by Leslie Meier
“But if she didn’t kill herself, that means somebody must have killed her.”
“Exactly.” Dante raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“Aren’t the cops investigating? Your mom was a high profile person; her death got a lot of press. The police would be under a lot of pressure to conduct a thorough investigation.”
“That’s what they claim, but you can’t always believe them.” He paused and pulled out his wallet, producing a business card. “The investigating detective gave me this,” he said, pushing it across the table.
“Don’t you want it?” Lucy picked up the card, which had Detective Lieutenant Tim McGuire’s name printed on it, along with his precinct and contact info.
He shook his head. “Never trust a cop. That’s what Tito always used to say, and I think he was right.” He snorted. “Only on that one thing, mind you. Everything else was crap.”
Lucy smiled, tucking the card into her pocket. “I hope you’ll stay in touch, let me know how you’re doing.”
Dante gave her a dubious glance. “That sounds suspiciously like a promise you must have made to my mother.”
“Nope. I’ve always been fond of you, ever since you were in diapers. And I can’t help it—I admit it—I have this strong mothering urge.”
He stood and gave her a hug. “Well, thanks. You can be my de facto mom.”
“You’ve got a deal,” she said, returning the hug.
* * *
Lucy thought over what Dante had told her as she walked toward Lexington Avenue and the subway, and found she wasn’t as convinced as he was of Beth’s honesty. There had been times when Beth lied to her, mostly little fibs about borrowing a pair of pantyhose or skipping an arranged meeting, usually because some guy asked her out, and claiming she’d forgotten it. Lucy also knew that people who were planning to commit suicide could be quite cagey, and often were careful to give no hint of their intentions to loved ones, who were completely taken by surprise. But even bearing all that in mind, she doubted that Beth had taken her own life.
Lucy was marching along Sixty-Ninth Street, which was lined with large apartment buildings, when the jutting canopy of one caught her eye. She’d seen it before, she thought, trying to remember where or why it suddenly seemed so important to place it. Then it hit her. It had been pictured in a news story about Beth’s death. She stopped in her tracks. This was it.... This was Beth’s building. She looked up, past the rows and rows of windows, but couldn’t see the penthouse, which was set back. Her eyes fell and she quickly scanned the sidewalk, looking for what? Traces of Beth? She shuddered and, feeling rather woozy, began to sway on her feet.
The doorman, who had just stepped out of the building, noticed and caught her before she fell. “Come on in and sit down,” he urged, supporting her and leading her into the lobby. There he placed her on a nubby gray sofa, next to a ficus tree, and went to get a glass of water.
Lucy sat with her head between her knees, taking deep breaths. When the doorman returned, she was sitting up and feeling well enough to sip the water.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . . you see . . . I knew Beth Blake. She was an old friend.”
“That was terrible,” said the doorman. He was a pleasant-looking guy in his sixties, and Lucy suspected he was a retired policeman, or even military. Or maybe it was just his uniform, with its double row of brass buttons. “Everybody in the building is pretty upset.”
“I’m just sick about it. I’m at a complete loss.” Lucy had a sudden brain wave. “Was she close to anyone here? Is there anyone I could talk to?”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I doubt anybody here could tell you anything. The Blakes were up there, in the penthouse, and it’s not like she bumped into her neighbors in the hall or anything. This is New York—people keep to themselves.”
Lucy suspected she might have gone too far. The doorman was there to protect the privacy of the building’s residents and he wasn’t going to allow her to intrude on their peace and quiet. “I wonder,” she asked, thinking aloud. “Did you see anything odd that day, the day Beth, I mean Mrs. Blake, died? Anything out of the ordinary?”
He was clearly losing patience with her. “You mean apart from the fact that one of the residents took a dive off the twenty-second floor?”
Lucy sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with a worn tissue she found in her pocket. “I just can’t believe she killed herself.”
He sighed. “I wish I could help you, but the fact is, I wasn’t here. It was street-cleaning day, and some of the tenants have me move their cars for them, so they don’t get parking tickets. I heard the sirens, of course, but I never guessed it was all for my building. When I got back all hell had broke loose and the street was full of cop cars and flashing lights and ambulances. Too late for the lady.”
Familiar with tragedy, Lucy could picture the scene. “It must have been awful.”
“You said it.” His voice had a definite note of finality.
“I’ll be going. Thanks for your help.”
“Here,” he said, pulling a lollipop from his pocket. “I keep ’em for the kids. It’ll raise your blood sugar.”
Lucy unwrapped the pop as she left the white brick building, and when she tucked the cellophane into her pocket she found the business card Dante had given her. She pulled it out and studied it as she walked along, sucking the lolly, only to discover the precinct was on the next block. It was worth a try. Cops worked on Sundays, didn’t they?
The precinct was a squat brick building, squeezed between a couple of town houses that had been subdivided into apartments, and Lucy wouldn’t necessarily have identified it except for the blue light over the door. Stepping inside, she noted the reception area was grubby and smelled of sweat and disinfectant. A uniformed officer was sitting behind a thick sheet of Plexiglas, which had a few holes drilled in it to allow communication with the public, if the public yelled. Lucy didn’t feel up to yelling, so she slipped Detective McGuire’s card through the little slot at the bottom of the Plexiglas barrier.
The officer apparently didn’t feel up to speaking either, but returned the card and tilted his head to the side, indicating a man in plainclothes who had just stepped through a scarred metal door and was closing it behind him.
“Excuse me,” said Lucy, showing him the card. “I’d like to speak with you, if you have a moment.”
“A moment’s all I got,” he answered in a gruff voice. Detective McGuire was in his fifties, with a broad, freckled, Irish face and a graying buzz cut. He was dressed in loose track pants, a dark blue windbreaker over a black polo shirt, and running shoes.
“It’s about Beth Blake, the woman who fell to her death last week.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
Lucy sensed she’d better be brief and go straight to the heart of the matter. “Well, I was talking with the doorman and he said he wasn’t in the building when it happened. That means somebody could have gotten into the building, somebody who shouldn’t have been there. Maybe a thief and she discovered him, something like that, and he pushed her off the balcony?”
“Look,” he said, meeting her eyes with his baby blues, “I’m sure you want to be helpful and all, but we investigated thoroughly and the lady took her own life. If you need some help dealing with this, we have a list of resources that I can give you.”
“You say you investigated thoroughly, but I know family members who say—”
“I’m sure they don’t think we did enough. I understand that. Suicide is hard for families to accept. But take my word for it, there is no evidence of any foul play. The building has CCTV, and nobody came or went while the doorman was moving cars, except for one elderly woman with her little white dog.” He scratched his head. “I don’t think Mrs. Feinstrom from twenty-two A has a habit of pushing people off balconies, do you?”
Lucy was willing to explore the idea. She knew some pretty tough old ladies back in Tinker’s Cove, but Det
ective McGuire was clearly impatient to be on his way.
“Thanks for your time,” she said, as he brushed past her. He was pulling the door open when she had an idea. “Oh, wait. Could that CCTV tape be tampered with? That happens in TV shows all the time.”
McGuire turned and glared at her. “Didn’t happen here,” he growled, turning on his heel and letting the door close behind him.
Chapter Five
There was a lot of turbulence on the Sunday evening flight home, which matched Lucy’s emotions. The days following a death of a friend or family member are always something of a roller coaster, and Lucy’s emotions rose and fell with the plane’s altitude. It was time to put it all behind her, she thought, as the jet cruised serenely through fields of clouds. Then there would be a sudden lurch and she’d wonder if there was some conspiracy afoot, some reason the police were so eager to close the case. Then there were the drops through thin air, accompanied by panicked screams and grabs for the armrests that filled her with despair. Beth was dead and it didn’t make any sense. They said she killed herself, but she had everything to live for.
But if she hadn’t killed herself, somebody else had to have hurled her off that balcony. Unless, thought Lucy as the plane rose through the clouds and burst into the pink glow of the setting sun, it was a terrible, dreadful accident. That was really too much to bear, she thought, with an involuntary gasp. Beth falling because she reached too far, or because a railing gave way? But that couldn’t be right—the investigators would have found the broken railing. Maybe she had plants growing on the balcony . . . maybe she was plucking off dead leaves and lost her balance.
Not Beth, thought Lucy. Beth didn’t care the least bit about plants or gardening, and if there were decorative plants on the balcony they would most certainly have been tended by a professional gardener. Beth wouldn’t have risked her manicure, much less her life, to tidy up a few brown leaves.
Lucy turned and gazed out the little window, noticing that the sky was darkening. She didn’t want to see her anxious reflection in the glass, so she closed the shade and opened the book that had been lying in her lap, unread. She turned on the overhead light and settled back to read, but the words made no sense to her. Instead of paper and ink, she saw Beth’s husbands, one by one. Husbands were always prime suspects and, from what Dante told her, Beth’s husbands were certainly not above suspicion. There was Gabe Thomas, apparently still running that crazy Angel Brigade outfit, which Beth claimed was all about control. The artist, Tito Wilkins, had burst onto the art scene straight out of the crime-ridden projects in the South Bronx. As for the chiropractor, Lucy had always harbored a suspicion that chiropractic bordered on quack medicine. But of the four, Lucy tended to think that Jeremy Blake had the most to gain from Beth’s death because he was still deeply involved with her and stood to lose not only money, but perhaps even his reputation in the divorce.
The captain announced that passengers should prepare for landing, and Lucy checked that her tray was securely latched, her seat was in the upright position, and her seat belt was fastened. She leaned back, took a deep breath, and came to the conclusion that Beth must have been murdered by one of her husbands. But which one? And why? And most difficult of all, Lucy had to make peace with the fact that she would probably never know.
* * *
Lucy got to work bright and early Monday morning, happy to be back in her familiar routine. Phyllis was at her desk behind the reception counter, almost hidden by an enormous bunch of pink and magenta peonies. She was wearing a blouse in an unusually subdued shade of pale rose, but had gone with magenta for her hair and nails.
“Oh, peonies,” moaned Lucy, leaning in for a sniff of their lovely scent. “I have peony envy—I’m lucky if I get one or two blooms on my bushes.”
“Wilf grows them,” said Phyllis, referring to her husband. “He’s got some secret formula. He won’t even tell me what he does.”
“Probably horse manure,” offered Ted, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee. He was adding some cream when he turned to Lucy and, as if suddenly inspired, asked, “How was your weekend?”
Lucy was taken aback, since Ted rarely bothered with small talk. “Not great,” she replied. “I was in New York, at the funeral of one of my college friends.”
“Uh, sorry.” Ted sat down at his desk, chagrined that his effort to be sociable had backfired. “I didn’t know.”
“You would if you paid attention,” observed Phyllis. “Lucy left early on Friday to catch a plane.”
Ted was quick to defend himself. “I guess I had other things on my mind, like our falling subscription rate and the rising cost of newsprint.”
“It’s okay,” said Lucy, seating herself at her desk and turning on her computer. “I’m okay. It’s all behind me now and I’m a forward-looking person.”
“Good. I want you to give the harbormaster a call. I heard there was some vandalism at the herring run and . . .” He stopped in midsentence as the door flew open and the little jangling bell announced the arrival of Corney Clark. Corney, as executive director of the Tinker’s Cove Chamber of Commerce, was a frequent caller at the paper and a reliable source of news.
“What’s up, Corney?” asked Lucy. She was wondering how Corney, who wasn’t getting any younger, always managed to look so good. It was her huge smile, Lucy decided, and her youthful, sporty clothes. Today Corney was wearing a striped French top and light cashmere cardigan, skinny black pants, and sporty red driving shoes.
“You may well ask,” she answered, with a sigh, as she sank into the chair Ted kept for visitors next to his desk. “Sylvia Bickford is driving me insane.”
“She tends to do that,” said Phyllis. “Just ask Warren.”
“I don’t know how that poor, sweet man manages to put up with her,” said Corney, who was digging in her tote bag.
“He’s either genuinely sweet and good, or he’s amusing himself by thinking up various ways of killing her,” said Lucy.
“I vote for the latter.” Corney produced a sheaf of paper, which she waved about for emphasis. “This is Sylvia’s plan for Silver Anniversary Weekend, which she expects the chamber to organize and support. She wants ads, she wants banners—the works—but so far she hasn’t come up with a penny.” Corney paused and batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at Ted. “Te-e-ed, I don’t suppose you could give us some free coverage, like maybe a special supplement? A lot of businesses are going to have twenty-five percent off sales. The Queen Vic and some of the B and Bs are offering special anniversary packages.”
“It depends on how many businesses buy ads,” said Ted. “The more ads, the bigger the supplement.”
“Could you give the advertisers a break on rates?” asked Corney.
“How about this? I’ll cut the rates for the bigger ads. The more space they buy the better the deal.”
“I knew I could count on you.” Corney patted his hand. “And maybe Lucy could write some feature stories about couples who’ve been married for twenty-five or more years?”
“Whose idea is that?” Lucy wasn’t enthusiastic about adding a series of lengthy interviews to her already full work schedule.
“Sylvia’s, of course. And she wants her marriage to be the focus of the story.”
Lucy was incredulous. “Sylvia wants me to write a glowing story about her marriage? I can’t do it. I’ll be a laughing stock. I’ll lose all credibility, right, Ted?”
Ted was chewing his lip thoughtfully. “I dunno, Lucy. Think of it as a challenge. It could be hilarious, if you do it right. Tongue in cheek, you know? Besides, we don’t have space for it this week. You’ve got a whole week to work on it.”
“Oh, Lucy, I know you can do it. You’ve got such a way with words,” exclaimed Corney, hopping to her feet. “I gotta be going. Sylvia wants to see me at nine a.m. on the dot.” She handed the news release to Ted. “This is the schedule, and some suggestions for coverage from Sylvia. See ya!” With those parting words she breezed out the
door, leaving the little bell jangling in her wake.
Ted watched her leave, then turned his attention to the papers she’d given him, saving the schedule and tossing the rest into the circular file.
“So, Lucy, who are you going to interview? Who are the happiest couples in Tinker’s Cove?” Phyllis was grinning mischievously.
“I dunno. How about you and Wilf?”
“Oh, no. We’re practically newlyweds.” It was true. Phyllis and Wilf had found each other rather late in life and had only been married for a few years.
“Too bad. I’m open to suggestions, if you can think of anybody.”
By the time the deadline rolled around on Wednesday, Lucy had a list of four couples to interview for her story. Instead of taking the afternoon off, as she usually did, Lucy headed to the Community Church to interview Reverend Marge Harvey and her husband, Hawley. When she arrived at the simple clapboard building she found Reverend Marge and her husband out on the lawn, working on the sign that announced the upcoming sermon. Reverend Marge was holding a large box of black letters and was handing them, one at a time, to Hawley, who was placing them on the sign.
“Marge, this doesn’t look right,” said Hawley, stepping back. He was a rather short, chubby man, who wore his long, gray hair in a ponytail. Like most of the men in town, he favored khaki pants and plaid flannel shirts, and was wearing a sturdy pair of hiking shoes. “I don’t think redemption has two p’s.”
“I think it does, like exaggerate has two g’s.” Reverend Marge was dressed similarly, in khaki pants and a polo shirt, with matching hiking shoes.