Murder Among the Angels

by Stefanie Matteson

  She was halfway through the omelette, and was sipping her glass of California chardonnay when she saw a curious figure turn up the brick walk leading to the front door. He had shoulder-length blond hair, and was wearing a full-length leather apron and a peculiar leather hat with a plastic visor to protect his head from the drizzle. In one hand, he carried a tall wooden staff. His other sleeve swung free.

  It was Peter De Vries, the Leatherman.

  When the pastor had told her the story of how a local boy had christened Peter the Leatherman, it hadn’t really made sense to her. His leather apron hadn’t seemed that out of place, and he hadn’t been wearing the hat or carrying the staff. But seeing him in full regalia, she now understood why his appearance would strike the imagination of a little boy.

  Climbing the front steps with the slow, shuffling gait of a man absorbed in his own little world, he opened the door, and was greeted by the maître d’, who, after carefully placing his staff in an umbrella stand by the door, escorted him to a bar stool at the back. Though the other diners looked up when he entered, as they might for any new arrival, they barely noticed the bizarre figure who shuffled past their tables. It was clear that they were as accustomed to his presence as they were to that of any of the well-dressed suburbanites who made up the rest of the restaurant’s clientele.

  Watching as Connie waited on him, Charlotte noted the care with which she set his place and the warmth with which she smiled at him, and thought of what the pastor had said about the high esteem in which the Leatherman had been held. But then it dawned on her that Connie’s attitude expressed more than just high esteem. Connie, she realized, was in love with him.

  After lunch, Charlotte headed off to talk to the wholesale florists Jerry had referred her to. Following the dispatcher’s directions, she arrived at the largest of them a few minutes later. The business was located in a lovely old cast-iron conservatory, which was flanked by two long greenhouses. Behind the conservatory were a number of other greenhouses. A sign over the entrance read: “Winter Garden Florist, Wholesale and Retail Flowers Since 1906.” Entering the building, Charlotte passed through an anteroom into a miniature tropical paradise: the conservatory was filled with exotic plants of every description, from calla lilies to moth orchids. It had finally started to rain, and the sound of the raindrops thrumming on the curved glass of the roof added to the air of intimacy. On either side, doors opened into light-filled greenhouses in which baskets of plants and flowers hung from the ceilings, and pots filled with geraniums, impatiens; petunias, and the other bedding plants that were in big demand among home gardeners at this time of year covered the tables.

  A young woman behind the counter was taking an order over the telephone. As Charlotte waited for her to finish, she savored the smell. There was nothing like the smell of a greenhouse, with its mixture of damp, moist earth and the sweet fragrance of flowers in bloom.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, once she had hung up the phone. She was a lively-looking young woman with short, curly, black hair, an olive complexion, and a ready smile.

  “I’d like to buy some hanging flower baskets,” Charlotte said. As long as she was here, she might as well get some flowers for her patio, she thought. She also figured that the clerk would be more likely to answer questions that were put to her by a paying customer.

  “Our hanging flower baskets are in this greenhouse,” she said, heading off toward the greenhouse on the left. “We have geraniums, lantana, impatiens. What else?” she asked herself. “Petunias, cineraria, blue lace flower.”

  Charlotte followed her down the center aisle, marveling at the heady riot of color, with its promise of bright summer days, that contrasted so starkly with the grayness of the weather outside.

  “Stop me if you see something you like,” the girl said. “Also, watch out for the buckets,” she said, indicating the buckets that had been placed on the floor to catch the rain from the leaky roof.

  “Here,” Charlotte replied, stopping at a plant with funnel-shaped flowers of a lovely lemon-yellow color. “Are these hibiscus?”

  She nodded. “They’re very unusual. We have a lot of unusual plants here.” She stopped to wipe a drop of rain from her nose. “We also have a lot of broken glass,” she added.

  Charlotte looked up at the exposed sky, “So I see,” she said.

  “We have eleven houses, so it’s hard to keep up with the breaks. We get a lot of breakage from kids throwing balls; we have a big housing development next door.” She looked up at the broken glass. “This isn’t so hard to replace, but the curved glass in the conservatory takes someone with special skills.”

  “Actually, I’m surprised that these old greenhouses are still standing,” Charlotte said. “It seems as if a lot of the older ones have deteriorated to the point where they’re beyond repair.”

  “Those are the wooden ones. Our glazing bars are made of cast iron. The manufacturer was from England. They built a lot of conservatories around here. Iron requires a lot more maintenance than wood, but if you take care of it, it’ll last forever.” She looked up at the flowers. “How many would you like?”

  “Three, please,” Charlotte said.

  As the girl took down three of the hanging baskets, Charlotte introduced herself and explained that she was helping the local police with their investigation into the look-alike murders.

  The young woman in turn gave her name as Lisa Gennaro and explained that she was the daughter of the owner.

  Then Charlotte asked her about the lilies of the valley: “I realize that it wouldn’t be a problem to get lilies of the valley at this time of year. But I was wondering about the other two incidents. Where would someone have gotten them in September or in April?”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” Lisa said. “We specialize in growing lilies of the valley.”

  Charlotte raised an eyebrow.

  “You can get lilies of the valley from any wholesale florist,” she explained. “But because they’re flown over from Holland, you wouldn’t be able to get them right away. You’d have to order a couple of weeks in advance. We have them available all the time. We grow them right here.”

  “How do you get them to bloom out of season?”

  “We dig the pips from our fields, plant them in pots, and set them in bulb crates, which are held in a suspended state in our coolers. After three months, they’re ready for forcing. They bloom eighteen to twenty-one days after they come out. We take some out every day, so we always have some in bloom.”

  “Would you be able to tell me who might have ordered some in September and in April?” she asked. “It was probably someone local,” she added.

  “That shouldn’t be too hard. We’re computerized now. I’d be happy to look it up for you.” Picking up the hanging baskets, the young woman led Charlotte back to the conservatory, where she set the baskets on the front counter. Then she picked up a brochure and handed it to Charlotte.

  The cover of the brochure read: “Lilies of the Valley, From the Finest Imported German Pips.” It went on to read: “We offer only ‘extra select’ grade: strong, twelve- to fifteen-inch stems; ten to fifteen bells to a stem.” The rest of the brochure gave price and ordering information.

  When Charlotte had finished looking at the brochure, Lisa led her down a hall lined with colorful posters advertising Holland-grown bulbs into an office at the rear and sat down at a computer terminal. As Charlotte looked on, she called up the sales records for the previous month.

  “Most of our orders for lilies of the valley are for weddings,” she said as she tapped the keys on the keyboard. “So it shouldn’t be hard to single out the orders that aren’t wedding-connected.”

  “Do any other local greenhouses grow lilies of the valley?”

  “No. We’re the only commercial suppliers in the country. We started growing them back in the 1950s for one of Edward Archibald’s daughters.” She looked up at Charlotte. “Edward Archibald was the founder of Zion Hill. Maybe you
’ve heard of him.”

  Charlotte nodded. “Which Archibald daughter would that have been?”

  “Lillian,” she said, as she scrolled through the records. “Lily of the valley was her favorite flower. I suppose it was because of her name. There’s a beautiful stained-glass window in the Zion Hill Church that shows her walking through a field of lilies of the valley.”

  “I understand the church’s stained-glass windows are magnificent,” Charlotte commented as she peered over Lisa’s shoulder.

  “They are,” Lisa agreed. “People come from all over to see them. Ah, here’s April,” she said. “Let’s see. Wedding, wedding, wedding. I can tell the weddings because they order other flowers too. Lilies of the valley are popular for weddings because they symbolize purity.”

  In light of what Connie had just told her, lilies of the valley didn’t seem a very appropriate choice for Lily’s favorite flower, Charlotte thought.

  “We don’t get that many non-wedding orders for lilies of the valley because they’re very expensive,” she added. She had stopped scrolling. “Ah, here we are. April twenty-sixth. A single order for a bouquet of two dozen.” She leaned back to allow Charlotte a better view of the screen.

  The name and address of the buyer were spelled out in glowing green letters next to the date: Victor Louria, M.D., 300 River Road, Zion Hill, N.Y. The evidence was right in front of her eyes, but Charlotte still couldn’t believe it. “Dr. Louria?” she said stupidly.

  The girl nodded. “He used to be one of our best customers for lilies of the valley. He used to buy them for his wife, who was the daughter of Lillian Archibald. They were her favorite flower too. He stopped buying them for a while after she died, then he started again.”

  Charlotte jotted down the date. Liliana Doyle’s skull had been found on the headstone at the Zion Hill Cemetery on April twenty-seventh, the next day.

  “What about last September?” Charlotte asked.

  Tapping some more keys, Lisa called up the older records. “This might take a minute,” she said. “There are a lot of weddings in September.” Again, she scrolled through the sales records. “Here it is,” she said finally. “September fourteenth, Victor Louria, M.D.”

  Charlotte couldn’t remember the date on which Kimberly’s skull had been found, but she did remember Dr. Louria saying she had disappeared just after Labor Day. If, as in the other cases, the skull had been found about ten days after the victim disappeared, then September fourteenth would be about right.

  She wondered about Dr. Louria’s alibi. If he had been in Brazil at the time of Kimberly’s death, as he claimed, he couldn’t have put the skull in the cemetery. But maybe his alibi wouldn’t hold up.

  Lisa looked up again at Charlotte. “I read that he was being questioned by the police in connection with the murder case,” she said. “This isn’t going to look good for him, is it?”

  “No, it’s not,” Charlotte agreed.

  “Do you want me to see if he placed any other orders?” she asked.

  The telephone was ringing again, but Lisa didn’t answer it. “When you get a chance,” Charlotte replied. “There’s no need to do it right now. I’d like to know about every order he placed, starting in February 1990.”

  “No problem,” Lisa replied, as they made their way back out to the conservatory. “The computer makes it pretty easy. I could probably get the information to you in a day or so.”

  “That would be great,” Charlotte said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if you get any other orders too.”

  Lisa handed Charlotte her card. “If you don’t hear from me, give me a call. I’m apt to forget,” she added.

  After paying for her flower baskets, Charlotte thanked Lisa and left.

  So it had been Dr. Louria, Charlotte thought as she drove back to the police station with her hibiscus plants in the passenger seat. The iron mask had been removed, exposing this urbane Brazilian for the monster he really was. The lily of the valley bouquets were the artistic finale to a drama in which he had created the Lily look-alikes, then killed them, and dismembered them in the summer house. The choice of the summer house was hard to explain, unless he had chosen it for psychological reasons. Maybe it had been the scene of some unpleasant incident with his late wife for which he wanted to take his revenge. A bitter argument, perhaps, or plans for a romantic evening that had gone awry. She shivered at the grisliness of it all. How had he killed them? she wondered. She remembered the article she had read in his waiting room about botulinum toxin being used by plastic surgeons to paralyze facial tics. The article had talked about the dangers of using too large a dose. It had captured her interest because of the exotic nature of the botulinum toxin, but a doctor would have easy access to drugs that were more mundane, and almost as deadly. Curare, insulin, digitalis, and any number of barbiturates had all been used as murder weapons, and those were just the drugs that immediately occurred to her. “A little shot—just to help you relax,” and—finis—that was it.

  Her discovery that it was Dr. Louria who had ordered the lilies of the valley also solved another dilemma: what to do about her own surgery. There was no way she was going to be operated on by someone who was very possibly the murderer of three innocent young women. Coming up to a convenience store, she pulled in and parked next to a telephone booth. Then she dialed Dr. Louria’s office and told the receptionist that she had decided against having the surgery. Her feeling as she hung up was one of profound relief. If she’d gone ahead with it, she would always have felt dishonest, as if she were being deliberately misleading. Other people may have been deceived, but she never would be. The lines may have been erased, but she would never be able to look at her face without remembering where they had been.

  A few minutes later, she had arrived at the police station. She met Jerry as she was heading in. One of his hands held the door open for her, the other cradled a round package under his elbow. “What took you so long?” he complained. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She smiled mischievously. “I had lunch at Sebastian’s. I wanted to make you jealous.”

  “You have,” he said. “I had a meatball sub at my desk. I’m headed up to the Octagon House.” He looked down at the package under his elbow. “I’ve got the skull of our third victim here. Do you want to come along? I’ll only be half an hour or so.”

  Charlotte checked her watch; she wanted to make it back to the city by dinner, but it was only a little after three. “Sure,” she replied, and walked with him out to the police car.

  Once they were under way, she said: “I’ve had a productive day,” and then proceeded to tell him about her meeting with the pastor, and his reference to a possible motive for Dr. Louria. Then she described her follow-up discussion with Connie. “Jerry,” she said, “it gives him a real motive.”

  Jerry wasn’t overly impressed with the jealous rage theory, but his attitude changed when she told him about Dr. Louria’s purchases of the lily of the valley bouquets. “They have records of this?” he asked.

  “It’s all on their computer,” she said, amused at seeing his detective’s brain kicking into gear.

  “And when were the flowers purchased, exactly?” he asked.

  Charlotte consulted her notes. “The second bouquet was purchased on April twenty-sixth, which I believe was the day before Liliana’s skull was discovered at the Zion Hill Cemetery.”

  Jerry nodded. “It was found on the twenty-seventh.”

  “And the first bouquet was purchased on September fourteenth. I couldn’t remember the exact date that Kimberly’s skull was found.”

  “September fifteenth,” he said.

  “The day after,” Charlotte said, “which was supposedly when Dr. Louria was still in Brazil. Have you confirmed his alibi?”

  “One of the county detectives is working on it. He’s confirmed the airline reservations. But they could have’ been falsified. I’ve got him calling Dr. Louria’s friends and relatives now. By the way,” he conti
nued, “I talked with the lawyers for Lily Louria’s estate.”

  “And?” Charlotte said.

  “They said her estate was valued at a little over two million. They also confirmed that Sebastian was her sole beneficiary.”

  Charlotte whistled. “Not bad for a girl who didn’t care about material things,” she said, remembering what Lothian had said about Lily’s habit of wearing the same pair of blue jeans all week long. “I guess that puts Sebastian on our suspect list.”

  “I’d say so,” Jerry said. “Especially since he’ll need to borrow against the inheritance to open his new restaurant.”

  “Getting back to Dr. Louria,” she said. “He ordered two dozen flowers each time. Do you know how many were in the bouquets that were found in the cemeteries? The bouquet in the undercroft looked like about two dozen to me.”

  Jerry shrugged. “We can check easily enough. We still have the bouquets in the evidence locker. We also have the crime scene photographs. Did you check the sales records for this month?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I figured that the murderer would simply have picked them, since they’re in bloom now. But I asked the clerk to check the records for all of Dr. Louria’s purchases dating back to the date of Lily Louria’s drowning.”

  “Good.” The face that looked out over the wheel was thoughtful. “It’s incriminating evidence, but I’m not sure it’s incriminating enough. There are probably dozens of florists where he could have bought the flowers.”