Peterson lit another cigarette and inhaled, pocketing his lighter, then bent down to examine a large garden ornament that had toppled over on its side, resting next to Barr’s back door. Light from within the kitchen reflected on the decorative brass object and its thick wrought-iron base.
That must have been the murder weapon. There was a dark stain covering a dented portion of the brass design, clumped with hair and probably brain tissue, too.
“But you knew who she was,” Mike said.
“Minerva Hunt.”
“You’ve met her before?”
“I’ve seen her in the building occasionally. She’s Tina’s landlady, if I’m not mistaken. Her name was on the buzzer before Tina moved in. I mean, I’ve never been introduced to her.”
“Did you touch the handbag, Billy?”
“No way.”
“How about the tote?”
Schultz hesitated a second too long before answering. “Maybe.”
“Whaddaya mean, ‘maybe’?” Peterson asked.
“Well, I saw the initials on it. M.H. I just turned it around-it was upside down-to make sure I was reading them right.”
“You tell the 911 operator-?”
“That I thought it was Minerva Hunt? Yes, I did.”
I took a few steps backward to the door and glanced toward the body. The shoulder strap of the python-skin bag still hung on the woman’s shoulder, but the contents had been strewn on the floor. Next to her was a large vinyl tote, the maker’s logo-now drenched in blood-garishly stamped all over it. The gold monogrammed initials of its owner-M.H.-were hard to miss.
“Just a minute, Billy,” Mike said, brushing past me to walk into the kitchen. His cell phone was ringing, and he answered it out of the presence of his witness. “Hello?”
The caller spoke to him and he held up a finger to me. “DCPI.”
The deputy commissioner of public information had gotten word of a murder on Manhattan ’s Upper East Side. Mike would have to keep that office up to speed on every development, no matter how minor, because newshounds would be on the scene in minutes.
“Only a tentative so far. We haven’t even started to look for next of kin,” Mike said. “No driver’s license. Nothing confirmed. Peterson’s got a couple of guys back at the office trying to run it down.”
I heard the front door of the apartment slam shut and footsteps-it sounded like a woman in spike heels-coming down the hallway. I was hoping to see Tina Barr, thinking she might shed some light on this.
“Give me a break, Guido, we just got here. We’re waiting for the ME now,” Mike said. “The broad was DOA, yeah. Don’t go with it yet, but it could be Hunt. Minerva Hunt, okay?”
The Chandleresque brunette-tall, lean, and tough looking-struck a pose in the doorway of the kitchen, dressed also in a well-tailored and probably expensive black suit. She looked through me as though I were invisible, tossed back her hair, and smiled at Mike.
“Now what kind of detective work is that?” she asked him. “Do I look dead to you?”
SEVEN
Minerva Hunt was perched on the corner of Mike Chapman’s desk in the offices of the Manhattan North Homicide Squad.
Mike seemed to be as interested in her affect as he was in her appearance. I watched him look her over again as she glanced around the room. She was casually coiffed and carefully made up to accent her dark eyes and full lips.
“Doesn’t exactly have the makings of a physical plant for a think tank, does it?” Hunt said, scanning the room.
The desks that were positioned back to back with each other had been cheap when they were purchased twenty years earlier. Computer equipment was usually outdated by the time it was installed. The drunken arrestee groaning on the bench in the holding pen behind us, who had beaten his mother-in-law to death just hours ago, was a harsh reminder of the business at hand.
“Most of the time we get it done,” Mike said. “You feeling better?”
Two hours earlier, when Minerva Hunt first saw the corpse on the kitchen floor, she had lost her composure. But the emotional outburst was short-lived, and a frosty veneer had settled over her like a thin sheet of ice.
“Karla Vastasi?” Mike asked, making notes on the steno pad he carried in his jacket pocket.
“Karla with a K, Detective. Could I trouble you to ask the lieutenant for one of his cigarettes, Mr. Wallace? And don’t tell me about the no smoking rules. I really need it.”
“There’s a chair for you here, Ms. Hunt,” Mike said.
“I’m perfectly comfortable,” she said, recrossing her shapely legs, which had caught the attention of the two older detectives working on the far side of the room.
“How long ago did you hire her?”
“She came to me during the winter. I’d say it’s been eight or nine months.”
“What did she do for you, exactly?”
“I told you, Mr. Chapman. Karla was my housekeeper. That’s what we call them now, isn’t it? I mean we don’t say things like ‘maid.’”
“Did she live with you?”
“No. She slept at my apartment occasionally when I traveled. Took care of the dog if I was called away.”
“And where is your home?”
“Thanks, Detective,” Hunt said to Mercer. She stood up and let him light her cigarette for her, holding her perfectly manicured hands around his. “I’ve got a town house on Seventy-fifth Street. Between Madison and Park.”
“Where did Karla live?”
“ Queens. Somewhere in Queens,” Hunt said, sticking the edge of a brightly painted red fingernail between her two front teeth while she thought. “The agency will have an exact address for her. Matter of fact, I probably have some receipts from the car service I use. Sometimes I sent her home that way if it was late or she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Family? Do you know anything about Karla’s relatives?”
“There’s a sister here in the States. Connecticut, I think. The rest are back home.”
“Where’s home?” Mike asked.
“Which is the country where the women all have such perfect skin? You know…they all come here to be facialists?” Minerva asked, looking at me. “ Romania, isn’t it? Yes, she’s Romanian. The employment agency has all that information.”
“How old was she, do you know?”
“She told me she was forty-five.”
I guessed Hunt to be a few years older than that.
“Did she have a husband, a boyfriend, a social life?”
“The ex is back in the old country. And no, no social life on my time.”
“She’s a good-looking woman,” Mike said. “Never a guy hanging around?”
Hunt inhaled and flicked her ashes on the floor. “She asked to sleep at the house once or twice because the man she was dating got a bit too possessive, maybe a little rough. But I never went into that with her, and I think they broke up during the summer.”
“Let me ask you, Ms. Hunt, did anyone ever get the two of you confused?”
She looked at Mike as though he had just punched her in the face. “Confused? The girl could barely form a proper sentence in English. She cleans house, makes the beds, washes the dishes.”
“Physically, Ms. Hunt. Karla was about your height, had a nice figure, hair about the color of yours-”
“And she was the help, detective. I’m not sure who would have had trouble getting that clear. My friends? The dry cleaner? The butcher? I don’t know if you meant that as a compliment to her or an insult to me.”
“We’ve got to figure out if whoever killed Ms. Vastasi was looking for her,” Mercer said, “or consider the possibility that she was mistaken for you. You own that apartment, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t spend any time there.”
“You went tonight.”
“Obviously. I think that’s the second or third time I’ve set foot in it. And I sent Karla there this morning.”
“Why?” Mercer asked.
The detect
ives were playing Hunt off against each other, Mercer distracting her from Mike’s comment that she found so offensive.
“Because I got word that the tenant had moved out. It was rather abrupt, and I wanted to know what shape the apartment was in. I wanted it cleaned out.”
Mike flashed me his best I-told-you-so look, then shook his head. Tina Barr was gone. I’d been puzzled by her connection to this tragic event from the moment I saw Karla’s body, and now the urgency of Battaglia’s directive to find Tina made sense.
“You lived there at one time, didn’t you?” Mercer asked. Billy Schultz had told us Hunt’s name used to be on the buzzer.
“Never.”
“Someone using your name, before Tina Barr moved in?”
“Ridiculous. What reason would anyone have to do that?”
No point pushing her on that tonight. There would be neighbors and witnesses to confirm or deny what Schultz said.
“Ms. Hunt, Karla seemed a bit overdressed to be cleaning an apartment,” I said.
She gave me a glance. “Remind me, young lady. Who are you?”
“Alex Cooper. From the district attorney’s office.”
“Well, then, you’re working overtime. I’m so glad I voted for Paul Battaglia, darling. Four times already, or has it been five? ‘Don’t play politics with people’s lives’-that’s a good mantra for a prosecutor.”
I was tempted to ask her whether she had spoken to Battaglia early this morning, but I knew better than to give her that advantage. I would call him as soon as we took a break.
“The clothes Karla was wearing-”
“They’re mine, Ms. Cooper. Old clothes, of course. It’s either the staff or the thrift shop. I hate to say I wouldn’t have been caught-well, dead-in that outfit again this fall.”
From Park to Fifth avenues, it was often hard to tell the matrons from the nannies, au pairs, and housekeepers strolling the sidewalks. The latter often sported last year’s fashions, handed down at the end of the season. They carried home leftover food and goody-bag giveaways in the instantly recognizable shopping bags tossed out by their employers: the robin’s-egg blue of Tiffany, the bright orange of Hermès, the pale lavender of Bergdorf Goodman, and the shiny black and white of Chanel.
“The tote with your initials on it?”
Hunt stood and crushed the cigarette with the ball of her black patent pump.
“I hate those logo bags, Ms. Cooper. One sees oneself coming and going. It was a gift, and I passed it on to Karla.”
“It’s a bit odd that she went to clean an apartment without taking some work clothes to change into,” I said.
“How do you know she didn’t?” Hunt snapped at me. “Maybe she put them down on her way in, somewhere else in the apartment. Maybe the thief took them.”
“The police didn’t find any clothes.”
“We’ll give the pad another look,” Mike said. He wanted to be the good cop again. He would like the challenge that this arrogant woman presented, perhaps as much as he liked her looks. “The ME was wrapping up when we left to come back here. Taking Karla’s body to the morgue. We’ll go over the place more carefully in the morning.”
“Listen, Detective Chapman,” Hunt said, softening as she talked. “I’ll try to get a number for her sister. If there’s any issue about funeral expenses, I’ll take the bill.”
“Thanks for that. We’ll be doing a lot of work with you on this investigation, so you might as well get to know us. First thing is, call me Mike.”
“Okay, Mike. You do the same.”
“Fair enough. Just tell me what you like. Min? Minnie?”
“Minnie’s a mouse, Detective. I’m Minerva.”
“Minerva, the warrior goddess.”
“Now that, Mike, is only a myth.” Hunt crossed her arms, and one side of her mouth lifted into a smile. She was practically nose to nose with him. “Just a myth.”
There was nothing about military history-from Roman mythology to real-life conflict-that Chapman didn’t know.
“The warrior part?” he asked, and Hunt laughed.
“We’ve got to talk about getting you some coverage,” Mercer said. “The lieutenant has someone standing by to take you home. And if you don’t mind, we’d like to give you a guard for tomorrow.”
The commissioner wouldn’t allow the same mistake the department had made, refusing my request to provide protection for Tina Barr.
“I’ve got my own security. Thanks for the offer, but I don’t need yours.”
“Security?” Mike asked.
“The gentleman who dropped me off at the apartment tonight and followed us here. Didn’t you make the tail, Detective? You’ve surprised me again.”
Mike chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“What’s that about?” Mercer asked. “Why have you got protection?”
“I’m a Hunt. And if you were thinking tomato sauce and ketchup, you’d be wrong.”
“I was thinking oil, actually,” Mike said. “Something thicker than tomato sauce.”
“Even better than that, Detective. Real estate. New York city real estate. My great-grandfather was a partner of John Jacob Astor’s. Jasper Hunt was his name. We still own more of Manhattan than it’s polite to talk about. Be careful where you walk, Detective. I wouldn’t want you stepping on me.”
“Well, what makes you Hunts so unpopular you need security 24/7?”
She looked at her watch as she answered. “We’re not unpopular in most circles, Mike. But my father made a point of teaching me early on to protect my assets. All of them.”
Mercer shook his head at me. He didn’t like the direction Mike was going any more than I did.
Minerva Hunt’s name was familiar to me from society columns and media coverage of philanthropic events. It made no sense that she, an heiress to a great family fortune, was micromanaging a basement apartment in Carnegie Hill.
“Going back a bit, Ms. Hunt. Perhaps I didn’t understand what you meant, but you own the apartment in which Tina Barr was living?” I asked.
“Not that dank little apartment,” she said, tsk-tsking at me without missing a beat. “We own the building, Ms. Cooper. The whole row of brownstones on that street.”
Then why didn’t Billy Schultz recognize her name when he saw it on the buzzer, as he claimed he had before Tina Barr moved in?
“And the tenants pay rent to-?” I asked.
“Not to me, Ms. Cooper. I don’t go around collecting with a tin cup on the first of the month. There’s a management company, of course.”
“Of course,” Mike said, taking Minerva’s part, as though the questions I was asking made no sense. “What’s that called?”
“Mad Hatter Realty.”
“ Alice in Wonderland?” Mike asked, laughing.
“Don’t laugh. My grandfather, Jasper the Second, was mad. Eccentric is what the rich like to call it, but mad is what he was. My father named one of the companies for him.”
“So you did have a special relationship with Tina Barr, then?” I asked. “It’s not just a coincidence that she lived in your apartment.”
“Tina worked for my father for a period of time.”
“Doing what?”
“He’s a collector, Ms. Cooper. Rare books. It’s an inherited trait in the male line of Hunts,” Minerva said, talking directly to me for the first time. I thought she was finally giving up her flippant attitude. But she went on. “For generations they’ve all seemed to love the same things-rare books, expensive wine, and cheap women.”
“And Barr?”
“She was cataloging the collection. My father’s an old man, Mike. He’s close to ninety, and quite incapacitated now. Changed his will more often than I change my shoes. I just made sure she had a place to live while she was working for him.”
“Did he fire her?”
“He’s not in a condition to fire anyone. Tina quit-that’s what Papa’s secretary told me.”
Minerva Hunt removed her BlackBerry from
her pocketbook and dialed a number, pressing the digits with her long nails. Someone picked up on the first ring. “Carmine? Are you in front of the police station? I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Where did Barr go?”
“Why don’t you check with our management office? Perhaps she left forwarding information.”
Hunt was pulling on her short leather gloves-a fashion statement or a sign that she was through with us for the night, not protection against the mild weather.
“You have all my numbers,” she said. “I expect we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Were you looking for anything in particular in that basement apartment?” Mercer asked as she readied herself to leave. “Anything you sent Karla Vastasi to retrieve?”
Minerva Hunt backed up a step or two. “I thought I told you why she was there.”
“Just cleaning up, I think you said. Nothing of value you might be interested in?” Mercer said, talking as he walked into Peterson’s office, mimicking Hunt’s motion with a pair of latex gloves that he put on as she talked.
“I assume Ms. Barr took whatever belonged to her. The apartment was sublet to her furnished. We keep a few of our properties available for help who need temporary lodging. I wanted to make certain that none of the belongings was disturbed. You’ll allow me to do that later in the week, I’m sure.”
Mercer emerged with an object in the palm of his large hand. It was a small book that appeared to be covered with precious jewels.
Minerva Hunt’s eyes widened. Her calfskin-covered fingers reached out toward it.
“You know what this is?” he asked.
“It once belonged to my family,” she said, glaring at him while she kept her arm outstretched, in expectation that he’d turn it over. “Where did you get it?”
“The ME found it after you and Alex left the kitchen. It was on the floor, under Karla’s body, tucked inside the jacket of her suit.”
I could see dark stains on the surface of the gems that must have been Karla Vastasi’s blood.
“I want the book, Detective. Do you know how much it’s worth?” There was nothing playful about Minerva Hunt’s attitude.
Lethal Legacy Page 6
