But knowing that hadn’t prepared her for sitting with them and listening to them speak of this unspeakable crime, and the man who had committed it, and his motivations, and the legal aspects of the whole sordid series of events as professionals, rather than father and son and daughter.
And it wasn’t just an idle conversation. They had been at it over an hour, ever since Brewster’s sedate black Cadillac had unexpectedly led Amy’s battered Suburban and Matt’s unmarked police Ford into the drive. When he had called from the Flatspin Restaurant where they had had lunch, she had asked what the chances were of having “the children” home for supper. He had said he’d see. From his tone of voice, it had seemed unlikely.
But then they’d appeared, surprising and pleasing her. Brewster had said Matt couldn’t come for supper, he had to be with Stan Colt, so they’d come now. They’d immediately gone out to the patio, arranged themselves on the comfortably upholstered lawn furniture, and started talking about Homer C. Daniels.
Without being asked, Mrs. Newman, the Payne house-keeper-a comfortable looking gray-haired woman in her fifties-had produced a pot of coffee and a tray with toasted rye bread, liverwurst, mustard, and sliced raw onions, and then taken a chair by the door. Patricia was pleased to see Mrs. Newman was as fascinated with Mr. Homer C. Daniels as she was.
And then the phone rang, and Patricia didn’t want to talk to anyone, and said as much.
“Grab that, please, Elizabeth,” she called. “And get rid of whoever it is. I’ll call them back.”
Mrs. Newman took her walk-around telephone from a pocket in her dress and spoke into it. Then she got up and walked to them.
“Mrs. Nesbitt for Mr. Payne,” she said. “She won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
“Damn!” Brewster C. Payne, Esq., said.
“Not you,” Mrs. Newman said. “Young Mrs. Nesbitt for Young Mr. Payne.”
“Shit,” Young Mr. Payne said.
“Matty!” his mother said.
Mrs. Newman handed him the phone.
“And how is the somewhat careless caretaker of my god-daughter? ”
“God, you’re such an asshole, Matt…” Daffy Nesbitt said.
“Thank you for sharing that with me. I’ll tell Mother what you said.”
“… but despite that, I’m going to do you a favor.”
“Oh, God!”
“I probably really shouldn’t tell you this, but Chad said I should.”
“You’re in the family way again?”
“No, goddamn it!”
“Can we get to the point of this fascinating conversation, please?”
“We’re having a few people in here before we make an appearance at the Four Seasons thing,” Daffy said.
“What people?” Matt asked.
“Old friends of ours, of yours,” Chad said.
“And I want you to show up in black tie and spare us your usual bad manners,” Daffy said.
“What’s in it for me?”
“Terry,” Chad Nesbitt chimed in.
“She’s the door prize?”
Chad laughed.
“I can’t imagine why,” Daffy said. “But she really likes you. She asked if you would be coming.”
Now, that’s interesting!
Detective Lassiter’s cellular phone was reported out of service. And messages left on her answering machine and at Northwest Detectives asking that she call him had brought no response.
“Tell me more,” Matt said.
“You could take Terry to the Colt dinner at the Four Seasons and then to La Famiglia.”
“Whose idea is that?”
“Mine,” Daffy said. “She’s not throwing herself at you.”
“Well, I don’t know. I like it better when they throw themselves at me.”
“Suit yourself, you bastard,” Daffy said.
“What time is this drunken brawl of yours?”
“Five-ish,” Daffy said.
“What was that all about?” Dr. Payne inquired, asking the question her mother had just, reluctantly, decided was none of her business and couldn’t ask.
“Daffy wants me to go by Society Hill before the Colt dinner at the Four Seasons. They’re having people in. What I think they really want is for me to entertain one and all by telling them all about Homer C. Daniels.”
“That’s unkind, Matt,” Patricia Payne said. “They’re your oldest friends.”
“And they’re playing cupid again,” Matt said, “trying to pair me off with Terry Davis.”
“So you’re not going?” Amy asked.
“As Mother says, Chad and I go back a long way,” Matt said, realizing as he said it that it sounded transparently lame.
At 11:48, when Matt Payne left La Famiglia-an upscale restaurant on South Front Street just below Market Street, overlooking the Delaware River-he was just about convinced that he was going to get lucky with Terry Davis.
Everything had gone well, from his immediately being able to put his hands on the little box with the studs for his dress shirt when he hastily changed into a dinner jacket at his apartment-that almost never happened-through the drinks at Chad and Daffy’s place until now.
Terry had looked very good indeed when he went into the party, and she did in fact seem glad to see him. And he’d even gotten along with the people Chad and Daffy had in. Many of them he’d known all his life. Usually, however, when he saw them socially, they gave him the impression that he’d done something terrible that had moved him far below the salt. Like being a cop. So he didn’t often see them socially. When he did, he often, in Daffy’s words, showed his ass, and embarrassed everybody.
Tonight there had been none of that, with one minor exception.
“I didn’t know, Payne, until I saw you on the tube, that you were a sergeant,” J. Andrew Stansfield III had said, coming up to where Matt was looking out the windows onto the Delaware.
“That’s right, Stansfield.”
Matthew M. Payne, Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV, and J. Andrew Stansfield III had graduated from Episcopal Academy together. Stansfield had gone on to Princeton, then the Harvard School of Business Administration, and then found employment with Stansfield amp; Stansfield, Commercial Realtors.
“I’m afraid I actually don’t know what that means,” Stansfield said.
“It means I make four percent more than I made when I was detective,” Matt said. “It comes to right over two thousand a year.”
“That’s all?” Stansfield said, genuinely surprised.
Then his face showed that he suspected Payne was pulling his leg.
“Well, there are certain professional privileges,” Matt said.
“For example?”
“For example, when Terry and I leave here for the Four Seasons, my car is parked right outside on the cobblestones of Stockton Place,” Matt said. “If you tried to park there, Stansfield, you’d be towed.”
“Yes, I know,” J. Andrew Stansfield had said, nodding and seeming a bit confused. Terry Davis had squeezed his arm, and when he looked at her, her eyes were smiling.
And Terry had smelled very nice indeed in his Porsche on the way to the Four Seasons, where he was able- because Sergeant Al Nevins of Dignitary Protection was there awaiting the arrival of Stan Colt and wanted to talk to him-to park very near the door.
“We’re playing games later,” Nevins said. “The limo will take Colt and the Bolinskis-”
“Bolinski as in ‘The Bull’?” Matt interrupted.
Nevins nodded.
“-the limo will take them back to the Ritz, where they will go inside, get on the elevator, go to the basement
