Crimes by Moonlight

by Charlaine Harris

  Then the urgency retreated, and I was back on my footstool, the tea at my elbow barely cooled. I took my mother’s Galway shawl down from the top shelf of the bedroom closet and ran my fingers over the soft lambs’ wool, woven centuries ago in an intricate Celtic knot pattern. I placed the shawl on the bed and unfolded its protective wings, revealing my O’Conor scroll. How do the names and dates get written? I know only that they are there. A name. A birth date. And after the awareness, a death date. I opened to the name of the hulking redhead. Casey Rheingold was seven generations down, through Rory’s daughter Jane. His birth date was written some fifty-odd years before, with today’s date newly added in the ancient, ornate script. His final line had been written, but I was not at ease with the reason for it. Something about Casey Rheingold’s death felt wrong, lighting the spark of my human curiosity. Banshees have no such attribute.

  I wrapped the shawl around my shoulders, grabbed my bulky canvas tote filled with the odds and ends of a freelance writer’s trade, and ran down to the cabstand on Second Avenue. The cabdriver, an African wearing a Yankees baseball cap, had pasted a sign on the glass partition boasting that his family village was only twenty kilometers from the village where President Obama’s father was born.

  I asked him to take Seventy-second Street through Central Park to the west side of Manhattan.

  Then we rode north along Broadway. I peered toward the Hudson River at each intersection, looking for a sign. At Eighty-third Street, I could see the swirling lights of a half-dozen vehicles scattered in mid-street. After paying the cabbie, I walked to the splendid art deco building at the core of all the excitement.

  I stuck my freelance press pass under the nose of the uniformed cop guarding access to the building entrance, which was cordoned with yellow tape. He waved me off, a movement that seriously jeopardized the seams of his dark blue shirt.

  “DCPI briefing in a few. No info until then.” And he turned his expansive back, stifling any further word from me.

  Reporters who regularly work the crime beat milled around complaining loudly that the deputy commissioner of public information’s office was notoriously late to any and all on-scene interviews.

  I was looking for a way to sneak past the yellow tape when I saw the old woman from the roof, sitting in a folding chair next to the latticework facade of the building. A policewoman was leaning against the wall but stood straight when she saw me walk over. I bent over the old woman, pulled a bottle of water out of my tote, and gushed, “Have they given you anything to eat or drink? We can’t have you dehydrating. Please take this.”

  The old lady’s rheumy eyes widened, then blinked. My heart nearly stopped beating, that’s how taken aback I was by my own impudence, but then she handed me the ragged gardening gloves she’d been holding, took the bottle, and twisted the cap.

  “Thank you, my dear. As you can imagine, it’s been quite a time.” She turned to the policewoman. “This thoughtful young lady is one of our newer neighbors. Some people I’ve known for forty years have brushed right past me, without a word.”

  The policewoman made a clucking noise at such a lack of manners and then relaxed against the building once again. I squatted next to the gardener while she took tiny sips from the Dasani bottle.

  She recapped the bottle and leaned back in her chair.

  “Did you ever meet Mr. Rheingold? Top floor, full terrace? He was a blustery, winter kind of man. In all the years he lived here, the few times he broke his silence, it was with a snarl or a roar. Not the nicest of neighbors, but at least he didn’t come home stumbling drunk like 5D or beat his wife like 3F. All the same, now he’s dead.”

  “He had a wife? How terrible for her.”

  “A wife of sorts. She flits in and out of the building, covered in jewelry and wearing one flashy outfit after the other. Where does she go, in her revolving-door life? Clara from the sixth floor said she once saw Linda Rheingold get into a snazzy yellow car waiting at the hydrant around the corner. The driver was a young man. A very young man.”

  She gave me a knowing nod. Abruptly, the events on the roof overtook her.

  “I heard the shot. Big, loud bang. I thought it was the maintenance crew. You know how noisy they are when they clean or fix things.”

  I nodded vigorously.

  “I tell you, when I saw Mr. Rheingold push through the roof door, clutching his chest, blood everywhere, my first though was that the missus and her young man decided to hurry him along his path to heaven. Not that it’s likely he’ll wind up there.”

  She reopened the water bottle and took a quick nip.

  “Fell right at my feet. It was too late to help him. He said something, sounded like Cladder, you know, ladder with a C in front. Like that. Then his eyes glazed, just like my second husband’s eyes, down at the veterans’ hospital on Twenty-fourth Street.”

  I watched as her whole being rolled back to her second husband’s death, be it last week or decades ago.

  She shook off the memory.

  “I told the police to look for the young man Linda footsied around with. I bet his name is Cladder or something like it.”

  Not Cladder. Claddagh! The old Claddagh village in Galway City. Casey Rheingold’s dying word was connected to our heritage, if only I knew why.

  I leaned on the back of the old lady’s chair, hoisted myself up, and offered to go to the corner store to buy her something to eat.

  “You’re a good girl, but I’m too excited to be hungry. When the excitement dies down, stop by to see me.” She stretched out her right hand. “Mildred Stresky, apartment 2D.”

  I shook her hand with a warm two-handed clasp designed to cover my evasive answer. “I’m Rynne Bannon. I promise to visit soon.”

  A police siren was coming ever closer. I saw the print reporters and film crews gathering. Perhaps DCPI had finally sent a spokesman. I stepped away from Mrs. Stresky and, morphing from caring neighbor to freelance journalist, I joined the crowd bunched around a makeshift podium. A dark-haired, middle-aged man, wearing black horn-rimmed eyeglasses, stood at the podium and held out his hands to quiet us. He clearly announced his title as captain, mumbled his name, and then droned on about the day’s events.

  “Responding to a 911 call at 18:20 hours, that’s 6:20 p.m., two patrol officers assigned to the Twentieth Precinct found the body of Casey Rheingold, aged fifty-two. Mr. Rheingold was a senior partner in the law firm of Stoddard and Weiss. He expired on the roof of the building where he lived.”

  Captain Mumbles pointed in the general direction of the address plate above the entryway.

  “FDNY emergency medical technicians pronounced him dead at the scene, probably from a gunshot wound to the chest. Mr. Rheingold’s body has been removed to the office of the medical examiner.”

  A voice from the crowd intruded.

  “So, it’s murder, right, Captain? Oh, yeah, and could you spell your last name for us?”

  “We expect the medical examiner to declare this death a homicide and are investigating accordingly. My name is Morales. M-O-R-A-L-E-S.”

  For nearly three centuries on two continents, I keened for thousands of O’Conor deaths caused by old age or illness. The Famine, accidents, and some wild and bloody fights took their toll as well. This war or that war piled the numbers higher. Still, I always knew the reason.

  Many’s the time my mother, Roisin, Banshee Queen of Connaught, would argue with me. “It doesn’t matter why they die. Dead is dead.”

  But I’m my father’s child as well. After each awareness, I would savor the intimation, be it hospital bed or battlefield, which helped me to let the O’Conor rest in peace.

  Not once in thousands of deaths over hundreds of years, have I suspected murder. How can I close the banshee scroll, knowing that Casey Rheingold’s death was not a result of the natural order of things?

  The press conference ended, and people were starting to drift away, when a buxom woman, in an ultratight leopard print sweater, stepped from a cab, dra
wing every eye. She moved toward the building door. Sitting on the edge of the rear seat of the cab, a sweaty young man ran one hand over his retreating hairline and then recounted a fistful of currency.

  The doorman hurried forward, touched his cap, and offered the woman his arm. He addressed her by name, causing the reporters to regroup and circle her like vultures waiting for the last gasp of breath.

  “Mrs. Rheingold?”

  “Hey, Linda, anything to say about your late husband?”

  “How does it feel to be widowed by a murderer?”

  Linda Rheingold spun on the tips of her open-toed, three-inch high-heeled shoes. Her white-blonde hair whipped from side to side as she spat the words like sour milk. “How the hell do you think it feels?”

  She looked past the crowd. “Jeremy, let’s get inside.”

  The young man threw another bill at the cabbie and reached Linda Rheingold at the same moment as Captain Morales. Together, they swept her inside.

  I didn’t believe the new widow would bring her secret lover home, but I had to be sure. I pushed my way through the press crowd to Mrs. Stresky, who was standing with both hands resting on the folding chair.

  “I’m free to go upstairs. They’re even taking down the yellow tape. Things will look normal again in a few minutes. I could use a small sherry. Would you care to join me?”

  Of course I would. A perfect opportunity for a chat.

  “Rynne, dear, would you carry the folding chair to Ivan, please?”

  It was a long, blank moment before I realized that Ivan was likely the doorman. With the chair in one hand and Mrs. Stresky leaning heavily on my other arm, I passed unquestioned through the crowd of police, reporters, neighbors, and spectators.

  The doilies and antimacassars covering everything in sight gave an inkling of what Queen Victoria’s sitting room must have been like. It would be generous to describe the old furniture as antiques, but even so, every piece was buffed to a high shine.

  I settled in a high-backed velvet wing chair. Mrs. Stresky stood at a lace covered sideboard pouring sherry into microscopic stemware resting on a silver tray.

  She served me elegantly, set the tray on the coffee table, and took her own glass in hand, raising it in a silent salute.

  I touched my glass to hers, brought it to my lips, and then nearly choked when Mrs. Stresky asked, “Who are you really? Not a reporter, I hope. I know you don’t live in the building. Why did you stop to talk to me?”

  I took a deep breath. “I came here to keep an appointment. Then I saw all the fuss and noticed you, looking exhausted and with a police guard and all. I just wanted to see if you were all right.”

  That sounded lame, even to me, but Mrs. Stresky seemed to accept it.

  “I knew you were a kind person.” She nodded, satisfied her assessment was correct. “Who were you meeting? Did you call and cancel?”

  I plunged more deeply into the tangled web.

  “Once I spoke to you, I knew someone had canceled the meeting for me. My appointment was with Mr. Rheingold.”

  “No.” Mrs. Stresky gasped. “I can’t believe it. Whatever for?”

  I edged closer to the truth.

  “I’m a genealogist. We were supposed to discuss his O’Conor line.”

  “What kind of line?”

  “His O‘Conor family lineage. Just after the American Civil War, Rory Dev O’Conor, his brother John, and sister Kate bundled their families aboard the steamship Colorado and came to America, leaving all they knew behind in the tiny village of Crosskil, County Galway. Mr. Rheingold is descended from one of Rory Dev’s children.”

  “Fascinating. Do you create genealogy charts for many families?”

  No reason to mention that my mother’s royal banshee line had been tied to the O’Conors for a thousand years or more, or that she’d sent me along so that Rory Dev’s family would never endure a death without a proper send away.

  “I can do any number of families, but my specialty is the Galway O’Conors.”

  I weaved the question on my mind into the conversation.

  “Is that man, Jeremy, who arrived with Mrs. Rheingold, a member of the family?”

  “No. He works with Mr. Rheingold. He’s here so much, the Rheingolds pay for an extra parking spot in the garage for his use. Always trundling in stuffed briefcases and file boxes so full, they have to be tied with thick elastic bands.”

  A short time later I took my leave, having no idea how any of what I learned would help me decipher the puzzle of Casey Rheingold’s murder.

  Once home, I spent hours creating a fancy genealogy chart of the links from Rory Dev’s grandfather to Casey Rheingold. The tranquillity of copying the names and dates in a round cursive hand left my mind free to plan. And plan I did.

  THE next morning, my energy renewed, I was ready to track a murderer. Where better to start than with the widow Rheingold?

  When a banshee decides to reveal herself to humans, she uses one of three guises: the young woman, the middle-aged matron, or the old crone. As one of what the pure banshees like to call “the half-breed lot,” I’d decided centuries ago to function in the mortal world. I rotate through the three guises over any number of years and then begin again. I briefly considered a transformation, thinking Linda Rheingold might respond better to someone her own age or older. But provisional guise changes are chancy without time to invent a history for myself.

  After making the decision to stay as I am, I called Mrs. Rheingold, and she surprised me with an invitation to stop by at noon.

  Linda Rheingold was standing in her open doorway when I got off the elevator. I thought she’d be surrounded by family and friends, rushing to take mundane tasks off her hands. But here she was, quite alone.

  Her widow’s weeds, a black silk tunic and slacks, were relieved only by the tawny stripes in her tiger print ballet slippers. She led me to a finely decorated living room, with high, wide windows covered in cream shantung. As we took our seats, I noticed she wore an Irish Claddagh ring. The hands, heart, and crown of the ring’s design stand for friendship, love, and loyalty. Mrs. Rheingold’s ring was made distinctive by the large diamond centered in the heart.

  I tried to express my condolences, but she was all business.

  “Ms. Bannon, you mentioned a genealogy chart you were working on with my husband. I suppose you want to be paid. Please send any outstanding bills to our accountant.” She handed me a business card and was clearly set to send me on my way.

  In hopes I could rescue the moment, I pulled the O’Conor genealogy chart from my tote. “Please, Mrs. Rheingold.”

  I opened the chart, handwritten with dark gray ink on pale gray paper, for her inspection.

  “Please,” I said again, although the role of supplicant rarely suits me. “You misunderstand. No payment is wanted. I’d only completed the chart yesterday. Then, when I heard the terrible news, I thought this would be a grand display for the wake. Poor Mr. Rheingold never got a chance to see the final version, but I’m sure his friends and family would take pleasure in it.” I put my finger squarely on Rory Dev’s name.

  “Here is where the family crossed to America.”

  Mrs. Rheingold examined the chart for a long while, asking about this or that ancestor.

  “This is extraordinary. It must have taken months to put together. My husband was proud of his Irish roots. His German roots as well. Did he commission you to do a chart on the Rheingold family?”

  “We didn’t have a chance to get that far. Lately, he wasn’t returning my calls, and if he did, he was gruff and hustled me right off the phone.”

  “Gruff and in a hurry. That was Casey all right.”

  Linda smiled, and for a moment I could see she held a strong connection to her husband, be there a younger lover or no. Then she tightened her eyes.

  “That damned law firm. If he’d kept a mistress like any normal man, he’d have had to hide it and fawn over me at home. Out of guilt, if nothing else. But I couldn’t c
ompete with his job, his clients, his business entanglements.”

  “Entanglements?”

  “Entanglements like this jewelry problem, whatever that was about. Constant phone calls. Constant research. You’d think Casey was a first-year associate rather than a senior partner. Jeremy should have been handling that. Casey and I should’ve been having dinner uninterrupted.”

  “Jeremy?”

  “Jeremy Lycroft, Casey’s toady. Well, I’m sure the firm gave him some important title, but that’s how I see him. Casey and Jeremy were so attached that when the police notified the firm about my husband, the partners told Jeremy to find me and escort me home. You’d think a senior partner would have been more seemly.”

  She harrumphed.

  “You should talk to Jeremy. He’ll know why Casey wanted the genealogy chart and whether or not he wanted one for his German ancestors. If so, I would commission you to do it. I could hang both charts in the den. Don’t you think that would be fitting?”

  Afraid to break her train of thought, I simply nodded.

  “Call and tell him I said to talk to you. Being married to Casey gives me ‘toady by proxy’ rights with Jeremy.”

  “I will definitely speak with Mr. Lycroft.” I could sense Linda was done with me, so I switched to the touchiest subject. “It must have been difficult being married to a man who was so intense about his work.” I sat quietly, leaving a gaping void.

  Her face softened for a second or two and then rehardened.

  “When we were younger, it was easier to accept Casey’s unending hours. We were building a life together. Casey was determined that it be a well-cushioned life. He made partner, and then senior partner, but the work obsession never stopped. I once asked Millie Cranepool, the managing partner’s wife, if it would always be like this. She seemed genuinely surprised. Her husband has been home for dinner nearly every night since he made partner twenty-two years ago. I decided there was something lacking in me. And I accepted my lot.”

  “You must have been very lonely. No one would blame you for seeking companionship.”