It would be unspeakably rude to refuse Harry’s southern hospitality. Even though my stomach has journeyed to my throat, I pick out a cookie dotted with chunks of pale orange fruit. “Thanks,” I say, nibbling the edge. “Delicious.”
“They were two nice ladies,” he says.
“Did Mrs. Galdi — did the mother seem sickly?” I ask.
He leans forward, lowers his voice. “Looks to me like a feather could knock that woman right over. But she left under her own steam.” When I don’t say anything he adds, “She’s a sturdy soul, I will say that, not used to people doing for her. She and her daughter brought down their own bags, said they didn’t want to bother Valet. Can you imagine?” He replaces the lid on the box. “You’ve seen the way some people around here use our valets like personal slaves. And here you have those two nice ladies lugging their own suitcases.” The cookie box disappears under the desk.
“So, they left for the airport this morning?”
He nods. “I offered to call a taxi but they told me they had friends picking them up.”
Friends? If Caprice had friends down here, why didn’t any of them ever accompany her to the courtroom, give her support while her father was on trial? My thoughts shift like Suduko numbers moving into place. I sense a critical number missing. I need to take a look inside the Douglas apartment. But how?
I nibble a bit more of the cookie. “Oh,” I say.
“Something wrong?”
“No, no, it’s just, Miss Brandy borrowed something from me and I bet she left it up in the apartment. Could I borrow the key, take a quick peek?”
“I’d need to get the owner’s permission,” he says.
I nearly choke on the cookie. “I think I heard Mr. Douglas might be going away for quite a while.” Like life.
Harry works this around. “Well, maybe you can get permission from the office to go into the apartment with someone from Security.” Harry picks up the phone. “I can call the office--”
“No!” I say. A Security person going into an apartment must file a report. My entry into the Galdino apartment would be on record. They’d know I’ve been poking around in their lives. “Really, don’t bother. They probably left it outside my door. I’ll check when I go upstairs."
He sets the phone back in the cradle. “You just let me know if you change your mind,” he says. “They didn’t leave forwarding information but, if you need it, you can likely ask the real estate agent on that particular apartment. A Ms. May Brown. Do you know her?”
Do I ever! “The name rings a bell,” I say. “But I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Thanks.”
I burst into my apartment and dial May’s house. No answer. I reach her cell. “I understand you sold David Douglas his apartment,” I say.
“Yes, I--”
“Can you describe him?”
“We never met. Everything was done by phone and computer.”
“Do you think you could let me into his apartment?”
“Whatever for?” Good question. “Oops, wait on a sec.” She puts me on ‘hold’.
‘Whatever for?’
--For my sanity.
--For my need to follow this thing to the end -- this first thing that has hooked my interest and dragged me up from the well of depression.
--For my need to answer niggling questions, stitch up frayed ends.
--For this metamorphosis from someone who didn’t give a damn, to someone with an insatiable hunger to know everything.
It’s as if putting every piece of this murderous puzzle into place will form a base on which I can begin to construct my own post-Michael life.
The phone clicks back. “Sorry,” says May. “Now, why do you want to get into the Douglas apartment?”
I don’t want to involve May in my larcenous foray. “I know the people staying in his place. They went home today and think they may have left…something. I want to run up and look for it.”
“Security will let you—“
“I don’t like bothering them. Harry thought you might have the key.”
“I do.”
“Could I run over and borrow it?”
“Oh,” she laughs, “I’m not home. I’m out with your sister.”
“Is that Laura?” says Bitsy in the background.
“Shush,” says May. “Focus.”
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Over at Sawgrass Mills.”
“Shopping?”
“No.”
“Don’t tell her, don’t tell her.” Bitsy again.
“Shush,” says May. “I have to.” They sound totally high school.
“What are you up to?” I ask.
“This mall’s dead in the summer,” says May. “And it has a humongous empty parking lot that goes on and on and on. You can see other cars coming for miles. It’s the perfect place for a driving lesson.”
“You’re teaching Bitsy to drive?”
“Yup.”
“My sister Bitsy?”
“That’s the one.”
I should feel happy. I’ve been nagging her to learn to drive, to become more independent. But after the carnage I just passed on the highway I shudder to think of sending Bitsy into the belly of the beast. Do I congratulate her or increase my collision insurance?
“Oh!” Bitsy gasps in the background.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Try that again,” May tells her, calm as you please. I’d best stay out of this.
“So,” I say, “what time do you think you’ll be home?”
“After this, we’re going to need a little retail therapy,” says May. “A little shopping, a quick bite, then maybe a movie.”
I’ll go crazy if I have to wait that long to get into Galdino’s apartment. But I don’t have a choice.
“Darn,” says Bitsy.
“Relax. Try it again,” says St. May. “Laura, if you want, I’ll tell you where I hide my house key. You can let yourself in and get the Douglas key….” She gives me detailed instructions then says, “Just please make sure there’s no one in the Douglas apartment before you go in.”
“I will.”
“I could lose my license, giving you the key.”
“I’ll make sure,” I say, even though I know there’s no one in the Galdino apartment. Caprice and her mother packed up and left. As for ‘Mr. Douglas’, I know exactly where he is.
In the background, I hear Bitsy make an odd gasping sound. “Oops,” says May and the line goes dead.
30
I’m standing in my lobby clutching Galdino’s apartment key so hard I have “Ace” imprinted on my palm. One of the two elevators heads up to the penthouse floor. The other seems stuck on LL, the Lower Lobby, a dank warren of hallways leading to the parking garage, loading dock, receiving room, storage cages, party room and areas I have never investigated. I don’t intend to. I saw The Shining. I jab the button again and the elevator on PH starts down. My thoughts flip faster than a Miami condo.
-Should I go up to Galdino’s apartment?
-Should I shouldn’t?
-Yes?
-No.
-Why?
-Why not?
“Go with your gut,” Michael would say. My husband – may he rest in peace -- was a big believer in trusting one’s instincts. Right now, my gut tells me to check out the Galdino apartment.
--That’s a lie. Your gut says go home, run a hot bubble bath, sip a flûte of Two-Buck Chuck.
But my curiosity is also a force to be reckoned with and there is something radically off-kilter about this whole Galdino-Douglas apartment thing. Now that Caprice and her mother have left and Galdino in jail, this is the perfect window of opportunity for me to see the apartment.
The elevator finally arrives. I hesitate, then get on and push the button. Twenty-four floors later, I step out onto a marble hall. The gleaming stone amplifies the elevator’s door-opening “ding-ding-ding-ding” to Big Ben decibels.
--Great. You’ve announced your
arrival to the entire northern hemisphere.
I sense eyeballs pressed to the peepholes of the four other apartments on this floor, suspicious neighbors watching. Creepy-crawlies scuttle up my neck.
--Don’t be paranoid.
What if someone stops me, asks what I’m doing?
--Good question. What are you doing?
Is it considered breaking and entering if I have a key?
--It’s considered stupid and stupider.
The elevator doors slide shut behind me, severing my lifeline. I listen against the still air. No muffled televisions blare behind closed doors. No one talks, laughs, practices the balalaika, breathes. Especially me. Smart money says the residents on this floor fled Florida to summer in swelligant cooler climes: Colorado, the Berkshires, Siberia.
The Galdino apartment is in the line of one bedrooms at the end of the hall. I press my ear to the door. The only sound is the ka-chug ka-chug of my heart pounding double-time. I slip the key in the lock.
--Stop.
--Right. May said I should ring the bell, make sure no one’s in the apartment.
--And if someone is?
I’ve folded Deke Hawkins’ obituary in my pocket to use as a prop just in case. If someone opens the door I’ll say, “Hi, Deke died. Here’s the info. Thought you’d like to know,” just a friendly neighbor doing a neighborly deed. The ruse sounds lame, even to me.
I push the bell. It echoes deep into the apartment. As far as I know, the Galdino women – if I’m on their radar at all – think I am a daffy lady who carries tissue packets in her purse, returns forgotten purses and, for some reason, likes to sit in on murder trials. They have no idea I’ve sneaked aboard the Dandy Brandy and seen photos of them in happier times, eavesdropped on their emergency room conversation, linked them to Deke Hawkins. So my presenting them with Deke’s obituary might strike them as creepy-weird. But it’s all I’ve got.
I ring again for good luck. No one answers. Hands shaking, I turn the key. The hinges screech as I slip inside the apartment and shut the door behind me.
Black. Complete and total. All the shades and curtains must be drawn, the balcony hurricane shutters closed. I sweep my hand along the foyer wall feeling for the light switch. Since hurricanes Katrina and Wilma blew out eighty percent of this building’s windows, all shutters must remain closed whenever a resident goes away for more than a couple of days. My hand hits a light switch. I click it on – off - on. Nothing. Either the foyer light burnt out or the electricity is off.
This place smells musty, unused, like the hope chest in Grandma Ann’s attic. The air conditioner’s probably been off since the Galdino women moved out. I’m praying this means they don’t plan to come back any time soon -- like while I’m here. Inching through the oppressive heat, sliding my feet along the floor, I run one hand against the wall, feeling for another switch. The wall feels pristine -no light switch, no paintings, no sculptures. No nothing. My eyes strain from trying to see into the dark. Did the Galdino’s keep the shutters closed, living like moles the whole time they were here?
-It’s depressing. Why would they live like this?
-Open shutters are a signal that someone is home.
-Living with closed shutters means they feared being found, being watched.
Anyone could easily see into this apartment from any of the surrounding buildings.
-Who would want to spy on them? Police? A private investigator like Sam Parker? Brandy and Mel’s kids? The National Enquirer? Did anyone even know they were in this building?
-I did.
The creepies start crawling again. Am I the only human on the planet aware of the Galdino connection to this apartment?
Where’s a damned light switch? This one-bedroom layout is totally different from my apartment. My hand reaches the end of the foyer wall. Taking a deep breath, I let go, sliding my feet along the floor, flailing my arms like Keller before Sullivan. I pray I don’t knock over a lamp or smash into an end table or –
My foot rams a solid mass. I pitch forward, land hard on my knees which crack against the marble floor. Fire explodes my knee-caps. “Ayyyyy yiiiiii.” I roll screaming onto my back. “Ay yi yi,” gasping. “Yi yi,” rubbing my palms against the bone-ripping pain. Sweat pours off me -- a mix of agony and stifling heat and a renegade hot flash. “Yi yi.” Double knee transplants loom large in my future. Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. I can’t stay here like this. I rub and rub and rub until, an eternity later, the pain subsides to ‘almost bearable’. Can I stand? I roll onto my side, bumping into the thick, heavy thing that tripped me. A body? Please, God, don’t let it be a body. Panic flares.
-Stop. You’d smell a body cooking in this heat.
True. I’ve only been here a few minutes and I already smell a little rank.
-A little?
Gingerly, I reach out and touch some sort of bunched-up mound. Rough fabric. Quilted. It feels like the pad my dad kept out in the garage, the one a moving company left behind. This one also smells musty with a soupçon of motor oil.
Off to the right, the faint red glow from a ceiling smoke detector outlines the shape of a doorway. I push myself up, wait for the knee pain to dial down to excruciating, then limp into the next room. An illuminated light switch glows on the far wall and I flick it on. Blinding ceiling fluorescents blaze bright enough to land jets.
My first thought is “kitchen.” My second is it’s just as well Maria Galdino is anorexic. The countertops are barren, devoid of the most basic of essentials for civilized sustenance – coffee maker, toaster, microwave. Limping around, I open the cabinets. No dishes, silverware, cookware, glassware, food. I know Caprice has stayed here since her father’s trial began, yet the refrigerator is also empty save for couple of bottles of Pellegrino. Even in the depths of my depression, when red wine became all my major food groups, some shtetl survival instinct made me hang a Vienna hard salami from the knob of a kitchen cabinet and hack off a chunk every now and again.
I go to the sink and splash cool water on my face and neck. It’s hard to breathe in this heat. Next to the sink are a few partially used packages of plastic cups, paper plates, plastic cutlery. In the breakfast nook on the other side of the island counter, a card table and two folding chairs make up the sum total of furniture. The Costco boxes they came in lean against the wall next to two boxes for inflatable beds. The floor-to-ceiling glass doors look out on an empty balcony enclosed by hurricane shutters. Even when the Galdino women lived here, no one lived here.
What was the purpose of this place? Was it a second home waiting for a decorator’s loving touch? No, Maria Galdino would have wanted a place closer to her sister up in Palm Beach. Maybe Joseph Galdino picked this apartment up cheap, expecting to flip it once the market turned around. But that would require a long term investment and from all indications Joseph Galdino had some money-gobbling monkeys on his back. When did he buy this place? How long before Brandy’s murder?
Now that I have light, I hobble back to the living room. “Oh, God.”
A large black safe, its thick door gaping open, stands empty in the center of the room.
31
The stark image strikes something primal --
2001
Kubrik’s monolith
--leaves fear in its wake. Open and empty, the safe rests on a large metal dolly. I limp over, touch trembling fingertips to the black metal. It feels like evil. It feels like death. I shiver despite the heat. Galdino murdered Mel and Brandy for this, ripped it out of their bedroom wall and transported it here. How could Caprice and Maria Galdino live with this everyday reminder of what their father and husband had done. It was like living with Brandy’s corpse.
-They were in on the murder.
No, that’s not possible. I watched Maria Galdino on the stand. She was a broken woman grieving for her little sister. And Caprice adored her aunt and uncle, loved them, loved staying on the Dandy Brandy with them. Deke said she was like their daughter.
; -Open your eyes, Pollyanna. Caprice and her mother could have called the police and handed over this safe, hammered nails in Joseph Galdino’s coffin. But they didn’t. They stayed here, lived here, kept their mouths shut.
I try to make sense of this. Joseph Galdino stabbed Brandy to death, stuffed her into the freezer then hacked this safe out of the wall. The man is a monster. Monsters don’t happen overnight. Maybe his wife and daughter lived in terror of him. Maybe they feared him so much for so long that they still fear him even though he’s behind bars. It would explain why Caprice was always so quiet and reserved when I saw her. What I thought was respect could have been fear. She might be terrified of her father, frightened for her mother, for herself. Was it possible she didn’t come to court to support her father but to be sure he was sent away for a good long time?
-Call the police.
I pull my phone from my pocket. A warning thought hits: What if I am the only person who can link the Galdino’s to this apartment, to this safe?
-Call the police.
I grip the phone tighter. If I call the police, my name will be linked to this apartment, to the Galdino murder trial. It’s the sort of radioactive information that has a way of leaking out of police reports and down into society’s substrata wherein live mutant moles and rats -- vermin like Joseph Galdino. What if he finds out I’m meddling in his life? Might he consider me a loose end that needs tying? I slip the phone back in my pocket.
-Get out of here. Get out, now!
The elevator chime reverberates out in the hall. Someone’s coming. My legs turn rubber as I go to the door, press my eye to the peephole. Two rough-hewn men the size of Newark step off the elevator. They start walking to an apartment on the far side of the hallway. For a moment, relief courses through me. Then I notice Acorn Movers in large letters on the backs of their shirts. The individual letters were ironed on by someone unconcerned with spacing or peeling edges. Wait, moving companies are not allowed in the building after four o’clock. Security would have stopped their truck at the dock. These men must have come in some other way. In the millisecond I am processing all this, they turn around and head back down the hall toward my door.
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