Murder in Alphabet City (11 page)

14

C
APTAIN
G
RAVES WAS
back at his desk when they returned to Centre Street and they briefed him in his office. The Rinzler autopsy had arrived and MacHovec had gone through it and pulled out everything that had set his hair on end.

“So it looks like you've found a case,” the captain said. “We just don't know if Stratton's part of it. And this Rinzler woman could be a suicide.”

“Could be,” Defino said. “But there are too many questions and no suicide note.”

“They don't all leave notes.”

“This one would have.”

“I agree,” Jane said.

“Let's not let Mrs. Constantine know what we know yet. String her along. As long as she thinks we're taking this seriously, she won't bother us. I don't want to find out it's a big nothing after we've told her we've got a case.” Graves looked at Jane, who was now the senior detective in the group. “What's on?”

“I have to call Mrs. C. about where Stratton's money came from and how he got it. Gordon and I saw the hotel room this morning and we talked to the guy who was on the desk when the body was discovered. He's the hotel manager now. We'll call him back and ask if there was stationery in the room.”

“She could have used an envelope in her bag,” Graves said.

“True. But if there was stationery, we'll know she chose not to write. The file from Midtown North is on its way. The autopsy is here.” She glanced at Defino. “Gordon and I think Rinzler's sister, Judy Weissman, is holding back papers that are more important than the ones she gave us. These are pretty light, letters from her niece and nephew. Oh, and there's a friend in California. I'll call her from home tonight.”

“Sounds like you've got a plan. Let's get to it.”

They went back to their desks and Jane made a few notes. Her head was buzzing. She had to call Mrs. C., but that could wait another minute. “Sean, indulge me.”

He gave her his wicked grin.

“Judy Weissman said her sister's things had been stored in a place in Queens. That included furniture, which was later sold, and everything Erica kept from her apartment but didn't have with her at the Weissmans'. Maybe Weissman looked through the things in the storage facility by herself, no husband around, found some incriminating or not so nice stuff, and decided to leave it stored, probably in a small locker, since the big pieces were gone. It could be rented under Weissman or Rinzler.”

“Got it.” He pulled a phone book onto his desk—he kept a pile for the five boroughs in the corner of the room where his desk was—and opened the yellow pages. If anything was stored under one of those names, MacHovec would find it.

“That's good,” Defino said, looking up from his typewriter and the Five he was working on.

Jane called the Constantine number and Mrs. Constantine picked up immediately.

“Mrs. Constantine, Detective Bauer.”

“Oh, Detective. I thought you'd forgotten me.”

“Not at all, ma'am. It was a busy weekend and I didn't get to the phone. I have a couple of questions about your brother's financial situation.”

“Of course. It was quite simple. Andy lived off a trust fund my parents set up for him years ago. Of course, he hated having anything to do with money and he didn't want to go anywhere to pick it up, so I arranged to have money delivered to him once or twice a month.”

“Do you mean you sent a check?”

“No, I couldn't do that. He would have to go to a bank to cash it, which would be just as bad as going somewhere to withdraw it. I sent it by messenger. It was delivered to his door.”

“Did he open his door for the messenger?”

There was a brief sigh. “Usually not. Andy didn't like dealing with strangers. They rang the bell, announced who they were, and left the package. I assume Andy opened the door when he thought they were gone and took it inside. It was cash.”

“Can you give me an idea of how much he received?”

“A thousand dollars a week, usually two thousand every two weeks, unless he said he didn't need that much or he needed more. I had power of attorney and I accommodated his needs.”

“What did you do when you took that trip at the end of his life?”

“I gave him more than four thousand for the month. I took care of the rent so everything he got was for his own use. I have to tell you, when I went through the apartment after he died, I found bills tucked everywhere, in his drawers, under the mattress, in the pockets of his clothes. He lived on very little. It was a matter of pride with him that he wasn't rich. He liked being a common man.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Constantine. You've answered all my questions.”

The voice in her ear laughed. “I didn't let you ask them, did I? But if there's anything else, please call. Are you making progress?”

“We're learning new things, and for the moment we're continuing with the case.”

“What about the little beads? Did you find out whose they were?”

It was a question she had hoped would not be raised. “We're still asking about them.”

“Keep at it,” Mrs. Constantine said. “My brother was murdered.”

“One tough cookie,” Jane said after she hung up. She turned to Defino and told him the money routine.

“Great. They left four thousand dollars in an envelope outside his door?”

“No complaints. It must have all arrived intact. Then, when he had too much, he stashed it around the apartment.”

“Maybe he gave it away on the street.”

“Could be.”

Annie appeared at the door. “A file was just faxed to you. There's a note that the photos are coming through departmental mail.”

“Good,” Jane said, reaching for the file. “I've been waiting for this.”

Erica Rinzler had checked into the hotel at four in the afternoon. That allowed time for her lunch beforehand with a friend. There was no record of any outgoing calls but the operator on duty remembered at least one call to her room from an outside phone. It had the smell of a rendezvous. No one at the desk remembered anyone asking for her room number or whether she was registered, so her visitor, if there had been one, had gotten that from the operator. Det. Lew Beech had not attempted to determine where the outside call had come from. In his defense, the number of calls coming in to the hotel that day had probably been large and without the cooperation of the caller, it would be impossible to isolate any calls to Rinzler's room. What troubled Jane was why he had not made at least a small effort. Didn't suicides generally hole up in a room that no one knew they were in?

Rinzler had been fully clothed. She was wearing a long, full skirt of a crinkly cocoa-colored cotton, a beige cotton sweater, stockings, and low-heeled shoes. A gold watch was on her left wrist and a number of rings adorned her fingers. Three strings of beads encircled her neck. Her clothes and the beads on all three strands were bloodstained. A coat, identified as Rinzler's by her sister, was folded over the dresser.

Only Rinzler's fingerprints were found on the gun, which was clean and well oiled. Besides prints from her right hand in the expected places where a shooter would hold a gun, there were also prints from both hands on the barrel, as though she had lifted the gun from her bag, which was also on the dresser. To Beech's credit, he had determined that Rinzler was right-handed.

That was the suicide scenario. If it had been murder, then Rinzler had sat on the side of the bed while the killer, to her right on the chair, forced her hand up to her temple and pulled the trigger, thus assuring that burned powder, nitrate residue, was on her hand as well as his. Both were viable scenarios.

The autopsy and toxicology reports indicated that Rinzler had been in good health and sober. The contents of her stomach included a partially digested spinach salad with bacon bits, the elusive lunch.

Jane picked up the phone and called the hotel. Steiner was there. “Mr. Steiner, Detective Bauer.”

“Yes, hello. How can I help you?”

“Was there hotel stationery in Ms. Rinzler's room?”

“Definitely. That's always a priority in our hotel. We never run out and it's always on the housekeeping carts. We consider letters written from our hotel good publicity.”

“Thank you.” She hung up and turned to Defino. “There's always stationery in the rooms.”

“And she didn't use it. One point for us.”

“Bingo!” MacHovec put down the phone and turned to face them. “A small box rented by Erica Rinzler, paid for semiannually by ‘a friend.' Here's the address of your treasure trove.”

That meant a scramble for a warrant. Jane and Defino went directly to Graves. With luck, they could have a warrant by early tomorrow at the Queens courthouse. He put his glasses on and read MacHovec's notes.

“In the dead woman's name?” he asked.

“Apparently. We think the sister left the good stuff under lock and key. She may not have known what to do with it, but she knew it was potentially dangerous. I doubt her husband even knows it exists.” She had to make a good case for Graves's support of a warrant or they'd never get it.

“It's worth a look. I'll ask Annie to run the paperwork over.”

“Thanks, Cap.”

Back at her desk, Jane dug into the file. The Rinzler file was much thinner and lighter in weight than a homicide file. The longest interview was with Judy Weissman, who, Jane realized, spoke to the police before looking through her sister's possessions. That would have come later when she learned where they were stored, and would have necessitated a longish drive from Chappaqua to inspect the lot. So what she said to the police after the suicide was her first reaction, probably honest, unclouded by later information that might have put her on her guard. She explained that her sister had resigned from her job, moved in with the Weissmans, and was looking for work. Erica had sent out résumés and had several interviews. On the day of her death, she had gone to Manhattan to have lunch with a friend, but Mrs. Weissman did not know who the friend was or where they had planned to meet. She had not been ill, had not complained of anything bothering her except her inability to find work, and the suicide was unexpected and very distressing. The interview had been carried out by Det. Lewis Beech.

The woman who had found the body had little to say and was too upset to put much into words. The hotel finally let her leave for the rest of the day after a detective essentially gave up trying to get anything out of her. Interviews with Mr. Steiner, then the deskman, and a handful of other employees yielded little additional information. No one had seen visitors going to or from Rinzler's room. No one had heard the shot. (The autopsy later determined she had died between six and seven that night.) All in all, it appeared to be a suicide and it was ruled as such.

And then eight years passed, Jane thought, and Mrs. Constantine gave us a push. She could hardly wait to get her hands on the contents of that locker. That might just tell the tale.

“You guys are lucky,” Annie said at the door. “I got the paperwork for your warrant faxed to Queens and I just got a call you can pick it up at five.” It was close to five now.

“I'll swear it out in the morning,” Defino said. “I'll have it with me. Thanks, Annie. Good job.” He had become both polite and deferential to the PAA after observing the power she wielded in the office.

“Sure thing, Detective.”

“Well, you guys have fun on the road,” MacHovec said, taking his coat off the hook. “You better have a good story when you come back tomorrow.”

Jane hoped they would too. She hated going to Queens. It was a maze of streets and avenues and courts all with the same numbers. But she couldn't let Defino do this on his own, even though he lived in the borough and it was a trip for her. She wanted to be there.

“Can I get there by nine-thirty without killing myself?” she asked him.

Defino grinned. “Hell, with your ambition you can be anywhere by nine-thirty.”

She waited till nine that evening to call the Raymond woman in California, giving her an hour after she got home to get herself together. The same male voice answered and called for his mother.

“Mrs. Raymond, this is Detective Jane Bauer of the New York Police Department.”

“Police? What is this about?”

“It's about a friend of yours who committed suicide eight years ago.”

“Erica. My God. What is it?”

“I'd like to talk to you about Ms. Rinzler.”

“I— How do I know you are who you say you are?”

“I'm calling from my home tonight. I can give you the number and you can call me back. You can check my name with information. I'll be glad to give you my address as well. If you'd like to talk to me at my office, that will have to wait till tomorrow. I can give you numbers to call to verify my name and rank.”

Silence, then, “Tell me your name again, please.”

“Jane Bauer.”

“And you're a police detective.”

“Right.”

“Are you investigating Erica's death? Because that was one damn peculiar suicide.”

“We are looking into it, yes.”

Silence. A faint sound. “You better be who you say you are.”

“If you have any doubts, I—”

“No, it's OK. Go ahead. It's been years since she died and I am full of unanswered questions.”

“Do you recall the last time you talked to Ms. Rinzler?”

“Yes. It was two days before she died. She was staying with her sister.”

“Mrs. Weissman.”

“Yes, Judy. Erica was never clear about what happened at the job. She was a social worker, a supervisor. They sent her out on difficult cases. She was top-notch in her job. I'm digressing. You asked about the last time I talked to her. We called each other from time to time and e-mailed each other a lot. I just got a yen to talk to her that day and she had given me her sister's phone number after she moved out of the apartment in Manhattan. I called her and we had a long talk. I knew she was out of work and had been for a few weeks by that time, but I can't tell you exactly how long. She was looking for work. She'd heard about some jobs in different fields and she was going to give them a try. I was as encouraging as I could be. We were good friends from college. She was my maid of honor when I married Walt. She came out and visited us a couple of times and she even talked about moving out here. I think I'm digressing again.”