“Your point being . . . ?”
“What if he engineered it? Hired those street punks himself to steal Tulsa so that Sylvia would fire him and he’d be free to make big bucks working for his honey, Norma. How do we know he was clean?”
“We don’t,” I conceded. “But I don’t buy it.”
“Why not?”
“Because he worked two grueling years on that book. Flushing it down the proverbial toilet goes against any writer’s nature. Especially a writer like Tommy. He was an honest newspaperman.”
“People change, Hoagy. Suddenly do things their closest friends and family members never imagined they’d do. Like, say, cheat on their wives.”
“Agreed, but I still don’t buy it. I just think he fell in with people who were a lot more ruthless than he realized.”
“You could be right. You do have amazing instincts when it comes to the horrible things that people will do when they have a shot at fame and fortune. But I still have to take a good hard look at him.”
“Of course you do. I’m expecting you to. What’s your next move?”
“A chat with Sylvia.”
“Why Sylvia?”
“Because Tommy worked for her and because I’ve never met a woman who had a Stanley Bostitch stapler hurled across a conference table at her.”
“She lives in the northern burbs just past Scarsdale in Willoughby,” I offered. “Likes to catch the 6:57 out of Grand Central.” I glanced at my grandfather’s Benrus. It was 7:30.
“Then let’s head on out there.”
“You want me to tag along?” Lulu let out a low moan of protest. “Us to tag along?”
“Absolutely. You know her. I don’t.”
“Do you want to make sure she’s home before we leave?”
“Never call and warn a suspect that you’re on your way. That gives them time to prepare a story. Besides, where else would she be? You said she’s the most hated woman in publishing. Has a bad relationship with her father. She’ll be home, all right.” He got up out of his chair and said, “I have to ride my bike back to the two-four.” The precinct house wasn’t far—West 100th Street. “I’ll throw on some clothes, meet you back here in my Crown Vic in thirty minutes. We good?”
“All good.”
LULU LOVES TO ride in police cars, even dented unmarked Ford Crown Vics with no functioning shock absorbers, springs or anything even remotely resembling proper wheel alignment. Very drove pedal to the metal, weaving his way fearlessly through the homebound commuter traffic on the Hutchinson River Parkway, his right hand on the wheel, his left arm hanging out of his open window. Air conditioning? Dream on. Not that Lulu minded. She planted her back paws firmly in my groin and rode with her head stuck out of the passenger window, ears flapping, tail thumping happily.
By the time he’d returned to pick me up, I’d washed and dried our dinner dishes and chosen a fresh pink shirt and burgundy-and-white bow tie to go with my navy blazer. Frank, the night doorman, tipped his hat at me as he held the front door open. Like I said—R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Lulu and I had been waiting downstairs under the awning for precisely two minutes when Very pulled up with a screech and we hopped in and sped off. He’d changed from his bike messenger outfit into a snug-fitting black T-shirt, tight jeans and motorcycle boots.
He made straight for the West Side Highway, which after a while became the Henry Hudson Parkway. Then he caught the Cross County, which merged into the Hutch. As darkness fell we made our way through New Rochelle, where the Petries—Rob, Laura and Ritchie—once lived. From there it was on to Scarsdale, the upscale burb where sixty-nine-year-old Dr. Herman Tarnower, bestselling author of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet, lived right up until he was shot dead in 1980 by his lover, Jean Harris. After we’d cleared Scarsdale, it was on to Willoughby. Next stop Willoughby.
Very let out a yawn, rubbing his eyes wearily.
“So tell me about this insomnia,” I said as we drove. “Is it your energy issue?”
“What energy issue?”
“You have a surfeit of it. Possibly you’ve noticed.”
“Oh, that. No, it’s something else.” He shot an uncomfortable glance at me before he looked back at the road. “Uneasiness. Dread.”
“That sounds to me like anxiety.”
“You’re familiar with it?”
“I’m a writer, remember? Anxiety is my rocket fuel.” I studied him across the seat. “You’ve seen a lot. Maybe too much. Have you ever considered—?”
“If you’re about to say the word Prozac, don’t.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
“If I go on meds, I’ll lose my edge and then it will be me lying facedown on the sidewalk under a blue tarp. And don’t say the word shrink either. That’s a career killer. Besides, I’ll sleep much better tonight now that you’re around. You drive me nuts, but for some weird reason you also calm me down. Does that make any sense?”
“As much as anything else does. Except I think you’ve identified the wrong party. It’s not me who calms you down. It’s Lulu. That’s why I keep her around. That and the whole glam thing.”
She responded by turning around and licking my face before she stuck her head back out of the window.
Very said, “I had the desk sergeant run a computer check while I was changing clothes. Richie Filosi and Jocko Conlon both served in the two-four at the same time in the early eighties before Jocko got bounced and ended up in Nassau County.”
“We know how Jocko’s making ends meet. He’s a salaried PI for Mel Klein’s firm. But I really do wonder how Richie’s staying afloat. He can’t possibly be making enough doing odd jobs like Kathleen said he was, especially if he’s still paying back what he owes the city over that disability scam.”
“Maybe Jocko threw a little business his way, one pal to another. Scum does stick together.”
“Then again, it could just be a coincidence that the two of them are both potential players in this case.”
“Could be,” Very said. “Except . . .”
“Except that you don’t believe in coincidences. It’s one of your bedrock personal tenets, like the right to vote, bear arms and hate the Yankees.”
He took the Willoughby exit and eased us through an old-timey shopping district with parking on the diagonal. Kept on going until we’d made our way into Willoughby’s residential neighborhoods. The street that Sylvia James lived on was in the deep-pockets district—a wide, tree-lined avenue of stately mansions set far back from the road on deep, wide lots. Hers, No. 14, was a Tudor style, dignified and regal, set behind two giant oak trees. It was quiet and sedate there.
All except for the two Willoughby blue-and-whites, an unmarked sedan, a van and the ambulance with blinking lights crowded in the street out front.
Sylvia’s front porch light was on. Her garage door was open. A silver Mercedes 300 SE sedan was parked in the driveway. And another body lay under another blue tarp—this one in the street about twenty feet from the curbside mailbox at the foot of the driveway, or I should say where the curbside mailbox would have been if it hadn’t been smashed hard enough to knock it from its post onto the lawn and splinter the post in half. Mail was strewn all over the grass.
Willoughby PD techies were taking photos of the scene. Not my idea of a fun job. Actually, none of this was my idea of a fun job. I wanted to be in my dream office in Merilee’s apartment, seated by the windows at my Olympia, working on The Sweet Season of Madness while the original vinyl of the Ramones’ “Rockaway Beach” blasted on the stereo. But it wasn’t to be. Not tonight. Nope.
Not with Sylvia James lying dead under that blue tarp.
Chapter Five
Willoughby was big enough to have a police department with its own violent crime unit. The detective who was at the scene when we arrived was named Sensenbrenner. He was in his late forties and had a narrowly cropped flattop crew cut that I suspected had been his tonsorial choice since he was about twelve. Sensenbrenner was tall and narrowly built
. He wore a dark suit with narrow lapels and a white shirt with a narrow tie. Probably lived in a narrow house with a narrow wife, a couple of narrow kids and a narrow cat. Everything about Sensenbrenner was narrow except for his mind, which was keen and supple.
“It plays like this, Lieutenant,” he said to Very as Lulu and I looked on, raptly attentive. “Miss James opened the garage door with her remote control device when she pulled into the driveway after her commute home from Manhattan. She arrived at pretty much the same time every evening, according to her neighbor across the lane.”
Very frowned. “Sorry, across the what?”
“This is Willoughby. All of the residential streets here are called lanes. You’re on Beckwith Lane, one of the nicest, if not the nicest. But we all live on lanes. Even overworked, underpaid cops. I live on Sophia Lane.”
“I knew a girl in high school named Sophia Lane,” I said. “She wore Jean Naté and had the sweetest dimples you ever saw. Married a podiatrist.”
Sensenbrenner tilted his narrow head at me. “I’m sorry, you are . . . ?”
“Stewart Hoag. The short-legged one is Lulu.”
“They’re with me,” Very explained. “You were saying . . . ?”
“Miss James had real regular habits, according to the neighbor. Caught the 6:57 out of Grand Central every night, which pulls into the Willoughby train station at 7:52. She’d leave her Mercedes at the station lot, which is a ten-minute drive from here, so she usually arrived home a few minutes after eight unless she had to stop at the grocery store on the way. But she rarely arrived later than eight-thirty. She’d pull in to the driveway, open the garage door with her remote, stop to get out and retrieve her mail from her curbside mailbox, then pull in to the garage, shutting it behind her. There’s a door inside the garage that leads into the kitchen. When our first responder got here, the Mercedes’s engine was still running, the transmission set in park. My guess? Someone was idling one or two houses over just waiting for her. As soon as she opened her mailbox, he floored it, plowed right into her and ran over her body. Then he hit the brakes hard. See these skid marks on the pavement?” He walked us past Sylvia’s body under the blue tarp, using his flashlight so we could get a better look. “Then he put it in reverse and backed over her as she lay here in the lane. Hit the brakes yet again. See that second set of skid marks? Then he ran over her a third time. Our medical examiner isn’t here yet, but the EMT people swear that whoever did this broke every bone in her body. You name it, he crushed it. Wanted to make good and sure she was dead, I guess,” Sensenbrenner said as Very crouched in the street, studying the tire marks.
“No, this was more than that,” I said. “It was pure, sadistic pleasure.”
“You think?” Sensenbrenner raised a narrow eyebrow at me. “Who in the heck would hate Miss James that much?”
“Pretty much everyone in the publishing business who knew her.”
“Are you saying she wasn’t well liked professionally?”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“I’m completely unaware of that aspect of her life. Just the life she led here.”
Very lifted a corner of the blue tarp and had a look at her body, his eyes scanning her from head to toe. “Jeez, she looks like she jumped out of a plane without a parachute. Want to have a look?” he asked me.
“No, thanks. One dead body a day is my official limit.”
Sensenbrenner peered at Very curiously. “Mind if I ask what brought you fellows out here this evening?”
“One of her writers, Tommy O’Brien, was murdered late this afternoon,” Very answered. “Shoved off the roof of an apartment building. Hoagy’s apartment building. An extremely valuable manuscript, one of her father’s, was stolen from O’Brien on Friday. Miss James hired Hoagy to get it back.”
“Are you a PI?” he asked me, peering at me.
“No, Tommy happened to be an old friend of mine. I was acting as a go-between. Sylvia thought that he was behind the theft.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No, I don’t. I think he was collateral damage. He showed up at my place this morning, soaking wet and terrified, and told me that the manuscript had been stolen from him. Also that his life had been threatened. I gave him some dry clothes and a bed. When I got home this afternoon he was lying facedown on the sidewalk out front under a blue tarp.”
“I’m working the case,” Very said. “Wanted to sound her out about it.”
Sensenbrenner pondered this, thumbing his narrow chin. “Are we working the same case?”
“I’d be surprised if we’re not,” Very responded. “Although I don’t have any idea how. Not yet. But I’ll be happy to keep you in the loop if you’ll clue me in on what you find out from your end.”
“You bet. Anything I can do to help.”
The two of them exchanged business cards before Very turned and looked at the pavement by the blue tarp that covered Sylvia’s body. “Can your people read anything from those skid marks?”
“It’s possible we’ll get a match on the make and model number of the tire treads. Also paint residue from the car off the mailbox or the post, which might tell us its make and year.” He paused, scratching his narrow head. “The trouble is, the car was probably stolen.”
Very nodded. “I hear you. No way anyone would take the chance of using his own car. He’d steal one and ditch it somewhere. None of the neighbors saw it happen?”
“Not a one. The folks we’ve spoken to were either having supper or tidying up in the kitchen. They weren’t looking out their front windows. Besides, it all happened in a span of about ten seconds. Her next-door neighbor, the one who phoned it in, heard the initial smash. He and his wife were taking a dip in their pool. But by the time he toweled off and made it to his front door, Miss James was lying dead in the street and her killer was long gone. We’ll canvass the gas stations and convenience stores near the on-ramps to the Hutch, see if anyone spotted a car hightailing it out of town some time between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty. But I’m not holding my breath. I’d wager he observed the speed limits and blended in after he got two blocks from here.”
“Was the house entered?” Very asked.
“It was not. No windows or doors were tampered with. He wasn’t after jewelry or silver. He was after her.”
“What about the mail that’s scattered about?” I asked.
“Glanced at it, haven’t opened it. There isn’t anything that looks like a ransom demand or any such thing, if that’s what you’re wondering. Just the usual catalogues and bills.”
Very stood there for a moment, his head nodding, his jaw working on a fresh piece of bubble gum. “He knew her routine. That means he followed her home from the train station several times. I’m betting he also camped out here a few evenings before she got home, using a different car every time, to see if he’d have a regular dog walker or jogger to contend with. This was carefully worked out by somebody who knew what he was doing.”
“An out-of-towner, if you want my opinion,” Sensenbrenner said. “No one around here had an ax to grind with Miss James. She was a kind, highly respected person in Willoughby.”
I tugged at my ear. “We’re talking about Sylvia James, right? Daughter of Addison James, the bestselling author?”
“We are,” Sensenbrenner said. “Like I said, I know nothing about her professional life in New York City. But here in Willoughby Miss James was legendary for her generosity. She donated $50,000 to our public library last year when it needed renovations. She endowed a college scholarship program at Willoughby High. Wrote a $20,000 check every year for our volunteer fire department. She was a private person. Kept to herself. Never threw her weight around. The only time we ever heard from her was a couple of winters ago when she found a dead fox in her backyard. Our Animal Control officer took care of it. Animal Control got a check in the mail for $10,000 from her the next day.”
Lulu moseyed over toward the edge of the pavement near the gutter about
ten feet from the blue tarp and began snuffling and snorting—until she abruptly stopped and let out a low woof.
“Why is she doing that?” Sensenbrenner asked me.
“She generally has a pretty good reason.”
“Let’s have a look.” Sensenbrenner shined his flashlight on Lulu’s find, which was a slightly dented piece of tan plastic tubing, maybe an inch long. He took a ballpoint pen from his narrow shirt pocket, inserted it in the plastic and picked it up, examining it in the light. “I wonder what the heck this is?”
I said, “Remember those TV commercials when a shapely, scantily clad cigarette girl would sashay around a fancy nightclub cooing, ‘Cigars, cigarettes, Tiparillos . . .’”
“Sure I do,” Sensenbrenner said. “So?”
“So that’s a plastic Tiparillo tip.”
“Could have been sitting there for days,” Very said. “Weeks.”
“Don’t think so,” I said. “If that was the case, then Lulu wouldn’t think it’s important. And I never doubt her instincts.”
Sensenbrenner said, “You’re suggesting her killer tossed it there?”
“Her killer or whoever else might have been in the car with him.”
He scratched his narrow head again. “This sure qualifies as a first for me. I’ve never collected a potentially critical piece of crime scene evidence from a dog before.”
“Can your people bag and tag it?” Very asked him. “Might get a fingerprint off it.”
“You bet.” Sensenbrenner waved down one of his crime scene techies, who took charge of it. Then the three of us stood there in thoughtful silence for a moment before he confessed, “You’ve got one person dead in New York City this afternoon and another one dead in Willoughby this evening, all because of some book. What’s the point? It’s just a book.”
Lulu bared her teeth at him, growling.
He eyed her warily. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Hoagy’s an author,” Very explained. “Rather prominent one, in fact.”
“Sorry, Mr. Hoag. I’m not familiar with your name. Not much of a reader. Just the occasional Louis L’Amour.”
The Man in the White Linen Suit Page 11