Murder in the Air (9 page)

“It's been a bad night for the past two months.”

His frustration instantly put her on the defensive. “Look, you're the one who was an hour late. Why are you trying to make
me
feel guilty?”

“Because I hardly see you anymore, Sophie. And I don't like it.”

She lowered her head, knowing this was a no-win situation. If she didn't work extra hours at the hotel, she would end up making mistakes—maybe even big mistakes. But if she didn't back off from all her overtime, her marriage would suffer.

Bram had made her a deal early in their relationship. His first marriage had ended because of all the hours he'd spent building his career in radio. He had no time for anything but work. Taking the job at WTWN had been a compromise, a wedding gift to Sophie. He wanted to put their relationship first. Sophie
was thrilled—it was what she wanted, too. Bram worked now for less money, but it was also less of a time commitment. He didn't want to make the same mistake twice.

Sophie never dreamed that she would be the one swept up by a career move, and yet she couldn't exactly turn her back on the hotel, or give it over to some flunky to manage. She knew, given enough time and experience, that she was the best person for the job. Running the Maxfield Plaza was the most absorbing work she'd ever done. Bram would simply have to understand. He surely didn't doubt her love. And besides, all these extra hours wouldn't last forever. “Things will change, honey, I promise—just as soon as I get my feet on the ground. The more I learn about the hotel business, the more I realize how much I don't know. And you know me. I can't do anything halfway.”

The waiter arrived with a basket of bread. Once they'd placed their orders, Sophie leaned forward, rested her chin on her hands, and said, “So, what important information did you want to talk over?” She hoped the change in subject would ease the tension between them.

“Did we finish our fight?”

“I think so. At least for now.”

Gazing at her for several long seconds, Bram nodded. “All right. For now.” Pulling some notes out of his coat pocket, he smoothed them out on the tabletop. “Believe it or not, this is everything you'd ever want to know about the Kay Collins murder case.”

Bram had talked of little else all week. “Where did you get the report?” she asked.

“From Al Lundquist.”

“Ah, yes. Mr. Knuckle Cracker. You can hardly hear his voice over the din his joints make.”

“Cute.”

“So what'd he have to say?”

Bram buttered a cardamom roll. “He gave me the official police report along with a bunch of newspaper clippings.”

“And?”

“In a nutshell? I don't see how this Justin Bloom could possibly be innocent.”

Sophie was intrigued. She was also glad to be concentrating on something other than hotel business for a few minutes. “Start at the beginning, honey. I don't want to miss a thing.”

“God, I love it when you're as pruriently morbid as I am.” He took a bite of the roll and chewed while he searched for a particular page. “Okay, here's the scoop. Kay Collins was murdered on December twenty-fourth, 1958. Christmas eve. It was late afternoon, sometime around four. An off-duty police officer named Arn O'Dell was walking near Bryant and Min-nehaha Creek when he heard what he thought was a gunshot. He rushed down the embankment toward the water and saw a man shouting at a woman. They were clearly fighting about something, though O'Dell couldn't make out the words.”

“It was Collins and Bloom?”

“Exactly. Now, even though it was getting dark, the cop still got a good look at both of them. He later picked Justin Bloom's photo out of a file. At the time all he knew was that the two people were young, and that the man was very, very angry. About twenty yards away, O'Dell slipped on a piece of ice and landed in a snow pile. When he looked up, he saw the man level a gun at the woman's head and shoot. Since O'Dell didn't have a gun himself, he shouted for the man to stop, but Bloom took off up an embankment. Thinking that the woman might still be alive, he raced to where she'd fallen and checked her vital signs. It was too late. She'd been horribly disfigured by the gunshot. The medical examiner said she died instantly. There was a citywide search that lasted for days. The police even found the clothes Bloom had been wearing that night. They were hidden in his bedroom closet, and they were covered with blood, Sophie—Kay's blood. The upshot was, Bloom got away. The story made the headlines for weeks afterward. It was a brutal, bloody murder, and no one had a clue where Justin Bloom had gone.”

Sophie shook her head. She, too, was amazed by the brutality.

“And it doesn't stop there,” continued Bram. “From what
others pieced together after the murder, Justin and Kay had apparently been dating. They told friends they were in love. Bloom even broke an engagement with another woman to be with Kay. Guess who that other woman was?”

“Who?”

“Mitzi Quinn.”

Sophie was surprised. “I met her the other night when she checked into the hotel. She's very attractive. Didn't look a day over fifty. But”—she did the math in her mind—”she must be in her sixties.”

“Fascinating, huh? And there's more. As I understand it, Kay had two roommates. They were all close friends, all from the same small town. They'd come to Minneapolis together to attend the university. But get this. Neither of the two roommates could be found for questioning after Kay's death. They'd disappeared. Vanished into thin air. As a matter of fact, they never even came back to the apartment to get their clothes or any of their belongings.”

“Creepy.”

“I agree. All I can say is, there was something pretty intense going on in that group of friends. Beyond that, it's hard to speculate.”

“What about the gun? Seems to me I remember something important about it.”

The waiter arrived with their drinks and two dinner salads.

“That's another interesting point,” said Bram, picking a crouton off the top of his salad and popping it in his mouth. “The gun was left at the scene. The only fingerprints on it were Bloom's.”

“Pretty incriminating.”

“The police shared the same opinion. The gun was registered to Cedric Bloom.”

“Justin's father?”

“His
stepfather.
And interestingly, Cedric Bloom had reported the gun missing just the day before. He usually kept it in his desk at the radio station. He sometimes worked late
at night. As I understand it, he'd been mugged once, so he said it made him feel safer to have one available.”

“You think Justin took it?”

“That's what the police think. Who had easier access?”

“Well, lots of people, I suppose,” said Sophie. “What about all the station employees?”

“Cedric maintained that only a few people knew about it. Since he didn't want any problems, he kept the drawer locked, and the key taped inside a filing cabinet.”

“So who knew about both the gun and the key?”

Bram ticked the names off on his fingers. “Besides Cedric and Heda Bloom, there were five people he mentioned specifically in his statement. Justin. Alfred Bloom, Justin's half brother. Valentine Zolotow. Mitzi Quinn. And George Chambers. Cedric said the last three people often worked late with him if they got behind on a
Dallas Lane
episode. They'd all seen him take it out of the drawer at one time or another.”

“Fascinating,” said Sophie under her breath. “And now they're all back in town for
Dallas Lane's
last hurrah.”

“Dallas Lane's
last hurrah, or is it Justin Bloom's?”

They both sipped their drinks for several moments in silence. This was a lot of information to digest. Sophie wanted to read the report herself. “So what about the rumors that Justin spent the remainder of his life in Europe? That he died in a car crash sometime in the early Eighties.”

Bram shrugged. “It's just that. Rumor. Although I did read something in the police report that suggested the FBI had watched Heda off and on for years after Bloom skipped the country. Sometime in the early Sixties she began taking a yearly holiday to Europe. They were never able to connect it to any kind of encounter between the two of them, so if they did meet, it was very discreet. I think the FBI probably gave up on the whole matter by the mid-Sixties. They had way too many civil-rights workers and antiwar demonstrators to harass to bother with small fry like Justin Bloom. Not that they still wouldn't like to get their hands on him, if he's still alive.”

“Do you think he is?”

“Well, it seems Heda attended a private funeral in Stressa,
Italy, sometime in the early Eighties. It was autumn. She was alone and came by rental car. It was mentioned in an addendum to the police report Al gave me.”

“You think it was her son?”

“The authorities weren't sure. She was apparently very closemouthed about the entire matter, but it was definitely a middle-aged man who died. No one knew much about him. And there's a picture taken of her coming out of the church. She had on a dark veil, but you could see she'd been crying.”

Sophie had no trouble picturing it. Heda, leaving the church. Walking alone back to the car. Standing for a moment and gazing at the damp Italian countryside. Was she mourning the son she'd lost so many years before? A mother who was denied her son's company in life, but refused to be parted from him in death? “Except, if it wasn't Justin, and he did come back to the U.S., he'd still be a wanted man, right? And if he was discovered, he'd still have to stand trial.”

“What's your point?”

“Just that the state might have a hard time proving its case against him. I mean, it's been so many years.”

“True. It has been a long time. But the facts seem fairly incontrovertible.”

“Is the cop still alive? The one who was the eyewitness?”

“He died years ago. But he left behind a sworn statement naming Bloom as the shooter.”

Sophie agreed. It did seem pretty cut-and-dried. “But—”

“But what?” Bram was almost done with his salad. Sophie had barely touched hers.

“There's something that doesn't fit. Why would a man who'd professed his love for a woman shoot her in the head? The stomach, maybe. The chest, the leg, the heart, but not the head. That's so disfiguring. So brutal.”

“Maybe that's the kind of guy he was.”

“Maybe,” said Sophie. “Except, I remember that he had a reputation as an honest reporter and a decent man.”

“Even decent men can go wrong.”

She could hardly argue the point. “So what do you make of it?”

“That Justin Bloom probably killed Kay Collins.
Why,
we may never know.”

“But doesn't that lack of motive bother you?”

“Sure. It's a huge hole, but not one we're likely to fill up at this late date.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She had a feeling the newest edition of
Dallas Lane, Private Eye
might do just that. “So, is that it? That's all you found out?”

“For now, yes. Actually, I accomplished exactly what I set out to do.”

“Which was—”

“I wanted to prepare myself to handle the calls that will undoubtedly deluge my show. This is going to be a hot topic for a while, Soph. At least now I've got some background.” He took a sip of his drink, his eyes straying to the front entrance. “Say, isn't that B. B. Manderbach over there?”

Sophie looked around and saw a short, rotund woman dressed all in blacks and browns being shown to a table near the fire. She looked typically ridiculous in an old-fashioned hat with a veil that swept dramatically over her forehead and down over one eye.

B. B. Manderbach was one of those characters common to every city and small town. Her claim to fame, other than her place in one of the oldest, richest, most successful business families in the Twin Cities, was her status as fashion nightmare. People pointed, whispered, even snickered, but most everyone left her alone. Normally, her clothing was eclectic, tending toward the Victorian. Tonight, however, she was dressed as a matronly 1940s woman-about-town. Instead of eyebrow pencil, her eyebrows looked as if they'd been painted on with black tempera. Her heavy makeup—especially the poorly applied red lipstick—made her look hard, and at the same time silly and rather sad.

“Boy, she's a case,” said Bram, leaning back as he was served his stew.

“You could say that,” said Sophie, delighted to see the food arrive. “You know, you should have her on your radio show.”

“My producer tried. She doesn't give interviews.”

Sophie watched her a moment longer and saw that underneath her coat, she was hiding a small table lamp. As she placed it on the opposite chair and then draped her coat over it, her eyes darted suspiciously around the room. “Strange,” said Sophie under her breath.

“What's strange?” Bram's dinner now commanded his full attention.

“B.B.'s got a lamp under her coat.”

“Really. Well … maybe she's been out looking for an honest man.”

Sophie stared at him over the rim of her wineglass. “At least I'm having dinner with a classically educated man.”

“You are.”

“Eat up, dear. I hate to be a broken record, but I have to get back to the hotel.”

Bram's head popped up. “Does that mean we don't have time for dessert?”

“You sound like you're four years old.”

“I know.” He grabbed another roll. “That's what makes me such a hit on talk radio.”

February?

Dear Mother:

I'm sorry if you're having trouble reading this. My hand is pretty shaky because of the drugs I've been given for the pain, and to help bring my fever down. I tried to get one of the other men in the ward to write this for me, but while several of them speak English, no one knows how to write it.

I'm not sure of the date. I know it's been a long time since my last letter. Right now I'm in a hospital in Tel Aviv. I've been ill. I'm stronger today. I even walked for a few minutes in the yard. I don't want you to worry, Mom. I'll explain everything in my next letter. The problem is, most of my money is gone, stolen on the boat.

I talked to my friend in New York last night. I was surprised to hear you'd phoned him several times. I'm glad you didn't call from the house. Anyway, even though my friend's a great guy, he doesn't have much money right now. I assume he told you he was in medical school. The hospital won't release me unless I can pay my bill. Can you send him some money and then he can wire it here? I'm in a bad spot, Mom. Really bad. I don't mean to sound desperate, but I'm not sure what I'll do if you can't help me. I need about three hundred dollars for the bill, and another three hundred for living expenses when I get out. He'll wire the first three hundred directly to the hospital authorities. I don't want the money sent to me personally because in my present condition, I'm afraid it might be stolen as soon as it came into my possession.