5 Deal Killer (19 page)

His message was puzzling.
I’m trying to gather information about the murder of Alec Rodin.
She rolled her dark eyes.
Oh yeah? Well get in line, buddy.

Miranda placed a call to one of the building’s classically trained chefs who prepared meals for residents lucky enough to afford them, and checked on the dinner she’d ordered that morning. “We’ll bring it up at eight, Ms. Styles,” he assured her. “And it will be delicious.”

“I have no doubt,” she said, hanging up. There was plenty of time
to take a shower and lay out a negligee, set the intimate table for two
, and light the candles. She poured herself a glass of wine and looked out at the park.

The light was just starting to fade, the traffic from rush hour starting to subside. She sipped a crisp Sauvignon Blanc and thought again of the Brit’s strange message. Why was he interested in the murder of Alec, she wondered? And what could he possibly know?

A small smile playing about her lips, Miranda crossed the room to her phone, her lean legs moving fast across the plush carpeting. “Mr. Porter?” she asked as the phone was answered. “It’s Miranda Styles. I heard your message, and thought I’d call back.”

She listened as Miles Porter explained that he was a friend of Natalia’s, and he was looking for any information regarding her fiancé’s tragedy.

“Aren’t the police looking into that?” she asked innocently.

He explained that they were, but that he was trying to lend a hand.

“I see,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything useful, but if I do, I’ll be sure to call.”

She hung up and took a sip of wine. Odd. Why should Porter be at all interested in Rodin’s murder, other than the usual voyeuristic enjoyment everyone got from an act of violence?

She took her tablet from its case and typed in his name. Up came dozens of references, many of them bylines to stories in the
Financial Times
.

He’s a reporter,
she realized. No wonder he was interested in Alec Rodin’s death. And the fact that the murdered man had been on track to be the son-in-law of one of the richest men in the world made it an especially intriguing story.

Miranda put the tablet aside and thought a moment. It was very likely that Rodin had been killed by Mikhail Kazakova, stabbed in broad daylight in an alley four miles from here. The possibility didn’t scare her. In fact, she found it a turn-on.

Her reasoning was sound. In the past few months, Mikhail had realized that the arrangement for his only daughter to marry Rodin was a mistake. The Cyrillic writing was on the wall: Natalia’s honeymoon would barely be over before she’d be whisked back to Russia, ensconced in a lovely home, and sealed off from the Western world. A marriage to Rodin meant Mikhail might never see his daughter again, much less any grandchildren.

For all Miranda knew, there were other reasons Mikhail had grown to see Rodin as problematic. Reasons that could easily have driven the powerful oligarch to end his future son-in-law’s life.

The big question, Miranda thought, as she regarded her stun gun on the kitchen counter, was why he’d chosen such a ridiculous murder weapon. An antique Russian saber! Why such theatrics? Did he picture himself as some sort of avenging Cossack?

She chuckled, picked up a slim remote, and pushed a button, so that strains of light jazz filled the airy space.

Maybe I’ll ask him tonight.

seventeen

Darby walked at a
rapid clip through Central Park, trying not to guess the reasons for Miles’s strange behavior.
If I keep guessing, I’ll drive myself nuts
, she reasoned.
I’ve got to forget about it—think about something else.

Like the mold lawsuit?
She grimaced. Fortunately her cell phone rang, preventing her from having to dwell on the Davenports and their claims against her.

“Darby, it’s Todd Stockton.” The real estate agent’s voice was brisk.

“Yes, Todd. Have you got that list of sales at Central Park Place for me?”

“I do. I’m going to email it as an attachment, if that’s okay.”

“So there are that many?”

“Yeah.”

“Todd, what’s up? You sound strange.”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news concerning Rona Reichels.”

Darby stopped walking. “Go on.”

“Her daughter is dead. We all got the report a little while ago.”

“How terrible. I didn’t know her—I don’t really know Rona, for that matter—but I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Overdose of prescription pills.” He sighed heavily. “Apparently it was an accident. There was no note, and no indication that Devin was suicidal.”

“How old was she?”

“Mid-twenties, I guess.” He paused. “She and Rona were very close.”

“I appreciate your call, Todd. Miles may run into her in the build
ing, and it’s good to be aware of tragedies like this.”

“I suppose. I’m not fond of Rona, but this really stinks.” He sighed. “On another note, I’ll be sending you some paperwork for Hideki tomorrow. Let me know if you have any questions.”

“I will. Thanks.” Darby hung up and thought about the compact, no-nonsense woman she’d seen in Natalia Kazakova’s apartment. The one who’d baked a cake for the grieving girl. She shoved her phone into her purse.
Poor Rona
, she thought.

_____

Gina Trovata said goodbye to Bethany, turned off her phone, and slid a frozen dinner into the microwave. Plans were going smoothly for the retail space in Brooklyn, and all aspects of the lease had been ironed out. “We can start moving things in next week!” Bethany had squealed. Gina agreed. It was all going well.

Why then, did she feel a nagging sense of something that was keeping her from being really happy? She examined the areas of her life for any snags and found nothing. She was in good communication with her adoptive parents and would see them at a family party in July. Her employer, Sherry Cooper, was happy with the job she was doing as morning nanny for the boys. Vera, her new friend, was not in the best of health, but the woman was in her eighties, after all, and seemed at peace with her condition.

What was it, then? Something that had happened recently, she felt. She poured herself a Diet Dr Pepper and then it hit her: the phone call regarding Alec Rodin’s murder.

Darby Farr, the one staying in the professor’s apartment, had said she wanted to “explore some connections within the building.” Gina had told her about the sword, but now that she thought about it, there was another link, and that was what was bugging her.

The connection was Sherry Cooper. She wanted the Kazakova penthouse, and it was not just an idle desire: she wanted it the way a dog wants a bone. Hers wasn’t a recent obsession, either—it was going on four years ago that she had lost the opportunity to buy it, and had been forced to settle for five thousand square feet instead of six-something.

Why had the Coopers lost out on the penthouse? Gina thought back to the various arguments she’d heard while working for Penn and Sherry. Financing? Could that have been it? The Coopers had needed to finance their purchase of the penthouse, while Mikhail Kazakova had come along and offered cold, hard cash.

Nobody’s got eighty billion dollars in cash,
Gina said to herself. Or did they? Rumor had it that the Kazakova billions were safely tucked away in Cyprus, the offshore haven of choice for Russians of extreme wealth.

Surely this was the kind of connection Darby Farr was talking about. But did it matter when it came down to Alec Rodin’s murder? Would killing Alec help the Coopers scoop up the penthouse? How?

With Alec out of the way, chances were that Natalia was more committed than ever to life in New York. Who wouldn’t want to hang out in that luxurious pad at the top of one of the city’s best buildings? Did it harbor bad memories? Could Alec and she have spent too much time there for Natalia to feel comfortable after his death?

Gina let her thoughts ramble, knowing that any conclusions she reached were most likely far-fetched.

What if Sherry and Natalia had made a deal?
I’ll kill him if you
get me the penthouse?
Thursday afternoon, when Alec Rodin had been stabbed, was Sherry’s scheduled time off. It was her weekly time to run errands, she claimed. Gina pursed her lips. Was killing Alec
Rodin just another pesky task?

She laughed out loud and removed her eggplant parmesan from the microwave.
Gina, you have a devious mind.

A little voice in her head piped up in protest.

This is Sherry you’re talking about!
The voice admonished.
Sherry, the mom of four golden-haired little angels.
Gina pulled a fork from
the drawer; grabbed a napkin. Quick as a flash, another voice responded:
Sherry, who threatened her hairdresser with a lawsuit the time her highlights came out wrong. Sherry, the one who sabotaged a five-year-old’s birthday party because her son hadn’t been invited. Sherry, who stole a nanny right out from under one of her best friends, while the friend was having chemo.

Gina knew that story intimately, because she was the nanny.

She sighed. There was a way to get more information, and that was to hang out with Natalia Kazakova. When she finished her dinner, she’d call Vera for the Russian girl’s phone number. Maybe they could meet in the morning, while she took care of the little Coopers. The thought made her smile. She liked Natalia.

As Gina carried her entrée to her small table, she had another thought, and this one, although true, did not make her smile.

Sherry Cooper could not be trusted.

_____

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Miles said, meeting Darby at the door. “I know I acted very strangely, and I’m sorry. I hope you’ll hear me out and forgive me.”

Darby shrugged off her jacket and looked into Miles’s eyes. There was something there she couldn’t quite name. Disbelief? Sorrow?

“Of course I’ll hear you out, Miles, and I can’t imagine your doing anything that I wouldn’t forgive.”

“Let’s sit down, then, and let me tell you the whole thing.”

Darby took a seat on one end of the sofa and waited. She had no idea what to expect, and told herself that what was required was listening, and then, hopefully, understanding.

“I’m listening.”

Miles took a deep breath. “After I graduated from Columbia and worked for the
New York Times
, I got a job in their London office doing investigative reporting. I think I told you about a murder that took place in Piccadilly Square, a cold case involving a very dear friend of mine.”

Darby thought back. She recalled one of the first real conversations she’d had with Miles, back in Maine, an intimate dinner at a restaurant in Westerly. “Yes,” she said. “A woman named Sarah, who’d been one of your most trusted sources.”

“That’s right. Her name was Sarah Winterbridge. When she died, I spent nearly two years trying to solve the case, with no real leads. In the course of those two years, I became very close to Sarah’s parents and siblings.”

“Naturally.”

“Sarah came from a very old, respected English family, but her relatives disapproved of her edgy life. She ran with a bad crowd, and was an addict, but she was trying desperately to get clean. The last time we met, she looked healthier than I’d ever seen her. The drugs
were behind her. She’d been clean and sober for two weeks, and ready
to start a new life.”

“But that didn’t happen,” Darby said gently.

“No.” His face registered pain, even after all the years.

“Were you in love with Sarah?”

He shook his head. “No. I cared about her deeply. We were friends,
and I admired her spirit. She refused to give up, that girl, and I feel she would have made it, had perhaps already made it …”

His mouth was dry, and he licked his lips. Darby handed him a glass of water, and he took it gratefully and drank.

“About a year after her death, I began seeing Sarah’s older sister, Violet. I didn’t plan for it to happen—it just did. We had a kind of hunger for each other, and it lasted about a year. Never lived together, and never spoke about the future. I think, in hindsight, our relationship was a way for us both to try and make sense of Sarah’s death.”

He closed his eyes. “Violet broke it off and began dating a Scot
tish businessman. Shortly after that, I traveled to India to see a cousin.
I ended up staying the better part of a year. When I came back to London, I avoided the Winterbridge family. I felt it was for the best.”

“But now they have contacted you?”

He looked up quickly. “Yes. Violet tracked me down a month ago.
She told me something crazy, something that I did not believe at first, until at last, tonight, she has given me proof.”

He paused.

“I have a son back in England. He’s called Simon.”

Darby exhaled and looked into his eyes. She wanted to keep qui
et, wanted to refrain from blurting anything out, but her mind could
not keep her mouth shut.

“This changes everything,” she said.

_____

Pete pulled on his leash, anxious to sniff the pile of debris Peggy’s neighbor had dragged to the street corner.

“Leave it, Pete, leave it,” Peggy admonished, not wanting the dog to lift his leg and ruin anything of value. She lifted some flaps of mildewing cardboard, peering into the piles with interest. A child’s wooden puzzle, a few detective novels, and a barefoot plastic doll. She picked up a stick and poked the doll. It stared at her with open eyes, its hair splayed out like a fan.

Peggy looked up and down the street, but no one else was outside. The familiar itchy feeling came over her, the sensation that was only satisfied by collecting. She reached for the doll, grabbing a naked leg. “You can come home with me,” she said softly. Although Peggy’s one-car garage was stuffed and her former den was nearly full to capacity, there was a guest bedroom that still had floor space.
I’ll use only a corner of it
, she vowed, but even as she said it, she knew it was a promise she couldn’t keep.

_____

Darby and Miles sat in silence for what seemed like several minutes.

“I realize everything is different now,” Miles finally said. “And I completely understand if you want to end our relationship. I have no clue as to how this will play out. I don’t know whether I want to meet him, or if he wants to meet me.”

“How old is Simon?” Darby’s tongue felt very thick.

“Twelve.”

She nodded.
A good age, better than thirteen
…

The memory of her parents’ death, occurring the summer she became a teen, came back in a rush. Darby watched it unfold before her as if it were a movie projected onto her brain. There was her father, John Farr, tanned and handsome, climbing into the dinghy, her mother, Jada, wearing white shorts and a red-checked blouse. She saw her mother wave a jaunty goodbye. She saw herself climbing on to her bicycle, one knee skinned from where she had scraped it at the little beach.
I pedaled off to find my friend Lucy, never dreaming it would be the last time I’d see them.

She willed the movie to stop.

Why am I thinking of this now? Is it the shock of the news? It’s the same kind of shock this poor kid will get when he learns that Miles Porter is his father. Out of the blue, out of nowhere, his whole life will change
…

She blinked. Was it the same? She was informed at age thirteen that her parents were gone, lost at sea, while Simon would be told of a new adult in his life, a man who had never known about him, but who was now anxious to meet him.

She looked up. That man was sitting next to her.

A kind and generous man. A smart, brave, and strong man.

Darby swallowed. It was not at all the same.

“Simon will be surprised, to say the least,” she said. “It’ll be a bit of a shock at first. But I know he’ll want to meet you, and I bet it won’t take him long to realize he’s won the British Lottery.” She smiled. “That is, if they have that sort of thing over there.”

Miles looked away, clearly moved. He cleared his throat. “Will you come with me?” His voice was thick. “Will you come with me and meet him?”

Darby wiped her eyes, thinking back to that thirteen-year-old girl who had managed to survive, somehow, despite it all, survive and open her heart again.

“I’ll be there,” she said.