The Mourning Sexton (26 page)

CHAPTER 41

S
unday morning.

Hirsch was seated at the conference table in his office, a legal pad on his lap, court papers spread across the table. For the last hour or so he'd been reviewing the file in one of his contested bankruptcy matters. It was set for a confirmation hearing Monday morning.

He stifled a yawn and tossed the pad onto the table. He stood and stretched his back, hands on his hips as he twisted his upper torso first to the left and then to the right. As he did, he glanced over at his desk and saw a stack of papers in his in-box. The papers reminded him of his conversation on Friday afternoon with his paralegal. He went over to his desk. Sure enough, the top document in the in-box was a two-page memo from Cheryl Jaspers. He picked it up and carried it over to the window:

Per your request, I was able to find five banks in Bermuda, all listed on the next page. As you will see, I even found the Swift codes for two of them! Please let me know what else you need me to do. Hope you have a nice weekend!

He turned to the listings on the second page:

Bank of Bermuda Limited

6 Front Street

Hamilton, Bermuda

Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Ltd. (Swift Code BNTBBMHM)

65 Front Street

Hamilton, Bermuda

Bermuda Commercial Bank Ltd. (Swift Code BPBKBMHM)

43 Victoria Street

Hamilton, Bermuda

Capital G Bank Limited

21–25 Reid Street

Hamilton, Bermuda

Hamilton Bank & Trust Limited

32 Victoria Street

Hamilton, Bermuda

He went over to the desk and flipped through his Shifrin folders until he found the printout of Judith's computer note with the Swift code: HBTLBMHM.

He compared it to the two codes on Cheryl's list.

No match.

Of course.

His eyes moved down the list to the last bank. Hamilton Bank and Trust Limited. One of the two banks on Victoria Street. The other one, Bermuda Commercial Bank Ltd., had a nonmatching Swift code.

He repeated the bank's address aloud as he found his printout of the Outlooks Note that Judith had created on November 9, just a little over a month before her death. That was the one that quoted some banter between “G” and “J” after a prehearing conference in “J's chambers.” The men joking about a controversial Victoria's Secret show on television the prior night. The Note ended with the “aside” by J to G:

“We've got our own Victoria's
Secret”—Both laughed.

Victoria's Secret.

Victoria Secret.

They would have sounded the same to someone overhearing the conversation.

His eyes drifted back to his in-box. There were several documents in there—office memos, court filings, unopened envelopes. He sorted through the items and came to a five-by-seven manila envelope with his name and address printed in ink. No return address. A Chicago postmark over the two stamps.

He cut through the flap with a letter opener. Inside was a green envelope about the size of the ones sold with greeting cards. The envelope was addressed to Ruth Ruggeri at her Evanston address. The words and numbers were written in dark blue ink, as was the return address centered on the flap on back:

J. Shifrin
256 Lincolnshire, Apt. 5E
St. Louis, MO 63105

The green envelope had been sliced open neatly, probably with a letter opener. Inside was a Christmas card with an old-fashioned winter-in-New-England illustration of a horse-drawn sleigh carrying two laughing, rosy-cheeked woman, each bundled in a sweater, scarf, and gloves. They were emerging from a red covered bridge capped with snow.

He opened the card. The preprinted message inside offered “Warm Wishes for a Happy Holiday Season and a Joyful New Year.” Below that, Judith had added her own message:

Dear Ruth:

Thank you so much. I know how difficult it was for you. I pray I can make it worth your effort. Tonight is the night! Cross your fingers. If anything goes wrong, be sure to tell Pat Markman that his Pulitzer is chilly but safe with Sadie the G.

Your friend (and ally),
Judith

He reread her message.

Tonight is the night.

He looked at the front of the red envelope, at the canceled stamp. It was postmarked on December 18 three years ago.

Judith Shifrin died on December 18 three years ago.

CHAPTER 42

L
ogistics were an issue. He needed to show the Christmas card to Carrie Markman, but not at her house. If he had really been followed the last time—and he still didn't know—he'd be putting her at even greater danger by going back. Carrie Markman was the quintessential innocent bystander, the sister of someone who may have learned something nasty about someone who may have killed someone else whose death was now being investigated by yet another someone who had dropped into her life unexpected and uninvited.

But perhaps not unobserved.

As for the challenge of arranging a safe rendezvous, well, he had never faced that problem before. Eventually, he turned to vaguely recalled scenarios from movies he'd seen, hoping he could cobble together a Hollywood scene that would hold together in the real world.

And thus at three forty-five in the afternoon of that same Sunday, barely four hours after he'd read Judith's Christmas card message to Ruth, he pulled his car into a space in the underground garage of the Plaza Frontenac shopping mall in suburban St. Louis. Four others boarded the garage elevator with him. Two were middle-aged women who'd apparently arrived together, since they were talking about someone named Nancy. The other two were men—one slender and tall in his fifties, the other burly and average height in his thirties. Neither acknowledged the other or Hirsch as the elevator doors slid closed. The taller man had gray hair and angular features. He was dressed country club casual in a red blazer, white shirt, yellow slacks, and penny loafers without socks. The younger one had a broad nose and curly brown hair and wore khakis, running shoes, and a light blue windbreaker zipped over a white turtleneck.

The elevator doors slid open on the first floor. All got off.

Hirsch wandered through the mall, working his way north toward Saks Fifth Avenue, which he entered at a few minutes after four. Along the way, he'd passed both men from the elevator. Once inside Saks, he meandered toward the main entrance at the north end of the mall. At four-fifteen
P
.
M
., he pushed through the front doors of Saks just as the Yellow Cab he'd ordered pulled up in front. He got in the cab, told the driver the destination, and turned to watch the Saks doors as the cab pulled away.

He expected to see someone—probably the burly guy from the elevator—burst through the door, spot the cab, and start charging after it as his right hand reached inside his jacket. Just like in the movies. Instead, an elderly woman with a hatbox stepped out and peered in the opposite direction.

The cab dropped him off at the Cheshire Inn. The clerk at the front desk gave him the key to room 204 and told him that the lady had already arrived. He couldn't tell whether the clerk gave him a wink or just had an eye twitch. It was only as he headed down the hall toward the room that he realized that the way he'd made the room arrangements earlier that afternoon, telling the clerk he only needed a room for a few hours and that the other guest would arrive separately, was subject to varying interpretations. Poor Carrie, he said to himself, imagining the desk clerk's X-rated speculations when she had asked for the key to room 204.

He knocked on the door and called her name. He made sure he was standing where she could see him through the peephole. She opened the door, smiled, waved him in, and closed it behind her.

He could see from the hollow in the bedspread that she'd been seated on the bed watching the television while she waited. A gourmet cooking show was on. She clicked it off and turned to him with a curious look.

“You have me quite intrigued, David.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “I feel like a secret agent.”

“I hope this rigmarole was unnecessary. I just want to make sure no one knows about your connection.”

“What exactly is my connection?”

He pulled the chair away from the desk and turned it so he could sit facing her.

“When we met at your house,” he said, “you told me that your brother had helped Judith Shifrin with an investigation. You didn't know the details, or even the identities of the people she was investigating, except that you thought they might include a lawyer or a judge.”

“That's right. Have you found something?”

“I think your brother was helping Judith even more than you or I realized.”

“Really? What makes you think so?”

“Judith died three years ago on the night of December eighteenth. Earlier that same day, she mailed a Christmas card to a woman in Chicago who was also helping her with the investigation. Here's that card.”

He handed her the envelope and watched her remove the card inside. She studied the front, opened it up, and read Judith's inscription. As she did, she put her hand up to her mouth.

“Oh, my,” she whispered.

When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes.

He waited.

After a moment, she nodded for him to proceed, blinking back tears.

“That woman—her name is Ruth—she never contacted your brother. She didn't find out about Judith's death until months later. By then, your brother had died as well. Ruth didn't know what to do at that point. She kept the Christmas card in her safe-deposit box. I met with her last week. Afterward, she sent it to me.”

Carrie looked down again at Judith's words and then raised her eyes to Hirsch's.

“She left something for him.” Her voice almost a whisper. “Something important.”

“But I don't know where.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I do.”

Hirsch could feel the adrenaline rush. “Tell me.”

“Do you remember those photographs of the Civil Courts Building? The ones in my brother's bedroom?”

“Sure.”

“Remember those two strange beasts on top of the pyramid?”

“I do.”

Hirsch recalled them from the aerial photograph—the sphinxlike creatures seated back to back, one gazing out toward the Mississippi River, the other in the opposite direction.

“During construction, the workers nicknamed them Sadie and Sue. I don't recall which is which, but Judith seems to have left him something in the one called Sadie.”

“Can you actually get inside them?”

“Oh, yes. They're hollow. Made out of cast aluminum. Patrick took me in one of them. You get inside from an opening in the ceiling below, like a trapdoor.” She frowned as she tried to remember. “Patrick must have taken me inside Sue.”

“Why do you say that.”

“I didn't see any safe.”

“Safe?”

As he said the word, he remembered Judith's other computer note, the one from seven thirty-eight
P
.
M
. on November 30:
G safe: 8-25-5-13.

Carrie said, “Patrick told me that they installed a safe up there during construction. I don't remember why. Maybe for secret court files. Who knows? He told me that no one had used it in years.”

“How did he know?”

“He found the combination somehow. Probably while digging through old papers on the building. He was a brilliant investigative reporter, God bless him. He told me he opened the safe. He said there was nothing inside.” She glanced down at Judith's inscription again. “But he didn't tell me enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at her note. She left something for him inside that safe.” She shook her head. “He never told me the combination.”

“But he told her.”

Her eyes widened. “And you found it?”

“She saved it on a note that referenced something she called the ‘G safe.'”

“‘G' safe?”

Hirsch smiled. “Those strange beasts on top of the building—they're called griffins, aren't they?”

She nodded. “They certainly are.”

The exit plan was for him to leave first and catch a cab back to the shopping mall. Carrie would wait an hour before leaving. He called a cab from the hotel room. The dispatcher told him it would be in front of the hotel in five minutes.

Carrie walked him to the room door.

“You must let me know if you find anything,” she said.

“I will, but we need to be careful. Don't call me. I'll contact you when it's safe to. But not until then. Okay?”

She was staring up at him, her lips quivering.

“They killed my brother, didn't they?”

He sighed. “I wish I knew, Carrie. Your brother must have been privy to a lot of what Judith knew. Did someone else find that out? Someone with a reason to kill him?” He shrugged. “I don't know.”

She was blinking back tears. “He was a good man, my brother. A little rough on the outside, but a good heart. He loved Judith in his own way—like an uncle, or a guardian. You can't imagine how upset he was when she died.”

She paused, staring up at him.

He nodded.

She said, “If she really left him something worth a Pulitzer Prize—”

She was crying now. He leaned down to give her a hug. Holding her against his body, he was surprised how frail she seemed. With all her feisty determination, it was easy to forget that she was just a little old lady.

“Find it,” she whispered. “For both of their sakes.”

“I will, Carrie.”