'Til Death Do Us Part (13 page)

“Thanks so much for calling back,” I said. “It’s a pretty urgent matter.”

“When you left a message saying you wanted to talk about Robin’s death, I was completely shocked. I’d had no idea she’d died. I made some inquiries yesterday and learned more about it. I’m very, very upset.” Her voice held a trace of a Long Island accent.

“Can I ask what your relationship to her was? She told her roommate you were her lifeline.”

“I—look, I don’t know how appropriate it is for me to be talking to you. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Like I said in my original message, I was an acquaintance of hers, but I’m also a journalist. There’s a possibility that her death wasn’t an accident, and I’d really like to talk to you. I promise to keep everything confidential.”

“You’re in New York?”

“Yes, though I’d be happy to meet you anywhere you say.”

“Okay,” she said finally. “I’m going to be out of town tomorrow, but I could meet you on Sunday at noon.”

She suggested a place, a small restaurant called the Mansion in the East 80s, and said she’d be wearing a red coat. I gave her a brief description of myself. I wished the meeting could have been sooner, but I clearly didn’t have a choice. I realized as I hung up that I still didn’t know what she did.

At six-thirty I split for Alicia’s. Usually it’s a cinch to find a cab on the corner of Broadway and 9th Street, but tonight cab after cab sailed by, all with their roof lights off. Finally, just when I was about to change location, several empty ones came down the street, and the first one screeched to a halt when the driver spotted my raised arm. I gave him Alicia’s address on Ludlow Street.

The Lower East Side, an area south of Houston Street, north of Canal, and bordered to the east by SoHo, had grown into one of the hippest neighborhoods in New York. Back in the late 1800s and early twentieth century, it had been home mainly to Europeans and Russian Jewish immigrants, but they were long gone and today it was populated mostly by Chinese, Hispanics, urban artists, and trendy twenty-somethings looking for semiaffordable apartments. There were still some traces of the old days. Wine bars and hip boutiques coexisted with hundred-year-old fabric stores and a matzo factory, as well as graffiti-covered Spanish delis. Still, it was getting harder and harder to imagine the streets once teeming with people and pushcarts.

Alicia’s apartment was in a five-story redbrick tenement building typical of the neighborhood. I rang the bell twice without getting an answer, and just as I cursed under my breath, her voice came through the intercom, sounding breathless.

“Hi, sorry. Who is it?”

“It’s me, Bailey Weggins.”

“I’m on three,” she said, and buzzed me in.

There was no elevator, and I had to trudge up three dingy, poorly lit floors. I thought I heard the buzzer go off again in the vestibule, but when I glanced down the stairwell no one was there.

I knocked on the door and Alicia opened it almost instantly, dressed in a bright orange sweater and brown corduroy skirt. She was stunning, tall, with skin the color of light coffee and long, straightened hair. Her coat was draped over a table, and her boots, dripping with water, were lying on their sides by the door. It was apparent she had just beaten me here.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do on a Friday night.”

“It’s not a problem. My boyfriend had to work tonight. He’s at
Newsweek
, and Fridays are super late nights for them. Here, come on in.”

I followed her into the living room. She had decorated her place 1960s style, in pinks and greens and reds with lots of Marimekko-style fabrics. It should have been jarring, but the effect was fun—and it was in total contrast with the building’s grungy hallways. I perched on the edge of a daybed strewn with throw pillows. Alicia chose a seat across from me in a small white bucket chair.

“So you and Jamie were friends?” I asked.

“That’s a stretch,” she said. “I mainly knew her professionally—we worked together on a few shoots. I bumped into her late last winter and she said she’d broken up with her boyfriend and was looking for a place to live. I knew the apartment across the hall was about to become available, so I arranged for her to meet the owner of the building.”

“Did you get to know her at all?”

She made a face.

“Was there a problem?” I asked.

“After she moved in, I got to know her a little better, and to be honest, I really wasn’t crazy about her. She seemed to have a big chip on her shoulder.”

“What about? Did she ever say?”

“Well, her boyfriend had dumped her, and that seriously bummed her out—though right before she died I think she’d started seeing someone new. But her main complaint was not being able to get this store of hers off the ground. She wanted to open a gourmet shop down here, and she was having trouble finding investors. She didn’t think it was fair that people like Peyton Cross had rich husbands who could fund their businesses and she didn’t have
anyone
.”

It was the same bitterness that
I’d
picked up on.

“Were you here the night Jamie died?” It was time to zero in on what I’d come for.

“For part of the evening. I was leaving on a junket to California the next day, and I stayed at my boyfriend’s on the Upper East Side that night. I left here about ten, I guess.”

“Did she seem klutzy enough to knock a CD player into her tub?”

“I can’t imagine
anyone
doing that,” she said, rolling her brown eyes. “But I know she liked to listen to music in the tub. She told me once that her nightly ritual was to soak in there with a glass of wine, listening to Norah Jones. Maybe the CD player was just too close to the edge and when she went to reach for something, it fell in. I even wondered if she might have had too much to drink that night—and didn’t see what she was doing.”

“Did she drink a lot?”

“I’d seen her looking fairly tipsy from time to time. Where are you going with this, anyway?”

“A couple of other women she knew have died since then. I’m wondering if Jamie’s death might not have been an accident.”

“Whoa—you’re kidding me.” She put her thumb in her mouth and gnawed on the edge of it.

“What?” I asked. “You’re thinking something.”

“Someone was there that night,” she said. “I could hear her talking to someone when I was locking my door—before I left for my boyfriend’s.”

I felt the hair on the back of my neck shoot up.

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“I couldn’t tell—because mostly I heard Jamie. At first I thought she was on the phone, but then I heard her say something with the phrase
look surprised
in it—like ‘You look surprised,’ or it might even have been ‘You don’t look surprised.’ I don’t recall exactly, but the way she phrased it made me realize that someone was sitting in there with her.”

“Did you tell the police this?”

“There didn’t seem to be any reason to. By the time I got back from L.A., they’d said the death was an accident, so I figured it had just been a friend stopping by long before she took her bath. I mean, if it had been an argument, I might have spoken up, but it just sounded like normal conversation. Nothing significant.”

Was
it significant, though? I wondered. Could this person have dropped the CD player in the tub as Jamie lay there relaxing? But it was hard to imagine her taking a bath with someone still in her apartment—unless it was a new boyfriend spending the night.

“And there was no sign of forced entry, right?” I inquired.

“No—I wouldn’t still be living here if there was.”

“She lived
directly
across the hall?”

“Yeah. And it gives me the creeps every time I look at her door. It would be so much better if someone moved in there.”

“It’s vacant? Have they had a hard time renting it because of what happened?”

“Please, this is New York City. It could be
haunted
and they’d rent it. No, what happened is that after Jamie died the landlord decided to hold it for his nephew, who was supposed to graduate from college in December. But now the kid isn’t getting out until spring.”

I leaned forward in my chair, wondering what other ground to cover.

“Is her place set up just like yours?” I asked, looking up and down the apartment.

“Yeah. But flipped. Do you want to see?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve still got a set of her keys. She asked me to hold them in case she ever lost hers. I don’t think the landlord’s changed the locks yet.”

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t know what I’d be looking for, but since I’d come all the way down here, it seemed silly to pass up the chance. I followed Alicia out to the kitchen, where she rummaged around in a drawer until she found two keys held together with a rubber band and a piece of paper that said “Jamie.”

“You don’t mind if I don’t go with you, do you?” she asked, opening her door. “I couldn’t stand it.”

She waited while I fumbled with the keys, figuring out which one worked the lower lock and which the upper. I pushed open the door, found a light switch to the left, and flicked it. Nothing happened.

“Oh, the power’s probably off,” Alicia said. “Wait, I’ll get you a candle.”

She returned in a minute with a chunky candle, already lit and smelling like coconut. I took it from her with a wan smile and slipped into Jamie’s apartment. I turned the bolt on the lock so the door wouldn’t close all the way behind me and a little light from the hall could work its way in.

I was standing in an entrance hall just like Alicia’s, though it was hard to see anything. To my right was a kitchen, a surprisingly decent-sized one for the apartment’s square footage; this had probably been high on her priority list as a foodie. I peered inside. The only remnant from Jamie’s life was a swag of cloth across the window.

To the left was the living room, and it was even darker in there—the two windows faced the side of another building. Not a lick of furniture remained. I could see that the wall nearest me was pocked with picture hook holes, signs of a life once lived here. There were two doors at the far end of the room. I could see the bedroom through one, so that meant the other must be the bathroom. As I took a step forward in that direction, the light seemed to dim. Glancing down at my candle, I saw that the melted wax had begun to engulf the wick. I didn’t have much time before it went out. I stepped carefully across the room and swung open the door to the bathroom. The tub was modern, probably a replacement for an old claw-footed one. Next to it was a toilet and next to that a sink. There was enough space between the tub and toilet to have put a small table or stool—and with the faint glow of the candle I could see a socket on the wall to the right of the sink. It was possible that Jamie had set the CD player there or possibly on top of the toilet. I tried to imagine how she might have knocked it in the water. Maybe, as Alicia had said, she’d been reaching for something—bath oil or soap, for instance—and accidentally dragged the player into the tub when she sat back down again.

Suddenly there was a faint hiss as the wax smothered the flame, and the candle went out, leaving me in nearly total darkness. Shit, I thought. I eased my way out of the bathroom and, using my hands, crept along the walls in the direction of the living room.

When I was halfway down the room, I heard the front door open and close.

“Alicia, is that you?” I called out.

There was no answer, just the sound of someone’s quiet footsteps coming in my direction.

CHAPTER 7

M
Y HEART STARTED
to race as fast as a greyhound. Could it be the super? Maybe he’d heard noises and come up to see who the hell was prowling around a supposedly empty apartment. I could easily make up some song and dance for him, or even tell him the truth. But I didn’t dare call out again, in case it
wasn’t
him. I inched my way along the wall as quietly as possible. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, but I still couldn’t see much. I heard more footsteps and froze in place. A form appeared in the doorway from the living room. I didn’t know what the super looked like, but the figure was too tall to be Alicia. The head was rounded, as if there were a cap over the hair. I held my breath, willing myself to shrink into the walls. For a few seconds he just stood there, his head looking left and right. Then the movement ceased as he picked me out in the darkness. In one swift move he bolted toward me. He reached clumsily for my arm and yanked, trying to pull me to the ground.