This was beginning to sound like the legalese Nick was learning in law school, all that business about the party of the first part and the party of the second part.
“No, Dorothy, I don’t,” I replied. “In a case like that, I think a friendly phone call the day after would be just fine. And maybe a card or a short note.”
“Oh, thank you!” Dorothy cried. “For your input, I mean. This happens to be something, uh, a friend of mine is dealing with.”
“Your friend certainly sounds like a very caring, sensitive person,” I said, astounded by how good I was getting at this. Still, I had to admit that I wasn’t exactly disappointed that my future shrew-in-law wouldn’t be attending my not-very-surprising surprise shower.
“Boy, are you a master of laying it on thick!” Nick commented with a grin after I’d put my cell phone back on the table. “Before you know it, you’re going to have that impossible mother of mine wrapped around your finger.”
I’d settle for having her stay in Florida, I thought. But I didn’t want to waste the rest of the evening thinking about such an unsavory subject. Not when there were much more savory ones to concentrate on.
“Now, where were we?” I asked, turning to Nick and purring as if I’d earned a Master’s degree at the Suzanne Fox School of Charm.
He’d barely had a chance to refresh my memory before my cell phone trilled again.
“If it’s my mother calling back . . .” Nick muttered.
But when I glanced at caller ID, I saw that it wasn’t Dorothy Burby. It was Forrester Sloan. And the fact that he was calling this late on a Friday night told me this was more than just a social call.
“I’m sorry, Nick, but I have to take this.” I tried to ignore his loud sigh as I answered with, “What’s up, Forrester?”
“Hey, Jess,” he said. “Sorry to call you so late.”
“No problem,” I assured him. My heartbeat was already speeding up. While Forrester had never been shy about his interest in me, I couldn’t remember any other time that he’d called me at this hour on a Friday night.
Which meant he had to have a good reason. “Is this about Erin’s murder?”
“I’m afraid so,” he replied somberly. “I just got off the phone with Falcone. The results of the autopsy are in.”
The seriousness of his tone was making me more and more anxious.
“And?” I prompted.
“I have to warn you, Jessie. This is kind of . . . disturbing.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
Forrester took a deep breath. “It seems that right before Erin was murdered, she was attacked by a deadly scorpion.”
Chapter 9
“I learned the way a monkey learns—by watching its parents.”
—Prince Charles
A scorpion!” I exclaimed. I glanced over at Nick and saw that he looked just as shocked as I was. “I know. It sounds crazy,” Forrester said, sounding dazed. “But it seems that while the medical examiner was performing what he expected to be a routine autopsy, he noticed some strange markings on Erin’s arm. He decided they looked like insect bites, so he did a little extra toxicology testing and found what he thought was some kind of venom in her blood.
“Apparently Dr. Stokes had never encountered anything like it before,” he continued, “so he contacted somebody at the natural history museum in New York. It turned out that what he’d found was the venom of a scorpion called—wait, let me make sure I’ve got the name right—the yellow fat tail scorpion. Apparently it’s found in North Africa and parts of Asia. It also happens to be one of the deadliest scorpions in the world.”
Forrester paused. “But interestingly enough, Dr. Stokes was convinced that it wasn’t the venom that killed Erin. Even though it was in her system, everything he found points to strangulation as the cause of death.”
So many questions swam around in my head that I didn’t know which one to ask first. But even though everything in the room suddenly looked blurry, one thing was perfectly clear.
And that was that the surprising findings from Erin Walsh’s autopsy pointed straight at Walter Weiner, the man who was as infatuated with creepy crawling creatures as he had been with the murder victim.
“What was all that about?” Nick demanded as soon as I’d hung up.
I was about to pour out the details of this bizarre new twist in Erin’s murder when I remembered that my interest in this subject wasn’t exactly something that Nick was likely to be particularly enthusiastic about.
I knew perfectly well that he had good reason to be concerned. After all, on more than one occasion I’d come horrifyingly close to suffering the same fate as the poor individual whose murder I was investigating.
But this time was different. The victim’s sister had specifically requested my assistance. Besides, as Kimberly had pointed out, the fact that Erin had called me to ask for help right before she was killed meant that I was involved, whether I liked it or not.
I decided to take a matter-of-fact approach. “That was Forrester Sloan,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember him. He’s a reporter at Newsday—”
“Believe me, I remember him,” Nick assured me. His icy tone told me he also remembered that Forrester had been pursuing me practically since the day we’d met.
“Anyway,” I continued, “he just talked to Falcone. The medical examiner discovered that right before Erin was strangled to death, she was stung by a deadly scorpion. One that’s only found in Africa and Asia.”
“Whoa,” Nick said breathlessly. “That’s horrible. And very weird.”
Not to mention potentially revealing, I thought.
“But why did he call you—especially so late at night?”
A look of comprehension crossed Nick’s face almost as soon as he’d gotten the words out, telling me that he’d already answered his own question. “Jessie, please don’t tell me you’ve been investigating another murder.”
“This isn’t just any murder investigation,” I insisted, trying to remain calm. “This is one I’ve been involved in all along. Nick, I’m the person Erin called to ask for help right before she was killed.”
“But you hardly knew her!” he countered. “You told me yourself that you hadn’t talked to her in years!”
“I know. But that just makes the fact that she called me at five-thirty on the morning she was murdered all the more meaningful.
“Besides,” I continued, “Erin’s sister, Kimberly, asked me to help. She wants me to try to figure out the meaning of some mysterious notes Erin made on a paper napkin a few weeks ago, the same night she attended a fund-raiser for the zoo. Kimberly said Erin acted strange when she asked her about them, so she thinks that whatever she jotted down might have something to do with her murder.”
Nick flopped onto his back. “I don’t believe this! Jess, have you forgotten that you and I are getting married three weeks from tomorrow?”
“Of course I haven’t!”
“Isn’t that what you should be concentrating on?” he demanded. “Instead of running around sticking your nose into places where it doesn’t belong—and where it might even get cut off?”
“Your mother is planning practically the entire wedding by herself,” I pointed out. “She’s turning out to be a real angel.”
He groaned. “I never thought I’d hear anyone, especially you, refer to Dorothy as an angel!”
“But she’s been an enormous help.” I was about to tell him about her being so organized that she’d put Suzanne in charge of planning my surprise wedding shower. But I decided that at least somebody should be surprised.
“So you thought that I’d simply accept the fact that, once again, the woman I love, the woman I’m about to marry, is going to put her own safety and possibly her life in danger by investigating another murder,” Nick grumbled. “You just assumed that I’d go along with it.”
“Actually,” I said casually, “I thought you might help.”
“What?”
“You were a private investigator for years, Nick. There are so many things you’re an expert at that I don’t know a thing about.” I reached across the bed and began running my fingers lightly along his chest. “You’re so good at being sneaky.”
I could tell he was weakening. In fact, the tension in the room was dissipating with amazing speed. “Sneaky, huh? You mean that in a good way, right?”
“Definitely! Besides,” I said, now moving my fingers around and around in a gentle swirling motion, “as a wedding present you could think of helping me figure out who killed Erin.”
“Oh, yeah?” he replied. “I didn’t know the groom was expected to give the bride a wedding present.”
Doing my best to keep a straight face, I said, “It’s an old Lithuanian custom.”
“And here I had no idea the woman I was about to marry was Lithuanian.”
“Only a small part.”
“No kidding.” Nick’s voice had gotten low and husky. “Do you mind if I try to figure out which part?”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” I told him. Wriggling closer, I added, “In fact, that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.”
Now that I knew Erin had been stung by an exotic scorpion, possibly one that lived in a tank in Walter Weiner’s house, I was anxious to find out more about the true nature of her relationship with him. But my plan was to start with someone other than the man himself.
Saturday morning, right after Nick and I gorged ourselves on the buttermilk pancakes he whipped up, I punched Kimberly Walsh’s home number into my cell phone.
“Kimberly? It’s Jessie Popper.”
“I was hoping you’d call,” she replied sincerely. “Have you heard the latest? About what the autopsy revealed, I mean?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, it raised a few questions that I’d like to talk to you about. Can I stop by this morning?”
“Of course. Let me tell you how to get here. . . .”
Kimberly lived in a condominium complex that had recently sprung up alongside the Northern State Parkway. For decades, the large plot of land had been a nursery that bore the name of one of the early Dutch families that settled Long Island in the 1600s. And then, practically overnight, the neat rows of flowers and ornamental shrubs magically morphed into a hundred townhouses, all painted a sunshine yellow that was at least as colorful as the blossoms they replaced.
While the grounds had once been covered with greenery, the developer had apparently pulled everything out by the roots and started again. As a result, the few trees that had been planted in the rich, dark brown soil were still scraggly.
Yet some of the residents, including Kimberly, had planted a few flowers of their own. Hers burst out of large terra-cotta pots lined up in back of the throw rug–size plot of land accompanying each two-story townhouse. The bright pink-and-white impatiens spilling over the sides went a long way in giving the place a friendly, welcoming appearance.
Kimberly answered the door even before the loud, melodious doorbell had stopped echoing through the interior. She was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. It was a somber outfit that I imagined matched the somber mood reflected in her slumped shoulders and the drawn look on her face.
“Thanks for coming over,” she greeted me. “Let’s go into the kitchen. I just made a fresh pot of coffee.”
As I followed her through the spacious apartment to the kitchen in back, I saw that it was as bright and sunny as the exterior. Instead of yellow, however, the walls were painted a glaring shade of white. Kimberly had used their starkness as a backdrop for her own taste in decorating, which incorporated restful pastels like pale blue and green with tiny floral patterns. The decor was decidedly feminine, with too many ruffled throw pillows and baskets of dried flowers for my taste. Still, it definitely looked as if she’d put a lot of effort into making the place her own.
I could see the anxiety in her eyes as she filled two white ceramic mugs, then pushed one toward me across the gray-and-white granite counter. I decided not to waste time on chitchat.
“Kimberly,” I said as I lowered myself onto one of the counter-height stools, “I have kind of a difficult question I’d like to ask you.”
She laughed coldly. “Believe me, everything I’ve had to deal with this week has been difficult. Why should today be any different?”
I realized that no matter how hard I struggled to find the right words, there was only one way to phrase the question I’d come here to ask. Even so, I took a deep breath before asking, “Do you think it’s possible Erin was having an affair?”
I braced myself for a string of protests, a loving sister’s insistence that there was no way her sister—a married woman—would ever have strayed.
Instead, Kimberly was silent for a long time, as if she was giving my question serious consideration.
“If you’d asked me that question even a year ago,” she finally said, her eyes fixed on the still-untouched coffee in her mug, “I would have said it was impossible. But given the tension in her marriage over these past few months, I could imagine Erin looking elsewhere for whatever she wasn’t getting from Ben.”
Narrowing her eyes inquisitively, she asked, “Do you have any idea who she might have been seeing?”
I nodded. “A man named Walter Weiner.”
I searched her face for a reaction. Instead, she just looked at me blankly. “I never heard her mention him. Who is he?”
“Someone she worked with at the zoo.”
“I see.” She finally paused to sip her coffee. “Is this what you mentioned was related to the scorpion business?”
“Possibly,” I replied. “I made a point of dropping by his house a couple of days ago, right after I went to the zoo. Someone who worked with Erin intimated that she and Walter were close.”
“What is he like?”
“He certainly isn’t as good-looking as Ben,” I replied thoughtfully. “Not nearly as charming either. But it was impossible not to see how crazy about Erin he was. He really seemed to care about her.”
“Then, unlike Ben, I guess we can leave him off our list of murder suspects,” Kimberly said dryly.
“Not necessarily.”
“But if he was as crazy about my sister as you seem to think, why would he have wanted anything bad to happen to her?”
“Because something in their relationship—if there really was one, that is—could have gone wrong,” I replied. “For example, what if he really did adore Erin and in fact had big plans for their future together, and then she told him she wanted to end the affair?”
Kimberly took another sip of coffee while she thought about that scenario.
“I see what you’re saying. I suppose he also could have pressured her to leave Ben and she refused.” As if she suddenly remembered what had precipitated this discussion in the first place, she abruptly asked, “But what does this new piece of information about the scorpion have to do with him and Erin?”
I took a deep breath. “Kimberly, Walter keeps some pretty unusual creatures as pets—including a scorpion that’s called a death stalker.”
“Oh, my God,” she breathed. In a choked voice, she asked, “Does he have one of those yellow tail thingies? The kind the police think attacked Erin?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But whether he has one or not, I bet he’d know how to get hold of one. And even though they’re apparently pretty dangerous, he’d probably feel comfortable enough around them to handle one without getting stung himself. He’s also likely to know enough about their habits to have created a situation in which one would have attacked poor Erin.”
“Walter Weiner,” Kimberly said softly. It was almost as if she was trying out the name to see how it sounded. “I wonder if he was at that fund-raiser.”
It was the very question that had been gnawing at me ever since I’d talked to him. While he’d claimed that he knew nothing about it, he had looked shocked when I brought it up.
His reaction had left me determined t
o find out more about his involvement in the event the next time I saw him.
And I intended to make that soon.
Even though the news about the scorpion had made Erin’s devoted co-worker look like an extremely strong suspect, that didn’t mean her husband wasn’t still under suspicion. And while I’d already had a chance to talk to the man himself, I was just as anxious to meet his business partner. After all, he was the one who had helped elevate Ben’s economic status to a level that included such highly coveted luxuries as impractical white carpeting and outdoor planters filled with fake flowers.
So I decided to spend Saturday afternoon paying Donald Drayton an unannounced visit. As was so often the case, the precise piece of information I was looking for—Donald Drayton’s home address—was readily available in the Norfolk County phone book.
While I was delighted that I tracked him down so easily, I couldn’t say the same about the place he called home. In fact, I couldn’t help grimacing as I pulled up in front of the Drayton residence. And it wasn’t because the house had been constructed on such a tremendous scale that it made Ben and Erin’s McMansion look like a starter home. It was because every detail of the place made it look like a set from The Sopranos.
Whoever had designed the house seemed to have been hell-bent on squeezing in every architectural element possible, whether it made visual sense or not. No fewer than six two-story columns were lined up in front, as straight and tall as the guards at Buckingham Palace. But the building also featured semicircular Palladian windows, an overly large porch crammed with archways, and on top, a cupola that reminded me of a single candle poking out of a huge birthday cake.
Even the grounds did little to disappoint in the race to achieve the ultimate in bad taste. A tremendous rose-colored marble fountain dominated the front lawn, no easy task given the fact that it stretched as far and wide as a potato field. The monstrosity was a tall, complicated affair adorned with cherubs frolicking with what from the street looked like half a dozen pink goats. As if that wasn’t tacky enough, water spouted from the most unlikely places.
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