Murder Off the Page

by Con Lehane

  “When I did this, she stiffened. She became formal, businesslike, as if we’d had a business meeting and it was time to shake hands and say good evening, as if there’d never been anything sexual or romantic between us at all. She said goodnight, pushed me toward the door, wished me well. I felt like a fool. I reminded her she’d brought me to her room to be romantic. I thought I was being reasonable, but she got scared. I mean really scared. I thought she was becoming hysterical, that she’d run down the hall screaming or pull out a knife and stab me. I didn’t know what she’d do, so I left—quickly.”

  It wasn’t often that when someone finished telling him his story Cosgrove didn’t have questions. He might want to follow up on discrepancies he caught, or poke around the edges of a description that seemed too pat. Or try to get the guy to repeat parts of the story to see if he might tell it differently the second time. This time, he didn’t have questions. At a certain point, Cosgrove reminded himself, you’re told more than you can absorb.

  “She turned you down. Built you up and didn’t come through. Prick teaser we used to call them. It would piss most men off. Some men wouldn’t take it.”

  Manning caught his drift. “I was angry. I felt foolish. It was late, probably three or four in the morning. All I wanted to do by then was go to sleep. I grabbed a cab and went to my apartment.”

  “You didn’t think about her after that, want to find her again, finish what you started, make her follow through on what she promised?”

  “I’m not like that.” He glared at Cosgrove for a moment and then turned to look out the window behind him. “I’m sorry she’s dead, that she was murdered. How did it happen?”

  “She died in a hotel room.”

  He nodded. “In circumstances like those I described?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Strange. I thought with me it might have been a one-time thing for her, that inviting me to her hotel room was an aberration. It was foolish to think so. I wanted our coming together to have been something unique.”

  “Then you did think about her.”

  “I might have. I’m thinking about her now, remembering her.”

  Cosgrove stood. “You didn’t see her again, try to find her?”

  Manning stood also but didn’t come from behind his desk. “I didn’t know how to find her. I gave her my card before I left. I guess I did want to see her again. She was a remarkable woman. It might be she revealed too much of herself, so she was more vulnerable than it was safe for a person to be. Still, because of that she had a kind of beauty that tugged at your heart. I’m sad thinking about her.”

  Chapter 12

  Ambler wasn’t pleased with the questions from the clean-shaven, crew-cut, jock-like detective from the Stamford Police Department Bureau of Criminal Investigations who was questioning him in the crime fiction reading room. Men who looked and carried themselves like his interrogator had rubbed him the wrong way since he was in college. He preferred guys with unruly hair and dumpy physiques who muddled through life to the muscular, smooth-shaven, decisive men who greeted each new day as a challenge and believed they always gave 110 percent.

  “He’s a friend of yours, right? Did you ever travel together? Go fishing? Hunting? Skiing?”

  “I don’t do any of those things. Neither does McNulty. He goes to baseball games and the track.”

  The detective frowned. “Mutual friends? People you know he might contact?”

  “No. There are many facets of his life I know nothing about.”

  “Are you aware of problems he had with women … assaults, complaints against him?”

  “None that I know of. Women seem to like him.”

  “He was divorced.”

  “There’s that. Maybe you should talk to his ex-wife.”

  The detective’s mouth went square. “I know who I should talk to. Right now, I’m talking to you.”

  “I’ve answered your questions,” Ambler said mildly.

  “Holding back information in a homicide case is serious. I’ve heard some questionable things about you.” This cop, whose name was Bill Smith, was as bland as his name. Nothing about him hinted he would ever be unpredictable. An impression he fortified by saying, “I don’t know what you’re used to in dealing with the police. In our department we go by the book. And the book doesn’t like fraternizing—or information sharing—with private citizens. If you think you know better how this case should go, you better think again.”

  Ambler caught the guy’s drift. “McNulty was with the woman who was murdered. He’s missing. That makes him a person of interest. Do you have forensic evidence that makes him more than that?”

  “That’s the kind of information we don’t share with private citizens.”

  “Right,” said Ambler, smiling. “You said that.”

  Detective Smith looked puzzled.

  “Anything else?”

  Smith’s expression hardened. “A woman is dead. We don’t need smart-assed comments about a murder. We’re going to bring in her killer. Make fun of me if you want, but don’t get in my way.” He held Ambler in a hard stare until Ambler had enough. He purposefully broke eye contact and turned to his computer.

  Smith stood and gestured at the book-lined walls around him. “All these books, they’re detective novels?” He seemed partly in awe and partly angry at them. “You read all these books … these writers? You think they know what it’s like being a cop, investigating a homicide?” He looked at Ambler with something like sincerity. “They don’t know.”

  “Have you read any of them?”

  Detective Smith looked puzzled again. “I seen the TV shows. They get it wrong.”

  “A lot of the books are better.”

  This struck a chord. “Which ones?”

  “You might try The Onion Field. A cop wrote it.”

  When the detective left, Ambler realized their parting conversation was similar to one he’d had years before with Mike Cosgrove after they’d butted heads over one of Mike’s investigations. Things probably wouldn’t turn out as well with Detective Smith. For now, Ambler was mad at himself for looking away from the cop’s stare. It’s what you do when you’re not confident of the stance you’re taking.

  That evening after work, he took Adele to dinner to make up for making her mad the day before. They shared a bottle of wine and a plate of charcuterie at a wine bar on Ninth Avenue in her neighborhood. Without talking about it, they’d avoided the Library Tavern since McNulty’s departure. Adele seemed to have forgiven him, though the formality was still there.

  “I’ve been advised to stay away from the search for Sandra Dean’s killer. As if I knew how to go about it anyway.” Ambler told her about his visit from the Stamford investigator, Bill Smith.

  “Well, too bad. I’m on the list of people advising you to clear McNulty.” She picked up steam. “How could you not help him after all he’s done for you? I can’t believe you, Raymond. What’s wrong with you?”

  He couldn’t help smiling, even though he knew it would make her angrier. “Hold it.” He held up both hands as a shield. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I don’t know where to start.”

  Adele sipped her wine. She wore a brown leather jacket over a white blouse that was open an extra button at the top, so he watched the graceful slope of her neck and the place where the blouse gaped against her chest at the curve of her breast. “You look pretty,” he said.

  Her eyelashes fluttered and her cheeks turned pink. She reached for the neck of her blouse and pulled the two parts together. The blouse gaped open again as soon as she let go. After a little embarrassed laugh, she said, “You always—” She didn’t finish. He thought her even more fetching when she blushed.

  After a moment, she asked, “Do you think we could find McNulty? Maybe you could call him.”

  “He most likely got rid of his cell phone because the police could trace him through it.”

  “If they knew the number.”

  “They’d get
the number.”

  “I guess.” Adele pouted for a moment.

  “His dad might know. But Kevin McNulty wouldn’t tell where his son was if they hung him by his thumbs.”

  Adele often locked her eyes on his when they talked; she did now and practically hypnotized him. “Wouldn’t he tell you?”

  Ambler had come to believe McNulty didn’t have anything to tell him. He’d have to figure things out for himself and he wasn’t doing a very good job at it. “There’s something fundamental I’ve overlooked in why Sandra Dean was murdered.”

  “You sound like she got herself murdered on purpose.”

  Ambler shook his head. “People are murdered for a reason. Someone benefits from her death. Did her husband take out a life insurance policy on her? Might she have discovered something so devastating about someone that someone needed to kill her to keep her from revealing it? Did she do something in the past that caused someone to hate her enough to kill her?”

  Adele sat bolt upright. “One of the women whose husband Shannon—I mean Sandra—was with might have hated her. The woman would hate her husband, too.” Adele’s eyes widened. “She followed them that night to the hotel in New York. She found them together in Shannon’s hotel room and shot him. Sandra Dean hid or got away somehow. Maybe the wife just let her go and then panicked and ran away. The killer stewed over the whole episode. Maybe she felt remorse. She blamed Shannon, I mean Sandra. She got angry and tracked Sandra down and shot her.”

  Ambler listened with mild interest. “And McNulty?”

  “Why would she shoot McNulty?”

  “He was a witness.”

  Adele took a moment to consider this. “The wife didn’t care if he was a witness. She’s not evil. She wouldn’t kill an innocent man. She only killed those who wronged her.”

  “So why did McNulty disappear?”

  Adele thought about that. “He understood why this woman did what she did, so he couldn’t turn her in. You know how he is. He won’t turn someone over to the police. He disappeared so he wouldn’t have to rat on the killer wife.”

  Ambler’s eyebrows shot up. “Rat on her?”

  “That’s what he would say. That’s what McNulty would say.”

  “That is what McNulty would say.” Ambler looked at the empty wine bottle, a generic Burgundy that had tasted pretty good, and thought about ordering another bottle. Adele’s eyes sparkled after the two glasses she’d drunk. With two more, who knows what might happen? They might walk to her apartment holding hands; they might kiss in her doorway … and then kiss again. She might invite him in.

  “Raymond! What’s that stupid grin about?… Were you listening to what I just said?”

  Ambler caught himself. No more wine. “It’s also possible the man murdered in Dr. Dean’s hotel room had the double-indemnity insurance policy, his widow the beneficiary. Mike talked with the widow. If there was something there, he would have caught it. Still, if McNulty wasn’t such an easy fall guy, you could wonder if the widow hired a killer.”

  “But why in Shannon’s—I keep thinking of her as Shannon. Sandra Dean is a different person that Shannon became when she was murdered.” Adele’s expression changed; the glow—her rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes—gone, sadness in its place. “I should use her real name.”

  Ambler’s mood changed, too. His daydream burst. “Up until now, we’ve thought of Ted Doyle’s death in relation to Sandra Dean. His murder might have had nothing to do with her. The man might have been murdered for reasons all his own. Later, Sandra was killed because she was a witness.”

  Adele frowned. “You’re right that speculation doesn’t get you very far. We need data, information … whatever it is Sherlock Holmes wanted to make bricks out of.”

  “Clay. Holmes said, ‘I can’t make bricks without clay.’”

  Adele put on her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck with a kind of flourish. “Why did Jayne Galloway call you yesterday?”

  Ambler watched her intently. Even putting on her coat and scarf, she was entertaining. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to reach her. I can’t reach Dillard Wainwright either. They don’t call me back.”

  “Maybe they’ve made up and run off together again,” Adele said. “Maybe they got together and killed Sandra Dean. Maybe Sandra Dean’s husband killed her and was faking all that grief. Maybe…” Adele’s voice cracked.

  Ambler tried to sound upbeat, as cheery as he could get. “Do you want me to walk you home?”

  Adele frowned. “Why would you do that?”

  Ambler felt his cheeks redden. “No reason.”

  “Is Johnny at his grandmother’s?”

  Ambler nodded.

  “Poor Raymond.” She patted his shoulder as she squeezed by. “All alone.”

  “I’ve got the dog.”

  She laughed and then lowered her head to make his gaze meet hers. “Am I missing something? Are you okay? Is there something—”

  He shook his head.

  Chapter 13

  Later that evening, Adele was mindlessly watching the TV news, which she did rarely, thinking about Raymond and why she didn’t let him walk her home, knowing she embarrassed him by turning down his offer. She was angry at him in some vague way that came from her sadness over Sandra Dean’s death. Restless and at odds with herself, she was too tired to do anything and too jittery to go to bed when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number or the 203 area code and considered letting the call go to voice mail but changed her mind before the phone stopped ringing. She answered without speaking, expecting a tape recording offering her a free resort stay. Instead she heard a familiar voice, gasped, and almost dropped the phone. “Brian, is that you? Where are you?”

  “I’m using a cell phone I borrowed from a stranger. Hang onto the number. I owe him and will pay him back someday … if I can. I can’t talk for more than a few seconds. I need a gigantic favor. Someday, I’ll have to pay you back, too, once more assuming I’ll be in a position to do so.”

  “You know I’ll help.”

  “You’d think by my age I’d have more than one friend I can trust. But there you go.” McNulty told her what he wanted her to do, which under normal circumstances would be a lot to ask. Under current conditions—the possibility of arrest for harboring a fugitive, for example—no one in their right mind would agree to what he asked. Except because it was McNulty—who’d once harbored her when she was something of a fugitive herself—of course she’d do it.

  The first part of the plan went more smoothly than she had a right to hope for. She waited until after 11:00 when the night doorman at McNulty’s building, a longtime pal of McNulty’s, would come on duty. McNulty had already called him to tell him his part in the plan, so the doorman buzzed her in when she rang the bell in the outer lobby, showed her to McNulty’s apartment, which was on the first floor, and unlocked the door for her.

  McNulty had told her there would be a stack of clean laundry and dry cleaning in the hallway. The day doorman put it there each week when it was delivered. And there it was. McNulty told her there would be two suitcases in the hall closet, which there were. And he told her she’d find a couple of envelopes taped to the wall behind the books on the top shelf of his bookcase in the living room–dining room. And there they were.

  The envelopes contained what looked like a great deal of cash, mostly in twenty dollar bills. She put the cash and the clothes in the suitcase and carried it to her apartment. The next morning, carrying the suitcase, she took a train to New Haven, Connecticut. She thought she should call Raymond but McNulty had told her not to, so she didn’t.

  The waiting room in the New Haven railroad station, a Beaux-Arts building like the 42nd Street Library, was a relic of the golden age of railroads—cavernous, ornate, tile floors, limestone walls, chandeliers, and rounded, curved, dark wooden benches like the ones in the Grand Central Terminal waiting room when she was a kid.

  She assumed—correctly, it turned out—that McNulty would f
ind her when the time was right, so she took a seat on one of the benches where she could watch the hustle and bustle of folks coming and going from the trains. She worried again about not calling Raymond—she hadn’t told him about the call from McNulty or the adventure she was undertaking because McNulty told her Raymond’s phone was probably tapped. This was why McNulty called her instead of Raymond.

  She didn’t pay any attention to the woman who sat down beside her, except to note her resemblance to Mrs. Doubtfire. After a moment, the woman spoke to her. “We’re going to sit here for quite a while,” the woman said, and Adele realized it was McNulty. “In about an hour—moments before my train is to leave—I’ll pick up the suitcases. Everything’s in the suitcases, right?”

  “Yes.” She turned to face him, barely able to contain herself. “Are you—”

  “You have to stay calm. You’re playing a part. I realize you lack training as an actor, but give it a try.” He spoke quietly and was as calm as he usually was. “For a moment, sit quietly and remember the last conversation you had with a stranger, on a plane, in an airport, something like that. Put yourself in that memory. Recall the situation with your senses. You don’t have to remember the exact words you used, but the tone, how often you looked at each other, silences, topics you touched on: her grandchildren? where you call home?”

  “What is all this?”

  “It’s an acting lesson.”

  “Jesus, McNulty…”

  “It’s ma’am. Get with the program.”

  Adele did what she was told. She hadn’t traveled often. When she did, she liked to find out about people. Sometimes they turned out to be boring but often she’d been surprised by how much people told you about themselves and how interesting they were.

  “You’re going to New York for the weekend?” McNulty asked amiably. “Are you married, dear?”

  “No…” Adele stammered. She didn’t have to act taken aback by the question.