by Barbara Paul
Marian had built up a picture in her mind of a stout, matronly woman in a flowered dress. But Mrs. Yelincic was thin and wiry and wore a navy blue polyester pantsuit. She stood in front of an artificial fireplace with her hands folded neatly at her waist, like a contralto in the church choir waiting for her solo. Marian caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a gray, featureless man rising from a rocking chair, a newspaper in one hand.
Claire did the honors, introducing her as Lieutenant Larch, no first name. Mrs. Yelincic advanced to meet her, one claw extended; Marian gave both parents what she hoped was an authoritative handshake. “We are honored to meet you, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Yelincic said in a voice like razor blades. Mr. Yelincic smiled and nodded.
Marian summoned her you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent voice and said, “It’s very gracious of you to help me out, Mrs. Yelincic. I want to make sure that everything is done right.”
“Yes, I certainly hope so.” Mrs. Yelincic smiled an artificial smile. “But first, let’s go into the dining room. We waited to have dessert with you.”
“Thank you, Ivan and I stopped for a bite on the way over …” Behind his future mother-in-law, Ivan was vigorously nodding his head. “… but we didn’t have dessert,” Marian finished with an attempt at enthusiasm.
“Today I have baked a torte,” Mrs. Yelincic confided. “You must tell me what you think.”
So they were to go through an eating ritual first, before they could get down to business. They all trooped across the hall to the dining room, where Marian sat down to her second dessert of the evening. She didn’t have to lie when she told their hostess the torte was delicious.
“I don’t put raisins or any kind of fruit in the thin layers,” Mrs. Yelincic announced. “That’s wrong. I don’t care how many recipes call for dried dates or figs or anything else. Fruit does not belong in a torte. Nuts, yes. But no fruit.”
Ivan and Claire quickly agreed; Marian followed suit. Mr. Yelincic nodded and smiled.
“Do you cook, Lieutenant?” Razor-blades voice, trying to sound innocent.
Marian saw the trap. “I’m a weekend-only cook now, I’m afraid. That’s one of the things I’ve hated having to give up. I wish I still had the time to spend in the kitchen that real cooking demands. Don’t you just hate those quickie meals tossed together at the last minute?”
Mrs. Yelincic heartily agreed. “Push something in the microwave, eat five minutes later—that’s not cooking.” Ivan was trying not to laugh.
Claire said, “Mama, you work all day, sometimes you’re just too tired to cook when you get home.”
“Cook on weekends. Freeze. Then you have a good dinner waiting for you every night.”
“Oh, Mama.” Claire glanced at Ivan mischievously. “I suppose we could spend our weekends cooking.” Ivan put on an angelic look.
But Marian had passed the first test; time for the second. “But Lieutenant,” Razor Blades went on, “doesn’t it bother you, working with all those men?”
Marian pretended to think it over. “I have two women detectives working under me—all the rest are men. But you know, I never stop to think whether I’m giving instructions to a man or a woman. I work with professionals. That’s all that matters.” Stressing her authority—working under me and giving instructions.
“But don’t you get embarrassed?” the woman persisted. “Changing clothes in the same locker room!” She was clearly scandalized.
“Oh, we have separate locker rooms. That’s never been an issue.”
Mrs. Yelincic looked unbelieving. “I heard all the police changed and showered together.”
Oh dear. “Why don’t you come to Midtown South for a visit someday? I’ll show you the women’s locker room. It’s not pretty, but it is off-limits to the men.” It was, in fact, an ordinary restroom to which lockers had been added.
But Mrs. Yelincic wasn’t satisfied. “And these men, they don’t mind taking orders from a woman?”
Sergeant Campos immediately sprang to mind. “I’m sure some of them do,” Marian said. “But we have regulations now—most police departments do anymore. Sexist and racist talk and behavior simply are not tolerated.”
Claire pitched in. “Things have changed, Mama.”
“And you’re telling me all these men obey these regulations?” Mrs. Yelincic made a sound of disbelief. “I know men, and they like to have their own way.”
Mr. Yelincic smiled and nodded.
Ivan tried to help. “Hey, I’m a man and I worked with Mar—Lieutenant Larch for years. No problem.”
“But she was not your superior then,” Razor Blades grated.
Marian patted her mouth with a napkin. “Mrs. Yelincic, if anyone gives me a hard time, I have the authority to take disciplinary action. I can send the offender for counseling, or I can suspend him up to three days without pay. If the unacceptable behavior persists, I can file charges against him and request a hearing. Our regulations have teeth—they’re not just a set of guidelines. Do you know how many times I’ve had to take disciplinary action since I was promoted to lieutenant?” Almost a month now.
“How many?”
“Not once. Not one single time.” Marian turned to the nodding, smiling man on her right. “That’s a pretty good record, don’t you think, Mr. Yelincic?”
Surprised, he stammered, “Oh, uh, yes, yes!”
Satisfied that the man could speak, she turned back to Mrs. Yelincic. “So you see, while it’s still a problem, it’s now a controllable problem. As Claire said, things have changed.”
But Mrs. Yelincic had saved her zinger for last. “Lieutenant Larch, I want you to tell me the truth now. Will you tell me the truth? Don’t lie to me.”
Thank you for assuming I’m a liar. “Of course I’ll tell you the truth. What’s the question?”
Here it came. Her interrogator looked her straight in the eye and said, “Do you really think it’s right for women to give orders to men?”
Pin-drop time. Marian laughed easily and winked, and leaned in close to Mrs. Yelincic, woman to woman. “Why not?” she said in a confidential tone. “We’ve been doing it for centuries.”
“Hey, I heard that!” Ivan protested. Claire laughed; Mr. Yelincic did his thing.
And it was all right: Mrs. Yelincic was laughing too. It wasn’t true, of course. But to a woman whose life had been lived in service to her family, there was a great deal of satisfaction in hearing outside confirmation that she had really been calling the shots all along. Marian had looked at the ghostly presence of Mr. Yelincic and figured Claire’s mother had carved as much authority for herself as it was possible to carve out of the institution called marriage.
It wouldn’t be like that for Ivan and Claire, Marian mused. Claire had a life and work she had no intention of abandoning simply because she was married (she was a medical librarian). And Ivan was no easily dominated smiler and nodder. The newlyweds would have problems—but they’d be their own problems, not Claire’s parents’.
The table was cleared of dishes and they got down to business. Mrs. Yelincic knew exactly what needed to be done and wasn’t shy about saying so. “You know the best man is responsible for seeing everyone gets paid?” she started out. “Except the florist—we pay the florist ahead of time. The caterers, the orchestra … oh, I should warn you. When you give the envelope to Father Kuzak, he’s going to hint it isn’t enough, as sure as you breathe. But don’t you give him one cent more! Do you hear me? Ivan, sit down—this concerns you. How much are you going to give Father Kuzak?”
It went on for over an hour, Marian filling page after page of her notebook. She learned which ushers were prompt and which were not, how many members of the wedding party would need transportation from the church to the reception hall, whose car tended to break down at crucial moments and whose was never quite clean, the exact route that the best man (in the lead car) was to take, precisely the right moment to toast the bride and groom, and on and on. This was one wed
ding in which nothing would be left to chance, and Marian was heartily glad of it.
When finally she got up to leave, Marian felt confident about the upcoming wedding for the first time now that she knew what needed to be done—and it was all Mrs. Yelincic’s doing. She told her so.
The older woman couldn’t have been more pleased. “Why, you’re welcome, Lieutenant, I’m sure. I’m glad to help.”
Marian laughed easily. “You did more than help, Mrs. Yelincic—you saved my neck.”
“Please—call me Aphra.”
“Gladly, Aphra. And my name is Marian.”
“Well, Marian, you must come back to see us again before the wedding.”
“I’ll certainly do that. And thank you again.”
Mr. Yelincic smiled and nodded.
Claire was going back into Manhattan with them, so Marian climbed into the backseat of Ivan’s car. As they pulled away, Ivan said, “That was good, telling her to call you Marian. Now she can brag to all her friends that she’s on a first-name basis with a lieutenant of the police.”
Claire added, “And you’d be amazed at the number of times she’s going to work your name into a conversation.”
“Ivan,” Marian said, “would you have asked me to be your best man if I were still a sergeant?”
He took so much time thinking it over that Claire laughed and slapped at his shoulder. “Well,” he conceded, “we might have let you be flower girl.”
Marian sighed. “Shut up and drive,” she said.
17
Marian awoke the next morning to the sound of flutes playing Bach.
She opened one eye and stared suspiciously at the unfamiliar clock radio; where was the customary brassy alarm that got her up and going every morning? Her waking disorientation passed; she rolled over to see that Holland was awake and in the process of sitting up. “I spent the night?”
He nodded gravely. “You spent the night.”
“Hm. Didn’t mean to do that.”
“I know. You came for a quick roll in the hay and goodbye.”
“Is that what I came for?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Holland, don’t ask me to figure things out before coffee.”
He fingered a strand of her hair. “Why don’t you ever call me by my first name?”
She rolled over and threw a leg over him. “Too personal.”
He laughed. “Well, don’t expect me to call you ‘Larch’—that’s what Saint Murtaugh calls you, isn’t it?”
She moaned. “Murtaugh. What time is it?”
“Six-thirty, a little after.”
“I’ve got to get home, shower, change. Grumble grumble.”
He cleared his throat. “And you’re going to have a new problem to contend with before you leave unless you move that leg—and I mean right now.”
Marian moved her leg. “Where are my shoes?” She found one under the bed and the other out in the hall. She dressed hurriedly; Holland got up to help and of course just slowed her down. She told him to stand with his hands behind his back until she was gone. With a sardonic smile, he obeyed.
All the way home, into the shower, into fresh clothes—Marian was puzzled. She’d accepted the fact that Holland was going to play a part in her life and was surprised to find how lacking in trauma such acceptance had proved to be. She’d been happy last night, in the big bed with him. She’d felt at peace.
But.
She’d put it out of her mind last night, but now she couldn’t help but think about it. His apartment. The first time she’d seen it, it had been spartanly furnished; only the barest necessities were there. It was the temporary resting place of a sojourner, someone used to moving quickly and often. But now it was the place of a man who planned on staying a while. Holland had spared no expense to make his nest comfortable and … well, beautiful. He’d surrounded himself with luxury—the ostentatious kind, the sort that called attention to itself. The apartment itself was on Central Park West, not exactly a low-rent district.
And his agency offices shrieked money. The costly equipment, the operating expenses … his monthly payroll alone must be a backbreaker. André Flood and at least two other “computer detectives” she’d seen there. The receptionist, Mrs. Grainger. Was Zoe Esterhaus his only street operative? Marian doubted it.
Where did the money come from?
He couldn’t have saved enough from his few years as an FBI agent. It was possible he’d taken out loans for start-up money, but what had he used for collateral? He owned nothing that Marian knew of. Had a venture capitalist provided seed money?
Or had Holland sat down at his computer, touched the right keys, and simply transferred the funds he needed from elsewhere to his own accounts?
That was the problem: Marian could easily believe he had done just that. He had the knowhow, and he showed precious little compunction about sticking his electronic nose into places it didn’t belong. Holland had always been a bit shady; and as much as Marian wanted to believe he was legit, she never could, quite.
Always between them was this question of trust. Marian simply couldn’t bring herself to trust him, and that was that. Ironically, it was the question of trust that had attracted him to her in the first place. Marian was no beauty; she didn’t kid herself that Holland lay awake at night fantasizing about her. It was only when he began to suspect that he had at last found someone he could trust that Holland had been drawn to her.
What had happened to him that had caused the need for trust to dominate his life so? Whatever it was—and Marian speculated it was a continuing series of things rather than one big dramatic act of treachery—it had made him oversensitive on the subject … downright touchy, in fact. He’d seen her choosing to stay with the police instead of working with him as an act of betrayal; she was only now beginning to understand how much she’d hurt him in making that choice. But he seemed to have overcome that distrustful interpretation of her choosing; his sending her the keys to his apartment, to his private space—that was probably the biggest gesture of trust he’d made since he was a child. The significance of the gesture was not lost on Marian.
Time to get to the bottom of this. In the stationhouse, Marian stopped by Dowd’s desk long enough to write on a notepad lying there. “Something I want you to check out.”
Dowd tore off the top sheet and read the name. “Curt Holland?”
“A private investigator. He has his own agency—Zoe Esterhaus works for him.”
“Oh yeah. The Knowles case.”
“I want you to find out what his prior experience was that qualified him to take the state licensing exam. If he apprenticed with a licensed investigator, I want to know who.”
“Priority?”
“Low.”
Dowd nodded and placed the sheet of paper on top of a pile of others awaiting his attention. “Er, Campos wants to see you. When you have time.” He looked uneasy.
“I have time now. Where is he?”
“Men’s room. I’ll get him.”
She’d barely had time to get her coat off and settle before Sergeant Campos came in. His face was tight. “Looks like you were right,” he said neutrally.
Marian did a quick mental run through the cases he was handling and picked the right one. “Sanderson is a fence?”
“Walker and Dowd followed him to a warehouse on South Street,” the sergeant said. “They were unloading big appliances—televisions, computers, even refrigerators, fer gawd’s sake. That shop of his just handles little stuff, nothing bigger than a tape recorder.”
“Why South Street? Shipping overseas? Importing?”
“We don’t know yet. But I think we got enough for a search warrant.”
Marian nodded. “See Captain Murtaugh. Tell him I said it was a go. Good work, Campos.”
He grunted acknowledgement and left. No sooner was he gone than Dowd came in. “Lieutenant?”
“Yes?”
“About Sanderson—me and Walker, we just read him wrong. We
thought if he was into fencing, it was just small stuff and only once in a while … junk, like, a kinda sideline. We can’t spend time on every little bit of petty larceny we learn about, Lieutenant. That’s why we let it slide. We were wrong and the guy is into big-time fencing, but we didn’t know that.”
“Relax, Dowd,” Marian said, “I’m not charging you with dereliction of duty. I know you have to let the small stuff slide. God knows I’ve done it myself often enough. But either you or Walker should have noticed the guy’s clothes.”
He cocked his head at her. “That’s really all you had to go on? His clothes?”
“That and his expensive manicure and the gold watch he was wearing. He’s bound to dress down for his shop. But when you brought him in for questioning, you’d picked him up at a restaurant, hadn’t you? You and Walker both know to pay attention to the way people adorn themselves. You got a little lax.”
Dowd sighed. “Yeah, I guess we did. Sorry, Lieutenant. It won’t happen again.”
Marian nodded and waved him out.
Quickly she read through the reports that appeared magically on her desk every time she was out of the office. She went to an interrogation room and listened as two of Sergeant Buchanan’s detectives put a suspected dealer through the paces. Then she rounded up Perlmutter and O’Toole.
Old business first. “Perlmutter, did you find out why Oliver Knowles and his wife had separated?”
“I don’t think the son knows,” he answered. “Austin Knowles said they just drifted apart.”
“Well, it’s probably not pertinent anyway.” On to new business. “A full background check on David Unger,” she said. “Finances, personal life, ties with the Knowles family. What he did before working at O.K. Toys.”
“Then he is our suspect?”
“You got a better prospect?”
“Nope.”
“Then we’re going to look into Mr. Unger’s life until we find something that tells us we’re wasting our time.” She caught the expression on Perlmutter’s face. “Something wrong?”
