The Valentine's Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  I found Carlotta sitting in her family room. “Maybe Mr. Kazmarek’s neighbors lived there twenty years ago and would remember the woman and her sons who lived in that attic.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” She looked at her watch. “Do you want to go now?”

  “It’s too late. People don’t like to open their doors after dark. Let’s do it in the morning.”

  “First thing,” she said with determination.

  “How’s the morning sickness?” Carlotta asked as I stepped into the breakfast room the next morning.

  “Manageable,” I said. “Being vertical helps. Getting something inside me helps, too.”

  “How shall we do it this morning? You take one side of the street, I’ll take the other?”

  I paused just long enough that she caught my hesitation.

  “You don’t want me?”

  I laughed. “Don’t put it that way, Carlotta. I just think having two people canvassing a block is not the cleverest way to go. I’ll do it myself and come right back here as soon as I know something.”

  “I’ll drop you off,” she said. “It’s too long a drive to go back and forth. But I promise I’ll stay out of your way.”

  We drove into Buffalo, and Carlotta worked her way through the city to a commercial street called Hertel Avenue. She turned a corner, and we were in a totally residential area. Everything was low, as though high-rise apartment houses were unheard of. There were one-family and two-family houses on quiet streets, narrow driveways hinting at the size of cars when these houses had been built. It was quiet and pleasant, a nice place to raise a family, a place where you could literally walk to the grocery and pick up a container of milk. I was in a big city with a very small-town atmosphere, and it made me feel comfortable and at home.

  “The house is halfway down this street on the right,” Carlotta said, stopping at a corner. “Shall I come by for you in an hour? Half an hour?”

  “It’s hard to judge. It depends on how many people are home and how many of them remember twenty years ago. Why don’t you come back at thirty-minute intervals?”

  “OK. And if you don’t see me, look for me at this corner.”

  “See you later.”

  I got out of the car and walked down the street where the Kazmareks had lived for the largest part of their lives. I stayed on the far side of the street so I could look across and get a picture of the house. Once I saw it, I could see the larger windows on the third level, different from the other similar houses on the block. I knew that many homeowners in New York built illegal apartments in their basements or behind the unmoving doors of a built-in garage for extra income that was also tax free, often providing the difference between getting by and having to give up the house.

  I crossed the street and rang the downstairs doorbell of the house to the right. No one answered. I rang the upstairs bell.

  “Who is it?” an older female voice called from the second floor.

  “My name is Chris Bennett. I wanted to ask you about the people who lived next door to you.”

  “I haven’t seen them in ten years,” she called back.

  “Did you know the Kazmareks?” My voice was getting a little worn out, but she would not come downstairs and I didn’t blame her.

  “Yes, but they moved out a long time ago.”

  “Mrs. Martone,” I called, reading her name off the mailbox, “I want to ask you about some people that lived in the Kazmareks’ house about twenty years ago.”

  There was a silence. Then, “Oh, all right. Just a minute and I’ll come down.”

  I waited at the top of the five steps in the entry hall. A few minutes passed. Then, through the curtain on the small window in the door, I could see a figure descending the stairs. The door opened and a gray-haired woman in a loose housedress came out.

  “What was your name?”

  “Christine Bennett. Chris.”

  “I’m Betty Martone.” She closed the door to her flat. “Why don’t we just talk down here? I don’t like to have strangers upstairs.”

  “Here is fine. Did you know the Kazmareks?”

  “For years and years. She’s dead now. He lives out Main Street somewhere in an old folks’ home. I’m not sure he’s all there anymore.”

  “Mrs. Martone, I’m trying to find someone who lived in their house about twenty years ago, more or less. He would have been a teenager then, and I think he lived in the attic apartment.”

  “Oh, that attic!” She gathered her skirt together and sat on the top step. Following her example, I sat a foot or so away so that we could look at each other. “Let me tell you about that attic. They were nice people, Stanley and Mary, but they went too far with that attic. You know, if you’re going to make a three-family house, you’ve got to go downtown and file the papers. The neighbors can have their say, too. Who wants a street full of three-families? I didn’t. Most of the other folks on the block didn’t. So they just plain bypassed us. They said they were building another bedroom up there that they could use as a den. But who lives on the first floor and has a den on the third? It was ridiculous from the start.” She sounded as though she were fighting the battle all over again. “And then, as soon as the last nail was hammered in, what do you suppose they did?”

  “They rented it out,” I said, hoping the lesson in real estate would not continue much longer.

  “That’s just what they did, they rented it out to a woman that had no husband and a couple of boys that were in and out all day long.”

  “Did you know them?”

  “Said hello to her in the street once or twice. She wasn’t the friendliest person I ever met.”

  “Was she the mother of the boys?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”

  “And there were two boys?”

  “It looked like twenty sometimes. But I think there were two.”

  “Did they have a lot of company?”

  “Didn’t have any. I don’t think anyone ever went up there. But they were in and out all the time. They’d go away on Friday and come back on Sunday night. Holidays, they’d go away.”

  “Did she speak English?” I asked.

  Mrs. Martone looked at me. “Well, now that you mention it, I think she had an accent.”

  “Did you happen to know her name?”

  “Never knew it.”

  “The Kazmareks never mentioned it?”

  She laughed. “We weren’t on the best terms with Stanley and Mary during those years. My husband just wanted them out. Imagine people living in an attic. It gave the street a bad name.”

  “I know just what you mean,” I said, agreeing with her to keep our relationship friendly. “How long did they live there?”

  “Well, a bunch of us got together and told Stanley if he didn’t get rid of them, we’d go to city hall and make a stink.”

  “So he threw them out?”

  “He said he’d make them go as soon as the school year was over, and he did.”

  “Did you ever hear the boys’ names?”

  “Probably, but it’s a long time ago.” She looked at her watch. “I really can’t sit here and blab all day. I haven’t been much help, have I?”

  “Not at all. You’ve been very helpful. Do you know anyone on the block who might have known the boys?”

  She pursed her lips and looked out the front door. “Zimmerman on the other side, a couple of doors down. They had sons. They’re all grown and gone now, but I think those boys played with the ones in the Kazmareks’ attic.”

  “Zimmerman,” I repeated.

  “About three doors down to the right.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Martone. You’ve been very helpful.”

  19

  I walked back to the corner to see if Carlotta was waiting, but there was no sign of her car, so I went back down the street two doors past the Kazmareks’ house. The inside foyer was identical to the one I had just visited: five steps leading up to two doors, on the right-hand wall at th
e bottom two mailboxes, one marked Black, one marked Zimmerman. Zimmerman was upstairs. I rang the doorbell.

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” a man’s voice called from upstairs, and then his feet pounded down the stairs. “Yes?” he said, opening the door. He was in his sixties, fairly tall, wearing work pants with paint stains.

  “Mr. Zimmerman?”

  “You selling something?”

  “No. I’m looking for someone who was a neighbor of yours before he moved away.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The family that lived in the Kazmareks’ attic.”

  “Oh, them. Yeah, I remember them. Been gone a long time. I couldn’t tell you where they are.”

  “I understand your son knew those boys.”

  “I think he did. Yeah. They used to play over in the school yard.”

  “Do you remember those boys’ names?” I asked.

  “Too long ago, if I ever knew them. I could call my son. You wanna come up?”

  I hesitated a moment, and he said, “My wife’s upstairs. It’s OK.”

  I followed him. His wife came into the living room and introduced herself, while he went to the kitchen and made a phone call.

  “Is the fireplace real?” I asked, looking at the one built into the living room wall.

  “Only for gas,” Mrs. Zimmerman said. “It doesn’t work anymore. I guess they kept a heater in there in the old days. These houses go way back.”

  “Flo?” her husband called. “Ask the lady to step in here. I’ve got Roger on the phone.”

  I went into the kitchen.

  “Here’s my son,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “He’s about your age. Talk to him.”

  I took the phone and told the man at the other end what I was interested in.

  “Haven’t thought of those folks for a long time,” he said. “I don’t have any idea what happened to them.”

  “Did you ever visit them at home?”

  “No way. No one was allowed up there.”

  “Did the boys come to visit you?”

  “She wouldn’t have it. Sometimes they snuck in someone’s house on the way home from school, but she kept a tight rein on them.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about the boys? Was one of them named Val?”

  “Val,” he repeated. “Gee, I don’t know. It could be. The one I knew was named Matty, Matty Franklin, I think.”

  Carlotta was parked around the corner, reading the New York Times. I got into the car, hardly knowing where to start.

  “Matty lived in that attic,” I said.

  “Matty?”

  “I talked to a man who was friendly with him in high school, but they never went to each other’s houses because the mother, or whoever she was, wouldn’t allow it.”

  “This is very crazy.”

  “Yes. I’m going to have to go back to that cemetery and see if there’s a stone for Matthew Franklin.”

  “You think that woman killed another child?”

  “I don’t know. But if Val and Matty lived in the same house during high school, there’s more than just an old friendship between them.”

  “And Val left a million-dollar life insurance policy to Matty. It starts to make sense now. I wonder if Matty left anything to Val.”

  “Annie might know.”

  “Annie might not tell you. Any more than I told Annie about the policy we found. We’re in something very big, Chris. Who is my husband? Who is Matty?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “It’s starting to look like there was something between Val and Matty that went sour, but I swear to you, Val didn’t own a gun.”

  “Then maybe it was Matty’s and there was a fight on the lake, and either Val or Clark got hold of it.”

  “Two against one and the gun went off.”

  “You realize you’ve just accepted the fact that Val was on the ice with the others.”

  “I haven’t accepted anything. I’ve just presented a possible scenario. Listen to me. Scenario. I sound like a TV movie. Where do we go from here?”

  I wasn’t sure. “I still have several things I want to look into. How far are we from Bennett High School?”

  “Not far. We can be there in five or ten minutes.”

  “Let’s go.”

  She started the motor, drove back to Hertel Avenue and took it to Main Street. The school, a large red brick rectangle with an enormous number of stairs leading up to the front doors, was just down the street. Carlotta found parking on a side street, and we walked back to the school and up all the stairs. Inside, we found the office, just to the right of the door. I let Carlotta do the talking. On the way, I had sketched out a little script that I hoped would get us some information.

  “I’m the wife of Val Krassky,” she said to the pleasant woman who came over to help us. “He’s one of the men who was in the accident on the lake in February.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember. I’m so sorry for you, dear.”

  “Thank you. We’re trying to set up a fund in their memory and we haven’t been able to find a high school address for Clark Thayer. Do you think you could look him up for me? He went to Bennett around twenty years ago, give or take a few years.”

  “Sure thing. Let me see what I can find.”

  It had occurred to me that no one remembered Clark, and the people I’d spoken to recalled only two boys living in the attic apartment. I wanted to know whether Clark was in any way a part of the group.

  The woman went through several drawers, then left the room. We looked at each other, but said nothing. I walked away from Carlotta and looked at the pictures on the wall, photographs of recent classes: eighteen-year-olds at the start of their adult lives, a football team, all the bodies identical and only the heads showing a hint of the individual within the padded shoulders.

  A door opened and I went back to the counter. The woman who had been searching had returned.

  “I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Krassky. I can’t find Clark Thayer’s name anywhere. Are you sure he went to Bennett?”

  “I thought he did,” Carlotta said. “His wife told me—I’d better check with her.”

  “I’m really sorry I can’t help you.” She sounded very sincere.

  “Thanks for your trouble.”

  We left the office and walked out of the building. “When I talked to Bambi, she told me he went to Bennett,” I said.

  “She must have gotten it wrong. They must have met some other way.”

  “How?” I asked. “They all went in different directions after high school.”

  “Well, maybe they were neighbors. Clark may have gone to a Catholic school. There are a lot of Catholic schools in Buffalo.” She thought about it. “Bambi isn’t Catholic, I’m sure of that. I think they went to a Protestant church together.”

  We went down the steps, crossed Main Street, and found the car, but we didn’t get in. We stood on the street while I tried to think.

  “The woman in the attic is a dead end,” Carlotta said.

  “I agree. Without a name, there’s no way to trace her. And for all we know, she used a false name. If she was trying to cover her tracks, why should she tell the truth? As long as you can pay a month’s rent and a month’s security, you can get an apartment, especially an illegal one.”

  “I’d like to know if Matty took out life insurance with Val as beneficiary.”

  “There’s no way to find out. Annie won’t tell you. If she found a policy the way you found yours, she’d be just as mad as you were. She’ll cancel the policy if she can before she knows if Val is dead or alive. And what difference will it make if we find out that there is such a policy? Aside from the fact that it would be nice to inherit a million dollars, all it’ll tell us is what we already know, that there’s some strong bond between the two men.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  That was the question I was asking myself. “Something occurred to me this morning,” I said. �
�There’s a possibility that I overlooked something at the business. I’d like to see Jake again.”

  “I just don’t understand what you think Jake has to do with all this. There’s nothing there, Chris. It’s wasted time.”

  Again her reluctance to have me talk to Jake, or was it to have me poke around the papers in Val’s office? “Carlotta, we don’t know what’s wasted time until we explore. Who would have thought I would find out all that information in Connecticut on the basis of a birth certificate?”

  “But you’ve talked to Jake. You’ve been through Val’s papers. You said there was nothing.”

  “There’s something I forgot.”

  She waited for me to say something else, to tell her what I had forgotten, but I had no intention of giving her a reason to alert Jake. “Let’s drive over there,” I said, and we got in the car.

  “I think I’ll come in with you,” she said, as she started the motor.

  I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, and it had nothing to do with morning sickness. “Carlotta, I’m doing this myself. If there’s something that Jake knows that you don’t want me to know, you should tell me about it now.”

  “There’s nothing.”

  I didn’t like it. This was the one person she had delayed in getting me to see, the one she visibly tensed up about when his name came up.

  It passed through my mind that she and Jake had had something going at one time, either before or during her marriage. It wasn’t the kind of information I looked forward to hearing, but, of course, it gave Jake a motive to be a killer. Although how Jake would have known about the trek across the lake was beyond me.

  We drove in uncomfortable silence for several minutes. Then Carlotta said, “Whatever you’re thinking, it didn’t happen.”

  I tried not to smile. “I just want to follow up on something I forgot about last time.”

  “And you won’t tell me what.”

  “I’ll tell you when I find what I’m looking for—if I find it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Jake seemed surprised to see me, which meant he had no idea I would be back. Better to catch him off guard, without time to shred and burn.