Brazen Virtue (17 page)

“No, you’re going to eat, you’re going to sleep, and you’re going to wait for me to get back. If there’s anything I can tell you, I will.”

In reflex, she caught the keys he tossed to her. “What if he kills someone else?”

That was a question he’d been asking himself since two
A.M
. “We’ll get him, Grace.”

She nodded because she’d always believed right won out over wrong. “When you do, I want to see him. Face-to-face.”

“We’ll talk about it. You want someone to drive you home?”

“I’m still capable of driving a car.” She opened her purse and dropped his keys inside. “I’ll wait, Jackson, but I’m not a patient woman.”

As she started to move by him he caught her chin in his hand. There was color in her face again, the first real color he’d seen in days. Somehow, it didn’t reassure him. “Get some sleep,” he muttered before he swung the door open for her.

W
HEN THEY WALKED THROUGH
the door into Fantasy’s cramped office, Eileen was on the phone. She looked up, unsurprised, then finished giving her operator instructions. Even when Ben tossed a warrant on her desk, she didn’t miss a beat. Her call finished, she picked it up and read it carefully.

“This seems to be in order.”

“You lost another employee last night, Mrs. Cawfield.”

She looked up at him, then back down at the warrant. “I know.”

“Then you also know that you’re the link. Your business is the only connection between Mary and Kathleen.”

“I know that’s the way it looks.” She picked up the warrant again to run it between her fingers. “But I can’t believe it’s true. Look, I told you before, this isn’t a dial-a-porn operation. I run a clean and organized business.” There was a flash of panic as she looked up again. Ed noted it, though
her voice remained calm and reasonable. “I majored in business management at Smith. My husband’s a lawyer. We’re not backstreet people. We provide a service. Conversation. If I thought I was responsible, somehow responsible for the deaths of two women …”

“Mrs. Cawfield, there’s only one person responsible. That’s the man who killed them.” She shot Ed a look of gratitude, and he pressed his advantage. “A woman called in a disturbance at Mary Grice’s place last night. It wasn’t a neighbor, Mrs. Cawfield.”

“No. Could I have one of those?” she asked when Ben pulled out a cigarette. “I quit two years ago.” She smiled a little as he lit it for her. “Or my husband thinks I did. He’s into health, you know? Prolonging your life, improving your lifestyle. I can’t tell you how much I’ve grown to detest alfalfa sprouts.”

“The call, Eileen,” Ben prompted.

She drew on the cigarette, then sent out smoke in a quick, nervous puff. “There was a client on the phone with Mary when—when she was attacked. He heard her scream, and what he thought were sounds of a struggle. In any case, he called back here. My sister-in-law didn’t know what to do, so she called me. The minute she explained things to me, I phoned it in.” The phone rang beside her, but she ignored it. “You see, the client couldn’t have called this in to the police. He wouldn’t have known where to tell them to go, or who to tell them was in trouble. That’s part of the protection.”

“We need the name of the client, Mrs. Cawfield.”

She nodded at Ed, then neatly tapped out her cigarette. “I need to ask you to be as discreet as possible. It’s not just a matter of my losing business, which I’m bound to do. It’s more that I feel I’m betraying client confidentiality.”

Ben glanced at her phone as it started to ring again. “Those things get shot to hell when there’s murder involved.”

Without a word, Eileen turned to her computer. “It’s top of the line,” she explained when the printer began to hum. “I wanted the best equipment.” She picked up the phone and handled the next call. As she hung up, she swiveled in her chair and detached the printout. She handed it to Ed.

“The gentleman who was talking to Mary last night was Lawrence Markowitz. I don’t have an address, of course, just a phone number and his American Express.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Ed told her.

“I hope so. I hope you take care of it very soon.”

As they walked out, the phone rang again.

I
T DIDN’T TAKE LONG
to run down Lawrence K. Markowitz.

He was a thirty-seven-year-old CPA, divorced, self-employed. He worked out of his home in Potomac, Maryland.

“Jesus, look at these houses.” Ben slowed down to a crawl and craned his head out of the car window. “You know what places go for around here? Four, five hundred thousand. These people have gardeners who make more than we do.”

Ed bit into a sunflower seed. “I like my place better. More character.”

“More character?” Ben snorted as he pulled his head back into the car. “The taxes on that place over there are more than your mortgage.”

“The monetary value of a house doesn’t make it a home.”

“Yeah, you ought to stitch up a sampler. Look at that place. Must be forty, fifty thousand square feet.”

Ed looked but was unimpressed with the size; the architecture was too modern for his taste. “I didn’t think you were interested in real estate.”

“I’m not. Well, I wasn’t.” Ben drove by a hedge of azaleas in a pale, dusty pink. “I figure Doc and I’ll want a place sooner or later. She could handle this,” he murmured. “I couldn’t. They probably have an ordinance about color coordinating your garbage. Doctors, lawyers, and accountants.” And senators’ granddaughters, he thought, thinking of the understated elegance of his wife.

“And no crabgrass.”

“I like crabgrass. Here we are.” He stopped the car in front of a two-story H-shaped house with French doors. “Tax sheltering must pay real good.”

“Accountants are like cops,” Ed said as he tucked away his bag of seeds. “You’re always going to need them.”

Ben pulled up in the sloping driveway and yanked on the parking brake. He’d have preferred to stick a couple of rocks behind the back tires, just in case, but there didn’t seem to be any available. There were three doors to choose from. They decided to take the front. It was opened by a middle-aged woman in a gray dress and white apron.

“We’d like to see Mr. Markowitz, please.” Ed held up his badge. “Police business.”

“Mr. Markowitz is in his office. I’ll show you the way.”

The foyer opened up into a wide room done in black and white. Ed discounted the decor as too stark, but found the skylights interesting. He’d have to price some. They turned right, into a bar of the H. Here there were globe lamps and leather sling chairs and a woman seated at an ebony desk.

“Miss Bass, these gentlemen are here to see Mr. Markowitz.”

“Do you have an appointment?” The woman behind the desk looked harassed enough. Her hair stood out in every direction as if she had raked and tugged and pulled on it with her fingers. Now she stuck a pencil behind her ear and began to search through the papers on her desk for her date book. The phone beside her rang steadily. “I’m
sorry, Mr. Markowitz is very busy. It’s not possible for him to see new clients.”

Ben took out his badge and held it under her nose.

“Oh.” She cleared her throat and unearthed her intercom. “I’ll see if he’s available. Mr. Markowitz—” Both Ben and Ed could hear the cranky static that followed the interruption. “I’m sorry, Mr. Markowitz. Yes, sir, but there are two men here. No, sir, I haven’t run the Berlin account yet. Mr. Markowitz—Mr. Markowitz, they’re policemen.” She said the last in an undertone, as if it were a secret. “Yes, sir, I’m sure. No, sir. All right.”

She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Mr. Markowitz will see you now. Right through that door.” Her duty done, she yanked up the phone. “Lawrence Markowitz and Associates.”

If he had any associates, they weren’t to be seen. Markowitz was alone in his office, a skinny, balding man with big teeth and thick glasses. His desk was black, like his secretary’s, but half again as large. Files were heaped on it, along with two phones, at least a dozen sharpened pencils, and a pair of calculators. Tape streamed onto the floor. There was a watercooler in the corner. Hanging in front of the window was a bird cage with a big green parakeet in it.

“Mr. Markowitz.” Both detectives showed their identification.

“Yes, what can I do for you?” He ran his palm over what was left of his hair and licked his lips. He hadn’t lied to Roxanne about the overbite. “I’m afraid I’m swamped at the moment. You know what today is, don’t you? April fourteenth. Everybody waits until the last minute, then they want a miracle. All I ask for is a little consideration, a little organization. I can’t file extensions for everyone, you know. Rabbits, they want you to pull rabbits out of your hat.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben began, then it hit him. “April fourteenth?”

“I filed last month,” Ed said mildly.

“You would.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but these new tax laws have everyone in an uproar. If I work for the next twenty-four hours straight, I might just finish before deadline.” Markowitz’s fingers hovered nervously over his calculator.

“Fuck the IRS,” the parakeet chirped from his perch.

“Yeah.” Ben ran his own fingers through his hair and tried not to dwell on it. “Mr. Markowitz, we’re not here about taxes. What do you charge, anyway?”

“We’re here about Mary Grice,” Ed put in. “You knew her as Roxanne.”

Markowitz hit the clear button in reflex, then grabbed a pencil. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mr. Markowitz, Mary Grice was murdered last night.” Ed waited a beat, but saw the accountant had found time to read the morning paper. “We have reason to believe you were talking to her on the phone at the time of the attack.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“You knew Roxanne,” Ben added.

Markowitz’s already pale skin took on a hint of green. “I don’t understand what Roxanne has to do with Mary Grice.”

“They were the same woman,” Ben said and watched Markowitz swallow hard.

He’d known. Somehow he’d known as soon as he scanned the morning headlines. But that hadn’t made it real. Two cops in his office in the middle of the day made it very real. And very personal. “I have some of the biggest accounts in the metropolitan area. Several of my clients are in the Congress, the Senate. I can’t afford any trouble.”

“We could subpoena you,” Ed told him. “If you cooperate, we may be able to keep things quiet.”

“It’s the pressure.” Markowitz took off his glasses to
rub his eyes. He looked blind and helpless without them. “For months your life revolves around 1099s and Keoghs. You can’t imagine it. Nobody wants to pay, you know. You can hardly blame them. Most of my clients have incomes in the high six figures. They don’t want to give thirty-five percent or more to the government. They want me to find a way out for them.”

“That’s tough,” Ben said and decided to try one of the sling chairs. “We’re not concerned with your reasons for using Fantasy’s services, Mr. Markowitz. We’d like you to tell us exactly what happened last night while you were talking to Mary.”

“Roxanne,” Markowitz corrected. “I feel better thinking of her as Roxanne. She had a wonderful voice, and she was so … well, adventurous. I don’t have much time for women since my divorce. But that’s water under the bridge. Anyway, I developed such an exciting rapport with Roxanne. Three times a week. I could talk to her and come back and face Schedule Cs.”

“Last night, Mr. Markowitz,” Ed prompted.

“Yes, last night. Well, we hadn’t been talking very long. I was just getting into it. You know, relaxing.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. “All of a sudden, she was talking to someone else. Like there was someone in the room. She said something like ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What are you doing here?’ At first I thought she was still talking to me, so I said something back, a joke or something. Then she screamed. I almost dropped the phone. She said, ‘Lawrence, Lawrence, help me. Call the police, call somebody.’ ” He began to cough as if repeating the words irritated his throat. “I was talking back to her. It was so unexpected. I think I told her to calm down. Then I heard another voice.”

“A man’s voice?” Ed continued to write in his notebook.

“Yes, I think. Another voice anyway. He said, I think he said, ‘You’re going to like this.’ He called her by name.”

“Roxanne?” Ben asked.

“Yes, that’s right. I heard him say Roxanne, and I heard—” Now he covered his face with the cloth and waited a moment. “You have to understand, I’m really a very ordinary man. I keep the excitement and complications in my life to a minimum. I have low blood sugar.”

Ed gave him a sympathetic nod. “Just tell us what you heard.”

“I heard such terrible noises. Breathing and banging. She wasn’t screaming anymore, just making some gasping, gurgling sounds. I hung up. I didn’t know what to do, so I hung up.”

He lowered the cloth again, and his face was gray. “I thought maybe it was a put-on. I tried to tell myself it was, but I kept hearing noises. I kept hearing Roxanne crying and begging him not to hurt her. And I heard the other voice say that she wanted him to hurt her, that she was never going to experience anything like this again. I think, I think he said that he’d heard her say she wanted to be hurt. I’m not sure about that. It was all so garbled. Excuse me.”

He got up to go to the watercooler. He filled a paper cup as air bubbled up to the top. After he’d gulped it down, he filled the cup again. “I didn’t know what to do, I just sat there thinking. I tried to go back to work, to forget about it. Like I said before, I kept thinking it was probably just a joke. But it didn’t sound like a joke.” He drained the second cup of water. “The longer I sat there, the harder it was to believe it was just a joke. So I ended up calling Fantasy. I told the girl there that Roxanne was in trouble. I thought maybe someone was killing her. I hung up again, and I—I went back to work. What else could I do?” His gaze darted back and forth between Ed and Ben, never landing on
either of them. “I kept thinking Roxanne would call back and tell me everything was okay. That she’d just been kidding. But she didn’t call back.”

“Was there anything about the voice—the other voice you heard—that made it distinctive?” As he wrote, Ed glanced up and watched Markowitz sweat. “An accent, a tone, a way of phrasing?”