ER - A Murder Too Personal (3 page)

“I wanted to see you,” I said.

She nodded and sniffled again. Then she burst
out sobbing and put her arms around me. I held her and felt her
body quivering. Where Alicia had been muscular and sinewy, her
sister was soft and vulnerable. Two sides of the same coin.

She continued crying against my chest for a
couple of minutes. Her perfume smelled like spring flowers and her
hair was soft against my cheek. She was wearing a black dress with
long sleeves, too warm for the day. She wasn’t as tall as Alicia
but she was prettier. I suspected she wasn’t as smart.

Finally she nodded to herself and dabbed her
eyes dry. She nodded again and pulled away from me.

“I’m sorry, Ed,” she managed. “Please forgive
me.”

She didn’t have to ask me to forgive her.

She was four years younger than Alicia and a
lot more feminine. Alicia had a hard edge about her that could turn
off a man, but Laura was the wife you wanted waiting at home for
you at the end of a rough day.

After she’d had a chance to regain her
composure, I said, “Laura, I want you to introduce me to some of
the people here.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You can figure out why.”

She pursed her lips and thought for a minute.
A tiny frown line appeared on her forehead. “Do you think someone
here knows something about Alicia’s death?” She obviously believed
the possibility was remote, from the way she said it.

I didn’t answer her question. “Do you have
the key to her apartment?”

“Yes, but why?”

“I want to take a look around.”

Her eyes widened. “But, Ed…the police have
already been all over the place. What do you think you can find
that they can’t?”

I snorted. If only this little innocent
knew.

“I look for things in a different way.”

She shrugged. “All right, but the keys are at
home. I’ll have to get them over to you.

“Never mind that. I’ll drive you home and
pick up the keys. Now tell me who’s here.”

She surveyed the gathering. “Do you see that
tall good-looking man in the gray suit?” She spoke in a
conspiratorial tone to my shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“That’s Michael Chisolm.”

“Her boyfriend?”

She nodded.

“Who else is here?”

“That creepy-looking fellow—the one with the
thinning hair.”

She indicated a man with gelled hair who
stood in a hunched posture. His mother had evidently never told him
to stand up straight. At first, I’d thought he was one of the
undertakers.

“That’s Alicia’s boss—Stallings. He’s
president of the brokerage house where she works…” She stopped and
corrected herself. “Worked…”

“Introduce them to me,” I said.

She took my arm and we angled over to where
Chisolm stood with two men in dark suits who looked like his
subordinates.

“Michael,” Laura said. “I’d like you to meet
Ed Rogan. He was…”

Chisolm cut her off. “I know who he is,
Laura.”

We shook hands. His grip was firm but his
skin was too smooth.

“Mr. Rogan. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He
smiled without warmth. “Alicia spoke about you from time to
time.”

He looked to be in his mid-fifties. He had
flowing gray hair at the temples and he wore an expensively-cut
Italian silk suit, probably Armani, with a red silk pocket
handkerchief. His shoes were hand-made from alligator or snake or
lizard or some kind of reptile that had once crawled on its belly
over the face of the earth.

“Chisolm,” I said. “I need to talk to
you.”

“All right,” he said with a
barely-perceptible hesitation. “I was just leaving. Why don’t you
walk with me back to my car?” He motioned to his men and jerked his
thumb in the direction of the parking lot. “Let’s head back to the
cars.”

The men nodded in acquiescence. “Sure thing,
Mr. Chisolm,” one of them said.

I left Laura standing where she was and
Chisolm and I ambled over a gently-sloping rise and down a gravel
path to where his car was parked. He obviously wanted to show me
the car. It was a Hummer. But I wasn’t very impressed because I
knew only fools drive Hummers. This knowledge was imparted to me by
the Edmunds.com web site where they featured a listing of the Ten
Cars That Fools Drive.

When we got to his car, Chisolm stopped and
turned.

“Go ahead, Mr. Rogan,” he said. “What did you
want to ask me?”

I shook my head. “Not here. Not now. And in
private.”

“Certainly,” he said. “I’d like to talk to
you also. Here’s my card. Why don’t you come up to my office? We
won’t be disturbed and we can speak privately there.”

The odds were good he was married and didn’t
want to talk at home.

“Sure. That’s fine.” I pocketed his card.
“I’ll give you a call.”

I headed back to where Laura was standing on
the grassy rise watching us talk. There was a strange expression on
her face that I couldn’t decipher.

“What do you think of Chisolm?” I asked
her.

She adjusted a clip that held her hair in
place. For a moment it fell loose as she swung her head back and
forth. Her hair was straight and honey brown and was cut so it just
touched her shoulders.

“He’s stylish and he’s certainly rich enough,
but he’s not my type. Somehow I never thought he was sincere. I
don’t know if he really loved Alicia.”

“Is he married?”

She nodded and looked down. “Precariously so.
His wife has oodles of money and he doesn’t want to take a chance
on losing it.” She rubbed the toe of her shoe on the lawn that was
so even it felt like Astroturf. She said softly, “He’s had other
girlfriends.”

“Including you?”

She started to giggle, then remembered where
she was and checked herself. “No,” she said with a vigorous shake
of her head.

“Let’s talk to Stallings,” I said.

We walked over to the man who looked like an
undertaker. He was standing alone staring at the grave, somewhere
deep in his own thoughts.

“Mr. Stallings,” Laura said. “This is Edward
Rogan. He was Alicia’s ex-husband.”

“How do you do, Mr. Rogan,” Stallings said.
He was careful not to extend his hand. “It’s a terrible tragedy.
Alicia was very well respected at the firm.”

I examined his face. He wore Ben Franklin
glasses on the tip of his nose, which was finely-veined with a
network of red capillaries. His eyes were a watery blue. They had
deep shadows under them. His voice was soft and his diction was
overly precise. He wore a dark blue suit, white oxford button-down
shirt, blue repp stripe tie and black wing-tips. Matter of fact, he
was wearing just what I was, but I don’t think he noticed.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a tragedy. That’s why
I’d like to talk to you.”

“Talk to me?” He seemed surprised. “Why? What
for?”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

His eyes narrowed. “What about?”

“About Alicia…her work…her co-workers…about
who might have had a reason to kill her.”

“I’ve already been interviewed extensively by
the police.” He was speaking rapidly. “I don’t believe there’s any
reason for me to talk to you as well. You don’t have any official
capacity in this matter.”

“Listen, Stallings. I’m a private
investigator. My job is to ask questions. Only this time the case
is a little closer to home.” I tried to calm him down. “I’m not
saying her killing had anything to do with her work. I’m just
looking for information that can help me find her killer.”

“Help you? Listen to me, Mr. Rogan. That’s
the work of the police. I have no interest in helping you.” He
tried to straighten his posture but the effort didn’t help much.
“You’re just a private citizen. You’ve no right to interrogate
me.”

I wasn’t in a mood to argue with this turkey.
“You’ll talk to me, Stallings. You can make book on it.”

I gave him my back and walked away.

I drove Laura home from the cemetery. As we
cruised along the Southern State, she didn’t say much, but neither
did I. We both stared at the highway ahead and the neatly-trimmed
grassy shoulders. Lost in the dim mists of our memories and our own
private guilt.

The temperature gauge was starting to rise
again. When you have a ten-year-old BMW, it’s one damn thing after
another. I shut off the air-conditioning and opened all the
windows. The wind felt good on my face.

The needle stayed on the hot side of the
gauge, but at least it wasn’t rising any more.

There wasn’t much traffic heading back to the
city at three in the afternoon, so we made good time. Laura and I
hadn’t exchanged more than ten words the whole ride.

I drove her back to her apartment in a
high-rise on Seventy-sixth between Third and Lex and waited in the
car while she went up to get Alicia’s key.

It took her fifteen minutes to come back
down. She gave me a quiet smile and said, “I’m sorry I made you
wait so long.” She’d changed from the black dress she’d worn at the
cemetery to a sleeveless one that was just as somber but not as
dark. “I have Alicia’s key for you,” she said. She handed me a soft
black leather Coach keycase.

I didn’t want to leave her alone just yet.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said.

She nodded agreement. I could sense she
didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts.

We walked a few blocks without speaking. A
few puffy clouds had appeared in the sky but the day was still
sunny and dry. After a while she fixed me with a sideways glance
and asked, “Why did you leave Alicia?” Her voice was soft but the
tone had an edge to it.

The question caught me off guard. I didn’t
answer for a minute. “I thought you knew. She left me—I didn’t
leave her. It was…you know…the guy…” I let it trail off.

She shook her head urgently. “No, she told me
you left her a long time before that. Not physically, I mean. It’s
just that you weren’t there emotionally.”

Christ, I was there. What the hell did women
mean? How could you communicate with them?

“Laura,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about. I was there. Same as always.”

“No, that wasn’t it. She kind of felt you
withdrew from her. You seldom spoke to her. She said you weren’t
concerned about her needs.”

This wasn’t where I wanted the conversation
to go. I took another tack.

“Do you have any idea why someone would want
to kill her?”

She shook her head and said quietly, “No.
That’s why it’s so strange. It’s so unreal—like a fairy tale I used
to hear when I was a child. I’ve never known anyone who was
murdered before. And now, my big sister…”

“Did you notice any changes in her
recently?”

She thought for a while. “Well, she did seem
sort of edgy…tense the last few weeks, but I thought it was just
pressure from her job.”

“You were the closest person to her,” I said.
“If she had a problem, she would’ve told you.”

She shook her head and ran her fingers
through her hair. “I used to be. But when she started taking some
evening classes she began to drift away from me…she really became
involved with the teacher and the other students.”

“What kind of classes?”

“Well, she enrolled at the New School and
started becoming interested in metaphysics and things like
that.”

“Why did she do that?” I asked. “Once she
finished grad school she said she’d never set foot in a classroom
again.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it was
like something to do with the current atmosphere—liberalism, new
age thinking, the environment, that sort of thing.”

“She was never like that. You knew how she
thought. She hated fuzzy thinking. She liked things to be hard,
clear and precise.”

Laura gave me a little smile. “Yes, she did.
But that was then…”

“What do you mean?”

She considered for a minute. “Well, she
really seemed to take to this Eastern mysticism. The teacher was
almost like a master and the students were his disciples. They…”
She seemed reluctant to continue.

I waited. Finally I prodded her. “Go
ahead.”

She still didn’t speak. Then she said, “Well,
they all had…sex…”

I raised my eyebrows. “Yes?” I had a notion
this was going to be a good one.

“I mean sexual relations.”

“Yes. So what?”

She blushed. “As part of the …religious
practices.”

“And the teacher encouraged this?”

Her face turned redder. “Not only encouraged
it—he demanded it. Alicia said he told them it was the only way
they could get in touch with their true natures. She said it didn’t
matter which sex or sexual orientation.”

I nodded. “Sure. I know these cults.
Polymorphous perversity. Any orifice in a storm. And did Alicia
join in the fun and games?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. That
hurt because it was the first time in our lives that she kept a
secret from me. She started to keep other things from me, too. I
think it was because she became close to one person in particular.
A woman in the class. They started spending a lot of time
together.”

She stopped walking, breathed a sigh that
came from some place deep inside her anguish, and looked up at the
street sign as if she were trying to get her bearings.

We were standing in front of a Korean
greengrocer with its orderly rows of produce. The place was
immaculate. On the sidewalk in front of the store, the Korean work
ethic was getting a severe workout. The women and children were
working the counter inside, but in front of us the father and the
grandfather were wasting time playing a board game. The board was a
piece of corrugated cardboard from some fruit carton, crudely
hand-drawn, and the moving pieces were hand-made. Had they finally
become that Americanized? Were they getting soft and lazy? No
longer so hungry?

Laura turned to look at me. “You know, you’re
going to get into trouble. The police sealed up her apartment.
Nobody is allowed inside.”