Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book)

by Con Lehane

“Ray. This will be fun. You’ll charm the pants off the board members.”

  “I hope not.”

  She laughed gaily, her eyes locked on his. “They rarely get a chance to hobnob with a real librarian. They’ll love it.” She put her arm through his and gave him a tug. “Give us a break. We don’t have to do this. We care about the library. Everyone will want to speak with you.”

  She was right. He strolled beside her among the benefactors, the affair not so different from the few other receptions he’d attended—tuxedoed waiters and waitresses slithering through the crowd with trays of wines and canapés, elegant and relaxed men and women chatting in groups that formed and broke up as new groups formed. The air crackled with self-assurance. Her hand on his elbow, she steered him from group to group, introducing him to people whose names he forgot seconds after hearing them. At each introduction, she talked about the ill-advised plan to close the crime fiction reading room. Most everyone she spoke with seemed interested, asking questions, nodding, wrinkling their foreheads as if this certainly was something to be concerned about.

  “See,” she said as they sat down to dinner. The long library tables in the Rose Main reading room, decorated with white tablecloths and vases of flowers, held china plates and crystal stemwear. “Your crime fiction has more support than you thought. By the end of the evening, you’ll have a fan club.”

  Ambler wasn’t sure he believed her. Nodding sympathetically, patting a worried librarian on the back, didn’t cost anything. These folks didn’t get rich by letting sentiment overrule business decisions. Perhaps he’d won some support by showing up. Most likely, it would dissipate once he brought up Lisa Young’s past life as Lisa Dolloway and asked about her dead ex-husband and estranged daughter.

  All evening, she’d carried herself with an air of cheerfulness and good nature, smiles and tinkling laughter, moving through this sea of evening gowns and tuxedos, money and sophistication, air-kissing cheeks, whispering greetings, embracing everyone she came across. If she wasn’t the belle of the ball, she was close to it. As they took their seats, her expression changed to something warm, and familiar, as if they were old friends and could relax and enjoy their time together now that the formalities were over.

  “You seem to enjoy this hoopla,” he said.

  “To an extent. I enjoy it in ways I doubt you’d understand.” Her expression shifted; the smile was there but something like sorrow lurked in its shadows. “To whom much is given, of him shall much be required.”

  “Was God talking about financiers?”

  The smile flickered. “I told you when I was younger I didn’t think I deserved wealth—”

  He took a deep breath. “When you were Lisa Dolloway?”

  The sorrow lurking in the shadows of her smile took over. Even so, her expression was noble as she gathered her thoughts. “It was a matter of time; I knew that from the evening we met.”

  A man in a tuxedo approached her from the side opposite him, kissed her on the cheek, whispered something. A bright flash of smile, a small laugh from her as he straightened up. This time, she didn’t introduce Ambler. “We’ll be interrupted often this evening. Can we wait until after dinner to discuss this?”

  Every now and again, someone stopped by the table to greet Lisa Young. Between visits, she chatted easily with the person on her right. Ambler spoke uncomfortably to the person on his left, who’d never heard of the library’s crime fiction collection and complained about so many of the tourists visiting the library on any given day being Asian.

  “They must have a lot of money in China these days for so many to be traveling.”

  “I’m glad they like the library,” Ambler said. “I wish more American tourists did.”

  “Of course, they do.” Her tone was a rebuke. “The Chinese don’t have libraries. That’s why they’re fascinated by ours.”

  Lisa Young took a moment to bend closer to him. “Don’t fret. Enjoy your dinner.”

  After the dinner and the speeches and presentations, Ambler took Lisa Young or Lisa Dolloway to the Library Tavern, where they could talk. Instead of the booth he suggested, she chose a corner barstool. It was late, the dinner rush over, and McNulty’s late-night regulars were yet to arrive. His greeting, while not formal, was less informal than usual. He made their drinks and moved a discreet distance away, not letting on by as much as a raised eyebrow that anything was different.

  “It was simple, really. Nelson wanted to keep his collection away from Max Wagner. He contacted Harry. Harry, at Nelson’s suggestion, asked me for a donation to pay for the acquisition.”

  “Why would Nelson think you’d do that? Why would you? How did he know where to find you?”

  “I always thought Nelson was a brilliant writer. I never hid from him. I changed my name. Not really a change, I dropped Dolloway—it was a nom de plume—and restored my family name. It’s not difficult to disappear from public view. After a short time, everyone forgets you. If Nelson hadn’t been murdered, no one would have cared where the money came from.” She drank from her snifter of cognac.

  “I asked you not to dig up my past. What good has it done you? I don’t want to be a Page Six exposé.” She was quiet for a moment. “I was a selfish young woman. The consequences, I brought on myself.”

  “I’m not interested in telling the world about your past—”

  Her face softened into an ironic smile. “The police?”

  He hesitated. “That’s more difficult.” He told her about Cosgrove, how telling him wasn’t the same as officially going to the police. “He asked me about you. He’ll ask again. I don’t want to lie to him.”

  “I see.”

  She did see, at least as well as he did. If he told Cosgrove about her, the information could get out. The murder was high-profile enough, the story salacious enough; reporters would jump at it.

  “If we got to the bottom of this—the murder, I mean—he wouldn’t care about you.”

  She threw up her hands. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew anything about Nelson’s death?”

  “If you tell me about Nelson, his friends, and more particularly his enemies, you might be telling me something about his death. I’d also like you to tell me about your daughter.”

  “Emily?” Her voice was a shriek. On her face was the horror-twisted grimace of a mother watching her child run into the street in front of a car.

  * * *

  As he walked home after putting Lisa Dolloway into a cab, Ambler felt the loneliness of the darkness and the empty city sidewalks. That riches don’t protect you from suffering was never more apparent. Lisa Dolloway suffered more than her share; she paid heavily for her mistakes.

  He told her he’d found her daughter. She wasn’t sure after all this time she wanted to see her. Too much had happened for things to be put back together.

  “I should never have been a mother,” she said. “I was young, terribly self-centered; I’d never had to be responsible for anything. I didn’t want a child. The baby scared me to death. It got worse as she got older. She was a smart and defiant little girl. She knew I was afraid of her. She’d stand there saying no, her eyes burning into mine, and I’d swear she was possessed.

  “Nelson loved it, that I couldn’t handle her, couldn’t control her, because then she was all his. I told him, ‘Fine. She’s yours.’ She had him wrapped around her finger. He loved her to a fault. It’s just—” She finished what was in the snifter in one swallow and signaled for another. “With Nelson, his caring, his tenderness—” She looked at Ambler, waiting for him to understand, to say he understood. But he didn’t want to say that. He didn’t want to understand.

  “You had to have known Nelson then. He was charismatic, a glow of peace around him, and—difficult to say now—love. People flocked to him. Everyone loved him. I loved him. And, of course, Emily loved him.” She drank from her snifter again, staring in front of her, watching McNulty, who was making a couple of fairly complex concoctions for three women w
ho’d finished dinner and come to the bar for dessert drinks.

  “She traveled with him. On one trip, she didn’t want to go—” Lisa Young threw back her head and closed her eyes. “She said it felt funny in bed. Daddy took up too much room—I didn’t want to hear.” She finished her second snifter of brandy. “She never brought it up again. I never asked. When she got older, there were older boys, and then men. I thought of sending her away to a boarding school. And then the tragedy with that professor.”

  * * *

  “Let’s compare notes,” Cosgrove said. “I’m on my way to the library. Can we talk in your office?”

  “It’s not an office but we can talk. I’m on the second floor,” Ambler said.

  Fifteen minutes later, he watched Cosgrove open the door of the crime fiction reading room. He walked softly, tiptoeing, like a penitent entering a church, surveying the bookshelves with a kind of reverence.

  Ambler cleared some books off of a chair. Cosgrove sat and without prompting told Ambler about his conversation with Kay Donnelly.

  “There’s your connection. All of these folks were part of a cult involving some sexual abuse of a minor. The minor was Nelson Yates’s daughter. She keeps coming up. Why did you ask me to look for her?”

  “Her father asked me to help him find her.”

  “Did he find her?”

  “No. He was killed shortly after I asked you about her.” His answer was the truth but disingenuous. Amazing that Cosgrove would ask about Emily now; it sometimes felt as if this cop could read his mind and ferret out his secrets. This was partly because they often thought along the same lines. Still, it was unnerving. At the moment, he was shaken by what Lisa Young told him about Emily and her father. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask Emily about that. And he’d told Lisa Young he’d try to keep her name out of the investigation if he could. So he wanted to sort some things out before he told Mike what he’d learned. He was sorry he’d agreed to meet with him and now had to be evasive.

  “The first victim, Donnelly, had a thing for young girls, including probably Nelson Yates’s daughter. You might think he’d be the one to do Donnelly in for what he did to his daughter. But Yates, I’m told, headed up the sex cult. I’m thinking there might have been other girls. They might have done something to some girl together. Years later, someone discovers what they did—the girl’s father finds the truth; she confesses to her husband why’s she sexually screwed up; her brother discovers what happened. Boom! Someone sets out to right the wrong.”

  Cosgrove waited for his reaction, nothing triumphant in his expression, a kind of weary craftsman’s confidence instead.

  “What do you expect Emily Yates to tell you?” Ambler asked in place of telling Cosgrove what he knew.

  “She was abused. Someone close to her might be the avenger. If not that, she might know other girls involved. Another reason is there’s something fishy about the death she was witness to when she was teenager. Your friend Wagner’s wife, Lou Lou or something—” He reached for his notebook.

  “Laura Lee.”

  Right. She changed her story, says now the guy, her husband at the time, jumped. The Yates girl was never properly interviewed.” Cosgrove shook his head. “She was hysterical when the investigator talked to her. He wanted to talk to her again but never got the chance. So we don’t know for sure what she saw.”

  “So?”

  “Fell, jumped; maybe the new husband gave the old one a shove.” Shrewdness flickered in Cosgrove’s eyes, like a not-so-good poker player pulling his full house closer to his chest. “You should like my thinking on this. In some ways, I’m spouting one of your theories, connecting the monkey business that went on back then with the current murders.”

  Ambler smiled, feeling uneasy. “If we’re comparing notes, I don’t have much to give you at the moment. I might have something helpful soon, maybe not. I don’t know who your source is—”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “I wasn’t asking. If James Donnelly was a serial abuser of young girls, it’s reasonable to think someone would make him pay for that. The Nelson Yates connection is possible. You don’t know. You don’t have an explanation for why the murders took place at the library. Professional jealousy or greed—in the case of Max Wagner or Mary Yates involving a significant amount of money—can’t be discounted.”

  He told this to Mike in good faith—somewhat stretching the definition perhaps—because it was a possibility. No real evidence connected anyone to anything yet. The field was open, yet he now had some disturbing questions to try to answer.

  * * *

  Later that day, on his way back from the deli on 40th Street with a container of coffee, Ambler came across Benny sitting at a table on the terrace behind the library that overlooked Bryant Park. He hadn’t spoken to him since his abrupt departure from the Library Tavern a few nights earlier. He walked over. “Why aren’t you inside?”

  Benny bowed his head. “I don’t like going in there. It feels funny if I’m not going to work, like I don’t belong.” He shifted his position to look out over the park. Ambler followed his gaze.

  “Sorry about the other night—”

  “It’s okay. Kay’s been on edge. She’s afraid to cross Wagner.” He was quiet for a moment. “I was thinking about that guy getting murdered.” He pointed out into the park. “He got killed right over there.”

  “Right over there,” Ambler thought back to the moment when he knew instinctively that Nelson Yates had been murdered.

  “It’s funny,” Benny said. “I talked to him on the phone the day before. He sounded like a nice—”

  Ambler’s heart started to race. “You what?”

  Benny turned a worried expression toward him. “Back before everything got crazy, Ray, you asked me to do a favor, try to find something about his daughter.” He eyed Ambler carefully. “Don’t you remember? I found her, or I found Emily Smith, who I was pretty sure was her.”

  “You found Emily Yates and you told him? You told Nelson? How did you know it was her? What did you tell him?”

  “It was actually pretty complicated. I did about six different database searches and didn’t find anything. Then I got lucky. It was—”

  “What do you mean you talked to him on the phone?”

  “You gave me his number. I called and gave him an address. I didn’t know if it was good or not. I told him that. He was really appreciative. I really liked his—”

  “What was the address you gave him?”

  Benny wrinkled his brow. “I don’t remember exactly. Somewhere in the West Forties?”

  Too much was coming at him too quickly—snatches of conversation, pieces of information, snapshots of places. He saw then what he remembered. “Benny, this sounds foolish and someday I’ll explain. Would you call Kay Donnelly and ask her what her husband’s middle name was?”

  Benny looked at Ambler curiously while he made the call, which took longer than it might have because of the questions she had that he didn’t have answers to.

  “Ray wants to know.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me? What difference does it make?”

  Finally, he hung up. “Xavier,” he said.

  Chapter 20

  Leaving the library after talking to Ray, Cosgrove had a sense the case would break soon. He couldn’t say he knew this because he didn’t. It was a feeling, like you might sense that a rainstorm was waning. Though it still rained as hard or almost as hard, a change in the color of the clouds to a paler shade of gray and a barely perceptible slackening of the wind hinted at the end of the storm.

  Often, in a case like this, you’d be heading down one blind alley after another. Then one day, you realized you’d been heading down this alley for quite a while now and hadn’t hit a wall; the alley was leading you someplace. It would be helpful to find the Yates girl, though that might not be so easy. Max Wagner could tell him something and soon probably would. It might be w
orth putting a tail on him; not so much that he’d lead them to anything, more to let him know it was there so he’d become more nervous than he already was. The ex-priest was a bundle of nerves also. He’d get to him sooner or later, too. Now, Ray had something up his sleeve. He didn’t often withhold anything, and it made him uncomfortable when he did, so you could most of the time tell. When push came to shove, he’d come clean.

  He was about to call in the request for a tail on Max Wagner when his wife called. She’d been drinking, so it took a few tries for her to tell him his daughter had run away. She was angry to the point of vengeful, stemming from her guilt, of course, guilt she wouldn’t admit.

  “Stop screaming, Sarah, and tell me what happened. Did she say where she was going?”

  “Of course not, you asshole. She ran away.”

  “Did she run out the door or did she take some of her things?”

  “How the fuck should I know? Let her go. She’ll come back soon enough when she figures out how good she has it here. It’s your fault. You never stand up to her.” She let loose with a string of grievances against him and Denise. While she berated him, Cosgrove turned his car toward Queens. He hated dropping the case—but that had always been his problem; he’d hated dropping the case, and too many times left Denise to deal with her mother’s tirades alone.

  Sarah finally admitted they’d had a fight and she’d slapped her daughter. He needed to find Denise; he was afraid of what she might get herself into. The problem with being a cop and a father was you expected the worst because that’s what you saw all the time. No one called the cops when they were having a good time at a kid’s birthday party. It was the birthdays where the estranged father showed up to put a bullet through the mother’s head that cops got to go to.

  * * *

  “You want me to steal from her?” It had begun raining, so Ambler and Adele took the subway to her apartment. At the moment, she stood on the platform with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “How do you know she even has a briefcase?”

  “I saw it the night we went to her apartment.” A train headed for Queens rumbled into the Bryant Park station on the opposite track, so he waited for it to stop and the noise to subside before he answered. “I want to know what’s in it.”