Murder on the Potomac (24 page)

She looked to Farley, who shook his head. “I made notes of my conversation with Morris Factor this morning,” he said, “and thought I would run down the events that have been booked into the museum between now and the end of the year. But you don’t have to stay for that, Annabel. I’ll be happy to have them typed up and send them to you.”

“Thank you, Don. I appreciate that.” Annabel stood, smoothed her skirt, took in the others at the table, and said, “Sorry to run out, but I made the mistake of overbooking my day.” One of the committee members laughed and said something about his doing that on a regular basis.

“Best to Mac,” Farley said as Annabel headed for the door. She turned and said, “See you all Saturday night.”

She stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her. Standing there was museum director Joe Chester; Annabel had the feeling he’d been waiting just outside the door. “Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Could I have a word with you?”

“Yes, of course. I am in a rush, though.”

“It won’t take but a minute.”

She followed him into his office. Neither sat; she stood patiently while he paced nervously before stopping at the window and peering through it.

“Mr. Chester,” Annabel said.

He turned. “I may be out of place talking to you about this,” he said, “but I don’t know what else to do.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

He spoke rapidly, the words tumbling out as though he’d rehearsed them many times. “I know that your husband is Mr. Tierney’s attorney. That’s why—”

“My husband is not Mr. Tierney’s attorney.”

“—that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“You’re wrong about my husband.”

“I don’t want to take the rap for anybody, Tierney included. Those letters he wrote to Pauline say it all. But the police keep looking at me, asking me questions because they were told Pauline and I didn’t get along.
Maybe we weren’t the best of friends, but I had no personal animosity toward her. I know I sure would never think of killing her, or anybody else.”

Annabel waited for him to finish. When he had—and she wasn’t sure it was because of a need to draw a breath or because the speech was ended—she said, “First of all, my husband is not Wendell Tierney’s. attorney. You have your information wrong. But even if he were, why talk to me?”

“Who else can I talk to? I’ve told the police a thousand times that I didn’t kill her, but they just look at me with their skeptical expressions and smirks on their faces. A lot of people didn’t like Pauline. Some people hated her. Ask Tierney. He was scared to death she’d go to his wife and break up his precious family. Ask his daughter. I heard her attack Pauline twice about the affair she was having with her father. Hell, check out Sy Fletcher. She went to see him the night she was murdered to lay down the law about his spending on Tri-S productions. They all hated her enough to kill her, but not me.”

Annabel didn’t know what to say, so she said, “I’m sorry you’re having these problems, Mr. Chester. But I can’t do anything about them. My husband and I and Mr. Tierney are friends. Neither my husband nor I are involved in an official capacity.” She thought of the conversation she and Mac had had about the letters to Pauline, and Mac’s theory. Why was Chester so certain the letters had come from Tierney? “You don’t seem to have any doubt that Mr. Tierney wrote those letters to Pauline. What makes you so certain?”

He snickered. “Everybody knew about their affair. It was the worst-kept secret in the museum.”

“You say you didn’t hate Pauline. Do you hate Wendell Tierney?”

Her question took him by surprise; a nervous fluttering of hands substituted for a verbal answer. Then, meekly, “Why do you ask that?”

Annabel sighed and said, “It’s possible that Wendell Tierney did not write those letters to Pauline. If that’s the case, then someone else did, perhaps to make him the prime suspect in her murder.”

He turned again to the window, his words coming off the panes. “You aren’t suggesting that I wrote them, are you?”

“Mr. Chester, I’m not suggesting anything. I wish I could be more helpful, but I can’t. I’m already late for another appointment.” She expected him to turn and say something, at least good-bye, but he didn’t. He remained standing at the window with his back to her, his shoulders slouched, head lowered.

She went downstairs to where crews continued to ready the hall for Saturday night and used a public phone to check for messages. There were none. She wondered how Mac’s meeting with Tierney had gone, how he’d reacted to the news that Mac had the letters and Mac’s theory about who wrote them.

She left the museum and stepped into the rain on F Street. Yellow umbrella raised, she crossed the street and wandered through the recently created and moving monument to all the nation’s law-enforcement officials killed in the line of duty. She was glad it was raining. The mist against her face, which caused the cement and granite around her to glisten, was cleansing. She would have stayed longer but was scheduled to meet a young college student at the gallery who’d started working
part time the previous week. The student, Sally Frasier, was bright and willing but lacked the sense of urgency that Annabel found to be the case in many of her generation. Annabel had promised to spend an hour familiarizing Sally with a recently installed computer system that not only handled inventory and gallery finances but a data base as well that had been created to track important pieces of pre-Columbian art in different parts of the country and world. She was tempted to call and cancel the training session but decided to go through with it. Putting it off would only mean having to do it another week.

As she walked through the front door of the Georgetown gallery, she was met with rock ’n’ roll blasting from small, high-tech speakers suspended in the four corners of the main display room. Annabel always kept her stereo tuned to WGMS, which programmed classical music, or played tapes from a large classical library she maintained at the gallery. The change in musical format was not pleasing to her ears.

Sally, a tall, lanky girl with limp, straight blond hair and a pale face colored pure passive, came from the rear office at the sound of the front door’s chime. “Sounds like a party in here,” Annabel said, having to speak above the music.

The girl stopped in the middle of the room, looked up at one of the speakers, and said, “Oh, sorry about that. I just thought with you not here, it would be all right to change the station.”

“Of course it is,” Annabel said, “as long as we don’t have customers.” She headed for the office and the tuner, her new assistant close on her heels.

“I guess I’m just not used to that MOR stuff,” Sally said.

“MOR?” Annabel said over her shoulder.

“You know, middle-of-the-road music. That’s what they call it. Elevator music.”

Annabel laughed and pushed the button for WGMS, catching one of Hayden’s six “London” symphonies in midscore. The contrast with the incessant backbeat of the drum machine that had filled the space was heavenly.

“Ready for your lesson?” Annabel asked.

“Yes, I am,” Sally said. “But be patient with me. I’m not computer literate.”

“Neither am I,” Annabel said, removing a dust cover from the CPU and turning it on. “But I’m learning. We’ll learn together.”

It didn’t turn out to be an especially fruitful session because customers came into the gallery, which necessitated either Annabel or Sally leaving the office to serve them. They all turned out to be browsers—no sales; the prices of the art in the gallery precluded impulse buying. At noon Annabel turned off the computer, covered it, and said to Sally, “You’re coming in tomorrow, right?”

“Yes, but I won’t be able to work again until next Wednesday. Exams.”

“No problem. I hate to run, but I have an appointment. I’m taking a tour of Chinatown.”

“Where?”

“Where? Here. In Washington.”

“I didn’t even know we had a Chinatown,” Sally said.

“Lots of people don’t, but we certainly do. I’m involved
with the American Building Museum, which is right on the border of Chinatown. A friend of mine, Sue Yoy, has been conducting tours for a year and has been after me to take one. Today’s the day.”

“Sounds like fun, Mrs. Smith.”

“I’m sure it will be. I’ll be back later this afternoon to close up.” Before leaving, she called her answering machine again. There was a message from Mac:

The electronic voice gave Annabel the time and date of the call before a series of beeps indicated it was the final message on the tape. She called her machine and left a message in case Mac called:

That Same Day

Tony Buffolino hadn’t appreciated being awakened by Wendell Tierney at six that morning. Having agreed to live on the grounds represented sacrifice enough beyond the line of duty. But when Tierney told him the reason for the early wake-up call, his groggy annoyance was replaced by curiosity and excitement.

Tierney hadn’t bothered knocking on Tony’s door that morning. He had simply walked in, mumbled an apology, and sat in the room’s only chair, a cheap wooden one with flaking pea-green paint. Buffolino could see through crusted eyes that Tierney looked like hell, as though he’d been up all night.

“Problem?” Tony asked, getting out of the narrow, lumpy bed and wrapping himself in a flannel robe.

“A big one,” Tierney replied. His voice matched his
sagging posture. He told Tony about Sun Ben’s arrest and the charges brought against him.

“Yeah, I’d say that
is
a big problem,” Buffolino replied. “Do you think …?”

“Guilty? I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

Buffolino experienced a sudden rush of discomfort. He was about to hear an intimate revelation from Tierney about his adopted son. Buffolino was as curious as the next person about families and their behind-the-closed-door troubles, but he could do without this one. Providing security for the family was one thing. Being taken into its secrets was another. He decided on the spot that Tierney was jinxed. His assistant is murdered, his adopted son gets nailed for laundering dirty money, his marriage is in trouble, his daughter hates him. He’d seen it before, guys like Tierney riding the fast track until the derailment. Once they went off the track, they kept falling, one car after the other until the whole train was upside down. He almost said, Look, Mr. Tierney, none of this is really my business. I’d just as soon not…

But of course he didn’t. He was doing a job and was being well paid for it. Hear him out.

“I assume you’re a discreet man,” Tierney said. “A private investigator with a license at stake.”

“That’s right,” Buffolino said, knowing he wasn’t always discreet. The letters he’d arranged to bribe out of Joe Chester in MPD Evidence—had Smith talked to Tierney about them, showed them to him? Had he indicated his source, named Anthony Buffolino, private investigator, disgraced former cop?

Buffolino’s the name, discretion’s my game, he
thought, keeping his smile to himself. “I can keep my mouth shut,” he said.

Tierney seemed to look right through him. All the muscles of his face had sagged, like silicone injections gone astray. His usually carefully coifed silver hair was tousled. Buffolino waited. Finally, Tierney said, “I believe in Sun Ben’s innocence, but that represents the natural feelings of a father. Even an adoptive father. Frankly, I don’t know very much about his business dealings with Sam Tankloff except those that directly involve my company. I also don’t know the extent of his losses at the gambling table. I’m a businessman, Tony. I try not to let emotions cloud my judgment. I want to know—need to know—how big those gambling losses are. Can you find that out for me?”

Buffolino shrugged. “Depends on where he did most of his gambling. Atlantic City? Vegas? The Bahamas?”

“Mostly Atlantic City. I don’t think he’s gone to Las Vegas more than once or twice in the past few years.”

“Okay, Atlantic City it is. Now, which casino was his favorite, or did he play ’em up and down the Boardwalk?”

Tierney told him.

Buffolino grinned. “Sometimes you get lucky. I know a guy there who’s pretty high up. We go back a long ways. This is a guy that—well, that don’t matter. You want to know how much of a high roller—how much money Sun Ben has lost?”

“Yes. I need that information quickly. And, as I said, whatever you find stays between us.”

Buffolino stretched and scratched his belly through the robe’s folds. “I’ll get on it right away. Like today.”

Tierney stood. He spoke like a sick man trying to sound strong. “Yes, go today.”

“Okay,” Buffolino said. “A shower, some breakfast, and I’m outta here.”

Tierney went to the door and put his hand on the knob, turned, and said, “You’ll need expense money. See me before you leave.”

“Gotcha,” Buffolino said, wondering whether Smith had raised the issue of the thousand dollars Buffolino had spent obtaining copies of the love letters.

And so here he was on Friday morning, a thousand dollars’ cash in his pocket given him by Tierney for expenses, a new shooter at a ten-dollar craps table. He was glad to be there. There was something comforting, at least for him, about a casino. In rare moments of introspective candor, he would question whether enjoying the windowless environment, the stale air, the losers on either side of him, the beady-eyed boxman and stickman and pit boss and the rest, represented his failed side. If so, so what? Could he ever entice Mac Smith to join him on a gambling spree? Fat chance. You had to be a type to enjoy casinos, especially the green felt craps tables where you instantly developed a kinship with other players looking to beat the pants off the casino. You had to be his type. Tony Buffolino, with an
O
.