Death Angel (14 page)

“Why don’t we sit down?” Mia said. She asked Gordon Davis to go over and join her guests—undoubtedly high rollers all—while she took his seat to give us some of the background. “I can get you started on the story of the silver.

“Lavinia was an only child, and to say that Archer Dalton doted on his granddaughter would be a gross understatement. She was raised in the Dakota, too, of course, which meant that Central Park was her front yard. She adored everything about the Park.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I said.

“As a gift to his son—Lavinia’s father—on his tenth birthday, Archer Dalton had commissioned a set of railroad trains. A train set like any other little boy might receive,” Mia said, holding out her hands, palms up, while she grinned impishly, “except they were all of Papa’s Northern Atlantic models, and they happened to be crafted in silver.”

“By Gorham and Frost,” Mike said.

“You’re good,” Mia said, pointing at him. “So in honor of Lavinia’s birthday—her tenth, too—Dalton commissioned another unique gift from the most celebrated silversmiths of the time. He had them build miniatures—in silver—of all the important landmarks in the Park that existed by then and had an architecture firm reproduce the landscape, to scale, to place them on.”

“That must have cost a fortune,” I said.

“Archer Dalton had a fortune. Several of them. Fortunes, I mean.”

“And where was there space to house this?” Judging from the size of the two pieces I’d seen, the layout must have been enormous.

“There was an entire room in the family apartment devoted to the train set and the Park,” Mia said. “Lavinia has always been one of our most generous donors, so I saw the set the first time I went to court her. You think there are treasures at Versailles or Blenheim Palace? This collection is staggering.”

“So why would anyone have broken it up?” Mike asked.

“I’m shocked to think that happened,” Mia said. “It took me a decade of begging, from the time I first came on the Conservancy board, to convince Lavinia to let us mount the exhibit. You’ve got to go to the apartment and talk to the staff. I’ll have to get her attorneys in, too.”

“Who represents her?” I said.

“The only person she trusted with her affairs was a wonderful lawyer named Justin Feldman. But he died last year.”

“I knew him well.” I thought of my beloved mentor and friend, biting down on my lip to stem the wave of emotion that swept through me. “Lavinia must have been very wise to have had such good counsel.”

“I’ll find out who’s looking out for her now and let you know.”

“How many pieces made up the collection?” Mike was attacking the mixed green salad while he talked.

“If I remember correctly, there were something like fifty-three or so. These two, and of course the Carousel, the Arsenal, the buildings that later became Tavern on the Green.”

“That was a restaurant,” I said, remembering the sprawling banquet space. “What had it been before?”

“It was a series of barns where the sheep were housed,” Mia said. “There was a miniature of the Blockhouse and the original horse stables. Then there were copies of the statues that had been erected up to that time—Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster—”

“Alice in Wonderland?” I asked.

“She came way later. But Beethoven and the Indian Hunter—I remember those. And the monument to the
Maine
was one of the most spectacular, as it is in real life.”

Mike added his historical military details. “The tribute to the two hundred sixty sailors who perished in Havana when the
Maine
exploded in the harbor, sparking the Spanish-American War?”

“That’s more than I knew about it,” Mia said.

The oversized memorial dominated the southwest entrance to the Park and was a striking landmark for New Yorkers. High atop the two-story base was a gilded figure of a triumphant Columbia—the quasi-mythical name given to female figures representing America—leading her chariot of horses and sea creatures.

“Was Dalton’s copy of the memorial gilded, too?” I asked.

“Twenty-four-carat gold leaf.”

“That must have been a standout.”

“In the case of Archer Dalton,” Mia said, “all that glittered was indeed gold.”

“And Lavinia,” Mike asked. “Did she have a favorite?”

“She adored the Carousel, of course. Each of the horses was decorated in vibrant colors, like the ones in the Park, with enamel. And they actually moved up and down as the piece spun around.

“But Lavinia loved the Bethesda angel best, she told me when we were spending time together planning the exhibit.”

I didn’t know whether to be surprised by the coincidence of a body found near the angel or to accept that the magnificent figure was a natural to be anyone’s favorite.

“She liked to play near the Lake and the fountain when she was a child. And that early stubborn feminist streak in her enjoyed the fact that the statue, designed by Emma Stebbins, represented the first time a woman was commissioned to create a major piece for New York City in the nineteenth century.”

“I so want to meet Lavinia,” I said. “I hope there’s a spark of her spirit left.”

“You must ask to see the angel when you go to visit,” Mia said. “Archer insisted on placing jewels in the figure’s eyes. He stopped short at sapphires, but there are blue topaz or some semiprecious stones that bring the sculpture to life. Almost haunting, in fact.”

“You mentioned calling her nurses and lawyer. What about her family? Isn’t there family?” I asked.

“It’s a terribly sad story, Alex. But there is no family.”

“She never had children?”

“When Lavinia was nineteen, she eloped with an Englishman—a viscount, in fact—who had all the charm in the world, and his title, but absolutely no money. Within a year, Lavinia had become pregnant, and the viscount had managed to have her move a fair amount of money into his name. But he had also fallen in love with a stage actress, very scandalous in those days. He abandoned Lavinia, and she came home to her father. She also took back the Dalton name and raised her son as Archer Dalton the third.”

“What became of him?”

“Lavinia raised Archer by herself till he went off to Groton and Yale. He actually married and divorced twice, then lived the bachelor life for while, before settling down for the third time with a young woman Lavinia was very fond of—a terrifically bright Vassar grad—and they had a baby girl together a couple of years later. They went off on a ski trip to Chamonix, leaving the child at home with Lavinia and the nanny. The small plane they’d chartered to fly in from Paris crashed in the Alps. Archer and his wife were killed instantly.”

“That’s tragic,” I said. “I’m almost afraid to ask about the baby.”

“I know it happened before you were born,” Mia said, “but surely you’ve heard of the Dalton kidnapping case? 1971?”

“Baby Lucy?” Mike said. “That’s
this
Dalton family?”

“That story was as big in its day as the Lindbergh kidnapping was in 1932,” I said. “Was it ever solved?”

One round of waiters was removing the salad plates while a second group behind them placed the dinners in front of each of us.

Mia shook her head. “I was a teenager when Lucy disappeared, and I don’t think there were parents in New York who didn’t clamp down on their kids, no matter their age or how rich or poor they were. The child was snatched right out of her home, so it seemed.”

“Out of the Dakota?” I asked. “The place looks like a fortress.”

“Charlie Lindbergh was taken out of a second-story window in a country house with no other homes around for miles. How the hell do you get someone out of the Dakota?” Mike asked. “Did Lavinia ever talk to you about it?”

Mia Schneider reached for her wineglass. “Once, Mike. Only once. Before I went to meet with her I had my office pull up all the clippings about the case. I got to know the story pretty well, although I had no intention of bringing it up. One day we were having lunch at the apartment, in the dining room overlooking the Park, and Lavinia asked me if I knew—if I remembered—the story of Baby Lucy.”

We were both riveted on Mia as she recounted the crime.

“The child had just celebrated her third birthday at the end of May, and this happened a week or two later. Lavinia had gone out for the day, but when she came home and went into the nursery to see Lucy, the room was empty.”

“Weren’t there servants?” Mike asked.

“Too many of them. The driver had been with Lavinia, of course. There was a cook, a laundress, two housemaids, a butler, a secretary, and two nannies. One of them had put Lucy down for her nap, and when she went in to check on her an hour later, the child wasn’t in her bed.”

“What did she do?”

“Nothing. For three hours she did nothing, which gave someone a pretty good head start.”

“Why?” I asked. “How could that be?”

“Because it had become fairly common, when Lucy woke up, for her to go into the kitchen to get a snack from the cook, or follow the laundress around, or put a little apron on and help the housemaid dust the big empty rooms day after day. There were staff quarters one flight above, and I’m told children used to love playing there on rainy days. Lavinia loved all the attic spaces as a child, she used to say. I’m sure Lucy was no stranger there either.”

“Poor little rich girl. It sounds like the staff thought she was just in some other part of the apartment,” I said.

“The entire eighth floor of the Dakota, Alex,” Mia said, stretching her arms out to either side. “More than twenty rooms, with more ways in and out than in an amusement park funhouse. Staircases and elevators for the residents, and other sets just for the servants. Staff quarters, as I said, mostly all above the apartment, on the ninth floor of the building. A gym and a playroom under the roof, and croquet lawns and tennis courts behind the building.”

“And then there’s Central Park out in front. You’d hardly have to force a child to want to go into the Park,” Mike said. “Most of the servants must have been suspects.”

“All of them were. Their families, their boyfriends and girlfriends, too. Even the staff in the rest of the building—doormen, handymen, janitors. But Lavinia refused to fire any of them unless they were charged with the crime, which never happened. I think one of the housemaids and the social secretary are still with her today.”

“Charlie Lindbergh’s body was found a couple of months after the kidnapping,” Mike said. “Dumped in the woods not very far from where he was taken, if I’m right.”

“Yes,” I said. “A blow to his skull, possibly from being dropped when the guys were trying to carry him down the ladder.”

“But Lucy was never found, was she?” he asked Mia.

“Never. Not a trace.”

“Ransom notes, like Lindbergh?”

“Lavinia told me that was one of the most painful parts of the case. Because she was so wealthy, all kinds of lowlifes jumped in and began to demand money for Lucy’s return. Vultures of every sort.”

“Did the police deal with them?” I asked.

“She had great respect for the way the NYPD handled the case. They ran down every lead, although the detectives and the FBI agents involved never believed it was the work of strangers. It would have been too hard to penetrate the Dakota, and too unlikely not to encounter one of the staff inside the apartment, as vast as it is.”

“Did anyone hold out hope that Lucy was alive?” I had seen those stories countless times in the newspapers—of children taken from a parent by an angry former spouse, from a hospital crib by a psychotic visitor, from a deserted bus stop by a child molester who raised his victim in the basement of a home, sometimes in chains for years.

“Only Lavinia,” Mia said. “She has never allowed anything in the nursery or playrooms to be touched. It’s quite disturbing to see, actually, but the staff continues to honor her wishes. She told me she would wait the rest of her life for that child to return home, although the police made it clear to her that they believed Lucy had been killed. None of the attempts to demand ransom for Lucy led to any plan to bring her back to Lavinia. All hoaxes, she suspects.”

The story had killed my appetite. Mia told us she was going back to her guests and would send Gordon Davis to join us. “I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow,” she said. “I’m curious to know how those two silver pieces got out of Lavinia’s home, and if the rest of the collection is intact.”

“So am I,” Mike said.

“Thanks for coming tonight. Please enjoy the rest of the evening.”

“That’s all we need,” Mike said. “A connection between the Baby Lucy case and our Angel. It’ll give the press the feeding frenzy they thrive on.”

“Last week you told me there were other cold cases from the Park, Mike.”

“No three-year-olds. Nothing like that.”

I leaned back with my wineglass and tried to make small talk with the commissioner. He, too, knew the Dalton kidnapping case well, but had not been in charge when the silver exhibition was on display so had not known about the fabulous Park pieces.

We spent the rest of the evening being introduced to Conservancy members, reassuring them about the quality of the investigation, as we listened to clever speeches and appeals for support.

At eleven o’clock, as the gala appeared to be breaking up, we said our good nights and followed the crowd through the tent and up the staircase to Fifth Avenue. Mike had parked nearby, and we walked to the car.

We cruised down Fifth and Mike made the turn onto my street in the low 70s. The Drifters were singing
“
Up on the Roof” and my eyes were closed as I sang along. As we approached the driveway, I was jolted forward when Mike suddenly applied the brakes, then sped up and drove straight ahead past my entrance toward the traffic light to turn downtown.

I reached up to rub my neck. “I think they call that whiplash. What’s your problem, Mike?”

“It looks like your problem tonight. The black Lexus parked in your driveway?”

“I didn’t see it. Wasn’t paying attention, I guess.”

“The license plate read ‘JSC 421,’” he said.

“Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.”

“Looks like Jessica Pell is on your doorstep.”