Partners In Crime (13 page)

By now Anne Marie would have agreed to a
wrestling match. She took another healthy sip of her Bloody Mary
and nodded in agreement. "Who would want to kill him?" She picked
daintily at her food and pushed it about her plate.

"Have you any idea at all?"

"The police think insider trading must be
behind it," Anne Marie repeated with great confidence. Being
married to a cop gave her great respect for the NYPD and she had
repeated the lieutenant's explanation automatically. T.S. noticed
that her speech had the very slightest slur to it, a defect that
seemed to come and go.

"Oh dear, and I always thought the police
were immune to fads," Auntie Lil said absently, searching about the
table for the orange juice, as if that were the most important
thing on her mind. "But what do you really think, dear?" she asked
in an offhand manner. "After all, you were close to him. You have
an intuition, shall we say, that they lack."

Anne Marie nodded in agreement, closed her
eyes and appeared to think it over carefully. T.S. watched with a
mouthful of eggs and for a moment was afraid she'd fallen asleep.
"I don't really know," she said at last. "Mr. Cheswick was a very
private man. I really couldn't say. It could be insider trading.
Maybe he had tried to stop them. I suppose anyone would kill for
enough money."

"Perhaps he was killed for his money?"
Auntie Lil suggested.

Anne Marie crunched loudly on her celery
while she thought this over. She seemed to like the idea. "That
could be. Wouldn't that be something if it was his snooty wife
after all?" She picked up her Bloody Mary again and twirled the
liquid with her pinky, then sipped at it and smiled daintily at
T.S.

T.S. concentrated on dissecting a waffle,
his conscience nagging him badly. What had they sunk to? Getting
respectable middle-aged women drunk and pumping them for
information? This was not the glamorous detective life he had
envisioned. It was, in fact, nearly tawdry.

Sheila was crunching away busily on her
bacon, her eyes moving rapidly from one person to another as they
spoke. Hangover or not, she wasn't going to let a single thing get
by her.

"But if it wasn't money," Auntie Lil asked
Anne Marie, "what else do you think it could be?'' Aunde Lil had
touched neither cocktails nor food and was skillfully pushing eggs
about her plate. She preferred black coffee, only, until the
afternoon.

A dreamy look crossed Anne Marie's face and
she stared off at the wall. The words came slowly from her lips.
"That's the funny part," she said softly.

"What?" T.S. interrupted, unable to help
himself. Auntie Lil was miffed at his interference but kept
silent.

"The mystery of it all," she replied. "He
seemed such an ordinary man to be killed in such an extraordinary
way. It's a joke on us all. Don't you think so?" Anne Marie looked
around the table at their faces as she spoke. "We all thought we
knew him so well. Robert Cheswick. Tweed jackets. Pipe. Connecticut
manor. But somewhere, beneath it all, even he had a dirty little
secret." She laughed thinly but it tapered quickly to a sigh. "I
think he was killed for some reason that no one else knows but
him."

"No one but him and the killer," Auntie Lil
pointed out.

Anne Marie looked vaguely discomfited and
sought refuge in her waffle.

"You must have known most of his secrets, my
dear," Auntie Lil said gently. "After all, you were with him for
many years."

"Since high school. He was so kind to me. We
were both young then." The dreamy look returned, the Bloody Marys
floating her back decades. "I started work there when I was only
eighteen and didn't know a single soul. Not one person. They were
all so young and handsome then—the partners today, I mean. Still
human beings. Full of fun. Before money and power took over." She
sighed. "Robert Cheswick was one of the most human of them all. He
gave me time off when Sheila was born. He was very good about
keeping my job open. He had another girl, but let her go so I could
have my job back."

"I think that's the law, Mom," Sheila said
between enormous gulps of scrambled eggs. She had demolished three
pieces of toast and was starting on her fourth.

"It wasn't the law at the time," Anne Marie
corrected her daughter primly. "He gave me an entire year and a
half off. He was really a very thoughtful man."

"He was?" Now it was T.S.'s turn to be
skeptical. This unexpected canonization of Robert Cheswick wasn't
sitting well with what he knew. "He didn't strike me as a
particularly thoughtful man."

Anne Marie looked insulted. "He was very
quiet about those kinds of things." She wiped primly at one corner
of her mouth. "I expect he will roll over in his grave when he
finds out that the investigators are poring over his personal
papers. I suppose they're even going into his private
finances?"

"You bet they are," T.S. told her. "I'm sure
they'll ask you about it."

"I've nothing to hide." She looked at him
sharply, then relaxed and sipped at her drink. "They'll only find
out I'm right," she predicted. "Why, did you know he sent his wife
flowers every week for nearly fifteen years? It's right there in
his checkbook."

That did surprise T.S. It seemed to him that
Robert Cheswick had failed utterly to appreciate his wife.

Auntie Lil perked up. "You, of course, know
about his small thoughtful gestures. Why, I expect you knew even
his failures. The faults he kept hidden from others."

"Of course," Anne Marie admitted. "I knew
everything about him.'' She stared unexpectedly at T.S., who,
surprised to find himself the sudden center of attention, swallowed
a quarter of a waffle without chewing and managed to shake his head
and nearly choke to death at the same time. Sheila pounded him
vigorously on the back while Auntie Lil and Anne Marie chatted,
oblivious of his distress.

"Had Mr. Cheswick been under a great deal of
strain?" T.S. asked her in a strangled voice when he was able to
speak again. "Had he been making more mistakes than usual?"

"Not that I could tell." Anne Marie shook
her head. "Between you and me, of course, he's never been a real
friendly man to most people. He seemed his usual starched self.
Poor Jimmy's raise came up last week and Mr. Cheswick turned him
down flat. No surprise there. You've got to know how to handle
him."

She certainly did, if her own healthy salary
was any indication. "Jimmy Ruffino?" T.S. asked. "The partners'
valet?"

Anne Marie nodded. "He's been there nearly
twenty years and, believe me, I know how hard it can be with Mr.
Cheswick in charge of your raises, rest his soul. But poor Jimmy's
wife is ill and he really needs the extra money and Mr. Cheswick
wouldn't even let him speak. Just told him things were tough, that
the firm was losing money and that no one was getting a raise this
year." She chewed her toast daintily.

"But that's not true," T.S. said
indignantly. "Sterling & Sterling made more money last month
than they have in two hundred years of months."

"Oh, I know that. But Mr. Cheswick always
said things like that when you asked for a raise. Sometimes I
wonder why I… " Her voice trailed off and she hiccupped.

"Did you speak to his wife, dear?" Auntie
Lil asked. "She must be terribly upset."

"Oh, I doubt it." Anne Marie gave Auntie Lil
a look that totally mystified T.S., although Sheila nodded wisely
at its meaning. "She'd be upset, of course, because being upset was
appropriate and everyone would expect her to be upset.''

T.S. was piqued at any suggestion that Lilah
Cheswick might not be entirely perfect, but stifled his anger and
consciously ignored Auntie Lil's lifted eyebrows.

"They weren't really very close," Anne Marie
explained. "If you want to know how Lilah Cheswick is, you'd be
better off asking another partner we know… " She stopped suddenly
as if she'd gone too far, thought better of continuing and sipped
her drink quietly.

Auntie Lil cleared her throat gently and did
not pursue the matter. She made a great show of filling up
everyone's coffee cups. T.S. knew she was stalling for time.

"Do you pay all his personal bills?" Auntie
Lil asked in an offhand manner. "It's amusing how men like Mr.
Cheswick neglect their own financial housekeeping."

"Everything. From the barber to the dry
cleaner to Bloomingdale's at Christmas time. He'd have a buyer
there pick out some nice things for his wife and daughters. Money
was no object."

"Did you notice any unusual bills or checks
recendy?" T.S. asked.

She thought for a moment. "No. The police
asked me that already. Just the usual."

"I suppose the police asked you for his
personal files?" Auntie Lil suggested.

Anne Marie shrugged and examined her toast.
"No. They acted like I was stupid, to tell you the truth. But they
went through his desk thoroughly. I'm sure they found them. It
wasn't my fault they seated me in a room needed for evidence," she
continued indignantly. "How was I to know not to touch
anything?"

"You touched the case the knife came from?"
T.S. asked faintly.

"Of course I did. It had been left open. I
thought I should straighten up in case one of the partners needed
the conference room. I didn't know the knife came from there."

T.S. thanked the fates that had steered him
into his own job and away from working for Abromowitz. Someone was
going to catch hell. Sheila stirred restlessly beside him, trying
to sneak a look at Auntie Lil's antique cuckoo clock. Her afternoon
plans must be important.

"What about that unusual paperweight he
had?" Auntie Lil remarked, unconcerned about Sheila's growing
desire to bring the brunch to an end. "I noticed that quite a few
of the partners have them. What is their significance?"

Anne Marie stared at Auntie Lil. "You mean
the silver spoons? When did you notice them?"

"Well," Auntie Lil hedged, suddenly intent
upon gathering up the dishes. "I was in there once and remember
them, for some reason. That's me. Latch on to some silly detail."
She was not, T.S. noticed, going to confess to Anne Marie that she
had rooted around the scene of the crime.

Anne Marie put her chin in her hand as if,
by this time, her head could use the extra support. "I don't think
he ever had one, actually," she said. "But it's an honest mistake.
Nearly all the older partners have one. They got them from Mr.
Peabody, the old Personnel Manager, a long time ago. It used to be
a real status symbol when Mr. Peabody presented you with one of
those on the day of your first promotion. He didn't give them to
everyone, just to the ones he thought would be partners one day. It
was a game with him. The back has an inscription that says, 'You're
on the way to the top' or something like that." Anne Marie was
quiet for a moment. "I didn't think it was such a nice tradition
for the people that didn't get one. It was like an acknowledgement
they'd never make it. They made him stop doing it because of that,
around the time you came, T.S."

"But in Cheswick's case, it should have been
obvious from the start that he'd be a partner," T.S. protested.
"Surely he would have received one."

Anne Marie nodded slowly and shrugged.
"That's true. He would have had to embezzle funds in his underwear
to screw that up."

"Mother." Sheila gave Anne Marie a horrified
look and was rewarded with a defiant gaze from her mother.

"Perhaps I'm mistaken," Anne Marie admitted.
"I just never noticed it, is all."

They still didn't know for sure if the
paperweight was missing from Cheswick's desk. T.S. made a mental
note to find out if the police had confiscated it. He could not
recall having seen it the morning of the murder.

It was just past noon by the time Auntie Lil
skillfully guided the brunch to an end. The drizzle had stopped and
a brilliant sun streamed in through the apartment's tiny windows.
Anne Marie had a bit of trouble maneuvering into the living room
and Sheila ended up firmly guiding her tipsy mother out the door
with a grim smile.

"Runs in the family," Sheila said by way of
farewell, as she leaned her mother against the elevator door. "It's
a good thing I'm driving her home."

"Mass," Anne Marie declared suddenly. "Drop
me home and then I'm going to change clothes and catch the
afternoon mass. Say a prayer for his soul."

Great, T.S. thought. She'd pass out the
second she dropped to her knees.

"Perhaps we overdid it plying her with
drinks," T.S. suggested as he sat on Auntie Lil's plump sofa and
compared notes.

"Perhaps," Auntie Lil said, ready to dismiss
the subject. "You would think she'd hold her liquor better. I do."
She sniffed rather disdainfully. "Which reminds me, I believe I
deserve a drink myself now. Did she leave us any?"

"That's not quite fair," T.S. protested,
rising to pour her a drink. "You're the one who told me to force it
down her."

She changed the subject instead of arguing
the point. "Did you see that suit she was wearing?" Auntie Lil
raised her eyebrows and made a genteel tsk-tsking before taking a
healthy gulp of her drink.

"What about it? It looked good on her," T.S.
admitted.

"Brilliant deduction." She glared at him in
mock irritation. "It was pure Japanese raw silk," she announced.
"Worth at least $700."

"Sorry I haven't your vast store of design
world knowledge," he told her irritably. There was something about
dresses and makeup and secret female looks that was so totally
beyond his realm of existence that they made him feel instantly
foolish.

"Never mind," Auntie Lil decided. "I can see
you're getting grumpy. You think the personal files and paperweight
are missing, too, don't you?"

She was right, but T.S. hated to give her
that satisfaction. "It's highly likely the police took them before
you got your chance to snoop around."