‘Sorry.’ Stella Small touched her bandaged arm. ‘A camera did this. No big deal.’
Eve Forelli’s face was deadpan. ‘A guy stabbed you – with his camera.’’ Of course. And this added credence to her pet theory that the roots of blond hair attacked brain cells.
‘No.’ The actress waved the newspaper. ‘The reporter got it wrong. I wasn’t stabbed – I was slashed!'
‘With a camera.’
‘But it was an accident.’ The blonde slumped down in the chair. Her blue eyes rolled back, and then she sighed – a clear sign of guilty defeat. ‘Okay, this is what happened. My agent thought getting slashed with a razor was better than a guy just bumping into me on a crowded sidewalk.’
‘Yeah, that would’ve been my choice.’
‘I didn’t know the doctor was going to file a police report.’
‘Ah, doctors.’ Forelli sighed. ‘They fill out these reports for every shooting, stabbing and slashing. Who knows why? It’s a mystery.’
‘You’re not going to get me in trouble, are you?’
‘Naw, what the hell.’ Forelli was overworked, very tired and feeling giddy. Inside the appropriate box of her form, she typed the words, Professional bimbo collides with camera. Damn every tall blonde ever born.
Her supervisor would not like this entry, assuming the lazy bastard ever bothered to read it – fat chance. All her best lines were lost on that illiterate fool. And now she would have to phone in the details to a detective from Special Crimes, another brain trust who had problems with the written word.
‘But no more false police reports, okay? You can go to jail for that.’ Forelli was not certain that this was true, but it did have a frightening effect on the blonde.
After the actress had departed, the police aide opened a window and leaned outside to smoke a cigarette. She looked down to see Stella Small standing on the sidewalk below, looking left and right, lost in yet another blond conundrum – which way to go?
Forelli, for lack of any better spectacle, watched as the young woman removed a wadded-up blouse from her purse, then tossed it into a trash basket near the curb.
Before the clerk had finished her smoke, an older woman came along. This one, with ragged clothes and matted hair, fished the blouse out of the wire basket and briefly inspected it. Though the material was stained with a large X on the back, the homeless woman stripped off her shirt – right in front of a. police station – no bra – and put the trash-can find on her back.
Mallory listened politely as Mrs Alice White gave her a walking tour of the residence, rambling on about the problems of renovation. ‘The place was a rabbit warren, all broken up in small spaces. Now there’s only a few apartments left at the top of the house.’ The rest of the floors had been restored to the former proportions and appointments of a family home.
‘Where did the murder happen?’
‘If I recall the old floorplan – ’ Alice White pulled open two massive wooden doors and stepped into a formal dining room. ‘It was probably in here.’
Another doorway gave Mallory a view of the adjoining sit-down kitchen. Always go to the kitchen. This was a lesson handed down from Louis Markowitz. Interview subjects were less guarded in that more casual room, for only friends and family gathered there.
Mrs White’s voice was jittery and halting. Police had that nervous effect on civilians, but Mallory suspected another reason.
Planning to hold out on me, Alice?
The woman paused by a large oak table surrounded by eight carved chairs. ‘Yes, I’m sure of it now. This was where Natalie’s apartment used to be. And it was no bigger than this room.’
Though the new owner had been a child when the victim had died, it was obvious that they had known one another. Whenever the conversation turned back to murder, the hanged woman was always Natalie to Mrs White.
Mallory was done with the pleasantries, the getting-to-know-you courtship. She decided upon a style of bludgeoning that would leave only psychic bruises and fingerprints. She raised her face to stare at the chandelier above the table, perhaps the same spot where Natalie Homer had hung for two days in August. ‘You can almost see it, can’t you?’
Gentle Alice White was forced to see it now; the woman’s gaze was riveted to the ceiling fixture, and her mind’s eye showed her a dead body twisting on a rope, rotting in the summer heat. And from now on, she would find Natalie hanging there each time she passed through her dining room.
The detective slowly turned on the freshly wounded civilian.
Can you hear the flies, Alice?
As if this thought had been spoken aloud, the startled woman’s hand drifted up to cover her open mouth.
‘Mrs White? Could I trouble you for a cup of coffee?’ Caffeine was the best truth drug.
‘What? Oh, of course. I’ve got a fresh pot on the stove.’ Alice White could hardly wait to leave this room, this ghost, for the safety of the next room, and the detective followed her.
Mallory sat down at the kitchen table and unfolded a packet of papers, spreading them on a flower-print cloth. ‘I understand you bought this building five years ago.’
‘No, that’s wrong.’ Mrs White poured coffee into a carafe. ‘I didn’t buy it.’ Next, she opened a cupboard of fine china cups and dishes, and this was a bad sign; she was putting out her Sunday best for company.
‘I like coffee mugs, myself,’ said Mallory.
‘Oh, so do I.’ The woman smiled as she pulled two ceramic mugs from hooks on the wall, then set them on the table.
‘Maybe it’s a clerical error.’ Mallory held up a photocopy of the ownership transfer. ‘This says you purchased the building from the estate of Anna Sorenson.’
Alice White, carafe in hand, hovered over the paper and read the pertinent line. ‘No, that’s definitely a mistake.’ She poured their coffee, then sat down across the table. ‘I didn’t buy the house. Anna Sorenson was my grandmother. She willed it to me.’
‘And you visited your grandmother – when you were a little girl.’ Ten seconds crawled by, yet Mallory did nothing to prompt the woman. She sipped her coffee and waited out the silence.
‘Yes.’ Alice White said this as a confession. ‘I was here that summer.’
Their eyes met.
‘The summer Natalie died.’ Her hands wormed around a sugar bowl and she pushed it toward Mallory. ‘The coffee’s too strong, isn’t it? Norwegians make it like soup.’ She reached for a carton of cream. ‘Would you like some – ’
‘No, it’s fine.’
And now it begins, Alice.
‘So, the last time you saw Natalie Homer – ’
‘I was twelve.’ Mrs White made a small production of pouring the cream carton into a pitcher, buying time to hunt for the right words. ‘She was so pretty – like a movie star. That’s what my grandmother said. Natalie gave me her old lipsticks and a pair of high heels.’
‘So you spent some time with her. Did she talk about herself?’
‘No – not much.’ Alice White was so rattled, she stirred her coffee, though she had added neither cream nor sugar. ‘I know her people were from the old country, but not Natalie. My grandmother said her Norwegian wasn’t good.’ The woman forced a bright smile. ‘I don’t speak a word myself. My parents only used it when they didn’t want me to know what they were saying. So when Natalie spoke Norwegian to Gram, I knew I was missing all the good stuff.’
Mallory shuffled her papers, then handed the woman another document. ‘This is a copy of Natalie’s marriage certificate. Her maiden name was an odd one, Qualen. That’s Norwegian?’