Magic Hour (14 page)
It was perfect.
It was over.
Lynne finally spoke. "That was nice."
"Yeah, it was."
"Wake me at six. Okay? I want to get home early. I have a ton of reading I have to do."
"Okay," I said. Then I closed my eyes against the darkness.
I spent Sunday going over the lab and autopsy reports and doing my paperwork. Then, first thing Monday morning, I pushed open the heavy glass-and-brass door at five after nine and strolled right over to Rochelle Schnell, first vice president of South Fork Bank and Trust, Bridgehampton branch.
"I respect your mind," I told her, and sat on the edge of her desk.
"You gave me that line about twenty-five years ago."
"Did it work?"
"No. Of course not. But I liked it that you tried."
Rochelle was forty years old. I knew that because we'd started
Rochelle sat behind her immense wood desk in a dark-gray dress-for-success suit. But then—as she strode over to kiss me and say "I haven't seen you around in months. You look fantastic!"—I noticed her skirt was one of those stretchy, midthigh things that look like an overgrown support bandage.
"Yeah? Well, so do you, Rochelle, except you've got a real problem. No one is going to hand out their life savings to a banker whose skirt's so tight you can practically see her pudenda."
"Don't bet on it. Now, what can I do for you? Or did you just drop in to check out my skirt?"
I put my hand on her back and guided her to her chair, then sat down across the desk from her. "Off the record. I want to know if you have a depositor named Bonnie Spencer—"
Rochelle cut me off. "Big no-no. You know I'm an honest woman. I can't even give you a name. I'll verify it with our lawyers, but I'm sure you have to give me a subpoena. Then, if she does have an account, I'll have to call—"
"All I want to know is if she has an account here. No details. Please. A personal favor, Rochelle. It's not like I'm some jerk you don't know."
"No, you're a jerk I do know." She exhaled slowly. Then she swiveled around in her chair, faced the computer terminal on her desk and put her hands on the keyboard. Her giant diamond ring, courtesy of Mr. Schnell, who'd bought the bank to get her attention, sparkled; her long red nails clicked as she typed. "Yes, she's a depositor."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Tell me how much is in her account."
"No. You're a cop. Comply with the law. And don't think you're going to charm it out of me. I've already told you more than I should. Not one more thing. Just go to the D.A. and get a subpoena."
"But, Rochelle, with all that Bank Privacy Act shit, that means you're going to have to notify her that there's been an inquiry by a law enforcement agency."
"Is that so terrible?"
"Yeah. Just hear me out. It's terrible because Bonnie Spencer is a genuinely nice lady and I don't want her to get hurt in this investigation. Her ex-husband—"
"Oh,
that
Spencer!"
"Yeah, well, the powers that be are getting a little antsy, and it would help if I could just find out—fast, without waiting for a subpoena and notification—that she really is as okay as she seems to be, that no big money was going in or out of her account. I'd like to see her name out of this. You know what I mean? This woman's a real sweetheart. She had nothing to do with a homicide. She had nothing to do with
him
. All I need are some numbers to back me up, so we can cross off her name. Time's a factor here. I don't want to risk some gung-ho first-year detective calling her employer and saying, 'I'm from Suffolk County Homicide and I'm checking up on Bonnie Spencer.' Please, Rochelle. Help me help her."
Rochelle's nails went click-click again. "She has a hundred and five in her checking account. There's regular activity, so I guess we're her banker." Click. "Six hundred thirty-four in a savings account, that last month had a balance of a little over seven hundred." Click-click. "And her Visa card ... she hardly ever uses it."
I pointed to the computer screen. "What does all that tell you?"
"That her ex-husband was
very
behind on his alimony payments."
"She wasn't getting alimony."
"In that case, she's just plain poor."
The only thing appealing about Bonnie's next-door neighbor, Wendy Morrell, was her name; it conjured up a dewy virgin gamboling in a field of clover. In fact, in the morning light, Wendy looked less like Snow White and more like the witchy stepmother—in an olive-green jumpsuit. She had a face full of those air bubble things that grow under the skin. There was one large one on her left cheek, and I found my finger reaching up toward my own cheek, maybe trying to perform a symbolic bubblectomy; I put my hand down at my side.
"I mean, naturally I've been reading everything there is to read about the murder," she said, "but in a million years it would never have occurred to me that
Bonnie
Spencer had any connection with
Sy
Spencer."
Wendy Morrell was probably in her early thirties. Manhattan thin, a body that if seen in the Third World would evoke pity but that probably commanded admiration in the city. Under the wide gold bracelet on her forearm, you could see the outline of her radius and ulna. Wendy's hair was cut in that chopped-off style that only guys just out of basic training (or very, very beautiful women) should wear.
We stood by the front door of her modern house. She had not invited me in. Maybe she was an elitist bitch. Maybe she was embarrassed; houses like hers, million-dollar exercises in solid geometry, had, overnight, become Out on the South Fork. They'd been replaced by postmodern whiz-bangs, country houses so enormous that they seemed to have been built for a race of giants instead of the periodontists and pocketbook designers who lived in them. Wendy had planted herself smack in the middle of her doorway, as though afraid I'd elbow her aside in an attempt to see how rich people lived—or, if I was hip, to get a look at her hopelessly outdated high-tech kitchen and snicker at it.
"That those two Spencers lived on the same planet was a miracle," she went on. "I mean, I don't mean to denigrate her, but it's such a contradiction of style: elegance versus gaucheness. You know? Look, she goes running. I'm the last person in the world to be a spokesperson for jogging suits. Am I going to make a case for pastel sweatpants and matching zip-ups? I know this may not mean a lot to you, but if she's got a house in the Hamptons, not Kalamazoo or wherever she comes from, she should manage to have a little pride in her appearance, not wear clothes that look like she raided the boys' locker room at the end of the school year. I mean,
some
sense of appropriateness must have rubbed off from Sy."
"You knew him?"
"Well, we were never formally introduced. But you know what they say: there are basically three hundred people in the world." She suddenly realized she was talking to a member of the four billion minus three hundred, because she explained: "That's a New York-Hamptons concept: You know there are certain places in SoHo or East Hampton and you'll walk in and there'll be Calvin Klein or Kurt Vonnegut or Sy Spencer. Sy happened to be the friend of a very dear friend. Teddy Unger. Commercial real estate. You know who he is? Well, he owns half of
Even if you stretched the definition of the Beautiful People beyond any rational limits, Wendy Morrell would not have fit in.
"So what's with the ex-wife?" she demanded. "Is she under suspicion?"
"No. This is strictly a background check. I'm just trying to get a sense of the sort of person Bonnie Spencer is."
"I can't help you. I am not a neighbor type." Wendy glanced over at Bonnie's, then at her own driveway, where I'd pulled my Jag all the way up, almost to her garage, so Bonnie couldn't see it from her house. She gave my car a suspicious look, as if it represented something nasty, sexual and, above all, unforgivably pushy, since it was not a car a cop should be driving.
"But maybe you might have picked up something, just out of the corner of your eye," I suggested. "Did she entertain guests with any frequency?"
"I wish I could give you a full report, but my days are
very
full. Believe me, I don't spend my time watching Bonnie Spencer." She touched the gold pin that, thank God, held her jumpsuit closed. It was at the point of her body that, on a woman who hadn't starved herself, would have been called a cleavage. "I have a business to run." She said "a business" as if she meant General Motors.
"What do you do?"
"Wendy's Soups. I'm president and CEO." As in: Everyone knows Wendy's Soups. Well, everyone who's anyone, as I clearly wasn't. "There have been major articles about me.
New York Times, Vogue
, et cetera.
Elle
... You know
Elle
? The piece was called 'Superb Soups!' "
"Do you cook them here?"
She smiled. Big mistake. God had given Wendy Morrell the gift of gums. "No. The plant is in a cute little ethnic neighborhood in Queens. I employ forty-six people."
"So you don't live here all year round?"
"No. East End and Eighty-first. Just long weekends here. It used to be all August too, but then there was that cover story in
New York Woman
." With, I assumed, a photo of a bowl of split pea superimposed over her ugly puss. "We went through the roof. You can imagine!"
"Look, Ms. Morrell, obviously you're a very busy person, but busy people tend to be the most efficient." She obviously agreed. "You're not the nosy neighbor type, but..."
"I don't know anything about her. We nod hello. That is all. When I'm out here I'm still plagued. The phone, the fax. My office cannot leave me alone. The pressure
never
stops. I have to
force
myself to relax. I do not do coffee klatches."
"Does Bonnie Spencer have coffee klatches?"
"Not that I've ever seen."
"What I'm getting at is, are there any frequent visitors?" She glanced at my Jag again. "Men in sports cars?"
"Men in sports cars. Men in sedans. Men in all
kinds
of vehicles. Is that news to you?" She paused. "Once ... I saw a pickup truck. I happened to notice it because it was late at night. Well, let's be generous. Maybe she needed some emergency construction done by a kid who couldn't have been more than twenty-two, in tight jeans and work boots."
"I'm going to be direct, Ms. Morrell, but I feel I can be direct with someone who's a CEO." She acknowledged the tribute with a brief flash of gums. "Is it your impression that Ms. Spencer is promiscuous?"
"Maybe she's just interviewing half the men in Bridgehampton for that happy-news column she writes. She came over once, asked if she could interview me! I was very pleasant. I told her I was horrendously tied up, but I'd love to. Some other time." She stopped. "Are you sure you're with the police?"
I handed her my shield. She brought it up close to her nose, breathing what was probably disgusting, humid, lentil-dill breath on the plastic, and studied it. Then she handed it back.
"Have you seen any one car at Bonnie Spencer's recently? A black sports car?"
"Detective Whatever"—she smiled—"I
know
what a Maserati is. My ex-husband drove a Ferrari 250 GT, '62. Believe me, I had sports cars burned into my brain during
that
marriage." She looked over at mine. "I know an E-type Jaguar roadster when I see one. The English don't say 'convertible,' you know." I hated it that this witch had any sort of intimacy with great cars. "And the answer to your question is yes."
"Yes, what, Ms. Morrell?"
"There was a Maserati in her driveway. Last week. Every morning that I was here. A quarter to twelve. Like clockwork. And a
fabulously
dressed man got out of it. I realize now that it must have been Sy Spencer. But I'm sure there's an innocent explanation. Maybe she just served an early lunch."
"Maybe. When did he leave?"
"Two, three, four."
"Any sounds of fighting?"
She shook her head. "I cannot believe it! He was so fine—and refined. I mean, this man could have any woman he wanted. Why would someone like him waste his time on a nothing like her?"
"Maybe she's nice."
Wendy Morrell cocked her head, drew her eyebrows together, as if she were hearing about a sensational new trend for the first time.
"Nice?"
Nice Bonnie Spencer.
Well, fuck her and the horse she rode in on. All along I'd known something was wrong. All along I'd known she was lying to me about Sy. Still, somewhere I'd kept a candle burning, a flicker of hope that she was a good person, that whatever ties she had to her ex-husband had to do strictly with making movies. Because if I ever was going to be friends with a woman, Bonnie would have been exactly the kind of woman I would have picked. She seemed so straight that in spite of all my doubts, when Wendy Morrell opened her gummy mouth, I truly believed she was going to say: A black sports car? No! The only car
I
ever saw in her driveway was the Lilco meter reader's—and he was never there for more than ninety seconds.
To hell with Bonnie. I shifted into third. The trip from Bridgehampton to Headquarters in Yaphank was thirty-nine miles, most of it along straight-arrow, four-lane Route 27. Once it had been my own personal test track. Since sobriety, though, I'd become an old fart and never pushed much beyond seventy-five mph.
But now, going west against beach traffic, I decided I needed speed. I couldn't believe how badly I'd misjudged her. Moose wasn't the town slut; the animal wasn't the animal. The stupid bitch, Bonnie, couldn't keep her legs together. I shifted into fourth, heard the deep, throaty hum of the exhaust, watched the tachometer go into redline. I eased up when I got to a hundred and five. Fuck Bonnie Spencer! This was fantastic! In most sports cars, when you're in last gear, you feel like you're skyrocketing, leaving the pull of earth's gravity. But the XKE kind of squats, fuses with the road. It's the ultimate down-to-earth experience.
There just isn't anything like speed to take you away, especially sober. (Driving drunk, you know in your gut that Death, carrying a scythe, in that hooded bathrobe—sort of like Sy's, although not as good-quality terry cloth—is standing over the next rise.)
So fuck Bonnie. And fuck this case. The minute it was over, I'd say to Lynne: Come on. No waiting till Thanksgiving weekend. Let's find some priest whose dance card isn't all filled up the way your guy's is. We'll get married right away. And forget Saint John. We'll go to London. I'll go to museums with you. To Shakespeare. I'll visit English schools and stand by your side and learn all about the newest methods for combating dyscalculia. I swear to God, I'll even go to the opera.
Sergeant Alvin Miller of the Ogden,
"No problem." Across the room, Charlie Sanchez sat at his desk holding aloft a cheese Danish from the daily love-me bag of bakery goodies Robby had brought in. Charlie was sticking out his tongue, licking the yellow cheese in the center. The crime-scene photographs on my desk, showing Sy with his two small, neat little wounds, were less revolting than watching Charlie tongue a pastry. "I appreciate your calling back," I said to Sergeant Miller.
"You bet. Now, you wanted to know something about the Bernstein girl. Don't tell me she's in trouble?"
"No, she's okay. Her ex-husband—"
"She got a divorce?"
"Yeah. A few years ago."
"No kiddin'. What was her first name, now?"
"Bonnie."
"That's it, all right. Bonnie Bernstein. She living in
"No. In Bridgehampton. It's a little town on the East End of Long Island."
"Oh. I heard she went to Hollywood. She made a picture, you know. I forget what they called it, but I saw it. Not bad."
"The detective I spoke to said you might know the family."
"Yup. Knew them. Pretty well, at one time." I wanted to grab this fucker by his string tie and shake him, make the words come out faster.
"Can you tell me about them?"
"Sure." I licked my fingertip and erased a coffee ring while I hung around and waited for his next word. "If memory serves me, the Bernsteins—that would be Bonnie's grandparents—opened the store."
"Uh-huh," I muttered encouragingly.
"Called it Bernstein's."
"Did her parents keep it up?"
"Kept it up real nice."
Out in the anteroom, Ray Carbone was handing one of Homicide's two secretaries a piece of paper. From the pained look in his eyes, it was probably a draft of the next press release, which would say, essentially, that we knew nothing. The secretary glanced around for her glasses, didn't find them, and so stretched out her arm and pulled back her head to read. Hanging above her head was the giant banner that no one could miss when they walked into Suffolk County Homicide: Thou Shalt Not Kill.
"What kind of a store was Bernstein's?"
"A sporting goods store."
"Bats, balls?"
"Nope. More like guns, fishing gear."
"Handguns?"
"Sure, handguns. This is
"Rifles?"
"Yup."
"Is the store still around?"
"No. Mrs. Bernstein—that would be Bonnie's mother—died. Dan—that's her father—sold the place and retired. I believe to
"Bonnie was the only girl."
"So far as I can remember, and I remember her because she was friends with the boys and girls in my Eddie's Mutual. I guess you don't know what that is."
"No."
"It's a group for Mormon junior high and high school kids."
"Were the Bernsteins Mormons?"
"Of course not. You're from
"Right. Okay now, let me be straight with you, Sergeant Miller."
"Best way to be."
"The incident I'm investigating—"
"I know what kind of an incident. They told me you were on the Homicide Squad. You need a whole department out there on Long Island just for homicide, huh?"
"Yeah. The victim was Bonnie's ex-husband. He was shot with a .22. The perpetrator was a good shot. I'd like to rule out Bonnie."
"What are you asking me?"
"I'm asking you whether you have any idea if she could shoot a .22."
"I don't know."
"Your best guess."
"My best guess is, a girl like Bonnie—a tomboy kind of girl—whose family owned a sporting goods store and whose dad was probably the damn finest shot in Ogden ... I used to go up to Wyoming with him and a couple other fellas, hunting elk. Well, she was the apple of her father's eye. Possible he or one of her brothers taught her to shoot a .22."
"Thank you."
"Well now, you expect me to say she couldn't have done it, don't you?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if you did."
"Well, I won't say it. She left Ogden. Went to Hollywood, then
"Right."
"But just between you and me, Detective Brady? You may be from Noooo Yorrrk and think you're pretty wily, saying you're trying to rule out Bonnie Bernstein. Sounds to me like you've got it in your head that she shot her former husband. With malice aforethought. Maybe." He took a long and very slow breath. "But if the girl you suspect is anything like the nice, smiley girl in my boy Eddie's Mutual, you know what I think? I think you got yourself one lousy theory. You get me? I think you're pissing into the wind."
Robby Kurz placed his bet: "Fat Mikey LoTriglio. Okay, never convicted of anything, but his name has been linked with two mob hits. All he has to do is raise his fat finger, and someone dies."
"No way," I said. "Bonnie Spencer. Motive. Opportunity."
Ray Carbone added his twenty to ours. "Who's left? Lindsay Keefe? All right. She may have felt cornered, her job, her reputation on the line. And she probably has a lacuna of the superego. It would be too much like a movie if she did it, but I'll go with her anyway."
Charlie Sanchez was about to retire and didn't care enough anymore to join the pool. He wrote down our bets, folded the money and slipped it into the pocket of his beloved suede vest.
The interrogation room we were in at Headquarters was better than a naked light bulb and a chair, but it wouldn't win any awards for design excellence. Headquarters itself had originally been a county social services agency, and in the heart of the soft green and brown fields of Yaphank, the building rose up, uncompromisingly ugly. Inside, it was full of gray asphalt tile and orange plastic furniture—just to remind the meek that while they might be in line to inherit the earth, their actual lives were shit and likely to remain that way.
Four of us sat around the fake-wood table. Charlie, who'd been with the department for twenty years and was within weeks of becoming head of security for a shopping center in Bay Shore, stroked the vest his girlfriend had given him for his forty-second birthday. He wore it inside and outside, even in ninety-five-degree heat. He loved the vest almost as much as he loved his girlfriend. (His wife had given him a snow-blower for his birthday, probably in response to the electric pencil sharpener he'd given her for hers.)
"We got a missing-one-thousand-bucks situation," Charlie began. He'd been doing background on Sy. "Here's what I found out. At fourteen minutes past eight on Friday morning, Sy was at the cash machine at the Marine Midland Bank over in Southampton."
"His secretary in
Charlie went on: "Sy had one of those preferred-customer cards, so he could withdraw up to a thou. Well, that's what he withdrew. Did any of you guys come across a thousand bucks?"
Robby shook his head. "No. There was"—Robby checked his notebook—"a hundred and forty-seven bucks in his wallet."
I closed my eyes, concentrated. Then I said: "Hey! Hold on! Listen to this timetable. Sy went to the bank at eight-fourteen. He got to the set in East Hampton eight thirty-five, eight-forty, which is about what it takes from Southampton to East Hampton if you don't make any stops. When he got there, he stayed pretty much in his trailer, talking to people. Right? That Gregory kid was around a lot, and we talked to everyone else who talked to Sy. Did anyone say anything about any cash changing hands? No. The people he was seeing were mainly technical—a special effects guy who was doing a fire and some gunshots, Nick Monteleone and his makeup lady. Spent a few minutes with Lindsay, but she was being fitted for a dress, so a seamstress and the costume design lady were there the whole time. He wasn't talking to union guys or local cops or politicians—people he might pay off. You with me?"
Robby and Ray nodded. Charlie caressed his vest some more. "Okay, assuming he didn't slip anyone a wad of cash, he leaves the set about eleven-fifteen with a thousand bucks in his pocket. Doesn't stop at Bonnie's this time. Instead, he seems to have gone straight home; he was there at ten of twelve. We have the cook's word on that, because he asked for a green salad and bread for lunch, ASAP."
"That's lunch?" Charlie shook his head. "Can you believe it? A guy has a cook all to himself and he says, 'Give me a salad.'
"What does all this add up to, Steve?" Ray demanded.
"It adds up to that after he got home, Sy saw only one person besides the cook: the person he as a practicing nonfaggot seems to have humped in the guest room. Now, there was Bonnie Spencer-type hair on the pillow in the guest room—okay, we have to wait till Lifecodes finishes the DNA analysis, but I'll bet you anything it's hers."
"Why are you fixating on her?" Ray asked.
"Because this is an intelligent murder, and she's very intelligent. Because he used her—twice—and I don't think this is a broad who allows three strikes. I think she's got a tough streak in her. And because she's been hiding something from me from the minute she opened the door Saturday morning. And because she was
there
Friday, at his house. Motive and opportunity, Ray."
"You know what I can't figure out? He was cheating on Lindsay Keefe with his ex-wife," Charlie said. "What was he? Nuts?"
"Keep your eye on the missing thousand bucks," I reminded them. "Ask yourselves: Where was the wallet we found that
did
have some money in it?"
"In the inside pocket of his blazer," Ray said.
"Where?"
"In his and Lindsay's bedroom, on a hanger outside the closet door. Stuff for his trip was all set out—a packed carry-on, a leadier envelope with a couple of scripts."
"Right," I said. "But the pockets of the pants he was wearing that day were empty except for some change and his car keys, and those pants were in the guest room. My guess is, he packs, then has an hour or so, decides he wants to get laid and calls Bonnie to get over. He sneaks her past the cook, upstairs, into the guest room. He throws his pants over a chair, fucks her, then..."
"Then what?" Ray asked. "This is the first serious speculation I'm hearing about this person—other than the fact that she was his ex who lived nearby. What do you think went on?"
"My best guess? They had words. He tells her to get dressed and get out. Or he doesn't have to say it; she figures it out for herself. Whatever. But he grabs a robe and leaves her there while he goes for a fast swim before the plane ride. In any case, she feels she's been had. She goes through his pants, takes the thou."
