by Susan Isaacs
“Fancy Phil makes bad things happen.”
“When?” I demanded. “Recently?”
“Over the years,” he responded coolly. He rubbed his lower lip. I warned myself: Don’t start picturing what it would be like to kiss him there. So naturally I got a graphic mental image of kissing his finger, then brushing it aside and kissing the very place he’d been touching.
“How come you haven’t arrested him?” I asked.
“Grow up.”
“I have. And I know if you’d had any real evidence, he’d have been convicted of murder. But the truth is, all Fancy Phil was convicted of was aggravated assault. One conviction. Fine, I’m the first to concede it’s not nice to hit people.”
“Especially not in the face with a brick,” Nelson remarked.
“But Phil paid his debt to society. Now he’s a grandfather, and he wants to play it straight for the children’s sake.”
“I can’t believe you fell for that.”
“And also for the sake of his son, especially since suspicion’s fallen on Greg for Courtney’s murder. I think Phil feels if it weren’t for the way he’s lived his life, the authorities would be doing what they should be doing—investigating who killed Courtney Logan—and not harassing Greg.”
Nelson leaned back so the chair rested on its two rear legs and crossed his arms over his chest. “Tell me you aren’t that naive,” he said quietly.
“I’m not naive at all,” I said to the cream soda. I was thinking it was actually a plus that the light over the table was strong enough to show him I hadn’t become a shriveled-up crone when, all of a sudden, looking down at his big hands resting at the edge of the table, I got a flash of the past, how Nelson used to undress me as we made love, how so many times I’d looked down at those hands unbuttoning my shirt.
“Phil Lowenstein is an animal,” he said harshly. “Don’t pretend you don’t know that.”
“Phil Lowenstein is a human being.”
“Don’t start shoveling the liberal bullshit, Judith. I don’t like seeing you getting involved with—”
“I can take care of myself.” He shook his head: No, you can’t. “Is Phil a suspect in the Courtney business or is it just Greg?”
“What’s your involvement in this?” he demanded.
“I’m curious. You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m not in Homicide anymore.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Your ‘I’m curious’ isn’t an answer either.” He shifted forward so the chair again rested on all four legs and stood. “Listen, I know better than almost anyone that you’ve got brains and guts. So if you want to pursue your detective thing, fine. Personally and legally I would warn you to stay out of it, but if that’s what you gotta do, you gotta do it.” Reluctantly, I got up, too. “Except find yourself another case,” he went on. “Dealing with this guy: Listen to me. There are top-level mob guys too scared of Fancy Phil to go near him. You should be, too.” He turned and walked to the door that led back to the hallway. When we reached the front door, he took a deep breath and said: “Someone like you, a person of your station in life, shouldn’t have her name in the folder that comes to my desk every morning. And I want you to hear me on this ...”
“Go ahead,” I told him.
“If you step over the line in his company, don’t count on any favors for old times’ sake.” Having said that, he at least had the decency to look embarrassed. On the other hand, he didn’t take it back.
Since I couldn’t think of any response, clever or insipid, I simply reached around him and pulled open the front door. “Does your husband know you’re involved in this?” he asked as he stepped out into the balmy May night.
“I very much doubt it,” I replied. Quickly, before there could be that instant of awkwardness followed by something he might regret and I might not, I closed the door behind him.
Naturally I didn’t sleep much, being busy playing over the scene with Nelson a few hundred times, coming up with all sorts of reasons for his dropping by, from strictly business to he-wants-to-be-completely-certain-before-he-leaves-his-wife-for-me. Much of the time I substituted sparkling repartee for what I’d actually said. Nevertheless, when my alarm rang at seven, I didn’t go back to sleep, perchance to dream of Nelson. Instead, I called my voice mail at St. Elizabeth’s.
To my amazement, Herr Toasty of the Austrian consulate had actually come through! Steffi Deissenburger, in a minimal German accent—the sort that makes the speaker sound like an American who just needs a little time with a speech therapist—said she was certain she had returned all her books to the Shorehaven Library, but to call her. She left a number with a Connecticut area code. Two hours later, when I called, I explained that Herr Toasty might have misunderstood: I was a historian who happened to be on the library board. I’d been asked to write a historical overview of crimes against the wealthy on Long Island for an academic journal. Could I have just a few minutes of her time to get some background on Courtney Logan?
Well, Steffi thought aloud, her employer, Ms. Leeds, would be taking the twins to a breeder to look at puppies. That would be at one o’clock. Therefore, Steffi would be free from one until two. Although she wasn’t supposed to have visitors at the house. But then again, the brakes on her car were being relined, so she couldn’t get out. If I was prompt...
I drove about an hour and a half northwest, up to one of the farthest of Manhattan’s bedroom communities. Whitsbury was a town of flawless lawns sheared to velvet, patrician trees, and houses so stately they could con their owners into believing they were to the manor born. From the roots of the English ivy to the tops of the stone chimneys, homes and grounds were unrelievedly refined, as if exuberance had been banned by local ordinance. This was stiff-upper-lip country. No new waves of immigrants reinterpreting the American dream the way we do on Long Island. No Tudor with a skylight to outrage the neighbors; no Dutch colonial resurfaced in ersatz fieldstone. Not even a château with a hot tub: Whitsbury was orthodox Anglo-Saxon.
I tooled up a cobblestone driveway to a red-brick house so splendidly solid it made the Logans’ impressive Georgian look like something made from Lego pieces. Steffi Deissenburger stood at the front door, watching with apprehension as I narrowly missed scrunching half a flower bed under my right front tire. As I exited the Jeep, I gave her an all’s-well wave that must have been a little too hearty because she inched backward into the house, perhaps fearing I’d do something embarrassingly Long Island, like bear-hug her or screech Hey, fancy-schmancy!
“Hello,” she said cautiously.
“Hello,” I said genteelly, though with extra warmth, in my be-nice-to-German-speaking-people-so-they-don’t-think-you-think-they’re-all-Nazis manner. From everything I’d heard, I’d assumed Steffi would be plain, and in khaki slacks, a white shirt, and sneakers, she definitely wasn’t fashion’s fool. Still, she would never be mistaken for an understated lady of the manor. Instead of the au naturel Connecticut horsey set’s no-makeup look, in which a woman strives for a family resemblance to her mare, Steffi was cosmeticized to the nth degree. What looked to be ivory skin was agleam with a heavy coat of that shiny, slimy foundation and cheek color that I guess is supposed to make the young look dewy but winds up making most of them look like hookers who need astringent. Too bad: She had a classic oval face with placid gray eyes touching in their gentleness. Her nose, unfortunately, was ice-cream-cone-shaped and stuck a bit too close to her mouth. But if she wasn’t actually pretty, at least she was better than advertised, projecting an aura of calm and kindness.
She was working as an au pair for an advertising-agency owner and his wife who had twin three-year-old girls. “Gwendolyn and Gwyneth,” she informed me as she led me through the house, stopping to hand me a silver-framed photograph as we tippy-toed through a living room that was so vast it needed three different Oriental rugs to cover its dark wood floor. She waited eagerly for a reaction, as if wanting to make sure she had communicated
her fondness for her charges.
“Very sweet,” I replied. Gwen and Gwyn were fat-faced and red-cheeked, with identical puckers above their noses; to me, they looked more like anxiety-prone Munchkins than preschoolers. I handed back the picture. Reflexively, Steffi buffed the frame with her shirttail before leading me into the glassed-in porch she referred to as a conservatory.
A white wicker couch and chairs were covered in a chintz of tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils that practically sang “Spring Is Here.” Expensive picture books on flowers and glossy gardening magazines were fanned across a marble table resting on a short Neoclassical pedestal. Leaves and flowers cascaded down a high, graceful steplike structure like chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley movie. I wouldn’t have minded taking the room back with me to Long Island. “Do you miss Travis and Morgan?”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “Now, you’re here because you wish to get a sense of what Courtney was like?”
“That’s right. As background for my project.” Steffi, like Gwen and Gwyn, seemed older than her years. Her brown hair had frosty platinum and copper streaks, the sort of color job a woman my age, desperate for top down, hair-wild-in-the-wind youth, might inflict on herself. Sunlight shone on her hair and gave the dyed streaks a green, phosphorescent gleam. “As I told you on the phone,” I continued, “this chat can be off-the-record. It’s for my benefit, so I can be better prepared when I begin to write.”
“Yes. Okay.”
“Good. Then we’ll get on to Courtney.”
“Yes, well, you see I am calling her Courtney as well because she asked me not to call her Ms. or Mrs. Logan. She was so kind.” Steffi pursed her thin, scarlet lips, meticulously outlined in darker red pencil, while she pondered what Courtney was like. Meanwhile, her index finger was busy tracing the outline of a large, pink hyacinth on the creamy chintz on the arm of her chair. “She was not at all formal. But neither was she ... friendly. No, that is not the word I want.” Though she was taking her sweet time thinking about adjectives, she didn’t strike me as pedantic as much as concerned about being precise. “‘Accessible’ is what I mean,” she finally said. “Most people in the U.S. are very free with information about themselves. Courtney was not. She was, I would say, a lady.”
“Can you give me an example?”
Steffi massaged her forehead with her thumb and index finger. In an American, I would have called the gesture full of baloney, but for all I knew it could have been a common posture for thinking Austrians. “I am sorry but ... It was not that she did not talk. Sometimes she could talk a great deal. She would ask me about my country and would speak of how it was here.” Her massaging left two dull lines in the sheen of her makeup. “But I learned little of her from all her talk, if you understand me. She spoke of government or economics or about the children, of course. So for instance, I did not know she came from the state of Washington until, you know, I read it in the newspaper when she was missing. I think I knew about her only that she went to Princeton College and worked as an investment banker.”
“Was she specific about what she wanted or didn’t want with the kids, or your duties around the house?”
“Oh yes. Very specific. Only fruit snacks. One hour of television a day. She must approve all videos and play dates. For the children, I mean. She asked me please not to let them see me eating sweets. Or watching television. I had a television in my room, so I could watch programs after they were asleep. But she was so kind. She said, ‘I hope this won’t put you out, Steffi,’ and I said, ‘No, of course not, Courtney.’“
“What about Gregory Logan?” I asked.
“I saw less of him.” Under the layer or two of makeup, I thought I saw Steffi flush. I couldn’t tell if it was because of some sexual memory, or a crush on her employer, or simply from chagrin at having been whispered about in connection with him. “He worked late many times. When he was home, naturally he was with the children or Courtney.”
“Did you call him Greg or Mr. Logan?”
“Neither.” Her violet-lidded eyes gave a single blink. “He never asked me to call him by his Christian name, but as Courtney had invited me to do so with her, I never knew what to say.” She shrugged. Just for an instant she looked flustered, like the postadolescent she actually was. “I didn’t call him anything.”
“What happened on the night Courtney disappeared?” I asked softly, praying she would find this an appropriate question for a historian to ask.
“She came home from tricking and treating with Morgan and went to the kitchen. She said we had no more organic apples. She did not wish the children to eat too many sweets, you see, from Halloween. So she said to give them an apple for dessert, then one sweet. After the apple they would not be so hungry and ask for extra sweets. I told her: I will go to the Grand Union and buy the apples. No, she said, because it was the one night of the year children run around the streets, tricking and treating. They wear masks, so they could not see properly. She would prefer to drive. You see? Always thoughtful.”
“What time was that?”
“Between five-thirty and six.”
“Did you hear her car? Or actually see her drive away?”
“Yes.” Steffi came across as one of those naturally tranquil people, with her gentle eyes and low-pitched, calm voice. Until you looked at her hands. They would not stay still; they traveled down to her khakis and rubbed her knees. “We always saw her go, because in the beginning, Travis used to cry when she would leave the house. Courtney said we should, you know, make a game of Mommy going bye-bye. Morgan would climb onto the window seat in the family room and look out the window where, you know, you could see the car leaving the garage. I would pick up Travis. We would all wave and say: ‘Bye-bye, Mommy. See you soon.’”
“And on Halloween night, as she left to go for the apples ... Did Courtney seem preoccupied or fearful or in any way not herself?”
Steffi’s hands slid back from her knees and began to knead her thighs. “No. I am certain. I have thought about this many, many times. She played Mommy going bye-bye with us in the same way. She waved good-bye. She smiled.”
“What happened next?”
“Nothing. I waited. It was seven o’clock. Then seven-thirty. I couldn’t understand, but I gave the children each a small Snickers bar—from the bag I bought to have for trickers and treaters, not the sweets from Morgan’s bag because I knew Courtney would not want them eating candy from other people. I put them to bed.”
“Where was Greg Logan then?”
Steffi’s hands came together as if in prayer. She rested her chin on top of her middle fingers. “In Manhattan. A dinner for business.”
“Did you try to call him there?”
She shook her head, wearily. Clearly, she had repeated this account over and over to the police. “No. I did not call him.”
“How come?” I tried for that look of benevolent curiosity women friends have in laxative commercials.
Her scarlet lips formed a tight fish mouth. “I was afraid that Courtney would become—what is the word?—upset with me.”
“For bothering her husband?”
“No, no. For letting him know she was not at home. One time early that month he called. I told him I did not know where Courtney had gone. It was about four in the afternoon. He called back several times. When she did come home, at seven o’clock, she was angry with me. Angry in a quiet way. That was her way of being angry.” Steffi hugged herself in consolation, as though still shaken. “It was my fault. I had forgotten what she had instructed me.”
“What was that?”
“That when I did not know where she was, I should say she was shopping so her husband would not worry.” I probably lifted an eyebrow or two skeptically. “Courtney worried that he worried,” she explained. “She said to me, ‘My husband has enough on his plate.’”
“What did she mean by that?”
“That he had much to think about. As they say, ‘pressured.’”
“Did he
seem that way to you? A pressured businessman?”
“No.”
“What was he like?”
“Quiet.”
“Nice to you?”
Steffi nodded, but I thought I caught her swallowing hard. Was Greg not nice? Had there been something between her and her employer, either before or after Courtney’s disappearance? Did she simply have a lonely young woman’s crush on her boss? Or was it about those rumors floating around Shorehaven? Could there be some darker reason for that swallow? “Yes. Nice. Very polite.”
“He’s an interesting-looking man.”
“Yes, interesting. Somewhat Asian in the upper part of his face, I think, but his manner is very American.”
“How were he and Courtney together? I’m asking because in preliminary interviews, I heard several different accounts. You have the advantage of being in the house.”
“They were fine. They were in love.” Steffi’s eyes left mine and gazed out the glass wall of the conservatory at the high stands of pink rhododendron on the far side of what was either a huge puddle or a small fishpond. “Her face—when he walked through the door she would become ... like a bride on her wedding day. So happy. He would always kiss the top of her head and ask her, ‘How is my Courtney?’”
“Any sign of violence or threat of violence? Did he ever hit her or threaten—”
She jerked back her head, startled at the suggestion. “Oh no!”
“Was she out of the house often—I mean, where you didn’t know where she was?”
“No.” Reluctantly, she brought her eyes back to mine. “Well, more so in the week or two before Halloween. Three or four times, I think. Mr. Logan did not come home until eight, so she could be out until then.”
“How did she dress those times she went off?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Was she dressed in casual clothes, as if she were staying in Shorehaven? Or dressier.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I think ... She was in—yes—a suit and high-heeled shoes.”
I recalled Jill Badinowski reporting how simply and elegantly Courtney had dressed, in slacks and a silk blouse. “The sort of outfit she would wear when she visited couples to tell them about StarBaby? Or dressier?”