But Remember Their Names Page 6

  We all politely didn’t notice her making her way out the back door. Pad lady began to work the room, apparently seeking volunteers for her three-page to-do list. I heard Sally Port explaining to the clergyman that she’d told the cops the doctor had given Ms. Bradshaw a tranquilizer, which was literally true, even though Bradshaw hadn’t actually ingested it. She seemed way too pleased with this verbal sleight of hand, but I felt a twinge of grudging admiration for it.

  I suddenly found my eyes focusing on a blond woman in a funereal black skirt and jacket who was coming in the front door—and I wasn’t the only one; she was a head-turner. I felt a nudge on my elbow. I turned around to see the gray-vest dude bending slightly toward me with his hand extended, kind of like Mickey Mouse had the summer I was eight and we went to Disney World.

  “Excuse me. My name is Walter Learned. I couldn’t help noticing you bring in the covered dish. Are you a friend of the family?”

  I shook hands with him while I thought about how to answer that. I had expected damp and limp in his handshake and got dry and firm instead.

  “I’m Cynthia Jakubek. I’ve known Caitlin for a short time.” I sensed Sally Port grinning at me a few feet away, but that may have been my imagination. “I feel a bit sheepish about taking that call a few minutes ago, but it was my fiancé. We expect to move to New York in a couple of months, and we’ve been talking about where to live.”

  “Quite forgivable.”

  I segued. “How long have you known the Bradshaws?”

  “Tom and I go way, way back,” Learned said. “Met during the summer he spent in Paris after his junior year at Princeton. I always thought I’d go first.”

  “Are you in the arts and antiquities field too?”

  “Only on the fringes. An amateur basking in the reflected glow of the real professionals, like Tom.”

  “An amateur does something for love of the thing itself. So where art is concerned, ‘amateur’ is a pretty noble thing to be.”

  “What a captivating observation.” He gave my right elbow a confiding brush with his left hand and pointed with his right at Schwartzchild. “Say, do you happen to know who that is?”

  “Samuel Schwartzchild. Top trusts and estates lawyer in Pittsburgh.”

  “Excuse me for just a moment. Wonderful talking to you.”

  With that he loped off in Schwartzchild’s direction. By the time I realized that I’d experienced a high-class brush off, he was towering over Schwartzchild’s yarmulke.

  “Mr. Schwartzchild? Walter Learned. You probably don’t remember me, but it’s good to see you again.”

  Schwartzchild looked blank for just a moment, then came up with a smile and shook Learned’s hand. After that, Learned’s voice dropped to a confidential, just-between-us-boys level, so I didn’t hear the next part. I did see Schwartzchild glance suddenly and with apparent concern at the blonde in black who was now buttonholing Reverend Whoever in what looked like a won’t-take-no-for-an-answer manner. Ten seconds later Schwartzchild was moving toward her in the steady but understated strides that I suppose you develop when you spend a lot of time going to your clients’ funerals.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.” He said this more firmly than you usually hear those words spoken. “I’m Samuel Schwartzchild, the Bradshaws’ attorney. I don’t believe I know you. Are you acquainted with Ms. Bradshaw?”

  “I have to talk to her,” she said. Someone who’d gone to, say, Stanford would have said she had a New York accent, as if there’s a single New York accent instead of about six. I’d heard all six of them at Harvard, and hers sounded more like northern New Jersey which—trust me on this—isn’t the same thing at all.

  “That would be ‘no,’ then,” Schwartzchild said. “And I’m given to understand that you’re a private investigator.”

  “I’m an insurance recovery consultant, and I have to talk—”

  “Thank you for that correction. My apologies to any private investigators whom my error offended. This is neither the time nor the place for deployment of insurance recovery consultant skills.”

  He held his hand out to one side and Port deftly put a business card into it, like an OR nurse slapping a clamp into a surgeon’s hand. Schwartzchild tendered the card to blondie.

  “Have your attorney call me.”

  “I don’t have an attorney.”

  “Then I’d suggest that you engage one. Promptly. And I must insist that you leave the Bradshaws’ home immediately.”

  It took her about five seconds and one survey of the unsympathetic expressions in the room to decide she had zero options.

  “Fine.” She spat this syllable. Then she spun around on one spike heel and headed for the front door. She didn’t take the card.

  Most of the room gravitated toward Schwartzchild to murmur low-key congratulations on the studly way he’d dispatched the blonde. I drifted toward the back door. Ariane and Caitlin hadn’t appeared yet. That was good in a way, because things might have gotten a lot more interesting with the “insurance recovery consultant” if they had, but I couldn’t help wondering what the hold-up was. A cathartic heart-to-heart with hugs and tears would have been a perfect psychological response, but I had trouble seeing those two doing kiss-and-cry in broad daylight.

  As I got within peeping range of the kitchen window, I heard their voices approaching the back door. They both spoke in casual, no-drama tones, but I picked up a hint of tension in the words, as if keeping things low-key required a bit of effort from each of them. I stepped back, but still caught the last of the exchange, just before the back door opened.

  “I came as fast as I could. As soon as organic chem was over.”

  “You might have left before it started.”

  “It’s an AP, Mom. I want to go pre-med, and I missed Monday.”

  “He was your father.”

  “And he killed my brother.”

  The next thing I heard was the back door opening.

  Chapter Seven

  Caitlin surprised me. She dumped her backpack on the floor underneath some coat pegs just inside the back door and hung up her earth-tone suede jacket. Then, instead of flouncing upstairs to cocoon in her bedroom, she went methodically through the great room, greeting the guests group by group. Her voice was low and a little mechanical, and she used standard verbal formulas—“Thanks so much for coming”; “It means so much to Mom and me that you were able to come”; “Thanks for caring about Dad.” Still, it struck me as a pretty impressive performance for a seventeen-year-old who’d just had her world turned upside down.

  “I saved you for last,” she said to Mendoza when she reached us. He started to respond, but she raised her hand and continued speaking. “I get that we have to talk. Let me change clothes and help Mom with our guests and then we’ll sit down so you can ask me where I was whenever Dad was killed.”

  “No hurry.” Mendoza had barely managed to get the words out before she headed upstairs, the hem of her black-and-yellow plaid uniform skirt sketching a brave little flutter as she reached the landing. That gave me a chance to share her “killed my brother” line with Mendoza.

  Most of the guests seemed to take Caitlin’s exit as a signal to start drifting toward the door, led by those who had accepted assignments from pad lady. I looked around for Learned, because I wanted to verify my sneaking suspicion that he matched up with the green Prius, but I didn’t see him. Then I heard Mendoza asking me something in a near whisper.

  “You got anything to write on?”

  Yes, I came here prepared to practice law, even though I had to leave my briefcase in the car while I schlepped meat loaf in. I did not say that. What I said as I pulled out my PDA was, ”Shoot.”

  “Okay. First, see if you can get the license number of that Prius without making a production out of it. Then call Becky and have her run the pl
ate and while she’s at it check out Walter Learned and Vera Sommers.”

  “Is Sommers the blonde that Sam booted out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it was Learned who told Sam who she was, I’m guessing.”

  “You’re guessing right.”

  I headed outside and strolled back toward Mendoza’s Citera, trying to look like a put-upon young lawyer who had to fetch her briefcase. Crisp temperature, bright sunshine warm on my shoulders, no wind—stepping outside seemed like a real good idea. I had to take an unnatural angle on my supposed way to the Citera, but I did manage to spot the Prius’ license plate and memorize the MEZ-558 on it. Then I fished my briefcase from the Citera, glanced inside it for effect, and closed the car door. I don’t think I had Meryl Streep looking over her shoulder, but it seemed like a pretty fair acting job to me.

  I leaned against the Citera’s trunk while I called Becky the Techie to relay Mendoza’s instructions. I had to leave them on her voice mail, which meant that I spent about forty seconds looking distractedly down the street so that I wouldn’t bore myself to death with the sound of my own voice. That’s why I happened to notice the blonde—excuse me, Vera Sommers—in a harvest gold Dodge Intrepid about ninety feet up the road. She was pointing an oversized telephoto lens through the windshield at me. Talk about clichés. All she needed was an unfiltered Camel dangling from the corner of her mouth and she could have stepped into some drag rip-off of hard-boiled pulp. I thought about flipping her off as I headed back into the house, but didn’t. I made a mental note to ask Ken if that was a sin of omission.

  I walked back in looking for Mendoza but I spotted Learned instead. He smiled at me and we exchanged friendly nods. Something about him seemed different, beyond the fact that he was now holding an oxblood leather attaché case, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was like one of those can-you-find-five-differences-between-the-cartoon-on-the-left-and-the-cartoon-on-the-right things that newspapers sometimes put on their funny pages.

  Pad lady was starting to shoo people out in a slightly less genteel way than she had been up to now, and Learned seemed to be taking the hint. I had the choice of tracking down Mendoza and breaking into the interview he was presumably conducting with Caitlin or chatting up Learned on his way out. I picked the second.

  “In case you’re interested,” I said, “Vera Sommers is playing paparazza down the street.”

  “That doesn’t come as a complete surprise. She’s never been famous for either subtlety or finesse.” If I‘d impressed him by knowing her name he did a good job of hiding it.

  “Have you known her for a while?”

  “Known of her. She’s been in the field for about seven years now. Not sure where she came from, but most people in insurance recovery are ex-cops of some kind.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you two moved in the same circles.”

  We had reached the driveway. He glanced at me with an avuncular smile.

  “People like Sommers are hard to avoid in the fine arts market. A lot of sellers tend to offer intriguing pieces that they bought without being clear on the chain of title. That’s an engraved invitation for Ms. Sommers and her ilk.”

  “You don’t think very much of insurance recovery consultants, do you?”

  “I ‘don’t think much’ of people who sell heroin to school children. I despise insurance recovery consultants.”

  “Wow. Way harsh.”

  “Up to a point, I suppose.” He stopped at the Prius—suspicion confirmed—and turned to look directly at me. “A lot depends on how it’s done. The A-list consultants help insurance companies reduce payouts or get some of their money back, and that keeps premiums down for everyone. But the bottom-feeders are basically fences, trafficking in stolen goods.”

  He reached for his lower left vest pocket and looked surprised for an instant as he came up empty. Then he reached lower and pulled a silver pocket watch on a braided chain from his pants pocket, took a look, clicked it closed, and stowed it in the vest pocket. That’s when my mind clicked on the something-different that I’d seen. When I first laid eyes on Learned, the pocket watch chain had curled from a belt loop up to the vest pocket. When I saw him again after my license plate quest, it had sagged downward into the pants pocket.

  Looking at your watch is an infallible signal that a conversation should end, so I tried to think of some excuse for exchanging business cards. He beat me to it.

  “I’ve enjoyed our conversations.” He slipped into the Prius and tossed the attaché case on the passenger seat. “I can’t promise anything, but I might be able to come up with a couple of leads when you and your fiancé start looking for quarters in the city. Can I get in touch with you at Mr. Mendoza’s office?”

  Fumbling a bit in surprise at this piece of luck, I dug out one of my cards and handed it to him.

  “Thanks.” He pulled a card of his own from his lower right vest pocket and handed it to me.

  Handy things, vests. Maybe I’ll start wearing them.

  Learned pulled away and his Prius purred down the tree-lined street. Vaguely resentful that his seat belt buzzer hadn’t sounded off about his case like Mendoza’s had about mine, I took a quick look at the card:

  WALTER LEARNED

  Ars Longa LLC

  New York, N.Y.

  Oh well. Maybe he’s in the book.

  If Mendoza had wanted me to take notes while he talked to Caitlin he would have called me on my Droid. He hadn’t, so I couldn’t see crashing the party now. I thought I probably had half-an-hour to kill, and ordinarily I would have spent the time checking voice mails and e-mails. But I left the Droid in its holster. I spent the time thinking instead. It turned out I only had eighteen minutes instead of thirty, but that was plenty. When Mendoza waltzed back onto the porch and started leading me toward the Citera, I was blooming with the ripe fruit of cogitation. I decided to keep it to myself until after he’d given me the highlights of his Caitlin chat while he drove back downtown.

  “‘Killed my brother’ got an interesting reaction,” was his introduction to the debriefing as he pulled away from the curb. “Said she couldn’t remember saying that and it didn’t make any sense. But she admitted she was so strung out by Dad’s murder and Mom’s bitching at her that she could have said anything.”

  “Are we sure she’s an only child?”

  “No, but between now and sundown we’re gonna get sure.” Trying to get headed back in the direction we’d come from, Mendoza turned onto yet another placid, winding suburban lane. “I wonder what ‘traffic calming’ is.”

  I saw the sign that provoked his question—Traffic Calming in black on a yellow triangle—and said “Speed bump” a second too late. We took a belly-wrenching bounce over the thing.

  “What else did Caitlin have to say?”

  “Let’s see. She was home alone Monday night. Did a load of homework and watched some tube.”

  “Did she do any of the homework on her computer?”

  “Yes, but not until around nine. She was booking it before then. Says mom came in sometime after ten and she’s not sure where she was before then. She offered to swear her mom was home with her if Ariane needs an alibi. I told her that would be a very bad idea.”

  “You’re a role model for young lawyers.”

  “Goddamn right. Three phone calls to friends, but they were all on her mobile phone, so that proves nothing about her whereabouts.”

  “What about instant-messaging on her computer?”

  “She said she’s not allowed to use IM on school nights. Anyway she’s felt a little funny about that since the cops searched the house on Sunday, so she hasn’t climbed back in the saddle yet.”

  “So she doesn’t have an alibi.”

  “She also doesn’t have a motive,” Mendoza pointed out.

  �
�Unless we turn up a missing brother—or unless she knows more about estate taxes than my fiancé does.”

  “Where did that come from?”

  “Any estate valued at more than a million and change will be worth fifty-five percent more up to December 31st than it will be starting the next day,” I said. “Say Caitlin finds out over the weekend that dad’s been swimming in the shark tank where she figures his survivability is low once stuff hits the fan. Since he’s a goner anyway in her eyes, maybe she hurries things along a bit so that she and Ariane won’t have to share with the IRS.”

  “That’s cold.” Mendoza whistled. “I’m not buying it. I’m not buying a word of it. But it is stone cold, I’ll say that.”

  “That theory works for mom, too, by the way.”

  “Only if she happened to know that little piece of trivia about the estate tax springing back to life next year.”

  “Since she’s a client of Sam Schwartzchild, I’d say her chance of knowing that is a lot better than Caitlin’s.”

  “Do me a favor, willya?” Mendoza took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot me a pleading glance. “Use some of those IQ points of yours to come up with a suspect whose last name isn’t Bradshaw.”

  “Walter Learned.”

  “What’d he do to get on your shit-list?”

  “Toward the end of the bereavement visit this afternoon, he appeared with an attaché case he hadn’t had before and his pocket watch in his pants pocket instead of his vest pocket.”

  “Jake, I’m pretty sure those are just misdemeanors.”

  “Why would a man move a watch on a chain from his vest to his pants?”

  “I’ll bite: why?”

  “Because he had to pull down his pants—and then forgot to replace the watch when he pulled them back up.”

  “Don’t get dirty on me, Jake.”

  “I’m just saying he went to the bathroom—and unless it’s coincidence, he retrieved his attaché case while he was at it.”

  “Or maybe he just stashed his attaché case in the closet and got it back while you weren’t looking.”