Sympathy for the Devil (19 page)

“…not if I heard that man correctly. That man said your father wasn't worth a penny!”

“Wait a minute, honey,” Graydon said quickly. “Don't get hysterical. Bru will fix things. Let's go home.”

Carmen stared at her husband. She just stared.

“Let's go home,” Gray repeated, putting his arm around her.

Lily was watching the scene from her position, curled up on a large moss-colored velvet wing chair. The chair was so large, she seemed like a child.

“Thank God,” Carmen whispered. “It's finally over.”

“Honey, nothing's over. You don't know these lawyers. Listen to me, honey. I'm in business. I know all about how these things work. They're just trying to scare us, but we
Huntleys don't scare easy, do we?” he asked her, pleading.

“I want a divorce. I want out,” she said quietly.

“Carmen.” His voice was getting hoarse. I could see the tears coming. “Carmen, honey, don't.” He held her close to him and whispered, “You'll get the land, Carmenita. I promise. I know how much it means to you. You'll get it.”

Carmen stood stock-still, making Gray's hug seem awkward. He pulled back from the rebuff, and finally let her go.

“So you're not coming home?” he asked, defeated.

“No. I'll call my mother.” With that, she turned and left the room.

Gray looked up, as if for the first time noticing he'd had an audience. He didn't seem embarrassed. I was again reminded of the quaint Huntley tradition of staging their most intimate and humiliating moments in public.

“She'll come back,” he suggested to no one in particular.

Well they might take these scenes in stride, but I, for one, felt miserably out of place. I tried to get Lily's attention. I needed a few private minutes to explain what I'd found out about the sperm samples and then I could leave.

“Lily,” I called out.

But just then the moving men came back into the living room. They surveyed the floor. There was barely a square inch of the enormous expanse that wasn't covered by a brand-new cardboard box.

“I guess we gotta leave now,” one of the men said. “I just got paged. Some lawyer just called our office and said what we're doing is illegal or something.”

“Fine,” Lily said. “Thank you.”

“The thing is, who's gonna pay? You got 370 boxes here at two bucks a box.”

“I suppose you should bill the man who hired you,” Lily suggested.

“The thing is, the office told me not to leave without I get paid.”

“Well, I didn't order these boxes,” Lily explained.
“And it appears I have no need for them. Perhaps you should just unfold them again and take them away.”

The two men laughed. “We need a check.”

“Sorry.” Lily spoke in her sweet breathy voice, but didn't back down. I guess it's easier to bounce back from shocking news when the news happens to be in your favor.

Donnie walked back into the room. “Hey, Madeline. There's a call for you.”

“Me?”

Who knew I was here?

T
he study was empty and this time, before I picked up the phone, I checked the attached bathroom. No one lurking about. The Huntleys had three lines coming into their home and the telephone had buttons for each as well as one to place calls on hold. I saw only one light flashing and answered.

“Madeline? It's me, Lizzie. I'd just about given up trying to find you.”

“This has been one wild night.”

“Tell me about it! Have you been outside lately? They're calling for flooding, mudslides, the works. Hey watch yourself driving home.”

“The weather is the least of my worries. Things are going nuts inside the house. The nanny quit, Lewis is missing, Bruno's property has been changing hands on an hourly basis, and now it turns out he was worth just about nothing. Movers are leaving as we speak, and on top of everything else, Wesley is still locked up in jail.”

“Look, the more I think about it, the more I have to agree with you. I just can't get convinced that Wes killed Bruno.”

“No kidding.”

“I went out on a limb today and told my people I thought they got the wrong guy. They were not thrilled with my attitude. I figure, the only way to turn this turd into a rose is to find a suspect who looks even better to the D.A.”

“You have such a delicate turn of a phrase.”

“Forensics just shot us a report on the fingerprints found on the brandy decanter, which you didn't hear from me.”

“Go on.” I was excited. Clearly there must be evidence that doesn't point to Wesley. Perhaps I was going to get a chance to hear some.

“No prints distinguishable on the body of the decanter. It was cut crystal. But on the glass stopper and on the smooth bottom surface, they lifted four readable prints. There was one each from Bruno and Lily and their daughter-in-law Carmen, and one clear right forefinger print from an unidentified party. By the size, it's most likely female.”

Or a child. “You got prints from the entire family?”

“Of course.”

“What about from the boy, Lewis?”

“Be reasonable. He's maybe three years old!”

“What about Carmen's mother? Did you…”

“Yes. It didn't match. We even tried to match it to his ex-wives' prints, and, I might add, yours.”

“And you still can't match that one print. But what does this mean for Wes?”

“That Wesley Westcott did not touch Bruno's decanter of Armagnac.”

“Won't they say that he wore gloves?”

“Gloves would have smudged the other fingerprints on the stopper. And they weren't smudged.”

“Thanks, Lizzie.”

“
De nada
. Listen, if you get anything really incriminating over there at the Huntleys, don't do anything foolish. Just call me, okay?”

I kept thinking about the unidentified fingerprint. With all the Huntley women accounted for, I was at a loss. I left the study, and as I walked through the entry hall, a sudden flash of lightning lit up the courtyard parking area outside. The pelting rain had softened to drizzle, and looking through the leaded-glass windows, I was surprised to spot Perry Hirsh's Bentley still parked out front.

I stepped into my rubber shoes and grabbed my dripping
coat from the hook where I'd left it. Pulling up the hood, I scooted out into the night. By the time I'd covered the twenty feet to the Bentley, the rain seemed to come to a stop. I tapped with force on the window and motioned that Angelica should roll it down.

She had watched me approach, but didn't seem in a hurry to unlock her door. At the sound of my tapping, she called to me through the closed car window, “I don't want to get Perry's leather seats wet. He'd kill me.”

“Come on out!” I yelled to her.

She wasn't happy about it, but she did open the door and quickly slide out. The sound of water, dripping off leaves and house, gurgling down drains, rushing down the steep driveway, stood in contrast to the sudden lull in the storm.

“I just got a call from a friend of mine,” I told her. “Seems the police identified some fingerprints on Bruno's private bottle of brandy.”

“So?”

“That's where the poison was, in Bruno's Armagnac.”

She stared at me.

“What were your prints doing on the decanter, Angelica?”

She whipped back so fast, I thought she was fainting. But then she swung her body around and hurled her clenched fist at me. Before I could react, the garnets in her ring zoomed into closeup.

I lunged left, slipping on slick pavement, falling against the car. She tried correcting her aim as I fell, and just missed slamming her cheap jewels into my cheek. Untouched by Angelica, I still hit the ground pretty hard.

With the force of her unlanded punch, she swiped the passenger door of the Bentley. I looked up to see a double line of scratches etched into the twenty-four coats of white lacquer.

Then, she started kicking at me. Hard. From my seated position, I grabbed her flying ankle, jumped up, and twisted. She collapsed on the wet pavement as I pulled myself up.

She was wearing a party dress, and as she crashed down, the flimsy red skirt hiked up, revealing a long shapely leg in muddied and ripped hose. One high-heeled red pump had kicked off somewhere and she was scowling at her right hand. Several long acrylic nails had broken off.

I balanced lightly on my feet, waiting for her to spring up, feeling wet and sore and ready.

Angelica just sat there looking spent. “I didn't kill Bruno, if that's what you think. I just had a few drinks with him last week. I probably left my fingerprint on the decanter then. I didn't poison him.”

Something caught her attention and her eyes darted up.

“Oh, shit! Shit!” she screamed, shaking her bruised hand.

The wind had picked up and I could hear the sound of rainfall again. Angelica sat there, swearing, eyes fixed to the spot where Perry's pride and joy had been scarred.

I ran the few steps to the front door of the house and looked back. Angelica's hair was collapsing in the renewed vigor of the downpour. Her dress was ruined. And by the way she was holding her right hand, there would be pain pills in her future.

I shut the massive door with a slam, twitchy in the aftermath of the fight. Then I remembered Perry Hirsh. I had just decked his cousin and she was sure to blame me for the scratches on his Bentley, but had they plotted together to kill Bruno?

Somehow, I had stepped over a line. Things had turned dangerous. I needed to call the police, but I couldn't use a phone where I might be overheard.

I raced up the grand staircase, two steps at a time, until I hit the second-floor landing. Spread out before me was a hallway so vast it was actually larger than my first apartment. Closed doors could be seen running down each side of the corridor. No wonder Holly had gotten lost the night of the party. I put a little space between the staircase and me and randomly picked a door on my left.

I shut the door quickly and turned on the light. A yellow
room. I had no idea whose. The large bed was covered by a pale yellow gingham bedspread. The plush yellow carpet seemed never to have been stepped upon. That is, until I showed up with my wet size sevens. My parka was dripping, so I grabbed the telephone and stretched its long cord all the way into the adjoining bathroom.

Holding the yellow phone to my ear with my shoulder, I shrugged the raincoat into the bathtub and stomped my feet onto a bath mat. Honnett answered on the third ring. Funny how I had memorized his direct number after staring at his message all afternoon.

“Honnett? It's Madeline Bean. I'm over at the Huntley estate. You've got to send someone over right away. There's a woman here that may have been involved in Bruno's murder, and she…”

“Hey. Slow down! What are you talking about? What woman?”

“The soothsayer from the party. The one we couldn't find and then she just turned up at my house yesterday. Her name is Angelica Sands. Look,” I was getting impatient with all the explanations, “she took a swing at me.”

“Yeah? I've felt like that,” Honnett said.

“Honnett.”

“Okay, okay. Just tell me something that hooks her to the murder and I'll be there myself in five minutes.”

“I accused her of leaving her fingerprint on the brandy decanter and she tried to slug me.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I can take care of myself. But she admitted that she had her hands on Bruno's decanter. That proves she's the unidentified fingerprint, damn it!”

“Whoa! Wait! Even if this Sands woman did leave a fingerprint, it proves very little.”

“What?”

“Honey, you've got a pretty good source inside the print lab, but you gotta start flirting with the toxicology boys. Then you'd already know there was no trace of strychnine in the decanter.”

If it wasn't in the decanter, then whoever poisoned Bruno must have put the strychnine into his glass.

“So even if your soothsayer had her hands all over that decanter, it proves nothing.”

“Yeah, I got it, I got it.”

My mind was backtracking furiously. The real killer would know there was no poison in the decanter. So why had Angelica attacked me? Because she didn't know it wasn't important. Damn!

“Now what would be real handy is finding Bruno's glass. That might tell us who poisoned him.”

“It wasn't Wesley.”

Honnett chuckled. “My mama used to warn me not to get involved with girls who like to fight.”

“She was a smart woman.”

I
looked into the mirror above the yellow sink. The wind and the rain had pulled my hair out of its tight chignon and it was curling this way and that. Taking a moment to wash up, I considered what I'd learned.

It hadn't exactly been easy to follow the ping-pong match of who would win Bruno's fortune, but now, even if Lily could convince the executors, there was nothing for her to inherit.

I thought about not telling her the details of her husband's sperm-gathering activities. Perhaps it was kinder to leave her some sweet illusions of Bruno, but that went against my nature. Lily was an adult. The truth means something. I had to tell her.

My hair more or less in place, my shoes wiped down, my face freshly washed, I opened the door into the silent second-floor hallway. Only the distant ticking of a clock could be heard. I padded to the landing, my feet sinking into carpet that was certainly luxurious, if a little difficult to walk on.

At the top of the staircase was a large oil portrait of Bruno. I hadn't noticed it when I was dashing up the stairs, but now I stopped and looked at the man. He must have urged the artist to play up his resemblance to Clint Eastwood.

What did you do with your glass, Bruno? Where is that brandy snifter?

And then I was seized by a memory. Bruno had invited me to share a drink with him many years ago. The two of us sat on a sofa that was placed in the atrium off the kitchen. The Armagnac was nice, but certainly not as spectacular as he seemed to think. When we finished, Bruno insisted we throw the empty brandy snifters into the fireplace.

“These are expensive,” I replied, studying the Baccarat crystal, figuring them to be at least a hundred bucks.

“One hundred and seventy-five dollars per stem,” Bruno informed me, smiling. “But who really gives a damn? It's fun to break something that costs a lot. You should try it.”

He stood up. And with a grunt, he threw the glass into the fireplace. The droplets of Armagnac caught fire and flared as the fine crystal shattered, then tinkled against the stone hearth.

“Come on, sport. I dare you!” Bruno was amused at my resistance to wanton destruction, even on this mild upper-middle-class level. I could see it in his eyes. He knew I never would.

So I tossed my glass into the fire.

Laughing, he yelled, “Bravo! I didn't think you had the balls.”

I flushed with pride and rejoiced in the freedom of my new spirit. And then he demanded that I pay him the $175.

Looking now at Bruno's portrait, I wondered if he had felt like breaking things the night of his Halloween party?

As I descended the stairs, the door to the powder room opened and Carmen Huntley, her makeup perfect, stepped out. Either this was another coincidence, or Carmen spends a whole lot of time in powder rooms, well, powdering.

“Hello,” I said.

“I was just getting ready to leave. Mother should have been here by now.” She sounded annoyed.

“The roads are pretty bad tonight. You know, I was just remembering the way Bruno threw his brandy glass at the fireplace one time. Was he still doing that?”

“He liked the power,” she said. “When we were first
together, he'd break those expensive glasses of his all the time. Why?”

“I was thinking about the night of his murder…”

“Oh, Madeline. I really don't want to talk about that anymore. Okay?”

“No one can find the glass that Bruno was drinking from and I wondered…did he throw his glass against a wall that night?”

She looked down, her thick black lashes almost touching her cheeks. Then she looked straight at me.

“I think he did throw it. He was angry after our talk. So he gulped the liquor and tossed the glass.”

“Where was this?”

“On the path where it curves past the guest house and goes on to the tennis court. It was about halfway down that path, near the statue of the old man by the little bench.”

There was a sharp tap. Carmen opened the front door to find her mother standing on the porch. She was half-opening and closing her umbrella, as if to rid it of the rain.

Carmen zipped her leather jacket and said, “Let's go.”

“Is that all you are wearing? What's the matter with you? It's a storm outside. You'll get sick!”

“Mother. Isn't your car parked nearby?”

Just then, Graydon walked into the entrance hall. “You're leaving? Weren't you going to say goodbye?” He seemed to be suffering and trying to spread it around.

“Who's leaving?” Bru, Jr. walked back into the entry. “Madeline what are you still doing here? Go home!”

“My Carmen is leaving, young man. She is coming back to her family where she belongs.”

“Mother!” Carmen spoke loudly, catching all of us by surprise.

“Yes, my little girl?”

“I'm not your little girl.” Carmen looked at the assembled group. Bru, Jr., leaning against the newel post, haughty, mocking; Graydon, forlorn; her mother, half-opening and shutting her umbrella in nervous impatience; and me.

“Madeline, can you give me a ride?” she asked.

“Well…”

Both mother and husband wailed protests.

“I'm tired. Madeline will drive me. Now everybody, please leave me alone.”

“Wait for me in my car.” I offered her the keys. “It's the black Grand Wagoneer on the street. I won't be more than a few minutes.”

Carmen swept past her mother on the front step, and walked out into the wind and rain. Without so much as a scarf, she disappeared down the driveway as I turned from the muddled group and made my way back towards the kitchen.

I just had to tell Lily about the sperm, and then I had one little idea to check out, and then, once and for all, I was out of there.