Slugfest Page 10

  “The Coney Island garden? Jensen mentioned Mrs. Anzalone to me. One of my competitors in the beach garden category. Jensen called it rough but charming.”

  “That’s a lot like the lady herself. Should I find out if the artist is willing to make another piece like the one Mrs. Anzalone bought?”

  “Gracious no. I wouldn’t want that. Then it wouldn’t be unique. Rick and I will test the waters to see how attached the lady is to her purchase.” That was his cue to unlock the brake on the wheelchair. Mrs. Moffitt’s card was still in his hand and I saw my sale slipping away or, more accurately, rolling away. She motioned to Jensen, who was again nearby, taking photos.

  I’d clicked through most of the slides of Primo’s work, when I remembered that I had uploaded them in ascending order by price. There were two more pieces after the one the Anzalones had purchased. I cleared my voice and tried not to sound desperate.

  “There are two other important sculptures no one else has seen. May I show you?” Exclusivity. It was the old quantities limited, act now routine. Old as dirt, but still effective. And important. I’d seen that word used in an auction catalog. What did it really mean in that context? Important to whom? Mrs. M. had already lost out on one piece, so she summoned Jensen, who had started to drift to the next aisle.

  I waited for his return before advancing the slide show to the last, biggest, and most expensive piece in Primo’s collection. Jensen waited a beat, then asked me the dimensions and copied them down in a black Moleskine notebook much like one I owned. He stared at the numbers as if visualizing the item’s placement. Rick wheeled Mrs. M. a discreet distance away, and the woman and her gardener conferred. When they returned, they pronounced it perfect for the Montauk garden. How many homes did this woman have? She wasn’t going to let this one get away. And neither would her two employees, who would do just about anything to keep her happy.

  Thirty-one

  While we did the paperwork on the sale, the judges announced the winners of the major display garden prizes. Best Suburban Garden: Fran Strauss, Glen Landing. Best Beach Garden: Pamela Choy, East Hampton. Best City Garden: The Sticks and Stones Garden of High School 240, Brooklyn. Best Country Garden: Mrs. Jean Moffitt, Sleepy Hollow. Best Overall Garden: Mrs. Jean Moffitt, Sleepy Hollow.

  I didn’t know if the winners had been informed before the rest of us, but Mrs. M. didn’t seem surprised and neither was Jensen. All she said was, “I refuse to let them call me suburban.” That seemed as much a triumph to her as winning the awards.

  Jensen and I ironed out the shipping details and Rick and Mrs. M. rolled away to celebrate and prepare for the obligatory photos.

  “That’s it,” I said to David. “I’m done. I can’t take any more smiling for a while. My face muscles need to relax. This is my neutral face. How does it look?”

  “Grim but good. Like Victoria Beckham. Does that woman ever smile? With her dough, it can’t be bad teeth—must be fear of wrinkles.” We agreed that wrinkles or not, if either of us was with David Beckham, we’d be smiling. A lot.

  “Take a break,” he said. “Get something to eat and explore the show before the hordes come tomorrow. Member night is like visiting the museum without all the tourists and group leaders with green umbrellas. But don’t take too long. You’ve got a few more hours of this.”

  It was a good suggestion. I knew people to congratulate, but first I went to the buffet table to fortify myself.

  Only the most mean-spirited, Grinch-like woman would have begrudged Lauryn and her students the first prize they were awarded for best city garden. As it happened, the Grinch and her friend were standing right beside me, criticizing a platter of pierogie. Allegra Douglas looked as if she’d just eaten a spoonful of sour cream that had spoiled.

  “Are you enjoying the show?” I asked.

  The friend spoke first. “Oh, yes! Even the blackout was thrilling!” Allegra mumbled a response, but her disgusted look said it all—this was torture for her. Someone was sabotaging her show. Not only had the youngsters from the high school taken a ribbon, but apparently Connie Anzalone had received an honorable mention in the beach garden category ahead of three East Hampton gardeners that Allegra knew well. It was anarchy. Chaos. I left Allegra and her pal stewing over the canapés and went to congratulate Connie and Lauryn.

  Whatever else happened at the show, it was Lauryn’s night. Most of the television cameras were on her and her students. Every year there was one plant or garden that got all the attention, and this year it was hers.

  I hung around, waiting for a free moment to extend my congratulations to her or to Jamal, but she was swamped and I didn’t see him anywhere. Another student told me the boy hadn’t shown up.

  Not far away, Connie’s garden was almost as crowded. “Congrats.” She was deliriously happy and couldn’t wait for Guy to join her later that evening. She had made it through the show unscathed, hadn’t needed the bodyguards, and decided that, while tragic, her veronicas had died a perfectly natural death. Not only had her garden been acknowledged, but her backless fish-scale dress was causing quite a stir. A photographer had already immortalized her standing next to a papier-mâché sea horse. On top of that, she excitedly told me that someone named Mrs. Moffitt had invited her to a garden party to be held Sunday evening after the show closed.

  “My first real friend at the show,” she said. “After you, of course. But you know what I mean. One of them.” I did know what she meant. I wasn’t one of them. Suburban girl in the city. City girl in the suburbs.

  “I’m happy for you, Connie. You deserve it.”

  A second photographer approached and politely asked if he could take our pictures, but I knew he really wanted Connie so I backed away to the perimeter, where I had an overview of the entire spectacle. That was where I bumped into Rolanda.

  “So was it all you thought it would be?” she asked.

  “All that and a bag of chips,” I said.

  “I was going to come find you tonight.”

  “To check my badge again?”

  She shook her head. “No, wise guy. The kid? The one whose bag you have? He won’t be coming for it. He’s dead.”

  Thirty-two

  Rolanda Knox was not your garden-variety security guard. I knew that the first time I walked into the building. What I didn’t know until the reception was that she attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the evenings after a full day’s work, and she monitored police radio the way other people listened to National Public Radio or watched baby owls on webcams. All day long.

  “I always learn something from the scanner even when it’s on in the background. I listen, so I know how to observe. Yesterday I heard about a floater found in the Hudson not far from here. White male, twenty-five to thirty.”

  She repeated it in that staccato, impersonal cop lingo that suggested it wasn’t a human—wasn’t somebody’s kid or friend or lover. It was a “floater,” like a raft or pool toy. I guess they had to say it that way. Otherwise, it would be too hard to think of the victim as an infant, then a toddler, then a teenager, the mental home movies fast-forwarding until the final frame, when it becomes just—a floater.

  “He was wearing jeans, Timberland boots, a T-shirt.”

  “Isn’t that every third guy who works at the Wagner?” I asked. “The carpenters and electricians? The show staff?” I didn’t want it to be the kid I had joked with, the kid who would have made a cute adult if he’d ever gotten the chance. “Was he wearing a jacket with a lot of souvenir patches?”

  Rolanda shook her head. “A T-shirt that said Happy Valley. He was identified as Garland Bleimeister, from Trenton, New Jersey. Wasn’t that the guy who left you a message about the bag?”

  There was no mistaking the name. Babe had spoken to him. And the Happy Valley shirt had registered with me. I’d had a friend who went to Penn State and wore a Happy Valley hat every time the Nittany Lions had a game, even if he was in another state. We are Penn State. Maybe that was why I could
n’t reach the boy and he’d never called again.

  “What does the medical examiner say? Did he drown?”

  Rolanda shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Cops don’t always like to say right away, but not many people going for a dip in the Hudson this time of year. Not many civilians think to ask about the medical examiner either. You a crime show junkie?”

  “No. I just had the bad luck to find a couple of bodies.”

  My mind was racing. Do I tell Rolanda I saw Jamal wearing the kid’s jacket? Do I call the police? What if I was wrong? I didn’t know what kids wore these days. For all I knew, some designer at Old Navy had a thing for the national parks and had emblazoned all the park names on their new spring line. Thousands of people could be walking around with the word Canyonlands written across their backs or tied around their hips. Maybe it had something to do with the guy who had to cut his arm off. He’d turned into a hero to some people. Why wasn’t Jamal here? Was he afraid because the body had been found and it would only be a matter of time before he was apprehended?

  “I’d better call the cops,” I said. “I still have the kid’s bag. Even if it’s not evidence, the next of kin will want it.”

  “If I don’t see you later, can we catch up tomorrow?” Rolanda said.

  “Sure. I should get back to work. You know where to find me. We can talk in the morning.”

  “Late afternoon. There’s a service for Otis at a Baptist church up in Harlem. A lot of us will be there, so there may be some new faces here tomorrow.”

  I was drawing a blank.

  “Otis Randolph, the janitor who passed.” I felt ashamed to have forgotten him. Rolanda and I exchanged cell numbers and agreed to meet tomorrow in the Overview Café, just outside the show’s entrance on the second floor of the convention center. If I was too busy and couldn’t sneak away, I’d call, and if the service for Otis ran long, she’d do the same. I took my time getting back to the booth. Death has a way of slowing you down, of reminding you there are more important things than whatever you’re rushing off to do. Maybe there’s a sympathetic, physical reaction, an acknowledgment of a soul leaving the planet.

  Back at the shops, where no one knew or cared about the dead boy, business was booming. David’s partner, Aaron, had arrived. The wavy black hair and heavy-framed eyeglasses had me itching to break into a chorus of “Peggy Sue,” but I restrained myself since I didn’t know if the look was intentional or not. The men were chatting up a middle-aged woman and her companion who—judging by the shopping bag and fabric books—could only be her decorator. I overheard something about redoing the country house, so I figured things were going well.

  We’d talked about a late dinner and a drink if the three of us had anything to celebrate, and so far David and I had each made a big sale. It was Nikki’s turn. But even though I’d only met him once, it seemed ghoulish to party now after having learned of Garland’s death. They could celebrate without me. Besides, Nikki was still gone.

  The husband had amassed a stack of clear plastic cups on the wicker table he was using as a desk. I counted six. Like wet rings on a bar they told me how long he’d been waiting. They could have been club soda, but his demeanor told me they’d held something stronger. Perhaps it was the muttering, which was not as sotto voce as he thought it was. I took the direct approach.

  “So, where’s Nikki?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I just dropped by … never mind.” He’d repeatedly called Nikki’s cell, but there’d been no answer for the last thirty minutes, the whole time I’d been away from our group.

  It was hard to believe she’d just leave. Did she decide she looked hideous in her stained dress and go home to change? Women have done crazier things. I’ve changed my clothes in elevators on my way out. Maybe she was still in the lounge talking to one of those “big pencils.” But even then, wouldn’t she drag the buyer back to her booth to close the sale?

  “She did this on purpose,” Russ said. “She’s always complaining that she does it all. I do plenty. She knew I needed to be somewhere tonight, but she resents my trying to leave the business. She saw me here and knew I wouldn’t leave the booth deserted. She let me do all the work out of spite.”

  “I don’t think so. She was very excited about this evening. You might want to call security to make sure she’s okay. Someone had an accident on an escalator here the other day.”

  After a brief, testy exchange on the phone, Russ sucked it up and resurrected his charm, but only when someone was within ten feet of Nikki’s booth. He was effective when he wasn’t fuming and glaring at his cell, willing it to ring. What did I know? I was rusty in the relationship department. Maybe she had seen him and stayed away. Between the Anzalones and this couple I was feeling good about being single.

  Two browsers, well dressed and drinking, were gently spinning one of Primo’s wind devices, so I excused myself and turned on my smile. “May I tell you about the artist?”

  Over the course of the next two hours, floor lamps, tufa troughs, urns, four of Primo’s smaller pieces—including the wind device—and countless pinecone nightlights were taken away or tagged with sold stickers. Only the mini Niagara fountains remained untouched.

  At 7:45 P.M., an announcement came over the public address system that the reception was ending. I crouched down and pulled aside the blue polyester drape Velcroed to the folding table to retrieve Garland Bleimeister’s bag.

  It was gone.

  David, Aaron, and I scoured the area, but the kid’s bag was nowhere to be found. “Maybe someone moved it.”

  “Who’d move it?” David said. “You know how neurotic some of these people are. And the cleaning staff knows better than to touch anything.”

  Just the same I looked underneath the tables on both sides of the booth and behind the backdrop curtain. No bag, just knocked-down cardboard boxes and two cases of Trader Joe’s water.

  “Afraid we’ll have a dry spell?” Aaron asked.

  “Go ahead, laugh. I can’t bring myself to spend five dollars for a bottle of water, even when someone else is paying for it. It threatens my self-delusion that we’re living in a rational world.”

  “Wow. Glad I asked.”

  “Here. Hydrate.” I pulled two bottles from the opened case and tossed them to David and Aaron.

  “Do you think he picked it up when you weren’t here?”

  “Like when? I’ve been here every hour the show’s been open.”

  “Which leaves the hours the show hasn’t been open. Maybe that’s why the ornaments were out of place,” David said. “Sorry—artwork.”

  They looked so cheerful, I hated to blurt it out and ruin the moment.

  “I’m pretty sure the owner is dead.”

  David stared. “Dead as in you’ll no longer have anything to do with him?”

  “No. Dead as in pushing up daisies. Taking the big dirt nap.”

  The overhead lights were flashing when a ripple of news spread through the crowd, finally reaching us.

  A woman’s body had been found in the members’ lounge.

  Thirty-three

  Days before the show had opened, exhibitors and staff had been informed that in the event of police or medical emergencies, we should notify convention center security of the Big Apple Flower Show office and not dial 911, which we’d been told would slow down response time. But everyone’s first instinct was to call 911, and that’s what Lauryn Peete had done when she’d gone to freshen up in the members’ lounge ladies’ room and seen a lifeless arm sticking out from under one of the doors. She pushed the door open with her foot and saw Nikki Bingham facedown in the stall.

  Nikki was unconscious. Her panty hose had giant holes, her knees were skinned, and she had a lump on her forehead the size and color of a damson plum. After the police and convention center security had been alerted, Rolanda Knox called me.

  “An anonymous caller to the BAFS emergency line said they heard a fight between
a man and a woman in the lounge. But the call was right before the blackout,” she said. “No one did anything and no one remembered until afterward.”

  Rolanda didn’t know Nikki’s condition. She had been stabilized—or collared and boarded, as the hired EMT staff person had put it. It looked gruesome—and serious—but it was standard procedure for anyone with a head injury even if it turned out to be nothing. Then she’d been taken to St. Athanasius’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.

  Rolanda and I stayed on the phone until I reached the members’ lounge, where she’d agreed to wait for me. By the time I got there, most of the onlookers had gone.

  “Maybe there really is a Javits Curse,” I said. I hit Call End and shoved my phone in my too small clutch purse. I don’t know at what point I decided to tell Rolanda what I knew about Jamal and the jacket, but I had. Somewhere between the news of Garland Bleimeister’s death and Nikki’s what … accident? Assault? Domestic violence incident? I needed a reality check from someone who knew about this stuff, even if it was only through show gossip and eavesdropping on the police radio.

  Rolanda looked tired. “Damn. This may just have trumped the shenanigans at the cat show.”

  “Interested in a drink?” I asked.

  “With you in that dress and me looking like a prison guard? Wait until I change and then, hell, yes.”

  I sat on a low, gray settee outside the staff locker room. Exhibitors and workers were still trickling out, and the extra police hovered discreetly, probably wondering what I was doing sitting on a bench in the darkened convention center as if I were waiting for a bus.

  When Rolanda finally emerged, she looked totally different. Tight jeans, a black leather jacket, and big earrings made her look not just more attractive but younger. And she had unleashed her hair from its tight bun at the nape of her neck.

  “What are you looking at? You’ve seen me in street clothes before, haven’t you?”