The Bassetts lived on Park Avenue, in Palm Beach, and Dark Harbor, off the coast of Maine. Max's bequeathing her the Bassett family enclave in Dark Harbor was a truly appalling move. In Florida all types mingled with relative ease. Even among the social set whose roots in Palm Beach predated air-conditioning, May-December relationships between the socially unequal were common. Lovely blond women of any origin, the young second wives of ancient gentlemen, were part of the scenery, a social set of their own. But Dark Harbor was another story. The houses were handed down from generation to generation, and new people just weren't welcome. Next message.
"Hi, Birdie, it's Al Frayme. Just calling to reschedule our lunch. By the way, the funeral was beautiful, and I thought you were very dignified in a difficult situation. Do you have time for lunch this week? I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Sweets. Paris. Tahiti. You name it."
Birdie smiled again. Sweets was downtown in the Fulton Fish Market, close to the Wall Street lawyer's office where she'd been earlier. The phone rang, distracting her from the rest of her messages.
"Hello, this is Birdie."
"You're next," a soft voice said.
"What? Hello? Hello?" A dial tone buzzed on the other end.
Jesus. Birdie felt so ill. She couldn't eat a thing. Nothing appealed and nothing stayed down. She was almost paranoid enough to believe she was being poisoned. Max's kids hated her; that much was clear. And people with money were always at risk. She glanced around the elegant room, wondering which things could hurt her. She knew that people could be poisoned by their clothes, by their toothpaste, by the air they breathed. Again she had that nagging worry. Max had not been sick. He'd died without warning. Everybody, including his doctors, had thought he was just old. But she wondered. The voice on the phone unnerved her. She wasn't sure anymore. She just wasn't sure.
Ten
As far as catastrophes for April went, second only to not witnessing what went down between Bernardino and his killer and not being able to save him was not being able to ask any questions about it. She'd recovered quickly enough from her exhaustion to tackle Bill Bernardino with a pad and pen. He wasn't answering her questions any better than she'd answered his.
Bill, what had your father been working on these last weeks? she wrote and passed over for him to read. As with the earlier questions she'd posed to him, this one sat heavily on the page, giving Bill ample opportunity to twist his mouth into any number of disgusted shapes while he pretended to decipher her perfectly legible handwriting.
There was no nuance to the written word, no tone of voice to temper her line of questioning. The questions looked like something out of a survey, not a personal exchange between two people who'd lost a loved one. With April's side written down, the interview was between Bill and the page, not between her and him. So he was having an easy time avoiding her.
His eyes looked down, away from her, when he tossed back, "How would I know what he was working on?"
He might have said something. You two talked, didn't you? There was a time lag while she wrote this. There was another time lag while he read the reply.
Worse than using sign language, this was like instant messaging with both people in the room. And one of them was determined not to help. April knew that Bill's mind was still on the blame track, but she wasn't going to stop trying to engage him in a dialogue.
Her expression was neutral as she strung her questions out like beads on a necklace she would never get to wear. Several times she exchanged glances with Mike. April could read in his face that, like her, he was annoyed and hiding it well. Whether or not Bill had meant his threat of a scandal, it was on the table, putting the cops and prosecutor on different teams. It was clear that neither Mike nor Bill was going to share information, so she had to do the talking, because she was the one who'd been close to Bernardino. Too bad. Now the investigation might have to go needlessly deep into the grieving family's private affairs. Unless they found the killer soon, Bill was going to get less happy as the days went on. He certainly wasn't making it easy on himself now by dismissing her queries.
"Yeah, we talked, but not about business. Look, I have to go." He tapped his watch and got to his feet, looking at them angrily as if one or both of them might try to keep him there. But neither Mike nor April made a move to delay him. He had come to them, after all. He could go when he pleased.
"Look, we're going to have to go through his things at the house," Mike said as he opened the door.
"Fine. The place is a fucking mess, though. He was getting ready to move." Bill paused long enough to shake his head. Then he made a point of checking his watch again. "Kathy will be here in a few hours."
"I'm really sorry," Mike murmured.
Anger flashed in Bill's face. "Yeah, well, something's wrong here. To get through thirty-eight years on the job and die like this." He shook his head. "It shouldn't happen."
April agreed with him. It shouldn't have happened. She gripped the pen in her hand, wanting to add something, but Bill glared at her, triggering a guilt she didn't want to feel. It wasn't her fault that his father left the party alone. It wasn't her fault that she'd followed him too late. It wasn't her fault that he was dead, and she was still alive.
She didn't want to feel it, but the guilt was there. Bernardino had been her boss, her friend. A part of her couldn't help believing that the timing of the events tonight and her position in them had some special meaning. And without her being aware of it, somehow the fault really was hers. Chinese guilt made for an extensive menu, and numbers one through a hundred were weighing her down at the moment.
Her cell phone rang almost immediately after Bill left, and she forgot that she couldn't speak. She punched talk, but only the sound of air came out of her mouth when she tried to say hello.
"What the hell happened to you?" It was her boss at Midtown North, Lieutenant Iriarte.
"Hahhhh," she answered.
"What? Where are you?"
"Pshhhh."
"For Christ's sake, speak up; I can't hear you." Iriarte's usual irritation sounded in his voice.
April rolled her eyes at Mike. Iriarte, she mouthed at him.
"April, I know you're there," the lieutenant said crossly. "What the hell is going on? When are you coming in?"
April passed the phone to Mike. "Hey, Arturo, it's Mike Sanchez. How ya doin'?"
"Mike. I heard about Bernardino. Terrible thing. What's with April?"
"Ah, she got into a little fight trying to apprehend the suspect."
"What! Nobody told me that. Where are you?"
"Well, she bolted from the hospital a while ago. Didn't anybody tell you she wasn't coming in?"
"She's supposed to call in. Let me talk to her, will you?" He barreled right ahead as if he hadn't heard the words hospital, fight, and suspect.
"Really sorry about that, Arturo, but I told you some asshole tried to wipe her last night and she's lost her freaking voice."
"Huh?" For a second April's boss was speechless himself, not sure whether or not Sanchez was pranking him to get April a day off. Pranking was not uncommon. Finally he said, "No kidding."
"No kidding. She's lucky he just knocked her voice out. It's a woman's nightmare, right?" Mike winked at April.
"Jeez," Iriarte said. "Anything I can do?"
Thanks, April mouthed at him. Thanks a lot.
The rest of April's day was just as frustrating. Bernardino's daughter, Kathy, arrived in the afternoon, but April was not able to call with her condolences, to inform her that she and Mike would be out to talk to her and to look at the house soon. Mike had to make that call, and it was a tough one. In less than two months Kathy and Bill had lost both their mother and father. Bill needed someone to blame. So heaven only knew what ideas the prosecutor would pour into the ear of his sister the FBI agent over dinner tonight. Both were trained investigators. It was almost enough to make a person paranoid. April didn't want to be paranoid, and she didn't want the Department to be blamed.