Murder on the Cliff (30 page)

Her legs were getting stiff, but she didn’t dare move for fear of making too much noise. She was amazed that Lester hadn’t heard her: in the silence, her breathing sounded as loud as a steam engine. After ten or fifteen minutes, the sound of a twig snapping alerted her that someone else was coming. This time the steps were softer and faster—the rippling steps of light, nervous, hurrying feet. She crouched down again to get a better view. After a few seconds, another pair of legs appeared. When she saw them, she realized that she had been wrong about Billy: he was an innocent after all, just as Lew had said. But she had been right about someone witnessing the murder, and blackmailing Lester as a result. That someone had tiny feet shod in expensive red suede moccasins embroidered with the crest of a well-known designer. She was holding a pearl-handled derringer in her dainty, white, immaculately manicured hand, which was adorned with a diamond and pearl ring. Although she couldn’t see her face, Charlotte was sure who it was. The diminutive, elegantly shod feet and beringed finger could only belong to one person: Nadine.

For a moment, Charlotte was nonplused; Nadine’s appearance on the scene was not what she had expected. The last piece of the Mystery-Jig puzzle didn’t jibe with the solution she had so carefully worked out. In her mind, she reexamined the pieces to see where she had gone wrong. Nadine had said she stayed behind until the caterers left while Paul gave Shawn a ride home. But what she really stayed behind for was to see if Paul came back. Maybe he had said something that aroused her suspicion or maybe she had found out somehow that his other lover was in town. Either way, she suspected that he had an assignation, and she was going to hang around to check it out. As Charlotte watched her approach the courtyard, she worked out the new solution. When Paul doesn’t come back, Nadine realizes that not only is he not going to marry her, he’s probably going to dump her. No sooner has she come to this realization than Lester shows up. She sees him go out to the temple, come back and move the car, and conceal himself from Shawn. Then she sees him carrying Okichi’s things out to the temple. Maybe she discovers Okichi-
mago
’s body after he leaves, or maybe she doesn’t put two and two together until she hears about the suicide, but in either case she quickly sees that Lester is the answer to her problems. If Paul dumps her, she’ll lose her source of financial support. The sale of the lot on Bellevue Avenue—Charlotte thought of the beeches with a pang in heart—would tide her over for a while, but what about after that? But by blackmailing Lester, she can live for the rest of her life in the style to which she’s become accustomed. As Spalding had said, people will go to almost any lengths to hang onto their houses on Bellevue Avenue. She knows Lester is willing to pay through the nose to avoid going back to jail. And her newfound riches aren’t likely to arouse suspicion in a town in which large inheritances are an everyday occurrence. As for the person on the point, it had probably been a teenager, just as Tanaka had said. But that still left Charlotte with the question of where Billy had gotten the money to buy the boat.

All this took but a minute or two for her to think through. By now, the woman had reached the courtyard. Her face still wasn’t visible—she was wearing a scarf that shielded her profile—but when she leaned over to pick up the flight bag, Charlotte could see that it was Nadine. As she turned to leave, Sullivan appeared in one of the dormer windows on the second story with his service revolver drawn. “Police,” he shouted. “Drop your gun!” Brogan was covering him from the roof with a shotgun.

At Sullivan’s command, Nadine took off with the speed of a gazelle. Before he could even get a shot off, she had fled the courtyard, and was headed down the path toward the parking lot.

As Nadine approached her hiding place, Charlotte raised herself from her crouching position. In one second, Mrs. Vanderbilt’s famous words ran through her mind: “Just pray to God, my dear.
She
will help you.” Then, as Nadine came running down the path, she deftly stuck her right leg out in front of her. Nadine took a header, and her gun went flying.

Emerging from her hiding pace, Charlotte quickly retrieved the gun, and stood over her quarry, the gun aimed at her head.

In a second, Lew was at her side.

“Good work,” he said.

“I haven’t used that trick since fourth grade.”

“Uncle Brewster,” Connie was saying.

“Who’s Uncle Brewster?” asked Charlotte. “Aunt Lillian told me that Billy didn’t have any uncles, much less any rich ones.”

“He’s actually not an uncle. Don’t ask me what he is. He’s the grandson of my great-uncle. Lillian probably didn’t tell you about Uncle Brewster because she’d forgotten about him, as we all had. He’s the original hippie. I shouldn’t even call him a hippie, because he came way before the hippies. He went out to California in the fifties. I guess you’d have to call him a beatnik.”

“How did Billy meet up with him?”

“Billy went out to live in Haight-Ashbury in the sixties and looked him up. Brewster was in his early forties then, but he seemed ancient to the young hippies like Billy. They looked up to him as the grand old man of the counterculture. Of course, we all knew he had a lot of money, but we never thought about it because he didn’t live like a rich man—more like a bum, in fact.”

“Wabi,”
muttered Charlotte to herself.

“What?” asked Connie.,

“Never mind,” said Charlotte with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“I guess he thought of Billy as a man after his own heart,” Connie continued. “They’ve kept in touch all these years. One thing he could be sure of: Billy wasn’t going to use the money to buy a pretentious stockbroker Tudor in Old Greenwich and become a member of the establishment; I think that was his main concern.”

“No,” Charlotte agreed, “I guess he could count on that.” She remembered what Lew had said about people like Billy leading charmed lives. As Lew had predicted, he had again landed on his feet, like a cat. “But how did he come up with the money so fast?” she asked.

“I imagine he borrowed it. It’s not difficult to borrow against a big inheritance. Spalding did it when his mother died.”

Connie and Charlotte were standing on the terrace at Briarcote. The Sayonara party was just getting underway. Charlotte could sense that Connie and Spalding—but especially Spalding—would be glad to get it over with. Two murders weren’t what he had bargained for when he had taken on the presidency of the Black Ships Festival Committee.

It was a beautiful evening. The evening light had tinted the sea a still, luminous green, which was flecked with turquoise: the color of Okichi-
mago’s
sake cup, and of her eyes. On the horizon, the sea made a line that was as sharp as a knife against the pale blue bowl of the sky, which was marred only by a few wispy clouds high in the heavens.

Charlotte would miss the floating world that was Newport.

A number of guests had already arrived, among them Paul Harris. Charlotte noticed him talking earnestly with Dede. She had abandoned her streetwalker look for an outrageously short Japanese-style tunic. It was the perfect outfit for someone with her lovely figure and long legs. Charlotte was surprised to see them talking together: she hadn’t thought Paul would ever speak to Dede again after the indentations her spike heels had made in his tatami mats.

Connie noticed Charlotte’s glance and raised her crossed fingers.

“Are you responsible?” asked Charlotte, nodding at the twosome.

“I hope so,” said Connie.

“What did you do?”

“I told Paul that Dede was planning to major in historic preservation at college next year,” said Connie. “She’s very interested in it. It’s a natural subject for her: she’s very artistic and she’s fascinated by historic houses. I guess she picked that interest up from spending her summers here in Newport. The whole town is one big historic restoration.”

“Do you think she’s going to replace Okichi-
mago
as his protégée?” asked Charlotte speculatively.

“Maybe,” Connie replied, her blue eyes shining with hope. “He’s the kind of man who needs a protégée. Somebody to mold. And God knows, Dede needs a father figure. Spalding’s been a good grandfather to her, but she’s never had a father figure. If he did take her on, it would be the best thing that’s ever happened to the family. Marianne and Paul could cease their bickering.”

“And Paul could die without an heir and feel as if Shimoda were being left in good hands,” said Charlotte.

Connie’s attention was diverted by the new arrivals, among them Lew and his wife and children. As a member of the local committee to promote tourism, he was an
ex officio
member of the Black Ships Committee as well.

As Connie chatted with Toni, Lew joined Charlotte at the bar. “I just thought I’d let you know,” he said, a wide smile on his face, “Sullivan picked up the contract killer this afternoon.”

“He did!” said Charlotte exclaimed. “How did he track him down so fast?”

“Parking ticket,” said Lew. “When he was scoping out The Waves, he parked his car at the end of Ledge Road, which is a no-parking zone. The police ran a check of parking ticket recipients against the files and came up with his name, or rather one of his names—he has about a dozen aliases. Routine inquiry and a stroke of luck—it’s what does the trick in police investigations every time.”

Charlotte remembered seeing the police scooter ticketing the parked cars on Ledge Road on the morning she had visited Shawn. “What did he look like?” she asked. “Did you see him?” She was thinking of the wandering tourist she and Shawn had seen on the Cliff Walk, the man wearing the baseball cap and yellow windbreaker who had studied them through his field glasses.

“Yeah. I was there when they brought him in. A thin guy with long, scraggly hair, a baseball cap, and very weird eyes: hard and shiny. They kind of rolled around in his head like loose marbles.”

Charlotte hadn’t seen his eyes, but the rest of the description fit the man she had seen on the Cliff Walk perfectly. She remembered him looking down at a piece of paper. She had thought at the time that it was a map, but it had probably been a photograph of his mark.

“A free-lance criminal: anything you want for a price. Burglary, safecracking, dope-peddling, murder. A witness identified him, someone who lives in one of the second-floor condos at The Waves. Saw the whole thing, but was afraid at first to come forward. They also found some bloodstains in his car that they expect will match Shawn’s blood.”

So, Lester had bought himself a killing, just as she had suspected. She thought back to Miller’s tips on how to get away with a murder: either do it yourself on the spur of the moment or hire somebody else to do it for you. Lester had tried it both ways.

“Something else too,” said Lew as the bartender handed him a beer for himself and a wine spritzer for Toni.

“What?”

“Remember the topknot you saw at Shawn’s condo? The one that someone had sent to Shawn to harass him?”

Charlotte nodded.

“It was Hayashi,” said Lew. “After what you said about him holding up the sign at the sumo match, Sullivan decided to bring him in for questioning. When they started grilling him about Shawn, he got scared and admitted to sending the topknot. He said he did it because he didn’t want to see a foreigner become a
yokozuna;
it was an insult to Japanese national pride.”

It was also jealousy, she thought, remembering how he had mooned over Okichi-
mago
at the geisha party and later insulted her by calling her
Tojin
Okichi. “Did you see the paper today?” she asked.

“Didn’t get a chance,” Lew replied. “What did I miss?”

“Yoshino Electronics just bought Paragon Studios. The idea is to merge the technical and artistic sides of the business. Tanaka and Hayashi may not like Americans, but they’re going to have to get used to us if they’re going to be running the country’s biggest entertainment company,” said Charlotte. It was one thing to buy office buildings and factories, but it was quite another to take over a business that struck so close to the heart of the American spirit.

“I guess we’re going to have to get used to them as well,” said Lew. “Was Paragon your studio?”

“Mine and most of the top stars in the business,” she said. “Which means the Japanese now own all my old movies.” It was the pending deal with Paragon that Tanaka must have been thinking about when he took his midnight stroll on the Cliff Walk on the night of Okichi-
mago
’s murder.

Toni had joined them, and Lew handed her her drink. The children had taken off for the cove at the foot of the lawn. The sight of them reminded Charlotte of Nadine’s sons. Their fate was the only unpleasant note in the final outcome. She had no qualms about Nadine going to jail, but she hated to see her boys suffer on account of it.

“What’s going to happen to Nadine’s kids?” she asked Lew. “Are they going to be ostracized because of what their mother did?”

“I’ll defer that question to my lovely wife,” said Lew.

“I doubt it,” said Toni. “People aren’t ostracized by society anymore because a relative has committed a crime. Not by Newport society, anyway. If that were the case, there wouldn’t
be
a Newport society. In fact, in some circles, having a relative who’s committed a crime, or, for that matter, even having committed a crime yourself, carries a certain cachet.”

“At the worst, her crime will be looked on as a social climbing accident,” Lew added. “Injuries sustained in a fall off the ladder.”

“But who’s going to take care of them?”

“Probably their aunt and uncle,” Toni responded. “The brother of Nadine’s former husband and his wife. They live here in Newport. They’ve practically raised Justin and Charlie anyway. When Nadine stayed with Paul, they always stayed there. Their sons are about the same age.” Her warm brown eyes smiled. “They’ll be all right. They’re good, solid kids.”

Charlotte was relieved.

As they talked, Charlotte caught sight of Marianne on the other side of the crowded terrace. She had battened herself to the side of a handsome young naval officer. Her nostrils were quivering, and her eyes had taken on a trancelike glaze. Hadn’t she learned? thought Charlotte. The last time she’d gone off the wagon she’d nearly gotten herself killed.