Dearly Departed (26 page)

PROLOGUE

T
he fussy little man held out a legal-size manila envelope. Fanny Abel accepted it, weighing it in her hand. “That's it?” Disapproval tinged her words. More than tinged. After all, this was Fanny. “It can't be more than thirty pages.”

“Forty-three. But it's double-spaced.” The man actually seemed amused. Fanny wondered if she might be losing her touch.

She tried again. “This is supposed to keep our mystery fanatics occupied for the next two weeks? For all the money we're paying you . . .” She let the words dangle.

“I e-mailed a copy to your daughter in Monte Carlo. It's all she'll need to start the game, I assure you.” There was a certain condescension in his calm, as if he were explaining things to a very dense child. It was a trick Fanny recognized from her own arsenal. This guy was good. “She followed my previous packet of instructions?” He tilted his head quizzically. “If not . . .”

“Of course she did.” Fanny hated not being in control. Unlike her daughter, she had rules to avoid such situations. Rule number one? Never do business with people you didn't know during your husband's lifetime or to whom you aren't related, preferably by blood. Otto failed on both counts. She had known him for only . . . how long? A minute? Two at the most, since the eccentric figure had walked through the door of their Greenwich Village travel agency.

Owlish
was the word Amy had used to describe him—the small stature (no taller than Fanny herself), the pear-like shape, the thick, round glasses that tried their best to add substance. Fringes of white, wispy hair wreathed his face. If Fanny squinted, they could be feathers.

Otto was decked out—
dressed
didn't do him justice—in a suit of gray wool tweed. The cut was almost Edwardian, so old-fashioned it could almost be trendy, some London design that had yet to make it across the Atlantic except for a few isolated outbursts, like the arrival of a flu strain. But the material showed signs of age. Food stains peppered the sleeves. And the details were of such poor quality that Fanny decided the suit had never been fashionable.

Fanny resented that Amy couldn't be in two places at once. Any considerate daughter would figure out how to be in Monte Carlo, dealing with the tour, and in New York, dealing with this strange animal that she'd discovered in some article and then tracked down on the Internet.

The illusion of a ruffled breast was accomplished by a wrinkled white shirt accented by a clip-on bow tie that bobbed so dramatically when Otto spoke—so irritatingly hypnotic—that it had to be deliberate. Intimidation by annoyance, an advanced ploy that she herself rarely dared.

“The entire game is written and ready to play.” Bob, bob, bob. Fanny had to force her gaze down to the envelope. “Every day your daughter will receive new instructions. All taken care of.” He was reaching across and tapping at the final invoice, paper clipped to the corner.

“What about the ending?” Fanny contorted her own squat frame, hunching down and trying once again to force her opponent into eye contact. “Shouldn't we know how it comes out? You know. Killer? Motive?” With a bit of eye contact, she might just regain her footing. “What if no one can solve it or if a clue gets lost? Amy says she would feel more comfortable . . .” Were his eyes peering up at hers through the bushy eyebrows? She couldn't tell.

“That's not the way I work. You'll notice the item listed as ‘assistant fee.'” Another reach and a tap, and this time Fanny couldn't help glancing at the invoice. The glance turned into a gape.

“Oh, my lord!”

Otto chuckled. “My assistant will be keeping tabs on the tour, at great expense to me and greater expense to you. Amy didn't advise you of this?”

“Yes, of course. But . . .”
But such an expense.

“Mrs. Abel, I have been constructing mysteries for nearly thirty years. The best of the best. And no one knows the ending beforehand—not the organizers, not the actors, no one. I once designed a game at which the vice president was in attendance. And if I won't tell the Secret Service, I certainly won't tell you.” Here he preened, smoothing back his head feathers with a fat left claw. “As for something going wrong . . . My assistant will be on-site, observing every step. You don't need to know anything more.”

“Well . . . I guess that makes it okay.” Fanny straightened the tan, pleated blouse that Stan had told her—in one of those rare romantic moments when her late husband knew he had to say something—so perfectly set off her auburn pageboy. Now, three years after his death, the blouse, a bit tattered around the cuffs, was still her first choice out of the closet. With a sigh, she opened the center drawer of the Chippendale-style desk that had once stood in the corner of Stan's den, took out the company checkbook, and began to write.

Why couldn't Amy have opened a normal travel agency? Between them they knew enough New Yorkers seeking European culture or sunny beaches. But no. Despite Amy's timid nature, she'd wanted to specialize in the exotic. Amy's Travel. Simple but personal. Fanny liked it.

Their agency would be different, Amy had vowed, shunning the usual low-risk, high-volume stuff. The Internet had already destroyed that end of the market. No, they would concentrate on customized excursions.

Fanny suspected the idea had been inspired by Amy's fiancé. Eddie McCorkle, bless his soul, had been the adventurous half of the relationship. He had always been dragging Amy someplace new, talking her into a trek on the Inca Trail instead of a walk on a Caribbean beach. Amy would fret for weeks beforehand and wind up loving every minute. They'd even fantasized about writing travel books. To work together, to travel and see new things. Someday.

Someday
had ended two years ago with Eddie's death, just a week after he'd popped the question.

Stan gone and then Eddie in less than a year, leaving a widow and an almost widow, both of them too young not to start over. But was this the way to start? Fanny wondered. It was as if Amy was pushing herself to become someone else.

The Monte Carlo to Rome Mystery Road Rally—Fanny knew she didn't like this name—was a perfect example of the new Amy. A high-risk, high-profile venture that put them at the mercy of the bank—and of an eerie bird of prey named Otto.

“What if something happens to your assistant? He or she or whatever. God forbid you should divulge the sex.”

Otto's grin was unnecessarily rude, considering that she hadn't finished signing the check. “If my assistant should unluckily be hit by a bus, then I shall personally take over the game. No extra charge.” He eyed the checkbook. “That's Ingo, i-n-g-o, an anagram for
goin',
which is what I must be doin', my dear. Thank you.”

She wrote as slowly as she could.

 

Otto took the 1 train from Christopher Street to Times Square. From there it was a short walk to the dingy two-room depressant that had been home ever since his bedridden wife had gone on to her much-deserved reward.

Their life had been a simple one. Mary Ingo had brought in a regular paycheck as a Brooklyn borough clerk, while Otto had written a succession of unpublishable mystery novels. The response from literary agents was always the same—good, twisty plots; poor character development. It was only a matter of time and luck before one of the agents, a member of the same church, asked Otto if he could write a mystery game for a charity event. After the rousing success of
The Deadly Communion Wafer,
one thing led to another.

It was on the day of Mary's funeral that he placed on the market the Brooklyn row house that he'd been born in, married in, and grown old and stout in. Over the following week, the sanitation department carted away dozens of pieces of heavy walnut furniture left out at the curb. Otto was throwing out anything and everything that might remind him of that unhappy eternity. And although his simpering niece—his wife's niece, actually—had begged him to save her the photo albums and the dinette set, out they had gone with the rest. His books—the research books, the classic mysteries from which he mercilessly stole plot twists, plus the prized bound scripts from his own games—all of these went with him.

Along Eighth Avenue, a breeze stirred the street debris into curbside cyclones. Otto joined the crowds elbowing past the cheap storefronts that asserted their stalls halfway out into the bustling sidewalk.

Ignoring the chaos, Otto concentrated on the game he'd just delivered, mentally reviewing the twists and turns, imagining the players' reactions and pre-guessing their second guesses. Designing mystery games was a specialized skill. But within this nearly invisible world, Otto was a living legend. Who else could have carried off The Guggy Murders, a charity event at the Guggenheim that had four hundred of New York's wealthiest racing up and down the spiral ramp in gowns and tuxedos, trying to discover who was impaling the museum staff on a slew of “priceless” mobiles?

A block south of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Otto used his key on a reinforced steel door and began to wheeze his way up four flights to the mystery king's lair. One step at a time. Arduous minutes later and he was depositing his overstuffed body into the deep, formfitting depressions in his overstuffed sofa.

It was only as his own gasps were fading from his ears that Otto realized he wasn't alone. He glanced up at the outer door, the door that he, in his oxygen deprivation, had neglected to shut behind him.

On the two windows that faced Eighth Avenue, the blinds were lowered, permitting a few slivers of dusty light to squeeze between the venetian slats. Otto had not yet switched on a lamp, and the naked bulb dangling from the stairwell ceiling turned the figure into the blackest of silhouettes. The figure glided in and closed the door, plunging the living room into darkness.

The owl's eyes blinked and adjusted. Among the shadows, a profile, and then the outline of eye sockets, cheekbones, and a mouth came into focus. The face was vaguely familiar. “What are you doing . . .” He stopped when he saw the gun. “Oh, my.”

Otto regarded the firearm with a curious eye. He knew his guns—and his bombs and his poisons and just about anything else that could maim or kill. Even in this light, he recognized it as a .22 pistol with a silencer, a muffler, as the English called it, screwed onto the muzzle.

Good choice,
he thought in an oddly dispassionate way. A silencer would be useless on a revolver due to the gaps around the chamber, from which air, and therefore noise, could escape. The smallness of the .22 and the fact that it was a pistol meant that the explosion would be minimal. Just the kind of weapon he himself would have written in.

“The walls are very thin,” Otto panted. “My neighbors are nosy.” He wondered if he had enough breath left in him to scream. At the same time, he was fascinated by his assailant's face. So familiar, yet not. “What do you want?”

The intruder didn't reply. Not a good sign.

“I have a few hundred dollars.” But he instinctively knew money wasn't the object. “I have a credit card.” He didn't. At this point he was just looking for a response.

The figure didn't move but seemed to be waiting—nerveless, emotionless. Waiting for what? The only sounds in the stale, greasy room were Otto's labored breaths and the normal abuse from Eighth Avenue: the blare of taxis as they jockeyed for position by the Port Authority, the rhythmic
clunk-a-clunk
of tires passing over an ill-fitting construction plate. It was during one of these
clunk-a-clunk
s that the figure fired.

Otto had read about thousands of fictional deaths, had personally staged dozens of them, but had never before been on the scene of a real murder. In his rare moments of self-doubt, he had wondered if his re-creations might be too clichéd or unrealistic. Did shooting victims really convulse with the impact, then go limp in their chairs as the life drained out of them?

Yes, they did. And with a certain degree of satisfaction, he convulsed and slumped and drained.
Of course, I could be reacting this way because that's how I think I'm supposed to,
he thought, then discarded the notion.
No, this is accurate, as far as I can tell. I should be spending my last moments thinking up a deathbed clue, shouldn't I? Some clever, unmistakable lead . . .

He slid from the sofa to the floor, leaving a smeared trail of red against the dirty corduroy cushions as he fell to his knees and collapsed forward. His brain was far too woozy now. Besides, he truly had no idea who had killed him, which was annoying on both a personal and professional level.

Otto's next thoughts were of the regrettable differences between factual and fictional murders and how, even discounting his current situation, he much preferred the fictional.

I wonder if this will ever be solved,
he mused dryly.
How very like me to leave a murder mystery in my wake. How fitting.

CHAPTER 1

“H
ow can you dictate my menu?” Emil Pitout snatched the printed card from Amy's hand and inspected it. “You are a chef perhaps?” The doughy man in the apron smirked—a needless smirk, since his tone was expressing it nicely. “Do you have a Michelin star you neglected to tell me about, eh? My apologies.”

Amy didn't take offense. She was too busy mentally translating the rapid stream of French and trying to phrase her own response. “I'm not a chef, Emil.”

“You must be. Perhaps you wish to cook tonight? I don't want to jeopardize your menu with my clumsy efforts.” Or at least Amy thought the word meant
jeopardize.
Something close.

Emil stopped to read the card. “Not bad,” he said grudgingly, as if he'd never seen it before. “But why must the dishes be just so?” The menu slipped from his fingers, drifting to the white tile floor. The entire kitchen was white and chrome and shining, like a surgical theater.

Amy hated arguing. She wasn't good at it, even worse in French. Her usual ploy was to surrender. It tended to cut short the inevitable bloody defeat. Only this time she couldn't.

“Because they must,” she ventured, bending down to retrieve the menu. “Emil, you've had this for a week. If there was a problem, you should have e-mailed me. It's a simple dinner, nothing out of season. A fish soup, coquilles Saint-Jacques d'Étretat . . .”

Emil snatched at the menu again, but Amy pulled it back. “You have been to the market? I came late this morning—five o'clock—so I probably missed you. The haricots verts were perfection. They would have thought me mad if I didn't buy them.” He pointed to a basket of the greenest green beans Amy had ever seen.

She was finally getting the point. “You want to substitute a vegetable.”

“The other, it was passable.” Emil shrugged, pointing to a basket of equally green broccoli heads. “But to take these poor fellows and then to pass up the haricots verts . . . What is the problem with one substitution?”

Amy honestly didn't know, but she had her instructions. “Emil,” she pleaded. “We are occupying sixteen rooms. And we paid a good deal extra to reserve the whole restaurant.” She was sounding like a pushy businessman. Even worse, an American.

“You think this is about money?”

Well, yes.
“Of course not.”

“It's not about money.”

“I'm sorry. No artist likes being told how to perform. The green beans look fantastic.”

“Look? Ha.” And in a smooth motion perfected over years of stuffing capons, he slipped a bean between his adversary's teeth.

“These are American tourists,” Amy mumbled as she crunched. “Which is not to say they don't appreciate food. Mmm, delicious. But they won't mind something not quite so perfect.”

“You think it matters who I cook for? You think I walk out into my dining room and say, ‘Oh, these people, they won't appreciate my food. I will serve them crap'?” Actually, Amy had been to Paris bistros that made this scenario sound plausible. “Americans come in, and they ask, ‘How is this cooked?' ‘What vegetable comes with that?' ‘Can I have this instead?'”

“Well, they are the ones eating.”

“They get the vegetable I decide goes best. It is part of the whole.”

“Emil.” Amy pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “If it were up to me, I would love green beans. But these are my instructions. People must sit in certain places and do certain things. I don't know why. Will this be a clue? I don't know. Will something be poisoned?”

“Poison?” Emil gaped in mock horror.

“You know what I mean.”

“You are going to poison my food?”

“Emil, please.”

“I call the police.”

How do you say ‘get off it'?
“I have told you over and over. This dinner is part of a murder mystery game. I can't change a thing.”

“Even pretend poison, I will not allow. . . . That thing that tastes of bitter almonds?”

“Cyanide. No. No pretend cyanide.”

Emil huffed. “You should not play games with food.”

For Amy, the ensuing compromise felt like a victory. At least she hadn't caved completely. The haricots verts, they agreed, would be a side dish, in addition to the broccoli. She just hoped that Otto Ingo's entire mystery didn't hinge on the absence of green beans at the opening night banquet.

 

It was a few minutes past noon on a cloudless day in mid-September. Amy Abel had changed into a crisp white blouse, lime-green clam diggers, and her favorite white and green espadrilles. Taking a deep breath of sea air, she strolled down the front steps and turned left onto avenue Saint-Martin.

The small luxury hotel had been hard to find. According to Otto's specifications, it had to possess a terrace opening directly onto the dining room and should, as much as possible, resemble a private home. Deluxe accommodations in Monaco tended to be large affairs. The smaller, homey hotels were generally of a lower grade, something that might have been all right with Otto but that would not have suited Amy's clients.

Salvation had come in the form of the Hotel Grimaldi, an eighteenth-century mansion on the spit of land known as Monaco-Ville. Halfway between the oceanographic museum and the cathedral, the Grimaldi was in a district filled with ancient squares and serpentine alleys, hardly the center of jet-set action. But this tiny gem was positioned right next to the seaside cliffs. And the view from the terrace was as good as you'd find at the Fairmont Monte Carlo.

Amy had left her to-do list back in her room. This was meant to be a break.
Perhaps lunch at an outdoor café,
she thought as she wandered away from the crashing waves. Emil was in his kitchen; the guests were all checked in; the actors would be needing her for the rehearsal in the dining room, but that wasn't until three. Before she knew it, Amy had mentally re-created the to-do list.

She'd barely traveled at all since Eddie's murder. Could it be almost two years? Time had glided by in a haze of despair. It had all been so senseless, so random. Hundreds of times she had gone over—still went over—the events of that Saturday night in early November. If only they hadn't had that fight. If only Eddie hadn't gone out for a walk. If only he had stormed out five minutes earlier or later or hadn't turned down Minetta Lane. All the millions of little forks in the road, the inconsequential moments you never gave a second thought to until they heartlessly, mechanically clicked into place and destroyed your world.

Amy knew this was all part of not letting go. But how could she let go? It had been the beginning for them, a burgeoning world of inside jokes, of quiet, cuddly mornings, and little traditions. . . all gone in an instant.

Amy tried to focus on the modest glories of the neighborhood, on the neat rows of window boxes, on the brass railings glowing richly in the sun. Which was worse? she wondered. Thinking about Eddie or obsessing over the game?

This rally had been her brainchild, combining her two great loves, travel and mysteries. The idea had come to her fully formed after she'd read a
New York Times
article about a mystery event at the Guggenheim.

Mystery parties were not new. They had been around for decades and usually consisted of a poorly written mystery, two hours of half-drunken role-playing in someone's living room, and a disappointing solution that didn't quite make sense.

But what if you could make it bigger and better? What if you fully immersed the players, took them on a journey, and made the mystery last for weeks, not hours? This Otto Ingo, barely mentioned in the
Times
article, seemed to be just the kind of man to approach about her idea.

Amy had assumed there were others like her, but with money: mystery lovers willing to pamper themselves to the tune of two weeks and many thousands of dollars. So she'd gone out on a limb, getting in touch with Otto, arranging the tour, creating the brochure and the Web site, all on her own. Well, not quite on her own. Her mother had been loyally at her side, to complain and tell her they were headed for disaster.

The rally had filled up quickly, much to Fanny Abel's amazement. If everything went right, the Monte Carlo to Rome Mystery Road Rally would put their little agency on the map, giving it a distinctive niche in the cutthroat travel market.

If things went wrong . . . For a woman who hated risk, who had moved back in with her mother rather than live alone, Amy was taking the risk of a lifetime. She was painfully aware that there was no other tour operator sharing the downside. And that was the reason why she kept reviewing her mental checklist.

Amy turned down a narrow pedestrian lane. The air was balmy, with that distinctive resort smell—coconut oil and citrus and aloe. Strolling in the welcome shade, she was jostled by the amiable tide, a couple here, a trio there, a small roadblock of Germans hovering around a particularly cheap postcard rack.

This scent, so suggestive of languid, half-forgotten vacations, was it seeping out of the rows of plastic bottles in the souvenir shops or evaporating straight off the tourists? Perhaps it was part of the atmosphere, the result of so many decades of slathered, half-naked bodies leaning against porous limestone columns or dripping their fragrant sweat onto the cobblestones.

The late summer sunlight met her at each corner, teasing her with its heat, only to retreat once she ventured on to the next block. Farther down, at the end of the block, Amy could see the shadows disappear, and knew that she was approaching a square.
Good.
She hadn't forgotten.

Dominick's was one of several cafés that poured their tables and umbrellas out onto place Saint-Nicolas, a picturesque square whose centerpiece was a statue of the somber Christmas saint. The old man peered down from the top of his lazy fountain, the water barely dribbling from the four lion heads that sprouted just below his feet.

They had eaten lunch at Dominick's on their very first trip, a three-week extravaganza fueled by sex and excitement and next to no money. How many more places would she find from their travels? Not that she was looking.

Amy settled into a white plastic chair at a red plastic table. She asked the waiter for a
croque-monsieur
and an Orangina and was surprised at how quickly the order arrived. That was the one advantage of coming here in high season. The cafés did their best to churn the tables.

Amy took her first bite, then turned her chair to get the best view. Only gradually did she become aware of a couple, an older woman and a younger man, staring at her from under an umbrella of the adjacent café.

Amy didn't consider herself the type to draw stares. True, she was tall and slim—not model slim, but close—with a five-foot-ten frame inherited from her father. In all other ways her looks were remarkably unremarkable. In her early thirties, an ordinary age, she possessed brown, slightly wavy hair cut to shoulder length and pulled back into a chignon. Her nose, mouth, ears, and brown eyes were equally ordinary. Eddie's best friend had once described her as the prettiest girl in the office. And although Amy had never worked in an office, the description rang true.

Her one extravagance was the eyeglasses. She loved them and felt they added some much-needed definition. A visual signature, with unlimited variety. Since childhood she had thumbed her nose at contact lenses. And the very idea of LASIK surgery . . . Her current favorite was a pair of Lafont sunglasses, with round tortoiseshell frames, and she was wearing them now.

Amy tried not to stare back but couldn't help glancing their way. And then it came to her. “Ms. Davis,” she said in a flash of recognition. No wonder they'd been staring. “Excuse me. I was daydreaming.” She tucked fifteen euros under her ashtray, took her plate and glass, and went to join them.

“Oh, you didn't recognize us. Admit it,” the woman purred.

“No, I did.”

“I forgive you.” Georgina Davis flourished an outstretched hand, as if to embrace her approach. “I barely recognized you myself. Your glasses are different.” She laughed in a pleasant, self-deprecating way. Her gold bracelets jangled as she moved an elegant crocodile purse an inch closer to her iced tea, her best effort to make room at the small table.

A British friend had once suggested that while some cultures might be obsessed with birth, education, or other barometers, in America things were more elemental. Beauty, youth, and money. This was how a democracy judged its people, he'd said, which explained why most U.S. magazines printed photographs of their subjects, found a way to mention their age, and always gave some hint of how well off they were. Amy had been appalled by the observation but now found herself using it to evaluate the two people seated around the curve of the table.

Georgina Davis was third-generation money, granddaughter of Davis Buttons, Inc., and worth a comfortable hundred million. A well-preserved sixty, Amy estimated, and probably ready to deny it.

In the final category, Georgina lost more of her democratic prestige. A soft aurora of strawberry hair did its best to soften a jaw that could be unkindly called lantern and a cleft in the chin too deep and heroic to be labeled a dimple. On a man it might be considered a strong face. A man at least would have had the option of cloaking it with facial hair. On a sixty-year-old woman, however, all you were left with was the odd impression that you were always catching sight of her from the wrong angle.

Her companion, Marcus—from her time with the travel documents, Amy recalled a Hispanic last name—rated much higher in the two less critical areas. He was about Amy's age and perhaps an even six feet, not tall enough for her to wear decent heels in his company, but . . . Why was she even thinking that? His face was long, with largish features—an aquiline nose and oversize ears partly covered by hair. He had a wavy, shiny jet-black mane, which complemented his olive complexion. Good hair and a killer smile.