Death Will Pay Your Debts

by Elizabeth Zelvin

  "Were you jealous?" he asked. "Please don't get mad at me again. You did sort of stalk Sophia. I saw you lurking around Starbucks."

  "I wasn't jealous," she said, "not really."

  "You got anxious, that was all," he said.

  "You know I always want to get inside your skin," she said. "It was hard being on the outside when I saw you with her. I know you're a one-woman man. But I did kind of compare and despair when I saw how stunning she was. Deep down, though, I knew we'd be okay. So how did the cops know what they knew? Or thought they knew? Do you think she told someone whatever you said to her?"

  "She wouldn't have done that," Jimmy said. "She took the traditions seriously."

  "Well, did you pour out your heart to her on her voicemail or something?"

  "No. I knew her voicemail wasn't safe, especially her landline. Her husband wasn't in the program. I'll tell you what happened. I turned over my fourth step to her the day before she died. I'd been working on it for weeks, and she encouraged me to let it go, turn it over, and move on. I sent it as an email attachment."

  "That would do it. They're bound to have read all her email. So I guess you mentioned resentments?"

  "I listed all my resentments," Jimmy said, "the way you're supposed to."

  "And I suppose your resentment against me headed the list, including your resentment of my resentments. I can't deny I had feelings about your putting the money recovery first and how close you had gotten to Sophia. It wasn't sexual jealousy. I did think that with her getting so much of your time and attention, there wasn't much left for me."

  "Oh, my sweet petunia," Jimmy said, "I'll always have love left for you. I was trying to get rid of the resentment. That's why you were at the top of the list. I was digging as deep as I could to see my part in everything we've locked horns about lately. I got down all the negative stuff as thoroughly as I could so I could let it go."

  Chapter Sixteen: Cindy

  Working a homicide sure cut into your meeting time, Cindy thought, as she sat at her desk frowning over the toxicology report on Sophia Schofield and trying to think of all the places an ordinary person might be able to get their hands on cyanide. Most cops complained about how the job played hell with their social life, if they were single, or their family life, if they were married. Cindy needed meetings to make the various compartments of her life balance out. Without them, it took effort to hold all the parts of her together. Being with Bruce had helped until his acquaintance with her murder victim had spoiled it. Bruce hadn't let sobriety change his personality or his sense of humor too much. And it was downright relaxing to hang out with someone who was also drinking club soda and lime without explanation or apology. If she had a dollar for every time a fellow cop tried to get her to take a beer, she'd be a rich woman.

  "What do you think?"

  Chair legs scraped on the linoleum floor. She looked up as Natali, looking more butch than usual in a brown leather bomber jacket and jeans, sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

  "There aren't that many ways to get hold of cyanide," she said. "We always take it for granted that it's easy to find whatever you want on the Internet. It's not as simple as I thought. For example, if you search pesticides, like rat poison, you find they contain other nasty chemicals that give the rats a slow death. Sophia died fast."

  "That may be why the killer used cyanide," Natali said. "Most deliberate poisonings take place over days or weeks, like the classic Victorian arsenic poisonings."

  "I know," Cindy said. "I did some reading. Even strychnine would have kept her thrashing around for a while. People might have noticed in time to save her. So if exterminators don't use cyanide, who does?"

  "There are industrial uses," Natali said. "No connection there with anyone in the case so far."

  "Sophia was a photographer,” Cindy said. “Her sister told me so. Photographers used to keep cyanide in their darkrooms, but who has a darkroom nowadays? Everybody's gone digital."

  “Where else could the cyanide have come from?” he asked.

  "Not counting the Internet?" she asked.

  "Including the Internet," he said.

  "If we had a suspect," Cindy said, "we could get a warrant. Then we could trace an online purchase from his end."

  “We?” Natali’s eyebrows shot up toward his receding hairline, like an undersized basketball player missing a jump shot. "We'll leave that to the geeks in the Computer Crimes Squad, once we've got a suspect."

  “Understood,” Cindy said. “Maybe one of the Schofields is a mad scientist."

  "This Barbara Rose character works in a hospital," Natali said. "She's some kind of counselor. Hospitals have labs. We need to find out if they keep any cyanide at the lab in her hospital and if she had access."

  Not saying anything could only get worse. She had to tell him she knew Barbara and how. He'd probably find the concept of a clean and sober group house in the Hamptons hilarious.

  "What about a botanica?" she asked. "Or never mind that, you can buy cassava, sometimes they call it yuca, in any bodega in the city. If you squeeze or pound all the juice out of a cassava root, you get cyanide."

  "Where did you get that?”

  “The cyanide, on the Internet. The cassava, hey, I’m a New Yorker.”

  In fact, the information came from Jimmy, whose wide-ranging passion for history had briefly lighted on Columbus’s annihilation of the tribal Taino, some of whom had poisoned themselves in preference to enslavement and massacre. She had only confirmed it on the Internet.

  “There are a lot of bodegas in Manhattan and more in Brooklyn and the Bronx,” he said. “It's a perfect do-it-yourself project," Cindy said. "And good luck getting someone who works in one to identify a customer who bought roots.”

  “Unless she looked like Sophia,” Natali said. “Someone might remember a tall blonde goddess.”

  “Right,” Cindy said, “the only person in this case who had no reason to cook up homemade cyanide.”

  “Anyone could have done it,” Natali said. “That Barbara, for instance. Maybe she speaks Spanish. She struck me as the hippie type. Maybe she was in the Peace Corps and learned all about pounding cassava. She's got a motive. Her boyfriend was two-timing her with the beautiful Sophia, and on top of it, he was blabbing to her about all their problems. A woman scorned: the oldest motive in the world."

  He had it all wrong. If Natali was in the program, he’d understand that the sponsor-sponsee relationship was, well, sacred. Sometimes newcomers got hit on, usually by some scuzzy guy whose sobriety was shaky anyhow. In AA they called it thirteenth stepping, and that was the polite term. But a guy like Jimmy and a woman like Sophia? Forget it. As for Barbara killing a woman out of jealousy, no way. It wasn't only Cindy's dating relationship with Bruce that made it borderline inappropriate for her to investigate this case. She’d spent that emotionally charged summer in the Hamptons with Barbara and Jimmy too. They were her friends. She had to tell the boss. But would he take her off the case? It was her homicide. She’d worked and dreamed and prayed for it, and she was damned if she’d give it up. She had to dig deep and prove there wasn't any evidence against Barbara. In the meantime, she had to get Natali to focus on other suspects.

  “I wonder how Sophia got on with her secretary,” she said. "She could be a person of interest. She'd have been in a position to know Sophia's secrets."

  “Personal assistant,” Natali said. “She corrected me four times. Miranda Spence, veddy British. As for getting on, to hear her tell it, the two of them sat on a cloud with harps and sang in harmony all day long.”

  “You saw her?” Cindy asked.

  “Phone,” he said. "We'll wait till CSU has been through her stuff before we go see her. Let's look at her files and see if anything jumps out at us. Did you see where her office was?"

  "Where?"

  "She sublet space from her husband's firm,” Natali said. “ Right down the hall. I guess Kane didn’t mention that when he talked to you.”

&
nbsp; “I should have noticed,” Cindy said with chagrin, "when I was in the building."

  “It was around a corner," Natali said. "She had her own plate-glass door and reception area."

  “Were there connecting doors?” she asked.

  “Good question. Yep. Theoretically, everyone in the firm, including Larry Kane, had access."

  "Does that mean we interview everyone in Kane's office?" Cindy asked.

  "If we need to," Natali said. "When we look through Sophia's files, keep an eye out for any connections between the law firm and her business. We also want to know which of his associates knew them socially."

  "Got it."

  "Whoever did her legal work," Natali said, "we're looking for probable cause to get whatever they've got. It’s one thing to ask their friends what the marriage was like and another to read the pre-nup for ourselves.”

  "Do you think her lawyer worked at Larry's firm?" Cindy asked.

  "Probably not," he said. "They do mostly corporate work. Besides, she could have wanted to keep hubby's nose out of her legal business for any number of reasons."

  "Like in case she ever wanted a divorce," she said.

  "Or assets she didn't want him to know about," he said. "Then there’s her family, the Schofield clan. According to them, nobody had any problems, financial or personal, not so much as an ingrown toenail, and everybody loved everybody else."

  "So we keep going at them?"

  "We chip away," he said. "I want you to go back and see what you make of that girl whose boyfriend poured out all his troubles with her to Sophia. That's a weird thing. I don't get it about those people, do you?"

  There was Cindy’s opening if she wanted it. Should she come clean, or was "jump off the cliff" a better metaphor? No, she had to start with Sergeant Washington. She didn't want him to hear it from Natali, who would get it wrong no matter how carefully she chose her words. Even Bruce didn't quite understand how vulnerable it made her feel to break her anonymity with the squad and why she thought she needed to in order to be credible on the subject of twelve-step programs.

  “Natali.”

  “What, Cinders?”

  “Sophia’s sister said she was a serious photographer. What if she did have a darkroom?”

  “Call Kane and ask,” he said. “I’ll call Spence, the personal assistant.”

  “She had two darkrooms,” Natali said five minutes later.

  "I know," Cindy said. "One at work and one at home. Did Miranda say what she used the office one for?"

  “High quality promotional materials,” Natali said, “shot with a single lens reflex and developed in a traditional darkroom, gave her high-end clients a sense of warm, fuzzy snobbery. Not how Spence put it. She could do her own rush jobs if she needed to, wherever she happened to be, and deduct it all on her taxes.”

  "It would be nice to be that rich," Cindy said.

  "I'll take alive and stretching to make ends meet over rich and dead," Natali said.

  "The real estate alone makes the mind boggle," Cindy said. "She'd converted their third bathroom because she needed running water. Larry Kane would never have told me if I hadn’t asked.”

  “Miranda knew about it,” Natali said. “I guess a personal assistant knows the boss’s personal stuff, like what she did with the third bathroom in her apartment.”

  “Arden said Larry blew off Sophia's photography,” Cindy said, “because it would never be a moneymaker like her PR business. But maybe it was misdirection. He wanted us to look at the rabbit in the hat, not the cyanide in the darkroom."

  "If there was cyanide in the darkroom."

  "At least now we can find out," Cindy said.

  "If not, the photos themselves could tell us something," Natali said. "Photos can be interesting, especially photos someone wants to keep private. Let's not narrow our focus too much. We need to pay attention to every aspect of this case."

  "Can we look at the autopsy report again?" Cindy asked. "I got hung up on the cyanide on the first pass. Maybe something else will pop out this time."

  A few clicks took each of them to the autopsy results on their computer screens. Both read in silence, scrolling as they went. They had different reading styles. Cindy squinted and leaned closer and closer to the screen, as if, by getting close enough to bite, she could rip the meat out of the mass of information. Natali was a speedreader, his glance darting over the page.

  "Ha! Look at this!"

  "Where are you?" She got up and looked over his shoulder.

  "Sophia was six weeks pregnant," he said.

  "Pregnancy changes everything," Cindy said, "including relationships. Larry Kane wouldn't want to kill his unborn child. Or would he? He told me they didn't want children."

  "The husband is still the most likely suspect when a wife gets killed," Natali said.

  "I guess it depends on how dysfunctional their marriage was," Cindy said.

  "We'll interview Kane again," Natali said. "For one thing, did he know his wife was pregnant?"

  "I'd like to know if she planned to stay home with the baby," Cindy said. "In fact, was she definitely going to have the baby?"

  "An abortion?" Natali's eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "They were married, so if they considered it, I'd like to hear the reason."

  "What was she going to do about her business?" Cindy said. "It was pretty much a one-woman operation. He seemed to set a lot of store by it, and obviously so did she."

  "Let's not rule out any possibilities at this point," he said. "Never mind what you would do in the same situation or what you privately think people should do or not do."

  "Understood," Cindy said. "I'd like to know more about the whole family's finances. Maybe someone had a stake in Sophia not producing the next generation of Schofields."

  "Let's find that lawyer," Natali said. "What about people who might have had a stake in her business? Clients, competitors? Would anybody be hurt if she slacked off?"

  "Or sold it," Cindy said, "or took on a partner to run it so she could stay home for a while."

  "Let's not forget the impact of her death on the business," he said.

  "She worked alone," Cindy said, "but her clients still have needs. Do you think the business will fold?"

  "We'll keep an open mind," he said. "This time we'll see Kane in his home, both of us."

  "Can we search the place for cyanide?" she asked. "Or evidence that he obtained it, a paper trail or an electronic footprint?"

  "We need probable cause for a search warrant," Natali said, "and we haven't got it. While we're digging, let's see if we can get Kane to let us to take a look voluntarily."

  Chapter Seventeen: Bruce

  I stared out the window of the train to East Islip, thanking my Higher Power that I hadn’t yet given up smoking and wishing I could light up now. Who would have dreamed that they would ever ban smoking on the Long Island Railroad? Nor could anyone have imagined that, in no time at all, a new addiction would spring up to become the bane of guys like me who wanted only to be left alone. The cellphonista in the seat behind me was calling all the plays of last night’s football game to some asshole who lacked the sense to hang up on him. It’s amazing how in these cell phone conversations, the party in the public place with the captive audience always does all the talking.

  With Cindy out of the picture, not for good, I hoped fervently, and Jimmy and Barbara painfully awkward to be around, I had time on my hands. I wasn't like Jimmy: I couldn't fix the discomfort of unstructured time by going to more and more meetings. My sponsor had been trying to get me to meditate. Again. I suspected I was incorrigible, because whenever I tried to empty my mind, anxiety crowded in, and when I tried to push it gently away, it did a do-si-do with different anxieties. My late therapist, Beryl Feingold, had been encouraging me to dive deeper into my feelings about my mother when she died. Beryl, not my mother. For so long, I had been a guy who kept his emotions safely in the kiddie pool, especially when it came to my parents, that I hadn't messed with m
y reprieve by trying to find another therapist. But my mom was getting old, and there was no one but me. Ready or not, I had to deal with it.

  My sponsor, whom I’d called last night, had advised me to take this visit to my mother one moment at a time.

  "Yeah, yeah."

  “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths,’” he said.

  "Sez who?"

  "Shakespeare," he said. "Or as your friend Barbara would say, don’t project.”

  I knew it made sense, and that in itself irritated the hell out of me. What right did these little platitudes like “one day at a time” have to be so hard to do and work so well? The backside of Nassau and western Suffolk counties whizzed by. Anticipatory images of Ma in her housedress and curlers floated through my head. I dreaded finding her more fuzzy and forgetful than last time I’d visited.

  She didn’t disappoint me. She looked more like a bag lady every time. She hadn’t put her dentures in, so her mouth and jaw had collapsed against the bones, giving her whole face a sunken look. I found the missing teeth soaking in a teacup, tucked in with the cheap tea bag, as if the string with its cardboard tag were a length of dental floss. It didn’t give me much of an appetite for tea. But I figured the familiar ritual would help get me through the visit. So I boiled the water and dunked fresh tea bags in a couple of relatively clean cups. I carried hers to the kitchen table, where she sat slumped as if the effort of doing nothing all her life had wearied her unbearably.

  “You have some too.” She dunked twice and held the tea bag up by the tag, the way you’d dangle a mouse by its tail. “You can use mine.”

  "I've got my own, Ma."

  Ma had never gotten over the Great Depression, even though she hadn't been born when it started. She'd raised economizing to an art. Maybe I should take her to a DA meeting. She could teach us all a thing or two about living in deprivation, no matter how much abundance was available. She dunked her bag again.