Tomorrow's Vengeance

TWENTY

‘Rester éveillé. Le plus longtemps possible. Lutter contre le sommeil. Le calcul est simple. En une heure, je fabrique trente faux papiers. Si je dors une heure, trente personnes mourront.’

Adolfo Kaminsky, 1925.

[Keep awake. As long as possible. Struggle against sleep. The calculation is easy. In one hour, I make thirty false papers. If I sleep one hour, thirty people will die.]

I had promised I would keep the information about the provenance of Izzy’s art collection to myself. Ditto my discovery of the bloodied croquet mallet. But, sharing that information with Naddie didn’t really count, did it?

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I cautioned after my long tale was done.

‘Don’t tell anyone what?’ she said.

I loved that in a woman.

We were tucked away at a corner card table in the lobby of Blackwalnut Hall. The cards were spread out for a game of gin rummy but neither of us had played a card. I kept my eye on Nancy, who was looking paler and thinner than ever, as we listened to Charlie Robinson play the piano. It was Gershwin Day, and happily even Nancy was humming along – ‘the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble’ – and drumming her fingers silently along the arms of her chair as if it were a keyboard.

‘What I don’t understand,’ I commented to my friend as Robinson launched into the next tune, ‘is if Filomena and Raniero inherited all these valuable paintings from their father’s estate, what are they doing working here?’

‘It costs a lot of money to start up a restaurant,’ Naddie said. ‘Two, three hundred thousand dollars would be a drop in a bucket. I can’t imagine they got much more than that for the three paintings.’

‘Still sounds like a fortune to me.’ I smiled dreamily, thinking what I might do with such a windfall if an unknown Monet or Picasso happened to turn up in my attic.

‘So, who do you think killed Masud?’ I asked Naddie, changing the subject. ‘If you were writing the novel, I mean.’

Naddie considered my question thoughtfully, tapping her tented fingers against her lips.

‘I hate thinking this, but how about Safa?’ I prompted. ‘He treated her like chattal, so it’s possible that she snapped.’

‘I think we can eliminate Safa, Hannah. She was in the computer room at the time, teaching a class on how to use Facebook. Six septuagenarians and her electronic signature on the Internet make for a pretty solid alibi.’

I hadn’t known that, and felt relieved.

‘Tyson Bennett?’ I asked, looking at her sideways through my lashes to judge her reaction.

‘Tyson?’ she sputtered, then laughed. ‘Mr Straight-Arrow? No way.’

‘Safa tells me that Masud threatened to turn Tyson in to the Office of Health Care Quality for the unit not following proper procedure when we discovered Jerry having sex with Nancy. Maybe Tyson wanted to shut him up.’

‘Not likely, especially since it’s clear that Masud followed through on his threat. I’ve spoken to Tyson, and according to him he did report the incident to the Health Care Quality officials. Another staff member in the unit told him. After that…’ She shrugged. ‘There’s no reason for Tyson to go after Masud.’

‘Except in anger,’ I said. ‘Like Elaine Broering. She’s out of a job because of Masud.’

‘We don’t know that yet. Isn’t Elaine simply on leave? Besides, I can’t think of anyone less likely to commit a murder than Elaine. She’s one of the most gentle, caring people I know. You have to be to work in the memory unit.’

I thought back to my first substantial conversation with Elaine and had to agree. ‘Nancy bit her, did you know that? Elaine simply shrugged it off in an “it-goes-with-the-territory” sort of way. I like her a lot, so I find it hard to picture her as a killer.’ I paused. ‘But then, a lot of women fell for Ted Bundy.’

‘How about Richard Kent?’ Naddie suggested. ‘Or Mr Easy Rider?’

I shrugged. ‘Possible, I suppose, but I think they just hated Muslims in general, not Masud specifically. Richard is a sure bet for the graffiti, but murder?’

We sat quietly for a moment, enjoying the sing-a-long. ‘I Got Plenty of Nothing’ seemed especially appropriate after what Naddie and I had just been discussing.

After the song was over, I said, ‘I’m fond of Raniero, too, of course, and I’d like to think it isn’t simply my lust for his spaghetti putanesca that keeps me from pointing an accusatory finger.’

‘I wonder what the police have on Raniero?’ Naddie said. ‘You mentioned the arguments he had with Masud. Do you think it might have been a fight over Safa gone bad?’

‘I don’t. I witnessed a lot of yelling, and a few punches were thrown, but nothing ever got too physical.’ I gazed out the window for a moment, collecting my thoughts. ‘If Safa and Raniero were having an affair, though, it’s conceivable that Raniero lost it when he saw how badly Masud was treating her.’ I picked up one of the playing cards, turning it over and over between my fingers. ‘Besides, how likely is it that Raniero would come across Masud in the Tranquility Garden? The more I think about it, the more I’m starting to believe that Masud was lured there.’ I ticked the items off on my fingers. ‘One, it’s secluded, especially at mealtimes when almost everyone is in the dining room. Two, by choosing to use the croquet mallet it was obviously premeditated since the croquet sets are stored in a shed some distance away and would have to be carried into the garden. And three…’ I flapped my hand. ‘I don’t have a three.’

‘I do,’ Naddie said. ‘If it happened at lunchtime, as the rumor mill has led us to believe, wouldn’t Raniero’s absence in the kitchen have been noticed?’

‘Yes!’ I said, doing an arm pump. ‘Naddie, you are brilliant!’

‘Hardly.’ She inclined her head toward my ear. ‘And here comes someone else whose absence during mealtime would certainly not have gone unremarked.’

I followed her gaze. Filomena was chugging our way like a determined steam engine. ‘Do you mind if I interrupt your card game for a moment, ladies?’

‘Of course not.’ Naddie waved at the empty chair. ‘Please.’

‘I need your help, Mrs Gray,’ Filomena said, pulling out the chair and sitting down in it.

‘Me? And how can I help you, my dear?’

Filomena folded her hands on the table in front of her and leaned toward Naddie. ‘You write the detective stories, right? You know about the police and things.’

Naddie cocked her head. ‘A little, dear, but remember, what I wrote is fiction not fact. Sometimes I simply made it up. It’s one of the reasons I gave up writing police procedurals, to tell the truth. Too much forensics in crime novels these days. I’m much more interested in the characters, in their relationships. I let the cops do what they do somewhere off the page.’

Filomena waved Naddie’s objections away. ‘I am worried. I think they are going to put my brother in jail.’

‘According to what I’ve heard, they’ve simply taken Raniero in for questioning, Filomena. That doesn’t mean he’s going to be arrested. If he has nothing to hide…’

The deer-in-the-headlights look on Filomena’s face said it all.

Naddie and I exchanged worried glances. Naddie leaned forward and cocked her head. ‘Are you telling us that Raniero does have something he doesn’t want people to find out about?’

Filomena lowered her gaze, confirming my suspicions. ‘Mr Abaza, somehow he found out what Raniero was doing.’

‘What was Raniero doing?’ I asked, bracing myself for an avalanche of sordid details about a love affair with Safa.

‘I know nothing about it, of course. It is the chef’s job to plan the menus and order the supplies. I just pay the bills.’

Filomena needed prodding. ‘Tell us. What was Raniero doing?’ I repeated.

She took a deep breath then puffed it out. ‘Raniero, he is taking what you call backkicks.’

‘Kickbacks,’ I corrected.

‘Yes, kickbacks. He is giving me invoices for meats that are kosher and that are halal when they are not. They are cheaper. And Raniero and the meat man, they are splitting the difference and putting the money in their pockets.’

That was a shocker. ‘How much money are we talking about, Filomena?’

She studied the chandelier, as if the answer were written on one of the cut-glass crystal pendants. ‘Since Calvert Colony opened? Many thousands, maybe. Special meat is very expensive.’

Although Masud was quite the busybody, it seemed unlikely to me that he’d be involved behind the scenes in the kitchen. While Safa… I flashed back again to the day I’d run into Safa scooting out the kitchen door. She’d said she’d been discussing the menu, and specifically mentioned a meat delivery. Could she have been aware of Raniero’s scam with the meat and told her husband, rather than been indulging in an affair?

‘But, wouldn’t you be the most likely person to stumble over what Raniero was doing, Filomena? How on earth did Mr Abaza get involved?’

She straighted her spine and rotated her shoulders. ‘Ah, Mr Abaza, he parks his golf cart over by the kitchen, where there is good shade so the seat is not so hot when you sit on it, you know? One day, Raniero tells me, he is late. Mr Abaza is climbing into his golf cart when the delivery truck comes, so he starts talking to the meat man.’ She tucked a wayward strand of golden hair behind her ear. ‘I don’t know exactly how, but Raniero tells me afterwards that he’s in trouble and we can’t afford to lose this job.’

‘We?’

‘If Raniero goes, I go. How do you Americans say? That’s how we roll.’

I wondered why Filomena was telling us this. You’d think she’d want to protect her brother, not point one of her well-manicured fingers at him. ‘So, are you saying that your brother murdered Mr Abaza to shut him up about the kickbacks to the meat man?’

‘I do not know, Mrs Gray. I only know about the meat.’

‘Do the police know… about the meat, I mean?’ I asked.

Filomena screwed her pretty face into a frown. ‘Raniero, I think he is confessing. That is why I am telling you.’

‘You don’t know that, Filomena,’ Naddie said gently.

Her face suddenly went pale.

‘Why did he do it?’ I asked. ‘Cheat Calvert Colony on the meat, I mean?’

Filomena looked distinctly unwell, but shrugged. ‘We need the money for the restaurant, maybe?’

I frowned. Skimming money off the top of the meat bill seemed like small potatoes to me, but over time perhaps it added up. Or perhaps the funny business with the meat was just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps Raniero had found other unorthodox ways to ‘economize.’ As if selling works of art that had been in their family for three generations wasn’t enough.

Filomena stopped chewing her lower lip. ‘What do I say when the police ask me about Raniero, Mrs Gray?’

Naddie reached out and patted the worried woman’s hand. ‘You tell them the truth, my dear.’