Connors was at his desk in the almost empty detectives’ room when I arrived at the Hollywood station at four-thirty after gathering Crime Sheet data from West Hollywood. Most detectives begin the day around seven-thirty and leave at two-thirty, so I was pleased to find him there.
He was doing paperwork and grunted in response to my hello.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” I asked.
“Overjoyed. You complete me,” he said, his tone dour.
“I don’t know who leaked the news about the possible homicide or the pregnancy. It wasn’t me, Andy. Do you believe me?”
“Yeah, sure. Now you can sleep at night.” He sounded tired.
I pulled over a chair and sat down. “I’ve left messages all weekend and several today. Where have you been?”
“See, this is why I’m not married, Molly. Nag, nag, nag. For your information, Lenore Saunders is not the only case we’re working. What’s up?”
“You first. Did you get the autopsy results?”
“They’re doing the autopsy today, and we should have a full report, including some lab results, tomorrow. I told Mrs. Rowan yesterday that she could schedule the funeral for Wednesday. I think the Saunders family is taking care of the arrangements.” He named a chapel in Universal City, near Forest Lawn.
“Talk about putting on a face for the public.”
Connors shrugged. “FYI, there were only two sets of fingerprints on the scissors, Molly. Lenore’s, superimposed on the nurse’s.”
“There’s a box of latex gloves in every room, in case you didn’t know.” I’d noticed that when I visited Lenore. “The killer could’ve helped himself to a pair, done the deed, and then put the scissors in Lenore’s hand.”
“The gloves would’ve smudged the nurse’s prints.”
I thought about that. “What if he brought another pair of scissors to do the deed, and put the nurse’s pair in Lenore’s hand?”
Connors furrowed his brow. “It’s possible,” he allowed. “Let’s wait to hear what the M.E. says. Preliminary report is still suicide.”
I stifled a wave of impatience. “And the trashed apartment?”
“What I said before. She had stuff on someone. That someone wanted it back. Maybe it’s the journal, maybe something else.”
“What’s the time of death?”
“The M.E. says sometime between eleven P.M. and five A.M., but we can narrow it down. Lenore was fine when the nurse made her three o’clock rounds. We’re getting a record of any phone calls Lenore made that night.”
“Did the nurse say Lenore was agitated that night?”
“She had a bad evening, so they gave her a shot of Haldol and, later, some pills. It was tricky, because of the pregnancy. They wanted to wean her off the meds, but Korwin was afraid that without them she’d be at risk.”
“So someone posing as a nurse or doctor could have given her more Haldol. What about a list of all the people who visited her room?”
“Not many visitors on the floor that time of night, according to the nurses, aside from staff. Which is another vote for suicide.”
“I imagine it’s not hard to get a hospital uniform and walk around unnoticed. Even without a uniform.” Attitude, I’ve learned, is everything. “And if Lenore’s room was away from the nurses’ station. . . . Was the station ever unattended that night?”
“Her room was at the end of the hall.” Connors hesitated. “Actually, there was an emergency in her bay a little after three. A patient tried getting out of his bed and fell. And yes, the killer could have created the diversion. But that could just as easily have been a coincidence.” He sat back and laced his hands behind his head. “Okay, your turn.”
I gave him edited summaries of my talks with Nina, Jillian, and Korwin. Some things I wanted to think about first.
“You’ve been a busy bee,” he said. “So what’s your take, Miss Marple?”
I do believe he was impressed. “A, Lenore knew Jillian wouldn’t be there that night. B, Jillian suspects that Robbie slept with Lenore, whom she pretty much hates, although he denied it. Jillian definitely has motive. So does Robbie’s mom. C, Lenore didn’t wear nightgowns. Which means she must have borrowed a gown from Jillian.” I allowed myself a modest smile, then frowned.
“Let me call Ted Koppel. What else?”
“Sshh.” For the second time something was tickling at my mind like a feather, and I needed to concentrate.
“You’re telling me to be quiet?” Connors asked.
I put up my hand and he stopped talking. A few seconds later I figured out what had been bothering me. “Where’s Lenore’s key?”
Connors scowled. “What?”
“She left her apartment and presumably took a cab to Saunders. She needed her key and money for the cab, so maybe she had a small wallet or purse. And if she was going for romance, she’d take a lipstick, a brush, some other stuff. But she was found without any identification. So my guess is, she left her stuff at Saunders’s house when she stormed out.”
Connors didn’t answer. I took that as a good sign.
“So who has the key now?” he asked after a few seconds in which I watched his face as he processed the question. I could picture the wheels grinding.
“Either Saunders or Betty Rowan.”
“Explain.”
“According to Nina, Betty and her ex–son-in-law are chummy. He bought her a house and he’s helping her financially—probably because she convinced Lenore to agree to the divorce.”
Connors looked skeptical. “Says who?”
“Jillian. So Betty owes him. Maybe Saunders asked her to put the purse back in the apartment. Or,” I said, thinking aloud, “maybe he kept the key and used it to get into the apartment to search for the journal himself.”
“And trashed it to make it look like it was a burglary.”
I smiled. “I knew you had potential. By the way, Lenore’s name was on some property Saunders bought when they were married. Also, Lenore was Robbie’s personal assistant. She may have been privy to information he wouldn’t want known.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about the zoning problems Ron had mentioned. “When did you talk to Korwin?”
“We talked to him several times.”
“And?”
Connors shook his head. “Sorry, Molly.”
“Talk about his work, and he’s Mr. Congeniality. As soon as I brought up Lenore, he was nervous.”
“Why wouldn’t he be? She was his patient. She’s dead. You’re a reporter asking questions he doesn’t want to answer.”
It was more than that. “He knows who the baby’s father is, doesn’t he?”
“If you’re hinting, try to be more subtle.”
“Was it Saunders? Just tell me that.”
He laughed. “You’re worse than the KGB. Korwin says he doesn’t know. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Maybe Betty Rowan knew.
Isaac, my landlord, was rocking on the porch glider. Perspiration dotted his wrinkled forehead and had plastered the sparse gray-white strands of hair to his scalp.
“How’s it going?” he asked as I walked up the three steps.
“Not bad.”
We chatted a minute. He told me about the week’s specials at the 99 Cents store and at the chain supermarkets. In return I gave him a few previews of the Crime Sheet. He loves bragging to his poker buddies that he’s in the know.
“How’s the boyfriend?” he asked.
“Which one?”
“The cute one who was here yesterday.”
“Even cuter.” I smiled. “Gotta go, Isaac. See you later.” I took a step toward my door.
“I have your New Yorker and some other magazines,” he said. “I wasn’t here when the mail came. Ernie left them in front of your door, and I didn’t want the gardener to get them wet when he hosed down the porch.”
He hoisted himself off the glider and disappeared upstairs into his apartment. A minute later he
returned and handed me an armful of magazines that looked as though a dog had danced on them.
Inside my apartment I flipped through them as I walked to the kitchen. Among them was a heavy large brown manila envelope with a return address I didn’t recognize. The flap was open.
I walked back outside with the envelope. “This was open.”
“I saw that.” Isaac shook his head. “You oughta tell Ernie.”
I suspect that Isaac looks at my mail, but he’s never opened anything before, so I didn’t see why he’d start now. Back in the apartment, I kicked off my pumps and removed the contents of the envelope—a manuscript, accompanied by a cover letter, from a cousin’s friend who wanted to know if I’d read his work and recommend an agent.
I put the manuscript and letter at the side of my desk. I’m happy to help new writers, but I’m always anxious about what to say if I don’t like their work. And who am I to judge? I hated The Bridges of Madison County.
I had two voice messages—one from an irate Robert Saunders, whose call I had no intention of returning, another from Nina. Nothing from Betty Rowan. I was in the kitchen, enjoying a glass of milk with a Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookie while looking through the rest of my mail, when the phone rang.
“I was just about to leave a second message,” Nina said. “I can’t believe what they said on the news, that Lenore was killed. It’s so awful.” Her voice quavered, and she sounded as though she was about to cry.
“They’re not sure what happened, Nina.”
“But if it’s true . . . They said she was pregnant. She must have just found out, or she would have told me. I guess Robbie’s the father, because she wasn’t seeing anyone else. I guess she was trying to hold on to him.”
“Did she tell you that they’d been together?”
“No. She probably thought I’d disapprove. But I wish she had, because I could have been there for her. She must have felt so alone. That’s probably why she phoned me that night.”
I put down my glass. “Lenore phoned you? When?”
“Late that night, or early morning. She left a message, but my machine is in the den, and I turn off the ringer in my bedroom at night so the phone won’t wake me. So I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t see the message until morning.”
I wondered why Nina hadn’t mentioned this before. “What did she say?”
“That she wanted me to call Robbie and tell him to come. That she had to see him. I keep thinking that if I hadn’t turned off my ringer, if I’d talked to her . . . It’s so awful, isn’t it? Every time I think about it, I feel like crying. I didn’t go in to work, I’m so depressed.”
“Maybe you should see Dr. Korwin, Nina.”
“I couldn’t get an appointment. The receptionist said she’d try to squeeze me in tomorrow.”
I felt a twinge of guilt at having taken her spot. “Was there something you wanted to tell me, Nina?” She didn’t answer. “You left a message for me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so . . . It’s about Lenore’s journal. The one she told you about?”
I felt a flicker of excitement. “What about it?”
“She kept a record in it of Robbie’s business dealings. That was when she saw he was going through with the divorce.”
“She told you this?”
“I was at her apartment one night when he called. She was depressed and angry. She went into her bedroom to talk, but I could hear her yelling at him, saying she didn’t trust him, that he kept lying to her and she knew it was Jillian’s fault, but she didn’t care. She was tired of his promises, she’d written it all down in her journal, everything, she could ruin him. . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Do you think I should tell the police?”
“Absolutely.” I waited while she got paper and pen, and gave her Connors’s name and phone number. “Do you know what she wrote?”
“I asked her, after she hung up. Names and dates, the amount of money involved. I don’t know details. They wouldn’t have meant anything to me, anyway. I think he must have threatened her, because she looked scared. I was scared. She told me she wasn’t going to do it. She was just so angry. She wanted to worry him.”
Robbie hadn’t known that, I thought. Neither had the people whose names Lenore had recorded.
“That Wednesday when Lenore was in the hospital, when she was feeling better?” Nina said. “She asked me to bring her the journal.”
I forced myself to sound casual. “Did you?”
“I couldn’t find it, but I was in a rush to get to the hospital. I was planning to go back to look again, but then . . . then she was dead.” Nina paused. “I think that’s why she was so upset that night. Maybe she thought Robbie took it. That could be why she left you that message, telling you she was afraid. I don’t think he took it, because how would he get into her apartment? And if he did, who broke in later and vandalized it?”
twenty-seven
“Sally can’t make it tonight,” Mindy told me as I followed her into her breakfast room. “Her husband had a last-minute business meeting, and she couldn’t get a sitter.”
Edie and my sister-in-law, Gitty, were seated at the table, stacking a double tier of tiles (called a “wall”) against their racks. I exchanged hellos, inquired about Gitty’s eight-month-old, and asked Mindy, nine months pregnant with her third child, how she was feeling.
“Put a fork in me, I’m done,” Mindy said.
“Let’s go,” Edie said, leaning over to set up my wall. “Talk later.”
Edie is thirty-four, the oldest sibling, and takes seriously the authority vested in her by her seniority. We have the same coloring—brown eyes, blond, highlighted hair (she wears hers straight and chin length)—but she’s inches shorter (five-one), and what she lacks in height, she makes up for in energy. We are polar opposites. I’m a last-minute kind of woman and tend to clutter, which I shamelessly blame on deadlines, imminent or forthcoming. Edie, who gives Israeli dance instruction three times a week and is president of her three children’s school PTA, is ruthlessly efficient and organized. Magazines are alphabetized and discarded, read or unread, after a month (neatly excised articles are immediately filed). Unlike my fridge, where foods often turn interesting colors, hers harbors no produce with wilted leaves or dimpled skins, and her freezer has enough prepared food to feed the family through seven years of biblical famine. She’s the only person I know who has never lost a sock, and her home is so spotless that her cardiac surgeon husband, Victor, could probably perform a triple bypass on her kitchen floor, whose five-year-old grout is bleached every week to its original whiteness.
Mindy, who has my mom’s dark hair and grace under pressure, is thirty-one and has two daughters with Norman, a nursing home administrator. She’s a tax attorney, not as organized as Edie, but unflappable and wise in ways that have nothing to do with her having graduated summa cum laude. I’m close to all my sisters, but Mindy’s the one on whose shoulder I cried when my marriage was falling apart. I didn’t want to worry my mom, and I sensed that Edie was impatient for me to sweep Ron out of my life. Like her china, shattered by the Northridge earthquake and quickly replaced, he was beyond repair.
Gitty is twenty-three. She’s been married two years to my brother Judah, who owns a Judaica store, so she’s relatively new to the family, and I’m sure she’s received pointers from Victor and Norman. She’s sweet but not cloying, a nutritionist who doesn’t criticize the crap we eat at our weekly games.
Bubbie G calls Edie a bren (a dynamo) and Mindy, five-eight, a hoicheh (tall) and a kliegeh (clever). Liora is a neshomeleh, a sweetheart. Judah is a lamden, an erudite person, Noah is a brillyant, a diamond, and Joey, a mazik, a rascal, a name that has stuck though he hasn’t done anything rascally in years. I’m a kochleffl, a busybody, as if you didn’t know, but am also a lebedikeh, a lively one. Ron is a choleryeh (accent on the second syllable), which is the Yiddish for “cholera.” Aside from Ron, Bubbie hasn’t given epithets to her grandchildren’s spouses, so I suppose he shou
ld feel special.
I took my seat and built my wall. We play the American version of mah jongg, not the Chinese. It has elements of rummy-Q and gin but is more complicated and challenging. You play with fourteen tiles, which are dealt from the walls. Tiles come in three suits (red Craks, green Bams, and blue Dots), numbered one through nine. There are also eight Jokers, eight Flower tiles, sixteen Winds (four East, four North, four South, and four West), and twelve Dragons (red, green, and blue ones called Soaps).
You play the game by picking and discarding tiles, and passing a tile when a player calls it. Your goal is to assemble sets of tiles (singles or in groups of two, three, four, or five) into one of the hands created annually by the national league in New York, at which point you proclaim, “Mah jongg!” and collect winnings from the other players. Quarters to fifty cents from each player if you’re playing face-card value, but the game is about fun, not money. It sounds impossibly difficult on paper, I know, and it takes a while to become familiar with the tiles and the sets and the rules. There are instruction booklets, and I could give you details, but it’s like having sex. The only way to learn is to do it.
I love mah jongg. The feel of the cool, ivory tiles; the click they make when you’re building them into a wall or arranging them on your rack. I love the idea that I’m doing something exotic, the smell and taste of the popcorn, the laughter and the gentle gossip and the release from the week’s stress. I learned the game when I was eleven from my mom, who’s been playing for over thirty years with the same core group of women. My sisters and I started our own game five years ago and Edie’s friend Sally joined us a little later. Since her return from Israel, Liora has been playing sporadically, when dates and homework allow, but Gitty has become addicted like the rest of us. I rarely skip a game, only when I’m on a deadline.
I finished building my wall, and the game began. Gitty dealt tiles from her wall. There’s an initial exchange of tiles, and we were all quiet, selecting possible hands. Then Gitty discarded a tile and named it, and the game took on its rhythm, each player picking a tile, discarding a tile, naming it. Five Crak, three Dot, Flower. . . . There were snippets of conversation—bulletins, really—about community news, movies we’d seen, family stuff. Talking is okay as long as it doesn’t slow the game or disturb concentration.
Blues in the Night Page 17
