The Thanksgiving Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “This was more than that. He kept an open bottle where he could reach it. Though this morning I noticed it wasn’t there. I think he was energized by having an assignment, especially one he’d be paid for.”

  “Work does magic. So what’s the game plan?”

  “I guess I just sit and wait for DiMartino’s call. I’ve followed up on just about everything I can. The next move has to be another ad in the Indiana paper with the picture of Natalie as a nineteen- or twenty-year-old. If she grew up there, there have to be people who remember her. There has to be a high school yearbook with a picture that’ll be close to what DiMartino’s going to give me.”

  “So we wait for the phone to ring.”

  “It won’t be the first time.”

  —

  On Friday morning I decided to talk to Sandy for the first time about Natalie’s mysterious “brother.”

  “Of course you’re not bothering me,” he said over the phone. “I always have time for this. Is something up?”

  I told him about my conversations with Dickie Foster and the super at Natalie’s former apartment near Gramercy Park.

  “She had no brothers,” he said. “No brothers and no sisters. The feeling I got, although she never came out and said it, was that she was illegitimate, given up by her mother, and raised by a foster family. Whether they were related by blood or not, I wasn’t sure from the way she told it.”

  “But you know, if her natural mother married later, she might have had more children that would be related to Natalie.”

  “She was pretty emphatic about being an only child.”

  “The question is who this man is. Maybe he’s the abusive husband we’ve talked about.”

  “Whoever he is, this is confirmation that you’re on the right track, Chris. I think when that sculpture is done, we’re going to get some answers.”

  It turned out, eventually, that he was right. But the answers we got were to questions we had never asked.

  —

  Just as I was about to go out to do some necessary shopping, the phone rang. An operator was at the other end.

  “I have a call from Mabel Bernstein in Antigua,” she said. “Will you pay for the call?”

  “Yes, I will.” There was a little static and then I said, “Mrs. Bernstein?”

  “Christine?”

  “Yes, it’s me. How’s your vacation?”

  “Warm and wonderful. I remembered something that may help you.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Natalie went away one weekend—can you hear me all right?”

  “I hear you fine.”

  “She went away with a friend,” she continued, straining her voice. “A man friend. And she wrote me a postcard. She said she was having a great time and he was a real jewel.”

  “A jewel?” I repeated. “Like a diamond?”

  “Yes. That kind of jewel.”

  “Do you remember when she wrote it to you?”

  “Early on. Probably the first year she lived on Greenwich Avenue.”

  “Mrs. Bernstein, do you remember where it was mailed from?”

  “Yes. It came from one of those lakes or something upstate.”

  “Upstate in what state?” I asked.

  “New York. I bet it was Saratoga Springs or one of those places.”

  “You’re sure it didn’t come from New Jersey?”

  “I haven’t lost all my marbles yet. It came from New York. I may even have the card somewhere at home, but I’m not going to be home for another month.”

  “Thank you for keeping this in mind. This has really been very helpful.”

  “Did you expect New Jersey?”

  “I did.”

  “Does this put a monkey wrench in your investigation?”

  “No. It just means someone’s memory wasn’t as good as yours.”

  “You mean he lied, don’t you?”

  “It’s possible. Enjoy the tropics, Mrs. Bernstein. And keep in touch if you remember anything else.”

  —

  I took myself off to the supermarket to think about what I had learned. Martin Jewell had been absolutely certain he and Natalie had gone to Cape May and that he had chosen the spot. When someone lies to me with such conviction, I am naturally alert. As I pushed my cart through the aisles, loading it in preparation for our weekend, I asked myself whether I wanted to challenge Jewell’s statement, whether it was important, whether he had just become a suspect in Natalie’s disappearance because they had spent a weekend in one place instead of another.

  By the time I got home, I knew I had to call him. The person who answered the phone gave me a little trouble but relented and put me through.

  “Yes, how are you?” Martin Jewell’s voice said. “Any news on Natalie?”

  “Something has come up,” I answered, avoiding the question. “It seems Natalie sent a friend a postcard the weekend you and she went away.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it looks like you didn’t go to Cape May.”

  “Sure we did. I always—” He stopped. Then he mumbled something under his breath that might have been an obscenity. “You’re right, we didn’t. We went to New York State. North, not south.”

  “Do you remember the place?”

  “It was a hotel. I don’t remember the name of it. It was five years ago.”

  “Was it her idea to go there?”

  “It must have been. I always pick Cape May. I mean when I go away for the weekend.”

  “Do you remember the town?”

  “It was north of Albany, around Saratoga Springs, I think. It was a hell of a drive.”

  “Do you know why she picked that place?”

  “If she told me, I don’t remember. It was a nice place, though, now that I think about it, a country inn or something, fireplace in every room kind of thing.”

  “Anything else you remember? Did you visit anyone she knew?”

  “We didn’t spend much time sightseeing,” he said, as though instructing me on the purpose of the trip. “Wait a minute. I do remember something.” He sounded eager. “She got up in the middle of the night and went somewhere.”

  “Alone?”

  “Without me anyway. I woke up and she wasn’t there. She walked in, fully dressed, a little while later, said she couldn’t sleep and had gone out for a walk. But I think she took my car.”

  “She drove somewhere?”

  “There was more mileage on it than I remembered. My keys were on the dresser. She could have taken them with no trouble.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Jewell.”

  “No problem.”

  “Let me know if anything else occurs to you.”

  —

  He was awfully smooth. He was so believable, I found myself believing him, as I had before. Maybe he had made an honest mistake. Maybe he usually weekended at Cape May and it had slipped his mind where he and Natalie had gone together. It was, as he had said, five years ago.

  I decided to set Natalie Miller Gordon aside for the weekend.

  21

  Elsie Rivers called over the weekend, a nice, homey kind of call, how good it was to see me again, to meet my husband, how memories of my mother had come back to her after we left, bringing her joy. We chatted for some time, discussing when we might get together again, although we never picked a date, and when I got off the phone I had that feeling again, that there was something she knew, something she was thinking about telling me but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

  “Sounded like your mom’s old friend,” Jack said when I had hung up. “She say anything?”

  “She came close, Jack. She wants to and she doesn’t want to. I wish I’d never remembered this.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s long past.”

  “That’s not a reason to forget it.”

  “But it’s a reason to forgive.”

  “I have to know what I’m forgiving.”

  “Give her time. You’ve stirred up a lot of her pa
st. She has to decide where her loyalties lie, or where they should lie.”

  “Do you think he met her at work? At one of the businesses he visited?”

  “Chris, you don’t know who she is. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  But I had made the leap and I didn’t like where I found myself.

  —

  The quiet of the weekend came to an end on Monday. Dickie Foster called in the morning.

  “Remember that postcard I told you about? I found it.”

  “You must have worked all weekend,” I said.

  “Turned the whole place upside down. Now we’ll have to move because I’ve started throwing things out. Any nice little houses out your way?”

  “Plenty. Come up and take a look some weekend. Tell me about the postcard.”

  “It says, ‘Dear Dickie, It’s gorgeous up here. Can’t wait for the job interview. I’m taking some time to rest up so I’m in good form. Yours, Natalie.’ ”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “The picture says Lake George, but the postmark—it’s a little hard to read, but I think it’s Saratoga.”

  “Upstate New York.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Dickie, I can’t thank you enough. Will you hang on to the card? I may want to look at it later.”

  “I’ll put it away so it doesn’t get mixed up with the trash. I’m really glad I found it. Brings back those good old days when I was single.”

  —

  Something had drawn Natalie to upstate New York twice in about a year, once before she moved out of Gramercy Park and once when she and Jewell went off for a weekend together. Was there an old lover up there, a husband and children, or the mysterious abuser whom I had come to believe in? Maybe she had been drawn to him as I had read many women are even when their intellects tell them they should stay away. But I was certain now that there was a connection between her and some place in Saratoga or Warren County.

  I had lunch and took a walk, having missed my early walk this morning. In the winter, later walks were easier because the temperature was higher and there was a chance of sun. Today the sun was shining and I was glad I had postponed, not eliminated, my gentle exercise.

  Back home, I put my house in order. I find that when I’m consumed with my work, whether it’s an investigation or something I’m doing for Arnold or the college, things get a little disorganized and I appreciate some downtime to reestablish order. I gathered up newspapers and put them in bags for the recycling program, then hauled out the vacuum cleaner, going from room to room without stopping, the momentum carrying me through. When I finished and went downstairs, I found the answering machine was flashing, the ring of the phone having been obscured by the noise I was generating. I pushed the PLAY button and heard a startling message.

  “Miss Bennett, this is Arlene Hopkins. I think we got off on the wrong foot when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. Would you call me on my private line as soon as possible?” She dictated a number that I had to listen to a second time with a paper and pencil in my hand. Then I called it.

  “This is Arlene,” the voice answered.

  “This is Chris Bennett.”

  “Yes, I’m so glad you called. Are you free for dinner tonight?”

  Jack was at law school and I had already done all my work for my poetry class last week. “Yes, I am.”

  “Come to my apartment, OK?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “You can park right in the building. I’ll tell them to save a space for you.” She gave me an address on East Sixty-third Street and I promised to be there at seven.

  Then I called Jack and let him know.

  —

  New York is many worlds. It’s a cliché to say that the richest and poorest people in the country live there, but it’s a dramatic truth when you see it for yourself. Arlene Hopkins was neither, but she certainly tended more to the brighter end of the spectrum. My car was accepted courteously and I went up to the lobby level and found the elevator that would take me to her apartment, passing through security first. I half expected to be asked to turn out my pockets and submit to a metal detector, but the uniformed man let me through with a tight smile after comparing my name with one on a list. I rode up a swift elevator to the eleventh floor and found Arlene Hopkins out in the corridor, awaiting me.

  “Come on in,” she said cordially, her voice and dress so different from what I had encountered in her office that I wondered whether she might be the good twin. “I’ll take your coat. We can have a drink in the living room before we sit down.”

  The apartment was spectacular. One wall of the huge living room was mostly glass, and the view, unobscured, was south with glimpses of Central Park to the west and to the east of the East River.

  “It’s very beautiful,” I said. I was wearing a brown pants outfit that I considered more than casual, but my hostess was in tight black pants and a white silk blouse with ruffles and frills that seemed out of character for the woman in the pin-striped suit at the office.

  “I enjoy living here. What will you drink?” Canapés were already out on a table with white cocktail napkins imprinted with ARH in a small pile near them.

  “White wine would be fine.” I had noticed a bottle on her bar and decided I could tolerate a glass or two before driving home.

  She took care of it all quickly and sat down in a chair and crossed her legs as though she was used to being comfortable there. “We got off to a bad start,” she said, repeating what she had said on the answering machine. “I had a lot of reasons not to want to answer your questions. Those reasons are moot now, and I want to be open and forthright. I know you suspect me of having done something duplicitous.”

  “I don’t suspect you at all. I’ve had time to think over what I’ve learned, and I’ve learned a great deal since I spoke to you.”

  “Let me explain anyway. You’ve heard we’re breaking up, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry and surprised.”

  “It’s probably been incubating for a long time. If you think divorce is tough, you should try splitting a company in two. But he has his lawyer and I have mine, and things will work out somehow. The reason I was less than forthcoming is that I was afraid of losing Martin and the company.”

  “Ms. Hopkins—”

  “Arlene, please. May I call you Chris?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s be as informal as we can. We’ll never see each other again after tonight, but I have the feeling neither you nor I will ever forget this meeting.”

  The way she said it gave me a chill. “I don’t need or want to hear about your personal life. What I’m interested in is finding Natalie Gordon, dead or alive. If you know anything, please tell me.”

  “I had a feeling about her,” she said, leaning back comfortably, “a feeling that she was trying to upgrade herself, that she was a hick intent on learning to be a big-city woman, and the person she picked to imitate was me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She would ask me about my cosmetics, my perfume, the name of the company that made my bags and shoes, and then she would turn up with not exactly the same things but similar ones. She left her lipstick in the ladies’ room once and I picked it up, thinking it was mine. She wore a pair of shoes once that I recognized as this winter’s update of the pair I had bought last winter.”

  “She admired you,” I said. “You’re a gorgeous woman and you dress magnificently.” I had no intention of complimenting her; I was merely stating what was clearly true, but she nearly blushed as I said it. “She was a small-town girl from nowhere and you were the big-city success.”

  “I hope you don’t flatter everyone this way.”

  “I don’t and it isn’t flattery.”

  “Maybe I saw myself in her then,” Arlene said thoughtfully. “I have a reputation for being driven and I worked hard to earn it. I have to succeed; there are things I need that other people merely want. I can’t relinquish
control unless I have absolute confidence in the person I hand over the control to. Marty is one of the few.” She took a sip of her drink. “Was.”

  I really didn’t want to hear a recap of her love affair. “Tell me about Natalie.”

  “I hated her from the moment I saw her.”

  I took another canapé and a sip of wine. A woman men loved and women hated. “But you agreed to hire her.”

  “Marty wanted her and she would work for him more than for me. Wormy thought she was hot stuff. Her resumé was great, her references golden. I didn’t steal them, Chris. I had no reason to. Nor did I ‘borrow’ them. And Wormy’s clean. She leaves that office at night and becomes a mother. She doesn’t think till the next morning.”

  A bell rang and I looked toward the sound.

  “That’s dinner. Grab a couple more and bring your glass along.”

  I followed her over the thick carpet into a kitchen that rivaled the Gordons’, except that it was smaller. She put down her glass and opened a microwave oven. Out came two marvelous-looking Cornish hens, stuffed, with vegetables on the side.

  “Want to take my glass in?”

  “Sure.” I picked up her drink and followed her into the dining room. The table was glass and steel and set with place mats, fine china, sterling silver, and crystal.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “I like nice things.”

  Nice things was an understatement. We sat opposite each other and she went back for a bottle of bubbly water and the bottle of wine.

  “Marty and I met seven years ago,” she said when we were eating. “It happened. He’s married and I didn’t care. Having children isn’t at the top of my list of priorities. Also I like living alone. At some point, we realized we were potentially a team in more ways than one. That’s when Hopkins and Jewell was born. We had a good run and it’s over. Someday someone’ll write a book about it, but it won’t be me.

  “But it’s Natalie you’re interested in,” she said, getting back on track with, I thought, some reluctance. She wanted to talk about the relationship; she would continue to make lots of money doing what she enjoyed doing, but she would miss the man. I could sympathize with her.

  “Right,” I said.