Dearly Departed (21 page)

CHAPTER 36

M
arcus had invited Amy to lunch, and she'd accepted. This was their standard way of apologizing. If one of them wasn't ready to make up, that person would be too busy. If the rift was only one person's fault, it would become a dinner date, with the offender paying the tab. But this was scheduled as a lunch—Dutch treat—and they met on the corner out in front of the Ritz-Carlton.

Since the day was nice and the lilies were in bloom—and no one had bothered to make a reservation—lunch was purchased from the gourmet food trucks that had recently emerged from their winter hibernation. Amy went with a coriander-braised duck burger from Le Camion, parked by the fire hydrant on Fifty-Eighth Street, while Marcus chose a lobster and orange salad from See Food, near the crosswalk on Sixth Avenue. They found an empty bench overlooking the Central Park Pond and talked as if nothing had happened.

This was the best part of a relationship
, Amy thought.
Well, maybe the second-best part. To have someone you could talk to about anything, to not have to struggle to make conversation or be on your best behavior.

The one sore subject in their repertoire came up only afterward, when Amy was walking Marcus back to the Ritz. “So you knew about our finances.” She tried to keep the accusing tone out of her voice. “And you didn't tell me.”

“Fanny made me promise.”

“Since when do you keep promises?”

“Now you're blaming me for keeping a promise?” He had to smile. “There's no winning.”

“Okay, you're right. It's Mom's fault, not yours.”

“As long as we're on the subject . . .” His voice turned serious. “I think you should be wary of Peter Borg. Personal feelings aside.”

“He should be wary of Mom and me. Have you seen our bank account?”

“That's my point. Why would Peter want to merge and assume your debts? It's not like you have a great business model or the only available storefront in Lower Manhattan.” He tilted his head in her direction. “I'm just being honest.”

“You know what he wants,” Amy said, giving her butt a sexy little shake.

“I do,” Marcus admitted. “I also think Peter's smarter than he lets on. He wants you to think it's personal, that he's giving himself a bad deal just for you. But the guy's a pro. There's got to be a reason.”

“You don't think I'm reason enough?”

“Seriously, Amy.” He put on his serious face. “You're sexy and smart and worth everything. But that's not how Peter thinks. There's something we're not seeing. That's all I'm saying. It's a warning.”

Could Marcus be right? Amy thought about it as they began to jaywalk gingerly across Central Park South. When Marcus looked over a few seconds later, she was gone. He found her back on the curb, standing behind a parked bus.

“Amy, I'm sorry. But I can smell a con job. . . .”

“It's Maury,” she whispered and nodded toward the other side of the bus.

Marcus glanced across the six lanes of traffic. Sure enough, Maury Steinberg was on the sidewalk in front of the Ritz-Carlton, waiting as the doorman hailed him a taxi.

“If we can see him, he can see us,” Amy said and pulled him back behind the bus.

“So? You knew Maury was staying at the Ritz.”

That was true. After Amy had found out about the Steinbergs owning the penthouse, she had called Lieutenant Rawlings, who had in turn called Maury's cell phone. After some hemming and hawing, Maury had admitted to being in New York for a few days.

“I was hoping to slip in and out,” he'd told the detective. “As much as I liked Evan, I didn't want to have to spend an afternoon at another memorial service. You understand.”

The lieutenant did. He asked Maury where he was staying and how long he would be in town, but somehow neglected to ask where he'd been at the time of Joy Archer's death.

“I don't want him to see me,” Amy said, still on the other side of the bus. “He'll think I'm following him, which will be awkward if I ever do intend to follow him and he catches me.”

“He's your suspect? Maury?”

“Only because he knows the building and probably has keys to everything.”

“Do you want to search his room? I can get us into any room in the Ritz-Carlton.”

“You would do that for me?” It was so much nicer having someone like Marcus on her side. “I'm not sure what we'd be looking for. But thanks.”

He seemed disappointed. “Well, think about it.”

They were still behind the bus when Amy's phone rang. “Amy?” It was Fanny, and she wasn't in the mood for chitchat. “Samime's leaving. I came home and found a note. What did you say to the woman?”

“Nothing. What did
you
say to her?”

“Nothing. The note says, ‘Thank you for all your help and friendship. I'm forever indebted.' Blah, blah . . . ‘No more we can do. Have to go home.'”

“Really? It says, ‘Blah, blah . . . '?”

“Amy, don't be a jerk. Something's wrong.”

 

In the taxi on the way to JFK, Amy checked her phone. There was a nonstop Turkish Airlines flight leaving in about two hours. She told her cabbie to take her to Terminal One, then sat back, buckled up, and wondered what could have happened. She tried Samime's cell phone every few minutes but saw that it was going directly to voice mail.

There wasn't much hope of catching her, Amy knew, but she didn't have a choice. If Samime left, there would be no contacting her again, short of Amy making her own trip to Istanbul. It was early afternoon on a Wednesday. Grand Central Parkway was clear, and the airport nearly empty.

Once inside the terminal, she followed the overhead signs, half running toward the security gate. She was hoping to see the usual rats' maze, with hundreds of fliers snaking their way through the endless nylon ropes. Instead, there was only one chaotic family and a few silent couples and business travelers.

At the front was a modestly dressed woman in a brown head scarf, just placing her shoes on the belt. There was no way to get to her, Amy saw, not without going through the ID and ticket control. She considered shouting out Samime's name but didn't want to risk having her disappear completely.

Amy scanned the edges of the hall, looking for another way to get to the woman. And that was when she saw the other modestly dressed woman in a head scarf. This one was seated in a nearby row of plastic chairs, rearranging the contents of a plastic shopping bag.

“Why are you leaving?”

Samime looked up from her shopping bag and frowned. “Amy?”

“I know it's not working out like we wanted, but we have to give it time.” She settled into the third plastic seat, with the shopping bag between them. “You knew I wasn't a real detective.”

“Sweet girl, I have imposed enough on your kindness.”

“It's not about kindness. It's about getting justice for Bill. It's about . . . Is that a painting?” Amy stared down into the shopping bag, where Samime had been in the process of wrapping the familiar scene in a cocoon of silk scarves. “Is that from Colleen's apartment?” She dug down among the scarves and gently pulled it out. “It is.”

“She gave it to me,” Samime explained.

“You went back to see her, and she gave you a painting?” Amy didn't know which half of the sentence was odder. Why would Samime go back to see Colleen without mentioning it? And why would Colleen give this woman, whom she didn't much like, a painting from her wall?

“Bill painted it,” said Samime. Okay, that sentence was the oddest. “Sometimes he would paint copies of impressionist paintings. As an exercise.”

Amy recalled Samime's reaction on seeing it and Colleen's claim that it had been painted by a friend. “You recognized it as Bill's work.”

“Correct. And she was nice enough to make me a present of it.”

“Are you sure you didn't just steal it?” Amy blurted out. She had a pretty good thought filter, but every now and then she found herself speaking like her mother.

“I did not,” said Samime, then proceeded to remove it from Amy's hands. The small painting was halfway back in the cushion of scarves when Amy noticed the pale green label glued to the back. The label held only five words, but they were enough: THE STEINBERG GALLERY, NEW YORK.

It took Amy a few seconds of blinking silence to make the connection. “That's Maury Steinberg,” she said, pointing to the label. Yes, of course. Bill had been an art professor and a painter. And, according to Paisley's postmortem speech, Maury had owned a gallery before teaming up with Laila. “That's the connection.” Amy was still pointing. “We were looking for a connection to someone on the tour. Here it is. Maury Steinberg and Bill.”

“I have to go,” said Samime. She covered up the label with the edge of a red scarf, then stood up with her shopping bag and headed toward the security desk.

“No, you can't.” Amy tried grabbing her by the arm but was too slow. “We can take this to the police. They can check out Maury's old gallery. Who knows what they'll find.”

“Police?” The Turkish woman shook her head. “No. I have to leave. I'll be late for my flight.”

“What?” Amy couldn't believe it. “Samime, you can't go now. This is why you came, to track down your husband's killer.”

“I don't think it will help.” She was moving faster now, stepping up to the nylon rope and the little podium and the stern-looking TSA agent who was checking tickets and passports. “I shouldn't have come and bothered you.”

“It's no bother. Okay, maybe at first I was reluctant. Sorry about that. I didn't want to put myself in the middle of another murder.” Amy found herself speaking faster than an auctioneer. “But you were right. There is a connection. Maury Steinberg. Don't you owe it to Bill's memory to stay?”

“Boarding pass and ID.” The TSA agent was a bulky woman in blue who was interested only in doing her job with as little physical movement as possible.

Samime produced the two documents out of the folds of her dress. “I'm sorry. I changed my mind.”

“But that doesn't make sense,” Amy countered. “We're closer now than ever.”

The TSA agent waved Samime through, then repeated her demand to Amy. “Boarding pass and ID.”

“You can't go.” But Amy found herself speaking into thin air as the woman scurried through the nearly empty maze, toward the next TSA agent and the walk-through metal detector.

CHAPTER 37

I
t took Amy over an hour to get Rawlings on the phone. In the past she had always found herself avoiding the homicide detective or having him pop up at the most inconvenient time. The idea of not being able to contact him was new and unsettling and probably should have been a hint.

“Abel, I'm busy.”

“I found a connection.” She was at work on her big-screen Mac, toggling through several open windows.

“That's nice. Between what and what?”

“Between Bill Strohman and Maury Steinberg.”

“The guy who isn't in Hawaii.”

“It's more than that,” she insisted. “Maury ran a Manhattan art gallery before he married Laila. You think everyone's life is an open book these days, with the Internet, but you still have to know where to look. Anyway, he sold at least one painting by Strohman. So there's a connection.”

“I suggest you call Inspector Badlani in India. It's his case.”

“But it's also connected to yours.” She couldn't understand why the lieutenant was suddenly so cool. “You yourself said—”

“My case is officially an accident.”

“Accident? What about the gas valves and the pill bottles?”

“The DA's office disagrees. They placed a call to my captain. Told him to stop wasting their time and our resources on some ‘grandstanding lieutenant trying to make headlines.' I believe those were their exact words.”

“But Joy Archer was killed. You can't just let it drop.”

“Amy . . .” He adopted a patient tone, which let her know his patience was gone. “I am not some amateur sticking my nose into things. My boss gives me cases, and I investigate.”

“But you can argue with them. Make your case.”

“Hey, I'm not Bruce Willis, either. I can't say, ‘Damn it, Chief. I won't let you close this one.' It doesn't work that way. You want to know where I am now?” He didn't wait for a guess. “I'm in a loft in the Meatpacking District, playing second officer in a drug dispute turned homicide. Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?”

“I trusted your instincts.”

Amy was outraged. “I didn't ask you to. You hounded me. You arrested my mother.”

“Well, I guess the joke's on me.”

For several minutes after the call, Amy was steaming, pacing the floor. How dare he blame her? How dare he give up, now that she finally had a suspect? And how dare he hang up . . . ? When the phone rang right in the middle of her mental tirade, she picked up without thinking. “This had better be an apology.”

“Actually, it's not.”

“Mom, I'm sorry. I thought it was someone else.”

“So who owes you an apology? Never mind. I need you to go to the Sutton Place apartment.”

“Paisley MacGregor's apartment? Why?”

“Arthur, the sweetheart at the front desk. I asked him to let me know if anyone takes the elevator to the penthouse floor, other than the police or the staff or the neighbor. Anyway, someone is there now.”

“Who?”

“Arthur didn't see, but his monitor recorded it. Whoever it is has been on that floor for nearly an hour. Oh, and bring a hundred bucks in cash. Give it to Arthur.”

“What are you doing?”

“Obviously, someone's searching her place. Dear, I can't talk. I just stepped into the elevator.”

“Elevator? You're there now?” But the line had already filled with static and gone dead.

Fanny Abel put away her phone and watched the lights blink their way up to the top of the Sutton Place building. She wasn't worried. At the worst she could knock on the door and say it was a mistake. She was looking for Margery Daniels, she'd say, the woman in the other penthouse. She was more curious than anything—about whoever was there and whatever she could worm out of them.

The door to penthouse 2 was ajar a fraction of an inch. Fanny knocked lightly, then pushed it open a crack and called, “Yoo-hoo, Margery.” After waiting a few seconds, she called again, even as she pushed the door all the way open.

Fanny tiptoed through the white oval foyer and into the living room, with its tall, stunning view of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. The evening shadows revealed two lanes of taillights on the upper level moving slowly into Queens and two lanes of headlights crawling at the same pace into Manhattan.

From here, she softly yoo-hooed her way into the master bedroom and was finally stopped by the sight of a parquet-topped trapdoor, angled back to reveal an open floor safe, approximately two feet square. “Yoo-hoo,” Fanny whispered, not really wanting an answer at the moment.

Amy had mentioned Barbara's inquiry about the music box, but Fanny really didn't understand what the problem was. The music box was right here.

The dark rectangular box lay on top of the satin bedspread, its diamond-patterned lid now open. The box's false bottom had been removed, she noticed, revealing a bundle of folded certificates stuffed inside. Fanny was old enough to recognize stock certificates.
Do they even make them anymore?
She unfolded the bundle, saw the company title, and vaguely recalled some CNN segment from about a month ago.

The flush of a toilet alerted Fanny and gave her nearly a minute's warning. She could have left right then. But she had a good sense of who the flusher was and how she could play this to her advantage.

A white door, nearly seamless in the white wall, opened, and Barbara Corns emerged. Fanny had the element of surprise and used it.

“I see you found the stock.”

Barbara saw the woman standing by the bed and froze. “Who are you?”

“Barbara, Barbara,” Fanny said, sounding a little disappointed. “Who do you think I am?” It might be better not to actively impersonate anyone this time around.

“I don't . . .” Barbara focused on the face and the red hair. “You were at Evan's memorial service, asking questions. Are you the police? You don't look like police.”

“Why? Because I'm a woman? Because I'm older? The mandatory retirement age is sixty-five.” She was guessing. “Do I look sixty-five?”

“No, no, you look great. Look, ma'am, I have every right to be here. The crime-scene tape is down, and I'm the executor of the will. I have a key.”

“Let's not waste time, Barbara. My partner will be here any minute, and she's not as understanding.”

“I've done nothing wrong,” Barbara sputtered. “I found the floor safe. It was unlocked. I was doing an inventory.”

“We know about the music box,” Fanny announced. “And we know why you want it back.” That was an easy deduction. The certificates, according to her memory of the CNN story, were probably worth millions.

“How much do you know?”

Bingo
, Fanny thought.
Home free.
“Why don't you start from the beginning? It'll go easier. Don't worry. I'm not recording. It's just you and me—for the next few minutes. After my partner arrives, however . . .” She raised her hands in a helpless gesture.

The clock was ticking, at least in Barbara's mind. And although Fanny continued to ask leading questions, the story more or less poured out. First and foremost, it was all Evan's fault.

Evan had been born into a long line of stockbrokers. Jerome Corns, Evan's great-grandfather, had been noteworthy as the only person to actually jump out of a window on Black Thursday in 1929. The other jumpers, according to family lore, were mere imitators and started doing it days later. Over the subsequent decades, Corns and Associates managed to stay afloat and eke out their meager profits, which was the reason why Evan decided on law school instead.

When the stock market boom finally hit and his brothers raked in the dough, Evan and his wife were still writing wills and paying off college loans. “Evan felt left out,” Barbara confessed. “He tried to keep up. But mostly that meant living above our means and hiring a maid we could barely afford.”

Evan's solution to his embarrassing state was to lasso a group of investors of his own, using his family name as a lure, and create a REIT, a real estate investment trust. The housing market was at a low point at the time and, he assured his partners, it had nowhere to go but up.

At some point, Fanny began to zone out. She had no affinity for finance. But she maintained a sympathetic expression, eyes wide and unmoving. Barbara obviously needed to tell someone. Fanny knew the syndrome. When you were used to having a husband to talk things over with, it became hard. Before you knew it, you were pouring out your secrets to the homeless guy cashing in bottle deposits at the grocery.

“Evan couldn't let his brothers see him fail. That would be the worst. So he started throwing good money after bad and cooking the books when he had to.”

“Why did he give the stock to your maid?” Fanny didn't mean to skip ahead, but she felt there was a window here, one that would slam shut. As soon as Amy walked through the door, it would be apparent that Fanny was not a police detective on the cusp of retirement.

“It was a joke.” Barbara unfolded the ancient certificates and spread them flat on the bedspread. The elaborate print across the top said it all.
Senosha Diamond Mines, Northwest Territories.

“Great-grandfather Jerome left a lot of worthless stock lying around after the crash. Evan found these in the back of a desk he inherited. We did our due diligence. I mean, we're not idiots. The mines are still incorporated in Canada. But in the thirties, they went dry—or whatever mines do. The certificates were worth a few bucks apiece, for their historical value.”

“So you gave them to your maid.”

Barbara sighed. “You know how it is. There's a birthday coming, and you don't feel like shopping or spending. We re-gifted a tacky music box with a diamond pattern and wrote a cutesy little card. ‘To our diamond in the rough.' That's what we used to call her.”

Evan and Barbara had no way of knowing that a few years after they handed over their gift, a new hydro-mining technique would be developed and that the Senosha Mines would reopen and enjoy amazing success. A share from 1925 would split twenty-four times. When they read the news in
Forbes
, the couple was floored. And angry. And embarrassed.

“Well, that must have rankled,” said Fanny with a straight face. “You're in desperate need of money, and then your little gag gift to your ex-maid . . .”

“Yes,” said Barbara. “Evan and I spent many drunken nights discussing this and blaming each other. We wanted to talk to Paisley, but by the time we got up the nerve, she was dead.”

“You probably thought she'd already cashed them in and made millions.”

“We thought so, yes. How else could she afford a life like this? But then we found out that she had never opened her gifts. Eight million dollars at the bottom of a music box. A few pieces of paper that could solve all our problems.”

“Eight million. Is that how much you owe?”

“We owe more. But eight would cover us for now.”

“My, my.” Fanny cocked her head to one side and scrunched her eyebrows. “I hate to bring up a delicate subject, but thinking about your financial hole and your dearly departed husband . . .” She paused. “You know what I'm getting at, right?”

“Did Evan kill himself? Is that what you're asking? Is that why the police were at his memorial?”

“That's not an answer.”

Barbara raised both shoulders and let them fall. “I've thought about that. No, I don't think so. There was still hope. Evan would cling to any hope.”

“And you think this would solve your problems?” Fanny asked, tapping the top certificate.

“Who would I be hurting?” Barbara demanded. “It was worthless at the time. She never even looked inside.”

“Would this solve your problems?” Fanny asked. She liked solving problems.

“Hello?” came a hesitant voice, echoing in from the living room.

“That's my partner. I must have left the door open.”

“I'll split it with you,” Barbara said, her eyes almost devouring the old pieces of paper on the bed. “Your partner doesn't need to know.”

“I'm not fond of re-gifting,” said Fanny.

“Please! If it becomes part of the estate, I'll get just a fraction. And it'll be months. Much too late.”

“Okay, just take it,” Fanny whispered. “No one needs to find out.”

“Really?” For a moment Barbara was stunned. “God bless you.” And she slipped the wad of certificates into the music box just a few seconds before Amy walked through the door.