Xs, An Allie Armington Mystery (16 page)

She peers at me through sad brown eyes. “You knew
him?” Bill leans down. “She worked for Uncle Jason.”

After shooting him an “I knew that” look, she turns
to me. “Of course you did. Thank you, my dear. My Jason’s sudden
death was quite a shock. He had just taken his annual physical, and
the doctor pronounced him healthy as a horse.”

She turns to gaze lovingly up at Bill. “My nephew
has been such a godsend.”

It seems as if we are all holding our breaths until
she says, “Well, let’s get on with it.”

Mindy places the bogus papers on the smooth side of
her briefcase and hands it with a pen to Bill.

He scans both pages, which in actuality state that
we made the appointment with Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe by telephone and
visited her on this date. From her dazed condition, it’s doubtful
that she will pick up on the nature of the document.

Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe signs the paper and turns to
Bill. “If that’s all, darling, could we go back to our gin
game?”

Her request is overridden by a hushed but intense
argument in the hallway, followed by determined footsteps heading
in our direction.

She’s tall, blonde and gorgeous, dressed in a chic
chocolate riding habit sans derby.

Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe’s face fills with sun.
“Dierdre. What a surprise. We weren’t expecting you for lunch.”

Dierdre glides across the Oriental carpet to give
Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe a kiss, then turns to do the same for
Bill.

I hardly have time to absorb the latest terrible
reality when the woman slides an arm around Bill’s waist, gives him
a squeeze, and says, “I’m so sorry to intrude, I didn’t know you
had guests.”

I have to give it to him. The man doesn’t miss a
beat. “Dierdre, please meet Angela Armington and Mindy Cha. Both
women work with me at the firm. They were kind enough to drive all
the way out here to accommodate Aunt Georgina.”

He looks down at her, then at us. “And this is
Dierdre Wainwright.”

I expect him to add “of the blah-blah Wainwrights,
who preceded God and the Mayflower to America,” but he spares us
that.

Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe’s eyes brighten. She motions
toward the piano. “Dierdre has given me so much pleasure since my
Jason passed away. He used to entertain me by playing his jazz
compositions on the Bosendorfer. Now the dear girl often pops by to
do the same.”

The silence that follows seems to last an eternity
until Mindy stands, retrieves the signed document and shoves it in
her briefcase.

————

My eyes don’t fill until we are in the car. To hide
the tears, I peer out the window until they dry and the catch in my
throat dissolves.

To ease the pain, I roll the tape of Bill above me,
crooning my name with each deep thrust. Then after, spooning his
body around mine, hugging me close and saying how nicely our bodies
fit together.

I remember his concern for my well being. How he
cautioned me to keep a low profile until I could get on a flight
out of New York. Now, I can’t help but wonder if his only goal was
to get me out of the way?

Mindy doesn’t speak until we’re on the I-95. “Okay,
what was all that about? First, the white-face-I’m-about-to-faint
look; then your zombie-mode when Miss I’m-somebody-really-important
walked in.”

I look away so she can’t read the pain in my eyes.
But why get into it with Cha? Why should I spill my guts to someone
I barely know—a person who isn’t overly enthusiastic about taking
me on as a roommate? Besides, I’m still reeling from the shock of
seeing Bill in this new setting and, much to my dismay, well
attached to that blonde.

When I first learned Bill was married for a short
time to a Southern belle from the First Families of Virginia, I
couldn’t imagine the sheriff married to a blueblood, but now that I
know a little more, it’s obvious he’s attracted to the type.

Mindy’s “Well?” brings me out of it. “I’m
hypoglycemic.”

“Don’t smoke-screen me. I didn’t make detective
grade for nothing. The tension between you and the nephew was so
thick I needed a hacksaw. Greene told me you were involved with a
DEA agent. Is this the same guy?”

“This is the last place I expected to see him. He
mentioned he had met Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe, but he failed to tell me
just how close he was.”

Mindy glances my way. “No wonder you went so
pale.”

She concentrates on the road for a minute, then
says, “Wow. Did you get a load of that blonde neighbor? The caring
little piano player? Where do you suppose she fits in the scheme of
things?” “Good question. But, at this point, not only do I have no
idea, I really don’t care.”

When Mindy shoots me a “liar-liar” look, I change
the subject. “Okay, Miss Detective, answer me this: Why would Mrs.
Kingsley-Smythe be so dependent on a nephew when she has kids of
her own? Weren’t those pictures on the table in the entry hall the
children?”

“You betcha.” She puffs up. “But did you notice the
pictures went only through adolescence? Where are the wedding
pictures? Where are the pictures of the grandchildren?”

I start to mention the cold gray eyes in some of the
ancestor portraits but decide to save that information for
Greene.

The rest of our drive back to Manhattan is mostly
silent. Mindy seems lost in her own thoughts, and I certainly am in
mine.

The shock of seeing Bill again, and in such an
unexpected venue, has thrown me for a loop. His words echo, “I’ve
never blatantly lied to you, Allie. My only sins are those of
omission.”

Boy, has he got that right! At first, he implied he
didn’t even know Mrs. Kingsley-Smythe. Now he’s Aunt Georgina’s
favorite nephew with the gorgeous next-door neighbor draped around
his neck.

MINDY AND I SPEND the next several days trying to
dig up information pertinent to the Kingsley-Smythe case by going
through investigative documents from the DEA and other law
enforcement agencies.

On this particular morning we are setting up the
Kingsley-Smythe family file. To her credit, that woman is like a
Jack Russell terrier when it comes to unearthing odd little pieces
of esoterica.

Mindy goes to the pile of files in the corner and
retrieves a thick one. “Though the Kingsley-Smythes had no kids of
their own, they seemed to be very much in love at first. You
know—in those early pictures they looked so happy. Then after a
while they didn’t.”

“Do you still have those pix? It might be
interesting to see who else shows up.”

“There are over thirty in here.” She hands me the
stack. “Be sure to keep them in order.”

I open the file. The first photograph shows a
younger and very dashing Jason Kingsley-Smythe posing with his
wife. But in the next one there’s a drastic change. Georgina stares
into the camera with vacant eyes, while Jason’s attention is
focused on an attractive brunette, who returns his gaze.

There’s another man in the picture with his arm
draped over the brunette’s shoulder. Knowing Mindy leaves no detail
unturned, I flip to the back side. The man is Lawrence Templeton.
The woman is his wife, Norma.

Though Templeton’s hairline is receding, he wears it
brushed back. His face is too big for his body and though his
features are coarse, they reflect a certain sensuality.

“Are the Templetons still married?”

“If you can call it that. Mrs. T is in the final
stages of advanced alcoholism. She’s just come back from one of her
bimonthly visits to Silver Hill.” “Children?”

“Two sons. Both attended California colleges. Never
came back to the East Coast.”

I can’t quite bring myself to see Jason and Norma as
lovers. She doesn’t hold a candle to Georgina. But in the light of
Norma’s alcoholism, Larry could be involved with Sigrid Hale.

I shuffle through the rest of the stack, hoping to
pick up another lead, but the photos deal mostly with the
Kingsley-Smythes at the club, at tennis parties, cocktail parties,
social suppers and the like.

“Did you ever find out why the Kingsley-Smythe kids
suddenly disappeared from view?”

Mindy looks up. “I found out who, what and when,
but, unfortunately, not the why.”

I give her a grin. “I’ll settle for the first part.
I’m sure you’ll unearth the second.”

“In a nutshell, the Kingsley-Smythes adopted Frank
and Sallie Stone when their parents died in an automobile accident.
The boy was fourteen and his sister eleven.

“Frank, nicknamed Bud, graduated from Andover, which
coincidentally was Kingsley-Smythe’s alma mater. He entered
Dartmouth and never returned home. Then Sallie enrolled at Emma
Willard between Thanksgiving and Christmas and remained there until
she went to Wellesley. She never came home either.

“And—get this—when Bud turned twenty-one he legally
changed his last name from Kingsley-Smythe back to Stone.

“Seems the Stone-slash-Smythes have no current
contact with the widow, nor were they in evidence at
Kingsley-Smythe’s memorial service.”

“But I don’t understand. Why haven’t they rallied
around their mother? Poor lady, she’s alone except for Bill. Thank
God, she has him.”

“Oh, so now he’s not such a bad guy?”

I look around the room. We’re alone. Greene and
Platón slipped out while I was riffling through the photos.

“I didn’t say that.”

Though I still haven’t heard a word from Bill since
the trip to Greenwich, for some stupid reason, I feel the need to
jump to his defense. “Look, I’m not trying to excuse what happened
in Greenwich, but dealing with his aunt can’t be easy for Bill.
That’s an added burden on top of the DEA assignment.”

“You mean a burden like Miss Got-Rocks?”

I shake my head, hoping Mindy will melt into the
floor. I don’t want to discuss Bill with her.

When she gives a derisive snort, I look into Mindy’s
all-knowing smirk and realize I’m trapped in my own agony. “Do you
know something I don’t?”

She settles across from me. “I like you, Allie, but
you just refuse to face the truth. That’s why you’re so willing to
buy this guy’s bullshit.”

Damn her. Who does she think she is? She barely
knows me and doesn’t know Bill at all.

I’m about to say as much when she offers, “I’ll give
you five to ten, Got-Rocks knows all about you.”

I try to think back to what happened in the library
that day. I was still in shock from seeing Bill. Then Dierdre
appeared. Yes, I was jealous. Yes, I felt threatened. Still, I
can’t admit it to Mindy so I put forth a lame lie. “I didn’t pick
up on anything unusual.” Another, louder snort. “Not looking. Too
scared. I’ll bet money they’ve been doing the nasty for
months.”

I almost choke on that. “Do you really think it’s
gone that far?”

She goes to her stack of files, eases one out,
shoves a red cardboard square in its place and slaps the file in
front of me. “It might be wise to learn a little more about your
wonderful, invincible Mister Cotton. I’m taking a bathroom break.
Be back in a few.”

I stare at the unopened folder with “William
Randolph Cotton” neatly lettered on the tab. “Randolph.” I never
thought to ask his middle name, but then he never mentioned it. In
Texas he was just plain Bill Cotton, the Sheriff—a handsome, sexy,
drawling guy with piercing blue eyes, who wore Kryptonite
aftershave and captured my heart. I knew so little about him then.
Come to think of it, I know damn little about him now.

How could I possibly be so besotted with a man I’ve
been with—I try to count our encounters—four or five times in
Uvalde—less than that since I’ve been in Manhattan. Except that now
we have stepped past that last line of intimacy.

————

Platón’s call puts Bill’s folder on the back burner.
He was able to gain entry to the townhouse and is on his way
back.

When he arrives, he describes the space pretty much
as I remember it, noting that Cliff took the smaller suite on the
second floor rather than the one I was in.

“I made sure both Danes and his ‘mother’ were out
before I jimmied the front door. No problem getting into Danes’s
suite, but the third floor is locked. No actual keyhole. Some kind
of high-tech system I’ve never seen before.

“I placed one bug on Danes’s telephone, put one in
the living room and one in the kitchen.” Jaime pauses, then says to
Greene, “Know anything about the flat downstairs?”

“We used it for surveillance when Allie was living
there. What about it?”

“I tried to get into the townhouse that way,
thinking I could come up the stairs into the main house without
having to be so obvious. The windows and doors all seem to be
boarded up on the inside. I scoped out the front of the ground
floor. Every window as well as the front entrance is covered in
Bermuda shutters. I guess that’s for appearance’s sake.”

The rest of us make sympathetic acknowledgements of
the bad news until Jaime taps the table and says, “Hey, don’t be so
down in the mouth everybody. I do have some good news. The
surveillance team was able to bore a small hole in the molding over
the entry side of the living room door and ease a wire camera probe
in there. Now we can see the woman’s face full on.”

He flicks out the overhead lights and a grainy
surveillance tape rolls. Two figures are walking through the outer
double doors into the entry.

Jaime points to the shorter of the two. “This is
Danes, and that is his ‘mother.’”

I think back to the one evening I spent with Cliff
and remember dancing with him. He was taller by at least a couple
of inches than I was in heels. “This woman must be huge. Danes
scrapes six feet. Maybe it’s the high heels.”

After Jaime turns off the tape player and the lights
go up, I say, “Wouldn’t a firsthand make be better?”

Greene looks up. “You?” “Yes, me.”

“But Danes knows you’re working with me.”