Spiced to Death (9 page)

“A lot of people like to chop the plant. They find the taste of the fresh ginger different from that of the dried powder. You need two to three times as much of it, though—when it’s dried, the taste becomes really concentrated.”

“You sound as if you know a lot about it.”

“Don Renshaw’s the man to talk to. He owns this place. He can tell you all about any of these spices and herbs.”

“You know him well?” she asked.

“We’ve done a little business together over the years.”

“You’re English, aren’t you?” Her brown eyes appraised me frankly.

“Yes. So’s Don. I knew him in England, then he came over here to expand his business. He decided he liked it so much he wanted to stay.”

“It’s a fascinating business. I had no idea that so many of these herbs and spices came from so far away.”

“The history of spice trading was written in blood a few hundred years ago. Nations went to war with each other for control of the pepper trade. The price of pepper was the standard for trade in all commodities. Like the way we’re on the gold standard today, it was the pepper standard then.”

Her brown eyes widened. “That’s amazing.”

“Perhaps we could have lunch together. We can talk spices and eat spices.”

She frowned. “Lunch is usually difficult …”

“Dinner, then?”

“I’d better tell you—I’m here to talk to Mr. Renshaw.”

“Really?” I put an inflexion on the word that invited further explanation.

“But I have a scheduling problem. I wanted to talk to him but he’s tied up and now I’m running late for another appointment. I’ll have to come back.”

“I hope I’m here—” was all I could get out before she was hurrying away.

“I do too,” she tossed over her shoulder.

I went in search of Peggy and was in time to catch her coming from another section of the building. She waved when she saw me.

“Those are our storage rooms,” she said. “We have a lot of our own stock in there and we store herbs, spices, plants, aromatics for others. This was a very expensive installation for us. It has control of temperature, humidity, particle size of foreign bodies, and it kills insects and bugs of all kinds. There are separate compartments for items that are sensitive to other aromas.”

“You’re really well equipped” I said admiringly. “You and Don have done a terrific job here.”

“Like to take a look inside?”

“I certainly would.”

“Let me get the keys—” She broke off as a woman in jodhpurs approached her asking where she could find pomegranate seeds.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Peggy said and led the woman across the floor.

I wandered around, looking at rare and bizarre plants, unusual herbs and strange-looking spices. Peggy finally came back.

“I can’t imagine why Don’s taking so long,” she said. “He knows you’re here. Let’s go see how much longer he’s going to be.”

We walked across to a small office with a glass-paneled door. Inside, the phone was ringing. Peggy rapped on the glass panel. There was no answer. She rapped again.

“That’s funny,” she said. “Why doesn’t he answer it?”

The phone continued to ring. She rapped a third time, then opened the door.

She let out a gasp of horror and I pushed the door farther open.

Don lay there on the floor. He was on his back and blood was dribbling from a hole in his chest. I put my fingertips against his left carotid artery.

I could feel nothing. He was dead.

I
N RESPONSE TO MY
call, Lieutenant Gaines and Sergeant Rossini arrived together, siren shrieking. I had had Peggy lock the front door and had asked the customers to remain for just a few minutes. They grumbled and protested but I was lucky. I expected New Yorkers to be more vociferous in their demands to be allowed to leave but maybe eating spices made people meeker. Certainly, none of them objected very strongly and one or two expressed interest as to what would happen next, possibly seeing themselves as playing supporting roles in a cops and robbers TV drama.

One customer, a very pleasant elderly lady from Queens, was a regular and knew Peggy. She said she was with a support group and although I wasn’t sure what that meant, it evidently was something to do with people who banded together to battle a common misfortune. This lady had a lot of experience with this organization and was consoling Peggy.

Gaines’s face was screwed up as if he was in agony. The pretty Italian sergeant was moderately friendly but her attitude clearly said that a murder right after a major theft was too much. Gaines didn’t wait for me to read his attitude. He let me have it right between the eyes.

“How come you’re always on the scene when these things happen?” he growled.

“Lieutenant, I know this looks bad but I had nothing to do with it. Not with the theft either, for that matter.”

He hit me with a barrage of questions. I answered them with what seemed to me straight responses.

“As for an alibi, I was standing talking to a woman just before Peggy and I went to the office,” I added.

“What makes you think you need an alibi?” he asked accusingly.

“Well, the questions you’re asking—”

“Which woman is it who’ll alibi you?”

“She—er, she isn’t here.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

He squinted at me in disbelief. “You call that an alibi? You could have shot Renshaw any time and then come out here and pretend to find the body. Nobody heard a shot—the gun was obviously silenced.”

“No,” I protested. “Whoever was with him must have shot him and then gone out of the other door from the office—the door that goes directly out into the parking lot.”

“How long have you been here?” the sergeant asked, her voice calm.

“About forty, forty-five minutes.”

“Did you talk to anyone else besides this woman?”

“No.”

“Why did you talk to her?”

“We were both at the ginger stand. We talked about ginger.”

The lieutenant’s eyes were on me while she was asking the questions and I could see his skeptical look. Talking about ginger was not a credible action in his book.

“Tell us again what she said.”

I did. Technicians began to come in and there was a steady flow of men and women, cameras, plastic bags and various pieces of equipment.

The sergeant turned to me. “You say you had no idea who was with Renshaw in his office?”

“No. I called him yesterday to ask if it was all right to come over but he said it was better to make it this morning. His wife said there was someone with him but she didn’t know who it was and I didn’t either. The woman I was talking to said she had an appointment to talk to him but couldn’t wait.”

“I don’t need to state the obvious,” Gaines growled. “This must have some connection with that pepper of yours …”

“I can’t imagine what connection but I have to admit it seems likely.”

“Tell me somep’n—when you both tested the stuff at JFK, you said it was genuine …” He let the rest of his sentence trail away in an uncertain manner that was not typical of him.

“To the best of our knowledge, it was.”

“Both of you?” he pressed.

“Yes.”

“Stuff’s worth more’n a million, you say? If it’s genuine?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s it worth if it’s phony?”

He rapped it out fast before I could see where he was going.

“Well, nothing … but it can’t be phony … we both—” I broke off. “Ah, I see what you’re saying. Don Renshaw and I could be in cahoots.”

I didn’t know if the word was still current but it was expressive. The lieutenant seemed to have no trouble recognizing it. His nod suggested that he not only recognized it but approved of it—the very word he wanted.

“Is there another variable?” the winsome sergeant asked. “Could the spice have been phony
and
you said it was genuine?” She no longer looked quite as winsome.

“I suppose we could come up with handfuls of theories if we tried hard enough,” I said bitterly. “The truth is that we both considered the Ko Feng to be genuine and we declared it genuine.”

The sergeant scribbled in her notebook. Gaines looked skeptical although the look was nearly lost in some facial contortions.

“By the way,” I added, “Don Renshaw had a theory.”

Neither of them showed any interest. I wasn’t invited to contribute to the pool of ideas but I went ahead anyway. When I had finished, Gaines chewed it over, then shook his head.

“Ransom, yeah, we thought about that but it doesn’t show up very high on our hit parade.”

A sallow young man with hair in what looked suspiciously like braids came up and said something to the lieutenant, who nodded.

“We’re fingerprinting. Got most of the people here, we need yours. Any objection?” His tone suggested that he hoped I did object.

“None at all,” I said promptly.

“Also, we need you to stop by the station—the sergeant will give you the address.”

“You’ll want a statement. All right.”

“And we’ll want you to leave your passport.”

“I’ve got to stay?”

The shock of the crime had occupied my mind to the extent that I hadn’t considered this possibility. The lieutenant nodded, his face muscles moving as if he were chewing invisible gum.

“Yeah, you gotta stay. It was a major theft before—now it’s murder. You gotta stay, all right.”

Now that the idea had sunk in, I didn’t mind. In fact, I wanted to stay. I had to clear myself, find out who stole the Ko Feng and who killed Don Renshaw, and get the Celestial Spice back. It was an ambitious program.

I didn’t imagine that Gaines and the sergeant would look too kindly on the idea of my investigating the two crimes but that was what I was going to do whether they liked it or not. I hoped I could convince them that I was only doing my duty and helping them.

I put on a look of annoyed aggravation.

“Well, if I have to stay …” I said with all the reluctance I could muster.

I
HAD PLENTY TO
think about on the cab ride back to the Framingham Hotel. I had talked briefly with Peggy. She was distraught but controlled. The very helpful support lady said that the full significance of Don’s murder hadn’t hit Peggy yet. Her sister-in-law was on the way over and though the Spice Warehouse would remain closed for the rest of the day, Peggy was determined that she would open tomorrow as usual. The support lady said she would come by and she agreed that it was best for Peggy to have a lot of work to do.

I changed my mind about going directly to the hotel and told the driver to drop me at a good Irish pub. I wasn’t that hungry but it would be better to eat now so I had a corned beef sandwich on rye bread and a bottle of Guinness. Nowhere in the world are there such delicious corned beef sandwiches as in the Irish pubs in New York.

I was able to spot a few sights on the ride from the pub to the hotel although my heart wasn’t in it. But then the Empire State Building loomed up on the right. I remembered that it had been unchallenged as the tallest building in the world when I had first seen it. The cabby was staying to the west of Broadway, presumably to avoid the thicker traffic. We went by the newly opened Woody Allen Theater and, in the next block, the massive billboard advertising the latest Sondheim-Lloyd Webber blockbuster musical about World War I—
Trenches.
Soon after we passed Lincoln Center we were at the Framingham.

I was asking for my key when a uniformed man appeared at my side.

“Would you please accompany me, sir?” His tone was frigidly polite but the “please” and the “sir” sounded superfluous, as if it didn’t matter what my answer was going to be.

He had a large, round face and was big and burly. His uniform was neat and crisp, dark gray with black leather cuffs and epaulettes. His cap was flat and straight on his head and his boots were shiny black. He looked threatening without even trying.

“Where to?”

“Just a short ride.”

“What’s it about?”

“I’m really not able to say, sir.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have asked more questions but Don Renshaw’s murder had left me in a careless mood.

“All right,” I said. “Why not?”

Outside, a long limousine, sleek and shiny, stood at the curb. The chauffeur gave the uniformed hotel man a bank note for keeping such a prime spot for him.

We headed south. The driver was a real professional and despite the traffic, the ride was smooth. He offered no conversation and didn’t open the glass window that separated us. I presumed there was an intercom but I couldn’t see it. The soft leather interior was luxurious and there was a TV and a minibar.

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center cast the street into shadow, we turned and a few minutes later stopped before a smaller building—a mere forty stories or so. The chauffeur took me into a busy lobby with half a dozen receptionists. He spoke a few words to one of them and I was taken to an elevator. He pushed a button and left me.

At the thirty-first floor, a man was waiting for me. He was young, thin, dark and Latin looking.

“This way please.”

He led me through a waiting area where several men with briefcases sat reading magazines. We went on until we stopped before a heavy, smoked glass door. He knocked, opened the door and ushered me in.

I knew who the man sitting behind the large desk was—the name of the Marvell Corporation was emblazoned on the wall outside in large letters. He was of stocky build with a bald head and pugnacious features. He was signing a pile of papers and had no intention of acknowledging my presence until he had finished. I wasn’t going to stand there that long so I sat in one of the several chairs opposite him. The office was comfortable but not large or elaborate. A couple of Matisse prints were on the walls and an enlarged photograph of a jungle river. Outside the window, adjacent skyscraper buildings climbed up and out of sight.

He finished signing, pushed the pile away and examined me from under bushy eyebrows, which contrasted with his bald head. It wasn’t a very friendly appraisal.

“This is a hell of a mess,” he said authoritatively.