A Killing Gift (11 page)

"No, Kathy, I don't get it. None of this is playing for me. Why don't you help me out?"

"Look, just don't patronize me. Mom died. We were dealing with that, okay? The money was a perk we didn't want to mix up with grieving. Like, Mom died, but hooray, we're rich. That may not make any sense to you. But that's how it was with us."

"That's what you thought." But that was exactly how it wasn't. April sipped the chamomile. By now she was wishing for that cookie. For a whole plate of cookies, but she never ate when she questioned. Kathy clammed up.

"Looks like you weren't in the loop. Your dad was cashing in the money big before he died. Four million of it. You said he thought of the money as yours…" She watched Kathy register betrayal.

The doorbell rang again. A look of irritation crossed Kathy's face. She licked her lips. "Where's the money?" she croaked out in a voice almost as fractured as April's.

"That's what I'm asking you."

Kathy shook her head. "I don't get it." But her face said she did.

"So what about Bill? Does he need money?"

"Who doesn't need money?" She rolled her eyes, trying to cover her own growing suspicion.

Good. April had her.

"Is he the kind of guy who'd hold out on his sister?" she asked.

Kathy collapsed inside. April could see her world breaking down. Right then she looked as grubby, unkempt, and highly unfemale as a very attractive person could get. Her body language said it all.

"We weren't close. Dad made us compete when we were kids. Bill was the one who got to law school. He was married, had the kids, got the perks, but he always resented me. You know how it is. Whatever bothers them, they don't get over it, right?"

The doorbell kept ringing. Kathy ignored it. "Yeah, I guess he might cheat me out of millions if he could get away with it, why not? But kill Daddy? Uh-uh."

"Maybe Daddy found out."

Kathy clicked her tongue. "Like you said, April. It isn't playing for me."

"Well, we'll figure it out."

"Is this the reason the Department isn't giving him his funeral? Possible gift-tax evasion? Isn't there, like, a three-million-dollar exemption anyway?" She clicked her tongue again.

"Not my area; I wouldn't know." April's voice was going again, but she believed Kathy's story.

Four detectives plowed through the kitchen on their way downstairs to the basement. It was clear from their faces that they hadn't found what they were looking for.

A
n hour later Mike got into the passenger seat of April's car and slammed the door. Down the street a reporter from a local station had spotted them coming out of the neighbor's yard and started yelling. April could see the girl's open mouth. See her hand raised. She had big red lips and the kind of straight streaky blond hair many Asian girls envied. The reporter was wearing a photogenic outfit, a nice heather-colored jacket and lilac blouse. The pants didn't match perfectly, but it didn't matter because on camera she would never be seen below the waist. April opened the window for some air and heard her plea.

"Officer, give me a second. Just one." The woman was clearly yelling at Mike.

April gunned the engine and took off. "You coming with me,
chico
?
That would be nice."

"Only to the next stop sign," he said.

April slowed and cruised the next block of lovely brick houses with picture windows and pointy roofs. She wouldn't mind living out here, but who wouldn't?

"Okay, stop anywhere along here."

She slowed in front of a house with a good strong slate roof and a lucky red door. Too bad they were there too soon for the show of fat-budded peonies that were thickly bedded in little kidney-shaped plots, like commas, by the front walk. Next couple of weeks, in mid-June, they'd be out.
Nice house,
she thought.

She sighed. Six o'clock was always an in-between time. Not really day anymore, but not yet evening either. Today at six again it was still bright as morning. On her second day in Westchester she could feel the tug of the suburbs, where the backyards were large enough for whole suites of lawn furniture. Where attics and basements were big enough to hold extensive junk collections. And where every house had a garage to hide the car away. The Woo house didn't have a garage. Mike's building had only a covered area. April kept saying she'd buy a new car when she could afford a home for it.
Ha.

She let the engine idle for a moment, then turned it off. The Le Baron was toasty from its long wait in the sun, but she really wanted to bask in the warmth of Mike's nearness. "Miss me?" She was desperate for a hug and didn't want to admit it.

"Why should I? You're always up to some trick." He shook his head. "This is why we can't trust the Chinese."

Uh-oh.
She didn't like when he went global on her. "Oh, come on, you did miss me." She was determined not to bite back.

"You're not trustworthy. Why can't you just rest, take a day off for a change?" he grumbled, hitting all her buttons.

"Look, I don't like to be kept in the dark. I don't like to be pushed aside."
Not trustworthy. Jesus.
She sulked in the driver's seat, angry at herself for raising the issue. She should have known better than request a time-out for love when he was the primary on a case that was getting stickier by the hour.

"Left me alone, no message, nothing." Out of his window he studied the house she liked. "You didn't return my messages. How do you think I felt?"

"I couldn't talk," she reminded him.

"So now you can talk. Big improvement." He turned to face her, and the bicker transformed itself into a slow, steamy smile.

Mike was never one for holding grudges. He had his priorities straight. His smile moved right on to the hug she needed. A kiss followed, a long kiss, uncomfortable to maneuver in the bucket seats, but a good kiss nonetheless. April didn't want to be the one to break it up.

"Mmmm." Finally he made the motions of disentangling.

She rubbed his neck and discovered muscles that were rock hard with tension. "How late will you be?" Now she felt bad because she hadn't been there for him last night.

"Few more hours. Are you going back to your mom's? You smell funny. What did she do to you?"

"Nothing much. I'm coming home." Eventually.

"Que bueno.
I gotta go." He shifted in the passenger seat, refueled for the moment, but then didn't move to get out.

"I'm sure Kathy didn't know about the money," April said suddenly.

"Oh, yeah?" Mike raised bushy eyebrows as if he found that impossible to believe.

"What can I say? It was a dysfunctional family. Welcome to America." April's voice was breaking down again, but she'd already promised herself that she wouldn't go back to Astoria. She'd have to work on it herself.

"We'll find the paper trail. It won't be difficult," he said.

"Yeah, follow Bill. Where was he yesterday morning, anyway? Remember when he burst in on us all, Mr. Indignation? He didn't go to his office in the morning; I checked while you were tossing the basement."

"Yeah, I know. You're thinking that he came out here and took the files from the house, aren't you?"

April nodded. "And possibly some of the money. Maybe all of it, who knows?"

"You think Bernardino kept that much money in cash right here? We didn't find any signs of it."

"Yeah, but he was smart. I thought I knew him. Now I don't know. Where's his car? Did you check the trunk?"

"Crime Scene has it. And we're getting serial numbers of the bills Bernie had. He got money in thousands. If anyone starts spending, we'll know." Mike lifted his shoulder, answering April's unasked question. "We could get a warrant and search Bill's place."

"Well, sure. But he wouldn't put it in a closet, either. Did you talk to Chief Avise?"

"Twice. He told me to tread softly. He told
you
to stay out of trouble." Mike pointed a finger at her.

April gave him a Chinese blank expression that was full of meaning for anyone who knew how to read it. Mike shook his head.,

"What about the funeral?" she asked.

"Working it." Mike shook his head some more and leaned close to her again. He kissed the side of her mouth and stroked her hair. "Don't get in any trouble between now and nine-thirty, okay? Promise me?" He gave her another look, then kissed her nose.

"Well, don't tell me to back off again. I can help you." April made an effort not to bristle.

"Play nice; be a team player,
querida.
Somebody knocks you off, I'll be the one in trouble."

"No one's going to knock me off. I want to talk to Bill."

"Not alone!" Mike shot back.

"Then come with me."

Moody, she stared out at that nice yard. She wanted to know what Bernardino had been up to. If it was just tax evasion, why would anyone kill him? Tax evasion was a national sport. There had to be something else. If Bill was innocent, she wanted to get him out of the way.

"Tomorrow. We'll talk about it." He brushed her lips one last time, tickling them with his mustache. Then he got out of the car. "Be a good girl," were his last words.

"Well, sure," she said.

But of course she didn't head home right away. How could she go home so early when she had things to do in Manhattan? She took the Saw Mill River Parkway to the Henry Hudson Parkway. At this hour all the traffic was coming out, and traveling was a pleasure. The route she followed brought back memories. As she crossed the toll bridge into Manhattan and drove south along the Hudson River, the old city views of the West Side reminded her of her years in the Two-oh when Mike had been her supervisor, always on the make. All his heavy breathing when they drove around together in the unit had driven her nuts. Why couldn't he just keep his mind on the job? she'd wondered back then.
Men!

She smiled, remembering her irritation.
Shou zhu dai tu
was a Confucian saying: Change is the only constant. It was the primary incentive for a Chinese to hold his tongue. In police lingo the litany went, What goes around comes around. Just wait; things would change and maybe you'd get what you wanted. But lucky for April there were a few things that hadn't changed in her life. Mike's mind still strayed from the job to love whenever he was with her, even when the tight muscles in his neck betrayed the pressure.

Clearly someone high up was nervous about Bernardino. As long as the back story on his lottery money and his murder were a mystery, the Department didn't want to take the chance of giving him a hero's funeral. Politics was another thing that never changed. It was only the influence of the players that waxed and waned.

By seven-thirty p.m. she was driving east on Fourteenth Street, forming questions in her head for Jack Devereaux, the man who'd saved her life. She had not yet made a list of places where tae kwon do was taught, but it was on her to-do list. Mike had been right yesterday when he'd said she had a link with Bernardino's killer. But he didn't know that it was in the moves that almost killed her. The killer was a fan of unarmed combat.

People interested in the martial arts came in several categories. The shadow boxers, tai chi fans, did it to limber up and acquire balance. Some tae kwon do practitioners thought they could use it to protect themselves from muggers on the street. Others learned it as part of their military training and used a variety of fighting techniques: Thai boxing, karate, mix fight, Muay Thai, kata, and a whole bunch of others. All martial arts involved weight, core strength, and balance training along with spiritual elements as an aid to concentration. Many people who started training became obsessed with the fighting discipline of "empty hand" combat. April herself used to be one of them, working at it for hours a day from seven, eight years of age. She had been a girl child and a small one, and needed to even the odds against her. From long experience she knew the moves and the training it took to excel. She knew that those obsessed with mind and body control did a lot more than keep in shape, but no one she knew learned martial arts to kill the way a sniper kills.

She shook her head. She hadn't competed in this arena for a long time. She didn't have to even the odds anymore. She was in love and had mellowed. A person in love didn't need to live and breathe the mantra "one
punch, one kill."

Full of remorse for faltering the one time her life was on the line, April told herself that the reason she'd been caught off guard was that she'd lost her edge. But the truth was that Bernardino's killer had to be a very strong man, an iron man. He had to be one of the obsessed. And he was probably younger, rather than older. Maybe someone around Bill's age. Bill was into karate, but if the killer wasn't Bill himself, maybe it was someone he knew or someone with whom he'd trained. Those guys tended to stick together. They needed someone to show off for. But why would Bill kill his own father for money when there was so much more on the come? It bothered her. The boldness of the hit and the possibility of a buddy thing. Who would be the buddy?

As the car moved through city traffic, April brooded again on the cop and former-cop theme. Even a crazy cop wouldn't thumb his nose at the Department so publicly. Too dangerous. An enemy would have followed him home and killed him on his quiet Westchester street, where a less experienced local law enforcement agency would investigate and never connect the dots. She felt certain that Bernardino hadn't been killed by a cop. But if it had been Bill, he would not have let him get home. She didn't like thinking dirty and switched to other possibilities.

She drove down University Place, thinking about it. University Place was a short street, only six blocks long. Where was the killer training? A search of all the martial-arts schools in the tristate area could take months. She peered out at storefronts, the cop's habit. She didn't remember a tae kwon do studio there, but the words were spread across three large windows on the second floor of an old building. The fourth window said
Tai Chi.
The fifth,
Aerobics.
Clearly the whole floor. Twelfth Street and University. She made a note of it, thinking she'd come back when she had an hour. Maybe she'd get lucky.

Then she concentrated on the geography of the area and found the brownstone where Devereaux lived on a busy block. She parked the car in front of a hydrant, too tired to worry much about getting a ticket. She was losing her steam and felt uneasy so near her old neighborhood and the site where Bernie had died. She decided to visit the spot before returning to Queens.

With this plan in mind, she rang the bell next to the name Devereaux and waited for what felt like a long time before a female voice answered.

"Who's there?"

"It's Sergeant Woo; can I come in for a few minutes?"

"A is in the front," was the reply.

A buzzer sounded, and April pushed the door open. Inside the foyer, the floor was worn stone, but the blue marbled wallpaper and runner on the stairs appeared to be of a more recent vintage. She followed the homey aroma of cooking chicken upstairs to the second floor and rang the bell of the front apartment.

The door opened on a chain.

"Sergeant Woo. I hope I'm not interrupting dinner," April said.

"Can I see your ID?"

April held her gold up to the opening.

"Sorry, we're a little paranoid these days." The girl who opened the door was short, not more than five-one, more cute than classically beautiful. She had chin-length almost-black hair, almond-shaped eyes a little like April's, and a nice apologetic smile.

April followed her into a small living room, where the girl suddenly broke into excited chatter.

"Jack, this is April Woo."

"What?" With a stunned expression, April's rescuer lumbered awkwardly to his feet from his place on a sofa in front of a TV. He was a regular-looking white guy, one of thousands of ordinary young people in the downtown crowd. Just under six feet tall, skinny, sand-colored hair, surprised blue eyes.

"Hi," April said a little uncertainly. "I'm sorry to bother you at dinnertime. I just came by to say thanks."

A chocolate lab with a mouthful of scary-looking teeth closed the space between them to sniff and lick her while its fat tail lashed out at everything within reach. April made a point of patting its huge head only because she thought it would be impolite not to.

"You didn't have to do that." Jack took his time studying her, as if trying to match her with the barefoot girl in a party dress who'd stopped breathing in Washington Square two nights ago.