Murder on Lexington Avenue (22 page)

“Where on earth did he go last night?” Mrs. Wooten demanded. “The evening of his father’s funeral! Even Leander would know better than to go out on the town after such an event.”

“I have no idea. He didn’t confide in me,” Mrs. Parmer said, obviously angry at the boy’s impertinence. “It seems he didn’t confide in anyone else either.”

“How very like him to cause us the utmost concern at a time like this,” Mrs. Wooten said wearily. “Well, I also have no idea where he might have gone, and I have no idea why you are burdening me with this now, when I’m weak and ill and can do nothing at all about it.”

“I’m
burdening
you because I
thought
you might be concerned. He is your son, after all,” Mrs. Parmer reminded her.

“I’m well aware that he’s my son, which is why I’m sure he’ll come home eventually. He always does. If you’re worried, send someone around to his friends to find out whom he was with last night. He’s most likely sleeping off his overindulgence at someone else’s house, out of consideration for his poor mother.”

With that, Mrs. Wooten sighed dramatically and pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes, as if she simply couldn’t keep them open another moment.

Mrs. Parmer made a rude noise and muttered something under her breath before slamming out of the room again.

When she was gone, Sarah said, “Does Leander often stay out all night?”

Mrs. Wooten opened her eyes and sighed impatiently. “Of course he does. He’s a young man. That’s what young men do. It was most inappropriate for him to go out last night, but without his father and his mother to guide him, I suppose he can be excused for making a bad decision. Have you heard anything from the agency about the wet nurse?” she added, surprising Sarah with the change of subject. “I don’t know how much longer I will be able to take care of this child. I haven’t slept two hours together since he was born!”

Sarah had no reply to this obvious exaggeration, but she said, “I’ll send another message to find out how much longer they think it will be.”

Seeing that the baby had drifted off, she laid him gently in his cradle and went to do the errand. She encountered Minnie coming up the stairs just as she was going down.

“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, that policeman is here, looking for Mr. Leander. They told him he wasn’t at home, so he’s asked for you instead.”

Sarah hurried down to find Malloy waiting in the small room just off the front hallway that was reserved for unwelcome visitors.

“Malloy,” she said, absurdly glad to see him.

“Mrs. Brandt,” he replied with a half-smile. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

“Mrs. Wooten begged me to stay. She doesn’t want to be left alone with her family, and I don’t blame her. She’s done nothing to endear herself to them lately.”

“She might
never
have done anything to endear herself to them,” Malloy replied.

“You may be right. They said you were looking for Leander.”

“Yes, but they also said he’s not home. Where is he?”

“That’s just it. Nobody seems to know.”

“I need to ask him a few questions. When do they expect him back?”

“I don’t think they do,” Sarah said. “He didn’t tell anyone where he was going, much less when he’d return. He’s been gone all night, you see, and—”

“All night? Are you saying he went out carousing the night of his father’s funeral and never came home?”

“So it seems,” she said,

Malloy shook his head in despair at the rich.

“What did you want to ask him?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” he said with feigned nonchalance. “Just what he and his father talked about when he went to his father’s office the day he was murdered.”

“What?” she asked in surprise.

“That’s right. Turns out that Wooten had an appointment with Adam Oldham late on Friday afternoon. Mr. Wooten must have sent for him when he found out Electra was taking lessons from him. Mr. Rossiter came with him to interpret. I haven’t spoken to Oldham or Rossiter, but I’m guessing they told him that Leander had hired Oldham.”

“Oh, my, Mr. Wooten must have been furious at Leander!”

“He was, and he sent him a telegram, ordering him to leave school and appear at his office on Saturday.”

“The day Mr. Wooten was killed!” Sarah exclaimed. “Did he come?”

“I don’t know yet. If he did, he arrived after the rest of the employees had gone for the day. None of them saw him.”

Sarah’s eyes grew wide as she realized what this meant. “Could Leander have killed his father?”

“Whoever killed Wooten did it in a rage. He probably didn’t plan it. He probably didn’t even intend to harm Wooten when he went to see him. If he had, he would’ve brought along a more reliable weapon.”

“Like a pistol or a knife,” Sarah guessed.

“Instead, he got angry for some reason and grabbed the first thing that came to hand—one of the dozen trophies sitting on a credenza in his office.”

“He must have intended to harm him then,” Sarah pointed out.

“Probably, but maybe not kill him. We’ll never know. Maybe
he
doesn’t even know. The point is, very few people could plan to kill a parent, but a lot of people accidentally kill a parent in the heat of passion.”

“And I’m sure their argument was passionate,” Sarah said. “Leander had betrayed everything Mr. Wooten believed in.”

“Yes,” Malloy agreed. “Getting someone to teach Electra to sign after they’d spent years teaching her to read lips and speak was the worst thing Leander could have done.”

“Oh, no,” Sarah disagreed. “Allowing her to fall in love with a deaf man was the worst. He’d taught her to lip-read and speak just so that would never happen!”

“So either of those things would have made Wooten furious, but both of them together . . .”

“I’m surprised Leander wasn’t the one who ended up dead.”

“Older men have usually learned to control their violent impulses,” Malloy said. “Mr. Wooten was especially good at that. According to one of the clerks in his office, he never even raised his voice when he got angry.”

“Oh, I hate people like that!” Sarah said. “I don’t think I’d even blame Leander for bashing him on the head.”

“If he’s the one who did it,” Malloy reminded her. “We still don’t even know if he came back to the city on Saturday. That’s why I need to talk to him.”

“And of course you can’t talk to him because he’s not here. I think Mrs. Parmer was going to send one of the servants out to see if he was staying at a friend’s house. I can send you word when he finally turns up.”

“Don’t bother. I don’t know where I’ll be, so I’ll just plan to come back here this evening. Make sure Leander doesn’t leave again before I get here.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she promised.

“I’ll see you later then.” He picked up a large book that had been lying on one of the chairs and started for the door.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He looked down at the book as if he’d forgotten he had it. “Some kind of ledger. I found it in Wooten’s desk along with these.” He opened the book and pulled out several sheets of paper on which someone had been doing sums with long columns of numbers.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but the man at Wooten’s office today got real nervous when he saw them in Wooten’s desk, and even more nervous when I asked him if there were any problems with the company.”

“Oh, I just remembered! Yesterday, at the funeral, I overheard Mr. Young advising Leander to finish his education and leave him and his son to run the business for him. Leander made some remark about how his father hadn’t thought much of Mr. Young’s abilities to do that.”

“Do you think Leander knew something specific?”

“If he did, he didn’t say anything about it. He just sounded angry that Mr. Young would presume to tell him what to do and was getting back by insulting the man. But he did seem to think that his father didn’t trust Mr. Young.”

“Maybe with good reason. What else did they say?”

“Not much. Leander didn’t want to talk about business at his father’s funeral, which was understandable, and Mr. Young said they’d talk about it later. Then I was called away, so I didn’t hear anything else.”

“I wonder what this means,” he mused, looking at the numbers written so neatly on the pages, but of course they meant nothing to him.

“My father always says that the numbers tell the story of a business,” Sarah said.

Malloy frowned. “I prefer words.”

“So do I, but I’ll bet an accountant could tell you what this means.”

“Do you know one?”

“My father employs a dozen of them, at least,” she recalled. “Why don’t you take this to his office? Ask for Mr. Colyer and tell him I sent you. He used to give me peppermints when I’d visit my father years ago. If anybody can make sense of this, he can.”

 

 

F
RANK HATED THE THOUGHT OF RETURNING TO THE OFfices of Felix Decker. He and Sarah’s father had worked together on several occasions, and the experience had never been pleasant for either of them. At least he didn’t need to see Decker this time.

The clerk at the front desk remembered him from his previous visits and was surprised when he asked for Mr. Colyer.

Colyer was a kindly version of Mr. Snodgrass. His thinning hair and his eyes were both the color of iron, and his expression was suspicious when Frank introduced himself.

“Mrs. Sarah Brandt sent me. Mr. Decker’s daughter,” he added in case Colyer didn’t recognize the name.

Colyer’s expression warmed instantly. “How is Mrs. Brandt?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her in far too long.”

“She’s very well. She remembers that you used to give her peppermints.”

He smiled at the memory. “She and her sister were such sweet little girls. But you aren’t here to talk about that. What is it you want?”

“I’m working on a murder case, and I found these in the dead man’s desk,” Frank said. They were still standing in the front lobby, under the watchful eyes of the clerk.

Colyer said, “Step over here.”

They moved to the farthest corner of the room, where a sofa had been placed for guests who needed to wait. They sat down and Colyer took the ledger from him.

“Those papers were lying on top of it,” Frank explained when he opened the ledger and found them.

Colyer glanced over them and then flipped through the ledger.

“Can you tell anything from them?”

“I’d have to study them,” Colyer said. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for a reason somebody might’ve wanted to commit murder.”

“I don’t have to ask whose ledger this is,” Colyer said. “I read the newspapers. Why don’t you just ask the accountants who worked for Mr. Wooten?”

“I did. He lied to me.”

Colyer raised his eyebrows.

“Why would he lie?” Frank asked.

“I won’t know until I figure out what these numbers mean,” Colyer said. “Leave this with me, and come back tomorrow. I should be able to tell you something then.”

 

 

F
RANK’S NEXT STOP WAS THE NEW YORK INSTITUTION for the Deaf and Dumb. Rossiter didn’t like being pulled out of his classroom a second time, but this time Frank noticed there was fear hidden beneath his outrage.

“I’ve already told you everything I know,” Rossiter said. “You have no right to harass me.”

“I have every right to harass you, Mr. Rossiter. You lied to me.”

The surprise registered on his face before he could check it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he lied again.

“You told me you’d never met Mr. Wooten, and now I find out that you and Adam Oldham visited him at his office the day before he died.”

“I . . . I’m sure I never said I hadn’t met the man. You may have asked me if I knew him, and of course I don’t, not socially,” he hedged.

“Met or knew or socialized, I don’t care,” Frank said, letting Rossiter see his anger. “I want to know what happened at that meeting with you and Oldham and Wooten.”

“Just what you can imagine,” Rossiter said defensively. “He’d found out that Adam was teaching his daughter how to sign. He was angry.”

“How angry?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Mr. Wooten is a man used to having his own way. You and Oldham had turned his own daughter against him.”

“That’s preposterous! We did no such thing.
I
did no such thing. I wasn’t even involved.”

“Except to recruit Adam Oldham because he stood a better chance of getting Electra Wooten to fall in love with him than you did.”

“Mr. Wooten had no way of knowing that, and naturally, I did not mention it to him.”

“He must have suspected it when he saw the two of you,” Frank said. He’d never met Wooten, but he’d formed the opinion that he hadn’t been a stupid man.

“I have no idea what he did or did not suspect.”

“But I’m sure you know exactly what he threatened you with.”

This time Rossiter couldn’t hide the fear in his eyes. “Threatened? I don’t know what you mean,” he tried.

“You know exactly what I mean. Mr. Wooten would want to make sure neither one of you ever went near Electra again. He’d have the power to make sure that happened. What did he threaten to do?”

“I . . . You can’t . . .”

“Yes, I can,” Frank said. “I can even guess. Did he tell you he’d have your job? That he’d make sure no one ever hired you again at any deaf school in the country? It wasn’t an idle threat. All he’d have to do is pass along the word that you had comprised his daughter. No parent would ever tolerate your presence in a school again.”

“A teacher must be above reproach,” Rossiter said, getting control of his fear. “I had done nothing wrong, but he would have ruined me anyway.”

Frank thought it was a matter of opinion whether Rossiter had done anything wrong, but he decided not to argue the point. “And Oldham would have really been ruined. You might have found work someplace else, but as a deaf man, he didn’t have a lot of options.”