yards?”
“Nope, it’s a sweater. She was good when she was twelve. Haven’t you been to her apartment?”
He shook his head. “She’s a civilian, ma’am. She was assigned to me. None of this is social.”
“What a waste that seems, Detective. Callie’s a special girl, always has been.”
“So special that Mrs. Califano didn’t marry Justice Califano until Callie went off to college?”
Janette Weaverton shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. What happened to her sister’s girl really affected her, affected all of us. None of us encouraged Margaret to change her mind about it. The thing is, though, Callie has gumption—she would have kicked her stepfather’s ass if he’d ever tried anything with her. And she really liked Stewart, admired him tremendously.”
Hearing a blueblood like Janette Weaverton talk about kicking ass made Ben choke. He coughed into his hand.
She laughed. “Oh, I see. You think I should speak more demurely, to match my St. John suit?”
“What’s a St. John’s suit?”
Janette smiled. “That’s what I’m wearing. It’s a designer label. Did you know Callie has a black belt in karate?”
“Yeah, she might have mentioned it once when she wanted to boot me out the car window.”
“The first thing Margaret did after her sister’s daughter was molested was to enroll Callie with an excellent instructor, to be sure that Callie would never be a victim.
“You seem like a good man, Detective Raven. You’re interesting, you’re also an excellent listener. I’ll bet you manage to get information out of the most obdurate of perpetrators, don’t you?”
“I try, ma’am. Actually, I hear it’s Agent Savich who’s the master at it. They give lots of classes on interviewing at Quantico. One day I might go see what it’s all about.”
“You really think Agent Savich is all that good? It’s been nearly a week since Stewart’s murder and nearly four days since Danny O’Malley’s murder, yet he doesn’t seem to have turned up anything.”
“He will. Justice Califano interacted with a great many people, so many it makes your head ache, and everyone has something quite different to say. Lies? Just differences of perception? Sheer perversity?”
“I see what you mean. Well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? It would be like Bitsy and me being married to the same man. We’d both experience him as very different men.”
“I never thought of it like that. Do we change our behaviors so much with each different person we know?”
“I’d rather eat pizza than think about that,” Janette said.
CHAPTER
24
THE DOORBELL RANG, and the delivery boy stood grinning from ear to ear with seven pizza boxes piled up to his nose. Callie, charmed by that grin, gave him a big tip.
Bitsy St. Pierre said between mouthfuls of her anchovy pizza, “This is delicious. Eat, Margaret, I don’t want to have to tell you again.” The other three women nodded. Ben watched them, his head cocked to the side. He was eating with six women, five of them his mother’s age, something he couldn’t remember ever doing before in his life. He decided he liked it.
Margaret took a small bite, chewed on it forever before finally swallowing it. Bitsy said matter-of-factly, “We buried Stewart today. It was a grand send-off. The President spoke, the Vice President spoke. You dealt magnificently with the media, Margaret. We’ve given Stewart a wonderful toast with his favorite champagne. He would have made one of his decision matrixes and concluded he was proud of you. Now, eat.”
He’d heard them say such things to Margaret at least three or four times that evening. Did it help? Evidently so. Margaret Califano took a bigger bite of pizza and actually looked like she might be enjoying it.
Janette Weaverton appeared to be the quietest of the five women, although he hadn’t found her reticent or shy at all. It was just that the others seemed more forceful in their opinions, bigger in their laughter. She seemed preoccupied. Yes, that was it.
Ben said, “Will you ladies be staying here tonight?”
Five sets of eyes turned to him. “Oh no,” said Anna Clifford. “Our families are patient, they understand, but they want us back home. Since Callie’s here now, we’ll leave when it’s time for Margaret to go to bed.”
“Your husband, Mrs. Clifford, what does he do?”
“He used to be a banker, but now he’s a venture capitalist.” She paused a moment, chewed some pizza. “Most people don’t really understand what that means, exactly, but to me it sounds mysterious, maybe dangerous, like laundering Mafia money.”
That drew a round of laughter, but Margaret said, in a serious voice, “There’s nothing illegal in what Clayton does, Anna. He simply invests his own and other people’s money in individual entrepreneurs or start-up companies that interest him. He’s good at analyzing their growth potential, their planning skills, and deciding if they’re worth the risk.”
Anna smiled as she said, “Come on, Margaret, you know very well Clayton says it’s like deciding whether or not to buy Boardwalk in Monopoly.”
Bitsy said, “Eat more pizza, Margaret. Those chunks of pepper will bring back your sense of humor.”
Margaret dropped her slice of pizza back on her paper plate. She looked like she was about to burst into tears. “You don’t know what I did!”
“Mom, whatever it was—”
“Stewart wanted to be cremated. I didn’t follow his wishes. It was the President, you see, and all the protocol experts. Everyone expected a big church service, Stewart in a coffin in front of celebrity mourners. I ignored his wishes and buried him.” Margaret put her face in her hands and wept. “I buried him.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t.” Callie put her arms around her mother and rocked her. The women gathered around, patting her hair, her shoulders, her arms. “It doesn’t matter, Mom. Stewart wasn’t there. That magnificent service was for all his friends, for the President, for all those people who admired him. It was for everyone there to say their farewells to him. And the burial itself was so beautifully done. He wouldn’t have minded, truly.”
Ben had never felt so useless in his life. If he could have disappeared in that instant, he would have.
Then the storm of tears was over. Margaret gave a small laugh. “Poor Detective Raven. I’m sorry for that. You poor boy, stuck among all us women, but you’re doing very well, isn’t he, Juliette?”
“Very well indeed.”
Ben said, “You said that we hadn’t gotten much done, ma’am. Well, actually that’s not true. The FBI think they know who the assassin is. He calls himself Gunter Grass, or just Gunter.”
Margaret said, puzzled, “The writer? The man who murdered Stewart is a German?”
“We don’t know what nationality he is. Gunter Grass is the name he uses. He’s been inactive, supposedly for at least fifteen years now, until this. He’s known to speak four languages fluently, including English. He could very well live among us. He could even be living locally, and the person who wanted Justice Califano murdered very possibly knew about Gunter and his profession.
“This man killed twenty people in Europe in the seventies and eighties. We don’t know why he stopped.” Ben pulled two photos out of his shirt pocket. “Here’s a grainy photo, digitally enhanced—Interpol is about ninety percent sure it’s him—and here’s one that’s been aged to show how he’d probably look today, unless, of course, he’s taken pains to change his appearance, which is possible.” He handed both photos to the women and waited until each one had looked at them.
“Does this man look familiar to any of you?”
Juliette said, “He looks like a contractor my neighbor hired to gut her house.”
Margaret said, “Detective Raven, if this Gunter Grass hasn’t killed anyone for at least fifteen years, doesn’t that mean he made enough money to retire in style?”
“One could assume that, yes.”
“Then why would he kill my husband and poor Danny O’Malley?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Califano.”
Bitsy St. Pierre said, “Maybe the person who hired him found out about him, blackmailed him into doing
