Death by Surprise (Carolyn Hart Classics) (19 page)

I found Natalie Gersten in her redwood hot tub behind her split-level house on Ruidoso Canyon Drive. As the maid showed me to the flagstone patio beside the hot tub, Mrs. Gersten, her hair covered by a silk turban, was studying my card. All that showed above the redwood circle was the turban and a bony hand holding the card.

“Come around here, darling, where I can see you.”

She was flushed from the heat of the water and perhaps from the red wine in a glass that was set upon a ledge. She had once been beautiful as a glossy raven is beautiful but now her face was haggard and, more than that, bitter. You could read it in the sharp deep lines that bracketed her mouth and in the purse of her lips.

“K.C. Carlisle?”

I nodded.

She glanced back down at my card. On it I had penciled, ‘May I see you on a matter of importance?’

It would take monumental indifference to ignore that request, or extreme caution. Most women possess neither.

She looked up sharply. “If you’re here from my ex-husband, I don’t have a damn thing to say.”

“I have nothing to do with your husband, Mrs. Gersten.”

“Ex-husband.”

Here must be the source of those lines of bitterness. It wouldn’t take much to loose a torrent. I chose my words carefully.

“At least,” I amended, “I am not here on his behalf. I do have a question about some activity of his in the past.” I paused and added delicately, “Perhaps it could even be described as a criminal activity.”

It is, of course, as much a crime to bribe as to be bribed.

She listened avidly and there was a dart of pleasure in her dark eyes.

“I could tell you where the bones are buried,” she said meaningfully, “if I wanted to.” She hungered to. She propped her arms along the side of the tub and hot water bubbled and swirled around her bony shoulders.

I felt a surge of disgust. What was I doing here, baiting a vindictive middle-aged woman to destroy my father’s memory? But I managed an approving smile, though it felt grotesque. I wouldn’t think of Dad now. I would think of Kenneth.

“Do you remember when your husband’s uncle, Adolphus Levy—”

“Ex-husband.”

“Yes, of course. When your ex-husband’s uncle was tried for fraud. My father, Judge Carlisle, heard the case.”

“Sure, and cleaned up fifty thousand to let old Adolphus off the hook. Sure, I remember. Albert took care of it.” She laughed and it was a hard ugly sound in the soft California air. “Albert was always such a goody-goody. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it but his Aunt Sonia could always pull his string. Poor Albert. He writhed and wriggled and whined but he finally took the money and delivered it. Sonia made him do it. He said it was wrong and just plain highway robbery, that old Adolphus was innocent and shouldn’t have to buy his way out, but Sonia wasn’t going to take any chances. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for that old dried-up string she’s married to. She’s the one who set it up. She’s a hard old bitch.”

That was all she knew. It was enough to make me feel physically ill. I refused a glass of wine, thanked her—God, how could I thank her—and made my escape.

As I drove down the twisting canyon road, I knew how Pandora must have felt. I had pursued this clue because it led away from Kenneth, but I was breaking my heart.

I believed in my father. I believed in him. I remembered how fairly he treated everyone in his court, lawyers, jurors, plaintiffs, defendants. Always.

He wasn’t a greedy man, although sometimes he must have been a little hard pressed since the great bulk of the family fortune skipped his generation, but I never remembered an instance of his talking about a great need for money or indeed evidencing any kind of interest in money at all.

Yet I now had heard, albeit second-hand from a hate-filled woman, a clear unambiguous claim that he had accepted a bribe.

I tried not to think of it, tried not to picture my father taking money to suspend a sentence. I tried instead to think, should the tawdry story be true, of the panic on the part of the man who paid the money when it looked like the story might be made public. Albert Gersten was an investment banker. He would not like to go to jail.

I pushed away the memory of the day I was graduated from law school and my father reached out to shake my hand and say quietly, with so much pride, “You will be the finest kind of lawyer, K.C.”

No man who admired the law, loved the law, could sell justice for money.

At the base of the canyon where the streets widen out and a new sub-development crowds against the hills, I stopped at a convenience store and went to an outside pay phone. I looked up the Levys’ number.

“Who is calling?” the maid asked.

“K.C. Carlisle. Please tell Mrs. Levy that it is very important that I speak to her.”

Sonia Levy’s voice was cool and placid. “Hello.”

“Mrs. Levy, we’ve never met, but I think you knew my father, Judge Carlisle.”

There was a distinct pause.

“No, Miss Carlisle,” she said finally. “I did not know your father personally. My only acquaintance with him came when my husband Adolphus was tried in his court. And exonerated.”

The last was sharp and pointed. The wound still throbbed.

“Mrs. Levy, I must talk to you personally.”

“Why?”

“I have heard a charge that your nephew, Albert Gersten, bribed my father to suspend Mr. Levy’s sentence.”

“That is an absurd accusation, Miss Carlisle. I would ignore it if I were you.”

“You don’t understand, Mrs. Levy. A murder is involved.”

“Murder?”

“Yes.”

“What are you talking about, Miss Carlisle? Please explain yourself.”

“I will be glad to do so. In person.”

“I’m sorry. Miss Carlisle. I see no reason why . . .”

“Then I suppose I must talk to Albert Gersten.”

There was a long silence.

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” she said finally. “When would you like to meet?”

“Now.”

“Very well.”

The Levy house was on the opposite side of La Luz, a beachfront home. Prices on these have been out of sight for years. Only Saudi sheiks need now apply. I drove slowly. I had a lot to think about. It was clear that Sonia Levy did not want me to talk to Albert Gersten. That suggested Albert might be a weak reed. If I didn’t get anywhere with Mrs. Levy, I would try him next.

The brief enigmatic phone conversation had done nothing to relieve the depression that dragged me down. If my father turned out to be a crook, it meant nothing could ever be what it seemed. I had scarcely trusted anyone since my sister maneuvered a sailboat away from me, willing me to drown. If my father was not what he seemed, I would never again have faith in the faces that people turned toward me.

The Levy mansion of grey stone clung to the cliff top. It spelled a lot of money, money enough to buy whatever Sonia Levy wanted.

She waited for me in her library. Silver and blue Persian rugs graced the highly-waxed oak floor. Books rose in tiers on mahogany shelving. She was standing at the far end of the room, beneath an oil portrait. I glanced up at it and was caught by the vividness of the portrait. It was of a man in his fifties with thinning grey hair and a slight build but the painter had captured in the face a suggestion of kindness and sensitivity that was striking.

“Do you admire it, Miss Carlisle?”

“Yes.”

“That is my husband. Miss Carlisle. Can you not look at his face and see the kind of man he is?”

I nodded.

“Everyone knows how good Adolphus is,” she continued heatedly. “Everyone. It was an abomination that he should have been persecuted as he was. It broke his heart. He has never recovered from it.” She spoke angrily. The passage of years had not, for her, eased the pain of his arrest and trial.

“The sentence was suspended.”

She lifted her chin. She was an elegant woman, her blue-grey hair coiffed perfectly, her makeup subtle and flattering. Slim and tall, she wore her ultra-suede dress with the flair of a wealthy woman who knows and loves clothes. Her dark eyes, rich brown eyes, looked at me dispassionately. “Yes,” she agreed without expression, “the sentence was suspended.”

Painfully, I said, “I have heard the charge that my father accepted money to suspend the sentence. Is that true?”

Sonia Levy clasped her hands in front of her. They were lovely hands, slim and dark, and she wore gracefully a heavy silver bracelet and one ring with a blood-red ruby stone that glowed even in the subdued light of the library.

“I want to know, Miss Carlisle, what you meant when you spoke of murder?”

“It was in the papers this morning. A woman was strangled here in La Luz. Francine Boutelle.”

“I do not know the name. What could she have to do with us?”

“She was writing an article about the Carlisle family for
Inside Out.
In it she planned to say that Albert Gersten bribed my father. At your direction.”

“Are you suggesting,” she said it slowly, thoughtfully, “that Albert or I could have killed this woman to keep the matter secret?”

I hadn’t envisioned Sonia Levy as a murderess, but, logically, it could be.

“Yes,” I said simply.

She turned away from me, walked to a rosewood table next to a sofa and picked up the morning paper. She returned to me, all the while skimming the article.

She read aloud, “Miss Boutelle was known to have been alive at six p.m. because she telephoned to a neighborhood delicatessen to order some food. There was no answer at her door when the delicatessen attempted delivery at about seven-thirty. Her body was discovered shortly before eight o’clock by La Luz attorney K.C. Carlisle, cousin of the man charged with her murder.” Mrs. Levy looked up at me with dark measuring eyes. “You found the body.”

I nodded.

Abruptly, she began to smile and the atmosphere of the room eased. “I am delighted to be able to inform you, Miss Carlisle, that my husband and I, and my nephew, Albert Gersten, left La Luz in the company of another couple, Paul and Camille Richards, at shortly before six p.m. on our way to attend a party in Los Angeles at the home of Harris Porter. We arrived there at seven-thirty and did not leave until almost midnight.”

I recognized the name. Porter had directed pictures which won back-to-back Oscars.

As an alibi, it was impeccable.

So Albert and Mrs. Levy were out of it. It didn’t really surprise me. And it didn’t ease my pain.

“All right, Mrs. Levy, I accept that. But please, I must know the truth. About my father.”

She looked around the room. She paused, then asked gently, “Miss Carlisle, have you ever seen my roses? They are quite lovely. Even this late in the season.”

I followed her through the French windows of the library onto a sloping terrace. Roses, glorious beds of roses, cascaded toward the cliffs edge. As we walked toward the center of the garden, she reached out and touched me gently on my arm. “Why do you not let it go, Miss Carlisle? There can be no joy in disturbing the dead.”

“I must know.”

She looked out toward the sea. It was metallic today, reflecting the heavy grey clouds that scudded restlessly overhead.

“I did not know your father,” she began, “but, during the trial, I came to feel he was a good man, a kind man. A man much like my Augustus. In my heart, I began to sing for I thought that one such man would know another.”

She reached out, lightly touched a yellow rose.

“Every fall, I hold open house for the La Luz Rose Club. I do not belong to the club, you understand, but always they want to see my roses and I invite them. I went ahead with the open house that fall, the year Adolphus was tried, because I did not want anyone to think I was . . . ashamed. An innocent man has no need to hide, or his family, Miss Carlisle. I held the open house. It was the last week of the trial. After I had guided everyone about, shown them my beds, I urged them all to enjoy the tea which I had arranged on tables on the terrace. There was a woman who seemed to stay near me, all that afternoon. Finally, as everyone began to move toward the terrace, she came up to me and asked if she could speak to me privately for a moment. I was surprised, but of course I said yes. I was the hostess.”

She pointed to the cliffs edge about forty yards away.

“There, do you see the wooden railing?”

I nodded.

“We walked to it and went down the steps and stood, all by ourselves, on a platform we have built there, just above the sea.”

At first there was an awkward silence, but then the woman spoke hurriedly, scarcely above a whisper, to Sonia Levy.

“She asked if I wanted to be certain my husband would be freed. I was so surprised. I said, of course, I should like that. She was very pale and she kept looking up at the cliff to be sure no one stood near. Then she said she could arrange it. For a sum.”

I was bewildered. None of this made any sense. None of it seemed possible.

“Who was she?” I asked. “Surely you demanded to know who she was?”

Mrs. Levy looked at me sadly. “Oh yes, of course I did that. I was not a downy duck.” She paused, “I am sorry, Miss Carlisle. I did not want to tell you but you have insisted.”

“Who was she?” I asked steadily.

“Your mother. Miss Carlisle.”

“I see,” I said slowly. I did see. I saw a great many things.

Sonia Levy walked with me to my car. As we said goodbye, she was kind. She tried to be helpful. “Remember, Miss Carlisle, we cannot always judge others.”

I thanked her. I knew that she meant I should not be disappointed in my father. But, as I drove away, I wasn’t thinking about Dad.

I was thinking only of Grace.

The shadows were lengthening as I drove home. No. Not home. Grace’s house. I gave no thought to time or to who might be there. When I swung into the long circular drive, I saw Chinese lanterns strung in the trees and two servants lounging on the garden seats just past the front door. They stubbed out their cigarettes and sprang to attention as my Porsche skidded to a stop at the base of the front steps.

I was out of the car before one of them hurried up. “May I park your car, Miss?”

“Don’t bother.”