Daddy's Gone a Hunting (14 page)

Lottie did not answer. She simply watched as her daughter stepped out of the receiving line, hurried over to a seat in the front row, and reached for her pocketbook. Then Lottie turned her attention back to the people in line. Soon Hannah was before her.

Before Hannah could express her sympathy, Lottie, her voice so low that Hannah had to lean forward to hear her, said, “The police are convinced that Gus and Kate intentionally set that fire.”

“They’re suspicious, yes,” Hannah said quietly. “I don’t think they’re convinced by any means.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Lottie replied fiercely, “but I do know my husband is dead. If your sister convinced him to set this fire, it would be better off if she dies, unless she would prefer to spend years in prison.”

Heartsick, Hannah realized that Lottie was afraid that Gus and Kate
had
set the fire. Was she telling that to the fire marshals? Knowing now that Lottie wanted no part of her sympathy, Hannah turned away. Gretchen, seated in the first row with Celia Ramsey beside her, had her iPad on her lap and was enthusiastically pointing out details in the pictures she was displaying on the screen.

Marshal Frank Ramsey had quietly slipped into the seat on Gretchen’s other side so that he, too, could see the pictures of her beautiful home in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

At that moment Hannah heard a plaintive moan and spun around in time to see Jessie try to grab and hold on to Lottie Schmidt as the frail woman collapsed to the ground in a faint.

31

A
s Clyde Hotchkiss had scrambled to get away from the complex early Thursday morning before the cops and fire engines arrived, he frantically threw just about everything into his cart and opened the back door of the van.

He could see that all the buildings in the complex were on fire. Thick clouds of smoke were being blown around by the wind. His eyes began to water and he began to cough. In the distance he heard the sound of sirens. Sobered up by the shock of the explosion, he had been desperate to get out of there and reach the subway station. He was pretty sure that he smelled of smoke. But he was lucky. He always kept a fare card for one subway ride and he was able to lift his cart over the turnstile gate and get down the stairs and onto the subway platform just as a Manhattan-bound train was pulling in. With a sigh of relief Clyde got on. The train was almost empty.

He closed his eyes and began to think. I can never go back to that place in Long Island City. When the fire is over, they’ll surely move the vans and if they look inside the wrecked one, they will know someone had been holed up in it. They might even try to blame the explosion on me. He’d read enough papers to know that street people were often blamed if they had been hanging out in an abandoned house or building where a fire occurred.

Then he had begun to think about the girl who climbed in his van that time. For some reason he had been dreaming about her when the explosion happened. I don’t think I hurt her, he thought. I did take a swing at her when she kept talking and asking questions and I needed her to be quiet. But I don’t know . . . I just don’t know . . . I think I punched her . . .

He panhandled all that day on Lexington Avenue. That night he went back to one of his old spots. It was a garage on West Forty-sixth Street that had a ramp from the street to the underground parking area. Between 1
A.M.
and 6
A.M.
the garage was closed and the overhead door at the end of the ramp was lowered and locked. Clyde could sleep next to the door, protected from the wind and out of sight of the street.

He hung around about half a block away until he saw the attendant come up the ramp, then he scurried to settle in there. It worked out okay because he usually didn’t need much sleep, but he realized how much he missed the comfort of the van.

On Friday morning he left before dawn and wandered down to panhandle on West Twenty-third Street. Enough quarters and dollar bills were dropped into his cap that he was able to buy four bottles of cheap wine. Two of them he drank in the late afternoon. That evening, he dragged his cart back up Eighth Avenue to Forty-sixth Street, keeping a sharp eye out for the do-gooders who might try to force him into a shelter.

He had drunk even more wine than usual and he grew impatient waiting for the parking attendant to leave. It was nearly 1:15
A.M.
before Clyde heard the slam of the overhead grate as it hit the ground. Seconds later the attendant came up the ramp and disappeared down the street.

Five minutes after that, Clyde was settled by the grate, newspapers beneath and over him, sipping the wine with his eyes closed. But then he heard the sound of another cart coming down the ramp.
Furious, he opened his eyes and in the dim light saw that it was a real old street guy whose name was Sammy.

“Get out of here!” Clyde shouted.

“Get out of here yourself, Clyde!” a raspy voice shouted back, the words slurred. Then Clyde felt the bottle he was holding yanked out of his hand and the contents spilling on his face. In an instant his fist shot up and caught Sammy on the jaw. Sammy staggered back and fell, but then managed to get to his feet. “Okay, okay, you don’t want company,” he mumbled. “I’m going.” Sammy put his hand on his cart, started forward, but then paused long enough to knock over Clyde’s cart before hurrying up the ramp.

Clyde’s last bottle of wine rolled out of the cart and landed next to him. He’d been about to spring up and chase Sammy. He knew he could catch him and he was aching to get his hands around Sammy’s throat. Instead he paused and reached for the wine bottle, unscrewed the top, and settled back onto the newspapers. With the sleeve of his filthy outer jacket, he wiped the wine Sammy had spilled on him from his face.

Then he closed his eyes and began to sip from the bottle. Finally, when it was empty, with a satisfied sigh Clyde fell into a deep sleep.

32

E
arly Friday evening, Doug Connelly and Jack Worth met in the parking lot of the funeral home and went in to pay their respects to the late Gus Schmidt. Lottie, ghostly pale, who had returned to the receiving line after a brief rest, greeted them with the same coldness she had shown to Hannah.

“Gus never was himself after he was let go from Connelly’s,” she told Jack. “He wasn’t too old to work. He was a perfectionist and you know it.” To Doug she said, “Kate took advantage of him. He was devoted to her because she fought for him to have a year’s salary when he was fired.”

Both men listened, then Doug said, “Lottie, we know what the media is saying. It’s public knowledge that Gus hated Jack and me. We have no idea why Kate met him at that hour in the museum. For all we know, she may have reached out to him to see how he was doing. They were good friends. The truth will out. And now, again, I extend my deepest sympathy for your loss and this whole tragic situation.”

Recognizing that it was time to leave, Doug simply nodded to Gretchen and began to walk toward the door. But he didn’t get far, because most of the people there were his own employees, and many of them had worked with Gus. They were all extremely anxious to know if Doug was planning to rebuild the complex.

“I am moving heaven and earth to make that happen,” Doug assured them.

He’s lying through his teeth, but he does it with style, Jack Worth thought. He knew it was his own turn to step in. “Mr. Connelly,” he said, his tone respectful, “you’ve had an exhausting day at the hospital at your daughter’s bedside. I know you want to talk to everyone, but they’ll understand if you have to leave now.” His firm tone conveyed a clear message to the men whom, until yesterday morning, he had supervised on a daily basis.

“Of course . . . certainly . . . we’re praying for your daughter Kate, Mr. Connelly.”

Followed by Jack Worth, Doug left the funeral home and walked across the driveway to the parking lot.

Jack opened the door of his Mercedes for him. “No driver tonight?” he asked.

“It’s going to be an early night and I don’t intend to have more than one scotch at dinner. Did you make a reservation at Peter Luger’s?”

“Yes, I did, Mr. Connelly.”

“Good. See you there in ten minutes.”

It was less than a half hour later that they were seated at a corner table in the famous Peter Luger Steak House. They both ordered a scotch on the rocks, then Doug said, “Lottie just gave me a very good idea—in fact a perfect idea. Kate’s cell phone will show that she called Gus on Wednesday afternoon, but nobody knows what they said to each other. Maybe Gus planned to trap her in the explosion.”

Jack looked across the table at the handsome face of his boss. “Doug, do you think that anyone would believe that?”

“I don’t see why not,” Doug said promptly. “Anyone who knows Kate would vouch for the fact that she was prone to exaggerate for
emphasis. For example, did she ever say to you that she’d like to blow up the whole damned complex?”

“Yes, she did, when she was out there a couple of weeks ago and saw that the security cameras still weren’t working.”

“Did you think she meant it?”

“No, of course not.”

“There you are.” The drinks arrived. Doug Connelly took the first sip of his and smiled. “Perfect.”

“You can’t do much to foul up a scotch on the rocks,” Jack remarked.

“Sorry, but I think you’re wrong about that, Jack. Too much ice in a drink can ruin it.”

There were some subjects that Doug had forbidden Jack to ever bring up. “Don’t even think about them,” Doug had ordered.

That was why Jack carefully phrased his next question before he asked it. “If Kate recovers, do you think she would go along with saying that Gus set her up by asking her to meet him?”

“Jack, Kate is a very smart young woman. She’s a CPA. She also has been extremely anxious to receive her ten percent share of the proceeds of any sale of the property. If Gus is blamed for everything, the insurance will be paid, including the insurance on the antiques. Arson by a disgruntled former employee is hardly unusual.”

Dismissing the topic, Doug looked up to catch the waiter’s eye. “I’m having steak, Jack,” he said. “How about you?”

33