by S. J. Rozan
When I hung up, Lydia said, “Susan’s in?”
“She’s in. And she doesn’t think any more of my use of symbolic language than you do.”
“I always admired her. What now, boss?”
“I’d better call Peter and tell him what happened. Then how about we drop over next door and shake some trees?”
She sighed. “You just don’t know good advice when you hear it, do you?”
It turned out we were able to go next door sooner than we thought. Peter, The Tabor Group’s receptionist told me, was home sick, and Leslie was out. I left a message that it was urgent one of them get in touch with me, clicked off, and said to Lydia, “I do have Peter’s cell number. But, you know, the guy doesn’t feel well. Maybe we should give him a break, just for a little?”
“You mean, just while the Wicked Witch of the West is still at Dorothy’s?”
“Now who’s using unauthorized analogies?” We stepped into the hall and shut the door. “Lock up, you who knowest the code.”
“It’s giraffe,” Lydia said, poking buttons. “He made the letters into numbers.”
“What do you do for the r?”
She gave me a baffled look so like Sam’s I had to laugh. “The one and then the eight. No one ever said it had to be one letter, one number.”
“Of course. My mistake.”
It took a couple of loud pounds to get Cromley’s door opened. When it flew wide with the customary yank, Cromley stood there, red-faced.
“Oh, God. What the hell do you want? Get lost.”
Seeing Lydia didn’t seem to soften her reaction to me. Or maybe it had, and that was why she hadn’t socked me. The hand that wasn’t on the doorknob was balled in a fist.
“We have news. You’d better let us come in.”
“Why?”
“Really,” Lydia said, “it’s a good idea.”
Cromley stood, clench-jawed, for another few seconds, then stepped aside. We walked past her on the narrow path and she slammed the door. Looking at the piled chaos of rolls and boxes, cans and brushes, I was reminded of Tony Oakhurst’s turtles. What would Cromley be like, I wondered, without her shell?
We reached the clearing by the paint-smeared couch, where Sherron Konecki stood glowering. If I’d been wearing an outfit that snazzy, I wouldn’t have sat down in this room, either.
I said, “Hope we’re not interrupting anything.”
“You are,” Konecki snapped. “What do you want?”
“We thought you’d both like to know the police just arrested Sam.”
“What?” That panicked burst came from Cromley. Konecki’s eyes widened just a little, but she said nothing.
“On suspicion of murder. The woman who was killed at the Whitney last night.”
After a moment, Konecki asked calmly, “Why?”
Cromley looked at me helplessly.
“They have physical evidence. The detective wouldn’t be more specific.”
Cromley found her voice. “But—”
With a sound like the ice you’re standing on starting to crack, Konecki laughed. “Well,” she said to Cromley. “There you go. Our arrangement’s off.”
Cromley, both hands now in fists, said desperately, “Sherron!”
But Konecki turned and slid past me and Lydia. She strode to the door and pulled it open. Pausing in the frame of the doorway—Woman Leaving Room, in Relief and Anger—she asked me, “Does he have an attorney?”
“Yes.”
She arched a single eyebrow. “A good one?”
“Yes.”
“If he needs anything, call me.”
Konecki shot Cromley another triumphant look before she stalked down the hall to the elevator. Cromley made no move to follow but stared after her, looking like she was about to cry.
“That was interesting,” I said. “What arrangement would that be, the one that’s now off?”
Cromley swiveled to face me, staring poison. “None of your damn business! Get out.”
I said to Lydia, “The two least likely contestants ever on Let’s Make a Deal. One of them pleased that their arrangement fell through, the other upset. What does that suggest to you?”
“That one wanted it a lot more than the other.”
“But the one who didn’t want it was going to do it anyway.”
“So the one who wanted it must have been very persuasive.”
“But her persuasiveness went up in smoke with the news of Sam’s arrest.”
We both looked at Cromley.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “Sherron and I had a deal and now she’s rethinking, so what? Get out.”
“Rethinking, based on Sam’s arrest,” I said. “For being a serial killer. Oh, but you don’t think he is, do you?”
“He’s not,” she retorted, but it sounded automatic and she didn’t meet my eyes.
“You’re a bad liar,” Lydia said gently. “You had something important to tell Sam. You also told Sherron Konecki something, maybe the same thing, or else she told you something, that got you two in business together even though she didn’t want it. Sam’s on his way to jail; you’d better tell us.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Sam is,” I said. “But he’s not a killer.”
“Yes, he is! He was in prison for it!”
I regarded her. “ ‘That was completely different.’ That was your answer when I made that point yesterday. Now you’ve changed your mind?”
Cromley flushed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out! I want you both out of here right now, or I’ll call the police myself.”
I didn’t know how empty Cromley’s threat was, but there were other people we needed to talk to and I judged the chances of us getting anything from her to be at zero. I’d have called it in negative numbers, but as Lydia had said, Cromley was a bad liar. She slammed the door behind us as we left.
23
“I want to call Peter,” I said as we walked back down the hall. “But from Sam’s studio. With the door open.”
“So we can see if Cromley leaves,” Lydia said, keying in Sam’s combination.
“I have an idle interest in two things.” We stepped into Sam’s studio. “One, if she does leave, where she’s going, with whatever information she has that Konecki doesn’t care about anymore. And two—”
“What she had in her hand.”
“You saw that, too?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I withdraw the question.”
“Something small,” Lydia said. “Something she didn’t want us to know about, but something she didn’t want to leave where Sherron could grab it. And something, therefore, that has to do with the arrangement that’s off.”
“You’re reading my mind.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to? Now, read mine.”
“You want to—”
We heard the door down the hall click open.
Lydia gave it a couple of beats. “Okay,” she said to me conversationally. “Bye. Talk later.” Sauntering out to the hall, she almost bumped into Cromley on her way to the elevator.
Cromley stopped. “What are you doing in Sam’s studio?”
“Bill has some calls to make,” Lydia said pleasantly. “I’m leaving, myself. We have other cases besides this one, and until Sam’s arraigned or released, there’s not a lot we can do here. Unless you want to tell us—”
“As if.” Cromley strode ahead of Lydia and just about punched the elevator button.
When the elevator door closed in front of them, Lydia was looking at her phone and Cromley was looking like it was a good thing the elevator wasn’t a pressure cooker. She’d have blown the top off.
I walked to the window to see where they went. Lydia’s plan, of course, was to follow Cromley, but as it turned out, she didn’t have to go far. They issued onto the sidewalk, Cromley in the lead. Lydia stopped and looked at her phone some more and Cromley, without a glance at her,
stalked across the street to Tony Oakhurst’s studio.
My phone rang.
“See that?” Lydia said when I answered.
“I did. A lot of cross-pollination going on this afternoon. If she goes anywhere else, stay with her. Let me know.”
“I have something else you want to know. 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5.”
“What’s that?”
“The code to Cromley’s studio. It’ll save you lock picking time. Sam told me while he was showing me his.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked him nicely.”
“You’re a genius.”
“No, I’m just nice. Listen, you’d better hurry. She might come storming out of Oakhurst’s and back upstairs any minute. It seems to be the thing to do today.”
Knowing Cromley’s code did a lot more than save me lock picking time. I’m not bad, but combination codes test the limit of my skill; I might not have gotten in at all. I found the code Lydia had given me depressingly, though not surprisingly, unimaginative, but it worked.
I closed the door behind me and stood just inside Cromley’s studio, wondering where in the hell to start. I was looking for the small thing she’d held in her fist that had unfavorably but unquestionably impressed Sherron Konecki. It was possible Cromley had taken it with her, maybe to talk to Tony Oakhurst about, or maybe just so she’d know where it was. But it was also possible she hadn’t. From all accounts, Cromley and Oakhurst didn’t like each other. Oakhurst was intimidating in a way Konecki wasn’t, for all her imperial posturing and all his hail-fellow friendliness. He was a large man with a jump-and-the-net-will-appear reputation and a penchant for metaphorically prying off turtle’s shells. A thin, angry woman with a case to make, whatever it was, might have chosen to leave Exhibit A behind.
On the other hand, I thought as I stood there, she might have left a five-hundred-pound gorilla behind, sleeping among the piles and boxes, and unless it snored, I wouldn’t find it. Searching this kind of disarrayed haystack for a needle that might not even be here could well be a fool’s errand.
But I’d been on those before. I moved into the room, trying to be methodical. I opened drawers holding jumbles of paint tubes, lifted papers that seemed to have bumps in the middle of the stack like the pea in the princess’s bed. I looked in cans of brushes and on tables thick with pencils and erasers. I guessed Cromley didn’t have a pencil and eraser drawer.
And just after that thought, I heard Sam’s voice in my head. She says literally no one ever goes near her easels.
I threaded my way to the back of the room, where Cromley’s three easels stood by the windows. The paintings on two of them didn’t look like they’d changed since yesterday, but though I couldn’t be sure, it seemed like more scarlet, cardinal, and crimson had blossomed on the center one, the one Lydia had been looking at. I stood before it, looking not at the painting but at the area around it. The table, the palette, the brush tray. The cleaning rags.
With great care I opened each bunched-up rag. Cromley had quite a few, mounded in a volcano-shaped heap, but here, as with her lock combination—and her canvases, if I reverted to art critic mode—her imagination was limited. What I was looking for was wrapped in the rag buried at the bottom of the pile.
At least I assumed it was what I was looking for: a small box, the velvet-covered kind you get from a jeweler. Using a rag as a glove, I opened it. Inside, on satin, rested three single earrings.
I wrapped the box in its rag and stuck it in my pocket. I trod the barely cleared path back to the door, cracked it open, and peered into the hall. I saw no one, so I slunk out and giraffed my way into Sam’s studio.
24
As I shut Sam’s door behind me, my phone rang.
“Get out,” Lydia said.
“I’m way ahead of you. I’m already out and lounging around at Sam’s, mission accomplished. She’s on her way back?”
“Waiting for the elevator.”
“Okay, come on up. We need to talk to her.”
I cut the call and waited. The elevator bell dinged; that would be Cromley. By just about the time Cromley would’ve walked—or stomped—down the hall to her studio, I heard her door open and slam. Then the bell dinged a second time. I stepped into the hallway, closing Sam’s door behind me, and watched Lydia emerge from the elevator.
“You found something?” Lydia said, walking toward me.
“I did.” I took the box from my pocket, unfolded the rag, and showed her the contents.
“Oh, God, Bill,” she breathed. She met my eyes. “The trophies? From the killings?”
“Or what looks like that. I think we want to know what they really are, where they came from, and why Cromley had them.” I stuck the box back in my pocket for the walk to Cromley’s studio.
It took some hard pounding on Cromley’s door to get even a shouted answer from inside, and when it came, it was “Go away!”
“No,” I yelled back, and kept pounding.
Finally the door was jerked open. Cromley, ashen-faced, stared from me to Lydia and back. “What the fuck do you want?”
“To talk about these.” I took the box from my pocket again, unwrapped it, and opened it.
For a moment, Cromley froze. Then she threw a wild look at the pile of rags behind her. Whipping her head back to me, she croaked, “Where did you get those?”
I nodded toward the easels.
“What? How—” She charged to the back and starting flinging rags into the air. Finally she spun to face us. “You bastard! You fucking bastard. You broke in? You fucking broke into my studio? You son of a bitch. You can’t do that. This is my studio. You can’t just come crashing in here and taking my things.”
“Your things,” I said. “These are your things?”
Lydia and I stepped in from the hall and I shut the door.
Cromley stopped, looking sick. “Of course they are. They’re mine, I wear them. Give them back.” She grabbed for the box, but I pulled it out of her reach.
“They don’t look like your style,” Lydia said.
“What the fuck do you know?”
“Not much,” Lydia said. “Why don’t you tell us?”
“Tell you what?”
“Where you got them.”
“Some store somewhere, I don’t remember.”
I looked at Lydia. “I don’t know about you, but I’m too tired for this bullshit. Let’s go.”
I turned and opened the door again. Cromley choked out, “Wait! Where are you going?”
Leaving the door open, I turned back and said, “To see Detective Grimaldi. I’m betting these are either the trophies from the killings Sam claims he did, or something put together to pass as them. And I’m betting Grimaldi will know which, and will really, really want to know why the hell you had them.”
In a voice that had devolved from choked to strangled, Cromley said, “Close the goddamn door.”
I shrugged but closed it. Cromley opened her mouth to speak, but before she did, I could practically see a lightbulb go on over her head. She gave me a sly glance. “If you show them to the detective, she’ll want to know where you got them. And I’ll tell her you broke in here and stole them. That wouldn’t be so good for your license, would it?”
I laughed and Lydia smiled. Lydia said, “You watch too many movies. Bill’s license has been hanging by a thread for years. One more B and E won’t make any difference.”
“Especially,” I added, “if it produces evidence in a multiple murder case.”
“But that can’t be evidence! You didn’t have a warrant or anything.”
“I don’t need a warrant. I’m a thief. And you didn’t have one when you stole them from Sam’s studio, either.”
“That wasn’t stealing. He’s my friend.”
“Oh, so that is where you got them?”
Cromley’s eyes widened. She made a tiny sound.
“Tell us,” I said.
She didn’t respond.
“All right, never
mind. We can let the police decide what’s evidence and who stole what.”
Cromley stumbled to the clearing and dropped onto the cruddy couch. She put her head in her hands.
Lydia walked over and sat down beside her. “It’s okay,” she said gently. “I’m betting you were trying to help Sam. That’s what I told Bill.”
After a moment, Cromley lifted her head and wiped her damp eyes. She gave me a glance of pure hatred and then shifted to face Lydia.
“That’s right,” she said, just above a hoarse whisper and only to Lydia.
“Can you tell me about it?”
Cromley swallowed. “This morning. I checked in Sam’s studio when I got here, but he wasn’t there. I was working, waiting for him to come back, and I heard his door close. I didn’t hear the elevator or him opening the door, but sometimes I don’t hear things when I’m working. Because I’m concentrating, you know? So when I heard it close, I ran out. He wasn’t in the hall. I thought, oh good, maybe he was just getting here, not leaving, and I knocked, but he didn’t answer. He sometimes doesn’t hear either, when he’s working, so I went in.”
Cromley paused. Sam’s miserable voice came back to me, complaining about people coming and going in his studio.
Softly, Lydia prompted, “But he wasn’t there?”
“No one was there. I thought, oh shit, I missed him, and I just sort of stood there. Because I was so worried about him and he didn’t answer my calls or texts, you know?” For some reason that got me another glare. “And while I was standing there, I saw the drawer was a little bit open. The one where he keeps his pencils.”
Lydia nodded.
“I got—a kind of chill? It wasn’t open much, just a little, but it wasn’t like that when I went in the first time and Sam never leaves the drawers open, or the cabinets, or anything. It’s his OCD.”
Lydia nodded again.
“I thought, he must have been seriously upset when he was there—I mean, kind of crazed, to leave a drawer open. So I went to close it so it wouldn’t upset him when he came back. But it was a little stuck. So I opened it to see why. And I found that box.” Cromley stopped as if that were the end of the story.
“What did you do?”
A tiny flash of the Cromley fire flared at Lydia. “Obviously, I took it.”
