by Otho Eskin
“Did the people from Homeland Security know about the letter?”
“I think so. Yeah. They asked if I’d seen a letter.”
“And you said?”
She looks hopefully at Kenneth. Kenneth is trying to look sympathetic but has sense enough to keep quiet.
“I guess I forgot,” she says.
I don’t believe for a moment she forgot but I decide to let that go. She’d probably start to cry.
“Was the envelope hand-addressed? Or was it typed?”
“Hand-addressed.”
“Was there a return address?”
She frowns. “I don’t think so. No return address. I’m not sure I remember rightly.”
“Did Sandra ever show you what was in the envelope?”
“No. I had the impression it was private. A love letter, maybe.”
I’ll have to get back to that. “Do you know where the letter is now?”
“Sorry. I never saw it again.”
“How about the envelope?”
“Sandy threw the envelope away the next day.”
“You said the people from Homeland Security never found the letter?”
“I told you, they were searching for that letter. They seemed disappointed they couldn’t find it.”
“When was the last time you saw the envelope?”
“It was in the trash the day after Sandy returned from her trip.”
“And you looked inside?”
She nods, abashed. “I was curious. But there was nothing there. I mean, an empty envelope. That’s all.”
“You think she might have kept the letter?”
“That’s what I think.”
“And you think Sandra might have hidden the letter somewhere and the people who were here this morning weren’t able to find it.”
“I guess.”
“What makes you think Sandra hid the letter?”
“She mentioned there was no good place to hide anything in our apartment. It’s so small.” She gestures vaguely around. “I took that to refer to the letter.”
“Why would Sandra want to hide a letter?” I ask.
“I wondered about that.”
“What made you think it was a love letter?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just … I don’t know.” She twists her hair in her fingers.
“There must have been something about it. Something that made you think it was a love letter.”
She looks anxious.
“Come, Miss Connelly. Did you open the letter while Sandra wasn’t here?”
“No, sir. I never did anything like that!”
“Where did you say you left the letter while Sandra was away?”
“I told you. On the kitchen table.” She points to the small table.
“Was it lying flat? Or upright?”
“I leaned it against the sugar bowl.”
“And you passed it every time you went into the kitchen?”
“I guess.”
“I’ll bet you stopped and looked at it once in a while.”
“Maybe.”
“And you picked it up? Looked at it carefully?”
Her eyes are red. She’s on the edge of tears again. I hope Kenneth’s not tempted to give her a warm hug.
“Why did you think it was a love letter, Trisha?” I ask. “What was there about it that made you think that?”
She takes a deep, ragged breath. “It was the scent.”
“Tell me about the scent.”
“A very nice scent. Like perfume. I didn’t notice at first. When the letter first came. But later, when I picked it up, I could smell a very faint scent.”
“I expect you stopped at the kitchen table sometimes and held the envelope to your face and smelled the perfume.”
The girl’s face flushes. “I didn’t do anything wrong. It was such a nice smell.”
“That’s okay, Trisha,” I say, trying to sound non-threatening. “Can you describe the scent?”
“I don’t know how to describe smells.”
“Was it strong? Citrusy? Sweet? Spicy? Flowery?”
“That’s it. Flowery. It smelled of flowers.” She stops. Takes another deep breath.
“And when Sandra threw the envelope away, you picked it out of the trash and smelled the inside. Is that what you did?”
She looks pleadingly at Kenneth as if for help. He smiles at her in a friendly way but says nothing. “I guess,” she whispers. “I’ve never gotten a letter that smelled of perfume. I’ve read about that sort of thing in books, of course, but no one has ever sent me one. Not a real one. Just in my imagination. You know what I mean?”
“I’m afraid I don’t read books about scented letters. You said Sandra told you she’d found a place for the letter. Are those the exact words she used? ‘Place’? She said she’d ‘found a place for the letter’?”
“Yeah. Those were her exact words. She sort of laughed. Like it was a kind of private joke. I remember thinking it was an odd way of describing where she hid the letter.”
“Detective Blake and I would like to look around the apartment now.”
She looks panicky. “You want to look in my room? It’s a horror.”
“Not unless you have some dead bodies there.”
“Nothing like that,” she stutters. “Just dirty laundry. You know.”
“I don’t think it will be necessary for us to examine your laundry. I imagine the people from Homeland Security searched your room.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And they took everything related to Sandra.”
“I guess.”
“We just need to see Sandra’s room.”
Trisha Connelly leads us to a door at the end of the hall, and we step into a small bedroom. It’s bright and sunny with a single bed, neatly made up, with a bright yellow duvet cover and a white pillow-case. The room is plain, almost austere. There’s a chest of drawers, now empty; a closet, also empty; a wooden desk, painted white, probably that once held a laptop computer, now gone. Next to the bed is a small table containing a tissue box, the tissues all removed, and a blue ceramic reading lamp that looks like it might have come from Korea, with a white parchment shade. There are no books; there is nothing to read.
On the wall opposite the window is a framed print of several men in an open sailboat. I think it’s by Winslow Homer and called something like “Prouts Neck.” On the wall opposite is a photograph of a group of soldiers. They are in two rows: In the first row the men kneel on one knee. In the back row, the men are at parade rest. I can just make out patches on the left sleeves but not well enough to identify the unit. To one side stand two men: one with chevrons on his sleeve indicating he’s a sergeant. The second man, also in a service uniform, has insignia and a name patch sown on. All are smiling broadly. It looks like some military unit on the occasion of a graduation or receiving a unit citation.
I’ve seen this room before. Rooms people in the military live in. Or former military. Rooms that are squared away.
“Okay, Detective Blake, find that letter.”
“What makes you think the letter’s here?”
“Sandra Wilcox did not throw it away, I’m sure of that. She hid it somewhere and she wouldn’t have hidden it somewhere else in the apartment; where someone might find it. It has to be here in her own bedroom.”
“Those people from Homeland Security searched here,” Tricia says. “They were looking for that letter. They couldn’t find it.”
“Let’s see if we can do a better job.”
I study the Winslow Homer. “That picture seems out of place.”
“Sandy was born and raised somewhere in Massachusetts,” Trisha says. “She told me the picture reminded her of home. That was one of the few things she had that were personal. And that bedside lamp.”
“What about the picture of these men in uniform?”
“Sorry. Sandy never talked about that photograph. She was in the Army, she told me. Maybe it was from then.”
Kenneth put
s on a pair of vinyl gloves and systematically goes through the room, opening closet doors, searching through the small chest of drawers and the bedside table. It doesn’t take long.
“I can’t find anything, sir,” he says. “Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to find. They took it all. Where would you put something you want to hide in a small room like this?”
“Under the mattress, maybe?” Kenneth suggests uncertainly.
“They looked under the mattress,” Trisha tells us. “They even cut it open and searched inside. They didn’t find anything.”
“Take that print down from the wall,” I say. “Let’s take a look.”
Kenneth lifts the Homer print gently from the hook on the wall. It’s an ordinary, inexpensive print, the kind they sell at the gift shop at the National Gallery of Art. There is nothing on the front. No alterations, no markings.
“Look at the back,” I say.
Kenneth flips the picture over and lays it facedown on the bed. The back is covered with brown paper, which has been torn from the wooden picture frame. Nothing is hidden inside. The same for the photograph of the soldiers—just shredded backing paper.
“Turn on the light by the bed,” I instruct.
Kenneth turns the switch, but no light goes on.
“Sandy said she always read in bed before she went to sleep.” Trisha stands by the door, watching us. “That’s why she needed the lamp.”
“What did Sandy read?”
“I don’t know. Books.”
“And the people who came this morning took all the books with them?”
“I guess.”
“What kind of books did Sandy read?”
“You know—books. She told me she liked novels.”
“What’s wrong with the lamp?” I ask.
“Maybe it’s broken,” Kenneth suggests.
“The person who lived in this room would not have a broken lamp by her bed. Certainly not if she was a reader. See if there’s a bulb.”
Kenneth picks up the lamp. “There’s a bulb but it’s not screwed in.” He tightens the bulb and the light flares on.
“Now that’s strange, don’t you think?” I say. “Why would she leave the bulb unscrewed?” I take the lamp from Kenneth and remove the lampshade using a small, brass screw at the top of the shade. I tear the parchment shade from its wire armature. There are two layers of parchment paper forming the shade. Folded between the two layers is a piece of stiff paper stock. I gently flatten the paper on the top of the bed. It’s a cream-colored paper that smells faintly of roses and jasmine. One side is blank. On the other side is a handwritten message in purple ink, in neat, rather elegant, old-fashioned, cursive script. It reads:
THE MOON HAS SET, AND THE PLEIADES;
IT IS MIDNIGHT,
AND TIME PASSES, AND I SLEEP ALONE.
There is no signature.
“Do you think it’s important?” Kenneth asks, looking over my shoulder.
“I think it was important to Sandra Wilcox,” I say.
“Am I going to get in trouble because I didn’t mention the letter to those people from Homeland Security?” Trisha asks.
“You won’t get into any trouble, Trisha. Isn’t that right, Kenneth?”
Kenneth nods. “That’s right, Miss Connelly. You’re not in any trouble.”
“Detective Blake and I are going to take this note with us. And we’ll take the picture of the soldiers as well.”
Trisha shrugs. “You can have anything you want. If the people from Homeland Security come back and ask for the letter,” Trisha asks, “can I tell them you took it?”
“Absolutely. You should definitely mention my name.”
I give my business card to Trisha. “Be sure to show this to anyone who asks you about the letter. Will you do that?” She nods. “And let me know.”
I look at Kenneth.
“I don’t have any cards made up yet, sir,” Kenneth says. “This is my first day on the job, remember?”
“I’ll call you if any mail comes for Sandy,” Trisha says.
“There won’t be any mail,” I tell her. “Effective today, your friends from Homeland Security will have instructed the US Postal Service to divert Sandra’s mail to them.”
“They can do that?”
When Kenneth and I leave, we stop on the sidewalk in front of the building. “What was that letter about, sir?” Kenneth asks. “It seemed like you recognized the words.”
“Maybe.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a fragment of a poem.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.”
Kenneth starts to move away. “Just a moment,” I say. “We need to talk.”
Kenneth stops, pivots to look back at me. “Sir?”
“You screwed up.”
“I don’t understand.” His eyes are wide.
“During the interview you tried to be friendly with Miss Connelly.”
“What’s wrong with that? If we’re friendly, won’t people want to cooperate?”
“Witnesses are not your friends. Never forget that. Witnesses are the enemy. Always. Witnesses lie. Even innocent witnesses lie. Everyone lies. Even people who have no reason to lie. Trisha Connelly lied about that letter. Don’t ever intervene during an interview again. Not until you’ve had a lot more experience. You confuse friendliness with truth. Like most normal people, you want to be liked. Homicide detectives are not normal people. You must learn that.”
“I only meant to be helpful.”
“I know what you meant. Don’t be helpful. As long as she felt safe, she’d never have told us about that letter. She was embarrassed and didn’t want to talk about it. That’s probably why she didn’t tell the people from Homeland Security about the letter. She was afraid it would make her look like a snooping roommate. Which she, of course, was.”
“You were kind of mean to her. Sir.”
“That’s often necessary. I suppose there are times when one should be nice. Although I can’t think of an occasion.”
“You almost made her cry.”
“That was the idea.”
“You don’t like her.”
“I don’t trust her.”
“Don’t you trust anybody?”
“Not really.”
“Sometimes you have to trust people,” Kenneth tells me.
“I don’t see why.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
LE ZINK IS a pretentious French restaurant run by two brothers from Serbia who, I’m pretty sure, are engaged in something illegal, probably involving large shipments of cigarettes. The restaurant has been decorated in a faux French brasserie style with fading pictures of long-dead French singers and actors on the walls and Edith Piaf singing softly in the background. Tonight, there are a few regulars at the bar including a middle-aged man—a bit louche and going to weight—always accompanied by a different woman. Tonight’s conquest is about twenty and she wears a shiny miniskirt that does her no favors.
“Bad day?” The bartender’s name is Roberta.
“You could say that.”
Roberta is an attractive black woman, dressed this evening in a fashionable, pale-blue frock and wearing large hoop earrings. Roberta could have been a model, I think. Except that, for one, she speaks in a deep baritone and, two, for most of Roberta’s life, Roberta was a DC cop. The day Robert told me his secret, we were in an unmarked police car on a stakeout of a crack house on North Capitol Street.
“I’m a woman,” he told me. That certainly got my attention. “I’ve been living a lie for years.”
I can sympathize.
“Now I’m going to come out,” Robert told me. “You have no idea how that sets me free. Now I can be my true self.” Robert explained the medical procedures he was undergoing. Like most men, I did not want to hear the details.
Roberta had to quit her job in the police department but found an undiscovered talent for making cocktails. She’s a good listener
and very discreet.
Roberta places my usual Van Winkle 23-year-old bourbon on the bar before me, and I absently stare at my reflection in the large glass mirror behind the bar—the glass mottled and stained with age—as the events of the day surge helter-skelter through my head.
There’s the problem of Sister Grace and her feral family. My instinct is to walk away from her, but it’s not that simple. It’s dangerous to cross her and there’s the money. The Soutine about wiped me out.
And there’s the call from Maine, bringing back painful memories—my sister’s violent death and the incident at Clarkson Creek I thought had been forgotten almost twenty years ago. That problem will have to be dealt with but must wait until tomorrow.
Throughout these random, half-formed thoughts the memory of those blue eyes haunts me.
I know I should focus on the murder of Sandra Wilcox—I do have a day job—and I try to concentrate on what I learned from the visit to her apartment and I think about that note and what it might possibly mean. That gets me nowhere.
“You have a visitor,” Roberta says, looking over my right shoulder.
I become aware of a figure standing behind me. A woman in her mid-thirties.
“I’m Agent Lovelace,” the woman announces. “May I join you, Detective Zorn?”
She slides onto the barstool next to me. Her hair is reddish brown—probably was bright red when she was a kid. She’s about five-foot-seven and wears her hair in a pixie haircut—badly cut—and her skirt and jacket don’t go together. Her eyeglasses are electric blue and are not the right shape for her face. She wears no wedding or engagement rings—in fact, no jewelry of any kind. She is without makeup and she has freckles on her nose.
She reaches into her purse and withdraws a black leather billfold, flips it open, and passes it to me. Inside are a gold badge and a laminated picture ID with a seal on a blue background. At the top an inscription reads “Department of Justice.” At the bottom: “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The card identifies the lady as FBI Special Agent Arora Lovelace. I don’t believe I’ve ever met an FBI detective lady with freckles. I pass the billfold back.
“You’ve misspelled your first name,” I say.
“Tell that to my mother.” She smiles a wide, generous smile and returns her billfold to her purse. Her nose crinkles when she smiles.