Worst-case scenario, I could check to see if any of the windows on the main level were unlocked. Over the years I’ve gotten good at breaking and entering. It may not be strictly legal, but anything in an emergency. Nope. All the windows were secured. Then I tried other doors—garage, mudroom, laundry. Nothing. In the back of the house, my last hope, French doors on the patio. The first was tight. So was the second. Then, just as I was in complete despair, a doorknob moved slightly within my grasp. I sucked in my breath and turned it, hard. It slid open easily at my touch. The last agent to show the house must have left this last door unlocked. Well, that was her problem, and I wasn’t about to tell! With a sigh of relief, I entered an airy living room and made my way over thick carpets to the front door: Welcome, I told my anxious clients. Sue gave one last, tiny, gasp, and stopped crying.
Dear God, I thought, what a stupid brat she is!
The two-story entrance hall was awesome, with patterned Italian tile flooring and a curving staircase with a wrap-around balcony on the upper level. A ficus tree in a large blue ceramic planter was set into the center of the entrance hall and grew towards the light from a massive skylight above. I felt encouraged. So far, it had the tasteful architecture the Mullers had hoped to find in their comfortable price range.
The Mullers were impressed with the spacious living room, and impressed with its twelve-foot ceiling, dentil molding and carved mahogany fireplace mantle. “If you look straight ahead,” I told them, for all the world sounding as if I knew this house inside and out, “you will see three French doors leading out to a private, terraced garden. That’s how I was able to get in—one was unlocked. Also, to your left is the formal dining room with custom-made Japanese screens on the windows.”
“Whoever the architect was, he really knew his stuff!” David remarked.
We entered a stunning gourmet kitchen. I went into my spiel. “This state-of-the-art kitchen was designed with all the accessories young families are looking for these days: granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, an attached great room so children can be supervised from the kitchen.”
“I looove it,” Sue Waterman crooned.
It began to look as if I was finally going to sell these folks a house!
We finished our tour of the downstairs, and began walking up to the second level. I was leading the way, and was first to hear the sound of running water.
“What’s that?” David Muller asked. “Is someone taking a shower?”
The sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the master suite on the left. Had some member of the family come back to the house? Maybe to get some last minute items taken care of? Had they forgotten a real estate agent had an appointment to show the house this afternoon?
Recently, I’d walked into a bathroom with a prospective buyer, and we were met by a woman just emerging stark naked from her shower. I really didn’t want to have another embarrassing experience like that. I’d better check it out.
At the landing, halfway up the stairs, I paused and turned to the Mullers.
“Why don’t the two of you stay where you are, while I check to see if anyone’s upstairs,” I said. “If it’s just a faucet that’s been left on, I’ll have you join me.”
Hopefully, there wasn’t some kind of a leak to deal with. That’s a sure way to dampen a client’s enthusiasm!
“Is anyone home?” I called out, as I walked toward the sound of the water. I cautiously pushed open the double doors to the master suite, walked past an antique four-poster bed fitted with pastel silk pillows, and called out, again, “Is anyone home?” The door to the en-suite bath was slightly ajar, and the light was on. I felt uncomfortable. What was going on here?
“Hello, anyone there?” I asked loudly, in front of the door. There was no response, but closer to the bathroom I could hear the sound of a motor.
Then my cell phone suddenly rang. I almost jumped right out of my Ferragamos. It was Marcy Goodwin, the listing agent for this property, returning my earlier call. “Maggie, there’s nothing to worry about. The sellers have definitely moved out. I checked the house yesterday evening. It was in perfect shape—all ready to be shown. And I don’t know what’s going on with the key—I tested each and every one of them myself, and they all worked fine.”
“Well, mine didn’t!”
“It should have!” Marcy was beginning to sound miffed. “And about the water, maybe the cleaning people forgot to turn it off when they were done cleaning early this morning. Maggie, why don’t you see what’s going on—I’ll stay on the line.”
I opened the bathroom door just a bit more and stepped over the marble threshold. “Oh, my God!” I screamed.
“What? Wha-a-t?” Marcy’s tinny voice came from my dropped cell phone, from where it now lay in a pinkish puddle on the floor. Oh my God!” I screamed again.
On the left side of the huge, luxurious master bathroom, in a double-sized whirlpool tub, a naked figure was floating face down, the motor sending jets of bloody water around the body and into spirals of steam. A broken Prosecco bottle lay on the shelf of the tub facing me, jagged pieces of glass and blood scattered everywhere. I took a step forward. Glass bits crunched under my expensive new shoes.
“What’s going on,” David Muller yelled from just outside the door.
“Call the police,” I shrieked, whether to David or to Marcy, her tinny “Wha-a-t,” over and over again, still emanating from the phone, I didn’t know. Trembling, I approached the tub, my hands covering my mouth, the desire to help giving me the courage. It was a woman who lay in the bloody water. And there was no way to help her. A large piece of glass protruded from the back of her head.
“Call the police,” I yelled again. “Someone’s been murdered!”
As David burst, all manly, into the room, I cried, “There’s a dead woman in the whirlpool! Call the police! Hurry! Hurry!”
David took one look at the floating body and promptly fainted.
I left him there. In a cold sweat, I backed from the bathroom, my heart pumping almost out of my chest. I called out to Sue Muller, still waiting on the landing. “Get out! Get out fast!” I screamed. “There’s a dead woman in the tub, and the killer might still be in the house!”
I could see the terrified woman waddling down the stairs and out through the front door, and I followed on her heels as fast as I could, leaving her husband still slumped over the bidet.
So much for finally selling the Mullers a house.
12
Christina Hernandez-Asprino didn’t want to end up like Princess Diana. Having just fired her chauffeur/bodyguard because she’d smelled alcohol on his breath once too often, she was on the lookout for a new man-of-all-work to take on both roles in a sober condition.
Christina was a native of Caracas, but, early on, that city had become too provincial for her. Oh, yes, it boasted sky-high glass-walled buildings and tourists from many countries. Of course, tourism flourished—or waned—depending on the political situation. (There’s nothing more unappealing to travelers than military bunkers surrounding a city and soldiers with shouldered guns at the doors of luxury hotels.)
A six-foot-tall Latina beauty, Christina had been voted Miss Caracas, 2005, and although she hadn’t made the final cut for Miss Venezuela, she had been discovered by a top agent and flown to New York to receive a modeling contract. Once in America, which she called a “sweet poison,” she returned to her homeland only occasionally to visit aging relatives. She liked America’s poison all too well.
Then, in Las Vegas as a showgirl, she landed the best contract of all: Raul Henriquez, the celebrity racing car driver married her weeks into a whirlwind courtship. Unfortunately, their marriage came to a sad ending when, after only a few months, Raul died in a Monte Carlo grande prix. But, fortunately for her, Raul, the only child of a Venezuelan millionaire, left Christina a huge estate. Also, fortunately, she had a
wise attorney. Although she was long on beauty, the woman was charmingly short on common sense—especially when it came to predatory men. Her attorney thought it prudent for Christina to find a sensible bodyguard to look after her on a daily basis, but she didn’t like any of the candidates at the agencies he recommended.
In the building where she now lived in Manhattan, an underground garage boasted an appealing parking valet. He was a tall, strong fellow, good-looking and always very respectful. His name was Nicky, and she queried the manager of the garage about him. It seemed Nicky was a really good driver. Her attorney checked his credentials including whether he had a criminal record of any kind. Nicky Pardo was found to be clean.
So, Christina hired him.
Nicky Pardo, aka Daniel Joseph Farrell, went to work for Christina Hernandez-Asprino feeling as high as if he’d just won the lottery. He’d been doing a little of this, a little of that, from driving farm tractors to swabbing out stables at race tracks. Buying his new identity from a drifter he’d met somewhere along the highways had been worth every penny it had cost him!
But, Danny Joe had a bigger dream: he planned to become a high-class escort, the kind who took rich ladies to concerts and parties. The kind who took them to bed. The kind who took them for everything they had. In Juvie, he’d watched enough TV to know how a sophisticated man should look, should dress, should behave. He saved every cent he earned in the backsides of race tracks, until he had enough to get himself to Manhattan, enough to buy a decent wardrobe, piece by piece, enough to rent a room to keep that wardrobe in. He was handsome, smart, glib, and he knew how to use his blue eyes, his respectful but fascinated sky-blue masculine gaze, to drive any woman wild. It wasn’t that he especially liked women, because he didn’t. But he was instinctively good at charming them—it was the only talent he had. He planned to use that talent to get him out of the sewer and head him right to the top.
13
Each time I closed my eyes, I envisioned the nightmarish scene in the whirlpool tub. Each repetition of that vision was accompanied by yet another wave of nausea. But the worst part had been learning the identity of the victim of this brutal crime: Amy Honeywell, a local broker—part girl, mostly barracuda. Amy had stepped on a lot of toes along the way, making plenty of enemies, yet no one deserves to be murdered—and especially to die the way that poor woman had.
Each time I opened my eyes, I was still in Chief Betsy’s office at the Hudson Hills Police Department. It was almost midnight, when the guys from homicide finally left, but Betsy had asked me to stay, along with the Mullers. I sank my weary head and aching shoulders into her soft brown leather chair. Sue Muller sat on the sofa with David, asleep with her head on his shoulder. I don’t remember ever feeling so physically and mentally drained. Of course, I had never before seen a brutally murdered person, or been questioned by the police for so many hours. Nor for any time at all, for that matter!
Plus, I was barefoot. The forensic team had taken my shoes to the crime lab—they wanted to remove glass and blood samples imbedded in the soles. Andrew had brought comfortable flats from home for me to wear in place of those wildly expensive Ferragamos. I didn’t think I’d ever want to put them on my feet again!
When Andrew appeared in the massive oak-framed doorway of Chief Betsy’s office, my favorite soft leather loafers dangling from two fingers, I’d managed a wan smile. “Thank God you happened to be in town, Andrew. I’d be limping up my driveway in bare feet if you hadn’t.” I sighed happily, picturing him by my side for the rest of the questioning—sort of like a twenty-first-century Perry Mason.
Andrew strode toward me and let the shoes fall. They landed on the rug with two soft thuds. He took both my hands in his. “I’d never let that happen, Sweetie,” he said. “But, listen, I can’t stay—I have to get back to the city tonight. I do hate to leave you, but I have an absolutely crucial breakfast meeting in the morning.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed.
He didn’t note my distress. “More important, I don’t think Sue Muller has the stamina to take Metro North home at this late hour. And David’s in worse shape than she is! I’ll drive them home, drop them off at their apartment on the way to mine.” He lowered his voice. “She’s so close to her delivery time, it wouldn’t be responsible for me to put her on that rackety train.
He was right. I nodded in wan agreement.
“But,” he went on, “you can call her tomorrow and talk about the house deal then.”
I gazed up at him, speechless. The house deal! After seeing a body in her bathtub, Sue Muller would never want to hear from me again!
He bent down and kissed me. “You’re exhausted. Go home. Rest.” Then he whispered in my ear, “I love you, my beautiful Maggie. Sorry you have to deal with all of this.”
Standing up, his hand still on my shoulder, he concluded, “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow.” He nodded, businesslike at Chief Betsy, rallied the Mullers, who were still dozing on the sofa, and left the office.
My hero! I thought, sardonically.
A half hour later, the Chief was still writing up her report. I shifted in the soft chair—it was an effort to move, even that little. But I stayed because every once in awhile she needed to ask me a question. It was three o’clock before she finally called in a patrolman to drive me home.
After today’s ghastly experience, my shingled Victorian, on a knoll overlooking the calm waters of the river felt welcoming. Andrew had thoughtfully left lights on in the house and on the garden walk for my return. Once inside—even though it was the middle of the night—the first thing I did was to call Claire to tell her about Amy.
She took the news hard. “I liked Amy! She may have been a bitch, but she was so alive. I just can’t believe someone could kill her!” Claire said, her voice catching in a sob. “What an awful tragedy! And right here in Hudson Hills, too!”
14
I’d always loved Hudson Hills, but in the days immediately after Amy Honeywell’s murder the atmosphere in town was either grossly titillating or sickeningly morbid. Everyone was in denial that the murder had anything to do with the rapist we’d previously obsesssed about. The local paper quoted a psychologist at Westchester Community College who said that serial rapists very rarely murder their victims. Otto Schultz at Otto the Butcher insisted that either Amy’s husband or lover had killed her. Luigi Caruso at Caruso’s Italian deli was making book as to which one it was—husband or lover. The odds were two to one for the husband. Josie’s Café, the coffee house on Main Street, was gossip central, standing room only; Amy’s horrid murder kept the coffee brewing, the cappuccino machine steaming, and the old-fashioned cash register dinging. But the realty offices in town were, for a change, quiet, sober places: the one undeniable common denominator between the first two attacks and, now, Amy’s murder, was that all three victims had been licensed real estate agents. There was no getting away from that.
And there was no getting away from the murder. It was all over the news. Fox News reported that Amy had a secret life, a love affair with a married man. That was a rumor that many real-estate colleagues had heard, had greeted with some credulity, but had seldom voiced.
Amy’s husband was being questioned. Word got around fast; he’d been seen by both the Methodist minister and the kindergarten teacher—two unimpeachable sources—stepping out of a police cruiser and being ushered into Hudson Hills Police Station. Then an unnamed “person of interest,” probably her lover, was also called in for questioning. Several locals reported seeing him—wearing a Borsalino hat—but since nobody knew who the man was or what he looked like—or even if the lover was a man—I took that news with a grain of salt. But, oh, what juicy scandal! Hudson Hills was abuzz!
And Chief Betsy wanted to keep me in the loop, because I was so well placed to ask “casual” questions. The time of the murder being critical to the investigation, I called Carmen, the woman who ran the local c
leaning service. Her crew had finished their work cleaning what had come to be known as the “murder house” at 10:30 a.m., and they’d made sure all doors and windows were secured before they left the premises. However, I had found one of the doors to the patio unlocked when I got there at 5:00 p.m. And at some point within that time frame—from 10:30 to 5:00—a good six and a half hours—Amy had been murdered.
Chief Betsy had retrieved Amy’s date book from her leather case at the murder scene and turned it over to the D.A.’s office. It noted an 11 a.m. appointment and a reminder to meet her client directly at the property, but there was no name written next to the time slot. Who else but that client could have killed her there? To obfuscate things, the killer had locked the front door and left the house through that patio door.
But, then, for all we know, someone other than her mysterious client might have gained access to the house in the brief period after the cleaning service left and before Amy and her client arrived. And he certainly could have hidden himself there until after the client left. The murderer might be a local. Or he—and, in public opinion, it was most definitely a he—might have taken the train to Hudson Hills from just about anywhere and walked to the house from the station—nothing in Hudson Hills is very far from anything else. Plus, the Old Croton Aqueduct runs behind the property the “murder house” is on, and many people use that walking trail as a shortcut to the station.
Amy’s Lexus, still in the driveway when I’d arrived at 5 p.m., had by now been driven away by the police. Surely, they’d checked for other tire marks in the driveway; I’d been the only agent after Amy who ended up showing the house. The other appointments had been scheduled for later in the evening, and were, of course, cancelled, yellow police tape circling the entire perimeter of the property.
“I always caution my agents to first meet new clients at our office,” Sally Whitten, the manager at Amy’s office told Mike, the cop, tapping her manicured, blood-red, fingernails nervously on the black leather desk pad. “They’re required to sign a NYS disclosure form at the first substantive meeting anyway, and it gives the agent, and others present in the office, the chance to size up these people.”
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