The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Tina picked up the pencil again and tapped it on her desk-blotter calendar. Her desk and bookshelves were noticeably free of photos or memorabilia. “Sure,” she said. “I don’t mind sharing a bit of the gossip, in an anonymous, hypothetical way, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I just finished a premarital screening case. I’m trying to move away from those, but they pay the bills. Rich men never trust their fiancées. Which is fine with me. Keeps me in business. So we dig a little, and we find out the woman was a stripper in a past life.” Tina held up her hands. “I’m just saying hypothetically.”

  “Of course. But how fascinating. You must have a million of these stories.”

  She nodded expansively. “The sad ones are the missing persons, especially when it’s kids. But, okay, here’s a good one for you. There’s this guy who dresses up in a tux, goes to weddings—no one he knows—and robs the money basket. You know, where guests put the envelopes for the bride and groom. Everybody thinks he’s an usher or something. You’ll never believe how he got caught, how stupid he was. He—”

  Rrrring. Rrrring.

  Tina checked the caller ID box attached to her phone.

  Rrrring. Rrrring.

  “I better take this. Dee Dee’s out to lunch. Are we almost done?” Tina looked hopeful as she lifted her telephone receiver.

  “Almost. But I want to hear the end of the wedding thief story.”

  Tina smiled, indulgent. “Sure. You can just have a seat outside. I won’t be too long.”

  The waiting room was still empty. I couldn’t help checking out Dee Dee’s small desk, which was practically on my way from Tina’s office to the square, understuffed chairs of the reception area.

  A metal file organizer with several horizontal trays, stacked like the floors of a skyscraper, took up one corner of the desk. Neatly printed labels sat in slots along the side of the frame; smaller labels were along the edges of the legal-size folders in each compartment. An organized woman, Dee Dee.

  I could hear Tina, though not clearly, on the phone in the inner room.

  “Okay . . . Saturdays or Sundays, got it . . . I’ll have to check . . . city hall.”

  I hovered around Dee Dee’s desk. The office was quiet except for Tina’s muffled voice and the sounds of footsteps from the corridor outside. The steps were too rapid and not clicking enough to be from Dee Dee’s stiletto heels, rather like a rush of people on their way to the elevator for a trip to the street-level restaurants. I tilted my head down and craned my neck until the labels in the file organizer were in focus.

  ANDERSON, B.; NAZZARRO, L.; MILBANK, A. I read conscientiously, as if the folders held a clue as to what got Amber killed and what Lori was hiding from us. My digital camera was in my purse, but I doubted I had the dexterity to whip it out and capture images in the style of a genuine spy.

  “Keenan, Keenan,” I mumbled, half to myself, scanning the folders. In my new career as police consultant, I’d become good at reading sideways and upside down.

  “Listen, Charlie, there’s another thing . . .”

  Tina’s voice. Not signing off yet.

  I read on. JANSING, L.; SASSO, K.

  K. Sasso? What a coincidence. Rose’s daughter-in-law—Robert Galigani’s wife—was Karla Sasso in her professional life. Rose and Frank had had breakfast with her parents yesterday on the Upper West Side.

  It couldn’t be the same person.

  I took a deep breath.

  “I don’t think . . . why in the world?”

  Tina, still on the phone. There was more time. To do what? I asked myself. To snoop?

  Apparently so.

  I tugged at the Sasso file, which was on the thick side, pulled it out partway from the stack, and lifted the corner. I could make out the printing on a thin strip of the top piece of the paper. Just enough to see the bright blue letterhead.

  KARLA SASSO

  HOPKINS, SARCIONE, AND SASSO

  555 THE FENWAY

  BOSTON, MA 02115

  I grunted. Not what I wanted to see. I wished I could go back to the time just before the Sasso label came into view, though I didn’t know exactly why I was so disturbed.

  Why couldn’t Karla, a Boston divorce lawyer, have business with a New York City PI who listed spousal surveillance in her brochure? Not unusual, or suspicious, I told myself. Except that this was no ordinary PI firm. It was the one where the late, murdered, Amber Keenan had worked.

  Dee Dee wasn’t back from lunch, but I knew Tina wouldn’t be on the phone forever. It was now or never. In jerky, two-handed motions, I yanked the Sasso folder from the slot and riffled through the pages. Letters, forms, expense sheets, and then more of each. I caught glimpses of legalese—heretofores and whereupons—and subject lines like Carter v. Carter and Lasky v. Lasky. The standard phrasing for divorce proceedings. What was I looking for, anyway? I shook my head, mentally slapping myself back to rationality. I hastily straightened the pile of papers, balancing the folder on Dee Dee’s short row of dictionaries and reference books. A flurry of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven pages, smaller than legal size, fell to floor.

  “I guess that’s it, then . . .”

  Tina’s call was coming to a close.

  I scooped up the pages and stuffed them into the folder, then squeezed the folder into the slot. I knew I’d messed up Dee Dee’s order, but there was no going back. What was worse, there was one piece of paper still on the floor, half of it under Dee Dee’s desk.

  I heard Tina’s footsteps approach the door between her office and the reception area. My breath caught. All my blood seemed to rush to my face. The door opened as I lifted the errant paper from the floor and shoved it into my thankfully large, deep purse. Rose’s tiny, hard-leather numbers might be chic, but in situations like this, only the soft, tote-style purse I always carried would do, I thought, never one to miss an opportunity for going off on a tangent.

  I brushed my pants of bits of dust. “I keep dropping my gloves,” I said, showing Tina one I’d deftly pulled from my pocket.

  Tina used both hands to make an ushering motion toward her office. “Shall we continue?”

  As much as I wanted to hear how the wedding bandit was caught, I needed to get out of the building. I looked at my watch and muttered a tsk tsk. “Look at the time. It’s later than I thought, and I need to be downtown in about fifteen minutes.” I opened my palms to indicate how sorry I was to have to run.

  “Another time,” Tina said, shrugging, in a meager show of disappointment.

  I searched Tina’s face for signs of awareness that her office was now a crime scene, but I saw primarily relief. Plus a bit of a questioning look at my abrupt change of heart? That might have been my imagination. I struggled to keep myself from looking at the disheveled file in the metal holder or at my purse, where a single sheet, hot as it was, seemed to be raising the temperature of the lining.

  We shook hands. Mine were sweaty from the exertion of chasing the papers and from nerves. I imagined Tina dusting her own hand for my fingerprints, then comparing them to the prints on her folders.

  I walked to the frosted glass door as quickly as I could without alerting Tina to a problem. I fell in with a crowd of workers carrying paper bags and plastic takeout boxes. A mixture of smells floated through the hallway. I identified hamburgers, salad dressings, and a re-heated Mexican dish, probably from a small office microwave oven. I hoped Dee Dee wasn’t part of the gang. I couldn’t face her. With luck, it would be a busy afternoon, and a horde of clients would pass through the office before the messy file was noticed.

  It could have been any one of twenty people, I imagined Dee Dee saying, though not a single client had darkened the door in the whole time I was there.

  The elevator to the street was crowded with workers I assumed were from the many law firms and CPA offices I’d seen listed on the menu-like lobby directory. My mind was in chaos, swirling with questions. What was Karla’s letter to Tina Miller about? I hoped it w
as a routine legal missive and my inadvertent theft was useless. Shameful, but not disastrous. Surely its loss wouldn’t be a problem for the Miller agency: I was positive twenty-first-century offices had multiple copies, hard and soft, of every piece of correspondence. Dee Dee wouldn’t be chastised and I wouldn’t be found out. It would be a close call, but no harm done. Most important, I would have nothing to explain to my husband or to my best friend, K. Sasso’s mother-in-law.

  On the other hand, if there was something to the letter, something that was relevant to Amber’s murder investigation, then what?

  By the way, what was the penalty for stealing a letter? Had I committed a felony? The envelope had been opened already, so it wasn’t like stealing from the U.S. mail, a federal offense. I pictured myself asking Matt the question.

  Honey, suppose a person lifted an already-opened letter from a file organizer?

  I made my way through the lobby, past a large Christmas tree with oversized, colorfully wrapped packages underneath. The boxes were empty, I figured. Deceiving. Like me. I imagined every pair of eyes looking at my purse, and a corps of NYPD waiting outside on West Fifty-seventh Street.

  I exited the building—not a cop in sight—and picked up speed, nearly running away from Tina’s office, perspiring in spite of the low-forties temperature. I wrenched my scarf from under my coat and jammed it into my purse. On top of the letter.

  I’d never done anything like this before. I tried to think of a word other than “theft” to characterize my rash behavior. Borrowing? Temporary custody? Obstruction of justice also came to mind. Not an improvement.

  When I thought I’d walked far enough from Tina’s neighborhood, where Dee Dee might be picking up lunch, I ducked into a bookstore café and ordered the largest cappuccino on the menu.

  I sat down and pulled the letter from my purse, keeping it low on my lap. The sheet was wrinkled from being crammed into my bag. I was relieved that it had no creases at the one-third points as an original might, from insertion into a business-sized envelope. This means it’s a photocopy, I thought, or a scanned color copy to preserve the letterhead. I breathed easier, by a nanohair.

  I decided to keep it hidden on my lap until my drink was delivered.

  I felt deceitful enough to start my own PI firm.

  CHATER EIGHT

  Lori walked from Coffee And to her building, crossing her fingers, saying every prayer she could remember from first grade, making promises to God to donate more to charity. Okay, to start donating to charity. Until now she’d considered herself a charity, but that would stop, she vowed.

  She needed to get into her apartment.

  The breakfast meeting with Gloria—she wondered if she was supposed to call her Aunt Gloria—was a disaster. The woman should have been a cop herself, the way she got Lori to say things without thinking. She had that soft, pleasant voice that misled you into thinking everything she asked was innocuous. Lori knew she’d blown it this morning, talking about Amber’s Midwest home and family. God, she’d even mentioned the crush she’d had on Amber’s brother, Billy Keenan.

  She turned the corner on West Forty-eighth. Halfway down the street, Lori could see a cop on her stoop, a short flight up from street level. He was young and cute—but so was she. She’d at least give it a try.

  “Hey,” she said, mildly flirtatious.

  The cop had been shifting his weight from one foot to another, the keep-your-blood-moving dance of winter. When he saw Lori, he stopped and swung his club, like a baton, at his hip.

  Lori knew how to lift her dark eyebrows just enough to express intensely personal interest: You have captured my attention, they said. She knew she had the best haircut to show off her high cheekbones and delicate chin, and she took advantage of the new styles to accentuate her petite figure. The short black jacket and bright scarf she wore today gave her a jaunty, sexy air she wasn’t above using to her advantage. Not exactly what Greer, Friedan, and Steinem advocated in her women’s studies texts.

  “Hey,” the cop said.

  Lori noticed the curly red hair under his cap, and how tightly his jacket fit across his chest.

  “Wow, that stick is awesome,” she said.

  The cop smiled and blushed. Good.

  “How you doin’ today, ma’am?”

  “I’m great. Did you see the tree lit yet?” Lori couldn’t tell if he wore a wedding ring under his heavy gloves. Please don’t let him show me pictures of adorable red-haired children.

  “Yeah, I was down there last night, on my trusty steed.” The cop straightened his shoulders and held his arms in position to hold the reins of an imaginary horse.

  “Wow, you’re a mountie, too?” Lori asked, fishing her keys from the front pocket of her tight-fitting pants. She moved closer to the door. The front entrance had been redone recently, with metal framing, and from the outside the rust-brown edifice looked like a doorman building, though it was far from it.

  “What floor?” the cop asked.

  Lori winked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” She reached for the door handle.

  The cop stepped between Lori and the door. Still smiling, but not as malleable as Lori had hoped. “Actually, I have to know. Part of the building is off-limits.”

  Lori gave a hopeful look, though she felt it was a lost cause. “I’m on four.”

  Oops, why hadn’t she lied? It wasn’t as if she was the most honest person around these days.

  The cop shook his head and wagged his finger. No go. “New York’s finest are still working up there.”

  Lori put her hand on her hip. One last effort. “Just for one tiny minute?”

  The cop took off his hat and scratched his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

  At that moment, uniformed officers—an entire crew of them, it seemed to Lori—opened the door from the inside and marched out, carrying boxes of stuff. Her stuff, she could tell. She saw one of her flowered pillows sticking out of a carton.

  Her stomach rolled. It might as well have been her life passing before her, and then out of her hands.

  She wondered how carefully they’d go through everything. She could ask Uncle Matt, but she hesitated to bring up anything about the case, especially with his wife nosing around. Not that it mattered. The money was in plain view.

  “You can come back in an hour or so. Then maybe we can grab some lunch,” the redheaded cop said, jerking his head toward the lowend diner on the corner.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she said.

  “Some other lifetime,” she mumbled to herself, and walked down the steps to the street.

  Work was the only thing that would bring some sanity back into Lori’s life. Whatever else was going on, there were still ozone issues to deal with for her video, and maybe doing something that made a difference to the world would give her perspective. Wasn’t that why she started Pizzano Productions in the first place? She’d wanted her parents to be proud of what she did with the money they’d left her. If she couldn’t double or triple her inheritance, the least she could do was use it well.

  She’d thought of producing something more immediately profitable, like the exercise videos and food-show DVDs some of her classmates turned out, but she couldn’t get rid of the investigative bug. All the President’s Men had unduly influenced her, Uncle Matt used to tell her.

  Lori ducked into a store, found a quiet spot in men’s shoes, and checked her BlackBerry. She scrolled through dozens of e-mails, mostly junk, but stopped at one that was only a half hour old, from an interviewee on her list for the ozone video. Rachel Hartman, the public relations officer for Blake Manufacturing, had agreed to see her ASAP at Rachel’s West Forty-sixth Street apartment, to spare Lori a long subway ride downtown to where the facility was. ASAP was fine with Lori, who was only a few blocks away and in need of a distraction.

  Rachel’s apartment was on the corner of Ninth Avenue, on a block called Restaurant Row, and above a bistro that was one of Lori’s favorites. As she climbed the steps to the third-f
loor, Lori could smell the vinegar peppers, the garlic bread, and the salami and cream cheese rolls they served on their antipasto plate. She’d had nothing but a couple of sips of coffee and two nervous bites of a croissant with Gloria this morning, and she was hungry. After the interview, she’d treat herself to a late lunch at the bistro.

  Rachel led Lori into her spacious, well-appointed living room. Lori gave a fleeting thought to switching careers, except she doubted PR paid this much, either. A benefactor, Lori figured, or a rich husband was behind this. A beautiful Tiffany-like (or was it genuine?) tulip vase on a low glass coffee table was one of many lovely objects of art in the room.

  Tall and strawberry blond, with legs long enough to fill one of those five-story ads for lingerie, Rachel could have had her pick of sugar daddies.

  “I’m home sick today,” Rachel said, with the slight lisp that came with an overbite. “But don’t worry. I’m not contagious. I’m taking a mental health day. Translation: Christmas shopping. My sister’s in town from Los Angeles. Anyway, I thought if we did this interview, I wouldn’t feel quite so guilty.”

  Rachel turned to give Lori a conspiratorial grin. The way her hair bounced, she could have been posing in a photo shoot in front of Macy’s.

  Lori smiled and took a seat as Rachel indicated, on a beige leather couch. A tea service was already on the coffee table. Rachel poured a fruity-smelling brew from her seat across from Lori. Rachel, who was dressed in a light brown that complemented her décor, was either well organized or well staffed, Lori thought.

  “I’m sure this won’t take long, and Bloomie’s is open late for the holidays,” Lori said.

  Rachel pointed to a handwritten list of stores and times, on the light oak end table next to her. “Believe me, I know, but my sister likes to hang around the Village. She’s staying down at one of those places with arty suites. She thinks midtown shopping is too upscale.”