A Drunkard's Path

by Clare O'Donohue

  I hadn’t thought of that. Had Sandra changed her mind since the confrontation in the bathroom and decided to tell me what was going on with Oliver? And if she was, only Oliver would have reason to stop her.

  I was getting whiplash from changing suspects so much.

  We weren’t really getting anywhere, and across the street I could see a steady stream of customers going in and out of Someday Quilts. I let Carrie get back to unpacking coffee cups and I headed over to the shop.

  Kennette was chatting with Bill Vogel, an artist who drove up from Spuyten Duyvil once a month to buy fabric. He made large-scale pieces that were part sculpture, part art quilt and, I was told, sold for thousands. He swore by my grandmother’s taste in fabric and would only buy from her.

  “Heya, Nell.” He kissed my cheek. “I love Kennette. Where did you find her?”

  “She sort of found us,” I said. “We take art classes together.”

  “Another artist?” Bill smiled at Kennette. “What’s your medium?”

  “We’re taking a drawing class from Oliver White,” she said. “He’s wonderful.”

  “That’s one word for him,” Bill said. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s interesting,” I said, but I had a question of my own. “You know him?”

  Bill shook his head. “Not him. His reputation.”

  “Which is?”

  “He’s temperamental. He’s moody. He’s a pain.” He shrugged. “He’s an artist.”

  “He’s brilliant,” Kennette added.

  “That too,” Bill said. “And he’s worth a fortune. Or he was. I hear he’s giving it all away to some school.”

  “Our school,” I said.

  “What a surprisingly generous move.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “I don’t think he has any family.”

  Bill nodded. “Doesn’t surprise me. Rumor has it that he has a bit of a problem with women.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Love ’em and leave ’em. And not on the best of terms.”

  “That’s not fair,” Kennette jumped in. “You said you don’t even know him.”

  Bill patted her shoulder. “Absolutely right. The man’s work is amazing. Such emotion. Such depth,” he said. “What else matters?”

  My grandmother matters, I thought.

  “I’ll ring you up.” Kennette grabbed the fabric bolts Bill was holding.

  “Two yards of each,” he called after her.

  I grabbed Bill and pulled him toward the back of the shop.

  “I need you to tell me something,” I said.

  He leaned in, smiling. “What?”

  “When you said ‘not on the best of terms,’ what did you mean?”

  Bill stiffened. “A lot of old rumors. Don’t read too much into an old gossip like me.”

  I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. “I don’t care if he was a womanizer. I pretty much figured he was. What I want to know is whether you’ve ever heard that he had been violent with a woman.”

  I could see Bill squirm. “Oliver White is a very influential artist. And I have nothing but respect for him.” He moved away from me. “Give your grandmother my love.”

  He walked to the front of the store, paid for his purchases, and left without looking back.

  CHAPTER 19

  During my Monday ceramics class I could barely concentrate. Several times the vase I was supposed to be forming spun off the wheel. When the teacher came over to help me, the clay splattered on her foot.

  “I guess this isn’t my strongest medium,” I apologized.

  “It could be if you focused,” she said.

  I picked the clay up off the floor and tried again, but my eyes were on the clock.

  As soon as I had wrapped up my clay at the end of class, I was focused. I pushed ahead of the rest of the students and practically sprinted to the registrar’s office, making it there just before they closed up for lunch.

  “I’m a student here,” I said, out of breath and looking, I’m sure, quite alarming.

  “What happened? Is there a problem?” A man jumped from his desk and came over.

  “No. No problem.” I tried to calm down. I’d rehearsed what I would say and it was crucial that it sound relaxed. “I take a class with Oliver White. I just heard about the student who died.” I took a breath. “Sandra.”

  The man nodded. “Terrible tragedy. I understand she drowned.”

  “Who said that?” I had to ask, even though I knew it made me seem too curious.

  “The officer who was here earlier.”

  “Jesse Dewalt? About thirty, brown hair, glasses?”

  “No. An older man. Looked military. I don’t remember his name.” He stiffened. “Why are you interested?”

  “Oh.” I backed down a little. “The police have been asking a lot of us questions.”

  “Us?”

  “Those of us who knew Sandra.” I made a kind of sad face that I’m sure looked fake. “I didn’t get to know her as well as I would have liked, but I thought she was really talented.”

  “That’s what Oliver said,” he agreed. “So sad.”

  “We were thinking of sending a card and some flowers to her family, something for the funeral.” I paused. “Do you have contact information?”

  He looked at me for a moment then nodded. “Under the circumstances I guess it would be okay. I think it would be very nice for her family to know that she was part of the community of artists.”

  He walked into another room while I waited out front. Teachers and students were passing in the hallway, and I tried to keep one eye on the lookout for Chief Powell while not looking suspicious.

  Several minutes passed and I started to worry. What if he came back with someone who questioned my intentions or wanted the whole thing to go through Oliver? But just as I considered leaving, he returned with a file.

  “I’m sorry. I only have her home address. She left the in-case-of-emergency section blank.”

  “That’s okay.” I was improvising now. “I think she had a roommate. If you give me the address, I can ask her roommate about the family.”

  “Good idea.” He smiled and wrote the address on a piece of paper. “It’s very kind of you to do this.”

  I nodded. I don’t think kind was the word Jesse, my grandmother, or the killer would have used.

  Sandra’s apartment was about a five-minute drive from the school, in one of those large, nondescript apartment buildings that were built in the seventies. I’m sure it looked modern for about five minutes. Then it just looked soulless.

  According to the slip of paper she lived in 11G, so I headed up the elevator and onto the eleventh floor. I hadn’t quite figured out how to get into her apartment. I guess I thought it would come to me when I got there. Or maybe I’d get lucky and she would actually have a roommate. But no luck. I stood in front of the locked door, wondering what I should do next. Then I looked out the hallway window and got an idea.

  I opened the window and climbed onto the fire escape. One step, though, and I realized it was rickety. Each time my foot moved, the platform creaked as if it might pull away from the wall at any minute.

  “If I live through this, I’m calling the building inspector,” I said as a threat to no one in particular.

  I took a deep breath and tried to reassure myself.

  Don’t look down, I thought. I looked down.

  I took another step toward Sandra’s window.

  If it’s locked, I realized, I’m a complete idiot. The staircase swayed slightly underfoot.

  A dead idiot.

  I reached Sandra’s window and pulled it up. It opened so easily, I almost lost my balance. I grabbed hold of the sill and climbed in.

  Now what? I asked myself.

  The apartment was barely furnished. There were her art supplies from class and a couple of half-painted canvases lying on the floor. I needed to satisfy myself one last time that Sandra was not the artist Oliver claimed she was in class. I
went through the paintings one by one, studying them for anything that expressed a unique talent. I recognized each of them from class and they were, just as I remembered, nothing special. Oliver’s second assessment of her was more likely—she had no future as a painter. I wondered for a moment if I did, but this was hardly the time for introspection. I left the paintings and got back to the task at hand.

  Across the room an empty bottle of scotch and two glasses sat near a small TV. There was one wooden kitchen chair with paint spattered all over it.

  What could I possibly find in here?

  I walked into the other rooms and saw pretty much the same thing. In the bedroom an air mattress sat next to a bundle of blankets and a pile of clothes. The bathroom had a makeup bag and some toothpaste.

  It felt like a squatter lived here—more like a hideout than a home. Maybe she was on the run from something. Or, to be fair, maybe she was broke and caught up in the romance of being a starving artist. It might have been that Oliver was just trying to help her out. It was something Eleanor would have done.

  I walked into the galley kitchen and started opening cabinets. Nothing. To get at the last one, above the refrigerator, I had to use the wooden chair from the living room. I opened the cabinet and reached in.

  “Oh my God.” I jumped off the chair and took three steps back. I knew my heart was racing but I stopped myself from further retreat.

  You’re looking for a murderer and you let yourself get scared by a cockroach? I scolded myself.

  I climbed back onto the chair and forced myself to look deeper into the cabinet. There wasn’t just one cockroach but an extended family crawling around in the cabinet and, now that I was on the alert, on the floor as well. But there was also something else: a purple wallet in the back corner. I reached in.

  “Yuck. Yuck,” I said involuntarily as my hand moved inches away from a roach. I grabbed the wallet and threw it onto the counter.

  Once down from the chair, I took the wallet into the living room. There were no IDs, no credit cards. Nothing in the billfold. I opened the change purse and saw just a few coins. At first glance there was nothing special about them, but when I looked closer, I realized they were Canadian. Lily had been from Canada. Could this be her wallet?

  I went through the wallet one more time, checking every pocket. Deep inside the last one I felt something. A small piece of thick paper. I pulled it out. It was folded in half. When I opened it, I realized it was a black-and-white photo of a woman sitting on a bed. It looked a little like the photo Rich described. She was a woman about my age, sitting on a bed, wearing a polka-dot dress. But unlike Rich’s description, this woman wasn’t staring off into the distance. She was looking at the camera, smiling.

  Still, it could be the same woman, and if it was, it would connect Lily’s murder to Sandra’s. I knew the only way I could confirm my suspicions was if Rich saw the photo. But that would be stealing evidence in a murder investigation.

  Breaking and entering was one thing, but taking the wallet was another. If I did take the photo, I knew I couldn’t bring it to Jesse because he would want to know how I got it. And based on the way he had treated Rich the night of Lily’s murder, I wondered whether he’d ever show him this photo.

  I stood staring at the wallet for several minutes before working out a compromise. I took the photo and threw the wallet back into the cabinet. I could show the photo to Rich, then return it to the apartment. It might only take a couple of hours. Then I could go to Jesse with Sandra’s address. It was interfering, but only in a very limited way, and I could find out if he’d already been to the apartment and discovered what I had. I knew I was rationalizing a crime, but if Jesse had paid attention to Rich in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to.

  I put the chair back where I’d found it and left the apartment through the front door. I took the elevator down the eleven flights and walked to my car. I drove away in a haze. A few Canadian coins and an old photograph were the slimmest of ties, but in my gut I felt that Lily and Sandra must have known each other. The wallet wasn’t Sandra’s so it had to be Lily’s. Who keeps their own wallet in a kitchen cabinet? That’s where you hide something.

  But what was the connection? Could they have met here or in Canada? And what was Lily’s connection to Oliver? Maybe she was another wannabe artist that Oliver took under his wing.

  I was so focused on the investigation that I almost went through a red light. Luckily I stopped just in time. As I was waiting, two police cars crossed the intersection in front of me. One was from Archers Rest and the other from Morristown. And they were headed in the direction of Sandra’s apartment.

  I could see that Greg was driving the Archers Rest car and Jesse was staring out the front window. Or did he look to the side and see me? I couldn’t tell. I ran my finger across the photo in my lap, trying to convince myself that I had done the right thing. I took it as a good sign that no one in the Morristown car, including Chief Powell, saw me.

  My relief was short-lived because now I had a bigger problem. Maybe I’d gotten away with busting into Sandra’s apartment, but that was just the first part of my plan. How was I going to get the photo back into evidence without admitting what I’d done? Suddenly I realized that my enthusiasm, or what Eleanor would call meddling, might have jeopardized the entire investigation. It was the closest I’d come in days to seeing why Jesse wanted me to stay out of it.

  CHAPTER 20

  When I called Susanne, she promised to have Rich come to her place. What she didn’t tell me was that Natalie, Bernie, Carrie, and Maggie would be there as well.

  “We’re Eleanor’s friends, and if she’s getting involved with a killer, then we want to know,” Bernie said before I even sat down.

  “I don’t want to get you involved,” I told them. “What I did was illegal.”

  Natalie put a cup of tea in front of me. “As of right now, we’re accomplices.”

  I looked around. I could see the worry in their faces and they could probably see it in mine. I wasn’t just concerned about my grandmother. There was a very real possibility that Jesse would lock up an entire quilting guild. But as I looked around it was obvious that nothing I could say would dissuade them.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “The first thing is this photo.” I took the stolen picture out of my purse and handed it to Rich.

  He stared at it for a long time. “It kind of looks the same, but the lady in this one is happy.”

  “Could it have been taken at the same time?” I asked.

  “I guess so.”

  Bernie leaned into him. “Is it the same woman as in the other photo?”

  Rich looked at the picture again. “I only saw it for a minute, but yeah. That’s the lady. I remember the dots on her dress.”

  Susanne took the photo from him and examined it herself. “It looks a little like you, Maggie.”

  Maggie grabbed it. “I was never this beautiful,” she said.

  Carrie took it next. “Nonsense. You’re this beautiful now.”

  Maggie waved her hand, but she blushed a little. “I was also pregnant for most of my twenties and thirties.”

  Bernie took the photo and laughed. “I don’t know, Maggie. She’s got that certain glow. Are you sure it’s not you?”

  “Okay, enough.” Maggie grabbed back the photo and handed it to me. “Let’s assume it is the same woman as in the photo Rich saw. What does it mean?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. What we do know is that someone took photos of this woman. One was found by Lily’s body and the other was found in Sandra’s apartment. I’d say that connects the two.”

  “So if we figure out who this woman is, we figure out the connection,” Natalie said.

  “Where do we start?” Bernie looked at me.

  “We have to start asking questions,” I said. “And if you guys are doing some of the asking, it won’t seem so suspicious.”

  “One of us has to talk to Oliver,” Susanne said.

  �
��I’ll do it,” Bernie said. “I lived in Greenwich Village for part of the early sixties. Maybe we have some people in common.”

  “And somebody has to talk to Kennette,” I sighed. I could tell they were all a little unhappy with that. “We really don’t know much about her,” I added.

  Natalie nodded in agreement. “I’ll take her to lunch.”

  “What else?” Susanne was getting into it now.

  “Maggie, I need you to talk with my grandmother,” I said. “You’ve known her the longest and she’ll trust you.”

  “So get the dirt!” Bernie laughed.

  “I’m going to find out what’s going on with Oliver.” Maggie looked at Bernie. “And try to get her to take it slow.”

  “Or break up with him,” Carrie said.

  “Let’s not hang the man before the trial,” Susanne scolded. “He’s making her happy, and for all we know, he’s completely innocent.”

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “For all we know Oliver is innocent. But we don’t know. And if we’re ever going to feel comfortable having him in Eleanor’s life, we need to know who he is and what he’s done.”

  “Well,” Maggie said. “That might be more difficult than it appears.”

  We all turned to Maggie, who pulled a file from her bag. As she opened it we crammed together, all trying to see what she had brought. Maggie looked up at us, annoyed.

  “Give her some room,” Bernie said.

  We each took a few steps back.

  “As far as I can tell, Oliver White didn’t exist until 1957,” Maggie said.

  “You didn’t find any records of him in England?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I found, through old immigration records, that Oliver came to this country in 1957, but I can’t find anything in England.”

  “Why would he lie about that?” I asked.

  “A prison record?” Natalie suggested.

  “Don’t get ahead of the story,” Maggie scolded.

  “He was in prison?” I practically shouted. “What did he do?”

  “Hold on.” Maggie had a tale to tell, and it was clear that nothing was going to get in the way. “There was nothing I could find about him before he came to this country. Once he was here it got easier. I checked through old newspaper files and starting in the late 1950s I found articles about him. He was an artist in New York.”