The Valentine's Day Murder (20 page)

“Well, a bunch of us got together and told Stanley if he didn’t get rid of them, we’d go to city hall and make a stink.”

“So he threw them out?”

“He said he’d make them go as soon as the school year was over, and he did.”

“Did you ever hear the boys’ names?”

“Probably, but it’s a long time ago.” She looked at her watch. “I really can’t sit here and blab all day. I haven’t been much help, have I?”

“Not at all. You’ve been very helpful. Do you know anyone on the block who might have known the boys?”

She pursed her lips and looked out the front door. “Zimmerman on the other side, a couple of doors down. They had sons. They’re all grown and gone now, but I think those boys played with the ones in the Kazmareks’ attic.”

“Zimmerman,” I repeated.

“About three doors down to the right.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Martone. You’ve been very helpful.”

I walked back to the corner to see if Carlotta was waiting, but there was no sign of her car, so I went back down the street two doors past the Kazmareks’ house. The inside foyer was identical to the one I had just visited: five steps leading up to two doors, on the right-hand wall at the bottom two mailboxes, one marked Black, one marked Zimmerman. Zimmerman was upstairs. I rang the doorbell.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” a man’s voice called from upstairs, and then his feet pounded down the stairs. “Yes?” he said, opening the door. He was in his sixties, fairly tall, wearing work pants with paint stains.

“Mr. Zimmerman?”

“You selling something?”

“No. I’m looking for someone who was a neighbor of yours before he moved away.”

“Who’s that?”

“The family that lived in the Kazmareks’ attic.”

“Oh, them. Yeah, I remember them. Been gone a long time. I couldn’t tell you where they are.”

“I understand your son knew those boys.”

“I think he did. Yeah. They used to play over in the school yard.”

“Do you remember those boys’ names?” I asked.

“Too long ago, if I ever knew them. I could call my son. You wanna come up?”

I hesitated a moment, and he said, “My wife’s upstairs. It’s OK.”

I followed him. His wife came into the living room and introduced herself, while he went to the kitchen and made a phone call.

“Is the fireplace real?” I asked, looking at the one built into the living room wall.

“Only for gas,” Mrs. Zimmerman said. “It doesn’t work anymore. I guess they kept a heater in there in the old days. These houses go way back.”

“Flo?” her husband called. “Ask the lady to step in here. I’ve got Roger on the phone.”

I went into the kitchen.

“Here’s my son,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “He’s about your age. Talk to him.”

I took the phone and told the man at the other end what I was interested in.

“Haven’t thought of those folks for a long time,” he said. “I don’t have any idea what happened to them.”

“Did you ever visit them at home?”

“No way. No one was allowed up there.”

“Did the boys come to visit you?”

“She wouldn’t have it. Sometimes they snuck in someone’s house on the way home from school, but she kept a tight rein on them.”

“Do you know her name?”

“Nope.”

“What about the boys? Was one of them named Val?”

“Val,” he repeated. “Gee, I don’t know. It could be.
The one I knew was named Matty, Matty Franklin, I think.”

Carlotta was parked around the corner, reading the
New York Times
. I got into the car, hardly knowing where to start.

“Matty lived in that attic,” I said.

“Matty?”

“I talked to a man who was friendly with him in high school, but they never went to each other’s houses because the mother, or whoever she was, wouldn’t allow it.”

“This is very crazy.”

“Yes. I’m going to have to go back to that cemetery and see if there’s a stone for Matthew Franklin.”

“You think that woman killed another child?”

“I don’t know. But if Val and Matty lived in the same house during high school, there’s more than just an old friendship between them.”

“And Val left a million-dollar life insurance policy to Matty. It starts to make sense now. I wonder if Matty left anything to Val.”

“Annie might know.”

“Annie might not tell you. Any more than I told Annie about the policy we found. We’re in something very big, Chris. Who is my husband? Who is Matty?”

“I wish I knew.”

“It’s starting to look like there was something between Val and Matty that went sour, but I swear to you, Val didn’t own a gun.”

“Then maybe it was Matty’s and there was a fight on the lake, and either Val or Clark got hold of it.”

“Two against one and the gun went off.”

“You realize you’ve just accepted the fact that Val was on the ice with the others.”

“I haven’t accepted anything. I’ve just presented a possible scenario. Listen to me. Scenario. I sound like a TV movie. Where do we go from here?”

I wasn’t sure. “I still have several things I want to look into. How far are we from Bennett High School?”

“Not far. We can be there in five or ten minutes.”

“Let’s go.”

She started the motor, drove back to Hertel Avenue and took it to Main Street. The school, a large red brick rectangle with an enormous number of stairs leading up to the front doors, was just down the street. Carlotta found parking on a side street, and we walked back to the school and up all the stairs. Inside, we found the office, just to the right of the door. I let Carlotta do the talking. On the way, I had sketched out a little script that I hoped would get us some information.

“I’m the wife of Val Krassky,” she said to the pleasant woman who came over to help us. “He’s one of the men who was in the accident on the lake in February.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. I’m so sorry for you, dear.”

“Thank you. We’re trying to set up a fund in their memory and we haven’t been able to find a high school address for Clark Thayer. Do you think you could look him up for me? He went to Bennett around twenty years ago, give or take a few years.”

“Sure thing. Let me see what I can find.”

It had occurred to me that no one remembered Clark, and the people I’d spoken to recalled only two boys living in the attic apartment. I wanted to know whether Clark was in any way a part of the group.

The woman went through several drawers, then left
the room. We looked at each other, but said nothing. I walked away from Carlotta and looked at the pictures on the wall, photographs of recent classes: eighteen-year-olds at the start of their adult lives, a football team, all the bodies identical and only the heads showing a hint of the individual within the padded shoulders.

A door opened and I went back to the counter. The woman who had been searching had returned.

“I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Krassky. I can’t find Clark Thayer’s name anywhere. Are you sure he went to Bennett?”

“I thought he did,” Carlotta said. “His wife told me—I’d better check with her.”

“I’m really sorry I can’t help you.” She sounded very sincere.

“Thanks for your trouble.”

We left the office and walked out of the building. “When I talked to Bambi, she told me he went to Bennett,” I said.

“She must have gotten it wrong. They must have met some other way.”

“How?” I asked. “They all went in different directions after high school.”

“Well, maybe they were neighbors. Clark may have gone to a Catholic school. There are a lot of Catholic schools in Buffalo.” She thought about it. “Bambi isn’t Catholic, I’m sure of that. I think they went to a Protestant church together.”

We went down the steps, crossed Main Street, and found the car, but we didn’t get in. We stood on the street while I tried to think.

“The woman in the attic is a dead end,” Carlotta said.

“I agree. Without a name, there’s no way to trace her.
And for all we know, she used a false name. If she was trying to cover her tracks, why should she tell the truth? As long as you can pay a month’s rent and a month’s security, you can get an apartment, especially an illegal one.”

“I’d like to know if Matty took out life insurance with Val as beneficiary.”

“There’s no way to find out. Annie won’t tell you. If she found a policy the way you found yours, she’d be just as mad as you were. She’ll cancel the policy if she can before she knows if Val is dead or alive. And what difference will it make if we find out that there is such a policy? Aside from the fact that it would be nice to inherit a million dollars, all it’ll tell us is what we already know, that there’s some strong bond between the two men.”

“So where do we go from here?”

That was the question I was asking myself. “Something occurred to me this morning,” I said. “There’s a possibility that I overlooked something at the business. I’d like to see Jake again.”

“I just don’t understand what you think Jake has to do with all this. There’s nothing there, Chris. It’s wasted time.”

Again her reluctance to have me talk to Jake, or was it to have me poke around the papers in Val’s office? “Carlotta, we don’t know what’s wasted time until we explore. Who would have thought I would find out all that information in Connecticut on the basis of a birth certificate?”

“But you’ve talked to Jake. You’ve been through Val’s papers. You said there was nothing.”

“There’s something I forgot.”

She waited for me to say something else, to tell her
what I had forgotten, but I had no intention of giving her a reason to alert Jake. “Let’s drive over there,” I said, and we got in the car.

“I think I’ll come in with you,” she said, as she started the motor.

I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, and it had nothing to do with morning sickness. “Carlotta, I’m doing this myself. If there’s something that Jake knows that you don’t want me to know, you should tell me about it now.”

“There’s nothing.”

I didn’t like it. This was the one person she had delayed in getting me to see, the one she visibly tensed up about when his name came up.

It passed through my mind that she and Jake had had something going at one time, either before or during her marriage. It wasn’t the kind of information I looked forward to hearing, but, of course, it gave Jake a motive to be a killer. Although how Jake would have known about the trek across the lake was beyond me.

We drove in uncomfortable silence for several minutes. Then Carlotta said, “Whatever you’re thinking, it didn’t happen.”

I tried not to smile. “I just want to follow up on something I forgot about last time.”

“And you won’t tell me what.”

“I’ll tell you when I find what I’m looking for—if I find it.”

“Fair enough.”

Jake seemed surprised to see me, which meant he had no idea I would be back. Better to catch him off guard, without time to shred and burn.

“I didn’t know you were back in town,” he said.

“I got in yesterday. I think we have to talk, Jake.”

“About what? We talked last week. If I know more than I told you, I don’t know that I know it.”

“I want to know about relationships, about you and Carlotta.”

“Me?” He smiled and his face relaxed. “Something between me and Carlotta? Hey, she’s my partner’s wife and I love her like a sister. If there’s something between us, I’m the last guy to hear about it. You better ask her.”

The way his face changed when I asked my question, the way his whole body untensed, I felt that I had hit a dead end. “Val and Annie,” I said.

“I don’t think so. They met years ago, I really don’t remember how. I think she came to Buffalo for a job.”

“Did they go out?”

“Yeah, they went out. It wasn’t anything that produced sparks. When Annie saw Matty for the first time, that was explosive. I don’t think either one of them ever looked at anyone else after that. They just clicked.”

“Did anything happen between Annie and Val after she married Matty?”

“I just told you. Neither one of them ever looked at anyone else. Val included.”

“There’s one thing I forgot to ask you when I was here last week. Your telephone bills for last year. Could I see them?”

“My what?”

“Phone bills. I’d like to see if Val made any personal calls from this phone.”

“They’re not easy for me to put my hands on,” he said. “Besides, you looked at his Rolodex, didn’t you?”

“That’s not the same as making calls.”

“Everyone makes personal calls from work. I call my doctor, my lawyer, my wife about fifty times a day.”

“Those aren’t long-distance calls. I’m looking for long distance that isn’t business-related.”

“You know what you’re in for? Matching up numbers on the bill with numbers on the Rolodex? It’ll take you all day to do one month.”

“I’ve got all day,” I said, watching his growing agitation. “Can I just see the phone bills?”

He looked at a loss. “I don’t know where they are. It’ll take me some time to find them.”

“You must have had them to prepare your taxes in April.”

“Yeah, right.” He scratched his head. “Look, I’m kind of busy right now. Could you come back later, or maybe on Monday?”

“Jake, this is what I’m here for. I can’t sit around all weekend waiting for Monday.”

“Let me see what I can find.” He opened the door to the back area and went toward his office as I followed. He turned into it, and as I reached the doorway, he was dialing a number on the telephone.

“Couldn’t it wait?” I said.

He slammed the phone down. “Who invited you in here?”

“I’m waiting for the phone bills.”

He got up from the desk and went to a file cabinet, opened a drawer near the floor, and pulled out a thick file folder. He went through it as I waited, finally pulling out a rubber-banded pack of bills. “You want last year?”

“Last year’ll be fine.”

He started to toss the pack to me, but thought better of
it and handed it to me. He wasn’t happy. “Where do you want to sit?”

“I’ll go to Val’s office.”

“I shouldn’t’ve given you those bills. The cops didn’t even ask for them.”

“The cops think he’s dead.”

“He is dead. Whatever his secrets, they should die with him. Whoever he called, it has nothing to do with you or Carlotta or Matty or Clark.”