Sketches—Renata’s sketches drawn three months before she died, a year before Anthony della Salva stunned the fashion world with the Pacific Reef look. Only last week Sal had tried to destroy the book because of one of those sketches.
“Neeve, say something to me.” Sal’s whisper pierced the room, an urgent command.
The door was ajar. From the corridor outside, Neeve heard the elevator stop. “I was thinking,” she said, trying to make her voice sound normal, “I love the way you’ve incorporated the Pacific Reef look in the fall line.”
The elevator door slid open. The faint sound of footsteps in the hall.
Sal’s voice sounded genial. “I let everybody go early. They’ve all been breaking their necks getting ready for the show. I think this is my best collection in years.” With a reassuring smile in her direction, he stepped behind the partially open door. The dimmed lights sent his shadow looming against the far wall of the showroom, the wall that was decorated with a Pacific Reef mural.
Neeve stared at the wall, touched the scarf on the mannequin. She tried to answer, but words would not come.
The door opened slowly. She saw the silhouette of a hand, the muzzle of a gun. Cautiously Denny walked into the room, his eyes darting in search of them. As Neeve watched, Sal stepped noiselessly from behind the door. He raised the gun. “Denny,” he said softly.
As Denny spun around, Sal fired. The bullet went through Denny’s forehead. Denny dropped the pistol and fell to the floor, without making a sound.
Stupefied, Neeve watched as Sal pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and, holding it, reached down and picked up Denny’s gun.
“You shot him,” Neeve whispered. “You shot him in cold blood. You didn’t have to do that! You never gave him a chance.”
“He would have killed you.” Sal dropped his own gun on the receptionist’s desk. “I was only protecting you.” He began to walk toward her, Denny’s pistol in his hand.
“You knew he was coming,” Neeve said. “You knew his name. You planned this.”
The warm, jovial mask that had been Sal’s permanent expression was gone. His cheeks were puffy, and shiny with perspiration. The eyes that always seemed to twinkle were narrowed into slits that disappeared into the fleshiness of his face. His hand, still blistered and red, raised the gun and pointed it at her. Spatters of Denny’s blood glistened on the shiny fabric of his suit jacket. On the carpet a widening pool of blood encircled his feet. “Of course I did,” he said. “The word is out that Steuber ordered you hit. What nobody knows is that I’m the one who started that word and I’m the one who gave the contract. I’ll tell Myles that I managed to get your killer, but too late to save you. Don’t worry, Neeve. I’ll comfort Myles. I’m good at that.”
Neeve stood, rooted, unable to move, beyond fear. “My mother designed the Pacific Reef look,” she told him. “You stole it from her, didn’t you? And somehow Ethel found out. You’re the one who killed her! You dressed her, not Steuber! You knew which blouse belonged with the ensemble!”
Sal began to laugh, a mirthless chuckle that shook his body. “Neeve,” he said, “you’re a lot smarter than your father. That’s why I have to get rid of you. You knew there was something wrong when Ethel didn’t show up. You caught on that all her winter coats were still in her closet. I figured you would. When I saw a Pacific Reef sketch in the cookbook I knew I had to get rid of it any way I could, even if it meant burning my hand. You’d have made the connection, sooner or later. Myles wouldn’t have recognized it blown up to billboard size. Ethel found out that my story about getting inspiration for the Pacific Reef look in the Chicago Aquarium was a lie. I told her I could explain it and went to her place. She was smart all right. She told me she knew I’d lied, and why I lied—that I’d stolen that design. And she was going to prove it.”
“Ethel saw the cookbook,” Neeve said numbly. “She copied one of the sketches into her appointment book.”
Sal smiled. “Was that how she made the connection? She didn’t live long enough to tell me. If we had time, I’d show you the portfolio your mother gave me. The whole collection is there.”
This wasn’t Uncle Sal. This wasn’t her father’s boyhood friend. This was a stranger who hated her, hated Myles. “Your father and Dev, treating me like I was a big joke from the time we were kids. Laughing at me. Your mother. High-class. Beautiful. Understanding fashion the way you only can when it’s born in you. Wasting all that knowledge on a clod like your father who can’t tell a housedress from a coronation robe. Renata always looked down her nose at me. She knew I didn’t have it, the gift. But when she wanted advice about where to take her designs, guess who she came to!
“Neeve, you still haven’t figured the best part of it. You’re the only one who’ll ever know, and you won’t be around to tell. Neeve, you damn fool, I didn’t just steal the Pacific Reef look from your mother. I cut her throat for it!”
• • •
“It’s Sal!” Myles whispered. “He ripped the handle off the coffeepot. He tried to ruin those sketches. And Neeve may be with him now.”
“Where?” Kitty grasped Myles’s arm.
“His office. Thirty-sixth Street.”
“My car is outside. It has a phone.”
Nodding, Myles ran for the door and down the corridor. An agonizing minute passed before the elevator came. It stopped twice to pick up passengers before the ground floor. Holding Kitty’s hand, he ran across the lobby. Heedless of traffic, they dashed across the street.
“I’ll drive,” Myles told her. With a screeching U-turn he raced down West End Avenue, willing a squad car to see him, to follow him.
As always in a crisis, he felt himself go icy cold. His mind became a separate entity, weighing what he must do. He gave Kitty a number to dial. Silently she obeyed, and handed the phone to him.
“Police Commissioner’s office.”
“Myles Kearny. Put the Commissioner on.”
Frantically Myles steered around the heavy evening traffio. Ignoring red lights, he left in his wake a snarl of angry motorists. They were at Columbus Circle.
Herb’s voice. “Myles, I just tried to reach you. Steuber put a contract out on Neeve. We’ve got to protect her. And, Myles, I think there’s a connection between Ethel Lambston’s murder and Renata’s death. The V-shaped slash in Lambston’s throat—it’s exactly the same as the wound that killed Renata.”
Renata, her throat slashed. Renata, lying so quietly in the park. No sign of struggle. Renata who had not been mugged but who had met a man she trusted, her husband’s boyhood friend. Oh Jesus, Myles thought. Oh Jesus.
“Herb, Neeve is at Anthony della Salva’s place. Two-fifty West Thirty-sixth. Twelfth floor. Herb, send our guys there fast. Sal is a murderer.”
Between Fifty-sixth and Forty-fourth streets, the right lanes of Seventh Avenue were being repaved. But the workers had left. Recklessly Myles drove behind the stanchions, over the still-damp tarmac. They were passing Thirty-eighth Street, Thirty-seventh . . .
Neeve. Neeve. Neeve. Let me be on time, Myles prayed. Grant me my child.
• • •
Jack laid down the phone, still absorbing what he had just heard. His friend the director of the Chicago Aquarium had confirmed what he suspected. The new museum had opened eighteen years ago, but the magnificent display on the top floor that reproduced the dazzling sense of walking the bottom of the ocean at the Pacific Reef had not been completed until sixteen years ago. Not too many people were aware that there had been a problem with the tanks and the Pacific Reef floor had not been open to the public for nearly two years after the rest of the Aquarium was completed. It was not something that the director cared to include in the public-relations releases. Jack knew because he’d gone to Northwestern and used to visit the museum regularly.
Anthony della Salva had claimed that his inspiration for the Pacific Reef look had been occasioned by a visit to the Chicago Aquarium seventeen years ago. Impossible. Then why had he lied?
Jack stared down at Ethel’s voluminous notes; the clip sheets of the interviews and write-ups about Sal; the bold question marks over Sal’s rhapsodic descriptions of his first experience seeing the Pacific Reef exhibition at the Aquarium; the copy of the sketch from the cookbook. Ethel had picked up the discrepancy and pursued it. Now she was dead.
Jack thought of Neeve’s absolute insistence that there was something odd about the way Ethel was dressed. He thought about Myles saying, “Every killer leaves a calling card.”
Gordon Steuber wasn’t the only designer who might have mistakenly clothed his victim in a seemingly appropriate outfit.
Anthony della Salva might have made exactly the same mistake.
Jack’s office was silent, the silence that comes when a room that is used to the activity of visitors and secretaries and ringing phones is suddenly hushed.
Jack grabbed the phone book. Anthony della Salva had six different office addresses. Frantically, Jack tried the first one. There was no answer. The second and third had an answering machine: “Business hours are eight-thirty till five P.M. Please leave a message.”
He tried the apartment at Schwab House. After six rings he gave up. As a last resort he phoned the shop. Somebody answer, he prayed.
“Neeve’s Place.”
“I’ve got to reach Neeve Kearny. This is Jack Campbell, a friend.”
Eugenia’s voice was warm. “You’re the publisher—”
Jack interrupted. “She’s meeting della Salva. Where?”
“His main office. Two-fifty West Thirty-sixth Street. Is anything wrong?”
Without answering, Jack slammed down the phone.
His office was at Park and Forty-first Street. He ran through the deserted corridors, managed to catch an elevator that was just descending and hailed a cruising cab. He threw twenty dollars at the driver and shouted out the address. It was eighteen minutes past six.
• • •
Is this the way it was for Mother? Neeve thought. Did she look up at him that day and see the change come over his face? Did she have any warning?
Neeve knew she was going to die. She had felt all week that her time was running out. Now that she was beyond hope, it seemed suddenly vital to have those questions answered.
Sal had moved closer to her. He was less than four feet away. Behind him, near the door, the crumpled body of Denny, the delivery man who would fuss to open the coffee container for her, was sprawled on the floor. From the corner of her eye, Neeve could see the blood that was oozing from the wound in his head; the outsized manila envelope that he had been carrying was spattered with blood, the punk-rock haircut that had been a wig was mercifully half covering his face.
It seemed an age ago since Denny had burst into this room. How long had it been? A minute? Less than a minute. The building had felt deserted, but it was possible someone had heard the shot. Someone might investigate. . . . The guard was supposed to be downstairs. . . . Sal didn’t have time to waste, and they both knew it.
From far off Neeve heard a faint whir. An elevator was moving. Someone might be coming. Could she delay the instant when Sal pulled the trigger?
“Uncle Sal,” she said quietly, “will you tell me just one thing? Why was it necessary for you to kill my mother? Couldn’t you have worked with her? There isn’t a designer going who doesn’t pick the brains of apprentices.”
“When I see genius, I don’t share, Neeve,” Sal told her flatly.
The sliding of an elevator door in the hallway. Someone was there. To keep Sal from hearing the sound of footsteps, Neeve shouted. “You killed my mother because of your greed. You comforted us and cried with us. At her casket you told Myles, ‘Try to think your pretty one is sleeping.’”
“Shut up!” Sal stretched out his hand.
The muzzle of the pistol loomed before Neeve’s face. She turned her head and saw Myles standing in the doorway.
“Myles, run, he’ll kill you!” she screamed.
Sal spun around.
Myles did not move. The absolute authority in his voice rang through the room as he said, “Give me the gun, Sal. It’s all over.”
Sal held the pistol on both of them. His eyes wild with fear and hatred, he stepped back as Myles began to approach him. “Don’t come any further,” he cried. “I’ll shoot.”
“No you won’t, Sal,” Myles said, his voice deadly quiet now, not a trace of fear or doubt in it. “You killed my wife. You killed Ethel Lambston. In another second you would have killed my daughter. But Herb and the cops will be here any minute. They know about you. You can’t lie your way out of this one. So give me that gun.”
His words became measured and were spoken with awesome force and contempt. He paused for a moment before speaking again. “Or else do yourself and all of us a favor and put the muzzle of that pistol in your lying mouth and blow your brains out.”
• • •
Myles had told Kitty not to leave the car. Agonized, she waited. Please—please help them. From down the block she heard the insistent scream of sirens. Directly in front of her a cab stopped and Jack Campbell rushed out.
“Jack.” Kitty pushed open the car door and ran after him into the lobby. The guard was on the phone.
“Della Salva,” Jack snapped.
The guard held up his hand. “Wait a minute.”
“The twelfth floor,” Kitty said.
The one elevator in service was not there. The indicator showed that it was on the twelfth floor. Jack grabbed the guard by the neck. “Turn on another elevator.”
“Hey, what do you think . . .”
Outside the building, squad cars screeched to a halt. The guard’s eyes widened. He threw Jack a key. “This’ll unlock them.”
Jack and Kitty were on the way up before the police burst into the lobby. Jack said, “I think della Salva—”
“I know,” Kitty said.
The elevator lumbered to the twelfth floor, stopped. “Wait here,” Jack told her.
He was in time to hear Myles say in a quiet, disciplined voice: “If you’re not going to use it on yourself, Sal, hand me that gun.”
Jack stood in the doorway. The room was heavily shadowed and the scene like a surrealistic painting. The body on the carpet. Neeve and her father with the pistol pointed at them. Jack saw the glint of metal on the desk near the door. A gun. Could he reach it in time?
Then, as he watched, Anthony della Salva dropped his hand to his side. “Take it, Myles.” He pleaded, “Myles, I didn’t mean it. I never meant it.” Sal fell to his knees and put his arms around Myles’s legs. “Myles, you’re my best friend. Tell them I didn’t mean it.”
• • •
For the last time that day, Police Commissioner Herbert Schwartz conferred in his office with Detectives O’Brien and Gomez. Herb had just returned from Anthony della Salva’s office. He had arrived there just behind the first squad car. He’d spoken to Myles after they’d taken that scum della Salva out. “Myles, you’ve tortured yourself for seventeen years thinking you didn’t take Nicky Sepetti’s threat seriously. Isn’t it time you let go of the guilt? Do you think if Renata had come to you with the Pacific Reef design, you’d have been able to say it was genius? You may be a smart cop, but you’re also somewhat colorblind. I remember Renata saying she laid out your ties for you.”
Myles would be all right. What a shame, Herb thought, that “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” wasn’t acceptable anymore. The taxpayers would support della Salva for the rest of his life. . . .
O’Brien and Gomez waited. The PC looked exhausted. But it had been a good day. Della Salva had admitted to murdering Ethel Lambston. The White House and the Mayor would be off their backs.
O’Brien had a few things to tell the PC. “Steuber’s secretary came in on her own about an hour ago. Lambston went to see Steuber ten days ago. In effect, told him she was going to get him busted. She was probably onto his drug operation, but it doesn’t matter. He didn’t hit Lambston.”<
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Schwartz nodded.
Gomez spoke up. “Sir, we know now that Seamus Lambston is innocent of his ex-wife’s murder. Do you want to press the assault charge against him and the tampering-with-evidence charge against his wife?”
“Did you find the murder weapon?”
“Yes. In that Indian shop just as she told us.”
“Let’s give the poor bastards a break.” Herb got up. “It’s been a long day. Good night, gentlemen.”
• • •
Devin Stanton was having a pre-dinner cocktail with the Cardinal at the Madison Avenue residence and watching the evening news. Old friends, they were discussing Devin’s forthcoming red hat.
“I’ll miss you, Dev,” the Cardinal told him. “Sure you want the job? Baltimore can be a bathhouse in the summer.”
The bulletin broke just before the program went off. Famed designer Anthony della Salva was being arraigned for the murders of Ethel Lambston, Renata Kearny and Denny Adler, and for the attempted murder of former Police Commissioner Kearny’s daughter, Neeve.
The Cardinal turned to Devin. “Those are your friends!”
Devin jumped up. “If you’ll excuse me, Eminence . . .”
• • •
Ruth and Seamus Lambston listened to the NBC six-o’clock news sure they would hear that Ethel Lambston’s ex-husband had failed the lie-detector test. They had been astonished when Seamus was allowed to leave police headquarters, both convinced that his arrest was only a matter of time.
Peter Kennedy had tried to offer some encouragement. “Polygraph tests are not infallible. If it comes to trial, we’ll have the evidence that you passed the first one.”
Ruth had been taken to the Indian shop. The basket where she’d dropped the dagger had been moved. That was why the cops hadn’t found it. She dug it out for them, watched the impersonal way they slipped it into a plastic bag.
“I scoured it,” she told them.
“Bloodstains don’t always disappear.”
How could it have happened? she wondered as she sat in the heavy overstuffed velour chair that she had hated for so long but that now felt familiar and comfortable. How did we lose control over our lives?