Twist

by John Lutz

  “One big happy family,” Harold said.

  “So’s the Mafia,” Sal remarked.

  “With the head of the family firmly in charge,” Melanie said, not at all miffed by Sal’s comparison. Sal mused that she wouldn’t make someone a good wife.

  “Is there no man you might point to as being special in Bonnie’s life?” Sal asked. “Anyone she might have mentioned more than once?”

  “Not really. She seemed to pick them up, examine them, then put them back. As far as I know she had no dearest friend—of either sex.”

  “She seems to have led a lonely life, working in the marriage shop,” Harold said.

  “True,” Melanie said. “However, what she did outside the shop, I have no idea. If I did, maybe I could be of help to you.” She began fidgeting with some sort of tiara fitted with jewels, signaling that she was busy and the conversation was over.

  “Nice crown,” Harold said.

  Sal got a card from his wallet and handed it to Melanie. “In case you think of something else . . .”

  Melanie gave Harold a look. “Oh, I assure you I’ll think of something else as soon as you walk out of here.”

  10

  Quinn parked his aging black Lincoln in front of a fire hydrant and stuck his NYPD placard on the dash. Such a miracle, parking free in Manhattan.

  Fedderman, seated next to him, said, “Ever see that photo of a car parked in front of a hydrant and the fire department rolled down two of the windows and ran the hose right through it?”

  “Through the car?”

  “In one side and out the other,” Fedderman said.

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “You wouldn’t worry much about that if your house was on fire.”

  “Two wrongs making a right,” Quinn said. “So what’s the problem?”

  Fedderman understood Quinn’s point of view, but was glad the old Lincoln was Quinn’s car and Quinn was driving.

  Both men got out of the car and stood in front of the fire hydrant in the hot sunlight. Directly across the street was the apartment building where Bonnie Anderson had been murdered. It was a redbrick structure with bulging iron grillwork over the street level windows that kept air conditioners in and B&E practitioners out. There was a skeletal iron framework for an awning above the entrance, but no awning.

  “You check the businesses close by,” Quinn told Fedderman. “I’ll talk to Bonnie’s neighbors. We can stay in touch by cell phone.”

  Fedderman gave a casual mock salute and walked away. Quinn watched him, a tall, lanky man with a basketball-sized belly and a suit that didn’t fit. Something about the way Fedderman wrote with a pen or pencil caused his right shirt cuff button to come undone. It had happened early today, and the white cuff was flying like a signal flag from the sleeve of his suit coat, flapping as he walked.

  Quinn turned away from the sartorial disaster and crossed the street toward Bonnie Anderson’s apartment.

  It wasn’t the sort of place to have a doorman, so he entered the small tiled foyer and checked the mailboxes. B. ANDERSON was still there. And the white showing in the slot of the brass box indicated that her mail was still being delivered. Quinn was making a mental note to get a mail key copy from Renz when he noticed that half the tarnished brass mailboxes had keys in their slots. Either they were left there for convenience, or they were stuck and no one had gotten around to repairing them.

  He tried the key in Bonnie’s mailbox. It went in halfway then and no farther. Quinn tried to rotate it one way or the other. It didn’t budge. He tried to remove it and try another of the keys, but it jammed in the box.

  “Help you?” a suspicious voice asked from behind Quinn.

  Quinn turned to see a stocky blond man in a green work outfit that looked two sizes too large even though he was well over six feet tall. “You the super?”

  The man nodded.

  Quinn showed his ID.

  “Yeah, I recognize you now. Seen you now and then on the TV or in the papers. You look bigger than your photos.”

  “I actually am,” Quinn said.

  “I’m Fred Daily. I guess you wanna talk to me about Mizz Anderson.”

  “I will in a little while, if you’re going to be around.”

  “I will be. Right down those steps in my apartment and office. Just buzz, and if I ain’t right there I’ll pick it up on my iPhone. Got a special App.”

  “Right now,” Quinn said, “I’m trying to get into the victim’s mailbox. You have a master key?”

  “Sure don’t. Doesn’t matter much. Only a few of those old locks work. Building owner ain’t quick about authorizing repairs, and nobody much complains ’cause they know the tricks of how to get their box open.” He stepped closer to the bank of mailboxes. “Like with Mizz Anderson’s.” He gripped the stuck key and leaned heavily against the box with his free hand. Slapped the box once, twice, and the brass door popped open.

  Quinn smiled. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Takes technique.”

  “I’ll practice,” Quinn said, removing the mail from the box. “Any secret about closing it?”

  “Nope.” Daily reached around Quinn and gently closed the brass door. It clicked neatly into place. “I’m gonna figure out how these things work and then take out a patent,” Daily said.

  “Do it on the Net. Saves time,” Quinn said.

  “You serious?”

  “Always.”

  “I can believe it.”

  Quinn moved toward the elevator.

  “Ain’t workin’,” Fred Daily said behind him.

  “Was it working yesterday morning?”

  “Oh, yeah. It went on the fritz just about an hour ago.”

  “Must have known I was coming,”

  “Some people are like that.”

  “Some elevators,” Quinn said.

  He got the key to Bonnie Anderson’s apartment from Fred Daily and started to climb. His right leg began to ache from when, as a cop, he had been shot in the line of duty. The bullet had entered his thigh and been removed from where it had lodged in the bone. Sometimes the leg ached when rain was about to fall, but he doubted if that was the case this time.

  The apartment was stifling and silent and still smelled of death. Quinn walked over and switched the window air conditioner in the living room on high. The unit hummed and the compressor kicked in and started a vibration that rattled the vents. Cool air spilled into the room, but it would take a while to overcome the oppressive heat.

  Quinn stepped around the bloodstains on the carpet and made his way into the bedroom. The CSU unit had gone through drawers and the closet, but he thought that sometimes in their search for stray hairs and nit-sized clues, they could overlook the obvious. Quinn gave it all a closer look.

  The dresser drawers held panties, nylon hose, a folded nightgown. Another drawer was stuffed with balled tube socks of various colors, sweatpants, pullovers, and T-shirts. The bottom drawers held dressier blouses, folded Levi’s, black and flesh-colored tights, odds and ends like a flashlight, ballpoint pen, and sunglasses, a clip-on reading lamp that looked as if it had never been used, and elastic headbands tangled together. There was a black winter sweater with a Filene’s Basement price tag still affixed.

  On top of the dresser were a comb and brush and a can of hair spray. A red plastic pig with a slot in its back to catch loose change—felt about half full of coins. There was also a framed photo of two elderly people standing in front of a modest house with a front yard that needed cutting. Bonnie’s parents in Chicago. Pearl had phoned them, broken their hearts, and found out that they knew practically nothing of their daughter’s life in New York. Nothing pertinent to the investigation, anyway. Also in Chicago, an old boyfriend, now a father and involved with another woman, expressed surprise and great sadness at the news of Bonnie’s death.

  A bedside table had a drawer containing an old Sara Paretsky paperback novel, some loose batteries, a spiral notebook, and a blunt number-two penci
l.

  Quinn looked at the notebook and found nothing written in it. There were no paper fragments caught in the spiral, indicating that the notebook contained all its pages. It was there for nighttime notes Bonnie had never written.

  And there was something else, way in the back of the drawer—a computer mouse with a wire and USB plug.

  Quinn went back to the living room, over to the desk that had yielded nothing useful. He bent over for an angled view of the wooden desktop. There was a slight rectangular discoloration the size of a laptop computer.

  So Bonnie had owned a computer. Probably she’d converted to a wireless mouse and put the old mouse in the bedside table. Almost surely the killer had taken the computer. That was no surprise, but it did suggest that the computer might have held a clue to the killer’s identity, something incriminating. Something as traceable as a computer, you didn’t steal it and risk tying yourself to a murder unless you had a good reason.

  Of course, all of this assumed that Bonnie Anderson hadn’t been killed by a stranger. A certain hairstyle, smile, a mere tilt of the head, could be enough to trigger an attack by a psychotic serial killer.

  That was something most women knew, but could do nothing to guard against without joining a nunnery. Even then, the terrible truth pursued them.

  Death was as random as life.

  11

  “I read about that in the paper,” a busty Hispanic bar tender said to Fedderman. She seemed fascinated but shaken, staring at the postmortem photo of Bonnie Anderson after she’d been cleaned up and her features rearranged. Something clever had been done to make it appear that she had closed eyelids. False lashes had even been applied. But there was no doubt that she wasn’t asleep.

  Fedderman was in the Lap Dog Lounge in the West Seventies. It was cool and dim, and not a bad place to be during a hot day in Manhattan. On richly paneled walls were framed photographs of various Westminster Dog Show winners, posing proudly. All breeds seemed to be represented. There were messy paw prints on some of the photos. Autographs, Fedderman assumed.

  Along the wall of photos were two rows of wooden tables and chairs. Across from them, facing the wall of canine royalty, was a long mahogany bar, where Fedderman slouched on a stool.

  It was too early for most drinkers, which was okay with Fedderman. He wanted to talk without being interrupted, and here he was alone with a fetching bartender. Though she didn’t look like a breed that would fetch.

  He was in the Lap Dog only because a coaster from the place had been in Bonnie Anderson’s purse. It was a circular vinyl or plastic coaster with the likeness of a little long-haired dog with its tongue hanging out. It was cute, all right. Fedderman could understand why Bonnie would steal the coaster.

  The bartender, whose name was Rose, looked up from the morgue photo and gave him a sickly smile. “You a cop?”

  “Yeah,” Fedderman said, figuring that technically he was telling the truth, what with Q&A’s contract with the NYPD.

  “You here to ask me questions?”

  “Sure am.”

  “You gonna put handcuffs on me?”

  Hoo boy! “Do you want me to?”

  “I should think about that.” She leaned on the bar, causing her blouse to part and reveal considerable cleavage. Fedderman was having second thoughts about being alone with her. “Ask away,” Rose said.

  “You obviously knew the dead woman.”

  “Yeah. Bonnie, the papers said her name was. Some guys in here called her Bon Bon because she was such eye candy.”

  “Was she that attractive? I mean, I only saw her . . . afterward.”

  “A beautiful woman, I’m not so sure. But she was a cutie who knew how to make the most of herself. And kind of a semi-regular here.”

  “And that would be . . . ?”

  “She’d be in here maybe twice a week, different nights. She tried to hook up with the right guy now and then, but pickings are scarce, maybe because of the economy. Anyway, nothing seemed to work for her until the last one.”

  Huh?

  “Who was the last one?” Fedderman asked, keeping his expression neutral.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t know Bonnie all that well, tell you the truth. We talked some when business was slow, is all.”

  They talked together. Rose, you’re a treasure trove of information.

  “What did you two talk about?” Fedderman asked in an offhand way.

  Rose lifted a shoulder. More cleavage.

  Fedderman gulped. Heaven help me,

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. “Girl stuff, is all. And how this place might become a fruit and veggie juice health bar.”

  “Fruit and veggie juice? You kidding me?”

  “Nope. Some idea of the mayor’s. He wants a fruit and veggie drink establishment every ten blocks, so one will always be within easy walking distance. S’posed to make New Yorkers healthier. Right now, it’s a pilot project. This place has already gone to the dogs. I didn’t think we could sink any lower.”

  “So who was this guy Bonnie thought might be a winner?”

  “I don’t know if Bonnie thought that. I did. Something about him. He just seemed like a nice guy. Genuine, if you know what I mean.”

  Fedderman didn’t, exactly. “What’d he look like?”

  “Average looking, but there was, like, nothing wrong with him. Features like they came out of a mold. Everything fit, nothing unusual. I guess that’s what makes him hard to describe.”

  “Go ahead and try, so I won’t have to cuff you.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Behave, Rose. This is a murder investigation.”

  That reminder seemed to sober her. “Average, is what he was. That’s how I’d describe him. Not too tall or short, not too fat or thin.” She smiled. “Mr. Just Right.”

  “Hair?”

  “He had enough of it and it was brown, I think.”

  “Eyes?”

  “Two. Blue, I think.”

  Fedderman wrote Brown over blue in his notebook, and then a question mark.

  “How’d he dress?”

  “Put his underwear on first, I would imagine.”

  “Rose . . .”

  “Average. I remember him in a suit, and once in khakis and a blue shirt. Always looked nice the half dozen or so times I saw him.”

  “Was he always with Bonnie Anderson?”

  “I think so. Though they didn’t always come in together. They used the Lap Dog as a meeting place, then they’d have a few drinks and head on out to who knows where.”

  “Not you, I guess.”

  Rose smiled. “Sorry. I make it a point not to pry into my customers’ private lives.”

  “Now here’s a big one,” Fedderman said. “Do you know the guy’s name?”

  “Rob,” Rose said, grinning, coming through again.

  “Just Rob? No last name?”

  “Hey, whaddya want? This is a first-name-only kind of place.”

  “Ever hear ‘Robert’ or ‘Robin’?”

  “Nope. Not ‘Roberto,’ either. Just ‘Rob.’ ”

  “When you saw them leave here together,” Fedderman said, “did they usually turn left or right?”

  “Right,” Rose answered without hesitation.

  Toward Bonnie’s apartment, which was within easy walking distance. If that meant anything.

  Fedderman closed his notebook.

  Rose grinned. “Did I do good?”

  “A-plus,” Fedderman said. “No need for handcuffs.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair.”

  “What’s fair,” said a voice from down the bar, “is if you’d sell me a drink.”

  Fedderman turned to see an elderly man with a neatly trimmed gray beard. He was scrawny but wearing a blue T-shirt that said PAIN AND GAIN GYM in faded black letters across the narrow chest. He didn’t look as if he’d ever worked out in his life.

  “Gin straight up,” he said. “First of the day.”

  “I believe it if you tell me,” Rose said, and
moved down the bar to pour from a gin bottle.

  Fedderman swiveled down off his bar stool and walked past her, gave her a smile and a wave. Let the old guy with the beard deal with this hungry cougar.

  “C’mon back sometime and I’ll break the law,” she said.

  “Just try it,” Fedderman said.

  Rose laughed. “I’ll sew a bigger button on that cuff for you.”

  When he was outside on the baking, sunny sidewalk, where Rose couldn’t see him, Fedderman buttoned his shirt cuff and went on his way.

  He put on his sunglasses and walked toward where he’d parked the unmarked car, his ego boosted by Rose the bartender, a definite slouchy spring in his step.

  Lookin’ cool. Then he noticed that his shoelace was untied.

  He stopped, kneeled down, and tied it and the other shoelace in double bow knots. Then he was up and striding toward his car again.

  Lookin’ cool.

  The man watching the woman across the street stayed back in the doorway, where she wouldn’t notice him. This was the third time that he knew of that she’d come here. The first time she’d stood motionless and watched the Q&A office door, but left without entering, as if she’d lost her nerve. That interested him enough that the second time, which had been a repeat of the first, he followed her. Found out her where she worked, her name and address. Began his research.

  A delivery van the size of a small house drove past, momentarily blocking his view. When it was gone, so was she.

  The man watching from the shadows knew she must have gotten up her nerve and entered the building.

  He smiled approvingly. That was what life was about, forcing yourself to open doors leading to where you were afraid to enter.

  12

  The street door made its familiar swishing sound.

  Into the office walked a petite, dishwater-blond woman with pigtails.

  Quinn was the only one at Q&A not out in the field. He watched her stand just inside the door and look around.

  My God, May!

  Only it wasn’t his former wife, May. But the resemblance was strong enough to be . . . startling.