Misfortune (43 page)

“So, here’s what we know. On July Fourth, Clio played tennis with three other women. We interviewed all three, separately. Quite a group, I might add.” His attempt at humor fell on an unreceptive audience. He glanced back at his pad and continued. “Clio seemed fine during the match. The group dispersed immediately afterward. Clio went up to the porch and had a drink sitting with a couple named Marshall and Beth Bancroft, old friends, I understand. They were with their two granddaughters, mulatto girls. They were dropped off by their father, Dr. Henry Lewis, around ten. A lot of people remember seeing him. Given his race, he stands out in the crowd, but no one remembers him with Clio at any time. By his own account, he left by ten-fifteen, a little before Clio joined the Bancrofts at their table.”

He studied his notes. “Louise Lewis, the mother of the girls, went to the bar to buy drinks for her family and Clio. Apparently Clio insisted on picking up the tab, so Louise charged them to her.”

Frances remembered her own conversation with the bartender the morning after Clio’s death.
Two Southsides, a Diet Coke, a Perrier water, and two Shirley Temples.
He hadn’t been able to confirm that Clio ordered them, but he knew they had been charged to the Pratt account.

“According to the Bancrofts and Louise, a waitress delivered the drinks to their table. Louise said the bar was packed, and she hadn’t wanted to wait. We think the waitress was a girl named Melanie Fox, but nobody can say for sure. There are three waitresses who work the porch. One of them, a kid called Daisy, had recently started and didn’t even know who Clio Pratt was. We talked to all the girls several times. None of them kept track of who they served because there’s no tipping. They noticed nothing unusual. No surprise, nobody asked them to put anything in a drink.” Meaty looked up from his notes. “We know Clio ordered the Perrier. We think there might have been as much as ten minutes between the time Louise’s order was filled and the waitress, whoever it was, served them. The waitresses all say things were crazy and they were going as fast as they could, but there was a definite backlog on orders. It’s possible that someone in the bar could have slipped the Dexedrine into the water. Forensics says ten minutes would be more than enough time for the drug to dissolve.”

He returned to his notepad. “That much we know for sure. After that, things get a little hazy. The Bancrofts remember lots of people coming and going, stopping by the table to say hello, but they can’t say for certain who they saw before Clio died, and who they saw after, when virtually everyone was hovered together on the porch awaiting the police. Around ten fifty-five, based on the time the call went into 911, Clio must have excused herself to go to the powder room, although, again, the Bancrofts don’t actually remember that. We haven’t found anyone who saw her in the bathroom until Blair found her body.”

“I’ve read the witness statements you gave me, Jack Von Furst, George Welch, people the police interviewed that day. I know there isn’t much.”

Meaty nodded. Details of discovering the body, calling an ambulance, canceling the tennis tournament, and attempting to calm the crowd had brought the police no closer to finding a killer.

“What else have you done?” Frances asked.

“We’ve tested every glass we could find, plastic, paper, Styrofoam, you name it. We couldn’t find anything with either Clio’s fingerprints or traces of Dexedrine. We still can’t confirm how she ingested the drugs. We’ve assumed it was her drink, given the solubility factor, but we could be wrong.”

“The Bancrofts’ table had been cleared?”

“Yeah.” Meaty looked disgusted. “I hope before anyone knew anything, or the police had arrived, although at this point it doesn’t help us anyway. By the time we got around to isolating material for the lab, what we wanted was probably either in an industrial dishwasher or the trash.” He paused and cupped his hands around his mug. “We did find one thing, though.”

Frances raised her eyebrows.

“In a trash container on the porch, one of those metal baskets. We found nine empty red-and-yellow capsules wrapped in a paper napkin. No prints. They were crushed, but contained traces of Dexedrine. Capsules have been identified as a diet pill called Thinline.”

Frances had been tempted in years past to use over-the-counter appetite suppressants herself, until her common sense got the better of her. It was a high price to pay for vanity.

“Which trash container were they in?”

“The one closest to the front stairs. If I had to guess, our murderer dropped them there on his way out. They were wrapped in a Fair Lawn Country Club paper cocktail napkin.”

“Were the capsules cut or torn?”

“I believe the two ends could be pulled apart.” Meaty checked his notes. “Yeah, as far as we know, the capsules could be opened.”

“Which would take a lot less time,” Frances added.

“Right.”

“Could the killer have known in advance what Clio would be drinking and made preparations?”

“Well, you know, I thought of that. Except why, if you’re doing this ahead of time, would you dump the empty pills at the club? Why wouldn’t you leave them at home, or in your car, or wherever?”

Frances had no answer.

“We were able to track down Clio’s prescription for Nardil through a credit card receipt from the Columbia Presbyterian Pharmacy on 168th and Broadway. She had been seeing a psychiatrist at the hospital, a guy named Prescott, but he’s not saying a word. Psychiatrist-patient privilege or some other crap. That’s what he told me last night, anyway.”

Before or after our meeting? Frances wondered.

Meaty continued, “Malcolm’s not at all sure he wants to take on a legal battle with the shrink. Some people can be pretty sensitive about what they perceive as invasions of privacy, and he can’t predict which way his constituency would go. That’s about it.” He paused for a moment and scratched his ear. “We’ve gone through all the financial records of Pratt Capital. Nothing unusual. There were several deals in the works, and we’ve interviewed the participants. If they had complaints, they didn’t share them. Mostly we heard a lot of compliments of Miles Adler, sympathy for your father, and respect for Clio, although most thought she was in over her head. One guy whose deal fell apart at the last minute was pretty pissed at Pratt Capital, but his alibi is rock solid. He was in Hong Kong at the time of the murder, putting together new venture capital. Besides, his beef was with Miles. He never even met Clio. The only other recently terminated deal was with a company called ProChem based in Mexico City. We assume that’s where Miles has been. From the paperwork, it looks like Miles was pretty psyched about this company. It makes health care products, performance enhancers, the kind of stuff bodybuilders are into. The files contain a letter from the principal of the company expressing regret at the deal falling through, but when I spoke to the guy on the phone, he told me that there were renewed negotiations and he had ‘nothing but the utmost respect for Pratt Capital.’ Those were his words.”

“Has anyone spoken to Miles?”

“I know he returned from Mexico City last night. I left several messages at his office with that secretary—”

“Belle,” Frances interrupted.

“Right. Belle. But Miles has not returned my calls.”

“He’s probably digging himself out from under a week away,” Frances said sarcastically.

“Whatever.”

“So you think Miles went down to renegotiate the Pro-Chem deal after Clio died?”

“That’d be my guess. But the corpse wasn’t even cold when he got on that plane.”

Frances remembered her conversation with Penny Adler. Miles had abruptly decided to leave Southampton, to run out on Richard, his mentor, at probably the worst moment in Richard’s life, all to salvage a deal. So much for partnership.

And so much for family, too, Frances thought, recalling her own suspicions of her brother-in-law. Despite the dismissive remarks she had made to her sister, she had tracked down Pearl and Bartlett Brenner to confirm that Jake had gone to their home for a morning appointment on the Fourth of July. According to Pearl, even after she and her husband had decided not to purchase the lithographs, they couldn’t get Jake to leave. Pleading with them, he had offered to reduce the price, to have them pay over time, practically given them the images rather than take no for an answer. He hadn’t left Scarsdale until long after the Brenners’ family and friends had arrived for a holiday luncheon. “Did you find anything else in the office?” Frances asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Anything unusual?”

“Do I hear the protective daughter coming through?” Meaty said with a smile.

“I was just wondering,” Frances said. Miles had been looking for something, according to Belle, something important enough that he lied to Belle to get access to Richard’s office. “Have you come across any reference to ‘RC’?”

Meaty flipped pages in his notepad. “Here. Yeah. Renaissance Commons.”

“What’s that?”

“A quasi assisted living facility, quasi private hospital in Quogue.”

Frances was startled. Had Clio planned to move Richard out of their home? That made no sense. Clio’s diary showed visits to “RC” at ten every Friday morning. She wouldn’t have gone with such regularity if it were only to decide whether the facility was an appropriate resting place for her husband. “What’s Clio’s connection to Renaissance Commons?” Frances asked.

“She wrote checks to the place every month.”

“Do you know what was she paying for?”

“Apparently the room, board, and care of Katherine Henshaw.”

Frances was confused. Her face must have shown that because Meaty added, “Henshaw’s her mother. I just assumed you knew.”

Clio Henshaw, of course. Her maiden name. “But Clio’s mother is dead,” Frances said. She tried to recall when she had been told that Clio was an orphan. Hadn’t her father said something? She had a vague memory of Richard explaining once that it was hard for Clio to be a mother, let alone a stepmother, since she had no role model. Clio certainly never mentioned any parents. She had no relatives at Christmas or other holidays.

“Maybe that’s what she said, but I assure you, Mrs. Henshaw is alive. She’s a seventy-four-year-old woman who has been at Renaissance Commons for twenty years. Before that, she was in a state mental hospital near Syracuse.”

“How do you know?”

After finding the series of checks, Meaty explained, he went to Renaissance Commons and made some inquiries. He brought along a photograph of Clio. “Everyone there, from the nurses to the cleaning staff to the administrators, knew Clio, although they knew her by the name Clio Henshaw. Apparently she sent regular gifts, fruit baskets, that kind of thing, to the nursing staff, so they were pretty fond of her. As it turns out, your father’s nurse, Lily, had worked at Renaissance Commons and met Clio there.”

“But nobody knew she was Clio Pratt?”

“The director did. An old-guard doctor by the name of Pierce W. Hamilton the Third. He’s obviously a big fan. Said Clio was quite the dutiful daughter, weekly visits, flowers, care packages. She also did a lot for the other residents, sponsored the Thanksgiving dinner, arranged for a chamber music group to play at Christmas-time. Quite the benefactress.”

For an instant the image of her own mother flashed in Frances’s mind. Would she be such a devoted daughter? “What’s wrong with Katherine Henshaw?” she asked.

“Physically, she’s in pretty good shape. Her problems are mental. She suffers from major depression and some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I’ve got the official name down here somewhere.” He flipped more pages, then turned his notebook upside down to try to decipher some scribbles on the side. “Here. Trichotillomania. Compulsive hair pulling.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Actually, from what I gather, the depression’s much more serious. She’s kind of a zombie. Most of the time she can’t even get herself dressed. She hasn’t been outside in fifteen years.”

“And they can’t do anything for her?”

“Dr. Hamilton wouldn’t get into the details of her treatment.”

“Did you meet her?”

“No. The place is very private, obviously designed for sick family members to be quietly squirreled away. I never even got into the area where the patients are kept.”

“I’m surprised he told you as much as he did.”

Meaty shrugged. “My guess? He’s pretty concerned about where the next check for Henshaw’s care is coming from. The place can’t be cheap.”

“Did Mrs. Henshaw get any visitors?”

“I didn’t see the logs myself, but Hamilton’s assistant reviewed them on his instruction. Over the course of twenty years, she saw her daughter and, occasionally, your father. The only other person that even tried to visit was Miles Adler. On May thirtieth, a Saturday. This year. She refused to see him. Since he wasn’t family, he couldn’t insist.”

Frances felt tense, as if she could feel the blood pulsing through her body. What was going on? Clio had a mother with serious mental illness who had been institutionalized for decades, and she, Frances, knew nothing about it. Why had her father affirmatively misled his daughters as to the familial history of his wife and denied the existence of this woman who lived only a few miles down the Long Island Expressway? Then there was Miles Adler, who had discovered the existence of Mrs. Henshaw. What had he done with that information? Or rather, what had his knowledge done for him?

“That’s about where we are.” Meaty’s voice interrupted the thoughts racing in Frances’s mind. “Frankly, this has me thinking that maybe this wasn’t a murder at all. We could be wrong.”

“What?” Frances asked.

“I don’t know how to say this delicately, so I won’t try.” He scratched the side of his cheek. “Clio had a host of problems. She’s seeing a shrink. She’s on pretty potent antipsychotic medication. Her mother’s certifiable. Her only child died, and her husband is—” He glanced at the floor. “The way I see it, it’s possible Clio decided there wasn’t much worth living for. I’m wondering if we jumped the gun in calling it a homicide.”

Frances was silent. Clio commit suicide? It seemed impossible, incomprehensible. She didn’t seem like the suicidal type, whatever that might be, yet Meaty’s logic was compelling. Loss of the two people in the world she most loved might have put her over the edge. But, Frances remembered, Dr. Prescott had said she had been planning to move to Europe. Besides, having cared for her mother her whole life, was Clio likely to abandon her now?