The Deadhouse (10 page)

"Yesterday or today?" Lily laughed at what she thought was her own
joke. "Ivan started out with an MBA from Columbia. Worked on Wall
Street for twenty years. Left his company after a merger and went out,
quite comfortably, on his own. Then he got involved in all kinds of
penny-stock deals. Stuff I didn't understand at all."

"Did you and your husband invest with him?"

"Not for a minute. He was always trying to get us to pour money into
his deals, but we've got two kids in college and my husband wasn't
falling for any of Ivan's tricks. You'll have to talk with Ms.
Reininger. Maybe she can tell you who he was scamming lately."

Lily got up from her bench to open another bottle of wine. "You
comfortable there?" she asked, gesturing toward the table. "Either of
you want to join me in something stronger?"

We both thanked her for the offer and Mike stood to refill our
coffee cups.

"Tell us about Lola. I mean, from your perspective, as family.
Before Ivan. And after him."

She closed the refrigerator door and leaned her back against it,
pausing before she motioned to us to follow her into the adjoining
room, a wood-paneled library. Two walls were stacked with bookshelves
and the one behind the sofa was lined from floor to ceiling with family
photographs.

"To understand any of us, you'd probably have to start with my
mother, Ceci Dakota. Ever hear of her?" Before we could answer, she
went on. "That's your problem, Detective. You're too damn young." One
of her hands clutched the glass firmly, while the other rested on
Mike's broad shoulder. "Mother was a Broadway showgirl, a hoofer,
really. Better dancer than she was a vocalist, but in the days of the
great American musicals, those girls had to be able to do it all."

I moved behind Lily to examine the early black-and-white pictures.
"Cecile—she hated that name—made her debut in
South Pacific,
playing
one of the nurses in the chorus. April seventh, 1949, Majestic Theatre
on Broadway. Ask me anything about those days, and I can tell you more
than you'll ever want to know, just from listening to Ceci. That show
played one thousand nine hundred twenty-five performances—five
years—and she stayed with it for two full seasons. How many times do
you think anybody can wash a man right out of her hair and never get
beyond the chorus line? She actually understudied Mary Martin for a few
weeks, but the woman was never sick a single day, so Ceci moved on.

"Bottom line was that each of us kids was named for a character from
one of the shows. For some reason she got hooked on the £'s. I
got Lily, from
Kiss Me, Kate,
which isn't at all bad. My
middle sister wound up with Liat, from
South Pacific.
Bloody
Mary's daughter, y'know? It's not easy to grow up Tonkinese in Totowa,
New Jersey." She took another drink. "And then came Lola."

The memories had made her smile, but her own mention of Lola's name
brought Lily up short. "Ceci was still dancing." She aimed her glass
toward a still of her mother, dressed in a pinstriped shirt over black
fishnet tights, hands on her hips and mouth wide open. "Closest she
ever got to a lead. Three performances subbing for Gwen Verdon in
Damn
Yankees.
Stayed with it most of the run, from opening night on
May 5, 1955, through another one thousand and nineteen shows. Even got
a part in the movie, in fifty-eight. Then took some time off to have
another kid. That gave us my baby sister, Lola."

Mike was staring at a photo of three long-legged little girls in
tutus standing around a basinet draped with blue ribbon. "A younger
brother?"

"Yeah, he'll be over later, if you want to talk to him." "Lemme
guess,
Guys and Dolls}"

"He should have been so lucky. Might have had a tough guy's name.
Louie or Lefty or Lucky. Maybe missed out on a few school yard fights.
But it was the sixties, and Ceci was madly in love with Robert Goulet.
Try
Camelot.
Lance, she named him. Lancelot Dakota." Lily
sunk down into a tapestry-covered sofa and put her feet up on the
glass-topped table that faced it.

"So your mother was a Broadway gypsy, and your father?" "Taught
history at the local high school. Let Mother go her own way, take us to
dance classes and sneak us into town to go to Saturday matinees if she
knew some of the girls in the chorus line. Dad thoroughly immersed
himself in local politics when he wasn't reading history books. Liat
and I wanted to go the show biz route. Endless auditions and the
deafening sound of tap shoes all over the house, day and night. Lance
was my dad's clone. Very serious, very studious. His favorite place was
the public library, in part to escape the constant screeching sound of
Ceci making us sing 'Let Me Entertain You' to the milkman, the mailman,
and anyone else who made the mistake of knocking on our door, and in
part because he loved all the things he could learn from books."

"And Lola?"

"Like a perfect combination of their genes. She was smart as a whip.
Couldn't keep her nose out of my father's history texts. Adored going
with him to listen to the wheeling and dealing at the political
clubhouses in town. But give her a sequined costume and a stage to
dance on and she'd drop her schoolbooks, as long as there was an
audience for her. No chorus line for Lola, and no understudy roles. She
was the star or she didn't play. Being second banana to anyone wasn't
acceptable to her.

"By high school, when she realized she didn't have the talent to
make it to the big time, she threw herself into her studies. Got a full
scholarship to Barnard. Majored in political science, with a minor in
history. Got her master's and her Ph.D. at Penn. Never looked back.
Liked every minute of what she was doing with her life. Her
professional life, not her marriage."

Mike's wheels were turning. "Was there another woman in Ivan's life?
Competition for Lola?"

"We didn't know about it if there was one. I believed my sister when
she said she was rid of him for good. At this point, I think she would
have welcomed the fact that he could focus his attention—and his
rage—on someone else."

"How about
her
love life? Did she confide in you about
that?"

"There was nothing to tell. Lola didn't have the time or the
interest to get involved in a relationship at this point. She was all
tied up in a new project at the college, and she had no desire to pique
Ivan's anger by letting him find her with another man, until the
divorce was final."

I sat in a chair opposite Lily and tried to ease my way into the
conversation. "Perhaps you can take a look at some of the shirts and
sweaters we found at Lola's apartment. It would help us to know how she
was dressed when she left here on Thursday afternoon. And then, well,
some of the things in the new place were men's clothing. You might
recognize them, too."

"They must have been Ivan's. Or maybe one of her faculty friends.
Sure, you can show them to me, but it's not very likely they'll be
familiar to me. I signed a power of attorney yesterday, giving Vinny's
office the right to go in and take any of her property they needed to
help their investigation."

I grimaced at Chapman, sorry that Lily was still in the hands of the
Jersey prosecutors, and thankful that the NYPD had declared apartment
15A a crime scene. Cops guarding the door, still blocked off with
bright yellow tape, would be unlikely to let anyone step into it
without the express permission of the chief of detectives.

"Do you know what kind of special project Lola was working on up at
King's?"

"You know, it's a bit embarrassing for me. For the last few weeks,
we used to sit here most nights after dinner, long after my husband
went to sleep. We'd open more wine, talk to each other about everything
from our childhood to our marriages to the Broadway theater. Revivals.
Ever notice that's all it is these days, revivals? We talked about how
we both loved Christmas. I used to be a Rockette, did I tell you that?
Did the Christmas show for six seasons, till my first kid was born.
Ceci loved it, seeing her own Lily Dakota on that big stage.

"Anyhow, I just lost it when Lola started talking about her job. I
couldn't tell you the first thing about New York City, its history or
its politics. North, south, or east of the Great White Way just doesn't
exist for me. She said something about a multidisciplinary program that
she was terribly excited about—digs and dead people—"

I interrupted her. "A deadhouse? Did she talk about that?" "I said
dead
people,"
she responded with a pout. "That's all that
comes to mind. Maybe it's the alcohol."

Maybe it was, but she showed no signs of slowing down. I kept my
fingers crossed that she wasn't going to stand up and show Mike her
best kick and her great extension. Wooden soldier number forty-four.
Rockette Lily Dakota.

"Lily, do you know what Lola was wearing the last time you saw her?"

"My clothes. That's mostly what she wore the whole time she was with
me. Black is all I remember. She wanted to wear black, for her phony
funeral. She laughed about it, too."

Mike's nose was six inches from Lily's at this point, side by side
on the sofa. "On Thursday, when the cops faked the scene with Lola's
shooting, were any of them here with you in the house?"

"Are you kidding? We had a basement full of them. Anne Reininger was
back in this room with us, explaining things to me step by step and
trying to keep me calm. There were detectives and DAs all over the
place, basement to attic, making sure everything went according to
plan."

"And when it was over, did any of them stay behind with you?"

She stopped to think for a minute. "I know I asked for a sedative,
to take a nap. I'd been extremely worried about this, and not being
able to tell the neighbors it was all a fake. Lola and I sat up
practically the entire night before, just trying to reassure ourselves
that if the whole thing worked, she'd be rid of Ivan forever. I
remember Lola and Anne giving me something to help me sleep that
afternoon, once Lola was done with the shooting, but that's about all.
I don't know when any of them left here."

"And Lola," Mike asked. "Did you know she was going back to her
apartment?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. She made me promise not to tell Anne. Anne left
the room, then Lola kissed me, thanked me, and put the throw over my
bedspread 'cause I was cold."

"She just told you she was going to walk out the door?"

Lily nodded.

"Did she ask to borrow your car?"

Lily's brow creased. She was working against the wine to remember
what had happened. "No, of course not. She told me a car service was
picking her up. At least, that's who I assumed she Was talking to. She
used the phone next to my bed to make a call. Told whoever it was not
to come to the front door. Lola said she'd slip out the back, cross
over Tess Bolton's yard—that's one of the neighbors you met—and wait
next to their garage, on Arlington Street. She told me she'd be fine.
Someone was taking her home, she said, where she'd be safe."

8

An hour later I was sitting at my secretary's typewriter, pounding
out subpoenas for Mike to serve as soon as possible.

"What's first?"

"Verizon telephone services in New Jersey. MUDS and LUDS. I want
every outgoing call made from Lily's phone on Thursday— in fact, all of
last week. I suppose you should try each of the cab companies in
Summit, too, but I think there's a good chance that she reached out to
someone she knew—and trusted—to drive her to Manhattan. After the
emotional drain of enacting her own murder, I assume she'd pick her
traveling companion carefully."

"How about phone records for the apartment and her office?"

"I'm working on them. Give me your notepad. You've got all the
relevant numbers written there, don't you?" We both knew the value of a
paper trail, and started to think of any electronic or written means of
communication that might have left a connection or a clue.

When I had finished looking for every possible link to Lola Dakota,
I reached for another blank subpoena in my drawer. I flipped through
Mike's pages until I found his references to Charlotte Voight, the
student who had disappeared in April. There would be King's College
records that could tell us which credit card she used at the school
bookstore, and from there, we could get the company's vouchers to tell
us what businesses she frequented and perhaps where she ate. As I took
the subpoenas out of the typewriter, I signed them beneath the printed
space with Battaglia's name in it, and passed them to Mike.

"What's this one for? King's College Student Health Services?"
"Long shot. We've got absolutely nothing to give us a control sample
for Voight's DNA. None of her belongings are at school— no clothes, no
toothbrush, no hairbrush. Nothing to let the lab develop a genetic
fingerprint. What if we come across evidence or—worst-case scenario—a
body? Once they work up a profile from that, we'd have zilch with which
to compare it."

"What do you think she left at the doctor's office, a DNA sample in
case of emergency?" Mike was growing impatient and was ready to leave.

"I'm willing to bet you that a sexually active college student made
at least one trip to that office, had one gynecological checkup during
her time at the school. Needed birth control, or maybe—with Voight's
lifestyle—a test for sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. And if
she was examined there, most doctors would have done a routine Pap
smear as part of the process. The cells scraped off during that
procedure are more than enough

to give us a control.

"So my guess is that sitting in a lab somewhere not too far away is
all we need to get started on a DNA print of Charlotte Voight."

Mike nodded his approval. "C'mon, blondie. Nothing I can do with
these papers till Monday morning. None of these business offices will
be open at this hour on a Saturday. I'll drop you off at home. Then
I'll be back at seven tonight to drive out to Mercer's."