A Killing Gift (19 page)

W
hen April hung up with Jason, the sun was out and the city was heating up. It had gone from rain to shine without her noticing, and she felt she'd missed something, missed a lot.

"What's going on, boss?" Woody Baum was heading uptown in the unmarked unit, away from the mob scene at the crazed Sixth Precinct. He was driving with one hand, playing tag with civilian cars, running red lights, all his usual antics to keep things interesting.

Woody had been in a rough-and-tumble anticrime unit for three years, driving around with a bunch of tough guys on the third tour in the earliest hours of the morning, looking for bottom feeders to lock up before they got impatient and shot someone. There had been a lot of shootings among the dealers back when Guiliani was cleaning up the city block by block. Since then Woody had hung up his spurs, cleaned up, and cut his hair real short. He was a good-looking, almost preppy kind of guy now, trying to be a nice, quiet detective. It wasn't so easy for him. His life on the streets had made him somewhat unpredictable. April thought of him kind of like Dim Sum-a bad dog with some training that didn't always stick. The poodle squatted in the kitchen when she was thwarted. And Woody kept testing his limits, too.

Right now April was too preoccupied to chastise him or answer his question. Jason's call had caught her off guard. Cops rarely made friends with people whose lives they'd saved. They didn't like to be reminded of their traumas. But Emma and Jason had been different. They trusted April, had even named their daughter after her. It always made April laugh to think that a little blond angel was carrying her name. But she was proud of the child and secretly wanted to return the favor. A dark-haired Emma, or maybe a Jason. Why not?

She'd consulted Jason on many cases. In return, Jason seemed to feel that April and Mike were his own private police force he could call on whenever something was off in his world, which was too often for comfort. He treated many different kinds of people and was no stranger to the dark side of human nature. Woody finally got her attention when he ran a light on Forty-second Street while a bunch of car horns blared in protest.

"Hey, slow down, Woody!" April closed her eyes as a bus hurtled toward them.

"No problem." Woody chuckled as they made it across the street unharmed.

April turned her attention to her cell phone and called Mike. "Yo. Sorry to bother you," she said when he answered.

"What's up?" He sounded stressed.

"Jason Frank knew Birdie Bassett's husband. He was a donor at the institute. The funny thing is, Jason was supposed to meet her today."

"Jesus. Okay, thanks for the heads-up," Mike said hurriedly.

"She thought her husband was murdered. She wanted Jason to look into it."

"No kidding." Now he was interested.

"And I got a hold of Brenda and Burton Bassett. Guess where they are?"

"Their father and Birdie's apartment."

"Yes, in one. It looks like they'd planned to raid the place before the IRS could get there. Can you get up here?"

"Give me an hour. I'll try."

"Right." She hung up as Woody plowed up the Park Avenue ramp to circle the Hyatt Hotel and Grand Central Station. Her cell rang again before they got to the top. "Sergeant Woo."

"It's Kathy. What about that second homicide in Washington Square last night?" She sounded stressed, too.

"Oh, you heard," April said a little guiltily.

"Of course I heard, but not from you. Why didn't you call me last night? You promised." Kathy was peeved.

"Sorry. I tried you yesterday afternoon." But then April's plate got full, and she forgot.

"Who's the vic?" Kathy asked.

"She's the widow of a richie, a big philanthropist. You can look him up. Max Bassett. Two Sams, two Toms. Birdie was attending a dinner at York U. Seems she was an alum there. A donor." April paused at Kathy's sharp inhalation of breath.

"York U?" Kathy said.

"Yeah, does that mean something to you?"

"Well, yeah. Dad went there," Kathy said slowly.

Bingo, a third connection. "Your father attended York University?" April said excitedly.

"Yes, ma'am, he got his BS there. He went at night when I was little. I think he got most of the credits he needed for a master's degree, too. I don't know why he didn't finish." She paused for breath. "York U. Humph."

"That's good, Kathy. Thanks." April was elated and wondered why it hadn't come out before.

"April, do you still think my brother is involved in Dad's murder?" Kathy's voice was cool.

"Kathy, I'm going to be honest with you. Bill wasn't forthcoming about a number of things. Right off the bat he made himself suspicious. He left the party early. It seemed odd, you know. Other things, too. I don't want to go into it. But we have to eliminate the family first in every case; you know that. And he's looking clean now."

"I know," Kathy said softly, but her voice was still icy.

April let it pass for the moment. "Look, we gave Bill every opportunity to help us out. He came downtown a few times. He invited a search of his house, and some detectives went over it and his car pretty carefully. I'm sure you know he was present at the time of the search. This was on the advice of his lawyer; you know what I'm saying?"

"I know what you're saying. I don't know anything about a search. When did you do it?"

"Tuesday."

"What did they find?" Kathy asked.

"Look, your brother is a prosecutor. He knows as well as you and I do how to hide an elephant."

"Are you saying you didn't find anything?" Kathy was still on the search.

"You know I can't answer that. All I can tell you is that Bill knows how to handle himself. And his team is on his side."

Suddenly April felt very tired. She couldn't talk about Tiger Liniment or missing millions or anything else with Kathy. For a second she let her thoughts wander to last night, when she'd taken her turn at examining Birdie Bassett's body. The staggering thing about this murder was that the killer had choked his victim-there were bruises on her neck-but that wasn't the cause of death, and he hadn't yoked her as he had Bernie. It was clear to her what he'd done because she knew the move. He killed Birdie with a karate technique few black belts had the deadly strength to execute. One punch, one kill. This time he signed a clear signature. Now she was sorry she hadn't asked Gloss whether Bernardino's killer was left-handed or right-handed. As soon as they knew that, they'd know if there was one killer on the loose, or two.

She shook her head. One punch, one kill. The move everyone practiced, and that looked so great on TV, came with the caveat of "Don't try this," along with a bunch of other moves it was stupid to attempt when a mugger held a knife to your throat or a gun to your head. The truth was, karate only worked to give a potential victim a second or two. Ninety-nine out of a hundred amateurs could not gain enough time to get away from an opponent with a gun or a knife.

Dr. Gloss had sniffed the body for the odor of Tiger Liniment, but Birdie Bassett's body had smelled only of its own waste that she'd excreted at the moment she'd died. And she'd smelled faintly of perfume, blood oranges and roses.

Kathy made an impatient noise, and April changed the subject. "Can you add anything to what we know about Harry?"

"Forget Harry. I want to know what's the link between the two victims?" Kathy returned to the question that prompted her call. She wanted her brother well off the hook. That was all she cared about right now.

"Both victims had a spouse die recently. They'd both inherited big money." April's voice cracked on the words
big money
because she didn't want this bit of news to surface in the media. "Keep this to yourself, Kathy. Let's not make it a circus, okay?"

Then April shivered with excitement. No one in the investigation had copped to the fact that both victims had money and both were alums of York University. Marcus didn't know it, and Mike didn't know it. Only she and Kathy knew it. April loved having an edge, even if she'd keep it for only about ten seconds. There was nothing overtly competitive about her.

"Tell me about Harry." April was back on Harry, relishing the few moments of relative peace in the car with her maniac driver before she'd have to move into the murk of the new victim.

Kathy clicked her tongue. "Bill told me about the racehorse. That's a crock, you know."

"You mean, your dad wouldn't give Harry a few hundred grand to buy a horse?"

"Not a few hundred anything!" Kathy exploded.

"Even in special circumstances?"

"No!"

"What about Bill-would he give money to Harry?"

"Are you nuts?" The suggestion made Kathy ballistic.

April paused to give her another moment to speculate.
Come on, Kathy, don't make me hurt you,
she thought.

"Look, I've been thinking about it a lot," Kathy admitted finally.

"Uh-huh." April was sure she had.

"I don't know. The truth is, Dad had been acting a little off before he died."

"How off?"

"I told you this before. Obviously he was secretive. You know Mom was into the lottery, but I didn't know how it works. Call me crazy. I didn't know it came in so fast, and I didn't know what he did with it. I know he was depressed about his future. He kept talking about living in a hotel, sitting on a park bench. Crazy stuff. I didn't know he was looking for a house in Florida. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know."

"Do you think he was feeling guilty?"

"For surviving Mom? I'm sure. He thought he'd neglected her."

"What about that
and
distributing money to Bill and Harry? Maybe guilt for excluding you was what you heard in his voice."

"Jesus, April. Don't go there. I knew Dad. He was my buddy. Why would he do that to me?" But Kathy wasn't sure now. April could hear it in her voice.

"Maybe your dad had a plan for you, too," she said. "Maybe the check was supposed to be in the mail and just didn't get to you."

"He would have told me," she said quietly. "He was a careful man. I'm sure he would have told me."

April had planned to save this for a time when the two of them were sitting face-to-face, but she went ahead because she didn't know when that time would be. "He didn't tell you everything, Kathy. He had your mother cremated."

"Oh, Jesus. That's a crock, too. Where did you hear that?"

"We know he did," April said softly. She didn't have to offer proof. It was in the computer if Kathy cared to look.

"Oh, sure, and where are the ashes? She had a funeral. I saw her buried. She didn't have an open casket because of how bad she'd looked. But I did see her buried."

"I know you did. What did you see her buried in?"

"A casket, of course. Where are you going with this?" Kathy was furious, but she sounded nervous, too.

"Okay, good. She was buried in a coffin. Maybe our information is wrong. Look, Kathy, I'm sorry about all this. We'll straighten it out, okay?" Lorna was buried in a coffin? April shivered. Something wasn't right; she could feel it.

"Where are you
going
with this, April? I need to know what you're doing," Kathy demanded.

"I'm doing whatever I have to, Kathy. Your father was a friend of mine." April was puzzled. What picture was she seeing?

"Fuck you. It doesn't sound like it," Kathy muttered before she hung up.

A
pril's stomach knotted up as they continued north on Park Avenue. She felt bad about Kathy. Something was way off between her and her dad, also between her and her brother. It appeared that Kathy had been out of the loop as far as the family finances were concerned, and she sounded concerned about the murder rap threatening her brother. But April knew her distress went a lot deeper than that. Now she had to worry about her mother's ashes. What was that all about? April was getting a creepy idea, but she pushed it away as traffic slowed them down in Midtown.

By the time they got to Fiftieth Street, she'd stopped brooding about the Bernardinos. Ten minutes later, when she and Woody got to the tenth-floor Bassett apartment, she had other things to be concerned about. For one thing no uniform was there to secure the victim's home. Here was another unsettling parallel with the Bernardino case. The heirs had gotten here first.

"Okay, okay. I heard you. Come in if you're coming in." Brenda Bassett opened the door for the two detectives, then quickly turned her back on them.

April stepped inside and was stopped dead by the magnificence of a rose-colored marble floor in a gallery hung with oil paintings of horses and dogs in various hunt modes and dead animals in small still-lifes. Also portraits of richly dressed people picnicking on flawless lawns in front of grand houses. A huge chandelier lit the hall. Under the chandelier was an ornate table inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and brass. Under that was a thick Oriental carpet in bright blues and reds. Way over the top, it was just the sort of place to which a cop from a string-decorated house in Queens could really relate. It was the kind of display that only big money could swing.

Brenda Bassett walked around the center table to a mahogany door on the other side. She was a tall woman, probably close to six feet in high heels, and thinner than a healthy person should be. Ms. Bassett had no bosom and no fanny, and it struck April as perverse that someone with so much money wouldn't eat. To the Chinese, food was pretty much everything. Most memories of luxury and excess were of eating, never of going hungry.

April blew her breath out as Brenda led the way through a door into a dark wood-paneled library where the walls were lined with a collection of books that looked as old as the paintings in the hall. Ms. Bassett turned and seated herself in one of several leather wing chairs, and April got to see her face. Her features were all angles. She had a long, straight nose, slab-sided cheekbones, a sharp chin, and razor-blade lips-the kind that couldn't be improved with lipstick. Her hair was black and blunt-cut.

The man, who stood near the desk, was five-eight, and had a heavy build, no chin, little hair, and moist pink lips set in soft round cheeks. April didn't have to examine him closely to catch the dazed look of an all-night drinker who'd been forced out into the daylight way too early. Boyfriend, brother, lawyer? A messy pile of papers and other small items on the desk indicated that a search had been in process. The man put some space between himself and the desk and sat gingerly in another wing chair.

"I'm Sergeant April Woo. And this is Detective Baum," April said. Woody took his at-ease position by the door, and she waited for a cue to sit. It didn't come.

"Well, this is my brother, Burton Bassett, I'm Brenda Bassett. What do you want?" the woman asked bluntly.

Burton put a hand to his head. "Gently, sister," he said in a pained tone.

Not a lawyer. Brother and sister. April quickly formed the impression that the genders of the Bassett siblings had been reversed. Brenda was the strong and pushy yang; Burton was the passive, yielding yin. Neither appeared to be in mourning for their father or stepmother. Suddenly new links between the Bernardino and Bassett murders occurred to April. Both victims' names began with B, both spouses of the victims had the money and had died first of natural causes. Both had two adult children, a boy and a girl. What else?

What, boss?
Woody's body language told her he was trying to read her orders. "Do you need something to drink, Sergeant?" he asked out loud. Their code for,
Do you want to separate them?

"Thank you, Detective. In a minute," April replied.

Neither Bassett offered her any water.

"I was at home last night," Brenda said, "if that's what you want to know." She smirked.

"I was out with friends, till… quite late." Burton actually yawned.

Brenda glared at him suddenly. "Birdie was a nice woman. She didn't deserve to die like that." Her mouth shut like a clamshell, then opened again. "Do we need a lawyer? You're not reading us our rights, are you?"

April smiled. People always jumped to conclusions. "We just need some background about your stepmother."

"Well, I don't know how much we can help you. We weren't close."

"When was the last time you saw Mrs. Bassett?"

"Dad's funeral. She was pretty out of it." This came from Burton, who looked pretty out of it himself.

"That would be when?"

"A month ago, something like that."

April frowned. Lorna died a month before Bernie was killed. What did the length of time between the natural death and the murder tell them about the perpetrator? "What day?"

"I don't remember." Brenda turned to her brother. "What day did Daddy die? I'm so upset with this-"

Burton shrugged. "Thursday? No, I was playing golf Thursday. It had to be Friday."

"Yes, it was Friday. But I can't remember the date." Brenda Bassett's mouth made an astonished O. "I've lost track of time."

"We'll need the time frames," April told her, as if they wouldn't know pretty much everything about them by dinnertime. Hagedorn would hack into their lives until nothing was secret.

"For God's sake, why?" Brenda made some noise with her breathing.

"How was she doing with your father's death?" April didn't bother to answer the question.

"I have no idea," Brenda said indignantly. "It's not like I knew her. I didn't
know
her. I mean, I'd seen her a couple of times a year. At family events. Thanksgiving, things like that.." Her voice was strong and angry. Maybe she hadn't liked being excluded.

"Did you speak to her after the funeral?" April asked.

"About what?" Brenda made a face, then lifted a shoulder.

"Your father's will, arrangements for…" April let her hand reference the rifled desk, the contents of the apartment.

"No, is the correct answer," Burton told her. "We did not speak to Birdie. She didn't speak to us. We don't know who her little friends and associates might be. We never knew what she did from day to day. We don't know why she would go to a dinner at York U. None of
us
went there; we didn't support the place."

"How do you know it was a York dinner?" April asked.

This time Burton made the O with his mouth.

"Someone called us," Brenda said quietly. "Someone from there, a dean or someone."

"That's how you heard?" April took out her notebook and began to write.

"Of course that's how we heard." Brenda frowned at her brother.

"How did they know to call you?" April asked.

Brenda blinked. "I have no idea. It wasn't me. Burton got the call, didn't you, Burr?"

"Well, I didn't
speak
to anyone. Someone left a message. I was out at the time. I didn't get in until late."

"What difference does it make?" Brenda said impatiently. "You called me in the middle of the night. After that I didn't sleep a wink." She sniffed over the lost sleep.

"Did you save the message?"

"No, why should I?" Burton said.

"What did you do then?" April asked.

Silence. The siblings locked eyes.

"You know, I think I would like that water," April said, but no one made a move to get it for her. "Detective, would you like some water?"

"Thanks, water would be great." Woody was enthusiastic. Now he'd get a chance to question Burton alone.

"Miss Bassett, would you show me the kitchen?"

Brenda remained motionless in her chair. Even when April reached the door, she still resisted getting up.

"It's not like I live here," she protested finally. "I haven't lived here since I was thirteen."

"You still know where the kitchen is," her brother pointed out.

Brenda pulled herself out of the wing chair. "Follow me," she said coldly.

She led the way into the gallery with all the paintings, then through a doorway to an inside dining room that wasn't very cozy. All it had in it was an old table and some wooden chairs. When she turned around, the fluorescent light from the ceiling fixture made her look old. "The servants' dining room," she said.

"Does someone live in?" April wouldn't mind knowing what had been taken out of here since last night.

"Not anymore."

"How about daily help?"

"I wouldn't know Birdie's arrangements." Brenda moved through a doorway into a kitchen April's chef father would appreciate. It wasn't one of those new overdone ones.

This kitchen was all utility and about the size of April and Mike's one-bedroom apartment. Half of it was equipped with a huge old restaurant stove, miles of stainless-steel countertops, and high glass-doored cabinets full of crystal glasses and delicate china. The main area boasted two refrigerators, two sinks, and two dishwashers. Another section had more miles of counters, with heat lamps set into the cabinets above and a third sink and dishwasher.

"Butler's pantry." Brenda waved her hand toward the area with the heat lamps near the dining room. An open silver closet revealed felt-lined shelves, heavily laden with silver casserole dishes and plates and serving trays and salt and pepper cellars, the gamut. An elaborate coffee and tea set on a silver tray, four large candelabra, and an open chest full of flatware on the counter had already been removed.

On the question of the water, Brenda seemed stymied by the three sinks, as if each one might dispense a different flavor. April pushed open the swinging door and went into the dining room.

This, too, was like a room from a museum. The door swung closed again as April tried to absorb a level of magnificence she'd never seen before. A huge table had sixteen English-looking carved mahogany chairs set around it. A beige-and-gold Oriental carpet matched the gold trim on navy brocade drapes. The drapes were tied back with golden ropes, and the sheers underneath were closed to shield the silk-covered Queen Annes around the table from the sun. But maybe the chairs weren't Queen Anne. Who knew what they were. But April did recognize the Chinese porcelain. Valuable pieces had been removed from the display area on either side of a huge marble fireplace. A large Tang camel, an even larger Tang ram, three stunning export chargers from a much later period, and a bunch of teapots all different ages. April noticed that the marble fireplace was inlaid with brass, or maybe even gold, and above it hung a painting of a rosy-cheeked girl that April knew was a famous one.
Auguste Renoir,
read the brass plaque on the frame. "I thought you wanted water." Brenda pushed the door open and grimaced at the dining table loaded with expensive goodies. "They were my mother's," she said defensively.

"Very nice," April said. "But please don't touch anything else or take anything out until we're finished here."

"Why?"

"Your stepmother was murdered last night. We need to go over the apartment," April told her.

"But the police were already here."

No doubt they were. Soon after the body had been identified, someone would have come to the apartment to notify the next of kin. But there had been no next of kin, and no one had stayed behind to guard the place. If Birdie had died there, the apartment would still be overrun with cops. April couldn't even guess how much the contents of the apartment were worth. But if Birdie Bassett had made a will, then her estate probably owned them. Who owned what, however, wasn't her department.

"Maybe, but there's still a lot to do. I'd like to see her bedroom," April said smoothly. Did she ever, and Birdie Bassett's jewelry box, and her closet and the contents of her medicine cabinet and her cosmetics, and the messages on her answering machine, and pretty much everything else.

Brenda gave her a truly hostile look. "What about that water?" she asked.

"Maybe later," April replied.