The Death Dealer

He had been on his way to attend tonight’s fund-raiser at the Met when he’d gotten sidelined by the accident, but now he decided he no longer cared. He was heading to Manhattan and a bar that had become one of his favorites.

“Congratulations, she’s just beautiful, Senator,” Genevieve O’Brien said to Senator James McCray and his wife. They had been showing her pictures of their new grandson, Jacob. She had done the right thing, “oohing” and “aahing.”

Frankly, the baby looked like a pinhead at the moment. As bald as a buzzard. Squinched up and…newborn.

But the senator was a supporter of the Historical Society, and had a paid great deal for his meal and a walk through the museum. Naturally she was going to say all the right things about his grandchild. Of course, if she’d met him on the street, she still would have said the same things, she realized.

She damned digital cameras.

The senator had not had just one picture but at least a hundred.

“You need to get married and have children yourself, young lady,” James McCray said.

His wife elbowed him. She’d suddenly gone pale.

Genevieve sighed and tried not to show her feelings in her expression, but she was so weary of this. Anything that so much as hinted of sex was considered taboo around her. She’d been the victim of a maniac who’d been stalking New York’s streets and targeting prostitutes, the same prostitutes Gen worked with. Everyone knew what she’d been through and that it was a miracle she was alive.

She had stayed alive because she had realized quickly that her attacker was actually incapable of sex. She had played on his own psychological makeup, providing the bolstering and ego boosts that he needed, and though she had been a prisoner and abused, she wasn’t suffering as shatteringly from the experience as the world seemed to think she should be. If she faced an inward agony, it was knowing that someone incredible, her friend Leslie MacIntyre, had died.

“I would love to have children one day, Senator, Mrs. McCray,” she said cheerfully. “When the right person to be a dad comes along. You enjoy that beautiful baby. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see to a few things.”

Yes, she needed to see to an escape.

She walked quickly into a side hall, opened only for the convenience of the Historical Society, which was hosting the event. There was a bench, and she sat on it.

He hadn’t shown.

She let out a sigh, wondering why she had even thought Joe would show up. He was a fascinating guy, intrigued by almost everything in the world. He hadn’t come from money, but if anyone out there knew that money really wasn’t everything, it was her. Joe was one of those people who lived life, and he’d done well enough for himself. He could look like a million dollars in a suit. Definitely a striking guy.

And her friend, she thought.

When he wasn’t avoiding her.

She smiled to herself. If she was in trouble, if she needed rescuing, he would be right there. Thing was, she didn’t need rescuing. And she didn’t want to need rescuing, either.

Her smiled faded.

She did want help.

She had hoped he would show tonight because she wanted to ask him about the current worry dogging her life.

A murder.

The media had dubbed it the Poe Killing, because the victim, Thorne Bigelow, had been president of the New York Poe Society, a readers and writers group whose members studied the works and life of Edgar Allan Poe, and called themselves the Ravens, and the killer had left a note referring to the famous author.

She looked around the room. Most of the members were involved with things that were considered either literary or important educationally in the city of New York. There were several of the Ravens here tonight; like her own mother, they also supported various groups interested in history and archeology. Among them she noticed newspaper reporter Larry Levine, who had come to cover the event. Then there was Lila Hawkins—brassy and outspoken and very, very rich. Quite frankly, she was obnoxious, but she did do a lot of good things for the arts in the city. Just a few minutes ago, Gen had seen Lila with Barbara Hirshorn, another Raven and the complete opposite of Lila; Barbara was so timid, she had difficulty speaking to more than one person at the same time.

She had noted that even Jared Bigelow had made a brief appearance with Mary Vincenzo, his aunt, on his arm. He was gone now, and she hadn’t had a chance to speak to him. He had shown up just to support the cause tonight; he was still in mourning for his father.

From her seat on the bench she could hear the booming voice of Don Tracy, the one Raven who’d taken Poe to the masses. He was an actor, a good one, even if he’d never become a household name. He loved the stage and had performed Poe’s works on numerous occasions.

None of them seemed to be frightened by the note that had been found with Thorne’s body.

Thorne Bigelow had been a very wealthy man. A well-known man. And though murder happened all too often, it was the sad truth that a murder with a hook—like a victim who was regularly in the headlines and a mysterious note making reference to a long-dead storyteller and poet—intrigued the media more than most deaths did.

It was only happenstance that Thorne Bigelow had been a very rich Raven. The Ravens didn’t demand that a member be wealthy, published on the topic of Poe’s life and works or world-renowned, though sometimes they were. Thorne Bigelow had written a book on Poe that was considered to be the definitive work on the man. Bigelow was honored far and wide for his knowledge.

And he had been poisoned. Poisoned with a bottle of thousand-dollar wine.

He loved wine, perhaps even to excess. And he had died of it.

À la Poe.

“The Black Cat.”

Or perhaps “The Cask of Amontillado.”

The killer didn’t seem to have been too precise about which story he meant Bigelow’s death to parallel. He had made his intentions clear in the note he’d left at the scene, though.

Quoth the raven: die.

The police were pretty much at a standstill, though why the media were harassing them so strongly about the case, Genevieve wasn’t certain. Thorne Bigelow had only been dead a week. She knew from personal experience that bad things could go on for a very long time before a situation was resolved. If it hadn’t been for her family’s wealth and her own disappearance, the sad deaths of many of the city’s less fortunate might have gone unsolved for a very long time.

But Bigelow was big news.

“My darling, there you are!”

Genevieve looked up. Her mother—it was still strange to call Eileen Mother, when she had grown up believing that she was her aunt—was standing before her. Eileen, only in her early forties now, was stunning. Her love for Genevieve was so strong—not to mention that without her persistence, Genevieve would surely be dead now—that it was easy to forgive the lies of the past. Especially since Genevieve knew what family pressure was like, and that her mother had been far too young to speak up for herself when Gen had been born.

But Eileen Brideswell had finally decided that a New York that embraced reruns of Sex and the City would surely forgive her a teenage, unwed birth. What she might once have been damned for now passed without notice by most in the city.

And after all, Genevieve had loved Eileen all her life.

“Here I am,” Genevieve said cheerfully.

“He didn’t show,” Eileen said.

“No.”

Eileen hesitated. She was very slim, and had classic features, the kind that would make her just as beautiful when she turned eighty as she was now. But at the moment, her expression was strained.

“What?” Genevieve asked, suddenly worried by what she saw in her mother’s eyes.

“There was a terrible accident on the FDR.”

Genevieve leapt up. “When? Joe uses—”

“About an hour ago. The reports are just coming out now. One man was killed—don’t panic, it wasn’t Joe—and a number of other people were injured.”