While My Pretty One Sleeps (24 page)

Why did she wear the blue-and-white one?

“What is it, Neeve?” Myles insisted.

“It's probably nothing. Just I'm surprised she wore that blouse with that suit. It just didn't look right with it.”

“Neeve, didn't you tell the police that you recognized the outfit and tell them who the designer was?”

“Yes, Gordon Steuber. It was an ensemble from his workrooms.”

“I'm sorry, I don't get it.” Myles tried to conceal his irritation.

“I think I do.” Kitty poured steaming tea into Neeve's cup. “Drink this,” she ordered. “You look faint.” She looked directly at Myles. “If I'm right, Neeve is saying that Ethel Lambston would not have deliberately dressed in that outfit as it was found on her.”

“I
know
she would not have chosen to wear it that way,” Neeve said. She looked directly into Myles's disbelieving eyes. “Obviously her body had been moved. Is there any way they can establish whether or not someone dressed her
after
she died?”

•   •   •

Douglas Brown had known that the homicide squad planned to obtain a search warrant for Ethel's apartment. Even so, it was a shock when they arrived with it. A team of four detectives converged on the apartment. He watched as they spread powder over surfaces, as they vacuumed the rugs and floors and furniture, carefully sealing and marking the plastic bags in which they stored the dust and fibers and particles which they collected as they minutely examined and sniffed at the small Oriental rug near Ethel's desk.

Seeing Ethel's body on the slab had left Doug with a queasy stomach; an incongruous reminder of the one boat ride he ever took and how violently seasick he had become. She was covered by a sheet that had been wrapped around her face like a nun's wimple, so at least he didn't have to look at her throat. To avoid thinking about her throat he concentrated on the purple-and-yellow bruise on her cheek. Then he'd nodded his head and bolted for the lavatory.

All night he had lain awake in Ethel's bed, trying to decide what to do. He could tell the police about Seamus, about his desperation to stop the alimony payments. But the wife, Ruth, would be blabbering about him. Cold sweat formed on his forehead as he realized how stupid he'd been to go to the bank the other day and insist on getting the withdrawal in hundred-dollar
bills. If the police found that out . . .

Before the police came, he'd agonized about whether to leave the bills hidden around the place. If they weren't there, who could say that Ethel hadn't spent them all?

Someone would know. That crazy kid who had come in to clean might have noticed the ones he'd put back.

In the end, Douglas decided to do absolutely nothing. He'd let the cops find the bills. If Seamus or his wife tried to point a finger at him, he'd call them liars. With the slight comfort of that thought, Douglas turned his mind to the future. This was his apartment now. Ethel's money was his money. He'd get rid of all those stupid clothes and accessories, A goes with A, B goes with B. Maybe he'd pack them all just that way and pitch them into the garbage. The thought brought a grim smile. But no use getting wasteful. All the bucks Ethel spent on her clothes shouldn't go down the drain. He'd find a good second-hand shop and sell them.

When he dressed on Saturday morning, he'd deliberately chosen to wear dark-blue slacks and a tan long-sleeved sport shirt. He wanted to give the impression of subdued grief. The lack of sleep had caused circles to form under his eyes. Today that was all to the good.

The detectives went through Ethel's desk. He watched as they opened the file that read “Important Papers.” The will. He still hadn't decided whether to admit he knew about it. The detective finished reading it and looked over at him. “You ever seen this?” he asked, his tone offhand.

On the spur of the moment, Douglas made his decision. “No. Those are my aunt's papers.”

“She never discussed her will with you?”

Douglas managed a rueful smile. “She used to kid a lot. She said that if she could only leave me her alimony payments, I'd be set for life.”

“Then you didn't know that she seems to have left you a sizable amount of money?”

Douglas swept his hand around the apartment. “I didn't think Aunt Ethel had a sizable amount of money. She bought this place when it went co-op. That must have cost her plenty. She made a good living as a writer, but not big-league.”

“Then she must have been very thrifty along the way.” The detective had handled the will with gloved hands, holding it at the very edges of the paper. As Douglas stared in dismay, the detective called to the fingerprint expert. “Let's dust this.”

Five minutes later, his hands twisting nervously in his lap, Douglas confirmed and then denied any knowledge of the hundred-dollar bills the homicide squad had found secreted in the apartment. To divert them from that subject, he explained that until yesterday he hadn't answered the phone.

“Why?” Detective O'Brien was in charge. The question cut the air like a razor.

“Ethel was funny. I picked up the phone when I was visiting her once and she took my head off. She told me it wasn't my business who called her. But then, yesterday, I happened to think maybe she might want to get in touch with me. So I started answering.”

“Could she have reached you at work?”

“I never thought of that.”

“And the first call you got was a threat to her. What a coincidence
you got the call almost at the very hour her body was found.” Abruptly, O'Brien cut off the interrogation. “Mr. Brown, do you plan to stay in this apartment?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We'll be coming in tomorrow with Miss Neeve Kearny. She'll be checking Ms. Lambston's closet for missing items of clothing. We may want to talk to you again. You'll be here.” It was not a request. It was a flat statement.

For some reason Douglas was not relieved that the questioning was at an end. And then his fears were justified. O'Brien said, “We may ask you to stop in at headquarters. We'll let you know.”

When they left, they took the plastic bags with the vacuum contents, Ethel's will and appointment book and the small Oriental carpet. Just before the door closed behind them, Doug heard one of them say, “No matter how hard they try, they can't get all the blood off rugs.”

•   •   •

In St. Vincent's Hospital, Tony Vitale was still in the intensivecare unit, his condition still critical. But, as the head surgeon continued to reassure his parents, “He's young. He's tough. We believe he's going to make it.”

Swathed in bandages that covered the gunshot wounds in his head, shoulder, chest and legs, intravenous fluid dripping into his veins, electronic monitors observing his every bodily change, plastic tubes in his nostrils, Tony drifted from a state of deep coma to fragments of consciousness. Those last moments were coming back to him.
Nicky Sepetti's eyes boring through him.
He'd known that Nicky suspected he was a plant. He should have driven to headquarters instead of stopping to call. He should have known that his cover had been blown
.

Tony slid into darkness.

When he groped his way back to consciousness, he heard the doctor say, “Every day shows a little improvement.”

Every day
! How long had he been here? He tried to speak, but no sound came.

Nicky had screamed and pounded his fist on the table and ordered them to get the contract canceled.

Joey had told him it was impossible.

Then Nicky had demanded to know who ordered it.

“. . . Someone turned the heat on,” Joey had said. “Ruined his operation. Now the Feds are on his tail. . . .” Then Joey had given the name.

As he slid back into unconsciousness, Tony remembered that name:

Gordon Steuber
.

•   •   •

In the Twentieth Precinct on West Eighty-second Street, Seamus waited, his round, pale face damp with perspiration. He tried to remember all the warnings Ruth had given him, everything she had told him to say.

It was all a blur.

The room he was sitting in was stark. A conference table, the surface scarred from cigarette burns. Wooden chairs. The one he was sitting on caught the small of his back. A grimy window that overlooked the side street. The traffic outside was hell; cabs
and buses and cars blaring at one another. The building was rimmed with squad cars.

How long were they going to keep him here?

It was another half hour before the two detectives came in. A court stenographer followed them and slipped into a chair behind Seamus. He turned and watched as she set up her steno machine on her lap.

The older detective's name was O'Brien. He'd introduced himself and his partner, Steve Gomez, in the bar.

Seamus had expected them to give him the Miranda warning. It was still a shock to hear it read to him, to have O'Brien hand him a printed copy and ask him to read it. He nodded at the question did he understand it? Yes. Did he want his lawyer present? No. Did he realize that he could discontinue answering questions at any point? Yes. Did he realize that anything he said could be used against him?

He whispered, “Yes.”

O'Brien's manner changed. It became subtly warmer. His tone was conversational. “Mr. Lambston, it is my duty to tell you that you are considered a possible suspect in the death of your former wife, Ethel Lambston.”

Ethel dead. No more alimony checks. No more stranglehold on him and Ruth and the girls. Or had the stranglehold only begun? He could see her hands clawing at him, see the way she'd looked when she fell backward, see the way she'd struggled up and reached the letter opener. He felt the wetness of her blood on his hands.

What was the detective saying in that friendly, conversational tone? “Mr. Lambston, you quarreled with your former wife. She
was driving you crazy. The alimony was bankrupting you. Sometimes things get too much for us and we blow our lids. Did that happen?”

Had he gone crazy? He could feel the hatred of that moment, the way bile rose in his throat, the way he'd clenched his fist and aimed it at that mocking, vicious mouth.

Seamus laid his head down on the table and began to cry. Sobs racked his body. “I want a lawyer,” he said.

Two hours later, Robert Lane, the fiftyish lawyer Ruth had frantically managed to locate, showed up. “Are you prepared to press formal charges against my client?” he asked.

Detective O'Brien looked at him, his expression sour. “No, we are not. Not at this time.”

“Then Mr. Lambston is free to go?”

O'Brien sighed. “Yes, he is.”

Seamus had been sure they would arrest him. Not daring to believe what he had heard, he leaned his palms on the table and dragged his body from the chair. He felt Robert Lane put his hand under his arm and guide him from the room. He heard Lane say, “I want a transcript of my client's statement.”

“You'll get it.” Detective Gomez waited until the door closed, then turned to his partner. “I'd love to have locked up that guy.”

O'Brien smiled, a thin, mirthless smile. “Patience. We have to wait for the lab reports. We need to check Lambston's movements on Thursday and Friday. But if you want to bet on a sure thing, bet that we'll have an indictment from the grand jury before Seamus Lambston gets to enjoy the end of his alimony payments.”

When Neeve, Myles and Jack got back to the apartment, there was a message on the answering machine. Would Myles please call Police Commissioner Schwartz at his office?

Herb Schwartz lived in Forest Hills, “where ninety percent of the PCs have traditionally dwelt,” Myles explained to Jack Campbell as he reached for the phone. “If Herb isn't fussing around his house on Saturday evening, something big is happening.”

The conversation was brief. When Myles hung up he said, “It looks as though it's all over. The minute they brought in the ex-husband and started questioning him, he cried like a baby and demanded a lawyer. It's only a matter of time till they have enough to indict him.”

“What you're saying is that he didn't confess,” Neeve said. “Isn't that right?” As she spoke, she began turning on table lamps until the room was bathed in a soft, warm glow. Light and warmth. Was that what the spirit yearned for after witnessing the harsh reality of death? She could not shake off the feeling of something ominous surrounding her. From the moment she had seen Ethel's clothing laid out on that table, the word
shroud
had danced in her head. She realized now that she had immediately wondered what
she
would be wearing when she died. Intuition? Irish superstition? The feeling that someone was walking on her grave?

Jack Campbell was watching her. He knows, she thought. He senses that there's more than just the clothes. Myles had pointed out that if the blouse Ethel usually wore with the suit was at the cleaners, she would automatically choose as a substitute the one that belonged with the ensemble.

All the answers Myles came up with made such sense. Myles. He was standing in front of her; his hands were on her shoulders. “Neeve, you haven't heard a word I said. You asked me a question and I answered it. What's the matter with you?”

“I don't know.” Neeve tried to smile. “Look, it's been a rotten afternoon. I think we should have a drink.”

Myles scrutinized her face. “I think we should have a
stiff
drink, and then Jack and I should take you out for dinner.” He looked up at Jack. “Of course, you may have plans.”

“No plans except, if I may, to fix us that drink.”

The scotch, like the tea at Kitty Conway's, did the job of temporarily taking from Neeve the sense of being swept along by a dark current. Myles repeated what the Commissioner had told him: The homicide detectives felt that Seamus Lambston was on the verge of admitting guilt.