The Oxygen Murder (14 page)

The letter seemed hastily written, by hand. I’d have thought a person writing an incriminating or threatening note would use something other than his own penmanship on local hotel stationery, but, as Matt always said, there really are no smart criminals.

Matt smoothed out the plastic to eliminate the reflecting bubbles and read the letter out loud, adding underlines where they appeared.

Ms. Keenan, I’ve left several messages for you, and now I’m trying to reach you by this note. I urge you
not
to act on the footage you have in your possession. It will do more harm than good, especially to
you
. You
must not
expose this. You know how to contact me.

The letter was unsigned. Matt turned the sleeve over and pointed to the address on the envelope, which was that of Lori’s apartment.

“Amber’s workplace, not her home,” Matt said. “So if this is Amber’s killer, it means he didn’t know where she lived and had to wait for her to show up at Lori’s, and preferably when Lori wasn’t there.”

“You got it,” Buzz said. “Looks like this is work related, one way or the other. Either the ozone companies or the marks she was blackmailing. I’m figuring the ozone only because it was sent to her ozone place of business, so to speak, and not to her home or to the Tina Miller Agency. So we won’t spend a lot of time on people Amber hung
out with in bars. We’re running some prints, checking out this hotel. We might get lucky.”

“Case solved?” I asked. I hadn’t meant to sound disappointed, but I’d hoped to be of more use. I realized I needed to add to my list of New Year’s resolutions: reevaluate priorities. Finding Amber’s killer should be higher on the list than whether or not I’d been of any assistance.

“We wish. It’s just barely a lead, but it’ll keep us busy for a while.”

Buzz stood, and Matt and I followed the cue. Both men reached for my jacket. In a police station, the chivalry felt appropriate, but I plucked it from both and dressed myself.

“We appreciate you coming down,” Buzz said, addressing me but slapping Matt on the back.

“My pleasure. Shall I leave this?” I asked, pointing to my ozone sketchpad.

“Oh yeah,” Buzz said. “Thanks.”

I envisioned his sweeping the pad into the wastebasket by his desk as soon as I was out of eyeshot.

The three of us left the room and entered the hallway, ready to walk down to the street level. At the top of the stairs, I turned to Buzz. “Can I ask you something?

“Gloria—” Matt said, eyebrows raised, a worried look on his face.

Did he really think I was going to quiz Buzz on the disposition of Karla Sasso’s letter?

“No, it’s okay, Mattie. Shoot, Gloria.”

“I’ve been wondering, why didn’t the killer finish . . . I mean why did he leave Amber alive?”

Buzz cleared his throat and looked at Matt, who nodded. “We think he heard the elevator.”

I gulped. “Me.” I said in a weak voice. Not that I hadn’t thought of it myself, but hearing it from an NYPD detective made it more real. And more frightening.

“We have some evidence that he went out the fire escape.”

The noise toward the back of the room, by the window. For a brief moment, I’d shared the loft with a killer. I shivered at the thought. The vision of Amber, on the floor, bleeding, exploded in my head.

“And the blood?” I asked, determined to have the information in spite of the queasy feeling taking over my body.

“Her nose was broken.”

I reached for the newel at the staircase landing and leaned on it for a moment. I had one more question.

“Amber’s body?” I asked. Not a complete sentence, but not bad, considering I was struggling to keep my mental and physical balance.

“It will be shipped to her parents out west as soon as the ME’s done. In a coupla days.”

“Thanks.” I smiled at the notion of Kansas, barely one-third of the way across the country, being called “out west.” I figured Buzz used that term for any town west of the Hudson River.

I took a deep breath, feeling some closure. I’d been able to contribute a little to Buzz’s background for the case; they had a viable suspect in the author of the threatening letter; and I had answers to nagging questions. I felt connected to Amber and was happy to know the disposition of her remains.

I was almost ready for more sightseeing. We had a date to meet Rose at Rockefeller Center, where she planned to ice-skate and I planned to take her picture doing it.

“A minute, Buzz?”

I turned to see that Bones had caught up with us.

Bones pulled Buzz aside and leaned into his ear. I thought I heard the name Pizzano. I didn’t like the expression on Buzz’s face, the way he looked over at Matt.

There went my sense of balance and closure.

After a short time, Buzz turned back to us, scratching his head, a pained look on his face.

“They’ve gone through your niece’s things, Matt.”
Matt,
not Mattie anymore. Not chummy or teasing. “Something’s turned up.”

Though I’d already bundled up for the street, a chill came over me.

The case wasn’t closed, after all.

C
HAPTER
T
ELVE

L
ori separated two slats of the blinds on her window and looked down on her street.

She could tell an unmarked police car a mile away.

She dealt with the NYPD a lot during location shoots all around the city. The beat cops were always very cooperative, putting up their wooden horses to close off streets where she needed space or a special backdrop.

There was also that brief fling with Bernie from the Sixteenth Precinct, the romance that had lasted just long enough to celebrate his making detective. As sure as Bernie’s wife had turned up at his promotion party unexpectedly (Bernie had deleted the
M
word from his dating résumé), the beige four-door double-parking in front of her building right now was a cop car.

She let the slats click back into place and moved away from the window.

Lori had come home from Queens a couple of hours ago, before Cindy talked her into a permanent move. Uncle Matt had arranged for a cleaning service to go to work on her place as soon as the cops were finished. The loft looked clean enough, but there was a definite creepy feeling about it, and she could have sworn she smelled blood.

She’d watched the overflowing boxes leave her building while she was flirting on the landing yesterday. They’d found her records—she’d seen the edges of the big ledger she foolishly kept up to date, and she was pretty sure there’d been an envelope full of cash from Amber practically blinking
Find me
near where Amber’s body had been.

Lori’s photos were all slightly off where they should be on hershelves.
She straightened the large, silver-framed photo of her grandmother Loretta, whose wedding dress hung in Lori’s closet.

“For that special day,” Lori’s mom had said.

Next to Loretta’s picture was a black-and-white of her parents, shot by Lori herself when she was eight years old and documenting family reunions. Lori thought how ashamed they’d be at this moment. They’d raised her to value honesty and integrity over money.

She wondered if Uncle Matt knew anything yet about her scurrilous dealings with Amber. When her mother died, he’d been there, supporting her all the way. Her own father had all but disappeared and emerged with another woman, who must have been waiting in the wings.

She looked out the window again. A plainclothes cop stood by the sedan, leaning on the banged-up front fender. She couldn’t hear him, but his lips seemed pursed, and she thought he was whistling. Maybe this was the end of his shift and he was going home to his wife and kids, or his domestic partner. Maybe he’d reached his quota of pickups for the month and would get time off. She envied his apparent good mood.

Lori heard the creaky old elevator. Amber always hated the elevator, insisting someone would get hurt in it someday. Lori heaved a sigh. Amber was beyond hurting. A year or so ago, before Amber churned up everything, they’d had some good times. Hitting all the great spots of the city, talking endlessly about the advantages of digital over film (Amber) or film over digital (Lori). They’d covered the city, attending film festivals, gallery openings, book fairs, and lectures at the Ninety-second Street Y.

It didn’t seem right that Amber would never show up again. She’d wanted Amber out of her life, but not this way. Just not around to tease and cajole Lori, to challenge her values, to ridicule her when she caved in to Amber’s scheme.

More sounds of gears straining, metal scraping metal. It could be that the cops were bringing the rest of her stuff back.

Who was she kidding?

Lori knew all the clicks, grinds, and thumps on the wobbly trip from the street to her loft. The cage had reached the second floor.

Lori angled her rocker toward the door, sat down, closed her eyes, and waited.

She let her last scene with Amber flash before her.

It’s Sunday morning. Lori has a date with college friends for breakfast and ice-skating at the Wollman Rink in Central Park.

Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

Her alarm goes off at six thirty. Way too early. She hits the snooze button. She can sleep a lot longer and still be on time.

Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

Lori thought she missed the snooze button, groaned, and slapped it again.

Bzzzz. Bzzzz.

Not the clock, the stupid doorbell. It had to be Amber. She wished she hadn’t taken away Amber’s key, so she wouldn’t have to get up now. But she needed to have control over who came and went in her studio now that it was also her home. Real estate in Manhattan wasn’t that easy to come by. Lori had been lucky to get her loft at a time when she had the money to renovate and then had been able to work it out so she could live here, too.

Amber had promised to look harder for a place for herself. At the moment she was crowded into a small apartment with three roommates and didn’t even have her own bedroom. A couple more transactions, as Amber called them, and she’d be able to afford her own setup.

Lori could hardly wait—who knew what little sideline Amber would come up with next? Lori’s special loft could become the central meeting place for pimps or drug dealers, at the rate things were going.

Lori put on her sweats and paddled to the door. She checked the peephole. Amber, with a big grin, waving a check. She had half a mind to ignore her and go back for another snooze session. On the other hand, this would be a perfect time—while she was sleepy, before she could talk herself out of it again—to confront Amber and be done with her once and for all.

She unhooked the chain, flipped the locks, and opened the door.

“Hey,” Amber said, shedding her outer jacket.

Another new jacket and purse, Lori noted, and most likely not
knock-offs from the street. Lori wondered how such a beautiful face could look so disturbing, how a friend from her earliest days at Columbia, the innocent farm girl, could have turned into a schemer who took advantage of people’s weakest moments.

Moralize away,
she told herself,
as if you’re not part of it.
An image of her mother came to Lori, as it often did when she felt she was not living up to the values she’d learned as a child. She’d tried to get out from under Amber’s game but never managed to stay strong.

This time felt different. Maybe because she hadn’t had enough sleep. Or maybe being with Uncle Matt again brought it home more clearly: She had to get out of the blackmail business.

“We need to talk,” Lori said. She followed Amber to the darkroom at the east end of the loft. Apparently Amber was in her film phase again.

“I know we said I shouldn’t come before seven at the earliest, but I have a whole bunch of film here, and it’s going to take forever to dry. And . . .” Amber smoothed the check out on an end table and held it in front of Lori’s face. “Look what I have for you. I know you prefer cash—so do I—but this has to do. Next time there might be a little something extra since old Mr. Fielding—”

Lori’s stomach turned over. Too much spaghetti in Little Italy last night, followed by that whole cannoli Gloria had talked her into. Too little sleep. And a sick, sick, person waking her up, standing in her loft. Her home.

“It’s more than that,” Lori said, nearly screaming. “More than you’re too early, which you are. I’m done with this, Amber, and you should be, too.”

“Dial it back, Lori. It must be that time of the month, right?” Amber picked up the check and tucked it into the diagonal slit pocket of Lori’s sweatshirt. “Another five K, Lori. How long would it take you to earn that selling one DVD at a time through your little network of buddies in the video stores?”

Lori removed the check and threw it on the table. “I don’t want this,” she said. Then she went to her desk drawer, pulled out a stack of bills, and tossed them next to the check. “I don’t want this, either. I mean it, Amber. And you have to stop, too. You have to stop this, or I’ll turn you in.”

“
I
have to stop?”

Amber is laughing. The sound tears through Lori’s brain.