Over My Live Body (6 page)

It’s a beautiful Marathon Sunday. The first voice I hear is that of the weather guy on the all-news radio station, extolling the couldn’t-be-more-perfect-for-a-Marathon weather, like he deserves all the credit. I turn on the TV instead. Shot from above, the people cramming the Verrazano Narrows Bridge look like a swarm of ants. “It’s a beautiful Marathon Sunday,” one commentator after the other says. I turn down the sound and watch as the throng pushes forward, seeming to move slower than ants until the ground-level camera takes over and focuses on thousands of muscular legs pounding the pavement as they begin to cross into Brooklyn. The part I want to see, the runners crossing into Manhattan, won’t be for a while yet. Last night Morgan told me he and Vittorio were going and asked if I wanted to join them, but I declined. I thought maybe I’d get a glimpse of them cheering the runners on along First Avenue, but that’s clearly not going to be for a while and I want to get an early start on my work today. If you can call ten forty-five early. It’s going to be even later than that by the time I get to the studio.

It’s a beautiful Marathon Sunday. Nobody is lying in wait for me as I leave the building and head east, stopping for a cup of coffee on the way. Even more beautiful is the fact that the clay room is empty when I get there. I have it all to myself. I unbag and unwrap the head I was working on yesterday and shoot water at it and start working the clay with my hands and my paddle and my sculpting tools. I lose track of time as the head takes shape. My fingers gouge into the clay, making deep eye sockets. Muffled voices behind the closed doors suddenly make me glance at my watch.
Hours
have passed. Nothing could be more beautiful.

Morgan sticks his head in the door. “Hey, you’re back.” I’m still smiling at the molded clay. “How was the Marathon?”

“All right, what I could see of it.”

Morgan doesn’t look like the happy camper he was last night. He must be hung over. He and Vittorio probably celebrated long after all the guests left. I back further away from the head I’ve been working on and take a better look at Morgan. He looks like
his
head needs to be worked on. His eyes are red-rimmed and glazed. His jaw is tight. “Morgan, what’s wrong?”

He shakes his head and mutters, “Vittorio.” He picks up one of my sculpting tools from the work table and turns it over and over in his hand. “Everything was
so perfect
last night. Today he turned on me. He was testy even before we left to go to the Marathon and wouldn’t let on what was wrong. Once we found a place on First Avenue, he said he was cold and didn’t want to stay, so he took off on me.”

“Oh, Morgan, I’m sorry,” I hug him.

“He’s never acted this way before.”

“Maybe he was just hung over and didn’t feel so good,” I suggest. Allowances have to be made for bad behavior in the course of any relationship, at least once in a while. Morgan and Vittorio have just had it too good. They’ve been cruising down the avenue of love without hitting any potholes. They’re both spoiled.

“Maybe.” He sounds less than convinced.

“Or maybe it has something to do with that business at work. ”

“Somebody called again late last night. He said it was a wrong number. But he was okay
then.
I mean,
really
okay.” I know what he means. I’m not going to push it; he feels and looks bad enough already. I give him a last perfunctory squeeze and let go. He’s not ready to let go. “But I wonder if…”

“What?”

“If there’s somebody else. No, that’s crazy of me, forget I ever said that. You
saw
how we were
last
night. Anyway, I don’t want to distract you,” he says. “It looks like you’re on a roll here.”

“You really think so?”

“Are you kidding? It’s
beautiful
.” He hands me my sculpting tool and manages a forced smile. “I dropped off some leftovers for you earlier. They’re in the refrigerator whenever you feel like eating. Now get back to work.”

The next time I look at my watch, it’s midnight and there’s a knock on the door; the night guard is kicking everyone out of the building. I finish draping the head with damp cheesecloth and bag it and wheel the stand against the wall. I’ve done a marathon and it
feels
beautiful.

There’s another more impatient knock on the door. I open it a crack. The night guard scowls. “You Delilah Price?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got a phone call,” he points to the front desk. “You don’t need to go back in there for anything, do you? I’m going to lock up.”

I steel myself for this. Curt or Ivan? Ivan or Curt? Who’s it going to be this time?

I lean against the front desk for support, calculating how many blocks I’ve got to go to get home. It’s not
that
far from here. I managed okay last night. Better a phone call than to have whoever it is waiting for me outside. Whoever is making this call could be waiting for me outside, right down the street on the corner of Fifth Avenue. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I feel like I’ve got lockjaw. I clear my throat and say, “Hello?” It sounds like the death rattle coming from the throat of someone being strangled.

“Delilah, you’re still there, thank God.”

“
Mor
gan!”
What a relief.
“That food you left me was out of this world. Mmmm. Even cold.”

“I didn’t know if you’d still be there. I tried calling your cell, but there was no answer.”

“I’ve been here since late this morning,” I remind him, not adding that I turned off my phone. “I told you I was going to stay.” I did tell him,
didn’t
I? I’ve been so absorbed in my work that I only vaguely remember his brief visit this afternoon.
There’s something funny about this call
. Usually Morgan works in his studio almost as late as I do, and he knows me well enough to know
my
work habits.
Something’s not quite right
. Morgan has never called me this late or sounded so desperate to talk to me before. Or has he? He sounds like he’s choking on something. “Morgan, what is it?” I ask him. “Did Vittorio not come back?” There’s a long pause and I hear male voices in the background talking to and over each other. I wonder if he’s in a bar. Sunday isn’t a night for cruising bars and I’ve never known Morgan to cruise, but then again I don’t know how Morgan acts when his heart’s been torn out of him. “Morgan?”

I wonder if someone’s snatched the phone away from him. I can’t even hear him breathing on the other end. Just those other male voices, deep authoritative voices, more of them than before. And they’re not in a bar. I don’t hear clinking glasses.
Something’s terribly wrong
.

“Vittorio’s dead,” Morgan sounds like he’s been anesthetized. “He’s been murdered.”

“What?”

“I’m calling from the First Precinct. The police brought me here. They greeted me when I came home tonight and brought me here and now they’re about to question me.”

“Oh my God, what happened?” I lean against the edge of the reception desk. “Who did it? Do they know? How…”

“I
don’t know
who would do this and
you
don’t want to know what they did.” It sounds like he’s already been asked and told a few things. His voice is beginning to break. “It wasn’t me. I couldn’t…”

“I know you couldn’t. I’m coming down there. Is there anyone else you want me to call?”

“I can’t think.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I reassure him. I look at my watch and calculate how soon I can get there. 12:10. If my timing is good and a train is rolling into the station when I get there, I can get downtown in ten minutes.

“Delilah,” he warns, “be careful.”

The irony is that Morgan lives so close to the precinct house.
So safe.
Practically around the corner. He‘d always tell me that he and Vittorio felt like they could practically leave the doors open.
Nothing
could happen, what with all those blue-and-whites cruising around at all hours.

He was talking about burglary. Not this.

Nothing was taken that I know of except a life.

I shift my weight on the hard wooden chair that I was gruffly told to sit in a half hour ago by a cop in uniform who ushered me upstairs and told me to wait. I wonder where they’ve got Morgan. The desk next to me is littered with pink forms. I stand up to stretch. The minute I do, I hear a voice out of nowhere saying, “Someone will be with you shortly.” I wonder if the chair is rigged to some kind of silent alarm. The pressure of the hard wood made my butt fall asleep like it does during a tough pose, and I remain standing in defiance of the law.

I squint across the room at the map of the city on the wall and take a few steps closer to make out what the shaded divisions mean. As I do, a low voice stops me in my tracks. “Miss Price?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you have a seat here…” He indicates the killer chair I just abandoned. “I’m Detective Quick. Mr. Merritt told us you’re a friend of his.”

“I want to see him,” I insist. “Is he all right?”

“You’ll be able to see him. We’re just getting some background from him.” He sits at the desk beside me and stares into me. This detective won’t ever need bright lights to force a confession. His eyes will do fine.

“When can I see Morgan?”

“Soon. Right now I want to ask
you
a few questions.” He rolls back the cuffs of his gray pinstriped shirt just past his wrists and takes a sip of black coffee from a Rangers mug, then sets it down between us. “Do you want something to drink? Coffee? Soda?”

I shake my head. “How is he?”

“Very shaken up. Mr. Merritt told us that you also knew the victim, Mr. Vittorio Scaccia.”

“Yes. Not very well. I knew him through Morgan. He was Morgan’s friend. I was just at their place last night. They seemed
so happy
.”

“Did you see either Mr. Merritt…Morgan or Mr. Scaccia since last night?”

“I saw Morgan this afternoon. Around three. He’d just gotten back from the Marathon.”

“Mr. Scaccia wasn’t with him?”

“Morgan’s an artist. He came to his studio to work. Vittorio is…was a gourmet chef. His was a different sort of art. He never came to the school with Morgan. At least not that I know of, and we’re both there a
lot
.”

“When you saw Morgan around three, he was alone?”

“He came in my studio to tell me he’d left some food for me in the fridge before he left to go to the Marathon. He was going to his studio…” I realize I don’t remember him saying he was going to his studio. “And the next thing I know, he’s calling me from
here
. What happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Miss Price. It would really help us if you could tell me if you have any idea what time Morgan left the school tonight.”

“He usually stays late, almost as late as I do, unless Vittorio has the night off; then he leaves earlier.”

“How much earlier?”

I shrug. “It depends. Usually eight or nine.”

“You didn’t see him after three?”

I shake my head. A lot of the shaking is involuntary. “Maybe the guard did,” I suggest.

“Is there any kind of register? Some place where you sign in and out?”

I shake my head. “People come and go at all hours. We get officially kicked out at midnight, but Morgan’s usually never there that late.”

“When you did see Morgan, how would you describe him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he still seem
happy
, Miss Price?”

Those eyes are unrelenting, boring into me from over the brim of his coffee mug as he raises it to his mouth again. I start to squirm in the chair. “I…I don’t know. I guess I was too absorbed in my own work, my own troubles to notice. Would you
please
tell me what happened? Why are you asking me these questions about Morgan? He’s the gentlest person I know. Particularly compared to some of the
others
I know.” I grab the detective’s coffee mug off the desk and sip nervously before either of us realizes what I’ve done. “Is he a suspect?”

“We’re trying to get to the bottom of this, Miss Price, and right now we’re just scraping the surface. Because of the nature of the crime, there are questions that have to be answered before we can rule out or zero in on anybody.”

This man’s use of the word
we
is driving me nuts. I have to keep looking around to verify that there are only two of us in this room. “Does he need a lawyer?”

Detective Quick leans back in his chair. “He hasn’t asked for one.”

“You’re not going to arrest him or anything?”

“Morgan’s been very cooperative so far. We’re not giving him the third degree, Miss Price. It’s just that certain questions need to be answered.”

I lick my lips. “
I’d
like to ask a few questions.”

He frowns. “Go ahead.”

My eyes waver toward his shoulder holster and then I take a deep breath and meet his stare head-on. “
What happened
?”

All at once this man’s fine features look pained, like
he’s
the one sitting in the hot seat, or
hard
seat, as it were. He looks like he’s been up all day and all night and he has seen way too much and wants to put an end to all the suffering in the city
now
. His dark brown hair looks uncombed, like it was blown around a bit when he arrived at the crime scene, or maybe it was mussed up earlier by some admiring woman’s roving fingers. I look down at my own clay-stained fingers now. I’m bending and unbending them. I can’t look at those eyes any more. It’s been a long night and it’s no longer beautiful.

“Mr. Scaccia’s body was discovered shortly after ten on a loading dock in front of the building in which he occupied a loft with Morgan Merritt. He’d been stabbed numerous times and suffered other injuries.”

“Oh my God, did Morgan…was he the one who found him like that?”

“The 911 operator received the call shortly after twenty-two hundred hours.” Detective Quick glances down at a pad on the cluttered desk. “Twenty-two seventeen to be exact. It was phoned in anonymously. According to the scenario we’ve established so far, Morgan arrived after the Crime Scene Unit was already in place. The part that’s a little fuzzy is why it took him as long as it did to get there when he supposedly left West Eighth Street before nine. How long did it take
you
to get here?”

“I didn’t look at my watch.”

I look at my watch now. It’s 2:20.

“Maybe someone tried to rob him? He didn’t understand much English. Maybe someone tried to rob him and he hesitated and whoever did it thought he was trying to resist…”

“We found his wallet on him, Miss Price. He had close to fifty dollars on him, two credit cards, a green card. He was wearing a gold ring on his right hand. We’ve pretty much ruled out robbery as the motive here.”

“I can’t imagine who would want to harm Vittorio. Not Morgan.” I shake my head. “
Definitely
not Morgan.”

“They were together for some time?”

“A year. Last night was their year anniversary. They had a party to celebrate.” I’m having a hard time reading what Detective Quick is thinking about all this. He finishes the last of his coffee. “They were
happy
.”

“It’s possible that someone may not have been happy about them being so happy.” His voice lowers. “An ex-lover. We’re looking into that angle too.”

“Yes, you never know what ex-lovers are capable of,” I mumble.

“Did Mr. Merritt…Morgan ever mention anything to you about people in his or Mr. Scaccia’s past resurfacing?” I ask.

“No,” I say.
I’m the one having trouble in that department.
“There was some kind of problem Vittorio was having at the restaurant, with someone who worked with him. He was getting annoying phone calls.”
Just like me.
“Didn’t he—Morgan—tell you?” 

“He mentioned it, yes.”

“You’re looking into that too, right?” Quick’s jaw clenches in response. “Didn’t anyone around there see anything?”

“Nobody we talked to so far. We’re going to canvass the neighborhood thoroughly tomorrow.” I envision all of the paintings in Morgan’s loft being lined up along Franklin Street from West to Lafayette. Another guy in plain clothes that are bursting at the seams barrels out of a room down the hall and stops at the door. “I’m getting some water for Morgan
Le Fey
in there,” he snarls. “Seems his mouth is dry.”

Detective Quick shoots him a deprecating glance, then hunches toward me, trying to suck me up into his dark pupils and make like his fellow detective doesn’t exist.
Quick thinking. Quick-tempered.
I wonder in what
other
ways his name suits him. “Here’s my card.” He pulls one out of his pocket and puts it on my outstretched palm. “In case you think of anything else that might be relevant to this case. If I’m not here, leave a message. I or someone else in this department will get back to you.”

“Can I see Morgan now?”

The other detective pauses on his way back and raises his eyebrows at Detective Quick. “Hat trick,
you
want to talk with him some more?” Quick nods and turns back to me as he stands up. I didn’t notice when he first came in how imposingly tall he is. As the night has ground on, I feel like I’ve shrunk in stature. Maybe
that’s
it. Everything is too huge for me to handle. “I’m going to go in to see how Morgan’s doing,” he tells me. He doesn’t sound like he’s talking about his health. “I want you to wait out here. I’ll let you know when you can see him. You sure you don’t want some coffee?”

I’m reminded of a time a few years ago when I flew to Rome to study artifacts. The jumbo jet was grounded because of engine difficulty, and the stewardesses served up free champagne; when that happens, you
know
you’re in for a long haul. I ended up being grounded for four hours. There’s no telling how long I’ll be stranded here.

“No,” I shake my head. “No coffee. Thanks.”

Detective Quick skims my shoulder with his hand as he walks past me, a small gesture of comfort that at the same time is telling me,
Stay!

That same hand displaying greater pressure wakes me up. “Miss Price!” I open my eyes and look up at him. My head is resting on a pillow of piled up pink forms on the desk. Some of them flutter to the floor when I move. He bends down to pick them up and puts them in a neat pile in the middle of the desk on top of a cream-colored file folder. “You can see Morgan now.”

“You’re through with him?”

“For now.” His mouth is grim.

“Can he leave?” I stand up and start for the door. Detective Quick gently reels me in and steers me back toward the chair.

“Miss Price, Morgan is very disturbed by what’s happened.” He sits on the edge of the desk. “It’s taken us hours to get anything coherent out of him. We’re going to want to talk to him more, but he’s not in any shape to help us right now.”

“I
thought
you said he was cooperating…”

“I don’t mean to imply that I believe he’s purposefully holding anything back. There are a few gaps in his story. We’re going to want to talk to him some more when he’s calmed down. He’s in a state of shock right now.”

“I imagine
anyone
would be, under the circumstances,” I insist.

“We still don’t
know
all the circumstances, Miss Price.”

“What are you telling me?”

“Do you know if Morgan has ever been under psychiatric care?”

“No,” I shake my head. “I don’t know. He’s always seemed calmer than most of the other artists I hang with.”

“Does he take any medication that you know of?”

“No.”

“As long as you’ve known him, has he ever acted irrationally or exhibited violent or self-destructive tendencies?”

“No.” I feel a sudden pang of guilt. What was it Morgan told me about how he felt looking through the windows of his studio when his work wasn’t going well?
Makes you feel like jumping out.
But of course I didn’t take that seriously. There were days when I joked about jumping into the kiln. I’d never do it. I’m feeling enough heat as it is. “Can I
see
him now?”

Detective Quick nods and ushers me down the hall. “Seeing as how you’re a friend, maybe you could get him to compose himself long enough to be a little
more
cooperative with us. Okay, Miss Price?” he says softly before opening the door.

No ifs, ands, or maybes about it, Miss Price.

Morgan doesn’t look up at first when I walk into the room. His head rests on the rectangular table in front of him; he looks like he’s sleeping or pretending to be. I start to rush over to him, but Detective Quick pulls me back. “Morgan,” he says, “you’ve got company.”

The look on Morgan’s face makes me start to rush over to him again. This time Detective Quick lets me go. “I’ll give you a couple of minutes of privacy,” he says, shutting the door behind him. I don’t turn back to thank him. I cradle Morgan’s head against me as he sobs convulsively into my stone-washed jeans. His arms encircle me clumsily and pull me closer to him like I’m the last life raft on a sinking ship. He’s shedding so many tears the room may get flooded before the night is over. I’m fighting back tears myself and losing the battle. I bend over and whisper into his hair, “It’s okay,” a lame reassurance to be sure because things couldn’t be less okay. My hands clutch him until finally his racking sobs stop and I only feel faint muscular tremors. “Morgan, I’m so sorry,” I purr, “I’m so sorry about what happened…”

“They think I did it.”

“You couldn’t have done it. You would never do anything like that.”

“Try telling
them
.”

“I did.” I reach out and wipe some of his tears away with the back of my hand. “They seem more concerned with chronology than character right now. The detective I was just talking to said he couldn’t understand why it took you so long to get home.”