'From time to time.' Mike's smile turned a little chilly. His old partner was a big boozer, always got him in trouble.
'This is a bad one,' Jimmy said, getting right down to the case. 'We're lucky on the other injuries. You hear about the kid in the hospital?'
'Anything new?' Mike asked.
'Twelve-year-old lost his ear. Could have been worse. The other one, bullet went right through him. He was lucky.'
April thought.
That was rare.
'Any ideas?' Mike asked.
'Not yet. Everybody in the victim's family was in front of her in plain view. So was her intended and all his family. That excludes family members. We've been in contact with the wedding planner. She has a guest list and vendor list.'
April glanced at Mike. They had a wedding planner.
Hollis smiled. 'This is Riverdale,' he told her. 'They have somebody to do everything. The wedding planner, a woman called Wendy Lotte, has all the details, knows everybody's name and everybody's story. She was there the whole time. She can fill you in on personalities. Doesn't have an alibi for the moment of the shooting. Claims she was in the ladies' room.' He arched an eyebrow. 'I'm still talking to her.'
'Really? She a suspect?' April found the idea downright weird. It wasn't a woman's crime.
'I don't know. She gives me a creepy feeling, what can I say?' He lifted a shoulder. 'Nobody else stands
out.'
April frowned. 'Motive, background check?' 'Oh, yeah, working on both.' 'Okay, what about the community, any anti-Semitic stuff going on here?' Mike's question.
'Inspector Bellaqua's been all over me about this.' Hollis flipped the Mickey Mouse tie up and down. 'Nothing. Believe me, we'd be on it if there were anything in it.'
Mike glanced around at the crowded space and the noisy detectives all pretending to ignore them. 'Where do you want to set up the charts? Let's figure out how wide we have to go on this.' 'Yeah, no problem.' They were down to business.
Eleven
A
nthony Pryce shot the cuffs in his summer uniform and adjusted his chauffeur's hat. He was a tall, slender Welshman, good-looking, with intelligent blue eyes and sandy hair that straggled over his collar in a London-late- Beatles-era shag. His gray uniform was just as smart as the wing collar, striped trousers, and tails that he wore when butlering in the house. He finished prepping himself for the ride to Manhattan and went down the back stairs to see to the cars. He couldn't stop thinking about that bride on the news, shot dead in the Bronx just before she took her vows. He moved through his chores, feeling an odd tingle of excitement about the possibilities such a murder presented: If someone wanted revenge on any bride in New York, now was the time to get it. It was all about knowing everything.
Anthony had worked on the Hay North Shore estate for eleven years, ever since his twenty-first birthday. And there was nothing he did not know. He was the butler, the driver, the cook when only Hays pater and mater were at home. He was the horticultural expert who directed the gardener in all his endeavors, the official head of the kitchen garden, and expert in all areas of social protocol. Along with Wendy Lotte, he was practically in charge of Prudence's wedding.
Anthony's knowledge of the family's doings extended to the secret places where in jealous rages Alfred, the toy poodle, tinkled against the priceless antiques. He knew that Lucinda Hay hid packages of forbidden foods like Twinkies and Ding Dongs along with acceptable ones in her room and nibbled between her hearty breakfast, tea, luncheon, tea, cocktails, and dinner. Mrs. Hay had once been a great beauty as well as a socialite, Anthony was proud of telling his friends. Now, alas, she had run to fat.
Anthony also knew that Terence senior was very rich and loved the bottle at least as much as his wife, and Terence junior was following in his father's footsteps, with hardly a sober moment since his junior year in boarding school, despite a sterling record at Yale and Harvard Law School. The Irish legacy. He now worked at the venerable firm of Hathaway, Harold, and Dean on Wall Street. What Anthony knew about Prudence was everything. And more than anything in the world, he hated the idea of her marrying that creep Thomas, an unexciting boiled potato of a young man, who knew nothing about her at all. And cared less. Anthony hated the idea, but it was fixed. It was done. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't very well marry her himself, now, could he?
In the kitchen he slowed only for a second to check on Nora, the Peruvian housekeeper. She didn't speak a word of English, but she kept going all day long like one of those bunnies in TV commercials. She liked to clean and he didn't, so from morning 'til night he had her dusting and polishing silver and the brass lamps and stair rails in the circular staircase. He had her cleaning the crystal in the three great room chandeliers and all the bowls in the bathrooms. Right now she was doing the flatware, humming happily.
Nora,' he said as he charged out the back door.
she replied. She knew he was on his way to the city and would be back by dinnertime.
On the mud porch, Anthony checked to see if the dry cleaner had been by yet to pick up Mr. Hay's suits and the quilt from the master bedroom that needed cleaning. Pampers had been by for the pickup. He checked his watch, ten-oh-two. Getting on the road between rush hours was both an art and a science. Anthony took personally long waits in halted traffic. Even now, when he hated what the family was doing to his girl—his Pru—he still couldn't help trying to make their lives perfect.
As he sailed out the back door, he noticed that the bird feeder was empty. It was hung on clothesline rope from a large oak limb over the brick-walled service area where the five cars were parked. The birds didn't really need seed in the spring and summer, but Mrs. Hay liked to see them constantly flying in for a feed, so he was careful to make sure it was well stocked in all seasons.
Anthony chose the Bentley for the drive into the city. At exactly ten-oh-five he drove out of the service entrance of Casa Capricorn and into the drive next to it. He circled the row of magnificent Kousa dogwoods, the late-blooming kind that stayed in flower all the way into July, and stopped by the brick mansion's front door.
Minutes later, he had Pru and Mrs. Hay settled in the car, and they were headed toward 25A and the Grand Central Parkway Mrs. Hay spoke up from the backseat.
'Anthony, the Denihan wedding.' She picked up from where she'd left off yesterday, comparing all the weddings of their large acquaintance.
'Yes, Mrs. Hay.' Anthony glanced in the rearview mirror. He could see Pru blowing on her engagement ring, polishing it on her sleeve even though he'd just cleaned it for her again this morning. Three carats, classic Tiffany solitaire. He kept telling her not to take it off and leave it on every sink everywhere she washed her hands. He knew she couldn't live on her own without him to care for her. She didn't know how to do a thing.
'Louis did the Denihan wedding, of course. What did you think of it?'
He was expected to answer even though they'd been over the Denihan wedding numerous times before. 'Very pretty, but half the guests were overcome,' he reminded her.
In fact, St. Thomas had been so glutted with lilies that people had coughed and sneezed throughout. Not only that, Mary Denihan had not allowed a single arrangement to be moved from the church to the reception, so that Louis had to repeat the fragrance debacle at the Pierre, where people sneezed all through dinner as well. The famous florist-to-the-stars had ended up acquiring every single Casablanca lily in the city for the event. That was the kind of thing Louis's clients liked him to do. Anthony would not mention it, however, for it would only fuel the competitive fires in Lucinda Hay's ever-spreading bosom. Lucinda Hay wanted Pru married well, and she wanted an over-the-top wedding. She was getting both.
'I'm glad we didn't do lilies, aren't you, Pru?' Mrs. Hay said loftily.
'I've always hated lilies, makes me think of funerals,' Pru replied, just a touch sulky. She'd always had a crush on Teddy Denihan, a far more dashing boy than lackluster Thomas Fenton.
