8 Antiques Con Read online

  Of course nobody got hung anymore (actually, hanged), but I had no doubt a New York jury would give him a stiff sentence.

  “Besides which,” I went on helpfully, “bad posture will only make you old before your time.”

  He smirked and snorted a sort of laugh.

  “Well, I’m glad I’m a source of amusement, anyway.” I pushed back from the table and stood. “Very well, I’ll take my leave,” I said, adding, “It is well-known that Vivian Borne never stays where she’s unwanted.” (Not precisely true....)

  Suddenly, Gino straightened. “No, no, I’m curious—let’s hear what you got to say.” But his smirk remained. (I might have lectured him on the dangers of smirking, as I had recently done with Brandy; but smirking suited Gino’s face, and, anyway, if you’re a man, what’s wrong with looking like Bruce Willis?)

  I sat down and folded my hands in my lap. “First, let me assure you most sincerely that I do not believe you killed Tommy Bufford.”

  A fib—actually, Gino was my number one suspect. But all’s fair in love, war, and murder investigations.

  I continued: “But you were seen arguing with him on the evening of the reception . . . even using the incriminating phrase, ‘I could kill you.’ ”

  “Come on, lady, you know that’s a—what? A figure of speech!”

  “Such a figure of speech can get you landed right smack in the slammer, young man—haven’t you ever seen Perry Mason?”

  “Harry who?”

  Don’t you think it’s just a travesty that these younger generations ignore our wonderful old TV shows? But I restrained myself from berating him.

  “I understand,” I said, “that you and the late Mr. Bufford were quite close—even best of friends. And in spite of your acrimonious parting, would I be right in assuming that you still held him in high regard? Perhaps even loved him like a brother?”

  Yes, that was a bushel of Iowa corn, but it brought the desired result.

  Gino’s smirk disappeared, the defiant eyes softened, and the sensuous lips quivered just a little.

  “I . . . do,” he admitted. “I did.”

  “Then, dear,” I said gently, “why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “Who are you? Why do you want to know these things?”

  “I am an independent investigator,” I said, liking the sound of that, “who happens to have the ear of the detective in charge of the case. Detective Sal Cassato? I can help you.”

  “All right.” He sighed deeply. “Tommy and me, we went to the same private school, but we didn’t hit it off right away.” He shook his head. “Two of us couldn’t have been more different—Tommy was a geek, and me, I was a jock—quarterback. Darn good one, too.”

  Here Gino paused, enjoying the memory.

  Then he went on, “We got thrown together in a math class where I was right on the verge, you know, of flunking out. And Tommy, he offered to help me . . . so I wouldn’t get thrown off the team. That’s when we found out that we both loved superhero comic books—you might say I was a closet comics fan all my young life. Anyway, we heard about the San Diego convention—the biggest one in the world—and made plans to go that summer together and share expenses.”

  “An exciting destination for a pair of young comics fans.”

  “Oh, it was a blast. But it was way the hell across the country, so Tommy and me began talking about starting our own convention. And there were things we didn’t like about San Diego—like how big it had got, and how un-user friendly it was for people attending.”

  “Like the Manhattan convention quickly became?” I asked gently.

  I was referring to the convention that Gino and Tommy had created together.

  Gino smiled and shook his head. “You’re right. And the irony is not lost on me, lady.”

  I switched gears. “Starting up a new convention takes capital—it’s a massive enterprise. Am I right in assuming you had an angel? That someone staked you boys at the outset?”

  Gino nodded. “That’s the funny thing—and I don’t mean funny haha. It’s something else Tommy and me had in common . . . we both came from . . . families—you know the kind of ‘family’ I mean, right?”

  Did he really need to ask this, in back of the Badda-Boom? He was saying, “Me, Jersey—Tommy, New York. And we got each of our two ‘families’ to put up the money to start the convention.” He laughed dryly. “It’s the only time I know of that those two families weren’t feuding. But now. . . .”

  I nodded. “You’re afraid of a war. And that’s why you’ve been lying low.”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid that New York thinks Jersey had Tommy killed.”

  “Jersey did force Tommy out of Manhattan Con.”

  Gino shrugged. “He got a good financial settlement.” He spread his hands. “Hey, you saw how Tommy looked—even . . . smelled. I mean, he was a good guy, but he’d become an embarrassment. Not who you want as the face of a big event. And it wasn’t just Jersey who expected high profits from their investment.”

  “You’re saying New York wanted him gone, as well?”

  “Some factions, yes. The younger ones. They saw future earnings being hurt. Tommy was the past, when comics conventions were about comics. The future of cons, hell, the present, is Hollywood.”

  I was nodding. “Then Tommy starts his rival convention—that must have made everyone nervous.”

  Gino waved that off. “He was no threat—his convention would always be small.”

  I shook my head. “Perhaps, at first . . . but you’re forgetting the prestigious Buff Awards that gave his convention credibility. And from a little acorn a mighty oak may grow.”

  Gino shrugged, nodded. “I suppose. And I know he and that girl Violet were looking into taking his con to half a dozen other cities in the U.S.A., and four or five overseas. So, yeah, the Bufford Con thing could chip away at the Manhattan Con.”

  “Are you aware of how Tommy died?”

  He shook his head. “Just that it’s being called a suspicious death.”

  “I was there. I found the body. And I can tell you the details if you like.”

  He winced, but said, “Yes. Please.”

  And I told him.

  By the time I’d finished, his face had gone ashen. “Oh, my God,” he said slowly. “I was afraid it might be murder. Lady, I have to get out of here. If I don’t lay low. . . .”

  “That the murder weapon was a Buff Award is not helpful, is it?”

  “No. Looks like somebody leaving a message.”

  “A message signed by you?”

  “Or Jersey, anyway. This is bad. This is awful.”

  “Do you have an alibi?”

  “No . . . and I’m afraid it’s even worse than that.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was there,” he said, “at the opening ceremony—backstage. I felt bad for what I’d said to Tommy the night before, and wanted to apologize, and wish him the best for the convention.”

  Apologize, perhaps, but I couldn’t believe Gino could be magnanimous enough to wish him good luck. But I didn’t see any merit in pressing.

  I asked, “Did you speak with him?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t have a chance. Tommy was busy talking to Violet—he seemed upset about something, and she was trying to calm him down—and then he got into an argument with Brad Webster. So I just left.”

  “Really? Tommy had words with his Fan Guest of Honor?”

  “Yeah. Quite the flare-up.”

  “Do you know what they might have argued about?”

  Gino shook his head.

  Again, I wasn’t sure I believed him. But what good would browbeating him do?

  Instead I said, “I can understand tension between Tommy and Violet—both under a great deal of pressure to make the convention a success. But I thought Tommy and Brad were good friends.”

  Gino’s smirk returned. “Maybe once upon a time. But lately? Tommy couldn’t stand that jerk.”

  Did I detect a note
of jealousy?

  “Then why did Tommy choose him as Fan Guest?”

  Gino seemed to be considering his answer. After a few moments, he said, “Look, Brad had a thing for Tommy—but Tommy was straight. They were roommates, and there was a bad scene at some point, and . . . words got exchanged that couldn’t be taken back.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I think Tommy was kind of, you know, trying to make it up to Brad, by giving him that honor. But then Brad took it wrong. Like maybe Tommy meant it as a sign that . . . well, anyway. That’s what I think their argument was about—Tommy rebuffing him.”

  “I see.”

  Gino shifted in his chair. “You gonna tell the police you located me through the club?”

  I reached over and patted his knee. “Of course not, dear. Why have them bumbling around?”

  And messing up my chance of solving this case.

  “Besides,” I went on, “I’m sure if I could figure out that you could be located through the Badda-Boom, they can do that, too. They are not that incompetent. But it will take them a while to extradite you for questioning, and by that time? I’ll have solved Tommy’s murder.” I stood. “In the meantime, do stay out of trouble. Stay in and read some funny books, why don’t you?”

  Gino said he thought that was a good idea, and said I could keep in touch with him through the Boom.

  After he left, I boxed up the leftover food, and I went out into the bar.

  My four new friends were seated at the counter, beers in front of them, and I asked Johnny Contralto to call me a cab so I could return to Manhattan.

  But I didn’t go back to the city.

  I needed to pay my respects to someone in a Teaneck nursing home.

  Mother’s Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip

  Don’t be afraid to haggle at a comics convention. If someone is resistant to lowering their price, say you saw the same item at another dealer for a lot less (even if you’re fibbing). It isn’t exactly a lie if you’re just making something up, is it?

  Chapter Seven

  Con Tact

  Apeeved Sal Cassato reached into the closet, latched on to an arm of mine, and pulled me out like a garment bag. While I wouldn’t say the detective was rough, exactly, he moved fast enough to get a growl out of Sushi, who let him know in no uncertain terms that she didn’t approve of manhandling.

  And neither did I.

  “Hey!” I said. “Let go of me! You break it, you bought it.”

  His eyes flared, but there was embarrassment on his face for having gotten physical. He released me, asking gruffly, “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “The closet or the room?” I asked, rubbing my arm.

  The almost-Tony’s face frowned. “I think I can figure out how you got in the closet. I am a trained detective.”

  “Good to hear.”

  He let out a sigh that sounded like steam escaping. “How . . . did . . . you . . . get . . . in . . . here?”

  “The room, you mean?”

  “You know what I mean!”

  Okay, I was vamping for time. Trying to work up a story, thoughts careening off the inside of my head like a spirited game of racquetball.

  Finally I said brightly, “I lost a ring?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “No. I mean, I lost a ring—thought it might be here. You remember—this used to be our room, Mother’s and mine, before we traded with Tommy? I told you all about that.”

  That seemed to relax him, but his look of distrust only deepened. “Right. But presumably you swapped keycards with the late Mr. Bufford. How did you get in?”

  I shrugged. “Still had a keycard left over. Found it in my purse. No harm, no foul . . . right?”

  He held out a paw. “Gimme.”

  I gimmied.

  We walked a few steps away from the closet into the torn-up room.

  He said, “Please tell me you didn’t make this mess. You know, looking for that imaginary ring?”

  “Who says it’s imaginary? And I haven’t made a room this messy since high school. But it does seem like somebody else was looking for something, too.”

  He was glancing around at the destruction. “And not a ring.”

  “Probably not a ring.”

  Now he looked at me again. “If you had to guess, what would you say this somebody was after?”

  “If we knew that,” I said cheerfully, “we might be getting somewhere in this investigation.”

  He formed a fist and shook it—at me, or maybe at God. “I told you and your mother to stay out of this case!”

  I stuck my chin out, as if daring him to use that fist. “You mean a trained detective like yourself hasn’t figured out yet that that’s not going to happen?”

  Startled, Sal Cassato backed up a step.

  So I took a step forward. “You’ve been around my mother long enough to know she’s not going to quit. You’ve talked to your brother about the cases we’ve solved, yes, solved, and you probably know all about his own frustrations with Mother.”

  “She’s your mother. Can’t you control her?”

  “How many children can control their parents? It’s an even smaller number than the parents who can control their children.”

  “You could try.”

  “I have tried. Often, I’ve tried. Do you know the definition of insanity? It’s performing the same task again and again, and always getting the same outcome, and then trying once more, thinking you might get a new one. No, I can’t stop her. But there’s one thing I can do.”

  He was starting to look plain tired. “And what, Ms. Borne, would that be?”

  “I can help her get this murder solved as quickly as possible.”

  That remark gave him renewed energy. “And I can throw her rear end in jail! And yours.”

  “Go ahead! She’d love it. And I’ve been there, too. It’ll be a big step up from our jail back home—a feather in her cap. Next time she’s in the Serenity clink, she’ll have bragging rights. What’s the charge, by the way?”

  “I’ll jug you girls as material witnesses.”

  “Just like in Nero Wolfe! Mother will be ecstatic. Oh—and while we’re inside, waiting for bail? I guarantee you there’s not a guard or a dispatcher she won’t be able to transform into her personal informant. Trust me, the only place for the police to have Mother that’s worse than outside is inside.”

  Cassato was scrutinizing my face as if working on a scientific study on the subject of whether mental illness could be passed on via heredity. Then he sighed again, and it didn’t sound like steam escaping this time. More like his soul leaving him to float to some safer, saner place.

  Then he asked, “Why do I think you have a suggestion?”

  “Because I have one. And here it is: join forces.”

  Cassato gave the kind of look a bartender gives a kid who just handed him terrible fake I.D.

  I asked, “Why, are you already close to making an arrest? And don’t need any more help?”

  “. . . I can’t comment on that.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ Then perhaps I could offer you some information that might prove helpful.”

  His eyes narrowed. “If you know something, lady, you better tell me right now.”

  Earlier, I’d been a “girl,” and I much preferred that to “lady.”

  But, nonetheless, I told him about Robert Sipcowski having been in this very room just before I arrived.

  Cassato’s expression existed in that no man’s land between a smirk and a sneer. “Surely you don’t think he’s involved?”

  I folded my arms like a particularly smug Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie. “I’m going to take a wild guess that he didn’t walk away from a pension at the NYPD for a chance to work hotel security.”

  “You can make a pretty fair living in the hotel security field.” There was something defensive, even evasive in the detective’s tone.

  I shook my head. “No sale. I’ve seen the photos in his
office—he’s proud of his career. It’s written all over him—he’d give anything to still be on the job.”

  Something flickered in the detective’s eyes.

  I asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He said nothing.

  “Your brother would tell me,” I said.

  “I’m not my brother.”

  I was starting to realize that.

  I asked, “Was Sipcowski forced out?”

  “. . . More or less.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced around, a ridiculous search for privacy in an upended room where the only other inhabitants were myself and a blind shih tzu.

  “I didn’t tell you this,” he said.

  “You haven’t told me anything yet.”

  “There were cases of his where a certain New York family were involved that didn’t turn out the way they should have . . . is all I can say.”

  But of course I pressed on: “You’re saying the hotel’s security chief has ties to a New York crime family? I mean, when you said ‘certain New York family,’ you didn’t mean the Rockefellers.”

  “Not the Rockefellers, no.”

  I frowned at him. “Have these Mob ties been substantiated?”

  “Let me put it this way—and you never heard this from me—but Robert Sipcowski was given a choice between resigning or sticking around for a full-scale investigation into those suspected mishandled cases. And that’s all I’m willing to say about it.”

  He’d said plenty.

  Then he added, “But you and that doggie’re barkin’ up the wrong tree with Sipcowski. I don’t see this as having anything to do with that murder.”

  “Are you sure? Sipcowski certainly had the opportunity to kill Tommy—as security chief, he can go anywhere in the hotel, at any time, without rousing suspicion. And he’s got access to the security-cam footage.”

  “And what’s his motive?”

  “What, do I have to do everything?”

  He winced, as if I were causing him physical pain.

  “Look, Detective,” I said, “I have a six o’clock dinner appointment, and I have barely enough time to freshen up. If you want me, a trained detective shouldn’t have trouble finding me. You know what room I’m in. You were in it most of the afternoon.”