“You could feed a village for a year on what the stuff in here costs,” Bernie observed as she and Libby went through the closet’s top shelf. It was fairly empty, except for some hats, a few rolls of wrapping paper, and, inexplicably, a bag filled with lightbulbs. “One thing is for sure, Penelope definitely had expensive taste and the money to indulge it.”
Which got Bernie thinking. She thought back to the clothes she’d last seen Penelope in. She was almost positive they’d been from Old Navy. Now that seemed very un-Penelope-like to Bernie, given Penelope’s background and what was in the hall closet. Had Penelope bought new clothes when she disappeared? Cheap clothes? Most likely. The implications were interesting. Bernie would bet she’d done it because she needed something to wear and she’d had to use cash.
She couldn’t use her credit cards, because credit cards could be traced. It was suggestive, but of what? Possibly of the fact that whatever had happened to Penelope had occurred suddenly. It hadn’t been planned. She hadn’t had time to pack. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been wearing the clothes she’d died in. So maybe her disappearance was voluntary, after all. But what would make her abandon a palatial Park Avenue apartment in the blink of an eye? That was the question.
Bernie was still thinking about it when she and Libby turned their attention to the chest in the hallway. For openers, it didn’t fit in with the rest of the furnishings in the hallway. In fact, it stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.
The other furnishings in the hallway were expensive. They looked as if they’d come from a chateau somewhere in France, and maybe they had, given Darius Witherspoon’s business. The mirror over the chest, like the one in the hallway, was ornately carved. Probably eighteenth century, Bernie guessed, as were the chairs flanking the chest.
“I’d hate to sit on these,” Libby said, pointing to them. They were carved out of mahogany and upholstered in a light green satin. “They look really uncomfortable.”
“I’d be afraid I’d break them,” Bernie said. “People’s asses must have been a lot smaller back in the day.”
Libby laughed as Bernie rested her hand on the chest.
“The chest looks Shaker to me,” Bernie observed. “Or Amish or something like that.” She didn’t know enough about furniture’s fine points to tell the difference. However, the design was simple. She thought the wood was pine. The top was scratched and scarred, and there were a few coffee cup stains toward the center. It looked like something you’d find in a camp in upstate New York.
“I wonder what this is doing here,” Libby mused. “Maybe Darius was selling it.”
“Doubtful. It doesn’t look like his kind of merchandise,” Bernie noted. “Maybe it had sentimental value to him. Maybe it was his mother’s or a close relative’s.”
“Maybe,” Libby said as she and Bernie bent over it and studied the contents of the pulled-out drawers.
The top drawer contained pens, pencils, old subway tokens, about five dollars’ worth of loose change, a couple of embroidered women’s handkerchiefs, and five small notebooks with spiral bindings, which had been shoved behind a large leather-bound book. The title read The Atlas of Implausibility.
“I like the title,” Libby said as Bernie took out the book, opened it up, and began to leaf through it. Libby watched over Bernie’s shoulder.
The book contained a number of maps of imaginary places, yet there was something familiar about them, something that neither Bernie nor Libby could put their finger on.
“I always was bad at geography,” Libby noted as Bernie put the book down and took out the first notebook and opened it up. It was filled with random doodlings. Dates, initials, street names. Some were written in pencil; others in pen. It was obvious the notebook had been written in over a period of time.
Three other notebooks were filled with similar jottings, while the remaining one was empty.
“What do you think?” Bernie asked Libby as she put one of the notebooks in her tote.
“Darius’s aide-mémoire?” Libby asked. She used to carry around a small notebook like these to jot down random stuff she had to or wanted to remember. As a matter of fact, the contents looked a little like hers. She pointed to a four-inch square sheet of lined paper taped to the bottom of the drawer. The writing on it read PROPERTY OF EZRA POLAND, EXPLORERS CLUB. “Well, at least we know where the chest of drawers comes from.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as an Explorers Club anymore,” Bernie said.
“Me either,” Libby replied, picturing a brownstone with a drawing room full of leather armchairs, maps, globes, and bookshelves, populated by men sipping brandies and puffing on pipes. “I kind of like the idea,” Libby added as she went through the next three drawers.
They were all empty. There was nothing in any of them. Not even a penny or a pencil. Or maybe there had been, and whatever was in them was gone now, Libby thought as she fingered her pearls. Under the circumstances, there was really no way to tell.
“We should talk to Ezra Poland,” Libby suggested.
Bernie nodded. “Definitely.”
“I wonder if the notebooks and the atlas are his.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Bernie said, and she scooped them up and stuffed them in her tote.
Libby turned and looked at the apartment. “Can you imagine living in a place like this?”
“Frankly, no,” Bernie replied. “It would be like living in a section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“It’s so uninviting,” Libby observed. “I’d be scared to touch anything.”
“Well, it certainly isn’t the kind of place that would make you want to curl up on a cold winter night in front of a fire and sip hot chocolate,” Bernie agreed.
“For sure,” Libby said.
The hallway she and Bernie were standing in was quite large. In fact, Libby reflected, it was as large as Bernie’s first studio apartment down in the East Village had been. No. It was larger. The floor was made up of black-and-white marble tiles; the walls were painted a pale yellow and were covered with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American paintings in elaborately carved gilt frames.
An oriental rug that looked remarkably similar to the one that Bernie and Libby had seen in the store window a few minutes ago lay on the floor. To the left was the kitchen, and to the right was what appeared to be a bedroom, while a small dining room was situated off the hallway next to the kitchen and was connected to it by a swinging door. In the rear was what Libby and Bernie took to be the living room. The blinds were drawn so that even though it was three o’clock, the room was dark. They stepped inside it.
“It’s like a tomb in here,” Libby remarked, rubbing her shoulders. “A very fancy tomb.”
“They must have noise-canceling windows,” Bernie noted, thinking about how quiet it was. They were on the second floor, but they didn’t hear the traffic going down Park Avenue. Then she realized she didn’t hear any sounds at all. “You’re right. It is like a crypt.”
“Is that the same as a tomb?”
“I believe so,” Bernie said.
Libby waved her hand in the air, indicating the apartment. “The difference between this apartment and the one in the Berkeley Arms is like night and day,” she observed.
“Literally,” Bernie said. “The apartment in the Berkshire Arms is light, while this place is dark. This place is furnished with expensive antiques, while the Berkshire Arms apartment is furnished with expensive modern furniture.”
“True,” said Libby. She pointed to the large oriental on the floor. “I can’t even imagine how much that cost.”
“Probably more than our building,” Bernie said as she and Libby got down to work.
They opened and closed cabinet drawers, lifted up the cushions that were on the chairs and sofas, and peered behind the painting on the wall, but all they got for their trouble was dust on their hands. If there was anything there, Bernie and Libby didn’t see it. Of course, Bernie thought it di
dn’t help that they didn’t know what they were looking for.
A couple of minutes later they walked into the dining room. They both studied the crystal chandelier, the inlaid dining table with its six pushed-in chairs, the matching sideboard with its blue-and-white Chinese pottery, and the landscape oils on the wall. Nothing had been disturbed, and after a quick look around, the sisters moved on to the kitchen.
“At least no one has been through here,” Bernie observed, taking in the closed kitchen cabinets.
Unlike the rest of the apartment, the kitchen was clearly an afterthought. The appliances were old, the white enameled sink was stained, and the red speckled linoleum floor was scratched.
“I bet the housekeeper did all the cooking,” Libby said as she opened and closed cabinet doors and peeked in the refrigerator. There was nothing there that she wouldn’t have expected to find.
“And the Witherspoons went out on her day off,” Bernie added. She’d just found the housekeeper’s uniform hanging in the utility closet. She sighed as she and Libby finished up and went into the Witherspoons’ bedroom. She hoped there’d be something of use in there, although she wasn’t too optimistic.
The bedroom was a surprisingly small but luxuriously furnished room. The bed was a four-poster worthy of Marie Antoinette, with an array of gleaming white sheets, mounds of pillows, and a pale blue duvet, a duvet that harmonized with the color of the walls and the pattern of the brocade drapes on the windows.
Two marble-topped nightstands holding two matching blue-and-white Chinese vases that had been converted into lamps stood on either side of the bed. Two books on navigation rested on Darius’s nightstand. He really was planning on taking some sort of sailing trip, Bernie thought as she paged through the books, looking for notes or underlining and not finding any. She sighed and opened up Darius’s nightstand drawer. A collection of reading glasses, cough drops, and packs of tissues presented themselves.
While Bernie was doing that, Libby was going through Penelope’s nightstand. Her reading material consisted of the most recent copy of Vogue and a variety of expensive shelter magazines, while her nightstand drawer contained a bottle of Ambien, a tube of lavender skin moisturizer, and a pair of reading glasses.
“Boy, she was neat,” Libby commented, thinking of what was on her night table at home.
Bernie just grunted and went over and opened one of the closet doors. There were two closets, and Bernie knew she’d picked Penelope’s when the smell of Joy wafted out into the room. Even at a quick glance, Bernie could tell that Penelope’s clothes were like the coats and boots in the hall closet. Expensive. She was about to take a closer look when her phone started ringing. She extracted it from her tote, glanced at the screen, and started talking.
“Time to go?” she asked.
“Definitely,” the doorman replied. “You need to get out now. People are on their way up.”
“Will do.” She stared at her sister. “Come on, Libby,” Bernie cried, hanging up and jamming her phone back in her bag. “We gotta leave. People are coming.”
“I knew this would happen,” Libby complained as she and Bernie headed for the back of the kitchen, which was where the service door was located.
They rounded the corner at a run, Libby managing to stop herself from crashing into her sister as Bernie stopped short. Bernie grabbed the handle on the door and pulled. Nothing happened. It took her a second to realize why. The lock on the door was a dead bolt, and you needed a key to open dead bolts from the inside, as well as from the outside. A key she didn’t have.
She wanted to kick herself. Of course the door would be locked. Why hadn’t she thought of that? More to the point, why hadn’t the doorman thought of that? Well, one thing was for sure. There was no time to call him and have him come up and unlock it.
“What now?” Libby demanded.
“I guess we’ll have to go out the front.”
“But the people are coming up the front,” Libby wailed.
“Trust me,” Bernie said. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Trusting you is what got us in this mess in the first place. We’re going to be arrested!” Libby cried as her sister turned and headed for the front door. Libby was right behind her.
“No, we won’t,” Bernie said as she opened the front door. “Just act like you belong.”
“Belong where?”
“Here, Libby, here.” Then she glanced down at Libby’s feet. “Oh my God.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Shoes, Libby!” she cried. “Get your shoes on.”
Libby glanced down. Her feet were bare. She’d taken her heels off and forgotten to put them back on. She dashed back to get them while Bernie held the door open.
“Hurry,” Bernie urged. She could hear the elevator starting its ascent. It would be on the second floor any minute.
Chapter 36
Libby and Bernie were standing in front of the elevator, chatting amiably, when the elevator door opened. Three well-dressed middle-aged people, whom Bernie estimated to be in their fifties, stepped out. Bernie smiled and nodded to them, and the woman and two men smiled and nodded back. Bernie noted that the woman was holding a key in her hand as she and Libby went back to chatting about the party they were supposedly catering.
“Tossed or chopped salad?” Bernie asked Libby. “That’s the question.”
The woman’s ears perked up. “Oh,” she said to Bernie. “Is Madeline planning a party?”
Bernie smiled and nodded and got into the elevator. Libby followed, and Fritz closed the gate. The elevator door shut, and Libby let out an audible sigh of relief. Fritz didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes facing forward. A moment later, they arrived at the first floor.
“Lobby,” Fritz announced, opening the door.
“Thanks,” Bernie said.
“For what?” Fritz replied, keeping his face expressionless.
Bernie smiled her answer, and she and Libby stepped out.
“People see what they expect to see,” Bernie explained to her sister as they both walked through the lobby. “As long as things don’t deviate from what people expect to see, they don’t question it. I mentioned salad, and the woman assumed I was catering an event for the people next door.”
“What if she knew those people?”
“She obviously did. . . .”
“And what if this Madeline was home, and she knocked on her door?”
“But she didn’t.”
“But she could have.” Libby pointed down to her feet. “Or what if you hadn’t noticed that my shoes were off?”
“That would have been more of a problem,” Bernie allowed as they walked out to the street.
The doorman was where they had left him. “You gave me a wee bit of a scare,” he said when he saw Bernie and Libby.
“Me too,” Libby said.
“So what did you think?” he asked Libby in his thick Irish brogue. “Are ye interested in the place or not?”
“Well, someone is,” Bernie told him.
The doorman looked at her as if he didn’t understand.
Bernie explained. “Someone went through the hall closet and the chest of drawers in the hallway.”
The doorman clasped his hands together, brought them to his chest, and raised his eyes to heaven. “Faith, begorra, lassie. Who would do such a dastardly deed?”
“Faith, begorra, indeed. Here’s what else I think,” Bernie said. “I think you should drop the accent.”
He looked at Bernie. “Too much?” he asked.
“Way too much,” she replied. “And for the record, you completely forgot your accent when you called me.”
The doorman shrugged. “What can I say? I panicked and broke character.”
“Anyway, lassie is a Scotch word,” Libby said.
“No, the Irish use it, too,” the doorman said. “So I take it you’re not looking for a place,” he observed.
“You knew that all along, didn’t you?” Libby asked.
The doorman
smiled. “I didn’t know. I suspected.”
“Because other people have been up there?”
The doorman shrugged. “I’m here only three days a week. I have no idea what goes on the rest of the time.”
Libby didn’t believe him, but she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked him, “Why the accent?”
“Simple,” the doorman answered. “I needed a job, and this building hires only Irish, preferably straight from the countryside. Anyway, I’m half Irish. The second half is Puerto Rican.”
“You’re an actor?” Bernie asked, guessing.
The doorman grinned and clicked his heels together. “Flynn O’Brien, at your service. I’ve been in two commercials and a crowd scene for an indie movie, The Werewolf and the Maiden. You may have heard of it? It won an award for best editing in Toronto.”
Bernie and Libby both shook their heads.
“Sorry,” Bernie said.
For a moment the doorman looked crestfallen; then he brightened. “I’m in another movie shooting in Dumbo next week. De Niro is in it. I actually have a line. Watch out,” Flynn said in a loud voice. “No. Too angry. Watch out,” he said in a softer voice. “Too wishy-washy. Watch out,” he said in a more peevish tone. “I think that’s it. This kid is about to run into me because he’s not looking where he’s going,” Flynn explained. “He’s De Niro’s grandson.”
“In the movie?” Libby asked.
Flynn nodded. He looked off into the distance, and Bernie wondered what he was seeing. Then he shook his head and returned from wherever he had been. “Okay,” he said. “Now that we know that I’m an actor playing the part of a doorman, whom are you two playing the part of?”
“Detectives. We’re looking into Darius Witherspoon’s death,” Libby answered.
Flynn raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look official. Far from.”
“That’s because we’re not,” Bernie said.
A Catered Costume Party Page 17