hers?”
I shook my head. “I’m not interested in proving it.”
Lefcourt paced behind the sofa and pointed at me, trotting out the anger again. “You’d better be prepared to, if you’re going to go around talking like that. You’re a deep enough pocket, March. You screw up Linda’s earning capacity, and I promise I’ll fucking empty you out.” I stood up and Lefcourt seemed startled. “Where are you going?”
“It seems a safe bet that your wife isn’t showing up anytime soon, and we’re going round and round here and getting nowhere, so I figured it was time to leave.”
Lefcourt stared at me for a few seconds. “Have you heard a word that I’ve said?” he asked.
“You know, I was about to ask you the same thing.”
I was at the door when Lefcourt called to me. “I meant it, March, about leaving her alone. Any more crap like your chat-room stunt, and there’ll be a flock of lawyers picking on your bones.” I looked back at him but said nothing. “I meant it about Danes, too. Neither one of us knows where he is, and neither one of us gives a shit.”
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
17
“Sure, I remember the guy,” Phyllis said. “A few more customers like him, I’ll burn the place down and go back to being a parole officer.” It was late afternoon, and I was calling the hotels that had appeared on Danes’s credit card statement. The Copper Beech Inn, in Lenox, Massachusetts, was first on my list. Phyllis was the owner, and her voice was rough and friendly through the telephone.
“He was a real piece of work,” she continued, laughing. “Had something to say about everything, from the pillows, to the coffee, to the water pressure, and none of it was good. We love guests like thatthey make it all worthwhile.”
“Was he there with anyone?”
“Nope, it was just him and his sunny disposition.”
“Had he ever been there before?”
“Not before or since, thank God.”
“Any idea what he was doing up there? That time of year isn’t ideal for leaf-peeping.”
Phyllis laughed again. “Back in January, it would’ve been more like snow-peeping. But folks do come up then, for cross-country skiing or just to get away. I have no idea what Chuckles was doing, though. Can’t say he seemed real relaxed.”
I thanked Phyllis and made my next call, to the Maidstone Tavern in East Hampton. A guy named Tim answered. He was arch and breathy and kept putting me on hold, and it took him a long while to tell me very little. Eventually, he confirmed that Danes had been a guest there about three months earlier and that he’d not been back since, but he had only vague memories of Danes himself and couldn’t say if he had been alone during his stay. I got off the line before a headache took hold.
I sat back from my long oak table and looked at the TV screen. Linda Sovitch’s muted image appeared. Her mouth moved, her white teeth flashed, and then she was gone, replaced by an ad for a German car. I thought- again- about my morning visit with her husband.
Aaron Lefcourt hadn’t registered much shock at the notion of his wife carrying on with Gregory Danes; the closest he’d come was an imitation of indignity. He was much more interested in how I knew about the affair and in how much noise I planned to make. Which, when I considered it, made a kind of pragmatic sense: the fact that she’d been sleeping with one of her regular guests- especially one as tainted as Danes- wouldn’t do Sovitch’s career any good. An imaginative plaintiff’s lawyer could even use it to turn her- and her network- into collateral damage in one of the investor suits still floating around. Reason enough, I supposed, for a practical man like Lefcourt to want things kept quiet. But was it also the reason Danes hadn’t come home?
That theory might go down easier if Lefcourt had been just plain jealous- though I knew just plain greed was at least as popular a motive for murder. Hell, maybe he was greedy and jealous, both.
It was absolute conjecture, but it was irresistible, too. I knew Danes wanted to restore his reputation, and I knew he wanted Sovitch to help him do it. I also knew- because Sovitch had told me- that he was pissed off at her for not giving him airtime on her show. What if their lunch conversation had been a little different from what Sovitch had described? What if Danes had threatened to go public with their affair? From what I knew of him, Danes wasn’t above that kind of threat; it might even be his style. And if he had done that, would Sovitch have run to Lefcourt, as she had when I’d come sniffing around? And what might Lefcourt have done?
“Speculative bullshit,” I said aloud, and of course it was. But Danes had checked his messages every three days for nearly three weeks, and then he had stopped. There was nothing theoretical about that.
I picked up the phone again. The woman in Bermuda had a lovely voice and an odd, mid-ocean accent, and she was so pleasant in her refusal to answer any of my questions about Danes’s stay at her hotel that I was nonetheless glad I called. When I hung up, it was time to go to Brooklyn.
I don’t often sit down to dinner with families- not my own or anye else’s- and I wasn’t sure what to expect at Nina Sachs’s place. Certainly not Ozzie and Harriet, but not, I hoped, something out of Eugene O’Neill either. As it happened, it was an entirely pleasant evening. Right up until the end.
I bought a bunch of irises at a market near the Clark Street subway station, and I walked over to Willow Street and down toward the water. The western sky was drenched in impossible color and the breeze was warm and full of blossoms and the smells of supper on the stove. Laughter and scraps of conversation drifted out of open windows into the darkening air, and the evening streets seemed intimate and somehow full of promise. I took my time walking down.
The I-2 Gallery was closed, and white shades covered its big windows. I looked up and saw that Nina’s windows were opened wide. I pressed the intercom button and the lock buzzed right away. Music tumbled down to meet me as I climbed the stairs: Motown. Nina’s door was ajar.
Billy was sitting cross-legged by the windows, between two stacks of comic books and in front of a pile of plastic bags and cardboard backing sheets. He wore camo pants cut off into shorts and a green T-shirt. His feet were bare and his legs were bony and white. He was bagging comics and bopping to the music, and he waved when I came in. Nina and Ines were in the kitchen, and they put me to work right away.
Ines was at the fancy stove, chopping peppers and onions and fixing them on skewers with cubes of beef. She smiled at me. Her black hair was up in a loose shiny pile, and she wore a long apron over a fuchsia linen shift. Her feet were bare, and her fingers and toes were nicely manicured and painted to match her dress. There was a small silver band on the second toe of her right foot.
“Detective,” she said, and she surprised me by kissing my cheek. “The flowers are lovely.” Her face was warm and she smelled of lavender.
Nina was at one of the steel-topped counters. Her hair was loose and she was wearing gray shorts and a sleeveless black T-shirt. Her legs were pale but firm and nicely shaped. She stood before a cutting board and the mangled remains of a tomato. She had a paring knife in one hand and a stem glass in the other. There was something red and slushy in the glass, and she took a drink of it.
“Can you chop?” she asked me.
“More or less.”
“That’s better than me,” she said. “I’ll trade you.” She handed me the knife, hilt first, and took the flowers. “Do I have something to put these in, Nes?” she asked.
Ines chuckled. “In the cabinet, above the glasses, there is a tall vase.”
I held up the paring knife. “Got something a little bigger?” I asked Ines. She smiled and pulled an eight-inch knife from a wooden block on the counter.
“This should do, detective.”
Nina made a mock scowl. “Everybody’s a fucking critic,” she said. “I’ll stick to driving the blender. It’s better for all concerned. You want a strawberry daiquiri?” I shook my head. “Come on, it’s our Memorial Day warm-up-
