My Gal Sunday (4 page)

“Exactly.”

“I
knew
this was a crime of passion!” Sunday said excitedly. “Only it appears that the passion was not on Tommy’s part. Okay, so I’ll go see Barker today, as well as Tommy’s housekeeper. What was her name?”

“Dora, I believe,” Henry replied. Then he corrected himself: “No, no — that was the housekeeper who worked for them for years. Great old lady. I believe Tommy said that she retired shortly after Constance died. No, if memory serves me, the one he has now, and that we caught a glimpse of yesterday, is named Lillian West.”

“That’s right. The woman with the braids and the Lexus,” Sunday said. “So I’ll take on Barker and the housekeeper. What are you going to do?”

“I’m flying down to Palm Beach to meet with this Countess Condazzi, but I’ll be home for dinner. And you, my dear, have to promise me that you’ll be careful. Remember that this Alfred Barker is clearly an unsavory character. I don’t want you giving the Secret Service guys the slip.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Sunday,” Henry said in the quiet, serious tone he had used so effectively to make his cabinet members quake in their boots.

“Oooh, you’re one tough hombre,” Sunday said smiling. “Okay, I promise. I’ll stick to them like glue. And you fly safely.” She kissed the top of his head and then left the breakfast room, humming “Hail to the Chief.”

Some four hours later, having piloted his jet to the West Palm Beach airport, Henry arrived at the Spanish-style mansion that was the home of Countess Condazzi. “Wait outside,” he instructed his Secret Service detail.

The countess appeared to be in her mid-sixties, a small slender woman with exquisite features and calm gray eyes. She greeted Henry with cordial warmth, then got straight to the point. “I was so glad to get your call, Mr. President,” she said. “I read the news accounts of Tommy’s terrible situation, and I have been so anxious to talk to him. I know how much he must be suffering, but he won’t return my phone calls. Look, I
know
Tommy could not have committed this crime. We’ve been friends since we were children; we went to school together, including college, and in all that time there was never a moment when he so lost control of himself. Even when others around him were being fresh or disorderly, as they tended to be at the prom, and even when he was drinking, Tommy was always a gentleman. He took care of me, and when the prom was over, he took me home. No, Tommy simply could not have done this thing.”

“That’s exactly the way I see it,” Henry said in agreement. “So you grew up with him?”

“Across the street from each other in Rye. We dated all through college, but then he met Constance and I met Eduardo Condazzi, who was from Spain. I got married, and a year later, when Eduardo’s older brother died and he inherited the title and the family’s vineyards, we moved to Spain. Eduardo passed away three years ago. My son is now the count and lives in Spain still, but I thought it was time for me to come home. Then, after all these years, I bumped into Tommy when he was visiting friends down here for a golfing weekend. It was so wonderful to see him again. The years just seemed to melt away.”

And love was rekindled, Henry thought. “Countess . . .”

“Betsy,” she instructed firmly.

“All right, Betsy, I have to be blunt. Did you and Tommy begin to pick up where you left off years ago?”

“Well, yes and no,” Betsy said slowly. “I made it clear to him how very glad I was to see him again, and I think he felt the same way about me. But you see, I also think that Tommy never really gave himself a chance to grieve for Constance. In fact, we talked about it at length. It was obvious to me that his involvement with Arabella Young was his way of trying to escape the grieving process. I advised him to drop Arabella, and then to give himself a period of mourning, something like six months to a year. But then, I told him, he had to call me and take me to a prom.”

Henry studied Betsy Condazzi’s face, her wistful smile, her eyes filled with memories. “Did he agree?” he asked.

“Not completely. He said that he was selling his house and was going to move down here permanently.” She smiled. “He said that he’d be ready long before six months were up, to take me to the prom.”

Henry paused before asking the next question: “If Arabella Young had gone to the tabloids with a story claiming that during my administration and even before his wife’s death, Tommy and I had thrown wild, debauched parties in the White House, what would your reaction be?”

“Why, I’d know it wasn’t true,” she said simply. “And Tommy knows me well enough to be sure that he could count on my support.”

On the return flight to Newark airport, Henry let his pilot take over the controls. His time was spent deep in thought. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that Tommy was being set up. Obviously he was aware that his future had promised a second chance at happiness and that he didn’t have to kill in order to safeguard that chance. No, it just didn’t make sense that he would have killed Arabella Young. But how were they going to prove it? He wondered if Sunday was having any better luck in finding a likely motive for Arabella’s murder.

Alfred Barker was not a man who inspired instinctive liking, Sunday thought as she sat across from him in the office of his plumbing supply store.

He appeared to be in his mid-forties, a thick, barrel-chested man with heavily lidded eyes, a sallow complexion, and salt-and-pepper hair, which he combed dramatically across his skull in an obvious effort to hide a growing bald spot. His open shirt, however, revealed a wealth of hair on his chest. The only other distinctive thing she noticed about him was a jagged scar on the back of his right hand.

Sunday felt a fleeting moment of gratitude as she thought of Henry’s lean, muscular body, his altogether pleasing appearance, including his famous “stubborn” jaw and the sable brown eyes that could convey or, if necessary, conceal emotion. And while she frequently chaffed at the omnipresent Secret Service men — after all, she had never been a First Lady, so why should she need them now? — at this moment, closeted in this squalid room with this hostile man, she was glad to know that they stood just outside the partially open door.

She had introduced herself as Sandra O’Brien, and it was obvious that Alfred Barker did not have a clue that the rest of her name was Britland.

“So why do you wanna talk to me about Arabella?” Barker asked as he lit a cigar.

“I want to start by saying that I’m very sorry about her death,” Sunday said sincerely. “I understand that you and she were very close. But, you see, I know Mr. Shipman.” She paused, then explained, “My husband at one time worked with him. And there seems to be a conflicting version of who broke up his relationship with Ms. Young.”

“What does that matter? Arabella was sick of the old creep,” Barker said. “Arabella always liked me.”

“But she got engaged to Thomas Shipman,” Sunday protested.

“Yeah, but I knew that would never last. All he had was a fat wallet. You see, Arabella got married when she was eighteen to some jerk who was so dumb he needed to be introduced to himself every morning. But Arabella was smart. The guy may have been stupid, but he was worth hanging onto ’cause there were big bucks in the family. So she hung around for three or four years, let him pay for her to go to college, get her teeth fixed, whatever, then waited until his very rich uncle died, got him to commingle the money, and then dumped him. She cleaned up in the divorce.”

Alfred Barker relit the tip of his cigar and exhaled noisily, then leaned back in his chair. “What a shrewd cookie she was. A natural.”

“And was it then that she started seeing you?” Sunday prodded.

“Right. But then I had a little misunderstanding with the government and ended up in the can for a spell. She got herself a job with a fancy public relations firm, and when a chance to move to their Washington branch came up a couple of years ago, she grabbed it.”

Barker inhaled deeply on the cigar, then coughed noisily. “Nope, you couldn’t hold Arabella down, not that I ever wanted to. When I got sprung last year, she used to call me all the time and tell me about that jerk, Shipman, but it was a good setup for her, because he was always giving her jewelry, and she was always meeting fancy people.” Barker leaned across the desk and said meaningfully, “Including the president of the United States, Henry Parker Britland the Fourth.”

He paused, once again leaning back in his chair. He looked at Sunday accusingly. “How many people in this country ever sat down at the table and traded jokes with the president of the United States? Have you?” he challenged.

“No, not with the president,” Sunday said honestly, remembering that first night at the White House when she had declined Henry’s invitation to dinner.

“See what I mean?” Barker crowed triumphantly.

“Well, obviously, as secretary of state, Thomas Shipman was able to provide great contacts for Arabella. But according to Mr. Shipman,
he
was the one who was breaking off the relationship.
Not
Arabella.”

“Yeah. Well, so what?”

“Then why would he kill her?”

Barker’s face darkened, and he slammed his fist on the desk. “ I warned Arabella not to threaten him with that tabloid routine. I told her that this time she was running with a different crowd. But it had worked for her before, so she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“She got away with it before!” Sunday exclaimed, remembering that this was exactly the scenario she had suggested to Henry. “Who else did she try to blackmail?”

“Oh, some guy she worked with. I don’t know his name. Some small potatoes. But it’s never a good idea to mess around with a guy who’s got the kind of clout Shipman has. Remember what he did to Castro?”

“How much did she talk about her efforts to blackmail him?”

“Not much, and then only to me. I kept telling her not to try it, but she figured it would be worth a couple of bucks.” Unlikely tears welled in Alfred Barker’s eyes. “I really liked her. But she was so stubborn. She just wouldn’t listen.” He paused, apparently lost for a moment in reflecion. “I warned her. There was even this quotation that I showed her.”

Sunday’s head jerked back in involuntary reaction to Barker’s startling statement.

“I like quotations,” he said. “I read them for laughs and for insight, or whatever, if you know what I mean.”

Sunday nodded her head. “My husband is very fond of quotations. He says they contain wisdom.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean! What’s your husband do?”

“He’s unemployed at the moment,” Sunday replied, looking down at her hands.

“That’s tough. Does he know anything about plumbing?”

“Not much.”

“Do you think he could run numbers?”

Sunday shook her head sadly. “No, mostly he just stays home. And he reads a lot, like the quotations you were mentioning,” she said, trying to get the conversation back on track.

“Yeah, the one I read Arabella fit her so well it was amazing. She had a big mouth. A real big mouth. I came across this quote and showed it to her. I always told her that her big mouth would get her in trouble, and boy it did.”

Barker rummaged through the top drawer of his desk, then pulled out a tattered piece of paper. “Here it is. Read this.” He thrust a page at Sunday that obviously had been torn from a book of quotations. One entry on the page was circled in red:

Beyond this stone, a lump of clay,

Lies Arabella Young,

Who on the 24th of May

Began to hold her tongue.

“It comes from an old English tombstone. Just like that! Except for the date, is that a coincidence or is that a coincidence?” Barker sighed heavily and then slumped back in his chair. “Yeah, I’m sure gonna miss Arabella. She was fun.”

“You had dinner with her the night she died, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you drop her off at the Shipman house?”

“Nah. I told her she should give it a rest, but she wouldn’t listen. So I put her in a cab. She was planning to borrow his car to get home.” Barker shook his head. “Only she wasn’t planning to return it. She was sure he’d give her anything just to keep her from talking to the tabloids.” He fell silent for a moment. “Instead, look what he did to her.”

Barker stood up, his face twisted with fresh anger. “I hope they fry him!”

Sunday got to her feet. “The death penalty in New York State is administered by lethal injection, but I get your drift. Tell me, Mr. Barker, what did you do after you put Arabella in a cab?”

“You know, I’ve been expecting to be asked that, but the cops didn’t even bother talking to me. They knew they got Arabella’s killer from the start. So, after I put her in the cab, I went to my mother’s and took her to the movies. I do that once a month. I was at her house by quarter of nine, and in line to buy tickets at two minutes of nine. The ticket guy knows me. The kid who sells popcorn at the theater knows me. The woman who was sitting next to me is Mama’s friend, and she knows I was there for the whole show. So I didn’t murder Arabella, but I know who did!”

Barker pounded his fist on the desk, sending an empty soda bottle crashing to the floor. “You wanna help Shipman? Decorate his cell.”

Sunday’s Secret Service guards were suddenly beside her, staring intently at Barker. “I wouldn’t pound the desk in this lady’s presence,” one of them suggested icily.