“Yes she is. A lot of people don’t notice that, though.”
“Lovely dancer.” Her smile seemed confident, but I sensed vulnerability. “Well, Mr. Heller? What do you say? Will you take the case?”
“No.”
Her wide eyes widened. “No?”
“No. Mrs. de Marigny, it’s impossible. I’m a material witness…for the prosecution!”
She smiled wickedly. “So much the better.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea, getting a private investigator to work with this attorney…Higgs, is it? I can tell you, frankly, that I’m not impressed with what the police down there are doing, either the Nassau boys or the imported Miami variety.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know that all too well.”
How? I wondered. But I didn’t ask.
I just said, “Really, I apologize, I’d like to help, but…”
She locked onto me with that unwavering gaze. “Mr. Heller-I checked with the person who recommended you to my father-an old friend of yours: Evalyn Walsh McLean. She speaks warmly of you, and assures me you are the man for the job.”
Evalyn. There was a name from the past…one of the queens of Washington society, the owner of the famed, cursed Hope Diamond, she’d been at my side during much of the ill-fated Lindbergh investigation. We’d parted rather bitterly-oddly enough, after all these years, it felt good to know I’d been forgiven….
“She claims you solved the Lindbergh kidnapping,” Nancy de Marigny said.
“Oh yeah. That one worked out just peachy for everybody.”
Her smile was wistful, her eyes glazed. “You know, it’s funny…that’s one of the reasons why my father moved to the Bahamas….”
“What is?”
“The Lindbergh kidnapping.”
“It is?”
She smiled, laughed sadly. “Oh, I know-everyone thinks Daddy moved to Nassau strictly to dodge the Canadian taxes. Well, I’m sure that was part of it. But after the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped, Daddy received several notes, extortion notes, threatening that I would be the next ‘rich brat snatched,’ if he didn’t pay. We lived near Niagara Falls at the time…sort of in the same part of the country as the Lindberghs-Mother and Father were friends of theirs, you know. Anyway, for something like two years we had armed guards walking our grounds. I know it was probably only a relatively short time, but in my memory it seems that I spent my entire childhood accompanied everywhere I went by armed guards.”
I didn’t know what to say; so I just nodded sympathetically.
“But in Nassau, Daddy had been told, even the richest man in the world could go to sleep, and leave his doors unlocked….”
And now, finally, she began to cry.
She found some tissues in her robe pocket and dabbed her eyes; I rose and went to her and touched her shoulder. After a while, she nodded that she was better, and gestured for me to sit down again.
I did.
“Mrs. de Marigny-I really do wish I could help.” And in a way I did, but really I didn’t: I just wanted to get back to Chicago. Between Nassau and Florida, I’d had my fill of palm trees, and I sure didn’t need to travel to the tropics to find knuckleheaded American cops to tangle with.
“Then you decline?” She took one last swipe at her eyes.
“Yes.”
“In that case, I’ll have to speak to Mr. Foskett.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well…you’ll need to refund my father’s ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”
“What?”
“I think you heard me the first time, Mr. Heller.”
“That was a nonrefundable retainer….”
“Do you have that in writing?”
“Well, no. How did you know…?”
She smiled blandly. “I’m friendly with the head of my father’s household staff-a Miss Marjorie Bristol? She’s holding the carbon of the check my father made out to you.”
I didn’t say anything. I may have moaned.
“And,” she continued cheerily, “in his personal ledger, where he recorded the payment, he noted that your daily rate was to be three hundred dollars. He also made a notation that you’d been paid in advance, one thousand dollars for one day’s work. And I believe that’s how long you did, actually, work? Isn’t it, Mr. Heller?”
I nodded. “That was three hundred dollars plus expenses, though.”
She shrugged facially. “That’s fine. And if you put in enough days to exhaust the retainer, I’m willing to continue paying you at the same rate. Which I understand is top money in your field.”
I sighed. “That’s correct.”
“So. When would you like to head back to Nassau?”
She’d beaten me; Nate Heller, tough guy, pummeled by a nineteen-year-old ballerina.
“This afternoon will be fine,” I said.
“Wonderful!” She reached in the pocket of her robe. “Here are your tickets…your room is waiting at the B.C.”
She meant the British Colonial; I took the tickets, numbly.
She sipped her orange juice. Looked out at the golf course, proud of herself.
“Mrs. de Marigny…”
“Nancy.” She smiled, and it was genuine enough.
“Nancy. And call me Nate, and how did you know the police are botching the investigation? Did the Count’s attorney, Higgs, tell you?”
She shook her head no. “I had firsthand experience with those Miami detectives.”
I squinted at her. “Barker and Melchen? How’s that possible?”
“They flew to Maine yesterday…they crashed the funeral, Mr. Heller.”
“Nate. They crashed the funeral?”
They crashed the funeral, and afterward they followed Nancy and her mother to the latter’s bedroom, where Lady Oakes collapsed in grief. They chose this moment to tell Nancy and Lady Oakes, in gruesome detail, their reconstruction of the murder as Freddie de Marigny supposedly committed it.
She was tightly angry as she told me this; her brown eyes brimmed with tears that seemed of indignation more than sorrow.
“The tall, good-looking one with salt-and-pepper hair…”
“That’s Barker,” I said.
She nodded. “Barker. He told Mother, stood at her bedside and told her, that Freddie had taken a wooden picket from a fence outside the house, and used it to batter and gouge Daddy senseless…this Barker even used his hands to demonstrate the motion, stabbing the air!”
“Christ. How did your mother take this?”
“She’s a very strong woman, very-but she became hysterical. Our doctor advised them to stop with their story, but Mother-through her hysteria-screamed to let them continue.”
“How did you take it?”
She spoke through her teeth. “It just made me mad. Mad as hell.”
“Good girl. Go on.”
Her eyes hardened even as a tear trickled. “Then Barker said Freddie splashed Daddy, who was still alive, with insecticide from a flit gun. And then…set him on fire-only the fire roused Daddy, who rose up, writhing in ‘horrible agony.’”
Jesus Christ.
“Even if it were true,” I said, “Barker is a sadistic moron, putting you and your mother through that hell.”
She shook her head vigorously, as if trying to shake that awful story out of it. “I didn’t believe a word. I was just getting more and more furious. But it was a cold fury.”
“That’s the best kind. Did those sons of bitches leave you alone then?”
“No. Barker added a coup de grace: he said that four or five fingerprints of Freddie’s had been found in Daddy’s bedroom.”
I shook my head. “I have to be honest with you, Nancy-that’s bad. Real bad.”
She heaved a huge sigh and nodded.
“Juries just love fingerprint evidence,” I said.
“But the odd thing is,” she said, frowning, thinking back, “the other detective…the fat one? With the Southern accent?”
“Melchen,” I said.
“Melchen. He said, ‘No kidding? Fingerprints?’ It was obvious it was the first he’d heard of it!”
I sat up. “What did Barker say then?”