Kiss of Death Read online

  “This is unlawful detainment,” I said.

  “It’s protective custody!”

  “I don’t need protection.”

  “You’ve needed protection since the day I met you,” he snapped. “A couple of months ago you were almost killed—for the third time!”

  Actually, that was the fourth time, but I didn’t think it would be wise to correct him. “Since I’m still alive, you’ve just proved that I can take care of myself,” I said. “Let me go.”

  “I will—as soon as you promise to stay out of the Veronica Rose case.”

  “Then you better use your cell phone to send out for meals, sleeping bags, and a port-a-potty because I’m not making that promise.”

  He expelled a gut-deep sigh in surrender and stepped back. “It was worth a try,” he muttered. “You take so many chances with your life you make me crazy.”

  I moved away from where he’d imprisoned me against the railing, but didn’t go up the steps. Instead, I reached out and took his hand. Reflexively, his hand closed around mine. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk,” I said.

  OVER SURPRISINGLY GOOD diner coffee, Matt and I took off our twin masks of hostility. As angry as I could get at Matt when we were on the opposite sides of a difficult situation, I hadn’t been able to rid myself of the physical attraction I felt for him. And that I suspected he still harbored for me.

  We had come very close to making love a few months ago, and I’d never stopped wishing that we hadn’t been interrupted before we got up to my apartment. An attempt on my life intervened. I really thought that we’d eventually make it up to my bed—or across Central Park to his bed, or to some bed, somewhere. Hadn’t happened, and wasn’t likely to. Matt stopped dating me when I accepted an inheritance that put me into a higher financial bracket than he was in. (On hearing about this, Nancy had referred to him as “an idiot.”)

  Now we were looking at each other across a scarred old table, its vinyl top discolored from years of scrubbing and beginning to peel off at the corners. Not exactly a romantic setting, but suddenly I felt a stirring of physical longing. Resolutely, I pushed it away. That horse had left the barn, so to speak. Concentrate on Nancy’s situation, I told myself.

  “I’m a lot less likely to annoy you if you’ll just give me some information,” I said.

  He smiled ruefully.“‘Less likely’ isn’t much of a concession.”

  “It’s something. Come on, please tell me what you know about Nancy’s problem.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you as much as I can, because I want to convince you that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to help her. What do you want to know?”

  I’d been thinking about scenarios other than Nancy as the killer, so I was ready with questions. “Couldn’t Veronica Rose have surprised a burglar and been killed because she saw him?”

  “The apartment was empty; they hadn’t moved in yet. Nothing to steal—and no forced entry.”

  “Her rings. She wore a diamond engagement and wedding ring set. The engagement ring had a huge stone—I’m guessing ten carats. It had to cost at least fifty thousand dollars, maybe a lot more.”

  He shook his head. “The rings were on her fingers. And there was a platinum and diamond pendant watch around her neck, and a diamond bracelet on her wrist.”

  “It could still have been a burglar—somebody who went to the wrong—”

  “No mistake. This was personal. Mrs. Rose was hit more than once, even though the medical examiner says she probably died from the first blow.”

  I shuddered; I knew that multiple blows were indications of rage. The killer had wanted to utterly destroy the victim, not just kill her.

  “Since I saw you this morning, another report came back from the lab. There were no fingerprints on that paint can. It had been wiped clean. That doesn’t exonerate Nancy.” He reached across the vinyl and took my hand in a gesture of comfort.

  “It’s hard to think that someone we like could commit a murder,” he said.

  “Nancy isn’t capable of murder. For God’s sake, Matt, she’s not some stranger suspect—you know her!”

  “One of the first things I learned as a cop was that you can never tell about people, or guess for sure what’s going to push them over the edge into a place you never thought they could go. Nancy had some ugly encounters with the victim in front of other people. One witness said the two women nearly came to blows in the law office.”

  Alarmed at how damning such a statement was, I jerked my hand away from Matt’s and demanded, “What witness? Who said that?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you. Her attorney will get names during the discovery process.”

  “But if he’s going to find out anyway, why can’t you tell me now?”

  Matt straightened up in his seat and frowned at me. “He? Her attorney’s a woman named Cynthia Ruddy.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Then who?”

  “B. Kent Wayne,” I said.

  Red spots of anger burned on Matt’s face; I half expected steam to start coming out of his ears. “Is this one of your jokes?”

  “No joke,” I said. “Nancy needs the strongest possible defense.”

  An astonishing string of expletives spewed from his lips! The vehemence of that reaction shocked me. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “That lawyer you went to doesn’t just defend people, he gets his kicks humiliating cops on the stand. A few months ago, he got G. G. so tangled up he made him sound like a damn fool. Our arrest was righteous, but he painted us as a pair of rabid fascists so the perp walked. Whatever that scum of a client of his does next is on Kent Wayne’s miserable head!”

  Matt stood up so fast he knocked over his glass of water. Angrily gesturing at the mess of soaked paper napkins, he tossed a ten-dollar bill at me. “This is for the waitress. You can pay for the coffee.”

  He stomped out of the diner. Our pleasant coffee date was over.

  I signaled to the waitress. When she came over with the bill, I apologized for the spilled water, gave her Matt’s ten-dollar bill, and a five of my own for our coffees.

  The diner was almost empty, which gave me quiet and privacy. I telephoned Kent Wayne and told him that Nancy had agreed to hire him, and filled him in on what I’d learned about the murder.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll get to work.”

  Me, too, I thought. Just as soon as I figure out where to start.

  Chapter 17

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, when I opened the door to my apartment, I caught the aroma of food coming from the direction of the kitchen. Whatever it was smelled delicious, and made me realize how hungry I was. My salivary glands sprang into action. That had to be the work of the best cook I’ve ever known.

  “Penny?” As I called her name, I wondered how she’d gotten into the apartment, but realized Walter must have let her in.

  At the sound of my voice, Magic came loping down the hallway and shocked me by making a graceful leap up onto my shoulder. “Wow,” I said, stroking his head. “When did you learn to fly?”

  I was in for another surprise when I entered the kitchen. It wasn’t Penny at the stove, it was Walter, and he was stirring something in a wok. I’d never owned a wok.

  “Hi,” I said. Magic stayed on my shoulder, but he was fascinated by what was going on at the stove.

  “How’d it go with the lawyer?” Walter asked.

  “He’s smart, and energetic.” I put my handbag on one of the four chairs at the kitchen table and sat down carefully, so as not to jolt Magic. “I just hope I’ve done the right thing for Nancy.”

  As Walter continued his activity at the stove, I told him about my meeting with Wayne, seeing Nancy for a few minutes, and about the subsequent fight in the diner with Matt.

  “That boy’s sweet on you,” Walter said. His back was to me, but I heard a smile in his voice.

  “Maybe he was once, but not now.” Eager to change the subject, I asked, “What did you do while I was
gone?”

  “Went shopping. Bought some groceries, an’ this pot. You didn’t have anything in the house except cat food, an’ a few cans of tuna. Looks like you take better care of the cat than you do of yourself.”

  “The neighborhood’s full of restaurants and takeout places,” I said, a little defensively. “I don’t have time to cook.”

  Walter took a big wooden spoon—also new—out of the wok. He opened the door to the oven and checked whatever was happening inside.

  “When Junie found out she wasn’t going to be around,” he said, “she made me promise to eat healthy, an’ she taught me some things. You never know what they put in restaurant food.” Walter closed the oven door, took a step toward me, and reached into his shirt pocket. With a grin, he pulled out a shiny new cell phone and held it in one large hand. “I joined the twenty-first century today.” Nodding toward a pad on the table, he said, “I wrote the number down for you.”

  WALTER AND I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating stir-fried chicken and vegetable teriyaki, and the corn muffins he’d baked. Magic was curled up on a pile of newspapers by the back door that led out to the service elevator. He was awake and watching us, but I suspected that the sound of our voices wasn’t as interesting to him as the scent of chicken.

  “You’ve never met her, but I want you to know that Nancy’s not guilty.”

  “Tell me why Matt thinks she is.”

  “Circumstantial evidence.” Even as I said the words, I realized how weak that sounded.

  Walter lifted one shaggy eyebrow and cocked his head. “What ‘circumstances’?”

  “Nancy went to see Veronica. They’d arranged to meet in the empty apartment, the one Veronica was supposedly decorating for herself and her daughter. The door was standing open a couple of inches. Nancy went in. She saw Veronica lying on the floor, her head bloody. She knelt down to see if she had a pulse, but there wasn’t one. That’s when Veronica’s daughter came in and started screaming.”

  “That can was the murder weapon … Fingerprints?”

  “No prints at all.”

  Walter shook his head in dismay. “The prosecutor’s gonna say she wiped the can clean, but that she didn’t have time to get away before she was discovered there.”

  “Nancy has never had even so much as a speeding ticket. She votes in every election, pays her taxes. There’s nothing about her that would suggest to any thinking person that she could commit a murder. She was just in the wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Any cop worth the tin in his badge would figure she’s the most likely suspect. Be fair now. You can’t really blame Matt for thinking she’s guilty, can you?”

  I sighed. “Okay, I suppose you’re right. But I know as surely as I’m sitting here that Nancy didn’t kill Veronica Rose. She found her after she was already dead.”

  Walter pursed his lips in thought. “What about motive?”

  “Veronica was trying to break up Arnold and Nancy, but that’s not enough reason to kill someone!”

  “In one of my cases, a man beat a stranger to death with a tire iron over a fender bender. Now that’s pretty unusual, but history’s full of people who killed out of jealousy.”

  “Not Nancy,” I insisted.

  Walter swallowed a mouthful of stir-fry. “Taking your word for it that your friend isn’t the killer, let’s look at the victim. What do you know about her?”

  “She comes from Boston, from a rich family. She married Arnold Rose about fifteen years ago. They had one child, Didi. She’s twelve. Three years ago, Arnold and Veronica Rose divorced. She took Didi and moved back to Boston. Then suddenly, a couple of months ago, she decided to move back to New York. I think she did it because Didi told her that Arnold was in love with Nancy and it was Veronica who was jealous.”

  “What you think isn’t evidence,” Walter said gently. “We need to find out exactly why she came back.”

  I was as surprised as Kent Wayne had been earlier, when I’d said something similar in his office. “We?”

  “Used to be a pretty damn good investigator in my day,” Walter said. “Fact is, when I was out shopping this afternoon I bought me a computer—one of those notebook things that fold up an’ fit in a briefcase. Your friend Bobby asked me to do some employee background checks, for a business client he’s got.”

  “It’s great, that you’re helping Bobby. I’m glad you two hit it off. But you need the Internet—”

  “Got that covered,” he said proudly. “Old Walter didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I found a coffee shop down the block has Internet access. You just plug the little bugger in one of their outlets. Only drawback is you gotta spend three dollars for a cup of coffee.”

  “You can work here,” I said. “Use my Internet access. I do most of my computer work at the office.”

  “That’s right nice of you—but you’re not stuck with me. I’m havin’ the cell phone bill sent to Florida. I’ll be back there ’fore it comes due.”

  An unexpected—and unfamiliar—emotion suddenly washed over me: a pang of loneliness. “I didn’t realize you would be going back so soon,” I said. “Don’t rush away. There’s plenty of room here.”

  He looked dubious. “You know what they say: after a week or two guests and fish begin to stink.”

  Before I could think of a response, Walter picked up the discussion of Veronica Rose. “Most murder victims aren’t killed by strangers. Who are her friends?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “There are a couple ways to go: find out what kind of life she was leading up in Boston—if she had any enemies. An’ find out if there’s anybody there or here she could have made mad enough to kill her.”

  I remembered something Betty Kraft had said, and it gave me an idea.

  “What you thinkin’?” Walter asked.

  “My assistant, Betty Kraft, is very observant. After Veronica and Didi visited the studio, Betty told me that Veronica was greedy. She described her as the kind of woman who had to have men wanting her.”

  As I told him about Betty, and her pre-Global Broadcasting background as a psychiatric nurse, Walter was scraping teriyaki sauce off of a couple of little pieces of chicken. He put them on a paper napkin and took it over to Magic, who immediately began to munch on the unexpected snack.

  “You got a loose-leaf notebook somewhere?” Walter asked. “An’ one of those three-hole punchers?”

  “Yes, both. With some other office supplies in the bedroom closet.”

  “Good. We’ll need them to start our own murder book,” he said.

  “A book?”

  “Over the years, we had our share of murders in Downsville County. Always made me a book. Most investigators do. We put in notes on everything we learn ’bout the case. After a while, we start to see what the story is.”

  Remembering my days as a photographer, I said, “Just like seeing a blank sheet of paper turn into a photograph in the developing solution.”

  Chapter 18

  AFTER DINNER, I found that Walter had put his shaving kit on the sink counter in the three-quarter bathroom off the kitchen. It had a toilet, a sink, and a shower, all clean and in good working order, but it was the size of a closet.

  “This bathroom is pretty small,” I said, concerned.

  “It’s jus’ fine. Growing up, we had an outhouse. No indoor plumbing ’til I was old enough to work an’ help pay for it. Junie was born poor, too, but I made sure she always had a nice place to live.”

  Even though his wife had been dead for more than ten years, I’d noticed that he still wore his wedding ring. “You must have loved her very much.”

  All he said was, “Yep,” but the tenderness in his voice as he spoke was eloquent.

  I took a set of clean sheets and a comforter out of the linen closet, and handed Walter a pillow and fresh pillowcase. Together, we transformed the couch in the den into a comfortable bed.

  “When I came back to New York from Africa and didn’t have anyplac
e to stay, Nancy turned her den into a bedroom for me,” I said. “This is like completing a circle.” I took the TV remote from the lamp table between the club chairs and handed it to him, and with it the card listing the channel numbers and what they were.

  “We have satellite. The company claims we’ve got a hundred and twenty channels, but I’ve never bothered to check out more than a few of them.”

  Walter settled himself in one of the club chairs, and I plopped down in the other. “I don’t want to be in the way now,” he said.

  I smiled ruefully. “If you’re talking about my so-called social life, there’s nothing to get in the way of. Frankly, I wish there were.”

  “What’s wrong with the men in New York?”

  Joking, but with a grain of truth, I said, “Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

  The telephone connecting my apartment to the Dakota’s reception desk rang. That was a surprise.

  “I’m not expecting anybody,” I said. Picking it up, I got a bigger surprise when I heard Arnold Rose’s voice.

  “Morgan, I hope I’m not interrupting you.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Please forgive me for just showing up at your building without calling first, but could you give me a few minutes?”

  “Yes, of course, Arnold. Come up. I’m on the third floor. Whoever’s on the desk will show you which elevator to take.”

  I stood in my doorway as Arnold got off the elevator. He saw me and hurried forward, grasped my hands, and said, “I feel terrible about how I acted when you phoned this afternoon. I wanted to apologize to you in person.”

  “There’s no need. I understand.” I led Arnold into the living room, where Walter was sitting on one of the two sofas flanking the big picture window that faced Central Park.