by Lee Harris
Greenwich Village is the area roughly around Washington Square, mostly to the west of it, although it has crept east. There are streets there with apartments so expensive, I couldn’t imagine being able to afford to live in them, but there are also others in older buildings, farther from the center of the Village, that become manageable if you have a decent income or a roommate or two. The four-story building that bore the address Sandy Gordon had given me had the age, charm, and slightly decrepit look that might fill the bill.
I have visited many apartment houses in my amateur investigations and spoken to several superintendents, but this time I was in for a surprise. The woman in apartment 1A who answered my ring on Wednesday morning was the owner.
“I’ve owned it seventeen years,” she informed me after I introduced myself, “and I pretty much remember everyone who ever lived here.”
“I’m a friend of Sandy Gordon, who married Natalie Miller about two years ago,” I said.
“I remember Natalie well. Good tenant, paid her rent on time. I think I saw him a couple of times, too. What happened?”
I told her.
She frowned as she listened. “Didn’t someone come by last year about that? A detective or something?”
“Very likely. Sandy hired him when the police had no leads to Natalie’s disappearance.”
“And he didn’t find her?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So you’re looking now?”
“I’m trying. What can you tell me about her?”
“Just what I already said. Paid her rent on time, didn’t have any secret pets, left the apartment in pretty good shape. Good tenant.”
“When she moved in, did you get any references?”
“You mean like from friends?”
“Possibly.”
“Friends say anything you want about them. Usually the tenant types up the letter and the friend signs it. I use my intuition and the bank.”
“What did the bank tell you?”
“How much money she had. She gave me a check for the first month and a month’s security. The checks cleared. And she gave me the name of the company she was working for. Want it?”
“Yes, please.” There was just a chance she had lived here before she got the job with H and J.
“Come on in.”
I had been standing in the foyer of the building. Now I followed her into her large living room. In the adjoining dining room, a file cabinet stood next to a desk. The woman, whose name I didn’t know, pulled out a drawer and went straight to a folder about halfway through.
“Hopkins and Jewell,” she called. “An ad agency. A Mrs. Wormholtz confirmed that Miss Miller was working for them.”
“Anything else? Any previous address?”
“Sorry. She said she was new in town.”
“Really?”
“That’s why the bank account was new, too.”
“Do you have any address for her? Where her family lives maybe?”
“I don’t do that,” the woman said, returning to the living room. “I did the first couple of years I owned the place. Called their mommies when they had crises, sat next to them when they threatened to end it all, that kind of thing. It got to be too much. I’m not their parents or their big sister or their loving aunt. I’m a landlord. If they need help, I dial nine-one-one. That’s the beginning and the end of my responsibility.”
“Do you remember Natalie having any crises?”
“Not really.”
“Is anyone living here now who lived here when Natalie did?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” She thought for a moment. “I’ve got an old lady who’s been here forever—I inherited her—and you could talk to her if you want. I don’t think the detective talked to her.”
“Why is that?”
“She usually takes a winter vacation and she was gone when he got here. Maybe he talked to someone else in the building, I don’t know. But she’s a good one. She lives on the top floor, right across from where Natalie lived. I’m sure they knew each other.”
“May I have her name?”
“Mabel Bernstein. She’s about eighty. I don’t know how she does the stairs, but I guess she’s just bound and determined not to leave this place alive.”
I had a certain admiration for that. “Thank you very much.”
“Go on up. She’s probably packing now. She’s leaving for her trip in a day or two.”
The stairs were wide but sagging a little, the banisters a fine old wood, albeit scarred. Someone would buy this building one day and spend a small fortune to put it in shape, and then the rents would go sky-high. I found Mabel Bernstein’s apartment to the left of the stairs and rang her bell.
“Who’s there?” The voice sounded a challenge.
“Christine Bennett. The landlady sent me up.”
The door was flung open. “No such thing.” She was a little shorter than I, pure white hair, wearing a black skirt, white blouse, gray cardigan that could have been cashmere, and stockings and slippers. “No landlady in this place. She’s a landlord. You can’t know her very well.”
“I just met her ten minutes ago, Ms. Bernstein. She said you would remember Natalie Miller.”
“Mrs. Bernstein,” she corrected me. “I’m not a miz and I’m not a miss. I remember Natalie very well. She lived over there.” Pointing. “Are you coming in?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, reverting to an earlier period of my life. I followed her into a large living room, past a bedroom with suitcases open on a large bed.
“I have nothing to offer you; the fridge is empty.”
“Thank you. I’d just like to talk to you about Natalie. Are you aware that she disappeared a little over a year ago?”
“I heard someone was here asking questions last year when I was in South America. I’m sorry to hear about Natalie. She seemed a nice person. Nice fiancé, too. I met him.”
“Did she ever tell you where she was from? We’re having a lot of trouble locating her family.”
“There isn’t any family. She said they’d died years ago. I was glad she met someone nice. There’s nothing like family.”
“Did she ever tell you where she lived before she moved here?”
“If she did, I don’t remember.”
“You said you met her fiancé. Did you ever meet any of the men she went out with before she met him?”
“I saw them. I can’t say I met them.”
“Did she ever talk about them?”
“Just to say, ‘We’re going to dinner Friday,’ that kind of thing.”
“No names?”
She looked around the room. It was a beautiful room with a fireplace and a mantel covered with framed pictures, candlesticks, magnificent old glass vases. She was a woman of taste and some means, even if—or perhaps because—she lived in an apartment whose rent was more typical of the sixties than the nineties. “Sandy is the one I remember best.”
“That’s the man she married.”
“You think some old boyfriend did something to her?”
“I don’t know. I just know we can’t seem to trace her further back in time than five years ago, and this is the only address I have for her before she married.”
“Susan,” she blurted out. “Susan Diggins. They were friends.”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to Susan.”
“And she doesn’t know anything?” She seemed shocked.
“They met at the agency that was Natalie’s last job.”
“Well, someone has to know where she’s from.”
“I’ll keep looking,” I said.
“There were men. I saw them. My opinion is, they weren’t suitable.”
“By which you mean—?”
“They were already spoken for. Or didn’t amount to much.”
“When are you leaving for your vacation?”
“Tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve still got a lot of packing to do.”
I wrote my name and p
hone number on a scrap of paper. “If any of those names come back to you, would you call me collect?”
“From South America?”
“I want to find Natalie. Believe it or not, you’re the last person on my list to talk to.”
“And I haven’t given you very much, have I?”
“You’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Bernstein. But if you think of anything else, I want to hear it as soon as possible.”
“I’ll do my best.”
—
On my way out I talked briefly to the only other person at home in the building, a single woman with a bad cold. She remembered Natalie but knew nothing about her, had never said more than a greeting to her and added nothing to what I already knew. I thanked the nameless landlord when I got down to the first floor and then found myself out in the cold both literally and figuratively, asking myself what to do next and having no answer. I had checked out Natalie’s last known address, last job, and last husband. I walked to where Greenwich Avenue ended at Sixth Avenue and located a phone. There I called Sandy Gordon.
“What’ve you got?” he asked with too eager anticipation.
“Unfortunately nothing. I’ve just been to the Greenwich Avenue address and I talked to an old woman that the detective missed because she was away last year.”
“That’s terrific,” he said excitedly, and I regretted my phrasing.
“But she had nothing to add, Sandy. She didn’t remember any of the people Natalie had known when she moved in except Susan Diggins, and I’ve seen her already. I gave her my phone number and told her to call collect from South America if she thinks of anything. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. Listen, where are you now?”
“On Sixth Avenue just south of Greenwich.”
“Suppose I pick you up and take you to the house. I have a clear calendar today. When you’re finished, I’ll drive you home or hire a car for you.”
“That’s fine. Jack’s in law school tonight, so I have no dinner to cook.”
“Give me a quarter hour. Is there somewhere you can sit and have a cup of coffee?”
I was touched by his consideration. “I’m fine, Sandy. Just tell me where to stand.”
“There’s a bookstore on the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street.”
“I see it.”
“I’ll pick you up right there.”
Fifteen minutes later, almost to the minute, he stopped at the curb and opened the car door for me.
14
Sandy drove an expensive German car that looked freshly washed, with fragrant leather seats and a dashboard that would have driven me crazy with its complexity. He kept up a pleasant banter as we drove through a tunnel and then along a highway to his New Jersey home. I found him very likable, and if I had any lingering suspicions that he himself might have been responsible for Natalie’s disappearance, they were all but gone when he turned in to the driveway of a handsome new house whose garage door opened at the touch of a button.
We walked into a huge family room with a stone fireplace that took my breath away, and from there into a kitchen that his niece Melanie would probably sell her soul for. The counter was marble, the floor tile, the stove had six burners and a name I had never heard of, and the refrigerator looked large enough to store a couple of bodies in. Not that I thought it had ever been used for that purpose.
We had stopped along the way and picked up lunch, which we now sat and ate at the butcher block table in the large eating area just beyond the kitchen. When we were finished, Sandy dumped the leavings in the garbage and led me upstairs to the master bedroom.
It was quite a room, massive with wall-to-wall carpeting in a pale peach, and draperies and bedspread in precisely the same shade. The furniture was imposing and needed a bedroom of that size not to appear too large for its space. The effect was breathtaking. I don’t read many magazines and haven’t been in many bedrooms in my life, so perhaps I was more taken than the Gordons’ neighbors would have been, but the room was really impressive.
“That’s Natalie’s dresser. I’ve gone through it myself and found nothing, and I’ve removed only her more expensive jewelry and put it away for safekeeping. It was all things I had given her. You’re welcome to go through it, and while you’re here, if you want to, go through mine, too. I had no idea you were coming today, so I haven’t prepared for this visit.”
I felt embarrassed, but I knew I had to do it. “Let me ask you a couple of questions first. I had occasion the other day to go through some old cartons that come from my mother and have been in my basement for many years. Maybe my family is just unusually attached to mementos, but it occurred to me that Natalie must have brought things with her when you married.”
“Very little. Mostly clothes, a handful of books—I think you saw them in the carton of stuff I dropped off at your house—and that’s about it. You found those keys; I didn’t even know they were there.”
“Did you find any old handbags?”
“They’re right here.” He went to a double-doored closet that opened into a small room with floor-to-ceiling clothes, his and hers, expertly hung, shelved, and folded, and came out with several bags of different sizes, shapes, colors, and uses. “This is the one she always carried to work,” he said, handing me a large, black leather shoulder bag. “She replaced it after we were married and she was carrying the new one when she disappeared.”
“I’ll start with this one.”
“I’m going to leave you alone here, Chris. I’ll be downstairs reading the paper. Take your time; I’m not in any hurry.”
And with that he left the room, closing the door behind him.
I felt awkward sitting on the beautiful bed, so I pulled out the lovely silk-covered chair in front of Natalie’s dressing table and sat on that. The bag, which was heavy even without the usual female paraphernalia, turned out to be as empty as one on a store counter, except that it didn’t have any tissue paper stuffed in it to keep it in shape. When Natalie had switched to a new everyday bag, she had removed every item from the old one with the exception of a small mirror, a satin change purse that had nothing in it, and a worn emery board so deep in the folds of the zipper pocket that she could easily have missed it when cleaning out the bag. Natalie was obviously so compulsive about neatness that she left nothing behind when she abandoned one purse for another or she was just one of those people who kept only necessities in her purse, and everything needed to be moved. The new bag obviously provided her with the change purse and mirror she needed.
I set it aside and went through the others, a black suede handbag that contained clean tissues, several single dollar bills, probably handy for tipping, a rather elegant hand mirror that magnified the reflection, and nothing else; a gaily colored summer bag of woven straw that contained roughly what the black suede bag did; a handsome and clearly expensive black leather handbag with an Italian name inside and little else; and a small black bag of lizard and the softest leather I had ever touched, hung on a gold chain, and holding nothing but some tissues and a table assignment for Bill and Jenny’s wedding. That was it.
Since I was sitting at the dressing table, I went through that next but found nothing of use to me. The enormous dresser was filled with the expected fine lingerie and sweaters, and again, no papers. I finished there and went to the closet. It was clearly divided into his and hers. Sure enough, half a dozen cruise outfits hung on the rack, all with their price tags. Natalie had left behind a wardrobe worth a fortune.
The bathroom, which was large and elegant, had a sunken tub with a Jacuzzi at one end, something I have yet to experience. A closet held sheets and bedding, dusting powder, skin lotions, and shaving necessities. A few prescription drugs had been issued from a local pharmacy.
Back in the bedroom I went through Sandy’s chest, feeling like a voyeur. He had a passport in the top drawer, an old one issued several years ago, but there was none for Natalie. He had other papers that I merely glanced at befor
e looking quickly through his shirts, socks, and underwear.
I was about to leave the bedroom when I noticed the night tables had drawers. I went over to one and opened it Inside was a woman’s novel with a bookmark about halfway through. I took it out and underneath found a diaphragm and a tube. To satisfy myself that she hadn’t run off with a boyfriend, I flicked the plastic container open, saw the round object inside, and closed it.
There were a few magazines in the drawer and I flipped the pages, but nothing fell out. Then I turned my attention to Sandy’s drawer. He, too, had books and magazines, some cough drops, a preparation for athlete’s foot, and a couple of tubes of medication. I closed the drawer and went downstairs.
“Done?” Sandy stood as I entered the family room.
“I’ve gone over everything. I don’t have a clue as to where Natalie comes from or what’s happened to her.”
Spread out in front of him was a stamp collection. He had been looking at something with a magnifier when I walked in. Now he put it down carefully.
“What else can I do for you? There must be something.”
“A couple of things. Did Natalie go to a hairdresser?”
“Every week.”
“Do you have the name?”
He thought a moment. “Sometimes she wrote a check. I’ll look through my canceled checks. I’m sure I’ll find it.”
“Good. I saw your passport in your drawer, but I didn’t see one for Natalie.”
“As far as I know, she didn’t have one.”
“You were making a trip to an island that winter. Didn’t she need a passport to get there?”
“We were going to St. John. It’s an American possession. All you need is ID like a driver’s license.”
“Whose idea was it to go to St. John?”
“I think we decided together. It sounded like the kind of place we’d enjoy.”
“Did she ever talk about the people at Hopkins and Jewell?”
“Sure. She liked them. They hired her early on and she had a kind of proprietary interest in the place. And they appreciated her. She got regular increases, they gave her special assignments, had her train new people.”