Jack in the Box Read online

  Peter’s eyes were firmly on the floor. “I’m afraid so.”

  “I’m sharing an apartment on 116th. But poor Peter is all the way over in the Bronx.”

  “We’re going that way, we’ll give you a ride. Right, Stone?”

  “Sure, I’m right outside. So you guys were both in Jack’s team?”

  Angie nodded her shaggy head. “Are you investigating his murder? But that was like, what…?” She looked at Peter.

  He said, “October 7th, 2014. Four and a half years ago.”

  “Is that like a cold case?”

  I nodded. “How well did you know him?”

  She looked at Peter when she answered. “He wasn’t easy to know. He was all about the work. He didn’t encourage personal conversation…”

  Peter snorted. “He was loud, rude, bombastic. Everybody here reveres his memory because he was murdered, but the truth is, he was a first class jerk.”

  Dehan gave a short laugh. “That’s refreshing. It’s what I’ve been picking up all day but nobody has come out and said it till now. Is that a personal grudge?”

  He echoed her laugh but shook his head. “Not at all. He was a great employer, and CC is a great place to work, but he was a jerk and an ego freak.”

  The doors slid back and we made our way out to the sidewalk. As we approached the car, Peter said, “Jaguars are very unreliable. Especially the older models.”

  I unlocked the door. “You ever own a Jaguar?”

  His glance was resentful. “No.”

  We all climbed in, the cat growled and we pulled out into the stream of traffic. I jumped right in. “So it was common knowledge that Jack was having an affair?”

  In the mirror I saw them glance at each other. Angie started to say, “I wouldn’t say common knowledge…”

  But Peter cut in. “Yes.”

  “No, Peter…”

  “Come on, Angie! He used to talk to her on the phone, right there in front of us!”

  Dehan glanced over her shoulder at them. “How can you be sure?”

  Peter’s voice took an almost hectoring tone. “Because, even though Jack liked to put it about that he was a private, reserved kind of guy, in fact he also liked it to be known that he put it about in a different way! So we’d be having a meeting to discuss a campaign or a contract or whatever, and he would receive a call and…”

  Angie sighed loudly. “Peter! You don’t know…”

  “No, listen. Let me ask you something. If you were having an illicit affair, and you were in a meeting, and you really—I mean truthfully didn’t want anybody to know you were having an affair, how would you deal with the call?” He paused and nobody answered, so he went on, putting his thumb and baby finger to his ear and mouth. “‘Hello… no, I’m afraid this is not a good time. Perhaps you could call back at seven. Thank you, goodbye.’ Or would you stand up, walk away from the table and in a loud, stage whisper say, ‘Penelope! I have told you a thousand times not to call me at work!... Yes, I love you too, baby… I miss you too… Look, I’m in the middle of a meeting, I’ll call you later.’”

  It was like the butler had just farted while serving the Queen her sherry. The silence was like a physical object in the car. I glanced at Angie in the mirror. “Would you agree with that, Angie? Was it like that?”

  She sighed again. “Yeah, it was pretty much like that. I mean, he was a pain in the ass, but he was also brilliant at what he did, and a great boss.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “The police are not here to investigate whether he was a great boss or not, Angie…”

  She cut across him. “And also there is the impact on Helena. Have you guys met Helena yet? She is such a sweet, kind, lovely woman. Everybody loves her, and what she does for underprivileged people? Man! You know her salary for teaching creative writing goes straight to charity?”

  I asked her, “What impact would it have on her?”

  “She was really in love with Jack. Bad enough that he was murdered like that—and being sent his head in a box? Man, that is harsh! But to know that he was cheating on her as well?”

  We had come to East 116th and I pulled in opposite her apartment. Angie went to get out but Dehan turned in her seat to look at her.

  “Angie? That is a sweet sentiment, but it is not a good reason to lie to the cops or suppress evidence. That’s a very serious offense. Do you understand that?” Her cheeks colored. Dehan went on. “A man was murdered, and you would have the killer go free so as not to upset the wife? I don’t think you thought that one through, did you?”

  “No, I guess not… I’m sorry… I’d better go.”

  She got out and we watched her hurry across the road. I did a ‘U’ and we continued on our way to the Bronx. Peter was in the mood to talk.

  “You know? We get regular seminars in NLP, neuro-linguistic programming? It’s kind of gone out of fashion now, but Jack was a big advocate, and Seth is too. And one of the main points about NLP is that some people think mainly in pictures, some people think mainly in words and sounds, and some people think with their feelings. That’s Angie. Like you said, Detective Dehan, they don’t follow through and analyze the consequences and implications of that first feeling. They just allow the feeling to kind of rule them. It was crazy, Jack was killed and there was like an automatic conspiracy of silence to protect Helena.”

  I frowned at him in the mirror. “You telling me that the whole staff lied to the original investigators?”

  He shook his head. “No, nothing so black and white as that. Jack never came out and said, ‘I am having an affair,’ therefore none of us knew that he was having an affair, and as they were both quite obviously very fond of each other, the collective conclusion was that he was not having an affair. So nobody lied, but nobody told the whole truth, either.”

  Dehan said, “So, Penelope? Was that her name?”

  “Yep, Penelope Peach.”

  Dehan grinned and looked over her shoulder again. “Penelope Peach? Are you kidding?”

  “No, that’s her name. It’s a hard name to forget. I heard him dictating her name and address over the phone. He was having something delivered to her. I don’t know what. I can’t remember the address, but it was on the upper west side, not far from his own house.”

  I studied him a moment in the rear-view. “You didn’t like him much, did you?”

  “Not really. I didn’t dislike him much either. I thought he was a narcissistic egomaniac and it kind of annoyed me that everybody bought into his ‘firm-but-fair’ great guy act.” He gave a small shrug. “He was living proof that his system worked. He was a crass, vulgar oaf, but he told everybody he was an amazing guy, and they all believed him.”

  Dehan gave a single nod and pulled down the corners of her mouth. “Is that what persuasion engineering is?”

  “It’s a little more complex than that, but in essence, yes. It’s based on the idea that communication is always what the other person understands. If in my language ‘I love you’ means ‘I hate you’, and I say to you, ‘Detective Dehan, I love you,’ what I have communicated is the opposite of what I actually intended to communicate. My intention plays no part in the communication. Communication is what you understand, not what I intend.”

  I gave a small grunt. “That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  “On the surface, perhaps. But then consider that each individual has his own language. Ninety-three percent of all communication is non-verbal. We communicate in hugely complex ways: tone, expression, twitches, gestures, body language—all of which flow from our unconscious urges, needs, fears and appetites; and all of that complex bundle is our own, personal language. So a skilled communicator takes the trouble to learn the language of the person he wants to communicate to, and tells them what they want them to hear, see and feel, in their own language. Jack was a passed master at that.”

  “But you didn’t buy into it?”

  He laughed. “Jack never thought I was important enough to learn my language. Consequ
ently I saw through him and he didn’t even see me.”

  “How about Helena?”

  We were on the bridge and I saw him look out of the window at the wide expanse of water. “I think it suited them both to present this image of a united couple deeply in love with each other. I think they really were fond, but I also suspect they had stopped being in love a long time ago.”

  Dehan had turned and wedged her back against the door so she could see him. “How well did you know her?”

  I saw him smile out at the water. Then he turned to face her. “Maybe I could start my own business teaching NLP to the NYPD. Then you might start asking more subtle questions. I didn’t know her very well at all. She would sometimes come into the office, charm everyone, be superbly, elegantly European and then leave. I am not a brilliant observer, there are people at work who are real masters. They call it calibration. They will actually detect changes in your skin texture and breathing pattern while they speak to you. But I’m not that good.”

  “I read somewhere that NLP is basically a form of hypnosis.”

  “Not basically, that is exactly what it is. And not a form, but many forms. NLP is a range of highly sophisticated techniques for putting people into trance, and manipulating their unconscious while they’re there.”

  We were quiet for a while as we drove along the Bruckner Expressway, headed east. As I moved off, onto the Boulevard to take White Plains north, he said, “I did try to talk to Detective Langstrum, during the original investigation, but he didn’t seem very interested. I guess because everybody else was giving him the official version.”

  We dropped him outside his house on St Lawrence Avenue and watched him push through the gate, unlock the white door and go inside. When he was gone from view, I pulled out and we made our way back toward Storey Avenue and the station. Neither of us spoke until I had parked the car and killed the engine. Then I looked at Dehan and said, “I am trying to work out what happened just there.”

  She nodded. “Me too. Roast beef sandwiches and coffee might help. You go get ’em, big guy, I’ll search for Penelope Peach. Like the man said, there can’t be many of them.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  When I got back from the deli and put the brown paper bag on the desk, Dehan was on the phone, sounding sweet and friendly.

  “Oh, she’s not there right now? But you think she’ll be back next Monday? With friends… I bet she has! Well, how about you, honey? You sound like you are just gorgeous! We have a superb range… Well what are you laughin’ at? Nobody ever told you you sound beautiful? Well, I just don’t believe that!” She reached over and took a beef sandwich from the bag, checked it for pickles and gave me the thumbs up. “OK, honey, well, I’ll call back Monday, but you think about what I told you. Bye now!”

  She hung up and bit into the sandwich. I said, “I think you derive a perverse pleasure from these personae you adopt.”

  “Personae?”

  “I gather she is visiting friends for the weekend.”

  She spoke with her mouth full. “Dere a’ chew Phenelophe Peash im Mew Ork shtate.” She swallowed. “Only one in New York City. Flat A, tenth floor, 464 Riverside Drive. She’s in the right class for him to have noticed she existed and engineered some persuasion.”

  I sat, took a bite of my own sandwich and asked, “Have we got a picture?”

  “Gorgeous. She’s an actress, so she has a small presence online.”

  My phone pinged and when I checked, she had sent me a picture of a partly clothed woman of prominent charms. I shrugged. “Not my type. Too…” I shook my head. “Too too.”

  “Yeah? I think you’re in a minority.”

  “You got a cell?”

  She nodded. “And her GPS is switched on.” She pointed at her screen. “She’s in Madison, Connecticut. She’s at a big house on Lantern Lane.”

  “Dystopia is alive and well.”

  “You want to call ahead or be all dystopian and just turn up? ‘Vee know vere you are! Vee can finet you anyvere unt make you obey!’”

  “That sounds like fun, but I think we’ll call and see if she’s willing to talk to us. If she’s not, we can try some persuasion engineering.” She tossed me a piece of paper with a number on it. “Something tells me she’ll be more responsive to a man.”

  “You’re a cynic, Dehan. I bet she’s a really nice person.”

  I dialed and waited while it rang. After a moment, it stopped and a voice like the chiming of tiny silver bells said, “Hel-lo-hoo! Penny Peach speaking!”

  I inserted a fatherly smile into my voice, avoided eye contact with Dehan and said, “Ah, Miss Peach, this is Detective John Stone of the NYPD.”

  “Oh, Lord.” A small giggle. “What have I done?”

  I laughed. “Nothing that I am aware of, Miss Peach. I head up the cold cases unit here at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx, and we were hoping to ask you some questions about an old case we are investigating.”

  There was a long silence. I was about to ask if she was still there when she said, “What case, Detective?”

  The acoustics and the sound quality had changed and I gathered she had moved away to a more private spot.

  “This would have been about four and a half years ago…”

  I left the words hanging, curious about how she would respond. Her response was a half-hearted laugh and, “You’re teasing me.”

  “Do you know what case I am referring to, Miss Peach?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If you were sure, what would it be?”

  “Was it a homicide?”

  “This is not a guessing game, Miss Peach.”

  “Jack…?”

  “Would you be willing to talk to us this afternoon? We believe you might have information that could be very helpful in our investigation. As I am sure you can appreciate, it is vitally important that we eliminate you from our inquiry.”

  “Eliminate me? Am I a suspect?”

  “Not right now, and the best way to avoid becoming one is to cooperate fully with us. We will be discreet, Miss Peach, and if your relationship with him is not relevant to the murder, it need never become public knowledge.”

  I heard a small sigh. “Yes, all right, when will you be here?”

  “In about two hours.”

  “OK, I’ll see you in two hours at Crysty’s, on Warf Road. And, Detective, please do be discreet. I am here with my fiancé at his senior partner’s house. There is a lot riding on this visit.”

  I glanced at Dehan and smiled. “I’m John, my partner is Carmen, we’re just passing through and we thought we’d look you up. Let’s make it the Madison Beach Hotel, we’ll be staying over till the morning.”

  “…Thank you. That’s very… sensitive of you. Carmen is a lucky woman.”

  “See you in a couple of hours.”

  I hung up. “Well, Carmen, how do you fancy dinner at the Madison Beach Hotel?”

  “Do they do bison steak?”

  “No, but they do prime 14 oz, 21 day aged New York strip, roasted garlic smashed potato, grilled asparagus, applewood smoked bacon butter and crispy leeks.”

  “Sold to the girl with the appetite. Let’s go talk to daddy’s latest fan.”

  We stood and I saw Mo, large and pale with his shirt untucked, staring at us from the next desk across the aisle. He shook his head. “Do you two know how nauseating you are?”

  Dehan pulled on her jacket and grinned. “What are you having for dinner, Mo?”

  “Get lost.”

  “Who knows? We might, tramping barefoot along Madison Beach; see where our wandering footsteps take us.”

  “Yeah,” he growled at the papers on his desk. “Here’s hoping.”

  We left.

  FOUR

  Madison is a small, pretty town that feels as though it has been carefully tucked into a tiny pocket on the edge of an immense forest that stretches far across the continent, from New England deep into Canada. It feels that way because that is basi
cally what Madison is. As we turned into Warf Road from the Boston Post Road, wherever we looked there were trees, thousands of them: oaks, red maple, sugar maple, vast beech trees and pines, all bulbous and billowing like clouds of green smoke rolling across the landscape; and tucked in among the foliage, dwarfed by it, were houses, steeples and chimneys, understated and elegant, which were not at odds at all with the wild woods that surrounded them, but seemed to be a part of them.

  “I could retire somewhere like this,” I said.

  “Retire? We have to have kids before you retire.”

  “Kids, in the plural.”

  “Two or three.”

  “I could get myself elected sheriff.”

  “Then I could raise the kids and bake apple pies.”

  I smiled. It was a nice image. We cruised gently down, past the golf course and after a moment Dehan grinned. “No, not a sheriff. I think you should become a novelist and write about our cases. You could be like Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote.” She started laughing. “You’ll have to wear slippers and a cardigan, and start smoking a pipe.”

  “Funny. You’re funny. The way psoriasis is funny.”

  We pulled up outside the hotel and climbed out. It was a cute bay with a white sandy beach flanked by rushes and grass, and a row of gabled, New England houses in gray and white clapboard. That was to the north. Behind us, to the south, was a large, elegant, colonial building that was two, three and four stories high, depending on which bit you were looking at. It seemed to ramble, like an agreeable fireside conversation, with long, white verandas, blue-gray walls and hexagonal turrets that were almost Chinese.

  We checked in, dumped our overnight bags in our bedroom and went down to find the Wharf Bar. We ordered two Martinis and sat in a booth. Penelope turned up fifteen minutes later, at ten past two.

  Raymond Chandler once described a woman as the kind who would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. Penelope Peach was that kind of woman, only she’d have had him selling the relics too, to pay for her Manhattan apartment. Her big blue eyes spoke to you of innocence, while her full, red lips told you the innocence was just as skin deep as you wanted it to be. What the swing of her hips told you was all kinds of anything but innocent.