“Nan Sheridan?”
“Of course, Nan Sheridan.”
“Doug simply isn’t capable—”
“Susan, what time did he pick you up the morning she died?”
“Seven o’clock. We wanted to get back to Brown for a hockey game.”
“Susan, before she died I got the truth out of Grandma. You were in tears because you thought Doug had stood you up again. He got to our place after nine. At least grant me the satisfaction of telling the truth now.”
The front door banged shut. Donny and Beth came in. Donny’s face looked relaxed and happy. It was becoming a carbon copy of Doug’s face at that age. She’d had a crush on Doug from their sophomore year in high school.
Susan felt a stab of pain. I’ll never get over him completely, she acknowledged. Doug pleading with her, “Susan, my car broke down. They’re trying to accuse me. They want to blame somebody. Please say I was here at seven.”
Donny came over to kiss her. She reached back and smoothed his hair, then turned to her father. “Dad, come on. You know how confused Grandma was. Even back then she didn’t know one day from another.”
XI
SATURDAY
March 2
It was 2:30 A.M. Saturday morning when he got to the place. By then his need to be there was overwhelming. When he was in the place, Charley could be his own person. No more skulking behind the other one. Able to dance in synch with Astaire, smiling down at the phantom in his arms, crooning in her ear. The wonderful solitude of the place, the draperies drawn against the unseemly gaze of a casual interloper, the bolts securing him from the outside world, the limitless sense of self, unrestrained by listeners or observers, free to roam in the delicious memories.
Nan. Claire. Janine. Marie. Sheila. Leslie. Annette. Tina. Erin. All of them smiling at him, so glad to be with him, never getting the chance to turn on him, sneer at him, look at him with contempt. In the end, when they understood, it had been so wonderfully satisfying. He regretted that he hadn’t given Nan a chance to realize what was happening, to beg. Leslie and Annette had pleaded for their lives. Marie and Tina had cried.
Sometimes the girls came back to him one by one. Other times they appeared together. Change partners and dance with me.
By now the first two packages would have arrived. Oh, if only one could be the proverbial fly on the wall, watching the moment when they were opened, when the puzzled expression changed to comprehension.
Copycat.
They wouldn’t call him that anymore. Now had Janine been next, or Marie? Janine. September twentieth, two years ago. He’d send her package now.
He went to the basement. The boxes with the shoes were such an amusing sight. Pulling on the plastic gloves he always used when he handled anything that belonged to the girls, he reached for the one behind the place card marked “Janine.” He’d send it to her family in White Plains.
His eye lingered on the last place card. “Erin.” He began to giggle. Why not send hers now? That would really put their copycat notion in the gutter. She’d told him her father was in a nursing home. He’d send them to her New York address.
But suppose no one in her apartment building was smart enough to give the package to the police? What a waste to have it gathering dust in some storeroom.
What about sending the shoes care of the morgue? After all, that was her last address in New York. How funny that would be.
First, make sure to wipe the shoes and boxes thoroughly just to make sure there were absolutely no prints on them. Get out the identification. He’d plucked their wallets from their purses, then buried the purses.
Wrap fresh tissue around the mismatched sets. Close the lids. He admired his sketches. He was getting better. The one on Erin’s box was as good as any professional could do.
Brown wrapping paper, sealing tape. Address label. Any one of them could have been bought anywhere in the United States.
He addressed Janine’s package first.
Now it was Erin’s turn. The New York telephone book would give the address of the morgue.
Charley frowned. Suppose some dumb klutz in the mailroom didn’t open it, just gave it back to the postman. “Nobody with that name works here.” Without a return address the package would go into the dead-letter office.
There was one other possibility. Would it be a mistake? No. Not really. He giggled again. This will certainly keep them guessing!
He began to print the name of the person he had chosen to receive Erin’s boot and special slipper.
DARCY SCOTT . . .
On Saturday, Darcy met Box 1143, Albert Booth, for brunch at the Victory Café. She judged him to be about forty. In their telephone conversation she’d managed to learn that his ad claimed he was a computer expert, enjoyed reading, skiing, golfing, waltzing, leisurely strolls through museums, and listening to records. He also said he had a good sense of humor.
That, Darcy decided, after Booth asked her “if meeting a box number made her feel boxed in,” stretched truth to the breaking point. By the time she had finished her first cup of coffee, she also doubted just about everything else he’d claimed except computer expert. He had a soft couch-potato look that did not hint of a skier, golfer, waltzer, or walker.
His conversation consisted solely of the past, present, and future of computers. “Forty years ago a computer took two big rooms of heavy equipment to do what the one on your desk is doing now.”
“I finally bought one just last year.”
He looked shocked.
Over eggs Benedict, he shared his disgust with the way clever students were manipulating school records by breaking into computer systems. “They should go to jail for five years. And pay a big fine too.”
Darcy was sure that desecration of the sanctuary or ark of the temple would not have been any more serious to him.
Over the last cup of coffee, he finally finished expounding his theory that future wars would be won or lost by experts able to crack enemy computers. “Change all the figures, see what I mean. You think you have two thousand nuclear warheads in Colorado. Somebody changes it to two hundred. You have armies deployed. The statistics change. Where’s the Fifth Division? The Seventh? You don’t know anymore. Right?”
“Right.”
Booth smiled suddenly. “You’re a good listener, Darcy. Not many girls are good listeners.”
It was the opening she needed. “I’ve just started to answer personal ads. You certainly meet a variety of people. What are most of them like?”
“Most of them are pretty boring.” Albert leaned across the table. “Listen, you want to know who I took out just two weeks ago?”
“Who?”
“That girl who was murdered. Erin Kelley.”
Darcy hoped she would not overreact. “What was she like?”
“Pretty girl. Nice. She was worried about something.”
Darcy gripped her coffee cup. “Did she tell you what was worrying her?”
“She sure did. She told me she was finishing some necklace and it was her first really big job and as soon as she was paid she was going to look for a new apartment.”
“Any reason?”
“She said the superintendent was always brushing against her when she passed him and making excuses to be in her apartment. Looking for a water leak, a heat blockage, that kind of thing. She said she supposed he was harmless, but it was kind of creepy to walk into her bedroom and find him there. I guess it had just happened again the day before I met her.”
“Don’t you think you ought to let the police know about this?”
“No way. I work for IBM. They don’t want any of their employees ever to be mentioned in the papers unless they’re getting married or buried. I tell the police and they start checking on me. Right? But I wonder. Do you think I ought to drop them an anonymous note?”
The vast resources of the FBI swung into high gear for the search for the retail outlet where the high-heeled evening slipper that had been returned to the home
of Claire Barnes and the one found on Erin Kelley’s body had been purchased. In the case of Nan Sheridan, fifteen years ago the police had traced the slipper to a shoe outlet on Route I in Connecticut. No one then had had any memory of who had bought it.
The Claire Barnes slipper was expensive, a Charles Jourdan, sold in fine department stores all over the country. Two thousand pairs, to be exact. Impossible to trace. Erin Kelley’s was a Salvatore Ferragamo, a current model.
Agents and NYPD detectives began to fan through department stores, shoe salons, discount outlets.
* * *
Len Parker was brought in for questioning. He began immediately to rant about how rude Darcy had been to him. “I just wanted to apologize. I knew I’d been mean. Maybe she did have a dinner date. I followed her and she wasn’t lying. I waited outside in the cold while she ate in that fancy restaurant.”
“You just stood there?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“She got right in a cab with some guy. I took one too. Got out down the block. The guy walked her to the door and left. I ran up. After all I went through to apologize, she slammed the door in my face.”
“How about Erin Kelley? Did you follow her?”
“Why should I? She walked out on me. Maybe that was my fault. I was in a bad mood when I saw her. I told her all women were rotten gold diggers.”
“Then why didn’t you admit that to Darcy Scott? When she asked you, you denied meeting Erin.”
“Because I knew I’d end up here.”
“You live on Ninth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street?”
“Yes.”
“Your trustee at the bank thinks you have another residence. You withdrew a large sum of money five or six years ago.”
“It was my money to spend as I please.”
“Did you buy another residence?”
“Prove it.”
* * *
On Saturday afternoon when he was finished with Len Parker, Vince D’Ambrosio drove to 101 Christopher Street and rang the bell. Gus Boxer, his face set in surly lines, came to the door. He was wearing a long-sleeved undershirt. Tattered suspenders held up shapeless trousers. He acted unimpressed by the FBI badge. “I’m off duty. What do ye want?”
“I want to talk to you, Gus. Your place or headquarters? And drop the righteous indignation. I have your file on my desk, Mr. Hoffman.”
Boxer’s eyes darted nervously. “Come on in. And keep your voice down.”
“I wasn’t aware I’d raised it.”
Boxer led the way to his ground-floor apartment. As Vince had expected from the way the man dressed, the apartment was a further extension of his personality. Shabby, stained upholstery. Remnants of a once-beige rug. A rickety table piled with porn magazines.
Vince riffled through them. “Quite a collection you have here.”
“Any law against it?”
Vince slapped down the magazines. “Listen, Hoffman, we’ve never gotten anything on you, but your name has an unhealthy way of coming up on the computer. Ten years ago you were the super of an apartment where a twenty-year-old girl was found dead in the basement.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“She’d filed a complaint with the management that she found you in her apartment going through her closet.”
“I was looking for a water leak. There was a waterpipe in the wall behind that closet.”
“That’s the same story you gave Erin Kelley two weeks ago, isn’t it?”
“Who said that?”
“She told someone that she was going to move as soon as possible because she’d found you in her bedroom.”
“I was—”
“Looking for a water leak. I know. Now let’s talk about Claire Barnes. How many times did you drop in on her unexpectedly when she lived here?”
“Never.”
When he left Boxer, Vince went directly to his office, arriving there just in time to get a call from Hank. Was it okay if he didn’t get in until eight or so? There was a basketball game at school and some of the gang were going out for pizza afterward.
A great kid, Vince told himself again as he assured Hank that was fine. Worth all the years of trying to make a go of his marriage to Alice. Well at least she was happy now. The pampered wife of a guy whose wallet was as fat as his waistline. And he? I’d like to meet someone, Vince admitted to himself, then realized that Nona Roberts’s face was suddenly filling his mind.
* * *
His assistant Ernie told him there’d been a break. A detective from the Midtown North Precinct had picked up Petey Potters, the derelict who lived on the pier where Erin Kelley’s body was found. They were bringing Petey into the precinct for questioning. Vince turned and ran for the elevators.
* * *
Petey was having trouble with his vision. Seeing double. That happened sometimes after he’d had a coupla bottles of dago red. That meant that instead of three cops he was seeing three sets of twin cops. Nobody’s eyes were friendly.
Petey thought about the dead girl. How cold she’d felt when he’d lifted the necklace.
What was the cop saying? “Petey, there are fingerprints on Erin Kelley’s throat. We’re going to compare them with yours.”
Through a haze, Petey thought of one of his friends who’d happened to stab a guy. He was in prison for five years now and the guy he stabbed had hardly been scratched. Petey had never been in trouble with the cops. Never. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.
He told them that. He could tell they didn’t believe him.
“Look,” he volunteered in a burst of confidence. “I found that girl. I didn’t have enough money to buy even a cuppa coffee.” Tears formed in his eyes at the memory of how thirsty he’d been. “I could tell the necklace was real gold. It had a long chain with lots of fancy coins attached. Figured if I didn’t take it, the first guy who found her would. Including some cops I’ve heard about.” He was sorry he’d added that.
“What’d you do with the necklace, Petey?”
“Sold it for twenty-five bucks to that big dude who works Seventh Avenue around Central Park South.”
“Buy-and-Sell Bert,” one of the cops remarked. “We’ll pick him up.”
“When did you find the body, Petey?” Vince asked.
“When I woke up late morning.” Petey squinted. His eyes took on a crafty expression. Everything was coming into focus. “But real early, I mean when it was still pitch dark, I heard a car drive onto the pier, pass my place, and stop. I figured it might be a drug deal so I stayed inside. Honest.”
“Even when you knew it was driving away?” one of the detectives asked. “You didn’t even peek?”
“Well, when I was sure it was going . . . ”
“Did you get a look at it, Petey?”
They believed him. He knew it. If he could only tell them something else to make them feel like he was trying to cooperate. Petey forced the alcoholic haze to retreat for a split second from his brain. All the days of standing with a bottle of sudsy water and a squeegee at the Fifty-sixth Street exit of the West Side Highway rushed through his mind. He’d had plenty of chance to know what the backs of cars looked like.
Again he could see the taillights of the car disappearing off the pier. Something about the rear window. “It was a station wagon,” he said with a triumphant wheeze. “On Birdie’s grave, it was a station wagon.”
As the haze rushed back, Petey had to force himself not to cackle. Birdie was probably still alive.
Darcy and Nona had planned to have dinner together on Saturday night. Other friends were calling, inviting her to join them, but Darcy was in no mood yet to see anyone.
They arranged to meet at Jimmy Neary’s Restaurant on East Fifty-seventh Street. Darcy arrived first. Jimmy had saved the left back corner table for them. ‘A damn shame,” he said as he greeted Darcy. “Erin was one of the prettiest lasses ever to walk through this door, God rest her.” He patted Darcy’s hand. ‘You were a grand friend to h
er. And don’t think I don’t know it. Sometimes when she’d come in for a quick bite, I’d sit with her for the moment. I told her to watch her step answering those crazy ads.”
Darcy smiled. “I’m surprised she told you about them, Jimmy. She’d have known you wouldn’t approve.”
“Be sure I didn’t. She reached in her jacket pocket for a handkerchief last month and pulled out one that she’d torn from a magazine. It fell to the floor and when I picked it up, it caught my eye. I said to her, ‘Erin Kelley, I hope you’re not into that foolishness.’ ”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Darcy told him. “Erin was a fabulous jewelry designer but not much of a record keeper. The FBI is trying to trace anyone Erin wrote to or met, but I’m sure the list isn’t complete.” Darcy decided against saying that she was also answering personal ads. “Do you remember what that ad said?”
Neary’s brow furrowed in thought. “No, but I got a fair glance at it, and I will. Something about singing or—ah, it’ll come. Look, here’s Nona and she has someone with her.”
* * *
Vince followed Nona to the table. “I’m only going to stop by for a minute,” he told Darcy. “I don’t want to interfere with your dinner, but I was trying to reach you, phoned Nona, and found out you were here.”
“It’s fine, and I wish you’d stay.” Darcy noticed that Nona’s eyes had a brightness she had never seen in them before. “You got the message about Erin’s telling one of her dates that she’d found the superintendent in her apartment again?”
“I saw Boxer today.” Vince raised an eyebrow. “Again?”
“Erin told me he pulled that last year, but she always dismissed him as being harmless. Apparently as of two weeks ago she changed her mind.”
“We’re following up on him as well as other people. I’d like to hear about the guy from last night.”
“He was a nice guy . . . ”
Liz came to take their orders. She gave Darcy a quick, sympathetic smile. She always took such good care of us, Darcy thought. She had told Erin that growing up in Ireland she’d been a redhead too.