Bird of Paradise: A Diana Siddal and Mustapha Alawi Mystery Short Page 3
His partner said, “He means, once I did a little research.”
“Hey! I made tea. We find your husband does work for Mr. Baxter, too, so of course we want to talk to you. Did you introduce them, or what?”
Robert took his time before responding. He didn’t look guilty. “Maybe indirectly? After the arrest, I pretty much withdrew from that group. Tom took an idea I had and expanded upon it: do flash mobs at corporate events. I know I suggested Peter to Tom, but Jasmine wasn't there when we talked. I certainly didn't know Peter and Jasmine were seeing each other; I always thought it was Tom who would end up with her. She's the sort of woman who can't live without a man: when I first met her, she started treating me like a father figure. Which was sweet; we have a daughter her age, but who lives across the country. But after a while, it became clear that she had father-figure issues, you know? She never did anything inappropriate, but the potential was there. One of several reasons it seemed prudent to withdraw from the group.”
Detective Siddal said, “When was the last time you saw or spoke to Mr. Morneau?”
“Maybe… a few weeks after the arrest? Around the first of October.”
“And Ms. Stark?”
“I talked to her on the phone a couple of days after the arrest. I don't know how much I can help.”
She said, “Neither do I, frankly. Looks like we're going to have to track down the rest of the flash mob.” She looked at her partner. “Shall we?”
“Yeah. You know, Mr. Wayne, I look at you, I see a VP of hedge management or whatever. How’d you get involved with a bunch of twentysomethings doing fairy wing flash mobs?”
Helen spoke before she could stop herself. “Robert had something of a midlife crisis last year.”
“Helen, that's not true,” he said in the teeth-clenched tone that meant she was probably going to have to make it up to him sooner rather than later. To the detectives, he said, “I've always loved theater. I acted and even directed in college. It’s how Helen and I met.” He must have caught her expression. “Well, we met in church. But I convinced her to help out with a production. I would have loved to stick with that, but even back then it was a labor of love. Once Helen got pregnant, I had to… become part of the audience rather than the cast. So last year, after our son went off to college, I cashed in the six months of vacation my firm owed me.”
He picked up the clarinet. “I started off busking in MARTA stations. Met some other musicians, met some theater people, ultimately, Tom and Jasmine and the others. The flash mob thing was my idea: I've been managing risk for almost thirty years, so it was a lot of fun to inject a little chaos into the lives of others.” He gave the sheepish smile that still made Helen feel warm. “But if I get convicted of a crime, I'll lose my CPA license.”
The man nodded. “Time to do some of your own risk management.”
“Exactly. What I'm doing now is helping some of the local theater groups work on staying within budget, fundraising, expanding their audience. That was why I was surprised I never heard about what Tom was doing.”
The blonde put the tablet in her bag. “And if you didn't hear about it, especially from Tom himself, it makes the whole thing even sketchier.” She handed Robert a card. “Thanks for your time.” To Helen, “Sorry to intrude.”
Helen said, “I wish you the best of luck.”
“I'll ask around,” said Robert.
“Please let us do that,” said the woman.
After they were gone, Helen said, “You were arrested?”
“Helen, I'm embarrassed enough.”
“I'm not angry. I'm just glad you can still surprise me after all this time. Why didn't you say anything about, what is it again?”
“Flash mobs. It was when you were running the fall clothing drive at church. You were working ten hours a day. We barely talked.”
“Oh, yes: and I was resentful that you got to sit outside and play the clarinet while I had to engage with church ladies who might perhaps have used their time to focus on charity instead of gossip and infighting. I had to take myself to task for the resentment. But that poor girl! Woman. She seemed so young; she's Liz’s age?”
“Their birthdays are like three weeks apart. But she did seem childlike.”
“Can we go inside and pray for her?” And then they did, and it was solemn, but then one thing led to another, and then they were on the living room floor like college students. Later, Helen wondered whether Robert had paid more attention to poor Jasmine then perhaps he should have. But she herself was hardly free of impure thoughts, and at any rate she’d rather enjoyed the afternoon’s interlude.
-----
A week later, Helen was concentrating very hard on serenity while weeding the garden, trying to ignore conflicting emotions regarding the church political mailer she’d made the mistake of opening. She jumped when she heard someone clear his throat right behind her: her hand jumped to her heart, leaving a smear of fresh soil on her apron.
“Sorry to scare you, Ms. Wayne,” said the Moslem detective. “Thought you saw me coming. Wow, this is a hell of a garden. What are those?”
“Delphinia. They won't bloom for a while. I'm afraid Robert isn't here, Detective.”
“Busking in a MARTA station, hunh? That's okay; it's you I'm looking for.” He had photographs, of poor dead Jasmine and the other fellow. “We're just stuck on this one. I want you to sit down, close your eyes and tell me everything you can remember about these people.”
“I really don't know what I can tell you. I only met him once, and he was getting ready for a performance. Makeup and costume; it would be difficult to understand anything about him. I met her three or four times, poor thing.”
“Do me a favor? Come sit here on the deck, in a chair. Don't worry: I'm not going to hypnotize you.”
“You can't. I tried it, as a way of quitting smoking. Didn't work.”
“Nothing works, for me.” Once she was in a chair, he said, “Close your eyes. Just tell me your impressions.”
“Someone who needed an older sister. Damaged. Her physical beauty made her a target, and she suffered when she was young. She looked up to Robert: sort of a substitute father/daughter thing. We do wish our own daughter didn't live so far away, but she loves San Francisco.” Helen broke out into a broad grin. “I'll bet she had sexual feelings toward Robert.”
“Yeah?”
“I'm just guessing. No, I'm not. See, that was her problem: father figure meant sexual feelings.” She looked up, saw that Robert had cleaned the gutters. “Yes, now that I think about it, Robert rather enjoyed the attention. And here I was thinking he was just excited about theater.” She caught his expression, and laughed. “Detective, don't be close-minded. Just because I'm a conservative churchgoer doesn't mean I'm willfully blind to human nature. We were given passion by God for a reason, and we’re not condemned to Hell for giving in to our desires. I don't blame Robert for enjoying having a beautiful young woman make eyes at him. I don't think he actually had an affair with her, and I'd be a little hurt if he did, but I wouldn’t be shocked, or really blame him. I’d just like it to be my turn. Perhaps next time you can come over, you can bring a hunky young patrolman: it might help spur my memory. I work very hard to stay in shape.”
“Uh… I'll do what I can.”
“Please do. I just… I don't see Jasmine as a con artist. She was guileless. That's a silly thing to say: she was an actress. But it rings true. If she were sleeping with this real estate fellow, she was doing it for sex and companionship. For protection, rather. If she had that, then she had what she wanted, and she wouldn't go further.” She tried very hard not to imagine Robert’s happy sex face buried between the girl's pillowy breasts, and largely failed. “Of course, maybe she was as much a victim as her boyfriend. What if she really thought she was raising money for a theater?” She saw the man’s expression change. “And here
I am, thinking watching detective shows makes me a detective. You've already thought about that, haven't you? Have you found that Tom fellow?”
“Vanished into thin air.”
“Too bad she couldn't. She really was very sweet.”
-----
Robert Wayne looked up, thinking it would be Jocelyn with the audit figures, then did a doubletake. “Oh, hi there, Detective.” She’d looked good the first time, but even better, now.
“I was all set to troll the MARTA stations, Mr. Wayne. I was kind of surprised to find you were in the office. Nice office, by the way.” Like almost all visitors, she walked to the windows behind his desk to take in the view of the eastern half of the city, now cloaked in the fresh yellow-green of early spring.
“This is my real life,” he said. “If I can wade through this, I'm taking a half-day on Thursday; if it’s nice out, I'm going to play Centennial Park.”
“Well, good luck with that. Look, we're stymied on this one. And I don't want to embarrass you in front of your wife. But you would have told us more if she hadn't pulled up. We traced phone records, and there is no contact between her, or Tom Morneau, and you for months before her death. I'm not here to blackmail you.”
He put down his pen, laced his hands behind the back of his head, spun his chair around, so they were facing the same way. “None of this gets back to Helen?”
“No, sir. Well, not unless one of you killed her.”
“Helen talks a good game, but she's too compassionate. Of course I slept with Jasmine. Finally, after eleven grueling years seeing what I want slip away from me because I'm too responsible to abandon a pregnant girlfriend who just won’t get an abortion? And then eighteen more years because I'm pretty sure she poked a hole in a condom and it was the one New Year's Eve when I’d drunk too much to notice? My wife is a good person, and I love both my kids, but the real me never wanted any of this. And finally, I get to have fun—and not only is it way more fun even than I expected, but there was also this knockout who started climbing into my lap. Just impossible to resist, even if I really wanted to.”
“So why did you stop?”
“I came to my senses. It was a vacation. And the daddy issues were too severe: she wanted an emotional engagement that I wasn't prepared to give. If I'd been able to hold off on the sex, it could have turned into a mentor thing, a substitute dad. But… shoot me, I couldn't. Too hot. In the end, I chickened out, went back to respectability. You really can't make live theater profitable, or even self-sustaining, in this day and age. We did a corporate event for Peter Baxter, he recognizes me, he's like what the hell? We have a drink, Jasmine finds me, I watched Peter's eyes bug out of his head. Instant solution to my problem. I prime them both with a couple of conversations, hooked them up, the magic happens. Good for them. Or it was.”
He stood up, gazed out at the horizon. “Peter hit me up for a contribution to his theater thing. He sent his personal assistant over to talk about it. The more she told me, the more my jaw dropped. A new theater group in a new theater, in a city that has half a dozen theater groups who do wonderful work and can't make their rent? And then once I find out it's Tom Morneau organizing it? He's a thirty-year-old man-child; the kind of person who's going to spend his whole life whining about how he could have been huge if someone had just come along and handed him everything he ever wanted. This won't end well, I thought. I almost pleaded poverty, but then thought better of it and wrote a check. I knew I was throwing good money after bad, but Peter is a real vindictive bastard. I was afraid if I didn't contribute, and then it went belly-up, he’d decide I was ripping him off, or part of the conspiracy, and he’d come after me.”
“Has he come after other people?”
“You don't get to be a major real estate developer by treating others with the compassion Christ demands of us. But, in the interests of not bearing false witness, I've never heard of Peter using any kind of violence. It's all lawsuits, rumors, buyouts, that sort of thing. He doesn't get his hands dirty—but he's ruined a lot of people, some of whom may not have even deserved it.
-----
Leslie Thompson was one of those fortysomething women who’d spent so much time in the gym staving off aging that it had prematurely aged her: she was all sinew and bone and hard-packed muscle underneath overtanned skin that had set in wrinkles of grim determination. Mustapha imagined her belly so taut that he could knock on it, more a carapace than flesh. “You think Peter killed her?” she said. “You're kidding. He's too much of a pussy. Well, he does pitch some epic fits, and things get thrown. So, she got in the way, some kind of freak accident? Maybe. But she got killed with an axe, right?”
“Yeah,” said Mustapha. “How did you know?”
“Gossip. Faster than light. People still think I still give a shit. But I quit three months ago, and haven't looked back. I'm free of that cheap prick. And to be fair, I liked Jasmine. Stupid as the day is long, but a good person. Deserved way better than Peter. Wasn’t actually in it for the money, near as I could tell. If she and Tom hadn’t disappeared like that, I would have been willing to bet my whole pathetic salary she’d turn up pregnant. Which might have been a good thing.” Her lips twitched. “She wasn't pregnant, was she?” At Mustapha's headshake, “Good. Because Peter was already in the ‘underpays and overworks his employees’ category, but I didn't want to put him into ‘kills his girlfriend when he finds out she's pregnant.’”
Diana said, “He had you going around and asking people for donations to this theater thing?”
“No; he had me picking up the checks after he did the sales over the phone. He wanted me to do the pleading; I told him it wasn't in my job description. That was the beginning of the end of it for me. And then it turns out Tom and Jasmine are ripping him off the whole time. I laughed at him, he threw some Chamber of Commerce award at me, that was it. I walked out. Made him pay me five grand in cash, to train my replacement. Poor girl.”
Diana showed her Robert Wayne's picture. “Did you get money from this man?”
“Sure. Nice guy. He knew the whole thing was bullshit, as in, not that it was a scam, but that someone was going to make money off live theater?”
Now a picture of Helen. “Her, I don't know.”
Another picture. “Tommy. Mister Art. What a douche. Tried to spellbind me with talk about the great mysteries of the stage. I thought he was as dumb as Jasmine, but then once he disappeared, I’m like ha, joke’s on me. On us. Everyone got played. But only Peter got ripped off.”
“You know,” said Diana, “disgruntled former employees do a lot of great work for us. Did you keep your calendar or datebook when you left?”
“Of course. It's all right here on my phone. Figured I'd need the contacts for another job.”
“Can you look back and tell us when Peter found out he'd been had?”
“Sure. It was like the Thursday after New Year's. Let me see… yeah. Wednesday the fifth. Lot of calls that day.”
Mustapha said, “But none of them got through to Jasmine or Tom, because they were gone.”
“Nope. Well, Tom was. Jasmine came in that night, acted like she was surprised about it.”
“Yeah? Was that the last time you saw her?”
“Um… yeah, I'm pretty sure. Peter wasn’t in the office the next day, probably home having a tantrum. The next day after that was when he pitched a fit at me and I quit.”
-----
Miguel Rodriguez didn't look like a criminal. Or Hispanic, for that matter. But whereas Mustapha didn't care about the guy’s ethnic background, Rodriguez was definitely a criminal: a two-time loser who’d gone down for aggravated assault and auto theft. Though he'd been clean except for a speeding ticket in the ten years he’d worked for Baxter. “Ain't done nothing,” he said, his voice at odds with his nice suit and haircut.
“Yeah, you did,” said Mustapha. “We got phone records.”
Diana placed a print out in front of him. “After eight p.m. on Wednesday, Peter Baxter nev
er calls Jasmine's cellphone again. But he does call back and forth with you about a dozen times that night.”
“Yeah? So?”
Mustapha said, “You did his dirty work, my man. You chopped Janet Stark in the back of the head, and you buried her in the park.”
“No, I didn't.”
“Mike, don't bullshit us. We've got your prints all over the tarp you buried her in.”
“Bullshit. She wasn't buried in no tarp.” He blinked twice. “Fuck me.”
“Yep. You want life without parole, you better confess.”
“No way. Peter killed her; I just cleaned up. I'll give him to you: get me a lawyer.” An hour later, Rodriguez had one, and an hour after that, Diana and Mustapha had what they needed.
-----
The girl lawyer started to speak, but Baxter cut her off. “This better be about y’all telling me you found Tom and my money.”
“Nope,” said Diana cheerfully. “It's about us giving you the choice between confessing now and maybe dealing yourself down to Man One, or us arresting you for Murder Two.”
“Don't play hardball with me. You'll lose.”
The lawyer spoke quietly. “What evidence do you have to suggest that my client might find it worth his while to consider your offer?”
“He's a cheap bastard,” said Mustapha. “Underpays his employees. Hell, I'll bet your own billing department has an issue with him.”
“Er,”
“Yeah.”
“Nevertheless, the question remains.”
“What Inspector Alawi means,” said Diana, “is that Mr. Baxter's chronic staffing issues have contributed to his downfall.”
“What?!” said Baxter.
Mustapha said, “You pay your personal assistant well, not throw shit at her, she might not contradict your timeline. You lied to us: Jasmine was with you two days after Tom disappeared. Tom didn't kill her; you did.”
Wilson was right on top of it. “Even if what you say about the timeline is true, it doesn't follow that Mr. Baxter killed her. We can argue in court that he misheard your question.”
“Yeah; we're just funning you. It's really Mr. Rodriguez he shouldn't have underpaid. You see, he told us all about how when you called him up panicking and told him you needed him to take care of his mess. He’s thinking you wrecked your car again. Imagine his surprise when he shows up at your house and there's poor Jasmine with an axe sticking out of the back of her head. Mr. Rodriguez was real fond of Jasmine.”
“That's crazy,” said Baxter. “Jasmine walked out of my house on her own two feet.”
“Oh no,” said Diana. “Mr. Rodriguez rolled her up in a cheap rug and dragged her to his truck.”
“Bullshit! That… snake. I hired him out of jail when nobody else would. I paid him–”
“Underpaid him.”
“–gave him the dignity of work. And he pays me back by murdering my girlfriend and accusing me of this?”
“No,