Coached in the Act

by Victoria Laurie

  I giggled with mirth and shook my head. “I doubt Yelena had an affair with Chuck Schumer.”

  “Who said it was a New York senator?” Gilley said. “Lots of politically powerful people have homes here in the Hamptons.”

  “Good point. Which widens up the field again.”

  “As if it weren’t wide enough with eight unknown suspects,” Gilley mused.

  “Don’t you mean nine? We only know of McAllen, Goldberg, and Leahy.”

  “I’m assuming Aaron is in this script somewhere,” Gilley said with a sigh.

  “Oh, that’s right. We’ll need to look for him in the script just to confirm though,” I said.

  After setting the script on the counter, I laid my hands flat on top of it. “We need to go through this page by page with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “Agreed,” he said, tugging at the corners of the pages until I let him have them. He then turned several pages, stopped on one particular page, and turned it toward me. “Did you see that?”

  I squinted at the page but couldn’t see what had caught his attention. “What?”

  Gilley tapped the bottom left corner. “See that note?”

  I blinked. I’d missed it on my cursory look through the pages. “I can’t make it out. Can you?”

  Gilley turned the page back toward him and moved his finger to the bottom paragraph, marked Lover Number Eight. “See that arrow?” he said.

  I did see it. It was faded, because it’d been written in pencil, but I could make it out. “You think the note is in regard to Lover Number Eight?”

  “I do,” Gilley said. “Her handwriting is terrible, but I believe the note says, ‘Call Gene,’ and then I believe that’s a dollar sign.”

  Gilley pointed to the squiggly symbol, and I nodded. “I think you’re right. So do we both agree that Gene is very likely Lover Number Eight?”

  “We do,” Gilley said.

  “And that she was calling him for money?”

  “She was.”

  “Like, for what? Support? Or something more nefarious, like blackmail?”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” Gilley said.

  “So who’s Gene?”

  Gilley shrugged. Then his eyes lit up. “Hold on,” he said, pulling out his phone and tapping at it madly.

  I refilled both our cups with more tea, waiting him out.

  At last, he exclaimed, “Yes!” and then he turned the phone to face me. “Gene Bosworth.”

  “Gene Bosworth,” I repeated as I looked closely at the screen. Then I read aloud. “Gene Bosworth, of Southampton and Manhattan, real estate developer, philanthropist, and patron of the arts, passed away on Wednesday, December twelfth, from complications of COVID-nineteen. He is survived by his sister, Kennedy June Bosworth-Murdock, and his brother-in-law, Eric Murdock, and his two nephews, Tad and Theo.”

  I stopped reading and frowned at Gilley. “This can’t be the same Gene, Gilley. He’s dead. He died last year.”

  Gilley nodded but then flipped through the script to the page on which began Yelena’s monologue about Lover Number Eight. Holding the script up, he began to read. “ ‘Lover Number Eight has decided to permanently social distance himself from the rest of us—except, of course, for his dear, beloved sister, or as I like to call her, his one true love. It took me far too long to realize how much she and I look alike, and why he once called out her name in bed like a gasp for the caress of a summer’s day.”

  “A bit poetic,” I mused.

  “No, Cat, don’t you get it? ‘Summer’s day’?”

  “Clearly, I don’t,” I said.

  Gilley rolled his eyes. “His sister’s middle name is June.”

  “Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch.”

  As if challenged, Gilley went back to tapping at his phone again, and with a triumphant “Aha!” he turned it toward me.

  I leaned in to stare at it and saw that he’d pulled up an image of a woman in the center of a group of people who bore a striking resemblance to Yelena. The caption under the photo read Eric Murdock and his wife, June; Chris Fitzpatrick and his wife, Winnie; Bill O’Dowd; and Ritvik Patel at the Spring Fling Festival in Westchester.

  “She goes by June,” Gilley said. Then he pointed to the script again and said, “ ‘He once called out her name in bed like a gasp for the caress of a summer’s day.’ Yelena was speaking in code. She was referring to June.”

  “Ew,” I said.

  “Right?” Gilley agreed, making a face.

  “But are we really sure, Gilley? I mean, couldn’t that all be a coincidence? And why would Yelena write a note to call Gene about money if he died in December? It’s September—nine months later.”

  “I don’t know. But I definitely know I want to do a little more research in this direction.”

  I nodded. “We should absolutely explore that angle.” Then I grabbed the script and said, “Come on, I’ve got a scanner upstairs in my office. We can scan this in and make a copy so that we can both study it for clues.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Gilley and I were back at my kitchen counter, having both read our copies of the script. Setting mine down, I waited for Gilley to earmark a page before I asked, “Did anything speak to you about the identity of the other lovers?”

  “Number Eleven is Aaron,” Gilley said. “She said the word count, like, fifteen times.”

  It was a little less than that, but I smiled at him and added a nod. “Agreed.”

  I got up and went to the whiteboard I’d propped up near the sink, and I wrote in Aaron’s name next to the number eleven that I’d written beforehand, when Gilley and I had first come downstairs and had decided to keep track of the lovers using my whiteboard.

  “So,” I said, pointing to the list. “We know that Lover Number One is Tucker McAllen, the real estate developer; Lover Number Four is Joel Goldberg, the jeweler; Lover Number Five is Liam Leahy, the vice admiral; Lover Number Eight is Gene Bosworth; and Lover Number Eleven is Aaron Nassau.”

  “Which leaves Lovers Number Two, Three, Six, Seven, Nine, Ten, and Twelve to identify.”

  “Right,” I said, pacing in front of the whiteboard. “Should we tackle this one by one, starting with Lover Number Two?”

  “I have no clue who he could be,” Gilley said. “I did a cursory search of any members of Congress that live here in the Hamptons and could find only this guy.” Gilley turned the screen of his phone toward me, and I gazed at the picture.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I voted against him in the last election.”

  “Me too,” Gilley admitted.

  “Still, he’s about the same age as Yelena,” I said.

  “He’s also got four kids, ages three to thirteen, a gorgeous wife, and a place in Eastport.”

  “That’s a bit of a hike.”

  “It is. Plus, Cat, if a guy like this stepped out with a woman like Yelena, it’d be gossip central. I just don’t see it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if he cheated on his wife and the mother of his four kids with Yelena, no way would she not hear about it.”

  I tapped my chin. “That’s true.”

  “I’m gonna do some more digging, of course, see if I can’t get a handle for the representative’s schedule, to see if he was even in town the night of the murder, but my gut says this ain’t our guy.”

  I sighed. “Okay, then we’ll leave Lover Number Two blank for now. Let’s move on to Lover Number Three.”

  “Three is curious,” Gilley said, lifting up the script to flip to the section on Lover Number Three. Quoting from the page, he said, “‘Lover Number Three is all about the clothes. He wears them like a mask, making you think he plays for one team, when he really plays for the other.’”

  “Someone in the closet,” I said, guessing.

  Gilley set down the script and pursed his lips. “Maybe,” he said, in a way that didn’t convey that he was convinced of my conclusion. He lifted his phone and began to tap at it
.

  “What’re you thinking?” I asked.

  “Yelena’s dress for the show was an absolutely gorgeous creation, no?” he said.

  “Oh, my God, yes,” I agreed. “Stunning. And she was flawless in it.”

  “Custom,” Gilley said. “Right?”

  “The way it fit her like a second skin? Had to be.”

  Gilley pivoted his phone around so that I could see. It was Yelena’s Instagram page. “Like this number, right?”

  The photo in question showed Yelena dressed in a burgundy, sparkling, floor-length pantsuit that flared widely at the bottom and had a slit from neck to navel, allowing her ample décolletage to practically spill out. The pants were tight and tapered, and the overall silhouette of the suit and the padding of the shoulders gave her a particularly powerful look. It was absolutely a tailor-made cut and fit.

  “Indeed. They look like they definitely could’ve been designed by the same person,” I said.

  Gilley scrolled to the next photo. “And here,” he said.

  The photo showed Yelena dressed in a rose-colored gown that fit her shape like a glove. The photo was obviously taken during the pandemic, because she was wearing a face mask made of the same material as her dress, but it was studded with Swarovski crystals.

  “Yes. Another custom outfit. And I love it on her.”

  Gilley nodded. “When her show started causing a stir, I began following Yelena on the gram, and I remember scrolling through these, loving her style. She wears a lot of Vivace.”

  “Vivace?”

  “Antonio Vivace. He’s starting to catch fire in the fashion world. Michel is a big fan, and he’s been pushing Anna’s team to feature some of Vivace’s designs in Vogue.”

  I smirked at the way Gilley casually dropped the name of Anna Wintour, like he was on a first-name basis with her. Though, to be fair, his husband likely was.

  Gilley was silent for a moment as he continued to scroll through the photos, until he came up with what he seemed to be looking for. Turning his phone around to me again, he said, “That’s him.”

  An impeccably dressed man with an olive complexion; a long face; big, brown, soulful eyes; and tendrils of silver hair pooling onto his shoulders stared out at me. He had the most sensual lips, set in a Mona Lisa smirk as he commanded the attention of the photographer. Meanwhile, three bare-chested male models were draping themselves over him, fawning in a way that suggested he was their objet de désir.

  “You think he’s who Yelena is referring to?” I asked Gilley.

  “I do. The gown she wore for her act is obviously from him. He has a certain style that celebrates a voluptuous woman’s curves that’s hard to get right. You see Christian able to do it well, and maybe Zac, but the list of truly talented designers creating clothes for the Rubenesque crowd is appallingly small.”

  I resisted the urge to ask Gilley if he meant Christian Siriano and Zac Posen, because I knew it would only give him pleasure to say, “Duh. Who else would I be talking about, Cat?”

  Instead, I directed the discussion back to the topic at hand by pointing to the script and saying, “So, Vivace is what . . . ? Not closeted and not even gay?”

  Gilley shrugged. “Professionally, it would be to his advantage to be seen as someone on the LBGTQ spectrum, leaning heavily toward the G, but he could also be bi or pansexual. I’ve never met the man, so it’s hard for me to tell.”

  “What other clues from the script fit?”

  “Most of it,” Gilley said, picking up the pages again. “I mean, if you understand that she’s referring to Vivace, it makes sense. She calls him a silver-haired fox with a passion for women, wine, and walkways.”

  “She was a clever girl,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  I turned and uncapped my marker. “Okay, I’ll add him to the list, but we’ll need to dig a little more into him as a possibility, because her clues are cryptic enough that we could be wrong.”

  “Agree, agree, agree,” Gilley said.

  “Okay, so let’s look at Lovers Six and Seven and see if they offer up any clues,” I said.

  “Lover Seven definitely offers up some clues,” Gilley said, and the expression on his face had me quite curious.

  “What clues?”

  In answer, Gilley began to read directly from the page. “ ‘Lover Number Seven was made entirely of chocolate. Dark, bitter, gorgeous chocolate—’”

  “He was black,” I said, reading between the lines.

  “That would be my guess,” Gilley said; then he got back to the script. “ ‘Willing to sell his soul for a dollar, he’d stand up for any white collar. He didn’t care if you were guilty, as long as you could pay.’”

  I felt the color drain from my face. “An attorney.”

  Gilley held up a finger and continued to read. “ ‘Generous in bed, certainly the second best of the lot, but unwilling to be seen putting caviar on a toast point of white bread.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think it means that he didn’t like to be seen in public with a white woman.”

  “Understandable,” I said, feeling my defenses go up. I had a very niggling feeling that Yelena might be referring to someone I knew and cared about, and it worried me for every reason I could think of.

  Gilley continued. “ ‘When I got tired of his song and dance, I tossed him right back in the harbor.’ ”

  “Oh, no,” I said, as my suspicion was all but confirmed. “Are we both thinking the same thing?”

  “Uh, that Marcus Brown fits every cryptic descriptor, including being tossed back in the ‘harbor,’ which is code for Sag Harbor?”

  I nodded. It would explain why, when I’d called Marcus to beg him to represent Aaron, he’d been silent when I mentioned that Yelena had been murdered.

  “Okay, so we’re both thinking it’s Marcus. Gilley, what do we do?”

  “I think we need to call Marcus,” he said.

  I blanched. “And say what, exactly?”

  “Oh, I dunno, Cat. Maybe start off by asking him how his day is going and then drift into asking him if he was the one who murdered Yelena Galanis?”

  I made a face. “Or perhaps something more tactful.”

  Gilley set down the script. “I suddenly don’t like this project.”

  With a sigh, I reached for my phone. In my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe for a second that Marcus Brown had killed Yelena. But I thought it was important to ask him about her, given the fact that he was currently defending a man she had also dated, and was now accused of murdering her. To me, it was a gigantic conflict of interest, and something I was convinced would make Aaron quite vulnerable at trial.

  “Catherine Cooper,” Marcus said, picking up the line.

  “Hello, Marcus,” I said, trying to regulate my tone to something casual and breezy. “I’ve got you on speakerphone, and Gilley is also here.”

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he said amiably.

  “Well . . .” I began collecting my thoughts hurriedly and was still unsure how I would proceed. “Gilley and I were considering helping you with the case against Aaron.”

  “You were, huh?” Marcus asked. “In what way?”

  I cleared my throat and dived in. “This morning we took a little trip to the theater and discovered Yelena’s discarded script. We’ve been going through it, attempting to identify the twelve angry men, you know, to give you a pool of suspects to help cast doubt upon the killer being Aaron.”

  “Nice,” he said. “I’d like a copy of that when you get a moment.”

  “Of course,” I told him. “While we were—”

  “And I’d like to hear who you’ve identified when you get a decent number of names.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “We’ve made excellent progress so far.”

  “How many names do you have?”

  “Including Aaron, we’ve got six,” I said.

  “Possibly seven,” Gilley told him, eyeing me meaningfully.r />
  “Let me guess, you got to Lover Number Seven and determined it was me?”

  Gilley and I exchanged a look of surprise. “Uh . . . yes,” I said.

  “Is it you?” Gilley asked.

  “It is,” Marcus said. “I dated Yelena very briefly eighteen months ago. I thought we ended things amicably, but I might’ve been mistaken. I’ve heard through the vine that her portrait of me isn’t exactly flattering.”

  My brow furrowed. How could he not see the problem here? “Marcus,” I said, “why did you agree to represent Aaron when you’re also featured in Yelena’s act? Isn’t that a huge conflict of interest?”

  “No,” Marcus said, without elaborating.

  “Why not?” Gilley pressed.

  “Because I didn’t murder Yelena.”

  Gilley rolled his eyes and tossed up his hands. I couldn’t have agreed more.

  Marcus probably sensed our frustration and finally elaborated. “Listen, on the night that Yelena was murdered, I was at a poker game hosted by Judge Andrew Cordite—a New York Supreme Court justice. Also there were two other judges and a former attorney general. I was with those gentlemen all evening, from seven p.m. to two a.m., so I have about as airtight an alibi as you can ask for.”

  I felt my shoulders relax in relief.

  But then Gilley said, “You could’ve paid someone to do it.”

  “Certainly,” Marcus said. “But that could apply to any one of Yelena’s lovers. Remember, she dated only the wealthy and powerful.”

  I shook my head, still a bit bothered by it all. “Marcus, Yelena calls you one of the angry men. If you had feelings for her, and in your investigation of this case against Aaron, you became convinced that he did it, wouldn’t that compromise his defense?”

  Marcus actually laughed. “Catherine, I didn’t develop feelings for Yelena. She and I never had a romantic relationship of any kind. We were lovers. That was all. We didn’t date, have dinner together, or spend quality time with one another on the weekends. We simply got together for a physical relationship about once every two weeks for two months or so. And while I’m saddened that she was murdered, since I broke things off with her, I honestly haven’t given her another thought.”