The Girl In The Glass

by James Hayman

  Whitby spent the next five minutes recounting how Aimée had stolen the show with her breathtaking entrance, dressed as the original Aimée. “My daughter was an incredible young woman,” he said. “Much more than just a great beauty. Like her great-great-grandmother, she was also an accomplished artist. Valedictorian of her class. A very good athlete. I could go on and on. But I’m afraid I can’t.”

  He took a deep breath and stopped talking. And wiped both eyes with a white handkerchief.

  “Can you think of any reason someone other than Knowles might have had for killing her?”

  “No. I have to believe it was Knowles. Perhaps Aimée tried to end the affair and he lost his temper and stabbed her. Just like Garrison. Then in remorse he took his own life. Again like Garrison.”

  “We’re looking into the possibility. Can you think of anyone else?”

  “I don’t know. Knowles’s wife? She certainly had a motive.”

  “Knowles’s wife is eight and a half months pregnant. I don’t think she would have been physically capable of murdering either her husband or your daughter.”

  Whitby shrugged. “Could the motive have been sexual? Simple rape? Might not a random rapist have killed her to keep her from reporting him to the police? Or to me?”

  “Detective Savage and I have discussed that possibility,” said McCabe, “but what you’ve told us means that any random rapist would have to have been familiar with the exact details of the first Aimée’s death. That seems unlikely, don’t you think?”

  “More than unlikely.”

  Chapter 40

  AT A LITTLE after 1:00 p.m., Maggie turned her Portland PD Ford Interceptor onto Hampshire Street, a small one-way cut-through a couple of blocks from 109 that connected Congress and Middle Streets. Number 47 was on the right. It was a small two-story covered with gray asbestos shingles and four unpainted wooden steps leading up to the front door.

  A heavyset man about fifty, with thinning hair and a face covered with old acne scars, stood waiting out front.

  Maggie got out of her car. “Dan Mullaney?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Detective Margaret Savage.” She showed him her ID and gave him a business card. He looked it over and gave her one of his own.

  “You’re the landlord here?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Do you live in the building?”

  “No. I live out in Westbrook. I own this place and three other rental properties here in town. That’s one of the others right there.” He pointed to a nearly identical building on the opposite side of the street. Same architecture. Same era.

  “How many apartments in this one?” she asked.

  “Four. Two up. Two down. All studios.”

  “I assume you heard what happened to your tenants?”

  “Yes. I saw it on the morning news. Real shame. I had no idea she was only a kid. Even less that her name was Whitby.”

  “Were they good tenants?”

  He gave her a squirrely look. “Far as I know. I didn’t see all that much of them. I showed them the place. He signed the lease. She paid the rent. All cash. Six months in advance.”

  “And you didn’t know she was Edward Whitby’s daughter?”

  “Not till this morning.”

  “You weren’t curious when she paid you in cash?”

  “I try to mind my own business. He said he wanted to use the place as an office for writing a book. Seemed okay to me.”

  “But she paid the rent? A little unusual, don’t you think?”

  “Unusual don’t mean illegal. She said something about being a patron of the arts. Don’t know if she meant that as a joke or not, but I didn’t ask.”

  “Still a little unusual?”

  “Like I said, I mind my own business.”

  Clearly, Mullaney wasn’t going to be very helpful.

  “Tenants get off-street parking?”

  “Nope. But there’s plenty of parking spaces on the street.”

  “So tenants . . . or maybe visitors . . . can usually find a spot to park in front of the building?”

  “Or close to it. C’mon, I’ll show you the apartment.”

  Mullaney sorted through a metal ring with a bunch of keys on it. He found the right one, climbed to the landing and opened the front door.

  They went up to the second floor, where there were two apartments. Maggie followed the landlord to the one with yellow crime scene tape stretched across it.

  Mullaney unlocked it and pushed the door open. “How long you gonna be?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe an hour. Maybe more.”

  “I’ll leave you to it.” He handed her the key. “When you’re done, would you mind locking up and returning this to the office. Mullaney Realty. It’s in the blue building just at the end of the block on Congress.”

  The landlord left, and Maggie pulled on a pair of booties and latex gloves. She pushed open the door, ducked under the tape and went inside.

  She found herself standing in a decent-sized room, which she guesstimated at fifteen by twenty. Not exactly luxurious, but it looked to be in reasonable condition.

  Beneath her booties was a fairly new, or maybe refinished, hardwood floor. Half a dozen of what Maggie guessed were Aimée’s paintings and drawings hung on the plaster walls. A couple of self-portraits and one nicely rendered figure drawing of Byron. The kid had talent, no question about that. She’d obviously inherited more than her looks from the first Aimée.

  On the far side of the room, two windows were covered with newish up-down shades. Maggie lowered the one to the right and peered down onto Hampshire Street. It would be easy for anyone driving by, especially at night, when the lovers were likely in residence, to look up and see if any lights were on in the apartment. Lights that would be visible even if the shades were drawn. And it would be just as easy to see if a maroon 2002 Camry or maybe a black Mercedes 560 or maybe both were parked nearby. If they were, and if you were patient, you could park your own car just across the street and wait to see if Aimée and Knowles were going in or coming out. Either alone or together. Maybe holding hands. Or kissing good-bye. Or maybe being discreet and each going their own way.

  Maggie remembered Gina Knowles, the wronged wife, telling her how she’d looked through her husband’s wallet and found a receipt from a restaurant in Cape Neddick. She’d confronted Byron with it. He wouldn’t have kept a lease in his wallet. But maybe in his briefcase? Or in his office at school? Had Gina ever looked for and found a signed lease for an apartment on Hampshire Street? She said she knew he was having an affair. “I think it’s probably with one of the young female teachers at Penfield. There are a lot of single women on the faculty, some quite attractive.”

  Maggie wondered if Gina Knowles could possibly have been the killer. McCabe’s third man or, in this case, third woman. Motive was easy. As the saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Could her fury have been powerful enough to motivate a double murder? As for the letter A, Byron taught The Scarlet Letter. Had Gina read it? Or maybe, like Maggie, had she just seen the Hollywood version with Demi Moore playing Hester Prynne?

  Okay, so Gina had an obvious motive for murder and for labeling Aimée an adulteress by carving the A. But what about her denial that she’d been on the island last night? Had anyone seen her? A woman eight months pregnant would have been noticed. Maggie texted McCabe, who was at 109 writing up probable cause to get both Byron and Aimée’s bank and credit card records. Ask the guys interviewing party guests if anyone noticed a large pregnant tummy on the island last night.

  Will do.

  The biggest problem with Gina being the killer was obviously physical. Expecting a baby in just a few weeks, there was no way she’d be a physical match for either her husband or Aimée. On the other hand, she didn’t have to be. She had the knife. Maybe a gun as well. Would Byron have jumped overboard if she’d threatened to shoot him? Doubtful. On the other hand, what if she’d threatened to shoot A
imée? Would Byron have done the gallant thing and taken a dive to save Aimée’s life? That seemed slightly more likely. Still, the whole scenario seemed far-fetched.

  Of course there was another possibility. That, instead of going to the island, Gina had hired someone else to kill her husband and his lover. Hired killers can be difficult to find. They don’t advertise in the yellow pages or on Facebook. They don’t have websites. Plus they tend to be expensive, and Gina said she and Byron were broke. Easy enough to confirm by checking their bank and credit card accounts. No, Maggie decided, Gina wasn’t the killer. She was barking up the wrong tree.

  She turned from the window and went back to checking out the apartment. One closet with nothing but a few metal coat hangers, a window fan and a beat-up vacuum cleaner. A man’s hunter-green cardigan sweater, size large, hung from a hook on the back of the door. Byron’s? Probably.

  The small kitchen was nearly as empty as the closet. A few glasses and coffee mugs occupied one of the glass-fronted cupboards, along with a pile of coffee filters, paper plates and a half-empty box of plastic utensils. An under-counter fridge held an open bag of coffee, a quart of milk and a 1.75 liter bottle of Ketel One vodka with maybe three inches of booze left inside. The stove and oven appeared to never have been used. Nothing in the drawers. No pots, pans or silverware. A Black & Decker coffeemaker with what looked like week-old coffee grounds in it sat on the Formica counter next to the stainless steel sink. A bottle of Dawn and a sponge on the sink. One coffee mug and two oversized martini glasses sat upside down in a plastic drying rack.

  Maggie turned back to the main room. The place looked clean, the furniture new and not inexpensive. The kind of stuff that looked like it’d been ordered straight out of Crate and Barrel’s or Pottery Barn’s online catalogues. Had Aimée paid to furnish the place as well as paying the rent? Probably. One of the perks of being a girl blessed with unlimited funds. In the immortal words of Lerner and Loewe, Wouldn’t it be loverly?

  An oversized love seat with white slipcovers was pushed up against one wall, with a matching armchair next to it and a wooden coffee table in front. A bright red Navajo area rug covered the floor. A couple of copies of a magazine called Art in America were arranged a little self-consciously on top of the table.

  Against the opposite wall was an unmade queen-sized bed and two matching nightstands with lamps. Rumpled red sheets and a reddish-brown paisley duvet that had slipped mostly off to one side and four matching pillows. A treasure trove of DNA, which would be worth next to nothing unless it belonged to someone other than the two lovers. Still, she’d have Jacoby haul it all into the lab and go over it looking for hairs, skin and whatever else he could find.

  Maggie paused on her way to the desk to look at herself in a full-length mirror that hung to the right of the bed. She was wearing no makeup, and her short, dark hair was sticking out in a few places it shouldn’t. Still, she thought to herself, not so bad for someone inching up on thirty-seven. Especially considering she’d been up all night and had thrown on the same clothes she’d worn the day before. Black jeans, black T-shirt, lightweight black jacket and red high-top sneakers. Just for a second she found herself wondering if, with Kyra out of the picture, she and McCabe really might get something going. She pushed the thought out of her head as quickly as it came and got back to work.

  Maggie walked over to Byron’s desk. A rectangle of solid birch supported by a pair of matching wood file cabinets. A desk lamp and a laptop computer were the only things on top. Before checking the computer, she opened the drawers. Top left was empty except for a roll of packing tape, a stapler and a small bag of rubber bands. Bottom left was totally empty. So was the top right. It was in the one on the bottom right that Maggie hit pay dirt. The drawer was filled with a large pile of papers, probably two to three hundred sheets in all. The top page was a photocopy of a front-page story in the Portland Press Herald from one hundred and eight years ago. She lifted several sheets carefully by the sides of the pages and saw other photocopies of subsequent stories about the murder.

  Maggie sat in the black Aeron desk chair and read the first story. A reduced-size copy of the front page of the Press Herald dated June 18, 1904. A banner headline screamed out the big story of the day: “Murder and Suicide on Whitby Island!” A subhead only a little smaller added, “Portland business tycoon’s artist wife and her lover found dead in island love nest. Passion and jealousy apparent motive!”

  Maggie lifted the page up by its edges and began to read the reduced-size type.

  “In what can only be described as an enormous loss to the entire Portland community, Mrs. Aimée Garnier Whitby, wife of prominent Portland business and civic leader Edward Whitby Jr., was found near death early yesterday by the water’s edge on the Whitbys’ privately owned island. Mrs. Whitby had been stabbed in the abdomen and was subsequently either pushed or fell over the island’s sixty-foot cliff, known to local mariners as The Eagle’s Slide. The fall from the cliff severed her spine, and, had she lived, she would have been permanently crippled. However, Mrs. Whitby died of her wounds as she was being transported back to Portland for medical treatment by Portland fisherman John O’Reilly and his two sons, Jack, 12, and Harry, 16. The O’Reillys discovered Mrs. Whitby’s stricken body lying on the rocks beneath the cliff early yesterday afternoon as they were preparing to lay nets on the seaward side of the island.

  “At great risk to their own lives, Mr. O’Reilly’s two sons braved the fearsome waves that predominate on that side of the island and transported Mrs. Whitby safely back to their vessel, the Jackknife.

  “According to Portland mayor Herbert Callaway, who announced that he will be personally heading up the investigation into Mrs. Whitby’s death, Mrs. Whitby had been mortally stabbed by the renowned Boston artist Mark Garrison. Garrison’s blade, an antique Japanese dagger called a Tanto, inflicted a deep wound to her abdomen. He then carved a crudely formed letter A in her upper chest. Cumberland County coroner Harley Creamer told this reporter that Mrs. Whitby’s death was the result of the abdominal wound. Her assailant later took his own life, hanging himself with a leather belt inside Mrs. Whitby’s island art studio.”

  The piece went on to describe in fairly lurid detail the story of the love affair, then engaged in what seemed nothing more than pure speculation that “Garrison had slain his paramour when she told him that she was breaking off their relationship. Horrified by what he had done, he then took his own life.”

  Maggie carefully lifted the top page. The story continued for two more pages and essentially recounted the tale that Edward Whitby had told her and McCabe back on the island. Below the article were copies of similar stories, including follow-ups from other papers in Maine, as well as all the New York and Boston dailies. The death of Aimée Whitby remained front-page news for nearly a month. Of course, in those days there was no television, no Internet and no twenty-four-hour news cycles with endlessly pontificating talking heads.

  Leaving the papers intact, Maggie pushed the drawer closed to await transport to 109 by a team of evidence techs.

  She then turned her attention to the laptop computer on top of the desk. A MacBook Pro. Presumably the new computer Gina Knowles told them about that morning. The one on which Byron was supposedly writing his biography of Lord Byron. Byron told Gina the school had paid the two thousand dollars plus that the machine cost. That could be checked. If they hadn’t, Aimée might have picked up the tab for this as well. Maggie wondered how a man her own age felt about a rich teenager spending all this money on him. Grateful? Embarrassed? Angry? Afraid of how he would be judged if the affair became public knowledge? Maybe McCabe was wrong and there was no third man. Maybe this was simply a case of an angry man killing his girlfriend and then taking his own life to avoid public disgrace.

  Maggie lifted the lid on the computer. At the moment, the screen was dark, either turned off or in sleep mode. She punched the space bar a few times. The machine lit up, and she typed GGB1788 in the login box
. The screen opened to page thirty-three of an eighty-five-page Microsoft Word Document titled A Mourning of Death1.3.docx. She read:

  DISS. TO EXTERIOR SHOT. A GRAY DREARY MORNING. THROUGH SWIRLS OF FOG WE CAN SEE THE ISLAND STUDIO.

  CAMERA MOVES IN FOR A MCU AS DOOR OPENS. DANIELLE BURSTS OUT. SHE IS NUDE, HER BODY SPATTERED WITH BLOOD.

  CUT TO CU HILTON’S FACE STANDING IN THE DOOR OF THE STUDIO.

  HILTON (OC): Danielle come back! Please come back!

  HILTON FOLLOWS HER TOWARD THE CLIFF.

  Obviously Byron Knowles was working on more than a biography of his namesake. This was a screenplay based on the events of 1904, a dramatization of the murder on Whitby Island. Byron had changed the name of the place to Barnett Island and also changed the names of the characters. Maggie wondered if Aimée had provided Knowles with any information Edward Whitby had not mentioned. Information possibly not included in the news accounts and court records of the day. Maggie would ask Jacoby to print out the screenplay, and she’d read it tonight after the autopsies. She pressed Save and closed A Mourning of Death. Then she shut down the computer, called Jacoby and told him to send a team over to the apartment to do a thorough search for both fingerprints and DNA. They could pick up a key at Mullaney Realty.

  Chapter 41

  From the journal of Edward Whitby Jr.

  Entry dated July 11, 1924

  On a cold night in January in the winter of 1904, the seeds of jealousy that had lain dormant in the recesses of my brain for so many months began to germinate. The immediate catalyst was a suggestion I made to Aimée. That night the two of us enjoyed a quiet dinner at home with our children, Charlotte, Teddy and Annabelle. After dessert, we all went into the sitting room, where Charlotte read stories to the two younger ones. When the stories were done, we kissed all three good night and asked Nanny to take them upstairs to get ready for bed. Charlotte objected.