A.R. Winters - Valerie Inkerman 01 - Don't Be a Stranger (5 page)

By the time Jerry got back to the apartment, I’d consumed two massive chocolate-chip cookies and half a mug of coffee. It took him longer to get back than I’d expected, and as soon as he closed the door behind himself, I saw why. He had a box of Fudgesicles in his hand.

“For you,” he said, by way of explanation.

“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind. Maybe you’re ready to admit how tasty they are.”

Jerry shook his head and put the box away in our freezer. “Are there any cookies left?”

“Yeah. But I thought you were trying to lose weight.”

“You’re right. I need to stay in shape in case I get any new auditions.”

I watched him carefully as he put a pod into our coffee machine and made himself a mug. “We need to talk.”

“Oh no,” said Jerry sarcastically. “Are we having the relationship talk? Are we breaking up?”

I rolled my eyes. “Seriously. You need to stop being so immature and sit down.”

He pulled out a chair opposite me and sat down. “Isn’t my dad the worst? I said he was scary, right?”

I gave him a puzzled look. “I thought he was pretty nice.”

“Yeah. But he roped you into investigating this case, right?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Even though you think I’m a dufus.”

“I only think that because you
are
a dufus.”

“Yeah, but now you’re stuck trying to help me out.”

I shook my head. “He’s not scary. He offered me a lot of money to do this.”

“Would you do the job if
I
offered you that much money?”

I tried to think that one through.

“See,” said Jerry. “He’s manipulating you and you don’t even know it.”

“Is not.”

“Did he tell you that if you can solve this case he’ll refer you to all his buddies?”

I raised one eyebrow. “No.”

“Well, he told me he would.”

“Wow.”

That’d be great for my career. And he owned a media company – there were lots of people he could tell. I’d be famous. I’d be a world-famous PI who solved difficult cases and charged hefty fees.

My eyes clouded over with dollar signs. I imagined myself being feted and begged to work on cases – “Oh, Ms. Inkerman, we’ll pay you whatever you want! Please, just find us our lost puppy, Smithers.” And of course Smithers would be a cinch to find and then…

“–And then, of course, I kept getting extra homework and the coach might have even pulled me from the team but then…”

I blinked and looked at Jerry as though I was seeing him for the first time. “Huh?”

Jerry looked hurt. “You weren’t listening, were you?”

I shrugged.

“I was telling you how my dad keeps manipulating people around me. He’s always been disappointed that I didn’t go to Wharton or some other fancy business school, and that I didn’t want to go into the family business.”

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I was breaking some kind of confidence. And then I said, “He told
me
that he’s proud of you for following your dreams.”

“Really?” Jerry looked surprised, and his face shone with a brief moment of happiness. But almost immediately, he looked glum again. “Maybe. But I think mostly he’s not happy that I didn’t try to be more like him.”

I shrugged. “People are complicated; we feel more than one thing at a time. It’s hard to pick apart our emotions and say just how much of each one we’re feeling.”

“Mphh.” Jerry shrugged noncommittally and took a big gulp of his coffee. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I need to get started with this investigation.”

“You mean you need to turn into Nancy Drew.”

I frowned. “I don’t know why you’re smirking. Nancy Drew always got her man. Or woman. And aren’t you supposed to be desperate for my help? Seeing as how you’ve been accused of murder?”

“Nah. I’ll just have my lawyer subpoena the woman I was with. Then when she’s on the stand, she’ll have to testify that we were together and heard the shot.”

I stared at him. “Are you serious? You really think she’ll come through?”

“Sure, why not? Otherwise it’s perjury.”

“She’s lied to the cops once, Jerry. She’s going to do it again.”

Jerry sobered up a little. “You think? I mean…”

“She can’t get divorced, right? And hey, you know this woman better than I do.”

Jerry finished his coffee and walked over to the fridge. “Ok, then. I guess you better put on your Nancy Drew hat.”

I waited for a few seconds to be absolutely, positively sure that this was the most serious, groveling request for help that Jerry could come up with. And then I sighed. His dad was my client – not him.

“Ok,” I said, watching Jerry take strange, roundish vegetables out of the fridge. “Tell me what you remember about that night.”

“I already told you.” Jerry cleared the top of his butcher’s block table and began washing the vegetables. “I went upstairs. There was no-one in the room–”

“Hang on! Are you sure? Did you look around?”

He made a face like I was being slow. “Of course I looked around! Unless there was someone under the bed, or something. Anyway, we slipped into the closet, and then, um–”

“You can skip the gory details.”

Jerry grinned. “Well it was going good at first.”

“And you never thought to ask this woman if she was married or not?”

Jerry placed the washed vegetables on his butcher’s block – our tiny apartment’s counter space was all taken up with the microwave – and started chopping. “Of course I asked. She said they were cool.”

I rolled my eyes. He was just like those naïve young girls who slept with older married men who were “separated,” “getting divorced,” or “in an open relationship.”

“Ok, so then what? Start from when things started to go wrong. What’re you making?”

“Stir-fried Asian vegetables and honey-soy drumsticks. Oh, I’d better put them in the oven first.”

I smiled. Nobody in New York cooked. I’d moved straight from my parents’ house to college, then to New York, and I didn’t cook. Not unless you counted the microwaved chocolate pudding I can make in an emergency. So it was fun to live with someone who cooked for a change. And it was nice, being able to eat something other than greasy Chinese takeout.

When he was done putting things in the oven and fiddling with the temperature, Jerry said, “It was all going
great
. You know, the whole ‘doing it in secret’ thing is such a… anyway. I thought I heard footsteps coming into the room, and I told her–”

“Are you ever going to tell me her name?”

Jerry made a wry face. “If she’s not going to help, I might as well leave her out of it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Look, there’s no point in you trying to talk to her. If she lied to the cops, she’ll lie to you.”

He had a point. Still… a strange doubtfulness crept into my mind. “What if this whole thing’s an elaborate conspiracy?” I said slowly. “What if this woman saw you talking with Esme and then she took you upstairs to set you up? And then someone – some accomplice – crept into the room and killed Esme, and the two of them framed you for it.”

Jerry shook his head, and turned back to his vegetables. “That doesn’t make any sense. To start with, how’d she know that I’d agree to go upstairs with her? And then how’d she be so sure that I’d try to keep her out of it?”

“Well…” I looked at Jerry uncertainly, but I could see the doubt creeping into his eyes too. “What’s her name?”

“Anita. Anita Lowe.”

“Ok.” I nodded. “That’s a start.”

“No, it’s not,” Jerry said desperately. “That’s no place to start. She’s not going to be any help and you’ll just waste your time with her.”

“Ok,” I said. “I’ll talk to her later on. After…” I frowned. “Who else do I need to talk to? Hang on, wait here.”

I disappeared into my bedroom and returned with a pen and a pack of index cards.

“What’re those?” Jerry said, as I settled down and started making notes. “Your Nancy Drew case notes?”

I finished writing down what Jerry’d told me so far, and sighed. “You’re not meant to be making fun of me. You’re supposed to be eternally grateful that I’m looking into this for you.”

Before Jerry could come up with some smart-alec retort, I said, “So. You were saying. You thought you heard footsteps.”

“Yeah – so I motioned to Anita, and we both froze.”

“And?”

“Well, someone was in the room. At least two people. They were having a conversation, but they were talking really softly. I could tell that one of them was a woman, but I wasn’t sure about the other. So Anita and I just stood there, waiting for them to leave.”

“But they didn’t.”

“No. And then, I heard a soft bang. And then another two.”

“And after that?”

“Well, I waited a few more minutes, then cracked open the closet door.”

“But did you hear anything else?”

Jerry shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. After the bangs, it was silent for a while. We figured whoever came in must’ve left.”

“But you didn’t hear windows opening, or anything like that?”

Jerry shook his head, and looked at his chopped-up vegetables, satisfied. While we’d talked, he’d cut them into tiny slivers. “No, no windows opening.”

“So whoever killed Esme walked into the room with her, and then walked out.”

“Yeah,”

“So it was someone she knew.”

Jerry shrugged. “I suppose so. You guys didn’t see anyone suspicious downstairs?”

“No. We didn’t really hear anything, either.”

“Well, there
was
music, and a whole bunch of people talking.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Whoever killed Esme must’ve used a silencer. There would’ve been a
lot
of noise from the gun otherwise.”

Jerry put a big wok on the stove, and started heating it up.

“That means,” I said slowly, “whoever killed Esme planned it out. They were going to kill her at the party. They had an alibi – and they did the whole thing so fast that nobody saw them disappear.”

It was a worrying thought. If it had been an act of passion or a sudden thing, maybe I could’ve outsmarted the killer. But this killer had obviously put a lot of thought into the crime.

It was my first murder investigation, and I was up against a pro.

As Jerry stir-fried the vegetables, I wrote down the extra details he’d told me, and asked him about Anita.

“She’s just this woman,” he said. “We’d only really said hello, and then she offered to give me a tour of the place.”

“Do you know
anything
about her, apart from her name? And the fact that she’s married to some rich guy with a pre-nup?”

Jerry shook his head. “Not really.”

I dragged my laptop into the kitchen and fired it up. A quick Google search revealed that there was, indeed, an Anita Lowe, and I showed her photo to Jerry. “Is this her?”

“He-ey!” he said, grinning broadly. “That’s her!”

I turned the screen back to me, and tried to dig up online dirt on her. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much dirt. She was married to a Larry Lowe – I could find quite a few business-y type articles about the company he owned, but not him personally – and she went to fancy parties once in a while. She didn’t seem to have much presence online, and it was clear that she appreciated the benefits of privacy and secrecy.

Jerry was probably right. This woman would be no help in the investigation. Still, I wrote up two index cards about her – just in case I wound up talking to her. As Jerry served the finished vegetables, I tried to find information about Esme online – but once again, there wasn’t much.

“Did you want any rice with that?” Jerry asked, as he handed me a plate with a grilled honey-soy drumstick and a generous helping of vegetables.

I shook my head, no, and we dug in.  Between mouthfuls, I said, “Tell me about Esme.”

“There’s not much to tell, really.” I watched as Jerry stuffed his face full of chicken, chewed hurriedly, and swallowed far too soon. “I met her a couple of months ago, and then we ran into each other again. We hung out sometimes, since we know some people in common.”

“Where’d she live? What did she do? Did she have any enemies?”

“No, nothing like that. She was – I think she told me she was a lawyer? Or maybe an accountant? I forget, something boring like that. But smart – she worked hard. And… I don’t really know where she lived.”

“What about friends and enemies?”

Jerry shook his head. “We had some friends in common, and she was really well-liked. She was so nice, I can’t imagine her having enemies.”

“And family? Did she grow up in Manhattan, like you?”

“Yeah, she did, actually. I remember her saying something about a dad who lived on Park Avenue.”

I nodded slowly. I should probably start with him. “Any idea what his first name was? Or what he did?”

Jerry shook his head. “No, but how many Park Avenue Mr. Lindls could there be?”

I thought back to an article I’d read on one of those gossip sites about Esme’s death. It didn’t have any information about her, or how she’d died, but it
had
mentioned that she’d been killed at a fancy Hamptons party, and that her dad – Laurence? Leo? Lewis?  Something Lindl– was a prominent human rights’ activist and a major stakeholder in some company or the other.

I rushed through my lunch, eating almost as quickly as Jerry, and then I went back to my laptop, scrolling through my history until I found the article I was looking for. Laurence Lindl was Esme’s dad, and his real estate company seemed to own half of Manhattan.

Jerry, in the meantime, had cleaned up the kitchen, packed the leftovers away into Tupperware boxes, and disappeared into his bedroom.

I was jotting down Laurence Lindl’s name when Jerry burst out of his bedroom. “Laurence Lindl!” he yelled.

I looked at him blankly.

“That’s Esme’s dad,” he said proudly. “I found it out.”

“Good for you.” I held up my index card with “Laurence Lindl” written on it.

“Whoa…. How’d you do that? I didn’t even see you write anything
down.”

I smiled to myself. “I found it online, silly. Did you find out anything else?”

“Yeah, his phone number. I called up some friends of mine who also know Esme, and one of them knows her dad, too.”

“Great.”

I grabbed the phone number from Jerry, found the handset, and took a deep breath. It had to be done.

A man’s gruff voice answered after three rings. When I asked to speak to Laurence Lindl, he said, “This is he.”

“Mr. Lindl. I’m so sorry to bother you. My name’s Valerie Inkerman and I’m a detective investigating Esme’s death.” I felt terrible as soon as the words were out. I’d given him the impression – not by directly
lying
of course, but by my way of saying things – that I was with the NYPD.

“Yes?”

“I wonder if I could stop by and ask you a few questions?”

“Sure. I’m home for the rest of the day.”

I managed to thank him and we hung up politely, and then I felt the air leave my body. I couldn’t keep pretending that I was with the NYPD. It was a ridiculous level of dishonesty, and I couldn’t do that to a man who’d just lost his daughter.

Of course, the moment he found out that I was a PI, he’d slam the door in my face. But I couldn’t see a way out – I would just have to put on my brave face and see it through.

I slipped into my nicest pair of dark blue jeans, the formal black heels I used to wear to work, a cream silk top and a black blazer. I figured that an NYPD detective
might
dress like this and it wouldn’t hurt to keep up the charade, at least until I got in through the front door.

Once I was in, I could decide what to do.