by Con Lehane
Esposito began to show signs of dissembling. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead; he no longer met Cosgrove’s gaze, fidgeting where he sat, crumpling up the bar napkins on the small table in front of him. He acted like suspects do when they’re afraid you’re going to ask a question they don’t want to answer.
Cosgrove picked up his rocks glass, examined it, and placed it back on the table, watching Esposito squirm. “So how did that work out? Did you see her again?”
“No. Not really.” Esposito’s embarrassed smile begged for help, or mercy.
Cosgrove felt sorry for him like a hunter might feel sorry for a deer he was about to shoot. He liked the guy, a kind of innocent himself like the woman he’d described. “Not really?” Cosgrove raised his eyebrows.
Esposito fidgeted, casting his gaze first at the bar on one side of them; then, something outside the window below them on 42nd Street caught his interest. He snuck a couple of glances at Cosgrove. “I saw her again. It was by accident. When I’d phone her, she’d tell me she couldn’t see me again. We were both married. She was too busy. It wouldn’t be right. I shouldn’t ask her.”
Esposito’s manner changed. When he first described the woman he knew as Shannon, his tone was lyrical, the words he used verging on poetic; now, his tone was bitter, scolding. He’d ordered another drink, not bothering this time to ask if Cosgrove wanted one, not noticing Cosgrove hadn’t touched his. “I saw her right here in this hotel, in this bar, all wrapped up in conversation with another guy, talking to him, I’m sure, the way she’d talked to me.”
Cosgrove wanted to keep Esposito talking without being so eager he scared him off. For the moment, Esposito’s strong sense of grievance overpowered his judgment. He recounted things, including his rage, that when he woke tomorrow he’d wished he’d kept to himself. Scotch will do that to you after one drink too many, bring up from your memory to color your evening an array of slights and insults and injustices you’ve suffered. Esposito poured out his story. He’d confronted the woman of his obsession that night and she’d told him to go away, get lost. They’d argued. There was a scene that ended with Esposito, Shannon, and the man she was talking with being asked to leave the bar.
Cosgrove wanted to see just how angry Esposito had been. “Did she leave with the man she’d been talking with.”
“Yes.” The sneer on Esposito’s face crumbled. Cosgrove turned away and went to the men’s room to let the guy compose himself. By the time he got back, Esposito had ordered another drink and composed himself enough to realize he’d talked too much. Cosgrove saw his resolve to be more circumspect as clearly as if he’d zippered his mouth shut.
Cosgrove wanted to keep him talking. “Could you tell me about this man she was with?” After all these years, Cosgrove still didn’t understand why people with something to hide, who’d made themselves obvious suspects, kept answering questions when all they had to do to keep themselves from getting in deeper was stop talking. Still, you had to ask. You never knew where a question might lead. He might describe Ted Doyle.
Esposito shook his head. “Nothing much about him. He didn’t like the commotion. With him it wasn’t like when she was with me. He didn’t connect with her the way she and I connected. She could see that. I knew Sandra better than she knew herself. I knew she’d be sorry she spent time with him.”
Sandra? Cosgrove didn’t comment, just made a note in his head. “This other man, did you catch his name?”
Esposito wasn’t ready with an answer, his hesitation longer than it should be. “No. If I did, I don’t remember.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He was foreign. He had an accent. Dark hair, dark skin, olive complexion, tall, well built. He didn’t say much.”
Neither did Esposito’s description, nothing distinctive in it, generic. It wasn’t for sure he made it up, but more than possible. “Does the name Ted Doyle mean anything to you?”
He didn’t give his answer much thought. “No. Should it?”
Cosgrove didn’t answer. If Esposito had followed the story of Sandra Dean’s murder in the news—and why wouldn’t he, as obsessed with her as he was?—he’d have come across the name of the man murdered in her hotel room. Esposito was glassy-eyed by now, so he wouldn’t be good for many more questions.
“You said you saw Sandra Dean here in this hotel. Do you stay here whenever you’re in the city?”
Esposito closed one eye, an attempt to be cagey that Cosgrove almost laughed at. Neither did he flinch at Cosgrove’s use of the woman’s true name. “I stay in different places.”
“That’s pretty easy to check.”
The closed eye popped open; the caginess went south. “Most of the time, I stay here.”
Cosgrove took out his notebook and paged through it. “Were you in the city, staying in this hotel, on September 7?” This was the day of Ted Doyle’s murder.
“No.… I don’t think so.… Why? Why that date?” His voice rose with alarm. Adrenaline must have surged through him because he sobered up. “What are you getting at?”
“Do you own a handgun, Mr. Esposito?”
“No.” He stood, knocking back his chair, lunging into the table as he righted himself. “I do.… I have guns. They’re legal. I’ve had enough of this. What are you trying to do?”
Cosgrove stood also. “I’ll be in touch.” He’d let Esposito pick up the tab for his drink. As he walked away, he watched Esposito reach across for the untouched scotch.
Leaving Peter Esposito to his scotch and his sorrows, Cosgrove headed home to Queens, his own sorrows, and a glass or two of wine to assuage them. Esposito had revealed too much for his own good. His unwillingness to let go of a woman who made clear that his interest in her wasn’t returned made him a danger to her and a suspect in her murder.
She told him she didn’t want to see him again. Still, he pursued her when he should have let her go. He also called the person he knew as Shannon by her actual name, Sandra. He’d tracked her down. He didn’t account for his whereabouts on the night Ted Doyle was murdered in her hotel room. Cosgrove hadn’t gotten to the evening of her murder. In time, he would. He prowled the quiet streets of Queens until he found a parking space a couple of blocks from his apartment and sat in his car for a few more moments decompressing. He might have a new suspect. That would cheer Ray up. It might also be wishful thinking.
Chapter 16
Ambler was still shaken up by his discovery of Jayne Galloway’s body when Mike Cosgrove called him the next day about the Nassau County investigation of her death. “The preliminary indications are that she died of natural causes. They’ll do an autopsy because it’s an unattended death, but those results we won’t get for a couple of months. They did dust the place for fingerprints, some hers, some unidentified. One more thing…” he hesitated. “This gives your theory she was murdered a bit of a push but not in the direction you want it to go.”
“What?”
“They found a car parked in the garage. It has Connecticut MD plates and is registered to Sandra Dean. I checked with Stamford. They have a car with New York tags registered to Jayne Galloway in the parking lot of the hotel where Dr. Dean was killed. It looks like when Sandra Dean and McNulty left the city after the Doyle murder, they went to her mother’s house and exchanged the cars. Dr. Dean wasn’t on good terms with her mother; I think you told me.”
“Are you saying Sandra Dean and McNulty murdered her mother and stole her car?”
“You’re the one who brought up murder. If it turns out that way, you came up with a new problem for your pal. On a more positive note: a parrot once lived at the Galloway residence but no sign of it.” Mike cleared his throat. “One more thing. Don’t get your hopes up on this. It may not mean anything.” Mike told him about Peter Esposito. “I have some things to look into. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Would you mind if I spoke to him?”
“I’d rather you wait.”
Ambler was okay wit
h that. The only reason for Ambler to talk to Esposito was to get his own sense of the man, which would be important only if Mike got stuck or gave up on him without sufficient reason. Meanwhile, Ambler was more concerned about what it meant that Sandra Dean and McNulty had been at Jayne Galloway’s house.
The likely sequence of events was that McNulty and Sandra Dean left the city knowing they were or would be under a cloud of suspicion and went to Sandra’s mother to hide and to exchange cars in case the police discovered Sandra Dean’s true identity. Other scenarios were possible but this was the most likely. The scenario meant that when Ambler first visited Jayne Galloway, Sandra Dean and McNulty had already been there. What Ambler didn’t know and couldn’t surmise was why Sandra and McNulty went to Sandra’s mother for help, if this was why they went there. Nothing Ambler ran across so far suggested Sandra and her mother had reconciled. Simon Dean said the opposite as had Jayne Galloway. Of course, Galloway lied about many things and might have lied about that. Simon Dean might have lied, too, or he might not have known.
Ambler surely wished he knew what Jayne Galloway wanted to tell him. Sandra might have told her mother who murdered Ted Doyle. Jayne Galloway might have known who murdered her daughter. Now mother and daughter were both dead. No one was left to tell him what they knew.
Yet there was one possibility. Jayne Galloway was a diarist in addition to keeping a writing journal. Ambler had found dozens of diaries going back to when she was a girl in the collection she donated to the library. According to the deed of gift she’d signed, the library was to get any papers or manuscripts she had in her possession upon her death. This would include the diaries she was writing in up until the time of her death.
He called her literary agent who had negotiated the donation of her papers to the library. She told him Mrs. Galloway bequeathed all of her possessions to her daughter Sandra. They would now belong to her granddaughter Carolyn. It would be up to her and her guardian to fulfill the promises in the deed of gift.
“Her guardian. Her father?”
Adele was with him in the crime fiction reading room when he made the call. “You have to ask Sandra’s husband? That’s going to be a problem,” she said when he’d hung up.
Ambler grumbled but recovered quickly. “I’ve got an idea.”
“You’re not going to send me.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Not you. Harry.” He remembered the priest at the funeral home and all of the Catholic trappings. Perhaps priests—even ex-priests—had a kind of professional code, like lawyers, where they would talk with one another in ways they wouldn’t talk with a lay person. Adele was skeptical.
Harry Larkin, the former Jesuit, despite having left the priesthood a couple of decades before, had held on to his priestly manner or more precisely his spirituality. He exuded kindness and forgiveness and practiced humility, seldom raised his voice, and was loath to discipline his staff.
Yet, in contrast to his mild manner in all things dealing with his staff, and the rest of the world for that matter, was his respect for authority, in his case the powers-that-be of the New York Public Library. Harry’s tendency toward understanding and forgiveness most often came into conflict with his respect for the dictates of authority in situations involving Adele and especially Ambler, neither of whom had any inclination to accept the dictates of authority. This state of affairs kept poor Harry in an almost constant state of high anxiety.
Unfortunately for Harry, Ambler knew that when push came to shove the former priest would consider it his pastoral mission to protect one of his flock, again often Ambler, from the consequences of an ill-advised undertaking. With this in mind, Ambler prevailed upon his supervisor to travel with him to Greenwich, Connecticut.
“You’re the director of the Manuscripts and Archives Division,” Ambler said when they were seated in the bare-boned Metro North railway car on their way to Greenwich the next morning. “Jayne Galloway’s diaries and other papers belong to the library.”
“I know what I’m responsible for. I’m afraid that with you it’s going to involve some kind of subterfuge.”
“A priest is helping the family, the father and the little girl—”
“A priest? I knew it.” Harry jerked himself up straight, darting glances around the car as if he might try to jump off the moving train. “That’s why you enlisted me, to con a priest into something. You better tell me what you’re up to, or I’m going to turn around as soon as we get there and take the next train back—after I tell the priest you’re a fraud.” Harry’s voice rose as he spoke, so a number of heads snapped around.
Ambler calmed Harry down by promising he’d tell the truth and wouldn’t bother Simon Dean if the priest thought he shouldn’t.
The meeting with the priest, Fr. Jerome, which Ambler had set up the previous day over the phone, was at the rectory for St. Mary’s church a few steps up Greenwich Avenue and across the street from the funeral home. The priest was friendly enough but unctuous. Harry’s manner changed while they talked, so he, too, became excessively polite. They went back and forth in a way that for most people would be an argument but was for them more like a fencing match, where they gracefully bowed and scraped, each pretending to be more than accommodating to the other, while neither gave an inch. In the end, the priest said he would call Andrea Eagan, Simon’s sister, who was handling the family affairs and watching over Carolyn during this difficult time.
Andrea Eagan remembered Ambler from the funeral home. She was sure Simon would be fine with her meeting him at Mrs. Galloway’s house in Long Island to retrieve the documents he would take to the library. She thought it would be wise for her to be there and to take an inventory of what he took. Simon could look it over later to see if everything was okay.
Because the trip to Greenwich worked out successfully, Harry was closer to his good-natured and agreeable self on the train ride back to the city. Ambler told him about Jayne Galloway’s phone call and about her death. Harry was already aware of the deaths of Ted Doyle and Sandra Dean and that she had been using the crime fiction collection at the library.
“All that is tragic and quite sad,” Harry said. “Nonetheless, I hope your involvement in any investigation is limited this time around. The library is a place for scholarship and contemplation and perhaps relaxation, not adventure except on the pages of a book.”
“The crime came to me. I didn’t go looking for it. I told you McNulty is the main suspect. I have to do what I can to help get him out of trouble.”
Harry sat back and folded his hands across his midsection. Ambler took this to be a priestly counseling posture. “I think you make a mistake if you set out to prove the man innocent rather than setting out to discover the truth. I came across a piece of advice in my reading—a detective story you’ll be happy to know. ‘Sometimes, you think you’ve found what you’re looking for when it isn’t there because in your eagerness to find it you don’t ask yourself all the questions there are to be asked.’”
Ambler turned to Harry in disbelief. “What have you been reading?”
Harry’s pious expression bordered on smug, unusual for him. “Actually, I’ve been reading stories featuring a priest, written by G. K. Chesterton. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with him.”
Ambler laughed. “Of course, Father Brown. I hope they don’t give you any ideas.” He thought for a moment. “Actually, I hope they do.”
Chapter 17
The following morning Ambler again rented a car and drove to Glen Cove, this time without Adele and on library business. A car was parked in the driveway when he arrived and Andrea Eagan got out of it when he pulled up on the roadway in front of the house. She greeted him and they shook hands. Slight and thin-faced with raven black hair, she was pretty in the same careless, winsome way Adele was.
“It’s a beautiful house,” she said when she’d opened the front door with a key and they stood a few steps into the open hallway. “I love the windows.”
Jay
ne Galloway’s study was on the second floor, a corner bedroom made into an office, with wall-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls, a leather couch against a third wall with paintings on either side. A desk was against the fourth wall beneath two windows overlooking the roadway and the lagoon beyond. Ambler went to the bookshelves, while Andrea stood in front of the windows watching something in the lagoon.
“It must be difficult for your brother,” Ambler said. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through.”
Her pretty face contorted into a grimace. “Simon’s taken to the role of a grieving widower, assuming the manner he believes is expected of him.”
Ambler had been examining the spines of the writing journals that took up half of one of the bookshelves. The spines weren’t dated and he didn’t know if they were in any sort of order. He wasn’t paying full attention while passing along his condolences, so he was taken aback. “I’m not sure I understand.”
A veil fell over Andrea’s eyes as she lowered her eyelashes. “Don’t mind me. It’s been a lot.… My heart is broken for Carolyn.”
They talked, standing in the office of the recently dead Jayne Galloway. Andrea, outgoing, at ease, talked easily to a stranger. “I love books,” she said. “I once thought I might own a bookstore … or be a librarian. I envy you.”
She was an elementary school teacher in Stamford, one town north of Greenwich, the town where her friend whom she called Sandi, was murdered. “Sandi and I were close. We became fast friends even before she married my brother. Strangely, Sandi didn’t have a lot of friends, despite her being the kindest and most sensitive person I’ve ever known.”
