She looked long and leggy, her dark hair styled differently, her makeup more unrestrained. Altogether, she seemed to exude an air of self-confidence that hadn’t been apparent that first morning in October, after she’d admittedly dragged her father from his perch on the closet door to his new resting place on the bed. Apparently, the prospects of a hit musical did wonders for the personality. Alexander, on the other hand, seemed his same brusque, blond, blustering self.
“What do you want from my client?” he said. “Twenty-five words or less.”
“Honesty,” Carella said.
“That’s a lot less,” Meyer said.
Alexander shot him a look.
“She’s always been honest with you,” he said.
“Good,” Carella said. “Then we won’t have to work so hard, will we?”
“Tell me something. You don’t really think she had anything to do with her father’s murder, do you?”
Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer gave a faint shrug, a brief nod.
“She’s a suspect, yes,” Carella said.
“Have you shared that thought with anyone else? Anyone outside the police department, for example? Because I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, if Mrs Keating is libeled…”
“The hell with this,” Carella said. “Let’s go, Meyer.”
“Just a second, Detective.”
“I told you on the phone I won’t waste any more time with you,”
Carella said. “If I walk out of here empty, I go straight to the D.A.’s office.
Yes, no, which? Say. Now.”
“I’ll give you half an hour, no more,” Alexander said, and went behind his desk, and tented his hands and sat there scowling at the detectives.
“I’ll make this brief,” Carella said. “At the time of your father’s death, you knew he’d left you the rights to Jessica Miles’s play, isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You told us about the twenty-five-thousand-dollar insurance policy…”
“Yes?”
“And your concern that it might contain a suicide clause…”
“That’s right. But…”
“Why didn’t you also mention you’d inherited the play?”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“You didn’t…”
Carella turned away from her. He looked at Meyer, who said nothing.
He went back to her. There was a tight, controlled look on his face. Meyer watched him.
“How much were you paid for the license to those rights?”
“That’s none of your business,” Alexander said.
“Okay, so long,” Carella said. “Meyer? Let’s go.”
“Three thousand dollars for a year’s option,” Cynthia said at once.
“And three thousand for a second year, if it hadn’t been produced by then.”
“What kind of royalties are you getting?”
“Same as the others.”
“Which others?”
“The guy in London…”
“Gerald Palmer?”
“Yes. And the cab driver in Tel Aviv. And the girl from Los Angeles.
The redhead in the long gown. Felicity Carr.”
“Felicia,” Meyer corrected.
“Felicia, yes. We’ll be sharing six percent of the weekly gross.”
“Do you realize how much money…?”
“Cynthia, you can end this any time you want to,” Alexander said.
“And go before a grand jury?”
“I hardly think the gentlemen will convene a grand jury simply to…”
“Do you realize how much money that can come to?” Carella said.
“Six percent of the gross? Split four ways?”
“I imagine quite a lot,” Cynthia said. “If the show’s a hit.”
“Then how can you say…?”
He turned away from her again. Walked back. Let out his breath.
“Do you want us to arrest you?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then how can you say you didn’t think it was important? You tell us about a lousy little insurance policy…”
“Lower your voice, Detective. She’s not in Canada.”
“… but you don’t tell us about a play that can eventually earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for you? Because you don’t think it’s important!”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I think that’s enough,” Alexander said.
“I’m not finished.”
“I said that’s…”
“ I said I’m not finished.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“When did you sign over the rights to that play?”
“I did not kill my father.”
“When, Mrs Keating?”
“I didn’t kill him, damn it!”
“When?”
“Right after the will was probated.”
“And when was that?”
“Two weeks after his death,” she said.
Nellie Brand came to the case with a cool assistant district attorney’s eye, ten years of experience in the D.A.’s office, and the hood of a ski parka pulled up over her short blondish hair. That Tuesday morning, when she was about to leave for the office, her husband suggested that perhaps she ought to dress for work a bit more conservatively than blue jeans, a heavy sweater, the ski parka, and boots. She had informed him-somewhat curtly, he thought-that there was slush on every street corner, and she wasn’t heading for the Governor’s ball, but thanks a lot.
Now-somewhat curtly, Carella thought-she told Lieutenant Byrnes and the detectives gathered in his office that they were premature in looking for a Murder One charge against Cynthia Keating, when all they really had on her was maybe Obstructing and…
“… okay, I’ll give you Tampering,” she said. “She’s admitted she moved her father’s body, and that’s a two-fifteen-forty, if ever I saw one.
