Murder on the Potomac (23 page)

“I will.”

Smith got in his car, started the engine, and reached under the front seat, where he’d placed the envelope
containing the letters and Pauline Juris’s family history. He placed them on the passenger seat, turned on the radio, and headed for the city and police headquarters.

Detective Darcy Eikenberg had a meeting scheduled that morning with Chip Tierney and had left MPD headquarters minutes before Smith arrived. She’d told Chip on the phone that she also intended to question his fiancée, which prompted him to suggest the three of them meet. Eikenberg vetoed the suggestion. If Chip had been having an affair with Pauline Juris, he wasn’t likely to admit it in the presence of his intended.

Once they agreed that the two of them would get together that morning, it became a matter of choosing a place. Chip hadn’t gone to work at Tierney Development because of his adopted brother’s arrest; Eikenberg had reached him at home. His low voice said that he wasn’t anxious for anyone else in the household to know that he was speaking with her. She offered to come to the house, but he was adamant. He suggested the Bistro in the Westin Hotel on Northwest M Street.
She knew the place; Nick had taken her there a few times. Trendy, good food and expensive.

Chip was two cups of coffee late, and Eikenberg didn’t attempt to hide her pique. They sat at a table for two by a window. “Sorry, but I got bagged by some business calls,” he said. She ignored his apology. “Can I buy you breakfast?” he asked.

“Thank you, no,” she said, flipping open a steno pad that rested on the table.

“Mind if I have something?” he said. “It’s been such a busy morning, I never got around to breakfast.”

“Suit yourself.” She uncapped a royal-blue Parker fountain pen. “Being late has set my schedule back, so let’s get right to the point.”

“All right. Fine.” He waved for a waitress who took his order of a mushroom-and-cheese omelet. “Did you get hold of Terri?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m meeting her later today.”

“I’m sure she’s real shook up about this. I mean, getting a call from a detective and knowing why she’s being questioned.”

“I’ve been told you had an affair with Pauline Juris.”

The blunt statement had its intended impact. He sat back and placed his hand over his heart; she hoped he wasn’t about to raise his right hand and take the Boy Scout oath.

“Did you?” she asked.

She knew the answer by observing him. His hand shook as he returned it to the table; his mouth quavered. He said, “No. Pauline and I were just friends. She worked for my father for a long time and knew me when I was a little kid.” He forced a laugh. “An affair with her? No way.”

“Why? Because she wasn’t attractive?”

“Oh, you mean—no, it wasn’t that. Pauline was pretty enough, I guess. In a plain sort of way. She was married once,” he said, as though being married were a barometer of physical appeal. “No, I sure didn’t have any affair with her. Not because of … No, because I’d never mess around with someone that important to my father.”

“Did your father have an affair with her? There are the letters.”

He averted his eyes and was obviously relieved when the waitress arrived with his tomato juice and coffee. Eikenberg pressed on. “There are a number of people who say you and Pauline were intimate.”

“Who would do that?”

“The who isn’t important. They’re people who knew you and Pauline pretty well.”

“They’re liars.”

“Did Ms. Pate, your fiancée, know about you and Pauline?”

She observed him closely. He was exactly where she wanted him, on edge, not sure of the right thing to say, of what answer would be acceptable and stave off further questions. “I told you—”

“If your fiancée knew about you and Pauline, she would have had a motive to kill her.”

“Terri? Come on, Detective. You aren’t going to tell her that, are you?”

“Tell her what? About your affair with Pauline?”

“No. Tell her that you think—well, yes, you aren’t going to tell her that you think Pauline and I were getting it on?”

“What I tell her is my business.”

“That isn’t fair,” he said. Anger had now joined his mix of facial expressions. “It isn’t true. About Pauline and me. You don’t really think Terri could have killed Pauline because—”

“Because she was jealous?”

“Of course not. She had nothing to be jealous about.” He placed his palms on the table and leaned forward. “Look, I don’t know who killed Pauline. It sure wasn’t me, and it’s absurd to consider Terri a suspect.”

“Did she dislike Pauline?” Eikenberg asked.

He sat back again. “She barely knew her.”

“What about other people in your family, Chip? Did any of them suspect you and Pauline might have been ‘getting it on,’ as you put it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, they had no reason to suspect anything like that.”

“You were discreet?”

“No, I—”

“Your brother is in big trouble, isn’t he?”

The younger Tierney seemed relieved that the subject had changed from Pauline’s murder to Sun Ben’s arrest. “He isn’t guilty of what they say he did,” he said. “It’s a frame-up to cover for Sam Tankloff. Sam is the one they should be looking at, not Sun Ben.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Talk to my father.”

“What was his relationship with Pauline?”

“Who? Sun Ben? I don’t know. He didn’t have much to do with her.”

“Your sister?”

A small, satisfied smile formed on his lips. “Okay,” he said smugly, “now you’re talking about somebody
who had
real
feelings about Pauline. Suzanne hated her.”

“Why?”

“Because Suzanne hates my father, that’s why. She’s been convinced for a long time that Dad and Pauline were having an affair. She accused him of it many times. When those letters surfaced, she really started attacking him.”

“Was he—your father—having an affair with Pauline?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know my father. He wouldn’t—” He seemed to realize that to issue a blanket denial about a rich, handsome, driving father was sophomoric. He lowered his voice and said, “I just know he wasn’t.”

Eikenberg glanced at her watch. Time to wrap this up. She felt a certain loathing for the young man seated across from her. She would have preferred him to be brash and arrogant, to refuse to answer her questions without an attorney present, to tell her to get lost. Instead, he was like jelly, spineless, used to getting his way because of money and good looks and family. Darcy had a particular dislike for people like that. She said, “Do you know what I think, Chip?”

“What?”

“I think you and Pauline had something going, at least at one time. I think your father did, too. And if I were at the ballot box, I’d vote for him.”

“My father didn’t kill her.”

“I think he did. I think she was blackmailing him by threatening to tell your mother, which would not only
blow him out of the water where she’s concerned, it wouldn’t be so great for business, either.”

For a moment she thought he might be about to admit something painful. She saw the words form on his lips—you could almost see them formulating in his brain—but he held back. He didn’t have to say anything else as far as Darcy was concerned. It had been a fruitful forty-five minutes. She hadn’t the slightest doubt that he and Pauline had been romantically, or at least sexually, involved. He wasn’t kidding anybody. Certainly not her.

She left him sitting at the table and walked out of the restaurant, through the lobby, and onto M Street. The rain continued to fall. She hadn’t brought an umbrella that morning and cursed her lack of preparation. She reached her car, which she’d parked on the street a block away, and called in to Homicide. “A Mackensie Smith was here to see you,” she was told.

She smiled. “What did he say he wanted?”

“He said it was important that he talk to you about the Juris case. Said he’d be home until one. After that, he can be reached at his office at GW from three till five.” The secretary gave Eikenberg both numbers.

She reached him at home. He was brief and to the point. “I have some information I thought you’d be interested in.”

“Concerning the Juris case?”

“Yes.”

“I can come to your house right now,” she said.

“No,” he said too quickly. “I’d rather meet with you some other place.”

She smiled again. No one that morning seemed to want her to come to their homes. Maybe his wife was
there. Or maybe he was afraid to be alone with her. Darcy liked that scenario.

“Tell you what,” Smith said. “I teach this afternoon from one till three and have a meeting after that. Would you consider a drink after work?”

“Of course,” she said.

“I’m ending up in Arlington late this afternoon. I’ll be free by six. The Rooftop Restaurant at the Key Bridge Marriott?”

This was getting more interesting all the time, she thought. A drink with Mackensie Smith. In a hotel. “I’ll be there at six sharp,” she said.

Annabel’s first stop that Friday morning was the National Building Museum where the Great Hall was being transformed into an opulent setting for Saturday night’s Scarlet Sin Society black-tie dinner-dance. She bounded up the stairs and joined other members of the finance committee in the pension commissioner’s suite. She was the last to arrive. Once everyone was seated, Don Farley closed the door and resumed his place at the table, saying in his usual pleasant way, “I called this meeting for several reasons. One was to have Mr. Factor update us on the schedule for catered parties through the end of the year.” Morris Factor headed the museum’s catering operation, an important source of revenue. “But circumstances have changed that plan. Morris came down with a nasty cold and wasn’t able to come in today. He did tell me on the phone, however, that bookings by private organizations have increased dramatically.
Why that is, I don’t know, but it certainly is good news.”

Annabel looked around the table and noted that Sam Tankloff wasn’t present. She returned her attention to Farley, who had other agenda items to cover. Two were disposed of in minutes.

“I thought we might use the remaining time—and I understand how pressed each of you is for time—for Hazel to give us a further report on the missing funds. Hazel.”

Hazel Best-Mason appeared ready, even anxious, to speak. Multiple file folders were open on the table in front of her. She said in her usual brisk and efficient manner, “I haven’t concluded my audit as yet of the special fund, or where the missing money might have ended up. But I have come to a preliminary conclusion. It’s evident that Pauline siphoned off proceeds of the special fund for her personal use.” She quickly looked at Annabel. “I realize it’s difficult to make such an accusation without being able to confront the accused,” Best-Mason said. “But reality dictates that isn’t possible. The question was raised at a previous meeting about Pauline’s lack of money in her personal bank accounts. That was misleading. Shortly before her death, she’d purchased a sizable tract of land in West Virginia for one-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The money she used undoubtedly came from stolen museum funds. Hal has verified the land purchase.” Hazel’s husband, Hal Mason, was D.C.’s planning commissioner, a sensitive and powerful position that brought him into frequent contact—and often conflict—with the area’s major builders, including the Tierney Development Corporation.

As far as Annabel was concerned, the conclusion Hazel had reached was still based upon an assumption. But she wasn’t about to argue the point. Cases had been made in courts with less tangible evidence.

Comments now flew around the table, most of them expressions of dismay at what they’d heard. Annabel said to Best-Mason, “May I see those vouchers again, the ones Pauline used to withdraw the money?”

“Of course,” Best-Mason said, sliding that folder in Annabel’s direction. Most of the vouchers had abbreviations scribbled on them in Pauline’s dreadful, almost illegible handwriting. Annabel got to the bottom of the stack, then started from the top again.

“Is something bothering you, Annabel?” Best-Mason asked.

Annabel responded without looking up or abandoning her task. “No. Just trying to make sense out of this.” She finished, closed the folder, and returned it to the controller.

Don Farley said, “I think Hazel has done a splendid job. And we obviously owe Hal Mason our gratitude for aiding her in getting to the bottom of things. The much larger question now is how we proceed from here.”

“That’s something for the board to decide,” a committee member offered.

“Yes, of course,” Farley replied, “but I do think we should be ready to offer our recommendations. Obviously, anything should be done with an eye toward minimizing the public-relations damage to the museum.”

“Why do we have to do anything?” Hazel Best-Mason asked. “It happened, unfortunately. But I don’t see any reason for it to become public knowledge.”

Farley raised his eyes and hands. “If only that could be the case,” he said. “But we all know how these things have a habit of finding their way into the press. Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

Annabel offered, “It’s been my experience that stonewalling this kind of thing only compounds the problem when it eventually does get out. Remember Mr. Nixon and his tapes.”

“Are you suggesting we recommend to the board that they make full disclosure?” Farley asked.

“No. I’m not a PR person. We have a public-relations and advertising subcommittee that should make that decision along with the full board. It just seems to me that those people who’ve donated money to this institution have a right to know that some of it—and obviously we’re talking about a small portion—has been misappropriated by a museum employee.” She paused, then added, “
If
that is what happened.”

She hadn’t expected Hazel Best-Mason to respond so angrily. “Are you doubting the conclusion I’ve reached?”

Annabel smiled and said, “Of course not, Hazel. I think you’ve done a good job of drawing a plausible conclusion from circumstantial evidence.” She made a show of looking at her watch. “Unless there’s something else important on the agenda, I really must go.”