Death by Surprise Read online

  “I have told you the truth. The tape proves it.”

  “You could have left and come back,” he replied.

  He dismissed us then.

  On the way out, I tried to see if there was anything lying about that looked like a manuscript.

  Farris was coming along behind me. “Looking for something, Miss Carlisle?”

  “No,” I said coolly, “I’m merely curious, Captain. I’ve never been this close to the scene of a crime before.”

  I’m sure my answer confirmed Harry Nichols’s opinion of the Carlisles in general and me in particular, but Farris undoubtedly brought out the worst in me.

  But Nichols was more interested in what he had managed to discover as we walked through the living room. On the steps outside, he asked, “Did you see the cassettes stacked in the bookcase behind her desk?”

  In the milling confusion, I had missed that.

  “They were labeled,” Nichols continued. “I would guess she worked on tape.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, though I suppose it should have from her actions at my office. Her search for a hidden tape recorder would indicate someone accustomed to using tapes. So the absence of a manuscript didn’t mean a thing. Francine may have taped for posterity all the dirt she had on the Carlisles and a police technician might soon be hearing all about us.

  “That worries you?”

  I would have denied it but he was too perceptive by far.

  “I would be interested to know what’s on them,” I responded.

  We were at the sidewalk now. We stopped, looked at each other and Nichols said abruptly, “I’ve got to get to a phone to call our police reporter.” He paused, then said slowly, “I’ll ask him to see what he can find out about the cassettes.”

  Was he actually offering to help me? “I would appreciate that.”

  Nichols frowned, his dark brows drawn tightly together. “There’s a bar a couple of blocks from here. We could get a drink and I’ll call him.”

  A Carlisle having a drink with a Nichols. It had an unholy aura I couldn’t resist. I could find out more about the murder through Nichols and The Beacon. Of course, I’d better not forget who he was. He obviously guessed there was more to my appointment with Boutelle than I had revealed.

  “I’d like a drink,” I said finally.

  We took my car. Louie’s was a quiet neighborhood bar with Streisand and Simon and Garfunkel and Joan Baez on the juke box, a pocket out of yesterday. We were Harry and K.C. by the time we slipped into a back booth.

  After we ordered, Harry went to the pay phone back in a dingy hall between the restrooms. I slowly sipped a margarita and debated trying to call Kenneth. But I needed to be careful. It might endanger Kenneth more if he knew about Francine’s murder when Farris came to see him.

  I wished I had a legal pad with me. There is something so clarifying about laying out a problem on the familiar yellow sheets. And it would build a wall of words against the picture of Francine that hung in my mind.

  I took a deep, deep drink.

  When Harry slid back into the booth, he drank down half his drink before he said a word. “I got Paul Lowery. He’s our police reporter. He gets along with Farris. If anybody can find out what’s on those cassettes, it’s Paul.”

  Then he stared at me, his face somber.

  So he was going to help me.

  I knew it would be better to leave it alone, but I had to know.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  For a long moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, finally, he said wearily, “Life is damned odd. I would have sworn I would never do anything for a Carlisle. And yet . . .”

  I waited.

  He reached across the table suddenly, gently cupped my chin in his hand. “Goddamnit, you look so much like her.”

  His hand dropped away. I was suddenly aware that I liked his touch and, at the same time, I was oddly offended. I was K.C. Carlisle and I looked like myself.

  “Like who?” I asked distantly.

  He didn’t notice my tone. He was staring down at the table, seeing things I could not.

  When he talked, it was almost to himself. “She was a blonde, too. Tall and leggy. She was . . . she was beautiful and her eyes were dark like yours.” He looked up at me. “But different. She had trusting eyes.” His mouth twisted a little. “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”

  It was closer to the mark than I would admit.

  “I know that I . . . idealized her.” It was hard for him to say. I could hear the pain in his voice. “She was older than I, enough older that when mother died it was really Susie who raised me.”

  He saw the total bewilderment in my eyes.

  “My sister,” he said quietly. “My sister, Susie.” He cocked his head, studied me. “The resemblance is in the way you hold your head, the way you move. I don’t think you are much like her in personality. Susie was very outgoing and happy and . . . trusting.”

  My margarita tasted even more sour than usual.

  He picked up on it immediately. “But you aren’t that kind of person, are you?”

  “No,” I agreed, “I don’t suppose I am an especially trusting person.”

  “Susie was trusting. And it killed her.” He glared at me angrily and finished off his drink. “So what the hell am I doing here with you?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll tell you about Susie.”

  I could have said I wasn’t interested. But I was.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “You’ve slept around some.”

  It could have been offensive. Oddly, it wasn’t. He didn’t wait for me to answer. He answered it himself.

  “Sure you have. You’re a beautiful girl. A normal girl. Times are different now. When Susie was growing up, in the late fifties, no one was open about sex.”

  As he told it, it was a familiar enough story. A girl met an attractive older man. She fell in love with him. He was married. When she told him she was pregnant, he left town. Took his wife and went on a trip around the world.

  “I understand he had a fine trip,” Harry said huskily. “Played polo in England. Even bought some new horses for his string.”

  I knew then. I had heard a lot, growing up, about how well Uncle Bobby played polo.

  “I didn’t know,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know.”

  “She died the week before her twenty-third birthday,” Harry said brutally, “in a goddam cheap sleazy boarding-house on Sausalito Street where she had gone for an abortion.”

  Now I knew why the Nichols hated the Carlisles.

  I reached out, touched his hand tentatively. “I’m sorry, Harry. God, I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  I shook my head. If others in the family had known, no one had ever told me. And somehow I doubted that Kenneth knew this about his father.

  “Uncle Bobby was . . .” I shrugged. “I guess the Victorians saw life pretty clearly. They had the best word for men like Uncle Bobby. He was a rotter.” I hesitated, said gently, “Harry, he’s dead. He’s been dead for years.”

  Harry stared at me, his grey eyes dark with anger. “I was thirteen when Susie died. I swore that someday, when I was grown, I would kill him. But the mountains killed him first.”

  “Can’t you let it go?” I asked. “Let it all go?”

  “It isn’t that easy,” he said slowly. “I don’t think the past is ever over. Ever.”

  I understood that. I, of all people, understood that. “You don’t have to help me,” I said abruptly and I started to slide out of the booth.

  “No, K.C. Wait.”

  I looked at him inquiringly. “Don’t leave.”

  “Don’t leave.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  We ordered a second round and were awkwardly silent for a moment, then he asked me about college and law school and, gradually, we began to talk, as if we weren’
t a Carlisle or a Nichols, two people finding out about each other.

  “Have you always worked for The Beacon,”

  His life hadn’t followed neat patterns, either. He spent a tour in Vietnam, was one of the early “advisers.” When he was discharged, he spent a few years drifting from one big city newspaper to another. He didn’t want to come back to La Luz and be the boss’s son. Then his father died of a heart attack and he came home to The Beacon.

  “Are you glad you came back?”

  He nodded. “Mostly.” He looked at me directly. “I got married then, too.”

  I waited.

  “Two kids, Harry Jr. is a freshman at Dartmouth. Susie lives with me. She’s fourteen.”

  “And your wife?”

  “Ex-wife. She’s married to . . . a former friend of mine.”

  So what do you say? ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I’m glad.’ I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m back where I started. A bachelor. I intend to stay that way.”

  He said it angrily, bitterly. This was one divorce I wouldn’t ask about.

  “Going it alone is better,” I said quickly. Maybe I almost believed it. It was the way I had lived for a long time.

  Harry’s face smoothed out. “That’s enough about me. Tell me, K.C., why did you go to law school?”

  I never had a chance to answer.

  “Hey, Harry.” The bartender was yanking a thumb over his shoulder. “Phone.”

  Harry went to answer. I finished my second margarita and decided that was enough. When Harry came back, I would thank him and offer him a ride back to his car. I needed to go home and do some thinking.

  But when Harry came back, I knew from his face that something big had happened.

  “I’m sorry, K.C. Sorry for you. Farris has arrested your cousin Kenneth.”

  It fell into place for Farris, I later learned, as neatly as a cell door clanging shut. Maybe there is an instinct to the hunt, a subconscious nerve-twang, that prompts a detective to make a try, and, when it succeeds, he is acclaimed for his cleverness and it reconfirms his own confidence and sets in concrete his original perspective. Farris had the letter, of course, that damning letter that pointed to Kenneth. When one of his men returned to the apartment with the news that a neighbor had seen a man leaving Francine’s apartment hurriedly just after seven, Farris went immediately to talk to her. The final piece of good luck and, from Farris’ viewpoint, proper response to his seeking out, was the neighbor’s description of the man, “Well, it looked like the young man who is running for the House. I’ve seen his ads on the TV. Carlisle, that’s his name.”

  Farris was primed for bear and he wasn’t new at the game so he took the time to roust out a judge and get a search warrant. He drove to Kenneth and Megan’s house. It was dark, a night light burning in the bay window. Farris wasn’t in any hurry. He settled back in his unmarked car and smoked and waited.

  The Mercedes glided up the wide circular drive just before eleven. The garage door swung up automatically, the car pulled in and the door came down.

  Farris and his assistant got out and walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Kenneth answered the door, still in the tuxedo he had worn to the symphony. Megan was just starting upstairs, her long dress a shimmer of silver in the light of the entry way chandelier.

  It was about an hour after this that I drove up the steep street and turned into the drive. A police cruiser blocked the way. A policeman shone a light in my face. “This drive’s closed.”

  “I’m going through. This is my cousin’s house. I intend to talk to his wife.”

  He turned without answering and walked back to his cruiser and leaned inside to talk on the radio. I couldn’t hear the exchange, but he returned in a moment to ask, “Are you K.C. Carlisle?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can go through.”

  He backed his car out of the way and I edged by in the Porsche.

  The house blazed with lights. Two more squad cars were parked by the front steps. The front door was open. I stepped into the entryway of pale green Italian marble. I could see my reflection in the gilt-framed mirror that hung above a Chippendale side table. My face glimmered at me, pale and strained.

  A uniformed policeman sat uncomfortably on a spindle-legged chair. “Are you Miss Carlisle?”

  I nodded.

  “Mrs. Carlisle is in there,” and he nodded towards the drawing room.

  Megan waited for me just inside the double doors. She reached out to draw me through. “K.C., thank God you’ve come.” She shut the doors. “They’ve arrested Kenneth. K.C., they’ve arrested him for murder.”

  Her eyes burned in a face paled by shock. The diamond necklace at her throat glittered in the light of the wall sconces. Megan clutched at her throat, oblivious to the necklace, frantic with worry.

  “I know, Megan. That’s why I’ve come. Tell me everything that’s happened.”

  Footsteps sounded above us. Megan looked up at the ceiling. “They’re still here. They are pawing through our things, looking everywhere.”

  “Do they have a search warrant?”

  “Yes. They showed it when they first came. They found something in the trunk of Kenneth’s car. I don’t know what it was but they were all excited.” She paused and looked at me with haunted eyes. “And Kenneth . . .” She said it slowly, it was hard to say, “Kenneth looked awful when they asked him for the keys. It was when they came back in from the garage that they arrested him.”

  I suddenly felt very tired. I knew what they were hunting for, of course. Any of the materials that were missing from Francine’s desk. And, more than that, they were looking for whatever had been used to strangle her. It was Harry who had told me he was sure something had been used, a rope or a tie of some kind.

  “Megan, where was Kenneth tonight, between six and seven?”

  “Between six and seven?” she asked faintly.

  I nodded.

  “He called,” she said dully, “about six and said he would be a little late getting home. He needed to finish a contract.” She hid her face in her hands for a long moment. Her voice was muffled. “Oh, K.C., I called the office about six-thirty. I wanted him to stop on the way home and buy some Chablis . . .”

  There wasn’t any answer. “What time did he get home?”

  Her hands dropped away from her face. I didn’t look at her. It was too painful.

  “About seven-thirty.” Her hands knotted in fists. She continued reluctantly, “He was upset. I knew that. I always know when he is upset, when something is wrong. He said he had a bad headache, but he insisted we go on to the symphony.” She looked at me forlornly. “K.C., what happened?”

  “Have you told this to the police?”

  She shook her head.

  “Keep your mouth shut. If they want to talk to you, refuse to say anything unless I am present.”

  “All right, K.C.”

  I hesitated, but I had to ask it. “Megan, do you have any idea what Francine had on Kenneth?”

  “No. But something has been wrong for weeks. Kenneth hasn’t been himself. At night, we would be home, just the two of us, and I would look up and he would be looking at me . . . so strangely. When I would ask, he always said nothing was wrong. But K.C., I knew that wasn’t true.”

  Yes, something was very wrong. Kenneth hadn’t engineered the dissolution of the Cochran-Carlisle trust for nothing.

  “Has it just been the past few weeks?”

  Her mouth tightened. “Yes. I know what everyone will say. They will say he was having an affair and this woman found out and wanted money to keep it secret and he killed her because of me . . . or the campaign.” She swallowed jerkily. “It isn’t true. I tell you it isn’t true.”

  The wife was always the last to know, wasn’t that the folk wisdom?

  I wouldn’t know. I had never been married, never had a husband to lose. But I wondered if in this instance folk wisdom failed? Wouldn’t you know, wouldn’t you know instinctively if
the man you loved had turned to another? Perhaps you could be fooled if he had always been untrue, but I felt sure that couldn’t have been the case with Kenneth.

  Kenneth loved Megan.

  That was a constant, a basic, a given.

  Wouldn’t Megan have known?

  She reached out, gripped my arm. “I tell you it can’t be true, K.C. We . . . Kenneth and I . . . I tell you, it can’t be true.”

  “All right, Megan,” I said soothingly, “relax. Don’t get upset.” Wasn’t that a laugh. Don’t be upset, dear, just because they’ve arrested your husband for murder. “Let’s sit down, Megan, think it out, pool what we know. It’s the only way we can help Kenneth.”

  If Kenneth could be helped. I didn’t say it, but I thought it. I asked what I had to know, “Megan, what did Kenneth say when they arrested him?”

  We sat on the long couch beneath a vivid Van Gogh. I remembered when Kenneth and Megan bought the painting at an auction at Sotheby’s. They had been so proud of it, in a well-bred way. Now the driven, tortured strokes in the painting seemed to echo the pain in her face.

  “He just looked stricken. He turned to me and he tried to smile. It was . . . dreadful. He said, ‘Megan, no matter what they say, I didn’t do it.’ Then that man, the police captain said it was time to go down to the station, they had a lot to talk about. Kenneth didn’t even look at him. He just ignored him and stared at me and said, ‘Megan, please, I love you,’ and then he turned and walked out with all those men around him.”

  Kenneth was always such a perfect product of his background and breeding. For him to have spoken publicly, before the police, of love showed just how great the strain upon him.

  I could imagine the words, almost see Kenneth’s face. Of all who knew him, perhaps I alone knew how much he loved Megan. I didn’t think, no matter what happened, that he would lie to Megan.

  For the first time since Harry told me Kenneth had been arrested, I began to think in terms of Kenneth’s innocence, not his possible guilt.

  There could be an innocent explanation for all that had happened. If Kenneth had been at Francine’s apartment, it didn’t necessarily mean he was her murderer. I had been there and I hadn’t murdered her.