Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (15 page)

When I finished the last creamy slurp, it felt good to do nothing for a while. Sitting quietly, I wondered if maybe I was pushing myself too hard. I had felt energized during my middle trimester, but now perhaps my body was telling me to slow down a little.

My caller showed up in a rush. I recognized him instantly. Except for his front teeth, he didn’t look much different than he had in his childhood photograph—all elbows and the big chin and floppy brown hair. He wore nondescript khaki shorts with sneakers and a short-sleeved polo shirt with the name of the high school band embroidered on it. He took off a blue baseball cap and put his hand down for me to shake.

“Wow.” He recoiled from me when I struggled to my feet. “I guess you’re having a baby soon.”

“Yes.” I caught my balance on the back of my chair. Judging by his tone of voice, he thought my condition might be contagious. “Do you want to go somewhere for a drink? Or is this okay?”

He looked around the busy space. “This is great. Can I get you something?”

“How about a bottle of cold water?”

“Coming up!”

When he returned with two bottles of water, I said, “When you phoned the newspaper, Mr. Kaminsky, you asked to talk to me, personally. May I ask why?”

He put his baseball cap on the table between us. “Call me David. My mother told me to phone you.”

“Do I know your mother?”

“Nah, she just reads your stuff in the paper. Even if the
Intelligencer
is getting a little wacko lately, she said I could probably trust you. She lives in Exton, right outside Philly. She says the picture in the paper is my first-grade photo. It just about gave her a heart attack, though, opening the
Intelligencer
and seeing my old picture there.”

“I’m sorry about that. What makes her think it’s your photo?”

He laughed. “Well, you know. Moms know everything. She recognized it. She has a copy at home, right there in the dining room. In one of those frames with all the circles and a picture for every year of school? Anyway, she said I should call you. So here we are. What’s this all about?”

The ball was in my court. I had stewed about how to approach a potentially delicate subject. Cautiously, I asked, “Do you know who Jenny Tuttle is?”

His smile was broad. “Sure. She’s my mother, right?”

I must have looked flabbergasted, because he said quickly, “My birth mom, that is. I’m adopted. So I’m guessing she’s my real mother.”

“Can you prove it?”

“That I’m adopted? Well, I don’t carry the papers with me, but—”

“No, I mean can you prove that Jenny was your mother?”

David cracked open his water bottle and took a thirsty slug before answering. “Mom was required to send my picture to the adoption lawyer now and then—we guess to keep my file updated,
but maybe it was to send to the birth parents. That’s the only reason I can think why she had a copy. Mom always said she would help me look up my birth parents anytime I wanted, but I never did, you know? Because, hey, they were never really my parents. My adopted parents, they’re my real parents. Actually, I have two moms. Mom and Mimi. They’re lesbian,” David said the word without batting an eye. “Both of them are music teachers, too, like me. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings by digging around for anybody else. Does this make any sense?”

“Yes, it does.”

“So I could find out, I guess. But why would that lady have my picture unless she was my mom?”

“I don’t know.” I peered at David for a moment, trying to see any resemblance to Jenny Tuttle. But my last glimpse of Jenny now clouded my impressions of her physical appearance when she was alive. If David’s eyes were the same color as hers or if their noses matched, I couldn’t be sure. He was certainly shaped differently than she. He was lean and knobby, while her figure had been well padded.

But his interest in music. Could that be hereditary?

I said, “Do you know who the Tuttles are?”

“Well, yeah. Toodles Tuttle?” David couldn’t hide the sparkle in his eyes. “Who doesn’t know who he is? The composer. ‘Begin with My Lips’? And ‘Usher in the New Year’? Great songs. I saw
Kick Step Change
when I was ten. Mom and Mimi took me up to New York for my birthday. I think I played the CD, like, a thousand times. Is it crazy to hope I could really be related to him?”

I couldn’t hide a smile. This high school music teacher wasn’t dreaming of a big monetary inheritance. He was thrilled about the musical connection. “I don’t think it’s crazy.”

“So what’s next?” he asked. “I know Toodles is dead, and Mom says that this lady is gone, too.”

“Well, if you think it’s time, you should find out who your birth parents really are. From your end, that is.”

“Mom says the lawyer who handled the adoption is still alive. He probably still has all the papers.”

“That’s the first step, definitely.”

David looked into the distance for a moment, letting his imagination fly. He was smiling. “How cool is this?”

“Pretty cool,” I agreed.

My cell phone rang. I checked the ID. Gus was on the line.

I said good-bye to David Kaminsky and asked him to call me when he learned more about his adoption. Running late, I took my phone outside and flagged a cab before returning Gus’s call.

He said, “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m on my way to my first event.”

“Come back to the office. I need to talk to you.”

“I can’t. I’ll be late.”

He growled. “I should meet you somewhere else, anyway. This is a personal matter.”

My antenna went up. “What personal matter?”

“Between you and me, of course,” he said with exasperation. “That’s what personal means. Plus I want to hear what you learned about Oxenfeld. What time will you be finished with whatever tea party you’re attending?”

“An hour,” I said without responding to his tea-party crack. “What’s this about?”

“I find it necessary to discuss it face-to-face.”

“All right.” Curiosity on high, I said, “I’ll call you in an hour.”

“Do that,” he snapped, then hung up.

The tea party was exactly that—a children’s tea party in the sleek, modern entrance space of the new Barnes Foundation museum. I crossed over the moatlike reflecting pool and entered the
blissfully cool lobby. Once I was inside the normally serene building, the party noise and mayhem practically hit me in the face.

Dozens of foster kids had been seated at darling little tables decorated with pastel paper cups and plates. The guests were supposed to be genteelly passing cucumber sandwiches while listening to a local author read from her newly released children’s book. But the audience was far more interested in pulling apart their sandwiches and pouring their juice from cup to cup than in hearing about two shy frogs on a picnic. The parents watched nervously from the sidelines and tried to signal commands to their charges.

The only parent who seemed above the fray was the regally tranquil woman I had met a few times at past events for foster kids—a cause in which I was becoming increasingly interested. My new acquaintance went by the name of Miss Patty, and I had learned she was the foster parent to fourteen children.

Miss Patty waved to me, and I slipped into a seat beside her.

“Nora,” she whispered, “you always look so pretty. Where do you get such fine clothes?”

“I’m a big believer in hand-me-downs.”

She chuckled. “You and me both. Do you have enough baby things for your little one?”

Touched by her concern, I quickly reassured her. “My sister has bags and bags. She promises I won’t have to buy so much as a sock.”

“Well, when you’re finished with those things, you know where to send ’em.”

She caught me by surprise. “Miss Patty, do you mean you’re fostering babies again? I thought you were only taking older children now.”

She wagged her head. “I know I am too old to take in babies, but they won’t stop sending me the ones that are hard to place.”

“You’re never too old for babies, right?”

“No.” She turned serious. “I have to think about my longevity now. I take vitamins and go for walks in the park. There are a lot of children who need homes.”

The beleaguered author looked up from her book and frowned in our direction, so I gave Miss Patty’s hand a commiserating squeeze.

The short conversation about leaving children behind got me thinking about Jenny Tuttle and David Kaminsky. If he really was her son, how had she gone about giving him up? Had she found a home for him herself? Or simply surrendered him to a lawyer? And if so, who was the boy’s father? Had he factored into her decision at all? Had the decision to give up the child been mutual? Or Jenny’s alone?

A shriek from one of the children’s tables drew my attention. The tea party was fast degenerating into a brawl, so I got up and found the event committee chair, an acquaintance whose husband owned many lucrative fast-food franchises. She was a pretty blonde who had started out flipping burgers in one of his drive-in joints because she needed to support her orphaned younger siblings. She’d married the boss and now devoted her time and considerable money to children’s charities. I conducted a whispered interview before requesting permission to take photos. I snapped pictures of the decorations and several of Miss Patty’s kids before calling it quits.

I noted the time and hit the street. In a hurry, I threaded my way through the hot, Friday rush-hour pedestrian crush toward my next event. On the way, I phoned Gus, but he didn’t pick up. I left a message to tell him where I’d be for the next half hour or so.

At a popular Pine Street restaurant best known as an LGBT hotspot, I arrived with the first rush of guests, which gave me only a few minutes to talk with the chairperson as she helped string a banner in front of the hostess station at the last minute.

“Hi, Nora! You look great! When are you due?”

“In a few weeks,” I reported, with a smile. I mopped sweat from my forehead with a cocktail napkin. “How’s the party shaping up, Elle?”

Elle Maslowski and her mother had cofounded the unfortunately named Center for Women’s Pelvic Health after both of them struggled with cervical cancer. Elle’s mother had since passed away, but Elle—back at her job at an advertising firm—was still fighting for a cure. To prove her worth to the local organization, she was hosting several small events leading up to a big annual fund-raiser. Judging by my previous experiences with Elle’s party throwing, the restaurant would soon be filled with dozens of young career women with checkbooks in hand and ready to pose for their close-ups. With her masterful networking skills, Elle had the makings of a major philanthropist for the future.

I got the party lowdown from Elle and took photos of her with the first few women who arrived. I sent the pictures to my online editor for immediate posting, and within a few minutes everyone at the event seemed to be sharing photos on their cell phones. Over the heads of guests, Elle happily shouted that even more people were showing up just because of my coverage. I suspected she was encouraging me, not really telling the truth, but it was a nice compliment.

Someone turned up the music and the big doors to the sidewalk were rolled up to let the afternoon sunshine pour in. With it came the heat. Elle’s banner fluttered in the hot breeze—a cartoon drawing of a uterus dancing alongside the words
CENTER FOR WOMEN’S
PELVIC HEALTH
.

Everyone was beautifully dressed in a rainbow of pastel colors—showing off plenty of well-maintained skin and admiring each other’s high, sexy shoes. Women might dress nicely for the men in their lives, but they really pulled the best from their closets when seeing other women.

Elle circled back from greeting more newcomers. “For real, how’s pregnancy?”

“For real, it’s pretty great, thanks. How are you doing these days?”

She knew what I meant and tried to keep her smile in place. Her eyes turned glassy, though. “I’m okay. Losing Mom was hard. A friend told me that when your mom dies, you have to start being a grown-up all by yourself. These days I am thinking a lot about the kind of woman I really want to be.”

I gave her a hug. “Your mom would be proud of what you’re doing today.”

We were interrupted by the arrival of more guests. Soon I felt rather than heard my cell phone go off, so I excused myself to answer the call. I expected to hear Gus’s shout when I picked up, but instead it was Michael’s voice on the phone.

“Everything okay?” I asked him when I found a spot on the hot sidewalk where the music wasn’t blaring.

“We’re great,” he said cheerfully. “We stopped at the garage for a while. I think Noah’s going to be a Corvette man.”

Smiling, I could imagine Michael, Noah in his arm, at his garage with the usual dubious roughneck employees who hung out there. “Will you be teaching our daughters about car maintenance, too?”

“You bet. How’s the murder investigation going?”

“I’m thinking of murdering my sister Libby. Does that count?”

“What’s she done now?”

“She thinks she’s falling in love with Ox Oxenfeld.”

“That won’t last,” Michael predicted. “The bug man’s head over heels for her.”

“But he’s broke, and she has tuition bills—not to mention cheesecake—on her mind.” Fearing the purpose of Michael’s call, I asked, “Have you heard from Hart Jones?”

“Nope,” Michael said. “Jones doesn’t have the guts to call me. You?”

“No.”

“Then I guess we’ll be keeping Noah for a while. Listen, I just wanted you to notice what time it is.”

I checked my watch. “Almost six.”

“Yeah. One week from now, we’re going to be walking into the judge’s office together. You and me, getting married.”

My heart swelled, and I laughed, delighted that he’d thought to call me at this very moment. He sounded very happy.

“I’ll be there,” I promised. “That’s a wedding I won’t miss.”

He said he loved me and hung up. Still smiling, I turned around and almost bumped into Gus Hardwicke.

He’d heard what I’d said on the phone. Sharply, he asked, “Whose wedding?”

I
could have made up a lie. But with the heat, the noise of the party and the swirl of young women around us, not to mention the dancing uterus and Baby Girl suddenly giving my bladder a kick, the whole sensory kaleidoscope made my brain short-circuit and I said simply, “Mine.”

A storm crossed Gus’s face, and then he blinked. A heartbeat later he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the bar. There, along the wall, he found two empty seats in the far corner. He pointed at one of the stools and said, “Sit.”

The swivel stool looked high and precarious. “I don’t think I can climb up there.”

He helped me up and waited while I steadied myself before sitting next to me. He said, “You’re marrying your thug? When?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“You can’t do it.”

“Gus, I’ve had a lot of time to consider this step. Believe me, I know all the pros and cons. But Michael and I want a family
together more than anything. Now that it’s actually happening, we’re getting married.”

“It doesn’t matter to you that your rug rat will be born into the mob? That someday it might be in danger from—”

“If anyone can protect us, it’s Michael.”

“You’re not a fool,” Gus began, “but there are circumstances to consider. Nora, I—”

“Is this the personal matter you wanted to discuss? My wedding? Because I’d rather talk about Jenny Tuttle’s son.”

Gus’s expression changed, and he sat up, all attention. The bartender noticed and came over. Gus ordered himself a scotch, and I asked for a tonic and cranberry juice. When the bartender went away, Gus said, “Tell me everything.”

I reported that David Kaminsky and his mom believed David might be Jenny Tuttle’s son. The adoption bulletin delighted Gus. “Just as I hoped! But the Kaminsky kid doesn’t know for sure?”

“Not yet. He’s not a kid, either. He’s a teacher, remember? He’s going to check with his adoption lawyer and get back to me.”

“Who’s his father?”

“David hopes to find out when he talks to the lawyer.”

“This changes the story very nicely, doesn’t it?” Pleased, Gus rubbed his palms together. “We have the beginning of a summer saga, see? Readers will love it!”

“We don’t have any solid information yet,” I cautioned. “It will be Monday until David can see his lawyer, and surely it will take a few more days before we’ll be able to confirm—”

“The hell with that. Did you take his photo? An updated picture, that is, not the kiddie version. One we can run in the morning?”

I was starting to feel railroaded again. “Aren’t you listening? There’s no new information.”

“Of course there is. We’ve got a cliffhanger for the murder story,
and we’ll have readers running to buy the paper every day to hear if he’s really the Tuttle heir or not.”

“He’s not interested in the Tuttle money. Well,” I corrected myself, “at least that wasn’t his first thought. He’s delighted to think he might be related to Toodles. It’s the music that thrilled him.”

Gus snorted. “Then either he’s a total wanker, or you don’t recognize when you’re being conned.”

The bartender returned with our drinks. I stopped myself from making an imprudent remark and instead sipped the cranberry tonic and looked around for some peanuts. The bartender noticed my glance and skimmed a fresh dish in front of me.

“Gus,” I said when I was crunching nuts, “we can’t use David Kaminsky this way. He’s a music teacher, for heaven’s sake. He’s not tabloid fodder.”

“He’ll learn to love it.”

“It feels dirty to me. Like exploiting Jenny Tuttle when she can’t protect herself. We’re smearing her reputation, and now his is—”

“She didn’t have a reputation,” Gus shot back. “She was too boring.”

I was starting to think Jenny wasn’t boring at all. She had led a quiet life, perhaps, but now I could see she had hidden a lot from the people who knew her best. She had hung out in a bar, listening to Bridget O’Halloran. It seemed she’d had a child—presumably out of wedlock. And Ox Oxenfeld had practically admitted Jenny was directing the new musical. My friend Nico had planted the idea that Jenny might have also written
Bluebird of Happiness
, and Krissie had almost confirmed it.

Before I could argue with Gus, Baby Girl chose that moment to make one of her violent, flying trapeze moves, and I instinctively put one hand down on my belly. I used the other to grab the edge of the bar to keep myself from being rocked off the stool.
“
Ooh!”

Terror flashed on Gus’s face. “What’s wrong?”

I gasped. “It’s the baby.”

He let out a curse and whipped around as if to flag down a passing ambulance.

I quelled his panic by grasping his hand, laughing a little as I caught my breath. “No, I’m fine. Every time I drink something with sugar in it, she does a somersault. I shouldn’t have ordered the tonic.”
Or the ice cream,
I thought guiltily.

He continued to look at my belly in shock. “Does it hurt?”

“Of course not. It’s just startling. Here.” Impulsively, I guided his hand to my baby bump just in time for Baby Girl to give him a solid Abruzzo kick.

He pulled away immediately, holding his hand in midair as if to allow germs to drip from it. “Good God, Nora, that’s disgusting.”

“It’s not disgusting; it’s natural,” I said. “Don’t you have any urge to have a family of your own?”

“To procreate? Seed the world with more Hardwickes? As if there aren’t enough?” He slugged back some of his scotch. “Of course not.”

“Can you tell me what’s really going on with you?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. “In addition to running the
Intelligencer
, are you really tending to Hardwicke family business? Is that where your future is?”

He swallowed more scotch and shook his head, refusing to answer.

“Nobody at the
Intelligencer
believes you’d actually leave us to ourselves for a whole month just to go bicycling. You went home to strategize with your father.”

Gus still didn’t meet my eye but let his gaze roam around the bar, taking in the scene for the first time since he’d arrived and perhaps deciding how much he could trust me. “My father called a war council for me and my siblings. He wants us all at battle stations for a big media buy.”

“The one here in Philadelphia?”

“That, and others.”

“Such a story would blow Jenny Tuttle off the front pages.”

Gus gathered his composure and said, “For reasons I’ll get to in a moment, I’ll trust you not to repeat any of what I’m about to say. Yes, he’s expanding the empire. Naturally, my siblings and I are vying for top honors—a division of our own, perhaps. And an opportunity to become the
capo dei capi
when our father is gone. That’s what’s really at stake. And none of us are patient about waiting around for a chance to steer the big ship. I have two capable brothers and two very daunting sisters, all of whom would be better chief executives than me, according to my father. I’d like to prove him wrong by making this Philadelphia deal happen.”

He talked about his father’s vast holdings as if they were pieces of a particularly delicious pie. But I wondered how much influence all those radio stations, television networks and newspapers added up to. Whoever owned them would be empowered with a lot of information and could choose how it should be presented to the whole world.

Was Gus the right person to control worldwide communication?

Gus had begun to frown with puzzlement at our surroundings. “I’m doing my damnedest to make this bloody buyout happen. You, by the way, probably know half of the Philadelphians in the playbook. They’re all as old as Thomas Jefferson, and just as prickly. What kind of party is this, exactly?”

I understood more than what he was saying. The ne’er-do-well son had decided to hang up his surfboard to become a leader within the powerful family corporation. To me, it was a familiar story. Except in Michael’s case, getting into the family business wasn’t something he particularly wanted.

“This party?” I said. “It’s a fund-raiser. I can see how badly you want to be a part of the family business. I hope you succeed.”

“Do you really care?” He turned back to me.

“I’m just curious,” I replied calmly. “You seem to be concerned about your father’s opinion of you.”

He studied my baby bump with less distaste than before. “I’ll admit my behavior would give a Freudian analyst a field day. I’m aware of my subliminal motives. Which brings me to the personal matter I mentioned.”

“Yes?”

He hesitated.

“Gus?”

“It’s about my negotiations with the Thomas Jeffersons.”

“Oh?”

Still he hesitated. “May I touch that again?” He put out his hand uncertainly.

I felt as if we were on the brink of friendship. So I allowed him to touch me, even guiding his long fingers to the spot where Baby Girl was still rhythmically nudging me from the inside, perhaps encouraging me to quit while I was ahead where Gus was concerned.

He and I sat in silence for a minute, sharing a funny sort of pause that I optimistically decided to interpret as a new phase.

He pulled his hand away and took another drink. “It’s still disgusting.”

I laughed. And asked, “Do you need help with your Thomas Jeffersons?”

“Yes.”

I appreciated his honesty. “What can I do?”

“In a sense, you already have. But it’s time I came clean.”

Just then Elle bebopped over to us, holding a cocktail and
enjoying the music. “Nora, this must be your baby daddy. Hi, I’m Elle. What do you like most about becoming a father?”

Gus flushed and shook her hand while I explained, “This isn’t my husband, Elle. This is Gus Hardwicke, my editor.”

Her face lit up. “Oh, right! I saw you on TV a few weeks back. You look much handsomer in person. Say something in Austrian.”

“I’m from Australia.”

Elle didn’t hear him. “Has Nora told you about the Pelvic Fund?”

“The—?” Gus squinted as if he hadn’t heard correctly.

“We’re raising awareness—and money, of course—for the Center for Women’s Pelvic Health. Maybe your newspaper could do an article? I bet Nora could write it. She’s a big supporter.”

I thoroughly enjoyed Gus’s revolted reaction to what he heard from perky Elle. I said, “There’s nothing I won’t do for good pelvic health.”

For once, Gus was speechless. Abruptly, he got up from the bar, threw some bills at the bartender and departed without another word, striding past the dancing uterus with a determined air. By the time he reached the sidewalk, he had regained his Aussie swagger and kept going without a backward glance.

Elle was startled but soon laughed with me, and I left her party with the promise of giving her plenty of space in my online column. I’d do my best with the print edition, but I had a feeling Gus would veto any coverage of pelvic health.

Feeling high-spirited, I walked a few short blocks to one of the city’s most prestigious private clubs for the final event of my night. I climbed the marble steps and thanked the uniformed attendant, who took a formal look at my invitation and made a production about unlocking the bronze doors for me to enter. He swung them wide, and I passed into the hallowed halls.

I made a beeline across the checkerboard floor for the ladies’
room. The club was so old that it had only recently added its first ladies’ room. Fortunately, it had spent a lot of money to make up for its antiquated membership policy. The bathroom featured marble and beveled mirrors, and heavy lamps swagged on bronze chains. A towel warmer contained a dozen small linen squares for drying ladylike hands.

Alone, I dug into my bag and came up with everything I needed to transform myself from a casually dressed reporter to a woman who’d been permitted to enter one of the most revered dining rooms in the city. I put on dressier shoes to upgrade my Pucci dress. I redid my hair and makeup, adding a little more lipstick and mascara for evening.

As I was tucking my makeup back into my bag, the door opened and a long-legged woman in a short black dress and a punk haircut barged in. Emma.

My sister stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of me, then grinned. “I should have known you’d be here.”

“What a pleasant surprise. We can troll for appetizers together. Or do you have other duties?”

“My duties are to look good for an hour.” She went into the first stall and talked to me over the door. “I’m here at the orders of Paddy Horgan. He wants to look like a wheeler-dealer to everybody else. I was hoping to duck out before the stupid dinner starts. I can only stand so much good behavior. Think you could stage some labor pains and give me a good excuse to leave?”

She flushed and came out of the stall.

“Sorry, I haven’t felt one twinge,” I said with complete honesty. “Em, you really look fantastic.”

As she washed her hands, she eyed herself critically in the mirror. “Yeah, I’ve been working out. Two hours in the gym, plus a lot of riding. And a whole bunch of nutritional stuff. Why does healthy food taste so boring?”

“The taste will grow on you.” The best thing about her physical transformation might be the clearness of her eyes, I thought, but I said, “I like your dress, too. Where do you shop?”

“Target. I cut off the cap sleeves. I look like a linebacker in cap sleeves.”

The sleeves had been hacked out of her dress with a pair of shears probably used to cut unruly horsetails. I noticed she had inflicted the same damage to the hem. The shorter length was perfect—midway up her lean, muscled thighs—and the dress looked surprisingly chic. She was wearing a pair of earrings that might also have come from Target. Or from Tiffany, for all I knew. She looked like a dangerous woman who’d mugged an unsuspecting fashion designer.

While she dried her hands on one of the linen squares, I handed over my lipstick. “Nobody looks good in cap sleeves.”

She finished drying her hands, then applied lipstick in broad strokes. “You got that right.” She eyed her reflection and tossed me the lipstick. “C’mon, if we’re stuck here for the night, let’s get some drinks.”

I went out into the lobby with my sister, and we followed a meandering crowd down the corridor to a ballroom with a high, wedding-cake ceiling and three matching chandeliers that would have looked right at home in a Vienna palace. A large portrait of William Penn frowned down from one paneled wall. A more convivial painting of Queen Charlotte, beloved wife of George III, gazed from the opposite wall. If I recalled correctly, she and her husband had fifteen children, so I felt a certain kinship with her this evening.