Singer 02 - Long Time No See (16 page)

“Between their money market and brokerage accounts I hear the total she actually wound up with was twenty-five thousand. She told Greg it was for StarBaby, her business, for camera equipment and I guess what you’d call promotion—ads and stuff.”

“Well?”
Heather asked, twirling the stem of her wineglass impatiently between her thumb and index finger. “Has anyone
seen
a twenty-five-thousand-dollar camera or a full-page ad in the
Times?”

“Not that I know of,” I responded.

“That’s my point!” Clay trumpeted, banging his empty martini glass on the table for emphasis. “Too many unanswered questions.” You’re telling me, I said to myself. “There’s been a rush to judgment,” he continued. “I’d have private detectives and forensic accountants all over the place looking for stuff on this woman, following the money, finding out who her friends were. Of course, with Logan’s old man, Lowenstein, there could be some organized crime angle and Courtney could be pure as the driven snow. But I’d buy time demanding a lot of forensic tests. And I’d look for anyone who might have a reason to want her dead.” The waiter, probably an actor whose career was already kaput because he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio’s older, less handsome brother, slid our entrées in front of us and faded out.

“Who had reason to want her out of the picture?” Clay demanded. His hands gripped the edge of the table. Leaning forward, he jutted his head toward me as if he were Queen’s Counsel in some British courtroom drama and I an accessory to murder standing in the witness box. “Who?” he repeated.

“As far as I can tell,” I answered, “no one. I mean, who’d want to kill a woman out to buy organic apples for her kids? On the other hand, there is the inescapable fact that she was shot in the head twice.”

“Does the husband
at least
have a decent alibi?” Heather interjected. Clay had fallen momentarily silent during the Sniff, Swish, Swallow, Cerebrate, and Nod Ceremony over the Burgundy he and the sommelier had earlier conferred about exhaustively. When I took a sip, it tasted like Manischewitz without the blessing of sugar.

“Greg had an early dinner meeting that night,” I told her. “Unfortunately, he was still driving to it around the time Courtney drove to Grand Union—or wherever she went—between five-thirty and six.” I’d heard that from Steffi, who had seemed observant enough. “He got home about eight-fifteen—”

I would have gone on, but all of a sudden a man about my age was standing behind the fourth chair at our table, the empty one. He sighed and shook his head: “Just got in from D.C. All the flights were delayed.”

I waited for Clay to suggest to the man that he was at the wrong table. Instead, he leaped up, vigorously pumped the man’s hand, and announced to me: “This is Dan ...” I didn’t get the last name because Heather was cooing “Dan!” and springing from her seat, leaning forward to offer her cheek to his cheek. They briefly smooched the air then switched cheeks only to peck once more to conclude their Euro-kiss. Immediately after that Clay and Heather began a battle of words: “Judith, this is our
dear
friend—”

“Dan Steiner,” Clay cut in. “He retired last year from running his own—and may I add—very, very successful hedge fund—” Dan Steiner was approaching six feet, although he hadn’t gotten there. Still, he was inches taller than Clay, who, unsettled being so near a man of greater height and vaster wealth, began to stroke his already smooth tie uneasily.

“But the
real
point is Dan is going for a Ph.D. in Russian history
at Yale
—” Heather, I thought, was being excessively delightful. I surmised her sparkle was not evoked by his academic credentials. Dan the Man himself did not appear the sort to inspire such enthusiasm. Although he fairly could be described as slim, or at least trim, he had developed one of those mush faces that are visited upon many in their fifties; it had lost not just color, but definition, so precisely from the point the jaw rose out of the chin he resembled an overkneaded oblong of dough topped with thin gray hair. The chin itself, however, a hard-edged rectangle, protruded out of his face as though it were an appendage donated by another species; it was so long I kept marveling he hadn’t grown a beard to camouflage it, especially now that he was one with Academe.

“He drives up to New Haven every week to take—”

“Dan—I hope Clay told you—Judith
has
a Ph.D. in American history and teaches at a
very prestigious
small Catholic college—”

Since the three of them were standing, I decided it might appear surly to remain seated. But just as I was about to rise, Dan reached across the table and gave my hand the limp shake of a man who’s never gotten over the notion that women are the weaker sex. His eyes looked past me, or nearly so; an observer would have thought he was saying Nice to meet you to my earlobe. Then he took his chair. Now that Heather and Clay had only each other to look at, they, too, quickly sat. Within two seconds Dan was asking about one of Clay’s SEC cases and Clay immediately began simultaneously declaiming and violating the Canon of Ethics: “The guy’s in a sweat. He’s leveraged beyond belief.”

Dan intoned: “You know, when you get that kind of leverage, certain moves in the market are magnified and—”

Not that I cared that they were (a) boring and (b) rude. Okay, I did care. But also, I was so agitated by being half of what I gathered was a blind date that all I could do was stare at my Tender Young Chicken in a Rosemary-Mustard Marinade Grilled over Apple Wood and try to calm down. What was as galling as the presumption of fixing me up without asking me if I’d be interested was the fact that Dan appeared utterly uninterested. He was spouting to Clay about unlearned lessons of the Long-term Capital Management scandal while disregarding me with such intense concentration that I could tell he’d been strong-armed into the dinner and wanted to be either at home with a tome about the terribleness of Ivan IV or on the town with whatever his definition of a hot number was.

Heather leaned so far over to me her left breast brushed across the fruit salsa atop her halibut, leaving a small dark stain and a fleck of what I guessed was peach but could have been some new fruit I’d never heard of. “Judith,” she whispered, unaware of the to-do on her left nipple. “We didn’t tell you about Dan because we didn’t want you to get your hopes up.” As I was literally dumbstruck she filled in the blank: “In case he didn’t show.” Then she sat back, waiting for me to attempt to entice Dan.

Except as I sat there, watching two middle-aged male hotshots vying to say something so insightful it would stun the other into silence, watching the exquisitely cleavaged Heather, this litigator who confronted for a living, say “Um” three times in an attempt to join the conversation only to have her husband and Dan reflexively raise their voices so her “Um” could be ignored without blatant discourtesy, I realized there was nothing I could say or do that would entice Dan Steiner.

Someone might ask: Why the hell would I even be tempted to entice a guy I wouldn’t want even if he exhibited the politesse of a Lord Chesterfield and a schlong that went from here to Cleveland? Well, because he was a prime catch, what someone like me ought to go gaga for. Smart enough to get into Yale, or so astoundingly rich he could buy his way in. Definitely rich enough—from the sheen of perspiration on Clay’s forehead to the gleam in Heather’s insignificant hazel eyes—to be the sort of magnate revered for his cool instead of being blown off as the cold fish he was.

What saddened me most was that in his snazzy pale gray pinstripe of exquisite summer-weight wool so painstakingly cut it (almost) concealed the mini-love handles no exercise or diet could expunge, Dan was precisely the man my late husband had always yearned to be.

The worst of the worst was, a sweetie pie smile kept trying to take over my face in a pitiful attempt to win the favor of the man who was ignoring me. Two more seconds and I’d be batting my lashes, complying with Article Two of the Girl Constitution: If he rejects you, try harder. I actually had to command myself: Wipe off that sycophantic smile. “Excuse me,” I said to Dan in an Elizabeth Cady Stanton voice. “There was a murder in my town on Long Island. I was asking Clay and Heather about how they would defend the chief suspect.”

“A murder?” he echoed. There followed an instant of silence during which we could hear the clink of fork against plate as a waiter deboned a fish at a nearby table. Dan seemed to recognize another sentence was required of him, which he evidently found vexing. For him, this was a dismal evening after a rough day in Washington. His cheeks inflated, prelude to a petulant exhalation. Clearly he knew intuitively (as well as from studying the Houses of Rurik and Romanov) that, as a rich and powerful person, he had an absolute right to behave badly. Finally, however, he exhaled his pissed-off sigh through his nose and in a resigned voice inquired: “Who was killed?”

So while the waiter dashed off to get him a Salad of Baby Greens with Four Variations on Duck, nothing else, thanks, which was no doubt how Dan the Man kept himself slim to trim, I offered a précis of the Courtney Logan case. “Clay told me the lawyer for Greg, the husband, should be hiring a forensic accountant. The goal seems to be to follow the money.”

“No one knows where the twenty-five thousand she took went to?” Dan asked. His suit was one of those trendy, three-button numbers that expose shirt and tie only to mid-sternum. It had the effect of making him look straitjacketed, and the impression was underscored by his stiff bearing and the way he held his upper arms close to his sides, even when he reached for his water glass and took a sip. It was not the posture of a guy who could, in any way that counted, be fun.

“From what I’ve heard, all Courtney said was that she needed the money for her business,” I replied.

“If she didn’t hide it really well, that should be easy enough to find out,” Clay interjected. “I mean, for the husband’s lawyer.”

What I was thinking was: No one had actually seen any expensive cameras, had they? Zee Friedman had told me she’d used her own stuff: Could the equipment Courtney told Zee was at the Wesleyan graduate’s house be a fiction? If so, then what could she have used the money for? Why would she lie about it? “Just out of curiosity,” I inquired, “what would a woman in her position need thousands and thousands for if not the business?” I halted for what I hoped was a meaningful pause, although it was probably a little overdramatic. “Blackmail?” I proposed. No one said no. On the other hand, I didn’t hear any resounding yeses.

“Face-lift,” Heather offered to break the silence. “Seriously, the works can
easily
be around thirty-five thou. Or could she have had a jewelry habit?”

“She didn’t seem the type.” Could the Wesleyan student himself be a fiction?

“Drugs?” Clay was asking.

“Courtney seemed to function very well—at everything,” I told them.

All I wanted to do was ransom my Jeep from the overpriced Manhattan garage, tool back to Long Island, and again read over my notes on the case. Maybe this time they would tell me something. Yet I kept talking to Dan, trying to get something out of him, at least some snippet of financial expertise that might shed some light on the Courtney Logan case. “You were a businessman before you became a scholar?” He nodded, a single nod, clearly not being profligate in the nod department. Still, he seemed gratified enough by the word “scholar” that I half regretted using it. (The other half, sad to report, was preening that I’d finally done something to please him.) I went on: “Let’s forget what the murder victim needed the money for. Let’s just say she needed it, ostensibly for the business. If she’d been turned down for a loan by the banks but still needed more money, where would she get it?”

“Family money?” Dan suggested. I shook my head, which seemed to disconcert him. He rubbed his shovel of a chin and, after a few seconds, “Money in the market?” emerged from his pale lips.

“There was some. I think eighty thousand in one particular account.” Dan blinked, probably in shock at such a chicken-feed number. “She took out twenty, but put ten back. Her husband wouldn’t let her get at the rest.”

“Well, maybe she only needed a small amount,” he replied in a rather hushed tone. “She did have a small business.” He appeared slightly dazed to find himself in a discussion whose subject he hadn’t set.

“But she had big ambitions for it,” I explained. “Franchising, stuff like that.”

“Maybe a loan shark?” Clay ventured. “Someone whose name she heard bandied about by her father-in-law?”

“She’d been an investment banker at Patton Giddings,” I explained to Dan.

“Could she have used the money for on-line trading?” Heather chimed in. “Or for day-trading?”

“Possible,” Dan replied, “but only barely. Most of these people, even the so-called sophisticates ... Cocksure of themselves. They wind up losing it far easier than they run it up. She’d have had to be very, very good just to break even over the long term. Day-traders are addicts, no better than the blue-collar guy who squanders his salary on off-track betting week after week.”

“But with her background in finance?” I reminded him.

“Please,” he said, in the overly patient manner of someone who is trying to appear open-minded rather than supercilious. He pointed his fork straight at me. I pulled my eyes away from the drippy leaf of baby spinach woven between the tines and looked right at him. His lips were compressed into a hyphen. Despite his mush face, the flesh above and below his lips was protuberant, well muscled, evidence that his disdain for me was almost nothing personal, that Dan’s native expression was one of scorn. “Ask yourself,” he said. “If she were really first-rate, would she have quit Patton Giddings? To live in the
suburbs
? To be a
mommy?”

Dan was so odious I actually skipped dessert. The worst thing about the evening was that it would be too late to call Nancy and recount it, thus giving her the chance, in her role as official best friend, to rage against Claymore Katz’s ill breeding and sexism in fixing me up without asking my consent, to orate on Heather’s self-victimization, and to offer a diatribe about Dan Steiner’s boorishness, egotism, pomposity plus, naturally, several scathing, southernly accented sentences about how teeny his penis must be—that being the universal and official female put-down. Alas, I’ve always felt it a form of vengeance (while not without its immediate satisfactions) that is sadly impotent.