Shakily, I went to the kitchen for the coffee I had stashed in the thermos. I had just started pouring a cup when there was a sharp rapping on the front door. It turned me to cement. The key! I had to hide the key! Darting back into the living room, I stuffed the note and key under the cushion of the wing chair. Then I went to the door.
I did not know the man on the porch. He looked about my age, perhaps forty-five, with a colorless buzz cut and hazel eyes that indicated they had seen everything and didn't like most of it. His mouth pursed with the same sentiment. Even at this hour he had on a tan suit that contrasted nicely with his olive skin. A political candidate? But no. Candidates smiled at you and didn't show up at seven A.M.
He took out a black leather case and flipped the top down. It showed a silver badge. "I'm Detective Marselli, Suffolk Homicide. You're Mrs. Laine?"
"Uh-yes. Delhi Laine. Come in." I unlocked the screen door and extended it all the way, and then led him into the living room. Thank God I had not brought my pillow and sheet downstairs and left them on the sofa like a derelict bunking down. I sat in the wing chair, on top of Margaret's key, and watched him settle himself on the striped couch across from me.
"Too early for you?" He sounded as if he hoped it was.
"No, I get up early. Want coffee?"
"No.'
We stared at each other.
"You found Mr. Singh when you were working at the bookstore?"
So I explained. I told him about how I had found Margaret and even mentioned Lily. But when I explained about deciding to keep the bookstore open, his head jerked up.
"You don't work there?"
"No. But I thought Margaret would need the money, so I kept it open"
"You aren't employed there?"
"No, we're just friends. I'd fill in sometimes when she needed help. I'm a bookseller too."
"Do you know if she kept a lot of money in the store? Or removed it at night?"
"I don't. Sorry."
"How about security: Was the shop alarmed?"
"Alarmed?" For a moment I pictured the leather couches and oriental rugs upset at the goings-on. "Oh. No. At least I never saw any keypad"
And then he erupted. "Let me understand this: You didn't really work there, you don't know squat about how she handled the money or locked up at night. Yet you suddenly decided to play store, totally screwing up a crime scene!"
I jumped. Who did he think he was talking to? "I wasn't `playing store' ! I'd worked there before. Many times. I even checked with Officer Kazazian and he said to go ahead!"
"Maybe because you didn't tell him about the ladder being tampered with. That didn't set off any alarms?"
I was almost too shocked to answer. "I called him as soon as I saw it! He should have checked it anyway. He's the policeman."
"Allegedly." But he was calming down. "Okay. You were in the shop, you smelled something bad and went downstairs and found Mr. Singh."
"Actually my daughter noticed the smell. I have allergies this time of year; her nose is much better. I mean, I did smell something, but it seemed sweet like, you know, aftershave." I was babbling, no doubt relieved that he was no longer furious.
He eyed me curiously, as if the men I knew had strange tastes in toiletries. "But you knew Mr. Singh was in there."
"Of course not! How could I?"
"What was your relationship with him?"
"Amil? We didn't really have a relationship. I saw him when I went to visit Margaret."
"Oh please, Ms. Laine. You went to his house"
"But-that was after he disappeared! I was trying to find him."
He leaned toward me, his thighs muscular in his tan suit pants. An attractive man, I realized, though exhaustion was making his eyelids droopy. "Why were you looking for him?"
"Because I told Alex Kazazian I would. He told me he wanted to talk to him."
This detective said everything with his eyes. Now they slanted skeptically. "So as a good citizen, helping out the police. How did you know where he lived?"
"I didn't. Until I found out from the university. Amil was, had been, a grad student there." Before he could ask why the university would tell me, I added, "My husband teaches at Stony Brook. Dr. Colin Fitzhugh. They weren't sure Amil was still at that address, so I went to the house. But I called the police as soon as I found out!"
He seemed to accept that. Or perhaps the fact that I had a husband who was a professor made it less likely that Amil and I had been dancing cheek-to-cheek. "Was Mr. Singh involved romantically with anyone? Did he have a girlfriend?"
"I don't know. He was very attractive." Uh-oh. "On the other hand, he got into a lot of fights," I added quickly.
"Fights? What kind of fights?"
I explained what had happened with Margaret. "And there was the instructor at Stony Brook. He cost her her tenure."
"Would you like to tell me what you're talking about?"
I did. He made more notes.
"Who else did he have altercations with?"
"His housemates, I think. At least one of them, Russell Patterson; he seems to hate him. I don't know why," I added, to forestall more sarcastic questions.
He shifted against the striped sofa back, which was a little too low to support his shoulders comfortably. "Did you have fights with Mr. Singh?"
"Me? Of course not! Why would I have fights with him? I hardly knew him. Everyone thought he was charming. Margaret certainly liked him. And Shara Patterson. And that woman at the university. I don't think it was a woman anyway. More like an angry husband. Or a drug deal gone wrong."
That head jerk again. "Why a drug deal?"
I hesitated. "When Amil took out his wallet on Friday to write down his phone number, the wallet seemed stuffed with money. A lot of bills."
He held up a callused palm-a home do-it-yourselfer? "Stop. Right. There" He enunciated very slowly, as if speaking to someone who was mentally challenged. "Why was this man you `hardly know' giving you his phone number?"
Damn. "I don't know! When I saw him in the shop Friday, he seemed upset and wanted to tell me something about Margaret. Then he saw someone out the window and stopped. I don't know who. Then he wrote down his number on a card and said to call him Saturday."
His head found the wall behind him and he leaned against it, eyes closed. "How long, Ms. Laine?"
I shivered. "How long what?"
"How long would it have taken you to realize that this is information that the police needs to know?"
I accepted the question as rhetorical.
"So he was carrying a lot of money and was upset with Margaret Weller. And for some reason he wanted to confide in you"
I shrugged. "I have kids."
He accepted the shorthand of my being a mother figure. "Any idea at all what he wanted to tell you? Problems on the job?"
"I asked Margaret after he pushed the coffee back at her, and she said that she was going to have to let him go. But-mostly she was acting like it was just an accident, that he hadn't meant anything. When I said she should call the police, she thought that was silly." I could not tell if he thought it was silly too. "But it burned her face! It could have blinded her. To me that's assault."
"Battery," he corrected absently.
Whatever
"Anything else you've forgotten to tell me?"
"Actually, there is," I confessed. "When I reopened the shop, I moved the shirt that had been under Margaret's head and the Nike, and put them out next to the trash. I didn't want customers to fall over them. I didn't know they were evidence."
I expected a tirade, but he only looked interested. "So you did that." Then he flipped back several pages in his notebook. "So you don't know if Ms. Weller kept a lot of cash in the shop."
I almost laughed. "There's not that much cash in a used book business. Any big sales would be by credit card. But Margaret can tell you that when she's conscious."
He stood up. "Ms. Weller won't be telling anybody anything."
"What
?" My hand flew to my throat. In all yesterday's craziness, I hadn't called the hospital.
"She's in a coma. And as far as you're concerned, the shop's closed."
"Don't worry! You couldn't pay me to go back there. Not after finding Amil. The smell alone. Not after two people I know were attacked there!"
He watched me with a small smile that was not heartwarming.
Shut up, Delhi.
"You have the key?"
For a horrible second I thought he meant the one she had sent me in the mail. How did he even know? Then I realized he meant the key to the bookshop.
He held out his hand.
I found my woven bag on the kitchen table and fished out my knot of keys. I wasn't sure why my fingers were shaking, but it took a long time to untwist the silver key from the double ring.
I dropped it into his outstretched palm.
"I'll be back," he warned. "There's too much that doesn't make sense." He handed me a card with a raised line drawing of a bull inside a circle, the Suffolk County logo. I saw that his full name was Francis X. Marselli. With his hand on the front doorjamb, he added, "Thank you, Ms. Laine. You've been a veritable fount of information."
I knew he was referencing my academic connections, ironically. But it sounded more teasing than mean-spirited. And I felt happy that a real policeman was finally in charge.
It wasn't until he was halfway down the front path of bobbing hosta wands and daylilies that I remembered that Margaret's key might unlock a drawer in the bookshop that I was now banned from.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I didn't go down to The Old Frigate. How could I? Instead I reminded myself that it was more likely that Margaret would hide something valuable in her house. She would have remembered that I had a house key from the times I had watered her plants when she and Lily were traveling. Leaving something in a public place like the bookshop was just too risky.
Rather than park outside her house, I drove to the residents' lot and got the last parking space. Or, rather, I created it. A car was waiting, signal on, as a motorcycle backed out of the only vacancy. Although the car pulling in had a New York license plate, I could see that it did not have a village sticker.
As the family started unloading, I slid out of my van and approached them. "If you don't have a permit to park here, it's a hundred-dollar fine."
The father, pale behind blue sunglasses, gave me a doubtful stare. "They really ticket you?"
I thought of Randolph MacWharton. "All the time. I bet some of these cars already have fines."
He didn't stop to look. I heard some expletive about my town as he climbed back in the driver's side and slammed the door. Understandable. But he would just have to look harder.
I parked and walked the several blocks up the hill to Margaret's house. It was one of Port Lewis' original Victorians and had been on the annual house tour several times. Rising behind an ornate wrought-iron fence, it would have been equally at home in San Francisco. Margaret and Lily had turned it into a Painted Lady, with the body a light coffee, and the gingerbread trim painted a deep pink, sky blue, and mauve. Unlike many of the Port Lewis Victorians, it had not been built by a sea captain but by the town doctor.
As I reached the walkway, I saw that the ancient tin bathtub planter was bursting with red Everblooming begonias. Several days' worth of the New York Times in blue plastic wrappers crowded the door, a bad signal to give. I would try to call and have delivery suspended. Unlocking the beveled glass door, I scooped up the newspapers, and stepped in. The ornate hall, a perfect recreation of a Victorian entrance with a large armoire of mirrors and brass hooks, had not had time to develop any stale odors. But there was an eerie stillness, as if the house had sensed what happened to its owners.
The hallway was a bit of whimsy. You expected to enter a parlor of carved oak, marble-topped tables, and stuffed pheasants behind convex glass. Instead you found yourself in the living room of a sophisticated collector of art and artifacts, a room in which the off-white furniture seemed to disappear as the walls of glass cases sparkled instead. But today something was wrong. Several of the cases that at Christmas had held exquisite masks, antique Balinese puppets and the eighteenth-century stoneware that Margaret loved were now empty. It looked like a museum where the display was being changed. Had they had to sell some of their collection? Had someone broken in? I was relieved to see that the more traditional dining room with its cabinets of early Wedgwood and Staffordshire looked complete.
At the back of the first floor was Margaret's office. Books that she would never keep in the shop, her personal collection, were shelved here. Surely the lock that fit the key would be there.
Pushing open the white-painted door, I reared back in shock. Like the keys on a derelict piano, books had been pulled from the shelves, and then stuffed unevenly back. A precarious stack tilted on the cherry coffee table. Two wooden file drawers stood open.
I was too late! I cursed myself for not paying attention to the mail. If I had opened the package Saturday, I could have gotten here first. But by now, Wednesday, everyone knew that Margaret was in the hospital. Someone had searched the bookshop-of course they would look here!
Disheartened, I moved over to the beautiful cherrywood desk, noting a disarray of papers that Margaret would never have left. Then I stared into the hanging files. They had been pushed back and forth, but not pulled out. The lock to one side, a silver oval, was unscratched. Experimentally, I removed the key from the coin section of my wallet and brought it to the lock. Wrong color, wrong brand. The cabinet had probably not even been locked.
Rapidly, I checked the desk drawers and opened a closet. I looked for another piece of furniture with a keyhole, and anywhere a locked box might be hidden. Nothing. Maybe I wasn't too late after all.
There was still the upstairs. I had never been anywhere but on the ground floor, and felt hesitant about invading Margaret's privacy. Would she have even left me a key to somewhere in her bedroom? But as I was debating it, I heard the creaking of steps on the porch outside. The mailman? No, Margaret had a post office box. Then I froze at the brisk tapping of metal against metal. I pictured the brass door knocker in the shape of a woman's hand being lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped.
Finally the rapping stopped and there were more creaking sounds from the steps. Edging into the living room I looked out and saw with relief that a brown truck was pulling away. Sometimes an intruder is only the UPS man.
But it made me conscious of where I was and what I was doing. I would run up the wide staircase, scan the rooms for anything with a lock, and then get out.
At first I wasn't sure that Margaret's bedroom was hers. There was a brass bed with a crazy quilt made of dark velvet pieces that I could imagine her sleeping in. But the rest of the furniture was haphazard, the kind of modern wooden dressers that companies like IKEA sold and lamps that could have come from any thrift store. Still, the room held the now-muffled fruity scent of Shalimar, her perfume. I opened the narrow closet and, reassured, saw her silk blouses and long, old-fashioned skirts. Of course this was Margaret's room, Margaret my friend!
And yet-I was surprised by the paintings on the walls. The most striking, over the brass bed, was of a younger Margaret in a checked western shirt, with flowing chestnut hair and an enigmatic smile. She looked beautiful and wild. I checked to see if it was a self-portrait, but the artist was a W. Weston. Two small seascapes next to the door had rocky cliffs that reminded me of the Pacific coastline; both had been done by an artist named Becca Pym. I was disappointed not to see any of Margaret's own artwork, but she had said she knew a lot of artists.
Quickly I checked the back of the closet, under the bed, and anywhere else a box using a key might be stored. A large jewelry box stood on one of the dressers. It was beautifully handcrafted of walnut and looked expensive, but it didn't have a lock.
I looked into the other rooms on my way out. Except for Lily's, they had the impersonal hospitality of bedrooms created fo
r overnight guests. But Lily's room troubled me. It was decorated the way I would have expected, with heavy dark green velvet drapes, a matching lustrous bedspread and heavy brass candle sconces. But when I pulled open the closet door, it was completely bare inside. A scent of cedar lingered, but not one piece of clothing, not one purse or shoe, remained.
It made my head spin. Had Margaret spent Friday afternoon packing up every single thing Lily owned? Was she that upset by her death? And if she had, where were the cartons?
I made a very quick tour of the basement-not a happy experience-and found a padlocked shed out near the garage. But the key did not come close to fitting the lock. I realized reluctantly that the answer to my search must lay in the bookshop after all.
Walking back down into the village, I tried to think how I could search inside The Old Frigate without disobeying Detective Marselli's directive. Perhaps when he told me the shop was closed to me, he meant I could not work there anymore. Maybe I could use the excuse of putting a sign, CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, on the inside of the door, and have a rapid look around while I was installing it. Then I remembered that the yellow crime scene tape was all the message people would need. Some days I wasn't the coldest beer in the fridge.
When I reached The Old Frigate, the tape still hung across the door, but it had a morning-after-the-party droop; one of its corners was even trailing to the sidewalk. There was no guard posted outside.
I glanced through the glass of the front door, just as any curious tourist might. No lights were on and no one was moving around inside. Looking up and down the street, I could not see any police cars. Evidently their investigation was finished. While watching the street, I pushed down on the front door lever with my thumb. The shop was locked.
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