Vanishing Act

by Seth Margolis

“What was happening?”

  “Joanna figured it was Mona’s doing. Much as she hated her uncle’s coarseness, she detested Mona’s pretentiousness. And the feelings were mutual. During one of their reconciliations a few years ago Joanna gave her uncle one of her paintings. I think it was Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.” Rudolph smiled and shrugged. “Anyway, the paintings were important to her. And she later found out that Mona had hung it in one of the servant’s rooms in their Connecticut house.”

  Joe D. felt a pang of sympathy for the servant. “Do you think Samson might really have been planning to disinherit her?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Did Joanna think he was?”

  “She was worried, let’s put it that way.”

  “Worried enough to kill him before he did anything about it?”

  Rudolph looked at him for a bit. “Didn’t I already tell you that she was with me all night?”

  “She could have hired someone.” Or you could have done it together, he added silently.

  Rudolph nodded.

  “Was she with you that night?”

  Rudolph answered in a slow, measured tone. “In the same loft, yes.”

  “That’s kind of like saying you were both in Macy’s at the same time. Are you sure she never left that night?”

  “I was watching the Knicks on television. She was in her studio.”

  This wasn’t really an answer. “She could have left the loft for an hour, couldn’t she? And you’d never have known.”

  Rudolph just looked at him.

  “For that matter, you could have left the TV on and slipped out yourself.”

  Joe D. could practically feel Rudolph’s hot breath on his face. “Deep down, here,” Rudolph put a fist to his heart, “I know she didn’t kill him.”

  “Did she own a gun?”

  The fist left the heart and he nodded. “She was terrified of being alone in that huge loft.” He couldn’t resist looking around his own apartment, where hand-to-hand combat, rather than a gun, seemed the appropriate form of self-defense.

  “Do you know what kind of gun?”

  Rudolph shook his head. “What I just told you, about Joanna’s troubles with her uncle? If she finds out I spoke to you about this, she’ll never speak to me again.”

  “I won’t let on who told me.”

  Rudolph looked so relieved it was almost touching. “You want to help me with these locks?” Joe D. asked.

  Rudolph hesitated before pulling himself up. He seemed reluctant to end the conversation. “I’ve lost the woman I love and my father, both in the same week,” he said. “Anything you can do…”

  He seemed unable to complete the sentence. “I’ll do my best,” Joe D. assured him. He ran down the three flights and out onto the sidewalk, where he took a deep breath. Never had New York City air tasted sweeter.

  Twenty-Four

  Joe D. walked to the corner of Seventh Avenue, and paused to figure out the quickest way to get to Joanna Freeling’s. The southern end of Manhattan displayed none of the orderly grid-logic of the rest of Manhattan. He figured there probably was a bus connecting the Village with Soho, but he hadn’t a clue where to get it. A cab would be faster anyway, he concluded, and stepped off the curb to hail one. It was close to rush hour, however, and as if that weren’t bad enough, a slight drizzle had begun, both of which made finding an empty cab a long shot. As always in Manhattan, walking turned out to be the only completely reliable mode of transportation.

  He walked quickly, zigzagging the intersections to avoid the red lights, and arrived at Joanna’s building fifteen minutes later. The drizzle had intensified into a downpour. Raindrops cascaded from his hair like sweat. He wiped them away and buzzed her loft. He caught his reflection in the glass that covered the tenant list, and tried to make himself look presentable. The effort was futile.

  Joanna greeted him at the door wearing a long black turtleneck over black leggings. She maneuvered herself to within inches of Joe D., looking up into his face with large, sparkling eyes. He couldn’t decide if she was being seductive, or if she was one of those people who just weren’t sensitive to physical distances between people. He took a step back.

  “I hate this time of day, don’t you?” she told him, and took a step towards him. She made this statement as if it were self-evident. When Joe D. didn’t respond, she added some explanation, sounding a bit peevish. “Do you continue working, or knock off? Is it too early for a drink, or has the cocktail hour begun? It’s an occupational hazard of the artist’s life that you never know when to quit. I imagine people with office jobs know precisely when to quit.” She made people with office jobs sound like a remote species. “But artists?” She waved both hands artistically.

  “I have a few more questions about your relationship with your uncle,” Joe D. said.

  “More questions? Then let’s have a drink.”

  She led him to the kitchen area of the loft, which Joe D. hadn’t yet visited. It was an enormous, gleaming space. Tiles, countertops, appliances—all were shiny white and impeccably clean. It was either fashionably uncluttered or starkly institutional, depending on how you felt about ultramodern design. Joe D. found himself clenching and unclenching his fist; Joanna’s kitchen reminded him of a blood donor center.

  “I’m having Chardonnay,” Joanna said. “And you?”

  She was treating his visit as a social call, and he was tempted to decline a drink in the interests of professionalism. But the rain had chilled him and he felt he could use some fortification for the interview to come. He really wanted a beer, but was afraid it would clash with the decor. “Chardonnay’s fine.”

  She removed a bottle from a nearly empty refrigerator disguised as a cabinet. “I’m afraid I haven’t anything to offer you in the way of hors d’oeuvres.”

  “No problem.”

  “I’m a vegetarian, you see,” she offered pointlessly.

  “You probably brake for animals too,” Joe D. muttered.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing.” In his experience, people became vegetarians more to express antisocial sentiments than pro-animal feelings. Joanna seemed no exception.

  “I’ve been doing some digging,” he began, once they were seated with their wine. “I’ve learned that you and your uncle were not getting along when he died.”

  “You’ve been talking to Howard,” she said bitterly. Her tight black leggings accentuated the remarkable length and shape of her legs. “Or should I say Arthur.” She waited a beat, then added, “Junior.”

  Her tone was so acid, Joe D. felt obliged to put in a plug for Arthur. “He’s known as Chip, actually. And he really loves you, you know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  The word sounded especially lurid coming from Joanna’s pale, delicate lips.

  “Anyway, did you believe your uncle was planning to change his will before he died?”

  “Uncle George and I never discussed wills.” Her nose crinkled at the word. “Our disagreements, such as they were, weren’t about money.”

  “What were they about?”

  “Art!” she said, as if this were obvious.

  “The painting you gave him, the one he hung in his servants’ quarters.”

  “Mona put it there,” she spat, then inhaled deeply. “It was one of my best pieces. I worked for weeks on it.”

  Joe D. pictured her stenciling “Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate” a hundred times on a white canvas. If she did kill her uncle, an insanity plea would probably stick; she’d only have to bring her canvases to court to prove it.

  “But if you think I murdered my uncle because he and his wife failed to appreciate my art, you’re mistaken.”

  “But this episode did lead to a falling out, am I correct?”

  “We had words.”

  “Did he threaten to disinherit you?”

  She smiled coyly. “I’d hardly tell you if he had, now would I?”

  “The night your uncle was killed, you and How
ard—I mean Arthur—were here in the loft.”

  “As I told you last week.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Reading, I suppose.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Chip may have been watching the television,” she said, sounding annoyed. “He liked to watch television.” She made this sound like a character defect on the order of pyromania.

  “In fact, Chip told me he was watching TV. Mind if you show me where the TV is?”

  She put down her glass and took him through yards and yards of loft until they reached her bedroom. A king-size bed covered in a bright quilt dominated the room. One wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with art books. There was even a library stand on wheels to reach the books on the top shelves. In front of the bed was a large television. Funny place for a person who never watches television to put a set, he thought.

  “This your only set?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where were you while Howard was watching?”

  “With him on the bed.”

  “He was watching a basketball game.”

  “I could be a fan, you know.”

  “You could be, but Howard told me you were painting.” If Rudolph ever had a chance with her, Joe D. thought, he’s dead in the water now. “Your studio’s practically in another time zone from the bedroom.”

  “Very funny.”

  “But you could easily have slipped out for an hour and Howard would never have noticed.”

  “He could have slipped out too.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t think so. But he certainly had a motive for wanting George Samson dead.”

  “Oh?”

  “Don’t play dumb. My uncle destroyed his father. I don’t think…Chip ever thought he’d have to earn a living. Now he’s broke. He’s bright enough to support himself somehow. He’s got the credentials—Choate, Harvard. And I suppose some of his family’s connections must still be worth something, even if the money’s gone. He’s just unmotivated.”

  “He writes,” Joe D. offered in his defense.

  “That’s his pretext, his cover. It gives him something to talk about at cocktail parties. He has no dedication at all. And believe me,” she added smugly, “dedication’s what it takes.”

  That and a trust fund, Joe D. was tempted to add. He felt a surprising sympathy for Rudolph, and decided to steer the conversation away from Joanna’s character assassination. “If Arthur was in here, and you were painting, then you can’t be positive that he stayed in all night.”

  “I thought I was, but I suppose you’re right. He could have left without my hearing him.”

  “Which means that you could have done the same.”

  “Touché.”

  “Do you own a gun?” He knew the answer, but didn’t want to further implicate Rudolph.

  “Oh, this is getting serious.”

  “Do you?”

  She nodded.

  “Mind if I take a look at it?”

  “I don’t have to show it to you.”

  Joe D. just shrugged. After a moment’s pause she crossed the bedroom, opened a drawer in a small night table, and removed a pistol.

  It was a Colt semiautomatic, the same type of gun used to kill Samson. True, it was the most common privately owned gun in the country, but a ballistics expert might be able to tie it to the murders through the cylinder markings on the bullets found in Samson and the driver. A sniff test told him it had been used recently.

  “When did you last fire this?”

  “A few days ago. I take lessons at a rifle club.”

  Funny sport for a vegetarian, he thought. “Are you afraid of someone?”

  “Everyone in New York should be afraid. But I’m a very wealthy woman, as you know. And I live alone.”

  “May I borrow it for a few days?” Joe D. had a contact in the city ballistics department who could run a quick check for him.

  “Absolutely not. I don’t have to give it to you. And I don’t want to be without protection even for one night.”

  “If the gun doesn’t match the one used to kill your uncle, it would clear you.”

  “I don’t need to be cleared. And certainly not by you. You’re not even a cop.”

  She replaced the gun by her bedside and escorted Joe D. due east toward the living area. She sat down and picked up her wine, but Joe D. remained standing. He was trying to decide whether Joanna’s refusal to give him the gun signified anything. If the gun had been used to kill Samson, she naturally wouldn’t lend it to him—but then she’d hardly keep it by her bedside, either, if it was the murder weapon. On the other hand, she had a petulant streak. Joe D. had no doubt that she’d withhold the gun just to be difficult.

  “It looks like you don’t have much of an alibi anymore,” he told her. “And you have a prime motive.”

  “I told you, it’s not about money.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “Anyway, you’re a private detective. I don’t need an alibi for you. As far as I know, the police still think my uncle was a random victim.”

  The truth of this statement took the wind out of Joe D.’s sails momentarily.

  “The person you should be harassing is Mona Samson,” she said bitterly. “Talk about motive.”

  “What motives are we talking about?”

  “She hated him. He wasn’t cultured enough for her. All he could do was make money. He wasn’t exactly a sweetheart, either. And he fooled around.”

  “She seemed happy enough with the arrangement they had.”

  “Don’t believe it. She detested him and he hated her. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he was planning on divorcing her.”

  Or faking his own death to get away from her. “If you think of anything else you want to tell me, you know where to reach me.”

  Joe D. left her in the living area and hoped he remembered how to find the front door. He regretted not leaving a trail of crumbs.

  Twenty-Five

  Joe D. hesitated before knocking on the locked door of Many Fetes. It was just after 7:00. Inside he could see Alison straightening up the store. She replaced some items on the racks, refreshed a few displays. He enjoyed watching her work. She looked beautiful in a tight-fitting black suit from the store that wasn’t the least bit corporate. She also looked happy in the store, and Alison had one of those faces that improves immeasurably with happiness, and falls to pieces when sad. A pout could look attractive on some women. On Alison a pout fell like a dark shadow across her face, obscuring its best features.

  He knocked on the door after a few minutes. She turned, about to announce that the store was closed, and smiled broadly when she recognized him.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she said after unlocking the door. She finished tidying up while Joe D. browsed through the racks. Alison had great taste in clothes—the store had even gotten a small write-up in New York magazine—but some of the outfits he looked at were pretty bizarre. He held up a few and wondered how a woman could figure out how to put them on. “This one looks like a parachute vest,” he said of one outfit, in pale beige, with an assortment of randomly placed holes and hefty brass hardware, and a price tag of $750. Alison frowned when she saw what he was referring to. “I think that was one of my mistakes. I’m marking it down next week.” He considered suggesting a 110 percent markdown—the store pays seventy-five dollars to anyone who takes the thing off its hands—but thought better of it. Alison took her work personally, and that included her inventory. Hadn’t New York referred to Many Fetes’s “highly eclectic, very personal assortment of dressing-up dresses”?

  They had dinner at a tiny Italian restaurant on a side street that Joe D. had passed several times recently on his nightly rambles. He’d thought it looked charming and out-of-the-way. After waiting twenty-five minutes for a table, he changed his opinion. Alison insisted they stay once she’d gotten a look at the place. “This is my market,” she said, surveying the small
but well-heeled crowd. “I want food, not market research,” Joe D. protested, but to no avail.

  They were shown to a table within swinging distance of the kitchen door. Alison ordered a glass of white wine and Joe D. had a beer. Their waiter handed them menus and recited the daily specials. The dishes sounded Italian, but Joe D. doubted his mother, a native of Naples, would have heard of any of them. That he’d heard of one or two of them was due solely to his relationship with Alison, who’d proven to him that there was Italian food that didn’t come covered with red sauce. He was learning to enjoy things like carpaccio and radicchio and carbonara, but couldn’t help pining for the old-style southern Italian food he had grown up on.

  He filled Alison in on his day, grateful, after months of relative idleness, that he had something to tell her. “Why the photo of Rudolph?” she asked him.

  “I have this hunch. What if it was Rudolph in the back of the limo, pretending to be Samson. I never got a good look at the guy, and Rudolph and Samson look enough alike that I could have been fooled.”

  “Is Rudolph sane enough to pull something like that off?”

  “By all acounts, no. But I have another theory.”

  He paused to take a sip of beer when someone caught his eye. Across the small restaurant he saw a familiar face. Kendall Williams was engaged in what looked like an intimate conversation with a woman who appeared to be no older than twenty-five, thirty max. She was stunning, with straight dark hair, turgid lips, and a long, sculpted face. Both she and Williams were leaning over the table, eyes locked.

  “What’s the matter?” Alison asked.

  “Don’t turn around…” Alison swiveled anyway and then turned back. “Thanks. Did you notice the guy at the table against the wall, with the stunning woman with the long straight hair?”

  “You mean the handsome guy with Natalie Danielli?”

  “Who?”

  “Natalie Danielli. She’s a model. I can’t believe I missed her on the way in.”

  “You know her?”

  “No, silly. But I’ve seen her in magazines. She’s one of the top models. Who’s the guy?”

  Joe D. told her. “She’s an improvement over Mona Samson.”