Bitter Business (35 page)

“I just thought you might remember something about it,” I said, flipping to the last page where the originator of the document and typist’s initials were noted. “See, Daniel dictated this and you typed it.”

“I typed a lot of things for Mr. Babbage. I never remembered from one day to the next what they were about,” she snapped defensively.

“It doesn’t matter.” I tried to sound casual. “I’ll just ask Jack Cavanaugh next time I see him.” I looked at Madeline sitting rigidly in my visitor’s chair. She looked miserable. “That’s all I wanted to talk to you about,” I continued, obviously dismissing her. Still she made no move to go.

“I think it’s something that Jack Cavanaugh doesn’t want to talk about,” she said finally, every word like pulling teeth.

“If you’ll tell me what it’s about I promise, I won’t mention it,” I coaxed. Still it took her a moment to make up her mind to speak.

“Mr. Babbage never told me the details. I don’t think he ever told anybody. But I know it had something to do with his son. The money in the trust was to compensate someone who’d been hurt because of his son.”

“Which son?” I asked.

“Jimmy. The one who died.”

30

I finally heard from Jack Cavanaugh just as I was leaving to meet Claire and Nora Masterson, the attorney from trusts and estates, for dinner.

“I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands,” he bellowed over the phone. I wondered what that meant. “Without Daniel, I’ve let myself be talked into all sorts of pussyfooting nonsense. By God, I didn’t get where I am today by listening to a bunch of lawyers—and I didn’t get here by asking nicely or asking for favors from my own goddamn children!”

“So what have you decided to do?” I inquired, bracing myself for the answer.

“I put them on the plane down to Tall Pines, that’s what. Just the three of them; no wives, no husbands, no outside influences. They’re all staying in my house—in the same rooms they had when they were kids. I’ve had Tom change the locks on their houses. I don’t want them hiding from each other.”

“Do you really think that locking them out of their own houses is a good idea?” I ventured.

“They’re my goddamn houses!” roared Jack. I wondered how many bourbons he’d put away before coming up with this harebrained idea. “I own the land, I own the buildings, and every stick of furniture was bought and paid for by my money. It’s all my money, and from now on it’s all my way. What’s more, they’re not leaving until they’ve figured out a way to get along together. Period.”

“Jack, they’re adults,” I reasoned. “I don’t know whether treating them like little children is going to help.”

“If they act like little children, then that’s how they’re going to be treated. They
are
children,
my
children. And you’re my lawyer, so from now on stick to writing letters and checking contracts and leave my children to me!”

I had only been to the Hard Rock once before and I hated it. Stephen and I had taken a group of Japanese lipid chemists there when it first opened. All I remembered was loud music, indifferent service, and mediocre food. The appeal of a restaurant with a thirty-foot neon sign in the shape of an electric guitar out front, rock memorabilia hanging from the ceiling, and a souvenir stand by the front door eluded me completely.

But one look at Claire’s face as she and Nora bent over their menus and I knew that they’d hit it off. By the time I sat down, they were already tasting each other’s milkshakes and had agreed to share an order of onion rings.

Claire was looking better. The color had come back to her face, and when she spoke some of her usual animation had returned. I couldn’t help but admire her resilience.

“How are things at your aunt and uncle’s house?” I asked. “Are you settling in?”

“I guess. It’s hard being so close to my old house. I try not to look at it, but it’s sort of impossible since it’s on the same street and all. Still, it helps that I can be with Mary Beth all the time and I like having all the little kids around. It’s hard to be depressed with so much going on. All the church stuff takes some getting used to, though. Did you know that Aunt Vy and Uncle Eugene kneel down and say the entire rosary every night before they go to bed?”

“I heard your uncle Eugene’s down in Georgia,” I said.

“That’s right. Aunt Vy says that Grandpa’s laid down some sort of ultimatum. The whole thing’s made Vy really unhappy and I’m not sure it’s such a good idea either. Uncle Eugene’s been so strange since Mom died—angry and withdrawn. You heard that he sort of went crazy when my uncle Jimmy died. I think Vy’s worried having him down in Georgia. She doesn’t come out and say so, but I think she’s afraid he’ll crack up without her.”

“I’m afraid they’ll all crack up,” I said, with more honesty than tact.

“No they won’t, they’ll just tear each other’s hair out! You should have heard the fight they had the night of Mom’s party. Mary Beth and I were over at Peter’s house watching a movie and the yelling was so loud we couldn’t hear the TV.”

“What were they fighting about?” Nora inquired.

“According to what Mom told me afterward, it all started over a piece of jewelry that used to belong to my grandma. I guess Grandpa gave it to Peaches as a present and Aunt Lydia was really mad about it.”

“That’s not that unusual,” Nora counseled. “Families fight all the time about who gets what. The thing to remember is that the jewelry, or the house, or whatever it is they’re arguing over, is not what the fight’s really about. Those arguments are always really about love and different people’s place in the family.”

“Well, by the time they got back to Peter’s house, they were fighting about a lot more than that,” continued Claire. “I never realized how much Aunt Lydia hates Grandpa—I mean
really
hates him. She was screaming that he didn’t really love any of them, that he just wanted to control them—stuff like that. Lydia just went on and on, with Uncle Philip trying to calm her down. In a way it was neat to listen to, because Aunt Lydia dragged out all the dirty laundry and the three of us heard about a bunch of stuff the grown-ups never told us about—like that Grandma’s sisters wanted to take Philip and Mom and the rest of Grandpa’s kids away from him after Grandma died and all the stuff about how Uncle Jimmy really died.”

“What about your uncle Jimmy?” I asked, thinking about the old documents that Madeline had unearthed from Daniel’s personal files.

“I don’t know. By that time they’d stopped shouting and it got kind of hard to hear, but it sounded like Lydia was accusing Philip of knowing something that he wouldn’t tell—you know, some big secret that he was keeping for Grandpa.”

Back at the office I pulled out the copy of the trust agreement that had been among the documents that Daniel had kept about the Cavanaughs. I read it through carefully. It was a straightforward document that set up a trust to pay for the care and maintenance of one Zebediah Hooker until the time of his death. Nowhere was there any mention of who Mr. Hooker might be, what he was being paid for, or where he might be found. From the notary’s seal I learned that it had been signed and witnessed in Thomas County, Georgia—a fact I didn’t find particularly enlightening.

I still had it in my hand when Elliott Abelman appeared in my doorway. “I brought you a present,” he said. He set a small box wrapped in gold paper on the desk in front of me. “Pretty flowers,” he said, bending to smell the roses on my desk. “I guess they’re from him.”

I didn’t say anything. Instead I went to work unwrapping the box. Inside, I found a small bottle of perfume in a red velvet box lined with white satin like a small coffin. The stopper of the bottle was made of frosted glass and shaped like a perfect rosebud. The name of the perfume was Forever.

“Can I smell it,” I asked Elliott, “or will it kill me?”

“There’s no poison in this one.”

“But am I correct in assuming that this was the kind?” I asked, pulling the stopper from the bottle and giving it a sniff. Normally, I think it must have been a heavenly perfume, but for me there were too many associations. I remembered the scent distinctly and for me it would forever be linked with death.

“This is the one.”

Self-consciously I put my finger over the top of the bottle and turned it over to get some on my finger. I dabbed some quickly behind my ears—the same innocent gesture that had killed Cecilia Dobson and Dagny Cavanaugh.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked lightly. “You’ve never come bearing gifts before.”

“Jack Cavanaugh just called me up and fired me,”

Elliott replied, Stretching his legs out in front of him. “Under the circumstances, I thought I should do something to mark the occasion.”

31

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “Why on earth would Jack Cavanaugh fire you?”

“He told me the police were about to make an arrest and my services were no longer needed.”

“Are they? The cops, I mean.”

“I talked to Joe this afternoon. He didn’t mention any big breakthrough.”

“So what’s Jack Cavanaugh talking about?”

“I think he assumes that because Joe has his boys following up the Leon Walczak thing pretty hard that Leon’s the bad guy. But let’s get serious. You’ve seen the guy. Do you honestly think he could walk up to the perfume counter at Neiman Marcus or Saks—and believe me this junk’s only sold at the most expensive stores— plunk down two hundred plus dollars for a bottle of perfume, and not have anyone remember him?”

“Maybe Joe’s right. It could have come from anywhere. The duty-free shop at some airport.”

“And what would Leon Walczak be doing in the dutyfree shop?”

“Maybe he stole the stuff.”

“Not the perfume. They keep testers on the counter for the cologne, but the perfume is kept under lock and key. I won’t bore you with all the fascinating information I’ve managed to absorb recently on the subject of perfume, but believe me, they guard the expensive stuff like it was diamonds. Come to think of it, they have a hell of a lot tighter security at the perfume counter than they do for the cyanide at Superior Plating.”

“So if you came up empty on the perfume, what makes Cavanaugh think that the police are about to make an arrest?”

“I wouldn’t say we came up empty. Joe and I went through the interview sheets together on the perfume and we came up with a few things.”

“For example?”

“Well, for one thing, this particular brand of perfume is brand-new. They just started selling it—
launched,
I believe, is the correct cosmetics terminology. It was launched on February first of this year, which means they didn’t sell it in stores before that date. They also sell a ton of the cologne and the toilet water and all the inexpensive parts of the line, but they barely move any of the perfume. This particular brand is only sold in Chicago at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and a store called Barneys that I didn’t even know existed until I went there yesterday. Joe got them to open up their books, which is not that big a deal now that they all have computerized inventory systems. It turns out that among the three of them they only sold twenty-six bottles of the perfume between February first and fourteenth—which is the date the box it was mailed in was postmarked. In addition, more than half of those bottles were sold to people who put their purchases on their store charge account. I’ve got somebody checking them out, but so far they’re all well-dressed women who drive Mercedes. I’ve also been able to check on the people who paid with other kinds of plastic—a lot of them are from out of town, so again we haven’t turned up anybody likely. Not that I’d expect the killer to have actually gone to the store and charged it, but you never know, dumber things have been done in the name of crime.”

“How many bottles were sold for cash?” I demanded, agreeing with Elliott that this would have been by far the likeliest method of payment.

“Six. Three at Neiman Marcus, two at Saks, and one at Barneys.”

“Anybody who sticks in memory?”

“It’s harder than you’d think. For one thing, it’s not that unusual for a guy to come in and drop a chunk of cash on an expensive gift—lots of times guys buy stuff for their girlfriends and they don’t want their wives stumbling over the receipts.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“That’s because you’re not a P.I. Lawyers usually deal with cheating on a bigger scale. P.I.’s get stuck with the petty stuff.”

“So nobody remembers anyone buying the perfume— or at least nobody who would help us.”

“Well, there was one salesclerk we interviewed who was pretty sharp. She didn’t actually make the sale, but she remembers a man who came in asking questions about perfume. He was looking for a gift for a woman who had every kind. He wanted to surprise her with something new. He smelled them all and thanked her for her time but left without making a purchase.”

“So he did his research in one store and did his buying in another. Clever. I assume you showed her Leon’s picture?”

“We showed her everybody’s picture. The only one who she thought it might be was Jack Cavanaugh, but she was a long way from sure.”