The Thanksgiving Day Murder (9 page)

Her office was windowless, perhaps to give her more wall space. It was not a place for a claustrophobic. Old-fashioned metal file cabinets stood side by side, effectively covering the walls from the floor to about five feet above it. On top of some lay stacks of unfiled folders; on others there were photographs and objects that looked like the handiwork of children. I sat in the single extra chair and Wormy plopped into her desk chair with a sigh.

“What can I tell you?” she said.

“When did you come to work for Hopkins and Jewell?”

“Am I on trial here?”

“No one's on trial, Mrs. Wormholtz. I'm just trying to organize my information into a rough chronology.”

“My mother is a cousin of Marty Jewell's mother. We've known each other all our lives. I had a lot of experience running business offices, and Marty convinced me to leave a very good job and come to work for him. I was reluctant, but he was very persuasive. I've never regretted it. I came to work the day they opened their agency.”

“So you were there when Natalie Miller came for her interview.”

“I set the interviews up. They advertised before they moved into their office. The responses went to a box number. I read them, discussed them with Arlene and Marty, and called the candidates to set up appointments.”

“Do you remember where Natalie was working when she applied for the job?”

“Somewhere in midtown. Maybe a law office, maybe another ad agency. I have a good memory, but frankly, that's not the kind of thing that sticks.”

“Mr. Jewell said you interviewed Natalie. Do you remember doing that?”

“Very well. She came across as very personable, she had terrific references, she was willing to come in almost immediately, and what I liked about her most was that she said she couldn't start tomorrow because she had work to clean up at the old job and she couldn't leave them in the lurch. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but honorable still means something to me.”

It was the kind of comment that touched a sympathetic chord. “Was there a period of time that just the four of you worked for the agency?”

“Now that you mention it, yes, I think there was.”

“When did Arlene Hopkins get her own private secretary?”

“I did her secretarial work at the beginning. I told Marty I couldn't do it for him because we knew each other so well. So he got Natalie, and Arlene got me. But we all did everything at the beginning. Arlene and Marty knew each other, they'd gotten a hefty account which was enough to get them going, but barely. They scrounged some used furniture, a typewriter, a box of number two pencils, and they opened up.”

“It must have been fun,” I said, some latent entrepreneurial spirit awakening in me.

“It was,” she said with the first hint of a smile. “Those were great days. Every time a new account came to us, we'd holler and scream. We'd go out to dinner and celebrate. There was a lot of good feeling that went around, a sense that we were all in on the beginning of something wonderful.”

“Is it possible that Arlene Hopkins removed the missing documents from Natalie's file?” I asked, hoping she would give a little now that she was feeling nostalgic.

She looked troubled. “It's possible,” she said, “but I can't think why she would. When I say it's possible I mean that she had a key to the office, she could have come in early, gone through the files, taken what she wanted, and been at her desk by the time anyone else arrived. Or she could have stayed late.”

“I assume everything you've said would apply to Mr. Jewell, too.”

“Every word. Applies to me, too, but I didn't take anything.”

“But those cabinets must have been locked.”

“Miss Bennett, we were using hand-me-down every-things. There were locks with no keys, there were locks that didn't work. We felt that what was important was our clients' materials. We didn't want anyone breaking in and stealing our business and our ideas. Who would want a secretary's resumé? We saved the locks and keys for the stuff that had commercial value.”

“You're sure it wasn't Mr. Gordon's detective who took those papers last year.”

“They were missing when Natalie was still here. That's a couple of years ago. More. Those papers were missing a year or so after we opened up. I went to put her first evaluation in the file and I saw it was practically empty.”

“Who else had the key to the office?”

“I did.”

“And—?”

“Arlene and Marty.”

“No one else?”

“No one else was entitled. You can't go giving out keys and hope to keep your office secure.”

“Did you check any of the references in Natalie's file?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. She asked that I not call her
present employer—that's not unusual; people don't want their bosses to know they're looking for another job—so I called the one before that. I don't remember who they were, but their reference was glowing.”

“Could Hopkins or Jewell have known Natalie's employer or former employer? Could there have been something between them that would provide a reason to remove their existence from Natalie's file?”

“You're asking me what's possible. Sure it's possible. Lots of things are possible.”

She was right, of course. And if there was one item in the file someone didn't want on record, it would be smart to remove other things so no one would know which piece of paper was the object of the search. “So you think the documents were taken about a year after the agency opened and Natalie started working here.”

“I didn't say that. I said I discovered they were missing a year later. They weren't files I checked very often. That stuff could have been taken the day after we hired her.”

“I see.” I hesitated a moment. “Do you get along well with Arlene Hopkins?”

“I get along the same with everyone. I do a spectacular job here as I've done in all my jobs. If I rub people the wrong way, they learn how to avoid me.”

It sounded a little evasive, but she was talking about her employer, and I sensed this was a woman with a strong sense of loyalty. “What about Martin Jewell?”

“I've known Marty all my life and there isn't a straighter, more honest human being on the face of this earth.”

There didn't seem to be any point in continuing that line of questioning, not with a woman for whom honorable meant something. “Are Hopkins and Jewell married?” I asked.

“What makes you ask that?”

Interesting answer. “Curiosity.”

“They've never married,” she said, a trifle nervously, I thought “I mean they haven't married each other. Marty's married to someone else.”

“But there's something between them,” I suggested.

“Look, I'm here to answer questions about a missing woman and some missing papers, not about in-house sexual relationships. Ask Arlene if you want an answer to that.”

“It's not the kind of question I can ask her, and besides, we didn't hit it off. Arlene tried to prevent me from speaking to you last Friday.”

“Then ask Marty.” She looked at her watch. “Is there anything else I can help you with? I have a full day's work ahead of me and only half a day to do it in.”

“One last question. You said on the phone yesterday that you knew who took the papers. Who do you think that was?”

“I said I had an opinion. I don't know anything for sure.” She got out of her chair and went to the most battered of the file cabinets, opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. “This is Natalie's personnel file.”

I took it from her and looked inside. There was a sheet of paper dated about five years ago with notes written in ballpoint ink and signed MJ, phrases with opinions he must have jotted down during his initial interview with Natalie. Following that was a typed sheet with similar comments by EW. There was nothing from Hopkins, but there were three evaluation forms with comments by all three of the charter members of Hopkins and Jewell, good comments for the most part. The skimpiest were from Hopkins, the most detailed from Jewell. On the last one, done not long before Natalie left to be married, Hopkins noted that Natalie spent too much time on the phone. There was nothing else in the folder.

“Thank you very much for your candidness,” I said, handing the folder back to her.

Then I left.

I stopped in the downstairs lobby and opened my subway map. I had checked the address of my father's office over the weekend and it hadn't changed. It was still in downtown Manhattan and I could pick up a train a couple of blocks from where I was to get there. I buttoned up and went out into the cold.

If the photographs had stirred up my emotions, approaching the place where my father had worked most of his adult life nearly made them explode. Much of downtown Manhattan has changed little since the turn of the century. Some old factories and warehouses have been torn down or converted to fashionable living quarters or have become artists' lofts, but this one was just as I remembered it, old, brick, solid, dirty, windows cracked or even boarded up. I had visited only a few times as a child, brought by my mother for occasions like a Christmas party or by my father once in a while, just to show me off. I had been treated like royalty, admired, complimented, hugged, and patted. Chocolates had materialized, cookies had been sent for. My father had glowed and my natural shyness had eventually given way to a feeling of comfort. I remember always going home with stories for my mother about this one and that one, sharing my cookies with her, telling her how everyone had liked my dress.

The street door was open and I climbed a steep flight of stairs to the second floor and walked inside. People were
dressed in jeans instead of the more formal attire of a quarter century ago. One woman in a skirt and blouse asked if she could help me, and I said I was looking for a Mr. Jackman if he was still working there.

“Sure he's here. Can I ask you what your business is?”

“It's more personal than business. My father worked here for a long time.”

“Come on in. He'll be glad to see you. I think he's having lunch at his desk today.”

I had forgotten lunch, not unusual for me when I'm working on something. I considered leaving and coming back in half an hour, but she was already far ahead of me and I ran a couple of steps to catch up.

The office was the kind I remembered, windowed so you could see into it from the inside. But the man eating a sandwich at his desk was far too young to have been working here when my father had.

“Go on in. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.” I went in and he stood and looked at me.

“Do I know you?”

“I think your father knew my father. I'm Eddie Bennett's daughter.”

“Eddie Bennett, I remember the name. My dad used to talk about him.”

“I met your father a few times when I was a little girl. I'm Chris.” I offered my hand and we shook.

“Pleased to meet you. What brings you down here today?”

“A couple of memories. I wonder if you could check something for me. I think there was a woman who worked here who lived on the west side in the Lincoln Center area that we used to meet when we went to the Thanksgiving Day parade. I don't remember her name, but I wanted to see her again.”

“How old do you think she'd be?”

“I'd guess between sixty and seventy. I met her when I was five or six and not a very good judge of age.”

“You want to wait while I ask?”

“If you don't mind.”

“Be right back.” He picked up the rest of his sandwich and left the office.

I went to the outside window and looked out onto the street. Places that don't change fascinate me. It must have something to do with the comfort of finding one's way, the way you do in a house you've lived in for years. Night or day, you know the position of every piece of furniture, every door, every board that creaks and rug that trips you up. I have heard people complain about returning to scenes of their childhood or their most memorable experiences and being overwhelmed with disappointment. Buildings are gone, replaced with steel and glass, not the substances of mortal memory. But here time had stopped. Perhaps in another twenty-five years and a huge input of money, this area might become gentrified, replaced, converted into a park. I would not think about that today.

“Got it,” a voice behind me said, and I turned to see Mr. Jackman with a piece of paper in his hand.

“You do? Really?”

“Here she is, Betty Campbell. Name ring a bell?”

“I'm not sure.”

He handed me the address. “Amsterdam Avenue, right near Lincoln Center.”

“That's exactly what I thought.” Well, not exactly, but one of the possibilities.

“Well, I hope you find her. She's retired, lives by herself, I think. Nice woman. Worked here a long time. Your father died quite suddenly, didn't he?”

“That's what I remember. I think they came for me at school one day. It was a heart attack.”

“Shame. He was not only a nice guy, he was the kind of salesman everybody loves, customers and us. Man with the
kind of sense of honor you don't find in a lot of young people nowadays. He was a gem.”

“Thank you.”

“Is your mother still alive?”

“Unfortunately no. She died a few years after he did.”

“Well, you come from a nice family, Chris. You can be proud of them.”

We reminisced for a few minutes more and then I left One of the women came out of her office as I passed and said something about my father. She had known him only a couple of years but remembered him well. As I walked to the west side subway, I felt closer to my father than I had for years. Imagine a woman coming out to say a good word. It was a kindness I really appreciated, one that would stay with me.

I went down into the subway and rode uptown to find Betty Campbell.

I got off at Sixty-sixth Street, right under Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and made my way to the street level, not certain where I wanted to be. Once outside, I took my bearings and walked a block west to Amsterdam Avenue. On the west side of the street a group of redbrick apartment houses ran the length of several blocks, although no street went through them. They'd been dressed up with greenery, that is, trees that would be green in the spring. So much of New York is concrete and brick that it always makes me feel good to see vegetation in brown earth.

With a little difficulty I found the entrance with Betty Campbell's number and rang her bell. She answered in seconds with a loud “Hello?”

“Ms. Campbell, it's Christine Bennett. May I come up for a minute?” I find that a woman who gives her name is frequently welcome even without an explanation.

“Oh yes, they said you'd be coming.” Then she buzzed.

I pushed the door open, realizing someone had called—rather
intelligently, I thought—to say I might be on my way. The elevator was waiting and I rode up to the fourth floor. A door was open and a woman was looking out. “I'm Chris,” I said as I walked toward her, keeping my disappointment out of my voice. As dim as my memory was, as unreliable as a child's perceptions may be, this could not have been the woman at the parade. She was too short even to be a finalist in the nonexistent competition, and age or disease had crippled her, hunching her shoulders.

“Come right in. They said you were Eddie Bennett's daughter. Nice man, Eddie Bennett. I remember you when you were little, all dressed up to see your daddy's office.” She turned two locks and shuffled, using a cane, to the kitchen.

I followed, my heart feeling heavy at this woman's pain. “These look like nice apartments,” I said.

“They're nice enough. Gotta watch yourself at night, though.”

“That's true everywhere.”

“Times have changed, haven't they? Cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then let's sit in the living room.” She shuffled her way there and sat in a big, worn chair, hooking the cane on the arm. “Sad when Eddie died. You must've been no more than a child.”

“I was about eight.”

“What a tragedy. Man taken away from his family like that.”

“He left a good legacy, a lot of happy memories.”

“Can't ask for more than that. Have a mint.” She extended a glass dish of flat round chocolates toward me. They had sat on the little table next to her chair, her daily treat.

I took one and let it melt in my mouth, two images passing before my eyes, one the young Proust dipping his madeleines, the second an older Proust tasting them to bring
back the past. It was as though I were visiting Dad again at the office in my new dress. “Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Almost fifteen years. I was on the list before that. In New York, you wait for someone to die and hope your name comes up.” She laughed. “I guess there are folks out there waiting for me to kick the bucket, but they've got a while to go. I feel real good.”

“You sound good,” I said honestly. “You sound like an energetic person.”

“Well, I've always been that. Broke my hip last year but haven't let it keep me down.”

“Where did you live before?”

“Oh, way uptown on the west side. It's all changed. I used to like to walk in Riverside Park when I was younger, but you wouldn't catch me going there now. Here I've got the subway close by and buses right outside.”

“It's very convenient,” I agreed. “When did you start working for Mr. Jackman?”

“Maybe thirty-five years ago. Probably more. I knew your father for a long time. He'd come in in the morning with a big smile and a nice word for everybody. ‘How're you doin' today, Betty?' Always nice to see him.”

It was as if each small addition to my archive of memories fleshed him out that much more. I could hear his voice saying the words, see the grin. “I want to ask you something kind of silly, Betty. Did you used to go to the Thanksgiving Day parade when my dad worked for Mr. Jackman?”

“Haven't been to the parade since I was a child. I watch it on the TV now. I don't like crowds. There's a mess of crowds for that parade.”

“Tell me something. Did you know anyone who worked for Mr. Jackman who lived around here when my father worked there?”

“Who lived here? Let me see.” She looked down at the
worn carpet at her feet. Her hair, which was black with deeply encroaching gray, was long and pulled back behind her head, gathered in a black velvet band. Her face was jowly and lined, bare of the slightest color. “A lot of them came from Brooklyn because you could take the old BMT into Manhattan in those days. That's gone now, you know. All those trains have letters on 'em, never know where you're going anymore. I used to come down on the Broadway line, same as what's at Lincoln Center. Where did Gloria live?” she asked, as though the answer would come from the air around us. “I'm wrong,” she said, as though correcting a statement unspoken. “Gloria was this young, cute girl, but now I think of it, she lived in the Village. Dressed like she lived in the Village, too, long hair and those exotic clothes. She left maybe around the time Eddie died. Got another job.”

“What color hair did she have?” I asked, although I knew the woman of my memory didn't look Villagey in any sense.

“Black as coal. Gloria, can't remember her last name.”

“So you don't think anyone who worked there lived up on the west side.”

“I don't think so, honey.”

“What about old Mr. Jackman?”

“Oh, he always lived out in Queens, had a beautiful house, I heard.” She made the adjective long and drawn out.

“Well, I guess that answers all my questions.”

“Oh, don't go,” she said. “Stay a while. It's good to have company, nice to have a young person to talk to. Tell me about yourself, what you're doing now.”

I sat back in the chair and talked to her for the next half hour. Her eyes sparkled as we exchanged reminiscences and brought each other up to date on our lives. I had no recollection of ever meeting this woman before, but when I left she was someone who fitted into my life. After about
half an hour and two more mints, I said good-bye, went back downtown to retrieve my car, and drove home.

“Thanks for calling,” Sandy Gordon said. “I've been waiting to hear from you.”

“I expect I've gotten all I can from Hopkins and Jewell, and while there are some intriguing things, I don't see where they lead.”

“Like what?”

“Did you know the documents in Natalie's personnel file were stolen or misplaced?”

“The detective said they didn't have much from before the time she worked for them. He saw her evaluations, which he said were very flattering.”

“They are. But that's all there is. Whatever letter she wrote answering their ad, whatever references she sent or high school transcripts, they're all missing and no one has any idea who took them or why.”

“Did they talk to Natalie about it?”

“Yes and she was upset.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think there may have been some bad feelings between Arlene Hopkins and Natalie.”

“Anything special make you feel that way?”

“Hopkins didn't want me talking to anyone except her. She had me steered to the word-processing pool, where only one person knew Natalie and he hadn't been there from the beginning.”

“So you think they're keeping something from you.”

“I think they tried. I probably found out more than Hopkins wanted me to know, but I don't know if I've got everything. And if I don't, I really don't know where else to look, except for Natalie's old apartment.”

“When will you go there?”

“I teach tomorrow. It'll have to wait for Wednesday.”

“You're doing fine, Chris. I mean that. I'm sure you're
on to something and you're a digger, I can see that. You'll find her. Need any more money?”

“Good heavens no. All it's going for is parking.”

“Let me know when you run out.”

I dropped a note to Arnold telling him about Hopkins and Jewell, my visit to my father's office, and what I intended to do next. If he had urgent work, I'd be glad to do it, but otherwise I seemed to have enough to occupy all my time.