Murder on the Cliff (24 page)

Paul’s presence at the Marriott that night also explained some other things: why he had said he was at home in bed, for instance. He hadn’t wanted to admit to his affair in front of Nadine. She remembered his glancing at Nadine when she had asked him where he’d been at the time of the murder; she had thought then that it was because he was with Nadine. It also explained why he hadn’t turned on the burglar alarm: if Nadine had still been there when he left, he didn’t want to tip her off that he wasn’t planning to come back after dropping Shawn off. And it also explained why the burglar alarm was turned on when the housekeeper had arrived in the morning; he had turned it on when he returned later that night. There was another little piece of the puzzle it explained too: why he hadn’t heard Miako bark. He had said it was because Miako wasn’t a barker, but Miako had barked readily enough on the morning Charlotte had discovered Okichi-
mago
’s body. The real reason was that Paul wasn’t there. But although Paul’s presence at the Marriott explained a lot, it also left Charlotte with the same pathetic list of suspects that she’d started out with: Marianne, Lester, Nadine, Tanaka. She would have to talk with Tanaka. She also wanted to talk with Billy again. Both Paul and Lew had told her Billy wasn’t a player in the Shimoda inheritance sweepstakes, but she wanted to see for herself.

After church, Charlotte headed for the beach. She was tired after all her running around and she needed time to sort out her thoughts. Connie would join her later for lunch. Spalding was lunching at the country club prior to the final event on the Black Ships Festival program: the Black Ships Festival Golf Tournament. It was a new addition to the program, a sop to the Japanese mania for golf. She arrived at Bailey’s at about noon. Bailey’s Beach Club, or the Spouting Rock Beach Association as it was formally known, was said to be the most exclusive beach club in the country (“Bailey’s beach or bust” had been the slogan of many of the century’s earlier social-climbing millionaires), but no one could have guessed it. Typical of ultra-exclusive clubs, Bailey’s was devoid of pretension: a crescent of simple wooden beachfront cabanas and a two-story stucco clubhouse, painted gray with lemon trim. Members at Bailey’s liked to complain that the swimming there was the worst in Newport, as if belonging to Bailey’s was a burden that they were forced to put up with, and in fact, the water did seem to have more than the usual amounts of seaweed, algae, and battered plastic, but the setting couldn’t have been more lovely. Unlike Newport’s public beaches, which were long, straight swaths of sand, Bailey’s was a little jewel, a sandy white crescent nestled among the rocks. Perched on the ledges surrounding the beach were the cottages of Newport’s summer colonists. Among these was Briarcote, whose slate roof was just visible above the banks of wild roses lining the Cliff Walk.

To Charlotte, Briarcote’s proximity to Bailey’s was one of its main attractions. She loved this little beach, especially in the late afternoon after most of the beach-goers had gone home. On a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon, as this was, the beach was crowded, especially at the east end. By law, the east end of the beach was reserved for the public. Popularly known as Reject Beach, the public section of Bailey’s was a favorite with the college students who flocked to Newport every summer to work in its bars and restaurants. The reject end of the beach was now packed, but most of the crowd would be gone by three or four. She also liked Bailey’s because no one bothered her here. The members of Newport society who made up Bailey’s membership weren’t impressed by movie stars, or at least, not by movie stars who weren’t tycoons in their own right, which Charlotte wasn’t. Connie liked to complain that her years of achievement on the screen counted for nothing in Newport’s social circles; it was Spalding’s old money and Cliff Walk property that carried the weight. “Marilyn Monroe could come back from the dead and no one at Bailey’s would even bat an eye,” she said with more than a hint of affront in her voice. But Connie was overstating her case. Newport had never been the kind of conservative hideaway where people of great breeding and respectability lived quiet lives of the utmost refinement, though there were a few of those, like Spalding. Which was not to say that Newport’s social lions didn’t like to
think
it was such a place. Indeed, it often seemed to Charlotte that the newer the money, the greater the snobbery. She was always amused at how quickly those who acquired fortunes concocted the pedigrees to go with them. Though it had its share of failings, Los Angeles, where she had lived on and off for the last fifty years, at least had no social pretensions: in Los Angeles, as a fellow actress noted for her acerbity had once remarked, society was anyone who’d gone to high school.

After a dip in the ocean, which was chilly but delightful, Charlotte stretched out in a chaise longue on the porch of the cabana, and ordered a glass of iced tea from one of the waiters who circulated among the members and their guests. If membership at Bailey’s earned one a permanent niche in Newport’s social pantheon, having a beachfront cabana at Bailey’s elevated one to its empyrean heights. Though they were nothing to write home about—a simple wooden structure with two small dressing rooms, a shower, a toilet, and a porch—Bailey’s beachfront cabanas were as eagerly sought after as an invitation to the royal enclosure at Ascot. Spalding had once commented that he sometimes felt as if the vultures were circling: cabanas only became available when the old-timers passed away. Social climbers were known to have called the club to inquire about the availability of a cabana before the funeral. Charlotte felt quite privileged sunning herself on the porch of the Smiths’ cabana, since—God forbid—a good number of the Bailey’s members were relegated to
inside
cabanas. In contrast to the simplicity of the cabanas themselves, most of them were beautifully decorated. The walls of the Smiths’ cabana were hand-painted with a design of pink and blue flowers intertwined with blue ribbons, which matched the design of the fabric on the cushions of the beach chairs. Even the beach towels bore the same design, Charlotte noticed as she got up to get herself some suntan lotion. After greasing up, she lay back down in the chaise, a big hat shielding her face. As she basked in the sun, she idly watched the sailboats on the water, the nannies chasing down their charges, the dogs from Reject Beach playing Frisbee with their owners, and felt her mind growing blessedly empty. After a few minutes, she closed her eyes and felt herself drifting off.

She was awakened by a voice in her ear, a voice with a Cockney accent. “There’s someone here who says he’d like to speak with you. He says it’s urgent. Shall I show him in?”

She opened her eyes: it was the club manager. Clubs like this always had British staff. An infatuation with the Mother Country was part of the picture. Never mind that it was a Cockney accent, as long as it was British. “Did he give his name?”

“Yes,” the manager replied. “A Mr. Lewis Farrell.”

“Yes, please,” she replied.

In a minute, Lew, accompanied by the manager, emerged from the corridor leading to the clubhouse. She could see from his expression that something was wrong. “What is it?” she asked.

“It’s Shawn. He’s been murdered. Chief Kilkenny called me a few minutes ago. I stopped off at Briarcote, and the maid told me you were here. It happened at The Waves. Do you want to head over there?”

“Of course,” said Charlotte, half in shock. She quickly threw a beach dress over her bathing suit, and headed out with Lew.

“When did it happen?” she asked as they passed through the lobby.

“Sometime late this morning. Lani discovered the body when he got back just a short while ago.”

“How was he killed?”

“Knifed. I don’t know any more than that.”

Charlotte was puzzled. How could anyone have knifed someone as strong as Shawn? An aikido expert, a champion sumo wrestler. He was probably one of the strongest men in the world.

11

In a few minutes, they had arrived at The Waves, whose entrance courtyard was filled with police cars, gumballs flashing. As with Okichi-
mago
’s death, the crime area had been cordoned off with yellow plastic tape. After talking with Lew, a policeman let them pass into the inner courtyard. The murder had taken place at the condo where Charlotte had met with Shawn just the day before. Or more precisely, as they found out once they were inside, on the terrace of the cohdo. After being admonished by a guard not to touch anything, they passed through the paneled living room and out to the terrace. It was swarming with police; crime scene investigators armed with cameras, calipers, and plastic bags were busy photographing and measuring everything in sight. At first, Charlotte couldn’t see the body; her view was blocked. But when she did get a glimpse of it, she knew why the killer had succeeded in killing Shawn. He sat cross-legged on a pillow at the center of the canvas practice ring, facing the ocean. Only his back was visible, a huge red blotch staining the indigo-on-white pattern of his kimono. His head hung forward over his crossed legs. The pillow, originally a cream color, was also stained with blood, as was the canvas mat. The killer must have sneaked up on him from behind and stabbed him while he was meditating.

Following Lew, she moved closer. As they came around to the side of the corpse, she got a look at Shawn’s face and she felt her stomach contract into a tight knot. Okichi-
mago
’s death hadn’t seemed quite real. The kimono, the makeup, the hairstyle, had all made her look like a doll. Apart from her feet, there weren’t even any signs of injury. But this was a disturbingly real corpse.

“Jesus,” said Lew, turning his head away.

Charlotte thought again of her conversation with Shawn. “If you die every day in your mind,” he had said, “you won’t fear death.” Maybe it was just the awkward angle at which his cheek pressed against his crossed leg—it was supposedly a myth that corpses bore any expression at all—but it certainly looked like fear on his waxen yellow face.

Miller crouched over the body, notebook in hand. As before, he was dressed in starched khakis and a button-down blue-and-white striped shirt with a cheery red bow tie. “Another interesting case,” he said. “Guess this is my lucky week.”

Lew grimaced. “Doesn’t it get depressing, dealing with dead bodies all the time, Doc?” he asked.

“Sometimes boring. Unattended deaths. Drug overdoses. The same old thing. But never depressing. It’s the live bodies that I find depressing. I’m much too soft to take care of the living. With the dead, I don’t care about them and they don’t care about me. I don’t even recognize them. That happened with old Bill Kramer; drowned last year. I’d known him for thirty years, but it wasn’t until I looked at his toe tag that I realized who the body belonged to.” He looked down at Shawn’s body. “Stabbed through the heart. Looks like a professional job to me, Lew.”

“A professional job? But he wasn’t a Mafioso or a drug dealer. At least, it seems highly unlikely.”

The medical examiner shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I think. The thrust would have to have been made with considerable force to get through the muscle. Also, it would have to have been aimed just right. Which is why I think it was a professional job.” He continued: “You know, this isn’t the first murder at The Waves. There was a murder here in the thirties. Guy blew his wife’s head clean off with a Springfield .30/06. Interesting case …”

“Excuse me, Doc,” said Lew. He explained to Charlotte: “If I don’t interrupt him now, he’ll go on all day. Instead of mansions and historic landmarks, Doc has this whole town mapped out in terms of death: a murder in this mansion, a suicide in that apartment house …”

Miller grinned his goofy grin.

Lew turned back to the doctor: “How long has he been dead, Doc?”

“Not too long,” Miller replied. He slid a hand under Shawn’s kimono. “He’s still warm. Not even much postmortem lividity yet,” indicating the purplish hue that had started to discolor the skin on the undersides of Shawn’s legs. “A couple of hours at the most.”

“What about the weapon?” asked Charlotte, who had noticed several policemen combing the rocks below.

“An ordinary hunting knife would be my guess. With a long blade, at least six inches. Sharp point. One edge. But I doubt we’ll find it. Our murderer probably tossed it into the drink. I figure he either came through the living room or up the stairs from the Cliff Walk.”

“Any witnesses?” asked Lew.

“The detective-captain can tell you better than I can.”

Sullivan had joined them by the corpse.

“None that we’ve located so far,” Sullivan said. “His roommate was out. He’s the one who discovered the body. The other sumos were over in the other condo.” He looked down at the body with a baffled expression. “I can’t figure out why he was in this position.”

“He was meditating,” Charlotte told him. “He told me that he often meditated out here. Meditation is part of a sumo wrestler’s daily workout,” she explained in response to his perplexed expression.

He nodded. “Psyching himself up,” he said.

“In a way,” said Charlotte. That wasn’t it, but she wasn’t going to bother explaining to a former jock whose yardstick of understanding was probably limited to the pre-game pep talk.

Now that the initial shock had passed, Charlotte was struck by something peculiar about the body. The crown of Shawn’s head had been shaved, and his thick, dark brown hair hung loosely down. She thought of his topknot, and then realized what had happened. “His topknot has been cut off,” she announced.

“Topknot?” said Sullivan.

“Sumo wrestlers wear their hair in a topknot. It’s the symbol of the sumo wrestler’s way of life. Somebody’s cut off his topknot.”

“Is that significant?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she replied. Who would have wanted to cut off Shawn’s topknot? she wondered as she explained about the topknot to Sullivan. Shawn’s rival, Takafuji? Someone who didn’t want to see him become a
yokozuna
? Or someone who wanted to make the murder look like it was related to sumo when it was really related to something else.