The Thanksgiving Day Murder Page 7

  “Nothing. I knew last Sunday would be completely taken up, so I thought I’d keep this weekend free. Got much work?”

  “The usual. I’ll leave it for tomorrow. Anything you want to do?”

  “A couple of things. How determined are you not to go to New York today?”

  “For you, love, I’ll make the sacrifice. What’s your pleasure?”

  “How long is it since you’ve been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art?”

  “Don’t embarrass me. It sounds like today’s a good day to do it.”

  “And maybe we can take a look at Sixty-fourth Street.”

  “The Statue of Liberty.”

  “Mind?”

  “Haven’t been up that way for a long time. How about we have dinner in the city and I’ll cook tomorrow?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Where’d you get these great muffins?”

  —

  We drove to the city in the afternoon and parked at the museum. I was amazed at the crowds. People of every age, together, alone, in families, were piling in and out of the front doors as we entered. Like everyone who works in the city, I wore sneakers with my suit, carrying my good shoes in a bag to wear later. The city has taken on the look of a giant track meet these days, all those sneakered feet moving quickly along the pavement, ready to broad-jump at each corner. For me it was comfort, not speed, that dictated my footwear.

  We looked at some of the classic paintings first, the old masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools, walking through packed galleries with the Saturday crowd. The people were nearly as interesting as the paintings. Some kept up a running commentary, some stared in silence, some moved toward and away from a particular painting as though focusing a preset camera lens, waiting for the image to become clear by changing the distance. A woman nursed a baby on a bench, a man with a beard narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, a father directed his daughter how to look at a canvas and what to look for while the wife and mother moved away from them at her own pace. I heard Spanish and French and something that may have been Russian.

  Finally we went back downstairs and found our way to the Egyptian wing.

  “This where they met?” Jack asked.

  “Somewhere around here.”

  “Shall I move away and see if you can re-create history?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Sometimes I feel guilty that I deprived you of becoming part of the New York singles scene by preempting you.”

  “I’m not sure I would have survived it.”

  “Got something against one-night stands?”

  “Lots.”

  It was a nice place to spend a Sunday afternoon, or a Saturday. I had read about the Egyptian buildings being moved, stone by stone, from their place of origin to be reassembled in this new home. I felt good that these antiquities had found a congenial home where they would be taken care of with the love and appreciation they deserved.

  I moved to the side to watch the people rather than the exhibit. You could almost pick out the hopefuls at first glance, young women and not so young women in ones and twos, the twos sometimes together, sometimes separating, women dressed almost deliberately casually, their clothes a carefully thought out statement. They touched their hair frequently, moving toward single men with a practiced subtlety they must have been sure passed for chance. I watched one woman initiate a conversation with a bearded man who seemed less than interested. After a perfunctory smile, he moved away and she stayed, her eyes fixed on the Egyptian antiquity, looking for all the world like Natalie Miller. A few minutes later she turned and left the room.

  “Maybe she should take up skiing,” Jack said.

  “Doesn’t anyone do anything for the sake of the thing?”

  “Sure. You and me.”

  “What a way to live.”

  —

  We drove through Central Park to the west side of Manhattan and Jack zigged and zagged his way south so that we were able to enter Sixty-fourth from Broadway. Jack pulled over to the side and double-parked. “Want to look around?”

  “Come with me?”

  “Sure.”

  He put a plastic-covered police marker plate in the window, made sure the cars at the curb could get out, and joined me on the sidewalk. “You think she lived in one of these buildings?”

  “Either that or she lived on Sixty-fourth farther west, toward the river. Why else would we have met her on that corner?” I nodded toward the corner of Central Park West.

  “So you could have the pleasure of seeing the Statue of Liberty.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Any idea how you’re going to move on this?”

  “I think I’ll have to start where my father worked. It was a place in downtown Manhattan. And I want to look through the stuff my aunt has in our basement.”

  “I’ve been afraid to ask you what’s down there.”

  I wasn’t surprised. The basement was an accumulation of a lifetime or two of acquisitions, my aunt’s and my mother’s. When my mother died and the house was sold, Aunt Meg took whatever was left and put it in her basement, assuming I would want those things at some point. It seemed the point was now.

  “There are probably things my mother couldn’t throw away, and I hope to find some photo albums down there. I promise I’ll throw out everything I can.”

  “I’m not pushing.”

  “But it would be nice to have an emptier basement.”

  We had reached the corner of Central Park West, the Ethical Culture Society on the south corner. I remembered people lining the sidewalks and the stairs of buildings, hanging out of windows in apartment houses, standing on narrow balconies, all to see the parade. We had always stood on this corner, as close as we could squeeze to the curb.

  “What do you remember about her?” Jack asked.

  “Very little beyond her existence. But they knew each other. They smiled at each other. She knew my name.”

  “Did she have a name?”

  “If she did, it didn’t stick with me.”

  We turned back and I looked up at the statue, wondering how long it had been there. At the corner where Sixty-fourth crossed Broadway and Ninth Avenue in the jumble of streets, we could see some of the buildings of Lincoln Center.

  “There are apartment houses on the far side of Lincoln Center,” Jack said. “Over on Amsterdam Avenue.”

  “I remember.” I’d been up this way before. “Probably thousands of people living there.”

  “Probably.”

  “Something’ll turn up,” I said.

  “My wife the optimist. We done here?”

  “I think so.”

  He looked at his watch. “How about I take you to a cop bar to kill some time before our dinner reservation?”

  “A place where cops go after work?”

  “Right. Not much class but a good place to unwind. Let’s get rid of the car first. There’s a place I remember around here from my early days.”

  It was nice for me to make a connection with Jack’s life before he met me. He’s been to St. Stephen’s several times and met the nuns I grew up among, but aside from a small number of his friends on the job, I knew less of his early life than he knew of mine.

  I kept my ears open while we sat at a table and had a drink, hoping to hear cop talk, department gossip, some clever political scheming, but it was all pretty mundane and I wasn’t sure the voices I overheard even belonged to cops. But it was fun and relaxing and we did our own talking. About twenty minutes before our reservation, we left and took a leisurely walk down Broadway in the dark.

  9

  When the phone rang at five after twelve on Sunday, I had the feeling that the caller had waited till noon for the sake of politeness.

  “Is this Christine Bennett?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “This is Steve Carlson from Hopkins and Jewell. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  I had already been to mass with Gene and taken him back t
o Greenwillow. “I’ve been up for hours.”

  “I talked to Wormy yesterday. I called her at home. There’s something weird going on.”

  It’s the kind of news that gives my skin a prickle. “Tell me about it.”

  “Wormy knows everything about that shop. The legend is she was the first person hired when H and J opened their doors. She may even be related to one of them in some way, I’m not sure. But she knows as much about what goes on there as H and J do. Maybe more.”

  “Then she’s a good person to talk to.”

  “She won’t talk to you.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She said it wasn’t any of her business, that if Arlene spoke to you, what else was there to say?”

  “I see. Well, I thank you for trying, Steve. Maybe on Monday I’ll go down and ask to see her.”

  “I’ll give you her phone number.”

  That surprised me. He had said on Friday that he wouldn’t. “That’s very nice of you.”

  He dictated the number. From the area code I could tell she lived in Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island. “She has a husband and a couple of kids that are probably late teens or twenties. I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t say straight out that I gave you the number, but she’ll probably guess.”

  “Do you have any sense of what she could be hiding or what she could be reluctant to talk about?”

  “Not in the slightest. Natalie came to work in the morning and left in the evening like the rest of us. As far as I know, she did a hell of a good job.”

  “I appreciate your help, Steve.”

  —

  I thought about it all day. I didn’t relish talking to a hostile informant who would prefer not to be called at home. After a light lunch Jack went upstairs to the little bedroom we had fixed up as a study, so I went down to the basement and started looking through the dozens of boxes that were my inheritance. The ones with my mother’s name on them were separated and pushed into a corner. I hadn’t thought to bring a knife with me, so I untied the rope on one that said SCRAPBOOKS AND ALBUMS on the top.

  It was an afternoon of nostalgia and even a few tears. All my baby pictures were there, my parents looking like a couple of kids, I like a bundle of blankets. There was the house I grew up in, Gene and I playing in a sandbox, Aunt Meg and Uncle Willy, lots of smiles. Events I remembered were recorded, my graduation from grade school, this time without my father present, a birthday party we had celebrated at a bowling alley and then later at home with cake and ice cream, a school play in which I had had a substantial part. There were no pictures of any Thanksgiving Day parade, but I had not recalled my father taking a camera with him. Not all the people in the pictures were identifiable, but I was reasonably sure none was the mystery woman of the parade.

  Deep in the box was a framed picture of my parents on their wedding day, probably the only existing picture of the occasion. I did not remember ever seeing an album or hearing of a large wedding, but they were dressed as a traditional bride and groom. I rubbed the glass with the bottom of my sweater and blew away dust. It would be nice to keep this where I could look at it, upstairs in one of the bedrooms.

  A box a little smaller than a shoe box held many pictures of varying size and quality, most of them unfamiliar to me. Both sets of my grandparents were there in formal, unsmiling portraits as well as some more casual ones. Many pictures had dates and names on the back, but many others did not. Who was Joe Formica? Who was Mrs. Elsevere? I went through them one by one, turning them over into the top of the box to keep the order the same. There was my mother as a child with three unidentified children. There was my father with my aunt Meg—they were brother and sister—as little children at the beach, in the country, plowing happily through snow.

  I was sitting under a naked lightbulb, on an old wooden folding chair I had found down there, renewing my family relationships. From time to time the furnace would go on and then, some time after, switch off. After I’d been downstairs for a long time, I heard the hot water heater go on and I figured Jack must be taking a shower, but I was as transfixed, as hooked, as I ever get and I kept turning over picture after picture, no longer looking for anything or anyone special, just looking with interest and nostalgia and an aching sense of being too late. Why had I not asked Aunt Meg years ago, during the time I was visiting regularly, if such pictures existed, if she could help me put a name or some kind of identity on them? It had not occurred to me. I had been in my twenties and I had looked forward, not back, and now I was sorry.

  Dimly I heard my name called and I started out of my reverie.

  “Chris? You home?”

  “I’m down here, Jack.”

  The door to the basement opened. “Down where?”

  “I’m looking at old pictures.”

  “You been down there all afternoon?”

  “I guess.”

  He came down the stairs. “You like spiders or something? I could have carried this stuff up and you could have sat in the living room.”

  “It was better this way.” I stood up and took the framed wedding picture. Then I pulled the chain on the lightbulb and followed Jack up to civilization.

  —

  He had put lamb shanks in a pot with wine and herbs and vegetables before his shower, but cooking odors only go up and I had been unaware. He poured me a glass of sherry and took some of his favorite Scotch for himself.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  “Lots and lots of stuff but no mysterious woman. I didn’t find any papers anywhere. As I remember, there are baptismal certificates and birth certificates in the box in the bank. I was a co-owner with Aunt Meg and I just kept it after she died.”

  “The woman probably worked with your father and came out to say hello at the parade.”

  “I’ll find out. I’ll go down during the week. Right now I have to decide whether to call this Wormholtz woman at home.”

  “I’d say go for it.”

  “That’s my feeling, too. I hope she doesn’t hang up on me.”

  “Want some Scotch to stiffen your resolve?”

  “The sherry’s fine, thanks. It’s mellowed me.”

  “Ah, Christine Bennett Brooks, normally the world’s most unmellow woman.”

  I smiled and went to the kitchen to make my call.

  —

  “Do I know you?” The voice was the one I remembered, firm, tough, unbending.

  “My name is Christine Bennett, Mrs. Wormholtz. We spoke on Friday.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “I called Hopkins and Jewell to make an appointment. You got me one.”

  “If you say so. What are you doing calling me at home?”

  “I’m working on something very important and I think you can help me.”

  “I work at the office five long days a week. You can reach me there any time from—”

  “Mrs. Wormholtz, this isn’t advertising business. This is life and death. Natalie Miller Gordon disappeared over a year ago and I am trying to find out what happened to her. The receptionist at H and J refused to let me speak to you, and I know you can help me.”

  “That’s who you are.”

  “That’s who I am, yes. Please, give me a few minutes. Please try to help me.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you know Natalie?”

  “I know every person who’s ever worked for H and J including the cleaning crew.”

  “Did you know her personally? Did you ever talk to her? Did you have lunch with her?”

  “A qualified yes to all three questions. We talked. She seemed like a nice enough person. I knew when she met the man she eventually married. I had lunch with her occasionally when we had a business party and a group went together. We weren’t friends. We didn’t meet after hours.”

  “Did you like her?”

  She took a breath before she said, “I liked her.”

  “Do you know where she worked before she came to H and J?”


  “No idea.”

  “I understand you’re the office manager.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can you tell me why you got rid of the material in Natalie’s personnel file?”

  “What material?”

  “Her references, her records of past employment—”

  “Slow down, Ms. Bennett. Who exactly told you I got rid of that stuff?”

  No one had. “I was led to believe—”

  “By whom?” she interrupted.

  “Arlene Hopkins said—”

  “Arlene Hopkins never told you I removed any papers from that file because I didn’t and she knows it.”

  “She said a lot of files were thinned out to save space when you moved to your present location.”

  “No doubt that’s true. I didn’t do any thinning. And I definitely didn’t do any thinning of that file.”

  “Do you have any idea who did?”

  “I have an opinion on almost everything.”

  There was little doubt that was true. “Will you tell me?” I was starting to feel like a trial lawyer, phrasing a new question to elicit each molecule of information.

  “I will not. I’m the office manager, not the president of the company. It’s not my place to tell you something Arlene Hopkins won’t tell you.”

  “How am I going to find out?”

  “Talk to Marty Jewell.”

  “Mr. Jewell?” I had half expected Jewell to be another woman. “How can I get to see him?”

  “I’ll arrange it. When do you want to come?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Be there at ten. You may have to wait a while, but I’ll see to it he gives you your fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll be there. Thank you, Mrs. Wormholtz.”

  “Good afternoon.”

  10

  The receptionist recognized me and gave me a plastic smile. Then she made a phone call and said, “She’s here.”

  I waited a long time. Maybe I was being taught a lesson; maybe they were as busy as they seemed. People came in with deliveries, arrived for appointments that were kept pretty punctually, people left. At ten to eleven a woman appeared in the reception area.

  “Miss Bennett?”

  I stood up. “Yes.”