The Valentine's Day Murder (2 page)

“I have no idea what this is about,” I said. They both had cold-reddened faces, as though they had walked in the street waiting for the appointed hour.

“It’s me,” Carlotta said. “I have a problem and no one will help me. I remember a story you told the night we met, and I thought you might be the one.”

“You’ll have to tell me about it.”

“Yes.” She looked over at the sofa where Amy was sitting. “You’ve heard this so many times you can tell it yourself, Amy. Why don’t you leave Chris and me? I’ll walk home when we’re through. It’s not that far.”

I had the sense that Amy was somewhat disappointed, that she wanted to be part of whatever Carlotta was going to tell me, but she got up, patted her friend’s shoulder, took her coat out of the closet where I had hung it less than five minutes ago, and left.

“It’s about my husband,” Carlotta said, when she had
sat down again. “I hate an audience. I hope I didn’t hurt Amy’s feelings—she’s been so wonderful to me since this happened—but I think I’ll do better one-on-one.”

She was an attractive woman, a little shorter than I, with straight dark blond hair, cut fairly short. She was wearing a green suit with the jacket open over a cashmere sweater of a lighter shade of green. She was rather busty, which at first glance made her appear plump, but she was not. The straight skirt was slim and her legs were shapely.

“I’m listening.”

“My husband is missing,” she said. Then she shook her head. “It’s a complicated story and every time I tell it, I seem to start somewhere else. It happened last week on St. Valentine’s Day, and he’s not the only person involved. There are two others.”

“They’re all missing?”

“Missing and presumed dead.”

“I see.”

“You really don’t. Let me fill you in a little. My husband’s name is Val, Valentine actually. He was born on Valentine’s Day, and his family named him for the occasion. One way or another, almost everything of importance in his life has happened on that day. Among other things, it’s our wedding anniversary.”

“How long are you married?”

“Six years.” She looked down at her hands. They were well manicured, the nails covered with natural polish. “He sent me red roses and this.” She held out her right hand. On the ring finger was a beautiful ruby cut in the shape of a heart.

“It’s wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Nor I.” She admired it for a moment, her face
clouded. “We had lunch on the fourteenth and he gave it to me. We were to have an anniversary dinner last Saturday, but he was gone by then.”

“Where do you live, Carlotta?” I asked. “I don’t remember if you told me.”

“Upstate, not far from Buffalo. Val works near where we live and I work in the city, but my job involves a lot of travel. I had to be somewhere on the fifteenth, so after lunch, Val drove me to the airport and I flew to Chicago. If I’d stayed home, Val would still be with me.”

The look on her face told me she blamed herself, in the way that people do when they believe that a chance act has stricken someone down.
If only I had called him back to answer the phone, he would not have been at the intersection when the bus went out of control
.

“Tell me about it.”

“He has two friends who are as close as brothers. They grew up together, went to each other’s weddings, cheered each other on through life. On Wednesday of last week they all celebrated Val’s thirty-fifth birthday.”

“How?”

“They were going to go out to dinner and then probably back to one of their houses. They did go to dinner. The police found that out the next day. I suspect at least one or two of them had a little too much to drink, although the restaurant didn’t seem to think so. They had a record of the bill. But they didn’t go back to anyone’s house after dinner.”

“Something happened?” I said.

“Until a few days before Valentine’s Day it had been a very cold winter in western New York,” Carlotta said. “The snow came early, and the temperature was so low for so long that it stayed around and was added to. Lake
Erie had been frozen for over a month, although it warmed up suddenly last week. It’s been an ice skater’s paradise. Apparently, the men decided to cross a narrow part of the lake on foot and end up in Canada.”

“Oh, no.”

“The car was found the next morning, and none of the three came home or showed up at work. Someone called the police and the county sent helicopters out to look for them, but there’s no sign of life anywhere. We can’t be sure all three made the trek because there was a light snow overnight, and any footprints they might have made were pretty much obliterated.”

“How can you be sure they walked across the lake?”

“They talked about doing it at dinner and the waitress remembered it. Also, the car was found at the beach. There isn’t much there besides the lake and no one in the area saw any of them. The helicopter found some breaks in the ice several miles from where they found the car, just where they would have been if they were hiking across to Canada.” She stopped as though the thought were too painful. “There was a red cashmere scarf snagged on the ice. We gave a scarf like that to Matty last Christmas.”

“Were they able to search the lake for bodies?”

“They tried, but the hole got bigger and the ice shifted, and they didn’t find anything. Now they think it’ll be spring before—before anything surfaces.”

“Carlotta, tell me about your husband’s friends.”

“They’re not like Val.”

“But they’re friends.”

“You know how it is with people you grow up with, people who were in first grade with you, you just keep loving them even though your lives take different routes.
That’s the way it’s been with Val and Matty and Clark. Matty’s never really succeeded at anything he’s tried, but he has a father-in-law who keeps them going. Clark owns a hardware store in a suburb of Buffalo, a very big, successful store. He’s a happy guy—or was.”

“Married?”

“Both of them.”

“But the dinner was just the men.”

“That’s the way it always was. They loved being together, making their own celebrations.”

“What did Val do?”

“Val works with computers. He builds clones to fit clients’ needs. He services them.” She used the present tense with determination.

“What’s happening now that he’s not there?”

“His partner is running the business.”

“When did you hear about the tragedy?”

“The next day, the fifteenth. My office called me. I flew back from Chicago, but there wasn’t anything I could do.”

“Whose car was found near the lake?”

“Matty’s. He had a big four-wheel drive. Where he lives, you need one, and it’s one of his big-boy’s toys.”

“Carlotta, I don’t see where I fit in all this. I can’t imagine what you want me to do.”

“I have a theory.” She crossed her legs. “I think the idea to walk across the lake was Matty’s. Matty’s crazy, always has been. He’s a practical joker, a dare-taker. He makes me nervous, although I’ve always been careful what I said about him to Val. Clark is kind of a quiet guy, though when the three of them got together, they were always boisterous. I’m trying not to point a finger. I want to be fair. I’ve known these people—and their wives—for
as long as I’ve known Val. But if I had to make a judgment, I would say Matty said, ‘Hey, let’s walk across the lake to Canada. We may not have another chance for a lot of years.’ And I think Clark probably went along with him because it’s what Clark always did. But Val isn’t stupid, he doesn’t take chances, he’s a grown-up, not just a big kid that dresses like a man. I don’t think Val went with them.”

“That’s a big theory. Can you back it up?”

“Not with anything hard. But I know my husband. He knew the value of life, the value of our marriage. I don’t think he’d take a chance like that.”

“That’s very interesting,” I said. “But where is he if he didn’t go with them?”

“That’s what I want you to find out.”

So that was the story, and I turned her down. She had no proof whatever that her husband had not drowned in the icy waters of Lake Erie on the night of Valentine’s Day, nor had she any idea where he might go if he had not accompanied his friends. No one had heard a word from any of the three men since they had left the restaurant that night, and apparently, no one expected to. A university scientist predicted that the bodies would surface, if at all, in late May or possibly early June, depending on the water temperature, and until then, there was nothing anyone could do but wait. The other two wives, Carlotta told me, accepted their husbands’ fate and presumed they were dead. One of them had had a funeral service for her husband a few days ago, but the other was waiting for the bodies to be recovered. It was a very sad affair, made worse by the not knowing, by the
little ray of hope that lives in all of us when we cannot prove that the worst has happened.

I pressed Carlotta for reasons why her husband, if he were still alive, would not come home, but she had no answers for me. The story had come out smoothly until her bombshell; then it faltered. Would the other two men have crossed the lake without Val? She couldn’t be sure. If Val had decided not to accompany them, why would he not have simply returned home? Well, the car wasn’t his, but, of course, there were taxis, there were neighbors who might be persuaded to come out and pick him up, although none had come forward.

There was nothing to go on except her strong feeling that her husband was the smartest of the three and therefore still alive. I told her that wasn’t enough for me and besides, I was involved in another investigation, I had my teaching, I had a husband I didn’t want to leave. She was very understanding, and we agreed that if anything happened, if her husband or either of the others turned up somewhere, she would let me know. And when that time came in the spring, if indeed the bodies surfaced, I wanted to know about it.

She promised she would keep me informed, and she left a few minutes before twelve, before Jack returned from his Saturday morning ramblings among lumber and power tools.

Amy Grant called me twice, several weeks apart, to tell me that nothing had happened. And that was the last I heard until I answered the phone that beautiful spring day and heard Carlotta’s voice.

There was a hopeful note in her voice as she said there had been an interesting surprise. “What happened?” I asked.

“Only two bodies have surfaced, Matty’s and Clark’s.”

“Your husband’s still missing?”

“Yes, and if his body doesn’t turn up very soon, they’re going to be out looking for him.”

“Why? Couldn’t it have gotten tangled in stuff at the bottom of the lake?”

“I suppose it could have, but there’s something else I haven’t told you. There’s a bullet in Matty’s body.”

“He was shot?”

“Before he went into the water. So Val’s a prime suspect.”

“That is a shocker. Did Val own a gun?”

“Not that I ever knew about. The police have already run a check. He never registered one. Matty owned hunting guns, of course. He was a big hunter. It’s why we gave him the red scarf for Christmas last year, so he wouldn’t get himself shot. I guess it didn’t work.” It was a rather flip comment from a woman whose husband was a suspect in the murder.

“Do they know what kind of gun was used?” I asked.

“A handgun, not a hunting rifle. It’s not likely he shot himself.”

Not very, I thought. “You told me these three men loved each other like brothers. Could you have been wrong? Could there have been disagreements that might have led to murder?”

“How can I answer that?” she said. “How much does anyone know about any other person? But if there were, I didn’t know about them because Val never said a word, and neither did the others that I ever heard about. And if they weren’t getting along, why did they go out for dinner on Valentine’s Day?”

“To set up an opportunity for murder,” I said.

“If that’s true, then Clark killed Matty, which is what I think happened. I told you in February I didn’t think Val was part of the group on the ice and so far I’ve been proven right. I think the two men went together, got into a fight over something, and Clark shot Matty and they both went down together.”

“What did they fight about?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why was Clark carrying a gun?”

“Chris, I want you to find the answers to all these questions. I think if you do, I’ll find Val. And whatever happened on the lake that night, I want him back.”

“I don’t know, Carlotta. It’s very intriguing. I have to admit I thought you were fantasizing that your husband didn’t join the other two men that night, but it certainly looks as though you were right. I’d love to find out where he was that night, and why he didn’t go with them, and what’s become of him. It’s just that my life has changed since February.”

“Are you tied up in a job?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, I see. That’s wonderful,” she said, almost as an afterthought.

“It is wonderful. I’m feeling fine and I expect to continue to, but I wonder if I just shouldn’t stay close to home.”

“This makes me feel very awkward,” Carlotta said. “I don’t want to press you. You have my number if you want to call, and you can leave a message on the machine if I’m not home. If you think you’re feeling up to it, I’d really like you to take this on. The police have pretty much made up their minds that if Val doesn’t turn up dead, he’s a killer. It’s not much of a choice for me. I think he’s alive and I know he isn’t a killer. If I could give up my job and look for him, I would, but I have to support myself. Will you think about it?”

“I will. Thanks for calling.”

When I hung up, my mind was flooded with questions I wanted to ask. What had appeared to be a foolish venture by three old friends, possibly under the influence, had become much more, much more interesting and sinister. If, as it appeared most simply, Clark had killed Matty and in the scuffle both had broken through the ice, what had happened to Val? Had he witnessed the shooting and run? Had he been shot, too, and was his body stuck on something at the bottom of Lake Erie? Or had he managed to shoot Matty from a great enough distance that he could escape with his life, while poor Clark had stayed behind to help his friend and then died for his efforts? I wondered whether Clark had tried to pull Matty from the icy waters using the red scarf, only to be pulled in himself. But the question I could never get away from
was what had happened to Val and where was he, dead or alive?