‘Mrs White?’ The detective held up her badge and ID.
The woman’s smile collapsed. ‘It’s about Natalie, isn’t it? I wondered when you’d come.’
The civilian police aide for the midtown precinct was a short thin woman with brown hair and a dim view of blondes. Eve Forelli held up her favorite tabloid with the headline: actress stabbed in broad daylight. She glared at the tall, pretty woman seated on the other side of her desk. ‘You look better in person.’
And this, of course, was sarcasm, for the grainy newsprint photograph only showed the back of the actress’s head; the face was pressed to the bosom of another actor, a man holding the unconscious, bleeding victim in his arms while he postured and smiled for the camera.
The blonde’s blue eyes opened wide. ‘How could it be in the paper? It just happened this morning.’
Forelli pointed to the line below the newspaper’s banner. ‘It’s the late edition.’ She could see that the younger woman was not following this. ‘It’s a second edition.’ And it had been free, a promotional gimmick for a failing newspaper. ‘Now I need the correct spelling for your last name. The hospital only used one L. It doesn’t look right.’ She handed the newspaper to the blonde. ‘And this story didn’t even mention your name.’
The startled actress tore her eyes away from the clock on the wall to scan the article. ‘Oh, damn, you’re right.’
‘The spelling, Miss Small?’
‘Just the way it sounds. Call me Stella.’ The woman flashed a smile. ‘Look – is this going to take much longer? I’ve been waiting for over an hour. I’m already late for another appointment in SoHo.’
Eve Forelli only glared at the woman. This – blonde had left the hospital before giving a statement to the police. One of the little princes from Special Crimes Unit downtown had reamed out a desk sergeant and demanded the missing paperwork on the reported stabbing. Her supervisor, in turn, had crawled up Forelli’s own scrawny tail. Further down the food chain, the frazzled police aide had screamed at the hospital staff. And, finally, the errant actress had been identified. And now Forelli prepared to marry an illegible attending physician’s report to the crime victim’s account. ‘So you were stabbed by – ’
‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ said the actress. ‘I don’t want any trouble with the cops. Look, I’m sorry, Officer, but this – ’
‘I’m not a cop.’ Forelli pointed to the name tag pinned to her blouse, clearly identifying her as a civilian aide. ‘You see a badge here? No, you don’t. I just do the damn paperwork.’
‘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.