The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  “They might eventually,” Nat said defensively.

  I sat up straight suddenly. “I’ve been leaving out an obvious connection—how could I be so stupid! Mr. Choy!”

  Nat rolled his eyes at me. “Can you truly see seventy-year-old Mr. Choy creepin’ around breakin’ into your place and shootin’ you, or stabbin’ Professor D’Allessio?”

  “Er—no, I guess not. Too bad, it sounded great there for a minute,” I said. “I’ve been trying to think of a reason Nicole was killed. Before all this rhino horn stuff came up, I thought it might be something personal. Suppose it still is?”

  “What do you mean, personal?”

  “The smuggling would be business—thieves falling out or something. But if we leave the rhino horn out of it for a moment, what reason could someone have to kill Nicole? We know about the cocaine—I suppose a drug dealer could have done it, but if Law and Order is right, they usually make a public example of people, so he would have no reason to hide her body. He’d want it to be left in the open as an Awful Warning, right?”

  “I guess that’s right,” he said slowly.

  “So maybe it’s not the cocaine, or the rhino horn. Maybe it’s somebody who has a personal hatred.” I shook my head impatiently. “That sounds sort of medieval. Do people hate like that anymore?”

  “Honey, ask any gay boy who’s been beaten up. Believe me, hatred exists.”

  I reached out and touched his hand. “So we try and think of anyone who has a reason to hate her—and Tim Callahan and Professor D’Allessio, let’s not forget. We know Nicole and Tim were married once,” I said.

  “Which feels as if it should mean somethin’, but what?”

  “You know, there’s something else. Why was Nicole buried? Tim was thrown onto the lawn like a gauntlet, and the professor was left bleeding out in the open—”

  “Theo, have a heart,” he said, looking sick.

  “Sorry. But he was. So why was Nicole buried?”

  We looked at each other in mutual puzzlement. Nat shook himself and stood up.

  “This amateur sleuthin’ isn’t as easy as Miss Marple makes it seem. You know what? I think I have somethin’ to take our minds off things for a minute. Derek finished a commission this mornin’. I’m going to show it to you—even though he’ll probably skin me—because they’re the most beautiful work he’s ever done and I’m so proud of him, I could bust. Seein’ them will make you feel better.” He darted off into the back of the apartment and came back with something carefully wrapped in pale gray jeweler’s cloth.

  “Look,” he said, carefully unwrapping it.

  Resting on the cloth were a pair of earrings—wild roses of thin beaten gold, each vein in the petals clearly visible, with leaves of pavé diamonds. The delicacy of the work was astounding.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said sincerely, touching one of them gently.

  Nat looked pleased. “They’re for Ruth D’Allessio. The professor wanted them finished by this week for their anniversary. They were a surprise. When I told him Derek trained at Tiffany, he couldn’t wait to commission them. The old snob.” He paused for a few seconds. “I talked to Haruto; he’s pretty broken up.”

  “It’s funny Haruto and the professor are such close friends,” I said. “God, I hope he’s okay.”

  “He’s a gossipy old fraud. And I hope he’s okay, too.” After a pause, I said: “I saw Kurt an hour ago. He’s got a splint and a huge bandage on his right hand. Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “Sabina maybe? She’s not exactly stable at the moment. They were havin’ some sort of argument this mornin’—in which Nicole’s name figured prominently accordin’ to your Davie, who absorbed every round of the fight with great interest. I gather the professor showed up and joined in to defend his granddaughter’s honor.”

  “How did he hear about it?”

  Nat leaned forward, his eyes dancing. “Hear about it? Darlin’, it happened practically on his doorstep. Kurt and Sabina screamin’ like banshees. The professor wavin’ his hoe around and yellin’ about male whores. Quite the scene, according to Davie.”

  “Wow!”

  “Wish I’d been there,” Nat said a trifle wistfully.

  “None of that sounds like Kurt,” I observed.

  “The professor called this mornin’ after it was all over to talk to Derek about the earrings. But he couldn’t wait to tell me about the fight. The old boy sounded ready to do murder.”

  “Whereas,” I finished for him, “it was he who was nearly murdered.”

  Nat grimaced ruefully.

  “What time did he call? It might be important,” I asked.

  “It was just before he was stabbed. Must have been around noon. I told Lichlyter and she had me giving her the conversation, word-for-word. Brrrr!” He shivered.

  “But how could Sabina hurt Kurt’s hand?” I said worriedly.

  Nat looked troubled. “This is goin’ to sound weird—but Sabina had your gun last night. I don’t know what to think about someone takin’ a potshot at you with it; I think you’re the only person in the world Sabina likes.”

  “You think she shot at me?” I said blankly.

  “She had a revolver like the one you were wavin’ at me the night before. It’s pretty distinctive. It was missin’ today when Derek and I got up. I figured Sabina took it back once she cooled off.”

  “I remember putting it on the washing machine when you got to the flat. And I didn’t see the gun after everyone left.” I hesitated. “What were you and she arguing about in the bedroom last night?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “She wasn’t herself—she was furious with Kurt about somethin’ and she was wavin’ the gun around. I don’t know what’ll happen to the earrings now.” He was almost mournful, and carefully wrapped them in their flannel veil.

  I heard the front door of the apartment open and close. Derek dropped his briefcase on the dining room table.

  “God, what a day,” he said, and bent down to kiss the top of Nat’s head. His face was etched with fatigue. He yawned and stretched. I’ve known him to spend ten straight hours hunched at his worktable, working with tools and techniques so fine they’re almost invisible to the untrained eye.

  “Hi, Derek,” I said quietly from my corner.

  He positively started. More evidence, if any were needed, of the emotional high-wire we were all on. He managed a rueful laugh.

  “Hi, Theo,” he said, coming over to take a cookie. “What are you two gossiping about?” He flopped heavily beside me on the couch and loosened his tie.

  “The rose earrings,” Nat said, a little shamefaced. “I was showin’ them to Theo.”

  Derek’s face went suddenly dark with anger. “For Christ’s sake—” He snatched the jeweler’s cloth from Nat’s hands and the earrings skittered across the floor. He bent to scoop up the roses and stuffed them furiously in his pocket.

  Nat looked wildly from Derek’s furious face to my astonished expression.

  The pendant around his neck swung like a pendulum and tinkled like a mini-sonata. The delicate, familiar sound suddenly was as shocking as a rifle shot. I remembered hearing it recently in some wildly improbable place.

  The baffling fury died out of Derek’s face as suddenly as it had arisen. He stuck his hands moodily in the pockets of his slacks. “Jeez, Theo, you must think I’ve lost my mind. I told you it’s been a hell of a day. These are supposed to be a surprise and this decorative idiot lets the cat out of the bag before the client’s even seen them.” He laid a penitent hand lightly on Nat’s shoulder. He was wearing a wrist brace and it gave me a nasty feeling of déjà vu. “Sorry, kitten,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Nat sniffed. But he still looked hurt. “I suppose with everythin’ that’s happened today it’s no wonder we’re all on edge.”

  Derek looked blank.

  “You don’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t know what?” He looked from me to Nat, and back again. His expression chan
ged from mild curiosity to dread as I hesitated. “What’s happened?” he said warily.

  “Professor D’Allessio has been stabbed.”

  He sat down again suddenly. “God. When?”

  “About the time we were havin’ lunch,” Nat said hurriedly.

  “Dead?” Derek said in a strangled voice.

  “He can’t speak yet. He’s at St. Francis in intensive care.”

  “Jesus.” He stared into space for many seconds and then roused himself. “And I thought I’d had a tough day. Carpal tunnel,” he added to me. “My hand is killing me.” He stretched it gingerly. “Sorry, both of you.”

  I said nothing, thinking hard. Two men with injured hands—only one with an explanation. But did I believe it? And where—where had I heard that faint tinkling sound?

  “Hey,” Derek said gently, leaning over to me. “Am I forgiven?”

  I shook off my mental fog. “Derek, what do you remember about Nicole and Tim Callahan from art school?”

  “I didn’t know them all that well,” he said, not in the least bit thrown by the change in subject. “They were only kids. I do remember they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”

  “Were they involved in anything in particular?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Both of them killed within a week. It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “And you think something from fifteen years ago might be the reason?” His skepticism made me more determined.

  “It could be, couldn’t it? What were they like?”

  “They were both passionate people in a fairly simple way,” Derek said slowly. “They were part of the student activist group—always supporting embargoes and going off to Berkeley to spit at cops. All the usual stuff. Their high-water mark—or low-water mark, depending on your point of view—was the mess at the Adelphi Club. Remember, kitten?” He turned to Nat, who nodded. “It went on for weeks—commando groups splashing red paint around and digging holes in the greens down at the golf club at night. It ended with busloads of activists screaming at rows of cops. Someone got injured or something and it cooled everything down. Still, give credit where it’s due, Nicole presented the club with a list of demands and the color bar came down. They were probably the last institution in the city to fold. Just in time for the dawning of the twenty-first century.”

  “I’ve heard the story. But it seems like a good thing,” I said.

  “I guess it depends which side of the police cordon you’re on,” he said with a smile. “My guess is the club didn’t see it that way. Hey, you know, you could ask Helga.”

  “Helga? Our Helga?”

  “Her dad was a member or something to do with the club in those days. She used to kid with Nicole about it; she might remember something.”

  I tried to decide whether this was a trail worth following, or if the rhino horn connection was a more likely reason for Tim and Nicole’s deaths. I said the first thing that came into my head. “I’ve always meant to ask you, Derek—” He looked at me expectantly. “What’s your nickname? Professor D’Allessio calls me ‘the soap one’—”

  “—and I’m ‘the furry one,’” Nat interrupted. “You know, because my body hair’s so silky.” I rolled my eyes. “It is! He used to call Derek ‘the ugly one,’ which was just mean, but now he calls him ‘the earring one’ because of the rose earrings. I think it’s a step up myself.”

  Something about that nickname, Nat’s pendant, and the rose earrings troubled me. What was it? Why was I worried about jewelry, of all things, when rhinos were dying?

  What could rhinoceros horn possibly be good for? Ben had said arthritis, but he hadn’t sounded all that certain. I hoped, somehow, that it wasn’t for something trivial like flatulence, that at least the rhinos were dying to cure drug addiction or something. And there was another thing to add to my weird jewelry obsession. Ben had said something the other night, after he and Nat met for the first time. Haruto—no, “some character” was yelling at him about the compost. Professor D’Allessio had been muttering about the compost, too, and about “the earring one” arguing with someone. And Derek and Kurt both had injured hands.

  I had to talk to Kurt. I looked up into their curious faces, suddenly aware that I had been silent for too long and that they were beginning to look at me strangely.

  “I’ll put this away,” I said abruptly, and started to pick up the tea tray.

  “It’s okay, I’ll do that,” Nat said, obviously puzzled. “Are you leavin’?”

  “I’m going to get back to my flat and figure out why Charlie O’Brien and the compost pile and Tim and the rhinoceros horn are rattling around in my brain together. Helga was asking why Nicole was buried, and I can’t figure that out either.” Derek went pale, which hurt me more than it should. “Or maybe I’ll take a long nap,” I went on. “Wake me up in a couple of weeks you two, okay?”

  I waggled a hand at Nat in adieu and glanced back as I left.

  Derek’s eyes were closed as if he was in pain and Nat looked as if he were staring at the end of the world.

  * * *

  I took the long way home and when I climbed the back stairs to my flat, Derek was waiting for me. He was sitting on the roof next door, with his legs dangling out over the edge.

  “I could see you were figuring things out,” he said, giving me much more credit than I deserved. His face was ashen. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but he looked so defeated I felt almost sorry for him.

  “It wasn’t Haruto who argued with Ben Turlough over the compost pile. Professor D’Allessio saw you—the earring one,” I said harshly.

  He nodded. “Nat doesn’t know I’m here. I want to explain.”

  “Go ahead,” I replied, and sat on the top stair of my landing where I had broken the pot of oregano over Charlie O’Brien’s head.

  He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring across the Gardens, his body rigid, his hands gripping the edge of the roof next to his thighs. “Nicole and I were partners over the rhino horn,” he started quietly. I didn’t say anything. “Yeah, I know. Disgusting.” He shook his head. “I told her about some of the Asian remedies and we got talking one night about the rhino horn and how much money could be made with a little planning. We decided to try it to see if we could get away with it. The payoff was so huge and we felt the risk was minimal. It took a while to set up—we had to find the right people to include—”

  “Bribe, you mean,” I interrupted him.

  His eyes flickered to me and back. “Yeah, okay. Anyway, we did it. We could hardly believe how easy it was. And we split two hundred thousand dollars. We learned a lot with that first shipment last year—and we decided to do a larger one. Nat had gotten wise that something was going on between us—we kept playing up our so-called flirtation as a beard for what we were doing. She came to the house that evening she was killed, but Nat threw a complete jealous fit and made her leave. It wasn’t like him to make a scene like that. I thought he was still partly shaky from fainting at your place that morning.”

  “You broke the mirror when I told you the police were interested in the things being stored in the attic at number twenty-three.”

  “I damn near fainted myself. Shit. I had my hands full with Nat after Nicole left; it took me an hour to calm him down. I couldn’t risk having her come back to the house. I settled Nat in the guest room with a sleeping pill, and Nicole and I met down in the garden late that night. We’d agreed to a fifty-fifty split, but she wanted a larger percentage—she said she was taking all the risks, but she wasn’t. I made all the Hong Kong contacts.”

  “I’m sure you were doing your fair share,” I said acidly.

  “Right. I left Nat asleep in the guest room. Nicole and I met downstairs and we argued and I left her down there.”

  “Alive?”

  His heavy face stretched into a grimace and his mouth fell open in shock as his head snapped to look at me. “God, yes, alive! Did you think—? I couldn’t kill anyone, Theo.
No, seriously, for God’s sake!” He turned to face straight ahead again but now he was looking at me sideways as if to gauge the effect his tale was having. “When I got back, I checked in on Nat and he was gone. I had no idea where he was. I looked out into the garden and saw someone lying on the ground. My only thought was Nat—that somehow he’d had another episode and fainted. I ran out there and it was Nicole.” His voice broke. “God, it was terrible. I was frantic, Theo. I got it into my head that Nat had seen us together and killed her.”

  I started to say something, but he raised a hand. “I know. But late at night, with the threat of losing everything hanging over me, and Nat not being at the house—you didn’t see the scene with Nicole, Theo.” His voice faltered. “He was irrationally jealous—I thought maybe he’d seen us together in the garden and—he knows that in the past, I’ve—” He hesitated. “Nat knows I’ve had a couple of—with women—”

  “Right,” I drawled. “So Nat thought he had reason.”

  “He didn’t, Theo. I swear. There’s been nothing like that since Nat and I have been together.”

  “Not me you need to convince.”

  “No. Shit, I panicked. I had to hide her until I could find Nat. I thought if she wasn’t found right away it could confuse the time of death. It would have taken me too long to dig a hole, but we were right next to the compost pile, and—well, you know the rest. The professor must have seen me arguing with the new guy—whoeverthefuck, Turlough?—when he found me out there clearing up. I was nearly insane. I had no idea who the guy was, for all I knew he was the killer. I took the offensive, figuring whoever he was he’d want to avoid a scene. He left me to it.”

  “What about the machete?” I asked. “Where was that?”

  “It was lying next to her, and I put it under the wire screen in the fish pond—I figured to get it out of sight so no one would know anything was wrong. All I knew at that point was that Nat was missing during the time Nicole had been killed, and I wanted to protect him.”

  “And yourself,” I said with distaste.

  “I swear, Theo, that wasn’t it.” But I thought it probably was. “I was a goddam mess by the time I got back home, covered in dirt and blood. And Nat still wasn’t back. I cut my clothes up in small pieces and put them in gallon-size plastic bags in the freezer downstairs. Then I took a shower and waited for Nat to get back. And he said he’d been with you and he told me about the guy who broke into your flat, and I was so relieved, Theo.” He put his head in his hands. “I was sure it must be the guy who killed Nicole. But I didn’t want to tell anyone I’d buried her—and I sure as hell didn’t want to be there when they discovered her at the Open Garden, so I stayed away and made sure Nat stayed away, too.”