New Year's Eve Murder (2 page)

A sibilant of an obscenity whistled through his teeth. “She told me to come here to talk to him.”

“Well, he'll be back, Kevin. Just sit down and maybe we can make some sense of this.” Harriet took some great-smelling muffins out of the toaster oven. Jack had taken over the eggs, and he turned the flame off just as everything else was ready for the table.

“Kevin's significant other wasn't where she was supposed to be yesterday,” Harriet said by way of explanation. “She's the daughter of a friend of ours.”

“She's missing?” Jack asked, never one to allow a polite circumlocution to obscure an unpleasant truth.

“Since yesterday afternoon or maybe the day before,” Kevin said. “Just coffee, please.” He sat in the spot that Arnold would have taken.

“I'm a detective sergeant with NYPD,” Jack said. “When did you last see her?”

Kevin's face brightened when he heard Jack's identity. “The day before yesterday. I dropped her off at her
mother's. She was going to stay overnight, and I would pick her up for a party we were going to last night.”

“Kevin called Susan at her mother's yesterday, and Susan wasn't there,” Harriet said.

“And she hadn't spent the night there.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack said. “You dropped her off at her mother's and she didn't go inside?”

“I think she went inside.” He looked confused. “If you mean, did I sit in the car and watch her go in, no, I didn't. I let her off—it was daylight—and while she was walking up to the door, I drove away. It's Brooklyn. It's a narrow, one-way street parked up on both sides, and there was a car behind me. I left.”

It sounded perfectly reasonable. “When did you call her?” I asked.

“I don't know. Four, five o'clock. Her mother said she hadn't seen her for a couple of days.”

I didn't like the cold feeling in my chest. “What's the neighborhood like?”

“It's as safe at this one,” Harriet said. “Private houses, children playing in the street, mothers pushing strollers.”

“But you never know,” Kevin said.

“Does she have a car?” Jack asked.

“No, but she drives.”

“Her mother have a car?”

“Yes. I'm sure if it were missing, she would have said.”

“Ada called us several times last night,” Harriet said. “She didn't say anything about the car being missing.”

“Let me just get this straight,” I said. As I spoke, I glanced over at the baby seat where Eddie was resting, his eyes glued to my face as I spoke. I smiled in spite of myself. “Two days ago, in the afternoon or evening—”

“Late afternoon,” Kevin interjected.

“—you dropped Susan off at her mother's house. You think she went inside but you can't swear to it.”

“Right.”

“Yesterday about four, you called her there, to make plans for New Year's Eve.”

“And she wasn't there and her mother hadn't seen her for a couple of days.”

“Could she have slept over without her mother knowing she was there?”

He thought about it. “Sure. She's a grown-up. If her mother came home late and Susan was already asleep, maybe she wouldn't have noticed.”

“Is there a father there?” I asked.

“There is definitely a father,” Harriet said. “A good and caring father.”

“We'll have to talk to them, Harriet. A young woman missing in the city scares me.”

“Me, too,” she said quietly, looking away.

“Scares the hell out of me.” Kevin walked out of the kitchen, as though he had had enough.

“It's very unlike Susan,” Harriet said. “I don't want to be an alarmist, but I'm worried.”

Jack started to say something when we all heard the key turn in the lock, and then Arnold's voice saying, “I'm home.”

“Come on in, honey,” Harriet called, leaving the kitchen.

“I've got Ada with me. Jack and Chris still here?”

I knew what was coming next.

Ada Stark was a tall, good-looking woman in her late fifties or early sixties. Her thick, short hair was salt-and-pepper with a lot more pepper than salt, and she had a clear complexion that today was devoid of makeup except for lipstick.

We had all been introduced and were arranged around the living room, where last night the New Year had been ushered in loudly and happily.

“Two nights ago,” Ada said. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead as if to conjure up the memory of the second-last night of the year. “I met Ernie for dinner in Manhattan. I've been over this with Arnold already, you know.”

“Humor us,” Arnold said. “I want Jack and Chris to hear what happened.”

“We weren't back that late, nine maybe, nine-thirty. I turned the news on at ten so I'm sure we were back by then.”

Eddie suddenly started to cry. “He's tired,” I said.

“I'll take him,” Harriet offered. She picked him up, talking to him like a doting grandmother. He stopped crying and laid his head on her shoulder, as I watched with a mixture of hope that he would let her care for him
and an unexpected flash of resentment that someone was successfully taking over my sacred task.

“Go on,” Arnold said. “You know you were home before ten. Did you have any idea Susan was coming home to sleep?”

“None. She has a key, she has a room, she keeps clothes in it, changes the bedding when she wants to. Sometimes she calls to say she's coming, sometimes she just pops in. I had no idea she was coming this time. She hadn't called.”

“Any deliveries during the day?” Jack asked.

She shook her head. “No meter readers either.”

“Wouldn't you have seen her bedroom door closed if she were there?” I asked.

“I wouldn't. It's an old house and the floor plan is crazy. To get to her room you have to go around a corner. I had no reason to look for her, so I didn't.”

“So we have no way of knowing whether she spent the night in your house or just dropped in and left before you got home.”

“We don't even know if she ever set foot in the house,” Ada said. “Kevin didn't see her go in. Or maybe she went in and then out again.”

“How did you come to drive her?” I asked Kevin.

“I left work a little early. It was our last work day of the year. We were closed all day yesterday. Susan told me in the morning she wanted to go to Brooklyn, so I drove her. I just didn't want her taking the subway.”

“What kind of mood was she in?”

“Great. She's a very ‘up' person.”

“What did you talk about?”

“The party we were going to. Whether the couple giving it would ever get married.” He thought a moment. “Some personal things. I don't think they'd matter to
you.” He turned to Jack. “What's going to happen if I report her disappearance to the police?”

“Not a whole lot unless there's evidence of foul play. When a child disappears, we raise heaven and earth to find it. With an adult, it's different. Adults have the right to go where they please and not ask permission or leave word.”

I had heard it all before and knew it was true. Even though you know in your heart your friend/lover/brother/sister would never go anywhere without telling you, the police see it differently. You can't invade an adult's privacy by seeking him out when he doesn't want to be found, and you certainly can't force him to return to a place he doesn't want to be, even if he's been there his whole life.

“She didn't have a suitcase with her when I left her at her mother's, so she couldn't have been planning to go to a hotel. She wouldn't just go somewhere without packing a bag.”

“Kevin's right,” Ada said. “Susan's very particular. She wants to put on clean clothes in the morning; she hates sleeping on the floor if a friend is short on beds.”

“Could she have packed a bag at your house?” I asked.

Ada thought. “She has clothes there, that's true, but I honestly don't know if she kept a bag in her closet. We're an independent bunch and we don't interfere with each other. I don't go through her closets any more than she goes through mine.”

“So we don't know if she's missing one day or two,” Jack said.

No one answered. Then Kevin said, “We're getting nowhere. How are we going to find out what happened to her?”

“I've called everyone I could think of,” Ada said. “I couldn't reach them all because last night was New
Year's, but the ones I talked to hadn't seen her. Susan knows lots of people I've never met, but maybe Kevin knows some of them.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” he said again. “She didn't go off and visit a friend. Something happened to her. If she was visiting a friend, she would have called. She's somewhere where she can't call. Doesn't anybody see that there's a problem here?” He turned to Jack. “And you tell me the cops won't look for her because her privacy is more important than her safety. What kind of sense does that make?”

Jack started to answer, but I interrupted him. “Kevin, could we talk in another room?”

He looked around as though he wanted someone to tell him what to do. Then he said, “Sure,” and he followed me to the kitchen, where I shut the door. We sat at the table.

“What is your relationship with Susan?” I started out.

“If you mean are we sleeping together, yes, we are.”

“That's only a small part of what I meant. Are you living together?”

“More or less.”

“Does Susan have an apartment of her own?”

“Not anymore. She stays with her folks sometimes for a few days.”

“So if I asked Susan for her phone number, she'd give me the one in your apartment.”

“Right.”

“And how long has that been true?”

“Almost a year. She gave up her apartment at the end of January of last year.”

“And she's always gone home from time to time and stayed overnight?”

“Always. She's close to her family.”

“When I asked you if you were living together, why did you say ‘more or less'?”

“Because…” The question had troubled him. “Because there was nothing formal between us. We played the your-place-or-mine game for a while and then when her lease came up for renewal, she said it was silly to pay for two apartments when she could stay with me or go home to Brooklyn. So she moved her stuff into my place.”

I could see why it griped him. It hadn't been a matter of “I can't live apart from you any longer.” It had been a matter of convenience, of economy, or so he had made it sound.

“Are you in love with her, Kevin?”

“Yes,” he said angrily.

“And Susan?”

“We are in love with each other, OK?”

“Kevin, you said before that on the way to Brooklyn you talked about some personal things that had nothing to do with any of us.”

“That's right.”

“Do you think those things could have anything to do with her disappearance?”

“I don't see how.” He got up from the table, took a glass out of the cabinet, and filled it with tap water. He stood near the sink drinking it while I wondered whether he was trying to delay my next questions or find an acceptable answer to my last one. Finally he put the glass in the sink. “Anything else?”

“Were you having an argument?” I asked.

“No, goddammit,” he exploded. “We weren't having an argument, we weren't fighting, we were on very good terms, and we were having a conversation. And who the hell are you to be asking me all these questions?”

“I'm an amateur,” I admitted, “but I've done some
investigating, some successful investigating. And I thought you might be more comfortable talking to me than to a crowd.”

“I just want to find her,” he said. “I have a terrible feeling someone came along after I drove away and got her attention and grabbed her. I don't think she ever got inside her mother's house.”

“Why do you think that?”

“That car that was behind me,” he said. “The reason that I drove off before Susan got to the door. There was a car behind me and there wasn't room for him to pass. When I got to the corner and stopped at the stop sign, there wasn't any car behind me.”

“You looked for it?”

“I looked in the mirror. I remember thinking that the guy must have found a place to park on the street or else he turned into a driveway. And then I forgot about it. It was just one of those things that passes through your mind and then it's gone.” There was a sound in his voice of great sadness, perhaps, I thought, of great loss.

Harriet had returned to the living room. Eddie was asleep upstairs, she told me, and she had just taken a little time to sit and watch him, to enjoy seeing him sleep. Jack had a quick conversation with Kevin and said he would accompany him to the precinct to report Susan's disappearance, with the hope that if Jack went along, it would give some impetus to the investigation.

They put their coats on and left, leaving the Golds, Ada Stark, and me in the living room. Ada looked worse than before I had gone to the kitchen. It was as if the enormity of her daughter's disappearance had begun to sink in.

“Ada,” I said, “where is your husband?”

“Ernie's at the office. When he can't cope, he goes to work.”

“You said you met him for dinner in Manhattan two days ago. Did you drive in?”

“I was already there. I work in the city.”

“Had your husband driven in?”

“Yes. He likes to take the car. He has a lot he's been parking in for years, and the men there buff the car up and keep it looking nice for him.”

“So even if Susan wanted to borrow your car, it wasn't there for her.”

“That's right. It was in Manhattan.” Her brow furrowed.

“Does Susan have a key to the car?”

“She's always had one.”

“Is that your only car?”

“Yes.”

“Do you drive?”

“Of course.” She said it as though I were foolish to think otherwise.

“So it looks as though whatever happened to Susan, she didn't take the car,” Arnold said.

“What about yesterday?” I asked. “Could she have slept in your house, gotten up early and driven off?”

“I used the car yesterday.”

“And it was there when you looked for it?”

“It was there.”

“Sounds like we've pretty much covered the obvious,” Arnold said. “Let's wait and see what they accomplish at the police station.”

We sat back and relaxed a little. Harriet said she would serve lunch whenever anyone was hungry, and lunch would be last night's leftovers, not a bad spur-of-the-moment meal. No one was ready to eat, so Arnold turned on his favorite music station and sat back with his eyes closed.

“He's a very nice young man,” Ada said. “Kevin. He's the nicest person Susan's ever gone out with.”

“She'll turn up,” Arnold said. “I love Vivaldi. I could listen to him all day.”

“Close your eyes, Arnold,” Harriet said. “You didn't sleep much, and you were out of the house at the crack of dawn.”

“I should be leaving.” Ada stood.

“Wait till Jack gets back,” I said. “We'll drive you.” I offered mostly because I didn't want Arnold to leave his chair. But I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to see where the Starks lived.

“It'll be out of your way.”

“It won't. Sit and enjoy the music.”

“I'm too worried to enjoy anything.” She sat and pressed her lips together.

“Was anything worrying Susan?” Harriet asked, a question I wanted to ask myself, but it was better coming from an old friend.

“What could worry a young, successful girl who has her whole life ahead of her?”

“Maybe her relationship with Kevin,” I suggested.

“I really don't think so. I think they have a beautiful relationship.”

“What about your husband? Does he agree?”

“He likes Kevin very much.”

I let it lie. Enough was enough. Arnold was right: We had done the obvious to death. The things I wanted to know about Susan I wasn't going to find out from her mother and her boyfriend. Maybe if Kevin got desperate enough he would tell me what they had been talking about in the car, or maybe it was true that it had nothing to do with Susan's disappearance. But Ada didn't know about that conversation, and if her face reflected her feelings, she was sick with worry.

Eventually I fed Eddie, and Harriet fed the rest of us. It took Jack and Kevin longer than I had expected, but even though traffic was light on the holiday, bureaucracies remain bureaucracies and the precinct was probably understaffed. When they finally returned, Ada was pacing and Arnold was snoring lightly in his chair.

Jack had a healthy snack, and even Kevin grabbed a bite as I got together baby and belongings. We said rather long good-byes, Arnold awakening in time to see us go.

“Let the police handle this,” he warned me. “You have enough to do.”

“I have a telephone, Arnold. Maybe I can make some calls from home.”

“We'll talk.”

As we went out to the car, Jack said quietly in my ear, “When we get there, go inside with her and get a picture of Susan. Kevin took one out of his wallet at the station house.”

“OK.”

“And find out where she works.”

“Fine.”

“She's twenty-eight and she's a good-looking gal. I don't like this at all.”

I didn't either, but I wasn't sure how much I could do to help.

The Starks' house was on a quiet, one-way street, just as Kevin had described it. The houses on the street were old and different from each other, constructed in a time before builders put up identical structures by the dozen. I went inside with Ada and she found a picture for me, slipping it out of its frame.