Murder Follows Money (3 page)

Hannah snorted, and when I looked at her, she was smiling, though it wasn’t the kind of smile you want directed at you. “Right, Naomi. You can tuck up and get some rest. I remember that I did say I would do a demonstration for them.”

It was starting to make me feel queasy to read in the car, especially sitting backward. I wondered if it would be against the rules to just hand the papers to Hannah and let her read them for herself.

Luckily Kim created a diversion. “What are we demonstrating?”

“We’re cooking, Kim,” Naomi said, her voice heavily sarcastic. “It’s why we’re here. We’ve written a cookbook.”

Hannah ignored Naomi’s dig and Kim’s stricken face. “I want to do two different things. For the market thing, we’ll make the
huevos rancheros
casserole. I’ll need handmade tortillas. Free-range eggs. Fresh tomatoes for the salsa. Good chorizo. Make sure you get decent tomatoes.”

I had to look out the window of the limo to see if it was still January. From the assurance in Hannah’s voice, it might well have been July, or we might have been transported to Oaxaca, where excellent tomatoes would be piled right beside the door to her hotel room. “I’ll do my best, but good tomatoes in January are hard to find.”

Hannah and Naomi both looked at me as if I’d suddenly started doing a bump-and-grind routine. Kim dug her elbow into my side. “But I’m sure I can find some,” I added hastily.

“See that you do. And avocados, not overripe or too hard, just right. Limes. Sour cream. I brought my own epazote, but I’ll need fresh cilantro. Garlic, onions—I prefer the white ones, and make sure they’re more flat than pointed.”

I was scribbling all this down on the schedule. And cursing Judi Kershay. Where would I find all this perfect produce in the City in January? I didn’t know where to shop there. And when was I going to get out to do it? I was supposed to be on hand during the newspaper interview to act as doorkeeper, according to Judi. Fetch everyone drinks when they needed them. Keep uninvited people out. Between the interview and leaving for Channel 6 was about twenty minutes. I wouldn’t even be able to find a produce market in that length of time, let alone make careful choices.

Naomi had to put in her two cents’ worth. “What about the fruit? Weren’t you going to build that two-tier fruit compote?”

“Oh, yes.” Hannah twinkled her fingers, dismissing any effort it might take on my part to fulfill her requests. “I’ll need at least two ripe pineapples, several mangoes, a dozen kiwis, a couple of bunches of red grapes. The grapes should be frosted.”

I gulped. Kim dug her elbow into my side again. When I looked at her, she winked and nodded. I took this to mean that she could frost grapes.

“What about the TV show? They want a demonstration too, don’t they?” Naomi had her own notebook out, though she jotted one thing for every ten items I wrote down.

“I think I’ll do
crêpes suzette
. It will be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate my new crepe maker. And a TV audience is a better place to push a new product, don’t you think, Naomi?” Hannah’s voice was sweet, but with a kind of triumph in it.

Naomi gasped. “Don’t you mean
my
new crepe maker? I didn’t know that was out of production yet. I haven’t gotten my milestone payment.”

“It’s my new crepe maker.” A note of steel entered Hannah’s voice. “You used my idea for your prototype. And anyway, I’ve refined it further for production. And my attorneys went through your contract, dear. It specifically says that any devices or inventions you create while in my employment belong to me.”

A hushed silence filled the car, the kind of silence that comes before a howling thunderstorm. Kim looked frightened. I wished I was sitting with the driver, blissfully unaware of the gamesmanship going on in the back.

Naomi looked at Hannah with pure hate in her eyes. It gave me the shivers to see it. “You’re an evil bitch,” she said finally, her voice flat with suppressed fury. “We had an agreement.”

“You mean, you tried to hold me up.” Hannah shook her head in crocodile sorrow. “After all the years we’ve been together, after all the profit you’ve derived from our association, you try to stick it to me. I was shocked, Naomi. To take my idea and try to sell it back to me. That truly takes a kind of hubris I know nothing about.”

“It was all my work.” Naomi stopped holding back her anger. Her face was inches from Hannah’s; her eyes were wild, and her thin lips were pulled away from her teeth like an animal going in for the kill. “You can’t just steal it like that. You’ll hear from my lawyers!”

“By all means.” Hannah didn’t seem the least discommoded by Naomi’s tirade. “As my dear husband used to say, let the lawyers talk to each other. If we’re still to be working together, we’ll have to have a good relationship. I couldn’t have an associate around who didn’t support my goals. Morton used to say, ‘If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.’

Naomi took a couple of deep breaths and let the implied threat sink in. “Yes, I remember Morton saying those boring things before he . . . died. So unexpected, wasn’t it? Some kind of gastrointestinal thing. Of course, it wouldn’t be something you cooked for him. For one thing, you rarely cooked at home anymore then. And of course you wouldn’t have put the wrong kind of mushrooms in the ragout, or the wrong kind of flowers in the salad.” She sighed gustily. “It’s sad, though. One minute he was alive, the next he was dead. And you got all his money."

It was Hannah’s turn to look venomous. She clamped her lips together tightly. She didn’t answer Naomi’s not-so-thinly veiled accusation. Instead she looked at her peons, Kim and me.

“You’ll need to get the crepe batter made first thing when we get to the hotel, or it won’t have settled long enough to work well by five.”

It wasn’t clear to me if she was speaking to Kim or to me.

“I’ll get the eggs and milk somehow. Didn’t we bring flour and baking powder and that stuff?” Kim looked nervous again.

“We have staples in one of the crates.” Hannah moved on to another topic, seeming revitalized by her run-in with Naomi. “What’s on the table tomorrow?”

“A radio talk show, very early. Seven A.M.”

“At least I don’t have to get dressed. I presume they’re doing a feed from the hotel suite.”

It didn’t say on the schedule. I made yet another note. Judi Kershay would get a very long phone call from me at the first opportunity.

“Ooo, look.” Kim was craning around to see out the front of the limo. “It’s like Oz or something!”

We had rounded Hospital Curve on 101, and San Francisco was spread out in front of us, from the ridiculous excesses of the Marriott to the gleaming towers of the downtown financial concerns. The hills were covered with buildings—the little boxes of the folk song, though if you tried to buy one, you’d find out how much ticky-tacky costs these days. In the distance, blue water sparkled.

“It’s so cute! Like a toy city.” Kim was entranced.

Hannah dismissed the view with a cursory “Very nice."

But Naomi seemed particularly struck. She stared out the window and whispered to herself, “San Francisco.” Her gaze at the buildings was almost gloating.

Chapter 3

Of course commercial royalty like Hannah Couch would not stay at just any hotel. She was booked at one of the queen hotels of the city. An attendant dripping with gold braid leaped to open the doors of the limo when we pulled up. The masses of luggage were tenderly put on a gold cart and wheeled inside. We made quite a progress through the lobby. Naomi gestured at me, and at first I didn’t understand what she meant. Then I realized that it was my job to go to the desk to pick up the room keys.

I have stayed in motels before. The procedure would be similar, I thought. I was wrong.

The woman behind the desk wore a suit and looked formidably impeccable. In my thrift-shop skirt and blouse, I felt totally out of place in this temple of sartorial splendor. Nevertheless, I told myself, my client was vastly important, and therefore I was too. It didn’t make me feel any better, but I didn’t have time to figure out why.

Luckily, the folder Judi Kershay gave me contained everything, including a fax copy of the hotel confirmation sheet. I didn’t even have to speak. I just handed it over and the elegant personage was transformed before my eyes into a cooing sycophant.

“Hannah Couch is here!”

I took great pleasure in shushing her. “We don’t want a scene in the lobby. Do you think you could just—”

“Of course. I’ll show you up myself.” She seized some plastic cards and passed them through a machine, then locked her drawer and came out from behind the polished marble countertop.

We went up in a special elevator that had to be operated with a key; the keys were those strips of plastic. I hoped there were enough keys for all of us. The woman from the desk cooed some more at Hannah, who accepted it graciously. Naomi watched, her expression dour.

The hotel suite was something else. It looked like the White House. A small foyer opened into a vast drawing room, full of antique tables and brocade-covered chairs and sofas, with lots of red silk draperies and priceless-looking oriental rugs on the floor.

Naomi nodded in approval. Kim, like me, was practically gaping with awe. Don was his usual laconic self, unimpressed by the splendor of a gilded ceiling inset with a Renaissance-style painting of frolicking cherubs and dripping with crystal chandeliers.

Hannah stood in the middle of the room, looking around critically. She went to the ornate fireplace surround and drew her finger across the mantel, then tested one of the gilt curlicues that supported the mantel. “Your maids don’t dust,” she said to our hotel escort.

“I’m sorry.” The desk person, whose nameplate read JENNIFER, looked frightened. “I’ll send someone up right away.

“Not now,” Hannah said reprovingly. “Not while I’m in the suite. Do the dusting after I go out.” She crossed to the enormous arrangement of flowers that filled a crystal vase on the polished wood of a low central table. “These are lovely. Did you use preservative in the water?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Jennifer stammered. “Shall I check?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll know tomorrow.” Hannah examined the rest of the room with pursed lips. “I hope my bathroom is clean. I don’t like to see dirty corners anywhere, but especially not on a bathroom floor.”

“Yes, Ms. Couch. I’ll make a note of it.” Jennifer began to look desperate.

“I believe in keeping up standards,” Hannah said, bestowing a brief smile on the hapless woman.

Naomi headed for a set of the tall, carved doors that folded open on either side of the room. “Kim, Liza.”

I jumped, but Kim was at the long windows that opened onto a balcony. “Look! The view!” She opened the windows, letting in a gust of cold, damp air, and went to hang off the balcony parapet. “What’s that funny building over there? The Space Needle?”

Don joined her. “Isn’t the Space Needle in Seattle?”

I joined them at the window. “That’s the Transamerica Pyramid. Kind of ugly, but San Franciscans are used to it now.

“It’s so cool.” Kim smiled. Don snapped a picture of her against the San Francisco skyline.

“Excuse me.” Naomi’s voice was peremptory, summoning us back into the drawing room. “It’s freezing out there. Please close the window.”

“Sorry, Naomi.” Kim darted back into the room, with Don following in a leisurely way that implied he was not to be ordered around.

Naomi sniffed. “Kim and Liza, check the kitchen and get it set up with our utensils. Don, figure out where the best place to take a picture is, in case any of the interviewers insist. Hannah, you must rest for a few minutes.”

Jennifer, the desk clerk, said in a trembling voice, “Oh, you had some messages. I should have brought them. I’ll have them sent up. And may we say how honored we are that you chose to return to our hotel, Ms. Couch? Please, if you need anything else, anything at all—”

Naomi shook her hand briskly. “We’ll be in touch.”

I followed Kim into the kitchen, which was compact but well designed and very modern, with marble counters and glass-fronted cabinets. “Isn’t the refrigerator kind of small?”

“I think that’s actually the ice maker.” Kim pulled out what looked like a deep drawer from the base cabinet. “These drawers are refrigerated. And the cupboards are pretty roomy.” She started taking armloads of dishes and linens out of the big plastic footlockers and transferring them to shelves and cupboards. “Listen, I bet room service would send up milk and eggs and butter for the crepe batter.” She giggled. “Especially if Jennifer spreads around what a dragon Hannah is. And I’ll help you with the prep. The only problem is getting the shopping done. I don’t know where they keep the food stores around here.”

“I’ve got an idea about that.” I stashed some copper pots and looked around for my knapsack. “I’ll just make a few phone calls. Where’s that cell phone Judi Kershay gave me?”

“Use the room phone. It goes on Hannah’s bill, which goes on the publisher’s bill, so you don’t have to pay.” Kim sounded worldly. I was impressed, but she added, “My mom told me to sign all my expenses on the room.

I’m not getting paid that much, and no tips. It makes sense.”

“It does at that.” I looked around for a phone.

“There’s one by the sink. I think there might be one every five feet or so. I saw two in the living room, or whatever you call that room we were in—”

“The parlor?” Its grandeur had been rather intimidating. “The drawing room? The throne room?”

“I think that’s some other room.” Kim laughed.

I hurried into the drawing room to find my humble knapsack, with the list of phone numbers for the night’s events. Only a couple of pieces were left from the tower of high-class luggage. My knapsack had been ignominiously discarded in the foyer.

Naomi appeared on the other side of the room and beckoned imperiously. “Come help Hannah unpack.”

“I’m helping Kim with the kitchen,” I began.

“You can get back to that.” She pulled the last of the elegant suitcases toward the carved wooden doors. “Get that train case, would you?”