A Drunkard's Path (16 page)

Sandra’s apartment was about a five-minute drive from the school, in one of those large, nondescript apartment buildings that were built in the seventies. I’m sure it looked modern for about five minutes. Then it just looked soulless.

According to the slip of paper she lived in 11G, so I headed up the elevator and onto the eleventh floor. I hadn’t quite figured out how to get into her apartment. I guess I thought it would come to me when I got there. Or maybe I’d get lucky and she would actually have a roommate. But no luck. I stood in front of the locked door, wondering what I should do next. Then I looked out the hallway window and got an idea.

I opened the window and climbed onto the fire escape. One step, though, and I realized it was rickety. Each time my foot moved, the platform creaked as if it might pull away from the wall at any minute.

“If I live through this, I’m calling the building inspector,” I said as a threat to no one in particular.

I took a deep breath and tried to reassure myself.

Don’t look down, I thought. I looked down.

I took another step toward Sandra’s window.

If it’s locked, I realized, I’m a complete idiot. The staircase swayed slightly underfoot.

A dead idiot.

I reached Sandra’s window and pulled it up. It opened so easily, I almost lost my balance. I grabbed hold of the sill and climbed in.

Now what? I asked myself.

The apartment was barely furnished. There were her art supplies from class and a couple of half-painted canvases lying on the floor. I needed to satisfy myself one last time that Sandra was not the artist Oliver claimed she was in class. I went through the paintings one by one, studying them for anything that expressed a unique talent. I recognized each of them from class and they were, just as I remembered, nothing special. Oliver’s second assessment of her was more likely—she had no future as a painter. I wondered for a moment if I did, but this was hardly the time for introspection. I left the paintings and got back to the task at hand.

Across the room an empty bottle of scotch and two glasses sat near a small TV. There was one wooden kitchen chair with paint spattered all over it.

What could I possibly find in here?

I walked into the other rooms and saw pretty much the same thing. In the bedroom an air mattress sat next to a bundle of blankets and a pile of clothes. The bathroom had a makeup bag and some toothpaste.

It felt like a squatter lived here—more like a hideout than a home. Maybe she was on the run from something. Or, to be fair, maybe she was broke and caught up in the romance of being a starving artist. It might have been that Oliver was just trying to help her out. It was something Eleanor would have done.

I walked into the galley kitchen and started opening cabinets. Nothing. To get at the last one, above the refrigerator, I had to use the wooden chair from the living room. I opened the cabinet and reached in.

“Oh my God.” I jumped off the chair and took three steps back. I knew my heart was racing but I stopped myself from further retreat.

You’re looking for a murderer and you let yourself get scared by a cockroach? I scolded myself.

I climbed back onto the chair and forced myself to look deeper into the cabinet. There wasn’t just one cockroach but an extended family crawling around in the cabinet and, now that I was on the alert, on the floor as well. But there was also something else: a purple wallet in the back corner. I reached in.

“Yuck. Yuck,” I said involuntarily as my hand moved inches away from a roach. I grabbed the wallet and threw it onto the counter.

Once down from the chair, I took the wallet into the living room. There were no IDs, no credit cards. Nothing in the billfold. I opened the change purse and saw just a few coins. At first glance there was nothing special about them, but when I looked closer, I realized they were Canadian. Lily had been from Canada. Could this be her wallet?

I went through the wallet one more time, checking every pocket. Deep inside the last one I felt something. A small piece of thick paper. I pulled it out. It was folded in half. When I opened it, I realized it was a black-and-white photo of a woman sitting on a bed. It looked a little like the photo Rich described. She was a woman about my age, sitting on a bed, wearing a polka-dot dress. But unlike Rich’s description, this woman wasn’t staring off into the distance. She was looking at the camera, smiling.

Still, it could be the same woman, and if it was, it would connect Lily’s murder to Sandra’s. I knew the only way I could confirm my suspicions was if Rich saw the photo. But that would be stealing evidence in a murder investigation.

Breaking and entering was one thing, but taking the wallet was another. If I did take the photo, I knew I couldn’t bring it to Jesse because he would want to know how I got it. And based on the way he had treated Rich the night of Lily’s murder, I wondered whether he’d ever show him this photo.

I stood staring at the wallet for several minutes before working out a compromise. I took the photo and threw the wallet back into the cabinet. I could show the photo to Rich, then return it to the apartment. It might only take a couple of hours. Then I could go to Jesse with Sandra’s address. It was interfering, but only in a very limited way, and I could find out if he’d already been to the apartment and discovered what I had. I knew I was rationalizing a crime, but if Jesse had paid attention to Rich in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to.

I put the chair back where I’d found it and left the apartment through the front door. I took the elevator down the eleven flights and walked to my car. I drove away in a haze. A few Canadian coins and an old photograph were the slimmest of ties, but in my gut I felt that Lily and Sandra must have known each other. The wallet wasn’t Sandra’s so it had to be Lily’s. Who keeps their own wallet in a kitchen cabinet? That’s where you hide something.

But what was the connection? Could they have met here or in Canada? And what was Lily’s connection to Oliver? Maybe she was another wannabe artist that Oliver took under his wing.

I was so focused on the investigation that I almost went through a red light. Luckily I stopped just in time. As I was waiting, two police cars crossed the intersection in front of me. One was from Archers Rest and the other from Morristown. And they were headed in the direction of Sandra’s apartment.

I could see that Greg was driving the Archers Rest car and Jesse was staring out the front window. Or did he look to the side and see me? I couldn’t tell. I ran my finger across the photo in my lap, trying to convince myself that I had done the right thing. I took it as a good sign that no one in the Morristown car, including Chief Powell, saw me.

My relief was short-lived because now I had a bigger problem. Maybe I’d gotten away with busting into Sandra’s apartment, but that was just the first part of my plan. How was I going to get the photo back into evidence without admitting what I’d done? Suddenly I realized that my enthusiasm, or what Eleanor would call meddling, might have jeopardized the entire investigation. It was the closest I’d come in days to seeing why Jesse wanted me to stay out of it.

 

 

 

 

W
hen I called Susanne, she promised to have Rich come to her place. What she didn’t tell me was that Natalie, Bernie, Carrie, and Maggie would be there as well.

“We’re Eleanor’s friends, and if she’s getting involved with a killer, then we want to know,” Bernie said before I even sat down.

“I don’t want to get you involved,” I told them. “What I did was illegal.”

Natalie put a cup of tea in front of me. “As of right now, we’re accomplices.”

I looked around. I could see the worry in their faces and they could probably see it in mine. I wasn’t just concerned about my grandmother. There was a very real possibility that Jesse would lock up an entire quilting guild. But as I looked around it was obvious that nothing I could say would dissuade them.

“Okay,” I agreed. “The first thing is this photo.” I took the stolen picture out of my purse and handed it to Rich.

He stared at it for a long time. “It kind of looks the same, but the lady in this one is happy.”

“Could it have been taken at the same time?” I asked.

“I guess so.”

Bernie leaned into him. “Is it the same woman as in the other photo?”

Rich looked at the picture again. “I only saw it for a minute, but yeah. That’s the lady. I remember the dots on her dress.”

Susanne took the photo from him and examined it herself. “It looks a little like you, Maggie.”

Maggie grabbed it. “I was never this beautiful,” she said.

Carrie took it next. “Nonsense. You’re this beautiful now.”

Maggie waved her hand, but she blushed a little. “I was also pregnant for most of my twenties and thirties.”

Bernie took the photo and laughed. “I don’t know, Maggie. She’s got that certain glow. Are you sure it’s not you?”

“Okay, enough.” Maggie grabbed back the photo and handed it to me. “Let’s assume it is the same woman as in the photo Rich saw. What does it mean?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. What we do know is that someone took photos of this woman. One was found by Lily’s body and the other was found in Sandra’s apartment. I’d say that connects the two.”

“So if we figure out who this woman is, we figure out the connection,” Natalie said.

“Where do we start?” Bernie looked at me.

“We have to start asking questions,” I said. “And if you guys are doing some of the asking, it won’t seem so suspicious.”

“One of us has to talk to Oliver,” Susanne said.

“I’ll do it,” Bernie said. “I lived in Greenwich Village for part of the early sixties. Maybe we have some people in common.”

“And somebody has to talk to Kennette,” I sighed. I could tell they were all a little unhappy with that. “We really don’t know much about her,” I added.

Natalie nodded in agreement. “I’ll take her to lunch.”

“What else?” Susanne was getting into it now.

“Maggie, I need you to talk with my grandmother,” I said. “You’ve known her the longest and she’ll trust you.”

“So get the dirt!” Bernie laughed.

“I’m going to find out what’s going on with Oliver.” Maggie looked at Bernie. “And try to get her to take it slow.”

“Or break up with him,” Carrie said.

“Let’s not hang the man before the trial,” Susanne scolded. “He’s making her happy, and for all we know, he’s completely innocent.”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “
For all we know
Oliver is innocent. But we don’t know. And if we’re ever going to feel comfortable having him in Eleanor’s life, we need to know who he is and what he’s done.”

“Well,” Maggie said. “That might be more difficult than it appears.”

We all turned to Maggie, who pulled a file from her bag. As she opened it we crammed together, all trying to see what she had brought. Maggie looked up at us, annoyed.

“Give her some room,” Bernie said.

We each took a few steps back.

“As far as I can tell, Oliver White didn’t exist until 1957,” Maggie said.

“You didn’t find any records of him in England?” I asked.

“Nothing. I found, through old immigration records, that Oliver came to this country in 1957, but I can’t find anything in England.”

“Why would he lie about that?” I asked.

“A prison record?” Natalie suggested.

“Don’t get ahead of the story,” Maggie scolded.

“He was in prison?” I practically shouted. “What did he do?”

“Hold on.” Maggie had a tale to tell, and it was clear that nothing was going to get in the way. “There was nothing I could find about him before he came to this country. Once he was here it got easier. I checked through old newspaper files and starting in the late 1950s I found articles about him. He was an artist in New York.”

“We know that,” Bernie said impatiently. “Get to the prison record.”

Maggie took a deep breath and continued. “I found several newspapers from that time, and I noticed that he seemed to have done a lot of group shows in alternative places from 1957 to about 1963. Then in ’67 he did a one-man show that got good reviews. Apparently he was doing a lot of paintings of people taking drugs or alcoholics passed out. In one article he was quoted as saying that he wanted to immortalize the people that society forgot—”

“Maggie,” Carrie called out. “What happened to him?”

“He disappeared out of the papers shortly after that show,” Maggie said. “Then I started seeing his name again in the seventies as an established Hudson Valley artist, with paintings selling in the thousands.”

“He was struggling. Then he disappeared,” Natalie summed up.

“When he reemerged, he was rich,” Susanne added. “How did that happen?”

“And what does that have to do with prison?” I asked.

“There was also this.” Maggie pulled out a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. The headline was “Artist Arrested at Opening.”

“What does it say?” I asked.

Maggie handed it to Natalie. “I haven’t got my glasses.”

Natalie took a deep breath “ ‘A Greenwich Village art opening turned into a brawl last evening when emerging artist Oliver White was arrested for assault on Julie Young. According to witnesses, White approached Miss Young, allegedly his date for the evening, because she was speaking with another guest. The two got into a shouting match and White struck Miss Young, knocking her into a painting. Police were called and White was charged with assault, drunk and disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. White was released on his own recognizance.’ ” Natalie looked up at us. We all looked equally stunned. She gave the paper back to Maggie. “It’s dated March 11, 1967.”

“Did he go to jail?” I asked.

“No. There’s another article I found somewhere that says the woman didn’t show up to press charges, so the whole thing was dropped,” Maggie said.