“Why is this one both pink and yellow?” Mike asked.
“A brownstone, but with a wooden porch in the backyard. I want you to hold that thought, because it’s going to come in handy a few maps down the road,” Bea said. “In the meantime, I can also tell you why these homes were built.”
“We’re all ears.”
“Jasper Hunt-the great-grandfather of Tally and Minerva-wanted a residence for his mistress. Close to Fifth Avenue, but not so close his wife would be able to smell her perfume,” Bea said.
“Now, how do you know that?” Mike asked, patting her on the back.
“I’ve got a library card, Mr. Chapman. It serves me well. There were tabloids even back in those days. Five buildings in this row. The one we’re in was completed first, and then the one next door was built for the mother of his mistress-a deal the young lady was smart enough to insist upon. The other three weren’t quite as grand, but Mr. Hunt built them for servants and staff.”
“And Minerva was still using the basement for the hired help,” Mercer said, referring to Tina Barr.
“The next structural change to note is in 1912,” Bea said, layering her maps on top of each other. “Something very interesting has been added to the rear of this building.”
“What’s that?” Mike asked. “Can we see it?”
“Look closely. Attached to one side of the pink drawing that represents the house, there’s a small black rectangle.”
“Got it,” Mike said. “But what does it mean?”
“It’s an indication that some kind of chamber was added out in the yard-something that would be impervious to fire and water. That’s what the black color code tells us. It’s not as deep as the basement we’re in, which was really helpful for me to know.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Remember yesterday, when Mike made me cancel my meeting with the Department of Transportation about the flooding in the Empire State Building? The men were coming to study the Viele map, so that gave me the idea to search out this site on that.”
“I know you’re the map maven,” Mike said. “But I’m trying my best to follow this.”
“Let me make it easy for you,” she said. From her briefcase she removed another thick paper, which she unfolded, revealing a vividly colored reproduction of a topographical map of Manhattan. “See there? Egbert Viele, 1865.”
This one had a street grid superimposed on the island, but no structures or buildings. Instead, it showed a city full of ponds, natural springs, and streams, from its southern to northern tips, before it was paved over and populated.
“This is Greenwich Village,” Bea said. “You can see Minetta Stream coursing below Washington Square. And there’s a creek, just underneath Broadway in the Twenties. This blue line, up in Harlem, right around One Hundred and Fortieth Street? That’s also a stream.”
And then her fingertip led our eyes to First Avenue, just east of the Hunt buildings. “And that, my friends, is an underground pond, where water pools and collects-to this very day, no doubt. The stream that leads from it comes right below our feet. You can’t possibly trace them today, but every architect in the city still uses this map-like an X-ray of the island-to find out where the leaks are coming from.”
“So what’s your deduction, Sherlock?” Mike asked the diminutive librarian.
“Elementary,” she said. “Who owned the buildings by 1912?”
“You’ve got better sources on the Jasper Hunts than I do,” Mike said.
“Jasper Junior had just come into his own. Don’t forget, he did his world tour, visiting all the European principalities, in 1905. By 1912, according to the yellow journalists of the day, Junior took over where his father left off. He moved his late father’s mistress in with her mother, next door, and brought his own to live right here.”
How had Minerva first described the predilections of the Hunt men? Rare books, expensive wine, and cheap women. Jasper Hunt Jr. had a wife, a mistress, and, later in life, perhaps an inappropriate interest in young girls like Edith Wharton Eliot.
“So what is this chamber he built in the backyard made of-Kryptonite?” Mike asked.
“Not so deep as this basement, where we’re standing,” Bea said. “After all, if something was likely to flood in here, it would be ruined. Seems to me, if a man had valuables he wanted to protect-”
“And if Jasper was more than a little bit eccentric, enough so not to entrust things to a bank vault…”
“Maybe he built his own vault, right in his babe’s backyard?” Bea said. “Maybe that’s where she kept her jewels.”
Mike straightened up and smiled for the first time that afternoon. “Or maybe that’s where he kept the panels of the great map of 1507. High and dry, locked in a waterproof, fireproof chamber where nobody was likely to look. Had to get past his lady love to get to the yard. Buried his treasure under his father’s favorite garden ornament.”
“Don’t tell me Billy Schultz didn’t know what his neighbor was digging for,” Mercer said, crossing the kitchen floor in three strides to open the back door.
Mike was on his tail just as quickly. “That’s a pretty deadly vertical search that landed Tina Barr so permanently horizontal.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
I had gone upstairs to knock on Billy Schultz’s door before returning to the backyard, but there was no answer. Both Mike and Mercer were digging with garden spades when I joined them and said he wasn’t home. Bea had pulled the collar up on her raincoat and watched them work from a bistro chair set out behind the house.
“You ever get your hands in the dirt up on the Vineyard?” Mike asked. “You have any idea what we’ve got here?”
I knelt down beside him. “The top couple of inches is mulch. These look like tulip bulbs,” I said, lifting out several plantings below the surface. “Some people plant them in the fall.”
Mike jabbed his small shovel into the dirt again. “Too bad Tina didn’t stick around for the spring bloom.”
“She’s still the victim,” I said. “Is there another shovel?”
“Not until Billy Schultz gets home.”
Whoever tended the little garden kept it densely packed with perennials and small shrubs. Mercer was pulling them out to get a better angle as he dug.
Minutes later, I heard the sound of metal clanging against metal. “I’m in,” Mercer said.
Bea jumped to her feet and both of us clustered behind him. Mike saw the hole in the ground left by Mercer’s uprooting of a dwarf pine and started digging furiously. Seconds later, the tip of his shovel struck against some kind of metal vault.
“Right where it shows on the map,” Bea said.
Both men scrambled to excavate the dirt on top of the buried chamber.
Just like on the diagram Bea had shown to us, the exterior of the rectangular chest was almost ten feet long bordering the rear of the house, and only three feet wide.
“It looks like it’s split into compartments,” Bea said, peering in over Mike’s shoulder.
“Can you tell from your map,” Mike asked as he continued to throw dirt back onto the flagstone path adjacent to the site, “whether there were peepers way back then in the buildings behind us?”
He raised a valid point. It wouldn’t have been a very good hiding place if everyone around could see the dig.
“It appears from the maps I’ve examined that Hunt enclosed these first two buildings-the ones for his mistress and her mama-with a common wall,” she said, pointing to the brick surround, which was about twenty feet tall. “The family held on to the property behind us until almost 1930, when those apartments that back up on it were constructed.”
“See that stump?” Mercer said. “Bet there was a big old shade tree right there that might have given some cover.”
“You gentlemen need to understand something about topography,” Bea said. “The reason this chamber was displayed on the map is because at some point, the top of it must have been visible, on the surface of the ground. A hu
ndred years later, with shifts in the land, it settled in a little deeper.”
“So what are you telling us?” Mike asked.
“That this would have been much more accessible to Jasper Hunt when he wanted to get to it,” Bea said. “Probably only covered with a thin layer of sod.”
Mike and Mercer were both kneeling at ends of the chest. “Doesn’t seem to be any opening on my end,” Mike said. “Totally airtight. How about you?”
“Same.”
Bea looked pensive as she walked back to the house. “Could be another way at it, don’t you think?”
I followed her into the kitchen, where she turned to study the cabinet doors high above the sink, out of reach to both of us. “You’ve got me on height, Alex.”
I dragged one of the chairs over and stepped on the seat of it to climb to the lip of the old sink. I pulled at the latch, too useless a location to have ever been replaced by any of the tenants.
It stuck for my first few attempts, then opened wide as I yanked again, practically dislodging me from my perch. Bea reached out to steady my legs.
The thick layer of dust that coated the interior shelf had recently been disturbed. Streaks across the width of the space suggested someone had reached inside.
“You might be right, Bea,” I said.
“Hey, Mike,” she called out. “Come help us.”
Mercer and Mike were behind me seconds later.
“Make yourself useful, Bea,” Mike said. “I’ll hold her legs.”
He put his hands around my calves, squeezing them to reassure me that all was okay between us.
I reached back and ruffled his thick black hair.
Mercer opened several closet doors until he found a stepladder. He helped me down and, with his great height added to the three steps, was halfway inside the cabinet when he called out, “There’s a false front here.”
He leaned to the side, pulling out the piece of wood that formed the crossbar for the single shelf.
In the space behind the center cabinet-a good four feet wide-was the side of the metal chamber we had seen from above.
Directly in front of Mercer, in the seam of the concealed door, was a keyhole-an old-fashioned design, which looked like it would accommodate a notched tip turned with an ornate bow.
“Call the lab, Mike,” I said. “Get someone up here with the key that I found in the library stacks.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“It’s a fake,” Bea Dutton said, her gloved hands spreading the parchment that appeared to be a panel of the 1507 world map across one end of my dining room table, after we’d made the short drive from East Ninety-third Street.
We had waited forty minutes in the basement apartment until one of the forensic biology lab techs appeared with the key that I had found along the path the killer probably took to dispose of the body of Tina Barr.
Mercer had opened the locked chamber to reveal a watertight series of metal chests within chests-like a small version of the caskets in Napoleon’s tomb-and removed them from the hidden compartment.
The smallest one was fitted with a velvet lining large enough to hold double-folio-size prints. Only one thing-a piece of the map-rested within the case. Mercer removed it and Mike called the lieutenant to tell him we were on our way to my apartment to determine what it was.
“How can you tell it’s a fake?” I asked.
“Remember what I said yesterday about forgeries of something as detailed as this piece? The fact that it’s a made from a woodcut, not just a drawing?” Bea asked. “It would be next to impossible to pull off.”
Bea put on her reading glasses and began to examine the paper more closely.
Mike was looking over her shoulder. “Which of the twelve parts is it?”
“Winturn Eurus. The easterly skies. That’s the coast of India, with Tibet above it, and the island of Java off to the side. It’s one of the easier panels to try to copy because so much of it is just water rather than the finely documented landmasses, which require minuscule writing and exquisite particularity.”
Bea rubbed the edge of the parchment between her fingers. “The texture is the first giveaway,” she said, starting to explain the flaws. “Most experts could tell right off the bat.”
“Someone like me, Bea, who doesn’t know rare maps,” I said. “Would it fool me?”
“Stevie Wonder could tell this one’s a forgery, Coop. Get with the program.” Mike pulled at a strand of hair that had fallen between my eyes. “Make yourself comfortable, Bea. Want a soda?”
He walked into the kitchen and helped himself to a soft drink.
“Nothing, thanks. Do you have that photocopy of the entire map I made for you at the library?”
“I got it,” Mercer said. He had brought a stack of work up from the car and sorted it out from the pile he had dropped on the credenza on his way inside.
“Let’s lay it out on the table. Do you mind if I move your flowers, Alex?” Bea asked.
Mike lifted the vase of white lilies. “More where those came from, Bea. Guess this guy didn’t get so lucky. The place usually looks like a funeral home when she’s put out her best stuff.”
Bea ignored him. “Grab me some tape and a few pads.”
Mike knew his way around my place. He left the room, then returned from my office with what Bea requested.
“You guys keep going on your end. Let me play with the map a bit,” she said.
Mercer, Mike, and I set ourselves up around the coffee table in the living room. It was late in the afternoon, and the three of us were trying to use a quiet Saturday to regain the territory and figure out what we had to work with so far in the murders of Tina Barr and Karla Vastasi.
“You liked what the old broad had?” Mike asked.
“Jane Eliot?” I said. “Absolutely.”
“But the guy who broke in to her place didn’t bother with a mask. So why would he bother with the fireman outfit the first time he hit Tina Barr’s place?”
I leaned back and put my feet up on the sofa. “Maybe he thought she’d make him, recognize him.”
Mercer nodded. “Possible. Didn’t mean to kill her if he could find what he was looking for in the apartment.”
“Jane Eliot can’t see well enough to describe her assailant,” I said. “If he knew her vision was impaired and was confident she had no reason to identify him from any previous encounter, he didn’t have to go to the trouble of hiding his face. Besides that, he’d lost the gas mask.”
“Alex has a point,” Mercer said. “The delivery uniform he wore to break in to Eliot’s was a disguise of sorts.”
Mike had found a deck of cards in the drawer of the coffee table and was playing solitaire while we talked.
“Did you ever follow up with the lab on that DNA profile in the mask?” I asked Mike.
“I’m on it. Partial match to Billy Schultz, but it’s a combo, so they can compare it to other samples we submit.”
“So how you doing on profiles?” Mercer asked. “Whose DNA have we got?”
“Schultz’s, obviously. But his alibi works for Tina’s murder,” Mike said. “And I gave the lab the Hunts.”
“Which Hunts?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” he said, folding his losing hand and shuffling again. “Minerva’s first.”
“I know they’re only amendments,” I said, too tired to go at Mike full force. “But they are still part of the Constitution. Hope the seizures were lawful, but then if they were, I probably would have known about them.”
“That cigarette butt she crushed to death in the squad room the other night? Abandoned property,” Mike said.
“I’ll give you that,” I said with a smile. “Nice work.”
“Think of it, a woman inside a fireman’s uniform and mask. Who’d guess that? You automatically assume it’s a guy.”
Bea Dutton looked over at us every now and then as we tried to put the clues together.
“You’re right, Mike. It would never occur to me, hearing
that description, to think of a Minerva Hunt-or a Jill Gibson.”
“What are you saying about Jill?” Mike asked.
“Forget I mentioned it. It’s just a personal thing.”
“I’m gonna talk to you about that, Bea,” Mike said. “You can’t hold back if you think there’s something that might be useful to us.”
“Sorry. I just think she plays both sides of the street. She means well, but she’s in a difficult position, as an administrator, between sucking up to the board and keeping her staff squared away.”
I made a note on the top of my pad to get back to Bea Dutton.
“So what did you get from Talbot Hunt?” I asked.
“Swiped a cocktail napkin that the butler missed in the living room yesterday. Figured the one with lipstick was Minerva’s and the one without was her brother’s.”
“Swiped doesn’t work for me.”
“Don’t get in a swivet about it, Coop. I didn’t take it from his house. He doesn’t have any standing at Papa’s pad. Give me any illegal search bullshit and I’ll have a seizure.”
“I’ll remember to argue that when I’m taking heat in the hearing.”
“Who else should we look at for DNA?” Mercer asked. “I’d like to go back into Forbes’s apartment. See what he’s got going on.”
“Ask Shalik to scoop up some Band-Aids for you while Travis is picking himself clean on the stoop,” Mike said. “I want Alger Herrick. The man with the golden arm.”
“Because you think he’s dirty?” Mercer asked.
“’Cause he likes maps so much.”
“We have Herrick’s DNA,” I said.
Mike’s head snapped in my direction. “Promise me you went back to his house and got your sample the old-fashioned way. None of this swabbing and drooling stuff.”
“Not my type, Mikey.”
“So what’d I miss?”
Lethal Legacy Page 29