Death by Surprise Page 14

  “Oh, more than that?”

  “It’s Harry Nichols. The owner of The Beacon” I didn’t like standing in my office foyer, explaining myself. “Come on in my office,” I said impatiently.

  I shut the office door behind us and walked on to my desk. Greg stood just inside the door, anger clear in the taut line of his body.

  “When did you start running around with him?”

  I dropped into my chair. “I don’t,” I said coolly “run around with anybody, Greg. If you read the newspapers, you might know that Nichols and I happened on Francine’s body at almost the same time last night.”

  Greg stared at me. “You didn’t call last night. I waited and waited. You find a body and you don’t even call me. Were you out with him?”

  There was no question who Greg meant.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. He offered to buy me a drink after the police let us go. I accepted.”

  “You should have called me,” he repeated stubbornly. “You didn’t call this morning. I canceled a campaign trip. I came here. I called your apartment. I went down to the courthouse but I missed you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said contritely. “But everything’s happened so quickly. I had to help Kenneth. I went to his house after he was arrested last night, then to the jail. I represented him at the arraignment this morning.”

  “What were you doing with Nichols again this morning?”

  “He’s offered to help me. He had found out some things about Francine and he wanted to tell me.”

  “I’m the one who can help you,” Greg said quickly. “I know a hell of a lot more about these things than Nichols.”

  Greg was right there. He had been DA before Jack Kerry. Greg had prosecuted a dozen murder trials.

  “I know, Greg. And I’m counting on you. You know that.”

  The hard tight lines around Greg’s mouth eased. “Hell, K.C., I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper, but I was just about to go crazy with worry over you. Last night, I was worried sick. You didn’t call and didn’t call. I rang your apartment. I even went by but you weren’t there. I didn’t know what to think.”

  I had probably just missed Greg. I got back to my apartment about three a.m. and collapsed into an uneasy sleep for a few hours before I was up and arranging bond, should it be approved, and planning for the arraignment.

  “This morning,” Greg continued, “when I saw all this stuff in the papers, I couldn’t believe you hadn’t called me.

  He came to me, pulled me up out of my chair and held me hard against him. “Jesus, K.C., you should have called.”

  Abruptly, he kissed me, his mouth hard and demanding against mine. The fatigue that dulled my mind and body burned away and I was, suddenly, kissing him in return and there was a wild surge of excitement between us. Then, in an ugly twist of memory, I could hear Grace’s voice, “Perhaps we could buy you a stud farm,” and I was abruptly as limp and cold as seaweed left behind by the outgoing tide.

  “K.C.?”

  I gave his arm a quick squeeze and slipped out of his embrace. I brushed my hair from my face. “I’m sorry, Greg, I’m very tired.” I was tired. I had slept perhaps four hours after finally getting home from the jail. The arraignment and the crush of reporters had taken a further toll. I ached with fatigue.

  “K.C.,” he said gruffly, “I didn’t mean to make things harder. It’s just that you mean so much to me.”

  For the first time since I had known Greg, I felt that I was hearing him speak without any pretense. There was always so much ebullience in him. Now he spoke quietly, opening himself to me.

  I looked into his eyes, dark commanding eyes now strangely uncertain. I almost told him that I cared, too. Yet, damn Grace, was it caring or passion with me? Greg was incredibly exciting.

  I hesitated and the moment was gone.

  I did say quickly, too quickly, after that long silence, “I wish we could go somewhere, the two of us, get out of all of this.”

  Now he hesitated. That was impossible. For both of us.

  “Yeah,” he said heavily. “That would be nice, but . . .” Then he said awkwardly, “Well, look, K.C., I’m sorry about your cousin. I hope . . . I hope everything works out.”

  “Thank you, Greg.”

  He frowned. “Don’t take it wrong, K.C. I know you’re a damn good lawyer, but I believe, if I were you, I’d get Pinella.”

  I nodded. “If it comes to a trial, Greg, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “If it comes to a trial?” he repeated.

  “Yes. You see, Greg, Kenneth is innocent. I’m sure of it. I’m going to be working on it, finding out more about Francine.”

  He wished me luck before he left and we talked about getting together later in the week, except he had some heavy campaigning to do. It was a little stilted and I felt let down after he left. Then I shrugged it away. Greg and I could patch it up, I was sure of it, and, right now, Kenneth needed my thoughts.

  I told Pat to hold my calls and remake all appointments for next week. I settled down to work.

  In an hour, I had it laid out—and it looked bad for the Carlisles.

  Item: Boutelle came to La Luz to write the Carlisle story.

  Item: To our knowledge, Boutelle had no other contacts in La Luz.

  Item: She was strangled with Kenneth’s silk scarf.

  That, of course, was the whammy.

  If her head had been smashed by a poker, we could reasonably imagine her attacker to be anyone, a maniac stranger who happened to pick her as a victim, a neighbor irritated by her cat, a door-to-door salesman overcome by the lust to kill, a devil-ridden evangelist with homicidal tendencies.

  It was impossible that any of the above could have come into possession of Kenneth’s scarf.

  What did we know about the scarf?

  Item: Kenneth wore it to work Monday. He did not think of it again until leaving Grace’s house Monday evening. When he reached into his pocket, the scarf was gone.

  Conclusion: The scarf could have been taken by anyone at Kenneth’s office or by anyone at Grace’s house that evening. The latter included me, Priscilla, Grace, Edmond and Sue, and Travis and Lorraine.

  I read my notes and reread them. So far as I could figure, there was only one possible killer other than a Carlisle. And he was a very slender possibility, indeed, because I could imagine no way that he could have obtained the scarf. But I decided to start my search with him. I would turn back into the family only when that was my only recourse.

  I leaned back in my chair. I must remember exactly what Francine had said, that night we talked.

  I had been tired then, too, tired from the long drive home from Rosemont and it had taken me a little while to realize that Francine Boutelle wasn’t an investigative reporter. She had begun by talking about the Levy case, claiming Dad had accepted a bribe. She pointed to Albert Gersten, Sonia Levy’s nephew, as the bagman. I concentrated furiously. Boutelle got her information from Gersten’s ex-wife. What was her name? Veronica? No. Victoria? No. Natalie. That was it, Natalie Gersten.

  I found Natalie Gersten in her redwood hot tub behind her split-level house on Ruidoso Canyon Drive. As the maid showed me to the flagstone patio beside the hot tub, Mrs. Gersten, her hair covered by a silk turban, was studying my card. All that showed above the redwood circle was the turban and a bony hand holding the card.

  “Come around here, darling, where I can see you.”

  She was flushed from the heat of the water and perhaps from the red wine in a glass that was set upon a ledge. She had once been beautiful as a glossy raven is beautiful but now her face was haggard and, more than that, bitter. You could read it in the sharp deep lines that bracketed her mouth and in the purse of her lips.

  “K.C. Carlisle?”

  I nodded.

  She glanced back down at my card. On it I had penciled, ‘May I see you on a matter of importance?’

  It would take monumental indifference to ignore that request,
or extreme caution. Most women possess neither.

  She looked up sharply. “If you’re here from my ex-husband, I don’t have a damn thing to say.”

  “I have nothing to do with your husband, Mrs. Gersten.”

  “Ex-husband.”

  Here must be the source of those lines of bitterness. It wouldn’t take much to loose a torrent. I chose my words carefully.

  “At least,” I amended, “I am not here on his behalf. I do have a question about some activity of his in the past.” I paused and added delicately, “Perhaps it could even be described as a criminal activity.”

  It is, of course, as much a crime to bribe as to be bribed.

  She listened avidly and there was a dart of pleasure in her dark eyes.

  “I could tell you where the bones are buried,” she said meaningfully, “if I wanted to.” She hungered to. She propped her arms along the side of the tub and hot water bubbled and swirled around her bony shoulders.

  I felt a surge of disgust. What was I doing here, baiting a vindictive middle-aged woman to destroy my father’s memory? But I managed an approving smile, though it felt grotesque. I wouldn’t think of Dad now. I would think of Kenneth.

  “Do you remember when your husband’s uncle, Adolphus Levy—”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “Yes, of course. When your ex-husband’s uncle was tried for fraud. My father, Judge Carlisle, heard the case.”

  “Sure, and cleaned up fifty thousand to let old Adolphus off the hook. Sure, I remember. Albert took care of it.” She laughed and it was a hard ugly sound in the soft California air. “Albert was always such a goody-goody. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it but his Aunt Sonia could always pull his string. Poor Albert. He writhed and wriggled and whined but he finally took the money and delivered it. Sonia made him do it. He said it was wrong and just plain highway robbery, that old Adolphus was innocent and shouldn’t have to buy his way out, but Sonia wasn’t going to take any chances. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for that old dried-up string she’s married to. She’s the one who set it up. She’s a hard old bitch.”

  That was all she knew. It was enough to make me feel physically ill. I refused a glass of wine, thanked her—God, how could I thank her—and made my escape.

  As I drove down the twisting canyon road, I knew how Pandora must have felt. I had pursued this clue because it led away from Kenneth, but I was breaking my heart.

  I believed in my father. I believed in him. I remembered how fairly he treated everyone in his court, lawyers, jurors, plaintiffs, defendants. Always.

  He wasn’t a greedy man, although sometimes he must have been a little hard pressed since the great bulk of the family fortune skipped his generation, but I never remembered an instance of his talking about a great need for money or indeed evidencing any kind of interest in money at all.

  Yet I now had heard, albeit second-hand from a hate-filled woman, a clear unambiguous claim that he had accepted a bribe.

  I tried not to think of it, tried not to picture my father taking money to suspend a sentence. I tried instead to think, should the tawdry story be true, of the panic on the part of the man who paid the money when it looked like the story might be made public. Albert Gersten was an investment banker. He would not like to go to jail.

  I pushed away the memory of the day I was graduated from law school and my father reached out to shake my hand and say quietly, with so much pride, “You will be the finest kind of lawyer, K.C.”

  No man who admired the law, loved the law, could sell justice for money.

  At the base of the canyon where the streets widen out and a new sub-development crowds against the hills, I stopped at a convenience store and went to an outside pay phone. I looked up the Levys’ number.

  “Who is calling?” the maid asked.

  “K.C. Carlisle. Please tell Mrs. Levy that it is very important that I speak to her.”

  Sonia Levy’s voice was cool and placid. “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Levy, we’ve never met, but I think you knew my father, Judge Carlisle.”

  There was a distinct pause.

  “No, Miss Carlisle,” she said finally. “I did not know your father personally. My only acquaintance with him came when my husband Adolphus was tried in his court. And exonerated.”

  The last was sharp and pointed. The wound still throbbed.

  “Mrs. Levy, I must talk to you personally.”

  “Why?”

  “I have heard a charge that your nephew, Albert Gersten, bribed my father to suspend Mr. Levy’s sentence.”

  “That is an absurd accusation, Miss Carlisle. I would ignore it if I were you.”

  “You don’t understand, Mrs. Levy. A murder is involved.”

  “Murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you talking about, Miss Carlisle? Please explain yourself.”

  “I will be glad to do so. In person.”

  “I’m sorry. Miss Carlisle. I see no reason why . . .”

  “Then I suppose I must talk to Albert Gersten.”

  There was a long silence.

  “That shouldn’t be necessary,” she said finally. “When would you like to meet?”

  “Now.”

  “Very well.”

  The Levy house was on the opposite side of La Luz, a beachfront home. Prices on these have been out of sight for years. Only Saudi sheiks need now apply. I drove slowly. I had a lot to think about. It was clear that Sonia Levy did not want me to talk to Albert Gersten. That suggested Albert might be a weak reed. If I didn’t get anywhere with Mrs. Levy, I would try him next.

  The brief enigmatic phone conversation had done nothing to relieve the depression that dragged me down. If my father turned out to be a crook, it meant nothing could ever be what it seemed. I had scarcely trusted anyone since my sister maneuvered a sailboat away from me, willing me to drown. If my father was not what he seemed, I would never again have faith in the faces that people turned toward me.

  The Levy mansion of grey stone clung to the cliff top. It spelled a lot of money, money enough to buy whatever Sonia Levy wanted.

  She waited for me in her library. Silver and blue Persian rugs graced the highly-waxed oak floor. Books rose in tiers on mahogany shelving. She was standing at the far end of the room, beneath an oil portrait. I glanced up at it and was caught by the vividness of the portrait. It was of a man in his fifties with thinning grey hair and a slight build but the painter had captured in the face a suggestion of kindness and sensitivity that was striking.

  “Do you admire it, Miss Carlisle?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is my husband. Miss Carlisle. Can you not look at his face and see the kind of man he is?”

  I nodded.

  “Everyone knows how good Adolphus is,” she continued heatedly. “Everyone. It was an abomination that he should have been persecuted as he was. It broke his heart. He has never recovered from it.” She spoke angrily. The passage of years had not, for her, eased the pain of his arrest and trial.

  “The sentence was suspended.”

  She lifted her chin. She was an elegant woman, her blue-grey hair coiffed perfectly, her makeup subtle and flattering. Slim and tall, she wore her ultra-suede dress with the flair of a wealthy woman who knows and loves clothes. Her dark eyes, rich brown eyes, looked at me dispassionately. “Yes,” she agreed without expression, “the sentence was suspended.”

  Painfully, I said, “I have heard the charge that my father accepted money to suspend the sentence. Is that true?”

  Sonia Levy clasped her hands in front of her. They were lovely hands, slim and dark, and she wore gracefully a heavy silver bracelet and one ring with a blood-red ruby stone that glowed even in the subdued light of the library.

  “I want to know, Miss Carlisle, what you meant when you spoke of murder?”

  “It was in the papers this morning. A woman was strangled here in La Luz. Francine Boutelle.”

  “I do not know the n
ame. What could she have to do with us?”

  “She was writing an article about the Carlisle family for Inside Out. In it she planned to say that Albert Gersten bribed my father. At your direction.”

  “Are you suggesting,” she said it slowly, thoughtfully, “that Albert or I could have killed this woman to keep the matter secret?”

  I hadn’t envisioned Sonia Levy as a murderess, but, logically, it could be.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  She turned away from me, walked to a rosewood table next to a sofa and picked up the morning paper. She returned to me, all the while skimming the article.

  She read aloud, “Miss Boutelle was known to have been alive at six p.m. because she telephoned to a neighborhood delicatessen to order some food. There was no answer at her door when the delicatessen attempted delivery at about seven-thirty. Her body was discovered shortly before eight o’clock by La Luz attorney K.C. Carlisle, cousin of the man charged with her murder.” Mrs. Levy looked up at me with dark measuring eyes. “You found the body.”

  I nodded.

  Abruptly, she began to smile and the atmosphere of the room eased. “I am delighted to be able to inform you, Miss Carlisle, that my husband and I, and my nephew, Albert Gersten, left La Luz in the company of another couple, Paul and Camille Richards, at shortly before six p.m. on our way to attend a party in Los Angeles at the home of Harris Porter. We arrived there at seven-thirty and did not leave until almost midnight.”

  I recognized the name. Porter had directed pictures which won back-to-back Oscars.

  As an alibi, it was impeccable.

  So Albert and Mrs. Levy were out of it. It didn’t really surprise me. And it didn’t ease my pain.

  “All right, Mrs. Levy, I accept that. But please, I must know the truth. About my father.”

  She looked around the room. She paused, then asked gently, “Miss Carlisle, have you ever seen my roses? They are quite lovely. Even this late in the season.”

  I followed her through the French windows of the library onto a sloping terrace. Roses, glorious beds of roses, cascaded toward the cliffs edge. As we walked toward the center of the garden, she reached out and touched me gently on my arm. “Why do you not let it go, Miss Carlisle? There can be no joy in disturbing the dead.”