The Big Killing (23 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Crime Fiction
“So?” Wetzon was annoyed with Rick for being presumptuous, annoyed with Silvestri for barging in without calling, and annoyed with herself for not handling the situation better.
“I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important,” Silvestri said, looking immensely pleased with himself.
“You weren’t, but you wouldn’t care if you were, right?”
“Right,” he said, helping himself to more coffee. Today he wore a dark blue turtleneck sweater under his jacket. He looked less official, and sexy.
“So this isn’t a social call, I take it.” She stood with her hands on her hips.
He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out some papers, and again she caught a glimpse of his shoulder holster. It jolted her right out of the cat-and-mouse sexual play and into harsh reality.
“I want to go back over a few things,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
“Okay ...” She was getting very strange vibes from him.
He looked at his watch. “Metzger is late,” he mumbled. He seemed to be procrastinating.
“That’s nice.” Wetzon was totally confused. “Shall I make more coffee? And is Detective Walters coming, too?”
“No. The case belongs to the Seventeenth.” His eyes met hers, and she felt a peculiar pull, like an undertow. Weak-kneed, she sat down.
“That’s you....” Her voice was barely audible; she was finding it difficult to speak. So Georgie’s death and Barry’s
were
linked.
“That’s me.”
“What—” She seemed to have lost her voice. Clearing her throat, she said, “What do you want to know?”
“You said George Travers asked you to meet him Wednesday night.”
She nodded.
“You also said you hardly knew him, yet you went out to meet him. Why?”
“Because he seemed very upset and wanted to talk.” Silvestri was right. Why had she gone to meet Georgie? She hadn’t even liked him.
“Is that the only reason?”
“What other reason could there be, Silvestri?” she asked impatiently. Should she tell him she had trouble saying no?
He leaned toward her. “What’s your stake in this, Ms. Wetzon?”
She rocked back as if he’d slapped her. “Stake? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on now, just what did Barry Stark tell you? I think you know far more about these murders than you’re telling us, Ms. Wetzon. You are withholding vital information. There have been four deaths.”
She clenched her jaw, digging in.
Damned right, Silvestri, and when I put it all together, I’ll
let you know
. Instead she said, with as much ice as she could muster, “All I can tell you about Georgie is what I told you before. He said Barry was holding something for him, and it wasn’t in his locker at the Caravanserie.”
“We’re talking obstructing justice, Ms. Wetzon.”
She had wanted to get out from under, tell him everything she knew, but how could she now? It would seem as if she had purposely kept information from the police. Her head reeled. What had she gotten herself into?
“Go away, Silvestri,” she said, very upset, standing.
He sighed, put his papers in his pocket, getting ready to leave, and she thought about the key again. She could not let him leave without telling him about it.
“ Silvestri—wait—”
“Yes?” He moved closer and she took a step back, leaning against the barre. He frightened her when he looked at her like that.
“Silvestri,” she said, plunging in, “there
is
something I have to tell you.” She felt his eyes, piercing her, appraising her, as if he already knew what she was going to say. But how could he?
He waited.
“There’s a copy of the key ...” she began haltingly.
“I know,” he said, not letting up.
“How do you know?” She was stunned.
“I have it. You gave it to me.”
She frowned. “No. You don’t understand,” she said. “I gave you the key....”
“No,” he said gently, as if he were talking to a child. “You gave me the
copy
.”
“I’m sorry, I’m confused,” she said, crowding the barre.
“The one you gave me had never been used,” he said. “It was freshly cut.”
“How could you tell that?” She felt exposed, as if it had been her idea to make the copy. “It could have been the key Barry gave me.”
Damn Smith
, she thought.
I’m out on a limb because of
her. No. Because of me. I always go along because it’s easier
. “I thought it was when I gave it to you.”
“But you’d made a copy.”
She stared at him. “How do you know for sure?”
“The edges were still rough, and I’m a good guesser.”
“The other key is in my office,” she said, defeated, unable to look at him. Why did she feel so ashamed?
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” she said, facing him, “but I went along with it, so I am guilty.” For a moment, a quick moment, an odd expression glimmered in Silvestri’s eyes.
“Oh?”
“You think otherwise?” she asked defensively.
“As I understand it, it was your idea, and Ms. Smith persuaded you to let her hold it in the office.” Silvestri’s eyes were hard slate.
Wetzon was shaken. “Smith told you that? I can’t believe she said that—” She stared at him, upset and dismayed.
“But she did,” he said.
“How could she have said that?” She felt herself babbling. “It’s not true, it’s just not true. It didn’t happen that way at all. She’s my friend, she’s supposed to be my friend—”
“I’ll be on my way now. Think about what I said. This is not a game, Ms. Wetzon. I expect to hear from you—and soon.”
“You’re a hard man, Silvestri,” she said, fighting tears.
“I’m a detective,” he said gruffly. “I’m nosy. I ask questions. Things that don’t fit bother me.”
She did not hear him leave. She was holding on to the barre for dear life. Why hadn’t she told him about Smith and the twenty-five thousand dollars. What was Smith trying to do to her? What the hell was going on? She had to confront Smith first thing in the morning.
And worse, she was mortified by the fact that Silvestri had believed Smith. She felt small and cheap, like a piece of garbage. Automatically, she went into first position, left hand on barre, head high, shoulders low, tears starting.
“So what do you think, Carlos?” Wetzon said.
They were in tiny Mezzaluna on Third Avenue in one of the window seats on the platform. Every table was full, and there was a noisy waiting line on the white ceramic tile floor and out into the street. In spite of the din coming from the open pizza kitchen and from the music, they seemed to be sitting in a pocket of acoustic perfection. They were in a storefront café of wild clutter, tables close together, surrounded with floor-to-ceiling paintings.
Crowded on the minuscule table were a gigantic bowl of steamed mussels and two small pizzas, a tuna with anchovy and the standard margarita, with tomatoes and mozzarella. They were halfway through a wonderful bolla.
“What do I think?” Carlos said. “You really want to know what I think? Are you ready?”
She nodded. “Come on, Carlos, this is serious.”
“I know it’s serious, buddy mine, and I want to tell you what I’ve said before: that nutcase broad you’re in business with is bad news.”
“Oh, Carlos, I don’t know. I can’t say that. She’s been behaving strangely lately, but ...”
“Strangely? Hey, come on, that’s an understatement.” Carlos pointed a long, double-jointed index finger at her. “And if you don’t dig in, I won’t continue with my incisive analysis of your situation.” He cut the two pies into narrow sections and announced, “Remember, this is my celebration. So let’s celebrate. I demand it. I command it.” He raised his glass and crossed his eyes.
Wetzon raised her glass, reached across the small table, and clicked hers to his, laughing. “You are incorrigible,” she said. “And look at you.” She studied him seriously. “You’re becoming a distinguished gentleman on me. Do I actually see gray at the temples?”
“Oh, please, don’t remind me. I’ll have to get one of those magic combs.” He groaned theatrically, lifting his eyes to the ceiling, the back of his hand to his forehead.
“Assistant choreographer, how about that? Name on the poster, royalties and everything.”
“And everything. And since Marshall is also directing, I get to be very creative.” Carlos was wearing a scarlet satin shirt, open low in front, enough to show cleavage in a woman, but in Carlos’s case, plenty of bare chest and lots of heavy gold chains. “It’s about fucking time,” he said with a touch of the old cynicism. “It’s only taken twenty years. They’ll probably call me an overnight success.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears, my friend,” Wetzon said. “I salute you, my dear friend,” sentimentally, her glass high.
“Thank you, thank you,” Carlos said, eyes downcast, in mock modesty. “But now let’s get back to you.”
“Me ... yes ... well, I seem to have gotten in over my head everywhere. I don’t understand what’s happening. I feel as if I need a trot to my life.... Everyone, including the police, thinks Barry told me something before he died, and an assortment of certifiably crazy people keep telling me things about each other they refuse to tell the police, and I haven’t told the police what they’ve told me, and oh, God, I don’t get Smith....”
“Hold on there, sweet thing.” Carlos set down his glass to take her hand. “You always think everyone is as good and honest as you are.”
“Like you?”
“Now, there’s what I’m saying. I’m neither good nor honest.”
“Oh, Carlos, come on now, I’ve known you for ten years, and you are a faithful, honest friend.”
“True.”
“And you would never do anything to hurt your friends.”
“True.”
“So why would Smith have told Silvestri such an out-and-out lie about the key?”
“To save her ass, of course.” Carlos shook his head. “You are such a trusting soul. How long have you known Xenia Smith?”
“Almost three years. She’s my partner, for godsakes.”
“And what do you really know about her before that?”
“Well, she has a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia, and she worked on the staff of the Menninger Clinic for five years.”
“And how do you know all that, pray tell?”
“She told me, you foolish person.”
“Ha! Which one of us is the foolish person?” Carlos said triumphantly. “I rest my case.” He threw up his hands dramatically.
“Maybe she felt trapped. Maybe Silvestri cornered her.”
“The cop, you mean?”
She nodded. “The detective on the case.”
“Tell me more. I’m dying to hear—get it?”
“Stop being so crazy for a minute. Yes, I got it. Seriously, do you agree I should confront Smith tomorrow?”
Carlos’s eyes flashed. “Damn right. I’d be furious with you if you let her get away with this. You’re already starting to make excuses for her—listen to yourself. Let me tell you, there’s no way she can weasel out of this. Now, enough about her. I want to know all the delicious dirt about the slayings.”
“Okay, I’ll begin at the beginning. This stockbroker I know—Barry Stark—calls me about some trouble he’s having and wants me to meet him at the Four Seasons, which I do. He looks as if he’s been in a fistfight and he’s nervous as hell. We sit down and right away he jumps up, says he has to make a phone call, and doesn’t come back. He leaves his attaché case with me. The rest you know.”
“Only what I read in the papers. I want it from the eyewitness. It sounds like a real whodunit.” Carlos rubbed his hands together in anticipation and ran his tongue over his lips lavishly, in a broad, villainous caricature.
Wetzon reached across the table and punched him gently. “Carlos, stop licking your chops, you bum. This is serious. And I’m not the
National Enquirer
.”
“Oh, do go on.” His dark eyes with their gorgeous dark lashes teased her. “Don’t be so touchy. I leave you alone for two days, two more people get iced, and you’ve lost your sense of humor. How are we going to solve these murders if you can’t see the forest for the trees?”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, crinkling her eyes at him. “I’ll accept that under advisement.”
“Good girl!” He gave her an abundant, loving smile and opened a mussel. “Continue.”
“Okay, so I wait and wait and finally I go down to the phone booths and open the door and he falls out at me with a knife in his chest. No more questions about that scene, please,” she said as Carlos opened his mouth to ask for more gory details. “Unless you want me to embarrass you and barf all over this lovely table of food.”
“I give up,” he said, making a face at her. “Then what happened?”
“I get interviewed by Silvestri—”
“What’s he like?”
“Who?”
“Silvestri.”
“Why?”
“Because you get all fussy and blushy every time you mention him. Who are you kidding, darling? I know you better than anyone in the world. Is he the new interest?”
“No. He likes Smith.”
“Too bad, no taste. Erase him.”
She felt her face flush, and she took a nibble of pizza, avoiding Carlos’s eagle eyes.
“Anyway, I ended up at Smith’s with the attaché case.”
“Did you open it?”
She nodded guiltily. “How did you guess?”
“Simple. I know you and I know Smith. But honestly, I would have been desperate for a look-see myself. I hope you were smart enough to use gloves.”
She shook her head, chagrined. They hadn’t even thought of it.
“Jesus! Your prints are probably all over everything. Don’t you ever watch television, darling? Even a six-year-old knows better than to muck with evidence.”
Wetzon sighed. The pizza suddenly tasted like cardboard. “It was a dumb move, I guess, but it seemed harmless. All except for the gun.”
“Gun? What gun?” The joy on Carlos’s handsome face disappeared and in that moment he looked every bit of his thirty-eight years.
“Barry had a gun in the case.” She was depressed again. She’d picked up the change in Carlos’s humor immediately. “There’s more,” she said. “Drugs, blackmail, I think. More murder … Georgie Travers, Sugar Joe, Mildred Gleason ...”
“I’m sorry I teased, birdie,” he said, taking her hand. “What can I say? This is the real world, and you have every reason to be upset.”
“I know, but you were right before. I have lost my sense of humor. I’ve lost all sense of who I am and who everyone else is.” She gave him a miserable smile.
“Let’s make a detour, darling,” Carlos said. “Who is the new love interest?”
“Not much of a detour. When Silvestri was driving me home, someone cut us off, stole Barry’s attaché case, and we ended up in the emergency room at York Hospital ... that’s how I met this very nice doctor....”
“Aha, the new love interest.”
“Well, sort of.” She picked at an anchovy on the pizza and kept her eyes down.
“Look at me for a second,” Carlos said knowingly. She raised her eyes reluctantly. When they met his, he said, “But you prefer the cop.”
“The detective.” She blushed.
“Oh, now I do rest my case.” He looked smug. “Go on.”
“You already know about the key I found in my jacket pocket, but what I didn’t tell you is that Smith sold it for twenty-five thousand dollars to Leon Ostrow, presumably for Jake Donahue.”
“Christalmighty, she’s really a low-level cunt.”
“Carlos, come on, she had a lapse. It’s because she was so poor when she grew up.”
“Sure.” Carlos’s voice dripped sarcasm.
“I told her I wouldn’t touch the money, that she’s to give it back.”
“Very likely she’ll do just that,” he said even more sarcastically. “But do go on.”
“Then I’m accosted by one of Barry’s girlfriends, who wants me to help her look for a diary of some sort that Barry’s supposed to have hidden, and we go to her apartment and find Georgie Travers there, dead.”
“Who—” Carlos began.
“You wanted to hear the whole story,” she grouched, “so don’t interrupt. I’m on a roll. Then Mildred Gleason pleaded with me to come see her, so I did, and it turned out that Barry was working for her as a spy while he was also working for Jake Donahue. She told me that he was on the phone talking with her when he was murdered.”
“And you think show business is sleazy?”
“I know. You’re right. While I was talking to Mildred Gleason, Jake Donahue crashed in and threatened to kill her. That’s when I sneaked out.”
“Oh, joy. Delicious. Better than
Dynasty
. Why didn’t you stay and watch?”
“Because I had an appointment with a broker, silly,” she said. Carlos had such a mad sense of humor that she was starting to feel good again. He made her laugh. At the situation. At herself.
“Okay,” Carlos said, devouring another slice of pizza. Nothing ever seemed to hurt his appetite. “I’ve got another question for you. Who wasted Georgie Travers?”
Wetzon stared at him. “Wasted ... You’ve been watching too much television, Carlos.”
“I knew him, birdie.” A trace of a frown crossed his face as he poured the last of the wine into their glasses.
“You did? How?” Carlos always surprised her.
“Through the Caravanserie—some people he and I both knew.”
“You must have some interesting little black book.”
“Oh, boy, do I.” He laughed. “I’ll leave it to you in my will. You can auction it off.”
“Jesus, don’t say that.” She shuddered. “It’s almost what Barry did.” She filled Carlos in on Buffie and the mysterious autobiography. “But I’ll bet there was nothing in writing. Maybe he was just trying to keep himself alive. He figured the story was his insurance.”
“What about the tapes?”
“I think there really may be more tapes hidden somewhere.”
“Maybe the police have found them.”
“Maybe.”
“So who killed Barry Stark?”
“Jake Donahue ... One of his clients? One of his girlfriends? And who killed Georgie?”
“One of his boyfriends.”
“Oh, Carlos. Don’t be bad. What about Mildred Gleason?”
“Simple. Jake Donahue.”
“No. Wrong. But they’re all related. I know it. I feel it.”
“Okay. Smith did it. Believe me.”
“Which brings us back to the key,” Wetzon said, ignoring him.
“The key is easy. The key unlocks the safe where the tapes are.”
“No, I don’t think so. Silvestri said the key was to a medical cabinet.”
“Hey, wait a minute. I know,” Carlos said. “The key belongs to Silvestri, the cop with absolutely no taste, who likes Smith. It’s for his little tin box, where he keeps his loot.”
“Loot?” She shook her finger at him like a schoolteacher. “Carlos, what are you talking about?”
“You know, the payoff money cops always get.”
“That does it,” Wetzon said, slapping her hand on the table. “Carlos, you are truly demented. I think it’s time we hit the Caravanserie before you overdo it.” She felt sad. “And you were doing so well there for a while.”
“Trust me, my love, Carlos knows. Carlos has second sight,” he said, waving for the bill. “And now that I’ve done all this head work, I truly feel we should be dancing our little hearts out.”