Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (13 page)

“I’m very sorry,” Wetzon told him. “Can I help you get something?”

“Just get out of my way, girlie,” the man snarled.

Shocked, Wetzon stepped aside. She’d forgotten how aggressive the elderly were in Fairway. She walked to the checkout lines, keeping a wary eye out for any other aging marauders, and was about to get on line when she was rudely butted aside by a shopping cart propelled by a little old lady in a storm coat and dirty white Reeboks. “Wait a minute,” Wetzon protested.

“I saw that,” the old lady yelled. “You tried to push me out of line! Did everybody see that? Miss Piss Elegant here tried to push me!”

“I didn’t do anything of the kind,” Wetzon said indignantly. “You pushed me.”

“Who cares? You’re holding up the line,” someone shouted. Stretched out behind Wetzon was a stream of impatient shoppers.

“It’s not you.” A woman in a hot pink coat carrying a plastic shopping basket full of groceries stood behind Wetzon. “I shop here all the time and I never fail to get run down or told off by one of these crazy seniors.”

“Thanks.” Wetzon breathed a fervent prayer that she would never become an elderly curmudgeon. She paid for the apple and the yogurt and walked the short distance to Sonya’s building, climbing the chipped and cracked stone steps to the front door. In the tiny vestibule she rang the bell marked
4
and waited, looking out at Seventy-third Street through the glass panel. Two women coming from different directions stopped to talk in front of the brownstone while their dogs, a leashed dachshund and an unleashed Weimaraner, sniffed each other.

Wetzon pressed
4
again. Finally, the intercom crackled, “Yes?”

“Leslie.” Wetzon put her hand on the door and waited for the buzzer, then pushed the door open.

It was immediately obvious to Wetzon that the old brownstone had a new owner. The place had been so run down last time Wetzon had been there that Sonya had told her that the only reason she stayed was because the rent was so cheap. Now the hallway looked almost elegant with new cabbage rose carpeting and an upholstered Victorian sofa. In the corner near the staircase was an old maple rocker. Antique costume prints in beautiful frames hung on the walls. The cabbage rose runner went right up the stairs under rubber tread guards on each step.

Sonya’s two-room office was on the second floor in the rear. The place was still seedy, but it was now a good-quality seedy compared with what it had been.

Tall, broad-shouldered, Sonya Mosholu wore a black leotard, slim black pants, a long, loosely cut red blazer, and low snakeskin cowboy boots. Her short dark hair was in a side flip, her dark eyes accented with mascara and a taupey shadow. Artwear earrings framed her face.

“God, Sonya,” Wetzon said, “instead of aging like the rest of us, you look younger every time I see you. Now you have the nerve to look girlish.”

“Girlish? Me?” Sonya laughed. She had one of those rare throaty laughs that made you want to join in.

The room had twenty-foot ceilings, a ceiling fan, and wonderful old moldings. Small exercise equipment—balls and weights—lay in every corner and on the mantle of a Wetzon-high fireplace. Two exercise mats were rolled and set upright in one corner.

Wetzon hung her coat and hat on the standing coatrack next to Sonya’s black shearling, sat down on the low, striped sofa with metal legs. She took the apple and the yogurt from the paper bag. Setting the apple aside on the bamboo table, she opened the yogurt. “Oops, I forgot a spoon.”

Sonya went into the next room and returned with a plastic spoon, handed it to her, then sat in one of the two Bauhaus-style metal-and-leather chairs facing Wetzon. She studied Wetzon for a moment. “You’ve cut your hair.”

Wetzon’s fingers went involuntarily to the tiny line in her scalp. She tore her fingers away and got busy with the yogurt.

“So ...” Sonya smiled, after a while. “Do you want to tell me?”

“It’s stupid.” Her hands were squeezing the empty yogurt container out of shape.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, isn’t it stupid to know why you’re scared, but also know you’re okay, now that the danger has passed? You have to get on with your life, don’t you?”

“Leslie.” Sonya’s voice was soft, almost hypnotic. Wetzon had to strain to hear her. Or might it be that she didn’t
want
to hear her? “Tell me about the danger,” she urged. “Why are you scared?”

Wetzon sighed. She dropped the savaged yogurt container on the table. “Last year. It happened last year.” Her fingers touched the tiny scar. She started to speak again and couldn’t for the lump in her throat.

Sonya waited. Wetzon kept her eyes on the bamboo table and the yellow box of tissues for patients who cried. She was certainly not going to be one of them. “I got shot. Here.” She inclined her head to show Sonya. “It was hardly anything.”

“Being shot is hardly hardly anything, Leslie. How did it happen? Was it an accident?”

“Someone was trying to kill me.” She saw the flicker of a reaction push through Sonya’s enormous self-control. “I was okay, though, Sonya. I was lucky. I got over it. Then I started having these dreams. Before this happened I used to have the most wonderful dreams. Smith said they were psychic.”

“You’re still in the headhunting business?”

“Yes.”

“Go on, Leslie.”

“Well, at first I had no dreams at all, and then I started waking up every hour or so, and then the dream started coming.”

“Tell me about them. Are they always the same?”

“Yes. First there’s a flash of fire and I’m terrified but I can’t move, then the smell of gunpowder, then a burning pain in my head and I wake up soaked to the skin, shaking. I hear it even has a name: post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

Sonya’s expression didn’t change. “How long has this been going on?”

“Four months.”

“Oh, Leslie—”

“But Sonya, I was handling it fine until Saturday night.”

“What changed?”

“I went to the gypsy run-through of
Hotshot
—Carlos’s new musical.They’re setting up in Boston as we speak. Anyway, when we got to the theatre we found Dilla Crosby. She’d been beaten to death.” She told Sonya about finding Dilla and the events immediately following.

“Most of these people are familiar to me,” Sonya said, when Wetzon had finished.

“Did you know Dilla?”

“Slightly. We had a jazz class together a long time ago. How did finding Dilla affect you?”

“I was upset, but the way anybody would be if they’d found a body, and I didn’t like Dilla and hadn’t seen her in years. But God, Sonya, I had the dream that night and I woke up with terrible chest pains. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even stand up. And sweats and chills and absolute terror. I thought I was going to die. I thought people were coming to kill me. It was crazy. If Silvestri hadn’t called when he did ...” Wetzon shrugged. “But I guess I would have been all right. It would have gone away without him.”

The carillon in the old Rutgers Dutch Reform Church behind Sonya’s brownstone began to play a hymn that Wetzon recognized but couldn’t name. A Thanksgiving hymn. Something about gathering together to ask the Lord’s blessing. For no reason at all, her eyes got teary. She pressed her lips together and shook her head at Sonya.

Sonya waited patiently. After several minutes, she prompted, “But Silvestri came and helped you?”

“Yes.” Wetzon’s hands wouldn’t stop fretting. “I’m not seeing him anymore, Sonya. It’s over. At least, I’m trying for it to be over. I’m seeing someone else. It’s a much better relationship.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Alton is nice and doesn’t fight with me about everything I do.”

“You like that?”

“Well, of course.” Wetzon couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice. “Isn’t it easier to be around people who—oh, never mind. I don’t want to get into the differences between Alton Pinkus and Silvestri and why one is better for me than the other.”

“Alton Pinkus? The labor leader?”

“Yes. And don’t say it, please. I know. He’s twenty years older than I am.”

“All right. What happened Saturday night, or was it Sunday morning by that time?”

“Silvestri eased me down and then made me promise I would talk to someone.... Which is why I’m here.”

“Well, chalk one up for him.” Sonya smiled. “Is there anything else that’s bothering you?”

Wetzon sent Sonya a suspicious look. “Why do you ask?”

“Think about it. Don’t be in such a hurry. We still have some time. How are you and your partner getting along?”

“As well as we ever will, I guess. Smith’s shallow and drives me to distraction, but we have some history together. And we work well in business. From my point of view, except for her son, Mark, her personal life is a disaster, but she would say the same about me, minus the child.”

“Her personal life?”

“She dumped a wonderful man for that sleaze lawyer, Richard Hartmann.”

“Oh?” For a fraction of a second Sonya gave herself away. Feminists hated Richard Hartmann. When he defended a rapist or murderer, he always tried the victim, who couldn’t speak for herself, and got his client off. And Sonya was a feminist.

“Yes. I’ve always wondered what kind of woman would be attracted to a creep like that—” Wetzon remembered his body against hers, his hands on her throat, his threat. Her hands curled into fists.

“Leslie.” Sonya’s soothing voice penetrated the intense memory. “Did something happen between you and Richard Hartmann?”

“How could you think that?” Wetzon glared at Sonya, then lowered her eyes to her lap, clasping her hands together.

Sonya didn’t react. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Minutes went by. Someone began moving furniture in the upstairs apartment. The floorboards protested with a humanlike groan.

Wetzon cleared her throat. “I found some papers that could prove Richard Hartmann is laundering money. Smith was just getting involved with him, so I warned her not to. I was going to take what I found to an assistant D.A. I’d gotten to know. But Smith told him—”

“She
told
him?” Sonya’s voice crackled and Wetzon looked up.

“I know how that sounds, but Smith’s in love with him. I couldn’t go to the D.A. with it while she was part of his life.”

“Why not, Leslie?”

“Sonya, she has so little and, believe it or not, she’s fragile. I care about her.” She bit her lip. “And I’m afraid of Hartmann. He threatened me—physically—and coward that I am, I have done nothing about it. So the evidence against him sits in my safe deposit box, aging. How’s that for your highly ethical friend, Leslie Wetzon?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Leslie. You’re not Superwoman.”

“I’m not? Here all this time I’ve been thinking I was.” Wetzon sighed.

“Do you want to come back and talk to me next week at this time?”

“Oh. You want to see me again? I thought once was enough.”

“Leslie, this is serious. None of this is going to go away overnight simply because you told a therapist about it. Do you want to help yourself or not?”

“Oh, okay. If you think so. I don’t want Saturday night to happen again.”

“Good. Then we’ll see each other next week?”

Wetzon stood. “Thanks, Sonya.” Fifty minutes had gone by faster than she would have believed. She put on her coat and shoved the uneaten apple in her pocket. Sonya was standing at the door to show her out. Wetzon asked, “Am I your last patient?”

Sonya nodded; a slight flush colored her cheeks.

“Well, have a good night then.”

Wetzon went down the stairs feeling as if a small weight had been lifted from her shoulders, but she couldn’t say why. She was thinking about her life again and doing so somewhat critically, so she didn’t see the man at first. She popped out the front door of the brownstone and almost fell over him. He was sitting on the stone railing smoking. All one could see was the pinpoint of light the tip of his cigarette made in the darkness. When he saw her, he stood up, looming over her, forcing her back against the door.

The door gave under her weight and swung in, sending Wetzon sprawling backward in a tangle of fur, purse, and briefcase. She landed ungracefully on her backside.

“Here now,” she heard a man say. “I’m sorry I frightened you.” He reached down and helped her up and back outside, then gathered up her briefcase. Embarrassed by her almost irrational fear, she straightened her clothing and found she was clutching her purse in a death grip.

“Are you okay? I guess you didn’t see me sitting there.”

Wetzon peered up at him in the dingy light. Way up. He had a nice smile, yellowed teeth under a wiry mustache, deep lines around his eyes. He flipped his cigarette butt into the street and frowned down at her.

“O’Melvany,” Wetzon said.

He squinted, then snapped his fingers. “Yeah, Silvestri,” O’Melvany said. She saw he didn’t remember her name.

“Leslie Wetzon.”

“Yeah,” he said, pointing his finger at her. Eddie O’Melvany was a detective with the Nineteenth Precinct and one of Silvestri’s sometime poker buddies. Wetzon had met him three years earlier when her friend Hazel’s school chum had been murdered. And she hadn’t seen him since. What the hell was he doing here?

“I didn’t see you,” Wetzon said. “And you cast a long shadow. Are you with the Twentieth now?” The Twentieth was her precinct and probably covered Seventy-third Street as well.

“Nah. Still with the One-Nine.” He lit another cigarette and the light flared on his orangy mustache. “Ah, here she is.” He was smiling and looking behind her.

Wetzon turned. Sonya had just opened the inside door.

“You two don’t need to be introduced, do you?” Sonya spoke evenly, but Wetzon was sure she looked flustered.

Wetzon grinned. “Not at all. It was nice seeing you again, Detective O’Melvany. Good night.” She practically skipped down the steps and over to Broadway. How absolutely amazing. How long had this been going on? Silvestri had brought her to the Nineteenth to talk to O’Melvany about Peepsie Cunningham’s murder. O’Melvany had been in a vile mood that day; his back was out and a blizzard had left his detective squad decimated. Wetzon had handed him one of Sonya’s cards and suggested O’Melvany try Sonya’s bioenergetic therapy.