Linda Fairstein - Likely To Die

“I hate to get melodramatic but where have you been in my hour of need?”

“I tried to call you back as soon as I got your message. Drew’s been phoning you over there, too, but-”

“I doubt he’ll ever try again. Mike answered the last time he called and he probably thinks I’m holed up with another man. Joanie, you have to help me with this one. Can you remember exactly when it was that Drew told you that he wanted to meet me?”

“Why are you mixing him up in this woman’s murder case, Alex? You’re just overreacting. You’ve got to get over what you went through with Jed and his kind of-”

“One has nothing to do with the other. It’s a bit freaky that Drew tells you he wants to meet me and a week later I find out that the doctor whose murder I’m working on was the surgeon holding the knife when Carla Renaud went out of the picture. How did the whole thing start? That’s what I want to know.”

There were a few seconds of silence as Joan stretched for an answer. I was thinking like an interrogator now rather than a friend and it hurt my case not to be able to eyeball her and gauge her demeanor as she tried to answer me.

“Joanie?”

“I’m not stalling. I’m looking in my date book. Remember the AIDS benefit at the Temple of Dendur in early March? Jim and I were just leaving when you arrived-you were standing right in front of that sarcophagus with the twenty-five-hundred-year-old mummy on loan from the British Museum -”

“Which one of us looked better?”

“Personally,I voted for the mummy, but that’s when Drew told Jim he knew who you were and wanted a chance to be introduced. We were on our way out so I told him to give us a call with some dates and I’d put it together at a dinner party.”

“And when did he call you? Got that in your little black book, too?”

A longer pause.

“He didn’t call you until after he saw the newspaper articles about my assignment to Gemma Dogen’s case? Right? Like a day or two before the dinner party that you’d already set up. And you just added an extra chair.”

“What’s the big deal? I mean, I certainly didn’t know anything about this, Alex. But I can’t blame the man for being curious about the doctor who had such a profound effect on his personal life. I’ve talked to him plenty since then and he’s really crazy about you.”

“Well, it’s extremely weird to be in the middle of a love triangle with a guy who’s probably trying to channel messages to his late wife through the prosecutor who’s handling the murder of the woman-”

“Cut it out. I’ve got to go, the baby’s crying and-”

“You don’t have a baby.”

“Well, it works for Nina whenever you’re makingher crazy with your phone calls. Maybe I’ll borrow one ‘til you pass through this phase.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Look, you’ve only dated the guy a couple of times. Jim’s known him forever. Get through with this case and give Drew a chance.”

I was lying down on my side now, with my head propped up on one elbow, holding the phone to my right ear. We made small talk for a couple of minutes before I wormed my way back to the purpose of my call. “Mike thinks this is a bit far out, but do you-well, does Jim think that Drew harbored enough of a grudge against Dr. Dogen that he might have-I don’t mean that he did anything violent himself, but that he would have hired someone to-”

Joan was shouting at me across the Atlantic. “Do you remember what you used to tell me you did your first year in the D.A.‘s Office, when you were assigned to that bureau where all the nuts called in with their complaints? Whenever you got stuck on the phone with a pain in the neck who wouldn’t let you go, you used to reach a point where you’d say, ’Madam, I think we’re about to be disconnected.‘ Keep talking like this, Miss Cooper, and you will be permanently disconnected.”

I could hear Joan take a deep breath.

“Listen to Mike,” she said. “He’s got wonderful instincts about this kind of thing. I’ll be back up in New York on Tuesday, then you and I can get together for a quiet dinner. Call me here on Sunday after you’ve unpacked and settled in.”

Mike had shaved and showered during my call and emerged from the bathroom dressed in a dark blue suit. He was almost ready to go downstairs for the cocktail hour as he finished knotting and straightening his tie.

My conversation with Joan had put things in perspective and cheered me up as my exchanges with her usually did. There was no reason to write Drew off altogether, especially since I wouldn’t have much time for socializing as the pace of our investigation picked up. I might as well enjoy my free hours now and figure out how I felt about him when this case was behind me.

“Is my little wallflower going to stay in her room again this evening or are we going to have the pleasure of your company?”

“Give me half an hour. I’ll clean up and be downstairs-”

“That’s what you told me yesterday.”

I waved him out of the suite and went in to shower and wash my hair. My cocktail dress was a simple black silk with a short pleated skirt that swung when I moved. My mood was lighter than it had been in days as I stepped into my evening spikes and gave the skirt another shimmy.

It was after seven when I walked down the staircase to the Great Hall. I could see Chapman’s thick dark hair amid the thinning pates of the older academics and made my way across the room to join him. Along the route I asked one of the servers for a Dewar’s on the rocks and was told that the only Scotches the bar stocked were single malts. He would bring me a Glenrothes.

When I approached Mike he was standing with his back to me, facing three enormous panels of tapestry that lined most of the south wall of the Great Hall. He was shoulder to shoulder with a woman in a strapless gown whose skin glowed with the creamiest porcelain texture I’d ever seen and whose short platinum hair bounced gently beneath a diamond tiara as her head moved up and down in response to something that Chapman was saying to her.

I hovered a foot or two behind them waiting to be glimpsed instead of interrupting the conversation.

“I never knew Orkney had anything to do with this place but I sure know the story of these things.” The hand with the Jameson’s pointed up at the wall hangings. Chapman was telling the woman that the Earl of Orkney had been England ’s first Field Marshal, second in command to the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim. The huge tapestries celebrated that victory and, as Mike was describing, depicted the arts of war.

My curiosity was overwhelming my manners and I circled around Mike’s side as my drink was delivered to include myself in their conversation.

“Cheers. I’m glad you could make it, kid. I’d like you to meet my duchess.”

The elegant woman shifted her glass of champagne to her other hand and extended the right one to shake mine, throwing her head back and laughing at Mike’s description, introducing herself to me as Jennifer, Lady Turnbull. Enough midnight soaks in my Jacuzzi with fashion magazines made the introduction unnecessary. Her beautiful face and stunning figure had graced as many covers and articles as those of any professional model. And the stories of the American college girl who had married the elderly Lord Turnbull and shortly thereafter inherited his millions had been front-page tabloid news while I was still an adolescent.

“Jenny’s fiancé is the person who underwrites this conference for the Brits every year. That’s how come they’re here. He’s the guy over there, talking to your boyfriend.”

Lady Turnbull wrapped one of her long thin arms in the crook of Mike’s elbow and turned him around to face into the roomful of people. I saw Lord Windlethorne speaking to a man I recognized from the same sort of magazine articles as the British industrialist Bernhard Karl, a fiftyish man with boyish good looks.