Murder Among the Angels (19 page)

“I think they come from overseas now,” he said. “But the wholesalers are still located there. I’ll have Pat give you a map,” he said, referring to the dispatcher. “They’re easy enough to find.”

“What about lunch?” Charlotte asked.

“You go ahead. I’m going to get a sandwich. You could try the Broadway Diner or Jack’s Luncheonette. They’re both on the Post Road. The diner’s just before Zion Hill, and Jack’s is in Corinth.”

Charlotte crossed her arms in mock exasperation and gave him a withering look. “I thought we had our priorities straight,” she said. “Which means that food is at the top of the list.”

“Not all of the time,” Jerry said.

After the dispatcher had written down the directions for Charlotte, she set off for Corinth. But as she thought about their morning at the church, she was struck by an idea. She was still nagged by the feeling that she didn’t know the victim. She had once heard a homicide detective say that it was as important to figure out what made the victim tick as it was to figure out what made the murderer tick, and in her limited experience she had found that observation to be true. “Victimology,” it was called: to find out about the perpetrator through the victim. It was possible, of course, that the victims had been chosen at random: that the killer had favored five-foot-six-inch redheads in the same way that Son of Sam had favored women necking with men in parked cars, or Jack the Ripper had favored prostitutes from London’s East End. But Charlotte suspected not. Though the victims had been Kimberly, Liliana, and Doreen, the bouquets that the murderer had left with the skulls led her to believe that the real victim was Lily Louria. It was Lily Louria that someone had been killing over and over and over again.

Charlotte’s only sense of Lily was as a beautiful face. Was that all there was to her? It was very possible. There was precious little behind many of the beautiful faces she had known. But whether or not there was much behind the face, something about Lily had provoked the killer to murder her substitutes. Was it jealousy, revenge, greed? Dr. Louria’s love-besotted description of his wife wasn’t any help. Nor was that of her devoted Aunt Lothian, despite her account of Lily’s being difficult as a child. Charlotte needed an assessment of Lily—her loves, her hates, what she liked to eat for breakfast—from a more objective observer. And in that category, a minister who had known her since she was a teenager would serve very well.

She pulled into a gas station, and then turned around and headed back in the direction from which she had come. She arrived at the church a few minutes later. Since it was lunch-time, she decided to try the rectory first, and continued on up the hill. About fifty yards past the church, she came to a sign for “The Manse” and turned into a driveway lined with big old rhododendrons. The driveway ended at a charming house: a gabled, gingerbread-adorned Victorian Gothic confection, which was painted a pale yellow trimmed with white.

After parking at the side of the driveway, she walked up the brick pathway and rang the doorbell. She waited a few minutes, but there was no answer. She had just decided to try the church office when she saw the pastor approaching along the path from the church. He was wearing his white vestments, which billowed in the spring breeze behind his tall, thin figure like a sail from a mast.

“Ah! Mrs. Lundstrom,” he exclaimed, upon seeing her waiting at his door. “What a pleasant surprise!” After they had exchanged greetings, he escorted her into a sun-filled center hall, where he proceeded to remove his robes and hang them up in the hall closet.

“Excuse me,” he apologized, as he removed the outer vestment, “I just did a baptism—hence the clerical garb.” Having removed the outer vestment, he then proceeded to remove the inner vestment. “We wear two robes,” he explained, “which makes this process all the more unwieldy.”

“Why two?” asked Charlotte.

“Symbolism,” he said. “The New Church is rife with it. The outer one stands for the outer man—the public man, if you will—and the inner for the spiritual man.” After hanging up the inner robe, he escorted her into a study filled with beautiful antiques and art objects.

“What a charming house!” Charlotte said as she took a seat on an Empire-style sofa covered in pale green silk damask. He was clearly the kind of bachelor who took great pride in the appearance of his house.

“Thank you,” the pastor replied, as he sat down in the armchair opposite her. “It’s typical of the Gothic villa style that was in fashion during the 1840s, and which was very popular in the Hudson River Valley. The house antedates the church, of course.”

“Is that it there?” she asked, nodding at a framed engraving hanging on the wall that showed the house as it must have looked when it was built.

He nodded. “The property was originally a farm that ran all the way down to the river. I’ve restored the house to its original condition,” he said. “I’ve also tried to furnish it with pieces that are typical of the period.”

“You’ve done a beautiful job,” she said as she looked around at the bookshelves lined with leather-bound copies of Thackeray and Tennyson, and the antique mahogany secretary heaped with papers.

“Thank you,” he said with a smile. “This is my favorite room in the house. It makes me feel like a man of letters.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

“Only the church newsletter and the ideas for my weekly sermons. I’m more of a reader than a writer. I’m reading a very interesting book right now,” he said. “I think you might be interested in it as well, Mrs. Lundstrom.”

Rising from his seat, he lifted a book off the mantelpiece and handed it to Charlotte. The title was
My Story
by Charlotte Graham.

“Aha,” she said with a smile. “You’re onto me.”

“I was onto you from the moment I met you,” he said. “I’ve been a fan since I was a young sprout. It’s a great honor to meet you,” he added with a deferential nod. “May I offer you a glass of sherry?”

“It’s not six o’clock yet,” she commented.

“Rules are made to be broken,” he said with a smile.

“Yes,” she replied. “That would be very nice.”

“How did you meet Chief D’Angelo?” he asked, as he poured the sherry out of a crystal decanter on a mahogany campaign table.

Charlotte explained about helping to solve the murder case at the spa where Jerry had worked, and her reputation as an amateur sleuth that had come out of her solving the murder at the Morosco case.

“You talked about that a bit in the book,” he said. He gave her her glass and sat back down in his chair with his own. “Is it about the murder that you’ve come to see me?” he asked, taking a sip.

“Murders, I’m afraid,” she said. She didn’t think that she was committing any indiscretions. Anything she might be about to tell him had already been splashed all over the newspapers.

“I’ve read the newspapers,” he said, echoing her thoughts.

Charlotte went on to explain how each of the victims had been a cosmetic surgery patient of Dr. Louria’s, and how he had remodeled their faces to resemble that of his dead wife.

“What you’re saying is that the real victim was Lily.”

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s why I’ve come to you. I understand that you knew her since she was a teenager. I’d like to find out more about her.”

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

“What she was like,” Charlotte replied simply.

“Would you mind if I work while we talk?” he asked.

When Charlotte replied that she wouldn’t, he set down his sherry glass and pulled over a low, three-legged stand covered with a linen cloth. “I do Victorian hand braiding,” he said as he removed the cloth cover to reveal the donut-shaped cushion that comprised the top of the stand.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Charlotte said.

“I never had either. I found out about it through the Victorian Society, of which I’m a member. I’d always been interested in Victorian decorative arts, but hand braiding was new to me. It was extremely popular during the Victorian era—more popular, in fact, than knitting.”

He proceeded to show her how each of the many threads that hung over the sides of the stand was attached to a weight in the center hole. The opposite ends of the threads were held down by wooden bobbins, which hung down from the perimeter of the stand like the fringe on a lamp shade.

He then went on to show her how, by manipulating the threads, each of which was numbered, one could create an intricately patterned braid that could then be molded or woven into various designs.

“How interesting!” Charlotte said.

“My watch chain is braided,” he said. He reached down to show her the triple-stranded chain that was attached to his pocket watch. “As is the design on my ring,” he added, holding out his long-fingered hand.

“What are you working on now?” she asked.

“This is going to be a part of the design for a wreath, which I’ll frame,” he said. “I’ve been working on it for about two weeks.”

“How did you get into this?” she asked.

“My sister had introduced me to embroidery when I gave up smoking several years ago. She thought it would help me keep my hands occupied. I found it to be very relaxing,” he explained, “but it was a hobby that I didn’t like to engage in in public.”

“Why not?” Charlotte asked.

“People don’t think of it as being very masculine,” he said with a rueful little smile. “I liked to do samplers in
point tresse
, which is an especially delicate form.” He nodded toward the center hall. “Maybe you noticed some of my samplers hanging in the hall.”

Charlotte nodded. She had noticed the framed embroidery work.

“Then I read about the braiding and thought I’d give it a try.” He adjusted the bobbins on the braiding stand. “It was a pastime that was engaged in during Victorian times by both men and women.”

“So it was socially acceptable,” Charlotte said.

He nodded. “I also found it to be a good conversational gambit. People often come here to discuss their personal problems. Talking about the braiding was a good way of getting the conversation rolling. Which brings me back to the reason for your visit.”

Charlotte nodded.

“What Lily was like,” he repeated. He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Then he looked back at Charlotte, his deep brown eyes smiling under his shiny cap of dark brown hair. “That’s a tall order,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“I was never able to figure Lily out,” he replied. “She was beautiful, of course. She had amazing eyes. They were a very pale green, like a celadon glaze. They were also an unusual shape—cat’s eyes, everybody said. She also had that magnificent red hair, of course.”

He paused for a moment, deep in thought.

“But in addition to being beautiful, she was also captivating, mysterious, exasperating, electrifying.” He threw up his hands. “I could go on, but I think you get the idea.”

“It sounds as if you were …” She paused to fish for words.

He completed the sentence for her. “A little bit in love with her?” He turned back to his work. “There wasn’t a man who wasn’t. Just because I wear this”—he lifted a hand to his clerical collar—“doesn’t mean that I’m immune to the blandishments of feminine charm.”

“Her aunt said that she could wrap any man around her finger.”

“I’d say that’s a pretty accurate assessment. I managed to tie myself to the mast, but there were many others who couldn’t resist.”

“She was charming, then?”

“Yes, but not in a demure way. Hypnotic would be a better way of putting it. She was one of those people—not unlike yourself, if I may be so bold—who seem to have an aura. But where your aura is steady, hers was erratic. She’d be shooting sparks one minute, and a black hole the next.”

“It sounds frightening.”

“It was,” he agreed. “She was a bit of a manic-depressive. When she was in her manic phase, there was a reckless quality about her. You never knew what outrageous stunt she was going to pull next. Sebastian used to call her the ‘mistress of the gratuitous act.’” He went on: “He has the same reckless quality, though to a lesser extent.”

“What kinds of gratuitous acts?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said, pausing to think. “I remember her driving down the Storm King Highway once at sixty miles an hour,” he said, naming the highway in the Hudson Highlands that was famous for its hairpin turns. “Or swigging vodka from the bottle until she was falling down drunk. Or taking off all her clothes and jumping into the quarry lake.”

“Which is what she did in Mexico,” Charlotte said.

“Yes. She was one of those people who crave stimulation, who live every moment to its fullest.” He thought for a minute, and then continued: “I think it came from losing her parents so young. She had no inner stability. I’m not surprised that she died young.”

“Lothian couldn’t compensate?”

“She tried, of course. She was genuinely crazy about both of them. But I think they were just too much for her. Even as adults, they’d bully her, so I can imagine what they were like as children. I had a taste of their bullying myself, for that matter. I used to be their teacher.”

“At the Zion Hill School?” she asked.

He nodded. “That’s where I first met them. I taught religion there when I first came out of theological school.”

“How old were they then?”

“Lily was a sophomore, and Sebastian was a freshman. They could be a very intimidating pair. I was new to teaching, and they really had me flummoxed.” He chuckled to himself. “It was a very small school—only eight or ten students to a class. The students in Lily and Sebastian’s classes did what they said.”

“Such as?” Charlotte prompted.

“I remember an incident where I was writing on the blackboard, and when I turned around, there was no one in the classroom except for one very shy girl. Lily and Sebastian had climbed out of the window, and the rest of the class had followed them.” He added, “The classroom was on the second floor.”

At Charlotte’s look of amazement, he explained:

“It turned out that they’d shimmied down the drainpipe. They all came waltzing defiantly back in the door a few minutes later. My point is that if Lily and Sebastian whistled, the rest of them jumped.”