Conundrum (11 page)

Iris caught the motion of the kitchen door swinging open and Luc strolled out in jeans and a sports jacket, gripping a bottle with the recognizable orange label of Iris’ favorite champagne. He spotted her and headed over, his eyes locked on hers. Hair loose, he looked like a Viking Prince. He leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips. The room had become dead quiet.

“How are you holding up?”

Was this what it felt like to swoon?
“Um… good.
I’m good.”

He filled the flutes and toasted, “to your continued liberty.” They
clinked
glasses. “So, catch me up on the latest on this guy Will. Was he actually murdered?”
So much for the romantic mood.

“’
Fraid
so.
The police found his body at Fresh Pond where as it happens I’d just been walking my dog.”

“Jeez. How did I miss all the blood on your blouse yesterday? In fact, you seemed pretty calm.”

“I kill ex-boyfriends all the time. It’s gotten routine by now.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Actually, most murders are committed by family members. The wife probably did it.”

Iris looked at him through her lashes. “What do you mean, most murders—51 percent, 89 percent? How do you know that, anyway?”

“My father used to be a cop—
here in Cambridge. I told you I grew up here.”

“I knew that, but didn’t know about your father. Is he retired now?”

The pulse in Luc’s temple fluttered. “He died eight years ago. He was shot by a teenage crack-head.”

Iris reached for his hand. “God, I am so sorry. That must have been awful.”

Luc’s voice turned low. “I had just
graduated from culinary school—
Johnson & Wales, down in Providence. When that happened, I couldn’t deal with it. I took off for Italy and stayed there for seven years. I ended up working in some of the great kitchens of Rome before I got my own place. That was the good part. I finally came back last fall to help take care of my mother. So I went full circle.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Iris saw Ellie and Mack enter the restaurant. She silently willed her friends away but they hurried over, gushing with apologies for being late.

First business was ordering Ellie her favorite aperitif, a
Lillet
. The other three stuck with champagne. Then Luc explained that he was trying out a new chef that night and wanted to taste things without hovering in the kitchen. Louise approached. She was the only post-pubescent female Iris knew who could manage to wear pigtails without looking ridiculous. She recited from mem
ory the short, well-edited menu—
three appetizer choices, three entrees, and three desserts. Luc explained that the nine choices varied from day to day depending on the market and his whims. With insider information from him, they ordered their meals. Iris realized that she was starving.

Mack was first to report on what he had learned. “The Medical Examiner on the case turns out to be a woman I knew at med school. She said that they should have the full scoop on Monday, but it looks like the killer
tasered
Will first,
then
jabbed him with a needle full of a strong drug, a lethal dose of some kind of muscle relaxer. He died within minutes. The cops haven’t found the needle yet.”

The table was silent. Iris imagined those agonizing minutes.

“I was able to learn something important this afternoon,” Iris wanted to break the spell. “I followed G.B.’s teaching assistant to the auditorium where he complained to G.B. about getting a last-minute call to sub for his Semiotics class on F
riday. And get this—
the class meets in the early afternoon, just when Will was murdered.”

“Wow,” Mack said. “That’s pretty incriminating. I hope that G.B. didn’t spot you eavesdropping.”

“I hid up on the balcony. They couldn’t see me. But Ellie and I were discussing this and it doesn’t necessarily nail G.B. as the killer.”

“That’s right,” Ellie picked up the story. “I sat next to Jerry this afternoon on the bus tour of alumni work. It slipped out that he actually flew up on Thursday and I got the distinct impression that he stayed over at G.B.’s condo in Beacon Hill that night. So, they could have murdered Will together or they could have just been spending the day with each other. Or, for that matter, maybe one of them went his separate way on Friday and met up with Will.”

“This is making my head hurt. It seemed so clear this afternoon that G.B. was the killer. Well, at least we know they
could have
done it, separately or together. And speaking of Jerry,” Iris said, “after I left the picnic, I saw Jerry and Norman walking together in Harvard Square. I lost them on Holyoke Street, but I think they went into a restaurant for lunch. What could they have had to talk about?”

“He didn’t mention that when we talked on the bus. I wonder what he was up
to?
”

“I can’t imagine those two having much in common,” Iris said, “but it sure seems as if Jerry’s trying to hide his actions. And we know from his brownie comment last night that he knew about Will’s drugging Carey. Maybe he was the one who actually killed Carey, and Will didn’t say anything about it because he didn’t want his own part in the drugging to come out. But maybe after all these years, he got a conscience and decided to rat Jerry out.”

“Wait a minute. Back up. What’s this ‘brownie comment’?” Luc said.

Mack proudly filled Luc in on the clue that he himself had extracted from the previous night’s party.

“Oh, and C.C. told me that Alyssa actually made the brownies. So that means Jerry, Alyssa, Adam, C.C. and Will all knew that Carey was going to be in a weakened condition that night,” Iris said.

“So out of our suspects, that only leaves G.B. as being in the dark,” Mack said, as he passed around a basket of warm bread. “Jerry probably wouldn’t have told him beforehand since it was G.B.’s apartment and he could have gotten in trouble if he hadn’t stopped it.”

Hmmm.”
Ellie said. “If Jerry was the one who killed Carey, and Will was going to expose him, then he’d have a motive for killing Will, but that could apply to the others as well. We’ve caught Jerry acting suspicious and furtive, but he always acts that way. I tried last night to get him talking about the graduation party, but he clammed up. He mentioned only that he stayed in Cambridge that summer and worked for G.B. Then he left for Chicago and said that he hadn’t kept in touch with anyone but G.B. since then. Of course, he could be lying.”

They looked up eagerly as Louise approached with the appetizers. They had ordered plates of fluke ceviche and frizzled clam strips for the table.

“I think I’ve died and gone to Heaven!” Iris said as she speared a piece of clam.

After every morsel was consumed, Luc excused himself to go compliment the trial chef and make sure that Arnold, his sous-chef, was keeping the pace steady. When he returned, he brought with him a bottle of dry Riesling.

Ellie resumed her report. “On the bus tour, I managed to get Alyssa talking about their ride up on Friday. She complained that they had hit rush-hour traffic on the Mass Pike and barely had time to check in to their hotel to change before getting to the dinner. If she’s telling the truth, then that lets them off the hook. That’s the kind of thing the police can track down, but how can
we
check what they say?”

Iris nodded.
“Same thing with C.C.
She said that she was in Connecticut yesterday afternoon checking out two projects for the magazine and flew up here afterward. That could alibi her as well for Will’s killing. I guess we’ll have to try to get others to verify their stories and to use our knowledge about them to test their credibility.”

“Right.
We know that every one of them would frame their grandmothers to divert suspicion from themselves. We’ll have to hope that they’re all too arrogant to consider themselves suspects.” Ellie directed her fork toward Iris. “When I spoke with Rachel on the phone, she seemed convinced that you’re the one who killed Will. She’s sure you lured him east to murder him as revenge for his catting around during graduate school.”

“She’s forgetting that that was 20 years ago. She gives my memory way too much credit.” Still, Iris felt a blush warming her cheeks. She avoided looking at Luc.

“Rachel had overheard Will talking on his cell phone on Wednesday, agreeing to meet someone for lunch before going out to Lincoln. It was someone going to Norman’s dinner, judging from Will’s side of the conversation. She assumed it was you. She told this to the police and said to check his cell phone call log. I tried to assu
re Rachel that you didn’t do it
—that I had talked with you that afternoon. I think I created some doubt in her mind about you being Iris-the-Ripper. She flew out here this morning and is waiting until the ME finishes with the body so she can to take it down to Rhode Island where his family’s from.”

Luc jumped into the discussion. “Do we know if the police found Will’s cell phone? If not, I guess they can trace his records through the phone company. Tracking down that caller sounds like the quickest way to identify the killer.”

“But can’t people block their number?” Ellie said. “Wouldn’t the murderer be sure to do that?”

“Luc, you said that your father was a Cambridge policeman.” Mack and Ellie both turned to stare at Iris, then Luc. “Do you know any way we could find out about that call?”

Luc leaned back in his seat. “My father’s old partner is still working. We keep in touch. I’ll try to see if he’ll tell me anything. I think we can assume that they went through the wife’s alibi with a fine-toothed comb. The spouse is usually the first person they suspect.”

“Unless there’s an idiot like me around to catch their eye.”

Luc winked at Iris and she felt deliciously happy. She was a suspect in a murder investigation and might even be next on the real murderer’s list. But here, in the glow of candlelight, she felt far removed from all that.

There was a moment of quiet appreciation as Louise brought their entrees. Iris had the gnocchi with morel mushrooms and fresh peas. Mac and Ellie had both opted for the scallops with braised fennel, rhubarb
beurre
blanc
, and candied pistachios. Luc rounded out the selections with the rock shrimp in aioli, but the others insisted he taste theirs as well for a proper evaluation of the new chef’s try-out.

“This is gastro-porn, my man!” Mack gave Luc a thumbs-up.

The decibel level was starting to climb as the restaurant filled up. “You need more fuzz in here, Luc,” Iris said.

He looked at her blankly.

“Fuzz, you
know,
soft stuff. Curtains, carpet, upholstered chairs. It absorbs the noise.”

“Ah, you’re right. I’ll have to get you in here as a consultant.”

The talk segued into a spirited debate about the relative perfection of each dish served that evening with the scallops finally emerging as the evening standout.

That issue resolved
,
Luc went back to the discussion of murder. “It seems to me that we should try to pin down what each of the five remaining suspects
were
doing before the dinner. When did you say the police thought he’d been killed, Iris?”

“Between noon and three.
That’s a good idea, but we’ll have to go about it indirectly. Alyssa and Adam claim to have been driving up here during that time frame. Maybe someone saw them pull in to the hotel parking lot. C.C. says that she flew up in the late afternoon. The airline’s got to have that on record.
then
, G.B. and Jerry are the ones that don’t seem to have alibis.”

“Mack and I are going to the luncheon tomorrow so we can try to pin down what G.B. and Jerry were up to then.” Ellie said.

“Yeah, I’m good at finding clues. I’ll just put on my dumb-spouse-along-for-the-ride act,” Mack said grinning.

“I think I’ll talk to Norman,” Iris said. “As the reunion chair he might know about people’s travel plans. I wish that I could get my hands on the hotel’s records showing when people checked in. But I guess the killer could have met with Will beforehand, so that wouldn’t really prove anything. Maybe I can pry out of Norman what that lunch with Jerry was about. Somehow I can’t see Norman conspiring with Jerry to kill Will. Jerry alone I could see.”

“I can pay a visit to my father’s partner from the force,” Luc volunteered. “Maybe I can pry loose some details about what Malone’s got.”

Hunched protectively over his rhubarb tart, Mack asked, “Should we tell Detective Malone about anything we’ve discovered?”

They looked at Luc, their new authority on all things police-related. He shrugged, rubbing a lemon rind around a delicate espresso cup. “It’s probably just Jerry’s coming up on Thursday and his having lunch with Norman today that they don’t know about already. I’ll bet they know about G.B. ditching his class. I’m sure they’re checking out the alibis of all of the classmates and G.B. You know, our edge isn’t just in your knowing the characters involved. It’s also the link that you’re making between Will’s death and Carey’s. That may bring up clues that the police aren’t focusing on. Once we get more
information, that
may lead us to motive for both murders. But the police aren’t going to believe our interpretation of events, especially if they consider Iris their prime suspect.”