Murder Among the Angels (29 page)

The picnic supper came in an ash splint basket, from which Sebastian removed a blue-and-white-checked tablecloth and napkins, two place settings, and a bottle of California cabernet sauvignon. After laying their places, he removed the supper items one by one from the picnic basket: a crusty basil foccacia, a pasta primavera with seafood, a cold filet mignon with béarnaise sauce, and marinated broccoli rabe. For dessert there were cold poached pears with chocolate-raspberry sauce.

“You’ve outdone yourself again, Sebastian,” said Jerry, as Sebastian finished setting out the food on the tablecloth. Each item was served in blue and white crockery; it looked like a spread from a glossy food magazine.

“The church concert comes but once a year,” said Sebastian. “Besides, it’s the least I can do for someone who’s been chopping vegetables all year long, and who hasn’t received a cent of remuneration.” Reaching back into the basket, he pulled out a bottle of champagne and three champagne flutes.

“What’s this?” asked Jerry as Sebastian passed out the glasses.

“We’re celebrating,” he said. “I got a loan against the money I’ll be getting from Lily’s estate, and I have a backer for an additional two million. I also have a site: on Park Avenue South in the Flatiron District. Construction starts next week on Manhattan’s next four-star restaurant: Sebastian’s II.”

Raising their glasses, they offered him their congratulations.

“When will you open?” Jerry asked.

“We’re aiming for October,” Sebastian said as he took a seat with his champagne flute on a corner of the tablecloth. He went on to describe his plans for the restaurant, which wouldn’t be formal and French, but rather an elegant space with a down-to-earth atmosphere.

Charlotte had a gut feeling that it would do well. Manhattan was in need of a first-class restaurant that wasn’t overly formal.

“Connie’s going to be in charge of the interior,” he said. “She’ll be working with the designers. She’s also going to be my maître d’.” He went on to describe his plans in further detail, and then announced that he had to leave. “Let me know how you like the food,” he said as he stood back up.

“We will,” Jerry replied as Sebastian headed off into the crowd. “Let me know if you need me to chop vegetables,” he shouted after him.

Charlotte had been right when she had figured that it would be an exquisite evening. They dined on their delicious supper in the fading light, looking out at the panorama of the dusky Tappan Zee, with the stained-glass windows of the church blazing behind them. As the sun went down behind Hook Mountain, the colors of the landscape softened to a delicate blue-green that reminded Charlotte of the heaven that Peter had described, a heaven whose foundation was the romantic love between a man and a woman. Below, the blue-tiled roofs of the houses of Zion Hill glowed like the roofs of some celestial village. Charlotte thought of Edward Archibald, the founder of Zion Hill, who had wanted to make this little hamlet the most beautiful spot on earth. In the gloaming, on this velvet lawn high above the gleaming river, with the sun setting on the western horizon, it really did seem like a little bit of paradise. But it was a paradise that had now been sullied. For days, the case of the look-alike murders had been front-page news, and Zion Hill had been put under the microscope of public scrutiny. To a certain extent, this hadn’t been bad. Some of the articles had taken pains to explain the complex beliefs of the New Church. But Charlotte suspected the primary effect of the sensational stories would be to reinforce the idea that the inhabitants of Zion Hill belonged to some strange cult. For a community that had striven so hard for acceptance—Charlotte was reminded of the efforts to plant daffodils along the roadsides and erect welcoming signs on the Albany Post Road—the look-alike murders were a disaster.

But then, seeing the tall, stick-like figure of the pastor circulating among the crowd, she was struck by another thought. Remembering that his outer robe symbolized the exterior or social man, and the inner robe symbolized the inner or spiritual man, she decided that it didn’t matter. A community built on inner faith would not be shaken by the Sturm und Drang of the exterior world.

It was her theory of landscaping as a measure of spiritual faith again: Zion Hill had thrived for nearly a hundred years, and it would go on thriving, despite the weeds in the velvet lawn.

The conclusion of the dinner hour was marked by the ringing of the church bells at six o’clock, after which Reverend Cornwall took a place behind the lectern. After a joke about the ringing of the bells marking the cocktail hour, he welcomed the visiting choir to Zion Hill and offered a brief benediction. Then the members of the visiting choir filed out of the south door and took their places on the tiered seats on the stage.

Reading her program, Charlotte saw that the concert featured songs and hymns that had to do with angels or with heaven. The first hymn was by an English hymn writer named Isaac Watts, and was called “A Prospect of Heaven Makes Death Easy.” She recognized the last line as being the quote on the stained-glass window that Peter had been repairing at the glass shop.

After the prayer, the boys began to sing, their radiant young faces lifted to the heavens. There was no accompaniment, only the clear, high, sweet voices—like the voices of angels—rising up into the pink- and apricot-tinged clouds of the early evening sky:

There is a land of pure delight

Where saints immortal reign;

Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides,

And never-withering flowers;

Death like a narrow sea divides

This heavenly land from ours.

For the next forty-five minutes, the air over Zion Hill was filled with the boys’ heavenly voices. The magic spell was finally broken by the intermission, which allowed the members of the audience a chance to attend to more worldly pursuits, such as going to the bathroom, buying souvenirs and snacks from the vendors whose stands had been set up at the edges of the lawn, and visiting with friends and neighbors.

Charlotte was putting the remains of their supper away in the picnic basket when she was interrupted by a greeting from a young woman with short, curly, black hair who was walking by with two young children in tow. It was Lisa Gennaro from the florist shop.

They exchanged introductions and chatted a bit about the concert. Then Lisa excused herself and headed off in the direction of the vendors. But in a moment, she was back. “I just thought of something,” she said. “I don’t know if this is important or not.”

“What is it?” Charlotte asked.

“I had another order for lilies of the valley from Dr. Louria,” she said. “I figured that since he was no longer a suspect, that it didn’t matter. But since you asked me to let you know if he placed any more orders …”

“Did you know he was dead?” Charlotte asked.

Lisa looked shocked. “I had no idea. When did he die?” she asked.

“When did the order come in?” Charlotte snapped.

“It was late this afternoon.” She pursed her lips in thought as her curly-headed daughter, eager for a balloon, tugged at her arm. “Around four, I think. He asked to pick it up in the anteroom after hours, as before.”

Charlotte and Jerry exchanged looks. Dr. Louria had jumped to his death on Friday. But that was something that few people other than the police would have known. The obituary hadn’t appeared in the paper yet.

“Thank you, Lisa,” Charlotte said. In the last case, the murderer had ordered the flowers the day before he deposited the skull in the undercroft, which, if he held true to form, meant that another victim had already been killed.

“You’re welcome,” Lisa said as her daughter led her away. “If you want to know anything else, you can call me at work.”

“Peter De Vries!” Charlotte said after Lisa had left. “You’d better have one of your men pick him up right away.”

“He’s already in custody,” Jerry said.

“I thought the parishioners had raised the money for his bail,” she said, “that Reverend Cornwall was going to post it for him.”

“Peter refused to accept it,” Jerry said.

Another possible victim, which meant another Lily look-alike. But
was
there another Lily look-alike? Hadn’t Doreen Mileski been the last of Dr. Louria’s. Galateas? Charlotte’s heart was pounding as she quickly packed up the remains of their supper. Maybe there wasn’t another victim; maybe Marta had ordered the flowers for some obscure reason. In the other three cases, the body parts had turned up prior to the discoveries of the skulls in the cemeteries, or the undercroft. This time, no body parts had been found. But why would the caller have asked to have the flowers left in the anteroom to be picked up later, as the caller had in the other cases? Why would he have posed as Dr. Louria, who had jumped to his death a day and a half before the call came in? No body parts had been found—yet. But that wasn’t to say they wouldn’t still turn up. The currents of the Hudson—“the river that flows both ways”—were idiosyncratic. Presumably the dismembered bodies of Kimberly and Doreen had both been tossed into the river at the summer house, but the parts had turned up in different places, and some had not turned up at all. It was a possibility that in this case the heavy current caused by the rains of last Wednesday and Thursday had carried the body parts farther downriver than in the other cases, and if they turned up in New York Bay, they might not be linked to the other look-alike cases, since body parts in New York Bay were not uncommon.

But that didn’t answer the question of who the victim was. Someone who looked like Lily Louria. The first person to pop into Charlotte’s mind was Sebastian, who looked more like Lily than anyone else, but Sebastian was obviously still alive. In fact, she could see his purple bandanna among the heads in the crowd on the other side of the church lawn.

As she continued to think about the three young women who’d lost their lives in a quest to become more beautiful, it suddenly dawned on her. “Melinda!” she said, grabbing Jerry’s arm as he put the empty wine bottle back in the picnic basket.

“Who’s Melinda?” he said.

Charlotte went on to explain about meeting Melinda in the waiting room when she’d had her initial consultation with Dr. Louria, and to remind him of their encounter with her on Charlotte’s second visit, when she and Jerry had presented him with the casts of the first two victims’ skulls.

“The one with all the bruises,” Jerry said.

Charlotte nodded. “It was even worse the first time I saw her. I remember wondering why such a young woman would have such extensive cosmetic surgery.”

“Maybe she had a facial defect,” he said.

“But why would Dr. Louria have been seeing her at his home office instead of at his office in the city?”

“He saw you at his home office.”

“Yes, but I’m a celebrity. The day we saw Melinda there, the patients were a famous comedienne and Melinda. If you remember, he saw the other victims at his home office too.”

“Why wouldn’t he have said anything to us about her?” Jerry asked, still skeptical. “He knew the murderer was targeting his patients. Even his suicide note only mentioned three victims.”

Charlotte shrugged.

“The same goes for Peter,” Jerry continued. “Peter would have known of her existence. Well,” he said, as he finished packing up the picnic basket, “we can’t ask Dr. Louria about her, but we can ask Peter.”

“And we know where we can find him,” she added.

They found him fifteen minutes later in a jail cell at the Zion Hill police station. The only jail cell, in fact. The history of Zion Hill wasn’t long on violent criminals. He was lying on his back on the cot, with his head cradled in his arm watching a baseball game on a television set that was mounted on a shelf on the cinder block wall. The remains of his supper lay on a plate on a table that had been pulled up beside the cot. Charlotte recognized what was left of pasta primavera with seafood, filet mignon with béarnaise sauce, and a poached pear with chocolate-raspberry sauce. It looked as if Peter too had been the beneficiary of Sebastian’s culinary largesse. On the cell floor was an ash splint picnic basket identical to the one in which Sebastian had brought them their picnic supper. In fact, it was quite a comfortable little setup. Except for the missing bottle of beer (though wine would have been better with this meal), Peter could have been any one of millions of male American couch potatoes on a Sunday evening in May. The only difference was that he didn’t have as far to go to the bathroom during the commercials: the toilet bowl was only about four feet from his bed, directly under the television set.

The Mets were playing the Chicago Cubs.

“What’s the score?” Jerry asked.

Peter turned his head to look at them, “Hi, Chief,” he said as he swung his legs around and sat up on the edge of the cot. “Two-zero,” he said. “It’s the top of the ninth. Needless to say, it hasn’t been a riveting game. I thought you went to the concert up at the church.”

“I didn’t realize that my inmate was keeping such close tabs on my comings and goings,” Jerry said. “It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

“Keeping tabs on the comings and goings of the people around here is the only thing to do,” he said. “Except for watching television, that is.”

“We’ll take care of that,” said Jerry. Taking a key out of his pocket, he unlocked the cell door and pulled it open. “Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope you realize why we had to detain you.”

“That’s okay,” Peter said good-naturedly. “Sebastian saw to it that I ate well, and I knew you’d release me eventually. Lily told me you’d be letting me go, but she said it would be yesterday.”

Charlotte and Jerry exchanged looks.

“Does the fact that you’re releasing me mean that you’ve caught the real murderer?” he asked.

“Pat,” Jerry yelled out to the dispatcher, “Peter needs his things back.” Then he turned back to Peter. “Not yet. But we’re working on it. We have another possible victim. A young woman named Melinda. Did Dr. Louria rent an apartment for her from you?”

Peter shook his head. “The last girl he rented an apartment for was Doreen Mileski. Before Doreen, there was Liliana Doyle, and before Liliana, there was Kimberly Ferguson. Was Melinda one of the Lily look-alikes too?”