“Would you like some help?” he asked.
“Love it,” Bernie said, looking at the middle-aged man with the receding hairline, brown eyes, and a bit of a potbelly standing before her.
“Thanks,” Libby said.
“My pleasure. Manuel,” he said, extending his hand. “Manuel Rico. But you can call me Manny for short. Everyone does.”
Libby and Bernie shook hands with him and introduced themselves. Somehow introducing themselves had seemed superfluous last night.
“I wouldn’t want to go through that again,” Manny said, referring to having to open the door to Darius Witherspoon’s apartment. He shook his head. “No, no, señor. And I took this job because it was quiet. Everyone thinks that Paraguay is bad, but I never saw anything like that there.” He shook his head again and laughed. “You never know, right?”
“Right,” Libby agreed, liking him instantly. “Have you been here long? Because you don’t have an accent.”
Manny laughed again. “I first came here when I was a kid, and I’ve been going back and forth ever since,” he told her. Then he pointed to the scalloped potatoes on the floor. “I would have cleaned this up for you last night, but the cops wouldn’t let me near the place. Mrs. Randall told me they left around three.” Manny sighed and bit his lip. “I should have known something bad was going to happen,” he told them.
“Why do you say that?” Libby asked.
“My abuelita used to say that a bat in the house means someone is going to die,” Manny replied. “And when Mr. Witherspoon moved in, one flew in his window, and I had to come up and chase it out.”
“My mother used to say that about birds,” Libby told Manny as she went to get the garbage cans from the kitchen. She figured she’d put liners in them and then dump in everything.
Manny shook his head. “Poor Mr. Witherspoon. First, his wife, and now this. I guess he didn’t have much luck.”
“Apparently not,” Bernie agreed.
Then, by common consent, the three of them turned to look at the place in the garden where Darius Witherspoon had lain.
“Rest in peace, Darius,” Bernie murmured, after which she turned on her iPod and the three of them started cleaning. They worked at full speed, and it took a little over an hour and a half to restore the area to what it had looked like before.
They threw away all the garbage and the food that had been left in the chafing dishes; emptied out the refrigerator; packed up the dishes, glasses, serving pieces, and silverware, all of which needed to be washed when they got back to the shop; threw the tablecloths and napkins into the laundry bag Libby had brought; closed up the tables and the folding chairs; and put the furniture back where it belonged.
“You know,” Manny said as he and Bernie began mopping the floor, “I can’t help feeling that Mr. Witherspoon’s death is on me.”
Bernie stopped mopping. “How so?”
Manny wrung out the mop before answering. “Because I was the one who bought him the rope and the hook. Even worse, I installed the hook for him. He said it was for a plant he was planning on bringing up from the city. A heavy plant. I shouldn’t have installed the hook so well. Then it would have come loose, and Mr. Witherspoon would have fallen to the ground.”
“Did he say what he wanted the rope for?” Bernie asked.
Manny shook his head. “I figured it was for something to do with his move.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Libby said. She’d been wiping down the side tables and straightening the chairs on the rugs by the fireplace. “You couldn’t have known.”
Manny pointed at himself. “Then why do I feel so bad?”
Bernie clarified. “My sister means Darius might have had help going out the window. He might have been murdered,” she explained when she saw the blank look on Manny’s face.
“Really?” he said.
“Yes, really,” Bernie said, and then she told him about the note Darius had left for them.
“No,” Manny said when Bernie was done. “No way. Not unless the ghost that’s supposed to haunt this place did it, and I don’t believe in ghosts.” Then he backtracked. “Well, maybe I do a little.”
“Then how do you explain the note?” Bernie demanded.
“I can’t,” Manny replied as he moved the bucket over to the stretch of floor near one of the French windows. “But I also can’t explain how anyone could get out of his apartment, either. Mr. Witherspoon’s door was locked, and his windows were closed.”
“Except for the one he went out of,” Libby noted.
“We were up there in a minute. We looked out the window. Did you see anyone?”
“No,” Bernie admitted.
“Neither did I,” Manny said, and he began mopping.
“Do you mind if we take another look in Darius’s apartment?” Libby asked.
“The police tape is up, but be my guest,” Manny said, then told them where the key to it was. “I don’t care. It’s none of my business. Just don’t tell the police I let you have the key if they come by.”
“We’ll say we took it without telling you,” Bernie said.
Manny nodded. “Call me if you need me.”
Bernie nodded back and turned her iPod up to drown out the sound of the crows. Then she and Libby went back to doing what they had been doing before.
Chapter 13
Two hours later, Libby and Bernie were standing in front of Darius Witherspoon’s apartment, contemplating the yellow police tape crisscrossing the door, when the door across the way opened and an elderly lady stepped out into the hallway. She looked at Bernie and Libby with bright eyes full of curiosity.
“Are you relatives of poor Mr. Witherspoon?” she asked, a slight tremor in her voice.
“No. We used to work for him,” Bernie explained. Which was true. “We’re just here to collect something we couldn’t get last night.” Which wasn’t true.
“But what about the police tape?” the lady asked.
“Well,” Bernie began, trying to decide on a story, but the lady cut her off.
“Don’t mind me. I’m an anarchist from way back.”
Bernie laughed, and the old lady extended her hand. “I’m Mrs. Randall. Who are you?” she asked.
Libby explained.
“Yes,” Mrs. Randall said. “You have that lovely catering place my daughter-in-law uses sometimes.”
“Who’s your daughter-in-law?” Libby asked.
“Erin Croft. The one with huge boobs, thanks to the magic of cosmetic surgery.”
Bernie laughed again as she watched Mrs. Randall smooth down her plaid wool skirt, make a minute adjustment to her black turtleneck sweater, and zip up her black leather jacket.
“Love the sneakers,” Bernie said, changing the subject and pointing to the yellow Converse high tops Mrs. Randall was wearing. She’d learned from experience that talking about a client usually did not end well.
Mrs. Randall beamed. “My daughter-in-law doesn’t.”
“Then she has no sense of style,” Bernie said in spite of herself.
“Strictly suburban soccer mom,” Mrs. Randall informed her.
“Well, I think you look great. In fact, I think you’re my new ‘This is what I want to look like when I grow old’ model.”
Mrs. Randall’s smile grew bigger, making her face look like a shar-pei’s. “I figure if you can’t dress the way you want at eighty, when can you?”
“You’re eighty?” Libby asked.
“Eighty-two, to be precise,” Mrs. Randall declared. “Which is a lot older than poor Mr. Witherspoon will get to be.” She tsk-tsked as she studied the door to his apartment. “Poor man. I told him I’d pray for his wife, and now I’ll have to pray for him, as well. Hanging. That’s an awful way to go.”
“Yes, it is,” Bernie quietly agreed.
“And so inconsiderate. Those poor guests. What a dreadful thing to see. Why he couldn’t have hung himself somewhere else, I really don’t know. He seemed so nice, too. Not the
sort to make a spectacle of himself.”
“So you think this was suicide?” Libby asked.
“Definitely. What else could it be? Although, I have to say, he seemed perfectly fine when I last spoke to him.”
“When was that?” Bernie asked.
“Early morning the day he died. We had such a nice chat, too. He was standing right where you’re standing now. He was returning my late husband’s metal detector. He’d borrowed it because his had gone on the fritz. I guess he found what he was looking for.”
“Did he say what he was looking for?” Bernie asked.
Mrs. Randall nodded her head emphatically. “Yes. Mr. Witherspoon said he was looking for pieces of old ships, told me it was a hobby of his, after I told him about my husband. Then we talked about ghosts. I told him I wasn’t afraid of them at my age, and he said—”
A horn sounded outside.
“He said what?” Libby asked as someone honked again.
“He said he was. I think that fact embarrassed him,” Mrs. Randall confided.
The car honked again.
Mrs. Randall put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear. That’s my daughter-in-law. I should have been downstairs already. She gets cranky when I keep her waiting. Sorry, but I really have to go.”
“Anything else you two talked about?” Bernie asked. “Please. It might be important.”
“Well, I suppose my daughter-in-law can wait for another minute. We talked about crows. Most people don’t realize how smart they are. They can remember people’s faces, people who have been nice to them and people who haven’t. He started feeding them when I told him that. He said he needed all the friends he could get.”
The horn sounded again.
“Now I really have to go,” Mrs. Randall said, and then she turned and headed toward the stairs.
“She should be in a building with an elevator,” Bernie told Libby as she went to help her.
When Bernie came back, Libby ducked under the police tape, slipped the key to Darius Witherspoon’s apartment into the dead bolt, and turned it. The door swung open, and Libby and Bernie stepped inside.
Chapter 14
“It’s cold in here,” Bernie complained before she realized the window Darius had gone out of, voluntarily or otherwise, was still open and the fog had crept in the room, leaving a thin layer of damp behind.
Bernie crossed the room. She was going to close the window but then thought better of it—someone from the CID might notice—and settled for turning on the lights instead. The plastic wall plate felt greasy beneath her fingers. As she looked around, she shivered, wishing she were wearing her black cashmere sweater over her shirtdress, instead of her denim jacket. The modern furniture, which had looked cheerful the last time she’d been up here, now seemed garish and mismatched. Like something out of a carnival.
“Look at the walls and the windowsills,” Libby said, rubbing her arms with her hands to warm herself up. Once white, they were now full of black smudges, which the crime-scene techs had left behind when they dusted the surfaces for fingerprints.
“Repainting will not be fun,” Bernie noted as she went over and began to go through the small pile of mail on the modern Danish teak dining room table.
“I don’t think a coat of paint is going to do it,” Libby said, looking around. “I don’t think I’d want to live here, considering what happened.”
“Maybe the Realtor won’t tell the new tenants about Darius.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Probably. Or maybe they won’t care,” Bernie said, preoccupied with what she was doing.
“I’d care,” Libby said. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Probably,” Bernie admitted, looking up at Libby before she looked back down at the mail. She found the usual assortment of junk mail. Requests for donations. Credit card offers. Invitations for free hearing loss screenings. Garden and furniture catalogs. Some of the mail was addressed to Darius’s wife, some to Darius; most was addressed to Occupant. None of it was of consequence. But what had she expected? Darius hadn’t been here for very long.
Bernie sighed and studied the area some more. A couple of crumbled-up take-out bags from Harry’s, a local deli/food market, and a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker on the coffee table caught her eye. No glasses. Maybe Darius had drunk straight from the bottle, Bernie decided as she went over and, for want of anything better to do, opened the bags. There was a half-eaten cup of coleslaw in one and a couple of crusts of rye bread in the other, along with the remains of two pears.
“Now, this could be something,” she said, showing her sister what was left of the pears.
“Like what?” Libby asked as she looked around.
“Remember, Darius had some weird allergy to pears? That’s why we made the caramel apple cake instead of the almond custard pear tarts.”
“That’s right.” Libby opened the hall closet. The only thing in it was a raincoat. “He did, didn’t he? Something about his tongue swelling. So maybe someone else ate here.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Bernie said. She thought about Harry’s. It was a popular upscale food market with seven checkout lines. The odds of someone remembering someone who bought a couple of pears and some sort of sandwich in the past couple of days were fairly slim.
On the other hand, maybe someone would remember Darius, and maybe Darius was with someone. It wouldn’t hurt to have her dad ask. He knew the general manager there. In the old days, he would have leaped at the opportunity, but now, with Michelle around, she wasn’t so sure.
“Found Darius’s metal detector in the bedroom,” Libby said while Bernie was thinking about whether going to Harry’s would be worth it or not, if she and her sister had to do it.
Bernie looked up as Libby plonked it down in front of her. “The one that doesn’t work?” she asked.
Libby nodded. Bernie flipped the ON switch up. Nothing. She remembered going prospecting for “treasure” with her grandpa on the Jersey Shore when she was six. They’d found five nickels and two quarters, and her grandpa had let her keep the two quarters. She’d promptly spent them on penny candy, all of which she’d eaten in one day, to her mother’s chagrin.
“Do you think Darius was really looking for wreckage?” Libby asked.
Bernie shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“How much value could it have?”
“A lot if the find was archeologically significant.”
“I wonder if he found anything. He did give Mrs. Randall’s metal detector back to her.”
“Well, if he did, it’s not here,” Bernie said as she studied the space in front of her. Aside from the take-out bags, the only evidence that someone had lived here was some books on the coffee table. She went over and took a look at the pile. There were three tablets of ocean charts; a book by someone named Sven Brighton, about his experiences crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat by himself; a copy of Kon-Tiki; and three paperback mysteries by someone Bernie had never heard of.
“Maybe he was planning on taking a sailing trip,” Libby said as she looked at the books Bernie handed her, then put them back down on the table. “A long sailing trip.”
“Maybe,” Bernie said as she and Libby moved to the kitchen.
All they found there was a handful of groceries that were going bad in the fridge. In the bathroom, they discovered dandruff shampoo and body wash in the shower, and toothpaste, a toothbrush, a bottle of aspirin, and a tube of Bengay in the medicine cabinet. There were some underwear, socks, and a couple of flannel shirts in the dresser in the bedroom, and three pairs of old frayed pants and a pair of mud-encrusted sneakers in the bedroom closet.
“I guess he hadn’t finished moving in yet,” Libby observed. “There’s no TV. No laptop.”
“Maybe he was a low-tech kinda guy,” Bernie suggested.
“Yeah. But even I watch TV,” Libby told her.
“True,” Bernie said. “We should take a look in his Park Avenue place. It might give us a l
ittle more.”
“Such as?”
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t have to go see, would we?”
“Fine. And how are we going to get in?” Libby asked.
“Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”
Libby didn’t ask what her sister had in mind, because she didn’t want to know. Instead, she went over to the window in the living room, reached up, grabbed on to the plant hook, and pulled. It didn’t move. “I wonder what kind of plant Darius was going to hang on this.”
“A big fern, I imagine,” Bernie replied, not that it mattered now. “Be careful,” she warned when Libby leaned out the window.
Deep in thought, Libby just nodded. “It would be hard,” she said, reenacting the crime in her head.
“Hard to do what?” Bernie asked.
“To get a rope over someone’s neck, attach it, and throw him over. You’d have to be really strong and fast.” Libby thought back to last night’s scene. “Darius’s feet weren’t kicking.”
“No. His neck was already broken,” Bernie said quietly, remembering.
“Maybe it was broken before he went out,” Libby suggested.
“Maybe,” Bernie agreed. “I’m guessing it would be hard to tell.”
And then the murderer did what? Libby wondered. The only way he could have gotten away was through the same window he threw Darius out of. He would have had to climb out of it and onto the metal railing of the small balcony and jumped. Assuming he didn’t break his leg, he could have run away.
But he would have had to jump after he’d pushed Darius out, and since all eyes had been on the window, someone would have seen him. Libby tapped her fingers against her thigh. Or maybe not. Maybe the murderer had counted on all eyes being on Darius. It was taking a big chance, she thought as she leaned back into the room.
Or maybe, Libby thought, trying to work things out, Darius’s killer had crossed over to the side of the balcony closest to the wall and had jumped from there. That way he wouldn’t have landed in full view. He would have to have an excellent sense of balance to do that. Like a circus performer walking a tightrope. Libby could never have done it. She was thinking about that when Bernie nudged her.
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