Take Out

by Margaret Maron

  “It’ll come,” he said. “It always does, doesn’t it?”

  Except when it doesn’t, Sigrid thought as she walked back to her own office. On the other hand, she and her team had only one unsolved case on their book, a young woman found burned in a dumpster. Her nude body had been spread-eagled over several cardboard boxes that were soaked in gasoline, then set on fire. By the time she was found, her body was so badly charred that there was almost nothing left to help identify her aside from the fact that she’d had perfect teeth without even a single filling. Caucasian, average height, blue eyes, brown hair, approximately 125 pounds.

  “Probably new to the city,” Tillie said, when no missing person report came close to matching what they could say about her. She could have been from anywhere.

  Surely someone could put a name to their second victim.

  “WholeLife Research,” said a pleasant voice on the other end of the call.

  “Dr. Gustav Bohr, please,” said Mrs. Bayles.

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Marcus Livingston’s law office.”

  “And this is in reference to—?”

  “Mr. Livingston arranged a donation to your institution last year. Dr. Bohr was his contact there.”

  “Organs or whole body?”

  “Whole body.”

  “One moment, please.”

  The taped music had barely begun to play when a male voice said, “Dr. Bohr here.”

  Mrs. Bayle pressed the intercom button on her desk. “Dr. Bohr’s on line two, Mr. Livingston.”

  In his office, her employer took a deep breath and said, “Dr. Bohr, this is Marcus Livingston. I hope you can help me.”

  It took several minutes to explain precisely what it was he wanted and why.

  There was a moment of silence and then the doctor said, “This is highly irregular, Mr. Livingston. The remains would have been cremated within six weeks.”

  “I understand, sir, but I was hoping some of the tissues might still be available.”

  “That is, of course, a possibility. But locating them?” Another pause. “Let me make some inquiries. It might take some time, but give me your number and I’ll get back to you.”

  At midnight, Janis Jennings put aside the book she was reading and walked out to the common room that served as a lounge for her tenants. It was empty and the rest of the house was quiet. Only one of her tenants was booked to have a client spend the night with her—a widower who still grieved for the wife he’d lost last year. She switched off all the lights except for one dim bulb in the entryway. As she started to throw the deadbolt on the front door, a key turned in the lock and a woman entered, pulling a small roller bag. Late thirties, her auburn hair was skinned back from her strong face and she was casually dressed in jeans and a beige linen jacket.

  “Peg?”

  “Whoa!” the woman said. “You startled me. I thought everyone would be in bed.”

  “You’re back early,” her landlady said. “How’s your mother?”

  “Fine now, knock wood. It wasn’t a full-blown stroke. What the doctor called a love pat from God. No aftereffects, thank goodness, so I called Mrs. Kirkland and told her she could come tomorrow after all.”

  She turned the deadbolt and moved past Jennings toward the stairs. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

  “I’m afraid so. Remember Matty Mutone? He was found dead Wednesday morning.”

  “Oh no! What happened? Overdose?”

  “I’m not sure, but I gather they’re treating it as a suspicious death. The police were here and they want to talk to you. They’ll be back on Monday to hear if Matty told you anything that would help them. If he had any enemies or anything.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Peg Overhold said, “though it probably won’t help them much. His witchy godmother didn’t want him back in her life, but it’s not like he thought she’d kill him or anything.”

  “You sure about that?”

  They both laughed and said good night.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Anne said her breakfast panel for BookExpo had sold out weeks earlier, so Sigrid would have slept in on Saturday morning except that Roman wanted to get to the convention center as soon as the doors opened. “Before all the day’s tchotchkes are gone,” he said. “Tote bags. The best books. The good candy.”

  The main exhibition hall was already jammed with people: buyers for bookstores all across the country, agents and editors there to look at trends and perhaps discover underappreciated authors who might be poached from their current agents and publishers, librarians, specialty retail and museum store staff members, scouts for foreign publishers and numerous other book industry people. Overhead hung brightly colored banners touting publishing imprints, logos, and replicas of book covers.

  They walked past booths piled high with glossy new books, high-tech booths that featured the latest in electronic gadgets, smaller booths waiting to take orders for binding a favorite book with tooled leather, regional and university presses with esoteric subjects. And every booth seemed to have a basket or glass bowl filled with candy or advertising badges and ballpoint pens.

  Roman scored a couple of sturdy canvas tote bags from the Dorling-Kindersley booth. “We should pace ourselves,” he warned, dropping two bite-size chocolate bars into his bag, but by the time they had threaded their way through the crowds, his bag was more than half full of free books. “I may have to get another bag,” he admitted sheepishly as he reached for a glossy picture book on herb gardens.

  She herself had succumbed to a collection of Robert Pinsky’s poems and a new biography of Hans Holbein.

  Anne’s multinational publisher had several imprints. Instead of a booth, their space was more like a series of salesrooms under banners of their blue-and-white logo. A company sales rep directed them to where Anne sat at a counter in front of a blow-up of her Pictures from Mogadishu book jacket. Aided by a boyish red-haired publicist who had opened the books to the title page for her, she had signed and given away more than fifty copies in the autograph area downstairs immediately after her panel, but now she signed an advance copy for a sturdy-looking woman whose thick white hair was cut in a short pixie with stylish bangs. The woman wore a white shell under a short-sleeved jacket of light blue cotton with a matching A-line skirt. A large, flat gold locket hung from a slender chain around her neck.

  Anne smiled as Sigrid and Roman approached and said, “Come meet the owner of your grandmother’s favorite bookstore. Nancy, this is my daughter, Sigrid.”

  Nancy Olson held out her hand. “And this is Sarah Goddin, our store manager,” she said of the slender brown-haired woman who had a youthful sprinkling of freckles across her nose. “We’ve just talked your mother into adding us to her tour.”

  “You have a store in Cotton Grove?” Sigrid asked.

  “In Raleigh,” the woman said with a smile so wide that her blue eyes almost disappeared into thin crinkles.

  Sigrid introduced Roman, whereupon Olson made him her vassal forever by saying, “Roman Tramegra? Didn’t you write Frosty Death? One of our local book clubs chose it for their January read and it did real well in our store.”

  Before Roman could kiss the hem of her blue skirt, she turned back to Anne. “Sorry to run, but we’re trying to nail down a commitment for Charlotte Randolph.”

  “Has her book been published?” Sigrid asked.

  “No, it’s not due out till next spring, but I want to make sure her publicist puts us on her tour. If she’s halfway honest about the life she’s led, it’s bound to make the Times’s bestseller list. I can’t wait to read it.”

  “Wasn’t there something odd about how she got her first big break?” asked Anne, who was not an opera buff.

  “With her voice, she would eventually have sung title roles anyhow,” said Olson, who clearly was a fan. “But yes, all the planets lined up to let her step into the role of Mimi that night and gave her career that huge legendary jump start.
Especially since an important critic happened to be there that night and wrote a rave review.”

  Before Sigrid could ask for more details, Nancy Olson hefted her own canvas tote bag. With a wave of her hand and a promise to be in touch before Anne’s tour, she and her store manager hurried off.

  “I’ve been hearing about Quail Ridge Books for years,” Anne said, “but I bet Mother’s the real reason she invited me to come.” She reached for Sigrid’s bag. “Are you having fun? What did you get? Holbein?” She frowned. “Nothing modern?”

  Sigrid shrugged. “You’re the one who exposed me to him.”

  “I also exposed you to modern art, but it didn’t take, did it?”

  Abruptly, Oscar Nauman’s name hung in the air between them.

  Unspoken.

  Anne looked stricken. “Oh, Siga, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop it, Mother. You can say his name. Nauman knew I liked the Northern Renaissance better than his things and he didn’t take it personally. I’m well aware how ironic it is that he left all his pictures to me.”

  Anne patted her arm in mute apology, glanced at her watch, and said to the red-haired publicist who had been helping her, “Am I through here, Jamie?”

  “You are,” he said. “Now go have fun.”

  They had a leisurely lunch in the food court, then browsed in and out of various booths. Roman filled a second tote bag and, to Anne’s amusement, Sigrid added a book on makeup techniques to her own bag. An interest in cosmetics had come to her late and she still wasn’t totally confident with eyeliner. At the Little, Brown booth, Anne talked the sales rep into giving her the newest Michael Connelly thriller.

  “For Mac,” she said. “His birthday’s next week and I was wondering what to get him. Don’t tell.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sigrid said dryly.

  By the time they got to the autographing area, the line for Billy Collins was so long that Anne immediately begged off. Roman professed himself too tired to wait with those heavy bags and Sigrid reluctantly admitted that having the poet’s signature on the title page of a book wouldn’t add very much to her enjoyment of his work.

  “Write him a letter,” Roman said. “I’ve answered all four of the letters my readers have sent me, so perhaps you’ll wind up with his autograph anyhow.”

  Out on the sidewalk, Anne headed for a crosstown bus while Roman flagged down a cab for the short ride down to Hawker Street. “My treat,” he said magisterially as he gratefully deposited his tote bags on the seat between them.

  Over on the Lower East Side, Denny Kapps dialed a number the local precinct had given him when he got out of prison last Saturday.

  “Robbery detail,” said a bored voice.

  “This is Denny Kapps. K-A-P-P-S. I’m calling to see if you’ve found my car yet?”

  Once again he had to give the make, model, and license number and once again the bored voice said, “Sorry, sir. By now it’s probably been stripped down to the chassis and sold for scrap. I suggest you talk to your insurance agent.”

  “I don’t care what you say, Nonna. I’m moving in with you this week,” said Laura Edwards.

  “Don’t be absurd, Laura.” Erect of spine and stern of face, Sofia DelVecchio tried to stare her granddaughter down. Her glare seemed to have lost its power, though.

  Her daughter had always wilted beneath that glare, but her granddaughter’s lips curved in laughter. “The only absurd one at this breakfast table is you, Nonna. You and Orla. You need younger help in the house and if you won’t hire someone, then you’re stuck with me.”

  “Who needs someone younger?” sputtered the woman who was both housekeeper and companion to her grandmother. “I’ve taken care of your nonna since the day she brought your mother home from the hospital and I won’t have anyone else do it.”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Orla,” said Mrs. DelVecchio. She turned back to the girl at the end of the table. “You have another year of school. You can’t quit now.”

  “I’m not quitting. I’ll transfer to NYU and finish there. The drama department at Tisch has already accepted me for the fall semester.”

  “Drama? Not law? That’s absurd.”

  “I know. It’s crazy, but I’ve got to try, Nonna. Dad thinks I could be a great trial lawyer, but arguing cases in front of a jury would just be a substitute for real drama. When I was on stage in my school plays—in front of an audience, hearing them laugh or making them hold their breath—I felt more alive than anywhere else. Mom understood, why can’t you and Dad? I want to live here in town, maybe take some voice lessons and go to some auditions this summer just to get my feet wet.”

  “An actress?” she faltered.

  Yet, even as she said it, Sofia realized with blinding clarity that of course she would want to be on stage. She was made for it. That beautiful face, that long blond hair, those flashing eyes. A slender body that curved in all the right places.

  Her own hair had been a light brown back then, but her face and body had been that entrancing when she first met Benito. He was older and already a made man. She knew what he was, what he did; but when his beautiful brown eyes lit up at the sight of her, when his smile melted her heart, when he swore to her fearful parents that she would live like a contessa and that the dark side of his world would never touch her, how could she resist?

  And for the first few years, it was all that he had promised. The dresses. The jewelry. The way the maître d’s bowed to her as if she really was a contessa when they swept into nightclubs with his entourage for an evening of dancing.

  “He won’t be faithful,” they had warned her.

  “I don’t care!” she had said. But when it happened, she did care. She had stormed and raged, even threatened to leave him.

  “No, you won’t,” he’d said, and there had been such an icy hardness in his voice that for the first time she realized that she did indeed have a tiger by the tail.

  “Have a baby,” said her mother.

  “A baby will keep him at home,” agreed the aunts.

  God knows she had tried. Then, when she was resigned to her barren fate, the miracle had happened. Aria. And he was so grateful to her that once again she felt like a contessa.

  Now Benito was gone. Aria, too. But she still had Laura.

  “An actress?” Orla protested.

  “Yes, an actress,” Laura said firmly, “so you can just freshen up Mother’s old room for me, Orla. New curtains, I think, and please get rid of those ratty towels in the guest bathroom.”

  “Ratty towels?” Sofia DelVecchio was indignant.

  “Ratty,” Laura said. “They’re frayed on the edges.”

  “Frayed?” Her grandmother turned on Orla. “Frayed? Are you as blind as you are crippled?”

  Miss Orlano’s bushy gray eyebrows beetled furiously and her eyes filled with tears. Wordlessly, she rose from her chair, gathered up their breakfast plates, and carried them out of the dining room with as much dignity as she could manage, trying not to hobble.

  “There now,” said Mrs. DelVecchio. “See what you made me do?”

  “Made you do? Don’t lay this one on me, Nonna. Anything you’ve ever done, you’ve done because you wanted to.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  Janis Jennings opened her red door Monday morning and said, “Hello again. Lieutenant Harod, right?”

  “Harald,” Sigrid said. “And I believe you’ve met Detective Hentz? We’d like to ask you more questions about Matty Mutone.”

  “Oh, sure.” She stepped back to let them in. Today, her bare feet had blue nail polish that matched her blue denim shirt. “They said at the diner that he’d been poisoned.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you haven’t found who did it?”

  “No, no arrests yet.”

  They were ushered into a large comfortable room that could have been the lobby of a good hotel. Oriental rugs covered the hardwood floor and defined two separate seating areas with couches and arm chairs
. The sheer window curtains gave privacy, yet still allowed the morning sun to light up the room. A vase of fresh daisies stood on a side table and soft music issued from concealed speakers. In front of the tall windows stood a mahogany card table with four straight chairs that would do nicely for an interview. Sigrid chose to sit in the one with its back to the windows so that light fell on Janis Jennings’s face when she joined them. Her long brown hair hung loosely on her sturdy shoulders. Her only jewelry was a small gold cross that dangled from a thin chain.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

  “We’re fine,” Sigrid said. “Could you tell us again, in more detail, about your dealings with Matty Mutone? How you met, what you know about him?”

  “It was back in January. I’d seen him around the neighborhood but I didn’t know who he was at first till they told me at the diner. They said he was connected with the DelVecchio woman. That he used to be her driver for a while until she fired him for using drugs. Evidently he used to be heavy into meth. Then she and her daughter got him into rehab and things were fine till this past winter when he started using again. I guess he hit the skids and went straight down the tubes and that’s when they gave up on him. Forbade him to come to the house.”

  Jennings leaned back in the chair with her strong hands clasped together on the table in front of her. “I suppose that’s what drew me to him. Stray dogs and anybody Sofia DelVecchio’s down on. She’s absolutely convinced that I’m running a whorehouse and she’s done everything she could to run me off. Unfortunately for her, this side of the street is zoned for business and it’s completely legal for me to register my building as an SRO and to have a jazz club in the basement.”

  She gave an amused smile. “I’m not wedded to this neighborhood, though. I could open up anywhere, so I told her lawyer she could have this place for four million.”

  “I’m guessing she didn’t want it at that price,” said Hentz.