Full Frontal Murder Page 4

  Did Hugh really look closely at the face of the figure in the sketch? It would have been the tutu he’d focused on. Marian heard Rita’s voice in her head, saying she wasn’t very good at catching likenesses … right before she left to work with the tech on a computer portrait. Was that a lie? Or did Hugh say the sketch was of him because he knew it was supposed to be of him?

  An hour later Perlmutter called in.

  “I talked to the school director. She told me how many times Hugh Galloway tried to pick up Bobby.”

  Milking it. “All right, Perlmutter, how many? Once as Hugh says or three times as Rita says?”

  “Twice. As the director says.”

  “Sheesh!”

  “Yeah. And we can believe the director, Lieutenant. You should see the security at this place—nobody gets in or out without three people knowing about it. Lots of wealthy kids here, the parents are very kidnapping conscious. The director keeps a log of everything that happens. She was even able to tell me the exact dates Hugh came for Bobby. Two dates. Twice.”

  “Oh … damnation!”

  “Yep. They were both lying.”

  5

  Marian slipped into the ladies’ before going into the bar, the Galloways and their problems firmly locked away until eight o’clock the next morning. Just as she was about to leave, two women came in, laughing and talking.

  “Did you see that dark, broody guy in the last booth?” one of them said.

  “Yes!” the other one answered. “That one looks like Trouble with a capital T.”

  “I wonder if he’s waiting for someone.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell from the way he’s sitting whether he’s saying ‘Hands off!’ or ‘What are you waiting for?’” They both laughed.

  Marian left the rest room and cautiously peered around a long floor planter toward the last booth. The “dark, broody guy” was sitting sideways in the booth, his back against the wall and one foot up on the seat. His left forearm rested on his knee and his right hand gripped a glass on the table. He stared straight ahead, motionless. The two women in the rest room were right; you couldn’t tell whether his posture meant invitation or rejection.

  Marian eased over toward the booth and stood with her fingertips resting on the tabletop. “May I?”

  He didn’t look at her. “May you what?”

  She slipped out of her jacket and sat down opposite him. “May I take off my jacket?”

  “You may take off whatever you like.”

  He still hadn’t moved. Marian studied his profile: a good one, even with the slight sag under the chin. His clothes were expensive, and unusual; the open-necked, collarless silk shirt could have been spun from silver. “You look like a toyboy,” she said slowly. “Are you?”

  He looked at her for the first time. “I like to think I’m not any kind of boy.”

  “Hmm. Well, it’s the ‘toy’ part that interests me.”

  He gave her the same sort of close examination she’d just given him. “You like to play, do you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He shifted his position so he was sitting normally in the booth, facing her. “And is now one of those times?”

  “I think perhaps it is.”

  Almost langorously he reached across the table and slowly began working at the top button of her shirt with one hand. When he had it open, he slipped two fingers inside, where he began a gentle massage of the spot between her breasts.

  “In public?!” Marian exclaimed, an octave higher than usual.

  He didn’t move his hand until the waitress appeared to take Marian’s order. When she’d come back with a scotch on the rocks and left again, he said, “You’re very warm in there.”

  Marian took a swallow of her scotch. “I’m very warm all over,” she muttered.

  He laughed then, a laugh that lit up his face. He took her hand between both of his and continued the gentle massage he’d started elsewhere. “I’m so glad you have a job that makes you horny.”

  She dipped a finger of her free hand into her scotch, licked it. “It’s not the job that makes me horny, Holland, and you know it—you vain creature.”

  He looked amused but said nothing. He dipped two of her fingers into the scotch—which he then proceeded to lick.

  “Arrgh!” said Marian. “I can’t stand it! Let’s go.” She stood up and shrugged into her jacket.

  “What about dinner?”

  “What about it?” She headed toward the door; Holland left money on the table and followed.

  Marian found she’d caught some of his langorous mood; it stayed with them all the way to his place. She took her time undressing him, taking pleasure from the mere sight of the body she’d come to know as well as her own. Their lovemaking was slow and sweet, just as it should have been.

  Almost two hours passed before they began regretting missing dinner. Marian showered while Holland called a Greek restaurant that delivered. Then while he was in the shower, Marian called her own number to check for messages. There was one.

  “I’ve been in the land of suntan panty hose and white shoes for exactly three hours,” said Kelly’s voice, “and already I’m homesick. Like you wouldn’t believe, I’m homesick. The studio sent this self-important little nudnik to meet me, talked about himself all the way from the airport to this hotel, whatever it is.” Marian could hear a rustling of papers, and Kelly read off the name of the hotel and a phone number. “I haven’t seen Abby James and Ian Cavanaugh yet. The studio found a bungalow for me, but it won’t be ready for another two days. Exactly what is a bungalow anyway? A log cabin without plumbing and electricity? At least I won’t have to chop wood for the fire—it’s hot as blazes here. Call me when you get home, Toots.”

  Holland came out of the shower as Marian was punching out the number of Kelly’s hotel. The voice on the other end of the phone said Ms Ingram had gone out; Marian left a message that she’d call tomorrow.

  “Shouldn’t she be prostrate from jet lag about now?” Holland asked, toweling his hair dry.

  “I don’t think anyone ever told Kelly about jet lag. She probably found herself a dancing partner.”

  He grimaced. “There is such a thing as too much energy.”

  “Not for Kelly. When she’s in in her eighties and on Medicare, she’ll still be dancing.”

  Their food arrived. They took it out on the balcony; the lights in the park had come on, and they were high enough up that the sounds of traffic were muted. When they’d finished eating, Holland moved his chair next to hers and sat with one hand resting lightly on her thigh. They were both silent.

  The thought occurred to Marian that this was a time she’d someday look back on as one perfect moment in her life, as she lazed there on the balcony of an expensive Central Park West apartment on a mild summer night. She was sated with food and drink and sex. She had good friends and good, meaningful work. Her health was good.

  And Holland was with her. Everything was better when Holland was with her.

  She was happy.

  The next morning she opened “her” closet and found only one outfit left. “You know, I haven’t been to my place in over a week,” she said to Holland. “I’m out of clothes.”

  “We’ll do laundry tonight,” he replied. “A nice, ‘sharing’ kind of domestic chore. And such fun.”

  “Hmm. No, I need to go home.”

  He placed one hand on his chest in a theatrical gesture. “You wound me to the quick. I thought this was your home.”

  “It’s my other home. But I haven’t even checked my mail lately.” She looked at her one remaining outfit critically, a lightweight summer suit that came with a skirt instead of trousers—the reason she’d left it to last. Marian still thought of the suit as new; but in the sunlight it was obvious that the suit’s new days were long gone. The NYPD had a dress code for its detectives, a fact that had never been any particular problem before. But now that she was a lieutenant, she had to pay more attention to her clothing than
she really cared to do. Marian hated shopping.

  She dressed and started the coffee while Holland hacked a melon in two. His day didn’t start as early as hers, but he never slept in when she was there. They’d almost finished eating when one of their pagers went off in the bedroom.

  “Yours,” said Holland.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Higher pitch.”

  Marian the Tone-Deaf sighed and went into the bedroom. She clicked off the pager and called in.

  When she went back to the kitchen, Holland said, “There’s been a break in a case and you have to go in right now.”

  She laughed and said, “Again, how can you tell?”

  “Your walk. You have a Marian walk and a Lieutenant Larch walk. You’re walking like a cop now.”

  “God, I hate being so transparent.” They exchanged no casual good-bye kiss; that would have been a little too domestic.

  Time to shift gears back to the Galloways.

  It wasn’t a break in the case, but instead one more ugly incident: a fire at the home of Rita Galloway. During the wee hours someone had heaved a brick through the dragon window and followed it with a Molotov cocktail. The alarms going off had awakened everyone on the street. Heron Security had been there within minutes and summoned the Fire Department. The explosion was small and the damage minimal; the fire had been quickly contained to the dragon window room and part of a connecting hallway. The gasoline in the wine bottle had been a minimum amount needed to cause ignition—an act of harassment rather than arson or attempted homicide.

  “Bring him in,” Marian ordered.

  No Heron Security man had been watching the house at the time it happened; their orders were to remain until the lights were turned out for the night. Right now Rita Galloway and Bobby were staying at her brother’s place on the West Side until repairs could be completed and the smell of smoke no longer lingered. Alex Fairchild had hired bodyguards to stay with his sister and nephew around the clock; brother and sister both were frightened and angry and demanding Hugh Galloway’s arrest. Bobby had been told only that the house had caught fire, but nothing about the cause.

  Perlmutter and O’Toole had gone to the headquarters of Galloway Industries and told Hugh he could either come in for questioning voluntarily or they could arrest him as a material witness. He called his lawyer and came voluntarily.

  The in control man Marian had interviewed the day before had given way to one in the grip of a titanic rage. “Do you really think I would set fire to a house where my son is sleeping? Don’t you see? Rita did it herself! That woman is evil, evil to the core!”

  “Why should she set fire to her own house?” Marian asked, knowing the answer.

  “What was the first thing you did? You hauled me in here. That’s what she wanted. She doesn’t give a damn about Bobby’s safety—just so she can get me. Why can’t you see that? Because women don’t do things like that? Because Rita’s poor-little-me act convinced you she’s the victim here?”

  “I’d say Bobby is the real victim. Where were you at 3 A.M.?”

  “In bed asleep, of course. And before you ask—yes, I was alone. I’ve slept alone since before Rita and I separated. My father was asleep in his bed, and I assume the servants were asleep in theirs. Now, Lieutenant—are you going to arrest me because no one was sitting there watching me sleep while my house was being firebombed?”

  “You still consider it your house, Mr. Galloway?”

  “Damned right I do. The deed’s in my name. I offered to give Rita the house if she’d agree to let me have Bobby. But she wants more than a house. She wants everything. Most of all, she wants to see me ruined and humiliated. Prison would take care of that. Have you brought her in for questioning?”

  “How many times did you try to take Bobby out of preschool?”

  “What? Oh … just the once. I told you that yesterday.”

  “The school director said you tried twice.”

  “Once, twice, what’s the difference? No—the director’s wrong. It was only once. Why the hell are you asking me about that at a time like this?”

  Marian left the questioning to Perlmutter and O’Toole. She walked down the hall to Captain Murtaugh’s office. “Jim? Got a moment?”

  He waved her in. “How’s it going?”

  “About as expected. She accused him, he’s accusing her.” She sat down and took a deep breath. “I don’t think he did it.”

  “Reason?”

  “I don’t believe he would endanger his own son. The little boy’s just too important to him. Hugh Galloway is probably every bit the son of a bitch his wife says he is—he’s tried to buy Bobby from her, for one thing. He offered her the house and god knows what else if she’d give the boy up. But if he was going to heave a Molotov cocktail through the window, he’d do it at a time Bobby wasn’t there.”

  Murtaugh nodded. “Sounds reasonable. What about the wife? Could she have done it?”

  Marian shifted in her chair. “I don’t think so. And for just about the same reasons. Even if she is the coldhearted liar Hugh claims she is, Bobby provides the only leverage she has over her husband. She wouldn’t risk losing that.”

  “You’ve seen them together, Rita and Bobby. Anything there?”

  She shook her head. “Looked like a normal mother-child relationship to me. Bobby’s a sweet kid. He doesn’t know what’s going on between his parents—Rita has shielded him from that.”

  “If we rule out both of them,” the captain said, sitting up straight, “then it looks as if old Walter Galloway was right. Kidnapping for ransom.”

  Marian agreed. “And it’s somebody who’s new at the game. An amateur. The man who grabbed Bobby on the street … an experienced criminal would have dropped the kid and run the minute he heard the police siren. But this guy not only held on, he even struggled with the bluesuit over possession of the boy. A pro would never have run that risk.”

  “Why set the house on fire?”

  She shrugged. “Planning to grab Bobby when he and his mother came running out of the burning house? But he didn’t figure on the alarm system being so noisy. It woke up the entire neighborhood … witnesses all over the place. Another amateur mistake.”

  “Yeah,” Murtaugh mused, “it could have happened just like that.”

  “There’s only one piece that doesn’t fit,” Marian said. “There are lots of little rich boys in New York. After the first attempt failed, why didn’t the kidnapper just move on to an easier target? Why did he come back a second time for this particular little rich boy?”

  “I think you’d better find out,” the captain said.

  6

  “Mrs. Galloway wasn’t sure of the exact date her brother caught the cleaning woman going through her checkbook,” O’Toole said. “But she’s sure it was a Tuesday either two or three weeks ago.”

  “Why Tuesday?” Marian asked.

  “Because Bobby wasn’t home when it happened. The cleaning service comes twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. And Bobby doesn’t go to preschool on Fridays.”

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  “The cleaning woman was Puerto Rican, first name Consuela. About five five, hundred-fifty pounds, in her forties. Mrs. Galloway doesn’t remember ever seeing her before. Mrs. Galloway didn’t report the incident to the cleaning service herself—she said her brother took care of it.”

  “What about the cleaning service?”

  “Maids-in-a-Row, on Lex,” O’Toole said. “They’ve just been bought by Galloway Industries, and they’re gonna be merged with two other cleaning services. The owner, name of Gordon Egrorian, says he don’t know nuttin’ about no complaint, his words. Could be lying, but he cooperated in checking the payroll.”

  “And?”

  “And Tuesday three weeks ago he had a new employee on the crew that went to Mrs. Galloway’s house, a Consuela Palmero with a home address on West 177th Street. I haven’t had time to check it out yet, I’ll get to that next. Egrorian said one
of his regular crew quit without notice, and the Palmero woman showed up looking for work that same day. He put her on the Galloway crew without checking her references.”

  “Whoa. Aren’t those cleaning services all bonded?”

  “He said she already was—she had the papers. That was good enough for him, in a pinch. He’d planned on adding her to his own bond later, but he never saw her again. He tried to call when she didn’t show up the next day, but the phone number she left wasn’t a working number.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do you want to bet that her name isn’t Consuela Palmero and she doesn’t live on 177th?”

  O’Toole grimaced. “Not even a penny. But I’ll check it out anyway.”

  “Talk to the others on the Galloway cleaning crew. See if this Consuela let anything drop about herself. Slim chance, I know—but this woman’s our only link to whoever’s behind the trouble. Let’s get that owner of Maids-in-a-Row … Gordon Egrorian? Get him in here for a session with the graphics tech. Set it up, O’Toole.”

  “Okay.” He scribbled a note to himself. “And I asked Mrs. Galloway if her husband was in therapy, like you said. She says no, Hugh looks upon needing a therapist as a sign of weakness. She says that’s one reason he insisted on her going into therapy. An insult. That lady’s very bitter, Lieutenant.”

  “I know.”

  “What about her therapist?”

  “Perlmutter’s at his office now. I don’t expect he’ll tell us much. All right, O’Toole, go check on the elusive Consuela.”

  “Right, Lieutenant.” He hurried away.

  Marian looked in the case file and found the West Side address for Alex Fairchild that Perlmutter had put there. She had legitimate police business with Fairchild and his sister, but mostly she wanted to see how Bobby had weathered this newest trauma in his young life.