The Valentine's Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  I told my friend and neighbor Melanie Gross that I would be leaving for a few days and sketched out the little I knew. Like me, she was excited and intrigued, not to mention very encouraging about taking on an adventure while pregnant.

  “I worked till the last minute with my first,” she said. “And that meant getting up, driving to school, and teaching a full schedule, a lot of it on my feet. Don’t worry, and drink lots of milk.”

  It sounded like good advice, the second half of it perhaps easier to follow. I called Amy Grant and told her I was flying to Buffalo and would stay with Carlotta for a few days. She had already heard the news about the surfacing of the bodies and she wished me luck. In this case I interpreted luck to mean that Carlotta’s husband would not be involved in the homicide—and would turn up alive. Maybe, I thought, packing my bag on Tuesday night, it was too much to hope for.

  Spring travels north a few miles a day, and even from the air I could see it had barely reached western New York. In Oakwood the trees had all leafed out; here the buds were just breaking and the air was cool but steeped with the promise of spring. I walked up the long corridor to where a small crowd waited for New York City passengers, and there was Carlotta, her eyes searching the faces of the moving group until she recognized mine.

  “Chris, you made it,” she said, coming forward, and I wondered if she had doubted that I would come.

  We shook hands. “Everything is scaled down compared to the big city. It must be nice to live in a less populated area.”

  “It is. And everything’s close. Did you check a bag?”

  “Yes.” I was carrying a small one and when she saw it, she took it from me.

  “Right downstairs. Then we’ll go out to the car. It’s a bit of a drive, but we’ll stop for lunch on the way. I’ve got you scheduled for later this afternoon, if that’s all right.”

  “It’s fine. I’m here and I want to get started.”

  The suitcase came around on the belt and Carlotta grabbed it, leaving me with two free hands and not a little embarrassment. But when I protested, she would hear none of it.

  “I brought Val’s car,” she said, as we walked into the parking lot, small by New York City standards but nowhere near as full. “It drives like a dream. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “What kind of car is it?”

  “A Mercedes. There it is.”

  “Carlotta, I can’t drive a car like that.”

  “Why? Because it’s expensive? It drives like any other car. Put your foot on the accelerator and push. That’s all there is to it.”

  “It’s funny. I asked Jack once if he wanted an expensive car, and he said maybe someday.”

  “Val wanted it now. He wanted everything now. He earned it and he got it. I hope he’ll come home to enjoy it all again.”

  She stowed my luggage in the trunk and we were off. We stopped somewhere for a light lunch, and she smiled when I ordered milk with my sandwich.

  “We decided to wait to have children,” she said.

  “I was just married last year, so this is my first opportunity. I think I told you last fall, I was a nun till two years ago. I never thought I’d have children, so it’s a real bonus for me.”

  “Then this may be your last case for a long time.”

  “Maybe,” I hedged. “I haven’t even gotten to the point where I need maternity clothes. I can’t think that far ahead.”

  “Just find Val,” she said. “Then you can retire.”

  * * *

  On the way to her house she took a detour and stopped at the point where Matty’s four-wheel drive had been found the day after the men disappeared. I haven’t traveled much, and the Great Lakes were completely new to me. If you had told me I was standing at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I would have believed it. The lake was vast, and the wind blowing off it, cold. Like the strip of beach on the Long Island Sound near my own home, this one had the cold, deserted look of off-season. The water was darkly forbidding, waves and whitecaps everywhere and the water slapping the shore as though angry.

  “It’s a great place to swim in the summer,” Carlotta said. “I know it’s hard to imagine it covered with ice and snow, but it gets that way when we have a cold winter. What happened this year around Valentine’s Day is that we had a few warm days, and I guess the ice started to melt, not around here or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did.”

  “It’s possible a gunshot may have gotten a hole started.”

  “That’s possible, too.”

  “Where was their vehicle?”

  “Right where I’ve parked.”

  “Was it locked?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was. Matty’s wife, Annie, had to find the extra key.”

  “Anything left inside?”

  She composed herself before she answered. “Val’s watch was in the backseat. It was a very fine watch. He was probably afraid of falling and damaging it.”

  She had not told me that before, not indicated in any way that Val had been with the other two men on the beach. “So we know he came this far,” I said.

  “This far, yes.”

  I didn’t say it out loud, but it certainly looked to me as though Val must have made the trek with the others. If he were going to leave them at this point, why would he leave his expensive watch behind?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Carlotta said. “You think he went with them. I think he took his watch off and walked across the beach with the others. Maybe he even started walking on the ice with them and then turned back when his head cleared, but it was too late to retrieve his watch because the car was locked. He assumed he’d pick it up in the morning.”

  “Did he go home?” I asked. “Were you able to find any indication that he went to the house, packed a bag, took a toothbrush, and then left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mean it’s possible.”

  “It’s possible. I know he didn’t take a toothbrush; I would have noticed that. But I never counted how many pairs of socks he had, how many sets of underwear, how many casual shirts. Is a navy blue shirt missing? I don’t know. I know which jacket he was wearing that night because it’s not in the closet, and I’m pretty sure he was wearing his snow boots because they’re gone, too. Aside from that, I’m just not sure.”

  “What did he wear when he took you out to lunch?”

  “A suit. It’s in his closet.”

  “So he went home and changed after he took you to the airport.”

  “Sure. All three of them probably went casual.”

  We turned away from the lake and walked back to the car.

  “You said it snowed that night,” I said.

  “A little. Enough to obliterate any footprints. And there was a wind, so the snow may have drifted a little. When a police car stopped next to Matty’s car, the cop pretty much trampled the area.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “My husband says the police do more to destroy crime scenes than anyone else does. The cop didn’t know anyone was missing at that point, so he had no reason to be careful where he walked. Anyway, if Val came back from the lake, he may have walked across another part of the beach. He had no reason to return to the car if it was locked.”

  “It’s so frustrating,” Carlotta said. “I’ve gone over and over all of this since Valentine’s Day.” She looked down at the heart-shaped ruby ring on her right hand. “A man doesn’t give his wife a gift like this at lunch and disappear after dinner without a word.”

  I had to admit it seemed unlikely. She unlocked the car and we got in.

  “How did he pay for it?” I asked, as she backed up.

  “It must have been cash. I never got a bill for it.”

  “That’s a lot of cash to carry around.”

  “It’s what we’ve always done. We both work, and when we buy each other gifts, we use our own money. We both have bank accounts in our own names.”

  “Has his been used since February fourteenth?”

&nbs
p; “The bankbooks are in his desk drawer. They haven’t been touched. And he hasn’t written any checks.”

  That would be easy enough to check. “Any credit cards?”

  “I have those records, too. Although some of the papers for the company credit card may be at the office.”

  “Did you keep much cash in the house?”

  “Never. We both thought it wasn’t safe. There’s no home safe either. We keep valuables in a box in the bank.”

  “What about insurance, Carlotta?”

  She looked blank. “Nothing that I know about.”

  “Maybe something will turn up.”

  When Carlotta finally pulled into the driveway, I couldn’t help being impressed with her house. It was large and had a lot of land, a rather extravagant residence for two people who spent a lot of time away from it. We went in through the garage and stopped in the large foyer to hang our coats in the closet. The foyer rose two stories with high windows that let in natural light.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Thank you. We put a lot of ourselves into this house. There’s still more we want to do, but it’s on its way. Come upstairs and I’ll show you your room.”

  “My” room was furnished comfortably for a guest with a double bed, a dresser, a lamp I would read by, a big closet, and my very own bathroom. I promised Carlotta I would be down as soon as I had hung up a few clothes. Before I opened my suitcase, though, I went to the large window, opened the blinds, and looked out. The land behind the house was as well cared-for as the front and appeared to amount to a couple of acres. There were flower beds, tall trees, younger trees that had probably been planted since the young couple moved in, and a stone patio that would surely be graced with summer furniture when the weather became warmer.

  I found my way to the kitchen where Carlotta was sitting at a built-in table looking over her mail. “When do we begin?” I said.

  She looked at her watch. “Pretty soon. Clark’s wife, Bambi, is first on the list. I have to call to see whether she wants to come here or wants you there.” She reached for the telephone and stopped. “A message. Let me listen first. Whenever there’s a message, I think it might be Val.”

  She pressed a button and the tape rewound, a sound that always reminded me of scurrying mice. Then a voice said, “Carlotta, this is Bambi. I’ve changed my mind. I really don’t want to talk to your friend. I’ve spent hours with the police and I’m worn out. I don’t know what she can do anyway. So let’s cancel.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Carlotta said. “She must be getting worried that the police think Clark killed Matty. This is very disappointing.”

  “Let’s not worry about it. There are plenty of other things I can do.”

  “Let me call Annie Franklin. She’ll talk to you. She’s looking forward to it.”

  I walked into the windowed breakfast room as she made her call. This was a bright, sunny house, one I would enjoy living in. Jack and I had decided to build a huge addition onto our house which would give us a family room for the first time, and a wonderful bedroom above it. Without meaning to, I had become interested in other people’s houses, how they arranged furniture, how they added on rooms. When I had moved into Aunt Meg’s house, I thought it would remain the way it was forever, but I had never imagined my life would change as much as it had. When my baby was born, we would have a bigger, more comfortable house, another fireplace, an extra bathroom. I had come a long way from my small cell at St. Stephen’s, my brown Franciscan habit, my shorn hair, and my simple life shared with a group of women.

  “She’d rather have you go over there,” Carlotta said, bringing me back to the case at hand. “She can’t get a sitter.”

  “That’s fine. You can point me in the right direction.”

  “You were right about relationships going sour. Annie’s not very anxious to spend time with Bambi. Bambi’s been giving her a hard time since the bodies surfaced.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Those men didn’t hate each other, Chris. They were friends. I know you have to be suspicious of everyone and everything that happened, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. They loved each other.”

  “Did the wives?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “No, the wives didn’t. We didn’t dislike each other, but we weren’t best friends. We got along. We spent a lot of time with each other because of our husbands, but I think each of us has a best friend outside the group. I know I do.”

  “What time am I expected there?”

  “I rescheduled for four since Bambi backed out. That gives you more than an hour. It’s a ten-minute drive.”

  “I’d like to look at Val’s desk.”

  “Come with me.”

  4

  It turned out that Val had a home office complete with the expected computer, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled mostly with books on his professional interest, a small radio, a telephone with buttons that automatically dialed a host of locations both personal and business-related, and more packages of software than I had ever seen outside a store.

  I know very little about computers and if Val had life secrets stored on his, I would have to get an expert in to help me. But for a first look I had other things in mind, and I sat down at the desk and began to open drawers. The bankbooks were in the first drawer I opened, and I took them out. There were three, each book a different color, each account at a different bank. I slid the first one out of the plastic envelope and opened it. It had pages of entries, both deposits and withdrawals, but many more of the former than the latter. I flipped to the last page and saw that the final balance was over ninety-seven thousand dollars. I took a breath. Rather a lot of cash, I thought, considering that interest rates were low. The last transaction was a withdrawal on February twelfth, two days before Val’s disappearance. He had taken over three thousand dollars out of the bank, probably, I thought, for Carlotta’s ruby ring, a pricey gift but one he could obviously afford.

  I went backwards through the pages and noticed that whenever the balance approached one hundred thousand, he would remove funds to bring the amount below that figure. From somewhere I recalled that bank accounts were insured up to that crucial number, so perhaps he took the funds and invested them elsewhere to keep the whole amount insured. It would seem to be a good idea.

  I slipped the book back in its case and took out the second one. This account was handled very differently from the first. Here there were periodic withdrawals in even amounts, one hundred, two hundred, seven hundred. I flipped to the last page and saw that the last withdrawal had been made on February second. Prior to that, the last deposit, a thousand dollars, had been made at the end of January. I opened the first book again and checked the last few entries. Sure enough, a thousand dollars had been withdrawn from book number one on the same day a deposit had been made in book number two, and for the same amount. It seemed that Val put his overflow from the first account into the second account, or something like that.

  I took the last book out of its case and opened it to the last page. Like the other two it had a large balance, over ninety thousand dollars. All told, the three books had nearly three hundred thousand dollars all together, a princely sum from my point of view. Like the second book, this one had frequent withdrawals in even amounts and more occasional deposits. I worked backwards, noting that the balance was always held over ninety thousand. When I came to the first page, I saw the name of the passbook owner for the first time, Valentine Krassky. Val and Carlotta had different last names.

  A red light on the phone caught my eye. In another part of the house, Carlotta was using the line. I turned back to my task. There seemed to be no address book in the desk, but a large Rolodex sat on the top at arm’s length from where I sat. I flipped through it for a few minutes, finding Carlotta’s number at work, Clark’s and Matty’s work and home numbers, Matty’s work number crossed out and changed several times since the card had first been written. If this
reflected his work history, he had held a number of jobs.

  Most of the names and addresses appeared to be work-related—I didn’t see anything that looked like a plumber or electrician, so that was probably Carlotta’s domain—and I left the Rolodex and turned to the papers on his desk. There were letters that Val had stamped with “Received Date,” and which I assumed he had yet to answer. He seemed to be a neat, well-organized man. All the unanswered letters had arrived within a week of his disappearance. Probably all the earlier ones had already been answered and filed away. From what I could see, these were not personal correspondence, but those having to do with business and with the kinds of things computer people have fun with. None of it made much sense to me.

  I was replacing the unanswered letters in their neat pile when Carlotta came in. She had changed into jeans and a pale blue cashmere turtleneck that gave her a look of casual sophistication. A long string of blue beads interspersed with silver added a note of eye-catching luxury.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “I discovered you and Val have different last names.”

  “I forgot to mention that. You and your husband do, too, don’t you?”

  “A little inconsistently,” I admitted. “I answer to almost anything.”

  “So do I. I’d been at my job several years when we married, and I have no brothers to carry on the family name. I decided to be the one.”

  “I’ve been looking at names and addresses and bank balances,” I said. “Val kept a lot of cash in his accounts.”

  “I think he needed to, psychologically I mean. He came from a family that had very little, and it made him feel secure to know that there was plenty of cash around. Even this—” she held up the beautiful ruby heart on her right hand—“made him feel good. He wanted to be able to do rash things with money if he chose to. It gave him a high.”