Dead Heat (32 page)

“Denise gives in, picks up her fork, and we all plunge in with many compliments. The soufflés are marvelous. But Fontenot's is just sitting there, listing to one side—well, it's awkward. And I decide the man ought to come back and eat. Me, the avenging angel. He shouldn't be so rude to his hostess. I didn't realize I had so much of the nursery governess in me.”

Spraggue smiled.

“I excuse myself, saying I want to check on Dora, which isn't exactly a lie. I do go into the ladies' room, but she's gone.”

“Gone?”

“I don't search the stalls. But I call her name and she doesn't answer.”

“Go on.”

“Well I go into the display room. I don't see Fontenot in the banquet hall, but I could have missed him. People are milling about. The display room seems peaceful and I want a moment to think and, well, I want to see the items on display. So I justify it to myself, saying I'm searching for Fontenot.”

“And?”

Mary's voice dropped to a whisper. “I find him”

“Be very specific now, Aunt Mary. Tell me what you see and touch and hear and smell …”

“The room is dark. The lights must have been on a rheostat and they're turned down low. It's eerie, with all those pots and pans hanging overhead. Shadowy. The drapes and the hangings eat up all the noise. The banquet room seems miles away instead of just through the archway. Everything's glittery, copper and brass and aluminum. Maybe I've had a bit much to drink.”

“Go on.”

“I kick something. It frightens me. I'm wearing open-toed sandals and I have visions of rodenty creatures. I look down and there's this small leather bag, like a tobacco pouch. I pick it up and realize it isn't tobacco …”

“Why?”

“You can't open it. It's sewn shut. And the smell. Sweet. Pungent. Like herbs. A strange smell …”

“And then?”

“I look down at the carpet, I imagine to see if there's anything else there. And the skirt of a display table is crooked. All the tables are swathed in that red-and-white-checked French peasant cloth. I think I'll straighten the fabric and I see something … something so wrong my heart just stops, seems really to stop.”

“What do you see?”

“A shoe. One large black shoe. And it's at an angle, sticking up, so it can't be empty.”

“Go on,” Spraggue said gently. “What do you do?”

“I lift a corner of the cloth, tentatively, with my thumb and my forefinger.” Her hands moved but she seemed unaware of it. “I bend down. The light is very bad.”

“And?”

“He's there. I find him.”

“Joseph Fontenot.”

“Yes,” Mary said. “With a knife in his chest.”

THREE

“She confess?”

The paunchy cop gave the question the same emphasis he might have given a request for the time of day. He had kicked the door to the office open, his hands balancing two brown paper sacks and a thermos bottle clutched to his stomach. He didn't seem surprised to find Spraggue seated behind the desk.

“Nah,” the cop said, when Spraggue made an effort to stand. “Sit. It's the only decent place to park your ass in this office. I'll set here on the file cabinet. Lieutenant uses the visitor's chair for torture. Shoulda been a special provision against it in the Miranda rules. Your aunt go home?”

“She filled me in a little, then went back to the hotel.”

“Too bad. Fine-looking woman. I'm Rawlins, by the way. Detective Sergeant Rawlins.”

“Michael Spraggue.”

“Well, since your aunt took off, how about if I feed you instead, and then you tell her what a fine cook I am.”

“What about Dora's bail?”

“Your fancy attorney's attending to it. You didn't answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“She confess?”

“I advised her to tell you exactly what she told me,” Spraggue said.

Rawlins' eyes narrowed, but his voice stayed unconcerned. “You mean about her secret marriage to Fontenot?”

“Was it a secret to you?” Spraggue asked. “Or did you already know?”

Rawlins snorted, busied himself removing things from the paper bags. “You eat lunch?” he asked.

“No.”

When the first bag was empty Rawlins ripped it in half, using the edge of the desk as a paper cutter and spreading the raggedy brown paper across the stained desk blotter. One tablecloth.

“I got about an hour before the lieutenant comes back and I figure to hide out in here and eat my lunch. I always bring plenty and you're welcome to join me.”

“My stomach hasn't figured out what time zone it's in yet. I think I'll pass,” Spraggue said.

Rawlins removed the cracked red plastic top of the thermos jar and unscrewed the inner seal. He took a big spoon out of the other paper bag, and dished half a white paper goldfish container of rice into the thermos cup. The stuff he poured from the thermos into the red plastic top was basically red, dotted with slivers of green pepper and translucent hunks of onion. It had a smell that grabbed the back of the throat.

“If you want some, just holler,” Rawlins said. “It's a gumbo. I make it by the potful and bring it in here. The boys say it melts their teeth, but it's mild to me. It's the cayenne pepper that does that.”

“You make it yourself?”

“That's what I said. I'm a lone wolf now. Your aunt live alone?”

There was more than casual interest in the question. Spraggue thought about the bustle of Mary's Chestnut Hill mansion. Pierce, her butler, the fleet of secretaries, housekeepers, the elderly chauffeur.

“Yeah,” he said. “She lives alone.”

“Widow?”

“In World War Two.”

“Long time ago.”

“She never remarried.”

“You're fond of her?” Rawlins licked the big serving spoon appreciatively before putting it back in the bag.

“She raised me from the time I was fourteen. Fond doesn't even come close.”

“Seems a fine woman. Hate to think her cook'd be mixed up in a thing like this. Now your aunt, Mrs. Hillman, would be a pretty rich woman, having her own cook and calling on that Mr. Jackson, who is one hot-ticket attorney, or so I hear.”

“Mary Spraggue Hillman. Runs the Spraggue Foundation out of Boston.”

“As in Davison Spraggue?”

“Yes,” Spraggue said flatly. His robber-baron great-grandfather had a name to conjure with still, years after his death.

“Oh my, yes.” Rawlins made a face. “And you're … I didn't put it all together. Hell, reckon I'd better quit flirting with her then.”

“Please,” Spraggue said, “forget about the Foundation. Forget about the old tyrant. It's been a while since anybody's flirted with her. I think she'd love it.”

“I don't know. People might take it bad. I don't want folks, least of all you, to get the idea that money buys justice around here.”

On Rawlins' round face was the look of suspicion Spraggue had almost gotten used to seeing when people found out he was one of “those” Spraggues. One of the joys of inherited wealth.

Spraggue said, “Is there anyplace I can buy us some coffee? I'll pay for it, if you won't count it as a bribe.”

The sergeant's lips spread in a slow grin. “You sure couldn't bribe nobody with the coffee here. It ain't worthy of the name. I bring in my own.” He hefted another thermos out of the second sack. “In that first file drawer over there, there's two cups.”

The top drawer of a newer file cabinet was sectioned off by a few hanging files. Instead of papers it held packages, small tins, and tiny bottles. Creole mustard. A quart of Tabasco. Stuff so potent the peppery smell was starting to escape. Two hefty mugs were stored under the letter
c
.

“That's my survival drawer,” Rawlins explained. “Lieutenant rents it to me in exchange for coffee. If'n I have to eat store-bought stuff at my desk at least I can season it up to where I can taste it.”

The coffee was strong, laced with chicory.

“Is this lieutenant in charge of Dora's case?”

“Nope,” the sergeant said. “That's me. We work cases on rotation, and my name came up on the roster.”

Spraggue said, “So which civic-minded citizen told you about Dora marrying this Fontenot guy?”

“Woman named Denise Michel. Local celebrity.”

“She's supposed to be a friend of Miss Levoyer's. Doesn't that strike you as odd behavior for a friend, Sergeant?”

“Nope. Never strikes me that telling the truth to the police is odd behavior.”

“Okay. You can make a case for Dora disliking Fontenot, but—” Spraggue started.

“Look, son, I don't make arrests just on motive. Lots of folks hated Joe Fontenot. Everybody I interviewed said he was one son of a bitch. But I got more than motive here, I got the whole rest of the shebang—means, opportunity, the works.”

“Could you spell it out?”

“The knife belongs to your Miss Levoyer. She don't deny it. And it's got her prints all over it. That's means as far as I'm concerned.”

“Pretty dumb to use such an identifiable weapon.”

“I never did see any study of murderers that put 'em in the same class as Rhodes scholars.”

Spraggue sipped his coffee.

“And she was right there at that dinner party,” Rawlins continued. “Your aunt tell you that? Your Miss Levoyer had opportunity.”

“So did a couple thousand other people.”

“Not so many as you'd think.”

“Hotels are public places.”

“Sure are,” Rawlins agreed. “But the private rooms at the Imperial Orleans can be pretty damn private. You know they had a guard at the door taking invitations and ticking off the names on a list?”

“But there might have been people who came in through another door.”

“No other door to come in through. The two rooms, the ballroom where the dinner was and the second room where the display was, do have separate entrances, so they can be used by two groups, say. But for that night the door from the hallway to the display room was locked. The only entrance was through the main ballroom door, and there was someone on that door all night. The killer was on the invitation list.”

“What about the waiters? They didn't come through the main door—and where waiters can pass others can pass.”

“True. But the hotel staff isn't a bunch of waiters picked up for a special banquet. There's always a banquet at the Imperial Orleans. And the waiters are well-known.”

“That doesn't mean one of them didn't hate Fontenot.”

“From what I hear all waiters hate all cooks and vice-versa. We questioned the staff and we were satisfied. And none of them mentioned any extra waiter, anybody unfamiliar.”

“Everybody looks familiar in a waiter's uniform.”

“So you're imagining some impostor waiter, somebody lurking in the kitchen, waiting his chance—”

“It's possible.”

“But it's so fancy,” Rawlins said. “And right now we got a nice simple solution. I like simple solutions. Nine out of ten times, they're the goods.”

“This is the tenth time.”

“You're so sure about that?”

“How many people were at that dinner?”

Rawlins shrugged. “Eighty.”

“Well, even if nobody extra waltzed in and the kitchen staff is as pure as snow, that's seventy-eight people with as much opportunity as Dora.”

“But only one with that knife. You ask her about that knife.”

“I will, Sergeant.”

“You gonna keep callin' me ‘sergeant'?”

“Would you prefer ‘detective'?” Spraggue asked.

“I hate callin' people by what they are instead of who they are. If you call me ‘sergeant' or ‘detective,' I gotta ‘mister' you back. You got a first name, right?”

“Michael.”

“Mine's Gorman, so folks call me ‘Rawl' for my last name.”

“Mostly, I'm Spraggue. So folks won't call me ‘Mike.'”

“I'll tell you something, Spraggue: Most murders are pretty damn pat. Wife kills a husband. Husband kills a wife. Most of the time we find the guy standing over the body with the knife or the gun, still wondering what he did. The rest of the time, somebody turns himself in a day or two later, saying I don't know what came over me, but she insulted me something terrible and I couldn't take that, now could I? Most murders are the same damn thing.”

Rawlins refilled his coffee mug, dumped in two spoons of sugar, and said, “Look, I'm sorry about this. I'd just as soon have met your aunt on another occasion. But I'm satisfied we got the right person. The D.A. agrees. And that's where my job ends.”

“Not necessarily.”

“No?”

“You could help me find a loose end to pull at.”

“Huh?”

Spraggue slipped a faded photostat out of a plastic sleeve in his wallet, placed it on the desk.

Rawlins fingered the card, read it all the way through. “One Massachusetts private investigator's license, expired,” he said. “Your aunt said you were an actor or something.”

“Right now, I'm in the ‘or something' phase.”

Rawlins studied the card. “Six-feet-one. You still weigh one-seventy-five?”

Spraggue shrugged.

“I'm shorter than you, but I sure weigh more. This here says brown eyes and yours look kinda yellow, but I'll pass on that. What it don't say is why anybody with your last name would want a crummy private eye license.” The suspicion was back in Rawlins' voice.

“I'd rather be playing Broadway leads. Nobody's offering.”

“Is there somebody in Boston who'll vouch for you?”

“Captain Hurley. Homicide.”

“I'll check that out.”

“I want to see the coroner's report. I'd like to know why you're so damn sure it's Dora's knife. A knife's a knife, and from what Mary said, there were knives all over the room. I'd like to know what Fontenot had on him when he died—”