Fortune Favors the Dead

by Stephen Spotswood

  That threw me hard. Wallace seemed so vanilla. I had as difficult a time imagining him engaged in thievery as I did imagining him killing Abigail Collins.

  “How sure are they about the money angle?”

  I needn’t have asked the question. Lazenby wasn’t going to make a move like this in such a high-profile case unless he had everything crossed and dotted.

  “The lieutenant sounded very confident about the embezzlement,” my boss said. “He disclosed that it has been going on for at least a year. At least two hundred thousand dollars over that time. Though they are still tracking where all of the money ended up.”

  Two hundred grand wasn’t much considering Collins Steelworks had annual profits in the eight-digit range. But it wasn’t chump change. The New York cops’ money men had cut their teeth tracking mob-laundered dough and knew their stuff. It didn’t look good for Wallace. I wondered whether the stack of bills in our safe was part of the lot.

  “Anything else to tell?” I asked. “What about Belestrade? How does she figure into it?”

  According to Ms. P, Lazenby hadn’t let anything slip on that angle, but it wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Abigail had told her pet clairvoyant what she’d found out and somehow Belestrade had let it slip to Wallace. Maybe she’d tried her old blackmail trick with him.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “You recover,” Ms. P said. “I attempt to get in to see Mr. Wallace. His bail hearing is being delayed since a separate murder charge is expected.”

  First-degree murder and hidden cash would mean big-time flight risk, which would mean the DA would contest bail.

  I signed off and let my boss do her job. I made a few more calls to some friends at the Times and the Mirror but they had more questions than answers. Eventually I gave up and went back to my room. I briefly entertained checking myself out against doctor’s orders but realized that if I showed up back at the townhouse, I’d be press-ganged right back to the hospital.

  I’d rarely felt quite so useless.

  The last notable thing to happen came on Tuesday morning. I was due to head home and had everything packed and ready to go, but Ms. P was late in arriving. I was left sitting in the corner chair, my clothes and books and a paper bag filled with pills packed away in a small suitcase.

  As far as I knew, Wallace was still locked up. Ms. P hadn’t gotten in to see him. The murder charge was still looming.

  When my boss finally walked in, she looked as close to flustered as she gets. Her braids had suffered some sort of structural collapse and were sitting lopsided on her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, perching on the bed and tending to her hair. “We were on our way out when we received a call. It was Mr. Wallace’s personal attorney.”

  “Let me guess—he wants everything we have on the Collins killing and he wants it yesterday.”

  “No,” she said with a scowl. “He wanted to thank me for my efforts to date and told me that my services will no longer be required.”

  We had been fired from the Collins case.

  CHAPTER 29

  What followed were three of the more frustrating days I’ve ever slogged through. As expected, the murder charge came down for Wallace on Tuesday night. Unexpectedly, it was for Belestrade, not Abigail Collins. Apparently, some intrepid officer had found the murder weapon in a storm drain a few blocks from Belestrade’s place. It was a Colt .38 automatic registered to Harrison Wallace.

  We learned all this along with the rest of the city in the Wednesday morning papers. No one was returning our calls. Not Lazenby, not Wallace’s attorney, and not the Collins family. The one time I got through to somebody it was Sanford, who said that the household “did not wish to speak to anyone at this difficult time.”

  I was tempted to go over in person and toss stones at Becca’s window until she opened up, but that would have been difficult. The doctors had prescribed bed rest for my ribs. While Ms. Pentecost could not legally confine me to bed, she could at least make it difficult for me to wander far.

  The sedan was off-limits, and Mrs. Campbell had stepped into the role of warden. Any time I went for the door, she’d intercept me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she bellowed. “Ms. Pentecost gave you a job and a bed and a roof and the least you can do is take care of yourself like she asked you, and if you believe I’m above twisting your arm and marching you upstairs to bed, you’ve got another think coming.”

  And more along that line.

  So I stayed put and healed and ate my weight in homemade sausage. I spent hours in the basement throwing knives into a block of wood, first with my right hand and its two splinted fingers, then with my left with its broken wrist.

  The first day I was lucky to come within two feet of the target. By the second day, I was still lacking power, but my accuracy wasn’t too bad. With each throw I pictured my attacker’s masked face.

  Sleep came hard. I kept running through the facts of the case over and over again. When I finally got my mind to quiet down, my wrist or my ribs or my head started screaming at me. The doctors had given me painkillers. I tried them once and they gave me nightmares. Hulking shadows lunged at me from dark corners.

  I opted for five good hours instead of eight dream-plagued ones.

  Apparently Wallace’s lawyer was tired of getting a dozen calls a day from us. On Thursday, we received a certified letter in the mail signed by Wallace officially relieving us of our duties. This was followed up by a call from Lazenby, who said, in no quibbling terms, that we no longer had a client or a case and therefore had no reason to stick our noses into the Collins business.

  This echoed what we were reading in the papers. The Journal had a piece about how Wallace and Collins Steelworks were distancing themselves from each other, with both the company and Wallace’s attorney stating that he had been a caretaker CEO and that the business remained in the hands of the family. Various Wall Street know-it-alls were quoted as saying this tactic would help ensure the company would be able to re-up its military contracts.

  Apparently you had to do a lot worse than embezzlement and murder to turn off the U.S. government.

  Speaking of which, there was no statement from Wallace contesting the allegations of embezzlement or murder. From where we were sitting, it looked like he was going to roll over and play dead for the prosecution.

  After the call from Lazenby, Ms. P leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. After a few minutes of silence, I broke it.

  “If we can get to Becca or maybe even Randolph I bet we could get them to hire us on. We don’t even need to charge them, since we have Wallace’s retainer. Until they tag Wallace with Abigail Collins’s murder, the case is still open.”

  She opened her eyes. They were red-veined and carrying heavier luggage than usual.

  “Wallace’s guilt in both murders is certainly the intimation,” she said, “whether or not the police will ever have enough evidence to charge him with Abigail’s.”

  “Whether Wallace did it or not, if we can get signed back on, at least we can help put the pieces together,” I argued. “Let me try to get to Becca again. If I go over there, I’m sure—”

  “No!” she snapped. “You will not approach Miss Collins. You will do no more work on the Collins business. Our role in the affair is done. We have other cases to attend to.”

  I was stunned. I’d seen my employer bend every rule and regulation on the books in the interest of truth. It’d be like walking away from a puzzle with half a dozen pieces missing.

  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “You’re not going to drop this. Two murders—including a woman you’ve been tracking for years. And you let it go just like that?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve warned you before about becoming emotionally involved in the work.”

  “Bullshit!” I jumped out of my cha
ir. “Emotionally involved? This from the woman who spends whole days and nights poring over her files, desperate because she’s afraid someone’s going to get away with something. You make yourself sick doing it. And you’re telling me not to get emotional?”

  I realized I was yelling, but I couldn’t stop myself. Mrs. Campbell appeared in the doorway, but Ms. P waved her off.

  “You can’t tell me this was just another case. Belestrade was personal for you. You know it was. I know it was. Don’t pretend Jonathan Markel was just another source. Or that…that…”

  I ran out of steam. Which was well enough. Any farther and I would have crossed a line, and I couldn’t see what was waiting on the other side.

  I fell back into my chair, breathing hard, ribs aching. It was a while before she spoke. Her response came slow and measured, like she was tiptoeing through a minefield.

  “My work does not make me sick. My passion for the job does not make me sick. The multiple sclerosis makes me sick,” she declared. “If I push myself farther than I should, it is because I know I will not be able to do this work forever. That is why I value your safety, physical and emotional. So that you may pick up the load when I am no longer able to lift it.”

  It was the first time she’d ever come right out and said it. I wasn’t just her assistant. Someday, I’d be her replacement.

  The anger drained out of me like so much venom.

  “You have been grievously injured,” she continued. “I am your employer and not your mother and I cannot force you into any course you do not wish to run. But as your employer, and hopefully your friend, I wish you would put this case aside and take time to heal.”

  Looking into her eyes, I wondered how I could have ever mistaken them for cold. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was so tired. The words wouldn’t come. I nodded. I excused myself and went up to my room to lie down.

  But don’t think I didn’t clock the fact she’d never answered my question about whether she was really done with the Collins case.

  CHAPTER 30

  I woke the next day to find Ms. Pentecost gone.

  “She hired a driver—one of the services she used before you came along,” Mrs. Campbell told me over breakfast. “She had her suitcase—the smaller one—and she said she’d be gone at least one night but no more than three. Said she’d call tonight so we know she arrived safe.”

  “Arrive safe where?” I asked.

  “She didn’t say.”

  Ms. P had gone off by herself in the past on one or another of her pet cases, but she’d always given me a general idea of where she was headed. To keep mum about her destination meant only one thing: It had to do with the Collins case and she didn’t want me chasing her.

  I was equal parts angry and worried. Angry for the obvious reasons. Worried because I got that way whenever she went off on her own. What would she do if she had a bad day? I looked around her bedroom and the office and was comforted to see that at least she’d remembered to take her cane with her.

  I sat down at my desk and tried to work. There were notes from previous investigations that needed filing, contact lists that needed updating, plenty to do. After an hour, all I’d managed was to turn one pile of paper into five smaller piles. I was actually considering getting out the Murphy’s and polishing my desk when the phone rang.

  “Thank Christ,” I muttered, sure it was Ms. P. Instead, I was greeted by a panicked Olivia Waterhouse.

  “Is what they’re saying true?” she asked. “Was Ariel blackmailing people?”

  Once Wallace had been charged with Belestrade’s murder, everything had begun spilling out. The papers were there waiting with cupped hands. They hadn’t gotten the exact details of what went down at the Collinses’ Halloween party, but they had the gist. The more enterprising reporters had tracked down previous clients of Belestrade and they, or their spouses, were starting to talk. Among the five piles on my desk were several requests from reporters asking for comment. I’d have to feed them something eventually, but I still wasn’t up for chatting.

  Since Dr. Waterhouse had helped us get the background on Belestrade, I figured I owed her the bad news.

  “I’m afraid so, Professor. At least, that’s how it’s shaping up.”

  “That’s awful!” she exclaimed. “That she would use her talents to hurt people in that way.”

  I was tempted to ask her why she was so surprised. Surely someone who would lie about being able to speak with the dearly departed would be willing to take it a step farther. In some ways, coming right out and blackmailing her clients made Belestrade a more honest specimen than her peers.

  I kept all that to myself.

  “Yeah, it’s a big shock to everyone,” I lied.

  “I’ve had to ask my publisher to hold off sending my book to press. I can’t have a whole chapter on Ariel and not mention this. I’d be laughed at.”

  “Was your publisher ticked?”

  “On the contrary. He said that a chapter on Belestrade that includes her murder at the hands of…of one of her victims…Well…” She trailed off. I could imagine her removing her glasses, squinting, putting them back on.

  “Adding her murder would sell a lot more copies?” I offered.

  “Essentially,” she said. “I find it grotesque. This is an academic book, not a pulp magazine.”

  I didn’t argue, but not because I agreed. Academics, in my experience, enjoyed blood and intrigue as much as the great unwashed. Also, while Waterhouse might have found it grotesque, she made no mention of not complying.

  I figured since I had her on the line, I might as well do a little digging.

  “Did you have any idea this was going on?” I asked.

  “The blackmail? No. None,” Waterhouse said. “I thought the worst that was happening was that—well, that she was like the rest of them. Reading her clients and giving them what they wanted.”

  “When you sat in on those séances at her office, you never saw anything out of the ordinary? Any notion that she was recording people so she could blackmail them?”

  “Is that what she was doing?”

  The details about the recordings hadn’t made it into the papers.

  “That’s what it looks like,” I said. “She’d probably get them on tape admitting something about themselves or a loved one, then use it to pry some cash loose later.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Doc? You still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” she said in a near whisper.

  “Did you have any clue?”

  “I…I knew about the recording.”

  “Really?”

  “I saw her retrieve the tape. The recorder was in a false panel in a bookshelf,” Waterhouse said. “She told me it was so she had a record of what she said when she was channeling.”

  “You didn’t find that suspicious?” I asked.

  “I didn’t at the time, no.”

  Which meant she bought that Belestrade wasn’t aware of what she was saying when she was “channeling.” I started to suspect that not only was Waterhouse a little smitten with the late clairvoyant, but was a secret believer, as well.

  Then I had another thought.

  “What did she do with that tape?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Waterhouse said. “She went upstairs. Then I heard this rumbling sound.”

  “Rumbling?”

  “I thought it might be a train going by, but there’s no train near there.”

  I made a note of that for later.

  “Is that helpful?” the professor asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll pass it on to the police. Ms. Pentecost is officially done with the case.”

  “Oh. So, this man they have in jail. She thinks he did it?”

  “She’s keeping her o
ptions open,” I said.

  “What should I do about my book?” she pleaded. “I can’t wait until a trial. That could take months.”

  Considering how little resistance Wallace was putting up, I didn’t know if a trial would take all that long.

  “Borrow a trick from the newspapers and use the word ‘alleged’ a lot,” I suggested. “Besides, the juicy stuff is what Belestrade was up to. Not who did her in.”

  She thanked me and said she’d be sure to send a copy over whenever her book hit the shelves.

  No sooner had I hung up the phone than there was a familiar knock at the door. I opened it to find Lazenby’s storm-cloud face.

  “I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” I said. “The lady of the house has gone adventuring and I know not where.”

  “That’s all right. It’s you I’ve come for.”

  I was about to yell for Mrs. Campbell to call the lawyer when he added, “We got him.”

  I didn’t have to ask who. I rode with Lazenby across the bridge to a station house south of Midtown. Once there, he escorted me to one of its less hospitable interrogation rooms.

  He pounded on the door and yelled, “Turn the light on him!”

  A voice called from inside, “It’s on!”

  Lazenby opened the door.

  Sitting on a metal chair, a handheld interrogation light shining into his eyes, was John Meredith.

  He had a bandage on his nose that looked a few days old. Apparently that right cross had broken more than my fingers. I couldn’t take credit for the rest of it, though. His lip was busted in two places, one eye was swollen shut, and he was listing in his chair, like it hurt to sit straight.

  Lazenby nodded to his sergeant, who shut the door again.

  “He didn’t come easy,” he said, reading my mind.

  “Is he talking?”

  “He didn’t at first. So we started tallying up the evidence: his nose, the blood on his boots, the metal splinters.”