Elected for Death

by Valerie Wolzien

  “How did they end up living in the same town?”

  “Well, Erika got into plants and things like that while she was in California. She had planned to teach—”

  “What’s her field?” Susan asked quickly.

  “Women’s studies.” He grimaced. “Not too practical and apparently she realized that about the time she finished up her doctorate. Anyway, she had gotten a job at some sort of organic farm while she was in school, and by the time she had her degree, she had fallen in love with flowers and knew that she wanted to own a store like Stems and Twigs. She thought the East Coast was a good location and stumbled into Hancock when she was visiting a friend.”

  “The friend who owns this carriage house?”

  “Exactly. The carriage house was empty and so Erika moved in, borrowed money, and started the first store.”

  “And Ivan Deakin was here all this time?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” Brett said, frowning. “You see, Ivan Deakin has a very interesting personal history.”

  NINETEEN

  Susan leaned back against the footboard of the bed and thought for a moment. “I know I’ve read his bio in the papers, but I don’t remember anything odd about it.”

  “Those bios don’t tell much. Degrees and jobs mainly. And Ivan’s is shorter than any of the other candidates—he not only doesn’t have a family, but he didn’t do a lot of volunteer work in town. Just a commission or two.”

  Susan nodded. That had been a tough part for Jed to fill out, too. They had finally translated the time that he ran the rides at the elementary-school carnival and the afternoon he planted bulbs in one of the parks (Kathleen had talked each and every one of her friends into volunteering for at least one afternoon or morning) into “extensive work in the local schools and parks.” Fortunately, he had coached both his daughter’s and his son’s soccer teams when they were young, so the list was not entirely bogus. The amount of volunteer work some of the candidates had done amazed the Henshaws. Susan, for one, had great doubts that Bradley Chadwick could possibly have served on as many committees and boards as he claimed: the man had to work, eat, and sleep sometime, didn’t he?

  “I don’t remember very much about Ivan’s bio. He graduated from some small college in Massachusetts, didn’t he?” Susan asked, returning to the subject.

  “Yes, barely … Remember, I’ve had men researching his background for the past two days, so I know more about him than most people,” Brett explained, noticing her surprised expression. “His bio doesn’t explain that he went to four different schools of higher education for five and a half years to obtain a degree from a college that no one can remember—it closed about six years ago, in fact. He did, however, get a graduate degree about ten years later from Cornell.”

  “After barely managing to get through his undergraduate work?”

  “Interesting, but not unheard of,” Brett said. “When you start looking into people’s background, you realize that there are a lot of second chances in this life.”

  “What did he get the degree in?”

  “Business the first time and then hotel and restaurant management.”

  “Well, he’s certainly used his education, hasn’t he?” Susan commented. In the early eighties, Ivan had been a famous enough restaurateur to be mentioned in The New York Times. In the current decade, he had branched out into the suburbs, buying, running, and selling the intimate French inns and bistros that were so popular—at least that’s what Susan had heard. But as she listened to Brett’s story she realized that the reality was very different than the image.

  The story Brett told was of a man who traded friendship and a lot of free meals for publicity—and who ended up with flash-in-the-pan popularity that he was unable to turn into lasting success. Ivan Deakin was well known, but what was less well known was that he was a failure. In a little more than a dozen years he had moved from owning a popular restaurant in the heart of Greenwich Village to owning an unpopular bistro near Greenwich, Connecticut.

  “Didn’t he make a lot of enemies along the way?” Susan asked.

  “If you’re thinking of people who might have had a reason to want him dead, believe me, we thought of that, too. And unless our information is incorrect, there’s no one. It’s his own money that he lost—or his uncle’s money.”

  “His uncle?”

  “Yes, it was an inheritance. He bought his first restaurant—the successful one—with an inheritance from his mother’s brother. In fact, that inheritance may be the reason he agreed to a divorce. His uncle died right before he called Erika and suggested filing. He probably didn’t want to be forced by a court to share the money with her.”

  “It must have been a lot of money.”

  “A couple of million. He was pretty much able to buy the restaurant outright.”

  “And how much of it is left?”

  “Well, he drove an eleven-year-old Mercedes that is paid for, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else.”

  “He didn’t have any other money?”

  “None. On the other hand, he didn’t owe a lot either—probably because his credit rating was so bad that no one in their right mind would loan him money.”

  “What about Erika?” Susan asked.

  “I’ve been wondering about that myself. She never told me that she had loaned or given him money—but I never asked either. What made you think of that?”

  “Well, she was worth so much money and he had so little—it just made sense. Except that you think she hated him—” Susan snapped her mouth shut. The expression on Brett’s face told her that she had said too much. “How did they happen to end up living in the same town?” she asked quickly.

  “It could have been an accident,” Brett said. “I mean, he might not have known that she was living here when he moved in. His restaurants in the city failed one after the other and he moved up to Westchester and bought a little inn up there, and, typically, that one didn’t do very well and he sold it for less than he had bought it for, and then he opened a restaurant in Westport.” Brett shrugged. “He was working in the suburbs and living in the city. Many people eventually move out under those circumstances. Besides, he probably needed the money that he got from selling his co-op. He got less for that than he had paid, too. But this had more to do with the market in the nineties than any lack of business sense.”

  “Did he own a home here?” Susan asked.

  “He rented a very nice Tudor near the municipal center. That is, it looks nice from the outside. Inside it’s a mess. Beige furniture rented from a company in Stamford, a huge entertainment system, and not much else. He was not, apparently, a man whose home was his castle.”

  “What a depressing story,” Susan muttered, looking around the carriage house and thinking how differently Ivan’s life had turned out from his wife’s.

  “Apparently he wouldn’t have agreed with you. According to everyone who knew Ivan Deakin, he always believed that he was going to make it big with the next restaurant. He was even teaching a community-college course on how to run a successful restaurant. Seriously! You’d think that he’d just stand up in front of the room on the first day of class and say, ‘Do as I say not as I do.’ ”

  Susan wondered if she should explain how Ivan had come to be considered an expert in a field in which he had apparently failed. She suspected that Theresa Martel would prefer Brett not to know, but he was being so open with her and he had asked her to come here. She made up her mind and began her explanation.

  “Yes, we know about that,” Brett interrupted her. “Just another woman who found Ivan Deakin irresistible and would do anything for him. It seems to be a common theme in his life. His restaurants would have failed much more quickly if women hadn’t helped out by sending him business or finding friends who gave him free publicity. One woman rented the restaurant in White Plains for her daughter’s wedding, but on the day of the event, Ivan’s suppliers refused him more credit and there would have been no foo
d if a deli nearby hadn’t agreed to send over three dozen foot-long hoagies. They didn’t exactly go with the vintage champagne and out-of-season lilacs that had been flown in from Central America for the reception. And amazingly enough, when the mother of the bride was interviewed by one of my men, she had nothing bad to say about Ivan—of course, she was saving her venom for her son-in-law, soon to become her ex-son-in-law. He had arranged the reception.”

  “What about her husband?” Susan asked, thinking that this was another area to investigate.

  “Ex-husband. There’s no evidence that Ivan got involved with married women.”

  “But Theresa—”

  “She may have had a crush on him, but she didn’t say anything about an affair, did she?”

  “No, in fact, the story was quite tame. More like a schoolgirl crush than anything else.”

  “That’s the impression the officer I sent to the college got from whomever he spoke to there,” Brett admitted.

  “I wonder if any other candidates’ wives could have been involved with him.”

  “We checked that out, too,” Brett admitted. “And found nothing.”

  “I suppose an unsuccessful businessman is not the type of person to appeal to Cassandra Chadwick,” Susan mused.

  “Do you have any reason to suspect her?” Brett asked quickly.

  “She’s such a bitch,” Susan muttered. “You wouldn’t believe what she did to Jed.”

  “What?”

  “She told that young reporter—Tom What’s-his-name—”

  “Davidson. What did she tell him?”

  “That Jed invested in this thing called the Malloy Fund and that this fund would make lots of money if Anthony Martel wins—oh, shit. What time is it?” She jumped up off the bed. “I have to write a response to the story that’s going to be on television tonight.”

  “Really? Network or local New York news?”

  “Actually the cable channel. The Hancock news on Channel 46.”

  “Susan, no one watches that channel.”

  “Someone must. And every vote counts!” It had better. Otherwise she had wasted the last month making calls, writing notes, and being exceptionally nice to the most boring people in Hancock. “I really have to go,” she insisted.

  “Susan.”

  She stopped, unable to ignore the sadness in her friend’s voice. “What, Brett?”

  “She didn’t kill him. I love her. Erika didn’t kill Ivan Deakin.”

  “Then I guess we’d better get busy and find the real murderer,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But first …”

  “Go defend your husband,” Brett said, almost smiling. “And if you think of anything …” He looked around the bedroom as though expecting to see something they had missed that would answer all their questions.

  “If I think of anything, I’ll give you a call right away,” she promised. Like him, she glanced around the room one last time before leaving. Something was missing here; she just didn’t know what. She frowned.

  “Worrying about what to say on TV?” Brett asked, getting up.

  “It’s not easy,” Susan began.

  “Just remember Nixon and the Checkers speech. Don’t worry about answering the question—and let everyone know how humble your family is.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Susan agreed, heading down the stairway. “Especially since I don’t actually understand how some apartments in Westport became the Malloy Fund in Hancock.”

  “Maybe you could mention Clue,” Brett called down the stairs.

  “And my cloth coat,” Susan muttered, appreciating how nice he was to even think about her problems when he was so worried about Erika.

  The phone rang as she reached the first floor and she paused to listen as the answering machine picked up.

  “Erika, this is Theresa Martel. We need to talk about Ivan Deakin’s murder. Something strange has happened and I think you might be able to help me with it. I just don’t understand …”

  Susan stood still as the message continued with the Martel phone number. Before she hung up, Theresa said, “It’s important, very, very important.”

  “Did you hear that?” she called up to Brett.

  “Sure did. I’ll give her a call. Not that I think she’ll confess to anything.”

  “But why is she so upset?” Susan muttered, leaving the house and heading out to her car. A glance at her watch told her she had just enough time to walk Clue, give Kathleen a call, leave a note for her son on the kitchen table about his choices for dinner, eat something herself, and write that damn speech before she was due down at the station.

  But she hadn’t reckoned with the time it would take to answer all the messages on her answering machine that the callers had deemed important. After almost an hour of sitting by the phone, she was wishing she could ask people if their message was important to her or her family or to them before returning their calls. The most innocuous of the calls were jokes about Jed and dog walking. The most irritating concerned the Landmark Commission and the election. Susan, remembering that a vote was a vote, dutifully listened to those callers, trying to write her response to Tom’s story in between “uh-huhs.” Around five o’clock, she realized that while there might be a makeup artist at the station, she was going to have to do her own hair. She spent an hour in the bathroom, washing, setting, and blow-drying, and was almost completely satisfied with her appearance when she came back downstairs.

  Clue was waiting by the front door. “Okay, sweetie, we’ll take a quick walk before I leave.” Mindful of Jed’s political problems, she tossed a large garment bag of blouses she was taking along to the station over a chair, grabbed a handful of plastic bags, stuffed them in her pockets, and led the dog out the door.

  She would have looked better when she arrived back home if it hadn’t begun to rain during her trip around the block. She pulled her damp hair into an unflattering bun and drove to the station, remembering Brett’s assurance that no one watched the cable channel.

  TWENTY

  Unfortunately, lots of people were going to see her photograph on the front page of tomorrow’s Hancock Herald, Susan thought as another flashbulb went off in her face.

  “Mrs. Henshaw, we understand that Tony Martel is thinking of forcing your husband off his ticket.”

  “Does the Malloy Fund have anything to do with the murder of Ivan Deakin?”

  She could only hear pieces of the questions that were tossed at her as she walked into the building. Who were these people?

  She asked the question of Tom Davidson immediately after stepping into the building.

  “Don’t you recognize them? That’s the press,” he explained, a grin on his face.

  “And what are they doing here asking me questions? Don’t they have better things to do? Don’t they know we’re about to elect a president in just a few days?” Susan asked, pulling her barrette from her hair. A glance at her reflection in the glass door to the station had convinced her that it would look better loose.

  “Conflicts of interest are always news in an election year. Besides, those are third-string reporters. If anything else happens tonight, their stories will end up in the dump.”

  “Their photographs, too, I hope. Where are we going?” she asked, surprised as he jumped up from the desk he had been leaning against and started from the room.

  “Makeup.”

  “Good! Maybe she can do something—what is this?” Susan asked as he opened what appeared to be a storage closet and flicked on a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.

  “Makeup,” he repeated, reaching out and picking up a battered tin box.

  “You do the makeup?” Susan asked, realizing what was happening.

  “Sure. What did you think?”

  “I had sort of envisioned a woman in a pink coverall sitting before a mirrored wall.”

  “Look, I run my own camera. I edit my own tape. The station car is a Rent-A-Wreck reject. And you thought there would be a luxurious makeup roo
m.…” He began to chuckle. “What did you think this was? The Today show?” He picked up a tube of pinkish greasepaint. “Do you want to do your own or do you want me to give it a try?”

  “I can put on my own makeup,” Susan assured him quickly.

  “Well, add a lot of blush. We don’t want you to look washed-out … or worried.”

  “I have nothing at all to be worried about,” Susan assured him. “I called Jed at work and he explained everything. He had no idea that the Malloy Fund even owned property in Hancock. He doesn’t pay much attention to that type of thing. He just knew that they were making money, so he figured—what’s wrong?” Susan asked, noticing that Tom had dropped the makeup and was furiously taking notes. “What did I say? What’s so interesting?”

  “Look, you’re a very nice lady. And I understand that you’re pretty smart when it comes to solving murders, but you know nothing about running for political office. What do you think the voters would think about what you just told me?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Who would elect a man to public office who doesn’t even understand his own financial affairs? He’s either too rich to bother, too ignorant to understand, too lazy to—”

  “Jed’s not any of those things!” Susan protested, making one cheek twice as red as the other.

  “I didn’t say he was. I said it could be interpreted like that.”

  “By the other political candidates at the debate tonight,” Susan said, realizing what he was saying.

  “Exactly.”

  Susan frowned. “Shit. What am I going to say tonight?”

  “I don’t know, but you have about six minutes to figure it out. Think of that speech Nixon made when Eisenhower wanted to dump him from the ticket. I don’t remember much of it, but it worked for him. We saw a tape of it in one of my—”

  “American history classes,” Susan ended for him.

  “Yup,” Tom said cheerfully. “I have to get to the studio. See you there.”