Six

“YO, PLUCKY!” OZZIE BRIGHT HAD clipped out a news story and he handed it to me within seconds of my entering the office. “For your scrapbook,” he said.

I was touched. Ozzie was a man of a school so old he barely acknowledged that women had entered the workplace. In the several months I’d worked there—for Mackenzie, not Ozzie—he’d barely spoken to me, and then, only when I’d directly addressed him or asked a question. “Thanks,” I said, flattening out my voice, demonstrating that I was not a flighty female ready to burst into tears at this show of consideration. “Gotta get to work now.” I’d scored points with Ozzie for that exchange. I always did when I made myself sound like the world-weary, emotionally void private eye in a thirties mystery.

“It’s a bitch you don’t get paid for the work,” he said. “Freelancing doesn’t mean free, you know.”

I hadn’t thought of the cup-retrieval as freelancing.

“But good you mentioned the agency,” he added.

I hadn’t done that, either. My home phone gives the cell phone number in case of emergency and that, in turn, gives our names as part of the Investigative Office of Ozzie Bright. While Sasha was visiting, I had refused to answer the phone at all last night, couldn’t stand the idea of more wedding agitation, but I had apparently supplied my caller with enough information anyway.

“Misspelled it though,” Ozzie said before closing the door of his cubicle.

I looked at the news story. The reporter had written “Brite.” First Plucky, then Brite. Strike two.

I hadn’t done anything here except talk to Mackenzie and run out of the place the day before, and I had stacks of boring but necessary filing on my desk—reports, expense vouchers, printouts—plus bills and statements to prepare. I put the news clipping in my desk drawer and got to work, pausing only to kiss and greet Mackenzie when he showed up. I liked the days when we were both in the same place at the same time, even if we inevitably wound up doing our separate tasks.

I was preparing a bill for yet another hapless middle-aged man trying to find his first love when I heard the knock on the outer door of the office.

This does not often happen. Things have changed since the days of noir when the dame with the gams slithered into the office and hired the shamus. Most people phone their orders in because most wants are simple: find the girl I loved in high school; find out if my husband-who-I-know-is-cheating-on-me really is; find my child who has run away; find out who’s stealing inventory or my daughter’s heart or state secrets; find out if this guy’s for real. Photos can be scanned and sent, documents faxed or attached, and much of our work is done without ever meeting the client.

Visitors these days are mostly delivery boys bringing Ozzie his nightly pizza, but it was too early for that.

Besides, the door wasn’t locked. I shrugged and went to open it.

Instead of the acne-scarred pizza boy, I faced a tight-lipped woman in a leather blazer over a white shirt, tailored slacks, and chunky-heeled lizard shoes I immediately coveted. I gestured for her to enter, at which point I was able to see her handbag, which I also coveted. And while we were at it, I wouldn’t have minded the jacket, either. It looked so soft, it was just this side of melting off her.

“I’m looking for”—she pulled a news clipping, that story again, out of her pocketbook and checked it—“Amanda Pepper.”

I identified myself, and invited her to sit down. I decided, partly wishful thinking, that she wasn’t from a newspaper. Her wardrobe suggested she had more money than most journalists, and her behavior lacked their self-possessed pizzazz.

She seated herself and found a paper-free corner of my desk, where she placed and smoothed the news story. “You found him,” she said.

“If you mean Mr. Severin, yes. And you are?”

“Penelope Koepple.” It was an awkward name, made more so by her speech, which had a discreetly European flavor, though I couldn’t tell which country had spiced it.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

She smoothed the article again, unbuttoned her blazer, and leaned forward. “I believe I have information that might be valuable concerning Mr. Severin’s murder.”

Forget what I’d said—this was a thirties novel, after all. Unfortunately, I had no homburg and wasn’t fond of mean streets, so I had to behave as if it was actually the present. “If that’s so,” I said, “you need to tell the police.”

Her expression was stern and direct. I was sure I was supposed to quiver and quake under that fierce stare. “That isn’t possible,” she said. Her features and hair looked die-cut, and everything about her from the head down to those lizard shoes and the accent and modulation in between made it clear she was privileged, educated, and used to fine things. She seemed astounded to find herself here, in a poorly decorated, poorly maintained office. I was pretty surprised to find her here myself.

“May I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked politely. It didn’t seem proper to mention how awful the house java was.

She shook her head. “Thank you, but no. If you have tea—perhaps with the smallest dash of cream?”

I offered up apologies, and thought of how Ozzie would view such a request. She was lucky he was still behind his office door.

I buzzed Mackenzie. “I’d like my partner to sit in,” I said. “We handle our cases together.” That wasn’t true, but whatever she had to say concerned a murder investigation and those waters were too deep for the likes of me.

When C.K. appeared, I made the introductions, and he pulled up another chair. “Ms. Koepple was about to explain her problem,” I said.

“It isn’t my problem,” she corrected me. “Except in that I’m the one who perceives it as a problem.”

We must have both looked blank because she nodded, as if agreeing that she hadn’t communicated anything clearly. “I am Ingrid Severin’s social secretary,” she said. “For the past fifteen years I have kept her calendar, though these days, in truth, Mrs. Severin requires more in the way of a companion. I still answer her mail, decline invitations on her behalf, and so forth, but Mrs. Severin is in decline, so she spends most of her time in seclusion.” I had been wrong about the thirties noir business. We were much further back in history than that. I purposely avoided glancing at Mackenzie to see if he was as entranced and surprised by the arrival at our humble office of a woman out of Jane Austen.

“I am here, therefore, of my own accord, but on behalf of Mrs. Severin, who doted on her son. However, if Mrs. Severin were to know of this mission of mine, I’m afraid I would be summarily dismissed. This is why I cannot involve the police. If they were to come question us, or in any way make it known that I’d gone to them, it would cost me my position.”

Judging by her attire and accessories, her position was sufficiently lucrative. Things had improved for the help since Jane Austen’s time.

“I believe you said you had information related to Tomas Severin’s death,” I prompted.

She tilted her head. “You didn’t use the word ‘murder.’ Don’t you think he was murdered?”

“I honestly don’t know. I didn’t know him, and we never had a chance to speak.”

She held her head high and angled so that she was looking down the tidy slope of her nose at me. “He was drugged, was he not? That can’t have been an accident. Tomas Severin was not a man to risk humiliation with a pitiable street drug. Midday! In the city! Something so low in a man so dignified and respectable. No. Absolutely not. Somebody wanted to humiliate him, to remove his ability to think clearly, make wise decisions.” She shook her head. I coveted her haircut now, shaped so precisely that it swung, all strands synchronized, as she moved. “I believe that there was malicious mischief,” she said, “as I believe anyone would surmise. And further, I believe I know who is responsible.” Before I repeated the fact that she was obliged to take this information to the police, I couldn’t resist asking, “And that person is…?”

“Cornelius Westerly. Or so he calls himself. He’s the type to re-create himself at whim, and I’m sure his actual name is something rather less grand. Less traditional.” She sniffed, regally, and looked from Mackenzie to me.

This had to be somebody’s idea of a practical joke. Instead of the tough PI talk, give the English teacher an escapee from Sense and Sensibility. Cornelius Westerly indeed!

“And he is?” C.K. asked.

“Ingrid Severin’s…” She paused and made sure she had our attention. “…betrothed. Her fiancé.” She paused for dramatic purposes. “It is worth noting that he is thirty-two years old.”

My age, and a decade or two younger than Ingrid’s son.

“Ingrid Severin is seventy-eight,” Penelope Koepple said crisply.

I could barely squelch an immediate response, a question as to how wealthy—or not—Cornelius Weatherly was. I was sure Ms. Koepple would inform us in time.

“Are we to take it that the age difference troubles you?” Mackenzie asked mildly.

Penelope Koepple appeared to be a well-maintained fifty-something, though it was hard to tell, and now she raised her fifty-something well-plucked eyebrows and considered that sufficient reply to Mackenzie’s question.

“Age disparity is not a crime,” he said in response. “And as they say, love makes for strange bedfellows.”

She winced when he said “bed.” I was sure he’d chosen his words carefully especially since the saying referred to politics, not lovers, and he knew that. I could feel his growing impatience, his eagerness to get back to actual paying work or to studying. In either case, to stop having his time wasted, and I had to salute his Southern politeness and savvy that hid his emotions from the prospective client.

“You perhaps don’t comprehend the gravity of the situation,” Penelope Koepple said. “Ingrid Severin fades in and out of lucidity, and she is often rather muddled. Further, as you may know, she is in possession of significant assets, so whatever papers she signs, new wills she makes, deeds she transfers—especially when emotionally diverted, one can’t be certain she actually understands her actions.”

Money. We were getting to the problem.

“That includes understanding the nature of love,” Ms. Koepple continued. “The nature of the loved object. It is obvious to everyone except Ingrid that her young man is nothing more than a fortune hunter, but she apparently thinks she is half of the great love story of the century. She has said that it took nearly eighty years for her to find the right one. Although I never met Mr. Severin, senior—he died before I became his widow’s social secretary—he was not, apparently, the most attentive of husbands.”

“And Cornelius?” Mackenzie murmured.

“The most attentive of husbands-to-be. At least while he is embroiled in attending the financial aspects of the marriage.”

“A prenup?”

“And worse. An altered will, or plans for same. Mr. Severin was quite involved in attempting to prevent the process, and need I say there was strife aplenty? Although Tomas controlled and ran the business once he was of an age to do so, and until, of course, he sold it, Mrs. Severin inherited significant assets when she was widowed, among which are apartment buildings here in center city. I am sure I need not say that we are talking about real estate worth many multiples of millions. I speak on behalf of her legal heirs—Tomas and his children. I should make it clear that I have nothing at stake here. I am simply a concerned friend of the family. And with Tomas gone, the poor addled woman needs someone to speak for her.”

“And that’s it for her heirs?” Mackenzie asked. “Tomas and his children. And his heirs?”

It was a logical question, but Ms. Koepple looked startled and nonplussed. It took her too long to say, “I of course am not a lawyer and am not privy to his will, but there are no other heirs I know of, except for the obvious charities and bequests. There might be issues with designated heirs. Mr. Severin has been married three times, and divorced, shall we say, two and a half times. The most recent severance was not yet complete. He was staying with his mother, briefly, while issues were ironed out.” She paused, and sighed.

“The newspaper mentioned a widow,” I said. “Is she the half?”

She sniffed. “Nina. Indeed. The current Mrs. Severin was not going to keep that title for very long.”

“Discouraging to marry three times,” I said. Ingrid Severin had obviously forgotten to tell her son the mantra, “Remember, you only get married once.”

“All lovely women,” Penelope said quickly. “Good women, good families. It’s simply that…well, possibly by coincidence, the first was quite young—in her twenties as was Tomas then, and the other two were also young, though Tomas had aged. People, including Tomas, seem to consistently undervalue mature women.” Again, she looked at us each in turn. We were to understand that she was saying something negative about her employer’s son, but she was saying it—she thought—obliquely.

I wondered for how long Sasha would have lasted. At thirty-two, she was probably just on the cusp of being overripe for Severin’s taste.

Having editorialized, albeit mildly, Penelope returned to her point. “The children of the marriages would, of course, inherit from Ingrid, as I assume they will from Tomas himself, and possibly, his current wife.” She waved away the idea of the looming legal mess. “Other than them, there’s no one.”

Perhaps Tom Severin’s third wife felt the sting of his lack of interest in women as they matured, and perhaps it was worth doing anything to retain the title and the inheritance, including drugging the man and knocking him down a staircase. I’d have to think about that.

“Of course everything’s in a muddle now with this tragic death. Naturally, it was expected that his mother would predecease him and that his children would inherit the remainder of Ingrid’s estate at that time. However, Cornelius has replaced those children in her affections and attention. He’s convinced her that he should inherit the real estate.”

The millions of dollars’ worth of apartment buildings in center city—gone to the fortune hunter? “She agreed?” I asked.

“She dotes on Cornelius the way she doted on Tomas. She used to think the sun rose and set simply to please her son, but of late, the discord between the two men was acute, which put a strain between mother and son as well. Ingrid was trying to sort out what she should do. Of course, this unscrupulous man—”

“Interestin’, of course,” Mackenzie said. “An’ undoubtedly troublin’, but I’m still unable to see what you want of us.”

“Proof,” she said firmly. “Proof that he murdered Tomas.”

“He? Who?”

“Cornelius, of course.”

“But he wasn’t in the building,” I said. “How—”

“How do you know who was there?” she snapped back, and I could sense how it must have been to deal with her when she was guardian of Ingrid Severin’s calendar. “You weren’t on the spot when this happened, and surely there’s more than one exit.”

“But why kill him there? Assuming anybody wanted to do such a thing, and assuming there was ongoing strife—why there?”

“I don’t pretend to understand Mr. Westerly,” she said. “Nor do I wish to. What I do understand is that he’s an opportunist, and he has no scruples. If there was a sudden opportunity, he would seize it. Trust me on that.”

“How would he even know where Tomas—Mr. Severin—was going to be?” I asked.

She looked at me, too quickly, and then at Mackenzie, and then down at her pale pink nail polish. “They had an appointment midmorning at the lawyer’s office. I have no idea what was decided, but I do know there had been all-out war about the inheritance and time was running out. Ingrid’s memory is fading rapidly, and it was apparent to all of us that if she didn’t make the changes in her will soon, then it was probable no responsible lawyer would ever allow her to do so in the future. Tomas—of course he was concerned and trying to slow the process. Hence, the rush and the conflict. You see how reprehensible Cornelius is? And then—just when it appeared that sanity was going to reign and Cornelius would get nothing, which is precisely what he deserves—his opponent in the struggle dies in a most peculiar place and manner a mere hour or two after they’d had a meeting that was surely rife with discord.”

Her theory was porous, to put it mildly. Without thinking about it, I came up with objections and questions about the motive and the drug, including how Cornelius would have administered it, where he’d have gotten it, whether she was suggesting that he always toted it in case he was going to a rave, or was in the mood for rape—or found himself with the opportunity to kill his fiancée’s son. But I also remembered Sasha saying that Tom Severin had a vodka martini before lunch because he’d had an upsetting morning.

“The man is a disgrace,” Ms. Koepple said. “A gigolo preying on a woman who could be his grandmother, and who is barely holding on to her sanity. Who will speak for her if not me? She’s lost the son she loved above all things until her mind started going soft. And soon, the son’s children will lose their rightful inheritance, thanks to this dreadful man.”

I tried to generate compassion for the children who, after splitting up millions of dollars, were going to be denied the consolation of bonus apartment buildings when grandma died. “Has anyone in the family gone to the police?”

She shrugged. “This is not the sort of family you see on TV sitcoms. As I mentioned, Mr. Severin was in the process of divorcing his wife.”

“How about his other wives?” Mackenzie asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Ex-wives,” she corrected him. “As far as I can tell, they’d have killed him themselves if they could.”

“Not friendly divorces?” Mackenzie said.

Once again she raised her eyebrows. “Tomas doesn’t—did not—wear well with women, although there were always lots of them. Until a week ago or so, he had number four waiting in the wings. She considered herself engaged to him, although…” She shook her head slowly back and forth, not willing to actually mention, out loud, the simple fact that a man is not supposed to have become betrothed while he’s still very much married to another woman.

“What happened to her?” If she was referring to Sasha, I’d know Penelope Koepple was prone to overstatement. Not even Sasha believed the relationship had gone that far.

But she was talking about somebody else. “He grew tired of her, of Georgeanne—or, more specifically, tired of the prenuptial agreement, of the squabbling over it, of the greed. That’s what I understand. No great loss. From what I’ve observed, she’s a better match for Cornelius than she would have been for Tomas, not to speak ill of the dead’s choice in spouses, though he surely wasn’t good at picking them. But the fact is, birds of a feather, and Georgeanne is Cornelius’s friend. Childhood friend, she says, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the actual couple and this combined attack is all part of their plan.”

My head swam with wives present, intended, discarded, and prevented. Ms. Koepple’s theory of Cornelius and Georgeanne working in cahoots—he’d take the mother and she’d take the son, and they’d have the billions together—was too convoluted for what I knew of reality.

And where did Sasha fit in here? Or had she had a niche of her own at all?

“I have to once again advise you to go to the police.” Mackenzie’s voice dragged at the edges.

“And I would once again remind you that if I were to do so, Ingrid would fire me the first lucid moment she had. And even if she didn’t, I fear retribution from Cornelius. I consider him a dangerous man. Yet even so, if I had anything besides my convictions and the obvious two plus two of the situation, I would go to them, but what do I have? The fruits of long observation—a distrust of and disgust with this man and nothing else. They would laugh at me.”

Mackenzie leaned closer to her, and in his most winningly soft-voweled Louisiana bayou voice, he said, “What is it you want of us in that case?” It was a sweet, almost lulling sound, and I could tell by it just how exceedingly, nearly critically impatient he’d become at this point.

“I want you to find whatever would give me a case to take to the police. Isn’t that what you do? I have no idea how to find out who he really is, or what was or wasn’t said in the meeting, but you do.”

The money would be welcome, but not right now. Not with an already overflowing plate, with the wedding witches and their ridiculous all-consuming plans. I had already talked with Mackenzie about cutting back here until after the wedding, and he agreed.

In fact, he thought we both should because he, too, was feeling overburdened and pressured.

So no. Not possibly.

“I’m hiring you,” she informed—not asked—Mackenzie. “That’s what I’m doing.”

He nodded.

What was this? I wasn’t asking for us to have extrasensory perception or acute sensitivity, simply to remember what we’d talked about. Maybe Mackenzie no longer felt overworked. Maybe he’d reached a state of inner peace he hadn’t told me about, and he felt ready to accept additional work on his own. I didn’t see how, but what else could account for this?

“But you must understand, Ms. Koepple, that Ms. Pepper and I are a team, so when you hire one of us, you hire the other as well. We work together.”

“I understood she was a schoolteacher.”

I had obviously disappeared while I wasn’t looking—to both of them. He didn’t remember what I’d said about cutting back, and she didn’t even remember that I was sitting beside her. I cleared my throat.

“She is also an investigator,” Mackenzie said.

That wasn’t 100 percent accurate, but a schoolteacher-clerk doesn’t have the same punch.

“I understand.” She looked at me this time, and nodded. “Actually, I surmised as much from the minute I read the newspaper story. I only meant your other duties might…” She let go of that. “Now I am sure there are practical details to be arranged, such as your fees and retainer, and how to bill me, as I would not like any bills arriving at the household.”

Her efficiency and thoroughness were commendable. She must have been a hell of a social secretary. I wondered if Mackenzie would approve of a barter system. We’d handle Penelope’s fears, and she’d handle mine. Let her deal with my mother. It would be just her cup of tea. With the smallest dash of cream.