lean graceful body, always exquisitely groomed, made her exceedingly photogenic. He pointed to the finger of her left hand and explained, "Note that her engagement ring is worn above her marriage ring. Her wedding ring was diamonds and platinum and the engagement ring is a flawless diamond stone of five carats."

  Again she could not shake the comparison to the Betty Taylor case. Mrs. Taylor had also reached over to show her a picture of the victim, had also failed to relinquish it, as if somehow such an act would make the picture disappear.

  "I'm sure they were quite expensive."

  "E xpensive?" He offered a wan smile. "Everything about Helga was expensive. We are very comfortable, Detective FitzGerald. I enjoyed buying her exquisite things."

  He replaced the picture, but not before Fiona had also noted Helga's earrings. They also appeared to be made of precious stones. She remembered the matching emerald earrings that Helga had worn at Mount Vernon. And the diamond bracelet.

  "Did she wear the wedding a engagement rings every day?"

  "Of course. Doesn't a married woman always wear her wedding and engagement rings every day?" He seemed affronted and his eyes drifted down to Fiona's hands.

  "I'm not married," Fiona said defensively. She repressed a brief tremor of anger. "As you might have guessed, Mr. Ambassador, her body was stripped of everything, including jewelry."

  He was learning this for the first time, although he surely surmised what she had been getting at. Often, next of kin did not ask or inquire about the victim's effects at the time of identification. He was aware, though, that she had been buried naked. He shook his head in disgust.

  "But to kill for that? Confronted with the danger, Helga would have handed them over."

  "Perhaps she did. And saw the robber."

  "Still," the Ambassador said, "to kill?"

  "People kill for less," Fiona said with a sigh.

  The Ambassador lowered his eyes and clasped his hands and she allowed him his moment of grieving silence.

  "Would she have worn other jewelry during the day as well?" she asked when she felt it appropriate.

  "Undoubtedly."

  "Would you know what that might normally be?"

  "Certainly a bracelet, necklace, earrings, even another ring. Helga adorned herself liberally. She was, as you saw, a woman of great style. I purchased many of the pieces as gifts. Often, she would buy something herself. It had to be the real thing. She was very European in that regard."

  "Where did she keep them?"

  "We have a wall safe in the bedroom."

  "Is there an inventory?"

  "I believe so. We did not insure all the pieces."

  "Would you mind checking the inventory for me?"

  "If it will help find Helga's murderer, I'll do anything."

  "It would be enormously helpful. We know her valuable rings are missing. Might be other pieces as well. Tracing these items is very difficult, but it would be something to hang our hat on. A clue, if you will. Certainly it gives us a credible motive."

  She studied his reaction to this carefully. A robbery motive would get them all off the hook, the Senator and his inner circle, including Nell. The Ambassador, too, would be free from suspicion.

  He nodded his agreement, but his mind seemed to be drifting back to his grief, which seemed quite genuine. She stood up and observed him for a long moment. There was another issue that had begun to nag at her earlier, but she had filed it away. It surfaced again and she confronted it.

  "I know this might seem rather crass and unfeeling, Mr. Ambassador, but I must address another issue that you might think out of line."

  "Out of line?" The idea seemed to confuse him, but Fiona continued to press on.

  "Apparently you are an important political figure in Austria."

  He raised his eyes to meet hers. They were suddenly alert, on guard. The political animal was stirring, even beyond the grief.

  "I am," he replied. "Although this is a professional assignment, and I have to be totally objective and, as far as I am able, politically neutral. The answer, however, is yes. I have a political agenda for the future." He was approaching it with a politician's caution.

  She hesitated, trying to find an inoffensive way of dealing with the question.

  "Obviously no one can possibly expect a tragedy like this to occur …" she began. "But why would you put up with such political risk-taking? Your marriage … well, it seemed to open you up to scandal. Given that Austria is a deeply religious, traditional country."

  He averted his eyes, looking everywhere but in Fiona's direction. Although he had confided in her earlier, he seemed to be wrestling with a sense of personal embarrassment. His confidence had considerably eroded since they had pondered the problem of Helga's disappearance, and he seemed to be working through layers of repressed emotion.

  Like many men in the diplomatic and political business, he had clearly learned the procesof inner control. At the moment he was having difficulty wit
h that process. After an obviously long wrestling match with himself, he stopped his eyes from roaming and met her gaze.

  "I've been less than forthright, Madam Detective," he said, assuming a distinctively formal continental tone. "I have been absolutely faithful to my wife during our ten-year marriage."

  He paused for a moment, presumably to allow Fiona to fully absorb the statement. Earlier he had hinted that he, too, was involved in affairs outside the marriage contract, that theirs had been a truly open marriage …

  "Everyone bears a cross, Madam Detective," he continued. "Helga needed the romanticism of an outside affair and all the attendant excitement. My hope has always been that this need would diminish with time." Again he averted his eyes, then struggled out of his chair and paced the room. "Our only compact was honesty and discretion. I have absolute faith that she observed both criteria. Despite everything, she was a woman of extraordinary integrity. Since, in this case, the Senator was equally at risk, I felt that she had satisfied the compact. It hurt, of course. I had to subjugate my ego. Put up with it, if you will. I hated the idea. But I loved her."

  "Why take the pain, Mr. Ambassador?" Fiona asked gently, wondering if

  such a question really had relevance to the case.

  "We make compromises," he shrugged. "It gave her pleasure and, in fact, it did not distract from our own relationship, hard as that is to imagine." He stopped in the center of the room. "I was elated when the Senator broke off the affair. Even Helga seemed relieved, although she adored him in a romantic and, I suppose, sexual way. I detected, as I told you before, no sign of depression. That very evening" — his ashen skin took on a slight coloring — "you understand. It was better than ever."

  "Yes." Again he was silent for a long time, standing like a statue in the center of the room, a man lost, unable to decide whether to move or sit. He lifted an arm and swept it across his chest. "Now see? I have nothing. I have lost her completely." His voice broke and tears rolled down his cheeks. Genuine tears, Fiona decided. He was sincerely bereft.

  "You'll call me on the inventory, won't you?"

  He nodded, then turned his face from her as she left the room.

  ———— *15* OFTEN WHEN she needed to think, Fiona would squirrel herself away in some out-of-the-way spot. Among her favorites was "Holloways," a neighborhood bar on upper Wisconsin Avenue, in a block of buildings from another era, still untrammelled by the gentrification of Georgetown and the trendiness of upper Chevy Chase.

  Which is exactly what she did when she left Ambassador Kessel. Although she was a curiosity to the regular bartender, she avoided any familiarity. He knew what she drank, a dry martini straight up, rarely more than one. She always chose a booth in the rear.

  She felt the first rush of alcohol stimulation, triggering a kind of movie reel in her mind. A cast of characters paraded themselves one-by one across the mental screen.

  There was the Senator — ambitious, articulate, driven by power and sex and willing to take risks to achieve both. Then Bunkie, whose future was in lockstep with the Senator's — ruthless, dissimulating, sly and mean- spirited if faced with something that might thwart ambition.

  And poor Monte, like the others, obsessively ambitious, which, despite his protestations and her own feelings, gave some weight to moral ambiguity. And the Ambassador, like Monte, an unlikely suspect. But she had often learned that some people had awesome powers of creating a new persona out of their real selves, undetectable to even the most practiced observer of human nature. Yet he had seemed completely sincere and believable as the bereft and grieving husband.

  And little Nell, who might have acted out of jealousy, which created in susceptible individuals a blind, overpowering and often fatal rag The political motives were obvious on the part of both the Senator and the Ambassador. Too obvious.

  Then there was robbery. A simple, but always compelling motive. The leap from robbery to murder was easy. A robbery is committed. The perpetrator is at risk. He or she can be identified. A quick garroting removes the risk. Burial in the backyard of an empty house, on the edge of a lot unlikely to be tampered with, was a gamble, but it could be justified. The house then represented the central core of a clue. Cates was following that lead.

  By the time she had finished her martini, she felt that she had adequately worked through the puzzle. Robbery. By a person or persons somehow connected to that house.

  She felt better. The alcohol had masked the fatigue, but she knew it would return as soon as the effects wore off. She left the bar, stopped at an Italian restaurant on Connecticut Avenue, ate a small plate of pasta and grilled sole washed down with white wine and drove home.

  She caught Monte Pappas in her headlights. He was standing in her driveway, shielding his eyes from the glare as she drove up. Stopping her car, she pulled up beside him and lowered her window.

  "You are one elusive lady," he said, ducking down and poking his head

  into the window. In the shadowy light, his face, framed by the window, looked bearlike. He bent forward and planted a noisy kiss on her cheek.

  "Your affection will wake the neighbors," she said, patting his cheek. He backed away and she got out of the car. "Did I miss something?" she asked.

  "I hope me," he replied, smiling broadly, obviously feeling good. He held her shoulders and pulled her to him, enveloping her in his arms. She let him hug her, but his mood was confusing. When she had last seen him he was anxious, tense.

  He released her to unlock the door and followed her inside.

  "Waiting for you, I was growing jealouser and jealouser," he said as he came in.

  "There were secret lovers to be satisfied," she joked, leading him into the den. Her hand swept in the direction of the bar. "Help yourself."

  She went to the bathroom, freshened her makeup and came back to the den. She was puzzled by his high spirits, of course, but glad that he had come. She had not relished coming back to an empty house.

  He had taken off his jacket and was just popping a champagne cork as she came back into the den. The bottle's neck was foaming as he carefully poured the sparkling liquid into two flute-shaped glasses.

  "We mustn't let the moment go to waste," he said, handing her the glass.

  "So you found the good stuff," she laughed.

  "I have a nose for that," he said, kissing her lightly on the lips. With her free hand, she reached up and stroked his face. He needed a shave and his skin felt like sandpaper, but she liked its feel against her palm. They clinked glasses and drank.

  "He'll never be the same," Monte said.

  "Who?"

  "The Senator. The great Sam. Mr. Hot Rocks." He began to roam the room and for a moment she wondered if his high spirits were actually hysteria. She watched, rooted to the spot near the bar, as he circled the room. "It was wonderful, Fi. Wonderful. He was shaken, really shaken. For the first time, I really believe now that he has taken the pledge."

  She remembered her own reactions during her interview with the Senator. Doubtful, she told herself.

  "Even sobered up the Bunkie-flunkie," he continued. "They were two little boys caught beating each other's bishops in the barn. I loved it."

  "Loved what?"

  "Their contrition," Monte said. His roamings took him back to the bar, where he poured more into his glass. She covered her glass with her palm and he put the bottle back on the bar. "I now feel," he went on, "that this campaign truly has a Chinaman's chance. The sword of Damocles seems to have fallen … and missed."

  It was only then that his conduct and words lost their sense of joy and became bizarre.

  hat the hell are you jabbering about, Monte? I'm confused."

  He had begun to roam again, but her remarks had brought him up short.

  "You're kidding." He looked at her with confusion, then, frowning, he walked over to the couch where he had tossed his jacket and removed a folded newspaper jutting out of a side pocket.

  "This," he said, handing it to her. "_The Washington
Post_ bulldog edition. I got it direct from the _Post_. The ink isn't dry."

  Fiona opened the paper to the front page. In the lower left-hand corner was a picture of Helga Kessel. Over it was the headline: AMBASSADOR'S WIFE PROBABLE ROBBERY VICTIM.

  "How could they know?" she asked.

  "Read on," Monte urged.

  "Helga Kessel, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador, whose nude body was found in a shallow grave behind a house in Cleveland Park two days ago, was apparently the victim of robbery.

  "According to the Ambassador, Mrs. Kessel's expensive jewelry worn that day was not found with her body, leading police to theorize that she was probably the victim of a robbery attempt.