The Valentine's Day Murder (3 page)

“Only two bodies?” Jack said, when we were sitting at the kitchen table for his late supper after returning from evening law classes.

“You sound as surprised as I am. When she told me all that stuff in February, I thought she was dreaming.”

“Where did Carlotta say she was when all this disaster happened?”

“Chicago, I think. Anyway, on a business trip. Val took her to the airport after they had lunch together.”

“I suppose it’s true,” Jack said. “Her company would have called her there to tell her the news—if they knew before she got back that her husband was missing and presumed drowned. But you know the drill, Chris. Check the items you can verify, establish facts, then go on to the rest of it.”

“You think she’s involved in those deaths?”

“You know me. I don’t think anything, not at this point anyway. It’s too early to be thinking. It’s evidence-collecting time. But that’s one weird story.” He filled his plate again. “So a dumb prank by a trio of men who should have known better turns out to be a homicide. I don’t have to ask you if you’re interested.”

“Carlotta wants me to look into it. She says the police have decided that if Val isn’t dead in the lake, he’s a living murderer.”

“Pretty obvious assumption. But she’s holding out for a third possibility, right?”

“Right.”

“Alive and innocent. So why did he run? And did he
run before or after the killing? Does he know there’s been a killing?”

“If he didn’t know when he ran, he must have found out about it soon after. It was in the papers, on TV. He couldn’t really have missed it.”

“Unless he went far away, maybe out of the country. But what did he use for money?”

“I haven’t asked Carlotta about bank accounts, but I’d guess the police are looking into that now. And I wonder if she can tell if he stopped off at home to pick up some clothes before he left. Maybe he went home, Jack. Maybe he’s home, he goes to sleep, he wakes up the next morning, ready to go to work, and turns on the news.”

“They don’t know about it yet, Chris. It’s too early. True, the men didn’t return home, but I’ll bet that wasn’t the first time. Their wives may even have been used to it, may have been waiting for their husbands to toddle home after a hard night at the bar rail. It takes awhile to make the decision that he should have been home a couple of hours ago. So wife number one calls wife number two and finds out both the husbands are missing. Wife number three, of course, is on a business trip so no one reaches her. But no one answers at her house, so the other two wives know husband number three isn’t home either.”

“But when the three men don’t show up for work, everyone gets the message and someone calls the police.” I got up and brought the coffee to the table. “And that’s when everyone starts to panic.” I poured and brought over a box of store-bought cookies. “So that means that if Val went home, he didn’t answer the phone when the other wives called, which is suspicious in itself, or he was already gone by morning.”

“I love it,” Jack said. “And you do, too.”

“I do. I wonder if anyone took Carlotta seriously in February when she said she didn’t think her husband would have crossed the lake with the others. That would have been the time to check the taxi companies and the buses. It’s months later now, and no bus driver would remember a particular passenger that rode his bus on February fourteenth. A taxi driver might, though, especially if he saw pictures on the news of the men who were missing. If Val was trying to disappear, I think he would have gotten on a bus to anywhere rather than take a taxi to his home.”

“That makes sense,” Jack said. “It also means he planned this disappearance, making him look like a good suspect for the homicide. You want to take this on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you know. You’re just worrying about what I’m worrying about.”

A bit of tissue that was half his and half mine and would be our first child before year’s end. “Maybe I should ask the doctor.”

“What’s she going to tell you? That flying in a plane and doing some legwork won’t hurt, and the exercise is good for you?”

I smiled. “Probably.”

“How do you feel?”

“As good as the day I met you.”

“You nervous?”

“Yes, I’m nervous. I’m not nervous about going to teach my class or driving to the supermarket. It’s just that this is so new and so important, and I keep thinking that I’m over thirty and maybe that makes a difference.”

“Did you talk to Dr. Campbell about it?”

“She said she was exactly my age when she had her first child.”

“So there you are.”

“You sound like you’re encouraging me.”

“Chris, we both know you’re going to do this.”

“We do?”

“Don’t we?”

I shook my head. “Maybe we’ve been married too long.”

He leaned across the table and kissed me. “Not long enough. Just watch out for our mutual interest.”

Carlotta, of course, was very happy that I had decided to give the case a try. She saw my job as finding Val, dead or alive, wherever he was. I saw it from a larger perspective, figuring out who had killed Matty and, if possible, why, and also, because there had to be some connection, what Val’s role in all of this was. I was pretty sure that answers to any of the questions would lead to answers to all. The first thing I wanted to do, I told Carlotta, besides reading everything in the papers about the Valentine’s Day walk across the lake and the recent discovery of the bodies, was to talk to all three wives.

“I’ll get us all together as soon as you arrive,” she said.

I said, “Great,” and regretted it almost immediately. “On second thought, it might be better if I speak to all of you separately.”

“Why is that?” she said with a wary edge in her voice.

“Because although you may have been best friends before February fourteenth, there’s a large possibility now that one of the husbands killed another of them—or even two of them—and that may not sit well with the survivors.”

“Whatever you say.” But I thought she sounded disappointed, as though she had hoped to hear what the other
wives had to say, or perhaps because she had thought she was directing the investigation and now realized that could not be. “When do you think you can come?”

“I teach a class on Tuesday, and we’re coming to the end of the semester pretty soon. I don’t want to fly up tomorrow and rush back on Monday. Let’s say I’ll come up next Wednesday and stay till the following Monday, if I have to. In the meantime, if anything happens,” I was sure she knew what I meant, “let me know. I can always cancel the flight.”

“You still think Val’s body will surface, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to think. I have so many questions I’ll probably go nonstop for days. One of the people I want to talk to is your husband’s business partner.”

“Why?”

Again there was the edge to her voice. “Carlotta, partners are intimates. Whether they love or hate each other, they know a lot about each other. If a man is making—or getting—phone calls, his partner is sure to be aware of it. Sometimes mail is sent to the business address instead of the home address. I have to know these things. If you have a problem with any of this—”

“No, of course not. I just hadn’t really thought about what an investigation entails. When the men disappeared in February, it was assumed to be an accident and the police hardly questioned me. I just have to get used to looking at this differently. I’ll cooperate with anything you want to do, Chris. There won’t be any problems. And you’ll stay with me, if that’s all right.”

“It’s fine.”

“I have a big house, and you can use Val’s car. I start it every once in awhile to keep the battery going. It’s in good shape and it’ll be better when it’s driven.”

“Then I’ll see you next Wednesday?”

“Yes. I’ll get you a plane before noon, and I’ll pick you up myself at the Buffalo airport.”

“And you’ll arrange for me to talk to Val’s partner.”

“I’ll call him right away.”

I must admit to an immediate surge in my spirits. Not only was it spring, with all the pleasure that the fresh air and sunshine give me, but I was embarking on one of those great journeys I had come to look forward to in the last two years, digging for information, development of a theory, and finding who knew what—a killer or killers, a victim or victims, a reason, a motive, an explanation I could not begin to imagine on the day I began.

And more than that, I sensed it was my last case, at least for a long time. With a baby coming I would not be hopping on a plane to go anywhere, not even picking up and going into the city for a day. I knew about as little about babies as one could at my age; I had never had anything to do with them after an occasional job as a sitter when I was young, and I had sat only with children whom I could talk to. Diapers were a mystery. I was aware that they had been transformed from cotton to disposable only because I saw shelves of them in the local supermarket and occasionally caught an ad on TV. I had a lot to learn, and I would do it at home with my child.

I told my friend and neighbor Melanie Gross that I would be leaving for a few days and sketched out the little I knew. Like me, she was excited and intrigued, not to mention very encouraging about taking on an adventure while pregnant.

“I worked till the last minute with my first,” she said. “And that meant getting up, driving to school, and
teaching a full schedule, a lot of it on my feet. Don’t worry, and drink lots of milk.”

It sounded like good advice, the second half of it perhaps easier to follow. I called Amy Grant and told her I was flying to Buffalo and would stay with Carlotta for a few days. She had already heard the news about the surfacing of the bodies and she wished me luck. In this case I interpreted luck to mean that Carlotta’s husband would not be involved in the homicide—and would turn up alive. Maybe, I thought, packing my bag on Tuesday night, it was too much to hope for.

Spring travels north a few miles a day, and even from the air I could see it had barely reached western New York. In Oakwood the trees had all leafed out; here the buds were just breaking and the air was cool but steeped with the promise of spring. I walked up the long corridor to where a small crowd waited for New York City passengers, and there was Carlotta, her eyes searching the faces of the moving group until she recognized mine.

“Chris, you made it,” she said, coming forward, and I wondered if she had doubted that I would come.

We shook hands. “Everything is scaled down compared to the big city. It must be nice to live in a less populated area.”

“It is. And everything’s close. Did you check a bag?”

“Yes.” I was carrying a small one and when she saw it, she took it from me.

“Right downstairs. Then we’ll go out to the car. It’s a bit of a drive, but we’ll stop for lunch on the way. I’ve got you scheduled for later this afternoon, if that’s all right.”

“It’s fine. I’m here and I want to get started.”

The suitcase came around on the belt and Carlotta grabbed it, leaving me with two free hands and not a little embarrassment. But when I protested, she would hear none of it.

“I brought Val’s car,” she said, as we walked into the parking lot, small by New York City standards but nowhere near as full. “It drives like a dream. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

“What kind of car is it?”

“A Mercedes. There it is.”

“Carlotta, I can’t drive a car like that.”

“Why? Because it’s expensive? It drives like any other car. Put your foot on the accelerator and push. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s funny. I asked Jack once if he wanted an expensive car, and he said maybe someday.”

“Val wanted it now. He wanted everything now. He earned it and he got it. I hope he’ll come home to enjoy it all again.”

She stowed my luggage in the trunk and we were off. We stopped somewhere for a light lunch, and she smiled when I ordered milk with my sandwich.

“We decided to wait to have children,” she said.

“I was just married last year, so this is my first opportunity. I think I told you last fall, I was a nun till two years ago. I never thought I’d have children, so it’s a real bonus for me.”

“Then this may be your last case for a long time.”

“Maybe,” I hedged. “I haven’t even gotten to the point where I need maternity clothes. I can’t think that far ahead.”

“Just find Val,” she said. “Then you can retire.”

* * *

On the way to her house she took a detour and stopped at the point where Matty’s four-wheel drive had been found the day after the men disappeared. I haven’t traveled much, and the Great Lakes were completely new to me. If you had told me I was standing at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I would have believed it. The lake was vast, and the wind blowing off it, cold. Like the strip of beach on the Long Island Sound near my own home, this one had the cold, deserted look of off-season. The water was darkly forbidding, waves and whitecaps everywhere and the water slapping the shore as though angry.

“It’s a great place to swim in the summer,” Carlotta said. “I know it’s hard to imagine it covered with ice and snow, but it gets that way when we have a cold winter. What happened this year around Valentine’s Day is that we had a few warm days, and I guess the ice started to melt, not around here or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did.”

“It’s possible a gunshot may have gotten a hole started.”

“That’s possible, too.”

“Where was their vehicle?”

“Right where I’ve parked.”

“Was it locked?”

“I’m pretty sure it was. Matty’s wife, Annie, had to find the extra key.”

“Anything left inside?”

She composed herself before she answered. “Val’s watch was in the backseat. It was a very fine watch. He was probably afraid of falling and damaging it.”

She had not told me that before, not indicated in any way that Val had been with the other two men on the beach. “So we know he came this far,” I said.

“This far, yes.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but it certainly looked to me as though Val must have made the trek with the others. If he were going to leave them at this point, why would he leave his expensive watch behind?