The Silver Anniversary Murder Page 3

  Later in the afternoon, Eddie and I walked down the block and across the street to the Grosses, and while Eddie played upstairs, Mel and I sat on her shaded patio and drank iced tea.

  “The body turned up yesterday,” I told her.

  “Mrs. Mitchell?”

  “A woman. Probably Mrs. Mitchell. The age is right for a woman celebrating twenty-five years of marriage.”

  “Too old to have kids in the schools.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but it was a place to look. And they might have gone there a few years ago.”

  “It’s very strange, Chris. Nobody I talked to had ever heard of them. I think that if you asked five people in Oakwood if they knew me, one or two would recognize my name.”

  “If she worked, she may not have had the kind of social life we have. She’d be too tired at night to go to council meetings and scream about injustice.”

  “Excuses, excuses,” my friend said. “Something’s fishy. Where did they find her body, by the way?”

  “Mm. I forgot to ask and he didn’t mention it. I’d call now but I don’t want to be a bother. Joe Fox faxed his report, so maybe it’s in that. Jack’ll bring it home tonight.”

  “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

  I explained about the friendly wager Jack and I had made.

  Mel laughed. “Did you really think you would stay out of this?”

  “What I really thought was that nothing would happen. The apartment was empty, the people had disappeared, the neighbor hadn’t seen them. I thought we would find a body right away. When we didn’t, I decided it was over. You know me well enough to know that I don’t bet a dollar lightly.”

  “I know,” Mel said. “But I’m glad you didn’t stand on your principles and refuse to look into this. It’s not just a homicide. There’s other stuff going on.”

  “Mommy?” a young voice called.

  “That sounds like mine.” I got up and went inside.

  “I wanna go home,” Eddie said, looking unhappy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like Noah anymore.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “He won’t let me play with his new game.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid it’ll get broken, honey. Remember when you wouldn’t let him play with a puzzle of yours?”

  Eddie pouted. “I don’t care. I wanna go home.”

  “Problem?” Mel said behind me.

  “A very small one in the great scheme of things.”

  “Eddie, we have really good cookies out on the table. Want one?”

  “Yes!” His eyes lit up, the slight fading in importance.

  At that moment, a soft voice behind me said, “He can play with my new game, OK?”

  “Sari, that’s very nice of you.” We worked out a settlement quickly, and Mel and I returned to the shady outdoors and our tea. “Whatever made me think bringing up a child would be easy?”

  “Your innate trust in humankind, dear friend. And it won’t be easy, but believe me, you’ll be successful.”

  It’s nice to have a friend who says the right thing at the right time.

  Jack handed me the fax when he came home. I glanced at it but was too busy with dinner to look carefully. Later, I read it with a pencil in my hand. The body had been found near Oakwood Creek, a trickle of fresh water that meanders through town and attracts teenagers at night in the warm months and bird-watchers and hikers all year round. I’m not sure of its source but I suspect it empties into the Long Island Sound, which forms one of Oakwood’s natural boundaries. The body had not been buried; instead, it had been covered with leaves and branches. A solitary hiker had literally stumbled on it and called the police on his cell phone.

  “I’ve saved the best for last,” Jack said, watching me make a few notes in my book.

  I looked up. “There’s more?”

  “No car registered to either Holly or Peter Mitchell at that address.”

  That sounded impossible. While some people who live in Oakwood don’t own cars, most of those are older people who have given up driving and rely on neighbors to do their shopping unless they live near one of the supermarkets. Occasionally I see an elderly woman with a wheeled wire cart filled with bags of groceries, walking cautiously along the side of a road. It always makes me nervous. “Mel’s right; something’s fishy.”

  “I’d check with the building manager, see if they paid by check or cash. Bet it’s cash or a money order.”

  I had the same feeling. I looked at my watch. It was still early evening. “Let me call Marjorie Walsh and see if they’re on the voting list.”

  “Want to make another bet?”

  “I’m through betting for the rest of my life.” I dialed Marjorie and spent a few minutes in the requisite chatter. Then I asked my question and waited while she went for the list.

  “No Peter Mitchell,” she said. “No Holly. If they’re new in town, they may not have registered yet.”

  “They’ve lived here for some time, Marge. Well, not everyone votes.”

  “Right, although we get a good percentage in Oakwood. Better than a lot of the towns around us.”

  I didn’t want to explain further so I thanked her and got off the phone.

  “Not registered?” Jack said.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Well, that’s not unusual. I know a lot of guys on the job who stay away from the polls. Not that they don’t care, they just don’t want a record of affiliation. Let’s see what happens in the canvass.”

  “And Joe will check if they forwarded their mail.”

  “And how they paid their bills. We’ll turn them up.” He sounded confident.

  But I was starting to wonder.

  The next morning, after Eddie went off to school, I drove to the creek, parked off the road, and walked down the mild slope to where crime scene tape had been spread over a sizable area, stretching from tree to tree and stake to stake where there were no trees. A lone local cop sat in his radio car, ostensibly guarding the scene. He was eating a bagel and drinking coffee from a thermos when I got there. I waved to him.

  “Morning, Mrs. Brooks.”

  I didn’t recognize him but I guess I’m better known than I think—always a surprise to a person who keeps to herself. “How long will you be here?” I asked.

  He had opened the window. “Probably another day. They took a thousand pictures when the body was found, but we don’t want the scene disturbed till we’re sure we don’t need any more.”

  “Where was she found?”

  He put his bagel down on the seat, screwed on the top to the thermos, and got out of the car. I followed him to the yellow tape, which he lifted for me to go under. “About there.” He pointed. “It’s kind of sheltered with those bushes growing there. I can’t let you walk any closer than where we’re standing.”

  We were about ten feet from the area he had indicated, a leafy nest with bush branches bending over it. The killer must have raised them somewhat to get the body in snugly. “Do you know where her head was?”

  “Left, I think, toward the water.”

  “Did you see her face at all?”

  “Just for a second.” He looked unhappy.

  “Was she recognizable?”

  “Not to me.”

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I didn’t want to press him. There was no evidence I could see that a body had lain on that sheltered bit of ground. There were just leaves and brush, new green growth on the bushes. “Were there tire tracks?” I asked finally.

  “You’d have to ask the crime scene detectives, ma’am. If she was dumped when she died a couple of weeks ago, it’s unlikely they’d find tracks that were useful.”

  “Thanks, Officer Jennings.” He had his name on a pin on the front of his uniform.

  We walked back under the tape and I returned to my car, leaving him to his bagel and coffee.

  Late in the afternoon, Joe called. “This is a real mystery, Mrs. Brooks
,” he began, “the kind that should delight you and drive me up the wall.”

  “What you’re saying is nothing makes sense.”

  “Exactly. We canvassed the apartment building and came up with nothing. The Mitchells, if that’s what their name was, kept to themselves and didn’t get along with the woman across the hall, so no one can tell us anything useful.”

  “Did anyone see them move out?”

  “One man thought he saw people loading an SUV with furniture two or three weeks ago. It’s hard to pinpoint the time at this late date. But as you’ve heard, they didn’t own a motor vehicle under either of their names.”

  “How did they pay their rent?”

  “Cash. Does that surprise you?”

  “Not at this point.”

  “But on time every month. And we’ve talked to a number of banks. There are no accounts in their names.”

  “So they weren’t Peter and Holly Mitchell,” I said. “They had other names, which they kept secret for their own reasons. Once a month they withdrew enough cash to pay their rent. They could have had credit cards in their real names, but no one in that complex would know what that is.”

  “That’s the way I’m thinking.”

  “Joe, has a police artist made a sketch of the dead woman’s face?”

  “In fact he has. I just got it a few minutes ago. I’ll fax it to Jack and you’ll have it tonight. And we’ll use it in our canvass.”

  “I’d like to try the nail establishments in the area. You said she’d had a fresh manicure when she died.”

  “Right. And I hear tell that women confide in their hairdressers and manicurists, so maybe the victim let something slip.”

  If the victim was Holly Mitchell, I thought that was a long shot. These were careful people, but perhaps the desire to confide had overcome Holly’s caution while she watched her nails redden. It was worth a try.

  Jack came home with a couple of sketches, one of the face and one of the whole person. I laid them side by side on top of the Times in my lap and studied them. There were handwritten notes, too, that the eyes were brown, the height about five-four, the weight one hundred twenty to one hundred twenty-five. This was an estimate, as a fair amount of decomposition had occurred in the time the body had been secluded near the creek.

  “Looks like you’re drawing a blank,” Jack said, putting down his sections of the Times.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.” I noticed the artist had drawn the full-length sketch with a skirt. She looked like a woman ready to go to work. All that was missing was her handbag and perhaps a fashionable briefcase.

  “See what the nail places have to say.”

  “What if she worked in New York and had her nails done on her lunch hour?”

  “Always possible. Then that’s just bad luck. Let’s not anticipate it.”

  He was right, but I was disappointed. Something in me had been sure I would recognize the woman, but she was a stranger to me, a stranger who was dead of mysterious causes, none of them a gunshot wound.

  “You look troubled.”

  “I am. I wonder if this woman was even the one I talked to on the phone. I wonder if the sound I heard was a gunshot. I really wonder what this is all about.”

  Jack got up and went to the kitchen to get seconds of coffee. “Keep digging. Between the two of you, you’ll come up with something.”

  4

  My theory was that a woman trying to keep her identity a secret would not go to the nearest manicurist or hairdresser—or bank, for that matter. She would be in danger of having a neighbor walk in, recognize her, and want to chat. After I noted all the nail places in Oakwood and surrounding towns, I drew a map and plotted them, deciding to leave the nearest for last. I had a feeling the police would work in reverse, and if I was lucky, I would come up with something before they did.

  On Saturday morning I left father and son to do their weekend thing together and set out to visit nail shops. The first one on the list was several miles from the apartment building where the fictitious Mitchells had lived. I explained my mission to the receptionist, a young woman with nails that were long and multicolored. I would have been afraid to shake hands with her.

  She didn’t recognize the face in the sketch but generously invited me to talk to the five manicurists, all of whom were hard at work. One after the other, they shook their heads. I took the opportunity to ask their clients as well, on the chance that one of them had seen Holly in another location or, better still, had known her personally. No luck.

  This wasn’t the first time I had made these kinds of inquiries, and I knew better than to feel defeated so early. I crossed off the name of the establishment and drove to the second on the list. The names themselves were inventive. Several called themselves some kind of spa. The one I was headed for was called Shimmer.

  Shimmer it might, but no one there recognized Holly either.

  Number three was Nails R Art. The mirrored front window prevented a view inside but an oval section in the door was transparent glass, facilitating safe entries and exits.

  Inside, it was bustling. The receptionist wore a smock with women’s hands painted on it, each set of nails done differently. Her own, by contrast, were covered with a colorless gloss. I rather liked it.

  I introduced myself and showed her the sketch. She looked at it carefully, then focused again on me. “I haven’t seen her for about a month.”

  “But you know her?”

  “Oh yeah. She came in every week or two. She was Ronda’s client.” She pointed to her left. “That’s Ronda over there.”

  “What’s this woman’s name?” I asked.

  “Rosette something. Wait a minute.” She turned back several pages of her appointment book. “Parker. Rosette Parker.”

  “Is she married?”

  “I think so. Ronda would know. She sees her hands all the time.”

  “When will Ronda be free?”

  She looked at her watch. “Five minutes. Tell her you want to talk to her. She has a little time before her next appointment. There was a cancellation this morning.”

  Ronda confirmed she would be free soon and told me to sit and make myself comfortable. I did as she suggested, finding a new issue of Time magazine on the rack. I had hardly gone through the table of contents when Ronda called me to follow her. We went downstairs to a basement kitchen and break room. A small microwave sat on a counter near the refrigerator. All the comforts of home.

  I explained what had happened without being too explicit. When I said a body had been found, Rondo drew in her breath and opened her eyes wide. I asked her to look at the sketch, and she quickly identified the face as belonging to Rosette Parker.

  “How long has she been your client?” I asked.

  “About two years. Maybe not that long. Could I look at that again?”

  I handed her the sketch, which seemed to mesmerize her. “Was she married?”

  “I’m pretty sure she was. She wore a thin diamond band on her left hand, very nice diamonds.”

  “Did she ever talk about her husband?”

  “She never talked about anything personal. She was pleasant and she tipped well and we talked, but I never heard her say much about her private life.”

  “What about children?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess I assumed she had them because she was married and the right age, but I don’t think she ever mentioned them. She worked, I know that.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Uh, maybe White Plains.” White Plains is a metropolitan center northeast of New York City, a great deal smaller than New York but the largest city in the area. It has department stores and the expected malls, buildings full of business offices, and too much traffic.

  “Did you ever see her car?”

  “I don’t know. She parked outside but I can’t say I ever—wait a minute. I think I once saw her get into a maroon SUV-type car.”

  That could be the one the Mitchells
’ neighbors had seen filled with furniture a few weeks ago. “I don’t suppose you noticed a license plate,” I said with no hope that she had.

  She smiled. “Sorry. Uh, could I ask you something? When did Mrs. Parker die? The last time I saw her she seemed fine.”

  “She died a few weeks ago. When was the last time you saw her?”

  She calculated. “Three weeks ago? Four? It’ll be in the book at the desk.”

  “Did she tell you what kind of work she did?”

  “I think it was something in public relations. She saw clients, I know that. Every so often she’d tell me a little story about one of them, something funny that happened. One woman locked her purse in her car along with the key, and Mrs. Parker gave her lunch money and called the police to help her break into her car.”

  “Did she ever recommend anyone to be your client?”

  “Never. I’m sure of that.”

  I wasn’t surprised. When you’re using two names, you have to be very careful not to entangle your personas. “Was she a regular?”

  “Pretty regular. Sometimes she had to go out of town and she couldn’t come in.”

  “Does the shop have her phone number?”

  “They must. We have to be able to call in case there’s bad weather and I can’t get in or I’m sick or something like that. They should have it at the desk.”

  “Anything else you can tell me, Ronda?”

  “She was a nice woman. I’m sorry she’s dead. Now I know why she missed her last appointment.”

  We went back upstairs—it was almost time for Ronda’s next appointment—and Ronda took the full-length sketch from me. At her station, she pulled over a bottle of bright pink polish, opened it, removed the excess liquid from the brush, and dabbed it over the fingertips on the sketch. They were hardly more than little circles, but they brightened up the otherwise black-and-white picture. She handed it to me carefully, screwed the cap back in the bottle, and pushed it to its accustomed space.

  On my way out, I stopped at the desk and asked for the date of Mrs. Parker’s last appointment and for her phone number. The phone number was on file in their computer; it was the same number as the phone in the apartment. That, at least, established the dead woman, whatever her name might have been, had lived in that apartment. The last time she’d seen Ronda was the day before I got the phone call. I headed home.