New Year's Eve Murder (17 page)

“Where?”

“At his office.”

“Was he there?”

“Of course, he was there. I told him what had happened and he came right home.”

They all covered for each other. “Where were you that day, Ada?”

“I had the day off. I took the car and went shopping.”

“Where?”

“Here and there.” She seemed nervous but the whole situation was so tense, it was hard to draw any conclusions from it.

“Where is here and where is there?” I asked pointedly.

“I went—I drove to New Jersey. I like to shop there. There's no sales tax and there are wonderful outlets.”

“Did you buy anything?”

“Just a few little—” Her voice faded.

“Little whats? What did you buy, Ada?”

“A pair of shoes, I think.”

“Did you charge them?”

“Is this an inquisition? Do I have to prove what I paid?”

“I am trying to find out where you were that day,” I said. “I want to know whether you were really shopping or whether you drove upstate to Bladesville and killed D.D. Butler, who was blackmailing you.”

“Get out,” she said. “Go away. I can't talk anymore. I can't think anymore.” Her voice broke. “Please go away.”

I looked at my watch. I had a baby to feed and a long drive to get to him. I stood and buttoned my coat. Then I patted Ada's shoulder. “I'm sorry,” I said. It was an understatement.

Late that evening, before Jack came home but long after I had put Eddie to sleep, I dialed Ernest Stark's business number. It rang several times and then an answering machine picked up, telling me what the office hours were and inviting me to leave a message. I didn't. The message I had gotten was that if Ada had called her husband on New Year's Eve to tell him that their daughter was missing, the machine could just as easily have picked up and a completed call from the Starks' residence to the Starks' business would show on telephone company records, proving nothing. Maybe Ernest Stark was there and maybe he wasn't. Maybe he knew his wife's whereabouts that day and was covering for her. Maybe one or both of the Starks knew that Susan was home the night before New Year's Eve and maybe they didn't.

The plain fact was that either of the Stark women could have driven up to Bladesville and killed D.D. And since we knew that Susan had gone, what was equally plain was that her mother could have gone, too. Ernest might have been home and might know when Ada left and returned.

Or perhaps I had to come full circle and look at Susan a little harder. By her own admission, Susan had gone to the farmhouse. It was perfectly possible that Ada had
spent the day shopping in New Jersey and Ernie had spent the day working alone in his office. For a short time I had convinced myself of Susan's innocence. The simplest explanation was that she had killed D.D. and removed all traces of identification and all indications that there was a connection to her mother. During the days of her disappearance she could have burned or otherwise destroyed the evidence. There were no computers involved here. The most sophisticated piece of equipment in the farmhouse was a manual typewriter. If you went through the house and removed all the paper, you had everything. Maybe it was as simple as it looked.

I turned it all over and over, looking at how each of the Starks covered for the others, how each could be telling the truth or just as easily could be lying. But there was more to the story than the murder. There was D.D.'s project, her play, her scenario if you like. This was not merely a story of blackmail and revenge. It was not simply that one or two of the Starks had decided to end D.D.'s life on New Year's Eve. D.D. was expecting them—or someone—that day. It was even possible that what had happened to her was what she had plotted for her killer in a scheme that had gone awry. She could have planned to invite one of these people to come up, kill the visitor, and leave the house in the visitor's car. Then everything would have happened in reverse. D.D. would have cleared out her things from the house and left the victim's body to be discovered in the spring. Her rent was paid up for another month, so no one was likely to come by for more money. She could call Teddy Toledo and tell him she'd left so he wouldn't come to take her shopping, and she could write a letter to the Donaldsons saying that she had left, thank you very much. Or even, I thought, send a check for another month or two to keep
the Donaldsons from going to the house and discovering the body.

The question I had to answer had now become: Who had D.D. invited to her murderous New Year's Eve party? For sure, Susan had been invited. And who else?

I got the envelope with D.D.'s short story and looked again at the lists of people she loved and people she hated. Was this the key? Or was I overreacting, taking a piece of fiction and translating it into real murderous intent?

I read the whole story through from start to finish. Except for the lists, there didn't seem to be much else that was helpful. Todd, the boyfriend (Teddy? I wondered again), narrowly escaped the narrator's wrath. The poor victim, whose death came in the last paragraph, was a stranger who didn't seem to have committed any injustice against the narrator, but he was handy. Far from luring him to her home, she met him in a park at night, possibly Central Park from the description, where she killed him on a park bench and walked away. It was a gruesome story and I wondered more than once why it had been published.

If anything were a clue to D.D.'s troubled psyche, it had to be the lists. Number one on the hate list: the Big Boss. God? The person she worked for at the insurance company? Second was the Little Boss. Then there were a number of apparent abbreviations, none of which meant anything to me. The love list was just as opaque. With a little blurring of letters, one name on it took on a familiar look: Weather Girl was pretty close to Heather W.

Eventually, the whole thing blurred and I fell asleep.

“It's a nice theory,” Jack said. He had eaten and I had nursed Eddie, and we were getting ready for bed. “D.D. invites the people she's most angry at or jealous of: her
natural mother who gave her up and doesn't send her enough money and her half sister who lives what she thinks is the better life. She's going to kill one or both of them and drive off. What's she going to do with the second car?”

“There are plenty of buildings on that farm. There's a barn that could hold several cars. She could stash one car there and take the other one. Maybe she had a ticket to leave the country.”

“Let me think about this a minute,” Jack said, and I knew I had his full interest. “We've ruled out Ernest because if he knew he'd take Ada in his arms and say, T don't give a damn,' and tell her to stop paying. Or he'd say, ‘I've found you out and it's all over between us.' ”

“Sounds right to me.”

“So maybe Ada went up and found Susan after she committed the murder. Or didn't find Susan but found D.D.'s body. She comes back to Brooklyn, and after Kevin calls to ask for Susan, who is now missing, possibly because her mother told her to get lost for a while, Ada calls Ernie's number so that there'll be a record of the call, making it appear that she has just learned of Susan's disappearance.”

“I can buy that. Are we back to suspecting Susan?”

“I don't know. A couple of things are tickling my mind.”

“Uh-oh,” I said. I smiled and looked at myself sideways in the mirror over my dresser.

“You look good.”

“There's still a bump where my flat stomach used to be.”

“Suck it in, babe. The way New York's Finest do when photographers show up.”

I laughed. “Joseph said there were so many magazines in this case. Susan worked for one. D.D. was published in
more than one. I think I'll call Harlow Sugar in the morning. I want to find out who published this terrible story of D.D.'s. And something else. If you run into a boring day, could you check and see if there are any unsolved murders in Central Park? A body left on a bench?”

“There are bound to be. Most homicides go unsolved, you know. Excepting those my wife has a hand in solving. What makes you think there's a connection?”

“I forced myself to read that awful story through from start to finish tonight. The first time, I skimmed it except for the lists. This time I read it carefully. The narrator kills someone on a park bench. The last sentence was, ‘Practice makes perfect.' ”

“Wow.”

“My very thought.”

I called Harlow Sugar the next morning. There was no answer. I didn't know whether he worked at home or in an office, how much time he spent in either, or exactly where I was calling, but I assumed it was his home since I had found the number in the phone book under his name. Perhaps he would be back later.

It was a little milder this morning and I took Eddie out for a walk, pointing out Mel's house as we passed it. I missed Mel a lot. We had become friends when I moved into Aunt Meg's house after leaving St. Stephen's, and I had learned to count on her friendship and her proximity. Through Mel I had found a place in the community for myself, council meetings to attend, issues to be concerned about on election day. There had been wonderful afternoons filled with tea and cookies and conversation, and on occasion I had baby-sat for her so she and Hal could go out with a sense of security.

Now she was working and I was tied to a schedule of
feeding my baby every four hours. The fluidity and changeability of life had never before been so apparent.

“Nothing is static,” I said to my sleeping son. “Look at you, gaining an ounce a day while I try to lose twice that.”

A car slowed and my next-door neighbor, Midge MacDonald, rolled down the window and called hello.

“Hi,” I called back.

“Nice day, huh?”

“Beautiful.”

“Come around some afternoon. I like babies.”

“Thanks, I will.” We waved and she drove on down the street.

I turned around and went back, hoping to reach Harlow Sugar before lunch.

“Hello,” his voice sounded.

“Mr. Sugar, I'm glad I found you. It's Chris Bennett.”

“Chris Bennett.”

“I talked to you about D.D. Butler.”

“Right. I remember. Did you get that piece I sent you?”

“Got it, and I thank you very much.”

“Not exactly bedtime reading.”

“No, it's pretty gloomy. I wanted to ask you about the magazine it was published in. Do you have the name?”

“Sure. I have the whole thing. I just Xeroxed those pages and sent them to you.”

“Can you give me the name, address, whatever else is there?”

“Hang on.” He went away, humming some strange tune that I heard for the whole time he was searching for the magazine. “OK. Got it. What do you want to know?”

“The name, to begin with.”

“Soupçon—I'm not sure how to pronounce it.” He read off the Manhattan address.

“Any phone number?”

“Yeah.” He gave that to me, too.

“What does the magazine look like?” I asked. “Kind of amateurish?”

“Amateurish, hell no. It's a good-looking glossy.”

“I'm surprised,” I admitted. “I didn't think the quality of that story was very good and it's hard to believe it had wide appeal.”

“Appeal or not, it's a very professional-looking job.”

“What's the name of the publisher or editor-in-chief?”

“The name at the top here is Melissa Hanes. You planning on calling her?”

“I may.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I'm curious about a story like D.D.'s appearing in what sounds like a mainstream magazine. Did you read any of the other stories?”

“To be completely truthful I didn't. I knew D.D. and when the story came out, I got myself one copy. But I looked through the rest of it. There's a French story here in translation, a story by a gal I've heard of,” he gave me a familiar name, “a bunch of poems—I don't read poetry so I can't comment.”

“That's very interesting. Thank you very much, Mr. Sugar.”

“Hey, glad to be of service.”

I called the number he had given me for
Soupçon
and asked for Melissa Hanes. I had to identify myself and they passed me off to a young assistant. “I'd like to talk to Ms. Hanes,” I said.

A perky voice said, “She's busy now. Can I help you?”

“I have a question about someone you published last year, D.D. Butler.”

“I remember that name. What can I tell you?”

I felt very frustrated. I wanted to get into a conversation with Melissa Hanes, not with her young assistant. “Is D.D. a personal friend of Ms. Hanes?”

“I'm sure I wouldn't know. Can I ask why you want to know that?”

“D.D. died recently and—”

“Oh,” she said, with shock. “I'm sorry to hear it.”

“It's just that I thought she might be Melissa Hanes's friend and if I could talk to her—” I let it hang, hoping she would bite.

“Let me see if she can talk to you now.”

Obviously, Melissa Hanes's calendar was less full than I had been led to believe. She picked up in seconds.

“This is Melissa Hanes. Who is this, please?”

“I'm Chris Bennett. I have some questions about D.D. Butler.”

“D.D. Butler, yes. We published a story of hers a few issues ago.”

“That's the one. I thought the story was a little unusual for your magazine.”

“We publish a variety of fiction. May I ask what your interest is in this?”

“D.D. Butler died about two weeks ago.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, “I hadn't heard.”

“Did you know her?”

“Not really. I never met her. She sent the story to me and I may have spoken to her once or twice on the phone after that. She was paid for that story and we've had no contact with her since. What is the point of this?”

“It appears that D.D. was murdered,” I said, “and there are some loose ends I'm trying to tie up. Can you tell me how you decided to publish her story? Was it your decision
or do you have an editorial board that makes that decision?” I really didn't think they had a huge staff. However beautiful the magazine might look, there couldn't be an awful lot of money in it.

“That story—you know, that's not an easy question to answer.”

“In general or for that story?”

“Our usual procedure is to read and review every submission. We're a small organization and we make our decisions through discussion.”

“And on this story?”

“I really don't want to discuss this story. We published it and we paid for it; it's done. I don't know who you are or what your interest is. I'm sorry Ms. Butler's dead but I really can't help you any further.”

She sounded angry and anxious to end the conversation so we ended it. She may have thought—or hoped—that she wasn't helpful, but the fact that D.D.'s story got published without going through the usual procedure and evoked these emotions in the editor made me feel that something was truly unusual. It hadn't been a wasted phone call.

Jack called in the afternoon while Eddie and I were having a kind of conversation.

“I looked up your possible Central Park-unsolved-park-bench homicide and there wasn't any.”