Guests spilled over from the sunrooms to the terraces to at least three different levels of the property. The area was almost as crowded as the convention center had been. Spotlights surrounded what the map called the Great Pond, and their reflections glittered in the water like the phosphorescence you sometimes see on the beaches in the Caribbean.
“Ms. Holliday.” It was Jensen. “Mrs. Moffitt would like to welcome you and your guest personally.” I had a feeling he’d said that two hundred and fifty times that evening, but I didn’t care—he made it sound genuine and it was classy. He led us through a gaggle of people clustered around Mrs. M.’s chair, and we shook the papery hand and exchanged a few generic pleasantries.
“Tell me about your guest. Do we have the honor of meeting the famous artist herself?” J. C. did look artsy in her gussied-up sweat suit. I said no and left her to explain who she was. I took my drink to the fringes of the terrace, looking for the SlugFest man and the Bambi-no couple, when I felt something squarish and hard pressing into my back. I stiffened.
“Okay, where’s your badge?” Rolanda Knox playfully jabbed me a second time with her cell phone.
“That’s hysterical. You’re lucky I didn’t swing around and knock you off this terrace.”
“Are you surprised?” She entwined two fingers on her right hand. “Mrs. M. and I are like this. It’s my third year.”
I hadn’t expected to see Rolanda at the party but I wasn’t unhappy about it. “I’m glad you’re here. They’re here,” I said.
“Who—poltergeists?”
“All of them. The vandals, the blackmailers, the killers.”
“You left out the cyborgs, the Visigoths, and the Sharks and the Jets.”
“They may be here, too, I’ll have to get back to you on them. I just arrived.”
I gave Rolanda the shorthand version of the previous three hours and told her to keep her eyes peeled for Stancik and Labidou, who should have already been there. Off to one side I saw Scott Reiger and Kristi Reynolds locked in conversation. If Rolanda and I hadn’t heard them going at it the previous night, we might have thought they were getting on, but we’d heard the vicious things she could say with a smile. Lucy swung by with two glasses of something.
“Hello, hello. Take this. Sorry, I would have brought three if I had known.” She looked up into Rolanda’s face and the breezy demeanor evaporated.
“It’s okay,” Rolanda said. “You don’t need a badge for this party.”
“We’re watching Scott Reiger,” I said. “He’s one of the two guys I think could be our man. Out of nowhere he comes up with a perfect pest repellent? Not a scientist—not even a gardener. Remarkable.”
“Two years ago that sleazebag was hawking fat-burner pills eventually banned by the FDA,” Rolanda said.
“How do you know?”
“I overheard one of those girls in the ugly pink shirts. She also told her friend that Reiger asked her if she wanted to come into the convention center after hours to make a few extra bucks.”
“Sex?” Lucy asked.
“That’s what the kid thought, but Reiger said it was something else. She thought it sounded fishy, so she passed.”
Two people had pushed the cart that we thought had held Garland’s body. Was Reiger in on it with Kristi? One of his employees? Or was it Shepard and his wife? The long-suffering Lorraine?
“Is Kristi the one with the fake tan? What a diva,” Lucy said. “I saw her in the powder room. She had way more stuff in her arsenal than I do and that’s saying something. Most of it was still in boxes, too. Who tries new makeup at a party?”
Someone who just lost her makeup bag?
“Was she with anyone?”
“No, but she was yakking on the phone. To a man, I’d guess. I overheard her say the curse was over. She was laughing. I assumed she was talking about her period. My older sister used to call it that as a joke, I think.”
I didn’t know about Kristi’s cycle but I thought she meant the Javits Curse; and the only way she could possibly know it was over was if she had orchestrated it.
Fifty-nine
“At the El Quixote, Kristi mentioned thirty-five locations,” I said. “Maybe they weren’t distribution outlets. What if they were sprinkler zones? She kept telling the cops it was an inside job. She wasn’t lying.”
“Can you turn off separate sprinkler zones?” Lucy asked.
“Why not? I do it all the time in people’s gardens. You can also turn off individual zones on an alarm system.”
“But why would she sabotage her own show?”
In the course of mingling I’d seen most of my show acquaintances—Connie, Nikki, and David. Lauryn and Cindy Gustafson. I looked around for the one person I knew who might have the answer. She was near the valet parking, having a smoke.
Lucy, Rolanda, and I headed for the entrance as casually as we could for people who really wanted to be sprinting. My new friend, Allegra Douglas, was just stubbing out her cigarette in a portable ashtray when we got there.
“Nice party,” I said. Chitchat over. “What happens if the Wagner Center is no longer deemed fit for the Big Apple Flower Show?” I asked.
“It would be unfortunate. Lots of people at Wagner will be put out of work. Maybe the building will finally come down and new construction go up. Someone makes a lot of money on that. On the director’s recommendation, the board probably moves the show to Javits; Kristi Reynolds quadruples her budget and doubles her salary. Shall I go on?”
“Can one lost show do that? Surely there must be other events at the Wagner Center?”
“None that are subsidized by a billionaire’s widow who’s passionate about gardening. If Kristi can convince Mrs. Moffit that BAFS needs to relocate, that building will lose its staunchest supporter.”
“Then why not sabotage her plants instead of other people’s?”
Allegra was shocked by what we were suggesting. “I suppose there’s a limit to even Kristi’s hubris.”
“Thank you, Allegra.”
Since we were back at the entrance, I asked the attendant again if Stancik had checked in. Still not there. Where the hell was he?
We moved out of earshot and I tried to think how we could find the Wrenthams. Then I remembered he had called me from the airport. His number was the last one on my call log. I hit reply. It rang close to ten times. Finally someone answered. The sound I heard was something between a gasp and a moan.
“Professor? Is that you? Where are you?”
He didn’t speak but I held on, waiting for something, background noises, anything. Then I heard it—ribbit, ribbit. “Are you near one of the ponds? Can you tell me which one?” I thought I heard rushing water but couldn’t be sure if the sound came from the phone or a nearby fountain. His voice sounded a little like Nikki’s after she’d been sedated, but Wrentham’s had the trace of desperation in it, and a little gurgle that might have been blood.
“Hang on, we’re going to find you.”
I pulled out the map they’d given me when we’d arrived. “Lucy, can you get us a couple more of these?” She ran off and was back in less than a minute. There were three ponds on the property and three of us.
“We really shouldn’t go off on our own. Rolanda, how about if you get Lauryn Peete and get her to search with you?”
“How about if I get my gun and go by myself? All right, I don’t have a gun with me, but that little thing? I’d sooner get Connie Anzalone. At least she’s got some meat on her bones. And I know she’s not afraid of anything.”
“Just don’t go by yourself,” I said.