Murder at the Falls (22 page)

She spoke a word in Italian that Charlotte didn’t catch.

“That’s how I think of Don,” she continued. “He’s still so real to me. I know he’s dead, but I can’t believe it. I feel as if my feet are stuck in tar, as if I can’t get on with my life until I come to terms with the fact that he’s not going to be a part of it anymore.”

I know that feeling
, Charlotte thought.

“I had a dream about him just after he died. In the dream, he told me: ‘I’m not dead. I just made a …’”—she said the Italian word again—“‘I couldn’t stand it at the mill anymore. I’ve gone to Round Hill for a while. Come and visit me’.”

“Round Hill?” said Charlotte.

“It’s our country house up in Dutchess County. You know, Julie and I actually went up to Round Hill after that. I really thought I might see him there. That’s how alive he still is to me.”

Their next stop was Ed Verre’s apartment at 24 Mill Street. When Charlotte had called Martinez for directions, she had learned that it was located in the Essex Mill, an old silk mill that had been renovated and converted into housing for artists and musicians who could live there at reduced rents as long as they met the income qualifications. As a neophyte artist, Verre would have qualified, but Charlotte suspected that he wouldn’t meet the income qualifications for long. If other collectors followed the Finders’ suit, Verre’s paintings would soon be bringing top prices.

But before they talked to Verre, Tom wanted to see the painting at the Paterson Museum again. Like Charlotte, he had only looked at it briefly before the incident with Randy. For that matter, Charlotte wanted to look at it again too, now that she suspected it had been painted by Spiegel.

“We can grab a couple of hamburgers there, too,” Tom said in reference to the diner that was part of the exhibit.

“Is that the real reason you want to go back?” teased Charlotte.

“Part of it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to miss a chance to taste one of Shorty’s famous burgers again. Make that five or six of Shorty’s famous burgers. There’re pretty small.”

Twenty minutes later, their stomachs filled with the delicious silver-dollar-sized gems that were smothered in chopped onions, they wandered over to take another look at “Falls View Diner at Two
A.M.
”

“They’re here,” she said, pointing out the initials on the candy bar at the back of the display case. “DS Crunch.” She also repeated for Tom what John had told her about the argument over the
ARTnews
article, and pointed out the magazine sitting on the counter.

“It’s the same night in all three paintings, right?” asked Tom.

Charlotte nodded. “Long shot, medium shot, and close-up, as if the camera were on a dolly.” Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the Koreman Gallery catalog, and opened it to “Falls View Diner on a Rainy Spring Night.” “Here’s the long shot,” she said.

“That looks like Kenny Meeker’s van,” Tom said, pointing out the old gray Ford Econoline van with Michigan license plates that was parked next to the semi. “He calls it his wheel estate.”

“It is. John told me that he was there that night. On one of his cross-country diner trips.” Reaching into her bag again, she pulled out the photocopy of “Falls View Diner with Banana Cream Pie.” “And here he is eating the pie, or at least John said it was him.”

“That’s him, all right. The ‘roads scholar,’ as he calls himself. He likes puns. If you think I’m a sicko, you should meet Meeker. Talk about diner nuts: his diner log book has over twenty-five hundred entries.”

For a moment, they compared the three pictures.

Charlotte was struck by the increasing mood of menace. The distance view had an innocent look, the middle view was darker, and the close-up was downright ominous. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “Why would Spiegel paint three scenes of that night?”

“Maybe Meeker would know,” said Tom.

Of course! thought Charlotte. Why hadn’t she thought of that. “Tom, you’re a genius,” she said. “From what John said, he was there for most of the evening—he had given an impromptu concert in the parking lot earlier on.”

“Did John also tell you that he sleeps in his van?”

“No! That would mean he was there all night.”

“It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try. I could call him right now. I have his number. He works at home—some computer thing. So unless he’s away on another road trip, he should be there.”

“There’s a phone booth outside,” said Charlotte.

Charlotte stood by impatiently as Tom chatted with Meeker, whom he reached right away. After fifteen minutes, he hung up and emerged from the booth with an expression that spelled success.

“Sorry I took so long. He had to tell me about his latest diner finds. He remembered the argument, but listen to this. He said he had just settled down in the van for the night when he heard loud voices. When he looked out, he saw the two guys from inside arguing in the parking lot.”

“I wonder why John didn’t say anything about that.”

“Meeker said he’d moved his van down to the far end of the parking lot, where it borders the river. John had wanted to reserve the spaces right in front for the early morning breakfast crowd. Anyway, Meeker said the argument degenerated into a fist fight.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow.

Tom continued: “When he looked out again, he saw the guy with the ponytail walking up the street. He never saw the other guy again.”

“Could he hear what they were arguing about?”

“No. But he said it was the guy with the ponytail who seemed to be the angrier one—shouting the loudest, and so on—and that he seemed to be demanding something from the other guy that the other guy wouldn’t accede to.”

Had Spiegel threatened to fire Randy? Charlotte wondered. To kick him out of the mill? To cancel the gift of the paintings?

“That’s it, except for his complaint about some dogs waking him at five
A.M.
with their barking.”

Patty’s dogs, she thought.

What Kenny Meeker had told Tom changed everything. Charlotte had been operating under the assumption that Spiegel had deliberately changed his identity for some reason of his own. But now a different picture was beginning to take shape in her mind, a picture that answered the question of who it was that had been out to get Randy. The picture was one of an angry, coke-crazed young man, lithe and fit, taking on a man fifteen years his senior. He knocks him out, and then panics. Believing that he’s accidentally killed him, he throws him into the river. He then returns to the older man’s studio and forges a suicide note on his typewriter. When a decomposed body is pulled out of the river four months later, everyone takes it for granted that it’s the body of the older man. But in reality, the older man isn’t dead, only unconscious. He survives the plunge into the river, and comes back with a new identity to plot his revenge. His goal is to drive the younger man out of his mind, and ultimately to take his life, as the younger man had once tried to take his. Like a cat toying with a mouse, he wants the delectation of torturing his victim until he has taken his full measure of pleasure before proceeding to kill him. She could imagine how a painter with a style as precise and orderly as Spiegel’s would delight in the balance of his vengeance: Randy tries to kill him by throwing him in the river; he retaliates by throwing Randy in the river. One was a reflection of the other.

The Essex Mill was only a short distance from the museum. They could have walked had they known it was so close. In fact, though it was separated from Gryphon Mill by another restored mill, it was almost directly across the street, and located on the same raceway. Had Randy’s body passed through the culvert, it might have been carried right under the Essex Mill. They parked in a lot across the street from an area on the river bank that looked like Dresden after the firebombing: burned-out shell after burned-out shell, with only the smokestacks left to tell where mills had once stood. The Essex Mill itself, however, had been beautifully restored, its charm only heightening the tragedy that was the wreckage of the other mills. Charlotte and Tom entered through an archway that opened onto a central courtyard, with a smooth green lawn in the center and planters filled with flowers around the perimeter. The only occupants were an old woman who sat in a wheelchair with her wrinkled face raised to the sun, and her black companion, who sat knitting on a nearby bench. The only noises were the hum of the air conditioners and the sweet strains of a tenor saxophone: a jazz musician practicing a riff.

Verre’s apartment was in the north wing, on the top floor. As they rang the doorbell, Charlotte’s heart was pounding. She was convinced that the key to Randy’s murder lay with the identity of Ed Verre. They had to wait some time for him to come to the door, but they could hear noises from inside, indicating that someone was at home.

At last the door opened, and they were looking at Ed Verre.

11

The wheelchair threw her at first. It was so unexpected. As was the silver-gray hair, beard, and eyebrows; the heavy, black horn-rimmed glasses; and the brown eyes. The eyes had been a light color in the black-and-white wedding photo: a pale blue or maybe a blue-gray. But when she looked again, she could see the triangular face and puckish expression of young Julius behind the beard and glasses, and … the ears. Remembering them from the photo, she realized now that they were responsible in part for the puckish look. They were unusually small, and pointed. One could grow a beard, put on eyeglasses, and wear tinted contacts, but one could not—short of plastic surgery—change the shape of one’s ears. She remembered a story she’d once heard about the woman who had claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. She told a convincing tale, but was eventually exposed as a fraud because her ears didn’t match those in a photograph of the real daughter of Czar Nicholas.

“Mr. Spiegel?” she said. “May we come in?”

For a moment, he sat there in his wheelchair with one hand on the door lever (Charlotte noticed that it was a lever rather than a knob), staring up at them. Then he gestured with his free arm for them to enter.

The room he ushered them into was small, with a kitchenette and bathroom off to one side and a small bedroom off to the other. But its size was offset by the white walls and high ceilings—they were probably twenty-five feet—whose hand-cut beams appeared to have been part of the original mill.

He followed them in in the wheelchair. “Please sit down,” he said.

Tom chose a Barcelona chair and Charlotte sat on a black leather couch. Spiegel pulled up his wheelchair in a space that had obviously been reserved for that purpose.

“How did you find out?” he asked. He raised a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Not that I’m unhappy about it. I’ve been expecting someone to come knocking on my door for some time now. Hoping for it, in fact. I was getting tired of being Ed Verre.”

Charlotte started to reply, and was interrupted.

“Wait,” he said. “First, who are you, and second, can I get you a drink?”

“The answer to the first question is Charlotte Graham and Tom Plummer,” Charlotte replied, “and the answer to the second is yes.”

Spiegel smiled. After chatting for a moment with them about Charlotte’s movie career, he took their orders—a beer for Tom and a sherry for Charlotte—and then wheeled himself into the kitchenette, whose counters were at wheelchair level, with recessed spaces for the knees.

As their host fixed the drinks, Charlotte took the opportunity to look around. The room was sparsely furnished, but the furniture, of the black-leather and chrome-tubing variety, was of good quality. A door at the back opened onto the studio: a large, bright room with enormous windows.

“Now,” said Spiegel as he wheeled himself back, the drinks balanced on a tray in his lap, “back to my earlier question.”

Acutely aware that Spiegel might be a murderer, Charlotte proceeded to tell the story, leaving out any reference to the investigation. After identifying herself as Jack’s wife, she said that she had concluded from the paintings in the museum show that Verre and Spiegel were one and the same.

Then she told him about her visit to the Finders.

“Yes,” Spiegel interjected, “I knew from the way they were snapping up my paintings that Morris and Evelyn knew. They kept trying to set up a meeting with me. Actually, I expected it to be they who came knocking on my door.”

Charlotte nodded, and then continued: “But despite all that, I still had my doubts. I wasn’t sure until I saw you.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Your ears,” she said, and then explained: “We got a copy of your wedding photo from Louise. I noticed your ears; they’re very distinctive.”

Spiegel touched a hand to one ear. “I always suspected that Louise knew, even if it was only subconsciously. I saw her once in the Question Mark Bar. She looked at me very oddly. Maybe it was my ears she was looking at.”

“She told us that she couldn’t really believe you were dead.”

“I’ll have to call her now. I’ve missed her and Julie very much. They’re really the only ones I’ve missed. Help yourselves,” he said as he set the drink tray down on the coffee table. He leaned back in his wheelchair. “Now I suppose you’d like to hear my story.”

“Yes, we would,” said Charlotte. “Tom is a journalist. He’s been working on an article about Randy Goslau’s dispute with your sister.”. Leaving it at that, she got up to remove her drink from the tray, and to pass Tom’s to him.

“For who?” Spiegel asked.

Tom named a New York magazine.

Spiegel nodded. “What’s one more article?” he said. “Especially if it sets the record straight.” He went on: “I’ve been eager to tell my story, actually. It’s been a burden carrying it around with me.” Picking up his drink, which appeared to be a Scotch on the rocks, he took a sip, and began. “I met Randy ten or twelve years ago. At the time, my career was beginning to take off and my time was being consumed more and more by the business of being an artist. I found that I needed someone to help around the studio and to help with the business side of things. Randy seemed as if he would fit the bill, and he did—at first. He was eager to learn, and I encouraged him. When I learned about his mania for diners, I encouraged him to paint them. I nurtured his career, and he in turn freed up my time for painting. We became very close. He had a taste for the high life, which I didn’t share, at first. But I grew to like it, having people around all the time. It drove Louise crazy; that was one reason why she moved out.” He paused (perhaps thinking about her other reason for moving out), and then continued: “As you may already know, Randy was a cocaine user. Only recreationally at first, but he eventually became addicted. As the drug took hold, he became more irresponsible, more arrogant. He seemed to forget who was the boss and who was the employee. He began making outrageous demands—that I do this and that for him. Finally there was the
ARTnews
affair.”