The Oxygen Murder (27 page)

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said. “Of course there are tens of thousands of lawyers in New York City. Sorry.” Looking at Karla’s face, though, I was glad I’d raised the issue.

My bumbling remarks were rewarded a half hour later in the kitchen. Matt and Roland were still back in the den. I could hear strains of a Cab Calloway album that I recognized from Matt’s collection at home.

Rose and Grace were talking about fabric Grace had bought. I realized with astonishment that it was for a dress Grace would wear to my upcoming wedding party. I remembered Rose’s telling me that Grace was an accomplished seamstress and still did freelance dressmaking for many celebrities, whose names had all escaped me.

Karla pulled me aside, leading me toward a corner of the kitchen where the noisy dishwasher provided cover for her voice.

“What’s up, Gloria?” she whispered. “Are you trying to set me up in my own parents’ home?” Karla seemed to be struggling to walk a line between anger and the respect she’d always shown for me.

“You tell me, Karla. Why did you deny knowing Tina Miller?”

“I don’t see why it matters.”

“It matters. Did you have dealings with Amber Keenan?”

Karla took a deep breath and leaned on the marble counter, no longer facing me directly. “Not exactly.”

“Does that mean
approximately?
”

I saw part of a smile in her profile, in spite of the tension that had arisen between us.

Karla picked up a colander and pretended to dry it when Rose’s and Grace’s voices seemed to grow louder.

“False alarm,” I said, as the two women retreated again to Grace’s workroom. “Please tell me, Karla, or . . .”
I’ll think the worst
came to my mind, but I trailed off instead of admitting it.

“I talked to her, okay? We met through Tina. You may not be aware of this, but Amber was a . . . not a nice person. She had access to every dirty deed filed away in Tina’s office. A lot of times a client or a client’s spouse will have a shady past, and it would be very bad for them if it came to light.”

“Like Mr. Fielding?”

Karla turned to face me, her eyes wide. She might have been looking at a witch with superpowers instead of just a nosy pseudo-aunt. “Gloria, do you know my client list now?”

“Karla, I know about Amber’s schemes. Did she want something from you?”

Karla nodded. “She needed a lawyer in her pocket, for referrals. Someone to tell her who was financially a good candidate. We never
talked about a specific client, though now that I think of it, Fielding would have been a good candidate. I guess you could say she wanted to expand her business.”

Maybe Amber should have been among New York’s most successful businesswomen of the year. Except it might have been her business that killed her, with one of the Fieldings, or any number of other so-called clients, involved. My head reeled as I considered the possibilities and how lacking I was in the information necessary to rout them out.

I was also upset that I’d put my best friend’s daughter-in-law through an ordeal that served only to bring her distress and shed no light on the murder investigation.

“I’m sorry, Karla. I—”

“Gloria, believe me, I feel better talking to you. I swear to you, I never, ever helped Amber. I’m embarrassed to think I considered it for a split second. I have no doubt that she got to some of my clients another way. She had this way of making things sound so innocent and appealing.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Every time I bumped into her in the office after that, I felt guilty, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Do you think Tina was involved in Amber’s business?”

“Off the top of my head, I’d say no, though we never discussed it. It’s just that Tina’s a no-nonsense person, and I think she would have fired Amber on the spot if she knew. Many’s the time I thought of telling her, but then I decided, no, just keep out of it. It’s not that I could have proven anything. Just my word against hers. Now, of course, I wonder, if I had spoken up . . .”

Lori and I weren’t the only ones wondering if we could have prevented Amber’s death, it seemed.

“How about Dee Dee?”

“Geesh, Gloria. Is there anyone you don’t know? I can see how you’d have connections in Revere, but I’m amazed that you were able to put all this together in Manhattan.”

Karla’s smile told me she’d dropped her defenses, and I consoled myself with the thought that my nosiness might at least have relieved her of pent-up guilt or stress.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I smiled, thinking of how Matt would have responded. That kind of question always drew his
It’s what I do.

“I’m not so sure about Dee Dee,” Karla said. “In a way she was a better link, with not so much to lose as Tina. She had all the files at her fingertips, but I can’t say for sure. Like I said, I just tried to keep my distance. When I heard Amber was murdered, I thought about how close I’d come. I mean,
I
could have been killed, Gloria.”

“Did you think of going to the police then?” I asked.

Karla shivered. When the dishwasher made a loud noise switching to its next cycle, she jumped. “Of course I did, but I had nothing. We never talked specifics. It was all this general
Hypothetically, suppose a person had a past he was ashamed of . . .
”

Karla was struggling to keep her makeup intact, dabbing here and there at her face with a tissue. I looked at her straight on and knew I should believe her.

As sorry as I was that I’d put her through a grilling, I was thrilled to be able to scratch Karla Sasso off my list.

In the taxi on the way back to the hotel, I mulled over the events of the day and my next steps. An update on Karla Sasso and the Fielding nonconnection would have to wait until Matt and I were alone in our room.

I’d decided not to tell Matt or Rose my elevator story. By now the event had faded, and I saw it for what it was: a brief glitch in a machine. Still, I couldn’t imagine ever stepping into an empty elevator again. Fortunately the number of elevators in Revere was limited; most of them were in the new high-rise apartment houses that had replaced the amusements on Revere Beach Boulevard.

“You’re going off to work with Lori tomorrow, right?” Rose asked, as the cab ducked in and out of lines of traffic heading south.

“Yes, we’re going to Curry Industries in the afternoon.”

Oops.
I shouldn’t have put limits on my time not available for shopping.

“So we could do something in the morning,” Rose said.

Too late.
“What did you have in mind?”

“Aren’t you all shopped out, Rose?” asked Matt, who should have known better.

“I have everything but your present, Matt.”

“Good one,” he said.

I wondered if I could commission Rose to pick out Matt’s present from me. I’d come to New York thinking all the city’s energy and resources would give me an idea of what to get him for Christmas. So far the only thing that emerged as a possibility was a book of Yogi Berra quotes.

Matt was half asleep as I finished up my Karla briefing, but I wanted to be rid of the issue once and for all, so I pushed forward on it from my side of the bed.

“So Fielding was Karla’s client and Amber’s victim, but I really believe Karla had nothing to do with blackmailing him. Amber fished around in the files—with or without Dee Dee’s help—and approached all the lawyers Tina worked with, for fodder. I’m convinced Karla resisted the temptation.”

Our usual pillow talk.

“That’s a relief,” Matt said, wiping his brow. Not easy to do from his prone position, he had to hoist himself on his elbow to accomplish it.

“I know you think I see nonexistent connections everywhere, whereas you never were worried about this.”

“I’m just amazed that while I was listening to music with Roland, smoking a cigar, you were on the job.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Smoking?”

“Gotcha. Now that I have your attention—have you given any thought to going home?”

“Home? To Revere?”

“Apparently not.”

“Goodnight, honey,” I said.

C
HAPTER
T
ENTY
-T
WO

L
ori had cabin fever. She’d stayed cooped up in her apartment since Uncle Matt and Gloria left, missing a gorgeous afternoon. She picked at leftovers from lunch and paced the long wooden floor. She walked to the large window on the West Forty-eighth side, separated two adjacent slats on her old metal blinds, and checked the street. This time the unmarked was for her protection, at least, and not to drag her away.

The breeze that wafted through a window facing east was cold and crisp, with a dryness that made the air crackle—her favorite walking weather. If it weren’t for her fears, she’d be out walking right now, soaking up the energy, getting inspired, meditating.

That was exactly what she was going to do.

It was just getting dark. She’d go for a walk and later grab the subway to SoHo and cruise some of the shops, take in a movie at the Angelika, maybe get an idea for her next video. Lori wasn’t one to work on only one program at a time, especially now that she felt she had a real handle on this ozone project.

Always be on the lookout for the next subject,
she reminded herself, remembering the day she wrote that in class and underlined it.

Lori got dressed—short skirt, boots, and the only jungle print she owned, a short, faux-fur-lined jacket, just for moods like this.

She left her building and headed west toward Eighth, waving to the cops in the sedan as she passed them, on the other side of the street. She wondered if they had a photo of Billy taped to the dashboard—well, that was how they did stakeouts in the movies, anyway. She hoped by now they’d cleared up the little problem with Billy’s story.

She turned south on Eighth and stopped to look at fuzzy scarves hanging from a makeshift post. The street vendor was packing up. Sometimes you got deals if the guy wanted to push some goods quickly before he left for the day. She tried to figure how long the feathery scarf fad would last and whether she should bother buying some yarn and knitting a few for Christmas presents. She’d done a pathetic job so far on her list, but maybe she could get back on track now.

Behind the vendor, at the curb, was a mounted policeman, his pale blue helmet catching light from a streetlamp just coming on. Lori wondered if it was the same redheaded cop who’d blocked her out of her apartment the other day. The cop had pulled his horse between two parked cars. Two young women in tight jeans and jungle prints not unlike her own were cozying up to the horse and rider.

“So, you have any advice on where to have a good time around here?” one young woman asked the cop. She ran her hand along the yellow band across the animal’s forehead.

The horse had reflector lights strapped to its ankles. Lori wouldn’t have been surprised if there was some kind of mechanism in the lights to keep the animals docile while cars whizzed by and single women flirted with their riders.

“You asking about a good time in New York?” The cop snorted, the way Lori imagined his horse would while clearing his nostrils. “All over the place. There’s all kindsa things goin’ on.”

“How about you? Where do you go for a good time?” the other woman asked, twirling her scarf, a pink and turquoise boa.

Lori dropped the nubby peach and cream scarf she’d been thinking of buying. She contemplated giving up all the scarves she now owned, trading them in for a good, smooth-textured, woolen one. As of this moment, the fashion had run its course as far as she was concerned.

The cop laughed, tilting his head back. “Me? Hey, I’m married, you know. But tell me what kinda guys you’re lookin’ for. I know a lot of single cops, believe me.”

Lori moved on, smiling. It was the little things in New York City, she mused—things like these one-minute vignettes—that made a filmmaker’s life easy.

An image of the letter with the vague threats flashed through Lori’s mind, ruining her good mood. She’d been so worried about it since she learned it wasn’t junk mail.
Enough people have been hurt.
Do not
expose this.

Uncle Matt told her about the similar note the cops had found in Amber’s apartment. That letter had talked about footage. Maybe if she’d seen the word “footage” in her own mail she would have responded more like a professional investigator. She might have tried to determine the origin from the partial logo.

Funny how she lost her journalistic edge when it came to her personal life.

Lori tried to rid her mind of the whole affair, but the cartoonish family logo stuck in her mind. It seemed downright twisted, the contents of the letter being so
not
family-friendly.

Closer to Times Square, Lori cut over to Broadway, where the crowds were elbow to elbow from the store and restaurant windows all the way out to the curb. There was nothing like teeming masses to give you anonymity and the freedom to let your mind wander. Lori loved it. She did her best thinking while she was walking on a street bustling with activity or sitting alone in the middle of a busy coffee shop. Now that most cafés had Internet access, her home-away-from-home offices were even better.