A Little Night Murder

by Nancy Martin

  Herman returned with a waiter carrying a tray of food and more drinks. They had gathered a selection of the best of the canapés, which the waiter set down on the low table before me. It took all of my self-control not to seize a stuffed mushroom right away. Herman tipped the waiter and dragged another chair closer for himself. When he was seated, the three of us dug into the feast. I avoided the oysters, saying I was supposed to skip raw seafood, so the men enthusiastically gulped all of them in short order. They told me stories about the people we could see at the party below and their donations to the current show. None of their anecdotes had information I could write up for the paper—too many off-color insider jokes for the public to appreciate. Nico and Herman were very entertaining, however. I enjoyed their company and was sorry to have to tear myself away.

  “Let me call you a cab,” Herman said with concern when I told them I needed to start walking to my next event. “You shouldn’t be out on the streets in your condition.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I stretched up to give him a kiss on the cheek. “The walk will be just what the doctor ordered.”

  Besides, a walk might help me organize my thoughts about Jenny’s murder.

  My mind was sidetracked, though, when I left the building and noticed a man loitering on the corner. Although he ducked his head and pretended to throw a cigarette into a trash can, I recognized Hostetler, the reporter Gus had assigned to locate Lexie Paine. With a pang of dismay, I realized Hostetler had decided to follow me in the hope I might lead him to my friend.

  Well, there was no way I could take off running down the nearest alley and lose him, considering the shape I was in. I’d just have to think of a way to send him on a wild-goose chase. For the moment, I pretended not to notice him and walked in the opposite direction.

  My next stop was a dinner for a politician who should have retired long before he dodderingly started spouting century-old political views about women. The dinner promised to be as dull as beans.

  But I arrived to discover that the hotel had been almost entirely taken over by an extended Indian family celebrating a wedding. The lobby was full of lively ladies in magnificent silk saris and dignified men decked out in traditional sherwani, although many had swapped out the usual leggings for Western trousers. Feeling underdressed, I cut around a group of young women and teenage girls who were elaborately hennaed and wore gold bangles on their arms. When one of them stepped into my path, I recognized a woman I had met before. In her native finery, though, I couldn’t recall her name. She reintroduced herself as Priyanka Sengupta, and I realized she was a doctor I’d encountered at some hospital fund-raisers.

  “May I take your photograph?” I asked her after we exchanged greetings. “Your sari is lovely.”

  Priyanka agreed and asked her friends to join her, so I was able to snap several photos of their exquisite makeup and clothing. One photograph of the young doctor’s arm—covered in a serpentine henna design that looked like a beautiful, though temporary, tattoo—was going to look great at the top of my weekly wedding roundup.

  She said, “Nowadays, it’s usually just the bride who has the mehndi design. The darker the henna, the happier her marriage will be. But we all got into the ceremony yesterday, so we were all painted. Very pretty, don’t you think?”

  “Beautiful.”

  “The bride has her husband’s initials painted in henna somewhere secret on her body.” She dimpled as she smiled. “It’s his job to find his own initials on the wedding night.”

  It was a serendipitous and charming encounter. I had been wanting to jazz up my wedding coverage with something other than white-bread events, and this would be a good addition. I thanked them all and wished them a happy evening.

  In the ladies’ room, I pulled a light jacket out of my bag to formalize my linen dress. I swapped my sturdier shoes for a pair of dressy heels and touched up my lipstick. The final effect wouldn’t get me noticed at the Indian wedding, but it was a definite improvement.

  I headed down a long hallway to one of the more distant ballrooms to find the retirement party. As the cocktail hour was ending, I snapped a picture of the tanned and beaming honoree. He had one arm clamped around his mortified wife, who managed to keep a smile frozen on her face. His clueless sons were already drunk. With his antiquated views, the man of the hour had offended women everywhere, so very few were in attendance. Only a handful of former political allies had showed up to wave the guest of honor into the sunset. They had all benefited from his favors over several decades, but now many were too afraid of being tarred with the same sexist brush to show up to thank him.

  I wasn’t crazy about attending, either. But I dutifully found the table in the back of the room where I had been seated with some other journalists covering the retirement.

  As I sat down, one of the television reporters said, “Hey, Nora. Tell us what you know about Lexie Paine. Is she really living in a Red Roof Inn on I-95?”

  “I have no idea,” I said as plausibly as I could manage.

  Another newspaper reporter grinned. “I hear she’s hoarding stray cats in a dump in Roxborough. She’s fallen a long way from the caviar buffet at Vendre’s. If you see her, tell her I’ll bring her a sausage pizza in exchange for an interview.”

  Someone made a sausage joke, and the other men roared with laughter. I wanted to defend Lexie, but that would only make them push harder for information they could print. Better to let the insults fly over my head.

  “Since when has your paper started paying for interviews?” I asked.

  A particularly dyspeptic older reporter had smuggled a pint of booze under his rumpled jacket, and he poured liberally into any glass that was pushed his way. “We gotta compete with the Intelligencer now. The Awesome Aussie is buying photos, I hear. This is what happens when the tabloids take over. In no time, the front page will be nothing but dick pics and perverts.”

  “I’m sure it won’t go any further than it has already,” I said.

  From their smirks, I could see nobody at the table believed me. They spent most of the dinner checking their cell phones and madly texting whomever. During the laudatory speeches, they muttered wisecracks to each other. There was no love lost for the retiree.

  I used my time to sketch out a quick article about Toodles Tuttle, as Gus had requested. I found all the facts online and wrote briefly but glowingly about the Broadway star. When finished, I hit “send” and it went to Gus.

  A tepid burst of applause erupted, so I used the moment to slip out to the ladies’ room to check my voice mail. No messages, but a lot of missed calls.

  Including one from my sister Emma. I almost hit “redial” immediately. But I needed to have some privacy before I called her back. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, and there was no guessing what kind of shenanigans she might be up to.

  On my way back to the ballroom, my cell phone rang, and I saw Gus Hardwicke’s name on the screen.

  Reluctantly, I answered. “Yes?”

  He said, “You were supposed to call me.”

  “I’m at a dinner. You’re making me miss the fond farewell speech.”

  “You can thank me later. I got the Toodles piece you sent. Can’t you dig up some dirt?”

  I had learned that Toodles was bisexual, and Nico had suggested he had been an avid philanderer, especially with chorus girls. But that was not the kind of information I was going to share with Gus just yet. I said, “I’m told his last show, The Flatfoot and the Floozy, was not his finest work.”

  “That’s the best you can do?” Gus moaned. “Well, I’ve been trying to roust up interesting tidbits for his daughter’s obit. Utter failure. Has there ever been a more boring woman? Even I can’t make her sound interesting. What about you? Know anything scandalous?”

  “I have nothing to offer. And I’m going home for the night.”

  “Not yet, you’re not. Where are you?
”

  I told him the name of the hotel but added, “I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be there in five.”

  He must have been having a drink in a nearby bar, because he showed up in the hotel’s lobby just four minutes later with his coat slung over one shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. He was listening to someone on his cell phone. Whatever he heard, he didn’t like. Abruptly, he hung up and headed my way.

  “Bugger me,” he said when he approached me sitting in a lobby wing chair. “I think you’re even bigger than you were this afternoon.”

  “I’m too tired for any more jokes about my size.”

  “You do look a bit wilted,” he observed, standing over me with a momentary air of indecision. “Do you—? Can I get you something?”

  “No,” I said tartly. “But thanks for asking. It suggests you’re actually human.”

  “Don’t tell anyone.” He kicked a chair closer, sat down and crossed one long leg over the other. “Instead, spill everything you saw when you walked in on the dead woman.”

  I rearranged my face. “She was on the floor in her bedroom in her nightclothes. Flannel, not black lace. No smoking gun, no bloodied knife. She had a heart attack.”

  Gus leaned back in his chair to get a better look at a pair of slender young ladies in saris who were walking by. He said, “My police contact says they’re running tests for toxic substances.”

  I knew that already from Michael. “Oh?”

  “I think that’s promising. Maybe she had an addiction to something interesting. My contact also says there was a photograph on the body. Did you see it?”

  The photo of the little boy. Conscious that Gus had begun to eye me with suspicion, I decided to play dumb. “What kind of photograph?”

  “A kid. Cops think it must have fallen out of her hand when she died. They’re faxing me the picture so I can put it in the Intelligencer.”

  “What?” Startled, I said, “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I need something to print, of course. I’m going to put the photo in the paper and ask people to help identify the kid. Who’s the mystery boy in the photo found at the crime scene?”

  “Gus, you can’t do that.” I struggled to sit up straight.

  “Why not? It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Look, I didn’t know Jenny very well, but she was a very private person. She’d be horrified to be part of a manufactured news story. You can’t do it.”

  “Bloody right I can,” he shot back. “We need to get the public’s motor running. So we’ll start with the kid.”

  I choked down my distaste and said as calmly as I could, “Please don’t do this. Using children—it’s disgusting.”

  He grinned with delight. “Nothing sells newspapers like disgusting.”

  “Some newspapers sell because they print the news. Jenny Tuttle doesn’t deserve to be abused. She was a quiet person. A very nice person.”

  “She was a useless sort of person, and nobody’s going to miss her. Not unless we juice up her life a bit.” With a cold smile, he said, “You could always write about Lexie Paine instead.”

  I wanted to snap at Gus. To tell him to leave Lexie alone. But a wave of pregnant-lady exhaustion swept over me. I checked my watch. Five minutes before nine.

  Gus noted my glance. “Am I keeping you from a hot date?”

  Unable to rock myself out of the deep chair on the first try, I blushed and attempted to boost myself up by bracing my hands on the upholstered arms. No luck. Smirking, Gus took pity on me and pulled me to my feet.

  I stretched my back to ease the stiffness that had set in during the dinner. “My ride is due any minute.”

  “You can’t go yet. We haven’t strategized.”

  “I oppose all your strategies. Anyway, I need sleep. I’m punching your time clock.” I headed for the hotel’s exit and tried not to waddle.

  Gus followed me out. “You’ve lost your stamina, Nora. How am I going to burnish your star if you can’t stay out past sunset? Do you plan to go into your coffin as dull as Jenny Tuttle?”

  I reached the curb. “There’s an old saying here in Philadelphia. You don’t want your name in the newspaper except when you’re born, married and dead.”

  “What kind of life is that?”

  “Old-fashioned, I admit. But at this moment, it’s exactly what I want.”

  From half a block away, a set of headlights popped on, and a massive vehicle slowly approached the hotel. The driver pulled to the curb and left the noisy engine running. The vehicle was a gigantic SUV that looked capable of roaring through tangled jungles or across searing sand dunes. It had some kind of large metal protrusion on the front, in case a herd of elephants might need to be pushed out of its marauding path.

  Gus squinted and recognized the driver. “Your chauffeur is off house arrest?”

  “No, but the terms are more flexible now.”

  “And where did he steal this vehicle? From the Secret Service? That’s his line of work, right—stealing cars?”

  “He stole one motorcycle when he was sixteen. What were you doing at sixteen?”

  “Packing my suitcase for Oxford.” Gus saw Michael come around the hood of the beast and took an involuntary step back from me. “Good evening, Abruzzo. How’s the life of crime?”

  Michael kept both hands in the back pockets of his jeans. His face was still, his eyes lazily lidded. Bad to the bone. Without trying, he managed to exude an attitude of casual menace. “Hello, Hardwicke.”

  I stood between them—Michael on the street, looking like a criminal who’d just slipped his handcuffs, and Gus on the sidewalk, looking like an Oxford-educated man of the world. To get the surly scowl off Michael’s face, I leaned out and gave him a kiss on the mouth. He met my gaze and smiled. With it, his eyes lit up.

  It was an intimate smile, one that communicated a dozen messages—how happy he was to see me, how pleased he was about the coming baby that would seal us together forever, how eager he was for our wedding in a week . . . and the night ahead of us. It made me warm inside, but I realized it was the look Gus hated. He’d told me so, and now here it was.

  “Ready?” I said to Michael.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Good night,” I said to Gus.

  Michael opened the passenger door and helped me up into the seat with a boost on my butt. Gus didn’t say a word.

  I was still struggling with the unfamiliar seat belt when Michael got behind the wheel and closed his door. He helped me with the buckle. I looked out the windshield and saw Gus watching us, his face blank. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and went back into the hotel.

  When the buckle clicked, Michael said, “How’s Baby Girl?”

  “Michael,” I said, “there’s blood on your shirt. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with your powers of observation, that’s for sure. How do you like this truck? I’m test-driving it.”

  He put the huge SUV in gear and slid into traffic with the ease of a tank barging into a raging river.

  “Can we afford to buy anything, let alone this monster?”

  “It’s not a monster. And it’s a business expense. For Gas N Grub. The finances are loosening up now, so, yeah, we can afford it.”

  Michael had been fighting his way back to solvency after one of his employees embezzled considerable money while he was in jail. To avoid going completely bust, he’d been forced to borrow capital from his infamous brother, Little Frankie—the brother best known for faking being dead to avoid prosecution for various crimes. The money had saved us from certain bankruptcy, but I was still nervous about how Little Frankie wanted to be repaid.

  Sitting in the passenger seat, I felt as if we were riding in the lead fire truck of a parade. “What is this thing, exactly? Gus said it looks like a Secret Service
vehicle.”

  “Close. It’s an Escalade. The governor ordered it—with bulletproof glass and body armor that’s supposed to resist rockets.” Michael couldn’t disguise his delight. “Except the state decided it was too expensive, even for the governor, so I’m giving it a try. We can get it at a discount.”

  What kind of discount he meant, I didn’t want to know. “Do we need bulletproof glass?”

  “No, but it’s cool, right?” Michael maneuvered the Escalade around a corner. “And check out how many kid safety seats we can put in the back.”

  I looked into the yawning rear cavern of the SUV. He had already strapped one baby car seat in place. I said, “We’re having a family, not transporting a platoon.”

  “It’s really safe,” he insisted. “It’ll survive a crash test with a train.”

  “Are you thinking of crashing into a train?”

  He shot me a grin as he pulled through an alley shortcut to reach our route out of the city. “No, but you never know if some old lady in a Prius is going to back into you at the grocery store.”

  I really had no opinion about cars. But I could tally up a list of strikes against this Escalade. Its size seemed ridiculous. The gas mileage was probably budget busting. And I’d never learn to drive something this big. Of course, I was still trying to overcome a tendency to faint at inappropriate moments, so I was barred from even applying for a Pennsylvania driver’s license, but I had hopes of getting behind the wheel before our children needed transportation to school.

  Michael had been researching various vehicles for weeks, making notes about crash tests and repair records. I knew he was looking for a car that would be perfect for our coming family.

  He was glancing up at the rearview mirror and finally said, “Is somebody tailing you?”

  “What?”

  “Nobody’d tail me unless they had a death wish, so it must be you. There’s an old guy in a blue Honda behind us, and he’s made every turn I have. Use the side mirror. Who is he?”

  All I could see in the side mirror was the blur of cars in traffic, but I could guess who was behind us. “Gus told another reporter to find out where Lexie is. I think he was following me earlier. He’s a very unpleasant person. What should we do?”