When I knocked on the door of the penthouse suite in the Biltmore’s central tower, the lush alto of Nancy Oakes de Marigny called, “It’s unlocked! Come in.”
Apparently the death of her father hadn’t made the Countess tighten up her personal security measures.
I stepped inside to discover, in the modern, pastel living room of the suite, Nancy de Marigny-slender and shapely in white tights and ballerina slippers-with her leg in the air, toes pointing right at me.
This was not a new way of waving hello she’d invented: she was doing a ballet workout. She had a hand against an over-stuffed peach-color chair on which she’d piled various thick phone books, using it for a support, in place of a rail. Her free arm arced gracefully in the air.
Without makeup, her hair pinned up carelessly, she was still a ravishing girl-and a girl is what she was: nineteen years old, a child, a woman. The body suit consisted of a white, bathing-suit-like portion that covered her torso, with her legs in white leotards. The outfit left her arms bare and little to the imagination.
“Hope you don’t mind if I continue my exercises,” she said. “If I miss a day, Miss Graham will tan my hide.”
“Miss Graham?”
She turned away from me, working the other leg. “Martha Graham. My ballet instructor. That’s why I’m summering in Maine.”
“I see.”
“But now I’m on my way to be where I belong: at my husband’s side.”
My hat was in my hands. “Mrs. de Marigny, please allow me to offer my condolences on the death of your father.”
“That’s very kind, Mr. Heller.”
God, I felt uneasy. She was pointing her toes at me again, and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing here!
“Would you mind if I locked your door?” I asked. “It makes me uncomfortable, thinking some reporters might get wind of you, and start hounding you….”
She was bending at the knees, now. “Go ahead. But I’m registered under an assumed name. No one knows I’m here.”
I locked the door, threw the nightlatch. “Speaking of which…how did you happen to recognize me? And know where to find me?”
“To answer your first question, the hotel manager pointed you out, at my request.”
Despite her continued exercises, she didn’t seem to be breathing hard, though small beads of sweat gleamed on her wide forehead like jewels.
“As for your second question…Mr. Heller, my father owned the British Colonial Hotel. You left the Miami Biltmore as your immediate forwarding address.”
“True. But how did you even know about me? What do you know about me?”
“You were hired to get the dirt on Freddie,” she said casually. She might have said, “The Astors will be taking tea with us later.”
I didn’t know what to say. She had turned her pretty backside to me again, arching her leg at the opposite wall.
“My husband’s attorney, Mr. Higgs, told me about you,” she continued. “You gave a statement placing Freddie near Westbourne about the time of the crime.”
“Well, yes….”
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Okay.”
“Sit on this chair. I need to do some stretching, and I don’t think those phone books are enough support.”
I sighed, went over, moved the phone books and sat down. She was looking right at me, her eyes dark and intense and as naive as a four-year-old child’s.
“Uncle Walter admitted he hired you,” she said.
“Uncle Walter. Foskett? The attorney?”
This close up, I could tell that she actually was breathing a bit heavy; just a faint huff and puffing.
“That’s right,” she said. “I saw him yesterday, at the funeral.”
“But you were here yesterday.”
“I arrived yesterday evening. The funeral was in the morning.”
“I see…” But I didn’t.
“I wanted to be at my husband’s side as soon as possible…allowing time to make contact with you, of course. I take a Pan Am flight to Nassau this afternoon.”
“You believe in your husband’s innocence, then.”
“I have no doubt.” And she didn’t seem to. Her eyes, her expression, were unwavering. Also, unnerving, as she faced me, leaned in to me, while she stretched each long limb behind her, one at a time of course.
“You see, Mr. Heller, while I may not have made a study of it, I know human nature-I’ve lived with Freddie, and he may not be perfect…but he is my husband, and he is no murderer.”
“That’s an admirable attitude for a wife to have.”
“Thank you. I want you to do a job for me.”
“A job? What sort of job?”
“I want you to clear Freddie, of course. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or orange juice? I think even Miss Graham would agree I’ve done enough of a workout for one day.”
She pointed me to an area where picture windows overlooked the Biltmore golf course, and I sat alone at a carved wooden table shaped like a large seashell and sipped coffee she’d provided from a silver service on a stand nearby.
She emerged in a white terry-cloth robe, belted over her workout clothes, and smiled her multimillion-dollar smile and said, “Would you like breakfast? I can have some brought up.”
“No. Thank you. I already ate.”
She sipped her orange juice. She looked calm, poised, but it was a mask. Her eyes had the same red filigree as Marjorie Bristol’s. Yesterday she had reminded me of Merle Oberon; today I was thinking Gene Tierney….
“Your friend Sally Rand really is quite a gifted ballerina,” she said.
“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?”
She shrugged. “He just shushed him, and they hurried out.”
My laugh was hollow. “They fly up from Nassau on the plane together, they’re partners in this all the way, and Barker doesn’t even mention to Melchen that he found the accused’s fingerprints in the murder room?”
She seemed confused, as well she should be. “What does it mean?”
“Well, the bad news is they’re working up a frame.” Then I smiled. “The good news is, they’re incompetent dopes.”
She was still confused. “But…why would they frame my husband?”
“Could be plain old-fashioned bad police work. A true detective accumulates evidence until it leads him to a suspect. A lousy detective finds a suspect and accumulates only the evidence that fits that suspect.”
“And even creates evidence?”
“Sometimes,” I said, making two words of it. “Does Freddie have any enemies in Nassau?”
She smirked humorlessly. “Quite a few, I’m afraid. He doesn’t play by the rules; he’s his own man, Freddie is.”
“These clowns, Barker and Melchen, they were brought in by the Duke. What was your father’s connection to the Duke?”
“They were friendly. David and Wallis are…were fairly frequent guests at Westbourne…even stayed there, for several weeks, when they first arrived in Nassau, while Government House was being redecorated to Wallis’ specifications. My parents attended many social occasions where the Duke and Duchess were present. Daddy and the Duke played a lot of golf together. And, of course, they had certain mutual business interests.”
“Such as?”
She winced in thought. “I’m not really sure. I know that Harold Christie and Daddy and the Duke were involved in some business deal or other…oh, and so was Axel Wenner-Gren. He’s a Swedish industrialist.”
“Is that the guy who bought Howard Hughes’ yacht?”
“The Southern Cross, yes.”
“Axel Wenner-Gren.” I was sitting up again. “Isn’t that guy a Nazi? The Duke and Duchess got bad publicity having him chauffeur ’em around in his yacht. The papers were full of it-the American authorities wouldn’t let him dock, a couple times.”
She was shaking her head and smiling at me like I was a kid who’d just repeated some wild, unbelievable schoolyard story. “Axel a Nazi? It’s preposterous. He’s a charming man, Nate.”
“Well, if you say so.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, it’s true that he’s been blacklisted from the Bahamas, and the United States, for the duration.”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s what I thought! For suspected collaborationist leanings, right?”
“Right,” she allowed. “But it’s nonsense.”
“Where is the charming Axis what’s-his-name now?”
“It’s Axel and you know it. Cuernavaca-sitting out the war on one of his estates.”
I was grinning. “So there’s a Nazi in the woodpile…that’s real interesting….”
“Nate-don’t bother going down that road. I know Axel isn’t a Nazi.”
“How could you ‘know’ that?”
Her gaze was boring holes in me again. “Because Daddy wouldn’t have been friends with him if he was. Look-Daddy wasn’t very political…like a lot of wealthy people, he considered himself above politics, I suppose. But he hated Nazis. He’d sooner do business with the devil! He was active in all the local war efforts, and when Hitler declared war on Britain, Daddy immediately donated five Spitfires to the RAF! And he’s given his airfield to….”
“Okay, Nancy…okay. You made your point. What about a guy named Meyer Lansky? Ever hear of him?”
She shrugged. “No.”
I described him to her. “Ever see anybody who looked like that come around to talk to your father?”
“No.”
“Any Americans come around who didn’t seem like somebody who’d typically do business with your dad? Somebody…suspicious. Somebody with bodyguards, maybe.”
“A gangster or something? Hardly.”
I didn’t want to get into it with her, but I wondered what interest, or connection, Meyer Lansky might have to the murder. Last night his questions had been pointed, and knowledgeable; so knowledgeable that I wondered if he might not have been, in an oblique fashion, warning me off the case….
A knock at the door summoned Nancy, and I stayed and sipped my coffee, watching golfers golf, pondering Lansky’s possible warning. I heard Nancy’s voice, then another voice, but higher-pitched, and that of an older woman; both voices were raised in something approaching anger.
I went to have a look. Probably none of my business, but I’m a snoop by nature and profession….
“Mother,” Nancy was saying, “I did not sneak away. I left word where you could find me, and under what name, or else you wouldn’t have! Correct?”
Lady Eunice Oakes was tall, handsome, dignified, and royally pissed off. She was also just a tad stout, with a firm jaw and thin wide lips, her hair of medium length and graying blond. She was in black, of course, but stylishly so, with a black fur piece, black soupdish hat and dark glasses and black gloves. Even her nylons were in mourning.
“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice,” Lady Oakes snapped. “I don’t appreciate having to come running after you…chartering a plane at all hours…”
“You didn’t have to come ‘running after’ me, Mother. I’m of age. I’m a married woman.”
“You would have to remind me of that.”
Lady Oakes rustled in her purse-also black-for a hanky-white. She lowered her face into the hanky as Nancy tapped her on the shoulder.
“Mother,” Nancy said, nodding toward me. “We’re not alone….”
She put the hanky away and removed her sunglasses; her eyes, though bloodshot, were a clear, sky blue. Once upon a time, she could have given Nancy a run for the money in the looks department.
Studying me, she said, not unpleasantly, “And who are you, young man?”
A funny way to address me, since she probably only had five or six years on me.
I told her, and expressed my sympathies.
“You’re the detective my husband hired,” she said, and beamed. She strode over to me and offered me her gloved hand. I shook it, not knowing why this welcome was so warm.
“You provided valuable evidence in the case against my husband’s murderer,” she said, “and I would just like to thank you personally….”
“Mother-Mr. Heller is working for me, now. He’s going to prove Freddie’s innocence.”
She let go of my hand as if it were something disgusting. She looked at me the same way.
“I fail to see the humor in that,” she said.
“Me either,” I said.
“Mr. Heller,” Nancy said, “was paid ten thousand dollars to investigate my husband’s activities. I’m keeping him on the case. He’ll investigate, and prove Freddie’s innocence.”
Lady Oakes smiled, and it was a sly, smart smile.
“Am I to understand,” she said, addressing us both, looking from Nancy to me and back again, “that you intend to have Mr. Heller continue investigating…using up the money that your father paid him?”
“Yes,” Nancy said, indignantly.
“I think not,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at me. “I’ll speak to our attorney, Walter Foskett of Palm Beach, and fix your little red wagon, Mr. Heller.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t both threaten me with the same lawyer!”
“Mother,” Nancy began, and the two were arguing. Not yelling, but heatedly talking over each other’s words.
I put two fingers in my mouth and blew a whistle that would have brought Ringling Brothers to a standstill.
The two women looked at me, startled.
“I have a suggestion,” I said. I looked at Nancy. “Your mother has a point. My client here, in a very real sense, is your late father.”
Lady Oakes smiled smugly and nodded the same way. She folded her arms across a generous matronly bosom.
“Suppose,” I said to Lady Oakes, “that I work for your daughter, on the following condition: if I find evidence of her husband’s guilt, I won’t suppress it. It goes straight to the prosecution-right to the Attorney General.”
The widow’s smile turned approving; but Nancy was frowning, and said, “But…”
“Otherwise,” I told the lovely Mrs. de Marigny, “it would be a conflict of interests. I’d be working against your father-who is, after all, my client.”
Nancy thought about that. “Well, Freddie’s innocent. So you’re not going to turn anything up that would work against him.”
“There you go,” I said.
“And you’d answer to me,” Nancy said. “I’m your client now.”
“Yes. With that one condition.”
“Well…it’s acceptable to me,” Nancy said, uncertainly.
“It’s acceptable to me, as well,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at her daughter with a softer expression. “We won’t be enemies, you and I. I’m championing my husband, and you are championing yours. I expect you to stand by him….”
Now Nancy was getting teary-eyed again; she clutched her mother and her mother patted her, somewhat stingily I thought, but patted her.
“All I need,” I said, “is for good old Uncle Walter Foskett to write up a letter acknowledging I’m working out my ten-thousand-dollar retainer-and that when it’s used up, my meter is still running, at three hundred dollars per day and expenses.”
Lady Oakes smiled frostily at me. “That’s between you and your client.” She turned to her daughter. “I’ll see you in Nassau, my dear.”
And she was gone.