Murder.com (9 page)

They did indeed arrive early, and were pleasantly surprised at Casciano's articulate and witty talk on his art. Dinner was pedestrian as usual, at least by Reuben's lights, but the couple did find an extraordinary bargain on the Club's wine list—a 2000 Saint-Émilion, albeit a
cru bourgeois
—that tempered Reuben's usual Cygnus Club impatience.

After dinner, as they were strolling toward the entrance, they passed a display case containing photographs of the Club's annual “revels,” a pre-Lenten celebration in which the members performed skits, sang nonsense songs, and generally carried on in an outrageously silly fashion. Reuben had accompanied Cynthia to one such annual event and vowed never to do it again. A vow he had kept during her thirty years of membership in the Club.

Stopping to look over the display, Reuben asked, “Who the hell is that?” pointing to a picture of a formidably large woman, in drag—tails, a cape, a top hat, and a fake mustache—pretending to choke a smaller and seemingly terrified victim.

Cynthia took a closer look. “Oh my,” she exclaimed. “Even in that ridiculous outfit and pose, there's no mistaking her. It's Darcy Watson.”

“Hmm. Sorry Luis didn't see that when he was here earlier today. Isn't it just possible that life followed art?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Reuben.”

“I'm not. All I'm saying is that that woman could be Marina Courtland's murderer and, let's face it, she had a motive to kill her.”

“It's time we went home,” Cynthia said. “Just let me do one thing first.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just wait here.”

Reuben continued to gaze at the revels pictures until Cynthia returned.

“I have a little surprise for you, dear. On a hunch, I checked at the office to see if by chance Darcy Watson stayed here at the Club the night of April twenty-seventh. And the fact is she did.”

“Good God.”

Seventeen

Quatorze

“Life is getting complicated,” Reuben told Luis when he called him Friday morning.

“What do you mean?”

Reuben passed along the information that Darcy Watson had been in New York the night of the murder, contrary to what she had told Luis.

“Could she possibly have done it?” Reuben asked. He told Bautista about the pirate picture. “I've never seen her, but from that picture it sure looked as if she'd be capable of choking someone to death without any difficulty.”

“I have seen her,” Luis replied. “And I don't have any doubt about that. She's one big woman under all those silk clothes. With big hands, I remember.”

“Well, think about it. Meanwhile, I'll see you tonight.”

As planned, the two men met for dinner at Quatorze Bis on East Seventy-Ninth Street. Reuben had been there before—he was enough of a local to know it as simply
Quatorze
—but he was not acquainted with the staff.

“It's a good, solid bistro-type place,” he told Luis. He gestured to the walls, which were lined with book jackets of works from authors both well-known and less known. All were customers and mostly denizens of the neighborhood. The choices ranged from bestsellers to a doctor's diet book.

“Even if we don't discover anything, we'll have a decent meal,” Reuben added.

They had deliberately made their reservation for nine thirty, on the theory that the staff would be better able to talk to them at a later, less busy hour.

The maître d' turned out to be a friendly fellow named Gary. He did not take umbrage when they rejected a small banquette next to other diners and asked for a table instead.

“We have some business to transact,” Luis told him.

“Sure. No problem.” Gary seated them at a table for four, and removed two place settings without complaint. Reuben noted with amusement that they were seated under the book jacket for a recent gory murder mystery.

He asked for a martini, and Luis, technically on duty, settled for a glass of the house Chardonnay.

“Happy anniversary,” Luis said, when the drinks arrived.

“What do you mean?”

“Marina Courtland was killed just two weeks ago tonight.”

“Oh,” Reuben said, raising his glass. Then he asked Luis if he had had any further thoughts about Darcy Watson.

“Just one,” he said. “If she was lying about her whereabouts that night, maybe John Sommers was, too. Maybe they acted together.”

“Interesting idea. That hadn't occurred to me.”

“I've got a detective friend out in Suffolk County. I'm going to get him to check on Sommers's alibi—his story that he had dinner out there on the fatal night. Probably should have done it before this.”

Both he and Reuben ordered oysters—Malpeques—and attacked them enthusiastically.

“Damn good,” Reuben observed.

They then settled into portions of
blanquette de veau
, a favorite of Reuben's, who pronounced it more than satisfactory. By the time they had finished, the restaurant, full to capacity when they had arrived, was almost empty.

“You know, Luis, it's the damndest thing,” Reuben said, looking around. “I've always been told that everyone in Los Angeles, or at least Hollywood, eats early. People want others to think that they're involved in shooting a movie at sunrise the next day. Now the same thing's happening in New York. Not just at this place, but every restaurant Cynthia and I go to. What's going on? Can you explain it?”

“Terrorism,” Luis replied.

“Oh, for heaven's sake. What on earth does terrorism have to do with people eating early?”

“I was kidding, Reuben. But terrorism, or fear of terrorism, is now the all-purpose excuse for everything. For instance: My wife left me? Traumatized by fear of ISIS. Can't get it up? Spooked by ISIS. Haven't you noticed? It's the universal alibi.”

“Let's get back to the business at hand,” Reuben said, with a sigh. “I'm reasonably sure terrorists didn't have anything to do with our problem.”

“That's about all we're sure of,” Bautista replied. He called over Gary, the maître d', and explained that he was in the midst of a criminal investigation. He produced a print of the photograph from Hallie Miller's fake driver's license. “Do you know this girl?” the detective asked, discreetly handing the print over.

Gary looked at the photo and said, “Sure, I know her.”

“Name?”

“Hallie Miller. One of our regular customers.”

“What can you tell us about her?”

“I think she lives right around the corner. She comes in about once a week. Some of the waiters and I know her pretty well. We kid around a lot. She's usually here alone and sits at the table on the end in the back, reading a manuscript or galleys while she eats. We tease her all the time about not having a boyfriend and why she doesn't get married.”

“Did your teasing get a reaction?” Reuben asked.

“She always says she has all the time in the world to get married, and we'd be the first to know when she finds someone.”

“Has she been here lately?” Bautista asked.

“Come to think of it, I haven't seen her in a while. Ten days maybe?”

“How about two weeks ago tonight?” Bautista prompted.

“That could be. Yeah, you're right. It was very odd, that day, because she came here twice. Something she'd never done before.”

Bautista and Frost exchanged glances.

“You mean she had both lunch and dinner here?” Reuben asked.

“Yes.”

“Very strange. I realize your food is pretty good, sir, but twice in one day is certainly out of the ordinary,” Reuben observed.

“And you knew her by the name Hallie Miller?” Bautista asked.

“That's what I said.”

“No other name?”

“No.” Gary looked puzzled. “What are you getting at?”

“We have reason to believe that Hallie Miller and Marina Courtland, the woman—”

“Oh my God! The billionaire's daughter they found murdered over by the river?”

“Correct.”

“Jesus, one of our waiters saw her picture in the paper and said she looked like Hallie. We had an argument about it. As I recall, the newspaper shot was her college graduation picture. It looked something like Hallie, but I was sure it wasn't. But now you're telling me that Hallie was murdered?”

“Yes. And on the very night you last saw her here. So help us with any detail you can recall about that lunch or that dinner. Let's start with the lunch. Was she alone?” Bautista pressed.

“No, she wasn't. And she wasn't at dinner, either. Both times she had a guy with her—a different one each time. I guess that's why I remember the day, because she almost always ate by herself, as I told you.”

“Tell me about the fellow at lunch.”

“I don't remember too much about him. He was pretty trim, but much older. Could have been old enough to be her father.”

“Ever meet her father?”

“No, not that I'm aware of.”

“What about the one at night?” Bautista asked.

“He was much younger, but still older than Hallie—Marina. I'd never seen him before, either.”

Gary got up to say good night to the last dinner guests. When he returned, he asked if Bautista and Frost wanted to talk to a couple of the waiters who knew her. Bautista agreed that this was a good idea.

“Let me get them before they go home,” Gary said, heading back to the kitchen.

Soon they were a group of five—Gary, Bautista, Frost, and two waiters, Jerrod and Matt—sitting around an empty table, the two waiters in their “after-hours” clothes of T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers. The new arrivals looked as stunned as Gary had when Bautista told them the purpose of his visit.

“I told you that newspaper picture looked like Hallie, Gary!” Matt said.

“You were right, kid. It just seemed too improbable. That Hallie could have been leading a double life. Or that Hallie was wildly rich—she certainly never acted like a richie here.”

“She was a great girl,” Matt volunteered. “I'm practicing to be a professional drummer when not working at my slave job”—he looked at Gary as he said this (though he was smiling)—“and she was real encouraging when other people thought I was crazy.”

“You're right, Matt,” Jerrod said. “She was always interested in us and what we were doing. I remember about a year ago, I got a part in an off-off-off Broadway show—really bad production of
The Night of the Iguana
—and she came to see me perform. She was like that. Always cheering you on.”

“But, you know, now that you think about it, she kept her distance,” Jerrod added. “I never felt I knew anything about her personal life, except that she normally didn't show up here with anyone, until that last day, and that she was a book editor somewhere.”

“What about the fellows she was with two weeks ago?” Reuben asked. “If you all were so concerned about her having a boyfriend, you must have been curious about them.”

“I wasn't working the lunch shift, so I don't know about the lunch guy,” Matt said.

“I worked both shifts,” Jerrod added. “At lunch, she sat in her usual place in the back, but with this old fellow she came in with.”

“What about him?” Bautista asked. “White hair, brown hair, gray hair?”

“Brown, I guess, what there was of it.”

“Fat, thin, stocky, what?”

“Pretty trim. Not fat.”

“Glasses?”

“Negative.”

“Anything distinctive about him?”

“Not really. He and Hallie seemed very serious. Since he did most of the talking, I assumed he was trying to sell her something. He looked like he might be a salesman.”

“Any idea what they were discussing?”

“No, sir, I try not to overhear my customers' conversations. But I could see the talk was intense. They were all business. They also scarcely touched their food.”

“How about dinner? Did you serve them again?”

“I saw them when they came in,” Matt, who had been silent as Jerrod described the lunch hour, interrupted. “I was working the tables in the back, near the kitchen. It was one of the first nice nights we'd had so she wanted to sit at a table outside on the sidewalk.”

“I served them,” Jerrod said. “In fact, I started to make a little joke about twice-in-one-day, but Hallie cut me off rather sharply.”

“Did they seem affectionate?” Reuben asked.

“Yes, they did. Not all over each other, but, yeah, there was some juice there.”

“Did they hold hands?”

“Could be. But I didn't really notice.”

“As I told you, I was working the back tables,” Matt interrupted again. “At one point Hallie's date came by, on the way to the men's room. I remember thinking he was pretty attractive, but older than she was.”

“Was there anything special or odd about them? Anything out of the ordinary, or the way they behaved?” Bautista asked.

Jerrod thought about the question. “I don't think so,” he said slowly. “But now that you mention it, they left in a hurry—no dessert, no coffee. Hallie always had dessert. We always told her to watch out, that she'd get fat and unappealing if she kept eating big desserts.”

“You're right, Jerrod,” Gary chimed in. “It was really busy that night—Friday is our busiest night—and I had it in the back of my mind to go out and say hello to Hallie, and to satisfy my curiosity about who she was with, when I had a chance. But she and her friend paid the check and left before I was able to do that.”

“There was one other thing,” Jerrod said. “I remember now. A guy came walking down the street and stopped at their table. He and Hallie's date shook hands and he introduced the passerby to her. It was clear the date knew him, but she didn't.”

“You sure about that?” Bautista asked.

“Yes, pretty sure. I heard the guy say ‘This is Hallie,' but I didn't get his name or the stranger's.

“They chatted for a few minutes and the guy on the street showed them what I guess was his new phone,” Jerrod continued. “At least all three of them looked it over like it was something new, laughing about it. Then, just before he walked on, the guy used it to take a picture of Hallie and the guy with her.

“After he left, Hallie and her date had a really animated conversation, I remember. Both of them were gesturing with their arms as they talked. I noticed, because they had been quiet—almost dreamy quiet—before. Then suddenly the fellow with Hallie called for the check and seemed to be in a big hurry. They left as soon as he paid.”

“Maybe he had a train to catch?” Reuben suggested.

“Can't help you there,” Jerrod said, shrugging. “Maybe. No, wait—he had a set of car keys in his hand when they got up to leave.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure, yeah. I figured if they were going off in a car, they weren't going to shack up—pardon me—at her apartment. And I thought that because I saw his keys.”

“What time did they leave?”

“I'd say about nine, nine fifteen,” Jerrod said.

“What about this stranger who came by her table?” Luis asked.

“I don't really recall much about him.”

“Was he tall? Short? Dark hair? Light hair?”

“Medium height maybe, probably Hallie's age or a little older. Conventional-looking. Black hair, I think.”

“Anything else you can tell me about him?”

“Afraid not. He didn't leave that much of an impression,” Jerrod replied. Luis looked dejected.

“By the way,” he asked, having decided he'd reached a dead end regarding the mysterious photographer, “how did she sign her checks when she ate here alone?”

“She always paid cash,” Gary said. “Which I guess was necessary if her credit cards were in her real name. But, Jerrod, you said the guy was the one who paid that night.”