The Oxygen Murder (8 page)

“Maybe you wouldn’t have agreed to see me so quickly,” I said. “I’m sorry—”

She held up her right hand, decorated with four rings, all of them silver with various ornamentation. Only her index finger was bare. I felt my fingers itch at the density of metal Tina carried around. It had taken me long enough to decide to wear one ring, a thin, plain platinum band.

“Don’t apologize for a little pretense,” Tina said. “Deceit is the core of my business. And I have nothing against scientists. I started out as a chemistry major, believe it or not, downtown at NYU, but then Martin Luther King was shot, and then Bobby Kennedy, so I switched to sociology, you know, the better to help humanity. Imagine my surprise when no one was hiring people to save the world.”

“I always assumed a physicist would save the world.”

“Yeah, well, you may be right. Now I try to bring equity to the universe at large by catching one little cheater at a time.”

I thought of nobler causes, but who was I to judge? Besides, I guessed flattery would get me more cooperation.

“I’ll bet it wasn’t easy for you, either, in a man’s field, especially a few years ago.”
Oops.
Another false start in my so-called interview. Maybe being technically on vacation had slowed down my brain. “Not that you’re old . . .”

Tina’s laugh was loud and hoarse. “I’m not in denial about my age. Kind of proud of what I’ve done, in fact. It took a while to build this business up. People tend to think women can’t do this job. You have to be sneaky, and nosy, and persistent. You have to be willing to take risks to learn other people’s secrets.” She picked a pencil from a generic black holder on her desk. She managed to doodle and keep eye contact with me at the same time. “I say, who better than a woman?”

Another show-stopper. It was clear who was in charge of this interview.

“Who indeed?” I asked.

“So what does a physicist want with a PI firm?” Tina asked. She nodded toward my only ring. “Looks new. Trouble already?”

I had a fleeting idea of claiming that I needed her services to track down my lowlife husband, who’d betrayed me after only a few months, but in the back of my mind I heard a voice:
Don’t con a conner,
or something like that. I opted for the truth.

“I was a friend of Amber Keenan’s,” I said, “and I work with the police.”

Well, mostly the truth. I was fewer than six degrees of separation from Amber, and I did work with a police department only a ninety-minute plane ride away.

Tina cocked her head, her countenance turning sad. “I heard about Amber on this morning’s news. Awful. She freelanced for me now and then. I didn’t know her very well.”

So far, apparently, no one did.

Tina continued, maintaining a mournful look. “I didn’t know you were her friend. I’m so sorry.”

Here I was, claiming friendship with Amber, a woman I’d seen only once, in the throes of death.

“I wonder if you’d be willing to tell me what Amber was working on recently,” I said.

Tina put the pencil down and folded her hands, a pose that signaled the delivery of bad news. “I’m sure you’re aware that I can’t release that information.”

I nodded, creating an expression of sympathy with the rules of confidentiality, combined with disappointment at not being able to help in the worthy effort of finding Amber’s killer. Tina’s file cabinets, in various wood grains, stood around the room, their gold metal handles tempting me, like an elusive password behind which was hidden data. “Maybe you have a few minutes to tell me in general what Amber did for you?” I spread my hands, a helpless gesture. “Or just what kind of things you do here?” I hated my dumb-little-girl voice, but I hated more the idea of leaving Tina’s office empty-handed.

Tina picked up the pencil again and tapped it on her desk-blotter calendar. Her desk and bookshelves were noticeably free of photos or memorabilia. “Sure,” she said. “I don’t mind sharing a bit of the gossip, in an anonymous, hypothetical way, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I just finished a premarital screening case. I’m trying to move away from those, but they pay the bills. Rich men never trust their fiancées. Which is fine with me. Keeps me in business. So we dig a little, and we find out the woman was a stripper in a past life.” Tina held up her hands. “I’m just saying hypothetically.”

“Of course. But how fascinating. You must have a million of these stories.”

She nodded expansively. “The sad ones are the missing persons, especially when it’s kids. But, okay, here’s a good one for you. There’s this guy who dresses up in a tux, goes to weddings—no one he knows—and robs the money basket. You know, where guests put the envelopes for the bride and groom. Everybody thinks he’s an usher or something. You’ll never believe how he got caught, how stupid he was. He—”

Rrrring. Rrrring.

Tina checked the caller ID box attached to her phone.

Rrrring. Rrrring
.

“I better take this. Dee Dee’s out to lunch. Are we almost done?” Tina looked hopeful as she lifted her telephone receiver.

“Almost. But I want to hear the end of the wedding thief story.”

Tina smiled, indulgent. “Sure. You can just have a seat outside. I won’t be too long.”

The waiting room was still empty. I couldn’t help checking out Dee Dee’s small desk, which was practically on my way from Tina’s office to the square, understuffed chairs of the reception area.

A metal file organizer with several horizontal trays, stacked like the floors of a skyscraper, took up one corner of the desk. Neatly printed labels sat in slots along the side of the frame; smaller labels were along the edges of the legal-size folders in each compartment. An organized woman, Dee Dee.

I could hear Tina, though not clearly, on the phone in the inner room.

“Okay . . . Saturdays or Sundays, got it . . . I’ll have to check . . . city hall.”

I hovered around Dee Dee’s desk. The office was quiet except for Tina’s muffled voice and the sounds of footsteps from the corridor
outside. The steps were too rapid and not clicking enough to be from Dee Dee’s stiletto heels, rather like a rush of people on their way to the elevator for a trip to the street-level restaurants. I tilted my head down and craned my neck until the labels in the file organizer were in focus.

ANDERSON, B.; NAZZARRO, L.; MILBANK, A.
I read conscientiously, as if the folders held a clue as to what got Amber killed and what Lori was hiding from us. My digital camera was in my purse, but I doubted I had the dexterity to whip it out and capture images in the style of a genuine spy.

“Keenan, Keenan,” I mumbled, half to myself, scanning the folders. In my new career as police consultant, I’d become good at reading sideways and upside down.

“Listen, Charlie, there’s another thing
. . .”

Tina’s voice. Not signing off yet.

I read on.
JANSING, L.; SASSO, K.

K. Sasso? What a coincidence. Rose’s daughter-in-law—Robert Galigani’s wife—was Karla Sasso in her professional life. Rose and Frank had had breakfast with her parents yesterday on the Upper West Side.

It couldn’t be the same person.

I took a deep breath.

“I don’t think . . . why in the world?”

Tina, still on the phone. There was more time.
To do what?
I asked myself.
To snoop?

Apparently so.

I tugged at the Sasso file, which was on the thick side, pulled it out partway from the stack, and lifted the corner. I could make out the printing on a thin strip of the top piece of the paper. Just enough to see the bright blue letterhead.

KARLA SASSO HOPKINS, SARCIONE, AND SASSO 555 THE FENWAY BOSTON, MA 02115

I grunted. Not what I wanted to see. I wished I could go back to the time just before the Sasso label came into view, though I didn’t know exactly why I was so disturbed.

Why couldn’t Karla, a Boston divorce lawyer, have business with a New York City PI who listed spousal surveillance in her brochure? Not unusual, or suspicious, I told myself. Except that this was no ordinary PI firm. It was the one where the late, murdered, Amber Keenan had worked.

Dee Dee wasn’t back from lunch, but I knew Tina wouldn’t be on the phone forever. It was now or never. In jerky, two-handed motions, I yanked the Sasso folder from the slot and riffled through the pages. Letters, forms, expense sheets, and then more of each. I caught glimpses of legalese—heretofores and whereupons—and subject lines like
Carter v. Carter
and
Lasky v. Lasky.
The standard phrasing for divorce proceedings. What was I looking for, anyway? I shook my head, mentally slapping myself back to rationality. I hastily straightened the pile of papers, balancing the folder on Dee Dee’s short row of dictionaries and reference books. A flurry of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven pages, smaller than legal size, fell to floor.

“I guess that’s it, then . . .”

Tina’s call was coming to a close.

I scooped up the pages and stuffed them into the folder, then squeezed the folder into the slot. I knew I’d messed up Dee Dee’s order, but there was no going back. What was worse, there was one piece of paper still on the floor, half of it under Dee Dee’s desk.

I heard Tina’s footsteps approach the door between her office and the reception area. My breath caught. All my blood seemed to rush to my face. The door opened as I lifted the errant paper from the floor and shoved it into my thankfully large, deep purse. Rose’s tiny, hard-leather numbers might be chic, but in situations like this, only the soft, tote-style purse I always carried would do, I thought, never one to miss an opportunity for going off on a tangent.

I brushed my pants of bits of dust. “I keep dropping my gloves,” I said, showing Tina one I’d deftly pulled from my pocket.

Tina used both hands to make an ushering motion toward her office. “Shall we continue?”

As much as I wanted to hear how the wedding bandit was caught, I needed to get out of the building. I looked at my watch and muttered a
tsk tsk.
“Look at the time. It’s later than I thought, and I need to be
downtown in about fifteen minutes.” I opened my palms to indicate how sorry I was to have to run.

“Another time,” Tina said, shrugging, in a meager show of disappointment.

I searched Tina’s face for signs of awareness that her office was now a crime scene, but I saw primarily relief. Plus a bit of a questioning look at my abrupt change of heart? That might have been my imagination. I struggled to keep myself from looking at the disheveled file in the metal holder or at my purse, where a single sheet, hot as it was, seemed to be raising the temperature of the lining.

We shook hands. Mine were sweaty from the exertion of chasing the papers and from nerves. I imagined Tina dusting her own hand for my fingerprints, then comparing them to the prints on her folders.

I walked to the frosted glass door as quickly as I could without alerting Tina to a problem. I fell in with a crowd of workers carrying paper bags and plastic takeout boxes. A mixture of smells floated through the hallway. I identified hamburgers, salad dressings, and a re-heated Mexican dish, probably from a small office microwave oven. I hoped Dee Dee wasn’t part of the gang. I couldn’t face her. With luck, it would be a busy afternoon, and a horde of clients would pass through the office before the messy file was noticed.

It could have been any one of twenty people,
I imagined Dee Dee saying, though not a single client had darkened the door in the whole time I was there.

The elevator to the street was crowded with workers I assumed were from the many law firms and CPA offices I’d seen listed on the menu-like lobby directory. My mind was in chaos, swirling with questions. What was Karla’s letter to Tina Miller about? I hoped it was a routine legal missive and my inadvertent theft was useless. Shameful, but not disastrous. Surely its loss wouldn’t be a problem for the Miller agency: I was positive twenty-first-century offices had multiple copies, hard and soft, of every piece of correspondence. Dee Dee wouldn’t be chastised and I wouldn’t be found out. It would be a close call, but no harm done. Most important, I would have nothing to explain to my husband or to my best friend, K. Sasso’s mother-in-law.

On the other hand, if there was something to the letter, something that was relevant to Amber’s murder investigation, then what?

By the way, what was the penalty for stealing a letter? Had I committed a felony? The envelope had been opened already, so it wasn’t like stealing from the U.S. mail, a federal offense. I pictured myself asking Matt the question.

Honey, suppose a person lifted an already-opened letter from a file organizer?

I made my way through the lobby, past a large Christmas tree with oversized, colorfully wrapped packages underneath. The boxes were empty, I figured. Deceiving. Like me. I imagined every pair of eyes looking at my purse, and a corps of NYPD waiting outside on West Fifty-seventh Street.

I exited the building—not a cop in sight—and picked up speed, nearly running away from Tina’s office, perspiring in spite of the low-forties temperature. I wrenched my scarf from under my coat and jammed it into my purse. On top of the letter.