The Oxygen Murder (22 page)

There were fuzzy lines between Lori’s work and living areas: Video and DVD cases were on both sides of the room, as were personal photos. Floppy disks were spread on the kitchen counter; a shoe rack sat on the floor next to the computer tower; and an easy chair upholstered in a mauve and red paisley fabric held a stack of clear jewel cases.

I took a leisurely look at the photos on Lori’s wood-and-cinder-block shelves, artistically arranged against one of the short brick walls.

I wondered if Lori had moved the pictures around in the last day or so. One stood out, of her and a young woman with amber-colored hair, both smiling broadly. The backdrop was an image of a movie screen with the words
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
. Another, showing Lori and Amber in the snow on the steps of the New York Public Library, brought home how much bigger Amber was than Lori. Amber and Lori were eye to eye in the photo, but two steps apart. At one time, it seemed, the two women were friends. I remembered how Lori at first denied knowing Amber well, and I assumed now that it was because she was trying to put distance between herself and Amber’s blackmail operation.

If the photos were on display on the day of Amber’s murder, I wouldn’t have noticed. I’d been focused on Amber’s body and my cell phone—and the sounds of a killer leaving the scene.

“You might want a closer look at this one,” Matt said, coming up behind me. He handed me a five-by-seven photo in a light wood
frame: a girl of six or seven with . . . I peered closer . . . her young, handsome Uncle Matt, in an Irish knit sweater.

It was always startling to see my husband in his earlier life, long before I knew him. In some ways I envied his niece and the people who’d known him so much longer. He’d been friends with Rose and Frank since his rookie days, when, according to them, he was a high-strung, stressed-out young cop. As much as Rose loved to talk about the old days, she hadn’t told me much about the Matt-Teresa couple, only that Teresa had been the stable, low-key force in the family. Rose’s diagnosis was that her death had brought Matt the perspective he needed and made him the calm, even-tempered man I married. Rose had the skills of a therapist in these matters, and I trusted her interpretation.

In a way, I was sorry I missed Matt’s wild phase (Rose’s term when he was around to hear it and blush). At the time I was hiding out in California, unable to deal with life outside my physics lab. The untimely death of my first fiancé, Al Gravese, a few months before our wedding seemed to set the course of my adult life, sending me across the country and away from relationships that might lead to the same horrible end.

Now I was part of this family, which included Lori, and I was thankful for every moment.

I looked at Matt, minus the Irish knit, but with the same droopy eyes and pleasant face.

“If I were the kind to lift things that weren’t mine, I might stick this photo in my purse,” I said. “Instead I’m going to ask Lori if she’ll scan it for me.”

You wouldn’t think elbow nudging could be so sexy.

“Lunch is served. Please report to the buffet line. The left side is for loading only,” Craig said, his voice like a documentary film narrator’s.

My immediate judgment of him was thumbs up, in case Lori cared to ask.

“This is quite a spread, Lori,” Matt said.

“Be impressed by Raoul, the cook at the deli on Forty-ninth,” Lori said.

“Well, you made good choices, then.” He held up a bottled water.
“Salut’.”

“
Salut’.
Thanks, Uncle Matt.”

We sat in a circle with TV trays spaced conveniently at our sides.

“Have you been to New York City before?” I asked Billy when we’d all filled china plates with Raoul’s offerings.

Billy put down his chicken leg. “Just once, ma’am, when Amber first moved here. I took that Circle tour, and I went to the top of the Empire State Building, but to tell you the truth, it was so crowded everywhere, I couldn’t wait to get home.”

If you want to be alone, try Lori’s elevator on a Sunday morning,
I wanted to say.

“That reminds me of a Yogi Berra quote a friend told me the other day,” Matt said, “but I can’t remember how it goes.”

Craig jumped in. “I’ll bet it’s ‘Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.’ ”

Matt pointed his fork at him, and the three guys laughed. “That’s the one.”

Lori and I rolled our eyes. I made a note to arm myself with a science quote, soon.

“If you’re in the mood for just walking around, Billy, I’d be glad to give you some company,” Craig said. “I’m a native, remember.”

“Thanks, dude. I could have used somebody who knows the ropes in all that rain. I had one heck of a time trying to hail a yellow taxicab downtown. I was soaked through. Lori said there are some rules about the lights on the roofs, but I didn’t know about them.”

“You should have taken the subway,” Craig said.

“I didn’t trust the subway, from all you hear, you know.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Lori said. “Craig and I take it every day.”

“Next time,” Billy said, his mouth not quite empty of pasta.

Chirp chirp. Chirp chirp. Chirp chirp.

Matt’s cell phone.

I followed him with my gaze as he excused himself and walked away to take the call. I waited patiently as he finished the call, took a detour to the buffet table, and came back to his chair, next to mine, with more food.

“Buzz?” I asked. Softly, I thought.

“Buzz Arnold? Your cop friend?” Lori asked.

Matt gave a slight nod, clearly not wanting to pursue the topic. I felt as discreet as dry ice.

“Detective Matt, do you have any way to find out how my sister’s case is going? I mean, I hate to impose on you, but if you have a friend on the force?”

At last, Billy’s request. It made sense that he’d want to know more than he’d been told officially.

“I understand you’d want to know everything possible, Billy,” Matt said. “I assume you’ve already talked to the people in charge of the case? I believe it’s Detective Glazer in the lead?”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t able to tell me much.” Billy looked forlorn. “He wouldn’t tell me why someone would kill her. But I guess this is New York, huh? And you don’t need a reason to kill someone.”

Craig bristled. “That’s what I’d expect to hear from—”

Lori put her hand on his arm. I heard a soothing whisper, and Craig sat back.

I wondered how much the police ever told the relatives of murder victims—something I’d never had the occasion to learn from Matt. Would the NYPD describe Amber’s blackmail business to her brother? Possibly, if they were sure it was connected to her murder. I doubted Lori had filled in those details for Billy.

“Maybe it has something to do with those ozone things,” Billy said, still thinking about motives for his sister’s murder. I hoped Craig would realize Billy was giving all possibilities equal weight and wasn’t picking on Craig’s hometown.

“Do you have any reason to think Amber’s work on the video was connected to her death?” Matt asked. I was amused that he was not above doing a little ad hoc interrogation himself. “Did your sister tell you she was frightened, or concerned about the ozone project?”

Lori sat forward on her chair, her hand to her mouth. I thought she might be biting her nails.

Craig, too, seemed focused on this spontaneous police drama, and ready to defend New York City. I thought the mayor, whoever he was, would be proud to have Craig as part of a Visitors’ Bureau staff.

Billy screwed up his face and raised his arms in surrender. “Amber wouldn’t have confided in me. To tell you the truth, we didn’t see eye to eye on most things. I never did understand my sister, you know.” His voice grew louder, with an angry undercurrent, and he seemed to be addressing Amber herself. “She was never happy on the farm, even when she was little. She used to dress up like the folks on TV and pretend she lived in a big city.”

“But, as far as you know, she wasn’t specifically worried about the nature of her recent work?” Matt asked.

Billy put his plate down and folded his arms across his chest. “I just think when you mess around with big companies in a megalopolis, you’re asking for trouble.”

Craig maintained his silence—helped, I was sure, by Lori’s unobtrusively rubbing his back.

For me, I’d lost track of some of the back-and-forth between Matt and Billy. I had another problem.

“When did you say you arrived in New York, Billy?” I asked.

“Monday night, ma’am, kind of late. I checked into one of them motels out by the airport.”

Then how did you get rained on?
I wanted to ask. The rain was over by Sunday night, and it had been clear ever since.

Instead of speaking out, I pretended Matt was rubbing my back.

I had to stop thinking of every conversation as an interrogation, I told myself. Not everyone was obsessed with logic and consistency, day and night. Not everyone gave answers to questions as I did, to three decimal places. Rose and Frank chuckled when I said my average monthly phone bill was $116.38 or that I’d drop by her office at 1:12
P.M.

The inconsistencies in Billy’s statements rattled me. Things got worse when I insisted on helping Lori clean up.

“It will be so much easier for you later,” I’d said. “I’m sure you have work to do. We can at least take things to the kitchen, consolidate the trash.” I’d held back on
Many hands make light work,
thinking it sounded too old-fashioned and not New York cool.

I made a trip around the circle of chairs, picked up papers and
after-dinner-mint wrappers, and carried a load over to the only wastebasket I could see, by the small table near the front door.

“Is this okay for recyclables?” I called out, but high-amplitude sound waves from the TV filled the air between Lori and me, and I realized she couldn’t hear me. I glanced down at the contents of the wicker basket and saw catalogs and pieces of mail. The right container, I thought. A few bits of paper fell in before I noticed a corner of an envelope. An envelope with the logo showing a stick-figure family. The letterhead on the threatening letter Buzz Arnold had shown us. The do-not-expose letter.

The killer’s letter, as far as we knew.

I stopped short, holding the rest of the trash in midair.

My heart leapt. The air in the loft turned cold. I was as shocked as if Lori’s wastebasket had become alive and wouldn’t let me toss my handfuls of used paper goods into it. I bent down, trying to determine if there was a matching letter. In the top layer there were other envelopes and some unopened junk mail, but I couldn’t see a letter with what I now considered an ugly design.

I looked around at Lori’s luncheon guests, all of whom seemed to be occupied. Matt and Billy were watching a sports news channel on TV. I knew Matt was just being sociable; he couldn’t tell one team from another. Unless Buzz’s Yogi Berra quotes were rubbing off on him. I hoped not.

Lori and Craig were collecting plates and glasses. I heard phrases like “continuity errors,” “establishing shot,” and words that were more familiar, like “fade” and “dissolve.” They were absorbed in their conversation—was Griffith’s smooth cutting better than Eisenstein’s overt “see the cut” method?

I wished I could cut everyone but me out of the scene. They were so close to me, I didn’t think I could get away with sorting through the trash. It was surprising enough that no one seemed to notice the freeze-frame: Gloria standing immobile over the wastebasket with an assortment of rubbish.

I bent my head around one more time, to account for everyone. I felt another episode of theft coming on. I wondered if there was a special legal category: stationery larceny.

I pulled the envelope out of the wastebasket as I slid the refuse into
it, and slipped the stolen property into my pants pocket. Smooth. I was getting good at this.

Rose would never own an outfit with as many compartments as my clothes had. “It ruins the line,” she’d say.

“My lines are already ruined,” I’d counter.

I liked a lot of pockets. They came in handy, like today.

Wide hips came in handy, too, sometimes. No one would notice the extra 0.185 millimeters (plus or minus 5 percent) on my right hip as I walked over to the couch.

“We should be on our way,” I said to Matt. “Buzz will be waiting.”

He gave me a strange look, but we’d learned to trust each other’s signals. “Right,” he said. “I’ll get the coats.”

We engaged in a round of good-byes that seemed endless to me, promising Billy we’d let him know if we found out anything new on the case, Craig that we’d check out a documentary on the Vietnam War that he judged the best of the decade, and Lori that we’d talk soon.

“Thanks for the plant,” she said, hugging us. “I’m all inspired to put up my ornaments now. I sorted through them last week and separated the nice ones from the ones that I should never have packed up in the first place. I trashed quite a few.”

It was all I could do not to ask for the contents of her current trash.

C
HAPTER
N
ETEEN

M
att and I left the overheated lobby of Lori’s building and went out into the cold. Temperatures in the thirties, I’d read. It felt like it. I hadn’t planned to show Matt the envelope I’d recovered from Lori’s trash al fresco, but there’d been no opportunity to talk to him alone in the loft.