French Twist Read online

  “I wish I had thought of that,” I say.

  Kwame Clarke laughs. We both give very weak smiles. Then Clarke says, “My instincts tell me that the horse-murder and the threatening note are not connected. I’ve got absolutely no proof. But I just feel that if there was a connection we’d see it. The whole thing is just a little too baroque, bizarre. You know what I mean?”

  Another detective with instinct. I knew I liked this guy.

  “My instinct’s the same as yours,” I say. Then I add, “Two cops with the same unsubstantiated idea. We must be wrong, huh?”

  We’re in no mood to laugh. I speak.

  “Look, my friends are scared. And I don’t blame them.”

  “I don’t, either. We’ve put three plainclothes people—two men, one woman—around the stables. We’ve got three other detectives checking everyone and everything coming in—florists, caterers, workers, set-up people, tent people.”

  “How about you assign some protection for my friends?”

  “Detective, I don’t know about the NYPD, but here in Baltimore there’s always a shortage in manpower. I can’t loosen one or two people for a civilian guard.”

  “Let me ask this. Do you have anyone who’s looking for some freelance work on their days off?”

  “Plenty of those, but like I just said, there’s no budget for it.”

  “Do me a favor, if you don’t mind. Get three people to follow the Savatiers. I’ll feel a whole lot better. And I’ll come up with the cash. I’m going to be back down here next Friday night for the race on Saturday. I’ll give you cash to pay your guys.”

  Clarke does a goofy over-the-top double-take.

  “Way to go, New York!” he shouts.

  Kwame Clarke throws his right hand up into the air. Shit. I must try to execute a high-five, always a disaster for me. We complete the gesture clumsily (on my end, at least), and almost immediately my cell phone rings.

  Of course, I know who it is, and I know what the greeting will be. I click on the phone.

  “Where the hell are you, Moncrief?”

  I answer the question.

  “And good day to you also. I’m afraid, K. Burke, that our work has followed us to the races.”

  Chapter 18

  After my plane takes off from Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall Airport we receive information that travel from our reserved airport, White Plains, into Manhattan is a mess. I don’t know how my pilot does it, but he manages to get last-minute clearance at LaGuardia.

  I walk through the private aircraft gate and immediately hear a shout.

  “Moncrief! Over here!”

  It can only be K. Burke.

  “I’ve got a patrol car and driver outside. We’ve got to get our butts over to Central Park West. We can catch up on the way,” she says. I follow her quick step toward the exit.

  Instead of asking why “our butts” are so urgently required on Central Park West, I ask, “How did you know I’d be here, at this airport?”

  “I have top-secret access to a special communication device. It’s called a telephone. I used it to track you down.”

  I stop myself from saying that I thought perhaps she had the powers of a gypsy woman. Instead I simply say, “Ingenious, K. Burke. You should become a detective.”

  “And right now you should become familiar with what’s going on at 145 Central Park West. It seems…”

  The police siren blares as our car enters the expressway.

  “One-forty-five?” I say. “That’s the San Remo. 74th Street. Très élégant; I have a good friend who lives there…”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Burke says. “Who?”

  “Juan Carlos Vilca, the Peruvian polo player, and his wife, Gabriela,” I say. “She’s a professional model. She is exquisite.”

  “Do you know anyone who isn’t exquisite?” A quick pause, then she says, “Wait. Don’t answer that. I just thought of someone who isn’t. And you’re sitting next to her.”

  “That is your opinion, K. Burke,” I say. That conversation goes no further. She moves on.

  “Meanwhile, there are a few facts you should know about a dead neighbor of your Peruvian friends.”

  Burke tells me that at two o’clock this afternoon a personal assistant to a rich young woman by the name of Elspeth Tweddle found her dead in her bedroom.

  “Tweddle?” I ask. “That is a real name? It sounds like the name of a talking duck in a child’s storybook.”

  “Elspeth Tweddle is a very real name, and Elspeth Tweddle is a very dead woman. And, there’s a bit of background information. She’s twenty-five years old. And take a look. As you would say, truly exquisite.”

  K. Burke clicks a photo of Elspeth Tweddle on her iPad. The woman may be twenty-five, but she could pass for eighteen.

  This woman is exquisite, truly beautiful. A big pouty look on her face, with light-green eyes, and chestnut hair with the fashionable blond streaks.

  Burke tells me that they are called champagne streaks.

  “When the streaks have more gold in them than blond,” she explains, “the color is called champagne.’”

  “I love to learn, K. Burke. And that is good, because you love to teach.”

  Burke ignores me. Then she tells me more about the woman with the champagne streaks.

  The woman’s personal assistant came in at two. He usually arrived at ten, but the woman had a dentist appointment and he had arranged to not arrive until after lunch.

  “The assistant found her sprawled on the floor, and since Tweddle was rich and beautiful, 911 actually remembered to call us. She was dead when the ME got there.”

  At this moment our squad car pulls up to the first of the two San Remo apartment towers. The doorman opens the car door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Moncrief. Is Mr. Vilca expecting you?” he asks.

  “No, Ernie. I am here today on official business.”

  K. Burke takes charge. “I’m Detective Burke, and apparently you already know Detective Moncrief. We will be joining a few other members of the NYPD on the…”

  Ernie finishes her sentence. “The twelfth floor. There are quite a few people up there already. Take a left at the end of this hall, and that’ll be your elevator.”

  As we wait for the elevator I ask Burke, “So, what are you thinking? Do we know if this case fits the same pattern as the other three?”

  “The only thing that fits is that the victim or the ‘dead woman,’ if you prefer, is very pretty, very young, and very rich. There the similarities end. Miss Tweddle is not married. Miss Tweddle does not have children. And so Miss Tweddle does not have an overweight nanny.”

  “Hmmm. Yet it feels…it feels…” I begin to say. Burke holds her hand up like a traffic cop. She speaks.

  “I’m with you. It sure as hell smells like the other three deaths.”

  “Mademoiselle Tweddle lives alone?”

  Burke looks down at her notes.

  “Well, there’s a live-in cook, a live-in maid, and another maid who doesn’t live there. Miss Tweddle’s personal assistant comes in five days a week. But there are a few other things I’ve got to tell you…”

  Then the elevator arrives. The elevator man pulls wide the bronze gates, and two young boys wearing blue blazers and gray flannel slacks get off the elevator.

  Burke and I ride up to the twelfth floor in silence. She’s not about to tell me anything in front of the elevator man.

  We finally arrive on twelve. Two police officers nod and gesture toward the open apartment door. But Burke pauses before we enter.

  “Let me finish the background,” she says. “Elspeth Tweddle lives here, but this is her mother’s apartment. The victim grew up in this apartment. Elspeth never moved out.”

  “The mother is deceased?”

  “No, she’s very much alive. Elspeth’s mother, Rose Jensen Tweddle, is currently the American ambassador to Italy.”

  Chapter 19

  The police scene has not been touched. Pristine.
Just the way we like it when we show up.

  The victim is lying on her back on the bedroom floor. She wears only a sports bra and cut-off gray sweatpants.

  Jonny Liang, the assistant medical examiner, approaches us immediately. Jonny handled Tessa Fulbright’s case.

  “A quick on-site blood test is telling us no drug abuse, but we won’t know for sure until we get the full autopsy going,” Jonny says.

  Jonny’s a smart guy. Before Burke or I can say a word, he anticipates our next question.

  “I know. From a circumstantial point of view, it looks just like your other three ‘rich gal’ cases. Yet so far the forensics don’t support that conclusion. Wait until tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll get you the information fast.”

  “Assuming there is information,” Burke says. I share her skepticism, but something is bugging me. Before I can even think about what that nagging feeling might be, a handsome young blond man—no more than thirty years old—approaches us.

  “Good morning, detectives. I’m Ian Hart. I’m Miss Tweddle’s personal assistant.”

  “I’m happy to tell you what I told the police officers,” Hart says. My instinct is that this guy is a sleazebag—too handsome for his own good. I notice his four-hundred-dollar jeans, and consider that he spends each day with the ambassador’s beautiful daughter.

  I immediately glance at the bed and consider if more than one person has been in it. No. Just one side of the king-size bed looks slept in.

  But I rethink that instinct as he speaks. This guy comes across as smart and strong. He’s also somber, like a guy who is authentically sad that he’s lost a friend.

  For the most part I learn nothing that I haven’t already heard from K. Burke. He does, however, point to a small desk near the window. On that desk is a coffee mug with the initials “ET” on it.

  “She had a lot of ET stuff,” Hart says. “Her initials, you know.”

  Burke nods. She obviously figured that out. Elspeth Tweddle.

  I also nod. I would never tell this to Burke, but I did not figure that out.

  Burke tells one of the officers to “bag” the coffee mug contents and get it to the lab.

  “What exactly were your responsibilities with Miss Tweddle?” I ask.

  “The usual PA stuff—lunch reservations, dinner reservations, dealing with what little correspondence she had. But a lot of the things she did…well, we did together. We played squash. We went to parties together. We’d run in the park. We went riding in the park a lot. And she was working on this documentary. She had all these home videos of her and her family’s summers on Fishers Island.”

  Clearly Ian Hart interprets our silence and our occasional nods as indication that we thought his boss’s life—not to mention his own job—was pretty frivolous.

  He says, “Listen. I know it kind of sounds like I was being paid to be Elspeth’s friend. And in a way I was. But I really liked the days I spent with her. She was smart and she was pretty and she was fun.”

  He looks away from us. He blinks his eyes quickly. He looks back at us, composed. He smiles.

  “She was my friend,” he says.

  Later, as we wait for the elevator, Burke says, “You know one of the toughest things in detective work?”

  She does not wait for my answer. Instead she gives her own answer.

  “It’s whether grieving people are telling the truth. In those moments, I never quite know for sure when someone is bullshitting me—or even being honest with themselves.”

  “I am not so good at it myself,” I say. We are silent for a few seconds.

  Then Burke says, “So, they went riding a lot. You’ve got quite a few horses in your life these days, Moncrief.”

  As we walk from the elevator to the door I say to Burke, “Alors. You have reminded me. You know that white dress in which you looked so magnificent at the Kentucky Derby?”

  “What about that dress?” She asks the question suspiciously.

  “Have it washed and ironed. Next Friday night we are leaving for Baltimore. The next day is…”

  She knows. She yells, “The Preakness!”

  Chapter 20

  The Savatiers’ horse, Garçon, came to Louisville as an anonymous foreigner. He comes to Baltimore as a worldwide celebrity, the favorite.

  Garçon now has a really good shot at capturing the Triple Crown, the honor that goes to the rare horse who wins the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. This possibility is beyond thrilling—only twelve times, in over one hundred years of thoroughbred racing, has a horse won the Triple Crown.

  Only a few days ago I was here to view the remains of a horse, a mysterious and disgusting slaughter. But we carry on. We have tried our best to tuck the event in the back of our brains. Even the ominous threats and flowers sent to the Savatiers cannot eradicate our nervous hopes. The Savatiers are worried, but they are certainly not defeated. The hired bodyguards and Detective Kwame Clarke have been staying very close to them.

  Now, if only the weather would cooperate.

  It is a miserable day. Cold rain everywhere. Umbrellas are everywhere. Serious raincoat weather. Pimlico Race Course is becoming Pimlico River.

  K. Burke and I wait in the stable with the Savatiers. Wet hay sticks to our water-soaked shoes. Rain pelts the stable roof.

  But Garçon’s jockey, Armand Joscoe, keeps smiling and tells Burke and me not to worry. Then he gives us some information to keep us calm.

  “Le cheval aime la boue,” the little guy says.

  “Très bien, Armand. Très bien.” Then I turn to Burke and translate.

  “The horse likes mud!” I say.

  “Merci,” Burke says. “And may I remind you for the hundredth time that I speak French.” She speaks sweetly, but there is a touch of irritation in her voice.

  “Where is your son, Armand?” I ask. He tells me that Léon is occupied elsewhere. But of course, he will be watching.

  Burke speaks.

  “Have you noticed, Moncrief, that you, me, Marguerite, and Nicolas are all wearing the same clothes we wore at the Derby?”

  I look.

  “Mon Dieu,” I say. “Unbelievable.” But it is not really unbelievable.

  The four of us seem to be honoring a superstition: Everything must be as it was in Louisville. Marguerite is in her bright floral suit. Nicolas in his perfectly cut gray slacks and blue blazer. Katherine Burke in her white linen dress with the Savatiers’ racing silk colors belted around her waist.

  I move in close to K. Burke and whisper, “Do you think Madame Savatier is wearing the same undergarments as she did in Louisville?”

  K. Burke looks away from me, as if I am a naughty-minded schoolboy and she is the little girl I chose to shock.

  Then a tremendous blare of trumpets. The moment is upon us.

  Chapter 21

  Thirty seconds later an announcement comes from the loudspeakers: “Horses and jockeys will now proceed to the track!”

  We walk a few yards with Armand Joscoe and Garçon. After a few minutes the horse and rider turn. They walk toward the water-drenched track, and the rest of us find our places in the owners’ circle.

  The parade is magnificent, a combination of beauty and strength. Marguerite is seated to my right. She holds my hand. Katherine Burke sits to my left. She holds a pair of high-powered binoculars. Me? I occasionally glance at the equine parade, but mostly I keep a keen eye on the many people seated near us. Who might be watching us? Who might want to harm the Savatiers?

  I would like to report that the sun broke out before the race began. It did not. The rain keeps on raining, but it seems a little more cooperative. It seems to fall in a softer, more peaceful rhythm. We wait for the race to start.

  I say, “You will recall, K. Burke, that during the plane ride down here you insisted that I was not to place a bet for you on Garçon?”

  “Of course I do. It was just a sudden superstition on my part. I didn’t think he’d win this time if we plac
ed a bet.”

  “Well, I disobeyed and did so anyway,” I say. “But I bet only a hundred dollars.”

  She’s pissed. She turns away from me and mutters, “Damn it. Do you ever listen?”

  I say nothing. So she speaks again.

  “When I specifically asked you not to? It’s bad karma, Moncrief. You’re pushing your luck…my luck…our luck.”

  “But, K. Burke, we are trying to do everything in the same way as we did in Kentucky, n’est-ce pas?” I say.

  “N’est-ce pas, my foot. I think it feels selfish to bet, to feel so smug about winning. If Garçon loses, I’m blaming it on you.”

  “We shall see. And please, not to worry. This time cannot be exactly like last time. At the Derby Garçon was a long shot. Today he is the favorite. Today his odds are a measly two-to-one. Even if he wins you will only…”

  But my attention is suddenly elsewhere. A few yards away from K. Burke I see Detective Kwame Clarke taking a seat. Clarke watches us. Our eyes meet. He tips his umbrella handle in my direction. We both nod to one another.

  Marguerite speaks to me.

  “I am scared, Luc. Very scared,” she says.

  “There is no reason…”

  “Yes. Yes. I know that you have the private guards watching us. And I know Detective Clarke is nearby. But I am nonetheless frightened.”

  “You have no need to be,” I say. “All is secure.”

  But I am wise enough to know that, like me, Marguerite is thinking about that dark and threatening note.

  Win the Preakness. Or you will suffer the consequences.

  “What if Garçon does not win?” she says.

  I don’t have time to answer. We hear the sound of a bell. Marguerite grabs my hand.

  The race begins.

  Chapter 22

  Armand Joscoe, the jockey extraordinaire, turns out to be a psychic extraordinaire.

  Joscoe’s assurance that Garçon “likes mud” turns out to be absolutely true! It becomes clear in the first few moments of the race that Garçon doesn’t merely like mud. Garçon loves mud! Physically, spiritually, indisputably. With mud painting his hooves and legs, Garçon does not merely gallop, he flies.