Murder Under the Palms (10 page)

It appeared that Lydia had already filled Detective White in. “Yes,” Charlotte said. “I’m here visiting the Smiths. Marianne and Mr. Feder were business partners in the jewelry line.” She proceeded to tell the detective about Marianne’s fashion business and about the new jewelry collection. “But as for their being lovers, I couldn’t say. Though I suspect they probably were.”

“What makes you suspect that?”

“Marianne’s history,” Charlotte replied. “She’s notorious for her many love affairs. If she wanted Paul—and it appeared to me that she did—she wouldn’t exactly have played hard to get. Also, she behaved in a”—she thought a moment for the proper word—“proprietary manner toward him when we were together at a dinner party at his house yesterday evening.”

Maureen was leaning back in the desk chair. She picked up an ivory Japanese netsuke in the shape of a monkey and started turning it over in her hands. “Miss Graham,” she said, looking up.

“Yes?” Charlotte said.

“In my experience, if a woman acts in a proprietary manner toward a man, it’s usually because she thinks there’s someone out to steal the goods. Was there anyone at the dinner party who Miss Montgomery might have perceived as a threat to her relationship with the victim?”

This woman is sharp, Charlotte thought. “I don’t know,” she answered. It looked as if Lydia had already done a good job of setting up Marianne, however unwittingly. Charlotte didn’t want to contribute to a scenario that featured Marianne as the jilted woman.

“Let me put it differently. Who else was at Mr. Feder’s dinner party?” Maureen asked and nodded at the policeman on the loveseat, who pulled out his pencil.

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith; their daughter, Marianne Montgomery; Marianne’s daughter, Dede—her real name is Diana—and myself,” Charlotte replied. “In addition to Mr. Feder, of course.”

“Tell me about the daughter,” Maureen directed.

“She’s in her mid-twenties, has her master’s degree in historic preservation, and she’s worked as the assistant to Lydia Collins at the preservation association for the last couple of years.”

“I understand that the victim was treasurer of the association.”

Charlotte nodded.

“Does Dede have a boyfriend?”

“I have no idea,” Charlotte replied.

“Pretty?” asked the detective.

“Extremely,” Charlotte said. She failed to volunteer the information that Dede lived in the cottage behind Paul’s house, though she was sure Maureen would find that out soon enough.

The detective looked at Charlotte appraisingly. “Could you have been the woman who the victim was interested in?” she asked.

Oh brother
! Charlotte thought—though it was true that she was more Paul’s age than Marianne was. She shook her head.

“Okay,” Maureen said, abandoning that line of questioning, much to Charlotte’s relief, “let’s get back to tonight. Do you have any idea what time it was that the victim went out to the beach?”

“It was six minutes past seven.”

Maureen looked surprised. “How do you know?”

“I saw him go out there,” Charlotte said, and went on to explain about standing at the rail with Eddie and noticing his burns. “I was looking at the burns on Mr. Norwood’s wrist. And I noticed the time on his wristwatch.”

“Was anyone with Mr. Feder?”

Charlotte nodded. “Dede Montgomery.”

Maureen gave her a disapproving look. “Why didn’t you tell me that right away?” she scolded. “Remember, we’re not jumping to conclusions here. We’re just gathering the facts.”

Charlotte nodded contritely.

“And where was Dede’s mother at this time?”

“She was inside. She came down the gangway to the patio a few minutes later. I saw her talking with some guests, a couple. Apparently she asked them where Paul and Dede had gone, because they pointed in the direction of the beach. Then she followed them.”

“She followed them out to the beach?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Did any of the other guests go out to the beach? You must have had a bird’s-eye view of everybody’s comings and goings.”

“We had a pretty good view, but there’s a lot of vegetation along the driveway, so somebody could easily have gone out there without our seeing them. Also, I wasn’t paying attention every minute—
boy, was that ever true
—but I did see a number of guests going out to the beach, yes.”

Maureen was still toying with the netsuke. “The cabana is quite unique,” she said. “It’s also in the art deco style. There was a write-up on it in an article on cabanas in the Living section of the paper recently. I imagine some of the guests might have gone out there to have a look at it.”

“I wondered why they were all headed that way. I thought it might be to smoke, but they could have smoked on the patio.”

“Do you remember who you saw?”

Charlotte nodded. “Most of them I don’t know by name, of course. But I did see Admiral McLean wander out there, and the man who’s head of the preservation association and his wife. There were a number of others. I wasn’t able to see if they just went to the cabana, or if they continued on down to the beach.”

“I understand that Marianne didn’t return.”

Charlotte nodded again. “I didn’t see her.”

“And Dede?”

“She came back about twenty minutes later. Just before the soup course.” Charlotte thought for a minute and then volunteered: “She looked upset.” She saw no point in holding out anymore. Maureen would find out anyway, and there was no point in alienating her.

“Crying, you mean?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Do you think there had been a scene at the beach?”

“I would guess that’s what happened, yes,” Charlotte replied, thinking that it certainly wasn’t looking good for Marianne.

“What was Marianne wearing?”

“She was wearing a dress of her own design. It was long, pleated, a soft purple color. With a ruffle at the hem and a big mauve flower at the waist. Very pretty.” What was Maureen getting at? Charlotte wondered.

“Any accessories—a handbag, anything like that?”

“Yes, she was carrying a
minaudière.
”

Maureen gave her a look. “A mini-what? I’m just a girl from da Bronx. Can you please tell me what the hell that is?”

Charlotte smiled. “I didn’t know what it was either. She was carrying it at the dinner party last night. It’s from her new collection. It’s a box with compartments for everything a woman might need for an evening out: lipstick, powder puff, comb, and so on.”

“It’s worn on a chain, like a pocketbook?”

Charlotte nodded. “Marianne’s was gold, enameled with an art deco design and inset with diamonds.”

Maureen looked her in the eye. “Miss Graham, are you squeamish? What I mean is, do you have any objection to looking at a dead body?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then I suggest we take a little walk.”

With Maureen in the lead, they followed the winding driveway out to South Ocean Boulevard. By now it was dark, though the undersides of the low-lying clouds that had moved in over the last hour were still tinged a dusty rose. The clouds had obscured the moon, and a stiff ocean breeze had come up, rustling the fronds of the coconut palms that dotted the lawn. From the direction of the ocean came the dull roar of the surf pounding against the shore. It was one of those unsettling South Florida nights. A line of cars, including several police cruisers, was parked on the beach side of South Ocean Boulevard. After speaking briefly with a cop sitting behind the wheel of one of the police cars, Maureen led Charlotte through a wooden gate and down a stone-paved path that passed through a miniature grove of feathery Australian pines, swaying palms, and stubby palmettos. Another path led off to the right, to the art deco cabana, which was surrounded by a thicket of sea grapes. At the foot of the path they were following, a steep set of wooden stairs led down to the wide, white stretch of beach twenty feet below.

At the bottom of the stairs, Charlotte paused to remove her high heels. The sand, still warm from the sun, felt wonderful between her bare toes. (She was one of those women who hated pantyhose and avoided wearing them whenever possible.) Then they turned north along a path in the sand that was demarcated by the yellow plastic tape used by police to rope off crime scenes. The path led to a spot about 100 feet up the beach where a cluster of policemen was gathered at the foot of a steep bank covered with sea grapes and the wheatlike stalks of sea oats. Other policemen were stationed up and down the beach to keep away the curious, and floodlights had been set up to illuminate the scene, which was encircled with the yellow plastic tape. At the center of the scene, a body lay on the sand at the foot of the embankment.

As Charlotte and Maureen approached, one of the policemen withdrew from the group and came down the path to greet them.

“Anything new?” Maureen asked, and he shook his head.

They paused at the edge of the crime scene, about ten feet from the body, which lay in a pile of seaweed and palm fronds and other debris that had been deposited at the foot of the embankment by the tides. Charlotte noticed that the location would have been hidden from the view of anyone at the cabana, which was set about fifteen feet back from the summit of the embankment.

The body lay on its back with with its knees bent to one side and its arms outstretched. It always struck Charlotte as odd how one tended to notice small things about a corpse, as if the death itself was too much for the mind to comprehend. This evening, it was Paul’s satin-lapeled tuxedo with its white pocket-square and his shoes, elegant patent leather tuxedo pumps with small grosgrain ribbons. The shoes had already been half-buried by blowing sand from the stiff offshore breeze.

“We’re waiting for the medic unit to take the body away,” said Maureen. “They should be here any minute. The medical examiner has already been here.”

The mouth and the clear gray eyes were open and the skin was already beginning to turn gray, but otherwise Paul looked in death as he had looked in life, the exception being the small red-ringed wound in the center of his starched white shirt front, just above the third gray pearl stud, and what looked like fingernail scratches on his right cheek.

“Very neat,” Charlotte observed.

“Yes, it is,” Maureen agreed as they gazed down at the body. “It looks like a direct in-and-out thrust. No defense wounds. The perpetrator must have caught him by surprise. Though there
are
signs of a struggle.” She nodded at the sand, whose surface had been disturbed by a chaotic jumble of footprints.

“Looks like somebody held a dance here,” Charlotte commented.

“Yeah,” Maureen said. “Some are the footprints of the crime-scene investigators, but most of them were here already. The photographer was here before the sand was disturbed.” She nodded at the policemen who were combing the vegetation on the bank with flashlights. “We’re looking for the weapon, but we haven’t found it yet. We’re planning to come back tomorrow.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The ME says it’s probably a dagger with a six-inch blade, though he won’t know for sure until he measures the depth of penetration.” Borrowing a flashlight from one of the crime-scene investigators who were sifting the sand around the body, Maureen aimed the beam at a point a few feet to the right of the corpse. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

Lying on the beach, partially covered by sand, was Marianne’s
minaudière
. The rich colors of its distinctive geometric cloisonné design gleamed in the light of the flashlight’s beam.

“Is this Marianne’s minny?” Maureen asked.

Charlotte nodded.

“Can we bag that now?” one of the crime-scene investigators asked.

Maureen nodded, and he proceeded to pick up the
minaudière
in a rubber-gloved hand and put it in a plastic evidence bag, along with a cigarette butt that was also lying in the sand.

Maureen then guided the flashlight beam along the ground to a spot where a photographer was aiming his lens directly downward at the sand. Then she moved the flashlight beam along the sand. The beam illuminated a line of footprints that went from the body to the stairs leading up to the next cabana, about fifty feet to the north.

They were the prints of small bare feet, feet that might have belonged to a petite woman, a woman of about Marianne’s size. The woman must have been carrying her shoes, just as Charlotte now was.

“As you can see, these footprints lead to the stairs up to the next of the cabanas lining this stretch of oceanfront. We’ll be coming back tomorrow to make plaster of Paris castings of the impressions. Also to do another search; it’s hard to conduct a thorough search in the dark.”

Charlotte could see the flashlight beams dancing in the vegetation crowning the embankment at the head of the stairs. Presumably, policemen were searching the area around the neighboring cabana. It was a cabana that she was very familiar with: she had spent all day there just two days before.

It belonged to Spalding and Connie.

It was a long evening—or so it seemed. Using three of the second-floor rooms, Maureen and her assistants took written statements from all the guests who had gone out to the beach themselves and all the guests who had seen others go out to the beach. The remaining people—guests, security guards, and catering staff—were asked to give their names and addresses to the police stationed at the front door on their way out. But the party had gone on. After dinner came the jewelry show, for which Charlotte was drafted as mistress of ceremonies in the conspicuous absence of either Paul or Marianne. Since she didn’t have a script, she improvised, relying on a combination of descriptions from the catalogue of the collection that had been prepared by Feder Jewelers, and whispered prompts from Connie on the names and backgrounds of the socialites who modeled the jewelry on runways that had been set up between tables. The guests at the captain’s table had succeeded in keeping the news of the murder under wraps for the duration of dinner, but once the police started interviewing the other guests, the secret was out. Watching the news spread across the room had been like watching a wind rise across a wooded plain: at first, just a few eddies of movement, and then all the leaves rustling. The fact that guests were being interviewed by the police downstairs added a titillating air to the party that, rather than putting a damper on it, made it all the more lively. Three of the guests, however, were clearly not amused by the prospect of a murder in their midst, and they were Connie and Spalding and their granddaughter, Dede.