In the Shadow of Gotham

by Pintoff, Stefanie

  I watched her walk away, her blue scarf catching in the breeze behind her. From what I’d been told, Stella’s life had not been an easy one even before Michael Fromley terrorized her last winter. What she had now witnessed was undeserved. I could only hope that with time—and the care of friends like Cora—she could once again live a normal life.

  We headed back uptown, talking over the new information we’d uncovered, and I considered a new angle: Had it been possible we were looking in all the wrong places—first, for Michael Fromley, and then for Sarah’s unknown assailant? We had been searching for connections to Sarah, connections to her world at Columbia. But my nagging suspicion that Mamie Durant somehow played an important role in this case had intensified.

  That also raised a new possibility we had not yet considered: What if the killer had come to Dobson with Stella as his intended target—and encountered Sarah instead? If so, we would need to alter our approach to the investigation. I mentioned as much to Alistair as we descended into the Seventy-second Street subway station.

  “It strikes me,” Alistair said, “that Sarah’s murder was carefully timed during a moment when she was alone in the house. If the killer’s target were truly Stella, it would have been even easier to isolate her during one of her household errands—to the ice house, to the basement, even alone in the kitchen or outdoors.” He paused a moment. “What troubles me more is the fact that Lonny Moore so little resembles the man Stella and Abigail had both described seeing the day of Sarah Wingate’s murder. They described a stout, heavyset man of medium height, whereas Lonny is short and pudgy.”

  I had a different view.

  “Though I’d like to think otherwise,” I said, “I fear neither Abigail Wingate nor Stella Gibson are the most reliable of witnesses. Abigail’s memory latched on to the only man she had seen that day. And as for Stella, until just a few minutes ago, she was convinced that the man she saw in Sarah’s room during the murder was Fromley himself.”

  There were no strong leads. But based on what evidence we had, Lonny Moore seemed the most likely suspect. He had hated Sarah, and his jealousy had prompted him to steal her work. Either at Columbia or at Mamie Durant’s, he might have crossed paths with Fromley. There would be much to talk about with him, but after the ups and downs of this investigation, I would not pin my hopes on Lonny—at least, not yet.

  CHAPTER 26

  Upon our return to the research center, Alistair was greeted with sobering news: Two of the major papers—the Tribune and the Post—planned to run a story on Monday about possible improprieties on the part of Judge Hansen in the Michael Fromley case. Alistair’s name was as yet unmentioned. But that was only, Alistair maintained, because he had so thoroughly cowed yesterday’s reporters with the threat of a libel suit should they report the wrong facts. I wondered whether it was possible that a generous bribe had also worked to keep Alistair’s name clear of the story. It was understood that many news editors were not averse to such persuasion, especially when scandal was involved. With his personal reputation at stake, Alistair began to telephone his more influential contacts. But given what I knew about the yellow sensation newspapers, I doubted even Alistair’s connections and money would be sufficient to keep his name out of the spotlight for long.

  With Alistair otherwise occupied, I met with Lonny alone. Sullen and scowling, he glared at me as I entered the second-floor meeting room. He was dressed nicely, even expensively, in a green cashmere sweater and heavy brown tweed pants; I also noted the gold pocket watch draped from his vest, which he made a point of checking the moment I came in. While he affected the manner of a man who has been delayed for an important meeting, he reminded me more of a schoolboy brought in for a reprimand. Did he truly understand that I was interviewing him on suspicion of murder? And how reasonable a suspicion was it? I wondered, as I searched his pale blue eyes for any sign of a man both violent and intelligent enough to have committed this particularly brutal murder.

  Once our initial greetings were dispensed with, we got down to my true business. “Could you tell me your whereabouts this past Tuesday afternoon, November 7?”

  “Don’t you talk with your colleagues? I already told the professor working with you. I had a card game going over at Sam’s,” he said, annoyed that he had to repeat the information. “That would be Sam Baker, one of my friends. He and the others there can vouch for me from two o’clock until well past dinner.”

  “Policemen like me tend to recheck people’s alibis multiple times,” I said easily. “It’s our way of determining whether you’re telling the truth. I will need the names of the other persons in Tuesday’s card game.”

  His response was belligerent. “You’ve got nothing on me.”

  “I had understood from Professor Sinclair that you wished to cooperate. That you were interested in helping us in this investigation,” I said.

  He glared at me a moment, then thought of something. “Say”—he leaned forward, eyes gleaming with curiosity—“I’ve still not heard how she was killed. Was she strangled? Shot? Stabbed?”

  “I ask the questions here; not you,” I said sharply. His question left me cold. Either he had wished her dead so fervently he now relished the details of it—or worse, if he were the murderer we sought, then he wanted to hear me recount the details. Either way, I had no plan to indulge him. “I’m sure you understand all details of a murder investigation are confidential.”

  Disappointed, he sank back into his chair.

  “A number of people have mentioned your name in connection with Sarah Wingate,” I said. “How did you know her?”

  “My name in connection with her?” He practically spat the words. “I had no connections with that woman.”

  “No?” I arched my eyebrows, feigning surprise. “From what I’ve been told, I understand that she was your classmate in at least two courses.” I looked through my notes to ensure I had the right facts. “Those would be organic chemistry and an advanced mathematics course. In fact, you were sufficiently familiar with her and her work, or thought you were, to challenge her grade in organic chemistry.”

  If possible, Lonny’s face turned an even brighter shade of red. It was anger; not embarrassment or even frustration. The mere mention of the incident seemed to rekindle a long-nursed animosity.

  “That was not a connection,” he said, sneering. “That was how I tried to get decent treatment for the rest of us. She had the professor fooled into thinking she was brilliant, so she could steal what was rightfully someone else’s, take credit for it all. I tried to tell them, and they just didn’t listen. They bought her side of the story, hook, line, and sinker.” He glowered darkly.

  “Did your interaction with Miss Wingate ever extend beyond the classroom?”

  “No, I never saw Sarah Wingate outside of class. I met her in the chemistry class you just mentioned. We were classmates, nothing more.” Then he tried to turn the questioning. “Who else are you interviewing from her classes?”

  “Why do you want to know?” I asked.

  “Because if you haven’t been talking with certain people, I can point you in the proper direction. Have you spoken with John Nelson?”

  “Why would it be important to speak with him?” I asked coolly. I remembered John Nelson had been mentioned previously as one of Lonny’s close friends.

  “He knew Sarah Wingate for what she was,” Lonny said. “He wrote an article about her and her rabble-rousing friends last year for the Spectator, exposing their conspiracy to disrupt the campus. What about Cyril McGee?”

  I recognized the name from the list Professor Muller had given us. I pulled out my notebook and wrote the name down, as well as a memo to myself to review those articles from the campus newspaper that mentioned Sarah Wingate. When I finished, I looked at Lonny expectantly.

  “You’ll see he has useful information, too,” Lonny said, in answer to my look, beginning to feel self-important.

  “What about the name Michael Fromley?” I said. “Do y
ou know him?” Cora had suspected they were acquainted, and I was curious whether he would admit it.

  “Is he a suspect, too?”

  I pulled out his picture and showed Lonny. “Do you know him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Think harder,” I said, “maybe you saw him someplace. Here at Columbia, perhaps. Or farther downtown, at Mamie Durant’s.”

  His eyes widened.

  “It is my business to know these things, Mr. Moore,” I said. “Did you think you would be able to keep that quiet?”

  “But how did you find out?” he whispered.

  I ignored him and repeated my own question. “How long have you known him?”

  He shrugged. “Ran into him a few times, that’s all. I don’t know him well enough to recognize his name. Michael, you said?”

  I didn’t believe a word of it.

  “Where else did you see him beside Mamie’s?”

  He had grown red in the face and was breathing hard. I had clearly struck a sore point. “Also at a gaming house,” he finally said. “But only once.”

  “Which one?”

  “The House with the Bronze Door. On West Thirty-third.”

  I wrote down the name of a place I knew well by repute. It was an upscale gambling establishment that catered exclusively to gentlemen. For those with the money and social connections to gain admittance to the game, the house offered a high-class experience. They guarded against cheating, lavished patrons with food, drinks, and cigars, and kept all identities safe by practicing the utmost discretion.

  “You and he have rich tastes,” I said. “When did you last see him there?”

  I knew Fromley had been hard up for money, even blackballed at the lower-class gambling houses according to my friend Nicky. It was likely Fromley’s behavior and financial problems had extended into the upper-class houses, as well. Not that it mattered anymore in terms of Fromley—but in terms of evaluating Lonny’s connections with Fromley, it might.

  Lonny thought a moment. “I think it’s been at least a year since I saw him there. I only saw him once or twice. That’s the result of my habits, though, not his. I lost a lot one night, and when my father helped me out, he forbade me ever to go there again.” He sighed. “It was the best place I ever played. But he said we weren’t rich enough for such high stakes.”

  I suspected there were other reasons, as well. Alonzo Moore Sr. would have had no choice but to answer for his son’s debts at a place like the House with the Bronze Door. Its clientele must have overlapped with his business clientele—and for a son to renege on obligations within that world would reflect badly on the father.

  “How does a student like you have money to gamble?” I asked. In reality, I knew the answer to this question, given the easy credit found in the hundreds of gambling houses operating in the city. But I was looking for a reason to connect Lonny with the funds diverted from Alistair’s research center.

  His voice took on a mean, hard edge. “I’ve got more in the bank than you’ll make in five years. At least, it’ll be mine as soon as I turn twenty-one. Why is this any of your business?”

  “Just need to be thorough,” I said, keeping my tone mild. “Other than the incident you mentioned at the Bronze Door, have you had to ask your father for money?”

  “Nah. I’ve been lucky of late. Haven’t lost much—not more than $25 to $50 a night.”

  Not much money, indeed. The sums he mentioned were large. Why, $25 would easily finance the monthly rent on a middle-class apartment in a decent neighborhood. Still, if he were telling the truth, these numbers were on a far smaller scale than the thousands taken from the dean’s fund.

  There was a sharp rap on the door and a man with silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a dark suit rushed in before we answered. “I got here as quickly as I could. Lonny—not another word more. And you”—he fixed me with an angry stare—“who are you and what business do you have with my client?”

  I stood up without extending my hand. “Detective Simon Ziele. And you are?”

  “John Bulwer, criminal defense attorney. I’ve been retained by Mr. Moore’s father to represent him.”

  “How does my father—” Lonny began, looking ashamed.

  “Young man, you’re lucky you have friends who were concerned enough about you to make the call you should have made yourself,” the lawyer said sternly. He went on to explain that Lonny’s friend Sam Baker, upon learning this morning about Lonny’s meeting, had telephoned Alonzo senior at once.

  I was impressed by one thing: Late on a Sunday morning, it had taken Lonny’s father no more than an hour to secure Mr. Bulwer’s services and arrange for him to come uptown.

  The lawyer turned to me. “Now, what business do you have with Lonny?”

  “Lonny was acquainted with a young woman—also a student here at Columbia—who was murdered earlier this week within my jurisdiction in Dobson, New York. I have some questions for him; he has been kind enough to agree to answer them.” I tried to sound as pleasant and nonthreatening as possible.

  “Is he under arrest?”

  “Of course not, Mr.—” I pretended to have forgotten his name.

  “Bulwer. John Bulwer.” He grimaced. “So if Lonny’s not under arrest, then he is free to leave anytime.”

  “Absolutely.” My words remained pleasant, but my tone turned more severe. “Of course, I could compel him to come to Dobson’s police station for questioning. But Lonny may prefer to continue answering my questions here. It is certainly more convenient and probably more pleasant.”

  John Bulwer looked displeased but did not object to continuing. “What have you discussed so far?”

  I glanced at my notes. “Let’s see. We reviewed Lonny’s alibi for the time of the murder. We talked about his relationship with both the murder victim and the man who was once our prime suspect. And I was about to ask him about one more issue.” I reached for the file Alistair had left me containing the materials Lonny had stolen from Sarah. I presented the contents to Lonny and his attorney. They included several pages of handwriting in neat, perfectly formed letters that in no way resembled what I knew to be Lonny Moore’s scrawled hand. Certain phrases stood out: “. . . symmetric about the critical line Re(s) = ½. . . . The unproved Riemann hypothesis is that all of the nontrivial zeros. . . . distribution of prime numbers. . . . definition of ζ(s) to all complex numbers s.”

  “Is this your work, Lonny?”

  He looked at Mr. Bulwer, who was quick to respond. “You don’t have to answer that.”

  “What about this letter?” I leafed through several more pages of notes and proofs, then pulled it out. Addressed to the editors of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, the letter stated that a proof for Riemann’s hypothesis, accompanied by an expository article, was available for immediate publication if they were interested. It was signed “Alonzo Moore Jr.”

  “I take it the letter is yours. But I believe this work”—I touched the stack of papers lightly—“belongs to the late Sarah Wingate. She had apparently finished the proof not long before she was killed.”

  Lonny’s face went white and he slumped deeper in his wooden chair.

  “Don’t say a word, son,” Mr. Bulwer warned, his voice stern.

  “You have a long history of hostility toward Sarah Wingate.” I leaned in close to him. “And this letter clearly shows”—I tapped it with my finger—“that you planned to pass her work off as your own.”

  Lonny stared at me, wide-eyed. “You—you’ve got it all wrong,” he stammered. “I didn’t kill Sarah.”

  “You stole her notes and proofs, and were planning to publish her research as your own,” I said. “You expect me to believe that you stole from her, but did not otherwise harm her?”

  “We’ll be leaving now.” Mr. Bulwer stood up and tried to pull Lonny along with him. But Lonny pushed the lawyer’s hand away and gripped the sides of his chair so tightly that his knuckles shone white.

  “No�
�I’ll answer this one.” Lonny turned to me. His demeanor had changed; now, he was scared.

  “I swear to you I didn’t kill her. I did steal her papers. But that wasn’t something I planned. I was in the library when I heard she had been killed. So I checked her library carrel to see if she had left behind anything interesting. That’s when I found all those notes. And I figured if she’s dead and not using all that research anyway, then why shouldn’t I get something out of it?”

  The three of us stared at each other in silence.

  I finally said, “But your professors would have known the work was not yours. They would have known you for a fraud.”

  Lonny shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not.” He repeated himself again. “You have to believe me. I admit I stole her work, but I didn’t kill her for it.”

  I stared at him. He had given me enough to build a circumstantial case against him—one that provided me with a tangible answer to the question of why Lonny’s hatred of Sarah had erupted into murder now. She had obviously just finished the proof, one that he intended to claim for his own. He had been acquainted with Fromley, so I could argue he had reason to know about Fromley’s criminal fantasies. And while two close friends had supplied him an alibi, I had been suspicious of that alibi since I first heard it. It seemed too convenient. Time and again, I’d seen the testimony of friends crack during questioning.

  I thought some more.

  While I had nothing on him in terms of the money stolen from the dean’s fund, that could yet come—or, as Alistair had said, prove a coincidence unrelated to Sarah’s murder.

  I didn’t like Lonny Moore. And watching him now, I wanted to believe he was the killer responsible for Sarah’s death. It would be an easy solution. And yet something about it didn’t sit right with me. So I didn’t arrest him. In fact, I let him go with a stern warning to stay in town and prepare for more formal questioning.

  After seeing Lonny and Mr. Bulwer out, I checked each office to see where Isabella was working. I couldn’t find her.