The Renewable Virgin (21 page)

‘Where was she from?'

‘Little town in Oklahoma called Rushville. She wanted to be an artist, says here.'

‘She'd made a good start at it,' I said, looking at the photo of
Man and Shadow
. ‘Did the autopsy reveal anything other than cause of death?'

‘Like what?'

‘Oh, like pregnancy?'

‘Nope.'

‘Drugs?'

‘None. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. “Healthy Caucasian female”—life terminated by ingested cyanide. Now it's your turn. Why are the New York police interested in this old unsolved killing?'

‘Because it looks as if Mary Rendell's killer has turned up here. Can't tell you anything officially yet—I have to talk to my boss first.' I promised to let him know when we had something concrete and hung up.

Before going to Captain Michaels, I needed to make one more phone call. I dialed the number of Cameron Enterprises' corporate headquarters and asked to speak to the Public Relations Director. PR people can almost always give you what you need, and they never ask why you want to know.

A woman identified herself as Mrs. Sullivan, and I said, ‘Hello, my name is Marian Larch, and I'm trying to get some information about clothing dyes. I know Cameron Enterprises uses a lot of dye—could you tell me who your supplier is? Or suppliers, plural, if you use more than one?'

‘We manufacture our own dyes. We have better quality control that way. And we don't have the headaches of late deliveries and the like that we'd have if we contracted out to vendors.'

‘I see. And where are your dyes manufactured?'

‘We have three laboratories. One here in New York, another in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a third in Los Angeles.'

‘Thank you, Mrs. Sullivan, you've been most helpful.' If she only knew.

I sat and thought about it. I thought about it a lot. I looked at it this way and that, from every angle I could think of. A few holes, but structurally sound, as they say. I decided to go with it.

I knocked on Captain Michaels's door and opened it before he could yell
Go away
. He was on the phone; he covered the mouthpiece and barked, ‘Later, Larch.'

‘It can't wait. I've got something.'

He scowled at me but nodded. He finished his phone conversation and then growled, ‘This better be good. I got a man up in the twenty-sixth precinct waiting for orders. What's so important it can't—'

‘Will you stop snarling and listen? This is important. Ted Cameron killed Rudy Benedict.'

He leaned back in his chair and stared at me, blew air out through his lips. ‘Okay, that's the punchline. What's the lead-in?'

‘Rudy Benedict was trying to blackmail Cameron. He had a piece of evidence that linked Cameron to an unsolved murder in Los Angeles fifteen years ago. Unfortunately for Rudy, he didn't have the knowhow to deal with a man as dangerous as Cameron. But even though he killed him, Cameron wasn't able to recover the evidence linking him to the old murder. That passed into the hands of Nathan Pinking, who's much more adept at covering himself in a dirty fight than Rudy Benedict ever was. Pinking undoubtedly knows Cameron killed Benedict as well—whether he can prove it or not, it's an added screw he can turn.'

‘What was this evidence Benedict had?'

‘A painting titled
Man and Shadow
. It was missing from his apartment at the time of his death—the bill of sale was in his safety-deposit box, but the painting was gone. I tried to get a line on it at the time, but nobody had ever heard of the painter. Her name was Mary Rendell and she was only twenty years old when she died. She was the murder victim in Los Angeles fifteen years ago.'

‘And Cameron?'

‘Probably killed her. Cyanide poisoning again, for one thing. For another, Cameron lied to the police at the time—said he didn't know her. But it's Cameron's face that's in Mary Rendell's painting. He knew her all right—he knew her well enough for her to make him the subject of a painting. Cameron was married at the time, and in line for the presidency of Cameron Enterprises. Mary Rendell must have become an embarrassment to him. I checked with the LAPD—the autopsy report made no mention of pregnancy or drugs. Maybe the threat she posed wasn't sexual. First thing you think of with a man like Cameron. But right now I'd have to say his motive for killing her is in the unknown category.'

‘
If
he killed her. You're doing a lot of supposing there.'

‘Granted. But Cameron wouldn't be vulnerable to blackmail unless he had some guilty connection with Mary Rendell's death.'

‘Okay, that'll play. But how did Benedict get the painting in the first place?'

‘Probably just bought it in all innocence. The bill of sale's signed by a small California dealer long since gone out of business—Rudy had a few pieces of inexpensive original art, all of it by unknowns. He picked up
Man and Shadow
when he and Mary Rendell and Ted Cameron were all living in California, fifteen years ago.' I put the newspaper clipping and the two Polaroid snapshots on Captain Michaels's desk. ‘Fiona Benedict found these among Rudy's papers.' Poor Fiona Benedict, sitting there alone in her attic going through Rudy's legacy of paperwork. She'd actually held a picture of her son's murderer in her hand and hadn't known who it was.

The Captain looked at the photos first and then read the clipping. ‘Rudy Benedict a blackmailer?' He shook his head doubtfully. ‘Doesn't fit the profile we got on him. The picture I got was of a cautious man, somebody who didn't believe in taking risks.'

I tapped the newspaper clipping with my forefinger. ‘That's not a photocopy. That's the original newspaper item, from fifteen years ago. Rudy Benedict kept it all this time. It took him fifteen years to work up the nerve to do something about his knowledge that Ted Cameron had lied about Mary Rendell. He'd reached some kind of turning point. Rudy was always talking about quitting television and writing for the stage, but he was never quite willing to take all the risks that involved. But his discontent must have reached the point where once in his life he decided he would take a chance.'

The Captain grunted. Not convinced.

‘Look,' I said. ‘Even attempting blackmail was in Rudy's case a hedge against risk-taking. He wanted to write a play, but he wasn't willing to risk financial failure. So he tried to put the bite on Ted Cameron, to force him to back his play or come up with grocery money or maybe both. He wanted Cameron to provide insurance against failure, one way or another. Rudy Benedict was an ordinary man who attempted one extraordinary thing in his life, and he got killed for his efforts.'

Captain Michaels massaged his chin. ‘Maybe. So how'd the painting get into the hands of Nathan Pinking?'

‘I'm just guessing here. Maybe Pinking saw the painting hanging in Rudy's California house and made the same connection Rudy did—and either stole or bought or “borrowed” the painting. But I'm more inclined to think a lifetime of playing it safe led Rudy to try covering his back by giving the painting to Pinking for safekeeping. Without telling him why, of course. But when the time for the shakedown came, Benedict didn't handle it right and Cameron killed him—and then, too late, discovered Rudy didn't have the painting. Maybe Rudy had showed him photos of the painting—those two there, or others like them. But the real thing wasn't in Rudy's apartment.'

‘So Cameron killed him for nothing.'

‘That's about it. He would have been better off in the long run if he'd just agreed to pay Rudy whatever he asked. Rudy would never have bled him dry the way Nathan Pinking is doing—he wouldn't know how, for one thing. By killing Rudy, Ted Cameron just gave Pinking another hold over him. It's ironic, in a way. Cameron killed off the “easy” blackmailer only to end up in the hands of a worse one.'

‘Where did Cameron get the cyanide?'

‘Cameron Enterprises itself can supply the raw materials a poisoner would need. They manufacture their own dyes—and they have laboratories both here and in Los Angeles. Ted Cameron could just help himself, both places. I'm sure we can prove he had access—that's all we'll need, isn't it?'

Michaels shrugged. ‘Should be.' He shifted back to the other man involved. ‘I wonder how Pinking protected himself—letter with his lawyer, I suppose. And the painting? He wouldn't leave that in any accessible place—I suppose his lawyer could hold that too. Okay, I think we'll hold off on Pinking until we pick up Cameron. Which one is more likely to talk?'

‘Cameron,' I said. ‘He's living right on the edge. It shouldn't take much to push him over.'

‘That's what I'm afraid of,' the Captain muttered. ‘We're gonna have to go careful there. I don't want any psychiatrist up and saying he's not competent to stand trial. Good way to win a little cheap sympathy.'

I found it hard to feel any sympathy at all for Ted Cameron, cheap or otherwise.
He
wasn't the one I was worried about. I was worried about somebody else.

How was I going to tell Kelly?

CHAPTER 15

MARIAN LARCH

I had to hand it to Captain Michaels; he'd played it just right. After first checking with Cameron Enterprises to make sure the boss was in, the Captain and Ivan Malecki and I paid an unannounced visit to corporate headquarters on Lexington. Three of us to arrest one man—Ivan was along to supply a little extra muscle that nobody really thought would be needed.

What the Captain had done was very simple. He'd put the old
Los Angeles Times
newspaper clipping and the two Polaroid snapshots on Ted Cameron's desk without saying a word. Then, when Cameron had had time to assimilate what they meant, Captain Michaels said, ‘We're going to give you a choice. Confess to the murder of Rudy Benedict and stand trial here in New York, where there's no death penalty. Or don't confess, and we'll extradite you to California where you'll be tried for the murder of Mary Rendell. There's no statute of limitations on murder—and California, I need hardly remind you, has the death penalty.'

For a moment I thought Ted Cameron had gone into shock. He stared at Captain Michaels with his mouth open, his blank eyes unblinking for so long that even Ivan began to feel uneasy. ‘Is he all right?' he whispered.

Eventually Ted Cameron closed both his mouth and his eyes, but still he did not move or speak.

‘Of course,' the Captain went on, ‘if you're a gambling man you might want to take the chance that the California DA won't prosecute a fifteen-year-old case too vigorously. And all guilty verdicts in capital cases are automatically reviewed by the California Supreme Court—you might get a break there. But you got to balance that against the fact that you're a big shot, and the newspapers always have a heyday whenever a big shot is on trial, you know, speculating whether there's one law for the poor and another for the rich. They always do that. It might make your prosecutors a little prickly, less inclined to ease up. Personally I think you'd do better here. But it's your decision. It's your life.'

Cameron licked dry lips and said, ‘I want my lawyer.'

‘Of course you do,' the Captain said in almost paternal tones. ‘And you'll get your lawyer, just as soon as we take care of a few little rituals first.' He nodded to Ivan and me. I read Cameron his rights while Ivan put the cuffs on him.

It was the cuffs that finally jarred him awake. ‘Are these necessary?' he asked bitterly. ‘What am I going to do—shoot it out with you? Run away? Where would I run?'

Michaels walked out of the office without answering. ‘Let's go,' Ivan said, nudging his prisoner forward. I brought up the rear. The cuffs were
not
necessary; but then the Captain was trying to get a confession out of Ted Cameron. Amateur criminals such as those who kill for personal reasons are sometimes intimidated by the accoutrements of the law.

We marched Cameron past his stunned secretaries, one of whom was talking earnestly into the telephone. I wondered whether she'd called Cameron's lawyer or his Aunt Augusta.

I kept waiting for the dam to break, for the bomb to go off. But by the time we got Ted Cameron into an interrogation room at Headquarters, he had an almost beatific expression on his face. His hands were steady, his voice was calm, he had no nervous mannerisms. He was in a state of false euphoria because the impossible battle he'd been waging was at long last over. He'd lost—but the relief of being finished with the struggle was so great that nothing else mattered. The Captain and Ivan and I had seen this before, and we all knew it was a temporary state; if we got anything out of him it was going to have to be quick. So we let him call his lawyer even before we booked him. Confessions signed without the presence of legal counsel had a way of being thrown out of court.

‘Tell us about Rudy Benedict,' Captain Michaels said.

Cameron didn't answer—looked at me instead. ‘You're Kelly's friend, aren't you? What are you going to tell her?'

‘The truth.'

He gave a half-smile. ‘Are you certain you know the truth?'

‘No, I'm not. Why don't you make sure I've got it straight?'

Cameron's attorney arrived, a pale, white-haired man named Trotter whose field was corporate law and who was clearly out of his league. He demanded we postpone the interrogation until he could get a criminal lawyer for his client, but the law didn't require us to await the appearance of specialists so we said no. Trotter did the next best thing and advised his client not to say anything.

‘I don't want to see her,' Ted Cameron said to me. ‘I mean, I don't want her to see me like this.'

‘I'll take her the message,' I promised.

Then he talked. Somewhere in the midst of his false euphoria Cameron had decided he was better off with us than facing a probable death sentence in California. Or maybe he just needed to talk, to tell somebody about it. His first instinct had been to protect himself, to call for a lawyer. But then when he had a lawyer, he ignored his advice. It happened all the time (fortunately for us). Trotter protested constantly, practically begged Cameron to shut up,
ordered
him not to sign anything. But the president of Cameron Enterprises had given up. He'd had all he could take; he was through. Two murders, the impending loss of his business, the horrors of being blackmailed—it had all finally caught up with him.