The Thanksgiving Day Murder (10 page)

We are both early risers and we do a lot more talking of substance in the morning when we're fresh than in the evening when Jack is exhausted from school and driving and my metabolism is running on empty. He didn't need to ask anything as we sat down to breakfast on Tuesday morning. I told him.

“So anyone who walked into this woman Wormy's office when she wasn't there could have stolen the stuff in the file,” he said.

“Essentially yes. And she must have gone out to lunch sometimes, no matter how dedicated she was. If a person goes out to lunch, she'll be gone at least twenty minutes, and that's really cutting it short.”

“But someone with a key could stay late and be safely alone.”

“And both principals have keys, along with Wormy.”

“What's the motivation for Arlene Hopkins to take the papers?”

“How's this? Natalie finds out something about Arlene that Arlene would like to keep quiet. Maybe she knows Natalie overheard a conversation she had with someone in her office or on the phone, or maybe Natalie fielded a call to Arlene that Arlene wished she hadn't. So she takes the documents one day looking for something in them she can use as a kind of blackmail.”

“Now you're talking.”

“It's even possible she didn't mean to keep them. She may only have wanted to look at them in the privacy of her office or at home. She takes them, planning to make copies or just look at them and return them, and by coincidence, in the short time they're gone, Wormy opens the file to put Natalie's first evaluation in it and finds it almost empty.”

“Makes sense. Once Wormy lets others know there are papers missing, Arlene, or whoever took them, can't put them back.”

“Right.”

“But they're just as gone for your purposes as if they were taken to be destroyed.”

“I know. And even if Arlene admitted she took them, what good would it do? They were probably destroyed four years ago or more.”

“Sounds like you've got problems, sweetheart. I haven't had a course yet in rematerializing destroyed documents.”

“Gosh,” I said, “and I was really counting on you.”

“You intend to push this woman a little?”

“I don't think I can. I found it a little hard to relate to her. She was wearing a pin-striped suit and hair out to here.”

“That kind of woman used to do something to me.”

I laughed. “Don't tell me what.”

“So you're telling me it's a dead end.”

“I still have Natalie's old apartment house to visit. Of course, she hasn't lived there for a couple of years. I'll go in tomorrow.”

“Where did she live?”

I went to the dining room where I'd left my notes. “Looks like Greenwich Avenue.”

“Ah, the Village. Narrow streets, old buildings, the artsy crowd. Gets a little rowdy down there on weekends now, but it's nice during the day. Pretty. Find yourself a nice little restaurant and have lunch at Sandy's expense. Bet you haven't been doing that.”

I thought with some embarrassment of my lunchless day yesterday. “I haven't.”

“That's what an expense account is for. I know you have a problem with being paid for your services, but you shouldn't be carrying soggy tuna fish sandwiches when you're working for Sandy. Lunch is definitely a necessary perk.”

I didn't argue. What I've learned since leaving St. Stephen's is that it's a lot harder to spend someone else's money than my own, and spending almost anything on nonessentials is hardest of all.

Jack left first to get to the Sixty-fifth by ten A.M. I left a little while later to get to the college well before my class began. Just before I scooted out, Mel called and asked if I wanted to meet her for lunch. I made a quick decision. Having missed a meal yesterday, I could afford a nicer lunch today and I looked forward to sharing it with Mel. She told me where to meet her and I hung up and ran.

I was brought up in the suburbs, not far from where I live now, so I have had no experience of living in New York. For me it was always a special place, the place where Daddy worked, where you went for parades and a trip to Radio City or the zoo, a place for a good time. I've been to New York many more times in the last year and a half than in the first thirty years of my life altogether, and although my opinion of the city has changed—as the city has—it's still a place that holds fascinations for me.

Greenwich Village is the area roughly around Washington Square, mostly to the west of it, although it has crept east. There are streets there with apartments so expensive, I couldn't imagine being able to afford to live in them, but there are also others in older buildings, farther from the center of the Village, that become manageable if you have a decent income or a roommate or two. The four-story building that bore the address Sandy Gordon had given me
had the age, charm, and slightly decrepit look that might fill the bill.

I have visited many apartment houses in my amateur investigations and spoken to several superintendents, but this time I was in for a surprise. The woman in apartment 1A who answered my ring on Wednesday morning was the owner.

“I've owned it seventeen years,” she informed me after I introduced myself, “and I pretty much remember everyone who ever lived here.”

“I'm a friend of Sandy Gordon, who married Natalie Miller about two years ago,” I said.

“I remember Natalie well. Good tenant, paid her rent on time. I think I saw him a couple of times, too. What happened?”

I told her.

She frowned as she listened. “Didn't someone come by last year about that? A detective or something?”

“Very likely. Sandy hired him when the police had no leads to Natalie's disappearance.”

“And he didn't find her?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“So you're looking now?”

“I'm trying. What can you tell me about her?”

“Just what I already said. Paid her rent on time, didn't have any secret pets, left the apartment in pretty good shape. Good tenant.”

“When she moved in, did you get any references?”

“You mean like from friends?”

“Possibly.”

“Friends say anything you want about them. Usually the tenant types up the letter and the friend signs it. I use my intuition and the bank.”

“What did the bank tell you?”

“How much money she had. She gave me a check for the first month and a month's security. The checks cleared.
And she gave me the name of the company she was working for. Want it?”

“Yes, please.” There was just a chance she had lived here before she got the job with H and J.

“Come on in.”

I had been standing in the foyer of the building. Now I followed her into her large living room. In the adjoining dining room, a file cabinet stood next to a desk. The woman, whose name I didn't know, pulled out a drawer and went straight to a folder about halfway through.

“Hopkins and Jewell,” she called. “An ad agency. A Mrs. Wormholtz confirmed that Miss Miller was working for them.”

“Anything else? Any previous address?”

“Sorry. She said she was new in town.”

“Really?”

“That's why the bank account was new, too.”

“Do you have any address for her? Where her family lives maybe?”

“I don't do that,” the woman said, returning to the living room. “I did the first couple of years I owned the place. Called their mommies when they had crises, sat next to them when they threatened to end it all, that kind of thing. It got to be too much. I'm not their parents or their big sister or their loving aunt. I'm a landlord. If they need help, I dial nine-one-one. That's the beginning and the end of my responsibility.”

“Do you remember Natalie having any crises?”

“Not really.”

“Is anyone living here now who lived here when Natalie did?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” She thought for a moment. “I've got an old lady who's been here forever—I inherited her—and you could talk to her if you want. I don't think the detective talked to her.”

“Why is that?”

“She usually takes a winter vacation and she was gone when he got here. Maybe he talked to someone else in the building, I don't know. But she's a good one. She lives on the top floor, right across from where Natalie lived. I'm sure they knew each other.”

“May I have her name?”

“Mabel Bernstein. She's about eighty. I don't know how she does the stairs, but I guess she's just bound and determined not to leave this place alive.”

I had a certain admiration for that. “Thank you very much.”

“Go on up. She's probably packing now. She's leaving for her trip in a day or two.”

The stairs were wide but sagging a little, the banisters a fine old wood, albeit scarred. Someone would buy this building one day and spend a small fortune to put it in shape, and then the rents would go sky-high. I found Mabel Bernstein's apartment to the left of the stairs and rang her bell.

“Who's there?” The voice sounded a challenge.

“Christine Bennett. The landlady sent me up.”

The door was flung open. “No such thing.” She was a little shorter than I, pure white hair, wearing a black skirt, white blouse, gray cardigan that could have been cashmere, and stockings and slippers. “No landlady in this place. She's a landlord. You can't know her very well.”

“I just met her ten minutes ago, Ms. Bernstein. She said you would remember Natalie Miller.”

“Mrs. Bernstein,” she corrected me. “I'm not a miz and I'm not a miss. I remember Natalie very well. She lived over there.” Pointing. “Are you coming in?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, reverting to an earlier period of my life. I followed her into a large living room, past a bedroom with suitcases open on a large bed.

“I have nothing to offer you; the fridge is empty.”

“Thank you. I'd just like to talk to you about Natalie.
Are you aware that she disappeared a little over a year ago?”

“I heard someone was here asking questions last year when I was in South America. I'm sorry to hear about Natalie. She seemed a nice person. Nice fiancé, too. I met him.”

“Did she ever tell you where she was from? We're having a lot of trouble locating her family.”

“There isn't any family. She said they'd died years ago. I was glad she met someone nice. There's nothing like family.”

“Did she ever tell you where she lived before she moved here?”

“If she did, I don't remember.”

“You said you met her fiancé. Did you ever meet any of the men she went out with before she met him?”

“I saw them. I can't say I met them.”

“Did she ever talk about them?”

“Just to say, ‘We're going to dinner Friday,' that kind of thing.”

“No names?”

She looked around the room. It was a beautiful room with a fireplace and a mantel covered with framed pictures, candlesticks, magnificent old glass vases. She was a woman of taste and some means, even if—or perhaps because—she lived in an apartment whose rent was more typical of the sixties than the nineties. “Sandy is the one I remember best.”

“That's the man she married.”

“You think some old boyfriend did something to her?”

“I don't know. I just know we can't seem to trace her further back in time than five years ago, and this is the only address I have for her before she married.”

“Susan,” she blurted out. “Susan Diggins. They were friends.”

“Yes, I've spoken to Susan.”

“And she doesn't know anything?” She seemed shocked.

“They met at the agency that was Natalie's last job.”

“Well, someone has to know where she's from.”

“I'll keep looking,” I said.

“There were men. I saw them. My opinion is, they weren't suitable.”

“By which you mean—?”

“They were already spoken for. Or didn't amount to much.”

“When are you leaving for your vacation?”

“Tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. “I've still got a lot of packing to do.”

I wrote my name and phone number on a scrap of paper. “If any of those names come back to you, would you call me collect?”

“From South America?”

“I want to find Natalie. Believe it or not, you're the last person on my list to talk to.”

“And I haven't given you very much, have I?”

“You've been very helpful, Mrs. Bernstein. But if you think of anything else, I want to hear it as soon as possible.”

“I'll do my best.”

On my way out I talked briefly to the only other person at home in the building, a single woman with a bad cold. She remembered Natalie but knew nothing about her, had never said more than a greeting to her and added nothing to what I already knew. I thanked the nameless landlord when I got down to the first floor and then found myself out in the cold both literally and figuratively, asking myself what to do next and having no answer. I had checked out Natalie's last known address, last job, and last husband. I walked to where Greenwich Avenue ended at Sixth Avenue and located a phone. There I called Sandy Gordon.

“What've you got?” he asked with too eager anticipation.

“Unfortunately nothing. I've just been to the Greenwich Avenue address and I talked to an old woman that the detective missed because she was away last year.”

“That's terrific,” he said excitedly, and I regretted my phrasing.

“But she had nothing to add, Sandy. She didn't remember any of the people Natalie had known when she moved in except Susan Diggins, and I've seen her already. I gave her my phone number and told her to call collect from South America if she thinks of anything. I hope you don't mind.”