Hope to Die (26 page)

I told her how I was investigating from the other direction, trying to find someone with a motive specific to the Hollanders. If I could find some common element, someone in her son's life who was in any way linked to Byrne and Susan Hollander, then I might be able to connect the dots.

She thought it over while she spread butter on her toasted bran muffin ("one thing that's definitely better in New York, I'll grant you that") and took a little bite. She sipped some iced tea, ate more of the muffin, drank more of the tea, and looked up at me and shook her head.

"I just don't know who he did or didn't know," she said. "He would call me just about once a week, he was good about that. He called collect, of course. I told him to, he didn't have the money to pay for his calls. In fact I helped him out a little, I sent a money order every few weeks. I didn't send checks because it was almost impossible for him to find a place that would cash a personal check on an out-of-state bank, and of course he didn't have a bank account of his own to deposit it into. He didn't have anything."

Except, she said, he was beginning to find himself, to get his feet planted. Not to take charge of his life, that made him sound a little more capable than he had yet become, but at least to play an active role in his own life instead of watching passively as it unfolded before him.

"He was working," she said. "Three hours a day, Monday through Friday, delivering lunches for a delicatessen. They paid him in cash at the end of his shift each day, and it wasn't very much, but he got tips, too. And he worked nights, too, making deliveries for a package store."

I didn't know the term, and she said, "Don't you call it that? A store that sells packaged goods. Beverages, alcoholic beverages. What do you call it?"

"A liquor store."

"Well, that's New York for you," she said. "I guess we're more discreet in the Midwest, or maybe just more namby-pamby. We call them package stores. Now you didn't know that, and I didn't know there was anything else to call them, so I guess we both learned something, didn't we?"

Jason's life didn't sound like much, she knew. A couple of part-time subsistence jobs hardly amounted to a budding career. But when you knew him and where he'd come from, well, you could see that he was on the right track.

"The last time he got in trouble," she said, "they had him see a counselor, and I have to give New York credit for this, because Jason said the man helped him see things a little more clearly. How he was just getting in his own way time and time again, and how it didn't have to be that way. And from that point on, his life began to improve."

Some specifics might have helped. The name of the social worker, for instance, who might have known the names of some of the other people in Jason Bierman's new life. It would have been nice to know the names and locations of his occasional employers; she knew only that the deli was in Manhattan, which didn't narrow it down much. The package store ("or liquor store, I'll have to remember to call it that") might have been anywhere.

She finished her bran muffin and iced tea, and I decided I'd had as much of my coffee as I wanted. I picked up the check, and she took a wallet from her purse and asked how much her share came to. I said it was on me. She insisted she'd be happy to pay, and I told her to forget it. "You're a visitor," I said. "Next time I'm in Wisconsin, I'll let you pick up the tab."

"Well, that's very nice of you," she said. "And after I just about accused you of trying to drum up some high-priced business!" But she'd had audiences with several private detectives, she said, and one told her to go home, that she was wasting her time, and the others wanted substantial advances before they would undertake to do a thing.

"Two men asked for two thousand dollars, and one wanted twenty-five hundred," she said. "And there was another man who asked for two or three thousand, I can't remember which, and I said that was much too high, and he said, well, how about a thousand? And I hemmed and hawed, and he said if I gave him five hundred he could get started. And it came to me that he wanted whatever I could give him, and he probably wouldn't do a thing once he had the money in his hand."

I told her she was probably right. She apologized again, unnecessarily, and asked if I thought she should stay in New York. She was supposed to fly home in the morning but she supposed she could stick around for a few more days.

I told her there was no need. I gave her one of my cards and made sure I had her address and phone number written down correctly. And I walked her back to her hotel, even though she told me not to bother. I waited until she had collected her key from the desk and boarded the elevator, then went outside and looked for a taxi.

When I walked in the door, Elaine told me Ira Wentworth had called twice. He wouldn't say what it was about, just that I should call him as soon as I got in.

I tried his number and a nasal-voiced male said, "Squad room, this is Acker." I gave my name and said I was returning Detective Wentworth's call.

"He's not in," Acker said, "but I know he wants to talk to you. Will you be staying put for the next ten minutes?"

"I'm not going anywhere. He's got the number, but let me give it to you again."

He repeated it back to me and rang off, and I realized I'd missed my chance to ask the number of the precinct. I picked up the phone and had my finger on the redial button but didn't push it.

I had a feeling I knew which precinct it was.

I put the phone down while I checked my notebook, picked it up again, and tried a number I'd tried before, with no success. It rang once, twice, and then somebody answered but didn't speak.

I said, "Ira Wentworth?"

The voice I'd heard once before, on my machine, said, "Who the hell is this?"

Half an hour later the doorman called upstairs to announce a Mr. Wentworth. I said to send him up, and was waiting in the hall when he got off the elevator. He was in his late thirties, tall and broad-shouldered, with a square jaw and a high forehead. His dark hair was combed straight back.

He said his name and I said mine, and we shook hands. "I made a couple of phone calls," he said. "You were on the job yourself."

"That was a while ago."

"You had a gold shield."

I suppose that accounted for the handshake. You can't shake hands over the phone, but even if you could I think he'd have passed it up. He'd been wary earlier, thrown off-stride by my having called him on Lia Parkman's cell phone. He'd picked it up once they'd established there were no fingerprints but hers to be found on it, and he'd been carrying it around ever since.

That was how he'd called me. The phone logged recent calls, and all he'd had to do was find the last call she'd made and open the mouthpiece to redial it. He'd called me without knowing who I was. Thus his original message, requesting I call back without identifying me by name.

Then I'd called back and left my name, and he'd called again, twice, and left messages, and I called him, and Charlie Acker had managed to reach him, and he was all set to call me when the phone in his pocket rang. And it was me, asking for him by name, and confusing the hell out of him for a minute there.

Over the phone, he hadn't even been willing to confirm that she was dead. But I already knew that. I knew the minute I heard his voice instead of hers, and I may have known when I placed the call.

"This is a nice building," he said. "I've never been inside, but I've admired it many times from the street. You been here long?"

"A couple of years. I've lived in the neighborhood a lot longer."

"Nice," he said. "Walk to the park, walk to the theaters. Very convenient." He admired the apartment, too, as I led him through it to the kitchen. Elaine was in the bedroom with the door closed, but she'd made a pot of coffee first, and I poured us each a cup and sat down with him at the kitchen table.

He tried the coffee and said it was outstanding, and I asked him about Lia Parkman, and he said, yes, she was dead. Her body had been discovered shortly after five that afternoon by one of her roommates. She lived in student housing on Claremont Avenue, shared a unit with three other students, and two of them were home at the time, and one of them knocked on the closed bathroom door, got no response, and walked in to find her in the bathtub, drowned, dead.

"Cause of death's drowning," he said. "Water in the lungs confirms that, pending final results from the medical examiner. Open pint bottle of Georgi vodka on the dresser next to the cell phone. Her prints on the bottle, nobody else's. Initial impression, she had a drink or two, went to take a bath, passed out and drowned."

"I can't believe that's what happened."

"Well," he said, "neither can I, but probably for reasons that are different from yours. First off, there's marks on her neck suggesting she might have been choked. That's also pending word from the ME's office, but it gets your attention. Then there's the vodka. Just a couple of ounces gone, and you don't figure that's enough to make a healthy young woman pass out. Granted, different people react differently, and if the water in the tub's real hot it could be a contributing factor, but it's unlikely. Of course she could have had a couple of pops before she got home, or pills of some sort, and the last slug of vodka made the difference. Once again, we'll know more when we get the autopsy results."

"Was she much of a drinker?"

He nodded approvingly. "That's where I was going next. According to the roommates, she hardly drank at all. Maybe a glass of white wine at a party, but the idea of her bringing a bottle back to her room, they couldn't see it. And then there's the prints on the bottle."

"Her prints, you said."

"Just her prints. What was the clerk in the liquor store doing, wearing gloves? Plus the prints are from her right hand, and she's right-handed."

"So?"

"Bottle's got a twist-off cap. You're going to open a bottle, how do you do it?"

I moved my hands in the air, working it out for myself. It had been a long time since I uncapped a pint of liquor, but I suppose any bottle would qualify, even salad dressing. "I think I'd hold the bottle in my left hand," I said, "and turn the cap with my right."

"If you're right-handed," Wentworth said, "that's how you'd do it."

"Any prints on the cap?"

"None." He picked up his coffee cup, but it was empty. He didn't ask for more, but I got the carafe and filled both our cups, and he grinned. "I'll regret it," he said, "drinking a second cup this late at night, but the hell with it. Some sins are worth the punishment. You grind the beans yourself?" I said we did, and he said it made a difference. Then he said, "There's another thing, made a little alarm bell go off for me. Her clothes."

"Her clothes?"

"Toilet lid's down and her clothes are folded and stacked on top of it, neat as a pin. She came in, ran a tub, got undressed, and hopped in."

"So?"

"Where's her towel? They share the bathroom, the four of them, so they each have their own towels and keep them in their rooms. There's a hand towel there for everybody's use, but it's too small to use after a bath. How come she forgot her towel?"

"All that vodka," I said.

"Yeah, right." He ran a hand through his hair. "None of this is conclusive, but it makes me want to take a second look. Which I'd be doing anyway if the medical examiner comes up with anything interesting. But while we wait for word from him, I'm treating this as a homicide."

"I think you're right to."

"So you said, and I'd love to know why. I'd also like to know why you're the last person she called, and what your connection is to her in the first place."

"I'm doing some work for Kristin Hollander."

"Name's familiar."

"She's the daughter of Byrne and Susan Hollander."

"Couple killed in that home invasion end of July."

"That's right. Lia Parkman is Kristin's cousin, Susan Hollander's niece."

"Jesus," he said. "Now why the hell didn't anybody tell me that? The one roommate said something about she was depressed about a recent death in the family, but that wasn't just a death, it was a fucking bloodbath. But the perps are dead, aren't they? Murder and suicide out in Coney Island?"

" Coney Island Avenue," I said. "Which is actually in Midwood."

"Close enough. You're doing some work for the daughter, and I don't suppose you're putting a new roof on the house. You're doing what, investigating?"

"It's unofficial," I said. "But yes, I'm investigating."

"And offhand I can only think of one thing you could be investigating. Case is closed, right?"

"Yes."

"And the daughter thinks the whole story hasn't come out yet. Or you think that, or both. Which is it?"

"Both."

"And that's what put you on to the cousin? Help me out here. How does she fit in?"

I brought him up to speed, just hitting the high points- the front door key, the numeric code for the burglar alarm. "Lia Parkman had a key and she knew the keypad code," I said. "This afternoon I managed to sit down with her and ask her who might have borrowed the key or doped out the code. She said she couldn't think of anybody, but I knew she was holding something back."

"Sometimes you can tell."

"I could tell," I said, "but I couldn't do anything about it. Maybe I should have kept at her. I had to make a judgment call, and I decided I was better off letting her think about it. I gave her a card, told her to call me if she came up with anything."

"And she did."

"If I'd come straight home," I said, then broke it off. "But I didn't, and by the time I got here she'd called and left a message. I called her right back and got her voice mail."

"That's because her phone was turned off. When that happens the voice mail kicks in. You leave her a message?"