Chapter 22
AS SOON AS the Jet Blue Airbus landed in New York, I turned my cell phone on and called Walter. I told him I was on my way back to the Dakota.
“Did you get some useful information in Boston?”
“We have four new suspects to check out.”
I heard Walter’s deep chuckle. “That was a good trip.”
The trip was even better than he knew. I smiled, remembering how wonderful it felt to be in Matt’s arms.
Walter met me at the door with Magic riding on his shoulder. “Come into the kitchen. I made us sandwiches for lunch.”
While Magic munched on his Natural Balance dry food, Walter set out thick turkey sandwiches and a plate of sliced fruit.
“A very nice woman named Penny called about an hour ago. She’s having a little shindig for your friend Nancy tomorrow night.” He scrunched his face, summoning Penny’s exact words. “She said it’s a getting-out-on-bail party.” He grinned. “She invited me, too. That okay?”
“Of course it is! I want you to meet Penny. Matt’s partner, G. G. Flynn and G. G.’s wife, Brandi, will probably be there, too. The Flynns are my favorite couple.”
“I’d like to meet your friends,” he said.
Meaning Matt, I asked, “Did anyone else call this morning?”
“Nope.”
That was a pretty dumb question. Matt was on a case, trying to find out who murdered one of their police officers. I couldn’t expect to hear from him so soon.
I handed Walter the list I’d made on the plane: Laura and George Reynolds, and Ralph and Gloria Hartley. With Boston addresses and phone numbers. “The two men had affairs with Veronica Rose in the last year or so. Both the wives found out. To say the least, they didn’t take the news well.”
“That’s about as sure a thing as skunks showing up in the spring.”
I filled Walter in on my nonlunch with Cathy Chatsworth, recounting the scene in the Santa Maria Room.
Walter shook his head. “Anybody who thinks that Chatsworth woman is their friend is a fool.”
“Gloria Hartley had a nervous breakdown over her husband’s affair, and is now supposedly in Paris, getting even, but I don’t know if any of that is true. Yesterday, I saw for myself that Laura Reynolds has a very bad temper. George and Laura Reynolds are in Boston. Ralph Hartley’s secretary said he went to Tokyo, but I don’t know if that’s true. According to Cathy Chatsworth, he goes to AA meetings in Boston every day.”
As an afterthought, I took back the list and added two more names: Cathy Chatsworth, a.k.a. Olive Flitt. “This woman is vicious. I don’t know what she’d be capable of if she thought she was in danger of losing something she wanted. Suppose Veronica stole a man from her—or maybe Veronica was in a position to threaten her job at the Chronicle. I don’t think we should overlook her. Maybe that’s why she tossed us the other suspects.”
“All six of these folks—we gotta count Chatsworth with her two names as two people—will have to be checked out: police records, court records, financial records, where they go, who they know, what their bad habits are, what they’re hiding—all kinds of stuff. Deep-sea fishing, so to speak. It’ll take a while.”
Trying to sound casual, I said, “I heard from Matt. He’s going to try to help us, unofficially. I’m going to tell Kent Wayne about our list. Nancy needs all the resources we can gather.”
“Don’t tell the lawyer ’bout Detective Phoenix being on our side,” Walter said. “The NYPD isn’t going to take kindly to one of their own working to free somebody they already arrested. Professionally, he’s on dangerous ground.”
I realized Walter was right. “Any help Matt gives us will be our secret,” I said.
MY CELL PHONE rang just before midnight. It was Matt.
“Hi, honey. Did I wake you?”
“Yes, but I don’t mind.” Remembering our delicious night together, a happy little shiver went through me. “What’s happening with your case?”
“We caught the guy who shot Officer Drew. A miserable crack addict, so out of his head he said he didn’t know Drew was a cop—he thought the uniform meant Drew was in the Navy!” He took a deep breath and let it out. That seemed to relax him a little. “Killing a cop is murder one. New York hasn’t put anybody to death since the nineteen sixties. He’ll die of old age in prison.” Matt’s voice took on an edge. “Unless he gets a lawyer like Kent Wayne. Then he’ll probably get off with a fifty-dollar fine.”
“That isn’t very likely.” Quickly changing the subject, I said, “Penny’s having a little party for Nancy tomorrow night.”
“Yeah. Because we arrested her, I wasn’t sure G. G. and I should be at her getting-out-on-bail party, but we talked it over and decided that since technically the case is closed, it’s okay. We just won’t advertise it.”
“Thank you for keeping an open mind about Nancy.”
“I’m glad I did.” I heard a teasing smile in his voice. “Are you bringing a date tomorrow night?”
“Walter Maysfield. Did you tell Penny about him?”
“What little I know, which isn’t much.”
That was another subject I was eager to avoid. “I’m looking forward to the party.” To seeing you, is what I meant.
“Me, too,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”
WEDNESDAY EVENING, WALTER and I met Nancy at her building, the Bradbury on West Eighty-first Street. I’d called her just as we were leaving the Dakota, so she was downstairs, waiting for us.
Walter and I climbed out of the back of the cab, but left the door open. I introduced Nancy to Walter.
Walter acknowledged her with a “Pleased to meet you,” and a gallant little incline of his head, but Nancy reached out and drew him into a hug.
“You’re Morgan’s friend, so you’re part of our little family,” she said warmly.
We reached Matt’s red brick townhouse on East Sixty-eighth Street a few minutes past seven. The big terra cotta pots on either side of the black lacquer front door were full of gloriously blooming scarlet geraniums. And, at the beginning of summer, Penny had edged the house with an eighteen-inch-wide bed of pink and red begonias.
Matt greeted us at the door, smiled at me, and said to Nancy, “No hard feelings, I hope.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were just doing your job,” she said graciously.
Matt shook hands with Walter. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Maysfield.”
“You, too, but call me Walter.”
“Brandi and G. G. are here already,” Matt said, leading us into the living room.
G. G. was sunk into the soft cushions on one of the two sofas that flanked the fireplace, and Brandi came from the wet bar against the wall, bringing him a drink.
“Hi, there,” Brandi said with a cheerful little wave. She handed G. G. his Scotch over ice, then gave Nancy a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here with us!”
G. G. heaved himself up from the downy depths of the sofa’s cushions. He greeted me with the gruff warmth I’d become used to, and offered a big, rough hand to Nancy. “No hard feelings.”
“None at all,” Nancy said.
G. G. Flynn was two inches shorter, ten years older, about twenty pounds heavier, and had only a fraction of Matt’s hair. He looked like a TV stereotype of the overweight cop a few years short of retirement, but Matt had said G. G. was one of the sharpest investigators he’d ever known, and there was no one with whom he’d rather risk his life on the job.
After Matt introduced Walter to the Flynns, Brandi and I went into the kitchen to see if we could help.
“Out, both of you,” Penny said, shooing us back in the direction of the living room. “Everything is under control. I’ll be with you all in a minute.”
When Brandi and I rejoined the others in the living room, we found Walter and G. G. chatting like old friends.
“You have more murders in New York—you got a lot more people—but we got the corner on weirdness,” Walter said. “Did you ever find a body that’d been hit on the back of the head with an ax handle, then drowned in a tub of moonshine?”
G. G. snorted. “Kid stuff. Did you ever find one vic in two separate parts of a building?”
Yuck, I thought.
Brandi shuddered with revulsion. “Oh, Georgie, stop that. Can’t you two boys talk about something besides dead people?”
Walter was immediately contrite. He stood up from the club chair next to G. G.’s end of the couch. “My apologies, ma’am.”
Brandi beamed a delighted smile at him. “How nice.” She maneuvered around the other end of the couch to sit next to her husband.
Nancy said, “I’m going into the kitchen to say hi to Penny.”
“She’ll throw you out,” Brandi warned.
G. G.’s mouth curved into what I called his “Brandi smile,” that loving expression his big face took on whenever he looked at his wife. She settled onto the couch and he squeezed her hand. “I’ll be good,” he said.
Conversation turned to sports, with Walter and G. G. arguing the relative merits of the Miami Dolphins versus the New York Jets.
Returning from the kitchen, Nancy took the club chair opposite Walter, and charmed the men with her knowledge of both teams, and of her personal favorite, the Pittsburgh Steelers. She’d been a football enthusiast going back to our college days, but I’d never learned to tell a scrimmage from a down. I’m a baseball fan.
Behind the bar, Matt was pouring glasses of wine, and watching me. Being in the same room with him after our night together was a little awkward. I was as nervous as a teenager, but it was a good kind of nervousness, ripe with anticipation. Matt brought me a glass of red wine, we exchanged smiles, and I began to relax.
Penny came out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of deviled eggs, baked mushrooms, and eggplant caponata with tiny little triangles of Italian bread for dipping.
“Something for everybody,” she said.
Matt took the tray from her and set it in the middle of the coffee table between the sofas, within easy reaching distance of all of us, while Penny passed out cocktail napkins and little hors d’oeuvre plates.
G. G. surveyed the tray. “Before I decide on this stuff, what’s for dinner? I gotta pace myself.”
“Chicken Parmesan, roasted red and yellow peppers, and steamed green beans. For dessert we’re having pineapple sherbet and miniature brownies.”
“Penny’s using us to test out things she’s going to make on her TV show,” Matt joked.
“Ma’am, I’ll be your guinea pig anytime,” Walter said.
Without my asking, Matt put two deviled eggs and a scoop of the eggplant mix on a plate and handed it to me. Nancy saw that gesture of intimacy—his knowing what I liked without asking—raised her eyebrows, and flashed me a smile of approval.
Matt picked up another plate and asked, “What can I give you, Nancy?”
Echoing the famous punch line from When Harry Met Sally, she said teasingly, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Brandi got the joke and giggled, causing Penny to look up in curiosity.
“What’s funny?” G. G. asked.
Brandi nudged him and said, “Tell you later, sweetie.”
Before I could steer the conversation onto less embarrassing ground, the doorbell rang. Penny went to answer it.
Matt told a story about his first week out of the police academy. “I got a tip from a numbers runner on my beat that there was a big-time drug trafficker in the Wildwood projects—he gave me the apartment number. Imagining winning citations and a gold shield, I went to the captain. Based on my information he got a warrant and arranged a full-on raid with the drug guys. I got to come along, but I had to stay in the back. I was still trying to Velcro my vest when they broke down the door and found a little old lady rolling joints for her husband who was going through chemo.”
“Oh, how embarrassing,” Brandi said. She was sympathetic, but G. G. and Matt were laughing.
Penny returned to the living room. “Now we’re all here,” she said.
Matt’s and G. G.’s laughter died when they looked up to see the man standing beside Penny.
Jaunty in a navy cashmere blazer and gray slacks, and carrying a gorgeous bouquet of tulips, daffodils, and tea roses, was B. Kent Wayne.