Little Black Book of Murder Read online

  “I’d call her feelings mixed,” I said.

  “If Swain had been killed on the night they broke up, I’d have said Marybeth did it. Nobody gets angry faster than Marybeth, especially when she’s drinking. And her husband leaving, after four children? No jury on earth would have convicted her.” He caught himself. “Well, that’s an exaggeration. This is off the record, right?”

  “Sure. Did Marybeth’s money really get Swain’s fashion house off the ground? I’d heard as much but never knew for sure.”

  Crewe nodded. “Funny to think one of the great fashion houses of the world got started thanks to a hot dog. He’d still be Sam Schulman, cutting men’s suits in a sweatshop if not for Marybeth. I kind of admire her, though. She could have spent her life blowing his money, plus what she inherited from her family. But she used that capital to build her own career in genetics. She was driven to succeed, just like her grandfather.”

  The prototype pig was important to her, I thought.

  We couldn’t continue our conversation because the auctioneer came out on the stage. As the crowd broke into polite applause, Crewe handed me his list and I glanced at it. I found myself thinking about Swain Starr and his wives. If he had married Marybeth only for the money she could bring to the marriage, had he finally thrown her over when he found true love with Zephyr? Had he been secretly so needy that he sought the kind of geisha-­like attention she gave him?

  As those in the crowd found their seats, the auctioneer called the event to order. He was the senior partner in the firm, and his appearance indicated the high esteem they held for the art in Lexie’s collection. He made opening remarks, smiling smugly that such a well-­heeled group had turned out for the auction.

  The first painting was wheeled onstage on a portable easel, covered with a dark cloth. As the lights dimmed in the auditorium, the audience murmured with anticipation. On the stage, a pinprick of light glowed on the dark cloth over the painting.

  Crewe leaned close to me again. “Now that we’re here, this is just painful.”

  “I feel the same way,” I murmured, rubbing the goose bumps that had broken out on my arms. “But I wanted to come for Lexie’s sake. She might actually have enjoyed it, you know.”

  It seemed impossible that a woman of Lexie’s pedigree might find herself suddenly penniless, but it had happened fast and furiously. She had inherited her father’s financial firm and built it to even greater heights. But a partner’s hubris—­and his stealing from their clients—­led to tragedy, and now Lexie was serving a sentence for manslaughter. From prison, she was trying to make things right for the clients who’d lost their investments.

  The auctioneer told his runner to remove the cloth from the easel, and the first painting was revealed.

  It was the Gauguin that Lexie had inherited from an aunt. Not one of the artist’s masterworks, the canvas was nevertheless lively with bare-­breasted native women gathered under palm trees in a slanted evening sunlight. Hot tropical colors seemed to leap off the cool greens of the background. Lexie had boldly hung the painting in our college dorm room, for heaven’s sake, and I could almost hear her roaring laugh as she set it on a nail and stood back to see how the fabulous painting looked in our untidy room. How many nights had I drifted off to sleep while gazing at the hot, romantic Tahitian sunset?

  I reached for Crewe’s hand, and he took it. He didn’t look down at me, though. I think he was struggling to keep his own composure, too.

  The bidding started. I saw paddles flash in the crowd, and the beautiful young women who sat at the bank of telephones were also busily signaling the auctioneer. The numbers escalated quickly—­by the millions.

  Whoever was bidding didn’t know what a spell the painting cast in an otherwise dingy dormitory. The Gauguin had brought out the spirit of travel and adventure in Lexie and me. It had presided over our late-­night talks and our sometimes less-­than-­earnest studying. When we threw parties, the frame had been decorated with Christmas twinkle lights and feather boas. I felt sure the painting would never again be loved as intensely as we had loved it back then.

  Crewe handed me his handkerchief just as I managed to wrestle my own out of my handbag. I dabbed my nose. He put his arm across my shoulders. We didn’t speak as the auctioneer pounded down his gavel. Thirty-­nine million, paid by a bidder on the telephone.

  The runner stepped back so photographers could snap pictures of the painting. In the flash of cameras, the colors suddenly seemed to fade away.

  Four pieces were sold before I realized I was feeling light-­headed. Perhaps the stress of the auction or the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since my slice of dry toast earlier—­I wasn’t sure which to blame.

  I touched Crewe’s arm. “I think I’ve had as much as I can take.”

  “Me, too,” he said—­glad to focus on me, not his own overflowing emotions. “As soon as there’s a break, let’s blow this joint and get some lunch. I’ve thought of somebody who might know Zephyr.”

  He whisked me out of the building, and we were soon seated in a small bistro Crewe claimed served the best mussels in town. I forgot about my struggle that morning to fit into the Dior that matched my coat and fighting back frustration when I belted myself into my cheap wrap dress instead. I dug into the mussels meunière as if I hadn’t eaten in a week. Over lunch, Crewe and I talked about the auction and whether or not it might earn Lexie enough money to ease her firm’s financial crisis.

  Our waiter must have told the chef that Crewe was in the house, because as soon as the lunch rush was over, he came out and sat at our table. For all of Crewe’s self-­deprecation, he was perhaps the leading food expert in the city, and people came to pay homage. The chef was a heavyset young man with a shiny pink face and his hair contained in a traditional toque. He set a dish of ice cream in front of Crewe and passed a spoon to me, too.

  Crewe introduced us. “Nora, this is Carlo Pinto, one of my favorite chefs in town.”

  “One of many?” Carlo protested with mock umbrage. “Give me back my ice cream!”

  But Crewe pulled the dish closer, laughing. “What have you brought us, Chef?”

  With a grin, Carlo hunkered down on the table with both meaty elbows. “A bacon hot-­fudge sundae.”

  I put down my spoon. I could see the bacon bits floating on top of the dense ice cream, and I suddenly lost my appetite.

  But Crewe laughed with delight and grabbed his spoon. “Now, this is a man’s dessert!”

  “Give it a try.”

  Crewe dug in and popped a creamy spoonful. He rolled the treat around in his mouth and began nodding even before he’d swallowed. “Excellent,” he pronounced. “A hint of smoke, a suggestion of maple. Savory, yet slightly sweet. The mouth-­feel is rich. Is it on the menu yet?”

  “We’re refining it.”

  I said, “Who’d have thought that pork would become the hot new ingredient in this age of healthy eating?”

  “Pork is king,” the chef agreed.

  “I wonder,” I said, “if you planned on buying any pork from Swain Starr?”

  Carlo shook his head. “It’s a shame he was killed, right? I hoped to get some of his product. He was going to have top-­notch hogs.”

  Crewe looked intrigued. “What kind of hogs?”

  Carlo said, “He said he was raising his own special cross. He told me it was going to be the perfect pig—­a blend of all the best qualities of an American commercial hog that was the brainchild of the Howie’s Hotties people, and a lean and mean feral pig found only in the wilds of rural Louisiana, known for its really great fork tenderness. Plus a dash of a Siberian wild boar, for some reason. Cross-­breeding like that often results in sterile animals, though, which means the genetic line ends. But I’ll tell you, if he pulled off what he claimed he was working on, we were all going to be enjoying bacon in wonderful new ways. He was very secretive, thoug
h. He didn’t share any samples of the meat.”

  I said, “The Rattigan family thinks the credit—­and the breeding stock—­belongs to them.”

  The chef shook his head. “Maybe the Howie’s Hotties hogs were the beginning. But as far as I knew, the final product was all Starr. That’s what he said, anyway.”

  As far as I could tell, Marybeth thought the credit belonged to her alone. It sounded to me as if Swain had been grabbing the limelight that was due to his ex-­wife. If Marybeth was angry enough, might she have killed her ex for that? But I remembered my orders from Gus and said, “Did Zephyr come along when Swain spoke with you?”

  Carlo got a sappy grin on his face. “Zephyr? You bet. I just wanted to look at her while Swain did all the talking. With her standing beside him, he was very persuasive. But her thing was organic milk and vegetables.”

  “Did you buy milk and vegetables from her?”

  “I was going to, as soon as her harvest came in. Who could say no to that face? And that body?”

  Crewe said, “I knew Swain Starr as a fashion designer. But you make his death sound like a great loss for foodies everywhere.”

  Carlo nodded. “That’s about the size of it. Are you writing a column about him?”

  “I might,” Crewe replied, already pulling out his notebook.

  I tried again. “I thought Tommy Rattigan was going to be Swain’s partner in pigs.”

  “I never heard anything about a partner,” the chef said. “My only contact was with Swain himself. And Zephyr. Man, she’s something to look at.”

  “Hmm.” Had Swain Starr commandeered the pig-­breeding venture from Marybeth and Tommy? “Is there a chance somebody might have wanted to stop this perfect pig from coming to market?”

  Both Crewe and Carlo looked startled by such a question.

  Quickly, I said, “I’m just wondering because Swain died under terrible circumstances. Unless the killing was a random act, it takes a big reason to kill somebody.”

  “I don’t know who might have wanted to stop his pork operation,” Carlo said. “I guess you’d have to ask the police.”

  Crewe went on studying me as the chef changed the subject back to his ice cream. The two men continued their conversation.

  But I thought about pigs a little more. I had planned on serving Ralphie all winter long, but once we’d gotten to understand and enjoy his personality, I couldn’t send him to the butcher. Since adopting him as a pet, I’d learned how personable he was. Still, hogs were big business.

  I interrupted Crewe and Carlo again. “How much does a pig sell for?”

  “One like the kind Swain was raising? Several thousand dollars.”

  “Per pig?” I asked, surprised.

  “They were going to be really special pigs.”

  I had seen only one litter of piglets at the farm. How many babies had there been? Eight? Ten? And he had planned on a whole pasture full of them. More than a hundred sows, he had told me. If every mother pig gave birth to eight piglets, that was—­I did the math—­a lot of money.

  Carlo saw where my thoughts had gone. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t chump change. Swain had a gold mine on his hands.”

  “I think what Nora’s wondering,” Crewe said, “is whether somebody might have killed Swain for starting this venture in pork.”

  Carlo shrugged. “I deal with a lot of farmers. A few of them have screws loose. I suppose one of them might have felt his livelihood was being threatened. But killing Swain? I doubt it.”

  “Maybe the Rattigans wanted their valuable Howie’s Hotties breeding stock back again?” Crewe suggested.

  “That would make one of the Rattigans . . . a murderer?” the chef asked, aghast.

  Instead of worried farmers or angry hot dog heirs, though, I found myself thinking about Zephyr again. Carlo said she hadn’t spoken much. But Swain brought her along when he pitched his pork to the restaurant owners. How had she felt about her beauty being used in an oblique way to help kill and sell animals? Remembering the way she had wept over chickens, I could guess how Zephyr felt about raising thousands of pigs destined to be slaughtered. She might have been happy to keep dairy cows—­no animals were hurt in the production of organic milk. But if she thought her husband was going to start killing large numbers of specially bred pigs, perhaps she might have wanted to find a way to stop him.

  I saw Crewe looking at me with concern. I managed a smile. “Don’t mind me. I’m just daydreaming. Finish your ice cream.”

  “It’s been a tough couple of days for you,” he said gently.

  “Yes.” I gathered up my handbag and gave him what I hoped felt like a jaunty kiss on the cheek. “And this one isn’t over yet. I must get to my office. Thank you for lunch, Chef. Your food was delicious. Just what I needed.”

  I couldn’t put it off any longer. Stiffening my spine, I went to see Gus Hardwicke.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The rain had given way to overcast skies, so I walked across town and thought about what I could write about the hillbilly supermodel.

  I tried phoning Michael first.

  “Yeah,” he said when I asked about the note he’d left on my laptop. “Sorry I forgot to tell you before you left. Things got busy. My guy in West Virginia had all kinds of information.”

  Trying to decide how reliable the information might be, I asked, “How do you know this friend?”

  “He’s not a friend, just a guy. I met him inside. He ran a small-­time racket, riding around remote mountains on an ATV to buy prescription painkillers from grandmas, then turning around to sell the stuff to the grandkids. Got caught when he drove over a ravine, and the rescue crew found him with enough Oxy to sedate a herd of elephants, plus enough cash to buy the herd, too. Hell of a way to make a living, but it paid for his vacation home in Belize. I hear it’s a nice place.”

  I should not ask questions about Michael’s prison acquaintances, I told myself. I never liked the answers.

  I said, “What did he have to say about Zephyr?”

  “Not the kind of stuff that gets printed in People magazine. She grew up pretty rough—­big family, isolated cabin, no central heat. It was a low-­rent chicken farm that went bust. She was the middle kid of, like, five sisters. When the chicken business went south, Dad started cooking meth. Mom died young—­likely beaten to death by her husband.”

  I must have made a squeak of dismay because Michael said, “It gets worse. Zephyr took care of the younger kids. Her real name, by the way, is spelled with two fs. Zeffer. Eventually, two sisters went to jail for solicitation, one died of an overdose, the last one’s getting rich in the meth business. At sixteen, Zephyr got into some kind of small-­time pageant thing with the help of a local, like, wedding store that gave her dresses for free, and she won, and that was how she got out and started modeling. Anyway, word is,” Michael said, summing up, “before Zephyr got off the mountain, she killed her father.”

  My breath stopped. “She—?”

  “Yeah. Plugged him with a shotgun during a family dispute in the middle of the night. You don’t want to think about why that went down. Or what kind of a mess a shotgun makes at close range.”

  No, I didn’t. “Why hasn’t anybody heard about this before?”

  “She was never arrested. Dad was a shit everybody hated. One of the daughters—­fourteen years old—­was pregnant at the time of his death, so the local cop figured the shooting was justifiable. And once Zephyr got famous, the community rallied behind her. Proud of the hometown girl, they kept her secret.”

  “How does your guy know all this?” I asked, hoping the story couldn’t possibly be true. “Why is he talking now?”

  “He’s known it for a long time, but I guess the surviving sister made a move on his territory, cutting into his profit, so he’s taking his revenge. Swears on a stack it’s all true.”

&n
bsp; “Why punish Zephyr for her sister’s drug dealing?”

  “That’s the way it goes with those crazy drug people. No scruples.”

  I let that judgment call slide. Instead, I thought about Zephyr killing her father. Whatever the horrible circumstances were, she had pulled a trigger once. Did that mean she was capable of killing her husband, too? Would committing murder be easier the second time around?

  “Thank you,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “That’s as much as I could stomach.”

  Far more than I could. I was feeling nauseated all over again. But I said, “Michael, Crewe says his newspaper is working on a story about a gangland war.”

  “Oh yeah?” He sounded relaxed. “What gang?”

  “Yours.”

  “Oh hell,” he said, “there’s no war going on. Just a few pissed-­off cousins making threats. If things get bad enough, somebody will tell Nonna, and she’ll make us all come for lasagna and a lecture about going to confession more often.”

  He made it sound so benign. And I wanted to believe him.

  He added, “In your whole life, you never tasted lasagna worse than Nonna’s. So nobody wants to risk the heartburn. This will blow over.”

  “Okay,” I said uneasily.

  “Gotta go,” he said. “Another call.”

  I put away my phone and walked a little farther, thinking about Zephyr. I’d had no clue she had come from such a hardscrabble background. Yes, everybody had heard the barefoot-­holler story, but maybe nobody realized how true it was. That blank face she wore on runways—­so chic as she strutted before cameras wearing fabulous gowns—­had hidden some very unglamorous secrets.

  But I couldn’t write about it in the newspaper. I didn’t have the right ruthless streak.

  By the time I got to the Pendergast Building, it was late afternoon and the big newsroom was almost empty. The few reporters who remained on the staff were either in meetings somewhere or on their way home. Only Skip Malone, one of three sports reporters who still worked for the Intelligencer, sat at his desk. He had a phone pinned to one shoulder, and he was typing madly on his computer. Like the rest of us who remained at the newspaper, he was doing the work of two reporters. He glanced up when I walked past, though, and gave my red coat and boots a raised thumb of approval.