The Thanksgiving Day Murder Read online

  “I wonder if you could show me the letter she wrote, her resume, letters of recommendation she sent, anything at all that you have.”

  Arlene Hopkins stared at me as though I had made some terrible faux pas. I looked at her with confusion, wondering if I had inadvertently offended her.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” she said finally.

  “I really need—”

  “I understand it might be useful to you. It’s just that we don’t have that material anymore.”

  “You’ve disposed of it?”

  “When we opened the shop we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. We had pencils and paper and an old file cabinet from my mother’s basement. All those original records were on paper and very space-consuming. When we moved here last year, we threw out everything that hadn’t been put on computer, especially for employees that were long gone. Payroll data is on computer, of course, but I don’t know how helpful that would be for you.”

  Not very helpful at all. “Do you have any recollection of where she worked before she came here?”

  She smiled, her lipsticked mouth a perfect replica of the nail polish shade. “I can hardly remember where I worked before I came here.”

  “Is there anything at all you can tell me?” I asked, feeling that I had really reached the end of the line rather soon with little to show for my day’s work.

  “She was an excellent secretary, more like everyone’s assistant at the beginning, and we were sorry to lose her. I believe we sent her a very nice wedding present.”

  “Did she have any friends in the office?”

  “She’s been gone for two years. Most of our staff has been hired since then. But feel free to ask around. And if you hear anything about Natalie, I’d like to know.”

  I stood and offered her my hand. “Thank you. I will.”

  Halfway down the hall I ran into the receptionist, who had obviously been called to get me. She took me to a room where several people sat at computers or word processors, and told them to talk to me.

  It wasn’t very fruitful. Most of them had been hired after Natalie left; one had known her briefly and knew only that she was leaving to get married. But the last one, a man about my age who worked in very casual clothes, said he had known Natalie for a year or more.

  “Did you ever talk?”

  “Sure. It’s a friendly office.”

  “She tell you anything about herself? Where she was from? Boyfriends, girlfriends?”

  “There was only one boyfriend that I remember, and she left to marry him.”

  “Other friends? Relatives?”

  “There was a girl in the office she was friendly with, Susan something, but she left before Natalie did.”

  There was a nameplate on his worktable that said STEVE. “I’m almost at a dead end, Steve. If there’s anything you can think of—”

  “It was an office friendship. We had a cup of coffee together, lunch once in a while. We didn’t date, we didn’t see each other after work. I liked her. She was peppy and upbeat. I’m neither one of those things. If she had sisters and cousins and aunts, she never talked about them.”

  I took the ring of keys out of my bag and put them in front of him. “Were those Natalie’s?”

  “I don’t know.” He picked them up and looked at them, then got up and walked away. “Come with me,” he said, looking back. “We moved here last summer and a lot of old stuff was thrown out, the stuff H and J started with. But a few of the desks from the original office were bought new, and they came along. I think one of them was Natalie’s.”

  I followed him to a small office on the hall that led to Arlene Hopkins’s big office. The door was open, but no one was inside. “I think this was hers. Let’s give it a try.” He put one of the small keys in the keyhole in the top center drawer. “Fits like a glove. Want to try it?”

  I turned the key to lock, then back to unlock, the drawer. As I did so, the occupant of the office came in. Steve explained and the new man seemed unfazed.

  “Was anything of hers in the desk when you inherited it?” I asked.

  “There was just the usual junk. I cleaned it out and threw everything away. Besides, I think someone else used it for a while before I got it. I’ve only been here a year.”

  Steve and I went back to his work station. At least I knew now the keys actually belonged to Natalie. I wrote my name and phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to him. “Call me collect,” I said, “if you think of anything.”

  He looked at it. “What do you think happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose she was kidnapped, but I have no idea by whom or why.”

  “You think her husband did it?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Isn’t that the way it usually is? They have a fight and he kills her? All the rest is just to prove to the world he’s innocent.”

  “My instinct is that he didn’t.”

  “Well, you’ve probably got better instincts than mine.” He put the paper in his pocket. “Let me know if you turn anything up.”

  —

  I was on my way down in the elevator when I remembered the voice on the phone when I had called for the appointment. I hadn’t met anyone who sounded like that woman. When the elevator stopped on the ground floor, I took it right back up again.

  “Forget something?” the receptionist said as I walked in.

  “There was someone I wanted to talk to, but I didn’t meet her, the woman I spoke to on the phone.”

  She looked baffled. “You talked to me.”

  “It was someone else.”

  “Arlene Hopkins?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “Can I talk to Steve again, please?”

  “Steve who?”

  “In the word-processing room.”

  “He just left.”

  I hate when people think they can put something over on me. “I just talked to him five minutes ago,” I said.

  “And he left right after you did. I’m surprised you didn’t run into him at the elevator.”

  I knew how to get from where I was standing to the room where Steve had his work station, but I don’t really have what it takes to do something like that when it’s pretty clear I’ve been asked to leave. This was private property, after all, and I didn’t think I had any right to be there if they didn’t want me.

  I left.

  —

  I rode down to the ground floor feeling irritable. My visit, now that it was over, seemed orchestrated. Arlene Hopkins had said the papers connected to Natalie’s tenure had been destroyed only last year, after her disappearance. Why would they have done such a thing? And the people they had invited me to talk to, the ones working in the word-processing area—weren’t there others in the agency who might have known Natalie? Why had I been steered only toward one group and kept carefully away from everyone else?

  But what bothered me most of all was the voice on the phone when I called from Westchester. It hadn’t been Arlene Hopkins, and as a partner, she wasn’t likely to answer a phone without someone running interference. There had been a woman and she called Sandy while I hung on and then agreed to give me an appointment in an hour. Who was she and why couldn’t I talk to her again?

  I buttoned my coat in the lobby of the building and pulled on my gloves. A man in a hurry opened the door and held it for me. As I thanked him, I thought I heard my name called. I looked around on the street and saw no one.

  “Chris Bennett?”

  I turned toward the building. The man named Steve was just coming out, still in his shirtsleeves. “Steve?”

  “Glad I caught you. I missed your elevator going down and I must have lost you in the street. Did you go back inside?”

  “I forgot something and went back up. Let’s go inside. You must be freezing.”

  “I thought of something right after you left.” He was rubbing his bare hands toget
her as though he had the first stages of frostbite. “Who else did you talk to besides our group?”

  “Arlene Hopkins.”

  “That all?”

  “That was it.”

  “I don’t know if they have something to hide or what, but Arlene is Miss Fixit around here. You’ve heard of the glass ceiling? She’s the iron wall. You talk to Wormy?”

  “Who?”

  “The office manager, Eleanor Wormholtz. She’s kind of a charter member of H and P. Wormy knows everything. Wormy knows things that haven’t happened yet.”

  “I wonder if she’s the one I talked to when I called for an appointment.”

  “She gets the overflow sometimes. Besides, she has brains. The girl at the door gave hers up a long time ago.”

  “How can I talk to this Eleanor Wormholtz? When I asked the receptionist if I could talk to the woman who answered the phone, she said she had. She hadn’t.”

  “They’re really giving you a runaround. You mind if I give Wormy your number?”

  “I’d be grateful if you would. I don’t suppose you know her number?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I understand. I appreciate your help.”

  “I told you. I liked Natalie. I want you to find her.”

  We shook hands and he went off to the elevators.

  8

  I don’t think I ever quite appreciated the beauty of Friday night until I married. There are no classes, there are two days in the offing without work, there is the chance to be lazy, to talk, to do absolutely nothing. Of course, we don’t always get to indulge ourselves over the weekend, but at least the opportunity is there.

  Jack came home just about when the chicken and rosemary and garlic fragrances were becoming intense and when the thermometer indicated I had a dinner ready to be eaten.

  “Got you some stuff from the file,” he said after we kissed. “It won’t make you jump up and down.”

  “Tell me.”

  “They did a sixty-one on Natalie’s disappearance two days after Thanksgiving.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the initial report of a crime or an incident which may become a crime. The missing persons report would start with a sixty-one. They wouldn’t do that on Thanksgiving because in most of these cases the person turns up pretty quickly. The cop he stopped after the parade would have told him to call home, go to the car, hang around and wait, that kind of thing. Most uniformed cops have had this kind of case before, boyfriend loses girlfriend, girlfriend loses boyfriend. If it had been a child at the parade, it would have been a different story. In this case, if she didn’t show up eventually, they’d suggest he come into the precinct and talk to a detective, which is what he did. He brought a photograph with him and they did a send-around.”

  “Which is?”

  “They make copies and send the picture to all the hospitals in the city to make sure she isn’t in one listed as a Jane Doe, you know, a woman brought in without identification. Maybe she fainted and got picked up and taken somewhere and she hasn’t come out of it yet. Detectives are just as anxious to get a missing persons case closed with results as any other crime case. There’s a handwritten note that Sandy was asked to bring in all her prescriptions. There was only one, a cough medicine she’d gotten about a month earlier. So I’d guess she was in pretty good health.”

  “I assume there were no positive responses from the hospitals.”

  “Nothing. The detective working on the case, a Tony DiRoma, went out to New Jersey himself and talked to the neighbors.”

  “Because he figured Sandy killed her.”

  “It’s what happens, Chris. But he seemed pretty satisfied they had a good marriage. No one ever saw her with bruises, no one heard screams or arguments, she always looked happy, chatted with neighbors.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. What did DiRoma do in New York?”

  “He talked to the doormen on Central Park West and asked if they’d seen anything, and the answer was a pretty conclusive no.”

  “Did he go to her last job?”

  “Hopkins and Something? He called.”

  “He didn’t go and talk to people?”

  “She hadn’t worked there for a while, Chris. They told him everybody liked her and no one knew anything.”

  “Did he go to the building she lived in before she was married?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. He’d need a reason for that, Chris.”

  “Someone there might have known her.”

  “So what? They’re not looking to write a life story, they’re looking for a kidnapper. Anyway, DiRoma was transferred to another job about six months later and a new detective took over, Evelyn Hogan.”

  “Interesting. She do anything?”

  “Looks like she did. She reviewed the file and checked up on Sandy. What did you do to this chicken?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked in terror.

  “It’s great. I thought you said you couldn’t roast a chicken.”

  “Melanie said anyone could roast a chicken and she told me exactly what to do.”

  “It’s fantastic. You used rosemary.”

  I glowed. “Isn’t it a wonderful smell?”

  “Yup, I think I’m going to retire as chief cook in this house.”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “Competition’s getting pretty keen around here.”

  “I’ll go back to convent stew.”

  He looked at me and I laughed. The food at St. Stephen’s had been very good, cooked by nuns who enjoyed cooking and who had their specialties.

  “Well, I wasn’t planning on giving up my title just yet.”

  “What’s for tomorrow?”

  “I’ll think about it tonight. Haven’t had lamb for a while, have we?”

  “That sounds good. Want to hear my day?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  —

  I went through my morning conversation with Sandy and then what Susan Hartswell had told me, omitting her food and drink concerns. He raised his eyebrows when I said Natalie had confided she might be pregnant and Sandy had likely not been told. Then I went through the Hopkins and Jewell episode. When I got to the missing personnel files, he interrupted for the first time.

  “That really stretches the limits of credibility,” he said. “It’s not as if she’d been gone for twenty-five years. It was only a year or two. And you said it’s a small place. How many files could they have accumulated?”

  “Is any of the stuff I asked for in the police file?”

  “None of it. But again, they weren’t interested in her work history.”

  “And they started out with a bias,” I said.

  “Probably.”

  I told him the rest and I watched his interest increase as I came to the end, the woman I couldn’t talk to because she didn’t exist, the man named Steve following me out of the building.

  “So they’re holding something back,” Jack said.

  “They are, I’m sure of it. But what? Why would they dispose of her personnel records? What on earth could they say that Hopkins and Jewell wouldn’t want me to know? Or wouldn’t want the police to know?”

  “Beats me. But I think you’re on to something.”

  “Should I tell Sandy Natalie may have been pregnant?”

  “I thought you were the half that decided moral issues.”

  I had done it before, deciding to withhold information from a family when that information could only cause them anguish and could cause no one any good. But in this case I was “working” for a “client” and I felt an obligation to keep him informed.

  “Did Detective Evelyn Whatever find anything in her check of Sandy?” I asked.

  “No evidence he ever beat either of his wives. His ex doesn’t love him, but she doesn’t seem to hate him either. The people who work for him like him. At least they didn’t tell horror stories about him. Some seemed pretty fond of him. I’ve copied some of the Fives for you to
look at.” “Fives” are D.D.5s, Detective Division sheets on which information is typed for a case file. “If he did it, there were none of the usual calls to the police complaining of battering.”

  “So he isn’t a suspect.”

  “Not officially, but I gotta believe DiRoma and Hogan started out with suspicions.”

  “He lives in New Jersey. Did the New Jersey police cooperate?”

  “Looks like it. It’s a pretty small town and they’re pretty sure nothing was going on that they didn’t hear about.”

  “I’ve got to talk to this Wormy woman, Jack. She must know something.”

  “Something they don’t want you to find out.”

  —

  I had a brief conversation with Sandy Gordon that night, telling him the keys were definitely Natalie’s.

  “So you’ve made progress on your first day,” he said enthusiastically. “That’s great.”

  “I have a couple of other things to check, and you’ll hear from me when I’ve done it. By the way, did a woman from Hopkins and Jewell call you this afternoon for permission for me to make inquiries?”

  “The office manager, yes. I didn’t get her name, but I told her you had carte blanche. They didn’t give you any trouble, did they?”

  “No trouble, but I’d like to go back and talk to some other people there. Did your detective get anything useful from them?”

  “Only that Natalie was one of the first people they hired, that they were sorry to see her go, they liked her, that kind of stuff. No one seemed to have a grudge, there were no stories about fights or arguments.”

  “Pretty much what I heard. OK, I’ll be in touch.”

  —

  I woke up Saturday morning thinking of my father. Jack had already awakened, and when I went out into the hall, I smelled coffee. It’s a great smell to wake up to, and I got downstairs quickly so we could eat together. I had bought a couple of banana walnut muffins for breakfast, and they were already cut in half and waiting for me in the toaster oven. “We have anything on for this weekend?” he asked when we were sitting down.