Dan Abbott, his business partner, and Doris Medford followed at a respectful distance. Behind them was a stunning black couple. Reuben did not recognize them, but Cynthia pointed out that the man, Tony Garrison, was Baxter’s up-and-coming design assistant—and lover, according to rumor—and that the woman was Baxter’s favorite model, called simply Tabita.
Running ahead of the parade, which was moving at a stately pace, was a hotel functionary who frantically assembled five chaises at poolside, directly in front of the Frosts’ semi-isolated enclave. Eventually the group reached its destination, but only after Baxter had stopped to embrace and kiss several women, including two wealthy customers from Fort Worth and New York recognizable from the pages of W.
Frost tried to recall the details of a Time cover story on Gregg Baxter that he had read a year earlier. He remembered that it had called Baxter the most gifted American designer since the young Halston and contained a wealth of biographical detail: Baxter had grown up in the Bronx, in New York City, and had attended the Bronx High School of Science before going off to Brown.
While at Brown, he had begun sketching at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. After college he had come to New York and signed on with Liz Claiborne, where he worked hard and learned the designing trade. By the end of the seventies, he was ready to try high fashion and go out on his own. He started his successful ascent almost at once, when the chief buyer for Bergdorf Goodman bought several of his creations.
Menswear followed in the mid-eighties, along with a more broadly distributed lower-priced women’s line, which competed with the clothes of his old employer, Liz Claiborne.
The Frosts watched as Baxter, realizing how strong the sun was, sent Garrison back inside for a cap. The assistant was dressed from head to toe in black—a declaration of independence from the gray look?—starting with heavy shoes and moving up to a black felt baseball cap that said PADRES in yellow letters on the front. He came back with a second baseball cap that he handed to Baxter, this one for the New York Mets.
Baxter put on the cap and sent Garrison to find a waiter, who soon hustled over with cups of cappuccino. Then the young man was dispatched again to the hotel, from which he returned with a stack of Italian fashion magazines. Baxter immediately began tearing through them as if looking for a specific item.
He was jittery and nervous, to the point where it made Reuben jumpy simply to watch him. “You say that young black man is the great man’s design assistant?” Reuben asked Cynthia. “I hate to say it, but Stepin Fetchit’s more like it. The kid’s done nothing except run his legs off since they came out here.”
Cynthia did not have a chance to comment. Doris Medford had spotted the Frosts and was coming toward them. Reuben was sure she was around forty, though her swimsuit revealed that she had a well-shaped figure, free of the flab that so often comes with growing older. Her bright red lipstick would normally have made a pleasing contrast with her dark, black hair, but the effect was at least partially spoiled by her flushed, ruddy complexion.
“How’s the flower girl?” Reuben asked. “They let you back in, I see.”
“Oh yes. But I almost had to go back. We were going to be two hundred and fifty at our party. Then we decided to use a second room at the Palazzo Labia, so we can handle three-fifty. But that means another ten centerpieces. Thank God those stupid flowers I brought back could be subdivided without looking scrawny.”
“That’s a lot of people, three hundred-fifty,” Cynthia said.
Medford covered her eyes with her hands. “You have no idea what a mess it is,” she said. “Can you imagine … no, don’t get me started. There are at least five hundred who want to come—all of Paris, Rome and Milan, it seems like. Gregg has intimate friends he didn’t even know about. And now we have a war about who goes in the main room and who in the anteroom. It’s something, that’s all I can say.”
As they chatted, Dan Abbott joined them.
“Do you know Dan Abbott?” Doris Medford asked.
Cynthia said no, and Medford made the introduction. Reuben reminded him that they had met “when you were at First Fiduciary.”
“Jesus, that was a thousand years ago. In my other life. On days like this one I wish I’d never left.”
Abbott was the oldest member of the Baxter entourage. Mid- to late fifties, Frost estimated. He was also the most unprepossessing, with a freckled face and a high-pitched voice. He had been going bald when Reuben first knew him, but now wore an obvious toupee. Observing it, Reuben could not help thinking of that emblem of the Watergate scandal, Howard Hunt’s ill-fitting red wig. Not only was Abbott’s hairpiece ill-fitting and red, it looked to be knitted of yarn, like the hair of a Raggedy Ann doll. It was so bad Reuben felt it must be a fashion statement, or antistatement, by its wearer.
“Is there anything we can do?” Cynthia asked.
“Maybe push a hundred people or so in the Grand Canal,” Abbott said. “There’s going to be a riot over there tonight.”
“Dan, we’d better get back. Gregg’s going to start feeling lonely and neglected,” Medford said.
“Yes,” Abbott said, sighing. “Along with everything else, let’s not have him throwing one of his fits.”
“Good luck to you both,” Cynthia said. “We look forward to the party.”
After Abbott and Medford had returned to their leader, Reuben noticed Medford whispering to Baxter. He looked around and stared at the Frosts, then got up and came over. He took off his sunglasses, which revealed piercing blue eyes. The kind of eyes, Cynthia later told Reuben, that could break a girl’s heart if that had been Baxter’s inclination, which they knew it was not.
“The Frosts, I believe,” he said as he approached and, when invited, sat on the edge of Cynthia’s chaise.
“I’m surprised to see you here by the pool,” Reuben said.
“I came out to relax for half an hour and then it’s back to work,” Baxter replied. This prompted Reuben to reflect that if the frenetic behavior he had been observing was relaxation, he wondered what the designer was like when keyed up.
“Everything’s ready for the party,” Baxter said, “but I expect it’s going to take most of the day to finish the seating list.”
“That sounds like fun,” Cynthia said.
“Not when you may offend your customers—and the prima donnas in the press. It’s damned hard work.”
“Well, it’s the party of the year,” Cynthia said. “I know, because the Tribune said so.”
“Pure hype,” Baxter said, smiling.
“I hope it compares with the party that was held in Venice,” Reuben said.
“When was that?” Baxter asked.
“Middle of the sixteenth century. I’ve just been reading about it. It was a banquet for Henry the Third of France. In the Doges’ Palace for three thousand guests. All the women wore white and there were twelve hundred items on the menu. Plus trick napkins at each place sculpted out of sugar.”
“We’re operating on a more modest scale,” Baxter said, smiling again. “Without any tricks.”
“And of course there’s the modern party that was held right where yours is going to be, at the Palazzo Labia,” Cynthia said.
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that one. Some rich Mexican,” Baxter said.
“Carlos de Beistegui,” Cynthia said. “Charlie, I believe everyone called him. He spent a fortune buying and fixing up the Palazzo Labia and had a costume ball to end them all back in nineteen fifty-one.”
“There are old ladies who still talk about it,” Reuben said. “Though I think it’s a little like the Mayflower and a good many more people say they were there than actually were.”
“We’re not quite up to Charlie’s standards, either,” Baxter said, as he stood up and tipped his Mets cap. “See you later.”
“Oh dear,” Cynthia said, when he had gone. “He seemed to leave in a huff. Did I make a mistake by mentioning the Beistegui party?”
“I don’t think so.
He’d heard about it. He said so.”
Cynthia was mollified and again asked her husband whose tomb he was going to visit that day.
“Pasquale Cicogna.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Cigogna commissioned the Rialto Bridge. A wonderful example of bureaucracy at work. He held a competition and got entries from Michelangelo, Sansovino and Palladio, among others. But he picked a hack named Da Ponte—of all things—who had done some work for him on the Doges’ Palace. The result is what we see over the Grand Canal. It reminds me of when Marty Lenmeade hired his shiftless, no-talent brother-in-law to redo the Chase & Ward offices.”
“Where is Cicogna’s monument?”
“In the Gesuiti. Why don’t we have a late lunch at Harry’s Dolci and I can sneak over there when the church reopens this afternoon?”
“Fine. I’d just as soon get out of here. With the party, there’s bound to be lots of Euro-trash here at lunch.”
It was exceptionally clear, with no clouds in the azure sky, and thus a perfect day to eat outside at the Dolci, the modest offshoot of Harry’s Bar down the way on the Giudecca. The Frosts went out the back entrance of the Cipriani and strolled down past the Zitelle church, now wrapped like a mummy while in restauro; past the youth hostel, with a United Nations of young backpackers lunching outside; past the Redentore, Palladio’s finest church.
At Harry’s Dolci, they sat at a table fronting directly on the water. This created a unique immediacy with the heavy traffic in the Giudecca Canal: water-buses, tour boats, car ferries, tankers, barges, a Norwegian cruise ship. The world seemed just about perfect as they watched the passing traffic, drank Bellinis—that nectar of Prosecco, the sparkling white wine of the Veneto, and peach juice—and ate their club sandwiches, here formidable behatted structures that had to be attacked with knife and fork.
After lunch Cynthia walked back to the hotel alone and Reuben took the circolare from the Sant’Eufemia stop next to the Dolci around to the Fondamente Nuove. He paid the fare for the forty-minute trip.
He was happy to be returning to the Baroque church of the Gesuiti, or Santa Maria Assunta, which he regarded as the most idiosyncratic sight in all of Venice, its interior enveloped with green and white marble carving that looked like damask drapes. The sarcophagus of Cigogna (1585–95) framed the door to the sacristy. It was worth the trip, topped as it was by a delightful sculpted likeness of the reclining Cicogna, wearing his ceremonial regalia and corno, the traditional headdress of a Doge. His head rested comfortably for eternity on one elbow. The monument seemed splendidly irreverent and Reuben liked it.
Given the oppressive heat, which showed no signs of letting up, Reuben had planned to take another swim when he returned to the hotel but then decided against it. He didn’t want to be tired for the evening ahead, which he was sure would be long. And hot.
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About the Author
Haughton Murphy is the pseudonym of former lawyer James H. Duffy, author of the Reuben Frost Mysteries. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Duffy got his start writing as a part-time and summer reporter for the Daily Times of Watertown, New York, before moving to New York City to practice law. After a number of years as an attorney, Duffy began writing thrillers, eventually retiring to focus on his novels full-time.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by James H. Duffy
Cover design by Greg Mortimer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2819-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Murder Saves Face Page 26