Icing Ivy (15 page)

“This is Hell's Kitchen,” Judy said.

“Right . . . ” Jane still didn't understand.

Judy met her gaze. “But Ivy lived in Sutton Place.”

Jane blinked. “Come again?”

“It's true,” Judy said solemnly. “I was kind of shocked, too, when she told me. But she said she inherited an apartment there from her aunt. You don't think it's true?”

Gently, Jane took the slip of paper from Judy's hand. “I'll check out
this
address first,” she said, avoiding the question.

Now Judy looked thoroughly stumped. “All right,” she said softly. Her hand was limp when Jane shook it before picking up the box and saying good-bye.

J
ane paid the cabdriver and got out, then lifted out the box of Ivy's belongings. As the cab pulled away, she turned and looked up at the grimy five-story brownstone a few doors west of Eighth Avenue. Sutton Place it most definitely was not.

Carrying the box, she climbed the seven steps into the vestibule and consulted the address Judy Monk had given her. Apartment 5-C. On the wall to the right was a list of names next to buzzers. Beside 5-C was written JORDAN. Frowning in puzzlement, Jane pressed the buzzer. There was no answer. On an impulse she tried the door into the building, but it was locked tight. She rang the buzzer again. Nothing.

The door from the street opened, and a woman who appeared to be in her late sixties and carried a sack of groceries trudged in. She was quite heavy, her flesh straining against the pink sweater and skirt she wore under a man's oversized tan parka, its hood lined with ratty fake fur. Seeing Jane, she stopped and looked her up and down, her expression wary. “Who you lookin' for?”

“Ivy Benson,” Jane replied.

“Not home. Ain't been home since before Christmas.”

“You know her, then?” Jane said, brightening a little.

The woman let out a single high-pitched cackle. “Oughta know her. Rents a room from me.” Jane noticed that the woman had no teeth, her mouth puckering in around her gums.

“Then you're the—superintendent here?” Jane asked doubtfully.

“No,” the woman cried impatiently. “I just told you, she rents a room from me. In my apartment.”

Then Ivy hadn't even had a place of her own. “I see.”

“And who are you?”

“My name is Jane Stuart. I'm an old friend of Ivy's.”

“So?”

“I'm here because—well, I'm afraid I have some bad news about Ivy. She's dead.”

“Well, if she's dead,” the woman replied without missing a beat, as if she'd just been told the toilet was leaking, “why are you looking for her?”

Jane forced a little smile. What a perfectly horrid woman. “You're right, of course. I'm here because Ivy had no family. I was pretty much the only person she had. I came to get her things.”

“Damn straight you better take her things,” the woman said, starting up the staircase that hugged the left wall of the corridor. “ 'Cause now I gotta rent that room again. Don't need all o' her junk in there.”

Jane, still clutching the box, started up the stairs after her. The stairway smelled of unwashed bodies and disinfectant but most of all of garlic, a stench of garlic so strong that it seemed to come from the very walls, like sweat through the pores of skin.

Abruptly the woman stopped and looked down at Jane with a scowl. “Hey, how do I know you're really who you say you are?”

“I beg your pardon?” Jane said, confused.

“How do I know this isn't some trick to get into my apartment, to take my stuff?”

Oh, for pity's sake.
“Look, Mrs.—”

“Jordan. It says it on the buzzer.”

“Mrs. Jordan—”

“
Miss
Jordan.”

“I'm sorry. Miss Jordan. If you need some kind of proof, I'm sure I could get it for you.” Then Jane remembered the photo from Ivy's cubicle. “Wait, I do have something.” She rummaged in the box and found the photo of herself with Ivy when they were freshmen. She held it out for Miss Jordan to see.

The older woman looked at the photo for a moment, then shifted her gaze to Jane. “Decided to go redhead in your old age, I see,” she said, and chuckled at her own wit as she resumed her trudge up the stairs.

“Auburn,” Jane said.

“What?” Miss Jordan squawked.

“My hair is auburn, not red.”

Miss Jordan ignored her.

Jane was out of breath and her legs felt rubbery and weak by the time they reached the fifth floor and Miss Jordan put down her grocery bag to take out her key and open the door of apartment 5-C.

“Well, come on,” Miss Jordan said impatiently, and Jane followed her inside. Miss Jordan crossed a small, shabbily furnished living room and entered a tiny kitchen, where she began putting away her groceries.

Jane said, “How long has Ivy been your, um, roommate?”

Miss Jordan slammed down a frozen half-gallon of Breyer's chocolate-chip ice cream onto the counter. “I
told
you, she rented a room from me. This is
my
apartment.” She pointed down a short hallway leading off the living room to Jane's right. “Her room is the one on the left. I'd appreciate it if you'd hurry up with whatever you need to do. I've got plans tonight.”

“Sure, no problem,” Jane said, hating this woman, and carrying the box she still held down the hallway, pushed open the door on the left. She gasped.

The room had been ransacked. The mattress of the single bed had been stripped of sheets and bedding and leaned against the wall. The box spring shot out at almost a right angle to the bed itself. The six drawers of a dresser on the other side of the room had all been yanked out, their contents rifled and dumped. A pale green oval chenille area rug had been tossed on top of a grimy white vinyl clothes hamper.

Miss Jordan's footsteps sounded in the hallway. “You know, I was just thinkin', there ain't no way you're gonna get all her stuff—” She appeared in the doorway and froze, shooting her gaze around the room. “What the hell d'you do in here?”

“It wasn't me and you know it,” Jane said. “When was the last time you were in this room?”

Miss Jordan looked at Jane aghast. “What, you think
I
did this?”

“No,” Jane said wearily. “I'm trying to figure out when this happened.”

“I don't ever come in here. Why would I? It's Ivy's room, her privacy.”

“Well, someone came in here, between the morning of Saturday, the twenty-second—that's the day Ivy came out to visit me in New Jersey—and now. No one broke into this apartment, apparently—”

Miss Jordan nodded in agreement.

“—which means it was someone with a key, or you let someone in.”

“I didn't let nobody in,” Miss Jordan cried defensively, gums flapping.

“Who else has a key to the apartment besides you and Ivy?”

“Just the super.”

“You'd better call him.”

“Damn straight I better.” Miss Jordan stomped back down the hall to the kitchen. From the doorway of ivy's room Jane watched her dial the phone.

“Yeah, Rafael,” Miss Jordan barked into the receiver, “it's Marie. Get up here. Now.”

Jane glanced back into Ivy's room. There was no point in looking around. If there had been anything there to find, Johnny—for who else could it have been?—had no doubt found it. Ivy's briefcase, for instance.

Still carrying the box of Ivy's belongings from
Skyline
, Jane returned to the living room and waited awkwardly in the center of the room while Miss Jordan put away more groceries.

“You can sit,” Miss Jordan said, more like an order than an offer.

Behind Jane was a sofa covered with a fluffy tan throw. She set down the box and approached the sofa.

“Hold it,” Miss Jordan barked from the kitchen. “What do you think you're doin'?”

This woman really was too much. “I beg your pardon?”

“Flopsie. Mopsie. Cottontail. Vamoose!”

The fluffy tan throw stirred, and Jane realized now that it was, in fact, three Persian cats sleeping in a tight clump. At Miss Jordan's command they stood, stretched, and bounded off the sofa, leaving a matted thatch of shedded fur in their place.

Jane had second thoughts about the sofa and headed for a nice clean vinyl chair, when there was a knock on the door. Miss Jordan opened it to reveal a slight middle-aged man with thinning black hair and a full mustache. He wore jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt.

“What is it?” He spoke with a faint Hispanic accent.

“You let anybody into my apartment since—” Miss Jordan turned to Jane inquiringly.

Jane said, “Since the morning of the twenty-second.”

He stared hard at Jane, as if she'd just materialized. Then his gaze darted back to Miss Jordan, fear in his eyes. “Uh . . .” he said, as if trying to guess the right answer.

“Yes or no!” Miss Jordan shrieked, stomping her foot.

He jumped. “Um, yes!” He smiled, almost triumphantly, as if now he would win the prize. “The roach man!”

Miss Jordan scowled. “The roach man?”

“
Sí
. It was . . .” His gaze wandered. “Last Friday. You were not home.”

“Just one problem, bozo,” Miss Jordan said. “I don't got no roaches.” Before he could respond, she took him by the wrist like a little boy, snapped, “Come,” and led him down the hallway to Ivy's room. “Take a look at what you did.”

He peered into the room. “
Dios mio!
Who did this?”

“Your roach man, that's who!” Miss Jordan moved close to Rafael, right in his face. “Why'd you let a stranger into my apartment without asking for no ID? What kind of super are you? I'm gonna call the police.”

“Wait,” Jane said, and they both turned to look at her. “Rafael, tell me, please, what did the man look like?”

“What did he look like?” He waved his hands frantically. “I don't know, like a man,” he cried, his voice breaking.

Jane said, “Tall, short, fat, thin, blond hair, brown hair . . . ?”

“What's the difference?” Miss Jordan demanded.

“Because I need to find out who searched Ivy's room,” Jane said, as if speaking to a cretin.

Miss Jordan looked as if she were about to clobber Jane. Her shoulders slowly rose. Jane wouldn't have been surprised to see steam shoot from her ears. “You're crazy, you know that?” she said in an ominously low voice. “I knew I shouldn't'a let you into my apartment.” She poked her finger hard into Jane's chest. “Get the hell outta here.”

“No, wait, please,” Jane said, turning to Rafael. “This man. Was he young, dark-haired, good-looking ?”

Rafael slid a scared look at Miss Jordan, afraid to speak, but finally he dared to shake his head. “No,” he replied in a low voice. “No, that was not him. This man, he was balding, heavy.”

Jane nodded, remembering how Judy Monk had described Ivy's “brother.”

“I said
get out,
” Miss Jordan screamed. “Get out! Crazy rich broads playing police,” she muttered, and marched back to the phone, where quite distinctly Jane could see her dialing 911.

Jane looked back at Rafael. He shook his head and gave a helpless shrug of apology. Shaking her head, Jane picked up the box of Ivy's belongings, walked out of the apartment, and headed down the garlic-scented stairs.

“Miss?”

Jane turned. Rafael stood at the landing.

“Was Miss Ivy upset about her room?” He smiled sweetly. “She's a nice lady.”

She went back up the stairs to the landing. “I'm sorry to tell you this,” she said gently, “but Ivy . . . Ivy died.”

His eyes grew wide. “Died? How?”

“She was at a retreat with me in New Jersey. Someone—she was murdered.”

He slapped his hand over his mouth, as if he himself had uttered the word. Jane gave a sad little nod.

Miss Jordan appeared in the doorway of her apartment. “You want to get arrested, lady?” she said in a vicious, piercing voice. “ 'Cause if you do, stick around. The cops are on their way.”

They ignored her.

“Very nice lady,” Rafael said, looking down. “She told me her story—about her daughter dying, about her marriage that didn't work. Not a happy life. But now . . . now things were better for her. A good job. It was taking her places, she said. And a new man who loved her.” Jane made no response to this. “A man,” Rafael continued, “who wanted to marry her.”

Pity for her old friend pierced Jane's heart. “Did you meet him?” she asked.

“No, but Miss Ivy told me about him. He knows what happened to her?”

“Yes, he knows.”

“He must have been very upset. Heartbroken.”

Jane touched his hand resting on the banister, said good-bye, and shot Miss Jordan a cold look before starting down the stairs.

Rafael called after her, “Oh, there is someone else who should know about this.”

She turned, waited.

“Her very best friend. They go way back, Miss Ivy said, all the way to college. Jane, her name is. Yes—Jane, that's it.”

She stood very still. “Ivy told you about her?”

“
Sí
. The only person she had left in the world, she said—besides her boyfriend, of course. Miss Ivy said this friend Jane was always there for her, a true friend.” His eyes narrowed, a thought occurring to him. “But you must know her, if you are also Miss Ivy's friend.”

“Yes,” she said softly, “I know her.” Very slowly, she turned and started down the stairs.

“Miss?” Rafael called, and she turned again. He looked puzzled. “Who are
you?
”

She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, closed it, and shook her head in quick apology. Turning again, she hurried down the stairs, the box of Ivy's belongings in her arms.

Outside, walking toward Eighth Avenue, she found she was crying. As she reached the avenue, a police cruiser passed her, turning onto 38th Street. She turned and watched it stop in front of Ivy's building.