The girl seemed to think that would be pocket change for Wrentham, but despite what her mother had said, he claimed not to have it. He’d bought a small farm and set up his own research facility with the settlement the school gave him, and he lived modestly continuing to test his formula.
“Emma will inherit whatever I own at the time of my death, but if I dropped dead tomorrow, it wouldn’t be in the millions of dollars as she and her mother think I’m sheltering. I’m afraid I’ll disappoint them again,” he said. “Lately, I’ve felt she was very close to me. I just hoped that as she got older, she’d want to hear my side of things, perhaps learn to forgive.”
“Her proximity might have been more than a feeling, Professor Wrentham. Did you ever employ a young man named Garland Bleimeister?”
“I did. I hire seasonal employees to help with the gardens and bring produce to the farmers markets. Garland was with me for three summers. Good boy. Although I know he had his issues. He ran down to Atlantic City more than I thought a boy his age would. At first, I thought it was for women.”
“Sir, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Garland has been murdered.”
“I heard.”
“And Emma is somehow involved.”
He hadn’t heard that. Wrentham agreed to take the next available flight from Philly to Westchester Airport, where Lucy and I would pick him up.
“How do you know when the next flight is?” I asked.
“I can be there in—two and a half hours. I have friends.”
“He’s smart, single, straight, and has friends with private planes?” Lucy said. “If he can cook, I want him.”
“I didn’t ask. So Emma and Garland were a couple, but she keeps that from Daddy. Garland needs money and Emma thinks she’ll just ask Daddy, but that doesn’t work. And,” I said, “given her mother’s influence—some might say brainwashing—Emma thinks he’s holding out on her. She and Garland steal Wrentham’s formula and offer it to someone who’ll pay handsomely but keep their names out of it by claiming to have invented it himself. They don’t want a long-term relationship, just a nice, simple payoff. And who knows—maybe Emma thinks her father will never find out and she can go back to the well at some point in the future after she dumps Garland.”
“Isn’t that like kids nowadays?” she said. “No work ethic.”
“Their buyers—and it’s got to be either the SlugFest or the Bambi-no people—initially said yes and then must have reneged on their agreement to pay, otherwise Garland would be lying on a beach somewhere instead of on a slab at the morgue.”
“Who’s got the most dough?” Lucy asked.
“Neither of them is rolling in it. The SlugFest guy looks a little more prosperous, but looks can be deceiving. And Bambi-no looked like a mom-and-pop operation. What if the payoff was contingent upon one of them getting a fat licensing agreement at the show?”
“And Emma?” Lucy said.
My guess was she pulled the strings but stayed in the background.
“I think she sicced the cops on Jamal as a diversion because she was still trying to make a deal. She didn’t want the buyers arrested—even if they were killers—until she got her dough.”
“I can’t wait to meet this girl—preferably with a plate-glass window between us.”
“In addition to being an accomplished liar, Emma is a remarkable and gutsy young woman. Her father’s been called a genius and her mother is a vengeful psychiatrist. That could make you feel smarter than everyone else. Too smart to get caught,” I said. “Let’s hope she’s smart enough to not get herself—or us—killed.”
Fifty-six
“How do you know they’ll both be there?” Lucy asked.
According to Jensen, Scott Reiger and the Shepards were both invited and had said yes. That was all we had to go on. Jean Moffitt’s party was a big event in gardening circles. It would be telling if the SlugFest or Bambi-no exhibitors didn’t show up.
“Do we bring a house gift?”
“No time to shop. Besides, the woman probably has everything she wants,” I said, packing my things. “There doesn’t seem to be much of a waiting period between her admiring something and acquiring it.”
“I know where we can get some lovely plastic tablecloths. Gently used.” Lucy had ripped down the Pilgrims and turkeys as soon as she’d gotten home, and they were now crumpled in the corner of her bedroom, the duct tape still attached.
“It’s a good thing I travel light,” I said, “because Spade and Archer will be taking up a good chunk of the backseat.” Lucy looked at me blankly.
“The sculpture. Primo’s piece?”
I’d been told people wore everything from overalls to long dresses to Mrs. Moffitt’s post–flower show shindigs, but the red dress was not going to make a third appearance quite so soon. I opted for something more conservative: my all-purpose black jacket and black slacks. Lucy was more adventurous and when the phone rang, we knew her outfit had passed muster with Harold, who’d been delighted to learn Lucy hadn’t sold her apartment to a paranoid woman with bizarre taste in window treatments.
The umpteenth white jacket Lucy cinched over her green floral dress was the charm—Harold agreed, although he did ask if she had it in red—and she modeled for him in her tiny bedroom. It walked the line between sweet and creepy.
“I can’t believe you’re taking fashion advice from an eighty-year-old man, whatever his past CV. I may need to rethink your position as my fashion guru.”
“I don’t always take it.” She looked at my outfit. “Wouldn’t you like to borrow something more festive?” she asked. “You look a little downtown for a garden party.” I stood in front of the full-length mirror. She was right. Next to her, in her sunshiney outfit I looked like our high school gym teacher on her way to a funeral.
“We’re just taking a short drive out of New York City. We’re not going back in time. Besides, there may be a confrontation at this party and I don’t plan to be wearing white gloves and a big hat if there is.”
“If it’s more than verbal sparring, I’m not sure I’ll be much use.” She tossed me one of her castoff white jackets, which made me look like the staff I was expecting Mrs. Moffitt to have. All I needed was a carnation. Hi, I’m Paula your waitperson. Beverage? I eyed the military jacket that I’d worn to the Friday night reception.
“I’ve been hustled, haven’t I? Go ahead,” Lucy said. “It’s you. But it’s still downtown. Take a scarf. Something bright.” She rummaged through a fabric-covered box and tossed me a piece of red nubby silk with a dragon pattern on it that was so long it could have been worn as a sari. I wrapped it around my neck five or six times as instructed. Harold would have approved. J. C. heard us in the hallway and cracked the door just a bit until she was sure it was safe to open it all the way.
“Where are you two off to?” she asked.
“Garden party at Jean Moffitt’s.”
She motioned for us to come closer—the Dons were home and the walls were notoriously thin. Stancik and Labidou had returned, asking her about Jamal and the girl, and the Dons were on high alert.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t know anything. That way I didn’t have to lie.” She looked around, although it was just the three of us in the hallway.
“At least I didn’t know anything when they asked me.”
She asked us in and closed the door behind us. Sitting on her sofa was Emma Franklin.
“Let’s see,” I said, “who are you today? Runaway princess? Alien life-form?”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I deserve it. I’m a liar. I’ve always been a liar. Ever since I was a child. I used to make up stories about my famous father and how he was doing top-secret work for the government and that was why he couldn’t live near us and I had to change my name. Later I said he was in the witness protection program. What was I supposed to say? That the great man dumped me and my mother so he could indulge his appetite for nineteen-year-old girls?”