Murder on the Potomac (31 page)

“Annabel, how wonderful to see you,” the wife of the British ambassador said. Annabel was happy to see her. She’d been the one who’d introduced Annabel to Mac at an embassy party. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes. Very much.” She caught a fleeting glimpse of the back of her husband’s head before he disappeared behind a Corinthian column.

“Dance?” a regular customer of the gallery asked.

“Love to,” Annabel said, suddenly remembering he was fond of dipping. “Where or When” came from the bandstand at the same tempo at which every other song seemed to be played. Annabel was spun around and weathered her first dip of the evening.

Smith assumed Chip was going to lead him to another area of the Great Hall. Instead, the young Tierney
started up the stairs at the building’s west end. Smith was about to follow when he heard someone call his name. He turned. “Darcy,” he said.

“Professor Smith,” she replied. “Surprised to see me?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Tierney is a generous man. He invited the commissioner and some of the detectives who’ve addressed his Scarlet Sin Society over the years. I imagine my invitation represents a more pragmatic decision.” She smiled.

Smith glanced at the stairs where Chip Tierney waited. “With you in a minute,” he said. He turned to Eikenberg and said, “Well, enjoy yourself. Wendell always throws a good party.”

“Is your dance card full?” she asked.

“Afraid so. I’ve danced once. That exceeds my limit.”

“I haven’t seen Mr. Tierney. He’s here, isn’t he?”

“If so, I haven’t seen him, either.”

“Nice to see you again, Mac. I came with my former husband, Nick.”

“That sounds encouraging.”

“Not at all. But he’s the best dancer I know. Never goes over his limit.”

Smith and Chip reached the first balcony. Chip started up to the second. “Where’s your father?” Smith asked.

“Fourth level.”

“As far away from the festivities as possible?”

“Something like that. He could have used any of the museum offices, but he preferred the one Tierney Development rents up there. Kind of a private place for
Dad to get away and think. You’re less likely to be interrupted.” What could such interruptions be? Smith wondered.

He’d been on the fourth level only once before, visiting a government attorney whose office was there. Because the building was maintained as a partnership between the General Accounting Office and the museum board (the government maintained it and allowed the museum to function rent-free; all other expenses were covered through fund-raising activities), federal agencies had first dibs on office space on the third and fourth levels. Obviously, with Tierney’s clout at the museum, he hadn’t had any problem becoming one of the few private tenants. The fourth balcony, unlike the lower three, was nothing more than a five-feet-wide wrought-iron platform with an ornate wrought-iron railing that had been installed as a safety precaution and painted gold.

As they continued to climb, the bouncy music, happy voices, and clinking glassware faded into a surrealistic single sound. When they reached that fourth level, Smith followed Chip to a large office located in the northeast corner. Smith paused and looked down on twelve hundred reveling guests. The band was playing a mambo.

He saw through the glass door that Tierney was seated at a desk, a lamp with a green shade casting a small lagoon of pale yellow light on the desk. Chip opened the door, and Smith entered, expecting the young man to follow. Instead, Chip closed the door and was gone.

“Good party going on downstairs, Wendell,” Smith said. “You ought to be there.”

Tierney was costumed for a party, in his tux and tan. But his actions were uncharacteristically subdued, even somber. His customary exuberance had abandoned him. He said quietly, “Sorry to pull you away from the good times.”

“Not a problem. Chip said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes. Please.” He gestured to a mellow brown leather chair with chrome arms. “What’s happened over the past month has had a profound effect on me, Mac. They say that young people don’t have a sense of mortality, that they forge ahead assuming they’ll be alive and healthy for eternity. I guess I’ve always been a kid, because I’ve felt that way right up until Pauline’s murder. And now Sun Ben’s troubles have really kicked the skids out from under me.”

“That’s to be expected,” Smith said.

“We are betrayed by what is false within.”

“Shakespeare?”

“I don’t know. Somebody. I just remember that phrase from someplace. I’m not a well-read man. No time. I set my sights on making a million when I was very young and never took my eye off that prize … and more. You know what that can mean.”

“Everyone needs a goal in life, Wendell.”

“True. But some goals are harder to attain than others. I suppose your goal was to become the best damn lawyer in Washington.”

“No. I decided to become a lawyer. My
goal
was to have a happy life.”

Tierney maintained his position at the desk, hands folded in front of him, arms resting on the surface. He swiveled in his chair so that he now faced Smith, the lamp’s light illuminating only one side of his face and
leaving the other masked in gloom. “You make my point,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve had to hurt a lot of people to achieve your goal.”

“I hope not, but maybe I have. If so, it was never intentional.”

“I wish I could say the same. But you don’t build what I’ve built without stepping on people. Bodies buried along the way. Lives broken. Too much sadness and sorrow left in your wake.”

Smith said nothing.

Tierney continued. “It’s easy to rationalize, isn’t it? Especially with a family. As long as I provided all the creature comforts, all the things money could buy, I considered myself a good husband and father.”

Smith shifted in his chair. Was this why Tierney had asked to see him, to use him as a sounding board to clear his conscience? As always, he was willing to listen but hoped it would end soon. He was never comfortable playing priest without benefit of collar. He thought of Annabel in her green gown.

“I was always confident that I could handle anything, Mac. I could always fix any problem my family and business had. The hassles Marilyn and I have been having aren’t indicative of our entire marriage. It was good in the beginning, good until a couple of years ago. I don’t know what went wrong. She changed, I guess.” He expelled a halfhearted chuckle. “Lord knows I didn’t change. Maybe I should have. But I couldn’t. You don’t ride the fast track all your life and then blithely and suddenly decide to get off.”

Smith thought of his own decision to leave his pressure-cooker law practice for the sedate life of a professor.
He considered mentioning it, but this was Tierney’s speech.

“I hope you don’t mind my venting like this, Mac. You’re the only person in this world I’ve opened up to. I’m not what you’d call an introspective man. I’ve never been to a shrink and don’t spill my guts to clergy. The last time I went to church was when I bid on a big renovation. Once I got the job, I gave a healthy donation and never set foot inside again, at least not on Sundays.

“No, I don’t talk to anyone about what’s going on inside me, which, I’m told, is unhealthy. Let it all hang out, they say. Good for the soul. Maybe they’re right, but I haven’t noticed any change in my soul over the last few minutes.”

Smith wanted to bring the conversation—the monologue—to a conclusion. “Wendell, you’ve been under tremendous pressure since Pauline’s murder. I don’t know much about the charge against Sun Ben, but that has to weigh heavily, too. I’d like to be of help, but I really don’t see where—”

“I know, I know. You want to get back to that lovely wife of yours, do a little jig on the floor, enjoy the food you paid through the nose for. But give me another minute, please. Just another minute.

“All the talk about Pauline and me having an affair was garbage. Yes, she was in love with me and let me know it. We got close to climbing into the sack a few times, but I always backed away.” He waved his hand in the air. “Yeah, I was the one who backed off. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no moralist, no angel when it comes to other women. But I didn’t follow through with Pauline because I knew what it was she really wanted.”

“Which was?”

“Power. And money. She had power by virtue of being my right hand, and she carried it off well. She was an incredibly efficient person. I don’t think I would have achieved what I have without her. As far as money was concerned, I ran a tight ship. Now and then I’d pass on some insider information on a stock. She’d buy a few shares and make a buck. When I decided to go into West Virginia with a major mall project, I learned that she and her ex-husband owned property smack-dab in the middle of the tract. I suggested she buy him out—hell, the property couldn’t have meant anything to him in its present state, just pine trees and scrub oak. And I tipped her to an adjacent parcel that would be part of the complex. I told her that if she grabbed the piece she owned with Lucas and bought that other parcel, we’d buy the whole thing back from her at ten times what she’d paid.”

“And she took your advice.”

“Sure. Only she didn’t live enough to enjoy it.”

Smith thought of Dr. Lucas Wharton. Was Tierney pointing the finger at him?

Instead, he shifted to talk about Sun Ben and his legal problems. “He’s a million-dollar loser at the tables, Mac. More. Did you know that? I assume that’s why he did what he did.”

He was admitting Cheong’s guilt.

Tierney leaned forward and moved the chair closer to Smith. Their knees almost touched. He said, the oblique light distorting his handsome features, “You’ve been straight with me, Mac. You’ve been there whenever I called. I know you haven’t asked for this, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it.”

Smith’s brow furrowed. “Accept what?” he asked.

“Knowing who killed Pauline Juris.”

Had Suzanne Tierney not been a member of the cast, she would have avoided the Saturday-night extravaganza. But she was there, director Seymour Fletcher her escort. Since rebellion did not take the form of staying away, she accomplished it with dress—a pink sweatshirt she’d studded with rhinestones using a kit she’d ordered after watching television, long blue denim skirt, and hoop earrings. She’d sprinkled metallic confetti in her hair, which picked up the light and turned her head into a walking Fourth of July. Fletcher wore a tux shirt and black bow tie beneath a short purple waiter’s jacket, black trousers, and black sneakers. They gravitated to the table where Tony and Alicia Buffolino stood. The pile of shrimp in Sherlock Holmes’s icy arms was almost gone, but it would not take a Holmes to solve the mystery of where it had disappeared.

“Hello, Suzanne,” Buffolino said.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Buffolino.” She said to Fletcher, “This is Tony. He’s my father’s bodyguard.”

Buffolino shook Fletcher’s hand. “I’m not his bodyguard. Bodyguards guard the person. I provide all-over security.”

Fletcher was not much interested in what Buffolino had to say and showed it. He looked past him to where Hazel Best-Mason and her husband, Hal, Washington’s planning commissioner, were coming off the dance floor. “Mr. and Mrs. Shakedown,” Fletcher said.

Buffolino, whose immediate dislike of Fletcher was as strong as his love for shrimp, looked at the couple to whom Fletcher referred. “Huh?”

Fletcher said to Suzanne, “A couple of typical D.C. whores. I applied for a license to operate a theater in vacant space off Dupont Circle. The application went to Mason, but it was his wife who called me. She said the request would be considered provided I donated a portion of the proceeds to what she called a general Dupont Circle development fund.” He sneered. “General development fund. Translation, kickback. Payoff.”

Suzanne and Seymour’s presence was enough to drive Tony and Alicia from the shrimp in search of more palatable company. The problem was that they knew so few people. “Dance?” Tony asked.

“Love to,” said Alicia, taking his hand. The band played a slow fox-trot version of “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” which was just Tony’s speed. He pulled Alicia close, extended his left and her right arm high into the air, and shuffled to the beat, spinning her in an occasional embellishing circle.

Annabel and a new dancing partner, a Georgetown antique dealer who specialized in Carolean furniture and who was one of her favorite friends, maneuvered close to the investigator and his wife. The two couples stopped dancing. “Annabel, great to see you,” Buffolino said. “You look terrific.”

“And I might say the same about you both. That’s a lovely dress, Alicia.”

“Thank you, Annabel.”

“Where’s Mac?” Tony asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m wondering. Have you seen him? He went off to see Wendell Tierney.”

“Tierney’s here?” Buffolino said. “Last I heard, which was this afternoon, he wasn’t going to make it.”

“I haven’t seen him,” said Annabel, “but Chip told Mac that his father wanted to speak with him.”

The orchestra shifted from the safe fox-trot medley to rock ’n’ roll. “That leaves me out,” Buffolino said. Annabel started to agree, but her partner began gyrating. “Down and dirty,” he said to Annabel. She laughed and began to match his movements. “If you see Mac, tell him I’m the captive of a dancing fool,” she said. Buffolino laughed and led Alicia from the floor.

“Enough,” Annabel said minutes later after the band had segued into another rock tune. Her partner returned her to the friends with whom she’d been talking before being hijacked as a dancing partner. Others had joined the group by this time, including, to Annabel’s surprise, Detective Darcy Eikenberg, who stood next to D.C.’s police chief.

“Good evening, Mrs. Smith,” Eikenberg said. She introduced the commissioner, whom Annabel had met before. “Has anyone seen my husband?” Annabel asked.

A sly smile crossed Eikenberg’s lips. “I have,” she said.

“Good,” said Annabel. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know, but last time I saw him, he was heading up the stairs over there. He was with Wendell Tierney’s son.”

“Upstairs? Is there a party going on up there, too?”