Foul Deeds: A Rosalind Mystery (13 page)

“Jesus Christ, it's from
Hamlet
,” I said aloud, recognizing the final line in Gertrude's famous willow speech, in which she describes Ophelia's death by drowning. In a sudden panic I pushed the message button and listened again more carefully. There was no mistaking it—the voice on the recording was Sophie's.

My knees went and I dropped down onto the bottom step opposite the hall table and sat there, frozen. What could this mean? That the thug who had gotten the cellphone from McBride had possibly followed Aziz to Sophie's and was now threatening her? Or did we have this all wrong—was Aziz himself the threat?

I decided to call Sophie's place first. What if she were being held in her own apartment?

I was having trouble holding my hand steady enough to dial. No answer. Next? Go over there and take a look.

I called Harvie's number.

“Greenblatt.” Again, he answered before the second ring.

“Harvie, it's me, Roz.”

“Oh good. I'm just making this sauce base for the salmon. Do you eat onions?”

“Look I'm…I can't come for dinner. Something's happened.”

“What's wrong?”

“It's Sophie, my friend. Someone dropped McBride's stolen cellphone through my mail slot and—this is crazy but—it's her voice on the message. I have to go over there. I don't know where else to start.”

“Start with the police. Listen, I have an old school friend there who's a detective.”

“I need to see her place first. This could be just a weird scare tactic or something.”

“Don't move.”

“What?”

“Don't move. I'll be right there to get you. Two minutes.”

He hung up. I stood still for a second. Dressed. Go get dressed.

I had brought the manila package with me and on the way over to Sophie's I pressed the message button. I held it up to Harvie's ear as he drove.

“Oh boy, that is creepy. That water dripping. She sounds scared.”

“I know, and the weird thing is that in rehearsal we're exactly at the point where Ophelia makes her final exit to go to the willow.”

“Then she drowns,” he said.

“Oh god Harvie, I feel sick to my stomach. Can you…just pull over!”

Harvie stopped the car by the military gates on Gottingen and I got out and threw up on the curb. I felt dizzy but I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together.

“I'm sorry,” I said, getting back into the car.

Harvie got some tissue from the glove compartment.

“Thanks,” I said wiping my mouth. I leaned my head back against the seat.

“You're white as a sheet. Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah—let's keep going. We're almost there.”

We went into the building and up to the second floor. When I knocked on Sophie's door, I could hear Molly barking, but it sounded distant. I knocked again, and called out Sophie's name. More barking.

“I'll have to get someone to open up,” I said to Harvie. I ran down the stairs and along the main floor hallway, praying for a little sign. At the end of the hall, there it was: “Superintendent.”

“Please,” I said to the woman who answered, “my friend lives in one of the second-floor apartments and I think something may have happened to her. Can you come up and open the door?”

“Against the rules,” she said, cigarette in her mouth. “You have to have the police with you for me to open someone's apartment.” I could hear the TV going. She was watching wrestling. Central casting.

“Yes,” I said mustering authority. “I'm a criminologist and I have a lawyer with me.” That seemed to confuse her enough to get some action.

“Okay—we'll take a look. But I have to be there.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

She closed the door in my face and reappeared a moment later without the cigarette and carrying a large ring of keys. “Which apartment?” she asked as we headed up.

“207.”

“Oh yeah—the actress,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Sophie.”

“No trouble. Pays her rent on time.”

She was so slow on the stairs; I had to counsel myself to keep calm. Harvie had come to the top of the landing.

“This is the lawyer I was referring to.” I was behind her looking directly up at Harvie. “So what we're doing is legal, right?” I said, nodding at him.

“Yes,” he said on cue. “Perfectly legal.”

In front of 207 she wheezed as she fumbled with the keys. Once again, there was the sound of Molly's distant barking. “She doesn't have a dog in there does she?”

“She's just looking after a friend's dog temporarily,” I said quickly.

“No pets allowed here.”

“It was an emergency,” I said, trying to stay even.

“Well she should have asked me. Listen to that barking. I'll be getting complaints.”

I was staring at the woman's nicotined fingers, waiting for the moment the door would open.

Finally, finally the right key! “Great, thanks,” I said, and pushed past her.

As we entered it was obvious something horrendous had occurred. Drawers were turned out and papers were strewn everywhere. On the low table in the living room, a tarot reading was laid out. I followed the barking to the bathroom door, which was closed. Molly was making a serious racket now.

I looked over at Harvie as I reached out to open the bathroom door. He nodded, and stepped closer to me. “Molly,” I called. “It's okay.”

As the door opened the dog leaped out and was all over me, licking and whimpering.

“Come on girl,” I said. “It's okay, Molly.”

Harvie sped past us into the bathroom. I held my breath, expecting the worst. But there was no sign of Sophie. The Super was standing in the hall just outside the bathroom with her arms crossed, looking askance at the dog and the mess.

“What's been going on here?” she said following me into the kitchen.

The back door, which opened onto a series of fire escape porches, was ajar. I stepped out. There was crushed cigarette on the landing. I got a baggie from Sophie's counter, put on her dish gloves and retrieved the butt. The kitchen drawers and cupboard doors were pulled open but not turned out.

Harvie called to me from the bedroom. Here was a much more chaotic prospect. Everything was upside down. The mattress was overturned and hanging over the foot of the bed. Lamps, books and cosmetics were all over the floor. Clothing and contents of the closet spilled out into the room.

I turned to the Super. “Obviously something has happened to Sophie. We're going to have to call the police. We'll stay here. Please go down and direct them up when they arrive.”

“I better call them,” she replied.

“No,” I said. “I will. It's okay. As I said, I'm a criminologist. Please go down and wait.”

As soon as she was out the door I turned to Harvie. “Okay, who was that detective friend of yours?”

“It's Saturday,” he said as he reached into his wallet and took out a card. “Home number's on the back.”

“Donald Arbuckle, Crime Division. I've heard McBride mention him. Would you mind calling him for me?”

“Not at all Roz.”

“There's a phone in the kitchen.”

The second Harvie went to the kitchen I was at the low tarot table. I felt carefully for the depression Sophie had showed me the night she had taken out the runes, and pressed it. The secret drawer released and sprang out a couple of inches. I pulled it open, and there inside was a green file folder. I opened the file quickly and spotted the City's letterhead.

“This is it,” I said to myself. I closed the drawer and quickly slipped the folder into my shoulder bag.

Harvie came into the room from the kitchen. “Luck is with us—Donald was at work—and there's a team on their way.”

“Good. Thanks for being here, Harvie,” I said.

“Hey, whatever I can do,” he replied, trying to keep things light. “How are you feeling, Roz? Are you alright?”

“Look, I need to be really careful here. I'm not going to fill the police in on the Peter King investigation yet. We're in the midst of gathering enough evidence to bring charges and we're not ready. If we blow it open now, we could lose everything we've got.”

“Well, I would advise you to sit down privately with Arbuckle and come clean.”

Within twenty minutes a crime unit was on the site, along with Detective Arbuckle. After introductions, I gave him the evidence I had found on the back steps, and told him about the back door being ajar. Somewhat reluctantly I also gave
him the envelope with my name scrawled on it, explaining that it contained what I thought was the same phone that had been stolen from McBride a few nights before. I told him about my present work with Sophie on the
Hamlet
production and the alarming recorded message in her voice quoting from the play.

“Well, if this all comes back to McBride's cellphone, we can bet the situation is a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance.”

“I know what you mean. Listen, I haven't touched the cellphone. With any luck you'll find prints on it.”

I could see Arbuckle restraining himself from making a comment about me not needing to tell him his business.

“And where is McBride?” he asked.

“He's had to fly out west for a family emergency.”

“What's his involvement here? Does he have a connection with this woman?”

“She's the one who found him the night he was assaulted, and she's been looking after his dog for him.”

“Whoever turned this place upside down was obviously after something. You say Sophie is an actress. Any lucrative sidelines, like drugs?”

“No, not her thing,” I said.

“And you. Harvie says you work for McBride.”

“I'm his researcher.”

“So, do you have any idea what they were looking for? What else can you tell me about this situation?”

“I don't know what to make of it.”

His eyes moved from me to Harvie and back to me. “I'm going to take a look around. Don't go anywhere.” I looked at Harvie. I knew he wanted me to tell Arbuckle everything, but I was determined to get a close look at the file I had hidden in my bag before having to hand it over.

“Roz—” Harvie began.

“I know, but I have to talk to McBride first,” I said under my breath.

“You have to think of Sophie's safety,” he continued.

“Look, it's my fault she's in this mess. We're going to find her.”

I went and sat down on the couch behind the little table where I knew Sophie would have been sitting during the tarot reading. I looked at the cards. The Significator—the card Aziz would have randomly chosen from the deck to represent himself—was the Knight of Swords, clearly an embattled figure. The Knight was covered crosswise by the card of Death. Even with as little as I knew about the cards, that was alarming. I decided to write the reading down for future reference. I took a notebook out of my bag and started to make a chart. Below the two central cards was The Hermit, an old man searching in the dark with a lantern, and above them was The Moon, with its baying dogs. To the left of the two central cards was The King of Wands and to the right was the Ace of Swords. Farther to the right were four cards not yet revealed.

I was about to turn them over when Arbuckle reappeared in the doorway holding a clear plastic bag containing a scrap of Indian print fabric. “Does this look familiar?”

I took it from him and looked at it. “Yes it does. It looks like a bit from a peasant skirt that Sophie wore frequently. Where was it?”

“It was snagged half a flight down on the side rail of the back stairs.” Images of Sophie being dragged down the fire escape flashed through my mind.

“Have you asked the apartment dwellers on the lower level if they noticed anything?”

“You know, we thought of that,” he said.

“And?” I asked.

“So far, no luck. Tell me what you're writing down there.”

“This tarot reading,” I said. “She must have been in the midst of reading someone's cards. She did do readings and horoscopes for people.”

“Just for friends, or for strangers as well?” he asked.

“Well, if someone called and wanted a reading, she would make an appointment for them and they would come here. The thing is, most often it would be somebody who knew somebody who'd had a reading, so it was a kind of network of acquaintances.”

For the first time, Arbuckle seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. “Did she keep an appointment book I wonder?” He began to look around, picking some scripts and notebooks up off the floor.

“And,” I continued, “it looks to me like this reading was interrupted, because four of the cards are still face down.”

“So,” he said, “we should be able to get prints of the person whose cards she was reading from those cards that have been turned over.”

“Well,” I said, “certainly from this one—the Knight of Swords—that would be the card he would have pulled from the deck himself to initiate the reading.”

“He?” This question came sharply as he picked up the card and dropped it into a plastic envelope.

“Well, the person, I mean.” I held his gaze.

By the time the crime unit was finished examining Sophie's apartment it was just after six. Harvie and I took Molly with us and he drove me over to the Crypt so I could check in with the cast. I had an irrational hope that Sophie would be at the rehearsal, going over her lines, oblivious to all that had gone on in her apartment. But she wasn't there. I was circumspect with everyone, saying that unfortunately neither she nor I could attend that evening. Since they were at the point of Ophelia's exit from the play, there would be only minor adjustments to their schedule. They would move on to the last scene of Act Four and into Act Five.