The Valentine's Day Murder (9 page)

“Done already?”

I turned and there was Carlotta, a bakery bag in her hand. “Done, and resisting temptation with difficulty.”

“I suspect you’re a person who resists a lot more easily than most people.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment. “Depends on the temptation,” I said.

“What did you learn?”

“Nothing about the case that we didn’t already know or assume. Murdock himself checked the taxi companies and buses, and no one remembers seeing Val on the fourteenth and fifteenth.”

“Which doesn’t mean he didn’t take one.”

“He understands that, Carlotta. It’s just that everything is a negative, and to believe that Val is alive, you have to reject all these negative indications.”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“When I suggested that Val never made the lake crossing, he pointed out that the watch was found in Matty’s car. He also told me that Bambi left a message on your answering machine the morning of the fifteenth.”

“I didn’t remember that. I guess I was in a fog when I got back from my trip.” She looked troubled. We started walking down the block to where we had left the car. “But there wasn’t one from Annie, was there?”

“Murdock suggested Val might have had money stashed in another state where he might also have friends you didn’t know about. Do you have your phone bills from the last few months? I’d like to see what the long distance calls look like.”

“I have everything.” She unlocked the car door for me and went around to the other side. “I don’t see those bills very often, but if I make business calls from home, I keep a list of them for reimbursement,” she said, when we were both in the car. “Sometimes Val makes business calls from home, too, and I know he does business with out-of-state people. You can call all the numbers on the bills if you want.”

“I may do that.” We drove away from the main street and toward the residential part of town, which was a short walk from there. “Have you called Val’s partner yet?” I asked.

“I will when we get home.”

In Val’s study Carlotta pulled out a tax file with this year’s gas, electric, and telephone bills. Since Val had disappeared early in the year, she found the file for last year and gave it to me. I sat at his desk and started with February, working back. The phone bills were many pages long, with a lot of toll calls to the 716 area and others to places as far away as California. Before I started, Carlotta warned me that she called old friends who were now scattered around the country, and she also called her parents regularly. She jotted down several of those numbers so I wouldn’t have to ask about them later.

This was the kind of work that real police detectives often spend their time doing, while those on TV are out in the middle of the night with their guns blazing. It wasn’t any more interesting for me than it was for Jack and his fellow detectives, and I had to keep myself from nodding off once or twice.

I skipped over the known friends and relatives; I could come back to them later, but Carlotta didn’t seem to think Val would be hiding out with her parents or her high school chums. Her parents, in particular, would have a hard time keeping his presence a secret from their daughter, and Val hadn’t known most of her old friends, who lived out-of-state. One number that appeared repeatedly was Amy Grant’s in Oakwood, and if Val were
there, Amy had done a masterful job of keeping him away from Carlotta while Carlotta was visiting.

I noticed that in the bills preceding February, certain telephone numbers were checked in red ink, and Carlotta told me that those were Val’s business calls made from home. Every out-of-state number that she didn’t recognize was checked.

I went back a full year, yawning by the time I decided to call it quits. Carlotta was sitting in the family room reading when I found her.

“Anything?” she said.

“All the out-of-state numbers that aren’t on your list were checked by Val.”

“Then they’re business. Call them if you want, Chris. But I don’t think they’ll lead anywhere.”

“Before I do that, there’s something else I’d like to try. I copied down the address of Val’s parents from his birth certificate. I know it’s a long time ago, but many people do stay in one place. I’d just like to see if there’s a number for them.”

“I can assure you they’re not in the country.”

“Humor me.”

She smiled. “You sound like me at work. OK, I’ll humor you. Give it a try.”

She followed me to the kitchen, where I called Connecticut information and asked for the number of Gregory Krassky at the Trumbull address.

“I have no Krassky at that address,” the operator said.

“Maybe they’ve moved,” I said. “It’s awhile since I’ve called them.”

“Let me check the name.”

There was a click and then a mechanical voice came on. “That number is—” and a telephone number followed.
I could hear Carlotta gasp as she saw me write it down. I hung up and looked at her.

“There’s a number for that name?” she said.

“In the same town. At least in the same directory.”

Her hand pressed against her chest. “This isn’t possible.”

I picked up the phone and dialed, my own heart doing funny things.

“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Mrs. Krassky?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“My name is Christine Bennett, Mrs. Krassky. I’m a friend of your son, Val.”

“Who is this?”
she said angrily.

“I’m a friend of Val’s,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “I wanted to ask—”

“What kind of joke is this?” the woman said with anguish. “My son is dead. Val is dead. Leave me alone.” And she hung up.

I hung up, too, and looked at Carlotta who was standing near me, transfixed. “I think I’ve found them,” I said. “I just spoke to Val’s mother.”

We sat in the breakfast room and talked about it, Carlotta sipping a cup of tea, which I would have loved to have. I drank a glass of skim milk instead, not enjoying it very much but knowing I was doing the right thing.

“How does she know he died? Do you think someone sent her the newspaper clippings?” Carlotta said. “I can’t believe a Connecticut paper would have run the story, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have mentioned the names of the three men. No one there would be likely to know them.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something’s really bothering me about what that woman said. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

“Why wouldn’t Val tell me they were there? Even if something happened in their relationship, if they had a disagreement, why would he concoct a story about their returning to Europe?”

“Something’s wrong, Carlotta.” We seemed to be holding separate monologues, neither of us listening to the other. “Why can’t I put my finger on what it is?”

“Somebody here in western New York called the Krasskys and told them Val was dead. But they don’t
know any more than the police do. It doesn’t mean he’s dead, Chris. It just means Mrs. Krassky thinks he is.”

“Everything she said was wrong.” I took a last gulp of milk, happy that I had downed my quarter-quart for the afternoon.

“It means he didn’t go there,” Carlotta said. “We can scratch Connecticut as a safe haven. He’s somewhere else.”

“Carlotta, listen to me. Have you ever called the family of someone who died to deliver your condolences?”

“Yes, a few times.”

“So have I. What was their reaction?”

“They were touched. They were often deeply moved that I had called.”

“Exactly. That’s been the reaction I got, too.”

“I see what you mean. You said she was angry.”

“She was spitting mad. She said, ‘What kind of joke is this?’ Who would ever say that if you were a friend of the deceased and had taken the time and trouble to call?”

“What does that mean?” She looked thoroughly confused.

“I’m not sure.”

“Maybe they’re not his parents.”

“There may be another explanation.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s wait till seven or eight tonight. Then you call, so if Mrs. Krassky picks up, she won’t recognize the voice. Ask to talk to her husband. Let’s work out a script before you call. Maybe you can get something from the father.”

“Like what?”

“I wish I knew.”

* * *

“Let’s consider the possibilities,” I said. We had driven to a restaurant known for its seafood, and Carlotta had insisted I order lobster. I told her I had only eaten it once before in my life and I wasn’t very adept at cracking the shell and extracting the meat, but she promised to assist and I relented. Lobster was the kind of treat that might not come my way again very soon.

“One is it’s a mistake,” Carlotta said, starting out with the most optimistic point of view. “We called the wrong people.”

“Let’s look at the more realistic side. A number of years ago, before you met him, Val and his parents had a parting of the ways. Some kind of rift developed that couldn’t be patched up. They parted and each side told a different story; Val said his parents had returned to Europe, which is where they came from; his parents decided they had lost him so completely that he was as good as dead.”

“And they’re still pained by the memory of whatever happened between them. Maybe they’ve even come to believe it,” Carlotta said. “That their son died.”

“Maybe.” I was a lot less anxious to embrace one of my hypotheticals than she was. I was looking for truth; Carlotta was looking for a living husband.

“The woman you talked to, did she have an accent?”

“No, she didn’t, which is another thing that’s bothersome.”

“It means Val lied about their coming from Europe. But I can see that. He didn’t want me to think they were in the country, so he fabricated the whole story about where they came from.”

“Let’s leave that one and move on. Let’s say these
people in Connecticut believe their son died, but he didn’t.”

“I don’t see that. You can believe someone you haven’t seen in a long time has died, someone who lives far away, but your own child?”

“I’m thinking wild thoughts. Maybe he was kidnapped as a child.”

She thought about it, but I could see she didn’t like it any more than I did. “It doesn’t make sense. If he knew his name, he would know where to find his parents. He had the birth certificate, Chris. He knew where he came from. If he’d been snatched as a baby, his name would have been changed. If you snatched a baby, you’d call it Something Brooks, wouldn’t you?”

“OK, I admit that’s not very good.”

The lobsters came at that point, and we put our bibs on and got to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The woman had been angry. She thought I was playing a nasty joke on her. In her mind, her son was dead. “How about this?” I said, setting my nutcracker aside for a moment. “Two boys are in an old shack and it burns to the ground. One of them is burned to death; the other escapes. The Krasskys believe the body is that of their son.”

She thought about it, her face deep in concentration. “Don’t they use dental records in cases like that?”

“Maybe only one boy was thought to be in the building, and that was Val. Maybe the boys were young, eight or ten years old, and they hadn’t had dental work yet.”

“Val has good teeth,” she said slowly. “He goes for checkups, but he rarely has a cavity. I’m not sure, but he may even have all his wisdom teeth.” I could see she was
on the verge of accepting my new theory. “But why didn’t he go home after the fire or the accident or whatever it was?”

I was ready for that one. “Two possibilities: one, he set the fire; two, he didn’t get along with his parents. This was his opportunity to run away. For all we know, he created the opportunity.”

She shuddered. “How did he survive in the adult world? Eight or ten years old—you have to be pretty streetwise to make it.”

“Twelve,” I suggested, “fourteen, sixteen.”

“Yes.”

“A boy who has good teeth and rarely sees a dentist, and a boy who’s homeless and has never seen one.”

“My God. Chris, we have to see these people.” She looked at her watch. “I can probably get us on a plane tomorrow if I call tonight.”

“Carlotta, this is just a theory. Let’s not dash out to Connecticut. Let’s call tonight and then decide what to do.”

“Isn’t it better to talk to people face-to-face? We’re two very nonthreatening women. If they look at us, they’ll feel at ease.”

She was right about that. I admit to feeling frequently uneasy on the phone, not knowing whom I’m talking to or what they look like. But to assume with no hard evidence that my little scenario was the right one was too much of a stretch. “Let’s call. We can always fly out there afterwards if we decide we have to. We’ll still look nonthreatening when they open the door.”

“All right. But I think you’ve put your finger on what happened. I think there was some kind of accident, and then he ran away and fabricated the story of his parents’
going back to Europe. In a way, it’s a combination of two of your theories.” She was quietly excited, hardly eating now. “I sensed there was something strange, something different about his early life. He was never clear about his parents, about why they went back. He never talked about his childhood. I talked about mine. I had good parents, a good family, a nice house to live in, a great school, wonderful friends.” She looked at me. “Val didn’t. I knew that, but I only knew it in a general way because he never talked about it. I wonder what these people are like.”

“We’ll find out, Carlotta. Let me put together some questions for Mr. Krassky. Do you have a speakerphone in the house?”

“The one in Val’s study has one. We can call from there.” She put her fork down. “I don’t think I can eat any more.”

“Calm down. This is so good, it’s a shame to waste it.”

She gave me a small smile. “You’re right. It’s just that I’m starting to feel that we’re getting somewhere. I know we haven’t found him, but a veil has lifted. Do you think—is it possible that the bullet in Matty is somehow connected to Val’s childhood?”

“I have no idea. Maybe after you talk to Gregory Krassky tonight, we’ll know a little more.”

She closed her eyes. “I hope I don’t blow it.”

We got home about eight and sat in the study looking over the questions I had scribbled during my lobster dinner. I had no idea, of course, if Gregory Krassky was alive, but I thought it would be better for Carlotta to try to speak to him rather than to his wife, who was already upset at my call this afternoon. The one thing I was now
pretty certain of was that their son, whoever he was, had not died in the recent past. He had died or disappeared or gone away some time ago, so that telling this woman that I was a friend had struck a dissonant chord.