Murder on the Potomac (30 page)

Sickles stood over him. Key propped himself up on an elbow. “Murder, murder,” he repeated.

Sickles held the gun inches from Key’s head and pulled the trigger. The weapon misfired with a dull, metallic
thunk
. Sickles recocked the gun, put it this time to Key’s ribs, and fired. Key twisted into his death spiral. Sickles again held the revolver to Key’s head. Another misfire. No matter. You can only die once.

“Is he dead yet? Is the bastard dead?” Sickles asked, now facing the large audience in the park. He smiled, calmly placed the hot revolver in his pocket, and walked offstage to thunderous applause.

That Same Afternoon

“It should have ended with the murder,” Mac Smith said gruffly as he and Annabel walked to their home in Foggy Bottom following the performance.

“I know,” Annabel said. She started to giggle. “That trial scene was torture. And the reverend playing Buck Buchanan—I thought he was going to burst into a sermon any minute.”

“Well, as you say, it’s all for a good cause. Shame Wendell wasn’t there. He might have enjoyed it, although murder is not an entertaining subject in his life these days. It went off quite well, and the crowd certainly was large enough.”

Rufus greeted them as they came through the door, his powerful tail beating a staccato rhythm against the foyer wall. “I’ll walk him,” Smith said.

“Aren’t you going to call Wendell? You told Sam you would.”

“A matter of priorities,” Smith said, fetching the leash from the kitchen. “Rufus has to be walked to go to the bathroom. Wendell doesn’t.”

Annabel busied herself in the kitchen while Mac was gone. She realized they hadn’t checked their answering machine and went to the study where they sat side by side. She pressed Play on hers. There was only one message:
“Be careful!”
She played it again, and a third time.

“I’m back,” Mac shouted from the hallway.

“Mac, please come here.” She played the message for him. “Recognize that voice?” she asked.

“No, but it’s hard to identify a voice based upon two words. Play it again.”

Back in the kitchen, Annabel said, “I have to admit a certain preconceived notion, if not outright prejudice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I keep trying to detect a hint of Asiatic in that voice. Maybe Sun Ben did see me playing Sam Spade and isn’t happy I know about his MOR company, whatever that might be. I keep thinking about his lookalike and Suzanne joining them. What do you make of it?”

“I don’t, but let’s see what we have here. Based upon your observations: It appears that Pauline Juris was skimming money from the museum’s special fund and passing it on to Sun Ben, perhaps through some company like this MOR entity. Maybe he has a relative from Hong Kong who’s come here to visit him. Then there are the charges of financial crime. He obviously had some sort of secret account in the Caymans, which doesn’t necessarily mean the money in it was illegally
obtained.” Smith frowned. “But, as we all know, offshore accounts are often used to launder dirty money from the sale of drugs, the Mafia, whatever. It’s all interesting speculation, but that’s all it is. Speculation.

“The bigger question is how this might relate to Pauline’s murder. We know she purchased land just before buying the parcel from her ex-husband. The strategic combination of the two tracts is evidently valuable because Wendell is planning to go in there with a major development.”

“Fair to assume, isn’t it, that she knew how valuable the land would be before grabbing it up?”

“Sure. My question is, if she managed to steal enough from the museum—what did you say it amounted to, a hundred and eighty thousand?—to buy the land, why involve Sun Ben? She didn’t need him.”

“Or maybe she did. Maybe the land cost a lot more than was available through the museum fund.”

“If she bought the land cheap from her former husband knowing its true worth, he’d be pretty upset,” Mac said.

“Mad enough to kill.”

“Could be. But he wasn’t the only person who might have been upset with Pauline. If I’m wrong about the letters and Wendell did write them, Pauline could well have threatened blackmail. There’s Chip Tierney, too. Was
he
having an affair with her? And how about Suzanne? Tony says she’s totally alienated from her father and accused him of a relationship with Pauline. As I said before, all speculation. The list could include all sorts of people with whom she came into contact, businesspeople unhappy with her, a secret lover,
and
Sun Ben. If she was funneling stolen museum money to
him, there might have been a web of financial dealings that went sour. As many potential suspects as there are motives. As far as that message on your machine goes, I’m going to dub a copy and file it away. There’s probably nothing to worry about, but let’s stay on our toes. I’ll call Wendell and see if he’s planning to attend tonight. I told Sam I’d try to persuade him, but I’m not sure I want to do that. He’s probably better off avoiding the social scene for a while.”

Annabel asked, “Is he coming?” when Mac returned to the kitchen.

“No. I suggested it might do him good to get out. Frankly, I’d like to skip it, too.”

“I know.” She finished polishing the second of two silver candleholders. “We don’t have to stay late,” she said, drying her hands. “Unless, of course, you take a notion to dance after dinner.”

“Which I just might do,” he said, wrapping his arms around her from behind. “I’m ready for a … what do they call it these days, a meaningful relationship? And a vacation.”

She turned and kissed him. “Let’s do it. A real vacation. We’d talked about going to Bermuda, but maybe you should come with me to San Francisco. The actual conference is only two days. We can extend the stay and hang out, drive up to redwood country, watch the fog roll in over the Golden Gate from the Top of the Mark, maybe even spend a few days in Carmel, or the Napa.”

“Sounds good to me. Call your travel agent and tell her to make it
two
tickets.”

That Night

Until the Scarlet Sin Society launched itself into the mainstream of Washington’s social whirl, the city supported three major fund-raising annual balls. One was to benefit the Opera Society, another to raise funds for the Corcoran Museum, and, perhaps the most lavish of all, the yearly gala to benefit the National Symphony Orchestra. The problem with adding a fourth high-powered event was finding enough ladies committed to such an undertaking (and with enough money to indulge that commitment). There were always those highly visible women whose lives revolved around fund-raising and who could be counted on to lend their names, zeal, and organizational talent to worthy events. But mounting a successful fund-raiser demanded dozens of such dedicated women. There simply wasn’t an abundance of
them anymore, not with so many having returned to the workplace, whether for money or to be politically correct by having forged a career away from the home.

When Wendell Tierney had suggested mounting another major yearly fund-raising extravaganza, his close friends counseled him to scale down his aspirations. But big had always been beautiful for Tierney, and he set out to enlist the services of the city’s leading “ladies of the balls,” as they are known in Washington, D.C. “The reason they’ll work hard for Tri-S is that it’s different,” he often said. “Arias, art, and overtures are fine, but murder is so much more fun.”

He proved himself right. Not only did Washington’s movers and shakers find Tri-S to be “delightfully different,” the charities that benefited from its yearly production and dinner-dance jogged the civic conscience of those involved. Opera societies, orchestra, and museums certainly needed money. But no one in them was likely to miss a meal. Inner-city meal programs, drug-rehab centers, ghetto youth centers, and senior-citizen outreach projects benefited directly from Tri-S’s extravaganzas. Those whose lives were Mozart, Puccini, and Picasso could now say they had touched the city’s underbelly and fed it. It made them feel good, which, as Ayn Rand espoused, made the lives of others a little better. Productive self-interest. A good deal for all.

The annual production and dinner-dance had been a success from the outset. This year’s event saw an increasing number of the rich or mighty or both seeking tickets. More than six hundred Washington couples, along with well-heeled fun-seekers from other cities, paid seven hundred dollars to attend a night of cocktails, exotic food, and plenty of dancing to Washington’s
premier society orchestra led by Gene Donati. Hundreds of others had taken expensive ads in the ball’s journal and had donated an impressive array of door prizes, including an all-expense-paid week at the George V in Paris, the use of a Rolls-Royce convertible for a year, and a number of other, less glamorous but not necessarily less expensive favors.

The British embassy had been persuaded to cosponsor the affair to the tune of eight thousand and provided a boxed set of six Agatha Christie murder mysteries as a favor for each guest. In addition, the embassy would host two intimate parties over the weekend for individuals who donated fifteen thousand dollars in return for VIP treatment. These favored few, by virtue of their generosity, joined what Tierney called the Cozy Club, in honor of that brand of genteel murder mystery.

An eight-piece contingent from the larger Donati orchestra played during cocktails as the guests poured out of their limousines in front of the National Building Museum and made their entrances.

Monty Jamison, resplendent in a tuxedo that was as natty as his office was tatty, held court next to one of the eight soaring Corinthian columns that dominated the Great Hall. A dozen couples surrounded him. He was in a particularly jovial mood, as was usually the case when he’d captured the attention, and ears, of people interested in the historical tidbits he dispensed. He raised his voice above the increasing noise of cocktail blather-skate coming from every corner of the huge room to announce, “We may be standing next to proof that the assassination of Honest Abe Lincoln involved considerably more than historians would have us believe. President Lincoln’s son Robert was secretary of war when
his father was slain in Ford’s Theater. That was the same period when this magnificent building was being erected under the watchful, albeit irrational, supervision of Quartermaster Montgomery Meigs.

“One of young Lincoln’s many responsibilities as secretary of war was to approve Meigs’s plans for this, the Pension Building. It has never been proved, but there is considerable—and I might add credible—speculation that Robert Lincoln came into possession of many documents supporting the wider conspiracy theory. Rather than release them to a worried, jittery nation, he chose to give them to Meigs to hide in one of these columns for posterity.”

Jamison smugly surveyed the faces around him.

“Any proof of that?” a literal-minded Washington attorney asked.

Jamison laughed, concealing his annoyance at the question. “No, not any more than proof that men on transparent horses canter these halls at night, or that the footless ghost whose eyes are empty sockets stalks the corridors. But that particular ghost sent one of the building’s night watchmen to an asylum after a midnight confrontation in this very room.”

There was laughter as husbands and wives gently nudged their spouses in pursuit of other conversation.

Mac and Annabel were late arrivals, having had trouble commandeering a cab in front of the Kennedy Center. Annabel always enjoyed attending functions for which Mac had to don black tie. He looked especially handsome in it, she thought, and was quick to tell him so.

As for the ravishing redheaded creature who was his wife, he was always proud to have her on his arm, but
she was especially stunning in a Cerruti
terre-verte
evening gown purchased especially for the evening from Saks-Jandel in Chevy Chase.

They’d no sooner presented their tickets to the women at the desk and had stepped into the Great Hall when Joline Lazzaras, wife of the area’s preeminent plastic surgeon, and a leading lady of Washington society, took Mac by the arm. She said to Annabel, “You won’t mind if I take your husband for a spin, will you, Annabel? If I don’t do it now, the line will be too long later in the evening.” Annabel smiled at the mixed emotions written on her husband’s face—I mustn’t be rude, but do something to save me.

Annabel was quickly surrounded. Because she was tall, she was able to see over most heads and watched her husband valiantly keep pace to the band’s spirited version of “Just in Time.” She spotted Tony and his wife, Alicia. Tierney always invited an assortment of people outside the society’s social realm; it amused him to mix but not match. The Buffolinos were camped in front of one of many long tables which bloomed with hors d’oeuvres. One table featured massive ice sculptures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, each with their arms bowed in front to cradle sizable silver bowls heaped with cooked shrimp. Although dozens of waiters and waitresses passed finger food among the guests, Tony obviously preferred a do-it-yourself approach.

Annabel plucked a profiterole of duck-liver mousse from a waiter’s tray. A waitress carrying glasses of champagne passed by, and Annabel relieved her of a glass. (Ever since the Great Hall had been carpeted, red wine was prohibited in the building.) She looked for Mac again and saw him chatting with Joline and her
husband, whose tummy tucks were considered the best in town. He disengaged from them and headed for the closest bar. Annabel smiled.

When he returned, he said, “I just talked to Tony. He looks lost. I should have thought to ask Wendell to put them at our table.”

Annabel laughed. “Tony always manages.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting lost myself.”

As he said it, Chip Tierney approached from behind and tapped his shoulder. Mac turned. “Good evening, Chip.”

“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” Chip said. He leaned closer to Mac’s ear and said, “Would you mind coming with me for a few minutes? Dad would like to speak with you.”

“He’s here?” To Annabel: “You don’t mind, do you?”

“As long as he isn’t stealing you for a dance,” she said. “No. You got your wish.” She answered his quizzical expression: “To get lost.”