Seven Kinds of Death (11 page)

“Hm,” Constance hmmed again. “So after Gray, there was Walter. Is that right? Where’s Walter now?”

“God knows. But let’s get this straight. After Gray there were a lot of guys. A whole lot. And none of them meant shit to me. Now, we can move on to Walter. It was fun with him. You know he dug for gold back by the brook? And he built onto the house as if he thought he was Noah, and this was the Ark, and the water was rising. We learned to hang glide together. Fun. That was Walt. Just plain old fun. He sort of drifted away after a while. No surprise; we both knew he would one day.”

“And now there’s Max,” Constance said quietly. “He really cares for you.”

“I know,” Tootles said, and then she threw her head back and laughed as raucously as a teenage boy. “You know what he said to me? Bastard. He said it turned him on to see a woman my age with dirty feet. The first time we met, I guess I had dirty feet. I don’t remember.” Her voice was affectionate, and her face had become soft; almost instantly she had shed the years that pain had put on her face just moments earlier. “He said he never had met anyone like me before. I bet the bastard didn’t.”

Constance nodded. “Did you ever even consider that the deaths might all have been simple coincidence?”

Tootles sounded mocking now when she said, “Isn’t that the first explanation a sane person would consider? Sure I did. And Paul has done the same thing. Everyone does.”

“Why are you afraid for Max?” Constance asked, still quietly, still being a professional, not the life-long personal friend who might have yielded to sympathy or impatience by now. “In spite of yourself, did you come to care for him?”

Tootles was startled by the question apparently. She snapped her head around to glare at Constance. “Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know. That’s why I asked. If you really believe in the curse, or gift, whatever you call it, you must be afraid to love him. Afraid you’ll lose him maybe. You begged me to come here for something; is that it? To get you out from under this curse? Are you afraid for Max?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. Period.” She stood up.

“Just one more thing,” Constance said, standing up also. She was taller than Tootles. As a professional psychologist she rarely would have put herself in a position where she would actually look down on a client or a patient; a few minutes earlier she had leaned against the rail in order to maintain equal eye height, but now she drew herself very straight and tall quite deliberately, forcing Tootles to look up. “When you left the party, what did you do? Minute by minute.”

Tootles made an impatient gesture, as if she would sweep the question aside if she could. “I’ve told it over and over. I went up and changed my clothes and went out on the upper deck, down the outside stairs, up the driveway to the road, across the road to the path and on to the little house where I sat down for a few minutes, and then walked home again.”

Constance was following this with her head tilted, frowning slightly. “I just don’t see why,” she murmured, as if to herself. “You wanted to be alone, that I can understand, but why so far? Altogether that’s a two-mile walk? Why? You could have gone down to the brook. Or you could have just stayed on the sun roof. Or in your room.”

“Aren’t you leaving out one of the other things I could have done?” Tootles snapped. “I could have hurried over to the condo to kill Victoria Leeds.”

Constance shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know who killed her, but I don’t think you could have got over there that quickly and then back again by eight. Do you have a dirt bike, something like that that you could ride through the woods?”

“Jesus! No!”

“Where did you go?” Constance asked, just as if they had agreed that Tootles would now answer. “Not the retreat a mile away. Where?”

“I told you,” Tootles said harshly, breathing too fast, too shallowly. “I told everyone. I have things to see to. So long, Constance.” She wheeled and reentered the house, nearly running.

Constance watched her go; she hoped Charlie was having more success at the condo than she was having.

Twice, at least, Charlie had hoped the same thing about her, that she was getting something worthwhile from Tootles, because he wasn’t getting a thing.

In a few minutes he had an appointment with the construction superintendent, Thomas Ditmar, who was in a trailer office near Building C. Someone could have climbed over the fence, Charlie was thinking moodily. No marks, no grappling lines, no indentations of ladder feet, nothing to show that they did, but it was still possible. Someone could have come up from the river, he went on, scowling now. No mud, no messed-up banks, no trace of mud found in the building, but it was possible. Someone could have been dropped in by an eagle, he thought then. Right.

He had talked to the painters, who confirmed Johnny’s story; he had sent them home a little after four thirty. They had come back to finish up on Saturday. They had put the panels on the elevator doors, finished the stripes on the floor for parking spaces. They had not gone up to Six A; what for? They had washed up their brushes, gathered the buckets and stuff and put everything away in the sub-basement, and they were done.

Charlie looked at the sub-basement, full of heating equipment and plumbing, and individual storage compartments for the tenants. The brushes were there, dry and clean: rollers, small finish brushes, large ones. The paint was there, and tarps. Stencils for the door numbers and for the numbers on the storage compartments that were as big as commercial ministorage units. Like them, these compartments were metal, rows of them, with four-foot aisles between them, all neatly numbered.

He inspected the scene of the death again. She had entered the living room, he decided, had gone in several feet and had been attacked from behind. The killer had been there already, he thought, waiting for her. You need a little bit of distance to reach out and put a rope around someone’s neck; if they had come in together, it would have been hard, unless the killer had hung back, let her get to the right distance. Someone could have said, go have a look out the windows. Great view. Then the rope over her head, jerked tight, no time for her to try to run or even to try to turn around. He remembered what Bill Gruenwald had said: she had tried to crawl away.

He walked through the apartment, dissatisfied. The police had taken the typewriter, but some tarps were still on the long table, still in the dining room, on the floor and on the table there. The police had taken the one she had grabbed and pulled partway off the table. He went to the window and looked out over the river and the woods. It seemed a wilderness out there. Finally, still dissatisfied, he left the apartment.

“Thomas Ditmar,” the man said, in the doorway of the trailer. He was built like an elephant, thick in every dimension, very powerful looking. His hair was sandy colored and fine, his eyes clear, pale brown, his skin weathered to a deep brown.

They shook hands and he stepped aside for Charlie to enter the room he was using as an office.

“Max says you’re hired on to clear up this goddam mess,” Thomas Ditmar said. “I hope to God you do, and do it quick. We had goddam reporters messing around this morning. Reporters!”

The trailer was small for a mobile home, but large enough for a comfortable office. A coffeemaker on a counter was nearly full; half a dozen mugs were upside down on paper towels near it. A gray corduroy sofa, two small matching chairs, a table, and a desk with a computer were the furnishings. The table was covered with blueprints and pencils, pens in a mug, note pads, drafting paper… . The tiny kitchen was super efficient, it seemed, with everything built in and nothing used, from all appearances, except the sink where more mugs were draining.

Ditmar poured coffee for them both and sat down on the sofa, cradling his mug in both hands. “Max says you’ll ask questions. I’ll answer. Your turn.”

Charlie laughed and took one of the small chairs; to his surprise it was very comfortable. “That makes it sound pretty neat,” he said. “Like erecting a building. Get the plans, the site, the materials, and up it goes. No problems.”

Ditmar grunted and shook his head. “Always problems. That’s what life’s all about, solving them. But my problems usually have solutions. Think this one does?”

Charlie shrugged. “Always a solution, sometimes you just don’t find it. History corrects the mistake you made, sometimes. Been with Max long?”

“Ever since he went into this business, twenty-eight years.”

“So you’re the last one to ask what’s wrong with him,” Charlie murmured.

“Nothing is,” Ditmar said matter-of-factly.

“What I mean,” Charlie said. “Know his wife?”

“Yep. Best thing ever happened to Max.”

“Knew his previous wife, too?”

“Yep. A very good lady, very, very good lady. Gone to her just rewards in heaven, at God’s right elbow, no doubt.” Nothing at all changed in his voice; his eyes did not sparkle with amusement, no laugh lines deepened, but it was there.

“Making sure he stays on the straight and narrow?” Charlie asked lazily. Ditmar nodded, and finally a gleam of amusement lighted his eyes. “What about Johnny Buell?” Charlie asked.

“Learning the business the way he should. Not half the man his father is, but Max wasn’t half the man at that age, either. He’ll be all right.”

“Will you keep on with the company if Max retires, turns it over to Johnny?”

“Nope.”

“Look, Mr. Ditmar,” Charlie said then, “I don’t know what the hell I’m after. Just talk, okay? I mean, I could ask you simple questions all afternoon and get nowhere, because I don’t know where I want to go yet. For instance, what’s with you and Johnny?”

Thomas Ditmar regarded him for several seconds in silence. At last he said, “You retired, from the New York police department, something like that? Isn’t that right?”

“Yep.”

Ditmar grinned and nodded. “Okay, then you know. You do things one way all your life, a pretty good way it looks to be, and then someone comes along and says that’s hokey, from now on we do it this way. No harm intended, you understand, just different ways. You must have seen it in your field. I know damn well doctors know what I mean. When Max wraps it up, so will I. Tired, ready to retire, hit the road off-season, leave winter behind a couple of years, head for mountains when it gets hot, do things like that, things I never could do before. Not ready to learn my trade all over again. There’s plenty others ready and able to step in and run with it.”

“How bad is it with Johnny?” Charlie asked. He understood exactly what Ditmar was talking about.

“Not bad at all. Max is still in charge. It’s a good company, one of the best, some of the best construction anywhere around, never lost a penny of anyone’s money, good times or bad, but things change. That’s all. Things change. You ever try to draw building plans on a computer?” Charlie shook his head; Ditmar did, too. “And I don’t aim to learn now. Max never wanted a company so big he couldn’t oversee everything personally; Johnny’s already planning to expand, get managers, go public maybe. Max never would have thought of trying to get a big write-up, not without paying for it. You know, advertising. Different philosophies, that’s all. Max leaves, so do I.”

“Is Max planning to leave?”

For a second or two Ditmar regarded him without expression. Then he shrugged. “Eventually. Won’t we all?”

“This is his last job maybe?” Charlie had no idea about this; a random shot, he thought, no more than that.

“If you already know that, there’s not much more I can add,” Ditmar said. “It’ll take close to a year to finish up here, and then… let Johnny diaper the baby, I guess.” He shrugged. “This is his solo flight, with the instructor in the next seat, but next time out, no copilot, just him, if he’s ready.” He examined Charlie closely. “Let me ask something, Mr. Meiklejohn. This have anything to do with the killing?”

Charlie had to admit probably not. “What I really need is a way to get someone in that building and out again past your watchman. Pierce. And so far, no dice.”

“What times you looking for?”

“Between seven ten and about seven thirty.”

Ditmar shook his head. “Johnny and his gang, then Pierce was on this side, closing the gate, things like that. I left the party with my wife and a friend of ours at ten after seven. Johnny pulled out of the complex in front of us, and I turned in at the parking lot over there and we had a little discussion about looking around. Decided not to, not until another building is finished, but we were there until twenty after seven probably, maybe a little longer if you count the time we had to wait for traffic to clear so’s I could enter the road again. Lots of folks were leaving the party along about then, you know. Fifteen, twenty cars must have gone by while we sat there.”

Charlie stared at him, aghast. “Jesus Christ! Have you told the sheriff?”

“Nope. Haven’t been asked.”

Charlie thought of the two scenarios he had come up with so far: one in which Victoria and her killer entered the building while Johnny and his group were all up on six. That one didn’t explain how they had got into the apartment on six, but at least they were in the building. And the other was the little scenario in which Johnny left his friends for five minutes in order to return to Six A to kill Victoria Leeds (who had obligingly set herself up for him without a sound), and then drove his girlfriend and her pals back to Washington to have dinner, and do a little screwing, he added darkly.

At this moment one or the other seemed to be the only one that would work at all.

TWELVE

Charlie had walked to
the condos from Tootles’s house, and now as he left the trailer/office to start the trek back, he saw Johnny Buell coming forward to meet him. Johnny was wearing good-looking tan work pants, a matching shirt, and a hard hat. He could have been dressed for an ad for an expensive liquor, or a sports car. He looked a lot like the boss’s son.

“How’s it going?” he asked, falling into step with Charlie.

“About what you expect this early. How many people have keys to the gate?”

Johnny looked startled, then thoughtful. Finally he said, “Damned if I know. Various foremen, Ditmar, of course. Dad. I do. Maybe Marion, but I sort of doubt that. Why would she? Pierce. Half a dozen, a dozen at the most.”

“How about the computer card keys?”

“Maybe the same list, with a few additions. I know Marion has one to the sixth-floor unit. She’s been in and out, picking out colors, drapes, that sort of thing. Ditmar has them all, and I do. I guess Dad does, too. A few others.”

In other words, a bust, Charlie thought regretfully. Too many people with access. They had come to Building A. One of the workmen had already explained the building designation: A is for Applegate, first in the row. B is for Birmingham, upscale, don’t you know? C is for Carlton, Rich, rich, rich, rich; D is for Davenport, a son of a bitch. E is for Ethridge, first among peers. F is for Farmington, or maybe for fears. Charlie thought the workers did not take the project quite as seriously as Johnny did.

He paused at the grillwork gate to the below-ground parking section. The gate was open now. “When you drove out on Friday, did you close both gates?”

“Sure. The system’s electronic. Going in, the thing closed after me, and coming out I just touched the button and it slid down when I drove up to the street level. I went back inside on the first floor.”

Charlie walked into the lobby at street level; the dedicated elevators with brass numbers lined the wall to his left, flanked by the door to the stairwell, broom closets, whatever.… He walked to the center of the building and gazed down the long corridor, with another bank of regular elevators at the far end, and apartment doors in between. “Are the rooms all kept locked?” he asked Johnny, who had remained at the entrance.

Johnny said they were, and Charlie sighed and shrugged. So it would take more computer card keys to enter them. He walked back to the front of the building. “Okay. See you later. Thanks.” He continued to walk toward the gate. It was open during working hours; trucks came and went, workmen came and left, there was a steady flow of traffic in and out. It had been open on Friday until Johnny closed it when he left to pick up Debra Saltzman and her friends, five thirty or thereabouts. The train had arrived at five forty and Johnny was waiting for it. So, he followed the thought, Victoria Leeds could have entered the grounds before five thirty without being seen. All right, he mocked himself.

Now tell us why, Mr. Bones. Step one, and then step two, he told himself firmly.

He went through the gate and came to a stop at the edge of the road; a movement across the train tracks near the woods caught his eye. When he looked more carefully, the scowl on his forehead vanished and he smiled broadly. It was purely reflexive. Constance had stepped from behind the trees, and was walking toward him. Seeing her unexpectedly usually gave him a jolt of pleasure like this. He quickened his steps to meet her on the other side of the train tracks.

She held out both hands to him, and he kissed her lightly before they turned toward the woods. “Anything?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I was trying to put myself in Tootles’s place,” she said. They had reached the trees, where she stopped to look back at the road. “It’s Friday evening, and I am tired of the party, and want people to go home. I go upstairs and change my clothes, go out by way of the sun deck, dodging anyone who might be outside smoking or something. Across the road, and then through the woods to the little retreat. So far, okay. It’s fifteen, twenty minutes after seven. I can get this far, but then I’m stumped, why didn’t someone see me?” She eyed the train tracks, the road, the condos across the road. “There’s just no cover at all. And people certainly were driving by at that time.”

They stood together looking at the clearing maintained by the railway, twenty feet on both sides of the tracks at least, then the state road with the cleared shoulders, and then the condo complex. No cover. He told her about Ditmar. “He sat there waiting to enter the road until twenty-five after seven probably. They were still coming out of the dirt road when he finally took off. I’m just glad that’s not our chore—to interview all the guests and find out if anyone saw anything.” He sounded glum and not at all hopeful.

They started to walk through the woods now, holding hands. It was very warm, no wind stirred, and the humidity was climbing. Summer had arrived without fanfare, simply heating everything, sweating everything. The woods seemed unnaturally quiet.

“I think it’s time to look beyond our little circle of old buddies,” Charlie said.

“New York,” she said unhappily. “Charlie, I don’t have a thing to wear for New York. And from the glimpse I got of your suitcase, neither do you.”

He laughed. “When we lived in the city, you would go out dressed exactly like you are now and think nothing of it. I think you look great.” She was wearing tan slacks and a pale blue shirt, a red belt, red sandals. She looked wonderful to him. No matter what came up, what they did, she was always dressed exactly right for it.

“That’s different,” she said patiently. “If you live there you can dress casually, do whatever you want, but if you go there from outside you have to dress differently.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Okay,” Charlie said later; after half a dozen phone calls he was now driving the rental car in to Washington. “I’ll go to the precinct house and go through the stuff they hauled in from the publishing office. Since the BB’s have the case, no problem there.” The BB’s were Bergdorf and Beckman; Charlie had known them for many years. “And while I’m doing that, you can talk to the people at Magnum Publishing. How’s that sound?” She hated the precinct stations. “Then we meet at Phil’s, do something about dinner, and crash. And tomorrow go together to see her apartment.”

“Not okay. Not quite. First I go shopping. A power suit, maybe,” she said with a thoughtful expression. “And a shirt for you. Anything else?”

“You might pick up a toothbrush for me,” he said, paying close attention to a semi that wanted to pass, but not enough to go ahead and do it.

“You forgot your toothbrush?” There was a note of disbelief in her voice.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly. The truck driver had given up and was back doing a sedate seventy-five. “I’ve been using yours.”

“Charlie! You haven’t!”

He looked at her, startled. “All right. I haven’t.”

“But you have, haven’t you?”

“Which do you want, yes or no?”

She turned to look at the passing scenery. If she had turned any further, he thought, she would have broken her neck.

At four that afternoon Constance walked into the office of Lewis Goldstein at Magnum Publishers. “It was good of you to see me on such short notice,” she said, shaking his hand. “I appreciate it.”

“Not at all. Not at all. Please, sit down. Poor Victoria. Such a shock. I just can’t quite believe it, you know?”

He was a handsome man in his fifties, well tanned, with beautiful silver hair that was thick and lush looking, gleaming. His office was small, much like other editors’ offices that she had seen, with stacks of manuscripts, baskets of unanswered correspondence, boxes of manila envelopes, few of them opened. A wall calendar displayed an icky May—illustrated by a big-eyed child sniffing a buttercup.

“Had you known her very long?” Constance asked.

“Years and years. We offered her a job here over a year ago, my suggestion. She was a superb editor. Just super.”

“She was the magazine editor of Paul Volte’s book, I understand. Were you the book editor?”

He nodded, beaming. “A delightful book, purely delightful, wasn’t it? She did a wonderful job helping him develop the material, guiding it all along the way. That’s what she was so good at. What a tragic loss.”

“Did you work together?”

“No, not really. She came here in the middle of May, along about then, and I was gone for nearly ten days in late May. Of course, Paul’s book was through production many months before that, while she was still at the magazine. But people acknowledged her role in the tremendous success of the project. A few proposals followed her here from the magazine, things of that sort. People had been stirred by the articles, her work. We expected very good things from her. Such a tragic loss!”

“Were the things that came after her the result of Paul’s articles? How could you tell?”

“Well,” he said, his broad smile returning, “at least one of them made it abundantly clear. It was addressed to the magazine, to the attention of the editor of Paul Volte’s articles. Right there on the envelope.”

She smiled ruefully. “That would seem to be clear enough. If it was addressed to the magazine, why did it come here?”

“You know, everyone believes editors pounce on the mail carrier, can’t wait to get their hot hands on the treasures they know will be delivered. It isn’t like that. Probably when that manuscript turned up it got handed around like a hot potato for a while before Sammy got the bright idea of forwarding it to Victoria. It must have been delivered to the magazine while she was on vacation, before she started working here, or she would have returned it herself then.”

“Sammy?”

“Sam Stover. He’s at
New World
. He might know something about that manuscript, if you think it’s important. I can’t imagine why it would be, though. One of thirty thousand that pour in year after year.”

She didn’t point out that she had not led him to this digression about the manuscript; she had followed, and it now occurred to her to wonder why it had stuck in his mind if it was one of such a great number. “What was unusual about the manuscript?” she asked, taking it for granted something had been, inviting him to take that for granted also.

“Not the manuscript. At least, as far as I know. I never saw it. See, we put it on her desk here as sort of a joke, that and a pile of other stuff, all to be taken care of instantly. A joke. Make her feel as if she was already one of the gang here. But for some reason she singled out that one to respond to. I never saw the proposal, and maybe it was great, but it surprised me that she read it and wrote the guy a note or something. A hell of an editor,” he said, and for the first time Constance had the feeling that he meant it.

He said he didn’t know why she had gone to the party. He had never even heard of Marion Olsen. He had suspected that Victoria was getting together again with Paul, and he had hoped that was the case, but she had not mentioned any of that to him. In fact, they had said hello in the corridors that last week or so, and that was the only contact they had with each other.

Matter of factly, she asked him where he had been the weekend of the party, and after a pause that held a mixture of disbelief and outrage, he answered. Sailing with two authors and their wives, over to Connecticut. She thanked him nicely and he was excessively polite when he stood up to see her out.

At the door she paused to ask, “Did Victoria have a secretary here, or an assistant? I’d like to ask that person a question or two.”

That person turned out to be Beverly Swandon, a plump young woman with dimples in both cheeks and very curly hair of an improbable chestnut color.

“I remember that manuscript, you better believe. Some joke, loading up her desk like that! As if it wouldn’t happen in the normal course of events, you know? But that manuscript that came from Sam Stover, from some nerd out in the boonies. I remember because this guy sends in the manuscript and a week after that he moves, and begins to make phone calls to get his right address on the return envelope. I mean, come on, you don’t know you’re going to move a week in advance? Yeah. You never heard that the post office will forward mail? Right. But Victoria Leeds took it like a lady and she even wrote him a little note when she sent it back.”

“He called here? When? What name did he give?”

“Not here. He called Sam Stover. Anyway, Stover called Ms. Leeds and told her the right address. I never heard a name.”

“And she rejected the manuscript?”

Beverly Swandon shook her head. “She put a note on it, something like if he fixed it up, wanted to talk about it in the future, to let her see it again. Anyway, the note was on her memo, you know? ‘From-the-desk-of’ kind of thing. She didn’t put his name on it, just wrote out the couple of lines and clipped it to the manuscript. That’s why I never saw a name, I guess. I had to make out a label with the new address. I remember that part. A Washington, D.C. box number. I stuck it over his old address.”

“You must have seen his name on the envelope?”

Beverly shook her head; she had reached the limits of her memory, the name eluded her.

It was getting close to five, Constance realized, and she asked Beverly about the rest of the time Victoria had worked here. There was very little beyond the fact that Beverly had liked her a lot, a whole lot, she repeated. She didn’t know anything about the party, why Victoria had gone, who Marion Olsen was, or even when Victoria decided to go. She had simply said she wouldn’t be in on Friday, and then they found out that she had gone off and got herself killed.

No one should have to be in New York at five in the afternoon, Constance thought a few minutes later, standing outside the building that housed Magnum Publishers. She was on East Tenth; Phil Stern lived on West Fourteenth. As far as she could see there were people, walking, rollerblading, on bikes, in trucks, in buses, in taxis, even in private cars that were virtually gridlocked. People running for the next bus, for the subway entrance, pushing, and creating a strange constant noise that was partly roar, partly high-pitched voices, brakes squealing, horns blaring, voices shouting, cursing, singing, even a cornet from somewhere seemed to belong to the overall sound. She started to walk. An image presented itself to her mind. She had seen a cloud of smelts moving up a river once, heading they did not know where, for a reason they could not explain, but determined. Yes, determined. She walked briskly.