Murder on the Potomac (11 page)

Mac and Annabel didn’t say much on the drive home. But once inside the house, and after Annabel had placed the music box on the mantel—“What a beautiful gift,” she said—they sat in the kitchen, where he told her of his conversation with Tierney.

“What do you think?” Annabel asked.

“I don’t know what I think,” was his response. “Somehow, I believe him. I don’t think he wrote those letters. On the other hand, maybe he did. If he didn’t, somebody not only wants to link him to Pauline’s murder, they’re out to destroy him personally.”

“Will you make the phone call?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s a small thing. I doubt if I’ll learn much, but I’d like to be able to say I tried.”

“Who will you call?”

“MPD.”

“Detective Eikenberg?”

“She’s the lead detective on the case and the one who told Wendell about the letters.”

“Do what you think is right. Now excuse me. I brought home the account books from the gallery to reconcile this weekend. I think I’ll get started.”

Smith intercepted her on her way out of the kitchen and embraced her. “How about extending a perfect day on the Potomac? Just the two of us.” He nuzzled her ear with his nose and attempted to kiss her neck. She disengaged. “Let’s save your ardor for another day,” she said.

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Call me in the morning.”

He stood in the kitchen and heard her go to the den and wind the sterling music box—the tinkle of “Sailing, Sailing, over the Bounding Main …” drifted from the room—and then to the bedroom, where she had a small desk. She closed the door behind her.

Smith sat at the kitchen table and glanced at mail they’d brought in. Rufus placed his oversized gray head on his master’s lap and looked up with wet, soulful
eyes. Smith scratched behind the dog’s ears. “I think the lady of the house is upset, my hairy friend, because she thinks I’m going to end up in the middle of another murder. She’s wrong, Rufus. Not Guilty.” He cocked his head and said, “You look skeptical, Rufus. Careful. Remember what they say about biting the hand that feeds you.”

Rufus continued to stare at him.

Smith sighed. “All right. All right. I change my plea, Your Honor. Guilty—but with an explanation.” He took a leash from where it hung from a wooden peg and slipped it over the dog’s head. “Walk time,” he said.

Monday Morning

“Professor Smith.”

Mac turned at the mention of his name. “Good morning,” he said. “What brings you to these hallowed halls?”

“A meeting. I’ve been named adjunct professor of economics,” Sun Ben Cheong said. He
sounded
pleased with his announcement. His face said nothing.

“Well, welcome. And congratulations.” They shook hands.

“Nothing like a real professor,” Cheong said. “Just one class a semester on investment banking.”

“I can’t think of a better person to teach it. And anyone who can teach well is real—and rare. Missed you on the cruise Saturday.”

“Couldn’t make it, Professor Smith. I was out of
town on business. I understand it was a typically pleasant day on the
Marilyn
.”

“Extremely.”

“Well, nice to see you. I’m honored to be on the same faculty.”

“The honor is all mine.”

Smith caught up on an hour’s worth of routine administrative details in his office before leaving Lerner Hall and heading for Twenty-fifth Street. He was early for his lunch date at the Foggy Bottom Cafe and considered taking a walk to kill the minutes. Instead, he entered the restaurant, sat at the bar, and had a Bloody Shame, a Virgin Mary renamed and disarmed—in England, he seemed to remember—to appease Catholic waiters who balked at placing the more familiar order.

Smith sipped the spicy, reinforced tomato juice and thought about bumping into Sun Ben Cheong at the university. From everything Smith had heard, Cheong was a financial genius. Which didn’t, of course, necessarily translate into being a good teacher. Time would tell.

The pretty young barmaid was in the middle of a story about how her car died the previous night when someone tapped Smith on the shoulder. “Am I late?” Darcy Eikenberg asked.

Smith glanced at his watch. “Right on time,” he said. “The punctual detective.”

“And the early professor.”

“Preferable to being the late professor. Drink?”

“I may not look it, but I am on duty. A rain check? Sometime when I’m off duty?” She wore a properly fitted beige sweater and knee-length brown leather skirt.

Smith tossed a few bills on the bar and indicated to the host they were ready to be seated.

A club soda with lime in front of her, Smith’s mild Mary in front of him, they bantered about the weather, sports, the day’s political headlines.

“… I really think he’ll win in November,” she said. “And I’m delighted you took me up on my offer to have lunch.”

“At first, I didn’t think I could. Have lunch. No, I don’t think he’ll win.”

“Small bet?”

“Sure. Then I realized a previous lunch date had been canceled. So, here we are, Detective. Tell me how the Juris case is progressing—if you can.”

“First, the bet. Ten dollars?”

“I’m a lowly professor. Make it a dollar.”

“You’ve got it. The Juris case? Of course I can discuss it with you. I can do anything. But—I may choose not to. Let me see. You called about the letters to Ms. Juris written by Mr. Tierney. Yes, we found letters in Ms. Juris’s apartment. They came from him.”

“So sure?”

“No reason not to be. They were very intimate and contained material only he was likely to know.”

“How many letters?” Smith asked.

“A half-dozen.”

“More than he led me to believe.”

“The number doesn’t impress me. One would be enough.”

Smith cocked his head. “Enough for what?”

“Enough to convince me that Mr. Tierney and Ms. Juris were having an affair.”

“Somehow that strikes me as too large a leap in assumption.”

She smiled, reached across the table, and placed her
manicured fingertips on top of his hand. “You’re right, of course. It is just that, too large a leap. At least at this juncture.”

“Wendell denies having written the letters.”

“What does he have to say about having had an affair with her?”

“We haven’t discussed that. I don’t believe he did. Have an affair, that is.”

“An unusual man.”

“I don’t think so.” Smith started to exclaim that he hadn’t had an affair since being married to Annabel, or during his longer marriage to his first wife. He didn’t. Not having an affair outside of marriage was as private a matter as having one. “ ’Tain’t nobody’s business if I do,” as Billy Holiday once explained musically. Or don’t, Smith added to the lyric.

“You will show the letters to Wendell,” he said, his tone saying he expected an affirmative answer.

She disappointed him. “Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how they fit into the overall investigation.”

“I see.” He looked up at the young waiter who stood over the table, order pad and pencil at the ready. Smith would have his usual chicken Caesar salad but asked for a menu for Eikenberg. She chose a grilled shrimp salad.

The order in, Eikenberg said, “I suppose you read about the deceased’s former husband, Dr. Wharton.”

“Yes. I understand they were married only briefly.”

“About as long as my husband and I lasted.”

Smith draped an arm over his chair’s back. “I have to admit a certain curiosity about marriages of extremely short duration,” he said. “The people in them must not have known each other very well.”

“I suppose that would represent the majority of cases.
It wasn’t true in my marriage. My husband and I knew each other too well. We went through undergraduate school together.”

Smith was happy the service was unusually swift this day. He didn’t want to go any further with this phase of their conversation. He speared a chunk of chicken.

“Go ahead,” Eikenberg said. “Ask me all the questions you want about why my marriage ended with the speed of a single bullet.”

Smith glanced up and grinned. “No,” he said. “No questions. But free-associate if you’d like.”

“Okay. He was a handsome devil. Still is. The juices flowed fast and furious. God, I thought, this is a miracle. Everyone I knew was going with guys who were okay, but this was different. This was heaven-sent. Meant to be.” She giggled. “And so we got married the minute we graduated and settled into our ‘adult’ lives.”

“Sounds like it followed the script,” said Smith.

“Oh, it did. Except whoever wrote it started changing the lines. Nick, my husband, who always said he wanted to start his own business, settled instead for a job with the Census Bureau. That’s what brought us here to D.C. He became a bureaucrat, and I joined the force.”

“How did he react to his wife becoming a cop?”

“Hated it. Thought all women cops were lesbians. At any rate, we started to go our separate ways, living together sometimes, living apart more often than not. Modern. We’re good friends.”

“He still with Census?” Smith asked.

“Sure is. A big shot.”

“And you climbed the ladder at MPD.”

She laughed. “Too quick for Nick. This lesbian was
accused of using her sexual wiles to gain favor with the male brass. Meet the original androgynous woman.” Her laugh was more throaty this time.

“An interesting tale,” Smith said, digging into his salad. “I’m glad you’re still friends.”

“How long have you and Mrs. Smith been married?”

“Not long enough,” he replied.

“Nice,” she said. “How long is that?”

“Three years.”

“Second marriage for both?”

“For me. My wife and son were killed by a drunk on the Beltway.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Needless to say, I contribute to MADD,” Smith said. “You mentioned Dr. Wharton, Pauline’s former husband. I read that he was coming to Washington to be questioned.”

“Already has. He came, and we questioned him.”

“Anything come of it?”

“First, let me ask: Are you serving as Tierney’s attorney?”

“More like a friend in court—in this case, out of court.”

The pretty detective said, “Wharton happened to have been in town the night she was murdered, met with her briefly, at least according to his story. It seems they owned a piece of land together in West Virginia and got together to discuss whether to sell it.”

“Ah-hah,” Smith said with exaggerated flourish. “A suspect.”

“Along with everybody else. No shortage here.”

“Was he the last person to see her alive?” Smith asked.

“Not sure. She also met late that night with the director of the theater group that puts on those historical murders for Mr. Tierney’s Scarlet Sin Society.”

“Seymour Fletcher,” Smith said.

“Yes. You know him?”

“You asked me that at the house. No, I don’t. By the way, I asked my wife about having overheard that conversation between Wendell and Pauline. She had but forgot about it.”

“Fine.”

“What brought about this late-night meeting between them?” Smith asked.

“Money. According to Mr. Fletcher, Ms. Juris was dispatched by Tierney to lay down the law about budgets. Evidently, the theater group has a habit of exceeding them.”

“Par for the course in this town—and in Hollywood. I take it there was animosity between them.”

“Mr. Fletcher’s hatred of her drools out of both corners of his mouth every time he mentions her name.”

“Another suspect.”

Eikenberg laughed softly. “As I said, the whole world is suspect at this point, Mac.” She touched his hand again and drew a deep breath. Smith couldn’t tell whether it was in preparation to say something difficult, or a sigh of contentment.

Her next comment failed to answer the question. She said flatly, “You’d like to see the letters.”

Smith was surprised that she even raised the possibility. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”

She leaned forward, and her face lightened. “Then you
are
Tierney’s attorney.”

“No, I am not his attorney. Are you offering to show me the letters?”

Her expression was that of a mother deciding whether a child had been good enough to receive a reward. They locked eyes. “No,” she said. “But that’s today. There’s always, as you’ve heard, tomorrow.”

Smith said gruffly, “Sometimes tomorrow doesn’t show up for people in trouble. Okay, you’ve been forth-coming about the letters, although you really haven’t told me any more than you told Wendell. I suppose I can’t blame you for that. I like people who play by the rules. But maybe you’ll tell me just how intimate the letters really are.”

“Do you mean were they filled with prurient, erogenous memories of intense sexual encounters between them, replete with loving descriptions of bodies and passionate moans? No, not that bad. They are—and I think the term I used originally is apt—they are love letters. Letters from a man to a woman with whom he is very much in love.”

Up until that statement, Smith had been neutral about whether the letters had been written by Tierney. Now he had doubts. Tierney might have been involved with Pauline Juris sexually, but the pragmatic businessman would not have fallen in love, and certainly wouldn’t have gushed poetic on paper. Smith didn’t say what he was thinking. He waited for Eikenberg to say more.

She did. “I think it only fair to tell you, Mac”—the use of his first name continued to be, at once, unsettling and pleasant—“that someone has leaked the letters.”

Smith straightened in his chair. “Leaked them to whom? The press?”

She avoided his eyes by focusing upon her half-eaten lunch.

“I’m afraid so.”

His anger showed.

She looked up and shook her head in a gesture of sadness. “They’ll be in the papers tomorrow morning.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you can’t release those letters to Wendell Tierney, yet they end up in the goddamn newspapers?”

She held up her hands in a gesture of defense. “Don’t say ‘you.’ I had nothing to do with it.”

“Then who did? Who had custody of them within MPD?”

“The evidence unit.”

“Some unit,” Smith said.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I’ve demanded an internal investigation to find out who leaked them.”