VC03 - Mortal Grace (12 page)

“Uncle Vince, we’ve got to join forces and get her a second job. So she won’t have time to worry about me. Do you know of any openings for a parole officer?”

“No.” He grinned. “But there’s a great opening in Binghamton for a prison matron.”

Later, he very much regretted that joke. But at the time, he felt he was winning a little of Sally’s trust. He even told her about the troubles he was having with his own daughter. He felt they were helping each other. It was almost eleven when he brought her home.

She kissed him good night on the lips. “Thanks, Uncle Vince. I’ll never forget you.”

The next day his sister Jill phoned, frantic. “What did you say to Sally?”

“Nothing—I just listened.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Then how come she’s gone?”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Her suitcase is gone.”

Cardozo didn’t trust his sister’s view of other people’s behavior. “Sally’s testing. She’ll be back.”

But Sally didn’t come home that night.

She didn’t come home the next night.

After seventy-two hours she was officially a missing person. Cardozo got two detectives assigned to the case. Unheard of in New York City, where three kids disappeared every day and six were murdered.

In two weeks, the detectives turned up nothing to suggest kidnapping or foul play. They both reached the same conclusion. “That mother. That mouth. That temper.”

“Jill’s under a lot of strain,” Cardozo said. But he knew what they were saying and he had a heartsick feeling they were right.

“The woman fights too much. Fur flies even where there’s no cat.”

Cardozo couldn’t think of an excuse for his sister.

“A kid couldn’t vanish like this unless she wanted to.”

“Or unless she was murdered,” Cardozo said.

“If she was murdered, something will turn up.”

Since there was no justification for further police involvement, the detectives were transferred to more urgent cases. Cardozo reviewed their reports. They’d done solid, by-the-book jobs: they’d interviewed family, friends, neighbors, teachers. They’d canvassed bus terminals, car rentals, railways, airports. They’d checked charge cards and phone records.

There were only two remotely odd things that had turned up. One was a note tucked in Sally’s high school yearbook.
Sally
, the writer had scrawled on letterhead of St. Andrew’s Church,
you do that divinely
—
thank heaven for little girls with talent! Joe.

The other oddity was a number on Jill’s phone records that showed up three times the month before Sally vanished. It was the number of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on the Upper East Side, and Jill didn’t know anything about it.

Cardozo went up and asked the rector if Sally had been phoning him.

“Our resources are available to anyone in need.” Father Joseph Montgomery wore a natty tweed jacket over his clerical shirtfront. He smoked a pipe and his eyes seemed to judge Cardozo. “Contrary to what some of us would like to believe, it’s not only poor girls or black girls who get into trouble.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Did your niece ever mention this church or its activities to you or your sister?”

“No.”

“Did it ever occur to either of you that possibly this young woman was in some kind of trouble?”

“Are you saying she discussed pregnancy with you? She’s
sixteen
, for God’s sake!”

“And possibly she was reaching out for help and you didn’t hear her.”

“And you did?” Cardozo showed the rector the note. “Is this your handwriting?”

Nothing in the rector’s expression changed. “It resembles my handwriting.”

“What does it mean? Sally does
what
divinely?”

“I couldn’t say. I don’t recall writing this.”

“Did you send her someplace? Do you know where she is?”

“If you’re asking whether or not I counseled your niece, I can’t possibly comment. But it sounds to me as if you and the girl’s mother might profit from a little honest reflecting.”

Cardozo asked a friend in the D.A.’s office if the rector could be forced to open his records.

“Come on, Vince, he doesn’t know anything. He’s liberal, he’s on record as anticop. He was being ambiguous on purpose—playing Solomon to get your goat.”

“There’s more to it. He wrote the note. He has that I-know-something-you-don’t smugness.”

“He has to be guilty of more than annoying you. You need proof of a crime and proof of his involvement.”

But nothing turned up. Not that year. Not the next.

Jill went from frantic to subdued. She told Cardozo she was paying private detectives five hundred dollars a week to track her daughter down.

Cardozo told her not to.

She began crying. “I feel helpless. Things are happening to my child and I don’t even know about them. I’m not even seeing her grow up—I won’t have memories. I won’t even have sound bites.”

She began putting on weight. Drinking too much. Phoning in the middle of the night, drunk. “Vince, where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a cop—you must know.”

“I don’t.”

Silence. Tinkling ice. “I think she’s alive.”

“I hope so. Get some sleep, Jill.”

During the next two years she started hanging up a lot more photographs of Sally around the living room. Rotating the collection.

One evening, during one of their monthly unbearable dinners, she told him she was in touch with an L.A. psychic, a specialist in runaway kids.

Cardozo’s heart collapsed painfully inward. “How much have you paid him?”

“Thirty thousand dollars.”

Cardozo flew out to L.A. The guy was clearly a crook. Cardozo threatened prosecution. The psychic gave twenty-five thousand back.

When Cardozo put the money on the kitchen table, his sister withered.

“That man’s reports were all I had to keep me going.”

“They were lies. He’s sending the same reports to eighty parents.”

She raised her eyes. They were moist. “Frankly, Vince, I would rather have had the hope.”

He would never forget that look on his sister’s face. Hurting. Accusing. As if he’d driven a spike through her.

He tried to turn off the memory tapes.
That was six years ago. This is now. That was Sally. This is…someone else.

He had been hunting through dead leaves for almost two hours when a butterfly caught his eye. He watched it gliding through a slanting cylinder of sunlight and then up across the shade to the branches of the dogwood.

It lit on a leaf and Cardozo saw that there was something oddly dimpled about that leaf and its neighbor. He moved the leaves aside.

A piece of thin red string had caught in one of the twigs. A cluster of dried stems dangled from one of its loops.

He counted. There were a dozen stems. Exactly.

A second bouquet. One could have been coincidence, but not two. Someone had tied flowers with string and wrapped them in newspaper and brought them here. Twice. Someone had known this place was the dead girl’s grave.

And that someone had worn a priest’s collar.

SIXTEEN

“W
HO WERE THE FIRST
people to go into the garden?” Cardozo said.

“On opening day?” Father Montgomery was thoughtful. “The very first were the committee.”

They were seated in Father Montgomery’s study. Slanting sunlight sieved through the leaded panes of the window.

“And who’s on that committee?”

“Myself—my assistant, Bonnie Ruskay, whom you’ve met—Tina Vanderbilt—Father Chuck Romero—Rabbi Green—Iman Zafr Mohadi.”

“Were some of you wearing raincoats?”

“The day started out looking like rain—I imagine we all were.”

“What about golf caps?”

“A golf cap in the rain?” Father Montgomery seemed sincerely bewildered.

“Do you own a golf cap?”

Father Montgomery rose and crossed to the closet and swung the door open. He took a tweed cap from one of the pegs and slapped it on his head and struck a golfing pose. “Voila. It was a Christmas gift from Bonnie three years ago.”

There was a knock and a brown-haired man in a summer-weight business suit stepped briskly into the room. “Good to see you, Lieutenant. Dave Lowndes.” He extended a hand. “Counsel for St. Andrew’s. We’ve met.”

“I remember,” Cardozo said.

“You’ve obviously become very fond of Father Joe’s company.” Lowndes’s tone was chummy and joking. “Either that or you suspect him of something absolutely unspeakable.”

“All kidding aside,” Father Montgomery said, “Dave happened to be here on another matter. I asked him to sit in while you give me the third degree. Do you mind?”

Father Montgomery obviously knew his rights and Cardozo realized there was nothing to be done about it except play the scene his way—three civilized guys killing ten civilized minutes.

“Not at all.”

Lowndes settled himself on the sofa. He pulled up his trouser knees just a little. He smiled. “And what is this little matter that couldn’t wait?”

“Several small matters.” Cardozo opened a St. Andrew’s outreach newsletter and laid it on the desk top. “Did you ever drive the van in that picture?”

“It’s our old van,” Father Montgomery said. “I drove it now and then.”

“Could I see?” David Lowndes said.

Father Montgomery handed him the newsletter.

“Did you ever drive that van in Central Park?” Cardozo said.

“Not that I recall.”

“Do you know of anyone ever driving it in Central Park?”

“Not offhand.”

“Tell me, Lieutenant,” Lowndes said. “I take it this van figures in your investigation of the dead girl in the garden?”

“Possibly,” Cardozo said.

“I frankly fail to see a connection.”

“Just making sure.” Cardozo reached into his jacket and handed Father Montgomery three photos of Jonquil. “Do you know this person?”

The rector stared blankly. “Should I?”

“Those prints were taken from the negatives you gave me.”

“Just a moment.” Lowndes’s lean, angular body uncoiled from the sofa. He stood up and pulled himself to his full height. “Lieutenant Cardozo took negatives from you?”

“I gave him the negatives.” Father Montgomery picked up one of the shots and tipped a critical eye at it. “I must have photographed her if she was on the roll. But it’s hard to say if I know her.”

“May I?” Lowndes reached for the other two photos.

“Apparently she’s a transvestite prostitute,” Cardozo said. “She works down in the meat-packing area.”

“We’ve certainly done outreach in that part of town,” Father Montgomery said. “But I meet so many people in my work—socialites, whores, politicians. My memory sometimes runneth over.”

“And teenagers,” Cardozo said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You must meet teenagers in your work.”

Father Montgomery nodded. “Oh, yes. Plenty of those too.”

“There was an accident a year and a half ago—a teenager in your care broke her ankle?”

“In my care? Good God, any parent who’d entrust their offspring to me should be charged with criminal neglect.”

“The parents sued.”

“Sounds like the Hitchcocks,” Lowndes said.

“Ah, yes—sing out, little Louisa.” Father Montgomery nodded. “The poor kid had her heart set on being the next Julie Andrews. She slipped during rehearsal and strained an ankle, sprained it, something.”

“Fractured it,” Cardozo said.

“Beg your pardon?”

“She broke her ankle—a complete fracture.”

Father Montgomery raised his fingers twelve inches in front of his face. Gold cuff links sparkled. Perfectly groomed fingertips danced. “I recall. Her mother brought charges—you’d have thought I had personally taken a sledgehammer to Pavlova’s foot.”

“Bear one thing in mind,” Lowndes said. “The judge threw the case out of court.”

“What caused the accident?”

“A device called a high-kicker. It moors the ankle. It’s absolutely safe, all theatrical dancing schools use them.” Father Montgomery added, a little sadly, “Of course, we don’t use it anymore.”

“I advised the church to play it very safe and conservative,” Lowndes said. “Accidents do happen.”

“Was this high-kicker involved in any other broken ankles?”

Father Montgomery drew back slightly in his chair, as though he needed more distance to see Cardozo clearly. “You mean at St. Andrew’s?”

“It was never established that the high-kicker caused the accident,” David Lowndes said. “As I understand the problem, the Hitchcock girl had only minimal talent and she couldn’t keep up with the tempo. Incidentally, she was rehearsing alone with the musical director when she fell—it had nothing to do with Father Montgomery.”

“That isn’t quite what I was asking,” Cardozo said. “Were other dancers in any of St. Andrew’s’ shows ever injured?”

Father Montgomery glanced at Lowndes.

“Father Joe can only answer from the best of his recollection. Unless you want to depose him and have him consult his records.”

“The best of Father Montgomery’s recollection will be fine.”
Fine for now
, Cardozo thought.

“There weren’t any other injured dancers,” Father Montgomery hesitated. “Not that I recall.”

“And what’s the name of your musical director?”

“Let’s see…the director on that show was Wheelwright Vanderbrook—Baxter Vanderbrook’s boy.” Father Montgomery reached for the phone. “Bonnie, could you be a dear and dredge up the Vanderbrooks’ phone number for the lieutenant?” He replaced the receiver. “Bonnie’s a joy. I’d be lost without her.”

A moment later Reverend Bonnie Ruskay, crisp and glowing in a slender-waisted dress, knocked on the door. “We don’t have that phone number. The Vanderbrooks aren’t with the church anymore.”

Cardozo made a notation in his notebook. “One last request. Do you still keep your talent file in that drawer?” He nodded toward the desk. “The photos and biographies of your performers?”

“Updated yearly,” Father Joe said. “Couldn’t put on a show without it.”

“Do you suppose I could borrow it for two or three days?”