A Killing Gift Read online

  First she was questioned by Chief Avise himself, then Poppy Bellaqua. They wanted to know if she had spoken with the man, if he had said anything. She couldn't remember. They'd asked if she'd seen him. She couldn't remember that either. Now the artist who sketched the faces on the wanted posters that the police distributed to the newspapers and TV had the assignment of getting a description from her. And they all used the same words. They were all talking to her the way they talked to civilian victims: as if she'd gone deaf and stupid as well as mute.

  She was ensconced in Mike's airless, windowless office in the Homicide Task Force on the second floor of the Thirteenth Precinct on Twenty-second Street, close to the Police Academy, where she'd been trained to remember a lot better than this.

  "You up for it?" Greg asked again gently.

  April had worked with him many times before, helping witnesses remember details buried deep in their subconscious. It was an iffy business. Nothing these days was proving to be more unreliable than eyewitness testimony. A lot of people over the years had been falsely accused and falsely convicted of crimes they hadn't committed on the basis of what people said they had seen, sometimes just to help the police close the case. That would not happen here. She had not seen the man's face. She hardly saw his shape. She did not remember talking or fighting with him, only the grip around her neck.

  "You up for it?" He repeated the question a third time.

  She swallowed some cold tea from the bottom of her cup, testing her throat. Then she wrote on the pad in front of her what she had written before. / didn't see his face. Then, Tea? Stalling.

  Mike got up and disappeared out the door to ask someone to get it.

  The features Greg used-noses, mouths, eye and eyebrow shapes, foreheads, jawlines, head and hand and limbs and body shapes-could be manipulated in a computer program, but he also could do it manually, creating faces and forms from laminated flip cards that he sketched into his own more lifelike portrait. Naturally, he ignored her denial. "We'll start on the shape of his head and his body type then, okay?"

  April closed her eyes, trying to conjure an impression of size from a blocked memory. Why were they bothering with this? They knew she'd gotten hit on the head in her fall. For how many seconds she'd lost consciousness she didn't know. What she did know was that lost consciousness also often meant a loss of memory of precipitating events as well. Sometimes it was a merciful thing that those minutes of actual violence disappeared forever, but it was not good for law enforcement.

  What April remembered was her annoyance at Bernardino for leaving without saying good-bye, the wet blanket of fog on the street when she left the restaurant to follow him. She remembered hearing the sound of the metal leash. A man had been walking his dog, some kind of big dog. She didn't remember now what kind. The two had passed her. Now that she thought about it, it seemed odd. How could they have missed Bernardino when she had almost tripped over his body?

  As she waited for her tea, she puzzled over this. Somehow she had gotten into Washington Square. She'd been barefoot. She didn't remember either of those things. When she first regained consciousness, Mike had been holding her head, talking to her. She remembered that. She'd assumed that Mike was the one who'd had saved her. But later in the hospital Mike told her a man with a chocolate lab had intervened. If it was the same man and dog, how could they have avoided Bernardino's body?

  Dogs were very sensitive to human states: injury, sickness, fear, anger, death. Even if the man hadn't seen Bernardino, the dog would have known. Something was wrong about the story. She had to talk to that guy. That hero who'd saved her. She made a mental note and checked her watch. How long would it take for them to catch on to the fact that she was not going to be any help in identifying the killer? One hour, two? Seventy-two?

  Mike came back with a fresh cup of tea. April sipped at hot water that was just beginning to streak with the brown of a tea bag. She read Lipton on the tag at the end of the string. Stalling. She had no impression of any body shape. No head shape. No features. And now she didn't even remember how the man had gotten his hands on her. The whole thing was a blank. She wasn't being difficult. She really didn't remember.

  She drew breath and coughed experimentally, aware of how investigators felt about this kind of thing. For once the shoe was on the other foot. Usually she was the one trying to help a witness remember. She was the one who felt frustrated because so often they seemed to be holding something back. She drank some tea to warm her throat. It didn't help.

  "What about his size, the shape of his body, April?" Greg fiddled with his shapes as if April didn't know the difference between a wiry build, a medium build, and a heavy build.

  "There you are!" Bill Bernardino opened the door and pushed into the small space. His suit was a rumpled mess and his face was flushed an angry red. He looked as if he'd been crying. "What the hell happened?" he demanded as if he hadn't spoken to Mike several times last night.

  "Bill!" Mike jumped out of his desk chair, offering his hands for condolence.

  Bill put his own hands up to reject the gesture. "He was fine when I left. Jesus!" he spit out angrily, as if it were their fault his father was gone, as if it were brand-new news to him.

  April's eyes welled up. "Oh, Bill." The words didn't come out loud enough to qualify as a whisper.

  He glared at her. A few days before the party April had called him personally. Prosecutors were very busy, and she knew from past experience that Bill would need a reminder to make it to his father's party. She also wanted to be sure that his wife, Becky, knew she had an invitation and that Bernardino wanted her there. Becky hadn't come, and Bill had kept his appearance short. From long habit, April kept her face stripped of her feelings. But her heart hammered out her anger so loudly she was afraid he could hear it across the room. Skinny Dragon Mother would be very vocal indeed about a son like Bill.

  What kind of son doesn't stay to the end of his father's retirement party? What kind of son doesn't take his old widowed father home when the party is over?

  A busy son? A careless son? No, a bad son. Skinny would say Bill Bernardino was a no-good son.

  "I'm sorry for your loss." Now Greg Spence was on his feet. "I'll catch you guys later," he murmured to Mike and April. Then he was gone, right out the door as fast as he could get away.

  A real prosecutor, Bill raised his hand a few inches to acknowledge his triumph in getting the floor. Then he went right to the point. "What the hell was going on there, April?" he demanded, singling her out as the focus of his rage even though they'd met only a few times over the years. And he'd heard what happened already!

  She blinked back the tears in her eyes, put off by the way he was behaving. No respect. Her tears dried out of her eyes as quickly as they had flooded them. She understood that he was upset. They were all upset. But this was no way to talk to his father's old friend.

  "For Christ's sake. The least you can do is talk to me, tell me what you guys were up to. Or are you going to cover this up like everything else?" he went on bitterly.

  Oh, that was it. April and Mike locked eyes, and Mike intervened. "Hey, take it easy, Bill."

  "Take it easy! My dad is murdered at a Department party where the top brass was skunk drunk, and you expect me to take it easy. How do I know one of them didn't do this? Huh?"

  "Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't talk crazy," Mike said softly. "You know that's not right." He glanced quickly at April a second time. She knew he wanted to move to her side of the table to protect her. An almost imperceptible shake of her head told him she was fine.

  "I know that she's responsible for this." Bill pointed an angry finger at her. "She was there on the scene. She let this happen! You'd better believe I'm not taking it easy. I'm not letting it go. Someone's going to pay."

  "Okay, sure. Fair enough. Why don't you sit down now? You need a cup of coffee, something to eat." Despite her warning, Mike instinctively reached out to April.

  She was wondering how Bill knew who
was on the scene.

  "Don't give me that cop shit! I don't want coffee. My dad is dead. I want some answers." His face was almost purple with rage. April figured he'd had enough time to start feeling guilty and almost felt sorry for him.

  But even if she could have found her voice, she would have remained silent throughout the tirade. Bill was threatening them, and it was a little scary. She knew how these things could be tilted and turned around. Police investigations came up with all kinds of explanations and skewed answers to cover up mistakes. It wasn't good, but it happened. Bill was a prosecutor and she could see where he was going.

  There had been incidents in the past of cops partying just before they went on duty, then having fatal car crashes as they sped to work. Each time drinking was implicated as a factor in a tragedy involving cops, a lot of people went down. Supervisors were transferred, demoted, or lost their jobs. Now the possibility of scandal because a bunch of high-ranking cops had been drinking at the retirement party of a distinguished lieutenant who was murdered on the way home was not beyond possibility.

  Dozens of friends only a few feet away and all too drunk to do anything to save him. Oh, it was so clear where Bill was headed.

  "Sit down, Bill. I was there and you weren't. So you listen to me for a minute before you get yourself and everybody else in a flap. Okay?" Mike pointed at the chair. April could see how angry he was but knew that Bill could not.

  Bill hesitated.

  "I said, 'sit down.' Let's be civilized here," he said softly. "I'm not going to bite you."

  "Fine. She was there, too; why doesn't she tell me what happened?" Bill took the chair Greg had vacated and looked to April.

  April was not feeling so good. But her hair covered the lump on her head, and her turtleneck hid the bruises on her shoulder and neck. Maybe he didn't know what had happened to her.

  "She can't," Mike said, real steel coming through in his voice for the first time. "She went after the guy. The bastard almost killed her. The man who killed your father is some kind of martial-arts expert."

  Bill's mouth opened. "A what?" He stared at April, stunned. This bit of news hit a nerve.

  Stony-eyed, she stared right back. She remembered that Bill happened to be a judo expert himself. Then her eyes went furry on her, and she took a little nap.

  Nine

  Birdie Bassett got in from her meeting with her husband's estate lawyers before noon and went straight to the phone in the library.

  "You have ten new messages," the flat-toned female on voice mail reported.

  Birdie sighed. It had been three weeks since Max's sudden death, and the phone was still ringing off the hook. Ten calls already, and she'd been gone only a few hours. She was still in shock, dizzy from hunger, but not yet up to eating. People told her she was depressed, that there was a book she could read about the stages of grieving. But she didn't think there was anything in the book about being a really prominent widow whose husband had taken care of everything.

  She took a few deep breaths to calm herself after the unpleasantness in Silas Burns's office. Max's lawyer of thirty years had informed her this morning that Max's two kids were going to contest the will. They were going to hold her up, fight her for a bigger piece of the pie. And that did depress her.

  "You have three options, Birdie." He put up three arthritic fingers to emphasize them. "You can fight, you can make a deal, or you can try to wait them out. You're young, and you have your allowance." He lifted his shoulders. "They could hold you up for a very long time, but so could you. Why don't you take a few days to think about what you want to do and let me know."

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he stopped her.

  "There's no hurry, dear. Take your time."

  Birdie had left the office and headed uptown. Back in Max's favorite post in the paneled library of his fifteen-room Park Avenue apartment, she picked up the last photo taken of him, taken only a few months ago in Palm Beach. He'd looked strong, healthy, and a good fifteen years younger than eighty-one. He was still a handsome man with a full head of hair. "Max, what do you want me to do?" she whispered. "Fight or flight?"

  Max's desk was a huge bureau plat of the Louis XIV period with lots of ormolu. The desk was genuine. The large leather chair behind it was of a more recent vintage. The library table and club chairs were English. The rugs were two complementary Persian garden carpets with blue borders. The curtains that framed the eight-foot French windows were made of shimmering red-and-gold silk damask and edged with two varieties of silk tassels and braid. Everything was too ornate and grandiose for her taste, but had suited Max perfectly.

  Birdie still couldn't believe he was gone. She'd expected him to remain vigorous for another ten years, then fade slowly for another five. She'd fully expected them to scale down during his lifetime. Simplify. She had no interest in the three houses he'd left her or the antiques his children thought belonged to them. Max didn't give her a sign, so she began listening to her messages.

  "Mrs. Bassett, this is Carla in President Warmsley's office at York U. President Warmsley asked me to call you to confirm for Monday night. Could you give me a call at nine-nine-five-six-four-eight-two. Thank you."

  Birdie punched three for delete, then listened to her next message.

  "Birdie, this is Steven Speel at MOMA. I'm calling to set up a lunch with you and Marilyn. She's available Thursday of next week. Would you give me a call when you have a moment? Seven-five-one-four-four-eight-nine."

  Steven Speel reeled off the numbers at twice the speed of the rest of the message, and Birdie got only the first three. She had to listen to the message again and again before she got them all. She hated it when people did that.

  The next two were personal requests that she take tables at forthcoming benefits to which Max had supposedly pledged his support. But how would she know if he really had? Twenty thousand for the Emerald Dinner at the Museum of Natural History sounded possible. They'd gone before. But fifteen thousand for BAM? Birdie could not recall ever seeing the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Max's foundation's donor list.

  Another call was from the Psychoanalytic Institute. What the hell was that? She listened to it with Max's heavy pen suspended over his ornate message pad. The pleasant voice of a Dr. Jason Frank invited her to lunch so that he and the foundation chairman could personally thank her for Max's generous bequest last year and encourage her to consider taking his place on the board. What? Birdie hadn't even known that Max had been on such a board. She shook her head at the latest revelation.

  Max had been retired, but he'd been busy every day, running his own sizable foundation with virtually no staff and no board members to keep track of his activities. The foundation had no brochure, no guidelines for grant proposals, no procedure for donors, and far fewer documents than there should have been.

  While he'd sent out letters with his foundation checks, the terms for the use of his sizable grants were often vaguely stated. Worst of all, Max had left her the reins of his foundation but no mission statement, no written pledges, no clues to his intentions. He hadn't bothered to groom her for this. All Birdie had ever done for the foundation was attend the functions of organizations he supported. She'd never been asked to participate on the board of any of them. Even on the occasions when Max had been honored, or had served as honorary chairman, all she did was lend her name. And she'd always understood that she had taken the place of a first wife with whom she could never compete. Her predecessor's name had been Cornelia, pronounced Cornelllya, and Cornelllya had never gone anywhere without a hat and gloves even in the summer. Forty years her senior, after all. The original foundation had borne her name. The Max and Cornelllya Bassett Foundation. Now Max's name stood up there alone.

  As sole trustee, Birdie could rename it the Birdie Bassett Foundation, and the thought of that made her smile for the first time all day. She'd been snubbed and overlooked so many times for so many years, it was bittersweet to think of the power she had now. But she didn't know
where to start.

  Birdie Bassett was thirty-seven years old. She'd married Max when she was only twenty-six and he was seventy, a crazy thing, but not unheard of. For the eleven years they were together people would talk over and around her at dinner parties, as if she were still the temp who'd filled in at his home office after his previous secretary went on vacation with a handful of his dead wife's jewelry and never came back. Birdie's stepchildren, both older than she, had loathed her from the start and never tried to hide it. Still, she would never have dreamed of begrudging them their wretched houses and wretched furniture.

  The Bassetts lived on Park Avenue, in Palm Beach, and Dark Harbor, off the coast of Maine. Max's bequeathing her the Bassett family enclave in Dark Harbor was a truly appalling move. In Florida all types mingled with relative ease. Even among the social set whose roots in Palm Beach predated air-conditioning, May-December relationships between the socially unequal were common. Lovely blond women of any origin, the young second wives of ancient gentlemen, were part of the scenery, a social set of their own. But Dark Harbor was another story. The houses were handed down from generation to generation, and new people just weren't welcome. Next message.

  "Hi, Birdie, it's Al Frayme. Just calling to reschedule our lunch. By the way, the funeral was beautiful, and I thought you were very dignified in a difficult situation. Do you have time for lunch this week? I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Sweets. Paris. Tahiti. You name it."

  Birdie smiled again. Sweets was downtown in the Fulton Fish Market, close to the Wall Street lawyer's office where she'd been earlier. The phone rang, distracting her from the rest of her messages.

  "Hello, this is Birdie."

  "You're next," a soft voice said.

  "What? Hello? Hello?" A dial tone buzzed on the other end.

  Jesus. Birdie felt so ill. She couldn't eat a thing. Nothing appealed and nothing stayed down. She was almost paranoid enough to believe she was being poisoned. Max's kids hated her; that much was clear. And people with money were always at risk. She glanced around the elegant room, wondering which things could hurt her. She knew that people could be poisoned by their clothes, by their toothpaste, by the air they breathed. Again she had that nagging worry. Max had not been sick. He'd died without warning. Everybody, including his doctors, had thought he was just old. But she wondered. The voice on the phone unnerved her. She wasn't sure anymore. She just wasn't sure.