Murder Among the Angels

by Stefanie Matteson

  As they were leaving, Dr. Louria’s secretary emerged from an office off of the waiting room and held out a manila envelope to Charlotte. “I was going to mail this to you, but as long as you’re here …”

  While Jerry rearranged the skulls in the shopping bag, Charlotte slid the contents out of the envelope for a surreptitious look. As she expected, it was the computer-generated portrait of her reincarnated face. Though she had seen the same image on the computer screen, the “hard copy” was much more impressive. Without the magnetic pen, the thousands of tiny pixels no longer carried the potential of flux, lending a new authority to the final product.

  And there she was: looking younger, more vibrant, and more glamorous than she had in thirty years. She felt a surge of youthful energy. If looking at the picture made her feel like this, she wondered, what would looking like the picture make her feel like?

  She had thought she had her mind almost made up. Now she was waffling.

  On the way back to the police station, Charlotte once again found herself pondering the credibility of Dr. Louria as a murder suspect. After their interview with him, she had no doubt that he had performed the surgery. That much was clearly apparent from his reaction to the cast of the second skull. But she didn’t think he had murdered the young women. It was his sadness that had convinced her. She was sure that, until Jerry had unwrapped the skulls, he hadn’t realized that the young women were dead.

  “What do you think?” she asked Jerry as they made the left-hand turn onto the Albany Post Road.

  “I think he operated on the victims. But I don’t think he killed them.”

  “That was my impression too. Why don’t you think he killed them?” she asked, curious as to his reasons.

  “Because he wouldn’t have had to ask when the skulls were found,” he said. “Also, his comment about the cemetery. He wouldn’t have been surprised that the skulls were found in cemeteries if he was the one who put them there.”

  “This is true,” said Charlotte. Though as she was well aware, people could dissimulate. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that we’re right,” she said. “That he didn’t kill them, but that he did create them, so to speak.”

  Jerry nodded.

  “If he didn’t create them in order to kill them, and thereby exert his contol over them—I thought that was a very good theory, by the way—then why did he create them?”

  “Remember what Aunt Lothian said about the amnesia?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Maybe he wanted to bring his wife back. Maybe his plan was to create a new Lily: school her in Lily’s habits, speech patterns, manner of dress, and so on. Then he would announce to the world that she’d been the victim of amnesia and set her up in Archfield Hall as his wife.”

  Charlotte thought about it for a moment, and then said: “Any discrepancies would be written off to the amnesia.”

  Jerry nodded.

  “I seem to remember Aunt Lothian posing a similar scenario, and I seem to remember you telling her something to the effect that this was real life, not the movies,” Charlotte commented. “But I’ll play along for the sake of argument. What would be in it for the Lily clone?”

  “Money, position, glamour.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed. It was a preposterous scheme, but not outside the realm of possibility. She remembered a young friend of her stepdaughter’s—a French major in college—who had been paid by a wealthy family to pose as the deceased French wife of an elderly member of the family who had lost his mind. For many years, this young woman had lived in luxury as the deceased Marie-Claire, benevolently shepherding the doddering millionaire around the world according to the dictates of the social season. She had thought it a wonderful job, and had stayed in it for a number of years before marrying an heir to a great fortune whom she’d met through her putative husband’s social connections.

  A girl could do worse, she thought. Particularly one who didn’t have anything to begin with. “Why more than one?” she asked.

  “For the reason you gave earlier: that the first ones didn’t work out. They didn’t look right, or they couldn’t learn to hold their fork in the proper way.”

  “Where did he find these girls, do you suppose?” she asked.

  “We’re going to have to find that out.”

  For a moment, Charlotte leaned back and imagined the doctor, like some latter-day Henry Higgins, teaching the young women to speak like Lily, to walk like Lily, to dress like Lily. Hadn’t Aunt Lothian said the young woman in the drugstore had been wearing sunglasses just like those Lily always wore. The Henry Higgins scenario would also explain why the girl in the drugstore had worn the same perfume Lily always wore. Suddenly, Charlotte sat straight up in her seat. “Jerry!” she said.

  “What?” He looked over at her.

  “The girl in the drugstore!” she said. “If Aunt Lothian was right that she looked like Lily, she might be the next victim.”

  “Jesus!” Jerry said. “You’re right.” Instead of turning into the police station, he passed it by, and then turned left onto the road leading to Sebastian’s. “Lothian said she lived in Corinth,” he said. He looked over at Charlotte. “I hope you don’t have to get right back.”

  Charlotte shook her head as Jerry felt around in his pockets. “Where’d I put that slip of paper—the one that I wrote the name and address that she gave me down on?” he asked himself.

  “Doreen Mileski,” Charlotte said. “Thirty-three Liberty Street. It’s in your right pants pocket.” It was too bad she had never managed to stay married—she’d been widowed once and divorced three times—because she possessed a number of wifely skills that were going to waste.

  Jerry shot her a look. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to remember anything once you got to be over seventy,” he said as he leaned back to extract the slip of paper from his pocket.

  “My short-term memory’s still pretty good,” Charlotte replied. “From what I understand, though, I’m supposed to start losing it as I get older. Then I’ll only be able to remember what happened in 1942.”

  “That’s the point I’m at now,” Jerry said as he opened the piece of paper against the steering wheel.

  “Obviously,” Charlotte said.

  “Doreen Mileski,” he read. “Thirty-three Liberty Street.”

  6

  It took only a few minutes to get to 33 Liberty Street. The house was located right down the street from Sebastian’s, which wasn’t much of a surprise, since everything in this little village was located within a stone’s throw of everything else. It was a small two-story colonial, painted white, as most of the houses in Corinth were, with black shutters and a front door of Chinese red. Next to the front door were two black wrought-iron mailboxes, one each for the upstairs and downstairs tenants. The label on the mailbox for the downstairs tenant read: D. Mileski.

  Jerry climbed the steps to the small front porch and rang the buzzer for the downstairs tenant.

  As they waited for an answer, Charlotte gazed out at the river, which was just visible over the roofs of the houses that stepped down to the riverbank, and which looked as smooth and peaceful as a lake. A riverboat was plying its way back downstream on the Manhattan-to-West-Point-and-back cruise that, along with the cruise that circled Manhattan Island, was a favorite attraction for tourists to the New York area.

  When no one answered, Jerry tried the buzzer for the upstairs tenant, whose name was C. Wald. Judging by the muffled sounds of children playing, the upstairs tenant, at least, was home.

  The buzzer was answered by the noise of someone thumping down the stairs in what sounded like wooden clogs. A moment later, the door was opened by a young woman with a pockmarked complexion and stringy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. A child clung to her leg, and behind her the entrance hallway was cluttered with balls, bats, and assorted kiddie vehicles.

  “Mrs. Wald?” Jerry asked.

  “Ms. Wald,” she replied tersely.

  He
showed her his badge. “We’re looking for the downstairs tenant, who I understand is a young woman named Doreen Mileski. She didn’t answer the buzzer, and I wondered if by any chance you knew where she was.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  She thought. “I guess it was a week ago last Monday. She was just going out walking. She liked to walk on the golf course early in the morning. I thought she might have gone on a trip, but her car’s still here.” She nodded at the tan Honda that was parked in front of a small barn at the back.

  Jerry pulled out his pad and made a notation of the make and model of the car, and the number of the New York State license plate.

  “How long has she lived here?” he asked.

  “Since last fall,” she replied.

  “This might seem like a peculiar question, Ms. Wald,” Jerry continued. “But it’s important to us. Did you ever notice any evidence that she’d recently had an operation? Any bandages, that sort of thing? Particularly on her face.”

  She shook her head.

  “Bruises?”

  For the first time, the young woman appeared to take an interest in the line of questioning. “Why, yes, I did notice bruises around her eyes a couple of times. She would wear sunglasses and a scarf, but I could see the bruises through the sides of the sunglasses.”

  Jerry nodded.

  “I thought maybe her boyfriend had beaten her up,” she added. She said this as if it were a fact of life that women had to put up with.

  “Any sign of a boyfriend?” he asked. “Or any other visitors?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I noticed,” she said. “But I’m usually at work during the day. Has anything happened to her?” she asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Did she have a job?”

  “I don’t know,” Ms. Wald replied. “She went out every day. But she wasn’t regular about it. One day she’d go out for an hour, the next for a whole afternoon. I don’t know much about her,” she added. “She wasn’t very friendly.”

  The little girl tugged at her mother’s sweatpants. “Ma, can I have my dinner now?” she asked.

  “Just a minute, Jenny,” her mother replied.

  “Just one more question,” Jerry said. “Do you know anything about her background? Where she originally came from? Where she lived before she came here? Her interests, and so on?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Ma,” the girl implored.

  “Why don’t you try the landlord?” she suggested. “The question about previous residences is on the rental application. He would probably know if she had a job or not too. She had to be able to show she could pay the rent.”

  “What’s his name?”

  She gave Jerry the landlord’s name, which was Peter De Vries, and told him that he could usually be found at the Zion Hill Church, where he worked as the sexton. He lived in rooms at the back of the Parish Hall.

  Then they thanked her and left.

  When they got back to the police car, Jerry radioed headquarters and asked the dispatcher to find out who the Honda was registered to. Then they headed back out to the Albany Post Road. At the intersection with the Zion Hill Road, they turned left and followed the road up what Charlotte presumed was Zion Hill to the church, which was set on a high lawn overlooking the town. At the sign for the church, they pulled into a driveway lined with old yews and holly trees that led to a parking lot. After parking the car, they climbed a set of stone stairs that led up to the lawn of the church. At the top of the stairs, they paused at the balustrade at the foot of the lawn to admire the view, which was magnificent. Charlotte guessed that the panorama extended for twenty-five miles in either direction: the New York skyline could be seen to the south, and the distant domes of the rugged Hudson Highlands to the north. In front of them, the waters of the Hudson spread out to fill the basins of the Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay, and on the western horizon, beyond the hills on the opposite shore, the distant ridge of the Catskill Mountains stood out against the western sky. Immediately below, the misty greens and fairways of the local country club stretched down to the Albany Post Road, and beyond the road, the hamlet of Zion Hill clung to the riverbank.

  From their vantage point, Charlotte could see the tower of Archfield Hall, and the Octagon House sitting primly on its little green knob of a hill overlooking the river. “What a view!” she exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Jerry agreed. “My grandfather thought it was the finest view he had ever seen outside of the Bay of Naples.”

  “Your grandfather?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Jerry. “He was also an Archibald serf. It’s an old family tradition. He was a stonemason who came here to work on the New Croton Dam and ended up working for Edward Archibald. He helped build this church. As well as the dry walls along the Albany Post Road.”

  “I thought you were from Bensonhurst.”

  “I moved there with my parents when I was ten,” he said. “But until then, we lived with my grandparents in Corinth.”

  “Corinth!” she said.

  “Right around the corner from Sebastian’s, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Though there wasn’t anything chic about Corinth in those days. That’s why I decided to take the job here—it certainly wasn’t because of the pay,” he added. “Some of my happiest memories are of growing up in this area.”

  For a moment, they leaned on the balustrade, gazing out at the view.

  “My grandfather died just after we moved to Bensonhurst,” Jerry continued after a while. “But I still remember driving with him along the Albany Post Road. He was so proud of those dry walls. He used to say, ‘A full-grown man can jump up and down on top of them, and they won’t budge an inch.’”

  “I’ve always admired those walls,” she said. “Nobody can do that kind of work anymore. It’s a lost art.”

  “It certainly is,” he agreed.

  “Jerry,” Charlotte asked, “why are all the roofs blue?” Though she hadn’t noticed it from ground level, it was readily apparent from their vantage point high above the town that the roofs of half the houses in Zion Hill were shingled with unusual blue roofing tiles.

  “They took their cue from the church, I guess,” Jerry said. Turning, he pointed out the blue tiles on the roof of the picturesque stone church.

  The effect was lovely; it was like the varying shades of blue of the mountains on the distant horizon.

  “Edward Archibald had the tiles specially made,” he explained. “There are sixteen different shades of blue, applied in specific percentages. The idea was to simulate the heavenly empyrean. The architecture in Zion Hill is very symbolic, though in most cases I couldn’t tell you of what.”

  “It’s a beautiful place,” Charlotte commented.

  “Yes, it is,” Jerry agreed. “Edward Archibald wanted to make this the most beautiful spot on earth, and I think he did a pretty good job of it.”

  As they stood there, they could hear another person trudging up the stairs, and in a moment, a gray head appeared on the stairs just below them. It was Lothian Archibald, who was there, she explained when she joined them at the top, for her daily bell-ringing duties.

  Together, they headed across the lawn to the church, which stood on the brow of the hill. It was in the Gothic Revival style, with narrow lancet windows, and heavy stone buttresses supporting the exterior walls. A crenelated bell tower stood to the south of the entrance.

  As they walked, they asked Miss Archibald where they could find Peter. When they arrived at the church, she led them around to the south side, where a cloister connected the transept to the neighboring Parish Hall.

  “There he is,” she said. She pointed to a man with long blond hair who was working on a platform that had been erected over the door to the south transept. Then she excused herself and headed back in the direction of the door at the foot of the soaring bell tower.

 
A moment later, they had entered the cloister. At closer hand, they could see that Peter was installing a plastic sheet over the opening for the center window of a stained-glass triplet. The window had been removed, and lay on the bed of an old red pickup that was backed up to the other side of the cloister.

  Jerry walked up to the foot of the scaffolding. “Hello,” he called up to the man. “We’re looking for Peter De Vries.”

  The man turned around. “That’s me,” he said, and proceeded to start down the ladder that was affixed to the scaffolding.

  As he did so, Charlotte noticed that he had only one arm.

  “Hello,” he said, as he dismounted the ladder. He extended his right hand. “Peter De Vries.” The left sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt, which was pinned up where the elbow should have been, swung free. “What can I do for you?”

  He was a thickset man in his late twenties—handsome in a rough-hewn sort of way—with a lantern jaw and dark blue eyes that were set close together in his face. He wore a full-length leather apron over his jeans and shirt, the pockets of which were stuffed with tools.

  Jerry returned his handshake. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Jerry D’Angelo, chief of the Zion Hill Police Department, and this is my friend, Mrs. Lundstrom, who’s visiting from New York.”

  Charlotte stepped forward to shake his hand.

  “So you came for the tour,” he said.

  Jerry paused for a moment, undecided about whether to take Peter up on his offer of a tour or get right down to business. He checked his watch. “We only have a few minutes,” he said. “Could you give us an abbreviated version?”

  “Sure,” Peter said.

  “I was just telling Mrs. Lundstrom that much of the architecture of Zion Hill is symbolic, though I’m not sure of what.”

  Peter nodded. He led them back out to the south side of the church and looked up at the bell tower. “We can start with the symbolism of the church bells,” he said, looking up at the bells that hung in the open belfry. “These bells have a very profound symbolic significance.”

  He paused, and Jerry and Charlotte patiently awaited his explanation. He had a very slow, distracted manner of speaking, almost as if he had forgotten what it was that he was about to say next.