Nice Place for a Murder (5 page)

“I’m your man,” I said.

Campy and seductive, “I know that.” She took her shiny pasta machine from a drawer in the island and clamped it to the butcher block.

“I mean, yes, I’ll make the fettuccini,” I said. “In a minute. I have to talk to Wally Prager.”

Using the wall phone in the kitchen, I dialed Wally at home. “I don’t mind you calling in the middle of my dinner,” he said. “Just choking down some dried-out pot roast I made last Tuesday, is all.”

“Only take a minute,” I said. “Do you know of a beat-up old commercial fishing boat around here, maybe 28, 30 feet, called the Lulu?”

“No boat I know,” Wally said.

“Could you ask around? It’s important.”

“I could. You want me to?”

“Please. And another thing. There’s a hole in the port engine gas-line on my boat. And there’s a hole in the windshield, too.”

“What kind of holes?” Wally said

“Bullet holes,” I told him.

As I spoke on the phone, I watched Alicia listening to my end of the conversation. With the mention of bullet holes she stopped washing the broccoli rabe, and stood there quietly, with her dark eyes boring into me.

“Well, now, muchacho,” Wally said on the phone, “you really had yourself a happy old time on Shelter Island.”

“I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Have your guys fix up the boat, will you? Go eat the pot-roast.” I replaced the phone on the wall.

Alicia turned back to the sink and stared at the water splashing on the greens. “Somebody shoots at you?” she said. “I thought you don’t do such dangerous things any more.”

“I thought so, too,” I said. I took flour from a cupboard plus eggs from the refrigerator, and started the pasta dough in a big bowl. “Teague got to me today, actually reached me out in the boat, and the next thing I knew I was in the middle of a case.”

“Again? This must not go on. You have a duty to tell Roger Teague to go to hell.”

“Just as soon as he hands me the final dollar of my payout. And then I’ll drive a stake through his black heart.”

“Very nice, but you’re no good to me if that man gets you killed. Run away from him. Or if you want, I have Uncle Tito come fly over next week and feed Teague to the fishes for you. You don’t need Teague’s money. I got money. You know that frenchy landscape painter I show now, that Pichou? I sell one today for seven thousand dollars. Thirty-five hundred profit, just like that. All the money you want,” Alicia said.

“I don’t want to be a kept man.”

“Why not?  Men wait their whole lives for such an offer.”

“I have this stupid pride,” I said. “The money I get isn’t Teague’s money. It belongs to me. All I want is what’s mine.” I filled the big pasta pot with water and put it on to boil.

She shrugged and sighed, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. The unspoken message was that I was stubborn and impossible, but she’d known that since the day we met. “Open some wine now. Merlot,” she said. “Then you tell me how you got bullet holes.”

I opened a bottle and we started on it.  As I told Alicia the story, I kneaded the dough on the butcher block with my hands, rested it a few minutes, then cranked it through the pasta machine to form long strands of fettuccini
.

Alicia sauteed chopped garlic in olive oil, added the broccoli rabe to the big skillet and wilted it down. She took the vegetable out and browned bite-size pieces of Italian sausage in the oil. The aroma was already irresistible.

“So this Ingo, he makes fun of Kenny, and Kenny is so humiliated he swims in the cold water to prove how brave he is?” she said.

“Something like that.” I said. “Then he goes under and drowns. Maybe a cramp. Who knows? But maybe somebody pulled him under, somebody from the boat. It would’ve been hard to see because the water was murky. And just maybe, Ingo knew what was waiting in the water, and sent Kenny out there to die. What I know is, Ingo was too anxious for me to go away. He doesn’t want me digging into this.”

“OK, maybe.” She took an open bottle of pinot grigio from the refrigerator, poured wine into the skillet and turned up the fire. It quickly bubbled up and began to boil. “But you tell me Ingo mostly goes swimming himself in the afternoons. You think maybe somebody is out there waiting for him, kills Kenny by mistake? I think this story is better.”

“Why?”

“I don’t believe such a rich man like Ingo kills people. Why should he make such a risk? Too much to lose.” She added chicken broth to the skillet, some chopped fresh marjoram and basil, salt and several grinds of pepper. The sauce boiled down fiercely in the skillet. She salted the water in the pasta pot, and put in the fettuccini. “Five minutes,” she said. “Get the bowls.”

In four minutes exactly, she drained the pasta and finished cooking it in the skillet, where the sauce was now thickened just slightly. She added the broccoli rabe, turned the food over and over with tongs, then filled our oversize pasta bowls, spooning a bit of the sauce over each portion.

The dinner was better than mortals have a right to expect, rich and garlicky, covered with the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese which Alicia grated, just so, into our bowls. We ate it all and finished the merlot, talking about the shooting and Ingo and Kenny and Hector.

And Lisa.

“So,” Alicia said, mopping up the last few drops of sauce in her bowl with semolina bread, “this Lisa, what do you think about her?”

“I’m not sure. She seems too anxious to make Ingo’s case for him.”

“But you kiss her, anyway, yes?” she said, without meeting my eyes.

“No. She kissed me. But you knew.”

“I am a sorceress. I know such things. I tasted it on your lips when you came in.”

“It was a joke,” I said. “I talked tough to her, and when I finally said something nice, she felt she had to respond. Couldn’t stop her.”

“Hey, it’s OK. What can I do? You drive women crazy.”

“You know how passionate I am for you.” I said. “ Only you, on this entire planet.”

“Say more.”

“As long as you can make pasta like this.”

She tossed her head back and laughed. “Who else is going to put up with you? Not some iron lady from New York. Look, you want to stay and make love to me?”

“You want me to?”

“Not if you’re going to fall asleep. You look tired.”

“Been a demanding day.”

“Go home then,” she said. “Tomorrow you make up for no love tonight. Don’t forget.”

I didn’t meet another car on the five dark miles of road from Southold to Greenport. North Fork highways that are busy on summer nights are desolate by October. It’s as though someone turns a switch and closes down the whole area at nine o’clock. When I turned onto my street I could see the lights of the ferry terminal four blocks away, and the far-away reflection of illumination on Shelter Island in the water.

I parked the car in the driveway and mounted the steps to the front porch of my house, a two-bedroom bungalow, built in 1922, renovated in 1964, and not touched since. I was eager to fall into my bed. But a voice from the dark corner of the porch stopped me before I could put the key in the door.

“There are matters we should discuss, Seidenberg,” said Lisa Harper.

CHAPTER V

She was sitting on the wicker love-seat, her feet up on the cushion, clasping her knees with her arms. I could make out her face in the faint beam from the streetlight outside that spilled through a hole in the overgrown bushes against the porch. Had she deliberately placed herself in that dim spotlight, or was it just one of those cosmic coincidences?

“I’d just about given up on you,” Lisa said. “Out to dinner?”

“You could say that,” I said.

“With a friend?”

“That, too.”

“Ah. A romantic attachment. Am I right? A strong relationship.”

“I’m pleased with it.”

“And of course she is, too,” she said

“Oh? Why do you think that?”

“I think you’re reliable. I think you’re levelheaded and realistic. I think you’re probably a thoughtful lover.”

“All that after having met me just this afternoon? I never realized how quickly people find me out,” I said. “You come on the ferry?”

“Only two cars and me. Seemed a shame for the boat to make the trip just for us.” She swung her legs off of the love-seat and stood to face me. “It’s chilly out here. You going to invite me inside?”

I unlocked the front door and we stepped into the living room. I turned on the lights with the switch just inside the door. “To think that just a few hours ago you resented my questions. And you took such pleasure giving me a rough time. You get off on irritating people?”

“How can you say that, Seidenberg? I did kiss you, didn’t I?”

“My lady friend knew it, too.”

“How?”

“She’s a sorceress. But she wasn’t angry about it. I told her it was a joke.”

“You think I was just having some entertainment with you?” She settled herself on the sofa.

“Let’s say I don’t think you were expressing a truly profound emotion.”

“What do I have to do, Seidenberg,” she said, “take off my clothes?”

“One, it’s too chilly in here to play. Two, though I hate to admit it, I’m too tired to do a really first-rate job. Three, and most significant, my lady friend would know about it, and that would disturb me a lot.” I reached to the coffee table and took the top off a glass candy bowl, the single hospitality item in my largely unadorned living room. “Have a hard candy. I think the orange ones are best.”

“I’m not much on sweets. I’m more of a meat-and-potatoes person. Though you wouldn’t think so, would you?” she said, pointedly stroking her sleek forearms, then her thighs.

“You carry it well,” I told her. I took an orange candy for myself, and lowered my overstuffed body into an overstuffed armchair, trying not to embarrass myself by wheezing as I sank into it. “And now, you didn’t really come to seduce me, did you? You said there were things we ought to discuss. Wasn’t that it?”

“I came here because Hector thinks your suspicions could be right. He trusts you completely. If he’s that high on your judgment, then I’ll go along, too. At least until you screw up.”

“I can’t tell you how moved I am by your confidence in me,” I told her. “And to think you came over on the ferry to tell me.” I crunched my hard candy and chewed up the pieces. “And why else did you make the trip?”

“You think there’s more?” she said.

“Isn’t there always? ”

She offered the barest hint of a smile, and nodded her head just once. “Yes, all right,” she said. “After you left, Hector told Ingo we couldn’t just pretend there hadn’t been a drowning and a shooting, and that he’d asked you check into it. Ingo finally agreed we had to do it, but he wasn’t happy about it. All through dinner he worried about word getting out and screwing up the stock deal. He wouldn’t let go of it. Over and over, he said there was so much at stake, and could we be sure of Seidenberg.”

“So Hector said not to worry about me, that I was discreet, and that I was a fair hand with touchy situations.”

“Something like that,” Lisa Harper said. She stood up for an instant, tucked one leg under her on the sofa and sat down again. How do women do that? “But Ingo was still on edge, so he —

“All right, let me guess the rest,” I said. “Ingo said get to me and make sure I understand how critical it is to keep this quiet. As if I didn’t know already.”

“Yes. To calm Ingo down, Hector said he’d phone you. But I said I’d take care of it, face to face.”

“Why you?”

“I wanted to. I told Ingo you and I have a rapport.” Again that barely perceptible smile. “Did I overstate it, Seidenberg?”

“Certainly not,” I said. “We’re communicating beautifully, I think.”

“I’m so pleased.”

“Now that we understand each other so well,” I said, “maybe you can clear up something that’s puzzling me.” I didn’t wait for her to respond. “Why aren’t Ingo and Arthur Brody getting along these days?”

“You know about that?”

“Hector said it was no secret. Why don’t they talk to each other?”

“I don’t know. But I feel, whatever it is, it’s coming out of Brody’s office. It’s tough to read Ingo sometimes, you know that. But I think he’s upset about the present state of affairs, distressed by it. He’d depended on Brody, consulted with him about everything, when he got out of rehab and returned to the company after the crash, still using a walker, Arthur Brody was with him constantly, helping him, advising him. From then on, Ingo didn’t make a decision without running it past Brody.”

“Tell me about the plane crash.”

“You know about that,” she said. “You were at Empire then, weren’t you?”

“Tell me anyway. I never knew the details.”

She said, “Ingo was into flying then. Always searching out new thrills. Still is. He’d got his license and right away he bought a light plane. He was flying up to Quebec with his brother Felix to go skiing.  The plane went down in the Adirondacks, and there was a fire. Somehow Ingo dragged himself out. But Felix was burned up in the plane. A helicopter took Ingo to a hospital in Utica. He was horribly burned, with broken bones everywhere. It was grim. There were operations, plastic surgery. They literally pieced him back together. We thought he’d never be able to return to the company. But he refused to give up. He rehabilitated himself with a vengeance, month after month. He made himself strong again. Look at him now.”