A Score to Settle Page 10

  Bobby Frye pinched his lip and looked me up and down. Then he glanced at Sheila for guidance. She shrugged.

  The next thing I knew Frye's hand was on my back guiding me down the hall toward the elevator.

  "We'll go to the Jewish Mother. My treat. Ever been there?"

  "No, I'm from out of town."

  "Mind if I drive? I've got a new car, and I've been dying to get my hands on it all morning."

  "Do you drive as fast as you talk?"

  "Not if you don't want me to."

  The car turned out to be a red Maserati. Bobby Frye, boy billionaire, held the door and eased my elbow down as I slid inside. That was the first moment I fully appreciated the bravery of the sailors who signed on with Columbus, the ones who didn't really believe the world was round.

  "We've all got to go some way," they must have figured, "and between here and the edge of the earth, a meal is a meal."

  Chapter 14

  THE MASERATI PURRED on straightaways and growled around corners. Judging by his expression, the Tomcats' owner seemed to enjoy the sound the way Steve Sabol enjoyed Elvis.

  We passed an elegant old brick and stone structure with "Cavalier" written in some sort of plant-life across the sloping front lawn.

  "Out of town, eh?" Bobby Frye finally stirred himself to ask. "Where from?"

  "Philadelphia."

  "Yeah? Eagles are good this year. They'll give the 'cats a run for my money."

  I tried to smile at his humor, but the fist hidden next to my leg was clenched. Just to make nice, I said, "This rides like a dream."

  "You want to try it later?"

  "Oh, no. I'm nervous enough right here."

  Frye laughed. "I'm not surprised. You're awfully married to be picking up strangers."

  My lungs decided it was okay to breathe. "You noticed."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Do you mind?"

  "Oh, hell no. Makes for a change. Unless you're selling something. It's usually one thing or the other."

  I reiterated the stock donation spiel. Frye didn't answer, just steered the powerful car east then south onto a wider avenue along the beach. Left and right were tidy low hotels and other businesses rooted into much paving.

  Frye pulled into a lot at 30th Street, nosed the sports car to the curb facing the ocean. The nearest landscape was a bit of grass, an asphalt bike path, then a strip of tall white lampposts stretching out of sight in each direction. A cement "boardwalk" supported trash cans, two telephone kiosks, and several wooden benches. Beyond that, the long, winter-blown beach was stroked by blue, brown, and slate gray water broken into ragged strips of foam.

  Frye opened a window. Sharp winter air spiced with salt water opened my eyes and cleared my head. I couldn't shake my nervousness, though, couldn't forget that despite all his wealth and power, this man probably should be regarded as a murder suspect.

  Frye turned toward me, his arm draped behind his bucket seat. "You need the deduction this calendar year?" he asked. He had decided to play my game whether he believed my ploy or not.

  I said, "No," because saying, "Yes," would have exposed me as a liar. This close to the end of the tax year, if I had even theoretically needed the write-off, I simply would have made the donation and been done with it.

  "Then why don't you hold your shares until this time next year?" Bobby recommended. "Our last dividends are posted on December 15. I think you can be fairly confident that the stock will rise in value between now and then, and the appreciation will give you a larger deduction. Your charity will make out better, too."

  "Thank you."

  I suddenly felt awful for insinuating myself into this man's life...although..., I quickly reconsidered. He hadn't taken long to agree to lunch with me, and not because he believed I was available.

  Maybe he was just another lonely divorced person, made even lonelier by his position. Regular people never invited their bosses out for so much as a drink, and with good reason–too little to be gained, too many pitfalls to avoid.

  "So tell me about this Jewish Mother restaurant," I said. "It sounds like fun."

  Frye broke off his contemplation of the ocean and scowled as he threw the car into reverse. "Why don't I just show you?"

  Had he become slightly peeved? Disappointed? Perhaps I should back off, regroup, reconsider.

  Not many blocks along and inland to Pacific Avenue an unassuming building squatted at the edge of the sidewalk. Green window squares had been unprofessionally painted with Hanukkah symbols.

  Frye parked in a far corner of the adjacent lot and helped me out. Then he hustled through the cold breeze to hold the restaurant door open for me.

  Inside to the left lay a long case of baked goods with potholders and mugs hanging above. A ceramic cookie jar of an older woman with round glasses seemed to offer a brown bag of goodies from The Jewish Mother. To the right and straight ahead lavender and aqua cubbyholes with black edges displayed bottled beverages of all sorts. Further in to the right lay a bar, and beyond that a stage backed by a wall of photos and a sign that read, "Budweiser presents Rumble Fish." For evenings, no doubt.

  Everywhere else booths or round tables with bentwood chairs had been scribbled with crayons or markers until what had been graffiti crossed over into a decor.

  We found a booth on a far wall and Bobby greeted a smiling waiter.

  "Yo, Mr. Frye, what'll it be today?" The server, “Clint,” slapped napkins and flatware onto the scarred table.

  "My guest here needs a minute with the menu," Bobby hinted, "but in the meantime, something to drink?" he inquired of me with a raised eyebrow.

  "Red wine?" I had to lose this edginess somehow.

  The waiter listed their offerings, and I chose. Frye went with "Maisel's Weisse," which turned out to be a beer.

  Cartoons of the bespectacled "mother" graced the newsprint menu, which little visitors could color with the crayons provided. Food items went by such names as "Gemiste Salad," "Mother's Grandson Frank (a hot dog)" or "Mother's Sister Adele (hot corned beef, coleslaw and Russian dressing)." I chose "Mother's Mother," a chicken salad sandwich with apples, raisins, nuts, avocado and Muenster cheese. Bobby Frye requested the Jewish Mother Club.

  "Pleasant as this is," he remarked after the drinks arrived, "why are we really here?"

  "Partly the donation," I fibbed, "and partly I wanted to know if you thought the value of my stock would go down because of the...the murder."

  "You must have one hell of a lot of stock," Bobby thought aloud. "What is it? A thousand shares? Two?"

  I waved the question away. "So what do you think?"

  "A little dip, if anything." His face had gone a bit gray, probably because of the stockholders' lawsuit that was much more likely to hurt my hypothetical shares than Tim Duffy's death.

  We considered each other for a moment, and I decided I had better address the latter difficulty, too. To ignore it would make me appear ignorant.

  "We won't even mention the other, uh, problem," I remarked kindly. "You're obviously a superb manager, and I'm sure your lawyers will have no trouble proving that in court."

  Frye grunted.

  "A little dip, if anything," I quoted him, again referring to the value of his company’s stock.

  He huffed out a small laugh.

  The food arrived, and I asked for a Diet Sprite to go with it. The wine had been a bad idea–or maybe not, since it was gone.

  Frye had withdrawn into his own dour speculations, so I asked if he was developing anything interesting.

  The corporate genius took a bite of his sandwich, marveled at the taste, then allowed some enthusiasm to seep into his eyes. "Always," he answered as soon as he’d swallowed. "Best part of being in business, taking on something new."

  As we ate, he described an inter-computer communication glitch and how his engineers had worked for months on the problem. “Almost there,” he said with a wink. Then he actually blushed. "I love solving problems, all sorts of problems," he co
nfessed.

  "Me, too," I admitted, which secured his attention.

  "Like what?" he wanted to know.

  I wiped my mouth with a napkin. "Take this mayonnaise for example," I hoisted my sandwich to illustrate. "The factory makes the stuff, puts it in a bottle. The bottle gets put into a box. The box is moved to a loading platform and lifted into a truck." Bobby had stopped chewing. "Next the truck drives miles and miles to a store where it's unloaded and the boxes are stacked somewhere. Sooner or later somebody puts the mayonnaise bottles on a shelf."

  I pointed at myself. "Then I go into the store, put the one of the bottles in a cart, drive it around the store and eventually transfer it to the checkout conveyor.

  "The clerk stuffs it in a bag. I put the bag in the car, drive home, take the bag out of the car and into the house. I finally lift the mayonnaise out of the bag and put it in my pantry. Before anybody even uses the stuff it's been handled and moved dozens of times. There ought to be a better way."

  "Never thought of that before," Frye admitted. "But it does sound pretty inefficient now that you mention it."

  "Your turn."

  "Okay. The earth's full of water, water's full of hydrogen, and hydrogen's full of energy. The trouble is it costs much too much to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen to use it for power." He shrugged.

  "There must be a way."

  "Maybe there is."

  We smiled over our mutual silliness. At least I thought it was silliness. For all I knew Bobby Frye would be on the phone the minute we got back to his office talking with one of his scientists about how inefficient grocery shopping was.

  I could feel Frye trying not to glance at his watch, so I quickly asked, "Why'd you bench Walker Cross last Sunday?" I sounded melancholy when I said it, and perhaps I was.

  Frye waved his head. "Who says I did?"

  I pushed away my plate. "Nobody else cared one way or the other whether he could make his quota."

  "Football is big business, Ms. Barnes."

  I told him to call me Gin.

  "Okay, Gin. If you play your stocks the way I think you do, you're no dope when it comes to money. So tell me. Is there a businessman alive who wouldn't cut one point seven million dollars off his budget if it didn't make any difference to the rest of his enterprise?"

  Instead of agreeing to the obvious, I answered a different question. "So Walker Cross really couldn't blame Tim Duffy for his loss of playing time."

  "No. What's your point?"

  "No point," I equivocated, for I had finally realized something else.

  The only payoff Tim Duffy’s heirs would be getting now would be from an insurance company.

  Chapter 15

  WHEN THE CHECK CAME, Bobby Frye examined it and quickly called back the waiter. "Clint," the electronics magnate scolded. "You put my guest’s Diet Sprite on the bill, but you never delivered it."

  "Oh, sorry, man. It's been a zoo here today. Sorry, lady." He hustled off to correct the total.

  I noticed that Frye left an exceedingly large tip, so it must have been that never-pay-for-nothing principle, a concept that did little toward eliminating the franchise owner from my list of suspects.

  We parted at the office's parking lot, shaking hands like two people who would never do it again. I would write him a lovely thank-you note, which his assistant might or might not bother to show him, and that would most likely be that.

  LATER IN THE AFTERNOON Michelle sat on the floor of what would be the nursery, back against the wall, legs splayed like a play-weary doll. She looked fragile and worried again, her eyes darting every which way, her hands plucking at her favorite denim jumper.

  For a distraction I’d talked her into putting the crib together, and for a while she was into it—reading me the instructions and playing around with baby names. Now the instructions were on the floor, and her head was in a gray cloud. When I glanced up from screwing part C into part D, she said, "I'd like to pay a condolence call on Elise Duffy."

  "Okay," I agreed with a bit of trepidation.

  "Would you mind getting the phone–please?" Michelle begged. "I can't move."

  I brought her the cordless one from her bedroom and tinkered with a crossbar while she spoke to the murder victim's widow.

  "That's strange," she said after she hung up.

  "What?"

  "She says she's leaving tomorrow afternoon, but I could stop over in the morning if I really wanted to."

  "And you said..."

  "You heard me. I said I really wanted to."

  "Because she was acting strange?"

  "Yes. You don't think...?"

  "That's the trouble with situations like this," I reminded my cousin. "Everybody seems guilty."

  Michelle’s eyes widened in panic and I knew she was thinking of Doug.

  "Some more than others," I quickly amended.

  The door chimes rang. When I rose to go see who was there, Michelle sighed with gratitude.

  Two gentlemen waited politely on the stoop. One wore an obsequious manner with his baggy black pseudo London Fog, the other the air of an apprentice.

  "We're from the Norfolk police, ma'am. Are you by any chance Mrs. Turner?"

  "May I see some identification, please?"

  "Certainly."

  Shields in nice black leather wallets were produced for my inspection.

  "Is it really necessary to speak with Mrs. Turner?" I pressed. "She was just released from the hospital yesterday."

  "I'm afraid so," Fake-London-Fog lamented. "We promise not to keep her long." His real name was Lt. Glenn.

  His sidekick, Detective Markowitz, earned my sympathy. My nutmeg red hair came with dark brown eyes and skin that would suntan if I was careful. Since he had the transparent freckled skin of a carrot-colored redhead, hats and sunscreen were surely his daily companions.

  Glenn's freckles were confined to the top of his head, above a skirt of black hair that tickled his ears and collar. Naturally, he completed the circle of fringe with a moustache–they always do. Glenn's made him look as if Kilroy was here.

  We maintained a silent standoff for a moment; but since I was bound to lose, I capitulated and went to fetch Michelle.

  Introductions made, the four of us settled into the Turner's sparse living room. The dining chair I brought in for myself made me look and feel like Michelle's guardian, which seemed about right. Already I feared another emergency trip to the hospital.

  To speak to her, Glenn had to swivel toward her on the sofa. "Detective Markowitz and I are conducting the investigation regarding the death of Timothy Duffy, Mrs. Turner," he began.

  Without glancing up, Michelle asked, "What has that got to do with me?"

  "You knew the Duffys, I presume."

  "Yes."

  I spoke directly to my cousin. "You know you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."

  Michelle looked into my face. "The sooner I answer their questions, the sooner they’ll leave."

  "That's right." Glenn’s eyes glittered as he glanced between the two of us.

  Since his interest had been piqued, I explained about the premature labor earlier in the week. "I'm sure you wouldn't want that to happen again."

  "Of course not," he said, but I could see that the timing hadn’t been lost on him. His left eyebrow twisted into a quizzical curve. Had my efforts to protect Michelle only made matters worse?

  "Your husband and Mr. Duffy were rivals of sorts, were they not?"

  I glared my disapproval but held my tongue.

  "Before my time," Michelle replied.

  "I was referring to the present." Glenn returned my glare.

  Michelle slowly met his eye. "What's your point, Lieutenant?"

  "Your husband said you were together at the time of Mr. Duffy's death."

  "We were." Her back stiffened as her fingers plucked at the fabric covering her lap.

  "Really, Lieutenant. Aren't you being a little rude? What exactly do you want from Mrs. Turner
?"

  Glenn's ruthlessness, which would have endangered most cases, scared me witless. It meant that Doug was a favorite suspect and Glenn was after anything he could get. Since Michelle could not be compelled to testify against her husband, I also surmised that Glenn was desperate, driven to take risks by the tremendous pressure augmented by the entire media industry each and every day.

  Michelle eyes darted like a woman with only minutes to live.

  "I'm sorry," Glenn apologized insincerely. "But I had to ask."

  "No, you didn't," I challenged. The Kilroy eyes wished me in hell or perhaps somewhere less pleasant.

  He took a breath and started over. "Tell me about your family, Mrs. Turner. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

  Michelle imitated Glenn's go-to-hell look, while Doug let himself in the front door with his key.

  Get out," he commanded the intruders. "Get out of my house."

  "We have every right to be here," Glenn remarked mildly.

  "Not if you're frightening my wife, you don't."

  Glenn and his partner stood. "This doesn't look good, you know. Not at all."

  "Get out," Doug repeated, and this time they went.

  I watched through the window until they were gone. The homicide lieutenant drove a long, dark green Buick with a black top, ugly and drab as the man himself.

  Still in the living room when it was gone, Michelle stood crying into Doug's shoulder while he stroked her back and stared.

  I left them alone as long as I could, until dinner, when we all made a transparent effort to be cheerful. We even laughed a little, but it didn't last. Faces fell, sentences trailed off.

  The damage had been done, and we were all of us helpless to erase it.

  Chapter 16

  THURSDAY NIGHT PASSED without any emergency dashes to the hospital, but none of us seemed to trust Friday. Each nursing our own emotional hangover, breakfast was consumed in solemn silence. Michelle and I set out to visit Elise Duffy’s Alanton home as soon as Doug left for practice.

  The overcast sky reduced the obviously new white stucco house to a cold, forbidding gray. Blank arched windows stared up at the Spanish tile roof above. A crumbling fishing pier cluttered an inlet just across the street with motionless tall grasses bordering its banks. Seagulls squawked overhead, and the tang of ripe brown water tainted the air.