Partners In Crime (25 page)

"Perhaps it is only because I'm an old
woman," Auntie Lil began, "but it seems to me that the truth lies
in the past. It's the only time everyone's paths crossed. Besides,
there's such passion in these deaths. Someone is hurting badly and
not letting go."

"And that's why you want to talk to Ralph
Peabody?"

"We have to," she said simply. "Who else is
there?"

"Abromowitz would tell you that Sinclair
killed the others and was referring to their deaths when he
scrawled 'R.I.P.'"

"Then killed himself with John Boswell's
gun?"

"Yes."

"First unzipping his pants so he could
relieve himself more easily upon death?" she asked brightly. T.S.
longed to put her up against the lieutenant in a sarcasm
contest.

"That does seem unlikely," he conceded. But
he could recall no personnel incidents involving the three dead
men. "Are you saying they had somebody fired or disciplined and now
this person is out for revenge?"

"No, not that simple." She leaned her head
back on the seat and sighed. "I'm afraid sex is involved somehow
and sex is never simple."

"Why would you think that?" he asked. He
hated it when Auntie Lil talked about sex. Far from being
embarrassed, she actually talked louder about sex, he suspected,
just to prove that the topic didn't faze her in the least.

"Think, Theodore," she said. "Every man with
his zipper pulled down?" She crossed her arms and shook her head
disapprovingly. "Now that's just nasty."

T.S. arrived at the office early the next
morning, despite a restless night plagued by ominous dreams and
images of Sinclair's dead body. In his dreams, a Spanish dancer
named Magritte whirled about, offering tables of dead men large
glasses of frosty margaritas, while Sinclair's wife, Muriel, cried
in a corner and Auntie Lil hovered about taking photographs. When
he finally awoke, T.S. felt exactly  as if he had a horrible
hangover. His head was pounding and his stomach fluttered
ominously.

Even worse, no one in the department
mentioned his absence or even seemed to have noticed that he had
been missing the day before. He couldn't decide if he was grateful
or if his feelings were hurt. He had not seen any mention of
Stanley Sinclair in the newspapers and no messages from Edgar Hale
awaited him. The word had obviously not yet filtered in from
Pennsylvania.

He had hardly removed his hat when Sheila
charged into his office, flopping into his visitor's chair
unceremoniously without bothering to take off her coat. T.S. stared
at her but she took no notice of his scrutiny. After prying
frantically at the plastic top on her coffee cup, she sipped at the
steaming liquid in a desperate manner before leaning back with a
sigh. She ran a hand through her tousled hair. "It was Xanax," she
announced.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Xanax." Sheila repeated patiently. "John
Boswell was drugged by Xanax before he drowned."

"What in the world is Xanax?"

She shrugged. "A couple of our employees
could give you a more colorful description, but as I understand it,
it's a relatively new anti-depressant commonly given to people in
pill form. Induces a sense of euphoria."

"He jumped off his boat in a fit of
happiness?" T.S. could be willfully obstinate in misunderstanding
people when the mood struck.

"Of course not. It can also introduce
artificial psychosis. But that's not the point." She spoke in a
superior manner. Pharmaceutical knowledge was one of the few areas
where she had it over T.S. "If it was given to him in combination
with enough alcohol, it would do a very good job of knocking him
out. Like shooting a horse, in fact. Boom!" She slapped her hands
together and he jumped. "He'd go right over.''

"And then someone could just toss him
overboard?"

"That's what it looks like
to me. Also to six million readers of the daily papers." She tossed
a final edition of the
Post
on his desk.

John Boswell's murder still
occupied the front page .
Wall Street Whiz
Drugged and Dumped,
ran the
headline.
Autopsy Reveals
Shocker.

T.S. pushed the paper back without comment.
"Why Xanax?" he wondered out loud. "Was he taking it for
something?"

"No," she answered at once. "He had slightly
high blood pressure and took medicine for that. But that was about
it. I'm sure he wasn't taking Xanax. I looked through his file to
make sure." She stared at T.S. expectantly.

"You were working with John Boswell on his
medical coverage?"

"Well, of course," she said somewhat
uneasily. "Partners are worse than clerks when it comes to trying
to get every penny back from the insurance company." She shifted
under his scrutiny and sipped at her coffee. "Why are you staring
at me?" she asked in an accusatory tone. "I work with everyone here
at one time or another."

He shook his head, hoping to clear his
thoughts. He was surprised at her defensive reaction. "Nothing. I
was just wondering about the Xanax. There must be a hundred more
common drugs that could give the same effect."

The question didn't puzzle Sheila for long.
She unfolded her long frame from the chair, struggling out of her
coat on her way to the door. "Beats me. Maybe someone wanted to be
on the cutting edge of innovative poisoning."

"Sheila," he called out before she could
disappear. "Could you find out where Ralph Peabody is these days?
Someone wants to know."

She paused before answering, "I'll check the
files, but I think he's in a nursing home somewhere. He's not in
too good shape. You need it soon?"

"As soon as you can get it," he replied.

"Doesn't everybody?" Her voice trailed off
and she was gone, leaving the faint scent of lemons behind.

T.S. called Edgar Hale shortly after 9:00
but the Managing Partner had not yet arrived. Despising his
deception, he asked Mrs. Quincy, "Did Stanley Sinclair show up
yet?"

"No, he hasn't," she said quickly, happy to
pass along information to any employee evidencing an interest. "But
Mr. Hale says he and the accountants worked through the night. So
far, the books are immaculate. The records are clean. It doesn't
look like Mr. Sinclair took a cent."

"Curious," was all T.S. could manage to
reply, and it was an effort at that.

"I just can't figure it out," Mrs. Quincy
was saying. "Why would he just disappear like that? Where is
he?"

He had no wish to enlighten anyone early.
"Perhaps he's afraid a maniac is on the loose?" he suggested.

"That's nonsense," Mrs. Quincy said firmly.
"Who would bother to kill Mr. Sinclair? He's not even a partner."
She then pulled one of her abrupt and overly confident changes of
subject. "I must speak to you about Anne Marie. She's supposed to
be helping me out, not hindering things. She's most unreliable. If
I didn't know better, I'd say she was enjoying playing the tragic
figure. Coming in late, leaving early, making mistakes, carrying on
in the bathroom. Being rude to her co-workers. I simply cannot
tolerate such unprofessionalism."

T.S. sighed. So, the war between the two
women was heating up. "She's lost the man she worked for most of
her life," he tried to explain patiently. "You should try and be a
bit more patient. It might help smooth things over."

The silence on the other end of the line was
eloquent and he was finally compelled to defend himself. "Besides,
I'm not the Personnel Manager any longer. If you really want to
complain, speak to Miss Fullbright." Women. That was just what he
needed. A memo war between Mrs. Quincy and Anne Marie. Miss
Fullbright would probably have Anne Marie brought kicking and
screaming up to the trauma team room for grief analysis or some
such nonsense.

He sighed and rang off, then went to check
the employee attendance reports. News was bad. Apparently, Anne
Marie was not the only one finding it difficult to cope, and not
everyone subscribed to Mrs. Quincy's theory that only partners were
being bumped off. Absenteeism was nearly at the sixty-percent
rate.

It would likely get worse. The news about
Stanley Sinclair hit Sterling & Sterling around 11:00 A.M.,
just before Sheila came back into his office with a current address
for Ralph Peabody.

"He's in a nursing home near Garden City,
just off the expressway," she said quietly, handing him a piece of
paper with the address written on it.

He looked up at her. "Thanks. What's
wrong?"

She stared at a point over his head. "They
found Mr. Sinclair last night. He either killed himself or was
shot. I put a call through to... to Brian for details."

He was a bad liar and opted not to feign any
surprise. She didn't seem to notice. "How did you find out?" he
asked.

"On the radio. It was the weirdest thing."
She shook her head. "I was up in the cafeteria getting coffee. You
know how they play that music over the loudspeaker all the time? "
He nodded. "Every once in a while some guy with an obnoxiously deep
voice interrupts and gives you all the news in about thirty
seconds."

"What did he say?"

"It was one of those moments when everyone
in the cafeteria decided to take a deep breath at once and, for a
couple of seconds, all conversation stopped. We all heard it at the
same time. The news guy distinctly said that the state police in
Pennsylvania had identified Stanley B. Sinclair as the male found
slain the night before in a resort home. An anonymous tip led
police to the scene."

"Did they mention Sterling &
Sterling?"

"No, they hadn't made the connection
yet."

"Do the New York police know yet?" T.S.
asked.

"I'm sure they do by now. They're going to
be pretty angry that they weren't told right away." She shrugged.
"I guess the media will make the connection with us by this
afternoon."

He was sure she was right. But he couldn't
afford to wait any longer. He took his coat and the address she'd
given him, made a quick call to Auntie Lil and ducked out the door
without being noticed—although he did have to hide in the Xerox
room for a few tense seconds when he heard Miss Fullbright
approaching, chatting earnestly  with a bearded man who
evidently headed up the employee trauma team.

T.S. was in no mood for a discussion about
trauma.

''Xanax,'' Auntie Lil said. Her voice
wavered between wonder and scorn. "They think up a new drug every
day. I can't say it's such a wonderful thing, Theodore." They were
heading out of the city toward Long Island and traffic was light.
She looked out the window at the gray day. It was drizzling
again.

T.S. shrugged. "To some people, these drugs
can change their lives. It's supposed to be quite effective in
combating depression."

"The modus operandi seems a little
confused," she said, relishing the official-sounding phrase. "An
old knife, a new drug. And a stolen gun." She had obviously been
reading her detective magazines again.

"We don't know that yet. It might not be
Boswell's gun."

"Of course it's his gun. This murderer is
not stupid. It's the perfect weapon. The police can trace it back
to the second murder and no further."

"But why a gun? Why not a knife?'' He was
unwilling to give the killer credit.

"Simple," Auntie Lil said. "The killer knew
Stanley Sinclair suspected he was being followed. The element of
surprise was gone. I would think that a knife would be more
difficult to use effectively, shall we say, when the victim is on
his toes. Particularly if the murderer is physically inferior to
the victim."

T.S. didn't know a whole lot of people
physically inferior to Stanley Sinclair; an anorexic dwarf perhaps.
Just about every other man had more meat on his bones. He realized
the implication. "You still believe the killer is a woman?"

"Yes," she said confidently. "I do."

"How can you be so sure?"

"The zippers," she said.

"The zippers again? That could mean
anything."

"Maybe to you it could. To me, it seems to
mean one thing." She folded her arms and waited for his curiosity
to get the best of him.

"What?" He swerved to avoid a bus that
suddenly pulled in his path and almost collided with a delivery
truck merging into the center lane. Auntie Lil didn't flinch.

"It means you should have kept your pants
zipped up, Theodore," she told him briskly. "That's exactly what it
means."

Nursing homes had changed since T.S. visited
his grandfather in 1961. Based on this memory, T.S. thought of rest
homes as long white clapboard buildings with spacious porches,
rocking chairs and shade trees surrounding all. But the massive
brick skyscraper looming over the Long Island Expressway did
nothing for his Utopian vision. It more closely resembled a prison
or hospital than a home, and this impression was hard to shake. He
and Auntie Lil entered through silent sliding doors to find an
empty and sterile reception area. Groups of muted orange chairs
clustered around glass coffee tables gave the room a distinct
hospital waiting room air. The receptionist sat inside a Plexiglas
cage and directed them to the fourteenth floor with little more
than a shrug.

They waited in front of the elevators
silently, T.S. intimidated by the hushed atmosphere and Auntie Lil
rendered anxious by the warehousing of adults her age.

The elevator was as smooth and white as an
egg. T.S. expected the theme from 2001 to begin at any minute, but
not even elevator Muzak penetrated the silence.

"At least it's clean," he tried in an
attempt at conversation.

Auntie Lil looked around her grimly. "This
place is absolutely horrifying, Theodore. It reminds me of the
inside of a crematorium."