The Silent Bride (10 page)

April considered the idea of a female sniper in an evening gown shooting a bride down in a synagogue full of people. "Gee, I don't know about that." It wasn't exactly a female kind of crime.

"It could have been a man dressed as a woman. Lot of wigs there, too."

She nodded, liking that better. "There you go."

She put her face out the car window into the wind and breathed the spring air. It wasn't good that both of them were so spooked by this homicide. Maybe Mike was troubled because it occurred near his old home, a section of the Bronx that crime-wise had always been quiet. In his day it had been staunchly middle- and upper-middle-class. Now a lot of newcomers to the city lived there. The neighborhood had changed from white-collar to blue-collar. Even Mike's mother, Maria Sanchez, who'd been a newcomer herself thirty years ago, complained about the immigrants who flocked to the buildings on Broadway. But still, the Five-oh was one of the safest precincts in the city. Crime-wise, it was sleepy.

The Deegan cut through the Bronx to Westchester. Apartment buildings were rooted in the hills on the east and west sides of the highway. The older ones were ten stories high, square, unrelieved red brick, one after another laddered in the hills. The newer ones were twenty, thirty stories high, towering on the bluffs.

April turned her thoughts to the funeral. They'd go. They'd see who was there saying good-bye.

Killers frequently went to the funerals of their victims. If the funeral was at one, they'd go over to the house and talk with Tovah's family in the late afternoon, around five. She didn't relish the prospect of interviewing the family. This was going to be a long day, but what day wasn't? Mike interrupted her timing calculations.

"I think we should get married. What do you say,
cjuerida
? How about we finally set a date?" he asked suddenly.

"Let's not compete with Ching's wedding."
Or a homicide,
she thought.

"How is that competing?" He put his foot on the gas, reacting to the evasion.

"There's just a lot going on right now, that's all." April shook her head; he'd driven right out of her comfort zone. And now he was speeding.

"There's always a lot going on," he countered.

"What's the sudden hurry,
chicol"
she said softly.
Don't push me at a bad time.

"The hurry is, I have a bad feeling."

"About what?" Her heart spiked as he changed lanes too fast. He was definitely pissed at her. She hated that, too.

"About this bride shooting. About being together but not married. Not being married feels wrong now, like bad luck. That's it. It feels like bad luck." He turned to look at her as he said it, and his expression was fierce, showing that he really meant it.

Bad luck!
April felt the kick of those two highly charged words. Right in the gut where she was most vulnerable. Only yesterday he'd been content being together on any basis. Now he was thinking it was bad luck. That hurt, because April's constant nagging worry was that worse luck would result from their marrying. So far she'd been able to avert really bad luck by nonaction. Now he was suggesting nonaction itself was dangerous.

"1 think you're in a funky mood/' she said.

"And I think you have a problem, April."

Oh , now she had a problem. This cold reading sent her feelings careening from hurt, to anger, to anxiety about truth and untruth and what she had to do about it. The feelings vied for supremacy.
She
had a problem! He didn't understand the complexities of her life.
He
was her problem.

She wanted to lash out at him but had to contain herself. It wouldn't be fair to make a scene in his home territory. From the second he exited the highway and crossed the overpass to Broadway he always got funny, thinking his childhood was looking him in the eye. There, the skating rink from his vouth. It was now a Loehmann's. There, where it used to be the Dale movie theater, now a bank. There, the Stella D'oro factory with the air still percolating with baking anisette and almond cookies. And Pauline's was still a grungy bar down the block from the precinct. McDonald's was still next door. Stop and Shop was across Broadway. Van Cortlandt Park a few blocks down. Two hundred thirty-eighth Street, still the end of the line for the Broadway El. And his mother within hailing distance. She couldn't say a word with his mother's ghost so close by.

April simmered on low as Mike parked outside the Five-oh, not a bad house, as precincts went. The blue building was three stories high and had been built within the last twenty years. But it was far from her home base back in Manhattan.

Mike got out arid stretched.
"Todo bien, quenda?"
he asked, as if he didn't know perfectly well that he'd ruined her day and she couldn't do a thing about it.

"Oh, yeah, everything's just hunky." April didn't lash out. She pulled herself out of the car, smoothed the wrinkles out of her blue skirt, adjusted her gun, her jacket, her brains. And she jerked herself back into line. There was no place for private feelings in police work. Anyway, she always got butterflies in a house not her own where she didn't know the personalities and no one wanted them there. She was far from hunky right now, but what else was new?

Cool as could be after laying his cards squarely on the table, Mike clipped on his ID and headed for the detective squad. It was in the usual spot on the second floor, had the usual components of holding cell, locker room with table for eating, a TV. Six desks that were home for twelve detectives, now scrambling because they hadn't had a homicide in quite a while. Suddenly smiling broadly as a man coming home, Mike raised his hand in salute to the worried-looking sergeant on command, and the guy dipped his head in acknowledgment.

"Hey, Sanchez, look at the big shot now. A lieutenant, hogging all the good cases. How ya doin'?" Sergeant Hollis held out his hand, oozing friendship.

"Hey, shut up. Let me think here," Hollis barked at the crowd in the room. No one shut up or moved out of the way, so he had to push through them.

Hollis was a man just over forty, five-ten, medium build, thinning ginger hair, light dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks, blue eyes, a mustache almost as lush as Mike's own. A man in a quiet house, used to an easy life. He was wearing jeans and a Mickey Mouse tie.

"Jimmy, good to see you." Mike clasped the hand and made quick introductions. "This is Sergeant April Woo. Jimmy was my boss when I came in. April worked with me in the Two-oh."

Hollis nodded. "I know. Another hotshot. I've seen your picture, both you guys. How's Dev, see much of him these days?"

"From time to time." Mike's smile turned a little chilly. His old partner was a big boozer, always got him in trouble.

"This is a bad one," Jimmy said, getting right down to the case. "We're lucky on the other injuries. You hear about the kid in the hospital?"

"Anything new?" Mike asked.

"Twelve-year-old lost his ear. Could have been worse. The other one, bullet went right through him. He was lucky."

Right through him?
April thought.
Another hollozv-point went through someone?
That was rare.

"Any ideas?" Mike asked.

"Not yet. Everybody in the victim's family was in front of her in plain view. So was her intended and all his family. That excludes family members. We've been in contact with the wedding planner. She has a guest list and vendor list."

April glanced at Mike. They had a wedding planner.

Hollis smiled. "This is Riverdale," he told her. "They have somebody to do everything. The wedding planner, a woman called Wendy Lotte, has all the details, knows everybody's name and everybody's story. She was there the whole time. She can fill you in on personalities. Doesn't have an alibi for the moment of the shooting. Claims she was in the ladies' room." He arched an eyebrow. "I'm still talking to her."

"Really? She a suspect?" April found the idea downright weird. It wasn't a woman's crime.

"I don't know. She gives me a creepy feeling, what can I say?" He lifted a shoulder. "Nobody else stands

out."

April frowned. "Motive, background check?" "Oh, yeah, working on both." "Okay, what about the community, any anti-Semitic stuff going on here?" Mike's question.

"Inspector Bellaqua's been all over me about this." Hollis flipped the Mickey Mouse tie up and down. "Nothing. Believe me, we'd be on it if there were anything in it."

Mike glanced around at the crowded space and the noisy detectives all pretending to ignore them. "Where do you want to set up the charts? Let's figure out how wide we have to go on this." "Yeah, no problem." They were down to business.

Eleven

A
nthony Pryce shot the cuffs in his summer uniform and adjusted his chauffeur's hat. He was a tall, slender Welshman, good-looking, with intelligent blue eyes and sandy hair that straggled over his collar in a London-late-Beatles-era shag. His gray uniform was just as smart as the wing collar, striped trousers, and tails that he wore when butlering in the house. He finished prepping himself for the ride to Manhattan and went down the back stairs to see to the cars. He couldn't stop thinking about that bride on the news, shot dead in the Bronx just before she took her vows. He moved through his chores, feeling an odd tingle of excitement about the possibilities such a murder presented: If someone wanted revenge on any bride in New York, now was the time to get it. It was all about knowing everything.

Anthony had worked on the Hay North Shore estate for eleven years, ever since his twenty-first birthday. And there was nothing he did not know. He was the butler, the driver, the cook when only Hays pater and mater were at home. He was the horticultural expert who directed the gardener in all his endeavors, the official head of the kitchen garden, and expert in all areas of social protocol. Along with Wendy Lotte, he was practically in charge of Prudence's wedding.

Anthony's knowledge of the family's doings extended to the secret places where in jealous rages Alfred, the toy poodle, tinkled against the priceless antiques. He knew that Lucinda Hay hid packages of forbidden foods like Twinkies and Ding Dongs along with acceptable ones in her room and nibbled between her hearty breakfast, tea, luncheon, tea, cocktails, and dinner. Mrs. Hay had once been a great beauty as well as a socialite, Anthony was proud of telling his friends. Now, alas, she had run to fat.

Anthony also knew that Terence senior was very rich and loved the bottle at least as much as his wife, and Terence junior was following in his father's footsteps, with hardly a sober moment since his junior year in boarding school, despite a sterling record at Yale and Harvard Law School. The Irish legacy. He now worked at the venerable firm of Hathaway, Harold, and Dean on Wall Street. What Anthony knew about Prudence was everything. And more than anything in the world, he hated the idea of her marrying that creep Thomas, an unexciting boiled potato of a young man, who knew nothing about her at all. And cared less. Anthony hated the idea, but it was fixed. It was done. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't very well marry her himself, now, could he?

In the kitchen he slowed only for a second to check on Nora, the Peruvian housekeeper. She didn't speak a word of English, but she kept going all day long like one of those bunnies in TV commercials. She liked to clean and he didn't, so from morning 'til night he had her dusting and polishing silver and the brass lamps and stair rails in the circular staircase. He had her cleaning the crystal in the three great room chandeliers and all the bowls in the bathrooms. Right now she was doing the flatware, humming happily.

"Hasta la vista,
Nora," he said as he charged out the back door.

"Que la via bien,"
she replied. She knew he was on his way to the city and would be back by dinnertime.

On the mud porch, Anthony checked to see if the dry cleaner had been by yet to pick up Mr. Hay's suits and the quilt from the master bedroom that needed cleaning. Pampers had been by for the pickup. He checked his watch, ten-oh-two. Getting on the road between rush hours was both an art and a science. Anthony took personally long waits in halted traffic. Even now, when he hated what the family was doing to his girl—his Pru—he still couldn't help trying to make their lives perfect.