The Morning Show Murders (1) (9 page)

She double-timed it in the direction of the bedrooms, slipping out of her plastic coat as she went. I watched her as she tossed the coat into her bedroom without pausing and rushed into Melody's.

I moved closer.

Rita was standing beside Melody's bed, looking down at the sleeping girl with such adoration I felt uncomfortable enough to back away before being seen.

I was seated on the pink chair again when Rita finally joined me. "How long ago did she fade?" she asked.

"Less than an hour," I said.

"You put her to bed?" It was almost an accusation.

"No. She did that herself. I did put the coverlet over her."

"Well, thanks for your help, chef. I can take it from here."

Her mood was so brusque, I asked, "Do we have a problem?"

She frowned. "They were talking about the murder at the gallery. You and Rudy Gallagher weren't friends. In fact, the cops think you killed him."

"It's true Rudy and I weren't exactly drinking buddies," I said, "but I had nothing to do with his death."

"Really? That must be why the cops have closed down your restaurant," she said. "And don't tell me they haven't. I went by there and saw the crowd. It was your food that killed him."

"It wasn't my food," I said. "It was poison. The killer might have put it in my food. Or in whatever Rudy was drinking. Or in his saltshaker. Or his toothpaste."

"But you and he had been fighting."

"Who told you that?"

"It's on the news," she said.

Great
. Just what I needed. Infamy.

"What are you doing here, chef?" she asked. "Why did you come here?"

There are times when you should clear the air with truth. This wasn't one of them. "I knew Rudy had been seeing Melody. I didn't know if she had anyone to help her through her grief."

"Uh-huh. Well, she does."

"How long have you two been roommates?"

"Long enough. Look, Melody is ... She's bright but she's also young, the kind of beautiful and naive girl that some guys like to play."

"Is that what you thought Rudy was doing, playing her?"

Her eyes flashed. "I don't know what Rudy was doing. I wasn't talking about Rudy. I think it's time you left."

"Past time," I agreed.

The doorman in the lobby of Rudy's apartment building was short, plump, and in his middle years, dressed in a smartly appointed uniform of midnight blue, with three shiny brass buttons straining to keep the jacket closed over his belly. The gray piping on the jacket's collar matched the trefoil trim on the sleeves and the cloth portion of his officer's cap. His striped tie picked up both colors.

He was wearing bright white gloves, highly polished black cap-toed shoes, and a loopy smile on his round, cleanly shaved black face.

"Welcome to the Hogarth Apartments, Chef Blessing," he said. "You're making a liar out of a brutha."

"Do I know you?"

"No, and that's my point," he said. "I tole the cops that even though I've watched you many times on the box--my wife loves your cooking show, by the way--I have never seen you in this building, in person. Now you've gone and made a liar of me."

I couldn't tell if he was busting my chops or if, as is sometimes the case, he was babbling because of nervousness. "What exactly did the police ask you?"

"If I'd seen you last night, which I didn't." He looked past me and added, "'scuse me a second, chef."

He stepped around me to drag open the thick glass front door for a white guy in his forties with dyed white spiked hair, a dark soul patch, and several gold rings in his left ear. He was wearing an AC/DC sweatshirt and blue gangsta pants, hanging so low on his hips you could see a strip of his red ant-patterned underwear.

"Yo', Maxwell," he said to the doorman, "mah man. Cops still uglying up the building?"

"They left hours ago, Mr. Washburn."

"My-t-fine," the white-haired man said, winking at me in passing, as if we were sharing some joke on the doorman.

I waited until the elevator door had closed behind him to ask, "Record producer?"

"Wall Street broker," the doorman said.

"Figures. So your name's Maxwell."

"Maxwell Sucony. Always been. Always will be."

"Glad to know you, Maxwell," I said, offering my hand. He peeled off his white glove before shaking it.

"How may I be of service, chef?"

I took my wallet from my coat pocket, but he waved his hand from side to side. "Not necessary. Like I say, my wife's a fan."

I accepted that, but I didn't put the wallet away.

"Since the police questioned you," I said, "I assume you were on duty last night."

"Six to two, five nights a week. And they didn't just question me, they sat me down and I had to identify everybody on the tape." He used his chin to gesture to a small camera secured to the ceiling and covering the front-door area. Including us.

You may have thought that appearing on television as often as I do would have inured me to camera discomfort, but I find secret taping, for whatever purpose, and that includes the cameras at the Bistro, inarguably creepy. So I shifted my back to the camera before asking, "What time did Rudy Gallagher check in last night?"

"Around six-thirty."

"Was he carrying anything with him?"

"Just a briefcase," Maxwell said.

"No big white bag, maybe a bunch of takeout cartons?"

"Nothin' like that. Was a time he'd show up some nights arms fulla takeout. Not for a while."

"He have any visitors last night?"

"No, sir."

"Maybe a delivery guy with that white bag?"

"You sure you're not the law? You askin' the same questions they did, only a lot nicer than that Detective Solomon." Maxwell lowered his voice. "What an asshole."

I knew I liked Maxwell.

"So no delivery guy?" I said.

"Like I told the cops, none I saw. Sometimes a tenant needs help and I'm gone for a bit. But last night I was right here ninety-nine percent of the time. And the time I was gone, nobody came in, according to the tape."

"Did he usually have visitors?" I asked.

"Not that many regulars. There's his fiancee, Miz Di Voss. Nice lady. She's here sometimes, but not so much last few weeks. He was out of town a while ago. Helped him with his luggage, coming and going, and the man did not travel light."

"Any other female visitors?"

Maxwell checked the lobby to make sure we were alone. Even though we were, he lowered his voice. "Mr. Gallagher was definitely a playa. Seen him take on two a night. Wore me out just thinkin' about it. Last couple of months, though, he slowed down. Aside from Miz De Voss, had just two repeaters."

"Tell me about them."

"For a while, before he took his trip, it was a blonde lady. But since he's been back, it's been this sweet-looking young black lady. Nice and polite. I don't get a lot of polite."

"Describe the blonde."

"Five-nine or -ten, blue-eyed, hair short but not goofy short. No buzz or nothin'. Well equipped. But she didn't show off the goods. Dressed down. Still, there's some curves too wide to hide, if you hear what I'm sayin'."

"I hear you. Don't suppose you caught her name?"

"Mr. Gallagher wasn't big on names."

"Anything distinctive about her? Tattoos or piercings?"

"Like I say, she wasn't flash. Least not where it showed."

"She come by cab or car?"

"Not that I noticed."

I opened my wallet and forced two twenties on him with my thanks.

"Uh, about Miz Di Voss," he said, folding the bills in half and slipping them into his pants pocket. "I saw her last night."

"I thought you said Gallagher didn't have any visitors."

"He didn't. She wasn't in the building. I saw her walking by across the street."

"When was this?"

"Aroun' ten."

"You sure she didn't come in?"

"Sure enough."

I thanked him again and, braving the nighttime traffic, jaywalked across the street and stood where Maxwell had seen Gretch the previous night. I looked up and down the street, but, with what meager information I possessed, I could see nothing that would have been of interest to her.

Except for Rudy's building.

It was a little after ten-thirty when my cab arrived at the Bistro.

Usually at that time of night, the lights would be burning brightly inside and out. Diners would be exiting. The valet guys would be on the run, retrieving vehicles. It would be a happy, welcome sight--a busy restaurant at nearly the end of another successful night. Ching ching!

Instead the building was in darkness except for a security light under the awning. It shone down on a couple of paparazzi with nothing better to do on a no-news night than to keep vigil at the lair of a suspected murderer.

I instructed the Middle Eastern cabbie to keep going to the corner and turn left. He did that. But when I asked him to pull over near the building's rear door, he refused, saying he would not "perform an act of illegality." Instead he continued on for about two car lengths along the deserted street, then made an equally illegal U-turn to deposit me by the door.

I increased his tip by an extra couple of dollars as a reward for his eccentric observance of the rules of the road. Then as he zoomed away leaving me in a cloud of carcinogenic exhaust, I approached the building with weariness and no small amount of depression.

I unlocked the door and went in just as the alarm system began to beep its one-minute warning. I turned on the light in the alcove and tapped the access code on the keypad beside the door. The beeping stopped.

I hesitated, wondering if I wanted to go directly to bed or stop off at the kitchen to see if the cops had found the slice of peach pie I'd hidden at the back of the reach-in fridge.

A third possibility came to mind when something cold and hard was pressed against the back of my neck and a gruff voice said, "Turn around and you die."

I got a whiff of clove breath. Could have been worse.

"You're the man," I said.

"Up to the office."

He may have been following me close enough that I could have pushed backward and knocked him down the stairs. But that sort of heroic/foolish move works only in the movies.

"Turn on the lights," he said.

I did that.

The office looked messier than usual, but I wasn't sure if Clove Boy was responsible or if it was the police who'd been poking around all day.

"Open the goddamned safe," he said, with enough anger that I assumed he'd already tried to do that and failed.

The safe was an eighteen-inch-high Sentry resting on the carpet under a two-drawer filing cabinet. I saw that the tubular key that I kept in my desk drawer was already in the lock.

"You need the combination, too," I said.

"No shit," he said. "Open it up."

I hunkered down, punched in the five numbers of my zip code, not the most secure combination but one I could remember, and heard the confirming click. I turned the key, opened the heavy metal door, and started to rise.

"Get on your hands and knees and keep facing the wall," Clove Boy said.

I took some comfort in the fact that he did not want me to see him. I hoped that meant he didn't plan on killing me. Or maybe he didn't want to look his murder victims in the eye.

Or maybe it meant nothing.

Using my peripheral vision, I saw him rooting around in the safe.
He was wearing a short-sleeve dark-blue shirt and dark-blue trousers. A uniform. And judging by the slightly rounded triangle patch on his sleeve, it was a policeman's uniform. Not good.

I wondered what would happen if I suddenly flopped on my back and kicked the heavy safe door into him. Then, while he was trying to recover, I could throw myself onto him, grab his weapon, and ... Enough with the James Bond nonsense.

Clove Boy cursed and threw a metal box at the wall. It was the one in which I kept petty cash. Not much. A couple hundred dollars. Judging by the tens and twenties on the floor, it wasn't chicken feed he was after.

"Where the hell is it?" he demanded, standing up.

"There's no big stash," I said. "We don't usually keep much cash, and we weren't even open today."

"I don't give a shit about money." He grabbed the back of my coat collar and yanked me to my feet. I felt his gun prod my back as he said, close to my ear, "Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The thing you took from Gallagher's."

"Gallagher's? Rudy Gallagher's? I've never been there." I was trying, unsuccessfully, not to whine.

"Bullshit," he said. "You tell me where it is or, so fucking help me, I'll put one right through your spine."

"What is it you want?" I yelled. "Tell me, and if I've got it, it's yours."

"What did you take from Gallagher's?"

"Nothing. I've never been there. I swear to God."

Something in the way I said that, or maybe the way my body was shaking in fear, must have made him a believer. He released my collar. "Another stupid fucking waste of time," he mumbled to himself. I felt the gun leave my back. Then it crashed against the back of my head.

I fell to the carpet, woozy but still semiconscious.

Looking across the carpet, I saw him running away, a big man with dark hair showing beneath a policeman's cap. From that angle, I was also able to see that his shoes were dark brown, not black. Maybe not a cop after all. Maybe just a thug who'd used the uniform to wander freely around a building filled with real cops, imitating them as they pawed through my belongings. They'd been looking for evidence.
He'd been looking for something that he hadn't found in Rudy's apartment.

What made him think I might have it?

I got to my feet, shuffled into my living quarters and, specifically, to the bathroom, where I plucked a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet and shot a couple with a tumbler of water. The man in the mirror didn't look all that battered. There'd probably be a welt on the top-right quadrant of my skull, but since there was still some hair growth up there, it wouldn't be that noticeable on camera.