Kiss of Death

FRIDAY NIGHT, BOBBY arrived first, shortly followed by Kent Wayne and Nancy. Wayne, who lives on East Eighty-first Street, directly across the park from Nancy, had picked her up on his way to the Dakota.

From the brightness of her voice, to her quick smile, it would seem to a stranger that Nancy was holding up well under the stress of being accused of murder, but I saw the stiffness of her shoulders, and the hollows in her cheeks. Movements that used to be smooth were now abrupt, and when she wasn’t holding something, her fingers tended to twist around each other when they used to lie gracefully at rest. Nancy had been the best and kindest friend in the world to me when I first came to New York City on scholarship to Columbia, and again, after Ian’s death. Whatever it took, I had vowed to help her now.

By the time Bobby, Walter, Wayne, Nancy, and I were seated at my dining room table eating Chinese takeout, it had been forty-four hours since my argument with Matt at Penny’s dinner party, and he still hadn’t contacted me. I was fuming. I might not have been so angry if we hadn’t spent Monday night and Tuesday morning making love with such enthusiasm. Apparently, those hours hadn’t meant enough to Matt for him to get over his snit about my tricking his partner. G. G. got over it. Why couldn’t Matt?

Well, to hell with him. Who needs a man with—as Walter put it—a stiff neck that goes all the way down to the soles of his feet? Not this woman!

Bobby and Wayne signaled with raised chopsticks. I got up to put more of that dish onto their plates as Nancy refilled glasses: bottled water for Bobby and me, beer for Walter, red wine for herself and her lawyer.

“I’ve never been in this building,” Kent Wayne said. “Always been curious about it, but I never knew anybody who lived here.”

“First time I took Morgan home,” Bobby said, “we were on my motorcycle. I thought the Dakota looked like the set of a mad scientist movie.”

Nancy defended me. “The place was furnished when Morgan bought it. She didn’t pick out that wallpaper with the tiny rosebuds, or this table with the gilt trim.”

“I wasn’t making a critical judgment,” Wayne said. Using his chopsticks, he gestured toward the most unusual object in the room—or in the entire apartment, for that matter. “Do you mean to say that authentic-looking ancient Egyptian mummy case in the corner came with this apartment?”

“I wondered about that thing. She’s not a bad-looking woman,” Bobby said, referring to the painted female figure on the front of the case. She had large dark eyes and even features, and wore a headdress fashioned in the form of a hawk’s head, with its feathers fanning out on either side. Her straight black hair reached to the middle of her breasts. Narrow arms, crossed at the level of her rib cage, displayed long, slim fingers.

Nancy, who had been staying here with me when the mummy case was delivered, and knew from whom it had come, glanced at me, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned her attention to the last few bits of Mongolian beef and snow peas on her plate.

There was, but I wasn’t about to tell him that the mummy case had arrived containing the missing piece of a murder mystery that I’d been involved in several months ago.

“When I was a young fella, we gave a bunch of flowers to a pretty girl. Guess the world has changed more than I knew,” Walter said.

“Anyway, I’ve been promising Nancy and Penny for months that I’ll get around to redecorating this apartment with things that I’m going to choose.”

“I wasn’t, until a former client paid my fee with an Egyptian sarcophagus.” He got up from the table and moved over to the mummy case. “I didn’t know anything about antiquities, but I live a couple of blocks east of the Metropolitan Museum, so I did some studying and found out the sarcophagus was from the early years of the Ptolemic dynasty, around three hundred B.C. This case might be several hundred years older, Morgan. You probably know this held a female mummy—the painting on a case was usually a representation of the person they put in it.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, and felt a little embarrassed that I hadn’t tried to find out. As soon as I have time, I’ll do some studying on the subject.

“An expert could tell you the exact age of the piece and where it came from by the panel of hieroglyphics that run down the center of her gown, and from the colors of the paint and the style of the artist.”

Wayne leaned over and pointed out a design on the side. “See this drawing of a doorway? Something like it was on my sarcophagus. The man at the Met told me that’s supposed to be the portal for the spirit to exit, allowing it to roam between the world of the living and the world of the dead.”

“More. My fee was eighty thousand, and according to an appraiser at a big auction house the sarcophagus was worth over a hundred. From the catalogue prices I saw, this case of yours would probably go for a bigger number.”

Walter was peering closely at the mummy case. “From all the work that went into decorating this, the woman must have been somebody important.”

Wayne reached for the latch. Before I could say, “Don’t open it” he opened the mummy case—and exposed one of my housekeeping secrets.

“Ah, thereby lies a sad tale. In a wild burst of affection, I presented it to the woman I was seeing at the time.” He added ruefully, “It turned out she’d wanted a diamond. She stamped her feet and cried—not a pretty picture. The irony is she didn’t realize that what she angrily referred to as ‘an old coffin’ was worth more than any diamond even she would have picked out. We broke up, and I kept it. If I ever again think I’ve found ‘the one,’ I’ll give it to her as a test of our compatibility.” He expelled an exaggerated sigh. “For now I’m just a lonely bachelor, overworked and underloved.”

“The girl, Didi, found her mother dead,” Wayne said. “I’ll want to talk to her, to find out if she saw someone in the hall before she went into the apartment.”

“Didi likes me,” I said. “Or at least she used to. If I can find a way to get to her, maybe I can persuade her to talk to me.”

“I appreciate what you want to do, and I wish you luck,” Nancy said, “but I don’t think anybody’s going to get through the barricades Arnold’s stacked up around her.”

“Unless she’s in a coma, I’ll think of some way to see her,” I said. An idea had already occurred to me. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Didi is obsessed with horseback riding—she’s won ribbons in competitions. To keep up her skills, I’ll bet she’s going to insist on practicing.”

“Yes, she would!” Nancy’s voice was full of excitement, and hope. “She’s registered in three big shows before the end of the year. Arnold doesn’t ride—he’s afraid of horses. He won’t go near one unless it’s to see Didi compete, and then he’ll stay outside the ring. I’ll bet he will let her go to the stable alone, but with his chauffeur to drive her and to make sure nobody tries to talk to her as she leaves or enters the building. The driver’s name is Max.” She turned to Wayne. “I know Max pretty well, but I don’t think he’s ever seen Morgan.”

“A few months ago Didi invited me to see her perform,” I said, “so I know where she goes through her ring exercises. The Woodburn Academy on Amsterdam Avenue.”

Nancy nodded in agreement. “Because she spends so much time practicing, Didi doesn’t go to school—Arnold has private tutors come to the apartment. I think the riding ring is probably the only place you could get to her.”

Talk turned to the list of suspects Walter and I had compiled: Ralph and Gloria Hartley, Laura and George Reynolds, Cathy Chatsworth—a.k.a. Olive Flitt—and Jay Garwood, who lied about being romantically involved with Veronica Rose.

“One of the things I’ll ask Didi is what she knew about her mother’s relationship with Garwood. When she saw him last, and how he acted.”

“Also, if she came down via the stairs, or used the elevator, and if she saw anyone at all between leaving Arnold’s apartment and getting to her mother’s,” Wayne said and turned to Nancy. “Is there a back way out of the apartment?”

“Arnold has a back service entrance for deliveries and trash pickup—an elevator and stairs. It’s likely that all of the apartments there do.”

Wayne frowned. “Back entrances mean easy escape, if the killer knew anything about the building. Let’s hope the girl saw something that she doesn’t realize is significant.” Proceeding to the next subject, he said, “There’s a detective firm in Europe that I’ve done business with. I’ll have them track Gloria Hartley’s movements in Paris the last few weeks. Find out who she’s seen, what she’s done, if she left the city.”

Walter volunteered to locate Jay Garwood’s ex-wife. “I’ll go have a talk with her, find out what she has to say about him—like for instance if he was violent, an’ why they got a divorce.”

Bobby said, “I’ll hire some reliable Boston operatives to help. We’ll do a full-court press on Ralph Hartley, George and Laura Reynolds, and Cathy Chatsworth.”

“Go over all the bank and investment records we dig up,” Wayne said. “With your corporate law and finance expertise, you might spot something significant—a clue, an anomaly—that the rest of us would miss.”

I held up an index finger. “Except we’ll give what we learn to the police, when we’ve discovered who the real killer is.”

“When you find out who it is. I like your optimism,” Nancy said. She tried to smile, but the attempt wasn’t successful. At that moment, our eyes met, and I saw how terrified she was about what would happen to her if we failed.