The Thanksgiving Day Murder (17 page)

I decided to set Natalie Miller Gordon aside for the weekend.

Elsie Rivers called over the weekend, a nice, homey kind of call, how good it was to see me again, to meet my husband, how memories of my mother had come back to her after we left, bringing her joy. We chatted for some time, discussing when we might get together again, although we never picked a date, and when I got off the phone I had that feeling again, that there was something she knew, something she was thinking about telling me but couldn't quite bring herself to do it.

“Sounded like your mom's old friend,” Jack said when I had hung up. “She say anything?”

“She came close, Jack. She wants to and she doesn't want to. I wish I'd never remembered this.”

“Whatever it is, it's long past.”

“That's not a reason to forget it.”

“But it's a reason to forgive.”

“I have to know what I'm forgiving.”

“Give her time. You've stirred up a lot of her past. She has to decide where her loyalties lie, or where they should lie.”

“Do you think he met her at work? At one of the businesses he visited?”

“Chris, you don't know who she is. Don't jump to conclusions.”

But I had made the leap and I didn't like where I found myself.

The quiet of the weekend came to an end on Monday. Dickie Foster called in the morning.

“Remember that postcard I told you about? I found it.”

“You must have worked all weekend,” I said.

“Turned the whole place upside down. Now we'll have to move because I've started throwing things out. Any nice little houses out your way?”

“Plenty. Come up and take a look some weekend. Tell me about the postcard.”

“It says, ‘Dear Dickie, It's gorgeous up here. Can't wait for the job interview. I'm taking some time to rest up so I'm in good form. Yours, Natalie.' ”

“Where's it from?”

“The picture says Lake George, but the postmark—it's a little hard to read, but I think it's Saratoga.”

“Upstate New York.”

“That's what it looks like.”

“Dickie, I can't thank you enough. Will you hang on to the card? I may want to look at it later.”

“I'll put it away so it doesn't get mixed up with the trash. I'm really glad I found it. Brings back those good old days when I was single.”

Something had drawn Natalie to upstate New York twice in about a year, once before she moved out of Gramercy Park and once when she and Jewell went off for a weekend together. Was there an old lover up there, a husband and children, or the mysterious abuser whom I had come to believe in? Maybe she had been drawn to him as I had read many women are even when their intellects tell them they should stay away. But I was certain now that there was a connection between her and some place in Saratoga or Warren County.

I had lunch and took a walk, having missed my early walk this morning. In the winter, later walks were easier
because the temperature was higher and there was a chance of sun. Today the sun was shining and I was glad I had postponed, not eliminated, my gentle exercise.

Back home, I put my house in order. I find that when I'm consumed with my work, whether it's an investigation or something I'm doing for Arnold or the college, things get a little disorganized and I appreciate some downtime to reestablish order. I gathered up newspapers and put them in bags for the recycling program, then hauled out the vacuum cleaner, going from room to room without stopping, the momentum carrying me through. When I finished and went downstairs, I found the answering machine was flashing, the ring of the phone having been obscured by the noise I was generating. I pushed the PLAY button and heard a startling message.

“Miss Bennett, this is Arlene Hopkins. I think we got off on the wrong foot when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. Would you call me on my private line as soon as possible?” She dictated a number that I had to listen to a second time with a paper and pencil in my hand. Then I called it.

“This is Arlene,” the voice answered.

“This is Chris Bennett.”

“Yes, I'm so glad you called. Are you free for dinner tonight?”

Jack was at law school and I had already done all my work for my poetry class last week. “Yes, I am.”

“Come to my apartment, OK?”

“That's fine.”

“You can park right in the building. I'll tell them to save a space for you.” She gave me an address on East Sixty-third Street and I promised to be there at seven.

Then I called Jack and let him know.

New York is many worlds. It's a cliché to say that the richest and poorest people in the country live there, but it's a dramatic truth when you see it for yourself. Arlene
Hopkins was neither, but she certainly tended more to the brighter end of the spectrum. My car was accepted courteously and I went up to the lobby level and found the elevator that would take me to her apartment, passing through security first. I half expected to be asked to turn out my pockets and submit to a metal detector, but the uniformed man let me through with a tight smile after comparing my name with one on a list. I rode up a swift elevator to the eleventh floor and found Arlene Hopkins out in the corridor, awaiting me.

“Come on in,” she said cordially, her voice and dress so different from what I had encountered in her office that I wondered whether she might be the good twin. “I'll take your coat. We can have a drink in the living room before we sit down.”

The apartment was spectacular. One wall of the huge living room was mostly glass, and the view, unobscured, was south with glimpses of Central Park to the west and to the east of the East River.

“It's very beautiful,” I said. I was wearing a brown pants outfit that I considered more than casual, but my hostess was in tight black pants and a white silk blouse with ruffles and frills that seemed out of character for the woman in the pin-striped suit at the office.

“I enjoy living here. What will you drink?” Canapés were already out on a table with white cocktail napkins imprinted with ARH in a small pile near them.

“White wine would be fine.” I had noticed a bottle on her bar and decided I could tolerate a glass or two before driving home.

She took care of it all quickly and sat down in a chair and crossed her legs as though she was used to being comfortable there. “We got off to a bad start,” she said, repeating what she had said on the answering machine. “I had a lot of reasons not to want to answer your questions. Those reasons are moot now, and I want to be open and forthright.
I know you suspect me of having done something duplicitous.”

“I don't suspect you at all. I've had time to think over what I've learned, and I've learned a great deal since I spoke to you.”

“Let me explain anyway. You've heard we're breaking up, haven't you?”

“Yes. I'm sorry and surprised.”

“It's probably been incubating for a long time. If you think divorce is tough, you should try splitting a company in two. But he has his lawyer and I have mine, and things will work out somehow. The reason I was less than forthcoming is that I was afraid of losing Martin and the company.”

“Ms. Hopkins—”

“Arlene, please. May I call you Chris?”

“Of course.”

“Let's be as informal as we can. We'll never see each other again after tonight, but I have the feeling neither you nor I will ever forget this meeting.”

The way she said it gave me a chill. “I don't need or want to hear about your personal life. What I'm interested in is finding Natalie Gordon, dead or alive. If you know anything, please tell me.”

“I had a feeling about her,” she said, leaning back comfortably, “a feeling that she was trying to upgrade herself, that she was a hick intent on learning to be a big-city woman, and the person she picked to imitate was me.”

“How do you mean?”

“She would ask me about my cosmetics, my perfume, the name of the company that made my bags and shoes, and then she would turn up with not exactly the same things but similar ones. She left her lipstick in the ladies' room once and I picked it up, thinking it was mine. She wore a pair of shoes once that I recognized as this winter's update of the pair I had bought last winter.”

“She admired you,” I said. “You're a gorgeous woman and you dress magnificently.” I had no intention of complimenting her; I was merely stating what was clearly true, but she nearly blushed as I said it. “She was a small-town girl from nowhere and you were the big-city success.”

“I hope you don't flatter everyone this way.”

“I don't and it isn't flattery.”

“Maybe I saw myself in her then,” Arlene said thoughtfully. “I have a reputation for being driven and I worked hard to earn it. I have to succeed; there are things I need that other people merely want. I can't relinquish control unless I have absolute confidence in the person I hand over the control to. Marty is one of the few.” She took a sip of her drink. “Was.”

I really didn't want to hear a recap of her love affair. “Tell me about Natalie.”

“I hated her from the moment I saw her.”

I took another canapé and a sip of wine. A woman men loved and women hated. “But you agreed to hire her.”

“Marty wanted her and she would work for him more than for me. Wormy thought she was hot stuff. Her resumé was great, her references golden. I didn't steal them, Chris. I had no reason to. Nor did I ‘borrow' them. And Wormy's clean. She leaves that office at night and becomes a mother. She doesn't think till the next morning.”

A bell rang and I looked toward the sound.

“That's dinner. Grab a couple more and bring your glass along.”

I followed her over the thick carpet into a kitchen that rivaled the Gordons', except that it was smaller. She put down her glass and opened a microwave oven. Out came two marvelous-looking Cornish hens, stuffed, with vegetables on the side.

“Want to take my glass in?”

“Sure.” I picked up her drink and followed her into the
dining room. The table was glass and steel and set with place mats, fine china, sterling silver, and crystal.

“It's beautiful,” I said.

“I like nice things.”

Nice things was an understatement. We sat opposite each other and she went back for a bottle of bubbly water and the bottle of wine.

“Marty and I met seven years ago,” she said when we were eating. “It happened. He's married and I didn't care. Having children isn't at the top of my list of priorities. Also I like living alone. At some point, we realized we were potentially a team in more ways than one. That's when Hopkins and Jewell was born. We had a good run and it's over. Someday someone'll write a book about it, but it won't be me.

“But it's Natalie you're interested in,” she said, getting back on track with, I thought, some reluctance. She wanted to talk about the relationship; she would continue to make lots of money doing what she enjoyed doing, but she would miss the man. I could sympathize with her.

“Right,” I said.

“She walked in dripping this sleazy sexuality and I knew Marty would fall for it. I suffered in advance, if you want to know the truth.”

“But you didn't voice an objection.”

“I knew what Marty would say if I did. And Wormy thought she was just what we needed. She was, in fact. She was terrific. There wasn't anything she wouldn't do. If I'd asked her to scrub a floor, she probably would've gotten down on her hands and knees. But Marty wanted to bed her, and she had no objections. I honestly think he thought I didn't know.”

“But you knew before it happened.”

“And I kept my mouth shut through the whole affair. We had a business relationship that had to be preserved at all costs. And we preserved it until a couple of weeks ago.”

“Tell me about Natalie.”

“She was a girl who came to town to make it. I don't think she gave much of a damn whether she did it on her own or married it. She thought Marty was her ticket to happiness. I knew he wasn't. If he hadn't left his wife for me, he wouldn't do it for Natalie. There was much less to Natalie than there was to me, and much less than met the eye. I had a feeling she was older than she said and anxious to land a man ASAP.”

“Why didn't she leave H and J when the relationship ended?”

“She often got to meet clients. She may have thought that would lead somewhere. It might have. I think she dated a few men who came down to the office.”

“Tell me about the missing papers.”

“I never touched them. I probably never looked at them after the first interview. I didn't care. I more or less heard they were missing and I heard Natalie was upset. But since I didn't like her, and since she'd taken my man, at least part-time, I was perfectly willing to look on the dark side of her. I figured she'd faked her background to get the job with us.”

“Wormy remembers calling a previous employer and getting a glowing recommendation.”

Arlene smiled. “Just goes to show how little I know.”

“I thought that she was trying to block out a former life, possibly a husband and children, possibly an abusive man who might come looking for her.”

“I hadn't thought of that. Your analysis is certainly more charitable than mine. So you think she took the papers so there'd be no record if someone came calling.”

“Pretty much. This chicken is great. Did you cook it earlier and freeze it?”

“Good God no. I'm not sure how to turn the stove on. In Manhattan you pick up the phone and order anything you
want and they deliver it. All I'm making tonight is the coffee.”

“You have good phone numbers,” I said. “Go on about Natalie.”

“About why she stayed. I thought about it myself when it happened. Frankly, there are office romances every day of the week, and when they end, the people involved think more about whether they can get a better job somewhere else or whether they're better off staying put. A lot of them stay put and watch their ex do the same thing with someone else in the office. In Natalie's case I thought she might not want to go elsewhere because she had faked her references. She would want to stay at H and J long enough that we'd be her best reference. But if you're right that Wormy checked her out, then maybe she stayed because she liked the job. I think she did like the job and she got raises, so she was doing a lot better at the end than at the beginning. We all were.”