by Jane Heller
He stroked his beard and pondered the question. “As a matter of fact, there is,” he said finally. “When I re-planked the topsides, I built a secret storage area under the anchor locker, just forward of the V-berths.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess: you had a premonition there’d be a missing manuscript you’d have to hide from the cops someday.”
“No, actually a lot of sailors like to have a secret locker when they travel to foreign ports. It’s great for storing valuables.”
“Terrific. Is this secret locker big enough to hold the manuscript?”
“Should be. You get the manuscript. I’ll get everything ready.”
I retrieved the Bloomingdale’s bag from the hanging locker and brought it into the V-berth, where Cullie was pulling up the mattresses.
“Better get something to wrap it in so it doesn’t get wet down here,” he said as he crawled down into the tiny compartment between the anchor locker and the V-berth.
I scurried into the galley and found a large plastic garbage bag, then went back into the V-berth and wrapped the manuscript in it, then taped it securely.
“Okay. Now hand it to me,” Cullie said, his voice muffled.
I lowered the manuscript down to Cullie, who was burrowing beneath the secret sub-floor.
Seconds later, he emerged. “Mission accomplished,” he said proudly.
“You don’t think Corsini and his boys would look down there?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t know to look there. And even if they did, they’d have to move two hundred feet of mud-encrusted anchor chain to find it.”
We both breathed a sigh of relief.
“Feel better now?” I asked after Cullie had restored the mattresses to their normal place in the V-berth and returned to the galley for a last sip of coffee.
“A little.”
“Good. Now go. I’m planning to be very busy today,” I said, holding up the classified advertising section of the Community Times.
“I’m going. I’m going,” he smiled. “Knock ’em dead.”
I winced. “Do you have to use that expression? I’m a murder suspect, remember?”
“Sorry. How about: give ’em hell.”
“Better. Much better.”
At about one o’clock, as I was sitting by the phone at Cullie’s navigation desk, eating a tuna fish sandwich and trying to swallow the fact that all four jobs I’d called about had already been filled, I heard footsteps on the deck of the boat, then pounding on the hatch.
“Who’s there?” I called out.
“Detective Joseph Corsini, Layton Police Department. Open up.”
I nearly choked on my sandwich. Oh, God. Maybe Cullie was right. Maybe Bethany did tell Corsini I took the manuscript and now he had come to get it. I glanced over in the direction of the secret storage area under the anchor locker and sighed with relief that the manuscript was safely hidden there. No manuscript, no evidence.
I opened the hatch. Corsini was not alone. Detective Michaels was along for the ride.
“What’s up, boys?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“This,” Detective Corsini said, and handed me an official-looking, four-page document.
I scanned the first page and gasped. “It’s a warrant for my arrest,” I cried. “But for what? There’s no cocaine on this boat. You can check the refrigerator.”
“Read the last paragraph,” said Detective Michaels with a self-important smirk on his face.
I flipped to the last page of the document and read the final paragraph. “Based upon the facts and circumstances contained herein,” it said, “a warrant is requested for the arrest of Alison Waxman Koff, of 33 Woodland Way, Layton, Connecticut, charging her with one count of murder in violation of Section 53a-54a of the Connecticut General Statutes for her participation in the crime described herein.” Murder!
“Alison Koff, you have the right to remain silent…” Detective Michaels began, unhooking the handcuffs from the back of his belt and fastening them around my wrists.
“But wait,” I screamed as he continued to read me my Miranda rights. “You can’t arrest me for Melanie’s murder. I didn’t kill her! I didn’t kill anybody! Somebody help me!”
“We can arrest you and we just did,” said Detective Corsini. “That’s what this document is about. A judge signed it, see?” He waved the warrant in front of my face.
“On what grounds? My fingerprints on the book? The cocaine in my refrigerator? That’s not enough to—”
“A little birdie told us you stole the manuscript Miss Moloney was workin’ on,” said Detective Corsini. “Stole it right from the crime scene, eh, Miss Koff?”
Bethany. Cullie was right.
“Our informant claims to have seen the manuscript in your possession, Miss Koff,” Detective Michaels explained. “The informant also said you were hidin’ it somewhere. One of these days, we’ll find out exactly where.”
“That’s a lie.” Well, the part about Bethany having actually seen me with the manuscript was.
“We’ll let the judge decide,” said Detective Corsini. “But I guarantee you, he’ll see it our way.” He chuckled and buffed his fingernails against his pant leg. “This news about the manuscript really sews up the case for us.”
“But I’m innocent, I tell you.”
“Then why’d you steal the manuscript?”
“I was all out of bedtime stories,” I said.
“There she goes again with the jokes,” said Detective Michaels.
“She won’t be jokin’ for long,” Detective Corsini said, running his fingers through his slicked-back hair. “Will you, Miss Koff?”
I stuck my tongue out at him. I would have given him the finger but mine were handcuffed behind my back.
“Stealin’ that manuscript was a greedy, greedy thing to do,” said Detective Corsini. “It was bad enough that you killed your boss to stop her from turnin’ you in for cocaine dealin’. But to steal her book so you could extort money from honest, reputable, hardworkin’ people like the Downs family? Tsk tsk. Shame on you.”
“The Downs family? Reputable? Don’t make me puke.” I made gagging noises. “What’s this about extortion? I didn’t extort money from the Downs family or anyone else. What are you talking about, Corsini?”
“Our informant told us there are some nasty allegations about the Senator in that book,” Detective Michaels said. “Our informant also told us you were playin’ the blackmail game. Blackmail isn’t very nice. Is it, Miss Koff?”
“Let me get this straight. First, you accuse me of cocaine possession. Then you accuse me of murder. Now you’re accusing me of blackmail. What’s next, child abuse?”
“Well?” said Detective Corsini. “You got something you want to get off your chest?”
“No!” I suddenly remembered Mrs. Silverberg. The way my luck was going, she’d probably come forward and tell Corsini about my dumping soda on her daughters’ heads. “I’m not going to say another word without talking to my lawyer. I am allowed to call my lawyer, aren’t I?”
“You know the routine, Miss Koff,” he said. “You’re gettin’ to be an old hand at this arrest stuff. You can call your lawyer when we get down to headquarters. Let’s go.”
Chapter 22
By four o’clock that afternoon, I was back in my old cell in the basement of the Layton Police Station—my home away from home. No, it didn’t boast all the amenities of Maplebark Manor, but at least this home wasn’t on the verge of foreclosure.
“Well, hello. Look who’s here,” said Officer Zenk as she slid a tray of food through the narrow slot in the bars of my cell.
“Hello yourself,” I said, trying to be friendly. Officer Zenk had been a fount of information about my case the last time I was in the slammer. I was counting on her to be just as forthcoming this time around. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but is this a late lunch or an early dinner?” Judging by the food on the tray—chipped beef on toast, mashed potatoes, and rasp
berry Jell-O—it could have been either.
“It’s dinner. Enjoy.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.” Shit on a shingle wasn’t my idea of dinner. Besides, I’d had that tuna sandwich a few hours before, and in all the excitement, it was beginning to repeat on me.
“I ran into your boyfriend upstairs,” she said.
“Cullie?” I’d left a message on his answering machine, explaining what had happened.
“I didn’t catch his name. He was talkin’ to your lawyer.”
“Mr. Obermeyer. Do you know if he’s still here?”
“Your lawyer or your boyfriend?”
“My lawyer.”
“Yeah. I heard him yellin’ at Corsini.”
“About what?”
“He was yellin’ about how you were arrested wrongfully, how Corsini had no proof that you stole Miss Moloney’s manuscript, how the police were takin’ an informant’s word over yours, how they were only goin’ on hearsay, how they hadn’t handled a murder case in forty years and were so inept they were an embarrassment to the law enforcement community.”
“Wow. I told you I had a good lawyer.”
“If he’s so good, let’s see him get your bail reduced again.”
“Why? How much will it be this time?”
“They’re talkin’ about half a million dollars.”
“Are you serious? Last time, it was only fifty thousand.”
“Last time you were up on drug charges. This time, it’s murder. Big difference.”
I fought back my tuna sandwich. I wished Mr. Obermeyer were around. I’d mooch some of his Maalox. “I didn’t do it, Officer Zenk. I didn’t kill Melanie Moloney. Honest, I didn’t.”
“Corsini thinks you did,” she said. “He says it’s an open-and-shut case now. He’s got the motive: your boss caught you doin’ coke on the job. He’s got the proximity: you had access to the house since you were the maid. He’s got your fingerprints on the murder weapon. And now he’s got the fact that you stole the deceased’s manuscript from the crime scene.”
“This is incredible,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m completely innocent.”
“It’s not me you have to convince,” said Officer Zenk. “But if I were you, I’d get my lawyer to cut a deal.”
“A deal?”
“Yeah, a plea bargain. It goes like this: they let you off the murder charge, you plead guilty to manslaughter.”
“Why would I do that? I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Honey, do you know what the sentence for murder is in the state of Connecticut?”
“No,” I said tentatively.
“Twenty-five years to life. Like I said, if I were you, I’d tell my lawyer to cut a deal, especially if I didn’t want to eat chipped beef on toast for the rest of my life.”
After Officer Zenk left, I paced back and forth in my cell, feverish with worry over my bail hearing the next morning. Obviously, I would never be able to come up with $500,000. And I knew my mother wouldn’t be able to either.
After I wore myself out pacing, I sat down on my cot and contemplated my future. What if Mr. Obermeyer couldn’t persuade the judge to reduce my bail? What if he couldn’t persuade a jury that I was innocent of murdering Melanie? What if I were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in the State Correctional Facility in Niantic?
I decided that my future was too awful to contemplate, so instead I contemplated my past. I wondered if God were punishing me for my fur coats, my Porsche, my big house. Were we all being punished? Was the stock market crash God’s way of telling us that we had overstepped, overspent, overdrawn? Was the recession His idea of a spanking?
I put my head in my hands and cried. Please help me, God, I prayed. I swear I will cut wastefulness and gluttony out of my life forever. I will never covet my neighbor’s house, his pool and tennis court, or even his professionally landscaped grounds. I will never utter the words, “Charge and send.” I will never order merchandise from a TV infomercial, no matter how many movie stars endorse the product. I will repent, Lord. I swear I will. Amen.
“Rise and shine,” said Officer Zenk as she deposited the breakfast tray into my cell the next morning. The meal consisted of coffee, burnt toast, and a waffle that was so flat and lifeless it looked like it had been run over by a fleet of Mack trucks.
“Thanks, Officer,” I said, groggy from lack of sleep. “But I’m not very hungry. Bail hearings don’t do much for the appetite.” I sent my breakfast tray back through its shoot.
“You mean you haven’t heard?” she said.
“Heard what?”
“They’re sayin’ the judge is gonna throw the murder charge right out the window. Lieutenant Graves is flippin’ out.”
“My murder charge?”
“You got it.”
“Who’s Lieutenant Graves?”
“The big cheese. Corsini’s boss. He’s madder than hell over the way Corsini and Michaels have botched your case so far.”
“Wait a minute, Officer Zenk. Rita. May I call you Rita?”
“It’s okay, I guess.”
“Good, Rita. Now let’s start from the beginning. Why is the judge going to throw out the murder charge and why is Lieutenant Graves so angry at the detectives handling my case?”
“’Cause they screwed up. They never field-tested the white powder that was found on the deceased’s desk.”
“You mean the cocaine?”
“Right.”
“What do you mean by ‘field-tested’?”
“Detectives have these little kits that come with chemical ampules,” Rita explained. “When they find powder at a crime scene and want to know if it’s cocaine, they take a little dash of the powder, put it in a plastic tube, break an ampule into it, and shake it up real good. If the stuff tests positive for cocaine, it’ll turn purple. Then they send the rest of it to the lab for confirmation.”
“I assume the stuff turned purple, right?”
“That’s just it. Corsini never field-tested the powder on Miss Moloney’s desk. Neither did Michaels. They tested the stuff in your refrigerator, but they didn’t test the stuff at the crime scene. And oh, man, are they in for it.”
“I’ll bet.” I still didn’t understand how the Layton Police Department’s latest display of ineptitude would provoke a judge to set me free, but I trusted that Rita would get to the point eventually.
“Yeah, you should have seen Lieutenant Graves chew ’em out last night. He comes stormin’ into Corsini’s office, wavin’ the lab reports, and yellin’ so loud I’m surprised you didn’t hear him down here in the basement.”
“The lab reports? They came back from Meriden?”
“Yeah, they came back. That’s why the lieutenant went bat-shit. He walks in and says to Corsini and Michaels, ‘Didn’t either of you assholes field-test the powder found on the deceased’s desk?’ They look at each other like they’ve been caught, right? Corsini says to Michaels, ‘Didn’t you field-test the powder?’ Michaels says, ‘No. I thought you were going to.’ Corsini says, ‘Well, I thought you were going to.’ Then the lieutenant says, ‘How can you assholes send the stuff to the lab without field-testing it first?’ The whole thing was bad news. If you ask me, I’d say your lawyer was right: this police force hasn’t had a murder case in forty years and they don’t know what they’re doin’. And that Corsini.” She shook her head. “He’s so celebrity-crazed that when he heard it was a famous author who got murdered, he kind of lost it.”
“If he ever had it to begin with.”
Officer Zenk laughed.
“So let me get this straight, Rita. The powder on Melanie’s desk was never field-tested. Therefore, the judge is gonna let me go?”
“No, honey. The lab reports from Meriden came back negative. That’s why the judge is gonna let you go.”
“Negative? You mean, the powder on Melanie’s desk wasn’t cocaine after all?”
“You got it. Corsini’s goin’ berserk because he’s got no
case against you now. No cocaine, no motive. Of course, he’s not finished with you yet. He still thinks you murdered your boss. But he’s got to find another way to prove it—and he’s not givin’ up till he does. His job is on the line.”
Who cared about Corsini’s job? I was about to go free. No cocaine, no motive for the murder. That’s what Rita said. So what if my fingerprints were on the book that somebody used to bash Melanie over the head. There were other fingerprints on that book. Maybe I’d find out whose.
“I’ll be back to get you in a couple of hours or so,” Rita said. “The hearing’s at ten.”
“Thanks, Rita. You’ve been great to me. Really, you’ve saved my life in this place. I’ll never forget you.”
“Don’t mention it. I mean, don’t mention to anybody that I told you all this stuff. The guys upstairs are always sayin’ what a big mouth I have. I could get in trouble if they find out I blabbed.”
Rita moved away from my cell and was starting to walk back upstairs when I called out to her.
“Rita?”
“Yeah?”
“About the lab reports.”
“What about ’em?”
“You said they came back negative, that the powder on Melanie’s desk wasn’t cocaine.”
“Right. It wasn’t.”
“So what kind of powder was it?”
“In police lab language, the report said: ‘Polysaccharide conjoined by a disaccharide with traces of a cellulosic cinnamaldehyde.’”
“How about in plain English?”
“Sugar. Powdered sugar. With a touch of cinnamon.”
I was arrested for murder because of a few measly granules of sugar?
“Hey, cheer up,” said Rita. “In a couple of hours you’ll be out of here.”
“Thank you, God,” I whispered to the ceiling of my cell after Rita had departed for the great upstairs. “It looks like you kept your end of the deal. Now it’s up to me to keep mine.”
My bail hearing turned out to be a thrilling example of the American Justice System at work.
“Your Honor,” my lawyer addressed the judge. “The police arrested my client on the basis of pure hearsay. They never found a missing manuscript in her possession. They never even searched her house. So they have her fingerprints on the murder weapon. So what? They have no motive for the murder. The cocaine on the deceased’s desk turned out to be sugar. Now what are they gonna do? Accuse my client of killing her employer over a spoonful of sugar?”