“Crime of passion?” I found myself parroting Ken Parrish. “There doesn’t seem to be much else for a motive.”
“Maybe there’s a nut running around out there staging murder as a work of art.”
“The Roman warrior doesn’t fit.”
“Trial run? Just to see how easy it was to get past Security?”
The mannequin had had her throat slit. The Lygia effigy had been gored—totally against the story. In Quo Vadis Lygia is saved by a Christian bull-thrower who rescues the maiden from Nero’s wrath and gains the sympathy of the volatile Roman crowd in the Coliseum. Billie’s only excuse for this striking rearrangement of the Sienkiewicz’s plot? Halloween. Most likely, he’d never heard of Quo Vadis.
And then Billie’s model—however in absentia she might have been when the effigy was created—Lydia, bright, bubbly Lydia, who only wanted a good time—had been gouged with a knife and arranged, not without artistry, behind the bars of a lion’s cage.
“The art of murder?” I muttered. Surely not. But it was an idea that grabbed the imagination. Were we dealing with a plot that made no sense because we were dealing with insanity?
Rob looked up to discover three passengers patiently waiting in his tram. “Later,” he called, and galloped off, his broad back a bit hunched, revealing his embarrassment at his lapse his first day on the job. His lapse? While Rob and I had schmoozed, four passengers had climbed aboard mine. “Everybody in?” I put my foot down, and off we went.
Nice may be considered an inadequate word, a cop-out, but it described Rob Varney very well. He was definitely going to enliven Friday afternoons. And after the stress engendered by the three younger men who had so recently entered my life, Rob was a relief. Since I’d just taken Ken Parrish off the Safe list and I had quite a few doubts about Martin Longstreet’s oh-so-smooth grandfatherly façade, Rob was a welcome acquaintance. As for Billie Ball Hamlin and Josh Thomas, on a Stress Level scale of one to ten, they each rated an eleven.
The next day I called Ken and asked him to meet me on the terrace at the Casa Bellissima. “Could it be a nut case?” I asked, when I’d finished relating my conversation with Rob Varney. “I mean murder as art is sick enough to make some kind of weirdo sense.”
Ken eyed me with what I can only describe as extreme tolerance. “Travis,” he said, “I’m willing to grant that no truly sane person creates a Roman warrior, a naked woman dripping blood, then carves up his would-be girlfriend and locks her in a lion cage. But we know Hamlin made the effigies, we know he had his eye on Lydia, we know she rejected him. Just what part of these facts does not add up to Hamlin as the killer?”
“He didn’t do it.”
Ken stopped his fist just before it slammed into the tabletop. Sheepishly, he eyed his hand as if chiding it for betraying a temper he seldom revealed. “With all due respect, Travis,” he said, “that fall scrambled your wits. Hamlin had motive and opportunity. The girl wouldn’t give him the time of day. He had easy access to the grounds. He can’t account for his whereabouts the night she was killed. Rejection is a classic motive for murder, you know that. You’re clinging to straws, Travis. Give it up.”
Ken leaned back in the big wicker chair, looking glum. He heaved a sigh. “I guess this is a bad time to ask you to dinner and movie?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “But not because we don’t agree,” I added hastily. “I’m . . . I’m just not ready for any sort of personal relationship.” So he really wasn’t married.
“The harp concert wasn’t a date?”
Damn! Was he having me watched?
As if he could hear what I was thinking, Ken added, “The City provided extra security Wednesday night. I caught your name on a list. Who’s Josh Thomas?”
As if he had any right to ask! “He’s on vacation,” I supplied. “His father knew Martin Longstreet, Aunt Hy’s escort. Martin’s a Board—”
“Yeah, I know.”
Of course he knew. Martin was probably the person who arranged for Ken Parrish to handle—
Oh, dear God, surely not! Had Martin and Aunt Hy conspired to provide me with both of them? And perhaps a mystery, a professional challenge, as well?
Two effigies and a mannequin, maybe. But murder? No way. Not that Martin hadn’t once been capable of murder. As, I suspected was my not-so-Sleeping Satyr, Josh Thomas.
But they wouldn’t go that far. Of course they wouldn’t. Unless they had some very good reason that had nothing to do with me.
Ridiculous. Martin Longstreet was a member of the Bellman Board of Directors, Aunt Hy’s closest friend. And Josh Thomas was . . . what?
Ken Parrish’s sharp gray eyes were so focused on my face I was sure he had read my every thought. I gulped, regrouped, tried to remember what we were talking about.
Dinner and a movie.
“I like you,” I told him. “Even when I think you’ve got your head stuck in the sand. So when I’m ready to date, I promise you’ll be first on the list.”
“List, huh?”
“Very short.” Two names only. Na-aw. No way. Martin and Aunt Hy couldn’t have arranged—
Damn, but if they did . . . what a pair of winners they’d picked.
Aunt Hy likes to quote that old expression about cutting off your nose to spite your face. It occurred to me—reluctantly, as I hate to admit to being wrong—that playing tour guide for Josh Thomas really wasn’t a hideous chore. A modicum of semi-social life was not going to tilt the balance of my world.
Therefore, on Sunday afternoon I guided Josh to a State Park about twenty miles from the city, where we soaked up the atmosphere of old Florida and even boarded a boat for a good look at alligators in the wild. It was a sunny day, and they were everywhere. Basking on sand banks and poking their snouts up out of the murky waters, no matter which direction we looked. This lake might be Alligator Central, but I’d been in Florida long enough to know that if it’s fresh water, there’s likely to be an alligator lurking. I thought of Billie night-diving into ponds on golf courses and a shiver raised the hairs on my arms.
Josh noticed, his arm casually moving around my shoulders. He had actually dressed down today. Chinos and a navy polo shirt. Among a boatload of tourists, he still looked like a barracuda in a sea of guppies.
He was not, repeat not, a date. I was merely showing him around. In response to respect for my aunt, I was being gracious to one of Martin’s acquaintances. Certainly, Martin Longstreet continually smoothed the rough edges of Aunt Hy’s life. It was the least I could do in return.
That night Josh and I had dinner together. What else could a girl do when her companion tells her how depressing it is to eat alone?
Afterwards—having talked ourselves to a standstill about Lydia’s murder—we went to a movie.
It was not a date. I maintained this firmly to myself right up until the time Josh leaned forward and, under the bright lights and close scrutiny of the hotel’s security guard, kissed me on the lips. Gently, but thoroughly. And then came back for more.
He had to put me in the elevator and push the button.
Obviously, Josh Thomas was even more dangerous than I had thought.
On Monday morning I climbed all three flights of the stairs by Escher to what Lydia had called the “aerie.” Though I’d never admit it to that masochist, my physical therapist, it was easier this time. Not easy. Just better than last time.
On the way, I paused to talk to the young lovelies in Marketing, each pale, solemn-faced, and unable to hide her fear. There was an empty desk in the corner. One of their own had died under grisly circumstances. The only suspect was still riding around the Bellman grounds under protection of a Security ID.
I told them flat out that I didn’t believe Billie was guilty and that I was trying to help him. “Did she have a boyfriend?” I asked.
There was a general shuffling as each of the girls studied her immaculately shod toes. “Actually, I think she really liked Billie,” one of the girls offered. Dark-haired and svelt
e, she looked as if she never ate anything more substantial than air.
“She just liked money more,” another girl, a blonde, offered. “You know—the best clubs, best food. And even if Billie had that kind of money, she’d never be seen with a security guard.”
“Someone who sells used golf balls,” added a third girl, more sharp-faced than the others.
Surprised, I asked, “Who told you about the golf balls?”
“Lydia,” said the Dark Thin One. “Guess Billie was trying to impress her. And it nearly worked. She kept saying how brave he was to take on snakes and alligators. And how would he sculpt if he lost an arm.”
“But you don’t know who she was seeing at the moment?” The girls looked at each other, shook their heads. I nodded my head toward the stairs to the fourth floor. “Could she have been seeing anybody after work up in the aerie?”
“Oh, no, that’s—” The Blonde took an elbow in the ribs from Sharp Face.
So someone—or should I say, some two—were using the aerie for something other than museum business. Which probably had nothing to do with Lydia’s murder.
Unless she had seen them . . . But what affair was so desperately secret that a possible whistle-blower must be murdered? Murders were committed over Money. Over Passions gone amuck. Self-preservation. Revenge. Not—in the rarified atmosphere of the Bellman—over who was sleeping with whom.
Blackmail? Had Lydia liked money enough to try that particularly nasty trick?
I hadn’t known her well, but somehow she didn’t seem the type. Art students tended to believe in “Live and Let Live.” If Lydia had seen two people sneaking up to the aerie, she probably would have tossed off a smirk and proceeded to go about her business.
I thanked the girls and tackled the last flight of steps. At the top was a padlocked door that obviously led out onto the balcony four stories above the museum entrance. To my right was a hallway, lit by a solid phalanx of windows revealing the narrow walkway outside. At the end of the hall was the suite of rooms Lydia had called the aerie. Small, intimate, the view from the eastern balcony was totally eclipsed by the spectacular vista on the west. From here, even my seventeen-foot David tended to look small. Lydia had been right when she said the aerie’s view was even better than the one on the floor below.
I searched every inch of that suite, including the bathroom and under the modest double bed in the room to the east. In the living room I even took the cushions off the sofa, feeling in all the crevices. I found sixty-four cents in change and a ticket stub. In a bottom drawer of a utilitarian-type desk I found correspondence old enough to have been relegated to Archives long since. But nothing else of interest to the case. It was as if this set of rooms had not been inhabited since the Fifties.
In desperation, I checked the bed sheets. They were Ralph Lauren, a new pattern. The glassware, carefully stored in a small cabinet, was cut crystal. There was a can of cashew nuts—the kind you can get at any grocery store—its half-eaten contents protected by a yellow plastic lid. There was, however, a cut crystal bowl to put them in. The liquor in the cabinet was the best. Even the mineral water was the most expensive money could buy.
At least one of the clandestine pair using this room had Money.
There were, I supposed, fingerprints all over the place. But connecting the aerie to Lydia’s murder seemed pretty farfetched. All the theories that had flitted through my mind while I was talking to the girls downstairs now seemed feeble. I would, of course, tell Ken Parrish that I had been up here, as I would tell him about my conversation with the girls from Marketing. But my instincts said I’d struck out. If the aerie had any connection to Lydia Hewitt’s murder, it was peripheral.
On my way down, I once again thanked the girls for their help. When I finally opened the door onto a tide of visitors, ticket sellers, and security guards filling the museum’s main lobby, I was dragged back to the reality of the moment with a visceral shock. Someone had been murdered. And the museum was getting more visitors than it ever had before. A madman was loose. Didn’t they have sense enough to stay home?
And there it was, springing full-blown into a mind weary of going round in circles. I couldn’t believe Billie killed Lydia. I wouldn’t believe it was a senseless random act of violence. Yet, even if we could find a concrete motive for what had happened, at the heart of this horror I had come to believe there truly was a madman. A cold, calculating son of a bitch who was getting his jollies out of making fools of us all.
Chapter 13
The police tape was gone. The Circus Museum open to visitors. The white lion cage with its gilded griffin and telltale blood stains had been hauled, with considerable effort, into a back room, out of sight of gawking eyes. Which didn’t keep me from standing there in the semi-dark room, staring at the place where Lydia’s body had been, willing some semblance of a theory into my mind.
There had been no fingerprints, of course. Not on the effigies. Not on the mannequin. Not on the lion cage. With packages of latex gloves available at every supermarket and drugstore, why should there be? Only people whose wits were scrambled—by drugs, by passion, by momentary insanity—failed to think about fingerprints in this day and age.
Passion. Or, in this case, the lack of it. I could hardly wait to point out this little anomaly to Ken Parrish. Lydia had been killed with premeditation and great care. I had been right about her being drugged. The autopsy had found traces of Rohypnol, a drug that would have made her pliant. Able to walk, to climb into the cage on her own, if steered in the right direction. The killer had come prepared with knife and gloves. Lydia had not been strangled or beaten in a lover’s quarrel. There was nothing passionate about her death. It was cold and calculated.
Someone, for some reason, had wanted her dead.
In a lion cage at the Circus Museum.
Rob Varney’s words echoed through my mind. Murder as a work of art. I pictured Lydia’s fresh young beauty bleeding out on the floor of an antique lion cage. More like The Art of Evil. It would have been so much easier to kill Lydia outside on the nearly pitch-black grounds. So why the elaborate orchestration, the intricate set-up to murder?
The obvious was so frequently the answer. Maybe Ken was right. Was there anything sane about golf-ball diving among gators and water moccasins?
Passion. Lydia had a lover somewhere. I needed to find him. And I’d have to pursue that slip of the tongue by the Blonde from Marketing. She knew who was using the aerie. Although it seemed unlikely an illicit love affair on the fourth floor of an art museum had anything to do with Lydia’s death, I would have to check it out. I sometimes wondered if anyone outside law enforcement had any idea how much of an investigator’s time is spent chasing false leads, dead ends, deliberate misdirections.
My cell phone rang.
The usually ebullient Jody Tyler was hysterical. “She’s gone! Mrs. Van Horne. I thought she was taking her nap, just like always, but when I went to take her her tea, she was gone. Bed looks like she was never in it. Mrs. Edmundson’s got the whole hotel looking. You gotta come home. Right now.”
I slammed out of the building so fast the visitors must have felt wind from my wake as I flew past. It was only as I was gritting my teeth, driving fifteen per through the crowded museum grounds, that I realized my cane had barely touched the ground. Not exactly a silver lining in the midst of all these storm clouds, but maybe just a light patch where the sun struggled to shine through.
I didn’t bother to park in the garage beneath the Ritz. If Aunt Hy had not been found, I was in for a long afternoon of driving the streets. I could tell by the look on the face of Fred, the doorman, that Aunt Hy was still missing. He had worse news.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Travis,” he burst out. “I was on my break when she went missing. We just discovered Lou, my relief, got her a taxi about three o’clock.”
“To where?”
“I believe the manager is attempting to discover that now, miss.”
“Has anyone call
ed the police?”
“Oh, no, miss.” Fred looked shocked. “We would never embarrass Mrs. Van Horne like that.”
Of course not. I thanked Fred, told him to keep my car handy, and charged into the lobby.
I was whisked into the manager’s office by a waiting minion with an aplomb that made me realize the staff of the Ritz-Carlton was accustomed to dealing with crises of every kind. To my relief, the manager was just hanging up the phone and she was smiling.
“I have it,” she announced with triumph. “Your aunt went to a dance studio.” She held out a slip of paper with the address.
My leg, which had performed so well only a short while ago, buckled. I grabbed at the chair in front of Miss Wayland’s desk and sat. Abruptly. Karen Wayland was a very special lady. Not much more than ten years older than I, she ran this hotel with all the expertise and efficiency that had made it a star among Ritz-Carltons in its first year of operation. It wasn’t surprising she had managed to track down Aunt Hy.
I stared at the slip of paper in my hand and groaned. “I suppose someone offered her free lessons. If I don’t get up off this chair and find this place fast,” I sighed, “she’ll have signed a contract to the tune of ten thousand dollars.”
“I hear the gowns run around five,” Karen Wayland offered. With sympathy. “Not to worry,” she added. “This is Florida. I believe there’s a three-day right of recision.”
I sat there with my head in my hands, my leg refusing to move. I wondered if Madame Celestine had recommended dance lessons.
“Rory,” Karen said, more gently, “you don’t suppose your aunt would enjoy dance lessons?”
“From what I’ve heard about my aunt, she could probably teach them. I doubt there’s a dance invented before the last ten years that she isn’t an expert on.”
“Then perhaps she’d simply enjoy the dancing,” Karen suggested.
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